I wrote a piece defending the writing of Arrow’s Felicity Smoak this season, because I think her storyline this season has been oversimplified by viewers who think that all of her actions have had to do with Oliver’s waffling over their relationship.
Badass Digest recently wrote a piece explaining how Arrow has “failed” Felicity Smoak in its third season. It brings up a lot of great points about the ways in which her character has changed, but I think it unfairly places the blame on the Oliver/Felicity relationship, when I think things are a bit more complicated than that. Sara’s death, pieces of Felicity’s (of the admittedly little) backstory that we know, and the overall darkness of the season all help push Felicity to a darker place this season. And I think that’s okay for the show overall.
This Thursday is apparently Recap Central. Here’s my Recap of this week’s Arrow, where I get to make a Friends reference and a Grey’s Anatomy reference and I feel awesome about it.
Well, almost. But two of the biggest season reveals finally happened in this week’s Arrow: Thea found out Oliver is the Arrow and Captain Lance FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY found out about Sara. There are a few things each character is a bit, ahem, fuzzy on… (how long has Sara been dead? Who killed Sara?), but it will finally be nice to get past btoh of these distracting omissions. Now, besides the circumstances of Sara’s death, we just need Lance to know Oliver is the Arrow and most of our major secrets will be out in the open!
The end of this week’s Arrow gutted me (and Oliver) more than the literally torso-piercing mid-season finale did. As I write this I am still in shock and can’t really move. We’ll get to that later though.
With regard to the title and the Malcolm-ness of the episode: I mostly just liked the alliteration of the recap subtitle, but both epithets were used for Malcolm in the episode and I think it represents the two parts of him. The Magician is the man he was before the League. He was flawed and scared but he cared about his family and still chose to show Nyssa his trick even when he saw that she was a tweenage bad-ass. The Monster is who he became. The League didn’t erase his anger or despair, it suppressed it until it drove him insane. Insane enough to think that destroying the Glades was helping the city (I am still thrown by all of the logic-adjacent support he got from Thea and Roy in this episode).
Malcolm has to rectify both sides of himself, as does Team Arrow. I agree with Felicity that he is a monster, but in contrast, he listened to Oliver and didn’t kill Brick. Hedoesseem to care about Thea (well, to a certain extent; he did still put her inthe crosshairs of Ra’s al Ghul). And if redemption and changing your ways is a theme of the series (which is what Oliver’s character development has been about so far), then Oliver is the person who can best help Malcolm redeem himself. Just like Canary was the name for Sara that she felt was beautiful but didn’t really represent who the League turned her into, Malcolm struggles with the same with his own name. Maseo also became someone else when he joined the League. This season is about identity and all of these characters must reconcile the different parts of themselves, including the different names they go by. Malcolm must stop being the Monster and return to being the Magician.
Check out the rest for my Olicity thoughts, because of course I have some.
Team Flash (this photo will be important later, I can feel it)
First up, I did this week’s The Flash recap, where Barry and Team Flash encounter the Pied Piper and some of the cracks in Dr. Wells’ secrets chamber begin to splinter.
Jimmy and Kara might getting a little swirly…
Then I wrote about the exciting news that Jimmy Olsen is now black! This gives the upcoming Supergirl series some serious blerd cred. I’m so glad they “thought outside the box” as the actor, Mehcad Brooks, stated on Twitter.
They need to fix the way the mask sits on her face, it’s bothering me.
Finally, I did this week’s Arrow recap as well, where the remains of Team Flash act more like teenagers whose parents went out of town and had a big party where everything gets broken rather than adults who know when to quit. Thankfully, Mama Felicity saves the day. But she can’t save Laurel from the creepiest Weekend at Bernie’s stunt she’s pulled on Captain Lance since Sara died. Sara MUST be coming back since they’ve refused to tell him this long.
Thanks for playing!
My NOC recaps are back! Arrow was my favorite show to binge this summer, so recapping it for The Nerds of Color has been awesome. I can write and write and write about this show for pages. It’s also fun teaming up with fellow NOC writer Christelle, who writes the Flash recaps.
Arrow returns with a resurrection, and while the episode featured a lot of the appropriate resurrection keywords and images: a “three days” mention, Oliver lying stretched out kinda Christ-like as Maseo brought him down the mountain, I guess Tatsu is kinda Mary Magdalene? Not really, that’s a stretch, but the point was to say that Oliver’s story is a bit more The Lion King than anything else. Click through to get a bit more context on that…
I’ve cast in this year’s Starling City Stages production of: The Lion King. Oliver is Simba, Robert = Mufasa, Scar is totally Malcolm, Felicity is Nala, I think Diggle has to be Zazu. Who is Oliver’s Rafiki? Tastu and Maseo aren’t exactly Timon and Pumbaa, but just go with it.
Where do I even begin? There’s the remains of Team Arrow (or whatever it may become without the Arrow to guide them — oh, haha, get it?); the future of both the A.T.O.M and the Canary; Malcolm, Thea, and everyone’s inability to disclose important deaths; the whitewashing of Brick; and of course: the revival! I think I’ll just go in that approximate order, and throw some flashback plot in there too (sorry, for now, they’re not my favorite thing).
We start with a car chase. Read the rest here:NOC Recaps Arrow: Pulled Apart, Brick by Brick | thenerdsofcolor.
Really wack title (or is it?!), but being inspired by the Screenwriting Links posts I used to do over at Aspiring Screenwriter blog and by Black Girl Manifest‘s Link Brigade, I want to do weekly (or less, because I’m still learning consistency) link posts of cool TV/screenwriting/diversity/industry things I’ve read this week. Sometimes I do this when I share one link and semi-officially post on it, but sometimes links require less commentary. I like how BGM is sort of conversational, so I might take that approach.
Anyway, here are some things I’ve been reading this week, features two Gina’s and a Jennie. I love Jane the Virginand have been loving Gina Rodriguez as the title character. Reading this Entertainment Weekly article on her desire to smash stereotypes was really insightful. Plus, I really appreciate her show of faith and the honesty of her prayer before she got the part. A prayer I hope to pray everyday:
“If it’s mine, it is, and if it’s not, give it to the person that’s meant to have it. Take this away, and I let it go. I lay my career at your feet. Just give me the patience and understanding to accept the story you have for me.”
So great. Then read her statement on Buzzfeed at this summer’s TCAs on how she waited for Jane, because the only roles out there for Latinas shouldn’t be maids. Oh, more Jane the Virgin?This time, showrunner Jennie Urman speaks over on the AV Club on her experiences adapting Jane for The CW.
“It was in that third and final draft that I decided to put the frame on with the narrator and have a bit of a meta-telenovela happening at the same time. Once I did that, I felt like it unlocked for me, tone-wise.”
I love the insight she gives on creating a show and presenting it to the important studio people and the way she both fought for it, but also the way it seemed to have all been meant to be. This is fantastic considering Jane was just nominated for 2 Golden Globes! There’s a lot here, on writing the pilot, casting the actors, the color scheme, music, it’s all important! I recently saw Beyond the Lights in theaters. I loved it, but what I love even more is writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s push for authentic stories for people of color.
I feel what’s discriminated against are my choices, which is to focus on people of color as real people. Those are the films that rarely get made and those are the films that take a lot more fight. But I’m up for the fight, because if we don’t fight for this we stay invisible.
She makes a statement for her film over at the Huffington Post. Finally, for this week, after my Arrow recap (hmm, should shameless plugs also be a part of my Clicks posts?), a commenter referenced the double edged problem of casting vaguely Arabic R’as al Ghul of Batman/DC Comics lore as a white actor (again). He says, in the comment and in a longer blog post that while we may complain that characters like R’as aren’t played by people of color, he questions if we want them to be. Should the only options for PoC be to play stereotypical villains who’s purpose was to mock a culture and represented eras of fear again [Muslims, the Chinese, the Japanese, insert your allegorical villain here]? Instead of wishing R’as was played by an actor of Arab-descent, let’s include better written characters of Arab descent.
That’s it for this week. Hopefully I can keep this up and bring more links throughout the week in this way. Until next time!
In which I discuss the Arrow midseason finale and note that most superhero/action-adventure shows pull the same stunt Arrow did. And that’s not a bad thing. TV is not about the big moments — that’s for movies to focus on, it’s often about the aftermath. This major moment on Arrow, and this episode, is merely a transition to a new stage in the story and that’s exciting.
Major spoilers for Arrow 3.09 “The Climb” are below and beyond the jump.
There is a point in most TV series (especially action/adventure shows like this one), where everything seems to burn to the ground. It’s the awful part where you get to it in your rewatches of even your favorite TV shows and you wonder if you can stomach those episodes again. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re painful for the characters. They reach a low point that it seems they can’t get out of, a fire they must endure to come out the better for it. At some point, Buffy dies, Angel gets buried at the bottom of the ocean — my fellow NOCs can probably give a Smallville example — I’m sure your favorite long running action/adventure show (any drama really) has had a moment like this one.
I am ready for the next leg in the journey of the story and the development of all the characters who must come out of this moment the stronger.
Also, in the comments, there’s an interesting, though brief discussion on another way in which the show doesn’t lend proper representation to a cultural group. This time with R’as al Ghul, who has suffered this before time and again. These conversations are important to have because if we don’t have them and bring them to the light, they will keep happening. Join the discussion!
Read more: NOC Recaps Arrow: A Battle He Was Always Going to Lose | thenerdsofcolor.
Replace Barry with Christelle, replace me with Oliver and you have the Nerds of Color’s Flarrow Team!
Looks like podcasting is an official part of my life now. Before last month’s live podcast with Black Girl Nerds and Eric Dean Seaton, I’d never considered being a part of a podcast before. How would I even get involved? But one thing led to another and here I am doing a second podcast/show with at least two more slated for January! I seem to be on a roll!
On this show, for The Nerds of Color‘s weekly “Hard NOC Life” series (great title, right?), I get to virtually meet some of my fellow writers and fans over at the Nerds of Color and we talk about this week’s amazingly epic crossover between The Flash and Arrow, definitely two of my favorite shows this season. I’ve been writing recaps for these two shows for the last few weeks (barring the weeks when my TV broke, where Christelle and Keith took over), so it was great to verbally talk about the show in a cool format with other cool and level-headed fans who are equally passionate about the shows.
So if you want to see me talk about The Flash and Arrow, their trajectories this season, where I think they’re going and other nerd/TV things, watch below!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdvigf70j34&w=560&h=315]
Or click through here: Flash v Arrow: Dawn of Just Awesomeness | thenerdsofcolor.
Podcasts are kinda fun! And my co-hosts were very easy to talk to, Keith had to cut our 2 hour conversation down to the hour and nine minutes presented before you! I’m glad to be getting more opportunities to meet new people and express my opinions. Maybe I have a future in TV criticism!
*Mad props to my awesome Flarrow tag-team buddy Christelle for the subtitle. We are Flarrow. She’s The Flash, I’m Arrow and together we bring you these recaps. It’s our superpower.
The first thing I thought of when preparing for the Arrow portion of the crossover was how would they Flashify the title card? Instead of the arrowhead, we got a beautiful lightning bolt.
And so begins the Flash team’s adventure in Starling City! We’ve actually seen all of these characters here before. Barry, obviously in his debut last season, as well as Cisco and Caitlin when they briefly helped Felicity on a case also last season. But it’s our first time seeing them all together like this and It. Was. AMAZING!
[Read the actual recap: NOC RECAPS ARROW: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN]
Phew! We did it! We survived the crossover and it was as awesome and epic (if not more so) than we could have dreamed or anticipated! Hopefully we get one at least once a season now (probably on the 8s) and some mini crossovers. Because while we may be getting a big budget Justice League movie, these boys have a league of their own right here on the small screen. (With what some say is better writing, action, and special effects than even the big movies have. Your mileage may vary, but I certainly enjoyed the last two episodes as much as I would a cinematic venture.)
I love writing about Arrow and can’t wait for the Fall finale next week that will certainly drive all us fans bananas with excitement and post ep-theories as to what will happen after hiatus.
Let’s chat about The Flash/Arrow. I can talk about them for hours. NOC Recaps Arrow: A League of Their Own | thenerdsofcolor.
I now write Flash and Arrow recaps for thenerdsofcolor.org. I’ll repost bits here, then link to the full thing, like I do with my Castle posts! Yay!
Arrow just keeps knowing it out of the park this season! This is the second Oliver-light episode of the season and it hits just as strong as a typical Ollie-centric episode does. Everyone’s been waiting for more information on everyone’s favorite (and I mean everyone) IT girl and we got loads of it tonight. From the appearance of Mama Smoak to Goth Felicity in the flashbacks (and a tease into her imagination — Dominique Ansel apparently didn’t think of cronuts first), we learned more about Felicity in this episode of Arrow than we have in the past three seasons. How cute is Diggle with the baby Sara Diglette? How petty was Oliver for dipping on Thea and leaving her door swinging open? How awesome was Oliver’s smooth save of that women from the car accident?
