You're on fire with the visual style jokes!

Okay. I still disagree with you on the laziness front, but you're totally entitled to your opinion. I feel like you heard me out and acknowledged the point I and "Much loved character" were trying to make about fridging, and that's all I really wanted, so thanks.

To quote Alasdair:

He's awful, and I thought it seemed pretty clear that making him an ass was a deliberate writing choice. Which worked in making him an antagonist to Cisco, but still makes it hard to understand why Kendra would then choose Hall over Cisco.

Oh! Malcolm wants Savage as a longevity supplement now that the hot tub of immortality is defunct! How did I not see that before!

I didn't like them as a couple at first because Kendra was so underwritten, but Cisco-Kendra grew on me this episode. I think a lot of it is Cisco's emergent awesomeness this season. He's so much more confident and witty this season, and the actor has really nailed the line readings to convey that. Last season I never…

THIS. No way Snart's allowing those to exist without providing him with a revenue stream!

It's a good question, given their respective levels of massive badness. But so far Barry's girlfriend trust issues have not yet ruined an entire season of the show for me, so personally I would have to go with Ra's al Ollie as the stupidest.

They were mostly superfluous, but I did like Thea's Avengers snark and Laurel's "Felicity babe, can we jump to the point?" moment.

Barry is absolutely right when he says that Oliver was distracted the first time around, with the unspoken suggestion that part of Oliver’s great power as a crime-fighter is that very focus; he has come to be able to hold his own among metahumans and mystics because he knows exactly what he wants to achieve at any…

Hey, some of us carry a lot of trauma from S3. Even a few minutes of cryface-angry Felicity and contrived secretive Ollie and we start to panic.

When I wrote "we," I meant "Much loved character" (whom you were responding to, whom I think you failed to understand, and of whom I think you were unfairly dismissive), Alana, myself and several other posters tonight who have all essentially made the same argument as to why we don't think this is fridging. If you…

I respectfully disagree. You seem to define fridging simply as a mechanical plot device, and deem it lazy because it is a device. Plot devices exist to make plots move, and in my opinion the laziness or lack thereof lies not in the device's existence, but rather in its execution. As "Much loved character" and multiple…

Did I really misspell "shield"? Damn, I should go to bed.

I'm not disagreeing with you, nor did I think you were saying that it was bad storytelling. I was just thinking out loud.

I think this particular episode worked really, really well as the breakneck action-fest I think the writers/director intended it to be. That said, I think as a larger take on the first half of this season, your compartmentalization critique is super-spot-on.

I admit it, I'm shallow, but for me the first action sequence alone put it in the "B" range. I'm a feminist. I get the whole "fridging" critique. But, as people have brought up, is it fridging when it's Tara and Willow is the hero? Is it fridging when it's Andrew and May is the hero? Or is it only fridging when the…

Yes. It seems like they've been building up Coulson for BB all season. He even has a Supervillain Black Hand of Evil!

Honestly, why do we need to see Nick with a new romantic partner this season? Juliette just died. And non-romantic co-parenting has so much more potential. Imagine Nick's reaction when Adalind starts dating prospective step-fathers: "I don't care if you love him, Adalind, my son is not living with a Klaustreich!"

What's strange is how great they are with older maternal figures—this show has given us so many badass, middle-aged moms/aunts! It seems to be girlfriend/wife issue that suddenly neuters these younger women, rather than motherhood.