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I think that is one of her weaknesses sometimes on the race. She does get jittery and tends to rush through things, causing Meghan to reply with exasperation. I would be more annoyed if he tried to use the interviews to be funny all the time. I'm not a huge fan of racers mugging for the camera. He just acted like a normal guy... I actually would have had no idea he was a sketch comedian, so in a sense, it's kind of weird that he's not naturally funny or it doesn't come out spontaneously.

He was so annoying. Not sure if that was supposed to be his comic book personality, but he wasn't likeable at all.

I definitely agree with this, though strangely, I actually enjoyed the Philip, Aurora, and Mulan stuff for the most part. I did feel g***** that Snow and Emma were transported away immediately, but I think even that was not necessarily the problem IF they had spent the Team Princess episodes having Snow and Emma come to grips with the realities of their relationship, and slowly melding friendship into mother/daughter. The scene in the burned out nursery was so touching, but literally that was all we got. It almost parallels that in 3A, all we got for Snow/Emma was the conversation at the end of "Lost Girl", which we now find out was meant for Hook. I think my own disappointment set in full-out with Episode 2, when there was no attempt in the Storybrooke part to deal with how the townspeople felt about having their memories back, and no real exploration of how David would now lead the town. And to top it off, the episode was a Regina-centric. Already by the second episode which was supposedly focusing on Charming. Yes, if the writers had dealt with Snow/Charming/Emma and the fallout from the Curse starting with "The Cricket Game", it wouldn't have been too late. But the writers preferred to tell the story of the Megavillain Cora. The problem for me is they did not cover what they missed. They claimed to, but they just paid lip service with a handful of scenes in the Season 3 premiere and then "Lost Girl", when the writing team was actually giving more thought to Hook/Emma than Snow/Emma until their last minute change of mind.

Wendy stated that she felt like she spent a long time in Neverland even though she was only away for one night. The line was: Baelfire: Just... the night. Wendy: It felt like so much longer. As though time works differently in Neverland. But I think in 3A, it was implied that time was actually travelling at the same rate in Neverland vs. Storybrooke. Let's say Bae dropped into 1870 England when he was 14, and then went to Neverland. If Bae was 14, and Neal looks around 35, this means after escaping Neverland, he spent 21 years on Earth and he aged during this time. So he came back from Neverland around 1991. So 1991-1870 = he spent around 120 years in Neverland given these assumptions.

You're more generous than I am. Big Jim was pretty much deranged in the Season 1 finale murdering Dodee and then trying to kill Barbie. Only to be rehabilitated. And now it's the Season 2 finale and Big Jim is even more deranged murdering Angela and Rebecca and then trying to kill, oh, it's Julia turn this time. A show can only use that trick once. Yeah, it looked exactly the same. The plot on a typical episode already makes no sense, but what they were doing in the finale made even LESS sense, if that makes sense. Joe and Norrie left the tunnels without even finding out where it led. Barbie had no idea if the tunnels led anywhere, or even had a big black hole like the last one. After seeing Phil impaled, Barbie seriously would have the entire town jumping into the abyss?

She was snide when Anna was explaining about the breakfast trays. It was sort of insulting since Bunting was basically implying their entire career as servants was silly and not worthwhile.

I think he was a guide for a rafting company.

It was a decent pilot, though not as good as I had hoped. The whole pilot felt very disjointed. The dialogue often felt stilted, like it wasn't a real conversation. For example, Gordon telling Bruce that "There will be light". It just didn't feel natural. And later on, telling the kid about the cops planting evidence? Why? I did like the Gordon/Bruce chemistry but there needed to be more before Gordon told him such adult stuff. I'm not sure it was effective to jump right in with that police station hostage situation. I would rather have seen Jim's first day on the job, meeting his partner, etc. The way they played it, Gordon didn't seem like the "new guy", especially how everyone listened to his commands. And then the out-of-nowhere, suddenly Jim is home with some random woman? And she knows Renee and Jim's partner? How long had Gordon lived in Gotham anyway, since he's already in a relationship. Again, the lines were so bad. "You know how to swim, don't you?" It doesn't sound like real people talking. Mob stories don't interest me, so the villains angle is the only thing that keeps this show apart from the boring cop dramas. Jumping right to Oswald murdering random people at the end? Meh. I actually did end up being interested in Ivy Pepper even though she was shoehorned into the Wayne murders plot. Overall, the performances were pretty decent, and it seems to have good production values, so I'll stick with it for a while.

I felt the same. This was as dumb as any other episode, but I didn't find it "fun" to watch the stupidity. Maybe it was all the death. The thing I hate most about shows that kill off everyone is there's no point in getting invested. So they killed the only two redshirts with speaking lines, and Angela was there from the beginning. As annoying as she was, at least it gave the semblance of some sort of community. And what was up with Barbie and Julia completely ignoring the kid after he saw his father get electrocuted and catch on fire after being struck by lightning. Sheesh! Oh and go help load the buses too, kid. I have actually grown to like Rebecca. At least she's helpful. Part of the "fun" of this season was hearing her ridiculous "scientific" explanations of Dome events, not to mention her even more ridiculous solutions to those problems. In this episode, Joe gives it a try: "The Dome is a sphere so it's contracting horizontally and vertically. I think it's shutting down. Everything inside is going haywire." Huh? How did he get that? Extrapolation x 10000000000000000000000000? Wasn't the contracting enough? Why did we need lightning too? I just hate Big Jim even more now. Of course, every character will be killed before he is. Pauline's final painting was practically a Picasso. I thought the wall exploding away at the end would reveal that they're back outside the high school which is beside a mountain which was "there all along". Oh wait, that's the Season 3 premiere. Norrie described this episode best: "Maybe it's nothing but a giant suckhole."

And they show the same day they realize they're pregnant. Or actually, before. Even in flashbacks.

Who knew it was so difficult to map out the plot in a single year. Maybe by a "year" they meant 10 months and was rounding up?

The problem for me, is I don't see how she "learned" anything. Good point about the Regina comparison. It's all about The Regina.

I just don't think it's rewarding when a character suddenly masters anything, much less Savior-level magic, in an afternoon with no conscious effort. It's way too easy. You raise a good point that Emma wanted to leave and go back to NYC and she wasn't learning for interest, but wouldn't she want to do everything in her power to make sure she defeats Zelena? One wrong move and she and Henry and her family are dead, much less out of Dodge. I agree the underlying problem is that the writers have not defined exactly how magic works, but I think the logical, bailbondswoman, strong Emma would have taken a different attitude and a different approach to this, even if she happened to build a bridge in a single lesson. She would want to be sure, and random ooh, I did so much when I thought I was going to die, isn't very concrete going into battle.

I wish they could show Emma go full out to learn concrete skills so she can actually be a Savior though. Half the time, those "Savior" powers just come out at random. I really hated how the writers had Emma dismiss learning the runes from the spell book. I personally think Emma would *want* to be as prepared as possible, and she would have no problems learning something intellectual. Yes, learning runes is so boring they don't want to write it, but at the very least have Emma learn it offscreen.

I guess I'll pass on this... I would hate to see the ugly side of some of the racers.

The tasks in this episode weren't very tough, so most were done in the order of arrival, which reduced the suspense a bit. The memory task was good though. I miss those from the US version. I was fine with the Dudes winning, since the Hockey Players already have a boatload of prizes. I felt badly for Meghan with her hand doing that task... it was weird when they said they usually had Spooner do the physical ones, and then showed her trying to find the miniature models in the museum. Overall, I liked this race because of the people. There were unfortunately some very competitive teams which got eliminated, like the Twins and Cormac/Nicole, who could both have given the Dudes a run for their money. But I'm fine with the result. It's a little pathetic in terms of the prize compared to the US version... not even half a million dollars. Oh well, I'm glad they do a Canadian version since I enjoyed it more than the recent US one. The problem with waiting to see the episode the next day (on the CTV website) is that I saw the winner in a headline on Google news! The art gallery task was a nail-biter since any of the teams could have won it if they made no mistakes (though I guess Ryan and Rob were more behind, but I wonder if they could have won if they got it right the first time around).

And yet they were in such a rush to break the Curse? Did they think the stories would write themselves?

I was so curious about all that when Season 1 ended. Those are the character stories which could have been told. So many shows, including "Once, just ignore the people in the background, the minor characters and the "redshirts". There are so many examples of this, even in Season 3. In terms of minor characters, there was the Flying Monkeys issue. These are their friends, their people, turned into Monkeys, and the "heroes" were shooting them with guns and running them through with swords? When earlier in the episode, we got a flashback of Aurora and Philip being turned into Flying Monkeys. This point was raised immediately on the message boards, but the writers didn't even *think* about that problem. Yes, those are just minor characters, but they trumpet their return cameos, yet they don't bother showing the main characters have any real human concerns about them? They had Zelena going after Snow's baby, but they said nothing about how Zelena was affecting the populace. If Zelena wasn't hurting anyone else, then it makes Snow and Charming selfish in displacing the entire world, just to save their baby. I get that the writers have zero interest in showing Snow and Charming ruling and managing the return to the Enchanted Forest after all these years, even though there are so many good stories there to tell. The writers don't care about the ordinary people in the realm, so in turn, it reflects poorly on Snow and Charming, who are *supposed* to be beloved, good rulers (based on the fact that no one revolts and people seem to respect them) but because of the writing, they look like they are selfish, incompetent, horrible leaders who put their needs ahead of the populace. And Neverland. We never find out what happened to the Lost Boys. We never see Wendy or Peter or Michael dealing with their trauma of being hired goons for the boys and trapped in a cage for a century for Wendy. It is just frustrating, since there is so much that *could* be told. And this is only talking Season 3.

It was so disappointing that they didn't even *try* to maintain the reset beyond an episode. Now that we've watched the rest of the season, what the heck was the rush? Nothing freak'in happened. Once again, these guys worked on "Lost" where turning the series on its head was a normal thing. They went halfway there with the reset and then completely reversed on it. So bizarre.

This was an average season premiere. It had its moments and wasn't that great, nor horrible. Finally, they chipped off one of the endlessly drawn-out storylines we had already seen for half of last season. We sure had to wait a long time for the utterly uncreative reveal of Baxter's "secret". Please don't tell me Thomas will now frame Baxter for theft. Couldn't they let Thomas on the losing end for a complete episode? It was nice to see Cora smack him down but by the end of the episode, she was back to being dumb as a doorknob. She could have been grateful for Thomas saving Edith without handwaving away what he did. We never even saw Baxter seeing Bates take that trip to London. Why would she be so obsessed with it that she would stare at Anna and Bates all the time? It's just very contrived, and I'm assuming this is how the Bates/Greene fiasco will finally come out. Again, this was a storyline which we've seen for half a season. Enough is enough... get on with it. Fellowes obviously has nothing to write for Bates and Anna since they apparently spend time discussing such mundane topics as who Mary is going to pick. I usually like Violet's machinations, but this one wasn't that fun to watch. So she really was threatened by Isobel? Or was she trying to get Isobel to admit her feelings through jealousy? I did like Thomas and Jimmy working together. Too bad they had to destroy Thomas' character with the Baxter subplot. If Jimmy can't get enough of his former employer, why not go back and work for her? Then, he could have sex whenever he wants. I did like Daisy learning math, unless this means more Ms. Bunting. (runs for the hills) Bunting was so abrasive, but at least it provided the only entertaining scenes, which were at the dinner table. For a moment there, she and Tom both had the same reddish shade of hair in the light. And then there was the tiresome stuff with the love triangle. Last season, it seemed like Mary cared way more about Blake, and Gillingham was that pesky try hard. But now it seems like Mary is giving him serious consideration? And he's sure she'll change her mind after he sleeps with her? Ick. Seriously, dumbest fire ever. So contrived with Mrs. Hughes seeing Edith's "moment" with the fireman. This series seems full-out soap opera now. There's hardly even an attempt to go for character development anymore.

It means we're Joe.

Where would speculating about the rest of Season 5 after watching the first episode of Season 5 go? I wanted to make a few guesses after the season premiere last night, but I don't read spoilers.

I had to look up what happened in those episodes. I actually liked "4C". I thought it was fun. The string of episodes after Carter's death really bored me, and in some ways "4C" actually brought me back to caring about the show because I could care about Reese. I couldn't care less about Control and the various factions. "Last Call" was alright. But the episode before it was even weaker. I don't think this show actually wants to do romance, so I don't "ship" anyone. I don't want Reese and Shaw together. I do think Shaw and Root bantering is fun.

Maybe, but it sure isn't satisfying to watch. Regina's latest consequence didn't even stick (she got to see Henry again, she got to have him remember her again, and he was right back to affirming how much of a hero she is). It would be nice if they and only they paid for something they did for once.

No, but who paid for it? Bae as a kid and Neal as an adult. That isn't exactly what I call justice.