companionenvy

Snow and David don't know that at this point, though, and I do think Emma's life, once she was left alone in Maine, would have been grim even apart from her interaction with EF people - the show just doesn't spend time on the non-FTL related parts of it. Presumably, most of her foster parents, including the ones who gave her up when she was three, were Muggles. In any case, while the EF clearly isn't a paradise, I can see why David would look at this as a chance to start over for them as a family, where Emma isn't going to be alone anymore and whatever struggles they face they at least face together. What makes way less sense is 3.01, where Snow is talking about having hope and finding each other and needing to believe, and Emma, quite rightly points out that not only is that not true in her experience in the real world, but that Snow and David's lives have sucked since the curse broke, too. Yet while Emma is allowed to make the point, which isn't entirely discredited, I think it is clear that ultimately, the show wants to suggest that it is Emma who needs to change - as she does even in this episode with the leap of faith thing. Yet ultimately, until the very ending for these characters, where things do work out (for our core characters, at least), there's really no basis for thinking that goodness is rewarded. Maybe the worst example of this is Emma's DO arc. She becomes the DO to save others, works really hard to fight it, and only "gives into" the darkness by saving the life of someone she loves -- and is resoundingly punished for it. What happened to love is a strength?

That's what is so manipulative about it. In theory, that's a good message, but the show doesn't bother to sell it in any kind of convincing way. At least in S1, Emma working with Regina made sense because that was the course of action most likely to help Henry. If Regina had been able to save Henry by taking his curse on herself, there's no question that Emma would have been all on board with that plan. I think even these writers would have realized that any other course of action would have been absurd. But somehow, when it is a whole town on the line rather than one boy, Snow's willingness to risk everyone for the EQ - who is directly responsible for their being in danger -- is something we should all cheer for. The larger issue, I think, is that A&E simultaneously wants to write dark subversion of conventional fairytales and a conventional fairytale. So, occasionally we'll get someone like Snow nattering on about hope and goodness winning out, when what we're seeing is a world in which the good consistently suffer terribly. They've "won" in that the curse broke, but that doesn't bring back Emma's childhood, or all the people, from Ava on down to Joanna, who died along the way.

I don't think this. I think trashbag-era Eleanor might. As far as I can recall, she has referred to attraction to women (often in a context that could be considered something of a joke, which is what I think a previous poster was objecting to), but has only mentioned dating men. I'm not that invested in romance on this show anyway, but I'd rather they make Eleanor's equivalent of Simone or Larry Hemsworth a woman, or perhaps refer to a previous relationship with a woman, than keep throwing off ha-ha references to her bisexuality.

It might be the best way to maximize the chances of survival for the largest number of people, but despite generally having a lot of sympathy for utilitarian calculations, I think there are situations where something actually is so morally wrong that you are obliged to take on any degree of risk short of near-certain suicide to avoid it. I won't necessarily blame a person too harshly if they can't live up to this standard - I'm far from sure that I could -- but I'm still going to consider it wrong. And as I don't think the risk Hook and the crew were under rose to the level of near-certain death - especially as Hook apparently considered it risky but not suicidal to harbor Bae and presumes that he and Bae would have a chance to escape together -- to me, what he does falls under the category of understandable but still clearly wrong. It is also worth taking into account, I think, the fact that prior to learning who Bae was, Hook had already been planning to turn him over to Pan, which indicates that sacrificing a young teen wasn't totally beyond his moral event horizon. That makes me less inclined to assume that Hook was only induced to do what he did under the severest duress. He was willing to fight for Bae if Bae hadn't rejected him, and even when Bae did reject him, he wouldn't have offered him up for possible murder if he wasn't under a real and serious threat. But his moral compass was flexible enough that it didn't, IMO, have to be a clear-cut life or death situation for him to have done what he did. In fact, while Colin plays the scene sad rather than vengeful, I think there may have been at least an element of "Well, fine. You rejected me - on your own head be it, then."

I've been finding the rewatch more and more difficult, and while, because I'm enjoying the opportunity to post meta, I'm going to continue, I've realized that I'm not really looking forward even to some of the arcs I thought were reasonably successful (like Neverland). I've also realized the reason, and it actually isn't the wonky morality and the victim blaming, though that contributes: This show, post S1, is an almost total misery. Emma is allowed to comment on this in 3x01, when she tells her parents that unlike them, she doesn't have the luxury of believing in hope, and in fact they shouldn't either - their life has been terrible since the curse broke. By the end of the episode, it is supposed to be wonderful and heartwarming that Emma has taken her leap of faith and stepped up as a leader. But the truth is, she's right, and the rest of the show - until, perhaps, the end of s6 (and reiterated in s7), where we are left to assume that, whatever other nonsense has happened, Emma, Hook, and Snowing are going to have good lives -- doesn't do much to refute this. First, the present day. After the curse breaks, they don't even have a day together before being separated. At least in 2A, neither the EF story or events back in SB wind up being excessively angsty. But then 2B comes around, and, after even their celebration is marred by concern for Regina's feelings, they immediately have to start dealing with Cora. There are very few heartwarming family scenes, and those few aren't given a ton of narrative prominence; what is focused on is Snow's dark heart and Henry being angry at Emma. Emma has to deal with the pain of encountering Neal again, and then losing him. They stop the failsafe, but can't enjoy it because Henry has been kidnapped. Neverland brings up a ton of angst for everyone. They rescue Henry, but Pan has switched with him. They defeat Pan, but at the cost of permanent separation and memory-wipes. Emma has a good year in NY off-screen, but then she's called back to SB in order to deal with another threat. She loses Neal again, isn't ready to really pursue anything with Hook, and then is rendered useless for the battle with Zelena, so the triumph is Regina's. I recall liking the Frozen plot quite a bit, but it is joined with a half season of Hook essentially getting tortured, and the show consequently robbing most of the joy from the start of Captain Swan (even their first date has the stupid hand plot). We can assume Emma is happy in the six weeks between 4A and 4B, but then we get the QoD, and a half season of our non-Operation Mongoose time worrying about Emma having darkness and dealing with what Snowing did in the past. Emma then has to take on the darkness, leading to everyone treating her like a ticking time bomb. She makes Herculean efforts to resist it, but is forced into the terrible, unfair choice between Hook's life and giving into the darkness; her actions as DO lead to rejection from Henry, her parents giving up on her, and, ultimately, Dark Hook going totally evil and her being forced to kill him - which means there is no happy triumph over the darkness. Hook winning his own way out of the UW is a legitimately satisfying outcome, but before then, he gets tortured, Emma's plan fails, and practically every encounter in the UW - again, except for Regina's -- winds up being angsty. Milah dies again, Liam - though he ultimately moves on -- is revealed to have a dark backstory of his own, David encounters James, Belle encounters Gaston, etc. Robin's soul is obliterated, and Emma and Hook don't get a day together before she's going after Henry and Hook and Snowing are captives in the Land of Untold Stories. Emma spends most of S6 thinking she's going to die, and we don't even get to enjoy Hook's proposal to her under the circumstances. At least the wedding/musical is fun - but of course the Black Fairy's curse hits before the reception is even over. Then, let's look at the flashbacks. With a few exceptions, almost all of the flashbacks are tragic or disturbing. Every time we learn more about Emma, it involves loneliness, betrayal, and loss. Every Hook flashback makes his sad backstory sadder and/or provides another example of him giving into the desire for revenge. We get the tragedy of Merlin and Nimue, various sad villain backstories, Anton's whole family getting slaughtered, Whale's brother dying, and so on. Where I do think the wonky morality comes in is that part of the reason things seem so woefully unbalanced is that a good proportion of the scenes that to the writers are balancing out the darkness involve characters that I - and a lot of other people on this board, apparently -- don't see as sympathetic. If you buy Regina's redemption, then things like Regina TLKing Henry or helping Cora and Henry Sr. move on are genuinely moving, triumphant moments. In 2B, "Selfless, Brave and True" is a "happy" episode, but only has weight if you don't see August as the total piece of garbage I think he is. The Rumbelle flashback in Lacey ends with Rumple doing the right thing and some sweetness with him and Belle - but even as someone who likes Rumple at this point in the show, I think Rumbelle is offensive and disgusting. Really, when it comes to triumphant, genuinely satisfying moments for the most sympathetic characters, I'd say this show might actually be worse than Game of Thrones, which has an unbelievable level of tragedy, but also has tons of scenes that I could point to as "Hell, yeah!" moments where the heroes get decisive, unambiguous wins.

Eleanor is clearly being written as bi, in that she is physically attracted to both men and women, but I'm not sure that she has ever seen herself living an overtly non-heterosexual life, if that makes sense. Not that Eleanor was imagining settling down with a guy, either, but it seems like to the extent that she was/is interested in some sort of longer-term romantic life, she imagines it being with a guy. Whereas her references to attraction to women are usually framed as non-serious fantasies or as something closer to an "I'd hit that" walk on the wild side. Based on everything she's said, I would assume she's slept with women before, but that she's never dated one. Which I actually think makes a lot of sense, given how frantically Eleanor resisted any potentially serious or emotional scenes. Even in today's society, actually having any kind of sustained same-sex relationship is likely to lead to a "coming out" conversation, questions, affirmations of either support or disapproval, etc. Eleanor could have gotten away with a random, lesbian one night stand that she could then mention to her friends in a kind of "You know I'm crazy, right?" way, but if she had been in even a casual a lesbian relationship? That would force her into at least quasi-emotional territory in a way that having a boyfriend wouldn't have.

That's...not a bad point, but I'm not sure that we're supposed to think about the logistics that deeply; the show just presents it as Hook saving his own skin and getting out of Dodge, not maliciously deciding he's just in the mood to let a bunch of people die for no reason. But regardless of how bad the initial action was (and yeah, it would be considerably worse in your scenario), it doesn't change the moral value of Hook's decision to come back.

Things were happening really quickly, though. Bae has literally just found out that his mother abandoned him, his father killed his mother, and the guy he's been getting close to is the one who broke up his family. Plus he's 14. He wasn't thinking rationally enough to justify giving him up on those grounds. At minimum, Hook could have pointed out to him that as he couldn't get him back to the Darlings, leaving the ship with Pan after him was suicidal. In any case, I still think that, as it was set up, the threat from Pan was too undefined and non-absolute to make it OK to sacrifice an innocent. This wasn't yet an unambiguous case of "Either we give person x up, or all of us die, including person x." It was a case of risking the loss of a certain number of adult pirates - who voluntarily live a life of constant risk -- in order to save an innocent teenage boy. That's not all that similar to what's going on with Snow at the diner, and not just because Bae is innocent and Regina isn't. This show loves putting people in no-win situations and then condemning them for their actions, but the situation with Pan doesn't rise to the level of a no-win situation. It was thorny enough that Hook giving Bae up doesn't make him irredeemable, not to excuse what he did.

ITA that she hasn't actually made any serious moral leap forward. What I'm saying is that if you hadn't seen the previous episodes (let alone the rest of the series) and didn't know exactly what was happening, you might be forgiven for thinking that there were nuances in the scenario that did make what she was doing at least a little more understandable. Because what she was trying to do was downright sociopathic, with zero mitigating factors, and that's not the character being depicted in this episode. I'll also note here that there is a really, really significant difference between what Regina does in being willing to sacrifice herself to stop the failsafe and Hook turning his ship around. Hook was 100% home free. Had he continued, he could have started over anywhere he wanted - the only thing holding him back was guilt. Whereas Regina was going to die either way. She wasn't actually sacrificing anything, she was just making sure that if she was going to die anyway, at least Henry would be better off. Given who Regina is, that actually does constitute a step forward for her, but it is hardly the kind of transformation that should count for much with Snow et al when weighed against everything else she has done. OTOH, Hook coming back to risk himself is deserving of a lot of credit. If we ever were going to start applying something closer to a RL legal system to the show, Regina being willing to sacrifice herself might be worth not giving her the death penalty (assuming a reality in which one could actually be sure that a prison could hold her). Hook coming back for everyone would be legitimately deserving of a pardon for past crimes, under the logic that it wouldn't be fair to punish him when the only reason he's in custody in the first place is because he passed up the chance to escape to save their lives. I do think it is mitigation, but in this case, I'm enough of an absolutist that I still think it was wrong, especially as Hook and his crew are neither total innocents nor totally helpless. Pan had threatened the Jolly Roger, and I doubt it was an idle threat, but Hook is a formidable fighter with a trained crew and a known ability to talk his way out of trouble. It seems to me that this wasn't quite enough of an imminent and guaranteed destruction scenario to justify what he did. And presumably, he had some plan for how he was going to get them all away from Pan if Bae had agreed to come with him.

I think Berens's response might be technically honest, but still disingenuous. I do buy that we're not supposed to view what Kaia said as absolute gospel truth. She has very limited experiences with him and is clearly trying to needle him, so she's intentionally going to make her criticism as extreme as possible. In any case, we've seen ample evidence over the years that Dean is not a brutal, conscienceless thug, let alone morally indistinguishable from Michael. So in that sense, I think Berens is being genuine in saying that Kaia isn't a creator mouthpiece in the scene. On the other hand, I do think that Kaia's critique, if only in a more moderate form, is supposed to be taken seriously as a reflection on more negative aspects of Dean's character. There's no point to the scene if Kaia is supposed to be spouting nonsense at random. And, at this point in the show, I think that going back to the well of "Dean has darkness in him" is itself tired and rings false. I mean, yes, Dean has flaws, and may be more naturally comfortable with a certain level of physical violence than Sam or Jody, but we've had thirteen seasons to establish that he's essentially a good man, so I have no desire to see him angst over whether or not he's the lowest of the low for pulling a gun on an uncooperative Kaia when she was literally his only chance at saving his mother. It was wrong, but we've been here before. Let's move on.

I think we have had one person "confirmed" to be in the Good Place, no? IIRC, Michael says that "All of the presidents except for Lincoln" are in the Bad Place. So, Lincoln apparently got in.

Another episode that is almost good if you ignore the big, gaping ethical hole in the middle. Taken out of context, Regina’s willingness to sacrifice herself is kind of affecting. But it only winds up being so because of transparent manipulation on the part of the narrative. It is consistent with Regina’s previously established character that she would ultimately be willing to die for Henry (it is not necessarily consistent with her behavior for most of S1, but at this point there’s enough of a history of her caring for him that I’ll accept it). However, beyond that, Regina’s entire affect is almost entirely different in this episode, to the point where she’s essentially not the same person. She’s contrite, snark-free, quietly affectionate, nobly resigned – which is simply not who she has been shown to be for at least the past half-season. It is a version of the same problem I had all the way back at “The Stable Boy,” where unlike other villain origin stories we had gotten and wind up getting on the show, there just wasn’t, to me, believable emotional continuity between who the show was trying to tell us Regina had been and who she had become. Obviously, people can have layers. I think Rumple is a good example – even with his recent bad behavior with Lacey, and his long history of truly horrific actions, he has been consistently represented as someone with enough emotional depth and nuance that I can buy both that he would be seriously considering killing Henry to save himself (though not without qualms), and that he would finally make the decision to sacrifice himself for Henry in the wake of Bae’s supposed death. But in the case of Regina, there’s this whiplash where she can be represented as a near-total sociopath one week and as, not only a villain with layers, but as someone who can be legitimately treated as a hero the next, to the point where she’s getting loving embraces with an admiring Henry (the kid she mind-wiped two episodes ago when he wouldn’t get on board with her “kill everyone not-us” plan) and the whole town is risking itself to save her from the consequences of her unequivocally evil plotting. Adding to the manipulation is the fact that Tamara and Greg, are placed so firmly in super-villain territory that we’re obliged to root against them and dismiss what might otherwise be legitimate moral claims. And significantly, except for Hook, no one knows about Greg’s history with Regina, so everyone rallying around her, on top of everything else, is predicated in part on lack of highly relevant knowledge that should weaken their sympathies. Although I suppose that if everything they already know she’s done hasn’t weakened their sympathies, nothing will. The diner speech is one of the most insidious moments we’ve had on a show full of morally problematic scenes. It takes the form of a stirring, genuinely noble call to action, but in context, it is horrifying. Even if Regina had been a total innocent, it wouldn’t be obvious that the right thing to do is to risk every single person in town to prevent one woman from sacrificing herself. As it is, you’re risking everyone in town for a woman who is a) guilty of tons of crimes against all of the townspeople, up to and including murdering their loved ones and b) responsible for the town being in danger in the first place. It is frankly insane, not to mention wildly irresponsible from a leadership perspective, not to let Regina reap the justly deserved consequences of her own plan to kill everyone in the town. It would be bad enough if this were a decision Mary Margaret made unilaterally. But the show wants us to believe that not only are she and Henry are on-board with it, but that the assembled townspeople – again, all of whom are her victims – unanimously agree that this is something they are willing to do, which besides being ridiculous, puts Emma in the position of being the bad guy who is too cynical and hard-hearted and needs to be taught to believe, when actually, she’s the only person (well, besides Hook, actually) who is making a damn bit of sense. It is transparently false when someone says “Snow and the Prince have never let us down before,” because they are only in this realm at all because Snow decided to give Regina unlimited chances rather than protect her people by ending her for good. And of course, when Snow cites her killing of Cora as an example of doing the wrong thing, the show never bothers to explain just what other options were available to her. It is one thing for a narrative to sometimes allow characters to pull magical McGuffins out of their asses, but you can’t operate in a coherent moral universe under the assumption that a magical McGuffin will always emerge, especially as Snow has plenty of evidence that it frequently doesn’t, leading to things like the deaths of countless people and the destruction of her own family. By the way, as of this episode, I now have a new headcanon for David’s attitude toward Hook. Even in this episode, where Hook richly deserves David’s punch, given his general villainy and the fact that he had knocked him out the last time they met, David treating Hook so harshly doesn’t track with him standing by supportively as Snow lovingly tends to a wounded Regina and Henry exchanges warm hugs with his supervillain Mommy. So, for my own sanity, I now choose to believe that David’s behavior toward Hook is his way of psychologically coping with being coerced by Snow into accepting the “we are family” policy toward Regina and Rumple. David has a lot less reason to hate Hook, but Hook is the only villain he is still allowed to express any anger towards, so he bears the brunt of David’s suppressed rage against the people who have actually ruined significant parts of his life. That being said, I don’t want to sugarcoat Hook’s behavior as a villain. In the excellent flashbacks, he may ultimately come to sincerely care for Bae, but before he learns who he is, his first scene with Smee makes it absolutely clear that his initial intention is to hand him over to curry favor with Pan. While later, it becomes obvious that harboring Bae actually is putting Hook and his crew at considerable risk -- somewhat mitigating Hook’s still obviously wrong decision to ultimately give him up after Bae rejects him – Hook’s attitude immediately after saving him is more mercenary thought of gain than fear for his or his crew’s lives. Again, he has better inclinations that are in evidence in his growing fondness for Bae and his obviously genuine offer to give up his revenge quest for him, but this is a guy who is capable of unconscionable behavior. He fares a lot better in the present, even before turning the JR back around. My interpretation of his decision to work with the heroes in the first place – and I think it is supported by the writing – is that it isn’t grounded primarily in concern about his own survival. Since coming to Storybrooke, Hook has been fairly consistently represented as suicidally committed to his revenge quest; when Tamara and Greg sneeringly ask him if he’s willing to die for his cause, the answer has pretty comprehensively been demonstrated to be “yes.” Even David alludes to this in their scene together, where he’s skeptical of why Hook has suddenly decided to care about surviving. So, I think he comes to Team Hero because he isn’t willing to let the entire town die, and is using the selfish concern for his own survival as a cover. Now, that only goes so far, given that he comes very close to leaving them to die in the end anyway, but I find it hard to blame him too much under the circumstances. He is prepared to help to stop Greg and Tamara from massacring the town, but that doesn’t extend to being willing and eager to join everyone else in voluntarily martyring themselves for Regina. I also want to point out that, whatever is said or implied later, I think it is very, very clear that Hook comes back primarily because of Bae, as it should be. I love CS, but the best part of this episode is the development of Hook’s relationship with Bae and how it obviously feeds into his actions in the present, and looking at his decision through shipper-goggles undermines that. Emma’s speech – and the fact that she is among those who will die – is a factor, but he isn’t doing it for her, any more than Rumple is; in an episode in which Bae explicitly parallels the two of them in a negative way, ironically, Hook and Rumple wind up being paralleled in a more positive light when they set aside their differences and their selfishness and commit to saving Henry largely because of their respective relationships to Bae. Though I think we could have used a little more reaction or commentary from Hook before he agrees to let Rumple on the Jolly Roger at all, which is such a fundamental reversal and betrayal of the quest that has guided him since Milah’s death that it needed to be treated with more care. Also, one last, small point, as it has come up on other threads, and I realized it is something I had the wrong impression about previously: Bae (who, by the way, I love so damn much for his bravery in coming at Hook with a sword to avenge Milah) obviously does believe Hook very quickly when he tells him the truth about Milah; by the end of the scene, he is blaming him for breaking up his family and using him as a tool against Rumple, not for killing his mother. So yeah, Neal has known that Rumple crushed his mother’s heart this entire time.

To get the requisite Regina-complaining out of the way: this is a show on which one of the main characters demonstrates consistent inability to empathize with other people, even during an episode in which she was forced to disguise herself as one of the peasants she oppresses and be treated in kind. So, of course, it is Snow who has to learn a very special lesson about feeling Regina’s pain by – no joke – using one of Regina’s tears to literally see the world through her eyes. I can’t think of a better metaphor for the show as a whole. But seriously, how on Earth does one write an episode where we’re supposed to root for team hero to save Regina moments after we see her laughing about murdering Greg’s father? As I indicated in the last couple of episode threads, I think Neal has been coming off notably better as of late. Even though I’ll never buy his reasons for setting Emma up, as opposed to simply Ieaving her, I can accept that he feels bad about it, that it – and not seeking her out later -- was the result of cowardice and shame rather than malice or indifference. What I don’t buy is that he and Emma are still in love. Under the circumstances, I find it believable that Neal still loves Emma, but even then not in a romantic sense: on top of everything else, the two of them weren’t in a healthy or mature relationship for the brief time that they were together, and eleven years later, neither of them should be in love with the person the other was when they last met. In Neal’s case, I don’t think that means he should be judging Emma for who she was as a 16/17 year old homeless foster-kid who fell under his sway – he should be judging himself for seducing and encouraging her– but he also shouldn’t want to resume a sexual/romantic relationship with her. And of course Emma really has no good reason to still be in love with Neal. I actually could see a path for them to fall in love with the people they are now in the present, but not this soon, especially given that Neal has been engaged since their reunion. So the scene in the portal is somewhat affecting in its own terms, but is based on a faulty premise. Also, I don’t see why everyone would take it as a given that Neal is dead; obviously, his chances of survival are realistically low, but it is hardly impossible that he’ll land somewhere where he’ll be discovered by decent people who manage to get him medical care. I mean, there were no guarantees that baby Emma was going to wind up somewhere where she would be found rather than left to die of exposure, either (and at the time, almost no one even knew that she at least had an older child with her, which raised her odds). Love Bae in the flashbacks. He’s just such a noble, decent kid, and it is such a shame that we don’t get more insight into how he becomes Tallahassee-era Neal. The show’s deconstruction of the Peter Pan story is also interesting, where Wendy is essentially acting as if she lives in Disney’s Peter Pan, in which case this visitor is a magic source of wonder, whereas Bae knows that there’s a much darker reality behind it (which is truer to Barrie’s original story, though even he doesn’t get as dark as Once does). At the same time, though it works here, it does expose one of the show’s problems, which is that it is really light on wonder as a rule. Your ostensible main character has discovered that she’s a literal fairy-tale princess with magical powers, and she’s almost never given the chance to simply have fun with it before being either launched into super-angst or sidelined.

This might give credence to the theory that Michael is engineering this whole thing specifically to get the other members of Team Cockaroach into TGP after all. It doesn't make a ton of sense to think that they can get someone like Pill Boi - or frankly, almost anyone - into TGP, but theoretically, as long as they don't know there's a chance of redemption for them, working to save others while knowing that you yourself are damned would, actually, seem to constitute Good Place-worthy levels of selflessness. I don't actually believe this, however, largely because the same complaint - almost no one gets into TGP anyway, so it seems fruitless trying to "help" someone get in -- could have been lodged against Michael's original agreement with Gen; even if our foursome became better people through these little pushes from Michael, it is hard to see them racking up the point total that is apparently required for admission. So really, I think it is a matter of Michael not yet having totally grasped just how corrupt the whole system is; the problem isn't simply that people who may still have the potential for good are being damned, but that the threshold for what is considered "good" is so damn high. I liked the episode a lot. Jason is an over the top character, but I think the reality of TGP is one that can accommodate that level of absurdity, so I was able to enjoy this spotlight into his utterly ridiculous life. The fact that the oft-mentioned Donkey Doug is his father was perfect. But, as usual, the show, even at its broadest, leaves room for some legitimate emotion; Donkey Doug's willingness to sacrifice himself for Jason was sweet, in its own way, and Jason's ability to recognize his father's own limitations shows some real growth on his part. Echoing those who think - and hope -- we haven't seen the last of Simone, though I can't figure out what role I want her to be playing. I think it would be too easy to make her a GP rep, but I'm wondering if she wasn't created as part of some other power's intervention into Michael's experiment, even if she herself is unaware of it. She reminds me a little too much of the fake soulmate candidate Michael created for Chidi in his first reboot to think it is just a coincidence that Chidi met a person who seems so perfect for him so soon after being saved. I also can't help but recall a (pretty forgettable) movie from years back where an AI-generated character was named "Simone" as a play on the words "simulation one." Another possibility is that Simone is just an ordinary muggle, one whose role is to be a person who actually does prove worthy of the GP under the current system, setting up the potential for the gang to encounter her again when they invariably wind up taking a trip there.

A lot of the episode was OK to moderately engaging, but the whole thing reinforces to me that this show should really be done. Dean's behavior in this episode was almost a point by point retread of his behavior when he got back from hell: After an experience in which he has been forced into doing terrible things, he claims falsely not to remember anything, angsts about whether or not he's just a terrible killer - and now a weak and broken one -- and then blames himself for breaking the world. The problem is twofold: even if it worked, it is repetitive, and the situation here is a lot less psychologically compelling or convincing than the situation in S4 in any case: - Unlike Dean in hell, Michael!Dean really was a different being simply controlling Dean's body. What Michael did says nothing about who Dean is. -While Dean certainly does have a violent side, Kaia's "you and Michael are the same" simply rings false, and at this point in Dean's life, he shouldn't still be so worried about whether or not he is nothing but a killer (and to the extent that he hasn't gotten over that anxiety, it isn't actually all that interesting for me as a viewer to watch, because it so clearly isn't true and I don't need version whatever.0 of " Dean hates himself"). Was Dean threatening Kaia prime the best thing he's ever done? No, but under the highly charged circumstances and given the stakes, it wasn't evidence of depravity. Certainly, Dean's willingness to suggest the possibility of using less-than-gentle interrogation methods on Kaia redux should not be enough to give Sam and Jody the vapors. This is not torturing souls willingly for ten years. This is maybe, possibly going too far when you're in the middle of a war. That may be wrong, but in the context of Dean's life, it really shouldn't rate as a source of existential angst. -Michael hasn't been established as enough of a threat for me to take seriously the idea that Dean has any reason to feel guilty about unleashing him on the world, especially given that in the process he killed Lucifer. At worst, you've replaced one evil archangel with another evil archangel who is perhaps ever so slightly more powerful. Theoretically, Michael could wind up being a world-ending problem, but unlike in S4, where Dean believes, with some reason, that he's set off the events that will lead to the Biblical Apocalypse, it is all too opaque to serve up a lot of dramatic tension in a show where the boys face a potentially world-ending enemy almost every season. Michael has killed people, but we're not seeing Amara or Leviathan or even Godstiel levels of destruction at this point. And, of course, as Sam says, Dean really did do what he had to do; in the moment, saying "yes" to Michael in order to defeat the more imminent threat of Lucifer was, IMO, genuinely the better call. I like Jack (his "Sleeping Beauty" line was ridiculously adorable), but can we please stop making Cas useless? It was bad enough when Cas always had to be the goat to prop Sam and Dean, but doing it to prop Jack adds insult to injury. Aside from saving himself from the Empty Keeper last year and a couple of references to off-screen victories, I really can't remember the last time Cas has saved anyone, come up with a clever plan that succeeded, or generally done anything all that important.

For me, the idea that Tahani is mostly a selfish namedropper who cares little about people isn't incompatible with the idea that she might sometimes demonstrate the capacity for genuine decency - in fact, that's sort of the premise of the show. Eleanor is a case of someone who pretty clearly was a bad person who didn't deserve to be in TGP, but obviously she is capable of goodness and moral growth, which we see throughout the first season. The same is true of Tahani, although I think she starts changing a little later in the game. At its core, though, I think even a lot of Tahani's early "good" gestures come from a love of being in control and an obsession with being seen as a good person, and seeing herself that way. And that, I think, is key to why the philanthropy is fairly empty. Sure, there are other things Tahani could have done to become famous - although it is worth noting that she evidently wasn't as talented as Kamilah, or at least wasn't perceived as such, so she wouldn't have been likely to seek validation through something that would have required extraordinary ability. But in any event, part of Tahani's psychology is that she is invested in and values a conventional notion of goodness in a way that wouldn't allow her to be a Paris Hilton or Kardashian type. I guess maybe you could say that wanting to be good and to be known for being good is in itself indicative of a kind of moral worth. But at the end of the day, I still think becoming a philanthropist was all about Tahani's ego, and had very little to do with any feelings for the people she was helping, which might legitimately be said to rob her act of a lot of ethical value.

But I think that part of what the show is doing is questioning whether the system underlying the Good/Bad Place is fair at all. Apparently, almost no one makes it to the Good Place, which is horrifying and suggests a real cruelty. On the other hand, in Tahani's case, whether or not she, or almost anyone, deserves eternal damnation, I don't think she was depicted as a good person in S1. She did a lot of good, but then, that's partially because her background and circumstances made philanthropy a viable path, and one that would get her a lot of praise and attention without requiring her to sacrifice anything. In terms of motivation and essential character, she clearly did not care about other people, and in fact looked down on anyone who wasn't in her celebrity culture to the point of gross insensitivity. That's different, I think, than the premise of Jeremy Bearimy, which suggests that in order for an action to be good, you have to do it with no hope of reward. That's more extreme; as it would seem to me that you could have a version of Tahani who sincerely likes helping, is genuinely decent to people around her, but also enjoys - like almost anyone would! - getting praise and fame because of her actions. And that may be closer to Tahani's actions in this episode, where there may be a part of her who is still thinking of the possibility of reward - whether in the form of entry into the Good Place, or in the form of getting validation from Jason and the other members of the Brainy Bunch -- but she also seems to be actuated by a more generous spirit. One problem I haven't seen addressed on this thread is that, by the logic of this episode, in theory there would be tons of people excluded from TGP because their religious beliefs included an afterlife dependent on reward and punishment. Even if you didn't have perfect knowledge of exactly how the point system worked, if you believe that doing good works gets you into heaven or a heaven-equivalent, then essentially you're in the same bind that Eleanor et al are.

Again, I think we're kind of talking past each other. I don't think anyone on this thread doesn't get that the CRM was about challenging these kinds rules, or that every black musician who played in the south would have confronted segregation. But the initial context for the reference to black musicians was evaluating a scene in which Ryan, Yaz, the Doctor and Graham don't seem to have been deliberately defying the "whites only" sign; rather, they go in and appear to be blindsided by the reactions they get. No one is saying they should have "known their place," but that they should have realized that there was going to be an issue. So in that sense, I don't think there were tons of musicians with parallel experiences, because the musicians who confronted and/or defied segregation would have known all too well what they were going to be dealing with. And after the handkerchief incident, it was, IMO, a slightly false note for none of the four to anticipate the problem, in the way that they did when sneaking into the hotel. Just like, on the other side of the spectrum, I felt it was a little unbelievable that Grace, would have known the name of the bus driver in the Rosa Parks case, especially given that she was British and not American.

Delurking from the thread just to say that I think there's been some misunderstanding here. My impression was not that anyone was doubting that racism in the Jim Crow South was a very real, daily occurrence. I believe what the poster was questioning, specifically, was the idea that it was common for black people who knew that racism was very real and potentially deadly to flout the rules and enter "whites only"spaces. Someone noted that there were hundreds of stories of black musicians doing just that; I have no reason to doubt that assertion, but neither would I have taken for granted that this was regularly happening, and I was raised in the Northern US where we certainly were taught about Jim Crow. If black musicians were routinely trying to get into segregated clubs, that would still be a really different situation from the one confronting Ryan and Yaz, as I would imagine that there might have been some clubs who were willing to look the other way if a couple of members of a band were black even if they wouldn't have been willing to serve a black customer. Even today, plenty of racists enjoy black entertainers. I do think that Team Tardis would realistically have been too acutely aware of the racial climate to have gone to that restaurant without considering that it might be segregated. It would have been one thing if they had deliberately decided to ignore the sign, but as it is, it played like they really had just sat down to a meal and hadn't counted on being interrupted. But ultimately, I thought the episode wound up being powerful enough that I'm willing to overlook a couple of missteps. I was pleased with myself for - unusually, for me -- realizing before it happened that it was going to end with the Doctor and Graham being the white people who forced Rosa to give up her seat, but it was still a great scene.

I think there's a lot of truth to this. What still doesn't make sense to me, though, is that an episode like this one suggests to me that there were ways they could have had their cake and eaten it too. Maybe they could never have quite pulled off Regina as misunderstood rather than evil without such substantial rewrites as to make her a totally different character, but they could have still written Regina as a scene stealing villain without making her so profoundly sadistic and lacking in empathy. They could have given her a backstory that actually suggested someone misunderstood, rather than someone who had again and again created her own misery despite ample opportunities to reverse course. They could have shown some evidence that she cared for Henry outside the bare minimum of wanting him alive and safe and the thoroughly selfish obsession with wanting him to love her. In this episode alone, if the scene had been written to reflect Regina being horrified at what she had done in ordering the massacre, rather than Regina being upset that Snow had rejected her, that would have helped in establishing her as a potentially redeemable person. Instead, not only does she revert to "why don't people love me" in the past, she is still equally baffled that she isn't getting insta-acceptance in the present as she once again plots mass-murder. At a certain point, I don't care if you're coming from a place of hurt. It isn't a misunderstanding when people judge you because you're a psychopath who is going around slaughtering people. It is truly bizarre to me that K&H set out to write a misunderstood underdog who was going to be redeemed, and this is what they came up with.

Yeah. Snow is awesome enough in the flashbacks that I'm not sure that the show is entirely blaming her - even when she turns on Regina, she has that great line "Ïf this is what good looks like, I want no part of it" -- but the whole setup reinforces the persistent, disgusting message that it is somehow the responsibility of victims to redeem perpetrators. Regina is an unrepentant tyrant liable to kill others if she escapes? Doesn't matter - she has good in her, and she's only lashing out because she's hurt and angry, so we can't kill her. Rumple locks Belle in a dungeon and has to be prevented from flaying Robin to death? Whatever; he really has a good heart, and so Belle is right to commit herself to saving him. In the case of Snow in this episode, the writing stops short of framing her too negatively, but we're still clearly supposed to think it is a real shame that she gave up on Regina at precisely the moment she could have changed. It also doesn't help that the writing for her when she reverses her position is so bad - she doesn't just say Regina has gone too far, she says that there was never any good in her, which she should know is false and doesn't follow from Regina being evil in the present. Because she's arguing a strawman, we can discredit her otherwise valid position and continue sympathizing with woobie Regina. It is sort of like "The Cricket Game," where everyone is after Regina for something she actually didn't do rather than the many, many things that she did. This also explains another odd element of 2B, which is the show's absolute lack of sympathy for revenge. Now, I'm not saying revenge is a good or justifiable thing, and it is perfectly valid to have a story that rejects that as a response. However, there's a reason that people love Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: even if there's a level on which we know obsessive vigilantism of that sort is wrong and unhealthy, there's a visceral, human satisfaction in the idea of a person wronged being able to execute justice on someone who has done a terrible thing to them, especially when you abstract the story from our day to day context and create a world where normal laws don't apply. Yet in a show in which people who kill for terrible, sadistic, frivolous reasons are given endless chances to reform while the viewers are constantly being reminded that they still have goodness, we're not only never allowed to have a natural "hell, yeah" reaction to one of them getting their comeuppance, we're expected to regard the avenger and his or her act with total condemnation. We see that with Hook, where no one bothers to acknowledge that, yeah, Rumple kind of does deserve severe punishment for killing Milah in cold blood, and we're supposed to take seriously Belle's "Rumple has a good heart and yours is totally black." We see it with Greg, where he is alternately so dull and so mustache-twirly in the present that we're not allowed to sympathize with his desperate quest to find out what happened to his father and destroy the woman who abducted/killed him. Certainly, no other character is allowed to sympathize with him. And we see it even with Snow. She doesn't kill Cora primarily out of revenge, as Cora is a real threat in the present day, but the show's unwillingness to have anyone say, as Snow is catatonic and suicidal with guilt, "Look. She killed your mother. She killed Joanna. She's killed tons of other people. And she was trying to kill all of us" is more evidence that the show has no concept of righteous anger or deserved punishment. This is interesting because it actually runs directly counter to the trend I'm talking about above, where it is the responsibility of the good and the victimized to redeem the evil. I'm not totally sold that the writers saw it in precisely that way, because I do think Emma is depicted as wrong for leaving Hook on the beanstalk, which sends him running back to Cora. As a whole, however, yeah, Hook is a case of someone who winds up turning because he isn't being coddled by everyone around him. He is treated like the villain he is, comes to the recognition that people are right to treat him this way, and does something about it. I think I'm both more and less negative about where Hook is at this point than you are. On one hand, I don't think Hook was going to ally with Regina even if she hadn't betrayed him. He would have switched allegiances if it became clear that she was getting the upper hand over Greg and Tamara, but I think regardless of what happened with Maleficent, he was planning on getting that cuff on Regina. On the other hand (or, you know, hook), had he been in a position where allying with Regina made sense, I don't think he would have bothered to consciously plan on saving others Had he happened to run into a group of kids as he was leaving SB, then yeah, he might have felt bad and invited them onto the JR in order to save them. But as a more abstract thing, I think he would have been perfectly capable of shrugging his shoulders, saying "that's a shame," and moving on. I do think that he was giving Regina a chance in his "Do you ever wonder why no one cares about us" speech. If she had responded differently there, he probably would have allied with her - but if she had responded differently there, she presumably would have abandoned her plan to kill everyone and found a less extreme path forward.

Is that better or worse than a) Naming kid number three after kid number one, whom you sold into slavery or b) Naming kid number two after the adult who seduced kid number one when she was a homeless teen, and then got her sent to prison? Man, this show is messed up.

Sorry for the double post; I thought the last had run long enough that I'd split my thoughts. Mostly, I want to talk about Hook here, but first some thoughts/questions on Emma and Neal. As with their brief scene in the last episode, Neal comes off pretty decently here. He is justifiably incredulous about Emma’s suspicions about Tamara, but he’s pretty gentle with her and recognizes how sensitive the whole situation is. I also found his “oh, hell no, I taught her that!” when he realizes she’s broken into his room kind of cute – although it does raise the still open question about what Neal has been doing since Tallahassee; the last Emma knew of Neal, he was robbing convenience stores, so you’d think she and the viewer would want some sense of what he was up to now. Fencing the watches and getting Emma arrested for possession of stolen goods shouldn’t have gotten Neal out of legal trouble. How is he still living under the same name? Does he -as he appears to – have a legitimate job, or is he involved in another con? Forget being the son of Rumplestiltkin. Does Tamara know that her fiancee spent years as a small to medium time crook? Does Rumple know his resolutely noble son turned to theft? Does Henry, or Mary Margaret or David know that Neal set Emma up, or that he himself was a criminal? I also don’t see a basis for Mary Margaret’s belief that Emma may still be in love with Neal, which isn't in evidence, to the point where it comes off as gaslighting. It is part of the laziness that continues next episode with Rumple making a similar comment to Neal about still carrying a torch for Emma; there's no real reason, as a viewer, to think these two people who were together for a few months eleven years ago in a relationship that originated in a life of crime that they have both now abandoned and culminated in a massive betrayal would want to get back together, so the writing relies on simply having other characters assert that they still have feelings for each other. As for Hook, he fascinates the hell out of me in this episode. Given his penchant for switching sides, and having forgotten the details, I was legitimately worried that he was allying with Regina and accepting her plan to kill everyone in town, so I was relieved that that wasn’t the case. His agreeing to work with Greg and Tamara makes much more character sense anyway, as he would be more likely to sympathize with Greg’s motivation than Regina’s. But what I still really don’t know, even after watching four more years of Hook’s character development, is to what extent his comments on Cora were sincere. My own read on it is that, on some level, they were, which is all kinds of messed up and gives real insight, I think, into his headspace at this point. Cora and Hook had a frequently antagonistic alliance in which she generally had the upper hand, and took full advantage of it; it was marked by mutual betrayals, and, after the Haven massacre, Hook knows exactly what she’s capable of (we never get confirmation one way or the other, but I don’t assume Hook was in on that; at worst, he may have known it was coming and done nothing to stop her). Yet, what gets me in this episode is just how profoundly lonely Hook is. When he talks to Regina about vengeance, he puts it in terms of their villainy being the reason that they have no one who cares for them, which is a kind of touching way of framing it (as opposed to putting it in terms of why they are unhappy, or why they can’t win). So I do think just the fact that they spent significant time together interacting in sometimes companionable ways is enough for Hook to feel some regret for Cora and look at her as a friend, because it isn’t like he has other options. This also sheds some light to what I saw – and still see as, though I’m not sure the show does – as his unwarranted hurt at Emma’s beanstalk betrayal. Really, it was delusional for him to have expected anything else. He’s a known villain who has confessed to allying with an even bigger villain. He has joined with Emma after betraying his previous ally, and for admittedly self-serving motives. His declared purpose for wanting to hitch a ride to the LWOM is to kill someone (for good reason, but he doesn’t give Emma quite enough information that she would necessarily trust that). She’s doing the only sane thing in taking the opportunity to ditch him, and the merciful thing in negotiating for his safety. But because Hook is so desperate for connection to another person – and feels a particularly strong sense of kinship with Emma --, it is devastating for him to get confirmation that he has fallen so low that even when he is legitimately being decent (as he was risking himself for Emma during the adventure, and really didn’t intend to double-cross her), he’s someone that no one worth making a connection with is going to want to touch. In the moment, it manifests as unjustified anger, but by this point, it has transformed into self-reflection, probably reinforced by the reactions he has recently gotten from not only Emma, but a bunch of other “good” people who rightfully treat him like untrustworthy trash.

Weirdly, I don't actually think the village massacre is the most unforgiveable thing Regina has done, in context. It is the worst in terms of quantity of evil, but it seemed to me that she gave the order thoughtlessly, as a kind of reflexive show of power and performance of evil, and really wasn't thinking about the consequences. For my money, as someone who judges redeemability more by things like motivation and level of sadism, horrific as it is, it isn't as destructive to her chances of redemption as things like sending children to the witch, her current plans for Storybrooke, or even what she did to Owen and Kurt. What is frustrating in this episode is that you can see the seeds of an interesting character here. It would require massive rewrites of multiple episodes, but it would be doable. There is something potentially worth mining in a Regina who is, in, spite of everything, sincerely touched and heartened to find that Snow still sees good in her, who on some level does want to be that person who saved Snow from the horse again, who quite clearly passes up an opportunity to kill her, and who may actually be horrified at seeing the consequences of the massacre. What spoils all of it is two things. One, that, while as I said quantity of evil isn’t my primary metric, you're going to have to work really hard to convince me that someone who has done as much as Regina has is capable of change. Instead, we’ve seen Regina given multiple chances, past and present, to change her ways and choose a different path, and every time she turns to sadistic murder (or, as Mary Margaret and David put it in a laughable euphemism, “she slips”). To use an analogy, it would be as if not only was a show or novel trying to present a committed Nazi as a complex, sympathetic and redeemable figure – which I don’t think would be impossible, but it would be tough –but they make him a committed Nazi who is also abusive to his wife and nasty to his supposed friends and who escapes to Brazil after the war, where, given the chance to start a new life, he proceeds to murder a few more people for hurting his feelings, and then joins with another genocidal leader for a while in a fit of pique when the local Jewish community doesn’t invite him to their Chanukkah party. But the other is that her lack of understanding, both in the past and present, of the transparently obvious fact that people regard her as a villain rather than a hero because she is doing things like mass murder puts her in the category of too delusional to be interesting. It would be like a drama spending a lot of time on a character who hallucinates that she is being pursued by a herd of pink elephants: that wouldn’t happen because, while it might be very sad that someone is so in the grip of mental illness that she’s lost all hold on reality, it isn’t otherwise a pathology that is nuanced enough to warrant extended exploration. They’ve created a character who demonstrates sociopathic lack of empathy, to the extent that she is baffled and hurt that Henry – who she knows is a “good” person who has come to love the members of his biological family – isn’t on board with a plan to kill everyone in the town except for him. Even her reaction to the village massacre doesn’t seem to be horror at what she has done, but horror at Snow’s reaction, which cuts into the self-flattering belief that she is really a good person. Basically, the show thinks Regina is simply someone who has given into the dark potential that resides in all of us, someone who is different in circumstances and degree, but not in kind, from someone like Snow or Emma. In theory, that’s not a bad idea to explore. Unfortunately, they’ve written her – unlike Hook, as becomes apparent in this episode – as someone who is on a different moral and psychological map entirely from even the other villains.