statsgirl

That would be proof that the writers are watching General Hospital since they just did that storyline. Although I have to say, I've been waiting and waiting for a wearable that would replace having to carry my mobile phone around, Giving me access to the internet would be a bonus. I think Brandon Routh said that Ray went after Felicity for her tech expertise and then when he met her, he found her more "fetching" than he had imagined. One big advantage Ray has over Oliver is that he's according Felicity her due in terms of her brains, unlike Oliver who made her his EA. I wonder if they're going to do Ray/Felicity half-assed because they don't want to upset the fandom too much just when they're going to make Laurel the Black Canary? ETA: so it looks like Ted Grant will be back in Uprising ep 3x12. Just in time for Oliver's return.

I think many shows do that to themselves, tank the show because they're so afraid to put the couple together. Including Arrow, it looks like. I gave up on Ugly Betty watching Daniel and Betty go from partner to partner. I came back when the cancellation was announced to see if they would finally get together.

I'd take that scene over Oliver telling Felicity that since he can't be with her, he's glad she's found someone else who will be good to her.

it's what should happen though. If Oliver and Felicity are still at odds when he goes missing, it's not as strong a story. Barry is the perfect nerd match for Felicity but he's not the perfect billionaire CEO match, that's why they had to ramp it up for Ray. I think we'll have a better sense of the direction of the show after the next episode. They spent the first part of the season putting the players in place, now it's time to get them moving. MG said that we would know more about why Ray is in Starling City and what he wants at the end of the 3x07 episode; presumably we'll have a better sense of Felicity's relationship with Ray when we find out about the dinner and the dress, and what sort of a conduit Cupid is for Oliver and Felicity i.e. whether she brings them together to resolve some issues or whether Oliver gives up on Felicity and lets her move on to Ray. And then there's also Thea's new DJ and whether Malcolm Merlyn cares.

I thought Mabius was very good too. But they only hinted at putting them together when the show got cancelled. Without that, like without Emily Deschanel's pregnancy, the couples might still be dancing around each other. Oh I gave on being a fangirl of the show during the Julia/Darcy years too, just as years 3 and 4 of Castle were painful. But once the characters stopped being stupid and the couples moved together, I thought both shows got better. And the Murdoch wedding was really well done.

Ugly Betty was a show I gave up on because it was taking too long to put the couple together and they were acting too stupid along the way but I liked the ending. I was watching Murdoch Mysteries, who went through it's own time of stupidity by the leads, but they finally got married in the 100th episode and it was the perfect way for two detectives to get married (they even asked the priest to rush through the ceremony so they could go catch the bad guys). Then they prevented another crime on their honeymoon. So it can be done, putting the couple together on an active/mystery show and still have it interesting.

I think they have to do this because if Oliver and Felicity are still as far apart as they are now and Oliver goes missing and it's all Laurel and Ray in January, I think a number of viewers won't be watching. I'm still looking for a reason to watch then. Ray could be giving her the dress because he needs her at a work dinner and she doesn't have anything with her.

I thought that was a really good article that focussed on what the writers were probably thinking they were doing for Roy's story. It's the first one I've read that saw this as an episode about Roy rather than a Laurel one, and what he lays out would have been good storytelling,. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to pull that off in less than 6 minutes of actual screentime.

I agree. But I don't think that's the message the EPs are getting. A lot of people are happy that Laurel is becoming the Black Canary and not questioning that her story looks more like Malcolm Merlyn's than it does Oliver's or Sara's. As long as people accept Laurel as the BC, that's all the producers want.

I liked Sara, As a person, she was someone I could see spending time with and I liked her friendship with Felicity. There aren't enough (not any now) female friendships on the show and those two were believable But the biggest reason I miss her is that as long as Sara was around being awesome, there was hope that Laurel would remain a lawyer and become another character like Manhunter.

Guilty was supposed to be Roy's big episode with the cop-killing reveal and Oliver not abandoning him. What it worked out to was just over two minutes with Felicity and three plus with Oliver, half of which was the candle scene, because the episode ended up being all about Laurel. A total of less than six minutes in an episode that was supposed to be about his growth. Roy's story had even less time in Corto Maltese because that was about Laurel's AA boyfriend battering along with Thea and Malcolm. The B plot in Guilty and not even the C plot in Corto Maltese. Roy isn't a favorite of mine but I'm really bitter on his behalf. It could have been a good story. If they're going to do Laurel becoming the BC, I wish they would have episodes about her and separately episodes about Team Arrow so I could skip the Laurel ones entirely, and the other characters would have enough time for their stories. Of course, they're not going to do it precisely for that reason -- that even if only a fraction of viewers skipped the Laurel episodes, the ratings would still go down and they don't want that.

LOL, if only that were the case. I wonder if Ray is SWMing Oliver, taking over QC, doing the salmon ladder, going after his love interest? It would be a good parallel, Cupid in a red dress because Felicity wore one and Ray doing the salmon ladder because it's Oliver's. I think I'd enjoy that more than what's probably going to happen, which is Ray is a good guy, albeit weird, and he's going to join Oliver's crusade to clean up Starling... er I mean Star City. But what if it doesn't work and there is no BoP spin-off? We're left with Laurel being a costumed vigilante and working with Team Arrow in the lair because there's no way to put that genie back in the bottle. If the original intention had been to put Oliver's and Laurel's stories side by side, maybe I would still be watching the show but this way with KC playing Laurel. As it is, I thought Roy got really short-changed on his big mirakuru cop-killing story line because the episode was given to Laurel.

If I recall correctly, every time Oliver had a 'morning after' scene, it was interrupted by Felicity calling him to do Arrow things. (The one exception was with Helena who got up herself to go kill.) I think it would be fitting to have Oliver be there for Felicity when she wakes up.

One thing I think the writers do well is to write to the strengths of the actor. I think when Susanna Thompson got some of her season 1 scripts, she must have gone 'WTH?' but because she's a good actor, she put all sorts of shades of grey into it and made Moira into an even more complex character, although the start of it was there in the pilot when she had Oliver kidnapped. David Ramsey was found to be really good at understated comedy and so Diggle became funnier and more sarcastic (much like Worf did when he moved from ST:TNG to Deep Space Nine). EBR made Felicity funny from her first episodes so she got comedy too, and I like that this season they've found CH's strengths and are writing to them. I think the problem with Laurel is that KCs strength is playing entitled and bitchy and that didn't fit the plan they had for Laurel. This season, they're writing more to that and it's making Laurel a more believable character. From the spoiler thread I'm answering this here because it's about the planning and the writing for the show. I thought "Guilty" didn't work nearly as well as it should have and it was because they tried to shoehorn in both Laurel's origin story and Oliver's mentoring of Roy, which is Oliver's origin story. But then I remembered that Sara's origin story worked alongside Oliver's, and so did Slade's and Roy's but Laurel's doesn't, and I think the reason is that Sara and Roy and Slade's stories were like Oliver's -- big and comic-booky and ridiculous but because they were all the same, they fit together. Laurel's origin story, like Laurel's addiction arc last season, is from another CW show. There is nothing wrong with Laurel seeing her sister killed and deciding to take up boxing lessons because her life as an ADA isn't enough. But it doesn't fit with Oliver's shipwreck and five years tortured, Sara on the Amazo and with the LoA, and Slade and Roy's mirakuru powers. It's apples and oranges and I don't think that even with another actress Laurel's realistic transformation would have worked with Oliver's grand island experience. Certainly with Laurel starting training 7 years later than Oliver she couldn't become his equal or superior in fighting without some mirakuru-like transformation. What you end up with is a tortured soul donning a hood to honor a promise, and a realistic ordinary person dressing up in black leather because other people are doing it. If the original plan was to call it Starling and have Oliver and Laurel equal stories, I'm glad wiser heads prevailed.

I like Iris too, and I like her interactions with Barry. Personally I think Laurel's reactions to Oliver, her parents, Tommy and Sara had more to do with why people didn't like her character than the fact that she was out of the loop. Tommy didn't find out till nearly the end of the season but he was a favorite long before that.

I took it to mean "you're not the boss of me and I don't have to listen to you" which is something she pulled on Quentin in season 1 when he tried to provide police protection for her and her client. And then of course they attacked her. I see it as consistent with them showing that she's not very smart or self-aware (as others have said), in contrast to on-screen characters saying how smart she is. Especially now when she's only reacting to the immediate stimulus instead of thinking ahead. But if Laurel prefers to not be a part of Oliver's Team and out of the lair, that works for me. (Of course, I don't think that will last past ep 3x09.) But she knows now, she's known since ep 2x18 and she's still out of the loop in terms of the stories. Either they write a completely Laurel-centric A story, as Guilty was, or they're still trying to shoehorn her into the main Arrow story as they did having her call out the riot squad in Secret Origins. My best guess is that the original plan for Laurel failed in s1 and they still haven't got a Plan B, or C, that functions. Part of the problem is that the Black Canary of the comic books was the Green Arrow's equal or superior in vigilante-ism and that's not going to work on this show given she's 8 years behind Oliver in learning the skills. Nor does it seem that making her his sidekick is going to work either. So she's still left out of the main Arrow storyline and I don't see how they can get her in.

I think he's working very hard to make it the best show he can and he really believes that it is a great show. To be honest, it has made superhero shows acceptable, there are a number of good actors and the stunts are amazing. I think he gets discouraged when fans get upset, like over the poster and now about Laurel's storylines, and it's especially bad when he gets too tired. He was still selling the January stuff pretty heavily but who knows what he really thinks of it? I have to disagree with this. I think Willa Holland is getting the worst storylines and what Susanna Thompson got in the first season was no picnic. Compared to what other people get on this show Laurel has got storyline after storyline and I think it's on KC that she can't sell either a romance with Oliver or an addiction arc. I really believe that this is as good as she's going to get in terms of being a leading lady on a TV show because she's now tagged as miscast and the weakest link on the show. At best after this, IMO she'll get supporting roles as the bitchy best friend.

I have the feeling that it will be Ra's or Talia pulling the strings in the end but CH said that he felt sorry for the character who did it when he read the script and found out and there's no reason to feel bad about it being Ra's, Talia or Katana because we don't know any of them yet, or for Amanda Waller who is already pretty hated.

I think she did buy the bed. It would be their heavy-handed way of showing that Oliver is still not interested in creature comforts and that Felicity needs to take care of him. I hope he has regrets every time he sleeps in it. Felicity was working for him on Team Arrow. Wouldn't that merit something? To be honest, Oliver would have done better to pay Felicity so she could spend the time prepping him to be a more viable CEO so he could take over QC than working at Buy More. I wonder if he paid Diggle and Roy. If he paid them because they're guys and didn't pay Felicity, we're back to 1970 when Lou Grant paid Mary Richards less because she's a woman and didn't need the money like a man does. ETA: Yeah. While it's touching he hand made something for the baby, it does put the lie to what SA said.

I didn't mind what they did with Isabel and Blood except in terms of it could have been written much better because I didn't care much about either character. With Sara and Sin, I like them both and the thought that they get sacrificed so we can have more Laurel, I have no words. I don't think Sara could have faked her own death. Felicity and Roy spent too much time cleaning her up and scanning her. (Speaking of which, why wasn't Laurel helping?) I read that and my heart sank. It's bad enough to have January Laurel-heavy with lots of Ray, but to have Oliver come back and go through that whole cycle again just to keep him from Felicity, I don't think I have the energy.

Speaking of SA's interview on the After show, I'm bitter that he said Oliver still has four million dollars, but Felicity had to work low-level sales at Tech Village. It makes Oliver a real douche not to support her since he was the reason she lost her job at QC. Which they should know as they are so proud of coming from the comic book fandom themselves.

Someone new for Laurel to mentor? It makes sense because Sin is bonded to Sara and didn't the Black Canary mentor Sin? So Laurel would need someone new to mentor because Sin in already way ahead of her in terms of fighting skills. I like Sin and I'd gladly trade her for Laurel but she makes the most sense as to who killed Sara from the clues. She's short, Sara would be friendly but surprised to see her there. and they could magically write some shooting skills that Sara taught her before we met them. Plus Bex is doing another show. So while I would hate it, it seems exactly in these EPs wheelhouse. Let's trash another popular character on the way to getting Laurel to be the Black Canary. But first I expect an episode or two where they all suspect Thea.

Thanks for reminding me about that shot of Felicity at the podium. One thing I like about this storyline with Ray is how they are finally, finally, acknowledging how smart Felicity is and the corollary of how important she is. It which gives me hope for the future when everyone is a costumed superhero except Diggle and Felicity, that our two normal clothed heroes won't get shunted aside. I've decided that I'm glad that Ray is getting his superhero costume sooner rather than later because it means he'll be relevant to the show other than as Felicity's boss/love interest. I have the feeling that after this coming episode, I'll be done with Ray as Felicity's new guy. I don't mind that there is a tie-in to the comics. I really hate that we have to go to the comics to plug holes in the TV show though, and use it to figure out how Felicity stocked the lair after the earthquake. I agree with all of that, especially that they don't understand why people don't like her, even though every reviewer seems to say pretty much the same reason why. But they do know people don't like her and they know it's too soon to make her a viable BC because they've said so in interviews. And Greg Berlanti at least is pretty savvy about TV shows. So I have to conclude (hope) that there is going to be more going on for the other characters than just propping Laurel in her bid to become BC, and I hope it's not just Ray's story. In spite of my criticsms of it, I'm fond of this show and I can't imagine a faster way to kill it that making the episodes for two months, from mid-December to mid-February, focus on Laurel and Ray. Are we sure Felicity has an alibi? If it's not Oliver, Diggle (who was with Lyla at the hospital), Felicity or Roy, that leaves Malcolm and Thea, who were presumably on Corto Maltese, Quentin, who I can't believe did it, Nyssa (ditto what I said for Quentin) and Walter, which seems ridiculous. Outside of there, there is Amanda Waller (although I can't imagine why CH would feel sorry for her), Deadshot, Katana. China White, or Bronze Tiger, none of whom I care about, and Talia or another of the LoA, who we haven't even met yet. Hopefully if the 8 episode Agent Carter show does well, the CW will be more open to the idea of a shorter Arrow season supplemented with BoP (especially with a really good Barbara Gordon who could center the show) and Suicide Squad mini-shows. I think it would help both Arrow and the other(s).

Grant Gustin is wearing what looks like a superman logo on his hat. Cute. http://instagram.com/p/vZ8uZGF7OE/ I guess Laurel is a fixture in the Arrow cave now.

I liked the flashbacks on about 1 in 5 episodes because I find the rest boring. (Worked well for Guilty though, although maybe because I found the present day story to be boring.) But I've read posts from people that think they're the best part of the s how. I can understand turning Arrow into more of an ensemble cast because there is only so much you can do with the character of Oliver Queen, 45 minutes per episode, 23 episodes per season. So it's natural to spread out, to show Diggle's past and give him some things with the Suicide Squad, and Merlyn training Thea. The problem is whose stories are they going to tell and how much time will they spend on them, and will it be balanced by the stories of characters I do want to know about. While I've liked most of Ray's scenes (in Sara not so much), I'm not yet on board the Ray Palmer/Atom train. I find CH best in smaller doses, although I wouldn't mind larger one than we got in this last episode. As much as I like Sara, I got tired of so much of her in 2b. Moira, on the other hand, I could watch endlessly. So while I'm okay with tweaking the show to include stories about characters other than Oliver, it depends which characters they're doing. Every spoiler we've had about episodes post 3x09 have been about Laurel and Ray, and those are the two characters on the show I care the least about, especially Laurel. I don't care much for Malcolm Merlyn either but John Barrowman is always entertaining. Consequently, every spoiler that comes out about the January and February episodes makes me less and less interested. I was going to say that maybe Ray Palmer's story was about why he wanted the Applied Sciences tech, and then I remembered to pictures of BR being fitted for his mask. The idea of Ray, Laurel and Roy all in superhero costumes, and Diggle and Felicity doing back-up for them, is such a turn-off for me.