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howe_sam posted:Arrow is totally the wrong show to take on gun violence in any serious sort of way, but like I said before, I admire the chutzpah. Guy Goodbody posted:Why do they spend so much time training with sticks, when they so rarely fight with sticks? As to why they do it before it just seems like kind of a cliche tv training thing and I've always accepted it as "weapons we can train with because they won't do any major damage".
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 06:14 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 17:49 |
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It was certainly clunky at times and yeah it had a bit of handwaving on what they actually did, but the message was solid enough. Do something. I mean, that's really the problem in general. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be the whole solution. It just has to be some sort of progress rooted in people working together to solve a problem with compromise instead of taking absolute stands that and shutting the conversation down before it begins. The handwaving was really the only way they could preserve that central point without taking a political side. The timing of the episode is something else though considering the rollback that was passed today. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Feb 16, 2017 |
# ? Feb 16, 2017 06:25 |
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Oliver used CASIE aug. It's super effective!
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 12:54 |
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I hated this episode. So unbelievably clunky, and every time Curtis opened his mouth I could see the writer just gesticulating wildly. I don't know why they wanted to do a very special episode about gun control completely out of the blue, but it just doesn't fit in a TV show where the main character is a vigilante who kills people every few episodes and the only powers of two of his sidekicks are to shoot guns at people. And then, of course, they magically figure out a gun control bill that appeals to both sides (but can't tell us exactly what it is) so the entire debate is cheapened so they can wrap it up for a nice TV ending. This was someone's pet issue, and it felt like they must have sucked someone's dick to get a whole episode devoted to it. No real action scenes, no Prometheus, no season plot movement, just a bunch of scenes of the writers talking about how they feel about guns and a dumb speech about how we all need to be good people.
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:42 |
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I'm not a huge fan of Curtis but I guess I can't blame him for the clunky dialogue some writer wanted to make a statement with.
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:33 |
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Ollie talking the shooter down as Ollie was great. He could have just swept in and beat the poo poo out of him in costume but he handled it as a real person instead and that's some pretty good writing.
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 21:53 |
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I wonder if this episode has destroyed any Arrow forums due to how much gun control chat was in the episode.
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# ? Feb 16, 2017 22:05 |
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GUN VIOLENCE IS BAD UNLESS YOU'RE A MASKED VIGILANTE BRUTALLY MURDERING CRIMINALS Murdering people with arrows? Still a-okay.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 00:19 |
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I liked the idea that there was some social working talking to Wyld Dawg about his daughter while Dharhk's army was attacking the city and a nuke went off one town over.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 00:28 |
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I mean, I guess you could reason that the social worker didn't have to be in Star City, and I'm not sure we even actually saw any indication that Rene and his family were living in Star City? It would sort of make more sense if the "Wild Dogs" was a team from some other city or else a ton of Star City residents would be wearing Rene's uniform. Maybe he just moved to Star City after everything that happened? But its still kind of weird that they were talking in the middle of the night, especially since a crazy night. Maybe Rene was just harassing the social worker. Maybe Rene's from Havenrock and that's why the phone cut off.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 00:41 |
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grack posted:GUN VIOLENCE IS BAD UNLESS YOU'RE A MASKED VIGILANTE BRUTALLY MURDERING CRIMINALS None of the people against it are the killy ones.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 00:48 |
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I hate politicization in media and found this episode to be typically hypocritical. I really wish they would avoid the liberalism and keep it out of the show.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:02 |
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I feel like people thinking this was some actual political statement one way or another are just kind of biting on their own biases since the episode was pretty careful to not say anything meaningful in either direction and then end with both sides making some mysterious compromise to victory. No actual ideology was expressed or could be satisfied by this episode. It was just a broad appeal to "do something" that ended with the episode's sympathetic character deputy mayor's assistant writing law instead of getting arrested for shooting off an illegal gun in the Mayor's office. But it does kind of speak to how ballsy/misguided they were to do the episode at all since they were always going to upset someone. But they clearly knew that and voiced it through Felicity and then rejected it through Curtis and the rest who argued for the need to argue. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 17, 2017 |
# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:10 |
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STAC Goat posted:I feel like people thinking this was some actual political statement one way or another are just kind of biting on their own biases since the episode was pretty careful to not say anything meaningful in either direction and then end with both sides making some mysterious compromise to victory. Yeah, notably Oliver does not pick a side and Felicity abstains from the entire argument.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:15 |
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STAC Goat posted:I mean, I guess you could reason that the social worker didn't have to be in Star City, and I'm not sure we even actually saw any indication that Rene and his family were living in Star City? It would sort of make more sense if the "Wild Dogs" was a team from some other city or else a ton of Star City residents would be wearing Rene's uniform. Maybe he just moved to Star City after everything that happened? The game Rene and his daughter go to is in The Glades, so at the very least they are Star City adjacent.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:16 |
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howe_sam posted:The game Rene and his daughter go to is in The Glades, so at the very least they are Star City adjacent. Ah, you're right. When he was yelling at his wife he mentioned getting out of the Glades. So I guess Rene is running around with some local team's uniform on his chest. That probably makes for some really angry PR people.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:17 |
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He mentioned having already left The Glades actually.STAC Goat posted:Ah, you're right. When he was yelling at his wife he mentioned getting out of the Glades. Well, not if the team was based in the Glades...
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:19 |
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Dark and true. But the ownership still probably lived outside the Glades so I look forward to the episode where Rene gets sued for copyright infringement.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:21 |
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STAC Goat posted:Dark and true. That's why he wears the mask.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 01:25 |
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This episode was clunky but it aggressively refused to take a side. And Ollie taking down the shooter as Ollie instead of as Arrow which kind of fits in with what he's trying to do. So it wasn't the worst thing ever and didn't feel that out of place. Did they send Rag Man away so he couldn't weigh in? If I had a gun that nuke never would have hit Havenrock
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 02:31 |
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R-Type posted:I hate politicization in media and found this episode to be typically hypocritical. I really wish they would avoid the liberalism and keep it out of the show. This is better than your post in the Supergirl thread complaining a female alien POTUS was a paid Hillary ad. Both viewpoints were equally mentioned and neither was declared better. Spacebump fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Feb 17, 2017 |
# ? Feb 17, 2017 02:51 |
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I also liked "If I had a gun, my wife would still be alive!" *flashback* grabs gun shoots bad guy threatening wife wife is not still alive I mean, yeah, it's a misnomer to call it overly-liberal because they don't take sides or even set up a resolution that is any more than vaguely alluded to, so why even do it at all? It's like the writers were arguing about this over a lunch break and someone said "hey, this would be a great episode", and so they just slammed a half-dozen of their rants into the mouths of their characters and called it a day. While making sure not to say anything too controversial so they don't piss off any of their advertisers or viewers. In a way, it's even weaker because they don't take any stand other than "be good people", because at least they could put some passion into it.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:28 |
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I mean, I think Rene's theory is that if he had been carrying his gun like he wanted to before his wife objected then he would have been able to take down the guy quicker rather than having to retrieve the gun. That theory is... complicated. And I think the episode more or less showed that with the way things played out. But that's mostly the point and Rene's obviously grieving and was a good representation of people who are genuinely driven by their desire to protect their loved ones (and as a foil to the gunman in that Rene kind of broke like him too but decided to take out his anger on bad guys). I still get why they did it. It fits with Arrow, its themes, and characters. It would arguably be irresponsible to not approach the subject given that they deal both with politics and armed vigilantes. It was good character work for Oliver to show him being Mayor and recognizing that the Arrow can't solve everything and good character work to flesh out Rene and help show some of his motivations. They just could never get anywhere with it farther than they did without upsetting people.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:38 |
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A TV show choosing not to explicitly solve a controversial topic like this is fine. They can bring up an issue like this and let the viewer decide what they feel about it without outright telling the viewer what to think or being too preachy. It wasn't handled perfectly because it's a superhero TV show, but for them to bring the idea up and get people to think about is a good move I think. I think they walked the line on it about as well as they could have. I imagine other shows can and have done it better, but that's about as well done as you can expect out of this show. And that may sound like a knock, but it's not. I think they handled it fine if a bit clunky.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:40 |
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At the end of the day, if you think the show took any one side on either side, it's time to go take a glance into the mirror to see the reason why no progress has been made on gun violence.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:42 |
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Phenotype posted:I also liked "If I had a gun, my wife would still be alive!" I think it implied that he meant that if he had his gun with him as opposed to in the safe. It was definitely preachy, but they very much tried to straddle the line and having everyone split evenly with Ollie and Felicity being specifically either abstaining or in the middle. The Mad Dog bits were nice as were the Mayor Ollie bits. I imagine it was an episode originally planned as a "Solve a problem as Mayor that can't be solved as GA" and needed to tie into Mad Dog's back story so gun control was the issue. There've certainly be worse issues and I do respect the series being on the fence about it rather than leaning to one side or another. I imagine it also stems from Amell's being publicly politically agnostic and not taking a side publicly.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:49 |
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I really liked how this episode went down. Maybe this is the start of Ollie being Ollie as opposed to Ersatz Batman. I lol'd at the Alderman or whatever. "I know you just talked down a high profile mass murderer at risk of your own life but looks like you owe me some political capital " I know this is comic book rules, but if someone did that in real life, they would be mayor for as long as they so chose.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 03:57 |
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It feels like they decided on the flashback origin story first, and the gun control debate was the only thing they could think of to hang around it to make an episode.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 04:04 |
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Yeah, they kind of blew their "political capital" on the whole "talk down a serial shooter" thing. Hell, just the story of him surviving the first shooting and cradling the DA in his arms as he bled out would probably have been good for a Congressional run.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 04:06 |
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I just saw it and thought it was well done overall. I wanted to know what exactly the new law did that would somehow solve the problem that everyone could agree too, so I googled it. I found an interview quote from the producer.quote:“We left that intentionally vague,” Guggenheim explains. “My first gig in the business was on a show called The Practice. [Creator David E. Kelley] always said, ‘I’m not interested in the verdict. I’m just interested in both sides in the case having equal arguments.’ Very intentionally, we didn’t want to provide [an] answer to the problem of gun violence. We wanted to leave that open to the audience as almost like a Rorschach test.” He also said that it was about getting people to talk with each other respectfully about controversial issues and working together to solve problems because right now the country is really divided.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 04:35 |
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STAC Goat posted:I mean, I guess you could reason that the social worker didn't have to be in Star City, and I'm not sure we even actually saw any indication that Rene and his family were living in Star City? It would sort of make more sense if the "Wild Dogs" was a team from some other city or else a ton of Star City residents would be wearing Rene's uniform. Maybe he just moved to Star City after everything that happened? He mentioned wanting to take the gun to the game with him because the stadium was in the glades.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 05:09 |
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The Lord Bude posted:He mentioned wanting to take the gun to the game with him because the stadium was in the glades. I wish more flashbacks had characters making GBS threads on the site of a future atrocity.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 05:25 |
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Guy Goodbody posted:I wish more flashbacks had characters making GBS threads on the site of a future atrocity. The Glades was laid out as a lovely place before it got earthquaked dude.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 05:38 |
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STAC Goat posted:Yeah, they kind of blew their "political capital" on the whole "talk down a serial shooter" thing. Hell, just the story of him surviving the first shooting and cradling the DA in his arms as he bled out would probably have been good for a Congressional run. Season 10 of Arrow "President Queen" That just sounds weird.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 05:45 |
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Rhyno posted:The Glades was laid out as a lovely place before it got earthquaked dude. yeah, it's just funny. I'm sure there are legitimate complaints to be made about the urban planning of pre-1945 Nagasaki, but if a movie set in the 30s had a character bitch about the traffic there, that would be memorable.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:00 |
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I actually think this is one of the best episodes they've done. The Green Arrow comic was always really progressive so it's good to see them addressing these issues. The very first run of the Green Arrow long series was about gay bashing. It's what makes Green Arrow different than Batman is his politics. He's basically a grumpy super liberal.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:22 |
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If the show was a little more on point about presenting the fallout from Ollie and Gang's nightly adventures I wouldn't mind them tackling issues like gun control. I mean, two episodes ago Ollie blew up a goddamned helicopter in the middle of downtown and no one loving cared.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:31 |
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This episode wasn't about helicopter control, I don't see the problem.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:32 |
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Rhyno posted:This episode wasn't about helicopter control, I don't see the problem. If we ban helicopters only criminals will have helicopters.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:38 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 17:49 |
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Hollismason posted:If we ban helicopters only criminals will have helicopters. And Magnum P.I.
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# ? Feb 17, 2017 06:40 |