Jean

I don't buy that at all Shanna. We've seen some "adoptive" families that were presented as happy and positive. Grace and her cursed parents, King George adored James, the Darlings loved Neal. Hell Wendy and her brothers sacrificed their lives for Neal and vice versa. It's probably the most selfless story presented on the show. Can we count 3 biological families on this show that are without issues as those mentioned above? They've portrayed "blood" families a million times crappier than any adoptive ones. I don't think they've ever said blood is best or even implied it. What they stake a claim on is families but that's not defined by blood. Ruby and Snow consider each other as families or they did before Snow got a lobotomy. As for "addressing the adoption community's concerns" that's all fine and good but when are they going to address the concerns of victims of violence? Or rape victims' concerns? Or child abuse victims' concerns? I side-eye their treatment of minority characters too.

Yeah this will be kid Emma. I'm not too worried. First they're only doing it to draw a parallel to Elsa so they can't screw it up too bad cause....Disney. If it was supposed to serve another story yeah it'll be open season on Eva's evil lineage. I just wished they were more interested in world building and their own mythology instead of some shallow parallels. There could be an interesting story there with the origin of magic with Elsa, Emma and Rumple's Dark Curse. They did say we were getting the origin of that curse/magic. Also where is this childhood flashback supposed to come in? Or it won't get a full episode on its own and will be a scene randomly inserted in the beginning like they've done before? 4x1 is Elsa/Anna flashback 4x2 is Woegina's episode right? 4x3 is Charming/Will flashback 4x4 is the one with Zoso 4x5? 4x6 is Belle's

10 minutes? Boy you are optimistic aren't you? lol. I think we've gotten like 3 minutes of kid!Emma and that's including the 2 minutes of baby!Emma from the pilot. So I'm guessing we're getting 3 minutes and 30 seconds now. This makes me positive that we are getting the Elsa story with Emma now with the kid out of control magic thing and that the only reason we're getting Emma's childhood is due to Elsa.

Does anybody really think that A&E see a problem with Robin marrying his baby momma's murderer? Seriously? A&E of the Snow has a dark heart and is a brat and therefore is to blame for everything and Regina and Graham is like a rom-com, those guys? I just wish they would stop trying to make a "triangle" happen like it's the new fetch. Do they have some leftover issues from Lost? It's like they want the drama of a triangle but not real drama. They go around stamping "endgame" all over but then they want to throw in a fake 3rd wheel. The one character that theoretically they could've done a real triangle with, is closed up tighter than a clam that there's no way in hell she'd be opening up to 2 people at the same time. The only character left to do a triangle with is Henry. Imagine that. Shudders.

I think the Anna/Belle stuff is in the present and Belle gets dropped down a portal after she finds out about the dagger. Cause let's face it, no one wants to see EdR try to act. And it's about that time of the season where Rumple gets temporarily free from his ball and chain. Then Rumple will have to join Elsa and the gang to get back to Anna and Belle and there will be a grand reunion and voila, dagger drama taken care of and Belle will continue being a moron.

I have my money on Elsa doing the true love thing and saving Anna and the Storybrook contingent vanquishing the Snow Queen or I guess they can do the opposite with one of the Storybrook peeps getting the true love act and Elsa getting to off the Snow Queen. In the movie Anna saved herself and Elsa by stepping in front of Elsa when Hans was going to chop off Elsa's head. So that "act of true love" thawed her literal frozen heart and Elsa's metaphorical frozen heart. Gahhh it's so cheesy when you type it out. To be honest I don't think any of the romantic couples are getting the big love moment. Next to Anna/Elsa it'll seem trite. Which leaves Henry saving the leech or the leech saving Roland/Marian.

Belle's benign. She's boring but relatively harmless. She can even be watchable away from the you have a good heart Rumple schtick. Ok so maybe she's like a noose around Rumple's neck but she's not attached to his side all the time and she's hardly ever on. Her scenes are easy to skip through. Woegina is a malignant tumor that destroys everything that comes within a mile of it. There's no escaping that leecher of souls. I think Georgina will be great as Elsa. She just pops from those stills alone and it'll be refreshing to see the spot light on a non-villain for once, even though I like those characters.

I don't care that it's one scene or multiple scenes or a whole damn arc but the fact that anyone has to apologize, comfort or feel guilty about Woegina, especially the woman who 5 seconds ago watched Woegina burn her mom at the stake, is downright disgusting. The number of characters this show has destroyed to prop poor poor St. Victim Woegina is disgusting. Why don't they just spin her off to her own damn show? Or spin off the other characters to another show so they can just have Woegina crying for 40 minutes. I'd like to see how well their pet can carry their fanfiction alone. All I asked for was that Woegina not contaminate the characters I want to watch damn it. Now the only thing I will root for is for her to die and get off my damn screen.

Yes! That's what I was saying earlier that their new bs episodes aren't only crappy but they also taint the good older episodes/stories. The thing about the Dark Curse that bothers me too is that, it clearly isn't the only option to get to land with no magic. Both times, they acted like Rumple and the Charmings had no choice but to cast this big horrible (but not) curse. I know with the Charmings, they had Hook throw in that line about the "walls" being down after the Storybrook curse which is how he got the bean to work. But as far as we were shown, traveling to the land of no magic has never been a constraint of the beans and Hook knows this. It was only a constraint of Jefferson's hat, that it only works between magical worlds. Bae used the first bean that we saw to get to London. Rumple wanted Hook's first bean, which Hook tricked him and then used to get to Neverland. Hook and Cora used Hook's 2nd bean and both had no idea that Rumple had already brought magic to Storybrook. Hook used a 3rd bean to get to NYC. That's 3 freaking additional beans after we were told that Bae got the last one. Oh and apparently you can grow the plants. Don't even try to tell me Rumple's magic couldn't replicate the "perfect" soil conditions on Earth that was needed to grow them. Then on top of all infinite supply of beans (for Hook anyway) there are other ways besides the beans. Flying monkeys, shadows, silver shoes, a magical tree/wardrobe, tornado, and however the tasered Dragon got here. Maybe mermaids can too. Can't say for sure cause Ariel swam to magical Storybrook.

I'm convinced this is for 2 reasons: a) they are forced to write Hook and Emma entirely in the present and not the past, so we see practically every single moment of them that exists playing out in real time. And b), they like or dislike Hook and Emma equally and therefore the story isn't framed in a way that emphasizes one character over another. Also someone somewhere said Christine Boylan was the designated Hook writer and left the show for greener pastures over the summer. It will be interesting to see if Hook and Hook/Emma holds up. Rumbelle and Rumple pretty much fell apart after Jane E. vacated that role. Note: I don't think they are written all that well either, in general. But compared to the others on the show? Yeah they do slightly better. I don't think they were all that interesting until the finale. I think they are less problematic than Rumbelle because they aren't as extreme. Hook isn't as bad as Rumple and Emma is nowhere near Belle good and innocent territory. But they both have enough of an edge to them to keep them from being completely cheesy as Snow and Charming.

Well is the issue really that it has gotten that much worse in S3 or is it that we've gotten that much more nitpicky because we're no longer that immersed in the story and characters anymore? I feel like the patience and willingness to overlook some dumb ass things have decreased as time goes by. A&E pretty much treat their audience like idiots or brainwashed cult members that are supposed to take everything they say as holy truth. I mean in S2 I think they were absolutely flabbergasted that they got so much flack for having WoodAugust die by taser or that anyone thought the thing Tamara was using was a taser. I don't think that's the problem. They have no problem calling Snow a killer and murderer onscreen. Repeatedly. You will never hear that word onscreen in relation to Woegina post S1. Cora and Daniel are meant to be dead characters also, yet it's forever a strike against Snow. It's a matter of how they want to frame the story, full stop. And that story is Snow and Eva are "teh evul" and Woegina is the victim saint. If it was Snow who killed an entire village, she would've been stoned to death and off the show by now.

Hat Trick is easily in my top 5 episodes. But to be honest I'd be hard pressed to come up with a top 10. Vladimir Cvetko is the writer and he's only written that one episode and nothing else for Once. They probably fired him after they saw his work. I mean it's clear they only want mediocre and crappy writing. The co-writer is Goodman. I wonder what that's all about. That episode probably had the tightest dialogue. I like Jane E. but she can veer towards being sappy. I think Hat Trick is one of those "lightning doesn't strike twice" things. I would give all the credit to Sebastian Stan but his subsequent appearances weren't that impressive. I used to want him as a regular but now I'm glad they weren't able to ruin his character as they have with the others. But how do you explain the crappiness that was S2? I don't think giving these writers more time and space would improve anything. They would just use that time for more Woegina vs Snow flashbacks, Woegina crying over getting victimized, the good guys being stupid etc. Man if Wicked was longer than 11 episodes, Snow would be making friendship bracelets for Zelena before they found out that she was Wicked. And they would have time to squeeze in more Eva is "teh evul" flashbacks.

I think it kind of worked in the sense that Woegina has wanted the citizens to hate Snow forever and she never got why they didn't. They never turned on Snow, back in the forest. Here in her world and her curse, she could get them to do that. Also Snow was the focal point. She got all the story and the drama. David didn't get any "flack" means he didn't get any story out of it.

I don't know about that. A&E basically said they came up with 3B because they were dying to answer this one question "What if someone was jealous of Woegina?" That's it. That's the core idea of 3B. I think 3B had the potential to be more fun than 3A since Wicked is built to be campy and fun. The angle they took on Pan was too emo from the get go. As for why 3B looked a lot like S1? Well that's cause A&E are uncreative to the extreme. They are not content with just bastardizing popular fairy tales and other fictional characters, they have now stooped to cribbing off themselves. That's really what 3B is, a bastardization of S1. Let me count the ways. S1 was supposed to answer why the Evil Queen hated/was jealous of Snow White. We got the curse and the mystery (a dumb and dumber version) of who cast the curse and why they did it. We got the mommy TLK and a brand new spanking shinier Savior. The writers claim we got a story of the missing year, like how they laid out the history in S1. We got the magical baby sent to another realm and grew up with parental abandonment issues. Zelena/Rumple slavery looks like Woegina/Graham (except for the rape part).

The prince is obviously one of Han's brothers. I guess they can tie him in to other people since said no name character isn't strictly Frozen protected property. I want those 2 together too but not for watching. I hope Henry superglues himself to Woegina's side permamently. They should become the first ever conjoined Mom/Son with no possibility for separation. Ever. Maximum containment people!

I'm 100% positive Hood and Woegina are endgame. You guys really can't think of more story for them? We still need the wedding with the big bad showing up with the worst curse ever, the truest wuv that ever wuved when they split a soul and spleen, and birthing of the super special octuplets. That should take them to the end of the series easily, however long that is. Snow and Charming have moved into supporting roles but I'm sure they can separate them again or give them some kind of baby drama. I'm still waiting for a baby swap or baby-knapping. That's one of the soap staples they haven't gotten to yet that I'm sure it's coming down the pipe. Emma and Hook aren't focused on all the time and their brand of drama is pretty benign compared to the others. Even in the middle of whatever coupley mini-drama they have, they still do their running around town thing. Rumbelle? Well I'm sure they'll keep on the same track they've been on the last 2 seasons. Having 4 established/official couples don't means happiness. They're pretty much established now. I don't think they're real big fans of the "build-up" part of a love story. They like to have the couples get together ASAP and the drama comes after.

Is this Kalinda person the new designated Woegina writer? And is this her personal endorsement? Cause......lol I don't really care except I hope this means Jane E. gets to move on to greener pastures. Maybe she's assigned Elsa temporarily. A&E would not want to eff up Disney's current cash cow.

It looks like those fake rocks they recreated as the parents' grave. It's going to be really morbid if Rumple stuck her in an urn with her parents' ashes!

I feel like A&E have been repeating that Emma magic line since S2 and all we get is a scene showing her doing the spirit fingers and then they act like it's a bona fide story. But maybe with Elsa and Frozen tie-in they'll actually do something with it. I have my doubts. My theory is that the Snow Queen was Elsa's mentor and if that's the case I hope Elsa becomes Emma's mentor. We need a new magic line separate from Rumple. Although knowing this show Rumple probably taught the Snow Queen. I'm not gonna lie but I'd be happy as a peach if all I got out of the Elsa/Emma "friendship" was a drunken karaoke night in a dive bar, with them singing "Let It Go" or any Disney song for that matter. Hakuna Matata anyone? It's not going to happen though is it?

I thought he started taking kids to search for the "heart of the truest believer." Man I can't even type that without rolling my eyes. It's just so cheesy but they don't want to embrace their cheesiness. I think Disney would draw the line at them offing a popular Disney Princess. But she can be moved offscreen permanently. I don't think Rumple needs to go completely cray-cray and start killing off entire villages. The fascinating part of Rumple for me is that he looks and acts crazy but his mind is actually sharp and always plotting something. It's the dichotomy that's visually presented in Rumple vs Gold. Rumple needs a goal. He should always be working an angle. And that goal needs to be more interesting than "Don't piss off Belle and keep Belle loving and pliant."

I'm not impressed by the new James Dean look. It just looks so normal. I think the character needs the distinct pirate, out of time, out of place look. It can be with or without the hook. I get that the jacket was cumbersome but they can lighten the load and still look pirate-y. Maybe something like in Princess Bride or a less flamboyant Johnny Depp pirate. He needs that little something that gives him an outlandish quality and flair. Besides I think it's kind of funny and fitting that Emma who resists the fairy tale world so much and just wants a normal life, hooks up with the guy that walks around decked out in full fairy tale gear. Also I rather have a fun and droll Hook than an emo Hook which is where I see this clothes thing is leading to.

I'm pretty sure they like to write for Rumple and Carlyle but they're completely lost as to what to do with him and have been since Miller's Daughter. I don't know if it's a coincidence that that was the last episode Jane E. wrote for Rumple or if they just plain don't know where to go with his character after he completed his Holy Grail quest by reuniting with Bae. Maybe a combination of both. They wouldn't have bungled the Bae/Rumple relationship so badly if they enjoyed writing for him and knew what to do. Now maybe some of that could be blamed on how badly they messed up Bae with Neal and the casting but they literally got nothing after 2x16. That was just 2 episodes in from his real debut, they couldn't have judged him that quickly. MRJ was pretty good in Manhattan. Rumple didn't get even get all that much material from Neal's death and the dude "died" twice! If that was Woegina and Henry we would've spent an entire season on it. Maybe more. Actually that wouldn't even happen because they would probably expire from depression if they had to kill off Henry, their so-called "soul" of the series. They can't go the full hog and give Rumple the "Woegina redemption" because Robert wants to play the villain and conflicted. I don't know how much say Robert has. Maybe they want to keep him conflicted, they just don't know how. They can't have him do the full villain act because now he's a romantic leading man in Rumbelle and here's where I think they buckled under fan pressure. They don't know what to do with him and they don't know what to do with him in relation to the other characters. That's why he was isolated the entire S3. They could've done so much more with Rumple and daddy Pan, Rumple/Zelena, Rumple/anyone but they don't. It just feels like Rumple gets a lot because of Carlyle, not the story or writing itself. He could probably be reading a phone book and it would feel like a real big moment for Rumple.

I don't know about that, see Henry and Belle. Although I guess you could say they do fine in the background but when the writers force attention on them, it all goes to hell. I think the writing is the worst for the characters when they try to write high-brow drama or what they think is drama and good writing. Well they suck at that. Majorly. You could always tell when this is too, because A&E are not shy about patting themselves on the back. So the characters with the most drama usually fare the worst. And their pet is automatically trash no matter what. Mary Sues are always the worst. I think Rumple gets by purely on Carlyle's talent. When David was stuck in the middle of a triangle and drama he suffered too. As Snow's sidekick there's not a lot to hate there or controversy. Hook gets more even writing than the rest and I have a theory why. He's not a straight up villain so he doesn't get as much attention and love. He's not a good guy either so they don't need to make him super dumb and get him to prop the bad guys. He's paired up with Emma who's not always drama-filled and she doesn't always have to be the one with the "bigger personality" so he gets more of an identity than say Charming, Belle or Hood.

Will doesn't have to be a unique character. There are only a handful of character tropes out there and in Once, one character usually takes care of 3 or 4 of those tropes already so it's kind of hard to be unique on this show. Snow, Belle, Red, all the Disney Princesses etc. are kind of redundant. The core people themselves have overlapping traits. Good gawd the daddy/parent abandonment issues on this show is practically a requirement to exist. What I'm more interested in, is his interactions with the other people. That's what he brings to the table and his relationships with those people can be unique. He's not another villain so that guarantees that he'll bring a different dynamic to the group and it looks like he will get integrated. We haven't seen Charming with a friend before and if anyone desperately needs something, anything it's Charming. Hook had a "rival" in Rumple but it was never on an even playing field. At most he was just a pest to Rumple so Will and Hook being at odds, that's not over fighting a woman, is new. I don't know where they're going with Emma and Will, if anywhere, but 100% it's not romantic. Will and Rumple could be fun too.

Snow and Red was one of my favorite relationships in S1 and I liked Charming and Red too. Such a waste. Also with Red around we got more Granny too. If Will wasn't already with Ana whom I did like, he'd be great with Red. Isn't Will supposed to be Charming's bff from childhood? That's an automatic connection right there. He also knew Maleficent so that's something that can carry over in 4B. He was also kicked out of the Merry Men gang so he is connected to the cardboard but I like to ignore that connection. I don't think Will is going to be Emma's friend. JMo would've mentioned it along with Elsa. Since he's Charming's buddy, he can be her "uncle." I'm also willing to bet he's got a connection to the Snow Queen and the reason he's in Storybrook in the first place is to rescue Ana for some reason.