I guess I've always been okay with romance soap opera (see Spider-Man) but like you say, my problem with it here is that a lot of it is shoehorned as "mandatory CW soap drama" instead of actually being a natural outgrowth of character interaction.

It was an okay episode.  I agree with a lot of the criticisms in the comments here, as well as the rating in the review.  Arrow is doing somethings right, especially direction wise, but a). the soap/love story is just terrible, and b). some plot holes in the A-plot.  Once again the island scenes are the best part of…

Hasn't future Ted directly hinted at that happening in wedding scenes we were teased at in the  last couple seasons?

Gotta agree. I think Hickman was trying too hard to ape Warren Ellis's Planetary with SHIELD.

I didn't even bother because of how horrible JMS's work has become.

Editorial probably messed with the plotting to begin with, prompting Diggle to leave.  But obviously that's my guess, so if I'm wrong I agree I'm glad he's gone.

Yeah I think Gillen's Tony is way overdone in that RDJ direction.  I think I heard he writes to try to fit Land's style.

I wasn't too impressed with that first issue, but I'll give it more chance to grow.  You can tell it was drawing from V for Vendetta, but the execution wasn't a fraction as good.  Which is of course to be expected in comparison to Alan Moore, but still Simone I think could have done better.

Yeah DC needs to give Kindt more books, and he's flatly stated that he loves doing superhero work too, and he's not just an indie-only type of person.

I didn't mean to say those things are needed, I just found the similarities to a superhero interesting, given how sophisticated and mature this narrative is.

Deserved an A, IMO.  Fantastic episode.

Yeah Root was interesting in this episode.  I found her annoying in the beginning of the season, the cliche sociopath who does that creepy version of  banter all the time, but I think the idea that she's "amoral" and is merely interested in the machine as if it was a person is a little bit more interesting.

Never mind.

So is Helena Bertinelli, and she showed up here, even if it was an awful version of the character.  What the comics do is irrelevant to what the producers/writers of Arrow want.  If they want to use Ted Kord (the other Blue Beetle wouldn't work here anyway) they could.

This show polarizes me to no end.  Malcom is awesome, mostly because Barrowman is awesome.  The A-plot and the island scenes tend to be pretty solid.

I'd rate this episode higher.  But my main problem was that the Doctor story was too simple.  There was no maneuvering it was just here's the guy and we kill him.

Don't forget the influence of Travis Bickle in Rorschach. 

Denny O'Neil rescued the character, but it made him very different, shifting to a zen philosophy and realizing Objectivism was a bad idea. 

Yup I would say that the end of Season 7 and the beginning of Season 8 were actually awful, but it's returned to form after they got rid of Quinn, etc.

I thought this episode was terrible until the twist.  Halfway into the episode I saw this review and I was surprised at the rating.  Still I can't say that redeemed the whole thing.  The "selling Marshall" was too absurd to take seriously even then.