statsgirl

If it were 75% flashbacks, SA would be on the set. Since he isn't, it's going to be mostly present day, starring Laurel as the BC and Ray Palmer as The Atom. I'd guess Thea and Malcolm too but without Oliver, why would they be there? Hell just froze over. Is this a dastardly plot to make us appreciate Oliver? Team Arrow hooked me in in s1, a mantra heard all over the internet. Without Oliver, a smart EP would be focussing on how Diggle and Felicity get on without him. But the question is, is there a smart EP attached to this show? --- The TV Guide spread says that Felicity asks Caitlin to run a DNA test on the arrow that killed Sara. Something happens to "a character we care about" and "the Flash characters are like 'Whoa, this is very serious'. That doesn't sound like the canary cry, unless someone attacks Laurel with something radioactive. And there's yet another "vital piece of evidence" about Sara's murder. Drop by drop.

If you're looking at who is manipulating events for Laurel to become BC, we always end up with the same suspect .... Marc Guggenheim.

I think that's the perfect metaphor, even to him going to her occasionally for what he wants ("and you know how I feel about her") but never willing to leave his marriage for her. Kudos to you.

Yeah, I fully expect him to be a suspect sometime this season, although how could Sara know who he was? And then he'll be eliminated, and we'll get the next clue, and the next suspect, and the next elimination. They really don't know how to write mysteries, do they? Maybe the Laura writers could help them out.

Wow, I love everything what Alan Sepinwall said. They should have put Sara on a bus instead of killing her. They also said that maybe too much of the creative juices have been focuses on The Flash to get it off the ground. Not a fan of Colton Haynes ("Colton Haynes should never be asked to recite dialogue"), but he does do better than Katie Cassidy does.

I don't see how Laurel could get the canary cry without some massively WTF? writing. The metahumans were created when Star labs exploded and Laurel was in Starling City then. Guggenheim said "someone we care about". Surely he can't be so clueless as to mean Laurel, Every critic comments how polarizing she is. Different things. If she didn't have social intelligence, she wouldn't realize that what she said was inappropriate.

Felicity is the tech person for Team Arrow. In terms of Barry and Cisco both have their own fields of knowledge but if this is analyzing the blood from the arrows that killed Sara, that's definitely Caitlin's expertise. Other than that, Felicity and Caitlin seem to have more social intelligence than Oliver, Barry or Cisco (which is fair since it tends to be higher for women than for men). Caitlin's comment to Cisco as he was holding the boomerang "You didn't think this one through, did you?" was the best line of the Plastique episode for me. No Laurel, though. Nice to see Lyla there. Is this where they bring in ARGUS to the 'who killed Sara?' mystery?

Felicity said that the test she performed on the sample from the arrows that killed Sara wrt Roy's blood was "inconclusive". Consider me thrilled if the EPs are actually going to let someone who knows CSI stuff and bloodwork look at the evidence. Someone I care about, Marc? Or someone you care about?

It's funny (as in 'not in a good way') that we get Felicity's feelings from scenes with Barry, and Oliver's from scenes with Diggle. That's where she was when Barry asked her in s2. In s3, in the Flash episode Going Rogue (not even an Arrow episode, really writers!), she acknowledged that it was a quiet dream that she had, to be with Oliver. In The Calm, Diggle called Oliver out on saying the ILU was just to fool Slade because it was true, and Oliver was having some quiet dreams of his own. But in true soap opera fashion, these two never really talk about their feelings. Although at the end of Secret Origins, Oliver realized that Felicity didn't want him to talk about how he feels about her if he's not going to do anything about it..

When Dinah returned in season 1, she told Quentin that she moved to Central City because both he and Laurel had moved away from her, he into the bottle and his job and Laurel into her life, and she was so alone. (This may have been a deleted scene, I can't remember.) Laurel was applying to law schools and planning on moving out when the boat went down so she probably did soon after. Of course, Laurel may have felt that she wasn't enough at the same time that Dinah felt that no one wanted or needed her. Talking to people about your feelings is a good thing.

Ouch. I love what a big Felicity fan Robert Doughtery is. And he often has very good points with it, as in his review of ep 5 I think much of the problem with Ray is that they wanted him to be like Oliver, billionaire CEO, charming, gorgeous, but they also wanted him to be funny, given all the remarks about how he's like Cary Grant. They got carried away with the last part. While it was very funny in the scene where he barges into Felicity's house, it was also way crossing boundaries. I wish MG would stop talking about people's incredible chemistry (now Thea with new guy) and just let us decide for ourselves if it's there or not. At this point, telling me a couple has incredible chemistry is a turn-off. Stalker!! I'm there already. Greg Berlanti said at SDCC that if you look at the scene in Lian Yu and how they are looking at each other "there's love there". Yeah, we have to get it from an EP interview.

That makes sense. And when she's angry that Sara's been killed, she goes vigilante and beats up a guy who she has heard hits his girlfriend. Punishing him however she can, just as she wanted to punish Oliver when he first came back, and the Hood for letting Tommy die.

I just read Wet Hot Starling City Summer, wherein Diggle and Roy especially have had it with Oliver and Felicity flirting through the summer, and the bed Felicity ends up buying. Really funny.

All the time we spend trying to make sense of fictional characters. I agree that Laurel is lashing out at the world because it's not going the way she wants it to. And the more it doesn't, the more she tries to make it. Laurel seems to be one of those people who have everything planned out and they want it to go according to plan. She even told Sara her plan: move in with Oliver, after a year get engaged, then get married. When Sara pointed out that Oliver wasn't ready for this, as shown by his cheating on her with a number of women they both knew, her response was "Why can't you be happy for me?" Sara was was only trying to get her to see reality but for Laurel, it was attack on her I agree with your child parallels but I don't think that Sara was the golden child in the family, I think Laurel was while Sara was the screw-up. When Sara came home from university mid-term, the question was asked if she had got kicked out, whereas the conversation with Laurel was about her applying to law school. In season 2, Sara was the one who felt that she wasn't good enough, that what she had done wrong was so horrendous, she could never be forgiven. When has Laurel felt she was wrong? She's always been more 'sinned against than sinning'. When Dinah came to Starling City looking for Sara, Laurel was angry at her for believing Sara was still alive and called in Quentin expecting him to tell her she was wrong. When Quentin started hoping himself, Laurel shut them both down in a very cruel way in Salvation. But Sara was alive and did come back and Laurel's reaction to the attention being on Sara now rather than herself was to throw a wine glass in anger. When Laurel was suddenly representing the DA in ep 3x05 and they told her Starling City bank was in trouble, she told them to call in the riot squad. That's not something most of us would do with zero experience, but she was so sure of herself that instead of getting someone who knew what to do in that situation or even finding out the regular procedures, she called immediately called in the riot squad*. That's the action of someone who is very confident in her abilities, not someone who watched her sister get all the attention. That's where the attitude that the world owes her what she wants because until the Queen's Gambit went down, it did give it to her, beauty, brains, a rich boyfriend and probably prom queen too. (Ironically, the show keeps giving it to her too, which is why people complain that it's "unearned".) Did Laurel call the cops on Sara because she wanted to correct Sara's course? Or because she knew Sara was interested in Oliver and she wanted Oliver for herself? We'll probably never know unless one of the EPs spills. *That scene reminded me of something. When I was an undergrad, I worked part-time as a ward clerk in the emergency room of my local hospital (a great job, I recommend it). Every year on July 1st, the new interns would arrive. Some of them would see their first patients and order tests all on their own. These were the ones you wanted to avoid as your doctor in the future. Others, knowing that they had very little experience and didn't know much, would go to the senior nurses to double check with them. Even though the nurses were significantly lower on the status ladder, these interns appreciated just how much they knew and experienced, and used them to avoid making a mistake. Later on they did the test ordering all on their own but it's a wise man who knows what he knows not..

I'm pretty sure Malcolm would have included archery in her training since that's his own forte. Her archery trophies suggest the skill could be genetic. Felicity and Thea speed dating would be hysterical, although Thea's about to get a new love interest. Why do we only have Felicity/Thea friendship in fanfic? Not the rest of her life, just longer than five weeks. Show me that she does have feelings for Oliver and it wasn't just a crush. I don't want to see Felicity waking up in Ray's bed as if who she's with doesn't matter. That's reserved for pre-island Oliver. I think they planned her murder without a murderer in mind but I hope they had at least picked someone when they actually wrote it. But Who Killed Sara is the crapiest murder mystery because ultimately I doubt it really matters who did it -- the point was to move Laurel's origin story along. (Although I'm intrigued that in both TV write-ups today, TV Line's spoiler column and Matt Roush's review, at this point almost all the Arrow comments are complaints about this season.) If they were going to let Laurel into the Arrow cave and make this season all angsty, they should have at least left Team Arrow intact. Give us something to hold on to.

Maybe Thea is the person who doesn't become her comic book character but goes dark instead. Otherwise, with Roy, Laurel, Ray and then Thea on top of O/D/F, it's going to be a very crowded lair. I think it's a question of numbers. If she goes out on dates with various guys, that's seeing what else life has to offer. If she gets into a relationship with Ray (multiple dates, overnights, weekends together, he's her plus one), then I'm going to think she didn't love Oliver after all, at least not in a SO way..

I don't hate Ray, I hate the idea of this contrived out-dated triangle put there for the sole purpose of delaying Oliver and Felicity getting together. If Ray becomes platonic friends with Felicity and she helps him navigate through the tech and other issues toward becoming a superhero, I will be his biggest fan.

I think that's very interesting speculation. In fact, it may actually be better than what they're going to do. I don't think he would be irrelevant because he'd be the person who is holding everyone together even if he's not there. What I can't see is why they would take him off the show just when "the most polarizing character" is taking center stage. Please make this happen. But only to a certain extent. After that, Oliver has to fight for her, and not just throwing things around the Arrow cave. This is where I disagree with you. I know people who have wanted to be in a relationship rather than be with a particular person, and unless it's an arranged marriage (which granted often work out very well), it's always ended badly. If you want one person and settle for another, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed and divorced.

Yes, Felicity has two reasons not to get into a relationship with Oliver again: first because he just rejected her as soon at the first sign of danger, and second because he's still being a martyr and self-sacrificing and who wants to be in a relationship with someone who is looking to get himself killed? If the killer is Sin or Thea, I can imagine how Laurel wanting to kill her would go over with Team Arrow. Sadly, I can't see Diggle yelling at Laurel because he's too good a person to take it out on a weaker person. I hope the scene is about dealing with the murder of a sibling and he can talk some sense into her. I have to admit, I'm mildly curious to see if Ramsey can pull a good performance out of her like Blackthorne can.. That said, I am officially sick of this show shoehorning Laurel in everywhere even moreso now that she knows the secret. Agreeing with you completely here. Why would she get into a relationship with Ray if it's Oliver she wants? That would be emotional cheating. Felicity's always been a smart girl, smarter than Oliver certainly. She's not going to put herself behind locked doors if he doesn't want to be with her but it doesn't make sense for her to get into another relationship. If she does, it's an indication she didn't really love Oliver after all. I think the only way Laurel will see Diggle and Felicity as more than subordinates is if they don't support her and she fails spectacularly, and even then she'll probably blame them for not being there for her. If Oliver does get together with Felicity, Laurel will probably think he's just doing it with the help.

I laughed at the "be careful what you wish for" in response to the Diggle question. He knows his audience. Since it was MG who said it, I'm not going to worry. He was the one who said Laurel was "Emmy-worthy" in TOD. The man is propping a different show than I'm watching. I was hoping he would tell Laurel off but since it's so emotional, probably not. I don't see why we need young Nyssa scenes now that Sara is dead, but they're clearly enamoured of Ra's and like Ray Palmer, are going to play him up for all he's worth. I think one date is okay given that Oliver just rejected her, especially since it sounds like Ray springs it on her as a business occasion. But to have her in a relationship with him given that she's just told Barry it's still Oliver for her, no.

Yeah, Matt Roush is a good voice of reason. (I couldn't do his job, he must get so many e-mails from the truly crazies and he handles it all with calm.) It's too soon to give up on the show even if they are focusing on a number of elements that are questionable. It's funny how many reviewers still mourn the loss of Moira. (As well they should, there was so much potential left with her.)

I remember Terri Miller re-tweeting that timeline during Castle s3, gleefully since it said the show was in its golden time, while I was absolutely hating the stupid plot contrivances to keep the couple apart. I wish more shows planned in five (B5) or seven (Star Trek) arcs so it still made sense in later seasons. While I liked Slade's arc last season (if only there had been less Lance Family Drama), Ra's Al Ghul is not doing it for me this year, and having him as the Big Bad this year means whoever it is next season, it's going to be a lesser villain. Using Ray to keep Oliver and Felicity apart in 3B is just a terrible idea. Harlequin romances are written better.

What Laurel could bring to the team is her legal expertise, which is exactly what she's not using right now. Other than that, she treats them, especially Felicity,as her personal underlings. But I don't mind because she's not in the lair. Sure, they have to save her now and then but she's not fighting with Oliver and she's not on-site being bossy to Diggle, Felicity and Roy.

I've been liking Murdoch Mysteries a lot this year. No more stupid triangles for William and Julia (although George has now found himself in one with the character who was his love interest in the pilot episode) and I think the mysteries are quite good. There was one about human trafficking (which impressed me also because it was real Hungarian spoken without subtitles so like William and Julia, you only had the translator's words). They also do a really good job of incorporating real inventions and real historical characters into the show (last week it was Teddy Roosevelt). And Julia got arrested protesting to give women the vote.

I've had people I loved die. Three months later, the hurt still tears you up inside, years in my case. You'd have to be very shallow or very needy to start dating someone else in so short a time. Just as Oliver got all sorts of shade for jumping into bed with Sara and staying there, Felicity is going to look the same if she's dating Ray whiie mourning Oliver. This seems more plausible, since he's the kind of guy who notices when she's upset. It would also tie her closer to Ray when Oliver gets back so that if he's still pushing her away, she knows Ray is there for her. I still don't see why Felicity can't date Ray in ep 307, realize he isn't Oliver, and end as platonic friends. But then, I thought Oliver and Sara would have FWB sex in TOD and not fall into a pointless relationship.