KAOS Agent

There were also all those worlds in the mirror room in Jefferson's hat.

Tom Ellis confirmed on The Kelly Clarkson Show that Season 5 will be split into two parts. Linked video is spoilery, so don't click if you want to remain fully unspoiled. They've already filmed the first five episodes, so this should mean that the first eight episodes will drop winter/spring 2020.

They're also the people who thought that their biggest mistake in Season 2 was the Taser of Doom.

Except this event happened two years after the poisoning as specified by Ella, so they blew their entire timeline up.

I'm amused by the fact that Altuve hit the game winning home run to get to the World Series and his thoughts while running toward home were not about the big win, but about how pissed his wife would be if his teammates ripped his jersey off.

Maybe trying to illegally procure another baby would have been too hard. How many baby selling rings are out there that cursed Rumpel would know about? How long would it take to get another baby? She was very dissatisfied with the idea of going through the process legally and having to wait a few years, which again showed that it was never about the baby's needs. It was always about her. Didn't she initially try to give Henry back because he cried a lot or something? It seemed like she only really wanted him when he got cute for a little while and smiled at her. The whole thing was really upsetting to me because her early reactions to the baby were very similar to her treatment of Henry in S1. That they tried to retcon the whole thing made little sense when we saw her react the same way to Henry as a baby and as a ten year old. When he acted like she wanted him to, she was all smiles and "loving" mother. When he acted less than perfect, she went all mommy dearest on him. I still think she saw him as an object to feed her needs. Trying to pretend that she was somehow prioritizing Henry's needs over hers makes no sense given her treatment of him even into S2. Not to mention her endless clinginess when he was a 30-something adult in S7.

I never understood how Regina taking the potion to forget about who Henry is made her some kind of wonderful mother. It wasn't a binary choice. It was not a matter of take the potion and keep Henry or don't take the potion and social services is taking him away. She took the potion because she didn't want to lose her toy, but couldn't love him knowing who he was. This was an entirely selfish decision. She took the easy way out. If she'd kept Henry despite remembering that he could be the end of her revenge, I'd be impressed with her making a sacrifice for her baby. Her little fairy tale to Henry before drinking the potion was pretty disturbing about her mental processes. "Once upon a time, there was a Queen. And she cast a glorious curse that gave her everything she wanted - or so she thought. She despaired when she learned that revenge was not enough. She was lonely. And so she searched the land for a little boy to be her prince. And then she found him. And though they lived happily, it was not ever after. There was still an evil out there lurking. The Queen was worried for her prince's safety. While she knew she could vanquish any threat to the boy, she also knew she couldn't raise him worrying. No. She needed to put her own troubles aside, and put her child first. And so the Queen procured an ancient potion of forgetting. Oh, it's all right. If the Queen drinks the potion, she won't forget her child. She'll only forget her worries, her troubles, her fears. And with those gone she and her prince can indeed finally live happily ever after." Nothing in that story gives any reason for Regina to take the potion other than for her own convenience. In fact, if Henry was truly in danger from some evil, Regina not remembering would actually put him in more danger. I just don't understand the idea that she was sacrificing for Henry in some way. This was also in the episode where Regina said she regretted nothing she'd done (and she's done a whole hell of a lot) because it got her Henry. The whole thing makes me sick.

Honestly, I think the worst part was where Regina was planning on killing an innocent newborn. There is nothing to redeem her from that. Watch the Black Guards and you can see them aiming for the baby. And then of course, there's a later flashback from that same time where Regina actually says that killing a baby just made her to do list. There is no way any of the Charmings should ever have had anything to do with this woman.

The Pilot had much higher stakes than anything S7 could possibly give. First of all, the original premise had the negative consequences of the curse on full display. We watch Snow sobbing as Baby Emma is taken from her arms, David fighting his way to the wardrobe and then "dying" and then see what happened to that same baby 28 years later. She's lonely, unloved and cut off from emotion having been tossed on the side of the road like garbage and passed from foster home to foster home her whole life. She meets her mother and there's nothing there. How can we not root for Emma to realize she wasn't garbage and how much her parents loved her? Or to see Snow reunited with the child who was torn out of her arms? Even beyond that, we see other side characters equally miserable separated and/or fighting with their loved ones. Wouldn't we want to see Emma defeat the Evil Bitch who'd caused so much pain? The same one who was now causing her son so much pain? There was a lot of showing of emotion going on in the Pilot. Contrast that with the beginning of S7. Lucy is the same age as she was when the curse was cast, so no one is missing much. She's still with her mother. No one's life seems locked in a horrible endless loop. Jacinda isn't doing the best, but it's not like she couldn't better her life if she tried. Henry is still pretty lame, but that's not really a change. We never see the loving family desperate to hang on to each other being torn apart by the curse. Lucy doesn't really seem all that distraught that her father doesn't know her. Nothing is keeping Henry and Jacinda from getting together. And we don't even really know who is to blame because there isn't an Evil Queen moment where Jacinda is holding a dying Henry in her lap while Ivy gloats about how she's now won. There's only Lucy telling us that it's a repeat of the original curse, which is funny because it really is like a copy of a copy in that everything is muddied and watered down.

It was pretty obvious that the Robin/Regina thing didn't have nearly the effect on the audience that Snowing, Captain Swan or even RumpBelle had, so the fact that they cribbed one of their biggest fails with that relationship's development (magic pixie dust = True Love) and threw it at Henry/Cinderella when all of the other cribbing from better received storylines didn't work is kind of hilarious to me. I guess we should just be happy that they didn't go with the tried and true sex on the dead wife & kid's grave with those two.

Did she ever show interest in Henry? Not only in the present, but in the past? Was there anything really built up between them? Her hitting him and running off with his motorcycle to go murder some guy does not translate into a "Snow Falls" moment for them. Snow rescued Charming by essentially giving up her planned revenge on Regina by using the dust and she did it for a guy she barely knew. Cinderella didn't give Henry a second thought after knocking him out and stealing his only form of transport (and presumably all his worldy goods). He chased her down because he's an idiot. She's not all that into him and only seems to stick with him because a glowing necklace says they're True Love. Why would I want these two crazy kids to get back together? Both of them seem like they'd be better off with others.

Wait, is this the episode where we discover that Henry has been entertaining his friends with a one man stage version of The Empire Strikes Back? And they paid such good attention that they've got it memorized too. Why would anyone hang out with this weirdo?

I don't think they gave a whole lot of thought to their existing characters (well any of them really, but the bridge characters especially). Without a real idea of how Regina, Rumpel and Hook fit into their story, they just seemed shoved in there. Wish Hook worked the best because he was in essence a new character, but Roni and Weaver were pointless. They were just there to provide continuity and encourage fans of those characters/actors to stick around. Given that they had nothing for them to do, they gave the actors' input perhaps more influence than they should have. Cursed personalities used to mean something. They were a punishment of some kind. Why not give Regina and Rumpel meaningful cursed personas? Why let Lana decide how she wants Roni to be? I don't see S1-S6 Regina being at all impressed with Bartender Roni, but it meant nothing. At the very least, shouldn't there be some sort of change once she gets her memories back? Giving an actor a say has never been good for this show. I don't think that a lot of the choices Jen Morrison made with regards to Emma's wardrobe were particularly good. I thought it was often too Jen and not Emma. But at least with her it seemed to be limited to costuming. Once it started to affect the story, it got messy. Regina and Henry's suddenly perfect mother/son relationship is a good example of doing it wrong. It's nice to get input, but it needs to fit the character and the story or it goes really wrong. It's not like asking for actor input is unique to this show. Plenty of showrunners do it. I was reading an interview with the Lucifer showrunners about their upcoming final season and they discussed sitting down with all of the actors and asking them what they wanted for their characters (as they've done every season). They made it clear that they are accommodating only so long as it makes sense to the story they are telling. That's how the process is supposed to work. Make your actors happy and maybe add something new and fun to the show, but remember that they aren't writers and aren't thinking about whether it works in the overall scheme.

S7 was meant to be a reboot of sorts though and bring in new viewers who didn't need to have seen the previous six seasons in order to understand what's going on. How can they expect these people to bring over the strong emotional connections that were built in S1 and apply them to S7 if they'd never seen anything else? The writers were obviously phoning it in, but it makes me wonder if it's just because they were too lazy to bother or whether they really had no concept of why S1 connected so well with the audience.

I actually liked Chloe more in S4. They gave her something to do besides being the straight man and it made a huge difference for her to be in the know. Still, the best part of the episode was the show explicitly stating that Lucifer changing for anyone, including Chloe, was wrong and essentially not going to happen. It was nice to have him tell Eve that he didn't like who he was with her, but also to turn around and tell Chloe that he didn't like how she made him feel either. It's a refreshing change from what we normally get on TV. Slightly evil, powerful Lucifer is so much better than whatever he turned into in S3.

I saw exactly two episodes of S7. They completely screwed Alice's timeline in a single episode. Based on what happened in the episode I watched, Alice should have been older than Jacinda, except that she was born years after Rapunzel escaped from the tower and Jacinda was born while Rapunzel was locked up. Unless somehow a two year old was able to slay a jabberwocky after it had killed a bunch of fully capable adults, and this was clearly not what they were implying, then Alice's whole timeline (and that of Wish!Hook) are completely impossible.

Evil doing the right thing means killing the evil villain to stop them. Good doing the right thing means standing around and letting yourself be killed. What a lovely world these characters inhabit. What the hell kind of morality is that?

Isn't that the story of Season 1?

I still have not watched this episode. I made it through six seasons and they lost me at the last episode (yes, S7 exists, but it's not really Once without the Charming Family). I've thought about watching it now that there's some separation and maybe it would be like fun new bonus content for a show I miss, but after reading through the comments again, I realized I would just be annoyed and disappointed at what could have been. After going through the S6 part of the rewatch, I also know that I don't really miss the show. The early seasons were must see TV (except for that part in S2 where I quit), but man the later seasons were a drag. This finale episode was just the cherry on top of a terrible season. A hearty thanks to Jennifer Morrison, Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas for wanting out and sparing us from God knows what horrors they'd have put Snow, David and Emma through in a S7.

It's more likely that they're just idiots who didn't care about inconsistencies. The last scene shot for the season was Snow interrupting Emma & Hook's breakfast sex. If they were able to shoot that after the finale had been taped and insert it into an episode that aired two weeks earlier, then they certainly could have reshot the scene where they decided not to get married yet or at least added some explanation for why they changed their minds.

I didn't care for this episode when it aired and I have zero desire to watch it again. This show loved to rip off Buffy, but I'll never understand how they always managed to suck at it. If you have a good blueprint to follow, how is it possible to screw it up so badly? Both the Once and Buffy musicals occurred in the sixth season of their respective shows with both seasons being pretty lackluster up to that point. The Buffy musical actually managed to briefly turn the season around. It brought out tons of things that the characters had been hiding and then the next episodes dealt with the secrets revealed (and delivered one of my favorite Buffy episodes, "Tabula Rasa"). Once could have done something similar. Why not have a villain cast a singing spell along the lines of the Shattered Sight where hidden resentments are expressed in song? Try to break the alliances amongst the heroes by sowing seeds of bitterness (bonus: a second Buffy rip off a la The Yoko Factor). No Three Stooges like idiocy, just hard truths. How would Regina handle it if Snow and David were really let loose with their feelings of the past? Or how could Snowing deal with Emma's childhood traumas? Maybe Hook could express some of his messed up feelings from the whole Dark One/death experience - although that one gets tricky because the actions taken there involve the Darkness and individual choices were influenced heavily by other factors and it's hard to hit out at Emma for that and then have them still on track for marriage. Speaking of the wedding, didn't they just decide not to have one since Snowing's was ruined and it still bothers them to this day that their happy day was marred by Regina and her threats? Now Emma and Hook can always look back fondly at the black cloud of doom that descended on their wedding. Lovely. Also, I hated Emma's wedding dress and would never see Emma picking out a Grace Kelly inspired gown.

But why couldn't Veronica move to San Diego or something? Neptune is really close to there and that's where Logan would have been based out of. She didn't need to take soul crushing jobs in Neptune. Why not expand? She's got to have some serious cred given her high profile cases. I think Logan would have been supportive of Veronica branching out professionally if she'd tried for something more. Something that would give her the same outlet for excitement that Logan gets in his job. I have little problem with Logan expressing that he wants a wife and kids and if that's not something she's interested in then it's best to end it now. That's a deal breaker in a lot of relationships and dragging it out just makes everyone miserable. Neither one was particularly happy with the way things were. It was clear that they were going in different directions and wanted different things in life. It would be painful to end it, but ultimately everyone would be better off.

Which was stupid because just a few episodes earlier, Regina had to prove she was bad by playing chicken with a train. They put no effort into maintaining a set of rules regarding Storybrooke and how it appeared (or didn't) to outsiders.

This was something that I thought would have made for interesting exploration, but at least for Ruby, I'd say the negatives outweighed the positives. Yes, bad memories were removed, but so was her close relationship with her grandmother and she became the town slut. The show backed off on what that meant later on as they were trying to pretend the curse wasn't so bad, but the reality is that during the curse she definitely would have slept around. Not cool at all. Whale wasn't really punished during the curse because he didn't have any loved ones left to be separated from and seemed to live a pretty good life as the town doctor. Not remembering his brother and how he died was probably a good thing. Although we don't know what memories he was given, so maybe it wasn't really any better. I hated Emma basically thanking Regina for the curse because otherwise she'd be a brainless twit. Yes, it was totally a wonderful thing that Emma was a starving, abused child who had no love or support as a young child. Living under an overpass burning a book to keep warm at the age of seven is so much better than the much loved Emma seen here because this Emma is weak and Snowing would have been terrible parents. It's such an awful message that's repeated so much through TV/movies. The hero can only be badass if they are lonely and bitter and experienced trauma. Well-adjusted people who grew up in a loving home and have a healthy relationship with a significant other are weak and boring.

I'm fairly certain that the creators originally intended to break the curse in episode 16 of S1. The network wanted them to push it back to the finale, which led to a lot of filler. I think that had Once not been such an immediate hit they would have let them end the curse and go from there in S1. If the show was in doubt of continuing to a second season, then allowing that arc to wrap up a little quicker and possibly bringing magic to Storybrooke in S1 might be a way to draw more audience interest than drawing out the arc with character-centrics and deeper backstory. They spent eight years or something like that mulling the idea for Once. I'd expect the first season to be extremely well thought out. Add in some helpful guidance from successful, experienced showrunners and the show had everything it needed to build a coherent story filled with fun twists and complex characters. Combine the Wouldn't it be cool if... showrunners with a relatively short window to come up with a new long term arc and a loss of strong network oversight and you get the mess of S2 - particularly 2B.