smarter than me

Hook's follow up was priceless- "It's a common name in the sea-faring world."

I really loved this episodes simply for all the surprises. I did not see it coming that Snow/Charming were the ones to cast the curse. Wow. Desperate times indeed. And I liked that they weren't the ones to call upon Emma- they didn't want to pull her back into the madness. I thought it would be Zelena who would be revealed to be the one who brought Emma to Stroybrooke. It being Neal was a total twist for me. Such a dramatic moment when he pulled himself out of Rumple's body and then collapsed back into it. I actually liked the guy again! Final amazing twist that it was Regina kissing Henry to break the curse. I personally loved that, and it cemented her character arc. This is the woman who, at the beginning of the season, was a bit ambivalent towards Henry even when she had her heart. Now she's True Loving all over him. (Henry is running out of moms to break curses though.) I get that people are skeptical of True Love's kiss working, but losing a heart doesn't prevent one from loving...In all characters we have seen without a heart, it bareley seems to affect them. Cora ripped out her own heart to stop herself from running off with Rumple, yet she still clearly loved Regina enough to go to great lengths for hope a reconciliation with her daughter. It didn't make her totally unable to love. Even without Regina's awkward exposition of that fact, we knew that removing one's heart doesn't make one incapable of love or having other emotions... Re: sharing hearts, Regina's heart wouldn't have been strong enough anyway to split with her father. It's pretty manky and blackened. (hence it's ridic that Zelena thinks it is "resilient" enough for it to work for her dumb spell but whatever). I liked that Regina was actually touched by the Charmings, instead of just disgusted. Again, a big sign of her emotional development and arc. WAIT what?! Seriously? I didn't get a good look. That is bizarre. I want to know this too. The whole time they were killing monkeys I kept thinking-- shit, they're killing their friends! They could have killed Little John and maybe Philip/Aurora if those two got pulled over.

Just catching up. I didn't think this ep was filler (there was so much exposition/information delivered) but it was probably the most flawed ep that's aired of 3B. One quick comment- I almost laughed out loud when they said Zelena needs a resilient heart for her spell. Regina is many things, but resilient ain't one of them. She might be the least resilient character on the show in fact. The woman doesn't bounce back from anything! That is like her biggest problem and the character flaw that steers her towards villainy half the time. It even looked all manky and blackened when Zelena was parading it around, as it is. The character with the most resilient heart is Henry. I can't believe they didn't go that route. The Truest Believer and all - that so we already know his heart is special.