statsgirl

What could she have said? Oliver Queen brought me a laptop with bullet holes and the plans for a building on? Oliver Queen brought me a sports drink in syringes and asked me to analyze where the water came from? Oliver Queen wanted to get in touch with the former foreman of his father's company who was later found dead? He asked me to decrypt a program that had military grade encryption and was found to be about armored cars? I think in the first instance, Quentin would have jumped at it but anyone else at the police station would have told her to run along home, little girl. By the time it came to Trust But Verify, she had come to trust Oliver maybe more than the police. But generally she trusts someone until she finds out that the other person hurt someone she cares about or did something wrong (e.g. Helena tying her up, Moira being shady) so it seems to be a personality characteristic.. By the time Walter was found, she had realized that Oliver was doing good things (going after the Dodger, saving Roy) and she wanted to stay on and help. Also, she had convinced Oliver to stop killing people first. She told Oliver that before he found her, she didn't think that she could be more than a boring IT girl so working with Oliver and Diggle gave her a purpose and a substitute family since she's estranged from her own. I think her darkness manifests two ways: her fear of abandonment; and the many things she's afraid of, from heights to being left out, to not thinking she's worthwhile as a person or a lover beyond her tech skills. You don't see the darkness affect her because when it's there, she bites down on the bullet and soldiers through. At least that's what I got from the show. eta: ban1o, thanks for listening to my rant and thinking about it. I agree, I think her feelings about her family motivates her and she is conflicted. But we don't know why she is so motivated about her family. Did she lose her family at an early age and is determined to protect this one? Did she marry the rich guy and wants to keep the good life,, as it looks like Laurel wanted to, so she turns a blind eye to Robert's cheating and Oliver's screw-ups? Where did her sense of morality come from, that she wanted to persuade Robert to stop Malcolm? We know the emotions, but like Felicity, we don't know the story that brought about those feelings. ban1o, I think we're going to have to disagreed about Moira too.

ban1o, I think Moira is a good character because of what Susanna Thompson brought to the role. But we know even less about Moira than we do about Felicity (she was married to a very rich man; she put up with his infidelities but she didn't like it; she will do anything to protect her family; she sat on committees but didn't appear to have a job until after Robert died; she blames herself for Robert's death because she is the one who convinced him to go against Malcolm; she lies). Thompson took those few bits of information and made Moira complex and fascinating. In the same way, I think Felicity is complex. In addition to wonderwall's list, I'm struck by how often she is in conflict and has to deal with that. She's afraid of many things but does them because they need to be done (when I heard Ken Burns' description of Eleanor Roosevelt "she woke up afraid every morning and then got up and" did what needed to be done, I thought of Felicity. She believes people should be given a chance to do better, but wants arrows in them when they have done bad things. She accepts people for the best parts of who they are (e.g. Sara) and wants them to be the best they can be (e.g. not telling Roy he killed a cop). She encourages the people she cares about to be happy (pushing Diggle and Oliver to find love. But it's all consistent and predictable from how we've seen her before, which is why I think she's complex and developed as a character.

The Diggle/Felicity dynamic is great. First he's testing her to see if she has a sense of humor (she does), and then he admires her for seeing beyond Oliver's b.s. stories.

Is there a sex difference between Green Arrow and Black Canary/BOP fans? If the Green Arrow fans think of BC only as his sidekick because she's a woman, I can understand why they might be more accepting of Laurel. I think they may have had a five year plan for Laurel which probably eventually grew her into the Black Canary but their primary interest is Oliver. He's the one ship-wrecked on the island, the one who had to go through hell to become the Vigilante. Unless they chose to emphasize all that Laurel had gone through in those five years, she would always been ten steps behind. And has been said before, if they wanted her to have a reason for becoming a vigilante herself, Tommy's death would have been perfect, or maybe her father's death at the hands of some crooks who got off. I don't understand how Laurel's addiction storyline is anywhere near what Oliver and Sara went through to become heroes. For one thing, it's Laurel doing it to herself and fighting herself, unlike Oliver and Sara who had to survive what others did to them and learn to fight back. For a second, it's Laurel helping herself, not helping the people who have been hurt by the 1%ers, or abused by men. But the big problem is that after all that, all the time spent on her in two seasons, she's basically learned nothing and grown not at all. She's right back in the pilot episode, wanting to help Oliver deal with his traumas and idolizing the Vigilante, and thinking of herself as a good-doer so she should be helping the Arrow. i can more easily buy Thea's time with Malcolm as an island than Laurel's addiction.

I think the people who complain that Felicity isn't a developed character or that Oliver can't possible care for her because he doesn't know anything about her are those people who don't like her and don't like that she's so prominent on the show, taking Laurel's place. In the present, Felicity is a beautifully multi-dimensional and consistent character. We don't have a lot of backstory on Moira either (who was she before the flashbacks? What was her role at QC? Why did she take Robert's cheating?) but that doesn't keep her from being a fascinating character. Kudos to both EBR and Susanna Thompson.

That poster with Sara looks good. Well, good is a relative because the original art is so crappy, but I like the placement of Roy, Felicity, Oliver, Diggle, Sara. it's much more interesting than the boy, girl, boy, girl, boy of the original, and the black of Sara's costume balances the red of Roy's with the three greenish outfits in the center. That's what I was hoping for too. The official poster is really amateurish, much more so than the fanart it sparked.

Diggle tricked Oliver into paying for the bank guard's hospital bills, pointing out to him that there is more crime in the Glades than just The List, and they went after the Gang together. Ironically the Gang was also linked into to Robert Queen through how brutally his fired his employees. Oliver also went after Deadshot, but that was connected personally to Diggle. I think the first time he deliberately went outside the list in something that wasn't connected to Diggle was The Dodger, trying to prove to Felicity that he was about more than just vengeance. Diggle was a soldier, like Oliver when he targeted The List so they had very much the same attitude towards the job. Felicity brought a different ethos to the lair, one that let Oliver and to some extent Diggle branch out behind the strict confines of the mission. Oliver became more human and you could say that Diggle did too since he started to date Carly. I think having Roy there and Sara even though she may have been temporary (no way to know for sure at the time), and with Diggle and Felicity being pushed into the background was wearing on people's patience. As well, there had been a lot of time already spent on Laurel, from the beginning of the season with her addiction storyline to the five episode arc in 2b. Some of us were just hanging in then, others had already given up (Jennifer Cruzie) and the idea that Laurel was going to come onto the team and take even more time away from Diggle and Felicity was just the last straw. For me, the core of the show is Team Arrow of Oliver/Diggle/Felicity. I can take individual storylines for other characters as grace notes, but Oliver/Diggle/Felicity is what I watch for. I'm excited to see how Diggle navigates fatherhood and Hoodhood next season.

Diggle agreed to work with Oliver in 1x06 and Felicity joined them in 1x14. From then on, for 17 episodes until 2x12 when Roy joined and then Sara, the Team was Oliver/Diggle/Felicity and that's when the real growth in Oliver happened. There's been comments worrying that the team is changing or getting too large, which the EPs and SA have commented on, not to mention "it started with the three of us, we need to get back to that" in response to Laurel wanting on, which is a pretty heavy-handed message. So I do think that saying that Felicity is Original Team Arrow is justified.

Felicity's "we're still in Russia (you idiot)" is never not funny. To me it seems more like he didn't want Felicity to think badly of him, as he wouldn't have wanted Diggle or Thea to either, not that he had any sexual or romantic feelings towards Felicity herself.

I hadn't thought of that but yeah, since both Oliver and Sara felt so guilty about what they had done to Laurel in s1 and s2A, to get together just for a FWB relationship is a really stupid thing to do. If they had both had feelings for each other and wanted to work things out, it would have been different but all the show gave us was FWB. I don't think that Oliver was just stand-offish to Felicity, I think he was pretty much of a dick to her (the whole 'why are you wearing work-out gear and trying to up your self-defense skills when your job is to sit at the computer' still makes me hate him a bit) through all those 2b stories, or at best she was part of the office supplies. I don't think they got back to their old Team Arrow relationship till Seeing Red, 7 episodes later. He wasn't great to Diggle either those episodes but they're not trying to sell us on an Oliver/Diggle romance. Grrr. Why was Oliver cradling Felicity's head? That's something that's okay when she's just been tied up (The Huntress Returns) or gone through a glass window (City of Heros) but not when she's loopy on drugs. It seemed next door to patting her like a puppy. She is cute, loopy or sober. But normally, people don't say that to another adult unless you're asking for an opinion on what you're wearing and whether you'll be okay on that date, so in the context of Felicity desperately trying to fit in with her former Team mates and the woman who just joined the lair and connects better with them than she does, the words come off patronizing. Add in the deleted scene where Felicity tells Sara that this is the first place she's come to feel as 'home', and it becomes poignant.

When MG first tweeted that line, I was really hoping that it was Oliver to Thea. Said to Felicity, it little-sistered her. I agree. Whatever the original intentions, the episodecame out looking like both Oliver and Sara were patronizing little Felicity. Diggle was the only one who treated her as an adult. That was a problem generally when Sara joined the Team, it was Oliver and Sara as Mommy and Daddy running things and Diggle, Felicity and Roy were like the teen squad. The arrival of Slade on the scene made it worse because Sara was the only one who appreciated what a threat he was and who Oliver could talk to about him. And how much do I hate that in Sucide Squad, when Oliver was so worried about what Slade would do to everyone he cared about, Diggle was the only one to whom it occurred that Felicity could be in danger. Did Oliver even think to protect Moira and Thea or was that Diggle's idea too, to put a protection detail on them?

It seems to me that if Isabel didn't have Oliver's full attention, it was because he was thinking about getting Diggle out. But Isabel didn't know that so it would makes sense that she attributed it to Felicity, who she thought Oliver was also sleeping with. Did Oliver look upset when Felicity found out? I know he looked upset at the end back in QC's offices when it was obvious that she was hurt because while he didn't necessarily want to be with her, he didn't want her to be hurt either.

I think they were also trying to give Felicity something to do since between Sara in the present, Slade arriving, Oliver sleeping with Sara, Laurel's addiction 5 episode tour and all the stuff in the flashbacks, Felicity was pretty much Garcia-d (Criminal Minds quirky tech girl, pretty much out of any storyline). Diggle was having his Suicide Squad episode coming up so that would take care of him but with The Promise and all the Slade stuff, there wasn't much for Felicity till the finale episodes. Good in theory, just not done well. From the Spoiler thread: I wonder if it's because they were trying too hard to make the female characters up front and important so they over did it and it gets cringe-worthy. ToD is good in theory but the execution was awful. I liked that Felicity wasn't jealous of O/S (I read that as Operating System which makes sense for Felicity) but they tried too hard to make Sara, who was the alpha female at that point, be nice to Felicity with "you're still cute" and the leather jacket stuff (Show, stop it with the leather jacket scenes), and it came out condescending. I think there would have been a problem anyway since many viewers had bonded with Felicity and then Sara came in and took over fighting and Oliver and then Felicity's field of science which would have been difficult enough to put in without resentment but somehow the way the episode came out just made it worse. I don't know what SA was thinking about with :"you'll always be my girl", a scene which I LOATHED since they immediately cut to a scene where he was kissing Sara. It made Felicity into a total idiotic puppy dog, which I gather was the opposite of how she was supposed to appear in the episode. If he was supposed to be jealous of Felicity spending time with Barry three episodes ago (and therefore awe of his feelings toward her), how could he be sleeping with Sara and still tell Felicity she's his girl?

Yes, I think he does. (Good to know he's not perfect.) Love the OG Team Arrow, and that he puts it next to EBR while David Ramsey gets DIGGLE

I hoped that it was okay saying that Colantino was only in this episode. I saw the ending scene in a promo ABC Studios put out and yea, that was pretty stupid. Just what you want on a cop show, to have the who-dun-it explained in a promo. The last scene they didn't play though. One of the detectives she worked with said that she should put her name in to be the new captain so I assumed she had the seniority to do it. But either way, I can't see anything good coming . (spoiled tagged just in case anyone doesn't want to know)

I listen to his vids but Emergency Awesome has always seemed rather clueless to me about what's actually happening on the show. The disconnect between what I heard about the show and the results of those polls has always surprised me. I agree about the Finale and Seeing Red but Suicide Squad had very low ratings and I never made it through The Promise. Or Birds of Prey, also in 2b. I think Cupid will do okay because they're good at writing women be crazy. That was the problem in ToD, all three women (Sara, Felicity Laurel) were kind of crazy. Sara came out the best but still badly because she wanted Oliver to come with her to the family dinner. SA has said no after talking to the EPs, and if he goes back on that so soon, the EPS and actors will have zero credibility That's in the 2.5 comics? Maybe it was just a contract position and she needs a part time job while she looks for a steady gig in IT, which I presume Ray will provide. (I hate contract positions, they keep people from having long-term lives and relationships.)

I'd say the three Arrow characters who appear on The Flash in the cross-over episode are there not because of their importance to the show Arrow, but because they're the only ones Barry Allen, Caitlin or Frisco have met. Laurel could still be all over that, doing all the work back in Starling City. I'm willing to entertain the idea that the people who made the poster did it divorced from communication with the EPs, although that's sloppy network running because it seems like the poster would be an ideal time to say something about the show and what it's about. But then, the quality of the poster itself is so far from professional, the CW should be embarrassed.

Matt K, by the end of s2 I was ready to give up on Arrow, pretty much for those reasons you gave. I gave it the last three episodes and that was going to be it. Fortunately, they turned out to be some of the best episodes of the season. (The fact that Laurel was sidelined and then damsel-ed helped.) So give those episodes a look if you can. I think there's a lot wrong with that poll, starting with how is KC even on it? She's done nothing other than CW show (except for the blink-and-you-miss-it Harper's Island and a movie that went straight to DVD). If you don't watch CW shows (and many TV viewers don't), you wouldn't even know who she is. Pauley Perrette and Cote de Pablo have been #1 and 2 on the Q ratings for years, but Cote isn't even on that list. And you could sell a TV show just because Alison Janney or Amy Poehler is attached to the project; you couldn't do that with Katie Cassidy. I really think they had no choice. The character was turning people off the show, at best she was using up time that could have been given to more popular characters, and the point of making a TV show is to please the viewers so that they will tune in. That's possibly why they made Sara the Canary rather than Ravenger, because after spending time with Ivo and then the LoA, Ravenger would have made more sense.. The question is, why are they seemingly so obsessed with making Laurel a main part of the show? As shown by the episodes in which she didn't appear last year or only appeared in a flashback, the show functions better without her.

I watched Mysteries of Laura because 1. Debra Messing, 2. Berlanti and 3. nothing else on this time of year. I was pleasantly surprised because the reviews had been so bad. I liked Laura Messing's character and thought the show had some nice quirky bits. I really hated the stuff with her kids because it was so over-the-top that it made her out to be stupid. (Yes, the kid sneezes, lets dose both kids on medicine that will put them to sleep just before the big interview.) I also didn't like either who did the crime and why and especially the twist at the end because On the plus side, that is Enrico Colantino's only episode so he can go back to Remedy which is one of my favourite shows. It was fun to see Janina G. (McKenna Hall) there. I like her character. I actually think that Castle is one of the few shows that often enough that the villain is not the best known character that I can't predict like that, unlike NCIS or Criminal Minds or most other shows. In the last episode, the two bad guys were actors I had never seen before.

Ugh, because I don't want Felicity to be damseled just because Oliver took her on a date. And it would also prove his theory that anyone who gets around him is in danger. Isn't the Tockman supposed to show up in Central City on the Flash part of the episode? I'd rather the crossover is about him, and Cupid goes after Roy. Boy needs some action now that Thea has rejected him.

That's only the positive Q scores, which is how much the respondent likes the actress. There's also a negative Q score, which is how much the actress is disliked. It's also a strange list of actresses that they scored. I wonder what EBR would have scored if they had put her name in. It's a strange way they picked actresses, two actresses from Criminal Minds but only Jennifer Morrison from OUaT (where are Lana Parilla and Ginnifer Goodwin?), only Ellen Pompeo from Grey's Anatomy (Sandro Oh anyone?) and CCH Pounder, Debra Messing Tea Leoni and Katherine Heigl from shows that haven't even aired yet, in spite of saying that ratings from older than 2012 don't count.

It would make sense -- Ray wants QC partly for its Applied Sciences division, which he wants to use to create his suit.

Many of us didn't even notice she was missing from the episodes till it was commented on on-line.

With the anonymity of social media, I don't think it's ever going to go away because it's just too easy to replying without thinking it through. The only thing the cast can do is ignore it. Replying to it, whether it's Bex saying 'don't do that' or KC's "haters gonnna hate hate hate" just gives tweeters more permission to get into the battle because now it's been legitimated as a form of communication.

I think it's accepted wisdom among many, including show-runners and p.r. people, that any talk about a topic or character is a good thing. In my experience (albeit with other TV shows), that if people don't like something, they will complain for a while, and then they will find something else to watch.