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Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "So It Begins?"

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  • #16
    Based on the Slade - Oliver feud stemming in part from 'love for Shado' (hated this part of it IMO), I wouldn't blame some fans for thinking that Billy and Oliver would likely clash over Felicity. The track record is there. The potential for conflict is there, even if it's the typical CW tension between old bf vs. new bf.

    What I'm saying is Billy doesn't even need to be a villain for there to be tension between them. Let's hope he's just a GA fanboy -- and not completely playing Felicity and everyone else. I actually hope the show doesn't default into villain-fights-protagonist-over-love-interest mode regardless of who Prometheus is, which would be very tempting, melodramatically, for the show to do again.

    Billy may just turn out to be an average dude who got caught in the wrong place, wrong time being Felicity's rebound guy (most likely fate). I actually don't care if Billy turns heel or not, in terms of being invested in his character my interest is below sea level. And there's no way I'm buying that Quentin is Prometheus. At all.

    As for the Oliver v. newbies issues, I see it as more of the series not knowing when to stop hammering home a point once it's made, whether it's Ollie's kill/no kill neverendum dilemma (wasn't this 'identity crisis' part of the Arrow Season 3 Greatest Hits collection), the recruits trust/faith in Ollie, or Ollie's own faith in his team (both old and new). The show has made the point -- maybe not convincingly, depending on whether you land on Ollie's side or the recruits -- but the show does need to move on.

    On the flip side, the times when they did need to dwell on the issue a bit longer -- eg. Felicity-Rory tension over Havenrock, and over on the Flash universe Cisco-Barry tension over Dante's death -- they resolve it way too quickly.

    The irritants here are Ollie's continuing uncertainty/indecisiveness on many things (something I hope Diggle's chat helped to resolve?) and the recruits' whining. Both are increasingly repetitive and annoying. It's one thing when the newbies do it among themselves -- in fact, I expected to see this venting, long overdue. I fully expect them to chafe under Ollie's demanding mentorship. But it's quite another when the task is at hand, mission is at stake and they still whine. That's when it's put up or shut up time. Looking at you esp., Curtis. On the Ollie front, it's time for him to put up or shut up on his "Am I a killer" problem and on whether or not he wants a team. A few more weeks of this and, dare I say he'd be venturing into SV Clark's hemming and hawing territory re: destiny. Nobody wants that for him.

    There's weighing options carefully ... and then there's just dragging your feet. S5 is taking action time. Time for both Ollie and the team to step up. Shark. Swim. Move forward.

    Again, I'm expecting that one or more of the recruits won't make it by season's end -- no lame magic, meta or time travel fixes -- it'll be either death, burnout or exile (either by choice or forced out somehow).

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    • #17
      Originally posted by President_Luthor
      As for the Oliver v. newbies issues, I see it as more of the series not knowing when to stop hammering home a point once it's made, whether it's Ollie's kill/no kill neverendum dilemma (wasn't this 'identity crisis' part of the Arrow Season 3 Greatest Hits collection), the recruits trust/faith in Ollie, or Ollie's own faith in his team (both old and new). The show has made the point -- maybe not convincingly, depending on whether you land on Ollie's side or the recruits -- but the show does need to move on.
      I look at Oliver's killing as an established recycled theme on this show now. Just like the "the big bad wants to destroy the city" storyline, Oliver's secret keeping or Quentin's alcoholism. They will always go back to it because they look at it as means for new drama. Whether it's between Oliver and Tommy, Oliver and Felicity and now Oliver and the recruits. Oliver's character development be damned. And sometimes they even retcon some stuff to make Oliver look worse. For example, Oliver did kill more regularly in season 1, but he didn't kill many people on the list. He killed a number of henchmen in the heat of battle, which he also did this season with Church's crew. Which is why I kind of laughed at Diggle's first/last resort arguement.

      Sadly, Arrow's first instinct will always be to throw Oliver under the bus either to create drama or to prop other characters. Here's Guggenheim talking about the Oliver character in a recent interview: “One of the things we embrace on the show is he’s a hypocrite, he’s kind of a lousy leader, he makes terrible decisions. It gives us fodder for a lot of stories”. That's how much regard this show has for its lead character.

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      • #18
        Now that Ollie's got his 'you and the Hood aren't the same guy' chat with Diggle and the newbies had their group venting session ... I'm crossing my fingers everyone will start to move forward. I don't expect the new team to operate like Team Arrow 1.0 yet -- and really, that team only ran "smoothly" in the latter part of S4, once BC was fully integrated and Thea got over her bloodlust -- but I do expect that the self-doubt and back-biting will be dialed down a bit. As silly as the citizen shootout crisis was, how the team itself functioned was a sign in the right direction.

        Rene will probably always be Rene, but this is more due to the likelihood that he's marked for death in the name of the cause aka the swagger of someone who's got an end date hovering over him. I actually expect more from Curtis, who's technically the senior of the recruits and, when you consider his friendship with Felicity, he should have a bit more insight on this than he's exhibited.

        If I were Ollie and the newbies' morale continued to slip in spite of my giving the recruits more leeway, I know who I'd blame for it: "Curtis? A word. In private. Now!"

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