Jean

No I don't see a mercy S7 due to limited real estate. It's that #3 that's thrown them in a bit of frenzy. Comedy expansion, procedurals expansion/replacement and introducing a new brand? I just don't see a path. There is no conceivable reason or advantage to throwing away limited slots on a low performing show that doesn't fit their vision. Development. That's not to say the show can't be moved to another place in some other form. You'd have to get the cast or some of them and the producers to agree but I don't have an opinion or info on that either way. But on ABC prime time? Good as done.

I haven't been around these parts in years but someone just asked me if I had any thoughts. This show is dead and you can take it to the bank. I give it a 0.1% chance barring a Frozen-like revival. The simplest reason and most publicly available information I could share so that you can judge for yourself is this. Dungey, Sherwood and the rest of the top brass has a very clear plan and a very clear vision for ABC and they are pretty much on the same page. 1. in-house comedies 2. procedurals 3. realistic stories about working class/blue-collar middle and rural America. See the big problem? The first 2 they've been committed to since immediately after last years upfronts. It is part of the reason Lee was summarily dismissed because he didn't agree, especially the about face on procedurals. The last one is a direct result of current real life political climate. So they are scrambling and making it a top priority. They are not the only ones but they are behind the ball. They are 100% committed to this rebranding based on those 3 tenets. Now taking a very quick look at Once's ratings and absolutely nothing justifies ABC trying to navigate around this minefield for Once. Take a list of the bottom half of their shows and which show(s) is the furthest from any one of the above 3 categories. The answer is pretty obvious. I'm not sure yet if one of the ET sites has put out a development tracker. If and when they do, take a look at scripts in development. I'm willing to bet the house that almost all, if not all, could be binned into at least one of those 3.

I haven't seen this show since end of Frozen but I was doing some analytics work about comic-con and came across the Twitter Reverb data that had Once as the most tweeted tv show. Thought people would find it interesting that the 3 major influencers driving that were @twittertv (the biggest one), @onceabc and @colinodonoghue1. ETA: Forgot source https://blog.twitter.com/2015/a-look-back-at-this-year-s-comic-con

Who knew Jon Snow would end up with the most interesting story and he's carrying it pretty well. Now that this story is ramping up, it's taking a lot away from the King's Landing stuff. I'm loving that Cersei is finally getting her comeuppance but I don't really care anymore either. I Anyone else disappointed with the Tyrion and Dany scene? I don't think they had any chemistry together and something about their banter was off. The words were there so that's not the problem but the timing or rhythm was off or something. I've been waiting for their meeting so long maybe expectations were too high.

I haven't seen the finale but the 3 gals were Rumple's students? For real? Why? I thought Ingrid was setting up a new pattern where the newbie villain can give Rumple the middle finger when he offers to teach them. She even outsmarted him! He had to go to her to ask for a pass out of town. How refreshing was that? I don't know how much control Disney/ABC had over Ingrid but I didn't figure it was a lot or that they would care all that much. She's not a Frozen character and outside of her direct interactions with Anna/Elsa I can't see them caring about the rest. But now it's suspicious to me that Ingrid happens to be the only one that broke the A&E mold on every level. This is why I have to say sayonara to this show. Rumple having to prop and validate the black hole is the last straw. Not even Robert freaking Carlyle will save this crap and his character having to play prop in A&E's wet dreams over soul sucker, is just plain criminal.

I don't think that was a network decision at all, on where to put that extra episode/hour. That was an A&E decision. Other shows got the extra episode order and as far as I can tell, Castle and Black-ish for example haven't "used" it yet. Those are the only 2 other shows I still watch on ABC so I don't know about the others. Scandal and AOS just told the network no to the freebie so I don't think ABC is dictating anything on the extra episode besides giving it to them. As for the ratings, I'm not surprised. I bet they would have hit that 1.7 back in episode 2 if it wasn't for the Frozen inflation. I haven't seen the finale either and from browsing the board I don't believe I will. Might have finally hit my permanent break point with the show.

It kind of does. The convention being back to back "baby stories" aren't usually done. Unless you're a soap opera. Which Once is but it's on primetime so it is going against the grain a bit. It sure would if the Woegina baby is named the new, and real "savior." Besides these things are usually written in hyperbole to some degree.

I still maintain Rumple "succeeds" in his plan. There's just some info he's unaware of. Hook with the dagger now makes me think that the Dark Curse transferred over to him but for plot contrived reasons it won't work the same way as with Rumple. They have the built in excuse that Hook didn't stab him for the usual way rules to apply. Because no way do I see them writing Belle giving the dagger to hook if Rumple is still under its control. And that could also be a plot contrived way for Hook to still be alive if his heart gets crushed. The curse is strong enough for his life to be maintained through his ankles or something. Belle is giving it to him cause it's his. Or it's a shapeshifted Belle.

I don't know if A&E are just delusional or if they learned to be PC after they got attacked last time for saying Rumple's only looking out for his own interests. Onscreen I think Rumple is pretty self-aware. That's always been what set him apart from the black hole. He told Emma the truth about himself, even if he was using the truth for manipulation, it was still the truth. When Emma brought up that mariage to Belle thing, he straight up told her Belle married him despite knowing that he will always pick power over everything. Now I don't konw if that assessment will hold true and I do think it's a bit off. It's true in the sense that Belle is a dumb ass that always went back to him no matter what. But I don't think Belle married him with the full knowledge that he will always pick power. She married him thinking he's changed and wants to be a good guy. To be fair, he didn't exactly planned it. Emma went to him and asked for his help which he took advantage of. Which is pretty much his m.o. I will agree that the gloating was out of character. Even the Milah thing was off.

Yes Beauty and the Beast is a bad boy-good girl trope but it was a complete story played out in 2 hours. The problems I'm speaking of mainly applies to tv and books to a certain degree. I won't get into how far apart Disney's Beast is to Rumple on the badness scale since that's been covered by everyone else, but when that story is played out over 4 seasons? It's headed straight down towards the pits of idiocy as demonstrated by the fact that Rumbelle only worked well for one episode, Skin Deep. The 2 hour movie or 1 episode only really allows for one screwup or a 10 minute spat before the bad guy is fully and truly "reformed." Everyone's allowed 1 screwup. That's never going to happen in a long running series though. Rumple is a character that should never be a love interest. There's plenty of other romantic leading men on this show for that. Now it seems like every single action of his is framed within the context of Rumbelle, which I think was Robert's point in an interview awhile back. I liked him with Cora but I thought their ending was perfect for them. If he has to be with someone, I much rather him be with someone like Ingrid. She doesn't take crap from him, is powerful in her own right, she's not power crazy so there's not that "bringing out the worst" in each other dynamic he had with Cora and she would be protective of Emma and therefore the good guys. That would be a better way to "leash" him than what they've done with Rumbelle. Ingrid would just thwart him instead of bleating about his good heart and she has the power to go toe to toe with him. Watching them try to outwit each other would be entertaining at least.

Rumbelle is just typical of the bad boy-good girl trope down to a tee. And nothing good ever comes out of those. For the most part the trope seems to be popular because for some reason it's seen as romantic that the bad guy is bad to the entire world but is a big sad teddy bear to the woman he loves. She's unique guys! But inevitably, 100% of the time, the bad boy always does something messed up to the "heroine" and now she gets lumped in with the rest of the world that he treats like crap. The shine is taken away and the only 2 solutions are, the girl gets to stay dumb and forgive the guy and/or the guy changes. I recall the Rumbelle fandom tearing Moe apart cause he wanted to erase Belle's memories and the argument then was well at least Rumple respects her agency. I didn't agree with that assessment then and I still don't. Now that Rumple is wanting to do the exact same thing with altering her memories it's not even up for debate.

Cora was the beginning of the end of Once as we knew it. Because of her we got the worst storylines ever and it hasn't stopped. Not content with that, they turned her into a pathetic victim. Given that, Pan reigns as the best Once villain, besides S1/S2 Rumple. And the culmination of his arc gave us Going Home. Hard to argue with that vs Snow's Dark Heart. I loved Ingrid but I don't know if she should get the straight villain label. Not because she got her redemption but because she wasn't really Storybrook's antagonist. Nor did I think she served as an antagonist to Elsa, Anna or Emma. I can't explain it very well but she just has a different feel to her from the rest.

Anna did more than that, she tried to put Ingrid in the hat. Anyway the writers effed up big time. Instead of trying to shoe-horn in the black hole in that Emma/Lily flashback it would've served them better had they drawn the parallel between Ingrid and Emma. Ingrid trying to find magical sisters seem kind of crazy and unrelatable but if you break it down what she was really trying to find were people like her because she thought that it would guarantee that they would understand her and not judge her. In the same way Emma could only connect to people she thought were like her, loners/orphans. That's probably why she's drawn to Neal, Elsa, Ingrid and Hook. The Emma/Lily thing could've easily grounded Ingrid's plot. But no we can't have that. Why do these writers constantly miss what's right under their noses? It's really a head scratcher.

Well to be fair to Ingrid, she thought that Emma's magic manifesting was a sign. Even if the "break up" hadn't happened then, it would've happened another time for another reason. Emma's too damaged already by this point as shown by the flashbacks. She has zero trust in people and is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Any little thing Ingrid did and Emma got paranoid that she was about to be chucked out. One misstep and that was it for Emma. In that way she's more like Ingrid than anyone. They let their own insecurities color everything in their life, and it doesn't help that there is a real basis for them. That whole sequence reminded me of Ingrid/Anna in the jail where one miscue from Anna and Ingrid wrote her off.

I thought the episode sucked and I love Ingrid. She was about the only bright spot and it was more Mitchell herself than the story or words. Was there a reason Emma and Elsa went to Gold and Belle? How did they figure those 2 wouldn't be affected by the spell and try to kill them on sight? As far as they knew only them and Anna would be immune. Why did they make those yellow ribbons so useless to the plot when they spent so much time on them? I swear those ribbons got more airtime than Snow, Belle, Marian, or Will plus all of the non-regulars and it ended up being a big fat nothing. And even though I called the letter and Gerda's "I love you and regret urning you" stopping Ingrid in the spoiler thread, I still thought it was contrived, like 90% of the stuff on this show.