Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"

[looptab]

This made me smile for a couple reasons: 1) That Stephen broke his SM hiatus to respond to this, because of course he did, haha;

2) that people really write stuff like that to actors - actors that do manage their SM pages. Wow.

Edited June 16, 2016 by looptab

[bijoux]

I guess Jason doesn't realize that the story and the props aren't really the actors' domain.

[Morrigan2575]

While i get the complaint, SA's character was Casey Jones in name only. That's not exactly SA's fault. The only way you could blame SA is if they changed the character to suit SA...which I have no idea if they did.

[Midnight Lullaby]

3 hours ago, wonderwall said:

According to this fan who met EBR at SHC2, she said that the dye was temporary so I doubt she bleached her hair for temporary color

http://lakadyn.tumblr.com/post/145970206139/after-my-rant-thanks-to-everyone-who-wrote-me

[HighHopes]

This may also explain why GG doesn't do cons besides the required ones. I really don't blame actors who are shy/have anxiety for not doing cons at all. Hell I get nervous even going to them- I can't imagine what it must be like for them.

[Midnight Lullaby]

3 hours ago, wonderwall said:

According to this fan who met EBR at SHC2, she said that the dye was temporary so I doubt she bleached her hair for temporary color

http://lakadyn.tumblr.com/post/145970206139/after-my-rant-thanks-to-everyone-who-wrote-me

A friend of mine did the same thing (with light blue instead of pink) and she had to bleach her hair despite being blonde already or the color wasn't going to show. Also Emily's hair seems lighter than they used to be to me.

Sorry about the double post, for some reason I couldn't write under the first one, not sure what I did wrong :/

[Velocity23]

I am more surprised Grant didnt do the Monte Carlo TV Festival.

[bijoux]

I've never seen this photo. Wow. What could have been.

[Morrigan2575]

Was that the S1 Christmas or Wrap party? I remember seeing that picture before.

[Velocity23]

Could be Halloween.

[Delphi]

Emily posted it in January 2013, if that's helpful. 

[Velocity23]

I miss my free iconosquare ....

[Velocity23]

Dont know if it means anything but seems Barrowman is booking new gigs.

[Guest]

When does Arrow go on winter hiatus from filming? Because the pantomimes in the UK go on for a long time, usually November to January, and there are two performances a day usually. That's a lot to do while fitting in filming for Arrow. It does make me think he'll have a reduced role in s5, unless they work around it.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Guest

[catrox14]

Re JB panto . That's during the holidays. He'll probably do it during the winter hiatus or Malcolm dies in by mid-season finale.

Edited June 16, 2016 by catrox14

[Velocity23]

They film till around 20th December. And they are back early in January (4th or 5th).

[wonderwall]

Aw these tweets are cute. Looks like Rick Gonzales is friends with Eugene Byrd :) 

[wonderwall]

Lyla?! 

COME ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN T_T

[looptab]

The last people I thought would complain about that. 

[lemotomato]

GATV is probably just waiting for TPTB to announce they've changed their minds and are bringing KC/LL back. 

Edited June 17, 2016 by lemotomato

[FurryFury]

I suppose TPTB decided that 2 women per show should be the norm now that they have Supergirl.

[quarks]

*Did MG or any of the other EPs mention that writing the legal stuff was a slog and that's why Laurel got sidelined as a character? Because I kind of recall something about them not liking the courtroom scenes, but we saw plenty of non-courtroom Laurel stuff throughout the series, so that doesn't seem right. Did they mention that's why we didn't see much of her actually in court, maybe?

Marc Guggenheim did address the courtroom point this year. It wasn't that writing the legal stuff was a slog, but that when they started filming back in season one, they found that shooting courtroom scenes on location was both more expensive than they'd anticipated and more difficult to schedule, so they pulled back on courtroom scenes and only had them when absolutely necessary for the plot.

My personal guess - and this is a just a guess - is that when they were developing Laurel, they had the LA studio/soundstage situation in mind - the Warner Bros lot has, or at least had a few years back, a standing courtroom set that a number of shows and films have used.  That option doesn't seem to be available in Vancouver, so they headed to the next option, location shooting. When that didn't work out, they had one more season one scene in a courthouse - Thea's hearing, which was important both for plot development and for pounding in the season one theme about not letting the 1% get away with crap, and then just went to having one courtroom scene per year.

And my guess - again, just a guess - is that this budget reason was another reason why Laurel was sidelined. The first five episodes suggest that the original plan was to have Oliver fight crime in the streets while Laurel fought crime in the courts, working together and separately against the corrupt systems of Starling City. As I've previously argued, the major problem with this has nothing to do with sets, but rather that this setup either means that Oliver/the Green Arrow is unnecessary (since if the court system is working, the city doesn't need a vigilante running around) or that Laurel is incompetent (because again, if she was actually as good at her job as the script in the first five episodes suggested, then, again, the city doesn't need a vigilante running around - Laurel can just take them down in court.)  

The secondary problem was that the original plan was to eventually turn Laurel into the Black Canary - something she would/could only do if she felt her role as an attorney wasn't effective in fighting crime. (Which they did eventually do in season three.) In order for that to work, once again, Laurel had to be made ineffective/incompetent. In fact, I'd argue that one of the problems with the season three Laurel finally becomes Black Canary storyline was that it started up just a few episodes after Arrow had just shown an effective partnership between Oliver/Arrow and Laurel as ADA. She WAS - finally - effective in the courtroom, and thus didn't need to run around the streets hitting people with a stick. But Arrow needed to have her running around the streets hitting people, so to get there, they gave her another, somewhat clumsy motivation (Sara's death), pulled Oliver out of the equation so that the city no longer had the working partnership between the Arrow and the law, and also had her cases overturned - making her incompetent again. So rather than having the competent, likable Laurel that we saw in the season three premiere (one of her best episodes, and probably not by coincidence, one of her better scenes with Oliver) agreeing to help out Team Arrow in Sara's absence, we had a Laurel consumed by anger who had failed again running around hitting people. It was another way where, I would argue, both the sets and the writing harmed the character. 

[looptab]

Quote

this setup either means that Oliver/the Green Arrow is unnecessary (since if the court system is working, the city doesn't need a vigilante running around) or that Laurel is incompetent (because again, if she was actually as good at her job as the script in the first five episodes suggested, then, again, the city doesn't need a vigilante running around - Laurel can just take them down in court.)  

@quarks, this is probably a dumb question (in my defense, I don't remember S1 that well, especially the very first episodes), but why wouldn't that setup work in S1 and work instead in S3?

[doesntworkonwood]

1 hour ago, looptab said:

@quarks, this is probably a dumb question (in my defense, I don't remember S1 that well, especially the very first episodes), but why wouldn't that setup work in S1 and work instead in S3?

It didn't work in S3. That's probably part of the reason they killed her. 

[looptab]

9 minutes ago, doesntworkonwood said:

It didn't work in S3. That's probably part of the reason they killed her. 

Quoting the post above here - and what actually prompted my question.

2 hours ago, quarks said:

Laurel finally becomes Black Canary storyline was that it started up just a few episodes after Arrow had just shown an effective partnership between Oliver/Arrow and Laurel as ADA. She WAS - finally - effective in the courtroom, and thus didn't need to run around the streets hitting people with a stick.

Though maybe that's the change in circumstances that made it "effective" in S3? That she was ADA? 

[AyChihuahua]

I think the setup could have worked if Laurel had been shown as competent BUT the court system/political system was so totally corrupt that it didn't matter. I can't remember them hitting that theme that hard or well, though. Mostly they just seemed to write her kind of sucking as an attorney, which continued enough  that in S4 I can say with confidence that Laurel Lance was the WORST LAWYER IN THE WORLD. All that stuff with "Hey, you're right, you guys WOULD be good witnesses what with Damien Darhk having publicly kidnapped you and stuff! But not you, Felicity, bc you and Oliver broke up, which has absolutely zero relevance and wouldn't be raised or admissible if raised, but nevertheless, Felicity, you famous and probably beloved Star City businesswoman, cannot testify. Because I, Laurel Lance, am the WORST LAWYER IN THE WORLD."

[dtissagirl]

I don't think the partnership between Team Arrow and Laurel in 301 was setting up a storyline. Despite the fact that the EPs and actors spent the entire hiatus selling that "I catch them you cook them" line. More like it was part of setting up everything that was gonna go away by the end of the episode. It was a sleight of hand. They needed everything running smoothly for 40 minutes, so they could destroy everything in the last 2 by killing Sara. They never intended Laurel to be a lawyer in S3 -- just for her to have been one during the hiatus in offscreenville.

[looptab]

Me neither, and I don't think Quarks thinks so either. I think maybe I haven't expressed myself very well in my first post. My question basically was, why would Oliver being a vigilante and Laurel a lawyer not be effective in S1, in that for one to be succesful the other had to fail, and deemed effective in 301? Hope I've been clearer this time around :)

[Delphi]

13 minutes ago, looptab said:

Me neither, and I don't think Quarks thinks so either. I think maybe I haven't expressed myself very well in my first post. My question basically was, why would Oliver being a vigilante and Laurel a lawyer not be effective in S1, in that for one to be succesful the other had to fail, and deemed effective in 301? Hope I've been clearer this time around :)

I think I get it.   Basically,  in season 1, if laurel had been this beacon of good lawyer,  taking down the 1 percent at cnri there would be no reason for the Hood to show up,  as Laurel would have handled that.   But going into season 3 the show has its footing,  we understand why Arrow is needed in Starling,  Laurel is finally in on the secret and they can work in tandem to bring criminals to justice without the need for Laurel to be a vigilante as well.  But they needed her to be the Canary for whatever reason so they still couldn't have the law being effective, it's just clumsy writing.

[bijoux]

[looptab]

22 hours ago, Delphi said:

I think I get it.   Basically,  in season 1, if laurel had been this beacon of good lawyer,  taking down the 1 percent at cnri there would be no reason for the Hood to show up,  as Laurel would have handled that.   But going into season 3 the show has its footing,  we understand why Arrow is needed in Starling,  Laurel is finally in on the secret and they can work in tandem to bring criminals to justice without the need for Laurel to be a vigilante as well.  But they needed her to be the Canary for whatever reason so they still couldn't have the law being effective, it's just clumsy writing.

Oh, yeah, I got why the one being competent meant the other was incompetent in S1. My brain came to a stop when trying to figure out what changed between S1 and S3 - character-wise and story-wise - besides from Laurel knowing, that made the vigilante-lawyer partnership effective. Until I finally remembered the small detail that Oliver was dropping bodies left and right in S1, leaving no one for her to prosecute. Don't mind me, I'm slow, haha.

Edited June 18, 2016 by looptab

[wonderwall]

[quarks]

22 hours ago, looptab said:

@quarks, this is probably a dumb question (in my defense, I don't remember S1 that well, especially the very first episodes), but why wouldn't that setup work in S1 and work instead in S3?

Well, in my opinion, as with most storylines involving Laurel, it didn't work all that well in either season.

It didn't work in season one because the show was both trying to argue that Laurel Lance was an attorney that the wealthy criminals of Starling City feared (in early episodes) while also trying to argue that the city needed a vigilante. They're opposing ideas. If Laurel can bring down wealthy criminals in court, Starling City doesn't need a vigilante. Arrow, though, as a show, needed a vigilante, so what we got in episodes 2, 4, 10, and 20 was a Laurel unable to do her job. (And in episode 5, a Laurel who would have lost her case had Oliver not set up an alibi for himself, and in episode 12, a Laurel willing to call in favors to get special treatment for a friend.) It made her look incompetent.

I think the original idea was to have Starling City be so corrupt that regular legal methods - such as those employed by Laurel - wouldn't work, which is why a vigilante was needed. Occasionally that concept even came across - for instance, when Quentin and Laurel were easily able to get a judge to mitigate Thea's sentence, or in episode 18 when another vigilante captured and killed the DA for failing to prosecute criminals, or when Laurel was easily able to blackmail Kate Spencer. However, for multiple reasons - including the budget/location shooting reasons that forced Arrow to abandon the courtroom scenes, meaning that the audience didn't find out that Malcolm Merlyn and Slade were basically just buying off juries and other legal officials until season two - that didn't come across all that well. And Laurel's descent into alcoholism started not because of her frustration with the legal system, but because of Tommy's death, her kidnapping by the Dollmaker, and Oliver dumping her yet again, which also muddled matters.

However, I still think the general idea - Oliver slowly starting to embrace the law as he moved towards becoming the mayor of Starling City by season five (hmm!), and Laurel slowly starting to embrace vigilantism as she grew increasingly frustrated with being unable to get things done in court as she moved towards becoming the Black Canary (in the original concept, probably not until season four) - was still there throughout the second season. In season three, however, things went off track. First, Arrow was forced to end one of its parallel "what would you do in the name of justice" storylines with the Suicide Squad when WB greenlit the Suicide Squad film. Second, for whatever reason, Arrow decided to kill off Sara Lance, which muddled Laurel's motives, especially during the scenes where it seemed that her major motive for becoming Black Canary was to trick her father.  

Third, Arrow was used a launching pad for a Brandon Routh spinoff vehicle. Since Routh's character did not, unlike Barry Allen, have superpowers, and had not, unlike Ted Kord, been sorta built up to in the course of two seasons, Arrow needed to give this character a reason to build an expensive robot suit and fly around. That is, the robot suit had to be needed.  Since Slade was mostly off the show, and the actor heavily booked for The Hobbit pickups and promotion, building a suit to get revenge for Anna's death was out. Instead, they decided to have Ray perceive that the Starling City police/law were insufficient, and thus, a robot suit was needed.

However, for Ray to perceive this, the Starling City police/law really had to be insufficient. And Arrow chose to show this through Laurel, who, rather than sending cops after the abusive guy, decided to go after him herself - showing that even a city prosecutor didn't believe in the law. Later, Arrow had everyone she put in jail released. That worked for launching Ray - by the time he put on the robot suit, most viewers were willing to buy that yes, the Starling City police force sucked and the DA's office wasn't much better (though given the death rate at the DA's office, I'm more willing to give them a break than AyChiuhauha is. Also I am not a lawyer.) So, although Ray definitely came in for criticism in the third season, his motivations for putting on the suit didn't.

Unfortunately, this once again did Laurel no favors.

So to kinda sum up, the idea didn't work in season one because Oliver had to look good, and didn't work in season three in part because Ray had to look sane.  Had Arrow not had to launch Ray - and from all appearances, that was a WB/DC decision, not a CW or Arrow showrunner decision - this might have played out very differently. 

Having said that, one thing I like about Arrow is that it did abandon its original plan (Oliver and Laurel working in contrast, Thea working out Oliver's secret identity in the first season and probably joining him at the end of the season, Tommy becoming the Big Bad). So it wasn't all bad.

[SmallScreenDiva]

Ooooh, I don't think I've heard that about Thea finding out the secret early @quarks. Do you know why they veered away from that? Or is that something previously discussed on this board? Apologies, if it's already been raised before.

[Guest]

Thea working out Oliver's secret and joining him by the end of the first season probably would have made Roy pointless, IMO. I wonder if that's the reason they veered off course there.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Guest

[quarks]

26 minutes ago, SmallScreenDiva said:

Ooooh, I don't think I've heard that about Thea finding out the secret early @quarks. Do you know why they veered away from that? Or is that something previously discussed on this board? Apologies, if it's already been raised before.

Yeah, that was the original plan. I believe they veered away from it for several reasons:

1) The small size of the Arrow Cave set - I can't remember if it was Kreisberg or Guggenheim that brought this up, but once three or more people were down there, camera placement apparently got interesting, and by interesting, I mean, delayed production. David Ramsey mentioned this as well.  Reportedly one of the trickier scenes to film was the Helena/Tommy/Oliver/Felicity scene in season one, just because of the number of people. The set designers redid the Arrow Cave to reduce the problem in season two, but it was still enough of an issue that season four got a brand new Arrow Cave, and before that, Arrow tried not to let too many people into the Arrow Cave outside of Flash crossovers. It's pretty notable that right after Ray and Laurel teamed up with Team Arrow and Thea found out the truth, everyone started meeting in the more flexible QC/Ray's lab set with the trick walls.

2) Roy, who was almost certainly added to the show at the insistence of the CW, replacing Thea in the Oliver's trainee role. It's very possible that bringing on Roy, another hot young guy, was one of the network conditions that allowed Arrow to veer away from its original "The Vampire Diaries go vigilante!" love triangle plan that, for various reasons, the showrunners didn't want to continue.

3) The decision to kill off Tommy and make Thea Malcolm's child, giving Thea another road to vigilantism that would not be copying Roy, Sara or Helena.

4) The decision to start building up the Oliver and Felicity romance, probably made either after filming episode 4, or after seeing the dailies for episode 7. To be clear, I don't think that the producers had made any final decisions at that point (or even now - it's television), but they did do a test run for the romance in episode 9 and started building it in episodes 11 and 12. To help build that romance, they had Felicity, not Thea, join Team Arrow in the first season.

[Tazmania]

2 hours ago, quarks said:

Yeah, that was the original plan. I believe they veered away from it for several reasons:

1) The small size of the Arrow Cave set - I can't remember if it was Kreisberg or Guggenheim that brought this up, but once three or more people were down there, camera placement apparently got interesting, and by interesting, I mean, delayed production. David Ramsey mentioned this as well.  Reportedly one of the trickier scenes to film was the Helena/Tommy/Oliver/Felicity scene in season one, just because of the number of people. The set designers redid the Arrow Cave to reduce the problem in season two, but it was still enough of an issue that season four got a brand new Arrow Cave, and before that, Arrow tried not to let too many people into the Arrow Cave outside of Flash crossovers. It's pretty notable that right after Ray and Laurel teamed up with Team Arrow and Thea found out the truth, everyone started meeting in the more flexible QC/Ray's lab set with the trick walls.

2) Roy, who was almost certainly added to the show at the insistence of the CW, replacing Thea in the Oliver's trainee role. It's very possible that bringing on Roy, another hot young guy, was one of the network conditions that allowed Arrow to veer away from its original "The Vampire Diaries go vigilante!" love triangle plan that, for various reasons, the showrunners didn't want to continue.

3) The decision to kill off Tommy and make Thea Malcolm's child, giving Thea another road to vigilantism that would not be copying Roy, Sara or Helena.

4) The decision to start building up the Oliver and Felicity romance, probably made either after filming episode 4, or after seeing the dailies for episode 7. To be clear, I don't think that the producers had made any final decisions at that point (or even now - it's television), but they did do a test run for the romance in episode 9 and started building it in episodes 11 and 12. To help build that romance, they had Felicity, not Thea, join Team Arrow in the first season.

tbh, the more I see their 'original' plan discussed in this forum, the happier I am that they did not follow any of those plans and the show veered towards the way it did. Couldn't be happier with the way they handled Felicity in particular and Team Arrow in general during the first season. 

2 hours ago, quarks said:

Yeah, that was the original plan. I believe they veered away from it for several reasons:

1) The small size of the Arrow Cave set - I can't remember if it was Kreisberg or Guggenheim that brought this up, but once three or more people were down there, camera placement apparently got interesting, and by interesting, I mean, delayed production. David Ramsey mentioned this as well.  Reportedly one of the trickier scenes to film was the Helena/Tommy/Oliver/Felicity scene in season one, just because of the number of people. The set designers redid the Arrow Cave to reduce the problem in season two, but it was still enough of an issue that season four got a brand new Arrow Cave, and before that, Arrow tried not to let too many people into the Arrow Cave outside of Flash crossovers. It's pretty notable that right after Ray and Laurel teamed up with Team Arrow and Thea found out the truth, everyone started meeting in the more flexible QC/Ray's lab set with the trick walls.

2) Roy, who was almost certainly added to the show at the insistence of the CW, replacing Thea in the Oliver's trainee role. It's very possible that bringing on Roy, another hot young guy, was one of the network conditions that allowed Arrow to veer away from its original "The Vampire Diaries go vigilante!" love triangle plan that, for various reasons, the showrunners didn't want to continue.

3) The decision to kill off Tommy and make Thea Malcolm's child, giving Thea another road to vigilantism that would not be copying Roy, Sara or Helena.

4) The decision to start building up the Oliver and Felicity romance, probably made either after filming episode 4, or after seeing the dailies for episode 7. To be clear, I don't think that the producers had made any final decisions at that point (or even now - it's television), but they did do a test run for the romance in episode 9 and started building it in episodes 11 and 12. To help build that romance, they had Felicity, not Thea, join Team Arrow in the first season.

tbh, the more I see their 'original' plan discussed in this forum, the happier I am that they did not follow any of those plans and the show veered towards the way it did. Couldn't be happier with the way they handled Felicity in particular and Team Arrow in general during the first season. 

[TimetravellingBW]

12 hours ago, quarks said:

Well, in my opinion, as with most storylines involving Laurel, it didn't work all that well in either season.

.So to kinda sum up, the idea didn't work in season one because Oliver had to look good, and didn't work in season three in part because Ray had to look sane.  

Having said that, one thing I like about Arrow is that it did abandon its original plan (Oliver and Laurel working in contrast, Thea working out Oliver's secret identity in the first season and probably joining him at the end of the season, Tommy becoming the Big Bad). So it wasn't all bad.

I wonder if another factor that contributed to reducing the court room/law part of the show (on top of court room scenes being expensive, realizing that either only Laurel or Oliver could be effective, having to launch Ray, bringing in other characters to the team) was simply that the show switched from Laurel being the second main character to minor character.

Like @quarks said: In S1 they very much set up Oliver and Laurel's stories running parallel to each other, with him on the streets and her in court. While other characters revolved around Oliver, Laurel had her own separate set up: CNRI, Joanna, Quentin etc. If Laurel's character had hit off with the audience, if she was a well-written character and if Lauriver worked, then the writers could have given Laurel's arcs more screen time. It wouldn't necessarily have to be Oliver or Laurel being useful, and "Oliver has to help Laurel" - Oliver and Laurel could have separate Plot A and Plot B stories with their own victories that sometimes overlapped. If Laurel was a well-written, popular character, it might have been worth investing money in courtroom scenes, making them more central and bringing in other characters to support that side of the show. (Or at least having more law-related/Laurel stories out of the courtroom set, whether it's Laurel investigating crime or helping out the police or law discussions in CNRI/prison sets/not the court rooms).

As it was, Laurel's character turned out to be a mess, and the Lauriver relationship bombed so hard, I'm convinced MG and SA still say prayers of thanks to Felicity's existence every night. They hit the jackpot with Original Team Arrow and realized that's where the show worked best. So the show switched Laurel from second lead to minor character. And with her went most of the court/law/legal side of the show, as she was the character it mainly benefited. (Even Quentin as a police officer was more involved with the action side of things). It wasn't worth keeping that aspect of the show just for a lukewarm, minor character.

Also, switching from Lauriver to Olicity meant having Oliver and Laurel's journey's running parallel to each other and framing the two of them as the most important characters just didn't make sense. With their romantic relationship/End Game gone, why would Laurel get the second most focus? She ended up as the character least connected to Oliver and wasn't a strong enough character to carry her own story separate from him. (If they ever wanted a shot at doing a Green Arrow in the A-Plot and Black Canary in the B-Plot style of the show - platonically or romantically - they should have kept Sara around, she at least had a chance of remaining interesting outside of Oliver's sphere. Even then the BC was always too big of a character to have on a GA show imo).

Basically rather than: Courtrooms scenes are expensive/failed --> Laurel's role is reduced. It went: Laurel's character failed ---> Law side of the show reduced.

(Honestly, the writers showed so little interest in giving Laurel decent screentime since the beginning of Season 2, that I wonder if they actually considered getting rid of her at the end of Season 1. After all Tommy was a major player in their original plan, but they killed him off to give the show a shock. What if their first choice was Laurel? Set up an epic-starcrossed-seemingly end game romance and then kill the love interest off? (A love interest who happened to no longer fit with their new direction for the show). Pure speculation, but given how they half-assed every one one of her plots - her "crucible", Black Canary arc and resurrecting Sara - it's hard not to wonder if the writers just didn't really want her around anymore).

Edited June 19, 2016 by TimetravellingBW

[looptab]

Quote

The decision to start building up the Oliver and Felicity romance, probably made either after filming episode 4, or after seeing the dailies for episode 7. 

I know we discussed this probable timeline hundreds of times, but please, remind me, what  were ep 4 and 7 about? I think 7 is the first Helena episode, was EBR  in it?

Edited June 19, 2016 by looptab

[SmallScreenDiva]

11 hours ago, quarks said:

4) The decision to start building up the Oliver and Felicity romance, probably made either after filming episode 4, or after seeing the dailies for episode 7. To be clear, I don't think that the producers had made any final decisions at that point (or even now - it's television), but they did do a test run for the romance in episode 9 and started building it in episodes 11 and 12. To help build that romance, they had Felicity, not Thea, join Team Arrow in the first season.

Thanks! And now I'm curious about why you think the decision to begin building Oliver/Felicity was made after ep 4 or ep 7. They had no interactions in ep 4, as far as I can remember (but that was when Felicity was asked by Walter to start looking at the list, thus creating a storyline for her that would eventually intersect with Oliver's). And ep 7 was the beginning of the mini Helena/Oliver arc. I get the test run in ep 9; there was that whole flirty interlude in Felicity's office that culminated with the "You are remarkable/Thanks for remarking on it" lines.

Also, and I may be muddling my question here, do you think the writers are struggling to create a series arc for Felicity? Laurel as the female lead and romantic interest had an arc — going from law to vigilantism — that contrasted Oliver's vigilantism to law. That would also have provided a nice, organic conflict for the couple for for 5-6 seasons. There seems to be no such thing for Felicity despite the switch. She had storylines of her own this season, but I can't seem to see a "destiny" for her.

[kismet]

nevermind

Edited June 19, 2016 by kismet

[dtissagirl]

9 hours ago, Tazmania said:

tbh, the more I see their 'original' plan discussed in this forum, the happier I am that they did not follow any of those plans and the show veered towards the way it did. Couldn't be happier with the way they handled Felicity in particular and Team Arrow in general during the first season.

Yeah, me too. If they had stuck with their Oliver/Laurel/Tommy original plan, Arrow and I would have amicably broken up midway through season one and I'd never even think about it again afterwards.

But speaking of the original plan, I was reading the Paris con recaps, and I saw someone asked Colin Donnell whether there were plans for making Tommy evil, and he said yes? I think this is the first confirmation we have of that. I'm trying to find the link again, pretty sure it was posted here, but I'm on mobile with really crappy signal right now.

[way2interested]

21 minutes ago, SmallScreenDiva said:

Thanks! And now I'm curious about why you think the decision to begin building Oliver/Felicity was made after ep 4 or ep 7. They had no interactions in ep 4, as far as I can remember (but that was when Felicity was asked by Walter to start looking at the list, thus creating a storyline for her that would eventually intersect with Oliver's). And ep 7 was the beginning of the mini Helena/Oliver arc. I get the test run in ep 9; there was that whole flirty interlude in Felicity's office that culminated with the "You are remarkable/Thanks for remarking on it" lines.

I think Quarks means ep 4 for both the idea that Felicity got a storyline for her that meant she would be sticking around and would eventually connect her to Oliver, but I think that was also the episode that had Diggle have that line about finding someone who was already the right fit and then made a direct cut to Felicity? Meaning that the editing was being very purposeful and on the nose (at it always is) about possibly setting up Felicity as that person. As for ep 7, it was one of the first episodes put into production after the show had fan and critic reactions to the plot/characters/relationships, and it already set up Oliver with a new possible relationship. However, it also had Diggle not supporting the relationship and kind of set it up as somewhat temporary with some set-up for the kind of relationship that Oliver eventually has with Felicity (but that's me kind of stretching). Then ep 9 and 12 specifically had Oliver and Felicity have some pretty lovey-structured scenes (9 with them flirty and 12 with the softly lit scene with Oliver acting as Oliver and imploring to Felicity that she can trust him).

[dtissagirl]

The first ep they could have gotten audience feedback was 109 [it started shooting Oct 9, the day before the pilot first aired], so the entire Helena arc was plotted before anyone had seen anything, except for the limited audience who saw the pilot at SDCC.

Edited June 19, 2016 by dtissagirl

[looptab]

57 minutes ago, way2interested said:

the episode that had Diggle have that line about finding someone who was already the right fit and then made a direct cut to Felicity?

That was episode 8 =)

Edited June 19, 2016 by looptab

[way2interested]

15 minutes ago, dtissagirl said:

The first ep they could have gotten audience feedback was 109 [it started shooting Oct 9, the day before the pilot first aired], so the entire Helena arc was plotted before anyone had seen anything, except for the limited audience who saw the pilot at SDCC.

 

Just now, looptab said:

That was episode 8 =)

My bad, then I have no idea where I was going with that. Sorry about my confusion!

[dtissagirl]

1 hour ago, SmallScreenDiva said:

Also, and I may be muddling my question here, do you think the writers are struggling to create a series arc for Felicity? Laurel as the female lead and romantic interest had an arc — going from law to vigilantism — that contrasted Oliver's vigilantism to law. That would also have provided a nice, organic conflict for the couple for for 5-6 seasons. There seems to be no such thing for Felicity despite the switch. She had storylines of her own this season, but I can't seem to see a "destiny" for her.

I don't think anyone but Oliver has a series long arc anymore. Everything is season by season now. Maybe they planned to give each character one before, or maybe the original plan was for Laurel and Tommy to have series arcs along with Oliver, but I think they ditched that conceit, because they ditched the idea of "destiny" when they switched the Laurel/Oliver/Tommy ~epic triangle of destinies intertwined~ [and Oliver being ~meant to be~ re: Green Arrow AND re Laurel/Oliver] for Dig and Felicity being Oliver's sidekicks helping him reach his potential without any sort of ~written in the stars~ predisposition in it anymore. They ditched destiny in S1.

The destiny hanger up after S1 was Laurel, who was still sort of in a series arc storyline of being destined to become Black Canary [she even said she was destined for the mask, in case you had doubts they kept her in a destiny storyline, despite the fact that the show moved on from it as a whole]. But even reaching individual "destiny" [i.e. becoming the mask + getting the superhero name from the comic books] doesn't seem to mean much anymore -- Roy quit, Laurel died, Thea just quit too, etc.

[lemotomato]

1 hour ago, dtissagirl said:

The first ep they could have gotten audience feedback was 109 [it started shooting Oct 9, the day before the pilot first aired], so the entire Helena arc was plotted before anyone had seen anything, except for the limited audience who saw the pilot at SDCC.

I think the popular theory is that producers and higher ups realized there was a chemistry problem after watching the pilot, and so the search for other love interests for Oliver-- Helena, McKenna-- started after that. I don't know how much of season 1 was plotted in the time between finishing the pilot and learning that the show got picked up, though.

Edited June 19, 2016 by lemotomato

[dtissagirl]

I just imagine the nightmare it was when assembling a writers room, and the first days of breaking episodes, knowing they had a totally dud romantic pairing as the leads of the show, and knowing whatever plans they had for the season were gonna have to be changed on the fly, because they were stuck with KC, and no one at the time knew whether superheroes on TV would really work.

I like to imagine the day the first EBR dailies arrived in LA was pretty much the equivalent of angels coming down from the sky and singing at the WBTV/Berlanti prod. offices.

But even then they had no idea if they could rely on EBR to carry this story. I figure they realized right then and there that all their chemistry problems were solved ~like magic~, but they could not do much about it during S1 until they knew for sure EBR was the real thing professionally. Hence backup plans to the backup plan in Helena, McKenna, etc.

Edited June 19, 2016 by dtissagirl

[SmallScreenDiva]

The way Guggenheim and Kreisberg tell the story about EBR's dailies for 103, that's exactly what happened ;)