The slippery slope of Nicole thinking that victory on Kinetic means James made a bad decision, to Tim thinking that winning at any price is somehow romantic or connected to their relationship, to all of Arrow talking themselves into acting tacky, to all of Arrow actually convincing themselves that acting tacky is the point. It's the last thing that worries me. It's like... okay, speaking of pederasts, this is like the To Catch A Predator thing. Somebody that fucks kids, we get the pass to do almost anything to them, either in words or deeds. Two Minutes' Hate. Nobody's going to be like, Chill out with hating on pedophiles, you're being tacky. And yeah, they're sick and they need to be fixed or locked up, but at what point does it stop being about justice or cultural expressions of disgust, and start being secretly delighted that you've found something to be angry about that nobody can tell you to chill about it? Kid-touchers get killed in prison: is this because felons are vigilante heroes, or because they have the option of expressing their rage in a way that's socially acceptable to the point of murder? Because the least important person in that scenario is the pedophile himself. It's about getting away with whatever you think you can get away with, instead of doing the right thing. If you offload all the power in the scenario to the pedophile, if you say that your actions were determined by their predilections to touching kids, you're being really weak. Pedophile's still an asshole whether or not you beat them up or humiliate them on TV, but we're not talking about the pedophile, we're talking about you and your choices, on this side of the line. He's gonna continue to be an asshole regardless of your actions -- the question is whether you're going to join him.

And the more contingent or creepy it is, the more you're going to get this repetitive "we weren't breaking any rules, we weren't breaking any rules" bullshit. One more repetition for each factor of shadiness they know damn well they're being. Now, they weren't breaking any rules, as far as the game's concerned, and these were not moral extremes that they were going to -- especially since Trump is the arbiter and he has zero moral sense whatsoever -- but it's still pretty yucky, and over the line. It shouldn't come up in the BR, and it shouldn't be brought up by the losing team, at this point, at all, because it's whining and nothing but, but I'm not a member of Kinetic, and I don't have anything riding on it, and I don't even mind Arrow that much anymore, but I do think it's a weak, immature call, and a bunch of gross decisions led to that behavior. Once you start in with the "We're going to do whatever it takes," you've got to be pretty strong and pretty adaptable to be able to monitor what that level of "whatever" actually equals. And those are not words that describe Arrow, or very many Americans, or anybody ever associated with this show, so I'm talking to myself again.