Yeah, I did wonder about Alena for a moment, but I don't want her to be evil, because she's so sexy-cute. Then again, Kacey Rohl's character on The Magicians was kind of evil and still very sexy. But Alena just has such good chemistry with Felicity that I don't want them to be on opposite sides. There was a moment there, when the camera was focusing on William acting all furtive and sneaking out of the bunker, that I was wondering if it would turn out that William was the evil mastermind -- that maybe he'd been some kind of impostor or under mind control or something ever since Lian Yu. But I guess they just wanted to focus on him overhearing where Green Arrow was heading so he could go there to be with him. Which does make more sense, I guess.
Why did Cayden James seemingly just trust the picture of GA killing his son without question and not try to verify it first? I would think a master hacker like James would know how easily pics and videos can be forged and would want to verify it first before going on a villainous revenge quest.
We're supposed to believe that he is so intelligent that he can look at the data and know it hasn't been faked. In reality, even a genius would need to perform his own computer analysis to be sure he wasn't being fooled.
I guess anger and no apparent reason for anyone to set up both of them is a decent enough explanation why he didn't thoroughly check it out at first, but after the faked photo was leaked and GA's insistence he didn't do it some alarm bells should have rung...
Remember, it took Felicity and Alena a couple of episodes to figure out a way to prove the image was doctored, even though they knew it was a fake to begin with. So it must've been faked in a way that would pass the standard tests, that would be hard even for an expert hacker to disprove. But once F&A broke the code and Oliver showed him their evidence, Cayden could follow their chain of reasoning and verify the fakery for himself.
The thing TV tends to gloss over in its portrayal of hackers is that the hacker's greatest tool is human weakness. Real-life hackers gain more access by tricking and manipulating human beings into granting access or revealing their passwords than they do by typing really fast on two keyboards at once. Obviously the Arrowverse tends to go with the more fanciful portrayal of hackers, but keep in mind that the "master of all master hackers" made the rookie mistake of using his son's birthday as the passcode to his server room. Obviously James's logic is uncertain where his son is concerned. When Owen was killed, James was furious and wanted to find someone to blame, to punish. And when people are looking for scapegoats, they tend to latch onto the first candidate they're offered and are often so blinded by the emotional satisfaction of having someone to blame that they don't stop to question it as carefully as they should.
Not sure about having Cayden James killed by Adrian Ch, er Ricardo Diaz. For me, it was less of a surprise and more like his story just fizzled out with a whimper and not a bang. I haven't been crazy about the storyline as the villain who is forever and always one step ahead has been played out on Arrow and, to some extent, Flash recently and I've been putting the least attention into following it this season but this was unsatisfying.
You know, I really thought Laurel was going to give the money back. I wonder what the city's going to do now. When was that video of Black Siren withdrawing the money taken, anyway? When did she have time during the past couple of episodes to go to Corto Maltese? I was expecting the video to turn out to be another fake by Diaz. It's too bad the two teams have had such a fierce split. I liked the dynamic of having two teams that still cooperated against their common foes, although I was getting a little tired of the weekly "This doesn't change anything" speeches. And I have to say, I come down more on Oliver's side here. Dinah's obsession with revenge is the main thing that's driven everything to this extreme. The other two's loyalty to her just got them dragged down into ever greater extremes.
The writing has not been as strong this season. Regarding the money, hearing them act as if they would go bankrupt over $70million is like hearing Dr. Evil threaten to destroy the world unless he got $1 million. Think of a city that is known for being poorly run financially. There is a very good chance right now that you are thinking of Detroit. A quick google search tells me that just casinos in Detroit forked over several billion dollars in taxes. There is no way $70 million would cause that much of a halt to city business. There are 104 schools in Detroit. The education budget alone is $884 million. Cut that in half and Star City still wouldn't blink at $70 million. If things were that bad, then rather than shut down the city, they would go to the state for help, and if that didn't work, they would go to Washington. No chance this is a real problem. Recovering the money would be a priority, but not a life and death one. It's harder to suspend disbelief to have a man run at the speed of light and time travel than it is to believe that a city would be so desperate over such a small amount of money. As for Curtis, Rene and Dinah--they can't leave the show fast enough.
At this point, reconciliation looks impossible. Agree. They are becoming unbearable. Rene is a total ass. Hacking Diggle's chip was a real low blow. But the hospital scene really made me hate Team Dinah. Felicity and Diggle were there out of concern for Rene who is in critical condition in the hospital. Surely, you can put aside your differences for one minute and give them an update on Rene. But Dinah and Curtis showed no common decency. Plus, I feel like Green Arrow works better as a solo vigilante. Give him Felicity to help with recon via camera hacking, sure, but not a whole team of vigilantes.
Well, in their defense, it was Oliver's attack that reopened Rene's old wound and put him in the hospital. And it was the old guard's suspicion and bugging of them that led to the breach in the first place, and the old guard had just invaded their HQ and gassed them so they could search it by force. Both teams have acted badly. I like having a large team. And it makes sense to have numbers, given the routinely city-threatening magnitude of the enemies and schemes that they take on. Speaking of Star City matters, I wonder if we're heading for the end of Oliver's mayorship. Hearing him say "I have failed this city" was a pretty big moment. If he's passed that judgment on himself, then it suggests he doesn't consider himself fit to lead the city anymore.
True. I guess I just feel like Felicity and Diggle were trying to do the right thing by stopping by the hospital to check on Rene. They were trying to show that they still care. It was a nice peace offering if you will. Curtis and Dinah could have at least respected that even if they were still upset and holding a grudge about the other bad things. Would that be such a bad thing?
Well, yes and no. It is getting a little silly for Oliver to operate as both a mayor and a superhero at the same time, but I'm not a big fan of reset buttons. I kind of liked the idea of Ollie permanently turning over the hood to Diggle and becoming mayor full-time -- still overseeing the team, or at least coordinating with them, but not actively going out into the field. It would've been interesting and bold if the show had committed to that kind of change permanently. But I realize that was never likely to happen.
Me too. I do wonder if she even had the money or was just using the fact they thought she had the money to bargain for her release... I like what they've been doing with Laurel and Quentin, and it looks like Laurel is going to try and Spoiler: Star Trek Discovery spoiler pull a Lorca. So that should be interesting. On the other hand, I'm not that happy with what they did with Dinah (and Curtis and Rene) to make this Civil War come about... Well if they continue to act like self-righteous hypocritical pompous asses, then yeah. But if they get back in character and stop for one second to consider how their actions have royally forked everything up, then it shouldn't be too hard to find common ground again. In Oliver's defense, he wasn't the one doing the attacking, he was defending himself from an axe-wielding(!) Rene, and they made it sound like Rene was picking flowers down by the river when Oliver just walked up to him and caved in his chest... hypocrisy levels off the charts there, seriously. Silly Ollie, if you're being indicted for being the Green Arrow, maybe don't use his catchphrase on TV... P.S. Disappointed there wasn't a shot of the Waverider dropping out of the sky in the background.
The point is, nobody's entirely in the wrong or in the right here. In the Trio's view, matters would never have gotten to this point if not for the senior members' destructive choices -- Diggle hiding his injury and thus getting Rene shot in the first place, Oliver and Felicity bugging the Trio and creating a climate of mistrust, Oliver refusing to rescue Vince and thus (as Dinah sees it) getting him killed, and now the senior team protecting Black Siren because (as the Trio sees it) their attachment to Laurel's memory is blinding them. Yes, the Trio has made bad decisions too, but neither side's accusations against the other are entirely unfounded.
Nor some of the acting. Agreed. They have pretty much shit on Curtis's character. He went pretty fucking far over the line. He even recognized it. But, then later he was like, "Sure, Dinah, I'll keep following you...." It maybe to much of this show for characters to have actual moments of self reflection. In Ollie's defense: There WAS a spy in the group. Rene WAS sort of spilling secrets. Rene DID betray the group. Sadly, though, the writing makes Dinah's team, in particular, look like a bunch of nincompoop teens running around the city all full of rage.