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There was also a whole lot of emotional character build up for the curse breaking in Season 1 that held a lot of people's attention. All of the betrayals in the past like with Geppetto, Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy, Regina locking up Belle in an asylum and Regina's murder of Graham should have led to some great stories in addition to the family stuff with the Charmings, Jefferson & Grace, Red & Granny, etc. Every week something new would come along to add to the build up of excitement for when the curse actually ended and all of these people remembered. Then "Broken" happened and Season 2 just completely bombed on dealing with any of the fallout. Truthfully, I think it was probably the lack of emotional payoff that hurt the show's numbers more than the silly magic and plot lines. Many held on through the return of Snow & Emma to Storybrooke, but once it became clear that the show would never deal with any of the stuff they'd built up and that the new story being told was really lame, people started tuning out in droves. The lack of payoff also becomes a problem when they introduce new emotional character issues because the audience already has a mistrust that the writers will ever follow through with it. Why get invested in something that will never come to fruition? Having magic in Storybrooke was definitely a problem too. Some of Rumpel's best stuff in Season 2 was watching him at the airport and seeing him realize how powerless and vulnerable he was. And Regina's struggles to use magic early in the season was interesting too - especially in light of Emma's using magic without even knowing it. Like when Regina couldn't get the hat to work and Emma simply touched her shoulder and voila! Magic portal. I'm still really disappointed that they chose to depower Emma in 3B (who really didn't care once they won and I think was pretty happy to have lost it) rather than go the much more interesting route of removing Regina's powers. I actually think a case could be made that Regina would be much happier without magic.

I remember watching this episode the first time and thinking how great it was for a mid-season finale. So much action, the plot moved forward, Emma stared to see the weirdness and should start to believe and the first time we see the truly evil side of Regina Mills not just her campy craziness as the over the top Evil Queen. Plus, they really went all in on the Evil Queen with the rape of Graham. I don't care what the writers say, I saw Regina sexually assault Graham onscreen and that is not okay ever. Just because it's a woman doing it to a man doesn't make it any less wrong or upsetting. Ripping out someone's heart, shoving him against the wall, forcibly kissing him and then telling him he's her pet and he'll do whatever she wants before ordering him to her bedchamber is all kinds of evil. I think I also have more of a visceral reaction to the normal persona of Mayor Mills very cold bloodedly and remorselessly murdering Graham simply because he dumped her than I ever have when she's the Evil Queen. And this is the episode I would point the writers to when they say that Regina's bad actions occurred a long time ago and in the Enchanted Forest because no, no they didn't. It is so sad to see Graham's story play out and for him never get any sort of justice. He just dies.

Considering how much better off Regina was without her heart, I guess she knew better than to make it un-rippable. I'm just surprised that now that she knows you can live without half your heart that she doesn't start gouging out all the black parts so she can have a heart purer than that black-spotted heart Snow White is currently half sporting.

I think it's worse when they do it for comedic reasons. Like Hook being completely incapable of coming up with an alias when they walked into the ball. These are two very street smart people who live on quick thinking and deception, he should be able to come up with something without even pausing. It's so jarring when they do that that what's played for laughs just leaves me annoyed. Or how about Emma, who described portions of Back to the Future, which means she watched it (and probably parts II & III as well), having to have Hook explain the consequences of changing the past to her. I'm sorry, what? If anything, it should have been the other way around. It's ridiculous.

What is this humidity of which you speak? One bonus of living in the high desert is there's no such thing as humidity. There's also not really such a thing as heat either. Then again, we do deal with cold and snow for ten months out of the year, so there's that. I got a little overly optimistic and planted my garden last week, so of course we had a very hard freeze last night. Even though I had them covered and set up close to the house, I'm not sure my plants are going to make it. On an I am a horrible person note, today as I was mowing my lawn I spent about fifteen minutes watching three little kids (they looked about 8, 6 & 4) trying to get their bikes through the serpentine gate on the fence across the street. At one point, the oldest kid's bike got stuck and watching them problem solve how to get it loose made for a highly entertaining time. Since I'm not totally heartless, I finally stopped mowing and went over to help when I saw the kid trying to lift/throw his bike over the fence to his tiny sister. Nothing good could come of that.

I actually think this is the case. About five minutes after Emma was born, they were cursed/in a coma. The ensuing 28 years really were a haze for everyone and other than the few months after Emma came to town, I'm not sure anyone really remembers much or actively associates just how much time passed. For Emma, an entire lifetime of being lonely and feeling unwanted had gone by. In the Charmings' memories, all they'd think of was the baby that they remember putting in the wardrobe seemingly a short time ago. Even if Snow remembers all those years passing, she never spent them worrying or fretting about her baby girl because she didn't know she had one. So basically, you have a woman who remembers giving birth to a beautiful baby girl and was handed an angry, emotionally closed off woman in her place. I think in "Ariel" that idea is laid out when Snow laments missing experiencing Emma's childhood, even though she never actually had the time to miss Emma the person. By the time Pan's curse separated them again, Snow had already twice given up on trying to be together as a family. Once when planning to return to the Enchanted Forest and once in Neverland. Which is why I get seriously pissed at her when she insists Emma stay in a dangerous place where she's unhappy because family, but not the point here. Anyway, since we've already seen Snow decide twice that she doesn't need Emma in her life, maybe on her return to the Enchanted Forest, she really didn't miss Emma much. She'd written that relationship off in the past and was more emotionally prepared to just get past it now. Emma was an adult and was doing her own thing, so give her baby do-over and she's good. I don't think it was the writers' intention to have me think they didn't care, but since that was what I saw on screen, this is the only reasoning I can come up with that explains Snow's ability to show no emotion about never seeing her daughter and grandson again.

I didn't have a problem with Hook trying to move on. He's not a magical being and doesn't have connections to one (as Neal did) and I also believe that he thought that Emma got her happy ending with a good life with her son in New York. I'd actually be annoyed if he'd gone after her and screwed that up for his own selfish reasons. He and Emma may have had a connection and he may have loved her, but she wasn't in that same place and honestly, after watching "Going Home" I thought they all ought to just leave Emma alone. We really have no idea what exactly was in the message, but Hook told Emma that it said she was their only hope. Hook knew that Emma would not want her family to suffer and die if there was a way she could help them and so once the walls were down and he had the ability to go find her and bring her back, he did. The issue I have with the way everyone handled their return to the Enchanted Forest is that we saw that Hook did indeed miss Emma. Just as we saw that Neal missed Emma & Henry. And we saw how much Regina missed Henry. We did not see Snow & Charming miss Emma and that's a huge problem. I know that Snow & David love Emma, but damn if they seem to care when she's not around. Why is it that the writers showed every other character missing their loved ones except Snow & Charming?

Poor Emma. That's it. The main reason she needs to stick around is so that Henry can play referee and keep Regina from going psycho crazy on everyone else. It really is all about Regina.

I rewatched the scene between Emma & Snow where they talk about returning to New York City and it still bothers me on so many levels because it really demonstrates the problems that I have with the Snow/Emma relationship and how the show portrayed Emma's need to go back to NYC in 3B. Emma: Our life in New York was really good. Snow: I'm sure it was, but it wasn't home. Emma: It was to us. Snow: That's because you forgot about us. Here's the thing. Prior to this part of the conversation, Emma expressly says that she's acting differently because she'd forgotten what it was like in Storybrooke - what with its wicked witches and time travelling holy wars. So when she starts saying NYC was good, we know that she's comparing the two and finding Storybrooke seriously wanting. She's not happy there and she and Henry aren't safe. Snow doesn't seem to care about the idea that Emma was happy. She's upset because it didn't include her. What's really interesting here is that if we look at Snow's definition of home for herself, it only includes David. She & David planned to return "home" to the Enchanted Forest regardless of whether Emma came with them or not. She was planning to stay in Neverland with David also without Emma or Henry because he was her home. I believe she actually stated that David is her home in "Quite a Common Fairy". Again at the beginning of 3B, she told Regina that the castle was their home (no Emma or Henry in sight). So how pray tell, is Emma wanting to stay in a place that made her safe and happy along with her son not a reasonable thing for Emma to call home? I don't think the writers meant for me to see it this way, but there's a huge double standard for what kind of home is acceptable for Snow to choose and what's okay for Emma. Emma is wrong for wanting good things in her life because it doesn't include her family - you know, the ones who only seem to want her around when she can do things for them. She's got to stick in a dangerous place and desperately search for the small number of good things she can find in Storybrooke. In terms of their relationship, Emma is fully aware of how many times her parents were willing to leave her and build a separate home without her. For someone who has been abandoned and felt unloved her entire life, having Emma base her home on a family that's pretty much cemented itself as a couple that doesn't include her in their own idea of home is ludicrous. It's pretty gross actually. And it's why I want Emma to just chuck them all over and go live in a nice beach house in Hawaii or something.

I hate that they regressed Emma in 3B using a motive that basically just laid it all at the feet of a life long survival instinct to run away rather than addressing the very real issues that Emma would have with living in Storybrooke. It was just ridiculous, but god forbid any hero character experience real development. I hated that they glossed over how losing the false memories would have affected Emma. I hated that they never had the Charmings tell Emma how much they had missed her and not just what she could do for them. I hated that we never once saw Mary Margaret even try to broach the subject of what she said in Echo Cave and the new baby. I hate that we never saw anyone other than Neal ask Emma about her life in the last year. It's a pretty big indictment on the Charmings that Neal & Hook were the only two people who honestly seemed interested in Emma the person. Poor Hook was constantly trying to use her family as the lever to get her to want to stay, but he never got any help from that quarter in convincing her she was wanted and loved. The Charmings were pretty much, baby, baby, baby, Wicked Witch, baby, baby, baby. That had to make Emma feel just great. I'm sure that really helped her get over the fact that she was back in the land of wicked witches and time travelling holy wars.

One of the things I really like about this show is that it puts the idea of true love and happily ever after to the test. All of the main couples have fought to get to where they are in their relationship. Nothing was handed to them. The Regina/Robin relationship completely bucked that trend and because it came out of nowhere and made zero sense (Robin didn't know why the Evil Queen was evil? Wtf?), I had no reason to think these two belong together other than that the show told me they should. Clearly, Robin was only thinking with his little head because otherwise I should have seen him questioning Regina on her past deeds. I needed to see him work through the idea that he was engaging in a relationship with a very dangerous woman. By showing him say things like she didn't look evil, just bold and audacious, it actually turned me off the couple because it seems like he isn't even aware of who Regina is as a person. Yes, she may have changed from her full on evil ways, but acting as if Robin was unaware of them completely means he doesn't know her at all. Outlaw Queen is all flash (pixie dust is shiny y'all) and no substance. The other problem is that when one looks at the other main couples featured, one thing stands out - these things took time. Sure, Snow/Charming fell in love during "Snow Falls" but it was a long road to acceptance and being together. Hook/Emma have been doing whatever for two seasons and are just now at the point of acceptance. Rumpel/Belle took the shortest time to fall in love on screen (one episode), but the backstory on that episode covered a significant period of time as well. Their story was also helped because Jane Espenson wrote "Skin Deep" and she's excellent at fitting character development into the showrunners' crazy plot, plot, plot storytelling. I've seen the argument that Regina/Robin happened because they are fairy tale characters who believe in love at first sight, but the truth is that we've not seen that with any of the other major pairings on the show and that's what made their stories so compelling. How did beauty come to love the beast? How did the pirate convince the lost princess to give him a chance? How could Snowing discover a love powerful enough to break any curse? Now I'm sure that the show plans to tell the Outlaw Queen love story, but by starting it up with an unbelievable and contrived pixie dust inspired insta-love, they've failed to give me a reason why I should care.

Using fate as an excuse for anything on this show is a cop out that makes the storytelling pointless. The idea that if it is fated, then it is going to happen regardless of anyone's actions removes agency and essentially tells me everyone should just sit on their ass doing nothing because it doesn't matter. That fate will get Regina/Robin together because "Pixie dust never lies" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The most interesting piece of that whole pixie dust story is that Regina ran away from it. She made a choice and it led her down a very dark path. How about we explore the idea that life gives you choices and you are subject to the consequences of your actions? Killing Marian off negates any real exploration of this idea and it would be a huge disservice to the character of Regina. My solution to this story is that Robin/Marian/Roland fall through a portal to live happily ever after and we never see them again. Bonus points if they all fall through because of something that Regina does (either a positive or negative motivation works for me here). Then Regina can just learn to deal and work on herself for a while. Or she can meet another guy, slowly work towards a relationship and after admitting her feelings discover the guy has a lion tattoo. Sadly, I have little trust in these showrunners because the creativity is severely lacking and Regina always gets to keep her toys without facing any real consequence, so I expect Marian to die and Regina to get Robin while they whitewash that Regina actually killed his wife in the first place.

I'm not a huge reader of fanfic but I Want to Start a Petition! kills me because it's so right on. It's random people of Storybrooke essentially writing letters to the editor and bitching about all of the crap that goes on in town. Some of the complaints aren't always the best, but I'd love an episode that would deal with stuff like this.

If this were a "real world" situation and by that I mean if the writers actually wrote Henry as the 12/13 year old he is, Henry would be interested in Regina/Charmings for a while but after a few weeks, he would be missing his friends and life in New York. That's not to say that he'd want to move back there, but that family would not be the end all be all after the initial novelty of it wears off. Growing teens are looking to become their own person and pull away from their parents because they no longer need them in the way they did when they were younger. In terms of his mothers' relationships with him, Emma's way of parenting would work better with a teenage Henry because she doesn't see him as a little boy the way that Regina does. Emma also does not cling to Henry as the only person in her life. Even when he essentially was, Emma was out forming an outside relationship with Walsh while Henry was free to form lots of other relationships. Both had a healthy relationship with each other because both understand that bringing in others does not lessen their existing relationship - though Emma worries more about change than Henry. Regina, on the other hand, has a strong tendency to cling and not want to share Henry with others. She will need to start understanding that acting this way with a teenager is pretty much the worst thing she could do. I think Regina was getting to where she understood that she could have more in her life with Robin/Roland, but I think having Robin "taken" from her would cause her to right back to clinging to Henry in an unhealthy way and in real life that would create all kinds of problems with a teenage boy - especially one who has been living a very normal life for the last year.

What I get out of the showrunners' comments thus far is that Rumpel gets the Frozen storyline and Regina gets the whole Marian returns storyline and once again, the Charming family gets the shaft. Dammit can they not come up with a story that features mostly the Charming side? I get that Snow's probably limited for the first few episodes given Ginny just gave birth and they start filming early next month, but seriously, give me a real Emma or David story that has actual punch and isn't them just running around contributing nothing until Regina/Rumpel come along with a magical whatever to save the day.

Regina backsliding into evil wouldn't surprise me at all given that I didn't buy the redemption arc they were selling. However, Regina used freaking white magic and that was supposedly more "good" power than Glinda the Good Witch was able to muster, so an evil Regina again just makes that whole 3B storyline more ridiculous. Slight backsliding and being upset is understandable, going full on evil and blaming Emma without evaluating her own actions and their consequences is not. The constant flip-flopping has got to stop with her because at some point (and for me this point has already been passed), it just gets to be too much that the heroes are willing to allow Regina to remain free and able to commit chaos every time something makes Regina sad.

The writers are definitely not interested in any character development other than Regina's. Sometimes the plot requires other characters to get some development (see: Captain Hook), but Emma tends to be the one to get the shaft most often because they mess with her just to fit the plot. Emma's actions in 3B made complete sense to me because everything to do with Storybrooke and the fairy tale world had screwed her over time and again. After she had accepted it and started to let these people in, it was all stolen from her again in "Going Home". Why would she be open to having it all ripped away again? That Emma started lashing out at Hook was believable to me because she had just been seriously hurt romantically and he was the "safe" option to attack. She clearly couldn't lash out at her scared and pregnant mother. A little work and positive character interaction might have given me a glimmer of understanding about her maybe starting to waver on her decision, but we never got anything of the sort. They never once showed me any reason for Emma to stay in Storybrooke. Even the finale (much as I enjoyed it) seemed to be a demonstration of why Emma should get the hell out of Dodge. She was exactly right when she said falling through portals does not happen in New York. She spent several days in a magical medieval hell where she watched a village being terrorized, saw the Evil Queen burn her mother at the stake, was jailed and set to be executed herself and then placed in an exit-less vault and left to die by Rumpelstiltskin. What about that would make her think hey I should totally stay in Storybrooke and live with people who would do this? I get that she missed her parents and all, but why not just visit them occasionally. Maybe she could move to Portland, ME and be close to them but much safer. Nothing in the plot, plot, plot of the finale fits with complete 180 made in the last minutes after the total regression that had gone on for the entirety of 3B. It was just the writers saying we need Emma in Storybrooke, so now she's going to stay because reasons.

I guess it's not totally clear about the ring's value. Obviously, Hook only wanted it because he needed Snow to steal that specific item to get David involved, so his interest is not important. However, it seems like in the original timeline, Snow had sold all of her stolen goods including her latest haul from the theft of David's ring to the trolls and was on her way to get on a ship when David caught her in his net (she was carrying her bag of goods including all of her valuables). In the finale, when she went to seek passage she had money, but was without the extra money she'd have gained from stealing the ring and thus, did not have enough for Blackbeard to agree to take her. That's why I'm questioning the ring, how someone so poor had possession of it in the first place and why she would choose to keep a ring that has at least some value over her own child.

It sounded like they told Lana that Regina had killed Marian, but that Lana assumed that Regina didn't know that she'd done it because to her Marian was just another random peasant. That's backed up by how they made it clear in the finale that no one knew who Marian was because she refused to tell anyone her name, so I'd go with Regina not knowing she'd done it. However, if the writers told Lana that Regina had killed Marian in the original timeline that does mean that had Emma not intervened, Marian would have died at Regina's hand and not after some event allowed her to escape and die later as some have posited. That it has been confirmed by the actress/writers that Regina killed Marian ends any possibility that I'll ever be okay with Outlaw Queen.

Since I went off a bit on Snow for her choices regarding her children, I thought I'd be equal opportunity and talk about something that occurred to me while watching the S3 finale. If David's mother, Ruth, had a ring valuable enough that it could help pay for passage on a ship to another realm, why did she choose to keep the ring and instead sell her child? I mean, I guess James was going to be royalty and all and they wanted to give him his "best chance", but they kept their other kid, so that argument seems little sketchy to me. And since I know that she actually did have something of value, shouldn't she have tried everything she could before literally selling her child to Rumpelstiltskin? In the past, I never really thought about the value of the ring thinking it had more sentimental value than monetary. However,now they explicitly had Emma say that she needed the money she got for the ring to pay for her passage, so I'm having issues with this "true love" ring now because it symbolizes some really bad choices to me. I don't know, maybe I'm confused and need to watch "The Shepherd" again (though I'm not sure I can deal with David's hair) to clarify, but the ring is really problematic to me now.

I never bought that Emma could defeat the incredibly powerful Zelena, so where I might usually be bothered that she saved Hook at the risk of everyone else, I wasn't because in my mind the plan for Emma to defeat Zelena & Rumpel was so ridiculously laughable to start with that they were better off with her losing her magic. However, there is a difference between the two situations. With the Snow/heart splitting, she wasn't forced into making a instant decision about David dying. They had talked it through and she had agreed it was the best option. David had expressed his feelings on the subject and willingness to sacrifice for their child and then had indeed made that sacrifice expressly so that their baby would live and Snow turned around and decided to potentially waste that sacrifice and die with him. It wasn't the oh God what do I do panicked immediate choice Emma was faced with, it was a deliberately selfish choice that only suited Snow's needs and ignored the life of the child she was carrying as well as potentially rendering David's sacrifice moot. And this isn't the only time I've seen Snow make this type of decision. They've made her love for David so exclusive and all consuming that it's coming off as unhealthy.

I was thinking the other day about just how much I hated the whole new Dark Curse/heart splitting with regards to how it affected my perception of Snow White. David had sacrificed himself and explicitly told his wife he wanted to do it so that she and their child would live and that their love would live on in the new baby (no mention of how it already lives on in Emma, but at least David was thinking of his new baby). So what does Snow White do? She freaks out because she can't live without David and immediately decides that heart splitting is a thing essentially putting her unborn baby's life at risk on the basis of crazy hope. Granted it all works out because this show isn't going to kill off Prince Charming, but it really exposes where Snow White's priorities lie. I hate that she's chosen Charming over Emma on multiple occasions without fighting to stay with both, but at least Emma is an adult who is more than capable of taking care of herself and not dependent on her parents. Baby Snowflake is not. (As an aside I'm going with Snowflake as the name because there already was a Neal and beyond hating them naming their baby Neal, it's too confusing to reference the two Neals in this post) Snowflake needs his parents and already before he's been born Snow has chosen David over him. So now I wonder, if David is shot and Snow is holding him back from falling in a portal (ala Neal/Emma in "Second Star to the Right"), would Snow be willing to let him go and not follow him through so she could stay with the baby who needs her? I have this horrible feeling she'd jump right in after him and leave her baby to be taken care of by Emma. Now Emma would do a fine job of it, but Snowflake needs his mommy and Snow was all about how she wanted a do over. Emma let Neal go, so that Henry wouldn't grow up alone like both of his parents. Would Snow's relationship with Charming preclude her from doing the same? If the roles were flipped, I think David would prioritize the needs of his baby son over his adult wife, but I can't say the same for Snow and this bothers me to no end.

After watching the S3 finale, I went back and watched "Snow Falls" to see just how the Charmings' love story had been changed. I think the original story shown in this episode was so much better. Charming saving Snow from the Black Knights was much more dramatic and "swoon-worthy" than the newer result. It is definitely a much more meaningful action and it clearly has a profound effect on Snow. His risked his life to save hers even though they were essentially strangers. It's a great beginning to what used to be this show's epic love story. I love how in Storybrooke, Mary Margaret starts to get on the fairy tale bandwagon with Henry. The scene in the diner where she says David woke up and immediately runs off with Henry to read some more of the book to David was adorable. Man, I miss the old days of awesome Bandit!Snow and equally cute, friends with Emma and looking for true love and a happy ending Mary Margaret.

I love how Regina is the one to screw herself over and is too stupid to understand that. Emma was more than ready to head out of town back to Boston. All she did was share a little tidbit about how Henry had made her birthday wish come true and smile over it and Regina completely freaks out on Emma enough to piss her off and make her stay. So typical of Regina to overreact to a little thing, but never figure out that her actions are what's causing all of her problems.

My mom called me just before the site went down for the last time and was massively confused at how upset I was. She didn't understand how a website closing could be so sad. I still have the tab open for Ella123's epic Regina rant. That's a good page to keep open for a bit.