Trek

Unlikely. I don’t think they have it in them. For example, the scene last season where Eph had to make a choice whether to shoot his now turned wife through the window while his son was nearby was a pretty blatant rip-off of Morgan’s scene with the rifle in TWD S01E01 in an attempt to draw the viewers into the emotional conflict facing the survivors. Only Lennie James and TWD writers nailed it while it came out as ridiculous on The Strain. One can hope though, that the plot result is going to be the same. That revelation was a sad event in the TWD, but will be a cause for celebration for us if the Strain copies that too.

I like Mitch as well, and hope how the show left off this episode - with Mitch being startled awake (due possibly to the cougar getting more aggressive) is a mislead and not an indicator that the next episode will be his tap out one. I like Mitch for being the most aggressive in trying to progress his situation into a sustainable one. Where most others are more or less near their start points (Brant, for example, appeared to have just stayed exactly where he was dropped off, drinking brackish water for 6 days. WTF?) Mitch scouted the most aggressively, to the extent of building a makeshift boat out of his tarp, to find the best location he could. On fire, he was the first to get one going with the curling technique and now he has char cloth to conserve his ferro rod. While others are still foraging – whether for mushrooms or bull kelp (essentially “hunter-gatherer” stage) – he’s taken a first step in trying to achieve a fixed sustainable/renewable food source (“food farming” stage)via fishing nets. With each move, what I see is a guy approaching this game almost like a settler rather than just “surviving day to day for as long as I can and hoping that it’s longer than the other guys.” That’s interesting to me and I hope it doesn’t end up costing him by drawing the attention of Mr. Cougar.

Heh,glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that the task was definately NOT photobombing. ... Trump playing favorites has gotten worse and worse every season. Infinity wins 5 and lose 1 and he fires the entire team. Meanwhile, Vivica and Geraldo lose 5 in a row and are still hanging on. At least in the first CA -with the exception of Omorosa- it was based more or less on competence (love him or hate him, iirc Piers has the winningest rescord on Apprentice, celeb or otherwise, ever). I much prefer a battle of competence over ego and faux drama. Leeza vs the Jonas brother would have made a good jingle face off.

Hell no, that’s way too many bios to check! You are right of course that for it to be scientifically sound, it needs to be crossed-referenced against the job distribution of all players who have played the game in each season. However, even for seasons I remember well e.g. Sekou, Billy, Flicka and Cao Boi being the obvious “no-collar” reps of their respective tribes for CI, I’d still have to re-check all to make sure that Sekou was not an accountant or something by day and only a musician at night. Mine was only ever intended as a back of the envelope style peek.

IMO, the chances of getting lambasted increases exponentially if you try to backtrack from your game (mom or otherwise), and top it off by throwing words like “integrity” around. Whether older (Lil), younger (Amanda) or male (Coach). Missy, for example, played both the mom card and the integrity card in her opening jury speech. That makes knocking her back fair game. Missy, in fact, played a decent game, she was actually the glue that kept the main alliance together. It was her that kept Jon in for as long as he needed to be when the guy was teetering to flip 3 times. Kelly and Dale were all her and she had a bigger hand in both the Josh and Jeremy blindsides than Nat (who didn’t even know about the latter one). Did she mention any of that? No. She played the game with “integrity” ooookay then.

With nothing better to do, I went back to have a look at the past winners and tried to categorize them according to the theme of the upcoming season as announced on the reunion show. Note that I was going by my categorization so may be a bit arbitrary (e.g. While some jobs don’t require them getting their collars dirty like car salesmen (Heidik) or flight attendants (Todd) I still consider Blue, while those in entertainment/modeling (Danni, Jenna etc.) I consider to be no collar.) The historical statistics suggest that Blue Collars are top as far Survivor is concerned. They have the winningest record and includes all three that tops virtually all “best survivor of all time” lists. Boston Rob (Construction), Parvarti (Boxing –although some have said it was more “lingerie boxing” thus making it entertainment and ergo No Collar), Sandra (various jobs for the military, non- commissioned). Notable white collars: Hatch, Yul, Earl, Kim Last three winners: Natalie (Crossfit coach/physical therapist – Blue), Tony (Cop – Blue), Tyson (Cyclist – no collar).

Heh. I actually watched ASS before Marquesas (I started watching at S07/S08 live before going back to the older seasons) and remembering going WTF, Maraamu's terrible. To be fair, they only had 2 good performers in the tribe (challenge wise) and BRob voted the other guy (Hunter) off! Marquesas wasn't a great season but it did have some of the most hilarious THs ever; "Cleopatra landing on the beach", "Robfather", and http://funny115.com/v1/79.htm amoung others.

That’s actually not quite true. America in particular has a very, very long history of actually actively supporting virtually every tyrant in the world - both petty and large - as long as they were non hostile to US interests. Marcos, the Shah, “baby doc” Duvalier, Pinochet, many unelected gulf leaders to this day etc. all got US money and they couldn’t really do much shit in return for it apart from being non-communist, non-jihad or non-whatever… unlike a Rumpletyrant. “I can scry for you the location of a 50billion barrel oil deposit for, oh say, two Navy Seal teams to be assigned to my Island on rotation as ‘honor’ guard for 10 years. Do we have a deal deary?” “What do I want for deradiating every single uranium atom in N. Korea?” Heaheh, I love it when they ask me that.” “I can indeed expunge your part in the Iraq has WMD debacle from collective memory, but all magic comes with a price!” (To a Senator) “I can guarantee you the Presidency in 4 years if your youngest would like to be my apprentice. Deal Deary?” “I have the potion that completely eliminates cocaine addiction right here in my hand dearie. Ah ah ah, I didn’t say it was free.” I can see deals getting done, above and below board. No shortage of demand - I actually have a harder time thinking up things that Rumple would want in return than what people may want from Rumple. His medical abilities alone (complete heals for all but the most serious ailments, re-attach limbs like he did for Whale, conduct non-surgical complete heart transplants in 30 secs with a 100% success rate, and ‘rewind’ people back to youth) is going to make him richer that Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the world association of plastics surgeons combined. PS. He is also immortal. Does this mean immune to bullets, definitely. Can he create a magi- dome Cora style for anti-air, he’s more powerful than her so that’s a yes. Can he take a nuke? Uhmm, maybe not, but if the US/UK or some other is thinking a strike (don’t forget he absorbed the seers power so has early warning), he “purple-mist vaporates” to China and provides services there. Anyone going to nuke China? No. Rumple lives!

Oh I agree with you on the management of bad luck and some people would be far better at it than others, (but didn't want to add in extra permutations on an already very long post). For example, I would say that while Michelle staying may have made YM more expendable, it would have made the highly unreliable Dreamz even more so (and I'd strongly suggest that his social/alliance skills would make it far more likely that he stays over Dreamz in most scenarios). With Dreamz out earlier, YM wins F4 (Earl was hopeless at challenges) - or at miminum gets to keep his car, heh, which is an improvement to what actually transpired.

I agree with you about the “all-in” but I think he’d actually go far in most games he plays in your 100000 simulations for two big reasons: 1) The luck factor should even out over the course of the statistical samples and those that benefited from some good luck would get some bad, and those with some bad would get some good. In other words, we have to factor out luck in the same way that a large statistical sample would automatically do – and by luck I mean anything that affects the outcome but in which the player has no influence or control over, whether it’s picking buffs out of a hat, or a key ally getting medivaced etc. For example, by my calculation, the chance that Yau Man would be screwed again by a twist that eliminated Michelle is only 1/9 * 1/29 (or once in every 261 simulations) so his overall record should improve with multiple simulations. On the flip side, Kim say, is very unlikely to again benefit from the opposing tribe going to tribal despite winning immunity (through no doing of her own whatsoever) since it has only occurred once in 29 seasons and if it does occur again then it is her tribe that’s going to be filled with buffoons and does it, undermining her game. (Heads or tails evening out in the long run to 50:50). In the case of BRob specifically, he’s actually been a pretty unlucky player. Heck, even in TAR, after dominating his season - most legs won (5), highest average placing (11 legs in the top 3) - he ended up getting a shitty cab driver for the last leg while the decidedly average Uchenna and Joyce lucked out on a superb one. Anyways: In ASS, out of all the possible permutations with 10 players left, the chance that Amber and only Amber would be swapped was miniscule. If there had been no swap or if it had been anybody else other than Amber being swapped, he wouldn’t have made the two deals (one with Lex and one with Alicia as his backup plan) that directly cost him their two votes. BRob wins ASS, easily. In the Marquesas, the swap was a disaster not because it put him badly down in numbers (although that certainly wasn’t good, but since his tribe were down in numbers going in, that was statistically probable –not bad luck) but because it also left the Rotu 4 completely intact (which was statistically highly improbable). If any of the Rotu 4 had been split up with one or more of Kathy/Paschal/Neleh remaining, it most likely would have been a completely different ball game even with the numbers disadvantage. In HvV, the Heroes couldn’t win a challenge when the BRob and Tyson were in the game while the Villains couldn’t win one without them. (Actual number was villains win 7/9 before and 1/5 after). The crucial turning point of the game – Tyson voting himself off- is well remembered by all. However, what people forget is that the villains should not have been at tribal at all because they won the preceding challenge. It occurred because of an idiot twist where both teams had to vote off a tribe member. They did not lose a challenge - a precondition for a team going to tribal in what, I don’t know, maybe 180-200 of the pre-merge tribals before and since in 29 seasons? Without that twist, BRob and Tyson would almost certainly have made the merge and the merge numbers would probably be something like 8 villains/2 heroes. What happens then is anybody’s guess but if we accord that twist with its correct distribution in a simulation - say once or twice every 100 tribals,- the chances of BRob making it to the merge if he is in a “strong in challenges tribe” is extremely high. Which brings us to challenges… 2) IMO, Boston Rob is the best challenge asset in the game, ever. Unlike many other challenge beasts who excel only in their specific leg of a challenge, Boston Rob not only does that (and is probably also the most well rounded – including puzzles) but brings out the best of the entire team as well. Examples vs other "highly rated" challenge performers. Strength challenge vs James (and or Tom) HvV: Make stairway with huge heavy cubes. BRob not only does most of the heavy lifting but solves the puzzle as he is doing it. Villains gushing with praise, Tyson says, “we need you, man, we really need you.” Meanwhile, Tom on the other team is looking completely befuddled while James does very little lifting and uses most of his energy yelling at Steph to “shut up, Shut up!” Agility/sports vs JT In the catch the slingshot ball challenge, JT is all kinds of heroic even loses a tooth trying to make a catch. His team loses. When BRob had this same challenge in RI, he specifically instructs Nat to fire short to Grant and Grant only, meanwhile he would act as a “free safety” in the entire backfield (not just his own pole) to compensate for the mismatches in other positions e.g. Ashley vs Mansweater. Grant catches 4 balls, while of the opposition balls, BRob swats away 4 and intercepts 1 for a perfect 5-0 victory. Ability + team strategy trumps ability alone every time. Water challenge vs Ozzie In ASS, there was a challenge when players had to dive down to a boat, remove 2000lbs of ballast to bring the boat up, bail the water out and paddle the boat back to the finish line. As the boats come up to the surface everyone starts furiously bailing with buckets… except Chapera. BRob tells his team to haul the boat up upside down onto the platform and even instructs Amber to sit atop the back to prevent it from flipping over prematurely. Only then do they flip it over and, in so doing, clear the water completely from the boat in one shot without having to bail at all. Chapera wins by a huge margin. Ozzie in such a situation may have dived a little faster (and even that is questionable considering that BRob prime could outswim Colby, Lex, Ethan and so-called fisherman king Rupert) and help them that way but Ozzie doesn’t have the ability to come up with the huge winning strategy for the team that BRob does pretty consistently and would just be cussing out the team for not bailing/paddling fast enough when they lose. The point being that while there are many players who are great at challenges individually (including BRob himself), in terms of team contribution he is IMO, by far, the best. In a schoolyard pick, I’d take him first every time. Specifically, this makes him very valuable to keep to the merge, whereas for others who are only individual challenge threats, that’s a good reason to get them out before the merge. Methinks BRob's average placing in 100000 runs is going to be pretty darn high. ETA: Yikes! sorry for the wall of text.

Heh, I have posted on that thread in the past (and will again!) Walkers stumble over rocks but apparently they can climb stairs. They got up many flights of stairs to get to the chained roof-exit door when Merle was handcuffed on the other side (real quick too).

ITA. Where is the guy once voted the 9th(or was it 7th?) hottest bachelor in NY whose book launches were glitzy “Tony Stark” style events with plenty of champagne and girls wanting autographs in private places. Now he is kind of Laurel (from Laurel & Hardy) and his book launch is basically a joke meme. The buffoon act for cheap laughs is nowhere near as fun to watch as Nathan's witty humor of the early seasons IMO.

Sounds like you are a fun couple. Now you need to give Glenn and Maggie some tips! There’s pretty much guaranteed 24hour wind once you get above 8 stories, so attach a wind chime onto the end of a pole and stick it outside a window. If any walkers get up there, they’ll just follow the sound and go “Raahr argh, raa …KER SPLAT.” The 9th floor on up are yours and, whilst a straight up barricade policy may result in a huge walker accumulation downstairs, this walker ‘revolving door’ method will keep the lower levels relatively free should you want to access them.

Sorry, when I said generic, i meant random scences from past episodes rather than specific items associated to speicific characters. "Away with you" is indeed from clear but to be Carl specific it'd have to be his hat or something (IMO).

Yes, they burnt it in the tunnel when they reunited on the way to Terminus. It now shows up in the opening credits. In order it goes; .357 Python for AL/Rick, Angel wing jacket for NR/Daryl, Watch for SY/Glenn, the burning photo for LC/Maggie. Everyone else gets generic backdrops when their name comes up except for MMB. (Why I said Maggie’s symbol was a bad omen, heh.)

Liked this episode but didn’t love it. I don’t ship Daryl with anyone, but the chemistry and understanding between them is light years superior than Beth/Daryl who’s episode and a half together last season was the worst segment in the series entire run as far as I’m concerned. That said, there were parts of it that felt padded out to me. This episode could have been condensed and bundled with the Hospital episode. 1) I felt that they actually struggled to come up with different ways for Carol/Daryl to have interaction points.The zombified mom/daughter and the therapy book were fine. However, once they had to resort to ripping off Michonne’s playbook (she’s the art connoisseur pre-ZA, not Carol) to try to make a point about “I know you/not as well as you think” should have cued them that they were putting in too much. 2) Splitting the meet-up with Noah into two distinct segments was bad (IMO). The whole first meeting was just a convenient way for them to lose their weapons to set up the “trapped in a van” set piece they already had in mind. However, if they plan on making Noah a long term addition to CDB, that scene would have done him no favors as a character. They also filmed it from a viewers’ point of view rather than the character’s which is a device I don’t like. i.e. We are supposed to think the decision not to shoot Noah was right because, as viewers, we already know Noah is a good guy. However, Carol and Daryl do not have this information. If, like them, we had never seen Noah before, we’d absolutely think he should have been shot in the leg. Some hostile dude, unprovoked, had stolen their weapons and unleashed walkers at them. This is up and up murder in mind whatever the words coming out of his mouth. Losing all their weapons is likely to kill them, kill their mission, and as a result kill Beth too, not taking Noah out is actually a very stupid move with no meta information on hand. 3) While I enjoyed the 1st flashback well enough, the rest didn’t really do anything. Good flashbacks should tell us something about a character’s backstory and/or motivations that we don’t already know. Abraham’s flashback and Michonne’s dreamback did this really well. The only thought I had when Carol was cleaning her face with the underside of the walker gore garment was “err, girl, you know that blood seeps through cloth right?” Like many, I feel this was padded so as to make it a good send-off for Carol. The ‘redemptive’ coming back re Noah under the book case, IMO, is not the start of a "coming back from this" arc. It’s the redemption treatment everyone gets (even Merle) before going bye-bye… Which makes me really nervous that there was smoke and/or fire in virtually every scene of her flashback journey. Combine this with talk about heaven/hell, her different personas being "burnt" away…surely they can’t be setting her up to literally DIAF, could they? After Kravid, it’s just the kind of Karmic circle symbolism writers everywhere seem to adore. Plus it adds a new shock factor and TWD are always looking for ways to do that. That would be way too cruel.

I think when Rick dies is going to be up AL more so than the writers. From Fox Mulder to Gil Grissom, leads of hit shows often get this syndrome by the 8th or 9th season at the latest that they want to go do other things.

If DQ was never de-urned between Greta putting her there and Hans freeing her, even if she was conscious while inside, it still does not explain how she had nifty new spells - like shaking the mountain to get at Anna and then apparating - when she got out of it. Elsa and DQ’s ice abilities are innate, more akin to a mutant (X-men) than witchcraft in its manifestation and application. It was just there and they can use it without knowing a single incantation. However, it was also just that. Ice and snow. They could not cast “earthshaker”, apparate, divinate or use opening charms (the latter two would be required for DQ to even have a clue as to how the box Anna was carrying worked). These then must all have been learned abilities. So unless we are now saying that the Urn’s interior came fully loaded with a spell book library, DQ must have gotten out previously and/or there’s been a big continuity error. Minor nitpick: Also highly unlikely that DQ could use Arendelle soldiers to imprison/guard Anna. She’s just some woman that showed up a week ago spouting claims that is not backed up by any of their memories or written record while Anna was a bona-fide princess that they’ve known and loved for 17 years.

Seeing her cast recently as the young Snow Queen to be in Once Upon A Time reminds me that …I miss Lizzie. I appreciate that many people hate her but to dismiss her as creepy Lizzie or a simple psycho is to do her an injustice. IMHO, hers was one of the most interesting character studies on TWD, main cast included. What would it really be like for a young child growing up in the ZA? Even in the comfort of warm beds, a safe society and parents/ratings system that don’t even let them watch scary movies, many kids still have nightmares all the time and concoct imaginary monsters lurking under the bed or in the back of the closet and the like. The majority are afraid of the dark even when the dark has nothing in it. What then, when the monsters are very real and all around? Where the normal protecting arms of parents/adults aren’t a comfort at all? How can they be when you’ve seen adults dying gruesome deaths in front of your eyes and know they can’t even protect themselves? What’s it like when in your young world the sight of rotting shambling corpses are as common a sight as, say, trees while in reverse things like puppies or chocolate cupcakes are just imaginary. If Mika and friends are not affected by this, I submit that they are the weird ones not Lizzie. If the kids were all “normal” there would be no sleep to be had in the prison at all with children waking up screaming all through the night. Lizzie, OTOH has a reason for not waking up screaming at night, she’s learnt a coping mechanism. One way a young mind could try to prevent itself from going insane (ironic tragedy in this case), is to convince itself that these monsters that were everywhere were not monsters at all and maybe even friends. Friends need names and friends need to eat too. This is highly plausible and not dissimilar to the way Herchel and Beth coped by convincing themselves that walkers were not monsters but just sick people. The walkers in the barn had names and were fed too. (And it can be very powerful. Beth tried to commit suicide when that illusion was broken.) Once that step is taken then the rest naturally follows. If they were not monsters, then the things they do cannot be monstrous either. If killing is not evil what is death, what is killing? (Fakes her way into sick ward to see death, experiments on small animals etc.). Why, death isn’t that frightening at all and killing is kind of easy. They must really be friends, I was right. All they want is for us to be one of them and once you are one of them everything will be alright. After that, there was only one more step to take. Her story had run its course when she committed the “final act” - there could only be one outcome after that - so I don’t mind at all that she was killed off. However, while many may not like it because her transformative journey during the ZA was a very dark one, for me it was far more interesting and believable than many others, ranging from ludicrous (e.g. Lori) to contrived (e.g. Bob) to lame (e.g. Termites - we were attacked by people once, so we became cannibals, Oookay then). I also thought the actress who portrayed this journey did a fine job. We rarely see bad children on screen apart from either your typical bullies or are supernatural in some way – demonic babies/spawns, possessed etc. Doing a lot of screaming and frothing with lots of makeup and sfx help is easy. Being cool, calm and soft-spoken while exuding an air of disquiet and an undercurrent of menace (a Hopkins light if you will) is a very demanding role for one so young, so I applaud her efforts as well.

Only Ben, Fleur and Andrea have a shot at winning this IMO. OTY should have a future as the in-house group for shows like Seasame Street or Blue Peter. I like them but don't think they can sell many records to anyone that is old enough to have their own credit card. Stevie, well, I like him better that the joke acts of the past like Rylan, the Brazilian guy or Jedward, so there's that. The rest have all been sitting in the meh catagory for a while.

I like Lulee's chain of thought. However, I think: - One of Beth or Carol (but not both) will die before or at the midseason finale. - Maggie may die (chances of dying increases if it's Carol who dies rather than Beth). That her "symbol" in the opening credits is the burning photo of herself - not a good omen. - Glenn will not die (killing the only Asian in the cast will require a token Asian replacement - that the replacement is a token will be too painfully obvious). - Carl may die at season end due to growth spurt (same reason Walt got kicked off Lost. The actor will have grown by 4 years, while in show it's only been 1.5 years). - Doctor may join CDB (25% chance). - Lollipop cops may have been the ones that executed the Vatos in order to take med supplies from nursing home to hospital.

Perhaps, but from the immigaration cop, to the supermarket woman to the many in the meat locker, it seemed the demon leaves a dead husk behind when it departs even if it only inhabits someone for a few minutes. ETA: Was it just me, or did Garry look a bit like Kevin Spacey?

Hmm, I saw the 'twist' coming the moment John was in the dream with the Shaman. Even so, I feel the sacrifice was unecessary. John only carved the symbols after the demon had entered his friend (i.e. it didn't need to be pre-carved). Just have Gary hold the popcorn-eating guy down and carve the runes on him, I say. The guy was dead anyway.

Rump did slaughter the fairy godmother, I never said he was good and Rump (pre-Belle) never ever claimed that he was. But Ella does claim to be just that, so was Ella shocked/horrified/angry? Nope. Truncated it was “ooh, you killed her, can you grant my wishes instead? I want to go to a ball so I can marry a rich husband.” Putting aside that she didn’t give a shit about the murder, she could have asked for “a horse, 50 gold and a job in a faraway town,” you know, and maybe then the price would be 3 tear drops plus her handkerchief. Point is, the ‘good guys’ are hypocrites. Rump doesn’t just take what he wants even though he could. He gives them a choice with enough rope to see if they’d hang themselves. That they do is as much on them as it is on Rumple (rather than “it’s all Rumple’s fault.”)

What I find hypocritical is when the "good guys" keep crawling to Rumple whenever they have something they want (and more times than not, what they want is nothing altruistic but selfish) and then being outraged that he wants them to keep their end of the deal in return. What Cinderella wanted (and got) was nothing more and nothing less than a gold diggers wet dream and when he shows up at the ball has the audacity to give him the ‘icky face.’ If Anna didn’t want to give the old dude the poison/cure don’t do the deal. Don’t pretend to go along and then screw Rumple over. She doesn’t have the moral high ground here. Furthermore, unlike modern lawyers, he even tells them specifically about the small print. He told Snow (who came to him) that drinking the memory eraser would change her. She does it anyway. He tells the three sisters (who also came to him) that they don’t need his help, true sisterly love (which the ribbons symbolizes) is all they needed and was worth its weight in magic. I.e. He practically spelled it out for them that the Ribbons were way more precious than the gloves and Urn and that they shouldn’t do the deal. They do it anyway. How is Ingrid going all Snow Queen his fault? He is under no obligation to tell anyone he knows her at all or try to save Anna who has screwed him over (see 2nd para) before. If he any of these contracts found its way into a modern court, they’d all find in Rumple’s favor. That Rumple does deals at all is in essence him putting a self-limit on himself. He doesn’t need to and, as far we know, no previous Dark One ever offered that courtesy. Unless it had something to do with Bae, he’s basically at home by himself minding his own business. They are the ones that come to him. If he just wants someone’s firstborn, he pretty much can go and take one anytime he wants from basically anyone. If he wanted a housekeeper, he could have just gone to Belle’s court, snapped his fingers a dozen times turning them all into roses and carted Belle off anytime he wanted without doing them any deed in return whatsoever. Nope they asked him to come so that dad could keep that shitty little crown on his head and that’s exactly what he did. Then after they got their wish, the courtier comes knocking at his door for Belle back. Getting obliterated is exactly what he deserved. If they keep their end, Rumple has no beef with them whatsoever and isn’t a danger. Charming, when he had no power, came crawling to Rumple for selfish reasons multiple times, did his end (e.g. give (the hair on the back of) his cloak, put egg in Maleficent etc.) and there were no problems. Later Charming gets some kingly power, instead of thanking the dude, colludes with Cinderella to imprison him forever? What an ass. PS. Partially tongue in cheek. ... ... ... The relativism here is that the good guys want to use/access Rumple’s power as much as Rumple but want to do so with neither consequence (magic has a price, but I don’t want to pay it) or guilt because it’s Rumple who has to bear the curse, not them. (Belle also couldn’t resist using it for selfish ends – to redeem her self-worth and be the hero she wants to be – more so than “saving” Anna per se). Rumple, OTOH, who actually has the ability to use his power all the time, puts self-limits on himself (he doesn’t need to do deals at all and can be dictator of Storybooke if he wants but is fine with owning a pawnbroker shop) and is also fully aware of the consequences of using magic.