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.

Those ratings are what they were getting in S2 and S3 so it's not a lost at all. The lost comes from the "here for Frozen" viewers gain and the conclusion should be, A&E had a billion dollor cash cow in their back pocket and failed to milk it on all levels. The Frozen centric promotions ceased after the premiere and the story couldn't hold the viewers interest. And now it's the holidays so people are looking for holiday related or heart-warming cheesy stuff with their family. Once doesn't and can't do that being a soap opera format. If it was more episodic they could've done an "Elsa/Anna does Christmas in NYC" or "Kristoff and Anna tries to cook a turkey, hilarity ensues." I think as cheesy and geared towards kids and families as those things are, if you want to hang on to the Frozen demos then it would've been a lot more successful than the same old Once soap opera we've been getting. Who wants to watch that depressing stuff Once regularly puts out, especially during the holidays?

I dare say most of the audience, except for maybe the Woegina fans?, have moved on from 10 year old Snow telling a secret plot too but 4 seasons on and soul sucker is still whining about it and the show continues to bring it up every other time Snow is onscreen. In show time it's been at least 40 years. So I think it's a little disingenuous for the writers to "move on" to apply only to the black holes crimes but she's forever allowed to continue whining and crying about a broken nail, and whatever slight against her biggest victim is me self.

Well Jamie Chung is not even Chinese, she's Korean American so there's that. To be fair the "white" characters are handled problematically too. A&E's equal opportunity shitty writing. About the only good thing you can say the white characters gets more of is airtime.

Yeah that's it. In that sense A&E did follow the movie's formula where Anna was the adventurer and Elsa was more passive and introspective but in the movie that passivity allowed them to build up to THE moment of the film which was given to Elsa in Let It Go. Once can't give Elsa that moment. I have a feeling their Elsa "moment" was the pity party she threw on the beach. I think it's also a lot less interesting to see real actors getting the passive material vs animation. The 9 episodes is the killer isn't it? I bet what they were going for was in the film Anna set out to find Elsa so now Elsa gets to find Anna. Except I can't believe no one in that writing room realized how different it is to watch a 2 hour movie in one go vs. 9 episodes over the course of 2 months.

Oh ok that is an important distinction. That makes it even worse. Because once again the black hole skates free and someone else is left holding her poop bag. I didn't watch the adultery talk scene myself but I read enough to get the gist from this board. From what I read it sounds exactly like the Bleeding Through talk. Where black hole goes "it's complicated my mom killed your mom" and Snow goes "I murdered your mom and I was such a brat." (Notice the soul sucker killing Snow's dad wasn't even touched upon). Well wasn't Snow condoning her own mom's murder then? By bringing up her own crime to make it seem like Cora's was ok? Was there backlash then over the condoning of murder? I mean they sound like the same conversation to me. But I could be wrong since I didn't see the latter.

I'm going to give the writers a pass on this one. After all if they can get some of the audience to go "aww poor Woegina why can't she ever be happy without someone ruining it" after slaughtering entire villages, I'd side-eye the "backlash" at adultery too. So mass murder deserves sympathy and hugs but the line in the sand is adultery? I don't blame them for thinking they could get away with murder and therefore anything else under the sun at this point. Now I get your point Kaos about fantasy vs realistic crimes or issues and agree with it to a certain point but I think there's been some close scenarios. The kid Owen/Greg one for example. If the response to that was poor Woegina and her big crocodile tears, screw that bratty selfish 4 year old crybaby, why wouldn't they think it's a free for all?

I thought Anna was annoying in Charming's episode and the Belle backstory was useless. But her scenes with Rumple, especially in the barn were awesome. I also loved the jail scene with Ingrid in Belle's episode and the vows in the trunk. I'm not much for sappy romances but I went aww a little bit. Those scenes I think could be listed in a top standout scene list somewhere of 4A. The rest of her material was comic relief lifted out of the movie. The problem with Elsa is not only the airtime but that most of her airtime was supporting material. I wished we got a little more substance out of Ingrid/Elsa. She finally found a person that was "like" her only not. And really it doesn't need a lot of airtime. I would've been happy if they had gotten one meaty scene like the one with Anna/Ingrid. I knew Haig was in Fringe but I gave up that show after S2.

But the bottom line is Cora did become a full fledged victim in the end, by that life-ruining evil lineage no less. Just because up to a certain point in the story she wasn't a victim doesn't mean that's not A&E's m.o. Point is she eventually fell into that category same as the others. That's like claiming A&E doesn't think or write Woegina as a victim because up until Daniel's story she wasn't one. Well she's one now and the biggest one of them all to boot. Or they didn't give Ingrid a sob story up until 4x07 so she isn't one and a million other characters had more of a sob story at 4x06. Yes but it wasn't played like "Look at this poor baby victim! Feel his pain and weep for him! Why is the universe so unjustly cruel to him. He deserves so much happiness." A&E are not subtle at all. There's a clear difference when they simply put a story onscreen vs. when they are desperately trying to get the audience to feel a certain way. As an example, just look at Snow. Her backstory is just as tragic as anyone else's and never once has that "victim" status translated onscreen. I've never gotten that "Look at poor Snow and how sad her life is." Instead we get Snow the murderer, Snow the happiness destroyer, Snow the bratty and selfish kid who ruined others' lives repeated over and over and over. Jafar got a crappy childhood backstory yes. But they never tried to use it as a righteous justification for his villainy. He remained a villain to the end, not a misunderstood victim. He was punished and Alice, Will, Cyrus etc. weren't villainized when they were trying to defeat him.

I think that's Marian in the background. Charming knew her? Belle's an idiot if she sticks with Rumple or leaves him. She married him knowing what he was and was going around spouting his good heart crap when he forced her to clean blood from his torture sessions. Nothing he's done this season is any worse than the past. I actually think he's been pretty mild compared to say attempting to kill his grandkid. It's not like he promised her that he'd change and be a good man either. He only promised that to dead Neal. It's like marrying a serial killer whom you know is one and then bitching that he's a serial killer. She has zero room for complaints.

Well also no one at Disney wants a full time job babysitting A&E. They sure hit the jackpot with the casting of Elsa/Anna though. Kristoff too but the ladies really shine. I like both Haig and Lail enough that I would watch other works from them. One thing I find strange is Elsa seems to be more popular of the 2 from the film, and yet in both the film and Once, Anna gets to do way more. I predicted that they would let Elsa lead the story in a way she really didn't in the film but they didn't do that.