Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy the Arrow TV series—at least when the characters aren’t wallowing in self-doubt instead of collaring master criminals, which, annoyingly, seems to be most of the time.

No, what bugs me most about Arrow is one particular actor—not the character she portrays, but the actor herself. Not her personality and not her appearance, both of which are just fine thank you very much, but her enunciation.

Emily Bett Rickards, who plays Felicity Smoak, the Arrow’s IT boffin, is unquestionably the Winner of the 1991 Genetic Lottery, but her speaking skills are nothing short of atrocious.

'Arrow' - Emily Bett Rickards

The producers of the show have evidently allowed her to get away with—if not actually encouraged her—extremely poor articulation. Some of the other actors are also guilty of the same thing on occasion, but Ms. Rickards does it continually.

Not only does she not inflect her speech, if you add the technobabble she has to deal with to the screechy music and sound effects layered into just about every scene of Arrow, she comes, at least to me, close to complete incomprehensibility.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must give the 2014 Mumbles Award to the beautiful but nebulous Emily Bett Rickards.