shipperx

Re: Zelena in Oz, I think the plot is was that Robin had an hour 'to live' and Zelena was going to be left to raise Green Bean on her own and expressly said she was going to raise the baby to be wicked. With Robin 'dead'. Z would have sole custody, so Z got banished to Oz protect the baby. Robin and Regina were going to be 'dead' shortly. Then they went to hell. At that, I've got nothing.

I was kind of expecting Regina to reveal that she had impersonated Daddy Hook because how did she know? And how sick is it to name your son after your dead son that you sold into slavery??? And what happened to Liam 2.0? Also what are Snowing and Robin thinking leaving snowflake, green bean, and Roland so they can go to hell (and did Robin mention Roland?) Oh well. Some things never change. Belle is still an idiot and Rumple is a duplicitous jerkwad. Charming barely gets to talk. And Re: CS... Could have been better. Could have been worse.

I'm with mercfan in that I didn't have a problem with what Henry said. People are making it a moral competition between Regina, Rump, and Emma. It shouldn't be, and that wasn't the way that I interpreted what Henry said, which was not a comparison of who did how much wrong but that Emma was behaving self destructively. He wasn't going to enable her flight down a dark path is her own self destructive tendencies. The very speed with which he joined her on Operation Whatever this week showed that his actions weren't out of vindictiveness or even about the degree of 'wrongness' of her actions (or of her actions as compared to Regina, etc). It want about competition. Emma jumped to that comparison but her decision making skills have been clouded by the Dark preying on her insecurities. What I thought Henry was saying was that he wasn't going to enable Emma in her reversion to shutting people out and isolating herself because those sorts of actions were what was leading her to poor decisions. As soon as she asked for real help he gave it. Basically, don't be Belle. Unconditional love isn't always a good thing even if we overly romanticize it. Similarly, I'm not as hard on Robin and Regina re: Green Bean as I've seen a few been. Again it's often being cast as a competition between Regina and Zelena as to who did the most harm. It shouldn't be a competition. It's about possibility of imminent harm. I believe the current diagnosis of Zelena would be along the lines of cray-cray. She is rather unstable. Unstable people really shouldn't have unsupervised visitation. It's not about a contest. It's about protecting a child. (And I can only imagine the screaming and teeth gnashing that would go on of it were Regina demanding custody of her rape baby. It would be ear splitting. And regardless of the desire to turn things into an evil measuring contest between characters, I think such competitions miss the point. Looked at purely on its on, an emotionally unstable woman is demanding her rape baby. That's gotta be approached with trepidation and supervised visitation. Anything else would be negligence).

But in the pic Hook and Dad are the same age. Either Dad found the fountain of youth or Hook is time traveling ...or Dad is already immortal when they met (again).

There would have to be more to Daddy Hook's death than that if he's Davy Jones (which I don't know that he is but would make sense if he were). Hook killing Daddy explains neither why Daddy would be the same age as Hook in the picture nor would cover the backstory for how Daddy could have become Davy Jones (if that's who he is).

Seriously! Made me think Deacon is just an insecure, controlling ass. Inexcusable.

Actually given that Emma's parents are her age and Hooks father is his age, it would be funny if Henry's father is his age. Creepy for Emma though.

I doubt that Hook killed his father. His father abandoned him and his father is most likely Davy Jones, the immortal who collects the souls of sailors, so probably not the easiest bloke to kill.

How would she know how she initially died? Wouldn't she only be aware of the alternate timeline. The point of changing history is that it changed.

I definitely think Merlin had a plan. A dumb plan because it is basically an idiot plot (see: "The Idiot Plot, of course, is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot. " — Roger Ebert ) but a plan which inexplicably hinged on sharing no useful information or making efforts to try a less fatal route to solution). I mean we know that the Dark Ones plans will be thwarted. It's Once. We know the ending. What's more Merlin was clairvoyant, so odds are he did too. So his total lack of trying to avert this cluster$&@ tends to favor it was an accepted sacrifice for said end game. Which is still an idiot plot.

Who on earth forced a grown man into proposing? What was the supposed coercion? She was nice to him? The Crawleys didn't chase him from the house sooner? Seriously, he was an independently wealthy man over 40. His claiming any sort of coercion in the circumstances shown is absurd.

It's called an analogy for a reason. I'm not saying that magic is literally like crack. I'll leave that sort of thing to Darth Willow. The point is that what happened in both cases was not voluntary. That he has low tolerance for exposure does not expunge the fact that he was opposed to the exposure, to the point that he explicitly states that he'd rather die. Repeat, he was willing to die to avoid becoming the dark one and then the dark one was forced on him and now he's 'blamed' for not resisting enough? For having weakness when exposed to the very thing he prefer dying to being exposed to? You're placing all blame in a REaction. That hardly seemed fair when he not only never asked for this, he point blank said he'd rather die. He isn't without weakness, but it is frankly strange to compare being forced to accept something he said he'd rather die than have forced on him to a bad day in traffic-- which was what my quote was responding to. Exactly! And it was forced on him when he said he'd rather die. But it was forced on him anyway. Having 'evil incarnate' forced on you against you will is several magnitudes beyond 'a bad day in traffic'. When you would rather die than have something forced on you it isn't something happeneng at the drop of a hat or because you had a bad day. It is an extreme event where something horrific was forced on you against your will-- in this case, in your words, evil incarnate So the analogy stands-- you don't blame someone for a low tolerance for alcohol when they had it forcibly poured down their throat. It's not about likening magic to a drug it is about force and blaming who something was forced upon as though they hadn't resisted. As if they are as culpable as if they had chosen this path rather than having the situation forced upon them. I think where you are getting derailed is in thinking that the analogy compares Dark One to alcohol. That isn't the point (and I'm not doing that). The point is that blaming someone for weakness in how they react to a situation that is forced on them is blaming them for the wrong darn thing. It's victim blaming (in a localized context ... And before I'm accused of condoning murder or some hyperbolic argument like that, I'm not. I never said that Hook is wholly victim in this or that he bears no responsibility for his actions. He has made choices and he bears responsibility for consequences for. HIS. choices. But there are also mitigating circumstances in that the situation and context were forced on him against his will... and comparing it to a bad day in traffic is such a reductive argument that it's just misses the mark for me in a very big way. Hook is neither wholly victim nor solely responsible. It's possible for it to be somewhere between two polar extremes. So arguments based as only one or the other feel both specious and oversimplified to me.

See I think the thing being overlooked is the elephant in the room. Hook wants revenge against the Dark One. Yeah, that's been Rumple for him. And he's hella angry at Dark Emma and claims that he wants revenge on her. What's the overlap here? The Dark One. Hook can easily be telling the truth. He wants revenge. He wants revenge against the Dark One. What's the ultimate revenge? Destroying the Dark One. Not Rumps. Not Emma. The whole Dark One thing. And now they're all in Storybook. He can now get his revenge in full. Nimue probably didn't think through what Hook's vendetta might actually mean.

I think it's easy to get stuck on definitions especially when people aren't agreeing on the definition. Basically 'Edith loved Strallen' could be better meteorites differently by different people just as it can be debated whether it would even require real romantic love to have a successful marriage in that particular context. Basically it's possible to think that Edith could love Strallen and not be passionately in love with him. It's also possible she thinks she loves him 'enough' to marry him in their society. Robert didn't even love Cora when he married her. Band they fully intended Mary to marry Patrick and it was absolutely clear she was not in love with him. Edith cared about Strallen. Edith thought she could have a successful marriage and home with Syrallen. It was her choice. And yet Violet and Robert -- for the first time ever-- decided to tinker with Edith's love life after years and years of noticeably not giving the least damn. All of a sudden they d code that despite what Edith was looking forward to they'd be jerks to the fiancé and make him feel bad because out of the blue they decide to notice Edith. Edith had the right to choose and everyone involved took that from her. Claiming it was 'for her own good' after years of ignoring her and then returning to ignoring her isn't the favor they thought it was. Would Edith prefer a younger man who passionately loved her? Yeah she probably would, she also had practical reasons for believing that the odds were against that happening for her. So rather than allow her to make the best of what she had, they decided to interfere leaving her arguably worse off than she had been before and without their having any plan to make it any better (or expending any energy in helping). So yeah it was a disservice to interfere. It wasn't like any of them paid any attention to her situation again until they found out about her love child. They could barely find energy to care (much less comfort) her when her next boyfriend died. Certainly not enough to criticize Mary for two minutes for mocking Edith's grief.

It's sort of a weirdly resistant to the plot accusation to say that Hook is 'one bad day' from going evil. That's not the plot in play. In the plot, he chose to die rather than 'go evil'. The plot explicitly states that the Dark One' thing was forced on him (yes, with cause, but it was still against his will). It's like blaming a drunk person for low alcohol tolerance after someone forcibly poured alcohol down his throat. Sure, the plot is stupid. And sure, the show's explanations of 'magic' are always ridiculously illogical. But it is the plot. The plot is saying that it takes much more than a 'bad day'. Being cursed with the idiotic Dark One (against his will) is intended to be quite a bit worse than being out of coffee, losing your car keys, getting caught in a traffic jam and being late for work 'bad day'. Degrees of scale actually are supposed to matter. There is an intended degree of scale in saying a dude got forcibly turned into the original source of evil magic for multiple worlds and a 'bad day'. And I say this as someone who always thought that Angel informed Angelus... And yet, except in shipper fights, still love the character. The point of this story is that these are extraordinary circumstances. Hook didn't choose the curse that's at work here -- which is not to say that he bears NO responsibility for his actions. There's a heck of a lot of ground between inherently evil and utterly innocent victim. Sometimes over simplifying making everything either/or black or white does no one any favors. Yes, the writing sucks but it doesn't suck to the point that there's no sense of scale and no subtlety whatsoever. So, while I don't think the plot is going to make much sense as this plays out, I do think it's meant to be redeemable Hook. I'm pretty sure he'll sacrifice himself for the greater good next week. He'll prevent the Dark from winning in the end (I'm guessing). So the only truly awful thing is the death of Merlin...which given all the info Merlin didn't act on that could have forestalled some of this, has to be at least partially on Merlin. Dude could see the freaking future and yet never did anything to change it (or even give anyone a heads up about the train barreling down the tracks! And why the heck was he brewing the darn Dark Curse potion I n the first place? ::headdesk::)

There are some huge plot holes in this one. Why is Merlin leaving a voice mail over a cauldron of dark curse rather than,y'know, destroying the curse? Why was he sending the heroes to Nimue? Why, if he saw this, darkest path, did he warn no one about anything? Free will is one thing, but directing someone down a road but neglecting to mention the bridge is going to collapse if you step on it is sort of criminal negligence? Why is Hook doing a dark curse for 'revenge' but then only causing a scratch before poofing? Why want Rumps head for harming Emma if Dark Hook hates Emma? Why release Emma so she can work to thwart him? Etc. Huge plot holes. They're are significant problems with the script and I think that the Dark Hook plot makes virtually no sense. That said, I also dismiss a lot of the infantilizing Emma with 'mean words are unforgivable'. Mean words are forgivable and, honestly, they weren't that mean. There was truth to her choosing to run and to distrust. It's clumsy writing of course as clearly the lesson of the whole arc was summed up in the Guardians of the Galaxy hand hold that repelled the death eaters, I'm sorry, the 'furies'. But that's still the point the story is hammering. I also don't have a problem with Henry. He wasn't holding Emma to a higher standard than Regina. He wasn't less forgiving. He just wasn't enabling her. As soon as he thought he wasn't enabling he was on her side. Yes, forgive. Don't help someone down their oath of self destruction. Basically, don't be Belle. So I don't actually have a problem with Henry. I think Emma is an adult and the hero and she'll come through this just fine. Merlin either has a master plan or he is utterly stupid or criminally negligent or both. Baby Green Bean was hilariously cute. I'd give this ep a C- Lots of what-the-huh??? But some good acting along the way. I also think it mostly stinks of red herring. The question is who is lugging more fish.

There is a problem in relying on meta material though. The vast majority of viewers aren't reading Fellows thoughts in a book. I never even knew there was one. Most viewers are going solely by what's on screen (and there will be various interpretations on that). But, anyway if it's not on my he screen most viewers will know nothing of it which is why there's the axiom about showing not telling.

I understand the plot reasons that this evokes Angel/Buffy reference. But it seems purely plot. (Male love goes dark, female has to off him for the greater good). But the background and support of the story is very different. The point of Season 2 Buffy was that she was a very young girl who had gotten in very deeply over her head. She knew virtually nothing of Angels background -- willfully so -- she flipped over the pages of his biography detailing the dark aspects to search for what kind of girl he wanted to date (and got all her guesses totally wrong,) and Angel would basically lie and obsfuscate about his past (such as leaving the impression he had spent 100 years in angst rolling in the gutter in remorse...when in unexpurgated truth he'd followed Darla to China and killed people to prove to her he 'hadn't changed' as he begged her to take him back, or that he'd fed a bunch of folks to a deman in 1950s because he 'couldn't be bothered to care,' or whatever it was he was doing in the Brady bunch striped pants that got that guy killed in the 1970s. When asked about Drusilla, he was practically 'Drusilla, who?' Until Dru kidnapped him for vengeance, And he was also misleading about exactly who Spike was (pretty much only being accurate in characterizing his tenaciousness). Anyway the point of the Buffy story was Buffy growing up. She was naive. Angel had a lot of secrets that he kept from her. The show hit this note very strongly when they had her looking like a child with a lollipop with him looking like a playground lurking perv in the L.A. flashback in Becoming. Whedon himself said it was about sleeping with an inappropriately older guy then waking up to realize you knew nothing about him and his turning into a monster. The metaphor was about her innocence being destroyed (it was even a title of an episode) by growing up too fast. That is not the subtext of Captain Swan. Emma is more latter season Buffy than early Season Buffy. Emma is already full of distrust and cynicism. Hers is a journey in learning to trust and to hope. In this story, Hook is the guy she can 'see a future with'. That was NOT Angels role in season 2 ( in fact the only reason he didn't stay dead is the WB began to plan his spun off series. Otherwise he was going to be permanently dead) So while there may be plot similarities between Dark Hook and Angelus, the story subtext is quite different. Hook is actually quite different from Angel, personality wise. What drives hook is different than Angel. Angel was the guy who rewrote his love's memory and gave up his chance to be human because of his need to be 'hero' of the piece. Hook is the 'anything for love' type. So while Hook may have an Angelus phase, I'm still guessing he's more the 'give my life so she can have one' guy than the 'cursed with a soul...three times' guy who really really really needs to be the hero because he's kinda Calvinistic about these sorts of things ala Angel. And Emma... Isn't an ingenue like Season 2 Buffy.

It would be rather oddly Emma centric for Hooks death to be her sacrifice. Sacrificing someone else as a 'sacrifice' conjours up a rather evil image of the one performing a 'sacrifice' of someone else's life (sort of the way Dark Swan was intending to sacrifice Zelena). So while it might be possible to make this into Emma's sacrifice, their choice of that particular word ups the likelihood (to me) that it will be Killian's. It's easier to use sacrifice for giving your own life as opposed to taking someone else's

I think it quite likely that Merlin has a stealth plan. That look he gave Emma and Hook... Merlin knew what was coming and kept quiet. He was also willing to give up his immortality hundreds of years ago. That was what Excalibur was formed to do. I suspect that ultimately it's going to be a Return of The Jedi ending where we see Darth Nimue with Obi Merlin. And I suspect that rather than a Buffy/Angel ending where Emma kills Angelus Hook, it will be the Buffy/Spike Chosen ending, where he sacrifices his life to free her to live hers and to be a hero with a similar nod to Leia/Han

To be fair if someone humiliated you by leaving you at the altar you probably have less reason to reminisce fondly than you are about the guy who loved you to the end and was tragically killed (and is the father of your secret love child). It's only natural that Gregson's memory is treated as more treasured than Strallen's.

I agree that the point was that Matthews money was left to Mary. It was free of the entail because Matthew never inherited Downton. Robert us still alive so Matthew's personal money isn't bound to the estate even if Mary andMatthew have chosen to use it to finance the estate. Now, I have little idea of how Talbot will factor into this. Does Mary's money default to her husband? I don't know the rules at that time. Does Mary have the 1920s version of a prenup? It sounds like Talbot isn't independently wealthy. I guess these are questions that should have been ask d before rushing into marriage.

Blame Coras father. He was American. He didn't have to link money to the entail (and it was proved stupid that he did so). Of course, Robert may not have married her then. He married money. She married a title. They were lucky things tuned out as a Fellowes fairytale because most of those American money met British Aristocracy marriages of the guilded age turned out to be unhappy affairs.

But it was Xfiles fandom that invented the term shipper. And the flame wars then were between the shippers and noromos ('no romance'). Shipper fanfic was tagged MSR (Mulder/Scully romance) and I never understood the Mulder/Krycek or the Scully/Krycek people. Kycek killed Mulder's father and Scully's sister. It didn't seem like a great idea. (And, yes, I am that much of a fandom dinosaur. See: my board name!)

This would totally work. We even had Belle mention the TLK to Hook earlier this season. Hook wants that life with Emma. He died wanting that more than power or revenge...and deep down he wants it still. So the kiss would work... And would kill him. Hence the angst.