companionenvy

The problem is that, with the exception of this episode, most of the time the show seems to think that Snow is right to be obsessed with doing the "right" thing to an absurd, self and others-destructive way. Like, they really don't see a difference between Snow potentially using the candle to save her mother at the cost of an innocent life (which actually would have been wrong, if understandable given Snow's age and the temptation), and Snow risking her family and entire kingdom multiple times in order to save Regina (which is lunacy, and ultimately selfish).

If it was in the podcast, I guess that's what the show is going with, but this doesn't really make sense to me. Functionally, if you believe in an afterlife that rewards goodness, it isn't any different than knowing that there is an afterlife that rewards goodness. In either case, you're doing your good deeds for "moral dessert." I suppose in most cases, even religious people who theoretically believe in that kind of system don't necessarily live their lives as an attempt to rack up "points," probably because their concept of heaven and what it takes to get there is fairly abstract and distant. But Doug clearly does live his life with the point system in mind, so again, I'm not seeing why his actions would be meaningfully different than the Soul Squad's.

I don't see why it would make a difference, though. As long as Doug fully believes it, his motivations are no purer than that of the Soul-Squad. The same would be true for someone with a far less accurate idea of the afterlife - as long as someone genuinely believes that access to heaven or some heaven-equivalent is dependent on how much good you do, their motives are compromised.

Doh! You're right, of course. Totally forgot that.

I've never blamed Snow for the Echo Cave revelation. Not only was she forced into it, she takes great pains to try to soften it by talking about how much she values what she has with Emma, and making it clear that her desire comes from the sense of what she's missed with her. Snow wouldn't be human if she didn't feel this way, and it isn't any reflection on Emma. I do think, however, that Snow has been in some denial over her feelings until recently - the orphan scene, combined with the "I don't know how to comfort my daughter - its the first thing a mother learns" have reinforced how irrevocable her loss is. Emma's confession to Neal is a lot more brutal, not that I blame her for it, either.

Hook's backstory isn't necessarily the best written one we've gotten, but it is enjoyable and believable, and gives real insight into his character. It does make me regret more that we never see how he got from where he was at the end of "Good Form" to where he was at the beginning of "The Crocodile," as there's obviously been a considerable devolution, and that's before he loses Milah and embarks on the revenge quest. I can fill in the blanks fairly easily, but I think it would have been worth at least an episode. Similarly, I wish we'd had more of him with Pan - Pan calling him Killian, a name that no one else (except maybe Regina?) knows at this point, IIRC, is especially effective. I also appreciate a rare instance of the show allowing characters to do something morally gray and not painting it as the obviously wrong choice. In absolute moral terms, ripping out the heart of the Lost Boy isn't justifiable, but it is completely in character for, not only Regina, but Emma to be willing to do it, and I'm glad that the show doesn't demonize them for it. Absolute ethics or not, as mothers, Regina and Emma should be willing to do what they did, and I think Snow comes off worse for resisting it than Emma does for approving it. In general, I feel like 3A is a high point in the show's treatment of present-day Regina. She's part of the team for a believable reason, in a context that might even justify the growth of some respect between her and Emma, but there's no illusion that these people are or could plausibly become friends, or that Regina is any kind of moral paragon. Even if no one is showing a remotely proportional level of anger and distrust, it is clear that Snowing and Emma still regard Regina as a bad person - and that Regina on some level acknowledges this about herself.

I'm still expecting this to happen eventually. I think if Charlie had been planning on something like that, Sam wouldn't have tried to talk her out of it. Instead, she seemed to be planning on running away and closing herself off from the world. Really liked the Dean and Jack plot - fun dynamics between them, and fun villain. Though I'm not sure if I need the necromancer to come back, as I assume she will.

IMO, Moffat could do characterization, he just tended to bury it under too many layers of shiny plot pyrotechnics for his own good. I actually think Clara was well-written after her first season, were she was bogged down by the Impossible Girl nonsense; she wasn't always the most attractive character, personality-wise, but she was often an interesting one. You see some of the same trends on Sherlock, where the character dynamics were great until he started introducing byzantine contrivances. Of course, there were also times that Moffat's ambition did pay off, or at least failed in interesting ways. I just don't get that with Chibnall.

This was by far my favorite episode of this series, though it doesn't, IMO, quite rise to the level of the best Who episodes. Prem's death was affecting, but it was slightly undermined by the fact that he was so obviously doomed from the moment we found out he was Umbreen's fiancée but not Yaz's grandfather, to the point where I was waiting for some kind of twist that never came. I also thought the end was a little lacking; not only could they have done more with Yaz and her grandmother, I was hoping that Team TARDIS - or at least Yaz and the Doctor -- rather than the demons were going to wind up being the witnesses to Prem's death. All the same, I found the episode effective, the highlight being the scene in which the Doctor performs the wedding and makes her speech knowing that Prem is about to die. Graham's interactions with him at the "stag party" were also great. I think this was a first time DW writer, and based on this, I hope he gets other chances. As far as the bigger picture issue, I agree that this season hasn't been my cup of tea so far, but not because it is fundamentally un-DW like. Frankly, I've just found a lot of it on the dull side - which was often the case with Chibnall episodes in previous seasons as well. His episodes are largely adequate, but he's, IMO, weaker on characterization than Moffat or RTD, and as I'm someone who needs to be invested in the emotional arcs to really care about the plot, that's an issue for me. I love Jodie and think she absolutely feels like the Doctor, but for me, having three companions isn't leaving enough room to develop any of them or their relationships with the Doctor.

I think he had stopped acting quite as jerky even before Tamara's motives were revealed. He (understandably) didn't believe Emma about Tamara, but he was fairly decent about it, and seemed to recognize that it was a sensitive and painful situation. IIRC there's also at least one scene before the Tamara reveal where Neal expresses faith in Emma's capacity to succeed. And he obviously wants to do right by Henry, plus -- as different as they seem -- there's the fact that he actually is Baelfire, who was a pretty great kid. So, he does have a fair bit of good to balance out the bad. I also draw a distinction between Neal as a character and Neal/Emma. I can look past what he did or how he treated her enough to not see Neal as a total piece of crap; I can't look past it enough to see him as a viable partner for Emma. Ever. On top of everything else, their relationship as it was presented in "Tallahassee" doesn't seem remotely healthy enough for either of them to want to resume it eleven years later. It is a shame that we never get more of a sense of how Bae became Tallahassee-era Neal, but we do get at least a hint of it in this episode - there's the nice touch where Emma quotes Neal saying "never break into someplace you can't break out of," and then Pan repeats the same line later on. Combined with the number Pan is trying to do on Henry, you can sort of see how Bae might have become hopeless and cynical enough to turn to crime once he was back in the LWOM. Relatedly, there's another subtle moment where Neal seems to visibly react to Rumple mentioning that Hook brought them to Neverland.

Like I said, I do understand anyone who can't get past what he did to Emma, which is genuinely unforgiveable. But show-logic wants us to believe that he was at least kinda-sorta doing it for her own good - or, at least, that he thought he was. I don't accept that logic, because it makes no sense, but he did (finally!) apologize, and as he doesn't usually act like a total piece of garbage, I find myself able to chalk that up to crap writing and begin investing in him again.

Okay, I'll admit it: I love Neal in this episode. I understand people who aren't able to look past the ridiculousness of his reason for leaving Emma, or his douchiness to her immediately after their reunion, but he improves a lot in the end of S2, and he's pretty fantastic here. From "I'm not a boy and I sure as hell ain't lost," to coating the shaft, rather than the tip of the arrow with Dreamshade, to tricking Rumple with the squid ink, he's brave, clever, and - perhaps above all - emotionally mature. In some of his previous encounters with Rumple, as righteous as his anger is, his attitude still shows a certain childish petulance. Here, his rejection of his father is clear-eyed. When Pan initially tells him that Rumple wants to kill Henry, not save him, I was worried that Neal was falling into an obvious trap, given that Rumple had been talking about saving Henry even when he thought Neal was a hallucination, and wouldn't have had any reason to lie about his motives. But in the end, that wasn't why he decided to walk away: he accepts that Rumple has committed to saving Henry at the moment, but doesn't trust that he's going to stick with that resolve if he sees a better path forward for himself. It is the antithesis of what happened with Regina last episode, where Blue and even Tink blame her for things that aren't really her fault rather than focusing on the things that are, which manipulates the viewer into sympathizing with the villain. Had Neal been vicious to Rumple throughout and ultimately told him "You're incapable of love and can't possibly care about saving my son," the scene wouldn't have worked so well because we know that Rumple, for all his faults, does love people and is sincere in his resolution to sacrifice himself for Henry. Instead, Neal shows how well he knows his father: Rumple is capable of love and might even be capable of a certain level of sacrifice under the right circumstances, but he can't be trusted to do the right thing when push comes to shove even if he starts out with good inclinations. And as much as I think Neal is sincerely moved by "You're my happy ending, Bae," he's not wiling to risk Henry on it. In a land where people don't grow up, Neal is showing that he finally has, moving on from the part of himself that can still convince Rumple he's real with an instinctive "Papa!" to the father finally taking responsibility for his son. And yeah, it doesn't work, and he gets captured - but that doesn't mean his choice was inherently stupid.

I don't mind Neal suggesting using Roland so much as I mind Robin going along with it. Neal is pretty sure that his own son is in danger, so he's desperate. He also thinks -- rightly -- that he isn't putting Roland in all that much danger ,as they do have a credible plan for making sure Neal's the one who winds up leaving with the shadow. But from Robin's perspective, Neal wanting to get back to Emma and help rescue Henry should not be nearly enough of a reason to put his son in any danger. With the usual caveat that, after everything she's done, I never really find it credible when Regina is depicted as a non-sociopath, Regina actually isn't terrible in the Neverland scenes. I especially like her "What I always do" when Emma asks her what she did to Tinkerbelle, where you really do get a sense of regret and self-loathing. But the flashbacks are just another part of the unconvincing "poor Regina" narrative the show wants to sell. Regina calls herself a prisoner, but then, she also claims that Snow "had her fiancée murdered," which shows us how reliable she is. And as Snow adored Regina at the time of the marriage, and Leopold seems to have at least been a decent guy, if things have deteriorated since then, it is presumably Regina's own damn fault. Then we have Blue's reason for not letting Tink help Regina, which -- like last season, when people were blaming her for killing Archie, rather than for one of her many, many, actual crimes -- is a strawman that manipulates us into sympathizing with her. Even at this point in the story, there's some really good reasons Blue could have had for refusing to help. Namely "She's already killed one innocent person, is plotting revenge against a child for an well-intentioned mistake, and willingly entered into the marriage she is now complaining about - which would make her pursuing true love with another man complicated in any case." Instead, she blames her for being Cora's daughter and learning magic from Rumple, which shouldn't on its own be enough to make her unworthy of aid. The soulmate thing is stupid anyway. Unless there's some magical mechanism for making sure all true soulmates meet at the most opportune time and place, presumably tons of people don't wind up with their soulmates, and manage to have perfectly happy lives anyway. If Regina had married Daniel, she and Robin Hood wouldn't have wound up together- and Robin seems to have been happily married to Marian. Even now, after losing her, his life doesn't seem to be "ruined." So the whole concept is incoherent.

Well, I love Hook, so I would personally have been thrilled if he had become one of the unquestioned leads of the show. But as he wasn't a character from the hugely successful season 1, and was just being upgraded from secondary villain status in the previous season, I can see being anxious about centering too much of the season around a relative newbie. In the end, I think this kind of fear wound up being destructive; it is the reason the show couldn't move past still more EQ and Snowing flashbacks, or give Rumple lasting development. But I can in theory understand why they weren't willing to give us an extended flashback Neverland arc. While they did that, in effect, for the Frozen characters, those were reliably, wildly popular characters, and even there they made sure that many of the flashbacks had Anna intersecting with main canon characters like Charming, Rumple and Belle. There's no excuse, however, for not giving us something of the Neverland backstory on screen.

What's crazy to me with Neverland is that it would be a comparatively easy fix. This show has some fundamental problems, but a single flashback episode involving Hook, Pan, Bae and maybe Tink in Neverland would have gone a long way to addressing this particular glaring hole in the story. I can understand the showrunners not wanting to make the arc too Hook-centric, especially as they wanted Rumple's backstory with Pan to be the one that carried the most dramatic weight. But in an arc that has such essential flashbacks as Charming tricking Snow into believing in herself, they had ample room for some treatment of the traditional Neverland story. Like...you have two regulars who have spent years on Neverland. One of them is the iconic villain of the traditional Peter Pan story. But instead, you decide that the stories you need to tell involve Peter Pan being the Pied Piper and the father of Rumplestiltskin, and Captain Hook's brother dying on a non-Pan related jaunt to Neverland. Not that I didn't like "Good Form" - and, unlike a lot of people, I actually thought Pan being Rumple's father was a good twist as well -- but even so, at a certain point, you need to give me some version of the actual story. Alluding to a period of well over a century in which Hook is grudgingly working for Pan while also sometimes engaging in fierce battles with villainous lost boys and apparently helping Bae in some capacity and also probably sleeping with bitter ex-fairy and sometime-ally Tinkerbelle, and then never showing any of it on screen, is writerly malpractice.

Emma may not really be an orphan, but I think she very much is still a Lost Girl. And even on the orphan count, Emma's truth is that she grew up unloved without parents. Now she has parents, but they are her peers, not credible mentor figures. So while knowing that her parents really did love and want her has to help, psychologically speaking, I'm not sure "I'm an orphan" is a wildly inaccurate statement, except in the most technical sense. Not that Pan isn't screwing with her, too, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

I made a similar post about how depressing the show is a few days ago. Even though it happens largely offscreen, I do find the fact that I know that Emma finally winds up happy consoling, but knowing how thoroughly so many of my hopes and expectations are going to be disappointed makes the rewatch tough going. I think where it is going to be the worst is Season 5, which I actually enjoyed a lot the first time around. I thought both the Dark One/Camelot and Underworld arcs were interesting premises, and both included some great scenes. But much of the pleasure of watching 5A, for me, came from the expectation that Emma's capacity for love would be what allowed her to defeat the darkness. Instead, after spending so much of the previous few seasons being told she needed to let down her walls and, more recently, embrace her magic, suddenly, both using her magic and acting on her love for Hook is a bad thing that needs to be narratively punished. Similarly, having Emma fail to save Hook and have Hook save himself in 5B isn't such a bad idea on its own terms, until you realize that the show isn't going to end with a grand triumph for Emma. As you said, a character sitting back and letting someone else kill her just doesn't provide that level of satisfaction. Beyond its morality being in some ways less troubling, Game of Thrones actually provides WAY more satisfaction than Once. Off the top of my head, I can think of tons of moments of unmitigated triumph in Game of Thrones to counter the scenes of death and doom. In Once, it's a real struggle, unless I start counting moments in which Regina or Rumple get big wins. I suppose that's what is bound to happen when your moral code treats any proactive response on the part of heroes as a sign of incipient darkness.

I agree - on top of everything else, Rumple's charge against Emma didn't even seem accurate. I get that learning to believe, or coming to terms with her past, or letting down her walls, is an ongoing process and that everything wasn't solved by the TLK at the end of S1. But at this point, Emma has admitted that fairy-tales are real, fought a dragon, saved her son with a kiss, climbed a beanstalk in the Enchanted Forest to retrieve a magical compass from a giant, won a sword-fight with Captain Hook before jumping through a portal between realms, sailed on a pirate-ship made out of enchanted wood, and accepted her own magic at least enough to help Regina stop the failsafe - right after calling her same-age parents Snow White and Prince Charming "mom" and "dad" for the first time. I'd say she's doing okay on the whole belief thing.

I think this is a really strong episode, in that it doesn't invalidate Emma's experiences. Instead, it exposes the naivete of Snow's perspective. Early in the episode, Snow (or possibly Charming, I don't remember) says that they've learned that "it is never too late," which had me rolling my eyes - yeah, you all found each other, but only after Emma had gone through 28 years of hell. But then, the show actually acknowledges this directly when Snow tells Emma, in their final scene "and then when we found you, it was too late." Similarly, Snow and Charming (kind of adorably, it must be admitted) sitting there all smiles trying to encourage Emma to acknowledge that she's the savior is juxtaposed with the scene where Snow has to give Emma emotional permission to admit that Emma still thinks of herself as an orphan. And, crucially, she doesn't tell her she's wrong, make Emma responsible for her pain, or present it as Emma's failing, instead acknowledging that it is her job to change that. Just a lovely scene. I see the complaint that the parallel between Emma and flashback Snow isn't perfect, but I'm not sure that it is supposed to be: those scenes (and Rumples, for that matter) are tied broadly by the question of finding yourself, but the fact that finding herself, for Snow, involves a triumphant assertion and finding herself, at this point, for Emma involves acknowledging her lingering feelings of abandonment seems to be part of the point. I'm not sure that I have a ton to say about Pan, but I do want to acknowledge how fantastic Robbie Kay is in the role. It is a shame he doesn't seem to have done much since. While I'm praising acting, I also have to give LP some credit for the moment when she tells Emma "You said you wanted to be a leader. Now lead." It could have been typical Regina snark, but as LP played it, I think for the first time you could see some grudging respect and even encouragement coming through. Given how bizarrely antagonistic David is to Hook - no, he shouldn't like or trust him, but the total hostility is over the top -- I'm going back to the head-canon I developed at the end of season 2: as David has been essentially gaslighted into forgiving Regina and Rumple for real, horrific abuses against him on the grounds that they are "family," he's taking his suppressed rage out on Hook as the only remaining, acceptable target for his anger.

The show is always better when Emma is being proactive and characters have a clear goal, so the episode is decent on that basis alone. The episode also, and crucially, takes advantage of the fact that Emma is (or should be) far more of a pragmatist than Snow White of Prince Charming; she's no villain, but she's willing to do what needs to be done and not apologize over it. But while I like Emma's leap of faith and her leader speech, the show is still doing that incoherent thing they sometimes do where these characters are expected to act like they are living in a Disney movie when they are actually living in a less-graphic Game of Thrones episode. Emma's speech to her parents in which she points out that not only are her experiences different from theirs, but their experiences, too, shouldn't lead them to be so hopeful, is great, and right on target. Yet it seems clear that, without totally invalidating this perspective, the episode wants us to think that it is Emma who needs to change - that's what the leap of faith is all about. As usual, the show is trying to have its cake and eat it too - on one hand, "belief" is invoked as a positive thing, yet Neverland, which is run on belief, is also being depicted as a hellscape run by a despotic, demonic teenager. You can be doing a subversive fairy tale where a magical land of belief is actually a horror show, or you can be writing a world where wishing on a star and thinking happy thoughts pays cosmic dividends. You can't do both. Other thoughts: I noticed this too. Sadly, even today it actually isn't, apparently, that rare for prisoners to be shackled during childbirth. But I call BS on the idea that a 17-year old serving less than a year on a non-violent juvenile offense would be restrained to her bed during labor. Even if we assume that Emma had turned 18 and been transferred to an adult prison (which I think is still technically possible if we assume Henry was actually a little bit shy of his tenth birthday in the pilot, and was rounding up his age), it simply wouldn't have happened to a minimum security prisoner being held on a juvenile charge. - I love the scene with Hook and Emma talking about Neal/Bae, and Hook giving Emma Bae's sword. As I've heard anti-Hook people bring up the fact that he never tells her what he did to Bae as a negative against him, I also want to note that when they cut back to Emma and Hook after the previous scene, Emma is asking "How long was he with you?" which suggests to me that in the interim he's told her at least some of the story. I'm not sure that Hook would have fessed up fully at this point, but there's at least room for thinking that Emma isn't totally in the dark. - Only on this show can someone say with a straight face that he "owes a debt" to a guy who came close to flaying him to death because he decided not to kill him at the very last minute. - While I love Mary Margaret finally being allowed to have it out with Regina, as usual, she is only able to do so in scenes where her righteous anger can be framed negatively. All of the squabbling parties are supposed to be in the wrong, and presumably supernaturally influenced (at least, I hope there's supposed to be some supernatural influence, or else David apparently trying to stab Hook with his own hook really becomes overkill).

I think there were a few good reasons to separate Neal from the rest of the group. What was silly was making everyone assume Neal was definitely dead when there really wasn't any reason to do so. Facing long odds, sure, but "We need to find a magical way of locating and trying to save him on the outside chance that he's still alive, like when Emma and Snow wound up in the EF" long, and not "What are you wearing to the funeral?" long.

And here's the list. My goal is to continue for each season: Pilot – Present - the Clock moves forward. Flashback – The curse is cast, but Snow remains defiant. Overall: Positive The Thing You Love Most – Present: Emma and Henry bonding; Gold getting one-up on Regina, clearly on Emma’s side. Flashback: Regina kills Henry Sr. Overall: Positive Snow Falls: Present: Katherine revealed as David’s “wife,” Emma moves in with Mary Margaret. Flashback: Charming and Snow meet, but part because he is engaged, obviously, we know they will wind up together. Overall: Mixed Price of Gold: Present: Emma helps Ashley/thwarts Gold; takes sheriff job. Past: Rumple separates Cinderella and Thomas after she breaks the deal. Overall: Positive A Still, Small Voice: Present: Emma saves Henry from the mine; Archie threatens Regina. Past: Archie gets Geppetto’s parents killed, but then finds his courage and turns into a cricket, which is supposed to be oddly heartwarming? Overall: Positive, though the flashback is kind of icky. The Shepherd: Present: David “remembers,” then chooses Kathryn. Flashback: Charming reluctantly chooses Abigail. Overall: Negative The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Present: Regina kills Graham. Flashback: Regina steals Graham’s heart after he refuses to kill Snow. Overall: Negative Desperate Souls: Present: Emma wins the election for sheriff, though she realizes Gold manipulated her and she now owes him a favor. Past: Rumple becomes the Dark One. Overall: Mixed True North: Present: Emma reunites Nicholas and Ava with their father. Past: Regina separates Hansel and Gretel from their father. Overall: Positive. 7:15 AM: Present: MM and D resume their affair. Past: Snow takes the potion to forget Charming. Overall: Mildly negative. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: Present: Regina forbids Emma from seeing Henry. Past: Regina kills Leopold, enslaves the Mirror. Overall: Negative Skin Deep. Present: Regina finds out Gold is awake (Emma gets a brief visit with Henry), we find out that Regina has Belle locked up. Past: Rumbelle begins, but Rumple refuses to be cured and rejects Belle. Overall: Negative What Happened to Frederick: Present: MM breaks up with David, Kathryn tries to leave and is thwarted. Emma gives Henry the book back. Past: Charming saves Frederick, and goes after Snow. Overall: Mixed. Dreamy: Present: Leroy raises the money for Astrid; town starts to let up on slut-shaming MM; Katherine missing. Past: Dreamy becomes Grumpy. Overall: Mixed Red-Handed. Present: Ruby finds herself; reconciles with Granny; Kathryn’s heart is supposedly found, with MM’s fingerprints. Past: Ruby accidentally kills her boyfriend, Snow rescues and befriends her. Overall: Mixed Heart of Darkness: Present: The case against MM deepens, she escapes from prison, Gold encourages Emma. Past: Snow gets her memories back, vows to save Charming. Overall: Mixed leaning positive. Hat Trick: Present: MM voluntarily returns to prison after she and Emma escape Jefferson, with Emma resolving to help, but Regina and Gold are still plotting against her. Emma sees Jefferson and Grace’s picture in Henry’s book. Past: Jefferson trapped in Wonderland. Overall: Mixed leaning negative. The Stable Boy: Present: Emma’s plan to prove Regina framed MM fails, but then Kathryn is found alive. Past: Cora kills Daniel; Regina starts turning vengeful. Overall: Despite the Kathryn reveal, still mainly negative. The Return: Present:. Sidney’s confession thwarts Emma’s plan to prove Regina framed MM, and Emma then vows to fight for custody of Henry. Past: Rumple leaves Bae. Overall: Emma’s final, proactive decision brings it into mixed territory. The Stranger: Present: Emma refuses to believe and rejects her identity as savior; decides to run away with Henry. Past: Pinocchio abandons Emma. Overall: Negative An Apple as Red as Blood. Present: Henry eats the turnover. Past; Snow White goes under the Sleepign Curse. Overall: Negative, but clearly a TBC situation. A Land Without Magic. Present: The curse breaks, Rumple brings magic back. Past: After the TLK, Snow and Charming vow to win their kingdom back. Overall: Positive Season 2: Broken: The family separated again; MM and Emma under threat from Mulan and Aurora in the EF; Philip “dead”. Overall: Negative We are Both: Present: MM and Emma in prison, where Emma meets Cora; David inspires the town with the We are Both speech, finds out the EF is still there and tells Henry he knows Snow and Emma are alive. Past: Regina begins learning magic with Rumple. Overall: Mixed leaning positive. Lady of the Lake: Present: MM and Emma bond in the nursery. Cora burns the wardrobe; continues scheming. Team Princess forms. Past: Charming’s mother dies, Snow and Charming marry, Snow finds out her first child will be a girl. Overall: Mixed leaning positive The Crocodile: Present: Belle and Rumple start reconciling; we learn Cora and Hook are working together. Past: Rumple kills Milah, Hook’s revenge quest begins. Overall: Negative, though seems intended to be mixed if you are rooting for Rumbelle despite finding out that Rumple murdered his first wife. The Doctor: Present: Regina has to kill resurrected Daniel; Hook leads Team Princess to the beanstalk to get the compass. Past: Rumple works with Jefferson and Whale to offer Regina false hope about Daniel, leading to her first murder. Overall: Negative. Tallahassee: Present; Emma and Hook’s beanstalk adventure, which succeeds, though Emma betrays Hook. Past: Neal betrays Emma. Overall: The present day scenes are too much fun for me not to call this mixed. Child of the Moon: Present: David saves Ruby from the Mob; thwarts George, the plan for Henry to contact the EF in dreams is concocted, Aurora realizes she is seeing Emma’s son in dreams. Past: Red kills her mother to save Snow; they affirm their bond. Overall: Positive. Into the Deep: David goes under the sleeping curse, Hook steals Aurora’s heart. Overall: Negative Queen of Hearts: Present: Emma and Snow make it home, Regina is sad, though she and Henry begin to reconcile, Cora and Hook sail the JR to SB, Emma learns about her magic. Overall: Positive. The Cricket Game: Present: the Charmings falsely believe Regina has killed Archie, who has been kidnapped by Hook and Cora. Past: Snow lets Regina go; Regina plans to enact the curse. Overall: Negative, though E & H probably see Snow not killing Regina as a positive. The Outsider: Present: Hook shoots Belle over the town line. Past: Belle saves Philip from the Yaoguai. Overall: Negative In the Name of the Brother: Present: Whale gets his groove back and saves Greg Mendel, who lies about not seeing magic, Rumple demands that Emma come to find Bae with him. Past: Victor gets his brother killed and turns him into a monster. Overall: Mixed. Tiny: Present: Anton finds acceptance in SB and gives hope of being able to return to the EF; Rumple Emma and Henry board the plane for NY. Past: James kills Anton’s family. Overall: Positive. Manhattan: Present: Emma/Neal/Rumple reunion. Past: Rumple maims himself; is rejected by Milah, hears the seer’s prophecy about Henry. Overall: Negative. The Queen is Dead: Present: Cora kills Joanna, Henry is furious at Emma, Snow vows to kills Cora, but this is framed as a bad thing; Tamara is introduced. Past: Queen Ava dies. Overall: Negative. The Miller’s Daughter: Present: Snow kills Cora (framed as bad); Rumple lives (framed as good). Past: Cora leaves and tricks Rumple, marries Henry, and vows her daughter will be Queen. Overall: Negative. Welcome to Storybrooke: Present: Regina tells MM her heart is darkening; Greg Mendel’s identity revealed. Past: Regina separates Kurt and Owen, who is left orphaned. Overall: Negative. Selfless, Brave and True: Present: August turned back into a child, giving MM hope that her darkness can be overcome; Tamara’s sketchiness established. Past: August makes terrible choices. Overall: Supposed to be positive, but that depends on you caring about August and buying into MM’s guilt. Lacey: Present: Rumple and Lacey engage in petty violence. Regina finds the bean-field, Greg and Tamara bring Hook to SB. Past: Rumple lets Robin live. Overall: Supposed to be mixed, but if you don’t find Rumple not killing RH compelling evidence of goodness, and don’t like Rumbelle, negative. The Evil Queen: Present: The bean field is destroyed; Regina captured by Greg, Tamara and Hook; Greg and Tamara are clearly being depicted as evil. Past: Regina commits to evil when Snow rejects her over the village massacre. Overall: Negative Second Star to the Right: Present: Neal “dies,” Regina reveals that Greg and Tamara have the failsafe. Past: Bae sacrifices himself for the Darlings; is picked up by Hook. Overall: Negative And Straight on Till Morning: Present: Emma and Regina stop the failsafe, Belle’s memories return, Henry is kidnapped, Nevengers assemble, Neal lives. Past: Hook gives Bae to Pan. Overall: Mixed.

So, to test my sense that one of the problems in the show is its increasing darkness, post S1, I went back over the first two seasons - the ones I've finished rewatching -- and evaluated each episode, present day in flashback, as either "positive," "mixed (to which I sometimes added "leaning positive" or "leaning negative"), or negative. I based my assessment largely on where the characters were left at the end of the episode. An episode with one positive and negative plotline could be deemed overall "positive" if I felt that the positive plotline or elements strongly outweighed the negative ones in terms of level of importance or degree of extremity, and overall negative on the same grounds. So, Price of Gold is positive even though Rumple successfully separates Cinderella and Thomas in the past, because Emma helping Ashley and taking the sheriff job is the clear A plot, and reuniting Ashley and Sean kind of makes up for the past separation anyway. I also want to note that I gave comparatively less weight, in the ranking, to a lot of the S1 flashbacks because we so often knew what the end result would be: Snow and Charming wind up together; Regina casts the dark curse. Those sequences inspire pleasure in seeing how everything came together more than sadness at a villain's victory or Snow and Charming's temporary separations. To be clear, I'm not equating negative with "bad." Many of my favorite episodes are negative (i.e, Manhattan and the Miller's Daughter). I also acknowledge that plots run on conflict, so plenty of episodes should bbe negative - though I'd note that, in theory, the flashback structure, in addition to the presence of multiple plots in one episode, should provide an opportunity to balance out some of the angst and bring most episodes into the "mixed" category. I'll post my episode by episode notes in a separate post, if anyone is interested, but here are my takeaways: 1. Four of the first five episodes of the show are pretty positive; this is wildly unrepresentative of what the show winds up being. 2. Though S1 becomes more negative as it goes on, most of the episodes are still "mixed," with something good or hopeful enough happening to keep it from a negative rating. 3. The difference between Emma's role in S1 and in S2 is drastic. In S1, Emma is almost always central to main events. Even in "negative" episodes - and despite her refusal to believe in the curse -- she is often acting in proactive, even somewhat admirable ways - for instance, when she decides to run away with Henry. A lot of positive episodes revolve around her triumphs, even if only small things like helping an individual person or taking a step in her relationship with Henry. This is much less true in S2, and especially 2B, where she spends episodes at a time more or less reacting to events around her 4. 2Bs episodes, far more than those in the back half of S1, are disproportionately negative - and solidly negative, where the main "bad" event is not being even partially relieved by a good event in a flashback or B-plot. I would call every episode from Manhattan to the finale overwhelmingly negative, with the exception of Helpless, Brave and True. 5. This is exacerbated by the fact that the episodes and plotlines that the writers seem to intend as positive involve moral judgments I don't subscribe to. Helpless, Brave and True is mainly positive and hopeful - but that rings hollow if you think August is so awful that you don't care about his redemption, and don't think Mary Margaret needs to be redeemed. Lacey is intended to be mixed, in that Rumple's decision not to kill Robin in the past is supposed to be evidence of a good heart, but if you think Belle is a total Stockholm case, it becomes negative. 6. In S2, the flashbacks are almost always negative. The only wholly positive one I can think of is Belle's adventure in "The Outsider;" I'd count "Lady of the Lake" and "Red-Handed" as bitter-sweet. Otherwise, every flashback - save the problematic Rumple one in "Selfless, Brave and True" -- involves a character making a terrible choice, giving in to temptation, getting betrayed, or suffering personal tragedy. 7. While S1 has plenty of darkness in the back stretch, the finale is overwhelmingly positive and satisfying. This is not true of S2's finale; even if you bought Regina's redemption and didn't think Snow was an idiot, not only is Henry kidnapped, but the solution to the failsafe issue isn't the culmination of a whole season's worth of build-up. To the extent that it is solving a long-standing issue, those issues are Mary Margaret's dark heart and Regina's redemption, so if you find the handling of both of those plots baffling and offensive, the episode really isn't going to give you anything like the satisfaction you got at the end of S1. That makes it harder to bear with the disproportionate gloom and doom of 2B.

'For this most part, I don't mind this because the show has always, IMO, operated at some remove from reality, even without taking the afterlife elements into account. Jason, in particular, can't be taken seriously as a realistic character - I mean, his backstory includes having gone to a school that was a bunch of boats tied together in a junkyard and named after Lynyrd Skynyrd. So, in a world where that can be "real," I can buy Randy Savage Non-International Airport. I see your point, however, that being on an Earth that has the same kind of whimsical place names as TGP dilutes something of the initial whimsy. I also agree that the logical place to go is challenging the point system. I don't mind this detour, necessarily, and I thought this episode was strong enough on its own terms that I can tolerate some aimlessness, but I do think that's where the narrative arc is clearly heading, to the point where this can only seem like delay. And while the show has done a good job establishing that the characters are now close again, it still bothers me that all of the memories of Team Cockroach - let alone of version 1.0 -- are entirely gone, and seemingly for good. I loved where these characters had gotten by the end of S2, so that's a real loss. Also, at the moment, the team really has no history with Michael at all, and his relationship with Eleanor, in particular, had had some development last season.

Really, the problem is that we don't really have a coherent idea of what will make any of these characters happy, except in the vaguest sense. Emma is Hook's happy ending, but making him her deputy just seems like the laziest, course of least resistance. We don't really get much of a sense of what Hook likes - does he miss the adventure of his life of piracy, or is domestic bliss really all he ever wanted? Does he wrestle with becoming an officer of the law after years of outlawry? For Emma, being a bail bondsperson originally made sense as part of the desire to find people, but she wasn't happy while she was living that life, and kind of fell into sheriffing. Mary Margaret has an "I'm Snow White again!" epiphany in 5B, and then goes back to being a teacher in 6. Other than being mayor for five minutes in a comedy C-plot, we never deal with the question of whether she wants to be leader or not. David ultimately wants to be a farmer, but there isn't much leading up to that; he seemed to take pretty naturally to being a prince, so it doesn't seem like the result of any kind of process so much as it is a convenient way of finding a place for him while leaving space for Hook to take over as Emma's deputy. In the meantime, It is a version of the same problem we see with the CS wedding, which winds up being a generic ceremony with nothing that would suggest specific thought about these two characters and what they would want.