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.

I just saw no character arc toward this. I didn't see him changing, I didn't see epiphanies. I asked a few days back in the Relationships thread, if Olicity ends up together in the finale, when did he actually change his mind? I still don't see it. I think that's a nice speech. They just didn't earn it by showing me the path. There are a lot of dots, don't get me wrong. I mean, he could've come back from "dying" in the midseason finale changed, and by could've I mean should've, they totally whiffed that. None of the frenzied cascade of plot points since then seem to have affected him. I doubt even Stephen could draw me a map of his internal arc this season. Many dots, but they didn't connect any of them with lines. I really hope that Wendy Mericle will sit down and truly map out what people WANT. In season three what did Oliver want? What did Ra's want? What did Malcolm want? What did Ray want? I know what Dig and Felicity wanted, but their WANTS didn't drive this dumbass plot. And speaking of Ray. Okay, watching Oliver and Barry together really drives home the problem with Ray. The problem is that they didn't think at all about what Ray meant to Oliver himself. What relationship will they have going forward? What do they think about each other? Yes Ray being isolated meant he didn't get enjoyable scenes with the group but he meant NOTHING to Oliver, and he should've meant...everything. Raylicity is fine but it should've been there to further illustrate what Ray meant in Oliver's life. I can see a lot of dots! A lot of things he could've meant. But again, they didn't connect any. I have so many issues with this season that are about the nonsense plots and how everything connected to MM and RAG was horribly executed, but none of that would matter if the characters remained consistent. Slade had nonsense going on, but you always knew what he wanted.

So he would've gotten Barry's buy-in before 322. Okay. Well, it's not great, but it's an improvement.

Which is why I said upthread that I think PR training for celebs in this position should look more like political PR than traditional media PR. They're playing to the idea that they have a lot in common with their audience, that the audience can get to know them. And the expectations change.

Unfortunately, you'll find guys who have it together on the not being racist or homophobic front who cannot see their own sexism and why it matters. Like Abe on Mad Men. Ugh, Stephen is like Abe on Mad Men.

Something misogynistic, though? I remember last fall when people were posting those idiotic manips editing KC out of the poster he said something that was apparently a racist term in some country but not in the US or Canada? That's the only -ism I remember him being accused of. I just read a lot of blogs that despise him, and I cannot imagine that they'd ever stop bringing up anything he said that could be interpreted as misogynistic. It'd be delicious candy for them.

I mean he deliberately has a presence throughout social media and focuses on it. He engages with folks on other shows. He makes his own media fixations clear, like...we know he loves Mad Men, for example. This has obviously paid off for him big time, since it's really the mainstream media that consider him the king of social media. I'm not sure what your agenda is here regarding misogyny in the Amell clan. I don't pay that much attention to him, and I pay no attention to Robbie. I somehow doubt that characterization would meet with much agreement from people without an agenda who do pay attention, though. I have a friend who works in PR, and they said that in their opinion, what she should've done really early on - I would think summer after season one - was to seem to ship Olicity. She knew the romantic focus was being switched to Olicity at the beginning of season two, because hello, she reads the scripts. She knew Olicity was a juggernaut online. Seeming to react to Olicity like the audience did - "those two just have great chemistry and hey, I'm not just an actor, I'm a fan of the show too!! I enjoy their work! But you know, I just do what the writers give me..." It's too late now, but early on it would've been a great idea. But taking the long view like this isn't something I think many actors could do on their own, especially if they aren't fannish themselves. Which is why a publicist with this expertise is needed. Really, it's more like *political* PR than traditional entertainment media training.

I don't think her people are the right kind of people to manage someone dealing with fandom. Katie doesn't do well in highly fannish contexts, doesn't have the instincts. She needs a publicist who gets it and can coach her on how to speak to intensely engaged audiences. It really isn't even about avoiding saying things like this. A lot of the problems could've been handled if she had just parroted back some fandom arguments as if they were her own. When asked about Loliver, don't talk about soulmates, talk about how really problematic the sister swapping is and how much has gone down, and how you never know what the writers will do but you'd just really like L and O to be able to get to a place of friendship and be able to work together. Talk intelligently about what's going on with the entire show, not just this narrow focus on your own character that doesn't even jive with what the audience thinks. Look at DR. DR talks about the whole show. He talks about all the relationships. Now of course Diggle is at the center of the relationships so there isn't much he can talk about that doesn't have something to do with his character, but still. The fandom audience likes to hear the actors thinking about the work as a whole. It would help if she sounded enthusiastic about other people's storylines, you know? Fake being a fan of your own show. Everyone else seems like a fan of the show. Media training...I think it means something a bit different when you're dealing with fandom. There is an expectation these days that the people working on the show can also fangirl/boy when they need to. On a show where you have Stephen being like King of social media, most of the cast fangirling, Marc available frequently on Tumblr and Twitter, seeming disengaged from the show and not really understanding what's going on isn't a good position to take. Becoming aware of fandom nonsense is the best way to handle fandom nonsense. Pretend like you are one of us, in a way.

One of the worst things about the marriage is that is ISN'T a real marriage. A real coerced marriage would be quickly annulled. No one would wonder why these two people who were forced under threat of death to one of them to "marry" weren't conflicted about faithfulness to one another. They'd just be relieved they got out alive. With it not being real and no clear path to dissolution just makes it messier. There is actually no way for it to ever be over, is there? Guys, was last night's Flash supposed to have been before 322?

I don't really mind that she does that. The fact is that she is not like Caity, not a natural at playing a superhero. She wasn't cast for that ability. She was cast to play the LI and they figured they'd be fine with stunt doubles doing the fighting. So, having the LI role taken from her is a way bigger problem for her. She was supposed to be able to handle that herself. I don't mind when she does things like this because it's her career and I can't really blame people for prioritizing their careers. It won't work, but she kinda has to try. It would've been better if she'd been on board with reconceptualizing the character but it's too late for that.

Seriously. How you wanna spend the next 56 years, Oliver?