#arrow criticism

Consistent. 

Like that’s the short answer, obviously, but the lack of consistency is my biggest pet peeve. And I mean that in every way. Respect for the established history of the characters and show is key (aka Felicity remains allergic to nuts). Actions should be dictated by characters, not by the desired outcome of the writers, as often feels the case. Emotional beats need to be scattered throughout. Action, fighting, danger, plot… all of that needs to come back to personal connections on a regular basis. I care more about what’s happening to a character if I see how it’s effecting the people around them and how they interact. 

I’m all for a big bad who arcs across the season, but it seems that they frequently rely on a name and a mask to carry them through rather than making the villain have depth (exceptions being Prometheus, to a point, and - back in season two, anyhow - Slade). I strongly prefer when the show is grounded in reality, too. Damian Darhk’s powers were a big miss, IMO, and his character felt like a cliche from start to finish (in spite of fantastic acting).  

This is where things are gonna get more negative. I wanna emphasize this is my opinion and where I’m at with the show right now. Some people are surely going to disagree with me about most of the points on here. I don’t really care to debate them. But it ties in directly to the question I was asked and this is how I see things right now. 

There remains for me, at this point, a cringe factor with the show that harkens back to the influence of Kreisberg and Guggenheim - and yes I am painting them with the same brush because of a litany of comments made by Guggenheim (compiled by @geneeste). There are strokes of good fortune (an IT girl) and some brilliant characters (Felicity) with tremendous actors (EBR, Amell, Ramsey) who keep me engaged with tangible chemistry (OTA). However, too frequently there are serious issues brushed across that are swept under the rug. Gun violence. Nyssa and Oliver’s forced marriage. Felicity’s paralysis. Ray (definitely, absolutely, no matter what Guggenheim says) stalking Felicity. The reintroduction of Felicity’s father to her life and revelation it was her mother who forced him out. The erasure of Baby Sara. All of the massive amounts of psychological trauma inflicted on Thea by Malcolm…

The list could go on forever, but all of these elements are things that they glazed over and brushed aside rather than dealing with in a realistic way. While the list could surely include more, the ones that came to mind immediately all had to do with problems faced by women. And I think it’s evident at this point that women are not something the EPs care about or even understand. It’s left these character consistently short-changed and that’s significantly impacted my enjoyment (and viewership) of the show. 

So my ideal season, I suppose, would be one with Beth Schwartz and Sarah Tarkoff at the helm along with Wendy Mericle. It would balance an empathetic, grounded villain with emotionally bonded characters who act in ways that always feel true to who they are and follows through on the impact of trials that the characters undergo. 

and 2 - that they have spun this ride so many times, and each and every time all the decisions, all the cards, all the agency has always been in oliver’s hands. and felicity is just ... y’know, there. looking really lovely. all her decisions feel like reactions. from the pot of what i know is hazy memory of all that has happened before, it seems to me like all the time since s3 she has had zero initiative. they don't seem to decide anything together. it’s oliver making decisions and felicity scrambling to catch up when the narrative lets her, or making her to be stupid/cruel/insensitive when it needs her away. 

hey anon. sorry it took me a while to get to this. I wanted to do this answer justice but to be quite honest it’s kind of exhausting just thinking about my reasons for disliking that scene. to put it simply - what it boils down to is that felicity shouldn’t have had to take back the (very valid) reason why she broke up with oliver. her saying “I get it now” is a very poorly written attempt to retcon what happened in s4b. he lied to her. not once but repeatedly, for a prolonged period of time, and he proposed to her and even pushed forward the date of the wedding because he wanted to marry her more than he wanted her to know the truth. he could have said that he had to keep something from her and he couldn’t say what it was, and at least maybe then she wouldn’t have been led into wanting to marry him. what bothers me is less the lie itself (that in itself was poorly written too) and more everything oliver did in spite of that lie. 

and the thing is. I don’t mind oliver most of the time. I chalk up his behaviour around laurel to shitty writing. I chalk up his actions in this shitty storyline to the same thing. and I think if the original timeline was restored and felicity found out about william from barry early on, and she confronted him and they had it out there, it would have culminated in something very different because he only hid it from her for a few days at most. but in the timeline that exists now, he kept something from her and proposed to her in spite of it. and that’s what bothers me. 

and I get it. look, I know oliver’s been through a lot of trauma and his time on the island has made him a damaged person. and some people argue that the storyline and that hospital scene was the show’s way of indicating that felicity was more accepting of said trauma. but when her character - and oliver’s - was assassinated in the process, it just doesn’t work. add to that the fact that the word ptsd has never been mentioned on the show (bar one time, to which ollie’s response was “I’m not crazy”) and they had a wealth of missed opportunities to explore his ptsd recovery in season 4 and I just think the show missed the mark when it came to exploring oliver and felicity’s characters in the end of that episode. and that’s a shame because I enjoyed the majority of it. 

So you may have seen the comments Marc apparently made at Wondercon this weekend:

These pissed me off. And sparked a mini twitter rant this morning, which I thought I would share with you:

So this (rather funny) post is going around, and I though it might be helpful (and cathartic!) to explain why people (read: citizens and actual journalists) are so annoyed with Susan’s characterization as a “professional” “journalist.”

A little background on me: I was a journalist for about 4-5 years and a public information officer for 2-3 before I went into my current field. I wasn’t a government/current affairs reporter like Susan; I was a business journalist for most of my career, although I would argue that business journalists need a firmer grasp of ethical reporting for obvious reasons (lots of money and influence involved in that game).

Anyway - I can’t believe I’m going into this kind of rant over a fictional character on a TV show, but LET’S DO IT ANYWAY.

So here’s the main three complaints most people have regarding Susan:

She has a personal and romantic relationship with a public figure on whom she’s reporting;

She’s paid for interviews/in exchange for information;

She’s broken a confidential relationship with a source.

Based on my own research (which I’m happy to give you if you’re interested!), there are four basic and overarching standards that reporters of all kinds try to follow:

The media serves the public interest.

The media has an obligation to the truth.

The media should commit to an objective method of reporting.

The media should maintain its professional independence.

Now obviously these standards can be explained in way more detail (and should be), but for our purposes and simplicity’s sake, these are the main ethical standards through which we’re going to evaluate Susan. Here we go!

it rly doesnt feel like parallels? it's actually a lot like what most of us wished to have had w s3. for now it does feel like most the initiatives are oliver's but he always makes sure to involve felicity befor e making a decision this time around. to me it's not that theyre rehashing old sls but rather they want to show that oliver learned from his mistake which is good 

i get all of that, its easy to see actually. but that’s not what i meant - i don't mean literal parallels. it feels like they’re doing this the way they do the parallels. I'm not even sure that the is the best way to say this, honestly.

besides, i don't get this feeling from the inside-the-story pov. like, oliver’s thinking, felicity’s thinking. oliver involves her etc, and this is great. (even though be honest, after five years of watching this show, it feels like this turn is coming too late, or like i’ve kind of seen it before or something? because the fact that he’s doing this now, undermines stuff he did before? that back then looked like he was doing one thing but now it turns out he wasn’t? christ, i don't know how to explain this, whatever.). (this is not about the portrayal about his mental illness so much as about the storytelling, and how it confuses me because there seems to be no continuity. or internal logic or something.)