statsgirl

Even with the jacket hand-off, I still Sara as a more viable love interest for Oliver than Laurel. But there was (could be?) development from that because Oliver recognized what he was doing and he apologized to Felicity. Other than his constant apologizing for his bad behaviour with the sister-swapping pre-island and his keeping secrets, isn't this the only time the apology-phobic Oliver has actually told someone he was sorry? He's told Diggle "you were right" a few times but he's never actually apologized. Once again, Oliver grew. As long as they don't become the Bickersons in the lair, I don't mind the occasional conflict, just as there was the conflict in s1 with Diggle when Oliver went to save Laurel's case (sigh) instead of backing up Diggle as he said he would. I guess I can't see the show putting Oliver and Felicity together and then deciding they'd be better off as friends. There seems to be too much fan and critical support for both Felicity and Oliver-when-he's-around-Felicity. They would have to come up with a more solid way to end them than that, and short of EBR leaving the show, I can't think of one. On the other hand, on-again, off-again would be even worse. I thought after Castle, Bones and a number of other current shows, that old Moonlighting chestnut would be long dead, not that it ever really applied. What killed Moonlight, among other things, was the bad writing that tore them apart after they got together.

You say "star-crossed", I say "stupid". Aaaaaargh! What makes it worse is that this thinking has written all over it the intention to ruin any other relationship either of them get into. Is that why Tommy had to die? So that they could tease Laurel with Oliver again? Guggenheim in the THR interview: Which park was that she knocked it out of? and he said about Olicity 1. It didn't get addressed by Oliver directly. There was a line about jealousy from Diggle but Oliver never replied. 2. Barry was no impediment because Oliver wasn't making any moves. 3. The good thing about Oliver and Felicity's relationship "lowercase "R"" is that it's not messy at all. I'd ask what show he's watching except, except... he's the one writing it. Thanks for all the research, starfish35.

They seem like so much fun together. (and surprise, she answered my question about Felicity training) Give Me My Remote fan awards http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2014/06/26/one-day-left-to-vote-in-the-gmmr-tv-awards/ Arrow is nominated in two categories: favorite actress (EBR) http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2014/06/16/gmmr-tv-awards-favorite-actress-drama-vote-now-3/ and favorite couple not together http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2014/06/19/gmmr-tv-awards-favorite-couple-not-together-vote-now-3/

After numerous times that she's told him they're not good for each other, they can't be together, even in season 2's League of Assassins, she assumes that walking her to her door after dinner means he wants to sleep with her. That would explain the love for Diggle and Felicity, who actually are acting like mature adults doing epic, heroic things. Followed by Quentin and even Thea. More unforgivable than Laurel and Oliver together bringing each other down as people, they're bringing each other down as characters.

Thanks, Starfish35, that's the quote I was thinking of and I remember being horrified because that's the worst kind of TV trope especially for a couple I don't like int he first place.. I thought it was later in s2 though. (I'll tlry to find it with this starting point.) Lawks, yes. I assumed that if they were trying to sell BoP it would be Huntress, Sara as BC, and Nyssa or if Katrina Law was busy then Sin as Oracle. I can't see KC on that show at all and assumed that if there is a spin-off, they would want to keep her on Arrow as kind of a shadow BC. But if they keep Laurel on Arrow, they have to cut out that "I know Oliver better than anyone else does; I know him in my bones" while showing us that no, Laurel didn't and doesn't have a clue who he really is.

And not marry Ed Raymond, hopefully. I find it mildly amusing that Oliver and Laurel are at opposite ends. So what we've got is Oliver trying to decide how much of his humanity he wants back, Thea going dark with Malcolm, Sara trying to figure out if she should stay at the LoA or maybe overturning Ra's al Ghul, Roy finding his place on Team Arrow, Diggle adapting to parenthood, Lyla and the Suicide Squad, Quentin doing more with Team Arrow and Laurel... I wonder if there is an arc for Felicity too (connected to her daddy story?).

I love Sara's low heeled boots. Also that she gets along so well with Diggle and Felicity. She seemed almost jealous that the three of them (Oliver/Diggle/Felicity) get along so well as a team. I guess she really is missing being in Starling City. "You're not flinching" "Pain and I came to an understanding a few years back" (That helps set up Felicity being jealous of Sara's scars.) Oh the anvil of the canary landing on the flotsam after the Queen's Gambit sank! Laurel says she has no influence over the DA and Donner to get out of prosecuting Moira and what she had she used to get the plea bargain. What the? All she had to do is say since she's been so associated with the Queen family and so close to Oliver that having her second chair could have the verdict thrown out. The case is paper-thin anyway, How are 10 years worth of phone records and e-mails going to prove Moira wasn't coerced? Does Moira look stupid enough to send something in an e-mail? Oliver; Not good [about his day]. Found anyone for me to hit yet? Queen Manor, in addition to having a really inefficient cleaning staff (did no ask who that blonde suddenly living there is?), is badly put together if Sara can just reach up and tear down a whole length of molding. Wow, Oliver is really manipulating Laurel. That's so romantic. "It's your funeral, Sara." "Wouldn't be my first." I like Sara, I really do. What I hate is that as soon as Sara is on an episode, Oliver forgets about everyone else. This time it includes Laurel, which sends her into a spiral of self-pity 'What is wrong with me that everybody leaves?" How much time do you have, Laurel? The self-pity that Tommy 'left' her is really the worst because he wouldn't be dead if she hadn't ignored everyone and gone to CNRI. I think this is the best Quentin episode. I love how he figures it out "You sent Felicity Smoak to warn me ... you know the Arrow... you're the girl in the mask...you've been in town for weeks kicking the crap out of people...would you have even told me you're alive? But why doesn't he recognize addict behaviour? Laurel is practically glowing with it. "What are you without your side arm?" "A man with a spare." Poor clock tower with your broken glass. Little do you know. And they don't even bother to fix you in the meantime. Oliver and Thea to Moira: "Whatever comes out, you won't lose us. Ever" And she loses both of them by the end of the season.

That seems to be the whole problem with Laurel -- that she's most likable when she's being snotty and rude but they keep wanting to make her into a good guy and Team Arrow member and all it does is backfire on them.

Yes, the sisters lived together and they both had the analgesia so he mistook the lawyer for the sister he had been communicating with.

It's funny because I suspect that the EPs thought Time of Death would be a wonderful Felicity episode. That's how it was promoted, that Felicity gets a chance to shine and grow. But so many people who like Felicity hate it It also emphasizes Oliver's worst qualities, from how he treated Felicity (basically putting her in a box and ignoring her) to going to the Lance family dinner. Even the big hallway scene (Emmy worthy!) when Oliver finally gave up on Laurel fell flat because for the first time, I was on Laurel's side. And the whole "I have to do this because my sister is sick" plot fell into a black hole, making Felicity, who was all about looking at people's reasons in s1 and giving them another chance, a hypocrite. This show is really terrible at plotting over a group of episodes. I wish someone would a huge whiteboard to the writers' room and plot for them every on-going storyline (A: main story; B: secondary story; C:Oliver's growth curve; D: someone else's growth curve; etc) before they send the stories out to be written so that they don't lose the thread of what they're doing because s2 was just a mess in terms of that. It's like they can only write 2 plots at at time and everything else had to come to a dead stop My wishful thinking too, although they have been spending a lot of media time on Oliver/Felicity since the finale, and hopefully they've got the hint.

I think the only thing that could redeem Carly for me at this point is for her to say "Sonny, I didn't like AJ but you were very wrong in what you did and it's horrifying that he was pleading for you not to kill him and you still did", come clean to Michael, and take the tape to PCPD so they can prosecute. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.

I hated TofD too, because by the time it aired, it seemed like the Lance sisters were the only women Oliver or the show cared about. I especially hated Oliver dismissing Felicity training and loathed the "you'll always be my girl" because it seemed so patronizing as he was sleeping with Sara at the time. Looking back on it now, after the finale, I can see what they were trying to pull off (Felicity on her own journey, learning to be out in the field and physically a part of the team not just back in the lair). I bet AK and MG were surprised at how that episode was received by Felicity fans. MG tweeted "you'll always be my girl" as the line tease for the episode, probably thinking people would like having Oliver say that to Felicity. He does tend to underestimate us. I wonder if they upped the touchy feely for Three Ghosts and the next episode because they were going to move away from Oliver&Felicity with the upcoming Laurel addiction and Sara arcs and they wanted to establish it before they moved on. In the same way, I'm anticipating they're going to back away from Oliver/Felicity at the start of the next season, having established it at the end of s2.

I think the show wanted to make it a special moment, something symbolic. Basically Oliver has been going through a journey these past two seasons to become a hero. The EPs have talked about it, SA has talked about it in interviews, and Oliver himself talked about it on the island to Slade. It's going from The Hood in s1 to Arrow in s2 to presumably Green Arrow next season. So given that they wanted to mark the move from greasepaint to mask as something significant in his journey, it would be better to have someone else put it on him and talk about becoming a hero. Of the two, Felicity is more likely to do it because 1) she's been referring to him as a hero since s1 and 2) Diggle is all stoic and not showing emotions. Getting too close to hug territory that.

I guess I'm blocking it out. So they were casting the love interest/superhero companion of the lead, and instead of screen testing her with him and seeing if she could do fight scenes, her screen test was crying? I guess maybe you do get what you deserve after all.

Crackfic! I think Diggle sees his job as grounding Oliver and keeping Oliver from getting hurt too much, either emotionally or physically. It's always been Felicity who pushed him not to kill and who talked to him about becoming a hero. (I don't think she gets enough credit in Oliver's scene with Slade in the island prison).

Sakura12, that restaurant scene struck me as so entitled and bitchy and that's even before she embarrassed Tommy in front of Oliver and Helena. It's like she came from vast money and expected to be treated like royalty, where the two guys who really were billionaires were nice and obliging. It seems like Laurel is a square peg (self-centered, bitchy, entitled) in a round hole (caring, crusader lawyer). Until they write a square hole for her, I don't think the character is ever going to work. Seriously? Why didn't they actually test her with something she's going to do as the character? When has Laurel cried? The only times I remember were in s2 in the flashback, and in her drinking moments.

So if they didn't test her with Stephen Amell, was KC's only screen test with the "Laurel is a crusading lawyer" parts of the script, and showing off her fight scenes from Supernatural? Because if that's the case, I can see why they hired her, but it was still stupid not to test her with all the parts that make up Laurel. Of all the actors on the show, I think she's the only one who was really miscast.

I can totally understand what he's saying .... or rather I could if I hadn't been watching the show these past two seasons. Then it sounds like he's speaking from an alternate reality. He seems to think that when people say she's an after-thought, they mean "give us more Laurel". Okay, Andrew, time to do some polling because I really haven't a clue any more other than I know I enjoy the episodes more when she isn't in them..

I wonder if the original plan was to kill Sara off at the end of s2 so that Laurel could take up the Canary cloak in her name... and then they realized that Sara had become so popular the audience would resent Laurel even more if they killed of Sara for Laurel's sake. But not the plan to make her Oliver's love interest... Marc Guggenheim was still talking about Oliver and Laurel getting together and breaking up over and over again in an interview this season. If AK really was that delusional back then (and I think he was), all he needs to do is look at the comments at TVLine when the first pictures of Laurel with the bow came out to disillusion himself. Hundreds of comments against and saying it was unearned, and a few in support. It seems to me that either the EPs are deliberately misleading the audience in order to retain the KC/Laurel fans or they have no clue as to why the character does't work, in which case they should come here and read this thread. It sounds like they had an idea for who Laurel is when they started the show but the Laurel that KC is playing doesn't work in that. If they want to keep Laurel as a character, they have to move her away both from a love interest for Oliver (because that didn't work even before there were alternatives) and from being the Black Canary. I have my doubts if she would work as BC even on a BoP show. I think they'll spend the first third of the season testing the waters to see how she's being received as a pre-Canary, and after Christmas we'll find out if they've decided they're going to go in that direction or another one. I think Arrow has moved away from being a comic/superhero show like Smallville and into being a show for its own sake like Supernatural. If they want to stay on that track, they have to move away from their early ideas about Laurel.

I agree that putting on the mask seems like it's in the fan-service category. The "Please save Oliver" still makes me cringe. But on the island, before Diggle leaves them for a moment, there is an exchange of looks and nods between him and Felicity. i can see Felicity having asked him to give her a moment to talk to Oliver alone about what was that thing at the Manor anyway, if she hasn't had the chance to talk to Oliver alone yet.

I think there are two kinds of awards shows. One group are the Emmys and Golden Globes category which are like the establishment and they play favourites like crazy. They have tunnel vision for a few channels and a specific kind of show and no matter how good you are on a sci fi show, your chances of winning are like a match in a hurricans. As hard as he tries and as good as he is, Stephen Amell isn't going to beat Kevin Spacey, Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm. Even Hugh Laurie had a tough time doing that and never did win an Emmy. The only chance for an Emmy that Arrow has is in a technical or stunt category. Then there are the pop awards, like Teen Choice. They're going to be dominated by the faves of people who have enough time and desire to keep voting over and over again for the actors they like, irrespective of performance. In between are the guild shows, like the Director's Guild or the Television Critics awards, and good acting on a show that isn't an Emmy favourite can still get you a win (e.g. Tatiana Maslany two years in a row).

I don't think a character can switch hero persona and be able to justify it to the audience (e.g. if they start Laurel out as Manhunter, it still wouldn't make sense to switch her to Black Canary even if Sara is dead unless it's "we can't let people know the BC is dead, let's get someone else to dress up as her"). It's not just a costume but also a way of being, of fighting and seeing things too. But I do agree that the first part of the season will be a test. I really hope they have a plan because if they don't, I can't see any way of writing themselves out of the jacket hand-off hole. Maybe the "other facets" that CH refers to are Sara finally finding a place she's comfortable in, as Oliver appeared to do in the season finale, and seeing her finally happy.

Here's an interesting idea -- Mandi Brierly from EW looked at Stephen Amell's work-out videos and remembered that back in the 80s, there was a show called Battle of the Network Stars in which the stars of shows from the 3 networks competed against each other. Want to see physically fit? Have a look at Mark Harmon. Someone must have brought it to SA's attention because he tweeted "Set it up. I'm in." http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/06/17/stephen-amell-arrow-battle-network-stars/

I thought it was a decent episode. I'm not sure I buy the idea of one choosing not to be happy, although it is true that pain medication does make a broken heart feel better. I also liked the use of chronic analgesia. I felt sorry for both the vigilantes though. I know you're not supposed to take the law into your own hands but when the law if wrong, it is very hard not to. Glad to see Daniel's hallucinations are back on track.

The "different facets of her" does like she going to be something other than the Canary. Ugh.