LizaD

Ask and you shall receive. Be sure to tune in Sundays on ABC for 4x18! Except it won't be a parody, it'll be dripping with honesty and sincerity. Seriously you know there's at least a 50% chance that very plot will indeed happen onscreen. I remember throwing out the Snow and Charming babynapped Maleficent's kid before 4B even started sort of as a ridiculous joke. And lo and behold here we are today. The only part I was wrong on, was that I said Emma was Mal's long lost kid. But hey getting 50% of a plot point right in a joke plot should count for something no?

Did people know this exist? It's an 80s tv show about Snow White and Charming and their kids getting cursed and the curse is getting transported from Enchanted Forest to modern LA. The Evil Queen/stepmom cursed them, who incidentally is named Lily White. The kids have a hard time believing they're from fairy tales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Charmings Methinks the creators of this show should get some kind of credit.

Lily's costume looks like Charming's costume to me. Did he have a black lace up vest or jacket outfit? Or am I remembering wrong?

Yeah I was being facetious with those 2 writers hence the specific mention of "small sample size" and "biased." Regardless my point is just that Jane E. in my opinion is mediocre and overrated. The other point is every writers, with a lot of epsiodes under their belt, has misses or bad episodes but her bad episodes are BAD.

Really? It actually kind of reminded me of that scene when Emma gets on Henry's eye level and is telling him fairy tales are fake so calm yo tits back in S1, right before the brat choked on the poisoned apple. She did the same here by crouching down and it came off kind of motherly and awkward cause the dude now has a beard instead of being a 10 year old red head.

I don't know. I just never got the hype over Jane E. and that's coming from someone who thinks Skin Deep and Miller's Daughter are 2 of the best episodes this show has and was a fan of Buffy and Spike. She might've written some of the best but she's also written some of the worst, with Bleeding Through counting as THE WORST, so it all kind of shakes out evenly in my book. I'm just kind of holding a deep grudge for the ruination of Cora. This. And it's not most of the time. It always comes off like "Look at me look at me, look at how funny and witty this is" complete with flashing neon signs and a whole orchestra for sound effects. Ok looking over that wiki article and writers, here's the people who I think are superior to Jane E: Liz Tigelaar for Snow Falls and I see she only wrote 1 other episode. The co-writer of Hat Trick, Vladimir Cvetko and that's his only credit. Are we seeing a pattern here? No decent writer wants to stay on this show? Or did they get fired for having more than 2 brain cells? Of course the small sample size is a bit biased. The other writer for Hat Trick, David Goodman. He doesn't have any real standout episodes besides Hat Trick for me, but he also doesn't have a huge clunker on Jane's level either. Also surprisingly or maybe not, I think A&E are better than she is too. Pilot, Heart is Lonely Hunter, Land without magic, Manhattan, Heart of Truest Believer, Ariel, Going Home, and Snow Queen were well written. I also don't think they've laid an egg as big as Jane. But the whole shebang is their brain child so maybe they should share the credit on all the clunkers too. I think Jane is on par with Chambliss and Goldberg the writers of Heart of Darkness. I'll say she's better than the rest.

Is she really? I can't remember what she wrote besides Skin Deep, Miller's Daughter and Bleeding Through, in which case I'm going to have to pass. She did write Rump and Belle well in Skin Deep and Cora in Miller's Daughter but then she turned around and destroyed Cora in Bleeding. Along with that she destroyed Snow too. I don't think that's a good record, especially seeing as how it'll be Snow and Charming set for destruction in 4x16. This whole story along with the author stuff is pure crap. What happened to their evil isn't born but victimized thing they've been pushing? I can't tell if they're just setting Snow up to look like the biggest moron ever for believing her fetus is fated to be Damien or if they're sincerely going with Emma is evil and Snowing ensured her goodness is the only reason she's good.

So? He can still go back by hitching a ride with Ariel or Ursula and her dad. Or I'm sure there's a convenient spell tucked away somewhere. And the people are no longer under any curse. Things can be shrunken and brought back to size. And Ursula's tentacles opened the portal and reached all the way over there to bring something back. They didn't even know the Jolly was shrunken so the expectation was Ursula could retrieve that big ship. But Tiny is still alive and in Storybrooke presumably so they can grow a whole field of beans again. If he's not there, they can go fetch him. She destroyed the beans, not the soil. Or they can damn well replicate the soil conditions with magic. "Brief" as it may be but apparently it was long enough to get the entire kingdom to go through it as was the plan in S2. Actually that was never explained. The well only looked like it was dissemanting the magic. All we know about Lake Nostos is that it "brings back what once was" so unless Land without magic once had magic, Lake Nostos would do bupkis. And if Land without magic once had magic in it, then it should've been way easier to get to it and it wouldn't have been LWM. Rump himself said "magic can never be destroyed" it only changes form so yeah.

That would be a huge mistake to have another Dark One. I would not want to be compared to Carlyle's character in any way, shape or form. But I'm sure he's gone as soon as his contract is up. The only acceptable alternate universe I want to see is The Omen-Once Upon version. Seriously I'm sure they can find a cute Shirley Temple lookalike to play Damien terrorizing Disney characters. Like baby Demma pushing a pregnant Aurora down a flight of stairs or something. You know I did call the babynapping when the spoilers first came out. I said that was one of the soap operas storylines they haven't used yet. All that's left is a baby swap. I don't see it here, unless Jennifer is quitting. It'd be one way to write her out.

This show is so stupid I can't take it anymore. It's not even stupid in an entertaining ridiculously cheesy way but more like "I can feel my brain cells dying" kind of stupid. So if the problem is Emma in the land without magic, why don't they just go back to the stupid Enchanted Forest? That seems a whole lot easier than trying to corrupt Emma of which we've seen no concrete plan or action yet. But they've already transported entire kingdoms back and forth at this point, it should be easier than peeling a banana. Or since the way to time travel is already known and the ingredients are so easy to get, why the hell isn't that an option? Hook literally was witness to Ursula's happy ending, of which he and Ariel gave to her and had nothing to do with some stupid Author, and then a second later is being all emo about the author and losing his? WTF? Seriously, none of this crap makes any sense. They found yet another way to travel to land without magic and I don't buy the whole Rump was trying to figure out a way to bring magic along with him, hence the need for the Dark Curse explanation. Because the way to bring magic with him was using Snow and Charming's stupid hair. He could've pocketed that vial while hitching a ride on Ursula's tentacles. And if Snow and Charming's hair is enough to power the magic in Storybrooke, how are they not bald? Along with Cinderella and her prince or Aurora and Phillip?

The best part about these Colin interviews is this, in regards to what he did to Ursula: Colin: Not nice A&E: OMG what's worse than a broken heart? It's not sexual either guys! It's soul crushing! The most dastardly thing EVAH! I would've typed that all in caps, like a tween who doesn't know any better, to better mimic A&E but I thought that would be obnoxious. And how the hell do you have both Ariel and Ursula in the same episode and never have them share screentime? Such BS. I'm hoping Merrin didn't get any scenes with Ariel but maybe young Ursula did. The timeline would be wonky but we all know they don't give a damn about something as trivial as that. Why am I not surprised that Ursula's father appears to be an asshat? There's some serious daddy hating going on this show, except for Charming?

When I heard Nastia was tapped to be on the show, this came to mind and I was hoping for a repeat. She's the clueless one in the middle in white, not trying to do the shuffle. Not that I hate her or anything but I just wanted some lol worthy material.

I'm going with the Author and Sorcerer being 2 different people. Peddler is definitely Author and Mickey is the Sorcerer, he's just playing like he's the Apprentice. I think he inherited the title from the original one. Yeah they're also allergic to logic, anything that could be entertaining, and anything approaching decent writing. After last week I'm hanging on by a thread and nothing in the spoilers look promising. I don't even have anymore material to snark on. Apathy is seriously settling in.

Live plus 7 ratings doesn't mean much because it doesn't bring in any ad revenue. That's not a number they can take to upfronts and sell to advertisers yet. Their main target demo is not children because again primetime network tv relies on ad dollars and the 2-11 demos aren't going to give you that money in primetime network. Like every other primetime network tv show the main target demo is 18-49 and Once probably goes a bit more specific to females 18-49. They try to sell it as a "family-friendly" show to lure in the children as bait for their real targets, the parents or the moms. You know what's the real barometer? Watch the ads that air during Once vs. say SpongeBob. World of difference. I haven't watched Once live in a long long while so I don't know what kinds of ads are airing but dollars to donuts they're not ads directed to kiddies. They would not have put the spinoff Wonderland on Thursdays 8pm either if the Once brand was made for kids. I'm sorry but no. Once is a nanodrop in the bucket for the Disney brand. It means diddly squat for Disney. When the sequel for Frozen was announced or the Frozen short that was attached to Cinderella was Once Frozen edition ever mentioned? Nope. With all the advertising for Maleficent, Cinderella, upcoming live Beauty and the Beast was Once ever mentioned as a tie-in? Nope. With the DVD re-releases was Once ever mentioned? Again nope. Once is using Disney as leverage to promote itself, not the other way around. Once doesn't give the Disney brand any additional promotion that it can't get on its own. It never has. Cinderella is nowhere to be found on Once now and never played a big role on Once and yet somehow Disney's live Cinderella earned a $70million box office opening weekend. I highly highly doubt some Disney exec is thinking "Gee if only we had used Once to promote Cinderella, maybe it would've garnered a $75 million opening. Or hey let's tell them to get Cinderella on Once so it could earn more money in the coming weeks." In fact seeing their vision for their product of Cinderella? If anything it makes me think the Disney execs would probably find anything on Once damaging to their brand. Besides the way this show has blown through "Disney" tales and used them as throwaway characters mean they now have a very short supply of Disney material to work with.

This. I also took this as confirmation that there IS an Author and one that has the actual power to write crap. Because if there isn't one then there would be no reason why Neal can't be Rump's quest and have him fail or realize that there is no one with that power. How disappointing. I was really hoping this whole dumb Author thing would turn out to be a red herring where some bum working at McDonald's tells them to go "write" their own freaking ending idiots. Or die. So I'm laying my money on the peddler being the writer. He's the only other guest of note. If not, then it has to be someone in the cast already.

I think the Oscar promo was just misleading. This isn't an Emma turning dark story or Emma being tempted by darkness story. Cause that would be new. This whole thing is what it's always been about from S2 onwards. I said this somewhere in the All Seasons thread. This story is for Snow and Woegina who are obsessed with the hero and villain label in different ways. The part it will serve for Emma is that she'll think her parents can't love her if she's isn't a "hero" and her usual self-esteem issues will rear its ugly head again for the umpteenth time. That said I will still feel ripped off if we don't get evil!Emma since that's what was advertised and it's been mentioned a million times already. From spoilers so far I don't think it's happening unless they're saving it for the last 2 episodes like they did with 3B finale.

Maybe Emma is the "Author" and the only way Rump thinks she'll give villains happy endings is if she's one too. In which case I hope she turns all evil and gives them all some twisted version of what they think is their happy ending. For example, Rumbelle could be together and Rump will have all the power he wants but they're stuck in a snow globe, population of 2 or something. And she gives Belle this annoying shrewish wife personality.

But I thought Emma was the darkest of dark or at least the potential. We don't know what Lily is/was or potential. She could be the light one. At least in the flashbacks she was the nice one and Emma was the unforgiving one. Yeah yeah all that lame teen angst and drama notwithstanding, you know the writers meant it to show Emma in the wrong. I agree though, the whole thing is kind of lame but par for the course of this show. Are we sure the writers didn't use to work on some soap? Like Days or something? They can't even answer a "who's the daddy" question.

So how did Mal know fetus Emma was going to be the most powerful and evil sorcerer to walk their land when Seer and Most Powerful Dark One Rump didn't even know Emma had magic until she told him in S2 after the Cora adventure? And I'm guessing Ursula and Cruella are too stupid to understand that same statement since they needed Rump to spell it out for them a 2nd time after Chernabog. What about all the other true love babies like Cinderella's and Aurora's or baby Snowflake? Why aren't they worried about them being Damien?

Yeah I'm not sure I like the nasty implications embedded here. Before it was Emma's had a crappy life as any of the villains but she managed not to kill entire villages or babies. Now they seem to be saying well that's only cause Snow and Charming cheated the "system" and ensured that she stayed good. See guys if Snow and Charming weren't so evil and separated a child from its mother to make sure their kid stayed pure and good, Emma would've been raping and killing right alongside the best of them. Worst in fact since she has the potential for the greatest evil! Aren't we so clever?

I hope EdR and Socha gets paid pretty well for showing up for 5 seconds without lines. We can't even see how those 2 got together? Anyone get the feeling they hired Socha and didn't know what to do with him so they just stuck him with the other person they don't know what to do with. Maleficent with the baby rattle was the highlight and believe me, this show is getting pretty thin on the highlights. I'm willing to put money on the Mr. Cluck scene from the premiere will be the best scene of 4B. This whole secret thing is stupid. Did the writers forget that the whole "Savior" thing isn't even real in the first place? That it was a trumped up term Rump made up for Charmings and his curse? So they're just retconning it that Snow and Charming knew about the curse and the savior thing before going to see Rump? So why the hell did they go see Rump anyway? They wasted a deal on it and gave him Emma's name for nothing. And does this make Rump stupid too? He plotted this elaborate scheme to get in jail to talk to the Charmings but those 2 clowns were already way ahead of him?

I thought it was pretty much settled that the secret is Snow somehow is responsible for separating the mommy/daughter pair of Mal and Lily. Just the details of hows and whys aren't known yet. Are they giving part of Aurora's story to Emma? In that, Mal "gifts" Emma with the dark heart bit as a result? That'd be more reasonable for Emma to get mad if she's directly affected. If she gets mad simply cause of the "oh noes you're so evil for separating a kid from the parent" thing I'm going to call what a load of horseshit. As for the divide I doubt it. This secret isn't done to write a story for Snow and Emma. They already said the purpose of the Charming's secret is to show that heroes are sucky villains in disguise and Woegina is yet again just a poor poor victim.

So I was thinking, if they were discussing ideas for 4B at the end of 4A does that sound like a short turnaround? This might explain the constant fuckery and illogical nonsense of the show. Take Zelena, lets say "end of last year" was around October/November to be generous, to when Zelena was spotted filming in February right? That's 3 months from discussing ideas to filming. That sounds awfully rushed to me for a non-standalone character or episode. I think that works for a procedural type show but for one that carries ongoing arcs? Yeesh. This might also explain why absolutely nothing happens in the middle episodes. They're just place holders while they think of more fuckery to write for the ending.

Anyone else find it disturbing they're trying to force a kid to remember his adult past for their own selfish purposes? What if the kid remembers "August" having an orgy in Thailand? Or getting high on ecstasy? Or getting wood-tasered by Tamara? Like those things could be traumatizing for a kid.

I think his character is hampered by the fact that they tried to shoehorn him into a "romance" and with Belle of all people. He's also being hampered by sucky writing but that's not unique to just him. Rump/Gold worked just fine in S1 and for most of S2 until after Miller's Daughter. I'm not sure why they went off the rails after that. I liked Cruella the most too but she doesn't actually feel like THE villain that they've done in the past. But I guess she doesn't have to be since there's 3 others. She feels like a character whose function is similar to Granny and Grumpy, comic relief and biting commentary. Or like Pam on True Blood. Kind of ironic considering Kristin is also on the show. By the way what happened to her and Mal? Something is off about Mal.