ARROW Discussion: Okay, I'm Officially Over Felicity

**Hey! This article contains spoilers of episodes leading up to and including last night's Arrow! You can totally still read it, but don't go off whining if I reveal anything you don't want to read about before watching!**

I've been really cautious with my criticism of this season of Arrow. Last season was godawful in its execution, and the story was an outright mess. This season started out okay, and last night it became a full-on CW teeny-bopper drama.

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I was never a huge subscriber to the whole Olicity fan service (I even wrote a year ago about how it's annoying that Oliver has to bang every woman on the show), but they had won me over in the first stretch of the season.

That was when the show was Arrow.

Now don't get me wrong, the subplots of Arrow (minus flashbacks, Roy Mirakuru, and "who shot Sarah") have always been weak, but this season the subplot has become the primary focus of the show. More specifically, Arrow has become Felicity.

Once again, I'm not a member of the crowd that's full of the blind anger you'll see about this subject on the internet. For a bulk of the series — and really up until last week — I liked Felicity! I understood how her getting shot helped the story. It would make Oliver angry, and help him find his balance between the vigilante and new Green Arrow. I was eager to see how the rest of the season would play out with this bold new direction the writing team had planned!

But that's not what the writing team had planned.

The plan of the writing team was to halt literally all main enemy story progression to focus on Felicity juggling a disability, a wedding, and a shocking revelation that absolutely rocked her world. I think her character has now become more dynamic than the rest of the Arrow team combined!

Guys, they literally had her perform a miracle on screen. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse...SHE BROKE UP WITH OLIVER.

I wasn't happy with the decision when we first saw it several weeks ago, but I reserved my judgment until I saw how it played out when the show returned.

Last night was the most annoying f****** hour of my life.

On top of the fact it was a throwaway episode, I literally felt like I was a mediator forced to sit and observe a teenage romance gone awry. You know what grown adults do when they break up? They stay the hell away from each other. You know what teens do when they break up?!

• They constantly remain in each other's company to heighten emotions
• They brood and make vague references to their relationship to get a rise out of the other
• They drag their friends into it

Oh and what was with that scene with the packing?! Felicity being "good old goofy blonde" making stupid jokes, not even a day removed from their break-up?!

"Oh...marriage...poor choice of words."

I want to be a complete dick about how ridiculous that was in context, but it makes me so damn mad I can't even do it.

Can we also just address the fact that this entire thing happened when Oliver learned he had a kid a month ago and the mother swore him to secrecy? Don't get me wrong, people swear me to secrecy all the time and I'm still gonna tell my wife, but you would imagine someone who supposedly has an IQ as high as Felicity's could have just a bit of damn empathy. I understand being mad...but calling off the wedding?! That's money down the drain.

I struggled...I really struggled through that episode hoping with the marriage ploy that at worst they get back together and we pretend it never happened next week, but somehow the writing team dug themselves deeper. Felicity ends the episode in a wedding dress (where she again makes a dumb joke), tells Oliver she loves him, and then says it can never happen.

I'm literally reliving my sophomore year of high school.

I'm so defeated at this point, but I hold on past commercials for a look at next week, excited because Felicity said she's finally leaving! Does this mean an episode with Angry Oliver taking no prisoners and settling his score with Damien Darhk?! Nope, just a preview of next week's EXCLUSIVELY FELICITY-FOCUSED EPISODE.

I can't. I literally cannot. I won't defend this show anymore. They have until the end of this season for me or I'm out.