apinknightmare

Yes, they were unreasonable. A reasonable situation would go something like this: "Oliver, I know that you would like to spend time with and get to know your son, but the person that I knew ten years ago wasn't a very good influence. I'd like to spend some time with you and get to know you better before I allow you that. You may mention this to your significant other and very close family members, but I'd prefer if you kept it quiet until we've worked out whether you'd like to have continued involvement in our son's life. I don't want him spending time with your girlfriend until I get to know her and feel comfortable around her, because I don't want William getting attached to people who might not be in his life long-term. Once we work out the kinks, we'll decide how to move forward." Or, "I'm incredibly uncomfortable with the way your family is continually targeted, and am worried about what would happen if someone found out the man running for mayor has a son considering what's happened to the previous candidates. I'll let you meet him today, but could we hold of any other discussions until things are more settled and I'm sure he'd be safe?" Easy peasy. Believably concerned mother looking out for the best interests of her son. Instead we got a woman who listed a shitload of reasons why she didn't want Oliver around her kid, then decided he could be around her kid as long as he agreed not to tell anyone ever, including the child. Completely and utterly unreasonable and ridiculous.

I'm not much of a hugger, either. This is how I feel about them in most circumstances:

But that's the same moment that Oliver should want to stay away from the kid as much as BM wants him to, because it wouldn't be safe. And honestly, it would make Oliver look like a complete asshole and a terrible potential father. It would be ten times worse than the dirtbag behavior he exhibited pre-island. Do what I want or I'll expose our kid to a madman? Yikes.

Here's what I want to know: does Oliver even get another visit with the kid? When Samantha opens up her daily subscription to the Star City Ledger or reads her Google alerts for Oliver Queen and sees that Oliver got shot at on the beach of Star City Bay, publicly went after the ringleader of an organization like HIVE, got his mayoral campaign headquarters attacked, then got into whatever dangerous situation he gets into with Felicity in that bullet hole-ridden limo, she should be nipping any future visitation in the bud right quickly. And Oliver should want to stay away anyhow. Like...none of this makes a damn bit of sense. Makes me wonder if Felicity's going to find out about the kid when DD publicly threatens him right around the time that her pops comes to town. Then Oliver can rescue him and send him and mama off into his own version of the witness protection program, never to be seen/heard from again.

A lot of major online reviews were positive toward the episode as a whole, negative toward the idiotic, contrived secret child storyline and subsequent nonsensical lying - which is something MG definitely got backlash for, considering he felt the need to post a pissy tweet about it.

Yeah, I guess the "It's complicated," indicates that he did. I'm just not sure why he doubled down on the lying when it was clear Felicity knew since that should've been a relief and he could've explained to her why it needed to stay a secret. But then again, we are dealing with a moron.

Did he though? We never got to see what happened in the first timeline. I wonder if anything went differently there.

Oliver's been threatened by DD, but nothing "real" has happened yet between Oliver and DD - it's all been between DD and Green Arrow. At the time Oliver went to visit his kid, I can see why thinking that being involved with the kid in a superficial way could be a viable situation for him. He said he wanted to see the kid "every once in a while." That, to me, does not indicate that he wants to visit the kid frequently, but I don't know what that means to Oliver. It might not mean much since Samantha made it very clear that he couldn't be a father to William. If he has the understanding that he's never going to get the opportunity to be a father to William and thinks that Felicity broke up with him over the mere existence of the kid, I can see why he might not think it's worth it to tell her, since he's never going to be involved in the kid's life in a meaningful way apart from a visit here or there, where he's lying to the boy about who he really is.

See, this is where I need to hear from him. He was told William could never be a part of his world, and that William could never know that Oliver was his father. Maybe Oliver is hoping for more at some point, but I don't know that because he wasn't given a voice for his reasoning. Samantha played to Oliver's insecurities by telling him that being a part of his kid's life would be bad for his kid. He even told Barry he thought it might be better if he stayed away from William. So, we know his mind is definitely going there. If he thinks he's going to go through life having a relationship with the kid where he shows up every once in a while as "mommy's friend Oliver," doesn't have any other kind of rights or responsibilities other than that because that's all Samantha was willing to offer him, then I can see him rationalizing it because it's not like he's going to be an actual father to the kid. Not telling Felicity about the kid is terrible either way, I can just understand one reason for keeping it from her a lot more than the other. This is just MHO, I know other people feel differently.

If we're supposed to believe Oliver didn't tell her because he was worried about Barry's revelation that he and Felicity broke up in the first timeline (in addition to wanting to honor BM's ridiculous conditions), the looks makes sense to me.

How is it any better if he's comforting her after lying?

One thing that is fairly consistent with Oliver (even though he should've learned by now), is that if someone makes a demand of him, and they're holding a loved one over his head, he goes along with that demand without question, doesn't even consider an alternative until Felicity offers him one.

The episode seems really packed and that clip seemed really to quick for This is just MHO, but I'd much rather That would taint them for me.

This is for sure gonna happen by the way. I don't know how Damien Darhk is going to find out about the kid, but he's gonna. Which leads me back to really not understanding how this storyline is going to play out because what parent in their right mind would want to subject this kid to that? Oliver shouldn't, and his mother shouldn't. But I don't think that the lesson here is supposed to be that Oliver shouldn't ever have children, so...wtf.

Technically he's chatting on Facebook - liking posts and commenting on them. He just isn't posting his own stuff for...who knows why, haha.

Can no one on this show do math? Oliver said the boy looked about nine, and that he and Samantha had their "thing" ten years ago, but the check that Moira gave her is dated November 2007.

LMAO, her kissing the glass, his face while she's doing it.

I think he's probably trying to calm her, and is going to say something like, "Hey, I'm going to get you out." If she panics with low oxygen, that's bad. I think he probably goes in there with a plan, and that Laurel, Malcolm and maybe Curtis are also in there working on a way of getting the cell open. I also hope that Diggle got Andy to work with HIVE as a double agent, and let him out of that cage and sent him back inside and that he'll have a hand in it, too.

I don't think he's pouting. I think he's pretty good at anticipating fan reaction, and pays more attention to fandom than we probably realize. I think he knows he's going to get a shitload of complaints and criticisms in his comments if he posts, and is probably staying away from it for that reason.

I don't find the Twitter silence so strange - he continually harps on how much he hates it. He's Facebook's biggest fanboy though; his silence on there and the deleting of The Flash promo and no post of the Arrow promo are what I find kind of strange.

I think the video with GG was a private message to someone that he didn't mean to post publicly.

I probably wouldn't think anything of it if he had just been silent, but he's also deleting things. So...

Given that he deleted at least one post he already made, and hasn't posted anything else since the ep aired, I'm guessing he doesn't want to put up anything that invites commentary.

It's really strange that everyone is angled downward.

Oh good. That makes me feel better!