statsgirl

Maybe it's a question also of who Barry respects and listens to. He does in some way to Joe and Wells but Oliver is a guy he's admired for some time, and the only one to know what it's like being a superhero.

I agree that they are aware that there are problems -- I just don't think they know what exactly those problems are or how to solve them. If they knew, I don't think they would have put Laurel/KC into a main season-motivating arc that required killing off Sara in such a brutal way. Like others have said, i think they would have done Laurel better by first making her a good lawyer, as she was in The Calm, and then motivating her to become a vigilante independent of executing Sara, either because Malcolm walked on Tommy's death, or with Sara being kidnapped. It just seems to me that what they are doing now with Laurel highlights all the problems with her, from thinking she's the only one who knows what's right (not telling Quentin, giving orders to Team Arrow), to weaknesses in KC's acting. All except for her being Oliver's love interest, that is. Fortunately they are keeping away from that.

On the other hand, when they are written to be stupid too for the sake of the plot contrivance.......Diggle telling Oliver to keep lying to Thea (shakes head sadly)

There were two notebooks, I think. One Robert's and one Moira's. She threw hers into the fire but Oliver still has Robert's. I think the lists were written by Malcolm Merlyn. Maybe the LoA teaches some way to write in neat lines using the secret ink. I think Oliver has always been stupid about emotional things. He didn't know that he needed to open up to Thea because she was looking for a connection to him; he opened up to Laurel instead. (Stupid). He was willing to move to Coast City to be with McKenna on practically no knowledge of her, he trusted Helena, he wanted to break up with Sara because of Slade going after him, he thinks he can't be in a relationship with Felicity. I think this season he's been increasingly stupid on a micro level, like about the paper in Sara's boot, or saying the LoA never would kill one of it's own. I take that to be plot contrivance around Laurel's story, and the lack of being honest with Thea plot contrivance about Malcolm Merlyn. Not calling the police to say that Malcolm is in town, or not even telling Amanda Waller I see as incredibly stupid. If he should have learned one thing, it's to never trust Malcolm.

I think it's definitely wanting to have Ray there, to make him a part of Felicity's personal as well as professional life. But if Felicity left for work early in the morning before her mother got up, I could see her mother coming by the office to say goodbye before she heads back to Las Vegas.

Panabaker has had a lot of experience (I remember a few years ago on the General Hospital thread at TWoP where one person would argue to bring her on to play the role of Lulu) but I don't think she's really had the opportunity to show what she can do on The Flash yet. That she is playing a character who came on bitchy and yet people don't hate her says something. I thought Cisco was pretty wooden but he was good when called on to stretch in the latest episode. EBR took the role of Felicity and ran with it but there are times when I think she's not quite up to what certain scenes call for her to do. She's smart and she wanted to create a memorable character in the two scenes that she was hired to do. It was luck that she clicked with SA and that the audience was looking for an alternative love interest to Laurel. I'd never seen Willa Holland in anything before Arrow but I wasn't impressed the first two seasons. I didn't hate her, but didn't love her either. I think a lot of it is what the actors are called up to do, and whether it's in their particular skill set. With Colton Haynes, I think they finally figured out how to write for him this season and he's miles better than the previous two. Writing for a character seems to me like making clothes. You have the person you're making it for (the actor) and the cloth (the overall story you want to tell) but what the outfit looks like in the end should be a combination of the two, like two different people could have outfits made out of the same cloth but the outfits are different because they are made to match the individual person. I wish they would do that for KC, take her acting style + a Black Canary origin story and make something that suits her specifically rather than trying to have her fit the story they want to tell. (Should we be having this discussion on the Behind the Scenes thread?)

The hug Mama Smoak is giving Felicity has F. in a different outfit than the crying scene. I wonder if it's at the end of the episode when Mama goes to Felicity's office to say goodbye. I've never had a parent or friend visit me at a workplace, even when it was one where they work (hospital and my dad was in to see his patients). I wasn't high on the management ladder and it would have been frowned on.

I was iffy about Colton Haynes the first two seasons but they've hit the right note with him now. Other than KC, I think all the original main cast is good, and they hit gold with EBR and Caity Lotz. I think that was Roush's way of agreeing with the questioner, that KC really is the weak link on Arrow, without coming right out and saying it. He's an old internet pro and I'm sure he's had lots of hate mail from fanatics who don't agree with what he writes. On The Flash, Gustin isn't as good an actor as Amell (but then, neither was Amell in season 1) but I think he's just right for what they want from Barry Allen The guy playing Eddie is pretty bland, but I have the feeling Robbie Amell is going to be the same too. Candice Patton brings a likability to Iris that Laurel has never had and I think most of the problems with that character are in the writing.

If it's true that everyone got three year contracts other than SA (who got locked in for 6 because there is no show without him), then KC's contract will be up at the end of this season. The question is, will they let her go then? Even though there are many satisfying ways to write her out in terms of the storytelling (see posts above), I would be very surprised if they do though. For some reason, they really seem to want her on the show, maybe it's because they can't give up on their dream of Dinah Laurel Lance: Black Canary. On the other hand, as TV Guide's Matt Roush wrote Even he notes a problem with the casting on Arrow.

I think they brought it on themselves though. After five months over the summer of promoting Olicity, they give us "blink and you miss it", and then it's full speed Laurel! And of course it's not quantity, that would take time away from the Laurel and Thea stories. I'm clinging to AK tweeting that SA and EBR were acting their butts off in 3x09. Even if it wasn't an Olicity scene, at least they were acting together.

ohmigosh, he would really have been awesome!

I will be surprised if she does leave though. For some reason, these EPs want her not just on the show but front and centre, even though everyone I talk to in real life thinks she should leave and most general internet sites are at best meh on her. I wish I knew why.

Where in the credits an actor's name appears is something there can be a lot of negotiation for, especially the coveted "and" role. But none of the kids in Dawson's Creek were established actors when their initial contracts were negotiated.

Comic con is being kind to them. When you can't tell which is Oliver and which is Roy, you're another step on the road to the Keystone Kops. And if the EPs are really going to have as they said they will (not sure if it's a real spoiler, in spoiler bars just in case), then we will have . Between that and watching Thea evolve, this is far more than I want when it sidelines Diggle and Felicity. I truly hate triangles with the fire of a thousand suns, but I'd take even that over this Laurel adoration crap.

I'm really over woobie Oliver. If he walks away with a load of angsty manpain, I'm more likely to want to Gibbs slap him than feel sympathetic. I wish the anhk Felicity is wearing would mean something in terms of Ra's but it's probably just Goth stuff.

Oh crap. Ray's going to be the one to comfort her, not Oliver. They really are screwing up Olicity this season. There are more pictures of Thea than of Felicity but I'll try not to be bitter; at least there are more of Felicity than of Laurel (although Laurel is close).

I wonder if the schedule got changed around after they planned the writing for the episodes. Barry's talk with Oliver would have made more sense if the Flash 1x01 had been shown before Arrow 3x01. That doesn't work for Felicity only showing up in Arrow for 3 seconds, and your friends are right, it was like a bait and switch. (Something Arrow is well known for.) That would be so awesome because they were great. They had real life problems and fights but you always knew they loved each other. Which means, of course, that the Arrow EPs won't do it.

Given the way this season is going, it may be the only way she's going to get on top of him. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Other things they do with her make me think of Garcia, like that outfit in The Promise. I thought this pictures was Jessice de Gouw at first. They say 'look at the mother if you want to marry the daughter' because that's what she's going to look like in 30 years. Oliver, take note. Wow. Way to totally kill the show for me. At least we know the acting is going to be better this time. I had a look at the NZ promo. Laurel get's 11 seconds of it, Felicity gets 4. I feel ragey. Seriously, is there anything they're not going to throw at Laurel this season to make her important?

I thought the time to put Josh and Donna together was when she was blown up and he rushed to Germany to be with her. At that point, he knew he cared about her and we knew she had cared about him for years. There was no good reason for them not to be together at that point, especially since Wells promised that we would love what we got with them. Instead, they spent seasons still apart for no reason that I could think of And it was so deliberate to keep them apart. In the last season, Josh spent more time with Amy Gardner, his ex, than he spent in scenes with Donna. I kept waiting for Josh/Donna scenes, but no, more Amy, more Santos. One thing that really bugged me the last season is that we got so many scenes of Santos (a character I had zero interest in) and his wife supporting each other and having a great relationship while Josh and Donna kept missing each other. It felt like Wells was using that fact that people cared about Josh and Donna and deliberately keeping them apart so that we would watch his "Santos becomes president" show. As for Harm and Mac, it's one of the worst endings ever. I think Donald Bellisario has something against couples being together -- the love of Magnum's life blew up, Sam Beckett never got back to his wife in Quantum Leap, Harm and Mac had the "if neither of us are married in 5 years we'll get married" (something I did when I was 14 with Russell V but fortunately he went through 3 marriages on his own), and no one on NCIS was allowed to be in a happy relationship. In terms of couples on a show, I don't want to wait 7 or 10 years to see them get together in the last frame. (If Emily Deschanel hadn't got pregnant in real life, would Booth and Bones be together even now?) I want them to be together when it's logically the right now, not kept apart by plot contrivances that make both characters looks stupid, and I want to see them in a relationship and see how they manage that. That's one thing that The West Wing did well, the relationship the Bartlett's had. I have my qualms about Death Comes to Permberly but I do like that we see how Elizabeth and Darcy navigate their life.

That makes so much more sense than what they are doing now, it makes me sad.

Hopefully Ray is also there to show Oliver that yes, you can have a life and a good business life and still have the relationship you want in it. While I don't like the distance between Oliver and Felicity these days (both emotional and physical) at least with working for Ray and being on the Flash we get to see more of who she really is.

Yes, I'd prefer that too. Oliver thinks that when Felicity said she had to work, it was work-work, not entertain clients work. And after The Arrow has fought, think of the awkward conversation Felicity would be having with Ray.

LOL that the Flash episode they're airing is the one with Felicity.

Laurel will have her own List from the DA's office of people they can't prosecute and she will insist that her List is more important than Oliver's List and make Team Arrow go after them for her. And she'll be the one giving orders, not Oliver or Diggle. But who is she going to go after? I can't see her being a sidekick to Oliver the way Roy is, and she doesn't have the skills Diggle and Felicity bring to the team. Not to mention, she's not a team player in the slightest. Is the solution to give her her own villains as the continuing 'B' plot? That might might Laurel/BC fans happy but it's going to do nothing for me except make me resent the time she's taking up that could have been spent on better characters. The problem is that this is Oliver's show, not GA/BC or even The Justice League. It's about Oliver's journey and Oliver's quest. Everyone else's journey fits into Oliver's (Diggle, Felicity, Roy, even Thea) except for Laurel's because the Black Canary is too powerful a character in her own right. I think the best thing to do is that at the end of this season, after she's become the BC, Laurel goes to Coast City (not Central City because Barry's there) to fight crime there. I don't see how they can ever successfully integrate her into the show so unless they want to keep giving her alternative plots to Oliver's they have to do something else with her. Either blind or contracts. Someone at WB must see that she couldn't anchor a spin-off.

Why is Oliver training with Ra's and the LoA? Did I miss something? The last I heard, Nyssa and Ra's were saying Oliver was the enemy. I'm all in favor of more emphasis on other characters as long as their names are Diggle and Felicity. The Flash episode showed more than anything that Arrow doesn't use Felicity well. She did five different things on The Flash as opposed to her two on Arrow (tech and crushing). And I think they could do the same with Diggle. I'd maybe take Roy too in certain circumstances. But not Laurel. IMO, Laurel's had more than enough airtime and storylines and not one has worked for me. Don't forget, just as he's changing his shirt from an espresso spill. If there's a tacky way to do it, this show will. Why does that remind me of Laurel?