KAOS Agent

I haven't seen this episode since it aired, but it was very interesting to rewatch as I was paying more attention to the little things outside the main storyline. I miss sneaky Rumpel. Making a deal with Regina to have something "tragic" happen to Kathryn was so classic Rumpel. Of course, Regina jumped to murder. The devil's in the details, Regina. He held to his part of the deal. Kidnapping is tragic after all. Given some of the confusion surrounding Regina and her origins, I also took note of the home they were living in and it does seem to be extremely nice. A huge manor house with towers or turrets or something. It would fit as a country estate for royalty or the very upper classes. It's no royal palace, but still very, very comfortable. During the interview with the DA King George, it's interesting that they referred to David and Mary Margaret's relationship as an affair and Mary Margaret does not deny it. I take that to mean she and David were indeed sleeping together even though we never saw it. Also, why the hell was Regina allowed to watch that interview? Not that the DA to interview was at all realistic anyway. I liked Emma's little conversation with David. I'd forgotten how deeply unimpressed she was with him. Cursed!David was such a jackass and I love that Emma's not at all hesitant to let him know what she thinks of him. I was so glad that this episode was the end of the let's make Emma act like an idiot so we can stretch things out forever storyline. I hate it when someone acts so out of character for plot reasons. There's no way Emma with her complete lack of trust and her ability to at least have a clue when someone's lying to her would believe Sidney the way she did. There would be a huge amount of skepticism about him and any claims he'd make. ETA: Incidentally, Daniel refers to him and Regina as True Love.

I'd say it was to hide Ginny's pregnancy, but since she'd just given birth when the curse hit, it was a very loose, flowing thing so it shouldn't have been a problem. It was also a very clean, white gown. Births must be incredibly clean in the Enchanted Forest. The cloak was probably more because that thing was more of a sheer nightgown thing and wouldn't have been appropriate for wandering around the picnic gazebo. That said, I do wonder why Belle was wearing the gold gown when they were dumped back in the Enchanted Forest. She certainly wasn't wearing that as a prisoner in Regina's tower. And why is she wearing a rather ratty cloak over it? Wouldn't she at least rate something nice to go with the gown?

I'd say that what really turned Hook around is that he saw that you could fight the power and win without losing your honor in the process. Hook's initial slide into darkness was caused by a corrupt king. He had no way to take down a power that great, but fought back the only way he could think of and became a pirate. Milah's death also the result of a corrupt and evil power. He descended further into the darkness and became Death!Wish!Hook where even collateral damage wasn't that big of an issue to him because he was the worst human around. Once he thought he achieved his goal, he looked at himself and realized he hated what he saw and knew that others must look at him in the same way. Then he looked at Emma and saw she represented someone just like him. Someone without any power or privilege but who had somehow managed to not give in to the anger and hate and instead claw her way up in spite of all of the forces trying to drag her down. Then she went and offered him a chance to reclaim his honor and did it in a way that even allowed for him to be semi-proud of his pirate skills - i.e. they needed to be the hero, villain & pirate to succeed in Neverland. Hook's biggest asset is his self-awareness. Once he realized he was responsible for a good deal of his unhappiness and had a good example to follow, he was able to make healthier choices for himself going forward.

Neal was shot in the chest with a .38, fell through a portal and laid face down on the beach until Aurora and co found him, yet all he had to show for it was a tiny hole in his shirt. He should have been a bloody mess and at the very least his shirt would have been a total write off, but no he was wearing the same clothes in Neverland as he was when he got shot in Storybrooke.

Power and the need for it is really at the heart of the matter for both of the redeeming villains on this show (I exclude Hook from any talk about this because he never had any power. See: Captain Floor). The truth is that I'd doubt Regina would have let Zelena live if Regina hadn't had all of the power at the end. The show played it as "heroic" that Regina didn't kill her because that would be the wrong thing to do, but that's really not why Regina didn't kill her. And we saw that when Regina was lording her power over Zelena later in the jail. She even told Zelena that if she didn't do exactly as Regina said, Regina would kill her. Regina held all the cards, had all the power and could do whatever she wanted. It was easy to make the choice not to kill her sister and seem all magnanimous and "good" because she could always just kill her later if need be. The grossness of Regina using the dagger and controlling Rumpel and forcing him to make the "right" choice was just the icing on the cake of the Regina power trip from "Kansas". The true measure of Regina's heroism and goodness is if she would choose to make the right choice without having power or getting anything tangible in return. In fact, it would be best if making the right choice would actually have a negative effect on her power. Until she demonstrates that the corrupting influence of power no longer has a hold on her, I can't buy into her being redeemed. She also needs to have regrets, but the show thinks not having them is a good thing so that's not going to happen. Rumpel has the same issue with power. He can't live without it. It's why he brought magic to Storybrooke and why he can't allow Belle to have his dagger (outside the fact that Belle wandering around with his dagger in her purse is the worst. idea. ever.). I'd say his past makes it even harder for him to be willing to let go of it. Beyond the endless number of enemies he's made over time, he knows that there are bullies like Hook and the Kiss My Boot Soldier out there and he can't live with the idea of being put back into the position of the village coward again. I think this is one of the reasons he respects Emma. She came from a position of no power and privilege and worked her ass off to earn some without being corrupted along the way. It must puzzle him how she went about doing that. Accruing power has been what Rumpel's been about for centuries, he has to let that go before he can ever start on the path to redemption.

Maybe the lack of bloody deaths is more that these aren't necessarily bad guys. We know that Graham was forced into being a black knight against his will. Maybe others are in her service in the same way. It's not like Regina would inspire a whole lot of loyalty in her army given her tendency to kill the messenger. They don't deserve to die in a pool of their own blood. The knights attacking Charming in the Pilot were actively trying to kill a newborn baby. They were very obviously bad. They didn't fight fair. They will spill blood in their quest to kill the Saviour and David was justified in going all in on killing them. In the Hook/Rumpel sword fight we don't get blood (mostly because Hook wears black, so it wouldn't show), but Rumpel had a defenseless Hook on his back and was standing there grinding the sword into Hook's side when Milah showed up. They didn't shy away from that. But again, you have villain on villain, so maybe it's okay. On the other hand, we also have Rumpel's blood soaked apron from when he was relentlessly torturing Robin. We don't see the torture, but we do see some of the aftermath. It's hard to say what's acceptable on this show. I'd say that maybe some of it has to do with budget - both time & money. They're not spending time on fake blood and costume changes and clean-up when shooting these scenes, so they have options to get more takes, better camera angles, etc as well as be more efficient in terms of filming in general.

I think for Rumpel the absolute power handed to him definitely corrupted him and allowed him to carry out all the secret fantasies he'd had of getting back at all of those who'd wronged him over the years. However, I highly doubt Rumpel the man had such extremely gruesome fantasies. More likely they were that he'd like to kill that guy someday with a sword or something, not that he'd like to rip open his throat with his own teeth and crush his veins. I wonder if maybe the Dark One curse is something that removes your conscience such that evil and terrible things become continually less horrible to the cursed individual over time. It's also been established by Rumpel that he uses anger/hate to fuel his power, so it seems the darker the acts, the more powerful the Dark One would become. This would also spur more and more sickening acts. Perhaps whoever created the Dark One's Curse in the first place may have considered this sort of thing. The Dark One craves power and in order to get more and more, he needs to do darker and darker things.

Random Question: Does anybody ever wonder why when Emma, Snow & the Wraith fell through the hat they didn't end up in the room with the doors? Also does Hook just end up in Wonderland or does he go to the door room when he uses the hat? Are there signs over the doors that tell where they lead? Inquiring minds want to know.

I assumed Zelena took out all of the ogres. Ogres would annoy her and could potentially mess with her plans. Easy enough to just kill them or turn them into her flying monkey army.

Regina, Belle, Snow, Henry and Baby Snowflake can have their own separate storyline in Storybrooke with some of the secondary players. Given Snow's poor judgement, I'd go with her hiring Evil Mary Poppins. Everyone's favorites would have a story and I could just skip those parts I couldn't care less about. I only left David out of my non-magical world scenario because I don't want him to miss out on his new baby. Eh, newborns are lame anyway. He wouldn't really miss anything if he was gone the first few months, so he can join Team Badass. I just want to avoid the 2A structure where they had three separate stories running at once and they couldn't fit all three in each episode. Since I mostly only cared about what was going on with Team Princess, there were several episodes where I completely tuned out because there was no Team Princess and instead had filler stories about Whale or whatever. It's annoying that they continued to waste time on pointless flashbacks (Hook's story was pertinent so I'll give them that episode) rather than focus on the two present day stories. Flashbacks should only be used when pertinent to the present story or actually give some new information. Emma background would be acceptable. Snowing vs. Evil Queen part 934823094823 is not.

One thing that we see with Rumpel is that he doesn't run out and have a kill everyone mode. A good example of this occurs in "Snow Drifts" when he tells Emma to just run along and let him enjoy his killing Hook. He didn't care about Emma at all and told her to go away even though she was with Hook because he didn't have any reason to hurt her. If that had been Snow & Emma faced with the Evil Queen, Regina would have killed them both because Emma deserved it for hanging out with Snow. I'd always take Rumpel over the Evil Queen because he has reason and accountability something which Regina completely lacks. There's also the mythology of the Dark One that's behind a lot of Rumpel's actions. We've seen Rumpel the man and he did not become a crazy psycho freak show when bad things happened. He went on with his life and was a good father to his son until he tried to protect him and became the Dark One. At which point, as Neal said, things went bad. Rumpel the man wasn't the psychopath and parts of that man must be screaming inside at what a monster he's become. I think there's some hope that the man happens to have more control over the body than the Dark One. And I'd say that even the Dark One can be reasoned with to some extent, which doesn't seem to be the case with the Evil Queen.

Alternatively, they could throw Emma, Hook & Rumpel into a different Land without Magic or a depowered Enchanted Forest. Someplace where Hook would have the skills advantage, Emma would be out of her element but more than capable and Rumpel would have the knowledge, but nothing to back it up. That would make for some very interesting dynamics and the power structure would be hugely shifted. This show desperately needs to step away from the magic cure all especially the Rumpel/Regina magical cure all. They've had two seasons of magical whatsits and the most magical magician that ever magicked except not to keep me interested in the plot, plot, plot portions of the story. I only hang on for the character moments and as those are in danger of becoming extinct, I'm almost ready to check out and not watch next season.

They've made Rumpel too powerful and that's why he's constantly shuffled off somewhere else while everyone runs around doing nothing until the very end when they need him to vanquish the big bad they've also made too powerful. They've got the same problem with Regina to some extent, so they come up with stupid things to keep her from winning until they need it. Then they pull White!Magic!Regina out of their ass and expect us to not feel cheated. I do so desperately wish they would bring in a non-magical villain whose appearance would also bring with it a removal of magic from Storybrooke. Let's put everyone back on the same playing field as Season 1 and make Rumpel use his constantly scheming brain rather than his magic. Make Regina learn what it's like to be completely powerless in the face of evil. Power and privilege is a huge issue with me for these villains. Those things need to be removed in order for me to buy into them changing. Make them lose everything and build themselves back up without just handing it back to them. Quit having them sacrifice and giving it back to them two episodes later when they've done nothing to earn it. I don't care about their mommy or daddy issues. There's a whole hell of a lot of others on this show with equal issues and somehow they've kept themselves in check and not become raging psychopathic murderers.

Given the way this show has its characters act as if True Love is some rare and mystical thing (even though everyone and their brother seems to have True Love), I'm not sure that Hook ever thought of Milah as his true love. It's more likely that as he said to David in the Season 3 finale that he didn't actually believe true love existed until he met Emma. It was definitely implied that he'd never felt that way before. That doesn't mean that he didn't really love Milah and that her death wasn't incredibly painful for him, just that it wasn't a love that transcends time and space. I'd say in some ways Hook/Milah parallels Emma/Neal in that while both relationships were loving, neither couple brought out the best in each other. Neal led an impressionable Emma deeper into a life of crime and Milah was an active participant in and encouraging of Hook's continued piracy something which was actually damaging to the honorable core that resides within Hook. Obviously, the dynamics of these relationships were massively different, but there is a thread of commonality between Emma & Hook and their first loves. There's love and then there's True Love and Hook seems to have learned and felt the difference.

Neither Hook or Neal ever act like the many hundreds of years old men that they are. Since it's consistent between those two characters, while Rumpel does show the wisdom and strangeness of an immortal, I chalk it up to Neverland and its timelessness. No one ever moves on or grows. They remain in limbo barely acknowledging the passing of time only aware of a growing unhappiness and darkness building within. What's interesting to me about Hook is that his relationship with Milah didn't mature him. You'd think that after several years in a committed relationship with a mature woman, he'd grow up a bit, but he's still a horrible drunken jerk when he runs into Rumpel all those years later. Milah apparently had no effect on his maturity level. However, since meeting Emma, he's grown by leaps and bounds. The writers drew a very clear picture of his newly found maturity in "Snow Drifts" (and to some extent in "The Jolly Roger") when he watches his past self with unhappiness and doesn't want Emma anywhere near that version of himself. It's especially interesting in light of the fact that he met Milah while doing the exact same thing his past self was doing in the tavern - drinking, wenching and playing dice. Milah was attracted to the the very same characteristics that he now despises in himself. It was also clear that Emma wasn't a bit bothered by Past!Hook, so Hook's feelings were all his own self-awareness and not a reaction to someone else's judgement.

This page lays out the differences between regular DVDs and the Blu-Rays for Season 2. It also details the extras that are exclusive to the Best Buy edition.

Actually, Emma was the one who brought up the rum. I don't think he'd been drinking. He just went with her suggestion because in his mind drinking rum would be better than letting vengeance/anger consume her life. We usually see Hook revert to rum when things don't go well for him. He dove right for the bottle when Emma went up to talk to Walsh, he was clearly drunk when he was coming on to Tinkerbelle at Granny's and they showed him go heavy on the liquor when he was cursed just as he was making progress with Emma. However, you never see him do anything more than casual drinking at other times. In some ways, I think it's just habit to have the flask and drink a bit. It was pretty obvious Past!Hook drank himself into oblivion pretty much every night; Present!Hook does not have that problem.

Okay, not quite what I meant on the gauging fan interest (as if they care what I think), but I'm never going to think of the horrible ideas these showrunners come up with again without thinking about Grumpy Cat screaming NO in their ears.

To be fair, pretty much everyone but Emma already thought she and Hook were in a relationship before the finale. I always wonder if spoilers like this aren't the showrunners floating ideas out there to see what kind of reaction they get on stories that they really don't know where to go on. Broad strokes they know where they're going with Rumpel/Frozen and Regina/Robin/Marian, but side stories are more throw things at the wall and see if they stick. They're still in the planning stages and writing the first episodes, so say they have some vague ideas, float them out there and let the ABC marketing department loose on gauging potential fan reaction.

For one episode (and only one episode), I could see sort of a big misunderstanding between Hook/Emma about Emma not wanting to be open about their relationship because of "guilt". Emma has just a general decency about not wanting to flaunt things in front of Regina, but Hook thinks it's because she's embarrassed/ashamed/whatever to be seen in public in a relationship with him. It just plays on his understanding that the Charmings don't approve or think he's good enough for her (which really Hook, Snow thought Neal was good for Emma, so her parents' judgment on this is highly questionable) in addition to Hook's uncertainty about Emma's feelings for him. Emma feeling guilty about saving someone's life at the cost of Regina being dumped by her boyfriend of less than a week is ridiculous and horrible. The morality of this show is already so off kilter I'm not sure why I'd be surprised at them trying to play this, but I really, really, really hope this is not the case. And if I hear Regina tell Emma she's ruined her life, I hope to God Emma just laughs in her face.

How would a shape shifter arrange to get paraded around by Regina in front of Emma/Hook when no one knew they were there, then later somehow know that Emma would be arrested by the Evil Queen and thrown into the dungeon right next to her, know that Emma could break out on her own, would be willing to spend the time to break out the woman next to her and then come up with the plan to take her back to the future with her? It doesn't fly with me. The main issue with Robin/Regina is that at this point all Marian would tell Robin is that Regina tortured her and sentenced her to death. There is no original timeline. If the writers try to show flashbacks to the timeline that was but now isn't because Marian was now not there for that to happen, it doesn't work. I don't care if she escaped or was set free (though Lana confirmed that the writers told her that Regina had executed Marian). This is the story they have now. So if Robin hangs out with this "bold and audacious" woman who did these terrible things to his wife and the mother of his child, I just can't handle it. It's not how Regina handles things that I care about. Regina wants Robin because pixie dust said he belongs to her. I care about how Robin reacts and the story they've given to me will never work as a true love match. I'm sure Season 4 will have the writers doing everything they can to make Outlaw Queen happen, but they'll pretty much have to make it so that the real Regina was locked in a tower this whole time and the Evil Queen was actually the shape-shifter for me to even consider going along with breaking up a canonical true love pairing for Regina. That said, given the Robin I've seen on Once, Marian deserves better. If she hooks up with some really great Storybrooker, I'd be down with watching that love story play out.

I had this vague memory that she'd changed her user name when we all came over here and I was right. I looked at the first couple pages of this thread where everyone was checking in and it seems she changed over to Amerilla, so you should keep a look out for that name if you're looking for her.

But I thought that was kind of the point of "Bleeding Through". Regina & Snow were bonding over the realization that it wasn't all cut and dried and even Regina said that it was complicated. I have a really hard time with the Snow/Regina relationship as it is considering how Regina utterly destroyed Emma's life, but if they want to go down that path, they at least need to have Regina understand just how messed up it was to blame Snow. Knee jerk reactions like the one she had with Emma tell the real tale on Regina's perspective over the whole Daniel incident and since it apparently hasn't changed, I just can't with the idea of Snow & Regina continued bonding.

And Pan was just evil. They didn't give him some sad sob story and boo hoo his life was so hard. No, he was just a straight up villain. I also knew that he could kill our heroes at any time but was so sure of himself and his total control of his domain that he wasn't worried about keeping them around just for the fun of messing with them. I enjoyed Pan a lot. I just wish they hadn't used him to further the sad, sad story of poor misunderstood Rumpelstiltskin. There was no need to add him to the Stiltskin family tree.

Regina being upset was understandable. That her immediate response to that upset was to tell Emma that she was just like her mother is highly problematic. They spent considerable time in 3B developing a bond between Snow & Regina both in the Missing Year and in present day Storybrooke. Having Regina immediately revert to blame casting and comparing it to Snow's past actions, in which the blame was so ridiculously misplaced anyway, rips away all of that relationship development because it showed that Regina still hasn't come to the realization that she was wrong and deep down she's still not over it and still blames Snow for ruining her life. Regina still doesn't get it. It's back to square one with the self awareness on Regina's part.