statsgirl

The Thea/Malcolm clip is great. That's what I want to watch for. The Diggle/Felicity/Oliver clip they gave us last week was also great, and then Laurel spoiled much of the episode for me. I doubt it too. But could the EPs even do it? The Laurel/Lauriver fans have got their noses twitching with the scent now. Once Laurel is on the team, I don't think they would be content with waiting to have her realistically learn the skills, or even to let Oliver have another relationship because they see her as the real BC and Oliver's one true love. With Laurel out in the field and fighting by his side, I think the floodgates have been opened.

Since the promos are put out by CW's promo department, and maybe the sneak peeks as welll, maybe they think that Laurel is a draw since Katie Cassidy was a CW darling for several years now. What surprises me is that no one associated with the show is hearing that KC isn't a big draw. Isn't the promotions department supposed to keep abreast of these things? AK knows there is a reaction against Laurel, wouldn't he call up the promo department and say 'hey, if you're going to promote Laurel, send out something with another character too'? I can imagine that the EPs are thinking about the audience "what are these people on about, all we've done is add Laurel to the team at last. What is their problem?" Our problem is that we're worried about the writing and we're worried that the characters we do care about will get pushed aside for Laurel. If they were come and say that Sara will be back next season, people might not be so upset. (Of course, if they said that Felicity will get her own storyline, we wouldn't believe them after last episode when no sooner had Oliver said it was up to the three of them that it because about Laurel and Oliver.). I laughed at the following paragraph from canadagraphs about the finale: http://canadagraphs.weebly.com/9/post/2014/05/arrow-films-a-scene-with-several-cast-for-the-season-2-finale-episode-unthinkable-spoiler-inside.html

I'm glad it made you laugh. I need to try that because it made me ragey. I've been wondering that since January. It would have made more sense to put out a Malcolm clip, or even Malcolm promo pics because people are going to be tuning in to see him again. I wonder if the EPs think that we will tune in for him and Oliver/Diggle/Felicity anyway so they want to promote Laurel and Oliver/Laurel. I still have the feeling that the EPs think that if they just shove Laurel at us enough, we'll grow to love her.

StupidTown, ahoy. The sneak peek is Laurel shooting the arrow to save Oliver. http://www.spoilertv.com/2014/05/arrow-episode-222-streets-of-fire-sneak.html If it's anyone but Thea (Oliver's sister), Laurel (whose picture he was clutching) or Sara (former SO and fighting partner), the show is going to have to justify how this person is close to Oliver's heart. I'd laugh if it were Diggle. I love the idea of Oliver injecting himself with mirakuru if he thinks Felicity is dead that if they do it on the show, I will praise them all summer. Sadly, I think the odds of it being Felicity though are rapidly diminishing. The EPs said they would explore Felicity backstory next season, but she doesn't actually have to be alive for them to do it.

I think it would be a fun twist if Ra's Al Ghul were Felicity's father, the dark and the light. A new kind of sister-in-law relationship with Sara too. But it's unlikely since I got the impression that Felicity remembers who her father is.

Slade's most obvious target is Laurel because that's who Oliver was obsessing about the first year on the island. But if Slade's been watching Oliver in Starling City, he should know that Oliver hasn't had much contact with her, and that he's been sleeping with Sara. So I would think Lauel if the show can't be bothered to do much thinking about it, or if not her, Sara. He's had the opportunity to kill Thea twice now and I think that if it were going to be her he'd have done it already unless he's playing cat-and-mouse. I would be surprised if it were to be Felicity because I don't think Slade would consider her that way. She's Oliver's PA and she's on Team Arrow but she stays pretty much in the background, unlike Sara. Slade strikes me as a man who pays attention to the obvious rather than the woman hidden in the background. I love the idea of Oliver being willing to be shot up with mirakuru if Felicity 'dies'. I think Kreisburg and Guggenheim would jump on the idea, but then they'd make it about Laurel and not Felicity. Your way is a much better story. Please, Slade, take Laurel away, out of Oliver's orbit, and do whatever you want with her. The only downside to that idea is KC herself. When she talks about her scenes with Paul Blackthorne in interviews, she talks about their "process", which sounds like Blackthorne spends a long time with her going over Laurel's motivation and how she would react in their scenes and what she would be doing so that KC doesn't have to look like she's doing multiplication in her head and so their scenes come off as Laurel's best. I don't think she does that with Stephen Amell, maybe because he's too busy to spend that kind of time with her, maybe because he's not experienced enough to know she needs it. Going by KC's anecdote, Manu Bennet works his stuff out in his own head and plays it out for anyone who may be around. I'd love to be wrong but I think putting Slade and Laurel together would look good on the page but KC's acting wouldn't be up to it. ,

Oliver was trying to drop a whole building on the men (yes, men) who were part of Slade's army. Since there is a mirakuru cure, he could have save them. That sounds pretty 'unthinkable' to me. A description designed to drive us crazy trying to figure out who the "someone close to his heart" is. After last week's Laurel-fest on the heels of "it has to be the three of us", I'm not playing any more,.

I have the feeling it wasn't that Felicity's story was so big it couldn't fit into s2, but that they took the room for Laurel's.

This is the greatest discussion I've read in a long time. I feel like I'm back in college.where the arguments we argued were smart and exciting and important (to us anyway). Arctis Tor, I really like your analysis of Laurel, although it took me a minute to remember that DiD stood for Damsel in Distress and not Dissociative Identity Disorder, although that could apply too. Pootlus, all your scenarios make sense, but I was thinking that there was one you didn't include: 8. the Pygmalion Factor. I was getting some information last night and I realized that AK was not only the one who the GA/BC that turned off many people, but that he wrote BC as Dinah Laurel Lance. This version of her is his creation, maybe he even had a hand in casting KC in the role and now I'm thinking that his bewilderment that so many people don't love her is genuine. He can't see what is wrong with the character and as one of the two show-running EPS (Berlanti is usually off doing other things), he has a lot of clout. It could be that the Pygmalion Factor is the wildcard that throws logic and good writing out the window. Maybe we should all be hoping that The Flash gets picked up and he leaves Arrow for it.

Well, fashion is her passion, after all. Laurel is in 9 of the 12 pictures, Diggle & Felicity in 2, and Thea in 2. In the first on, Laurel looks like she's keeping Oliver from getting close to Diggle and Felicity. They really must think we tune in for Laurel.

Yeah. I used to be excited for the finale, now I just want it to hurry up and get here so I can find out how bad the damage is.

Diggle is pretty non-judgmental generally I presume he and Felicity brought Laurel in because Oliver wasn't listening to them. Or was it that Laurel went to them because she finally had some information and that's what prompted them? I much prefer the latter. Either way, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when Diggle and Felicity talked over whether to let Laurel in. (Fanfic anyone?) I don't watch Blue Bloods, I didn't know he was already done on it. Is Arrow all he's got now, poor guy?

In other words, even Sara, who was presented as the not-so-smart daughter, knew Oliver for who he was. Maybe not in her bones or as well as she knew her own name, but even back then she knew him better than Laurel did.

That's one of the things that bugged me when he pretty much disappeared when Sara arrived in the cave and she was the only one strategizing with Oliver. How much time does David Ramsey spend on Blue Bloods? (He plays the mayor.) Could it be affecting how much screentime he gets on Arrow? I'm glad he's got the Suicide Squad tie-in because that gives him at least something that is his own and not in the shadow of Oliver.

Alibelle, I have long thought that the only way to make sense of Laurel is to see her as a gold-digger, but you've made the argument brilliant. Unfortunately, I don't think the EPS see it this way at all.

True. But if they actually knew what crap was, would they still be trying to force her into storylines like she's the greatest thing on the show?

I'm trying to think of in what possible way Laurel would be better for Oliver than anyone else, including Helena. Even setting aside that she doesn't know Oliver and that he has successfully lied to her for 7 years, and that he's put her in the category of someone like Thea who he can't be honest with because she's too fragile to know the truth... Is there anything about Laurel that would be good for Oliver? Thanks, I didn't know that. Nor, I hope, did the producers but why am I not surprised that what they had Laurel say is exactly the wrong thing? I agree. He was the perfect tie-in to get the movie audience to like the show but making him the team leader has ruined him for me (along with his OTT anger at May and the show's expectation that she needs to be the one to appease him.) However, another way S.H.I.E.L.D. has ruined Coulson for me is his constant propping of Skye especially over Simmons who is a better character. Rather like the Arrow producers prop Laurel as knowing Oliver bestest over Sara and Felicity.

That's why I think what they're doing on this show is such a cheat. They pay lip service to what the audience is asking for, and occasionally a scene like the one with Felicity and Diggle trying to stop Oliver from sacrificing himself (and which serves to show how much more attractive Oliver is, and how much better Amell's acting is opposite people who are not KC), and then it's back again full speed to St. Laurel. I tweeted to AK that I cheered when Oliver said it's time to get back to the three of them only to be even more disappointed when Laurel pulled him away but given Kreisburg's mindset, I doubt he paid any attention..

They don't trust us to notice Laurel's bug if it's not flashing. They don't trust us to notice Laurel's wonderfulness unless everyone keeps telling us about it.

But it's always possible that something went wrong... that the gun misfired and killed Thea, or that she was hurt in the car crash and so making Oliver choose was moot because Thea was already a goner. They want us to believe both things, that Blood knew that Slade was going to kill Moira, and that Slade was really giving Oliver a choice. I think what happened is that they wanted to give Laurel some information that Blood was working with Slade so that she could be the one to save Oliver, and this was the best they could come up with. Once again, it doesn't pay to look too closely to the mechanics of the construction. The writing for this show seems to go from endpoint backwards to construct it, rather than "Here's the situation and the characters, given that, what would happen next?"

She sure didn't at the Calgary Fan Expo. She seemed positively delighted with the direction Laurel is going in . It makes me very worried. It makes perfect sense but then she wouldn't be important enough in terms of the show or her connection to Oliver, though. For some reason, the EPs adore her and are determined to make her the show's lead. I thought when Felicity and later Sara were so well received I've seen several comments in various places that the contrast between the two scenes shows how much better Laurel is for Oliver than Felicity because Laurel brought up his family and other people while Felicity made it all about Oliver himself, I guess reinforcing his self-absorption. Once again, I don't understand what the writers are going for. Which was the better speech? Laurel pulling in everything she knew about, and finally giving him the information he needed to keep going, or Felicity telling him not to sacrifice himself because he is a valuable person?

Well, the poor guy does get hurt a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if they had intended Thea to be an archer and have switched it to Laurel now. Special snowflakes get everything cannibalized for them, especially when nothing seems to be working.. On Wednesday over at tvline.com, before the board exploded in Laurel-hate, Matt Mitovich suggested that Even he sees the problems.

I'm currently working on the theory that they have changed their game plan to keep Sara as the Black Canary and have Laurel turn into the Red Arrow, since Roy is going to be Arsenal. It makes Sara fans happy and explains the promo pictures of Laurel shooting an arrow, and why she ran home from the Cave to change her blue coat for a bright red one before hunting down Oliver. (How did she find him? Does she have him GPS'd?) Ditto to every comment above. In addition, she spoils the episodes she's in by a combination of bringing the action to a screeching halt whenever she has a scene, and forcing the storytelling into convolutions to accommodate the character. The storylines they create for her take time away from characters I'm more interested in; the A stories she's involved in make her the special snowflake of the show. I didn't mind her so much when she was peripheral to the show, I can enjoy it around her. But when she comes into the Arrow Cave, pushes Diggle and Felicity aside and claims Oliver because she's his true soul mate -- then I wonder why I'm watching.

Exactly. I have never seen a show/tell contradiction like there is on this show. And whichever you buy into, what they show or what they tell, you'll probably end up cheated. Although i do think she believed that she could be more than an IT girl even before Oliver told her. You don't go from the daughter of a cocktail waitress to attending MIT (on scholarship or work plans) without a power belief that You Can Be More. But compared to what this show tries to pull with other characters (hello, Laurel) that a pick of the tiniest nit.

His father died in the pilot, which was over 6 years ago now, but that's me being really picky. I think what he went through on the island would have been as traumatic as seeing his father die, if not more.