Arrow. Green Arrow tv show.

[[ That sounds a bit like appeal to worse problems. "Look this char has issues too." ]]

Well that is pretty much anti-Laurel fans' justification for hating her.

The thing is you can spend ages to defend everything they let Laurel do in the series. And you are right, other characters are forgiven for simliar lapses of judgement. But those characters also provide something positive to the show. Give me anything positive Laurel ever added to the show. Anything!

Helping Thea to grow up. Helping Wildcat deal with his past. Making her dad realize that maybe the Vigilante was not the real enemy. Helping her dad with his alcoholism and make him a much nicer person. And of course actually supporting Oliver on many occasions, bar the first half of season two.

edited 2nd Feb '15 6:59:23 AM by Julep

The problem with Laurel Crni job was that it is a good idea on paper which was badly executed. Because we have never seen her acting like a competent lawyer. Every single time her job came up she was just in the process of loosing her case, or unable to protect the people she promised to help, so the Arrow had to solve the problem for her. The show kept telling us that she is a competent lawyer, but never really showed her acting like one. And by the end of the second season, she was not even a morally upstanding lawyer anymore, but a corrupt one.

Laurel helping out Thea and talking with her about her job is one of the few scenes with her I liked. But that's one brief scene which never got adressed again. I don't think that Thea and Laurel shared one single scene in season 2.

Yeah, but we are watching Arrow. If we wanted to see someone being a skilled lawyer, we would watch The Practice, right?

I haven't seen Palmer inventing anything that works either. And I'm supposed to believe he is a genius inventor.

That doesn't mean that they can't show Laurel to be competent at her job. For example, if she is such a good lawyer, why does she need the help of her father to get a deal for Thea? Why can't she corner the judge herself with some smart moves? Why doesn't she have the necessary contacts?

edited 2nd Feb '15 7:14:31 AM by Swanpride

...because that would make Thea fill the "alpha bitch whose family has connections" trope to a T, and make her appear even less sympathetic that she already did? Also because after raising Sara her dad may know a bit more how to deal with troubled teenagers than she does?

I don't see the difference between Quentin using connections and Laurel using connections.

This is a superhero vigilante show. I don't watch Arrow to see Laurel's painfully slow character development. I watch it to see spectacle and snappy dialogue and awesome villains hatching schemes and heroes hatching counter-schemes. Laurel slows things down to a crawl. In fact, despite my issues with Canary-Laurel, I'm glad she's at least donning a costume to fight crime now because that's more in line with the overall point of Arrow (pun not intended). If we're going to play the "shallow" card, this entire show is "shallow." The entire DC universe is "shallow." It's not a universe filled with ordinary people having poignant life moments. It's a universe full of superheroes.

Superhero shows don't have to be shallow.

@Julep even if it isn't a courtroom drama they still should have it shown realistically as one of the producers, Marc Guggenhiem was a lawyer.

edited 2nd Feb '15 8:15:53 AM by Halberdier17

I don't think they're shallow, either. But I also don't think I was looking at the characters in a shallow way - I was just looking at them with the mindset of "This is a superhero show." When you go into this genre, there are some reasonable expectations to have. I mean, the show's called "Arrow," not "Whiny Lawyer."

Really, I don't even like the way the person I was responding to used "shallow" in the first place. It sounds more like a petty insult than an actual explanation of what he disagrees with me about. "Ugh, how dare you dislike the character I like for a reason I don't agree with! That's so shallow!"

edited 2nd Feb '15 8:17:55 AM by spashthebandragon

If you want to show a lawyer being realistically competent in a TV show, you need for it to be a courtroom drama. Or else it will only be shortcuts or Hollywood Law, which a real-life lawyer might not be comfortable with.

I really don't get how "Thea is a good manager", "Diggle is a great dad" or "Ray Palmer is a brilliant inventor" can be admitted without needing any on-screen proof (for now if we consider the latter), but "Laurel is a competent lawyer" requires to be shown on-screen.

edited 2nd Feb '15 8:54:10 AM by Julep

@spashthebanddragon, I'm terribly sorry. I was trying to defend a character I like and I let my temper get the better of me. Clearly I used the wrong words and didn't phrase my argument in the right way. I've seen a lot of bile thrown at Laurel online and as you could tell it gets me upset. It was not my intention to offend you and I apologize.

We see Thea being a good manager of the club multiple times. When she is looking for staff. When she is working in the back to do inventory. When she follows up missing deliveries. When she is serving drinks.

Since I dropped the show early in season three I can't tell if they show Diggle being a good dad or Roy being an inventor. But they certainly did a good job showing that Felicity is a good hacker, that Quentin is a smart and upstanding police office (with a drug problem), aso.

edited 2nd Feb '15 9:08:32 AM by Swanpride

What you describe is not being a good manager, it is being a manager, period. Like reading law files and listening to your client makes you a lawyer, not a good lawyer.

Felicity is shown to be a good hacker because her skills are required on a regular basis to help Oliver directly. Since he is a vigilante, it only makes sense that he does not require the support of a lawyer/prosecutor, or else he would be a cop.

edited 2nd Feb '15 9:37:25 AM by Julep

That's fine. I mean, I don't want to get lumped in with people bashing Laurel for sexist or otherwise bad reasons, but I just really don't like her character.

@The "Laurel is a Damsel in Distress" bit: I heard that a lot before the show actually started, and then I actually watched the show and found myself wondering where the heck people were getting that from. Three seasons in and I still don't buy it.

Laurel is rarely in any danger that doesn't progress in an organic and understandable way, and, in fact, her being in distress is treated in much the same way most people who aren't Ollie being in distress is treated, and is pretty comparable to her father to be honest: she's trying to act in a situation and is essentially working a different angle to the various cases to Ollie, but she's not a vigilante with underworld contacts and has to deal with the retaliation that comes with it. It's a character establishing characteristic that's actually fairly interesting, as long as you're not looking for a reason to hate the character.

Or in short, Laurel is in danger because she's an active part of the situation, not because she's there to be in danger.

Being treated as someone who are neat to have around but should just get out of the way simply because they're not donning a mask and beating the crap out of criminals is a serious problem superhero genres have with their supporting cast - especially their love interests - and it's something I've actually thought was pretty nicely averted with this show's supporting cast, especially the Lances.

Likewise, the show didn't go out of its way to put Laurel in danger, it put people in danger - which sometimes included Laurel. And sometimes included Tommy. And sometimes included Detective Lance. Etc. Arrow is very good at showing that both important and non-important are put in jeopardy by the characters' actions, and like I said most situations were organically developed and understandable - there's a reason these characters are in this position beyond the fact that the writers wanted them to be in danger, and it has everything to do with who their characters are and the kind of things they do.

A clip from 3.12 "Uprising":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpEXiJpb3M

I don't mind a female character to be in a situation to get rescued at all. I object to a female character being presented in the very first episode as having good self-defence skills, but whenever she has to use them, she is actually failing at them. And then running constantly into danger even though said character is not able to handle them. I object to a character who was a whole season the designated love interest who has to get rescued all the time and nothing else. Laurel fits perfectly in one line with characters like Louis Lane (1970s Superman), Mary Jane Watson (Raimi Spider-man), Vicki Vale (Batman) and so on.

Look, I am the first who would defend a female character, the first who would call out double standarts. But I'll call this kind of character out when I see them, the same way I will call Arrow out for ruining Felicity by reducing her to mooning over Oliver all the time, instead of allowing her to have her own motivations and goals like she did in the first season. I don't want Mary Janes. I want Gwen Stacys and Peggy Carters. Laurel is exactly the kind of character which should never be inflicted on anyone.

I'm gonna assume you mean the Emma Stone Gwen Stacy and not the one from the sixties comics...

Who else? Best written love interest in ANY comic book movie, ever.

Laurel didn't display any martial arts skills in the first episode. Or did I miss something?

In the first season she did. It was 1.03 Tommy convinced Ollie to go to a club run by somebody that hated Ollie because he slept with his wife. Laurel was there because Joanna told her she has to have a life outside of work. The bouncers started beating up Tommy and Oliver. Laurel beat all three of them up.

Another thing, Laurel wasn't really the love interest for most of season 1 and all of season 2. Her and Ollie's relationship had ended by the time of the first episode and she spent the majority of the season in a relationship with Tommy. Furthermore, she did have a life beyond Ollie. And while some may complain about her behaviour in season 2, it was a storyline separate from Ollie's. In fact, I've seen some people complain about her arcs being too separate from the main plot for them to fit in the show. Hell, when Oliver refused to train her she sought out someone else showing autonomy and agency.

[In the first season she did. It was 1.03 Tommy convinced Ollie to go to a club run by somebody that hated Ollie because he slept with his wife. Laurel was there because Joanna told her she has to have a life outside of work. The bouncers started beating up Tommy and Oliver. Laurel beat all three of them up.]

I know that. I was talking about Swanbride's claim that we saw her fighting ability in the first episode.