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I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about previous seasons here (if not, feel free to remove). I’ve been going through Arrow withdrawal and I’ve started binging the show from the beginning. I’m already in season 4, and I realized how much I *hated* the whole “you lied to me about your son (even though the son’s mother made you) so that means I can’t trust you so goodbye.” Felicity had been one of my favorite characters, and I was glad they ended up together, but I thought Felicity was such a judgements little princess throughout that whole ordeal. She said multiple times how she knew Samantha put Oliver in an impossible choice, and then basically said “I don’t care.” She acknowledged that the nature of Oliver’s life meant that he would sometimes have to keep things from her (like every other person who works in law enforcement) and again said “I don’t care.” What on earth was Oliver supposed to do? Risk not being able to see his son because Felicity was too insecure about their relationship? Report back every single thing he was doing so she knew exactly what he was doing every single moment of every single day? Ugh. I COULD NOT STAND HER. What a ginormous hypocrite. Like she doesn’t hide things from her mother? I mean, aren’t mother’s and daughters supposed to have an open and honest relationship too? Felicity basically threw a temper trantrum because Oliver wanted to get to know his own son.

Full disclosure - Supergirl is the show I like least in the Beeboverse (do you guys use that term here? It’s all over Reddit, and I find it hilarious. But if you don’t use it, replace it with Arrowverse.). So I wasn’t surprised when I discovered that I found the Supergirl contribution the weakest. (Maybe because the other two eps were so incredibly meta and I throughly enjoyed that.) The Kara/Alex dynamic is one of the few things that I like about the show, but Alex’s behavior made NO SENSE. I could have justified it if we were on Earth-38. Maybe Alex would have felt that something was... wrong about imprisoning Supergirl, since on that Earth they’re sisters and maybe Alex still had a remnant of her “true self.” But on Earth-1, Alex has no idea who Kara is. So why would she believe Kara so quickly? I know, I know - Kara magically convinced her by telling that story about when Alex was a child. But first, why would they necessarily have the same experiences as children? Alex-1 and Alex-38 are *different people*. We’ve seen how drastically different Barry & Co are on different Earths. And Deegan scrambled everyone’s life anyway to boot. Second, even if Alex had that experience, I don’t understand why that would have convinced her. In a world that has Superman, it’s pretty likely other powers exist, like telepathy and mind-control. Being in the military (or something close to it) as Alex was, didn’t she consider that a possibility? Because if she didn’t, that really just shows how incompetent this Alex is at her job. Someone who is that easy to manipulate shouldn’t have control over any sensitive information - the first charismatic villain with a touching story to tell would apparently be able to convince Alex of anything. I am so, so TIRED of everyone ragging on Oliver. To hear them talk, he’s one step removed from Manchester Black. AND HE’S NOT. Oliver has this tendency to think the worst about himself. I think he still sees himself as the Oliver from season 1 (or even the Oliver from the 5 lost years), where he had no problem torturing and murdering people he felt “deserved” it. (Do any of you remember when Oliver skinned someone alive during the lost years? Yeesh.). But he’s not that guy anymore, and he hasn’t been for a long time. The only person who seems to see that is Barry - everyone else apparently sees him as a psycho. Oliver’s soul is not “filled with darkness”. Of course it’s not. How could he be the hero HE SO OBVIOUSLY IS if it were? Why would he have sacrificed himself to the FBI to save everyone else if that were true? Why would he have cared about the treatment of prisoners at Slabside? Why would he willingly subject himself to the authority of the SCPD? Ugh. I also think it’s clear he made some kind of deal sacrificing himself to save Barry and Kara. (Yet another example of how his soul is perfectly fine, and probably in better shape than mine.) To be honest, if he doesn’t tell Felicity about whatever bargain he made, I’m fine with it. In fact, it’s probably better that he doesn’t say anything. What could Felicity do about it? All it’s going to do is make her sad about the future. If Oliver’s going to die, he’s going to die whether Felicity knows or not. Why burden her with knowledge? Let her be happy for as long as she can. (I’m also ok with his decision not to tell her about the deal with the FBI. Obviously she would have tried to talk him out of it. But there was really no other way to save everyone. So instead of having a long, drawn-out argument that wouldn’t change anything and just make Felicity madder and sadder, he presented her with a fait accompli.) The show also, once again, completely wasted J’onn. He’s the freaking Martian Manhunter. He’s pretty powerful - easily on the level of Supergirl and Superman. (In the JLA cartoon, he’s the one that created the Justice League because he foresaw something terrible coming, and he wanted the Earth to be prepared.) But apparently no one can be as powerful as Supergirl (even Superman, which is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard), so the show completely nerds MM, and relegates him to randomly saving 3 civilians (from fire, ironically enough). And I’m not saying those 3 civilians shouldn’t have been saved, but MM should have been able to save them and hundreds more. I was also disappointed that Calista Flockhart didn’t at least make a cameo. She was by far my favorite character. James Olsen is a poor, poor replacement for her as the head of Catco. I’ve just realized that at this point, no one’s probably reading this anymore. It became a little longer than I intended. That’s ok. I needed to get it all off my chest anyway, even if I’m just talking to myself. (Since I am talking to myself, I want to remind myself to buy soap - we’re almost out.)

I’m new here. Years ago, I was active on TWoP, and when that died I needed to find someplace else to talk about my favorite shows. But at that point, previously.tv was too new, and didn’t have enough activity, so I found my way on to Reddit. That’s primarily been where I go to to talk about Arrow, but a few days ago, I remembered this place and decided to check it out again. It is almost surreal to see how diametrically opposed the two user groups are. Particularly with regards to Olicity. Reddit HATES it. Like, a lot. Almost every episode there’s someone complaining that the “Olicity” moments ruined the episode. And then I come here, and everyone is in love with Olicity, and I’m getting a bit of whiplash at how abrupt the transition is. It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that not everyone despises this pairing. (I never hated Olicity. I’m not as big a fan of it as some of you are, apparently, though.) Anyway, in terms of the episode, didn’t some of you think it was weird how... easily Felicity kissed Oliver at the end? This guy doesn’t look like the husband she knows. He in fact looks like her friend Barry. Even if she believed completely that Oliver was actually Oliver, you would think that she’d at least say something like “It’s strange kissing you when you look like Barry.” Even after Iris believed that Barry was Barry, she didn’t kiss him. Because it’s odd.

Oh dear - that pink lipstick is unfortunate.