Arrow (Mostly the CW Show)

Felicity will end up being the Oracle/Hightower/whatever. That is basically the one singular thing that I remember from Green Arrow #1, is he's got a lady what does that for him.

I do wonder why Digglemon so vehemently wants not to know any of the other names in the book at this point, however. The problem here is that he didn't know this was coming. If he'd known that his old buddy was on the list of people, everything might not have happened all over the course of however these 42 minutes parcel out.

So a very special episode of Arrow that deals with the aftermath of Ollie's drunken sexual assault of Lincoln Lee?

He's dealing him unspecified damages.

At least that shot shows his wrist-shooter, which up until the last ep he hadn't used (and isn't shown on his wrist as far as I could tell).

edit: Oh, and what happened to the voice modifier thingy? He didn't use it all the entire last episode. It was a bit jarring, especially because they make a point of actually showing him activating it in the episode before.

Different episodes tend to get written at the same time. If the voice thing was a late intercession in the last episode to seed Black Canary (please, show - you do this for me please?), the writers for this episode may never have heard it.

Something really big and personal is going to have to happen to turn Laurel into Black Canary. Daddy dies? Tommy dies? Also, they're going to have to address how she acquires expert martial arts training, unless she already has it and they'll just write in a flashback to her training days. And then there's the Canary Cry. Like you, I hope the sonic device was a nod to the fans that hey, there may be a device out there that Black Canary could use to create the Canary Cry! Of course, then it comes down to how she actually acquires the device. There's a lot that needs to be worked out for Canary to happen, so I think it might take a while. Maybe they'll hand-wave a lot of that away and do another 6 month time jump or something after Laurel's Big Event happens.

They showed her using martial arts skills in one of the earlier episodes.

When? Don't need the episode # or anything, just the situation/context. For some reason, I can't remember her doing any ass-kicking. The only female that I remember being able to kick some serious ass was Huntress.

edit: I forgot to add, yay for more Felicity. I like her, but she's also the dumbest genius ever, unless the thwarted armored car heist never made the news. HMMMM Hooded Arrow guy just happens to show up and stop them right after she gives Ollie the information about armored car routes and grenade launchers and shit. Who could the hooded guy possibly be?! I hope she figures it out soon though, and I would not be surprised if she's the second one in line to learn Arrow's identity.

edit 2: When Felicity pulls up the "military-grade encryption" code, look closely. It's Java! With a switch/case statement. Musta been a tough nut to crack!

edit 3: When the police tech guy comes back and tells the detective that the phone has, again, "military-grade technology" and "he has no leads," later we see Laurel look down at the phone when Ollie calls and.. it's an iPhone! Military-grade must have a completely different meaning in this show's universe.

You're assuming "military-grade" means "US military-grade". That stuff might be cutting edge tech for the Laotian military.

Considering that North Korea unveiled their latest top-of-the-line technical innovation, an Android tablet running a version of the OS several years old, I can go with it.

Holy shit, they're using BIG-ENDIAN representation! How can we crack this!?!?!?

Wait, so you're telling me the MSB is on the left?! MADNESS!

Oh, Lincoln. Oh dear. I'm sorry that Fringe couldn't afford you for more than one episode this season but....wow. Was Sebastian Stan not available? He's usually the guy in that general range of being that you go to for something this....errr....much. I know that Berlanti knows him - dude was on Political Animals.

Also, I'm not a hundred percent on this, but I'm almost completely certain that the way you (or The Count, anyway....One ah ah ah....Two ah ah ah....Fifty Four beautiful corpses!) think wine works is incorrect. The vintage doesn't indicate the time the wine spent in the cask. The vintage indicates the year it was picked and squeezed. You have good years and bad years, and that's why some vintages are better than others. Now, the way that you think wine works is actually in the neighborhood of how scotch works (a 12 year old scotch spent twelve years in the cask, etc., and that duration reflects how many compounds the liquor had time to extract from the wood), but that's.....errr....really not the same thing.

And please stop leaning on how 18 Thea is. That is not an 18 year old woman. Look - The Vampire Diaries had the same problem, and they dealt with it pretty well. They just sort of discontinuously had their things happen and never, ever really bothered with any question of age at all. They stayed away from plot points that had to do with age. That was the right call, too, because exploitative teen sex only really works out if you stop drawing attention to the fact that I'm not supposed to be erect right now. Otherwise, I'm presented with the rather unpalatable choice of not believing your show (Candace/Nina/Willa is clearly not 18) or feeling icky about myself.

On the plus side, I do like how goddamn versatile Janina Gavankar is proving to be. I buy her in the role she has on True Blood (well, inasmuch as I buy anybody doing anything on that show) and I buy her here. And while I appreciate that she does indeed look quite fetching without any clothes, it'll be nice to watch her in a context where I don't have to worry about her flopping her tits out and appealing to my baser instincts. And more Felicity is good, though she and Willa should probably have traded roles (there's an outside chance I'd buy her as 18, though some of the Speedy problem has to do with the writing).

Also, not a bad episode. I suspect I'm mostly pissed at the fact that I can see Supernatural failing to record properly right now, and it is embittering me.

Dude, she's like 21. Do you really think that magical changes happen in the course of three years? Well they do, but not those three years. She looks a little over 18 yes, but she can easily pass for 18. She actually looks pretty young (and her being so skinny kinda helps). If you are erect every time Willa Holland is on your screen, that's creepy whether she's 18 or 21. The reason that Willa Holland is completely wrong for this part is that she's a terrible actress. She makes an already unlikable character completely insufferable

I'm still trying to figure out what accent Holland keeps slipping into sometimes, and why she can't seem to stop talking through her teeth (aka the Kristen Kreuk effect).

Ok, at this point I have no idea what is happening on the island.
I also think that they have some compulsive need to press the sidekick button anytime Digg is doing something on his own. Would we really have lost something if he hadn't stumbled into a birthday party (nice tactical awareness, special forces guy!) or get caught by Merlyn's security chief? The latter doesn't even make sense because he would tell Merlyn, and Digg would mysteriously disappear.

Hey show - the Deathstroke outfit is by leaps and bounds your worst super getup. It's horrifying. It looks like a kid's Halloween costume. And now there's TWO? Please either stop that right now or get wardrobe in here.

On the other hand, Dinah kicking conclusive ass. That's good. And Revenge should be taking notes here, because, say what you will, but "The Undertaking" is a hell of a lot more original than "The Initiative."

Huzzah - Felicity Smoake (also, boo shitty misspelled words for names, and also that makes her sound like a dragon I'd kind of want to put my dick in, but not in that weird, there's-actually-a-book-about-this way) will be a regular in Season 2.

Oh yeah, and this was renewed.

I'm happy about both of these things. :)

Woohoo!

Alright. You know it's coming, so let's just get it out of the way. JESUS SCREAMING DONKEY CHRIST SHOW, YOU NEVER SHOCK A GODDAMN FLATLINE. It's not a medical show, so I guess it's not a dealbreaker, but still - this is something you could have gotten right. Hell - v-fib makes more sense in that situation anyway. And also, for a superhero, Ollie her sure gets the shit kicked out of him a bunch. I mean, I'm glad that Felicity is in on things now, but I hope that the next time we want to do an entire episode on Purgatory Island (hey Lost, see this middle finger?), dude doesn't have to get hit by a car or thrown into Springfield Gorge. I also kind of wonder what it means that the show liberated a character from that haven of stupid names, Firestorm - I mean, it's not like it really needed to source Felicity Smoak (still a stupid name) from somewhere. Also, this show has a real hardon for sticking things in eyes. Readers know who Slade Wilson is, though, so what are the odds that Billy Wintergreen isn't actually Deadshot, who has now been penetrated in his eye twice? At least then only one character has to have survived having an object multiple inches inside of a part of his head not designed to accommodate that sort of thing.

Firestorm's stepmom is in this?.... That's random.

Except, Billy Wintergreen is already a comic book character and he's not Deadshot.

I love that Ms. Smoak is part of the team, however, the terms that she gave pretty much doom Walter Steele. The "once we find Walter, I'm out" bit just means the show is going to push it into, "I'm still here until we bring down the scumbags that murdered Walter".

Dang, show. Brutale? That's a deep pull.

What next? Anatoli Knyazev? Oh, what? They already dropped that name in the Vertigo episode?

Can't say that this show isn't willing to take from the comics!

Huh, I totally forgot to post about this. I guess that was the season finale? It made me happy that they brought Deadshot back, and thankfully didn't kill him off in one episode. The implications of Tommy knowing Ollie's secret are pretty immense, so I'm interested to see where they go with that (no mysterious amnesia-inducing Smallville head wounds in this show!). Ollie saving Merlyn (and Merlyn being told as much) also creates a cool story piece to run with. Also, nice job with the canary reference when Tommy picks up a picture of Laurel's sister (WHO MIGHT BE ALIVE OMG).

I hate when shows pull the "he's still your father!" cause fuck that. Sometimes your father is just an asshole, writers!

Other than that, I have to say this show has grown on me. Even though some things still make me groan like don't go hand to hand with the white haired lady, shoot her with an arrow instead of walking down the hall to fight with her. Also, seriously, I get it. Black canary. Stop it with the stupid references.

Also OMG RIVER SONG!

No. It's a full season. No new episode 'til March 20th, but that one is called The Huntress Returns, so that's awesome.

YES!

and I like the black canary references so nyah

P.S. What was up with that red pantsuit?

Thank god someone brought that up. Seriously!

My wife: "What the.. what is she... what the fuck is up with that pantsuit?"

This annoyed me sooooo much. Besides being total bullshit it's just lazy as fuck for writers to pull this.

Tommy finding out will probably be the death sentence for one of the Merlyns, and I'm guessing Barrowman pulls some extra viewers. My guess is Merlyn junior will be dead by the end of the season. It also creates an origin for Black Canary, possibly.

Or they go green goblin with Tommy.

He'll disappear off to Nanda Parbat for a bit, maybe a whole season while Oliver fights off some new big bad, and then return in a battle of Laurel. The love triangle between villain and hero is a concept the CW will not be able to resist.

God, I loved the part when Merlyn said that he'd gone to an island called Nanda Parbat and there was an instant pseudo Asian musical cue. You just know someone was like "Okay, and when he says this Asian thing someone hit a gong!" But someone convinced him that it was a bit too unsubtle.

Finally caught up. Alex Kingston is the original Black Canary, i.e., Laurel's mom (whether they actual show her as a hero or not)? Hell yeah.

So Coast City - that's an entirely kosher name. We're down for some Coast City. But Star City? No, and also fuck you in the neck - we're naming this shit after a bird because we don't think people can take that. Star City. What a ridiculous name.

Sometimes I just don't get this show.

I wish I liked Roy Harper better, since he's becoming a series regular next season, but I've never been much for the moody thug boy. I assume he'll be turning into Arsenal/Red Arrow/whatever at some point and becoming an actual problem. I also liked Huntress better as an antihero than as an insane villain who goes around murdering houses full of marshals in her misbegotten quest to prevent her father from actually bringing down more of the mob and instead get some petty revenge, but I guess we don't always get what we want. I also would have preferred it if Janina Gavankar actually died, but I can understand why the show wants to preserve the ability to call her back in a season or three.

Nonetheless, it's still a pretty okay episode. They're obviously setting up the Batman, Death in the Family, I'm never gong to train another protege thing for Oliver, and they did a good enough job of it.

Agreed on most things, though Roy seems fine, except his left eyebrow is noticeably thicker than his right :(
I wish McKenna hadn't been shot at all, but I guess she was too perfect for this show.

I loved the tmobile girl crack they worked in to the episode. My problem with the show is this....

We now have a villain, a son of and soon to be villain, a nerd, a guard, and the dumb cops all know its Oliver..

It would have been infinitely better if Powers was actually happening with that cast (she was slated to be Retro Girl). FX ruined that joke.

Barrowman knows it's Oliver? When?

I also assume you mean Felicity and Diggle as the nerd and the guard?

I'm not so sure Tommy will go on to be a villain just yet. It seems so obvious, and Arrow, for all its flaws, has so far managed to escape the clutches of the really cliched. Well... mostly.

Wait, the cops know? Since when?