statsgirl

BkWurm, thank you for going through the Laurel/Oliver videos. I salute you. I'm struck by how little chemistry SA/KC have compared to SA/EBR. All you have to do is turn off the sound and it's glaring. I was watching clips from the upfronts, and of course SA and EBR get asked first about that scene. In an IGN clip, SA talked about how what they shot was different than what came out in the edit, and how it made the scene much tighter and better. In a separate interview, EBR talked about how it was the last scene they shot at the studio and things were being cleaned out which made the sound much more cavernous and impressive. I've never heard KC talk about what makes up her scenes that way. If SA and EBR see making the show in much the same way, it's something that gets created and you do the best job you can, I can understand why they would be more comfortable with each other. I wonder if working on soap operas for a few years would help Katie Cassidy. I love Diggle, he's so open with his feelings about Oliver's women and the only ones he approves of are Felicity and Sara. Maybe McKenna but he never really got to know her. With Felicity, no sooner does she join the Team, with Diggle's full approval as they worked trying to save Oliver together, than she quits because she doesn't like the killing (Dodger). As Oliver tries to intimidate her with his size, Diggle is in the background grinning because he likes to see Oliver being stood up to.

I think the person with most shade to throw at Oliver was Quentin Lance because Oliver got his daughter dead. (Fortunately he was allowed to for the whole s1.) With Laurel, it never seemed to be about hurting Sara, it swung between "You cheated on me with my sister!" to "Let me help you", it was all or nothing and you never knew on which side she'd be on. The problem for me is that the only way I can make Laurel's behaviour consistent.is to make it all about her. The ship going down was her pain, not Sara's; her parents splitting up and her father losing himself in a bottle was them being mean to her, Even her work at CNRI, except in certain cases like an Innocent Man when she did it for the Hood, seemed to me to be more about how she saw herself as saving the world rather than actually caring about the individuals. When Quentin very reasonably wanted to put police protection on her in Home Invasion, she acted like 14 year old getting grounded. She also got him killed trying to save her because she wouldn't listen to Moira, Quentin or Oliver about not going to the Glades that night. The EPs said we would sympathize with her when we got to see the cut scene of her trying to gather the documents so the bad guys could still be prosecuted but I think that's another example of where they failed to understand how Laurel came across. I had forgotten about that. How self-involved do you have to be to go there, especially after she'd already slept with him earlier? Does she think she's that good?

Oliver did tell Moira that Thea needed more discipline and Moira tried. After that, her relationship with Thea got better and so did Thea. At the end of Vertigo, Thea thanked Oliver and Laurel for helping get her out of her trial. Also in Vertigo, when Laurel is trying to get Quentin to get the charges against Thea dropped, she mentions a time when he got charges against her dropped so she wouldn't have to go to court. When Oliver was recovering from vertigo, he said it was the worst hangover he'd ever had, and Diggle replied "That's saying something from someone who spent most of his twenties hung over." On this show, everyone behaved very badly and made mistakes in their youth. It took the cruelty of the island, Ivo and LoA to change Sara and Oliver, it took Malcolm cutting Tommy off at 28 to change him. In season 1 Thea was 17, now she's 19, still 4 years younger than Oliver, Laurel and Tommy were when the Queen's Gambit went down. When Thea tells her mother she's not going to school because she was out late last night (getting arrested) and Moira agrees to it, that's pretty bad parenting and that's on Moira. Presumably the bad parenting has gone on for a while since Oliver experienced it too before the island. Thea lost her father and brother at 12, she lost her stepfather at 18 because of her mother's actions, the Queens are pariahs in Starling City again because her mother was partially responsible for the earthquakes, and then with Walter gone, her older brother disappears for 5 months. She pulls herself together and takes over the club that he just left and does a good job for 8 months. But then her boyfriend dumps her and she gets kidnapped by Slade who tells her that her mother and brother have been lying to her for years about who her father is -- in reality he's the psychopath who killed 587 people last year. And then Moira and Oliver want her to sign some documents because they've screwed up QC and they're about to be broke. Not surprising she turns them down. "Time out" is a popular thing in parenting books and columns but I've found that often a 'time in' works better for the child. (Time outs are very effective for the parents though so they don't lose it.) I think what Thea needed at that point was for someone to sit down with her and give her their undivided attention so that she could talk, and process and understand everything that was going on. And then she might have been willing to sign what papers they wanted her to. Instead, they shoved some papers under her nose and told her to sign them or else. She found that everyone she had trusted had lied to her -- Moira, Robert, Oliver, Roy -- even though she kept begging them for the truth. She's angry and she's hurt. No surprise she wants to get away from Starling City any way she can; small wonder she's willing to go with the one person who has told her the truth and tells her that he will make her strong so she won't be hurt again. But this is what I see Laurel doing even in s2 when she's almost 30. You'd think that Sara and Oliver went off together just to hurt her, she's mad at her parents because their marriage fell apart when Sara died even though she was ready to move out of the house at the time; she's driving drunk, she's working stoned, she is intolerably cruel to her mother and throwing glasses at the door in fits when her sister returns from the dead, and she's blackmailing her bosses to get her job back after she was fired for cause. I give Thea a break because she's 19, not 29, and because she didn't have a happy, stable two-parent family until she was 24.

I'm hoping that Felicity is connected to someone either good or grey because that would be a better story as she has to reconcile any feelings of resentment she might have for him leaving. And because next season we already have Thea connected to a Big Bad. Also that he's still alive so the story can be carried through rather than as a one-shot shock value. I hadn't heard of him but that sounds like it could be good, Maybe they were thinking of him when they said Felicity's mother is a cocktail waitress is Las Vegas. Eddie Fyers is a character from the DC comics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Fyers

I thought it was interesting in s1 that Thea rebelled and got into trouble because she thought her mother was unfaithful. It was really her father and Oliver thought Thea should know the truth but Moira was angry when he told her because she thought it would be better for Thea not to know, not to be disillusioned. You'd think they would have known better than to do the same thing to her in s2 and keep from her that Malcolm is her biological father. Realistic because real people don't learn that easily, but interesting in terms of the continuity from season 1 to 2 and what triggers Thea. She was willing to walk away alone without any money and later with Roy. Malcolm just swooped in at the right time to manipulate her emotionally. (Not signing the documents was stupid but then, so was Moira for not tying up her money better.) But is her behaviour really any different than Laurel's, who threw a "you're not the boss of me" tantrum in ep 20 (Home Invasion) because her father wanted to give her police protection after the bad guys had killed 2 people from the case she was working on and she brought their son into her apartment? Both were having immature hissy fits but Thea was 19 while Laurel was 28.

That's interesting because we're doing a bit of a re-watch here and I saw ep 2 Honor Thy Father last night (I think it was ep 2, the one at the club). Laurel is still cold to Oliver (justifiably to some extent at this point) while Tommy is torn and trying to reconcile everyone. Late in the episode Laurel figures out that Oliver wasn't surprised when Thea told him that she and Tommy had got together and that's because he knew already. Tommy said something about it being a good thing that Oliver is okay with it and she spits out that he has no right to sit in judgement over her. My reaction was "what a bitch" because it's not all about her, it's even more about Tommy who was Oliver's best friend and now feels guilty for loving the same woman he thinks Oliver loved and only lost because he was stuck on the island. It's partly the dialogue but it's also her line reading because she could have toned it down, or even complained about it because writers will change things when the actors have a better way. But it's consistent with the Laurel of season 2 that she saw things only from how they affected her. Once she had accepted a relationship with Tommy, I thought her best scenes were with him as well as with her father (except for the stupidity in refusing police protection when 2 people had just been killed on the case). But even when she's living with Tommy, Oliver asks for her help with Thea and she lights up and pushes Tommy aside, going to her father to drop the charges. It's always all about Oliver for her, whether she's hating him at the moment or thinking she's in love with him. The dinner with Oliver and Helena was cringe-worthy, but interesting in that her relationship with Tommy was starting to parallel the mistakes she had made with Oliver Before Island. She pushed Tommy too hard, he lied to her because he felt he couldn't tell her the truth, she made assumptions and then it all blew up in her face. The difference is that I think Tommy truly loved her and he lied to her because he felt he wasn't good enough for her whereas Oliver just took the easiest way out. I think what she did to her mother in Salvation (1x18) was horrible. So while Laurel had moments of warmth in season 1, as she does in season 2 with Sara when she's not throwing barware, it didn't make for a completely warm and attractive character. ETA: Catrox, that's exactly it for me. She could be kind if it didn't cost her anything but it was always about what was best for Laurel in any situation, and damn what anyone else wanted.

Maybe in exchange for information on her father's crime organization, they could let Helena out early. Wasn't she the one who got it all on the laptop anyway? I think she was. When Oliver came back from the island, he was very closed off emotionally and physically. Laurel shut him out, he opened up to Helena and that went bad, then he tired again with McKenna and she left. (Really, for her knowing Oliver put her in danger because Helena was the one who took out her knee.) Oliver cared very much about Sara, enough to put a tracker on her when she disappeared from Starling City. Their sexual relationship this season didn't last long for various reasons (plot contrivance being the biggest) but I think it was good for him to be with someone he could trust and who cared for him, someone with whom he could let his guard down completely, and who he knew could take care of herself in the field and fight by his side. She may not have been his great love story but it was as good a relationship as they both could make it given how screwed up they both were.

No, not Laurel. I've like to see Helena have a friendship with Sara because they've both been through the darkness but Sara is healthier. If anyone could help Helena put things in perspective, it would be Sara. I'd like to see a BoP with Sara, Nyssa and Helena, long as none of them have to be in a wheelchair. Viewers or characters on the show? I like Malcolm Merlyn and his craziness is fun to watch but I wouldn't want anyone I care about to be in a relationship with him. (Same with Laurel, but for other reasons.) It's no surprise Diggle and Felicity don't like Helena. Felicity having to deal with Helena and come to some sort of accommodation with her could be interesting -- unlike Isabel Rochev she's not out to get Oliver but unlike Sara she's not good for him either -- but I don't want to see Jealous Felicity again. It does her no favours nor the show either.

EW.com is doing their 5th annual Season Finale Awards, and Arrow is nominated in five categories: Most Unforgettable Line (“Slade took Laurel because he wants to kill the woman I love…. So he took the wrong woman…. I love you.” — Oliver convincingly professing feelings for Felicity to lure Slade, ); Dumbest Move by a Character Who Should be Smart (Slade didn't frisk Felicity); Best Fight (Team Arrow vs. Slade’s soldiers); Most Rewound Moment (Oliver saying he loves Felicity); and Most Likely to Earn Someone an Emmy Nomination (Outstanding Stunt Coordination is a category) http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/05/22/season-finale-awards-vote-now-2/ Voting through Memorial Day. ETA: I'd like it if Arrow won the Best Fight and Stunt Coordination categories because hopefully the Emmy committee will take a look at that.

I'm really going to miss Slade. He was a hoot as a truth speaker. So is that where Oliver learned to fly a plane? I wonder when he got his pilot's license.

With Dracula cancelled, I can just see the EPs planning how to write the Huntress back for an arc next season. I like their dynamic and I think it could be a strong arc/relationship. She's a lot like Sara damaged but survived it less well, more darkness, fewer morals. The show (mostly voiced by Diggle) has set up that she's crazy and that for me rules out a healthy long-term relationship with Oliver but it would be interesting to have Helena back again and see where they go with it, especially if they use her to set up a Birds of Prey spin-off.

While I think the show has wonderful production values and they certainly give it their all in the fight scenes, everyone does, what really worries me is the risk to the narrative that Laurel is. Sara should stay the Black Canary because even if they kill her off, KC/Laurel is never going to be as good, and I really don't want Laurel to end up as Oliver's love interest because their relationship was false and dysfunctional in the past, and they wouldn't fit together in the present or the future, and I live Oliver too much to stick him with Laurel. Also, the Laurel storylines have taken away too much time from the people I really care about this season. Hopefully the EPs got the message that Team Arrow is what is worth spending time on, not Lance family drama..

Maybe Roy can be the cannon fodder while Diggle takes the role of a general. I love Diggle, he was so anti-Helena and later anti-Laurel. Oliver should listen to him, guy knows what he's talking about.

Vendetta Diggle: You know, Oliver, I'm no expert at this but I don't think love is about changing or saving a person. I think it's about finding the person who's already the right fit. One day you will. Oliver: I think I burnt that bridge. Napalmed it, actually. Diggle: The thing is you saved Frank Bertinelli, He'll be doing time for a while, justice is served..... You opened up, took a risk with your heart. The Oliver I met a few months ago would not have been able to do that. And when you meet the right person, you'll be ready for her. [cut to Felicity going into Walter's office]

I just watched Year's End from season 1, and at the Christmas party, Oliver tells Laurel that he is happy for her and Tommy. As she walks away, the expression on his face... there is no longing or jealousy that she's with someone else now. Except for the sex at the end of the season when Tommy pushed him into it, I really believe that Oliver was over Laurel by then except as a memory or desire to turn back the clock. In the island scene, I thought that Felicity was really asking Oliver to confirm that it wasn't just an act, that he really does have feelings for her. So she said "You really sold it" and instead of telling her that he meant it, which is what she was hoping for, he replied "We both did" putting both of them into the category of faking it for Slade's camera. The stars in his eyes tell me he was lying (as do Guggenheim and Amell) but he wants her to believe that he was just acting because he thinks he can't be with her and he doesn't want to hurt her any more than he has to. That's just my opinion,

Season 3 is coming up. With Sara handing her the Jacket of The Canary, maybe this is the 'make or break' year for Laurel if she did get a 3 year contract.

I thought contracts were usually 5-7 years when a show starts. There was a big deal about the House actors who played Chase and Cameron and whether they would get renewed after the first 5 years since their characters were back-burnered at the time. If KC has a good agent and lawyer, and given her family connections I'd take that bet, the contract will also include a penalty clause if they write her off before the end of the contract term.

It never occurred to me that the "Because of the life that I lead..." line could refer to Laurel. I have to think about that now. I always thought it referred to Felicity. Even Oliver's grimace at the end of it as Felicity walked away seemed like he didn't want to hurt her but thought he had to say that. But 2x7, I thought that Oliver was so over Laurel except as a responsibility. Oliver saying they both sold it seemed to imply they were both faking it otherwise why would it be a question whether it was sold if it was the truth. (That's very convoluted, am I making any sense?) Felicity knew that she wasn't faking but I can see her assuming that Oliver was.

But they may have to pay her a large penalty for ending her contract before the 5 or 7 year term is up, and the show is always short of money. Plus, even though I don't think KC adds much to the show, other people think she does .Maybe CW thought she was a necessity since she was their biggest name regular. Susanna Thompson was mainly known for guest roles on other shows, Paul Blackthorne had just had the Dresden Files fail, and Stephen Amell who?. Katie Cassidy was the known CW 'star'. Or maybe someone slipped up on the contracts and automatically put in Laurel Lance/Black Canary instead of just Laurel Lance, thinking it wouldn't make a difference since that was the plan. I don't think we'll ever know. I think she was. But if she was promised that, then she should have been kicking workout dummy ass as soon as she got the role. I can see that happening. If she thinks she's deserving of the Canary role on Arrow now, she may well think that if SA gets into the movie as Green Arrow, she will get in too as Black Canary. To quote a line from The Lost World, I never bet on a certainty. ;-) They will choose friendship in season 3. Because doing what they do, they can't be with someone they really care about.

Film-maker John Kastner has recently released a documentary of a man who killed his mother while he was in a psychotic state, and how he and his family have to live with that. It's heartbreaking now that he can understand what he did. I thought of the Team lying to Roy when I heard the interviews, and thought 'yeah, that could be good if they do it right'. From The Arrow Was Poisoned thread But Felicity doesn't see herself as lovable. Her father left her, her mother was probably too busy for her or didn't care. She may not have had a boyfriend in high school or college, given her "even a guy in a coma" moveson from her. She accepts that Oliver loves Laurel, as soon as he said that Slade took Laurel because he wanted the woman Oliver loves, she was all "I know, so..." When Oliver couldn't be with Laurel, he got together with Sara even though Felicity was totally available, right there in the Cave working beside him night and day. If he were interested in her, wouldn't he have made a move by now? She knows that she's his 'girl Friday' and maybe she should settle for what she's got. She was hoping on the island for a sign that Oliver may have meant what he said for the cameras but all he did was agree they both sold it. Oh, well, at least she's got him as a friend. The potential for jealousy over Oliver is huge now that Laurel will also be on the Team, or so KC says. Please show, don't go there.

After the terrible twos and threes, adolescence is possibly the most selfish time in a person's life, probably for good evolutionary reasons (time to leave the tribe and diversify the gene pool by joining another?). There are kids who reach other to help other, the Kielburger brothers for example) but most of the kids who do are set the example by their parents. I can't see either Robert or Moira Queen, much less Oliver, setting Thea on the path to altruism or reaching out to the poor of Starling City. At the Dallas Comic Con, Manu Bennett talked about the effect on his life of losing both his mother and brother at 15 He shut down from the trauma and had to drop out of school because he couldn't learn anything. Thea would have been about 13 when the Queen's Gambit went down, and after that Moira probably spoiled her silly out of grief. She was pretty annoying at the start of s1, but by the end, she's out trying to save people with Roy.

I'll be interested to hear what they have to say at Comic Con, but I'll be surprised if we get a definite direction on Oliver's love life. They'll want to tease everything, and it's too soon for Oliver's endgame relationship to happen. I don't know if the EPs have told Stephen Amell where the show is headed but in all his interviews, he says pretty much the same two things: told that the Olicity fans were upset that the ILU was a fake, he says "I don't know. Was it?"; and repeats the line from Keep Your Enemies Close that he told Felicity, that because of when I/we (sometimes it's 'I', sometimes it's 'we') do, I can't be with someone I really care about. Meanwhile, Marc Guggenheim is tweeting confirming that the 'unthinkable' is Oliver risking the woman he loves to defeat Slade. If Katie Cassidy weren't saying in all her interviews that Laurel and Oliver are Made For Each Other, would we even be wondering?

And it's only recently that she's back in love with Oliver. Other than their one moment last season, she's been either dismissive of him or indifferent to him or angry at him when she realized Sara was sleeping with him again.. But now that she knows that he's the Arrow and a hero, she loves him more than ever, just like she was willing to turn a blind eye to his cheating and reluctance to move their relationship on when he was a rich, attractive frat boy.. If the Oliver/Felicity story is hitting all the right beats, Oliver/Laurel is hitting all the wrong ones. I think she's not really interested in them except as it concerns her character, and she doesn't put together the show as a whole if she even watches it. That's an awfully harsh thing to say and I feel bad for saying it but we all watch the show and try to get it to make sense, and we're not even being paid. I think Felicity would continue to be supportive because she believes that Laurel is the one who Oliver loves and she'd try her hardest to make Laurel's integration comfortable for his sake as well as because she (Felicity) is a naturally nice person.. And then I'd want to smack her upside the head for being such a goose. I'd forgotten her loyalty to Walter, it was that long ago, but it makes sense. I think what sells it for me is that I can see how the abandonment affected Felicity, and how she fights it to do what she feels it right. I can see the emotional scars on Oliver and Sara too and how they struggle to get any kind of normal life. I can even see it on Dinah in season 1, the guilt and loss and the betrayal when Quentin lost himself in his job and the bottle instead of helping her. But I can't see it on Laurel, either physically or emotionally, and other than when no one believed her about Sebastian, I can't see her doing any fighting to get beyond it. It's all being handed over to her on a platter, or rather a leather jacket.

In Heir to the Demon, Felicity had two short scenes, one with Moira and one later with Oliver, less than four minutes in total, and I completely believe that she has a fear of abandonment and that it is a very real scar. And I see that she is willing to risk that hurt again to do the right thing, especially for someone she cares about. Why does that work and not Laurel's 'crucible'? Maybe because while it's okay to hurt other people, ones you don't care about, to keep those you love safe, it's been shown that Oliver does care about Felicity whether it's just as a friend or pre-romantic. You don't hurt or put into danger people you care about to save someone else you care about. At least you don't if you're not a sociopath. Diggle is right to be mad that Oliver bailed on him to play knight errant to Laurel but at least Oliver didn't have any idea that Diggle would get hurt when it happened. Setting up Felicity to be kidnapped by Slade was guaranteeing that she would be in grave danger. ""No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that.""

Thea has gone through worse, and it going through worse right now. Roy has gone through worse, now he's lost Thea, and it's going to hit him again when he realizes he killed a man. I remember Abby's addiction arc on ER. It took over a season and destroyed her marriage. Shouldn't an island change you? I don't see how Laurel is changed in any way, other than she appears to be getting everything she wants now that Oliver is truly the hero and she can claim him. And she'll probably be the DA next season, having blackmailed herself back into the office. But she's still as delusional as ever, and still expecting the world to revolve around her. That's not what makes a superhero. If losing someone, depression and addiction makes you into a superhero, Quentin should be the first in line.