apinknightmare

He is being vague, but he is also straight-up trolling with that answer. The EPs sold the Oliver and Felicity pairing all throughout the break, Stephen himself said that there was only one woman in Oliver's life this year, and that was Felicity - he meant as a love interest, since Thea and Laurel actually exist in Oliver's orbit. The symbolism being used in the scenes between O&F is like an anvil to the head. So, either the producers weren't being forthright with everything they teased over the summer (which, honestly, wouldn't surprise me at this point, but would be terrible both for their fanbase and for the actual story they're telling thus far, which is pointing heavily towards Oliver and Felicity), or Stephen's stirring the pot to get people talking. I'm going with the second option, especially since he could've easily given some non-committal answer to that guy's question. Although I agree with everyone above - I wish the shipper questions would stop, but I know that's never going to happen.

Maybe he doesn't consider her a love interest because Oliver's not actively trying to be with her right now? That's the only thing I can think of, cause, you know, he basically told her she made him remember how to be human again and gave her a reverse I love you, so he must be trolling.

I feel like this is a different situation, since he basically grieved for her the first time while still holding out hope, since they didn't have a body. There is a body this time, there is no hope, and it is absolutely shitty that he's being kept in the dark about his daughter when he can properly grieve for her a second time. When someone (who isn't Laurel, I'll bet) finally tells him, do you think he's going to say, "Hey, thanks for keeping me in the dark and lying to me so I could have a few good weeks of ignorance!" And it's also shitty that no one mentioned, you know, calling her mother. Also, is anyone else concerned about how shallow that grave was? The stench is going to be unbearable soon, unless Oliver or Diggle miraculously have mortuary sciences training.

No, they put her in a freezer while they figured out where to bury her, which was in an old grave in a pine box. But yeah, dicks.

Yeah, but the problem is that she has to tell him eventually, and the longer she waits, the worse it's going to be for him. And now instead of just being devastated that his daughter is dead, he'll be devastated that the other one kept it from him, buried her without him, and took the grieving process out of his hands. His alcoholism and heart condition aren't going away - it's a contrived plot point to create drama at a later date, and I hate it.

Yeah, I see what you're saying, but to the casual viewer, Felicity ended that relationship at the end of The Calm, so if that was it, there really wasn't any reason to not tune in to Sara, IMO.

Plus, if the drop were "Olicity" related, wouldn't it mean that people liked the pairing and were upset that they broke things off at the end of the last ep? If they hated the pairing, they'd tune in after the two called it quits, right?

I don't think it's reached 50 Shades level yet, because he's only pursing her as a potential employee, not a girlfriend. My ex-boyfriend was heavily recruited by two Fortune 500 companies, and the things they did for/gave him to persuade him into working for them was ridiculous. To me, Ray's your typical rich guy who goes after and gets what he wants, professionally speaking. I mean, he wouldn't be a billionaire if he didn't! If he acts this way if/when they date, I'll change my tune and quickly. I think the Buy More purchase was probably done because the people who write this show don't know/care how business works OR that purchase was already underway and Ray just told her he purchased it so she'd be his subordinate just to tease her.

I wrote this in another post (can't remember where), but I think this is where the show suffers a lot from crammed story lines. We don't get to see their friendships, but Sara spent a lot of time with Felicity and Diggle. They were in that foundry working together for hours nearly every day. I don't doubt they were friends, close friends even, but the story suffers because we're left to connect the dots without ever getting to see it.

Oh, he's totally a stalker. I know many people might not feel the same as I do, but it's slightly better for me in that he's not pursuing her romantically, he's aggressively recruiting her. Yeah, he's doing it in an over-the-top, Hollywood way, but I've seen some companies do some crazy things to court a potential employee. He wants her skill set. He'll do what it takes to get it and he's not used to people telling him no. Would he be as dogged if Felicity was a man? I think so. And I also think my perception of him and what he's doing is colored by the fact that I know he's a potential love interest for her. It means something to me that he quit with the shit when he saw she was upset, and realized she was actually serious about not wanting to work for him to the point she quit her job. I think it was a game to him until that point, when he realized he was the only one playing it.

I'm probably in the minority, but it didn't really bother me? She took that crappy Buy More job to be flexible for her Arrowing (why else would she say she wasn't looking for another job?), so I saw it less about her turning to Ray because she was pissed at Oliver and more about realizing that she's coasting along in life not living up to her potential, at a job she's miserable at. Sara's death opened her eyes to the fact that her life could be over at any time, why not be happy? She's not happy professionally, and Ray is handing her an interesting job and a ton of money on a silver platter. Why not take a chance and grab it? What's the worst that could happen? She knows first hand he may or may not be up to something, and that he's a little skeezy, so she's going into it with her eyes open. Maybe that's part of the reason she IS going into it, because SHE wants to find out if he's up to something (and if she can get paid for it, why not?). Plus, after the events of the last ep, I can see how she would think it's good to get a break from Oliver. He is-by virtue of her committing herself his mission-her life. And he just stood there and told her that this thing she's committed to helping him with is going to end with him being dead. It's good for her to get a break, and I see it as being all about healthy choices for her, not about Oliver or Ray.

Yeah, I think she just lashed out at him as a way of imploring him to feel something. Because she's seen him do this time and again, and it's never good. And yeah, poor Oliver. He does some incredibly stupid things, but I'm rooting for him. Enough is enough. And I agree about the "I don't want to die down here" line. It was perfect and poignant and SA really knocked it out of the park.

Or maybe she was concerned that he was shutting down and not dealing with it as he has a tendency to do? Everyone does grieve in their own way, but Oliver's had a lot piled on him in the last few months, and while her method of calling him out on it was bitchy and I'm glad she apologized, it came from a well-meaning place.

Yeah, we're actually agreeing here. In my original post I wrote that I'd hand wave it as being grief-related, since under normal circumstances I believe she'd check to see if the gun was loaded and/or notice that it wasn't. Over half of this show is fanwank material - I'm hardly going to be nitpicky over this when I'm asked to believe that she somehow managed to carry her dead sister down a full flight of stairs without messing up her outfit. :)

I understand why Oliver was distant; I think that if he had hugged her or allowed himself that comfort, he would've fallen apart (for lack of a better word). He was losing Felicity on top of losing Sara and I get that it would've been too much. And I maybe understand Felicity not being there for him like she had been previously, because allowing herself to be vulnerable like that for him is dangerous for her too. But I think we needed an ep or maybe just a few scenes where they re-established some boundaries so it didn't seem so jarring, considering how emotionally open they were being with each other last episode. I'm glad the show has established that Felicity's wary of Ray and acknowledges that he's a stalker (which is still not cute), so I think she went in and accepted that offer because it was something she couldn't refuse since she's been working a shitty part time job in order to make herself available for Oliver's crusade. I can see how that would be tempting given the headspace she's in and since she's going into it with her eyes open, I'm okay with it.

Eh, I buy it. Oliver's a screwed-up dude. He's pushing the grief away by telling himself he needs to be a leader, that everyone needs to him to be strong - it's a coping mechanism so he doesn't have to deal with losing Sara again. It's one more person he's lost, one more person he perceives failing - it's a lot for a guy who's been through what he's been through over the past 7 years. What can he do to "fix" it? He can promise Laurel that he'll catch the person who did it - it's his way for atoning for Sara's death, since him taking her on the Gambit put her on her path to the LoA (it's not his fault she made the decisions she did, but he doesn't see it that way). He didn't put the arrows in her, but even though he's progressing with the self-blame game, I'm sure he feels responsible.

I didn't think she was altogether terrible, but there were scenes where she was good-ish, and scenes where she was absolutely not. I think she's a terrible crier, and not very good at expressing devastation or grief. I do buy her when she's angry though, and I didn't find it unbearable to watch, although I'm not interested in her vendetta or basically anything about her, but if I had to watch something I'd rather watch her boxing it out than burrowing into Oliver's chest for comfort every time she breaks down. I seriously felt awkward turtle every time that happened.

This episode wasn't even about Sara - its sole purpose was as a giant To Do list to check off in order to appropriately set everyone off on their season-long journeys (STILL BITTER). That's why it kills me that AK tweeted that it was a love letter to Sara Lance - if that's what a love letter is to him...yikes. And I agree with fantique's assessment regarding Felicity: this is the first time a team death has directly affected her, and it's encouraging her to get out of the foundry, so I get why we saw more of her, although it didn't seem excess to me personally. And I think they used Oliver, Laurel and Felicity to show three ways of grieving: Oliver - keeping it bottled up inside and unhealthy, Laurel - going on a revenge-fueled journey, and Felicity - crying, being sad about it, and moving on. I do think that the writers rely too much on us connecting the dots about Team Arrow's outside-the-foundry friendship though, since I didn't feel like Diggle and Sara were close enough to warrant him naming his daughter after her. I do buy Felicity being so upset, but that's probably because I know there's at least one deleted scene in existence that shows her and Sara actually being friends/confidantes. I'll handwave the gun thing as being grief-related, because Laurel's shown on two separate occasions (maybe more, I can't remember) that she knows how to handle a gun. And being a cop's daughter, there's no way that she doesn't know the difference between a loaded and unloaded firearm. You can't tell me Papa Lance didn't show both Laurel and Sara the ins and outs of responsible gun handling and ownership. And because Oliver does tend to let his overprotective side show in dickish and controlling ways, I like the idea of Laurel not letting him boss her around, but I hated the execution of it. The writers at least prove to me that Oliver does know Laurel pretty well, because he knew she'd pull some dumb shit, and she did, and he was prepared for it. Hopefully the realization that she almost killed someone without thinking leads her to be more measured in her reactions ASAP, since that's not the first time she's blindly pulled a trigger. If I have to watch her for the long haul, I'd prefer not rolling my eyes for the duration of it, haha.

Yeah, I'm pretty meh about it, which I never would've thought was possible last year. I'm not ready to give up yet-I knew the first few eps we're going to be bad for the team, and I did really like the first one overall, this ep just wasn't what I expected at all. It was disjointed and too many plot points were contrived. I'm hoping it starts getting its footing back soon-or that this ep was just an anomaly (I know, I know).

No, this does make perfect sense. In my heart I know that this is an awkward, difficult situation and Oliver's not really in the right mindset to think clearly about it, so he'd let Felicity guide things to see what she was comfortable with. I think i just expected more because they've always resolved things maturely (even when, in most cases, Oliver wasn't being mature). But then again there's never been a reverse I love you in the air after the heartache that accompanies something like that first date. So I also understand that it would be difficult. And yeah, Oliver took what she said to heart, so I think that's a good sign. I hope these are the angstiest episodes of the season. At first I was worried that with the mystery of Sara's killer hanging in the air it might drag down the season and make the lighter moments TOO light, but I'm actually finding that I don't really care who killed Sara. She's dead, that's all that matters to me. So show, be as light as you want, it'll be more entertaining for me that way. Yeah, it was so, so shitty, the way they handled it. And...hello, what about Dinah? Is no one going to tell her? How's Quentin going to find out? Is Oliver going to slip, since he's under the impression that Laurel was going to tell him? Does he still not know by mid-season?

Yeah, I was expecting to be moved by it, but I really wasn't. For an episode that was supposed to be (and should've been) emotional, it packed next to no emotional punch at all, with the exception of Oliver telling Diggle that he didn't want to die in the foundry - I loved that, and I loved SA's acting in that scene.

He's either going to have a heart attack or he's going to relapse. Or he's going to die, I'm too afraid to get invested anymore. Yeah, I don't have a problem with her snapping. I do have a problem with neither one of them taking a minute for each other - that was really OOC for both of them, IMO.

Also, I'm glad they had Diggle mention that he was coming back to the team to find Sara's killer, because I had not a goddamn clue that he left it since Oliver and Diggle's conversation last week was about him not going into the field anymore, not not going into the foundry anymore. SHOW, I HAVE LOVED YOU SO HARD FOR SO LONG, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME

Yeah, there were a few opportunities where I thought maybe they'd put their differences aside and hug, and I hate that it didn't happen. They've blown up at each other before (and in high-stress situations, I completely understand it, regardless of how wrong it is to the core - like Felicity with her "feelings" comment, which I'm glad she apologized for right away), but yet again they're writing for plot instead of character. They need Oliver and Felicity to have emotional distance to keep them apart (contrived, contrived, contrived), but the Felicity and Oliver they've written over the past two years would've comforted each other. Oliver in his emotionally closed-off way and Felicity in her emotionally available way. I didn't even need it to be "Olicity"-like, just...something to show that they were in this together. Ugh. This ep was disappointing, and if that's a love letter to Sara Lance, then...I feel sorry for these guys' wives.