sharky

Really? He has been even more absent than the Charmings this season. Speaking of, I'm starting to think that's where some of the stupidity came from this season. Emilie gone? No more Charmings? Then let's put them under a sleeping curse and make them more useless than usual. Do not put this into the world to disappoint me because I would watch the hell out of that show. Ugh. The Jones brothers against the Evil Queen? Make this real!

I think JMo needed to make the announcement today. ABC in the past has announced renewals around a week before upfronts. Upfronts are next week so this will be something that would likely be mentioned as part of the renewal news. So I'm not surprised. This sounds like it's been in the works for awhile so they've had plenty of time to coordinate the announcements and responses. Adam and Eddy didn't write their response this morning when JMo posted this. It was already prepared to go. And as for Matt's reporting, he was on set a few weeks ago for the wedding episode. I'm sure he was filled on this then and had something prepared as well.

I think going to the past is a bad idea. That's a whole damn mine field of ret-conning. But a wish realm throws out all of the past and gives the writers a clean slate to start from scratch and tell new stories without being encumbered by the other flashbacks they've done.

Yeah, that rating is worrisome. On the other hand, the songs were high in iTunes sales on Friday and the show itself did well on Twitter. I don't know. There are so many variables at this point. It's hard to figure out what they will do based on ratings alone. The show has an amazing online and social presence but is that enough to save it? Are alternative ways to get revenue like iTunes and streaming enough to give it a boost?

I would assume it was the other way around. I don't think Jen's decision would have been made based on knowing the Wish Realm was the next story. It was more like the Wish Realm was created out of necessity. Jen has been doing some directing and has talked about how hard it is to travel to LA and New York from Van every weekend. None of that has been a secret. So perhaps the Wish Realm was created so in case she decided not to come back, they had a reset plan in place. Hell, if you look at the second half of the season with this info, there are several things that make sense now. The Wish Realm and Hook's separate adventure being the two biggest examples. And if they knew Jen was leaving early on in the season, it would explain why the Untold Stories were dropped so quickly. If anything, it would hint at the fact that this has been in the works for awhile even before the first ratings of the season rolled in.

Regina would be facing some magic foe and would need a cunning pirate to help her. She's been in our universe. She knows what Hook could be here as a enemy. But then she could put him on her side. Hand wave and drunk Old!Hook becomes Dashing!Hook.

Hm.... you know we speculated when it happened that there could be a possible Wish Realm reboot. I could actually see that working and would be on board with that. Outlaw Queen would be there, Colin would still be working, and Captain Swan would remain intact. It would actually better explain Hook's random appearance in the Wish Realm episode. It's essentially alt-Once. Plus, you could bring back other characters without ret-conning by just hand waving it as the Wish Realm. Blackbeard is around, Ariel could be a pirate friend (Joanna's show was cancelled). It's the same characters with a reset button. It would make sense too in the timing of the show. They filmed the Wish Realm in December likely knowing that certain contracts either wouldn't be renewed or at least would be renegotiated. Then pitch the reboot to ABC in January with this possibility and shove a bunch of stuff in to tie up Emma's story and Captain Swan with the wedding and musical and everything. The more I think about this, the more I could actually get behind it. How much have we complained about ret-con on this show? That would fix this. And if they stick with the stupid flashbacks, they could tell completely new flashbacks withou lt ret con nonsense.

Timing doesn't seem that strange to me. Upfronts are next week, but they usually announce renewals the week before so I expect news about the show's fate this week. Again, I think Hook's tangent adventure this season makes more sense in this context now. And frankly, I enjoyed his travels with Nemo and Blackbeard and Ariel. If they could somehow make that work, I would be OK with this. Maybe Princess/Queen Emma sends him on a quest to protect their kingdom or team up with Queen Regina to take on a new threat. It would separate Captain Swan but Emma would still be off screen and CS would still be happy.

If Colin sticks around then so will I but I'm just not sure how they're going to make this play out. I wonder now if they had Hook and Emma separated so much to test if Captain Swan would work with them apart. Although this also means Emma's last real appearance has her separated from Hook. Why would they do that if they thought this might be the end for her? They had to have some idea when they floated the reboot to ABC that this would be a possibility. I can see this going a few ways. Henry is bitter because his mom dies or disappears and some girl in Storybtooke finds his book and then finds him. That could be fine. But there is just no way I can imagine this working with Colin on the show, JMo gone and it not being dark or bitter.

Again, as I said, those are rare occurrences. We also were well aware that there was lots of drama surrounding Castle's renewal. And Once is not really a bubble show when you compare it to what else is on ABC. Right now, its pulling in numbers similar to the network's one bright freshman drama Designated Survivor. I can kind of see American Idol being a potential blip but that won't happen until March so there's plenty of time to run Once.

Yep. There were definitely issues with the episode but Captain Swan are married so don't give a crap about picking the episode apart tonight.

No it wasn't. The teaser called it the "season finale" which is not what you call an episode this close to upfronts unless you know its fate. Yeah, they could change their minds, but that's a rare occurance.

I do wonder if ABC got a hometown discount or if this was part of the new Seacrest deal. It doesn't seem like it would be a coincidence that this info would come out the same week Ryan gets a gig on ABC's morning anchor show.

Idol hasn't been officially confirmed yet. I'm kind of surprised that there is talk of it on Sundays since the earlier buzz I saw put it on Mondays to fill in for Dancing, but I guess that's the Bachelor's job. Articles I read said it would start in March after the Oscars so I could see either doing a shorter Once season with a season finale right before the Oscars and then Idol after that. Or perhaps putting it on after Idol and have Once have a darker feel perhaps? At the very least, a shorter season would help cut costs. And with the Sunday Night Football juggernaut in the fall, I could see Once in its normal slot as alternative programming. Of course with the reboot they could also treat it like their new Grimm and move it to Fridays or something.

It's been planned already. A&E have talked about pitching the reboot to ABC earlier this year. This is just the writers breaking the seventh season at the end of this month, which is typical for Once.

Don't worry about the lack of CS lines in A Happy Beginning. The actual performance has some awesome CS shots and some great shots of everyone from town. There will be a lot of CS gifs and gifs in general on tumblr from that performance.

The CS duet is actually not a dedicated CS song. It's a musical finale type number that includes lines from everyone in the cast. Yes, that means CS don't get their own song per se, but it's a good celebratory number for the CS wedding.

They posted the episode on their media site today -- something they only do with major episodes like premieres and finales. And they have lots of B roll and cast interviews for media to pull from as well.

That's how I feel as well. You don't have a preview screening for fans if it's the second to last episode of the series and you're about to cancel it. And for a show with this kind of following and longevity, you would either be promoting the hell out of the final episodes or they would be some indication that things could end. Castle was officially cancelled the week of its finale, sure, but Stana Katic got fired in mid-April. And I highly doubt ABC would keep Quantico but cancel Once. Quantico is pulling a season average 0.69 -- and that includes their move to Monday to try and boost ratings. Agents may have a better chance, but they're still pulling an average 0.74 for the season. They had a 0.7 on Tuesday with 2.1 million viewers. Once has a 0.94 with 3 million viewers on a night that is becoming another dead zone on network schedules now. Masked Scheduler did an interesting write-up on Sundays becoming a tough night for networks.

To be fair, they brought on two different writers to write the actual songs so I wouldn't give much credit to A&E. Regina's number had a very campy Rocky Horror vibe to it. It was good, I guess, but it was no Revenge. Once again proving that we're really lucky to have Colin O'Donoghue on this show of ours.

Because it's a stunt musical episode. I don't know how well that would play as a finale. But you are right, it sounds like fun, which this show has definitely been lacking lately.

To be fair, they're also releasing the songs on iTunes on Friday. I wonder if they're previewing the songs early to get some extra cash from the sale of the music to go along with this episode. Try to milk it for all its worth.

Hm...maybe all this is in Snow's head. Like she's the only one who hears people singing and therefore is the one trying to come up with an answer to help Emma. Or perhaps her "wish" for Emma leads to her seeing all of this in her head? Or maybe they were all really drunk on rum and then got punched by their future selves.

I don't understand what's going on in the promo photos. It seems like Hook and the Charmings are having an actual conversation and Hook is getting up in Snow's face. So how does she not recognize him when they take their beanstalk trip? I mean, she does say his name in season 2 like she knows him and his reputation. So what then? She didn't recognize him without the pirate garb? He looks too blacksmithish to be a pirate? She didn't expect him to look the same since he wasn't cursed in Storybrooke? It's a little weird. And again, this is why they need to drop kick the flashbacks. It's gotten to a point where there's too much retconning to make them work. At least Lost knew to change up the flash formula. I don't get why A&E are so stuck on it.

Oh hey, if you write the thing people want to see, then people watch the thing they want to see. I would hope this clues A&E into what the focus of next season should be but I think it would take an anvil dropped on their heads by ABC suits for that to happen. BTW with the musical screening tomorrow night do you think we could get an announcement about a possible renewal then? Seems like it would be the perfect event for something like that.