ostentatious

Re: Tyrion as secret Targ. If we get any references from him to his old dragon dreams, IMO he is. No reason to throw that in at this point if there is no payoff. And if he doesn't reflect upon such things while in the awe-inspiring presence of dragons...I mean somebody's gotta keep feeding Dany's babies. If they're going to get this on the table, his dragon fascination comes in very nicely there. I am kind of meh on it. I can't think of anyone I would prefer to see over him, doesn't bother me to have two secret Targs. However, I felt that scene with Dany where she stops him from drinking too much was so like all those scenes where he and Cersei are boozing it up that I thought well, if she really is his sister, this is a nice callback. I agree with Bran's visions being the season opener. I also see him encountering Ghost and having some suspicious interaction there, well in advance of any other indication that's where Jon went. Other than the editing, of course. I'm feeling a direct cut from Melisandre and perhaps Tormund? being concerned over what she's about to do to something to do with Ghost, or the other way around. If Sandor is the Faith's champion in Cleganebowl, I think it is compatible with his growth. However, they would have to get him on the table really quickly unless Cersei's trial is going to be her final storyline. Does he count as the valonquar if...would they hang her, or is that for plebs? If his winning means she hangs, it fits.

Well, I think Roose would obviously know that the armies were heading North...I am going to assume that Kevan is Regent and operating in KL. Jaime would be the obvious one to lead some sort of march north, after they get word of Stannis being wiped out. I think you'd have to spend most of the season with Brienne trying to get Sansa to...well, speaking of Tarth, isn't that the place she would take her? But Sansa might want to go north since she knows her brothers may be alive and Theon may have some vague idea they went north. I think there are reasons they could use to take them north or south, whatever is needed. Ramsay would have to be after them and finally capture them in 608/609, and then you'd have the cliffhanger at the end of the season. It could go a number of ways but I think it's easy to move these chess pieces into position. I think if Roose knows Jaime is the/one of the generals leading the armies to Winterfell, and knows Ramsay can force Brienne to do whatever they want, throwing the army into disarray by capturing Jaime - who, if the incest doesn't come up, is the King's uncle, nephew of the Hand/Regent/whatever they do with Kevan, thus also a valuable prisoner - would be more than attractive enough to loose Ramsay on Brienne and Pod. And Pod being flayed, whether Sansa gets recaptured or not, would be plenty of motivation for Brienne to have her crisis of oaths.

Yeah, if they really wanted to make this work to get Trystane to KL and thus probably subject to Cersei's wrath, they should've had Ellaria give her a poison robe or something that she only put on much later, not less than a quarter mile out to sea. Or a pendant that melts with body heat. There's just no way Trystane would voluntarily go to KL now, no way he wouldn't have the boat turned around immediately, and they're within sight of land so no other entity could abduct them. However, I believe he'll end up there, and suspect that he'll be the catalyst for Jaime bailing on Cersei once and for all. She'll demand he kill the kid, Jaime will remember that one time she tried to get him to maim or murder Arya, and he'll know about Lancel by that point. I think he'll go on to have roughly his AFFC storyline, though I'm not sure the trip will be about the Riverlands/Riverrun/Tully and Frey stuff but rather the march North to join up with the forces from the Vale that LF promised and take Winterfell. If Jaime is heading up to fight the Boltons, leading the Crown's forces, that gives Ramsay and Roose a very specific reason to think Jaime Lannister as an individual is an enemy and #1 problem to be eradicated, which would give Ramsay an excellent reason to threaten to flay Pod and force Brienne to go lie to Jaime and separate him from his army and bring him in, thus putting him in the LSH role I have thought he was going to fulfill since pre-S5. It's really kind of perfect, since Roose would know better than anyone that Brienne can be an excellent tool against Jaime. Logistically it works better for me than LSH did in the first place. And if Ramsay has recaptured Sansa, that brings in oaths for Brienne.

Hey guys, this show is awesome and I cannot imagine how I lived without it for so long, but question: what episode in season one has Jack say he's in a sexless marriage/marriage in name only? I know it happens but I binge watched the whole thing over the weekend and somehow didn't hear that part.

I think Oliver's reaction to Barry, to his flirtation with Felicity, to Barry being let in on TA secrets, was the most important aspect of Barry's first two Arrow eps. So I do think they're the primary relationship, yeah. Their dynamic is what has changed and grown. Their relationship had a place to go because of that. Ray and Oliver have nothing, have no place to go. They might as well never have met.

Watching Oliver with Barry really highlighted to me that the big problem with Ray was that he wasn't given a relationship with Oliver. I know how Barry and Oliver will react to each other. Oliver and Barry have the primary relationship, Barry and Felicity really secondary. Doesn't mean it isn't close, just means that - as is appropriate for the lead - greater attention was given to asking, what does Barry mean to Oliver? How does he affect him? than to Barry/Felicity. Ray's primary relationship should've been with Oliver. It doesn't mean he couldn't date Felicity, but by having no interest in what Ray meant to Oliver other than "steal yo girl," it means there's nothing between them at all. Ray didn't affect Oliver, Ray and Oliver don't have anything to work on, to strengthen, to jeopardize. Felicity thought about their similarities and differences, that was a mental process she was given, but *OLIVER* should've had that mental process. HIS psychology should've been attended to. That was more important than ever showing the guy dating Felicity. I mean, I don't know how you accomplish it...it feels more like he should've been around him all season rather than just midseason...but at the very least Ray should've been on the team when Oliver returned so they could interact. I would prefer engineering a reason why Oliver wasn't completely cast aside from QC/PT once Ray took over. Maybe Ray also felt strongly that the appearance of continuity between the old guard and the new was crucial for the venture to inspire idk, trust, nostalgia wtfever make it up idgaf, in the populace. Some reason for them to exist in each other's sphere and react to each other.

Yeah, there's no walking this thing back. If EBR decided not to re-sign when her contract is up, then I believe they'd bring in someone else before they'd go with Laurel. That thing is dead, dead.

They could make Supergirl an AU they visit, that's about it.

AND AND AND. They are terrible at mapping emotional arcs for their characters WITHIN SHOW. Look at Oliver in this ep and the great "where the hell was his arc?" question. Can you imagine them trying to work emotional arcs spread over three shows?

Yes, absolutely, another huge problem is that they write them inconsistently between shows. I mean, they had Felicity running off with Ray to CC in a very perky mood...at a time when TA was in crisis. You can even look at their inability to handle Felicity being the person "crossing over" from TA storylines to scenes with Ray *in a single show* and see the problems. Mood and where the characters are emotionally...that is more distracting for the audience than some slight factual inconsistencies. I loved the first Flash crossover and how Olicity was written there, but even that...they were not written correctly for where they were emotionally at the time. Oliver had just gone to find her and tell her err...something...found her kissing Ray, but you didn't see that on Flash. And sorry, but "everybody's in a good mood in CC" is funny, but nope. Not gonna work. I consider THAT an issue of timing. Characters not emotionally mapping between shows. That isn't network, that's writing coordination. However, I do start to wonder if they really are going to use time travel to age Connor up to his late teens or early twenties.

I don't think they can handle the complexity of these crossovers, either, and you add in shifting timelines and information gleaned by characters on one show they'll carry to another...they couldn't even have Oliver attribute his change of heart to the fact he'd just learnd he lives to see old age, and that had happened just the prior ep. And the CW has proven that they don't care about measing up the timelines and airing shows out of order, and that's with only two shows and the most basic and uncomplicated crossovers. This team cannot handle this work. They cannot.

But just because he stared at her picture the first year - before he was with Shado, before Sara turned out to be alive, before he started having his POV about Laurel shifted by some conversations with Sara - doesn't really mean anything more than what the show chooses to let it mean. Sure, at some point before October 2012 he got back to the island and probably found her picture in some stuff in the fuselage at that point, and he may have hit a major, major low and grabbed the pic and thought oh hey, maybe I can make *that* right..and maybe the book, maybe I can use that to make things right, before my inevitable early violent death. But that doesn't mean that by the time of The Return he was thinking about her very often, or particularly fondly.

Really, the worst thing isn't that Nyssa was usurped. It's that she had to kneel before the man who murdered the woman she loved, and vow allegiance to him. That's a vow she takes *seriously*. Yes, we know that Sara is coming back somehow, but that's irrelevant.

Laurel has benefited from having so little screen time, in that she has not been visually associated with as many problems as many of the others. The final swordfight scene..the worst choice of setting I can remember seeing for such a thing. They just appeared to be standing at a construction site. Only briefly did we even see the dam. There was little sense of danger until the absolute last second. Just green screen the entire thing guys. I did like Oliver straight up torturing and murdering Shrieve, though. I have been needing to get his downward spiral, and a child's death is definitely a strong trigger.

Exactly, this is a dot. There are dozens of dots. There just aren't lines connecting them. And sure, Oliver could be friends with Felicity's ex, but that isn't even what I mean. I mean the relationship between Oliver and Ray needed to be Ray's primary relationship. This is Oliver's show, characters have to exist in relation to him. "Briefly dating the woman Oliver wants" isn't a relationship between Oliver and Ray. And Ray isn't on the show anymore. And Ray was set up as a compare/contrast to Oliver...but the problem is they didn't let that comparison live in *Oliver's* head. They only let Felicity grapple with it. OLIVER should've been grappling with this psychologically or what is the point of making Ray a version of Oliver? Let Felicity have what she had, just make sure it's primarily about what Ray means to Oliver.