S02.E22: And Straight on 'Til Morning

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

It's like Hook stole the only axe in a burning building and instead of busting through the front door, he goes into a secret tunnel and opens a door in the back.

And now I'm picturing Hook running through town on his way to the docks, shouting to all the people not in the diner, "Come with me if you want to live!" and sailing off with the Jolly Roger full of people who are outraged that the idiots in the diner were deciding their fates like that, sacrificing all of them for Regina.

7 hours ago, companionenvy said:

And as I don't think the risk Hook and the crew were under rose to the level of near-certain death - especially as Hook apparently considered it risky but not suicidal to harbor Bae and presumes that he and Bae would have a chance to escape together

For me, it's not so much whether the crew faced certain death as it is that Hook turning Bae over to Pan didn't actually change anything for Bae. Once Bae left the Jolly Roger, which he was determined to do, there was no way Pan and his minions wouldn't have easily picked Bae up. Bae's only chance was staying on the Jolly Roger, and since he refused to do that, why not avoid the fight?

But then there's this

7 hours ago, companionenvy said:

In fact, while Colin plays the scene sad rather than vengeful, I think there may have been at least an element of "Well, fine. You rejected me - on your own head be it, then."

Which is I think a factor and where Hook's real sin lies. He was pulling an emotional flounce, feeling hurt and rejected and lashing out. He'd had his little fantasy of raising Milah's son and forming a family, then since he and Bae both had grudges against Rumple, maybe even teaming up to take him on together. But when Bae didn't want that, it was kind of like when Emma left Hook at the top of the beanstalk, and he got nasty and vengeful in his hurt. I think there's room for both sad and vengeful at the same time. Either Colin wears contact lenses and they caught the light just right, or he had tears in his eyes, but his hurt made him angry, and he punished Bae by handing him over.

[Camera One]

I was rewatching the final scene in the episode.  It was nice of the portal to wait for the Jolly Roger to get itself into position to go through it.  And LOL at Gold and Regina pulling on the ropes.  Magic works differently on the ship?

Rumple used that convenient locator-blood-globe, and both Rumple and Hook could simply look at it and go "Neverland".  Does that globe show all the realms?  Is the Enchanted Forest / Neverland world round?  Or are they on separate globes?  I wish we could ask A&E these questions.  I wonder what they would say?  (I'm walking into this one here, LOL).

Edited October 28, 2018 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

I really do wonder how that conversation would have gone down, if the Charmings and co had asked everyone else what they thought about possibly dying to save Regina. "Everyone! Good news and bad news! The good news is, we have a way out of our imminent death! The bad news? We cant use it, because the woman who created all of these problems in the first place, and has certainly tortured and murdered your friends, family, and neighbors, will die, and we cant have that!"

I mean, I get them wanting to save her, as she is actually trying to help (from the problems she was totally going to use on them about a day ago, but...) but its ridiculous how much people will bend over backwards for Regina, all because the narrative has given us these super specific, weird circumstances to allow her to get to play the hero. 

I think Hook, despite saying he wanted to save his own skin, really was horrified by the plan that Greg and Tamara had to destroy the town. Its an interesting episode in general for Hook. He shows both his good sides (coming back to help, being kind initially to Bae) and his bad side (ditching Bae out of anger) and I do think that a part of him going back to help was out of a desire to make up for what he did to him. 

Now that we`ve seen season two again, I feel like its both better than I remember, and worse. I think my hatred of most of 2b really affected how I remembered the whole season. 2a has its faults, but I really enjoyed the team princess adventures in the EF with Snow and Emma bonding now that the curse is broken, I liked the stuff in Storeybrooke for the most part, and it was nice to see them still utilizing the supporting cast. Cora was a great, memorable villain, and her arc mostly went well, and Regina actually had a more well put together redemption arc that made a lot more sense, and had her actually show some real self awareness. On the other hand, 2b is mostly utterly awful. It has a few good episodes and some interesting moments and ideas, but it was drowned out by a run of truly abysmal episodes at the end, with Greg and Tamara being the worst villains the show has had yet, everything that was set up not being paid off and, of course, the morality took a total turn for the bizarre and disturbing, with the bashing of Snow and the sainting of Regina, even after showing some of her worst crimes yet. It colored how I saw the whole season, even though there was a lot to like here as well. 

[KingOfHearts]

It's weird seeing Mulan, Aurora, and Philip at the end with Neal.

Spoiler

It makes it seem like they still have a bigger part to play on the show than they end up playing.

[Camera One]

A&E could say the season went full circle.  It started and ended with Aurora, Philip and Extra with the Armour, uh, I mean Mulan.

Everything in this show is a smokescreen.

Edited October 29, 2018 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

47 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I really do wonder how that conversation would have gone down, if the Charmings and co had asked everyone else what they thought about possibly dying to save Regina. "Everyone! Good news and bad news! The good news is, we have a way out of our imminent death! The bad news? We cant use it, because the woman who created all of these problems in the first place, and has certainly tortured and murdered your friends, family, and neighbors, will die, and we cant have that!"

The truly sad thing is that they painted "everyone" as agreeing with all dying in an attempt to maybe save Regina. I mean, we look at it and marvel at the idiocy of the plan and wonder about the other regular people in Storybrooke, who no doubt would definitely be for sacrificing one to save the many, but we aren't supposed to see it as anything other than everyone being fine with this plan. In that way, I see it as why Hook isn't telling everyone not in Snow's merry band of fools to follow him if they want to live. Apparently, they'd all stop him from using the bean to save them because Regina would die and that would be bad and wrong. 

Funny thing about the whole can't sacrifice one to save the many. It's a wonder that Snow can ever look her daughter in the eyes when she pushes this idea. The only one who ever matters is Regina. We can't let her be executed, who cares about the many villages she massacred and all those who suffered and died as a result of this choice? We can't let her die from her own weapon. Who cares that she was going to use it to kill all of us and we all might die now anyway? 

[KingOfHearts]

19 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

Funny thing about the whole can't sacrifice one to save the many. It's a wonder that Snow can ever look her daughter in the eyes when she pushes this idea. The only one who ever matters is Regina. We can't let her be executed, who cares about the many villages she massacred and all those who suffered and died as a result of this choice? We can't let her die from her own weapon. Who cares that she was going to use it to kill all of us and we all might die now anyway? 

It's not even a utilitarian "needs of the many outweigh the few" thing. Regina is willingly sacrificing herself to save everyone and taking responsibility for her actions. It's not like someone suggested, "Hey, let's leave Regina to fix everything while we hightail it out of here whether she agrees or not!" There is nothing morally objectionable about someone sacrificing themselves for the safety of everyone else. 

At the end of the day, it's really just about Snow's guilt complex.

Spoiler

Emma did it in S6, Neal *supposedly* did it in 3B, Ingrid did it in 4A, Hook did it in 5A, and Rumple did it in 3A as well as the end of S7. So why is it that in all those scenarios it's the correct course of action, but in this one, it's wrong? It's okay to "build a future on the blood" of Emma, Neal, Ingrid, Hook, and Rumple, but not Regina

Edited October 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

They were trying to send a warm and fuzzy "We are stronger together" message and the power of love.  They tried to do this in the Season 1 finale too with Emma and Regina working together to save Henry (even though once again, it was Regina's fault Henry was in danger in the first place).

Spoiler

A&E might also argue that if they had let Regina die in the Season 2 finale, they probably wouldn't have been able to save Henry in 3A.  But it's still fun to think about Regina dying in this episode.  

[tennisgurl]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

At the end of the day, it's really just about Snow's guilt complex.

 

Its a variation of Snow banishing Regina, instead of executing her or imprisoning her. She would feel bad about it, so now she puts the lives of everyone in her kingdom, and the surrounding kingdoms, as it turns out, in danger, all so she can feel like the good guy. Its all about Regina and keeping her safe, and Snow and her guilt complex regarding Regina. 

[KAOS Agent]

Was it ever made clear why people couldn't just leave town before the fail-safe destroyed it? Rumpel had a work around for the memory thing, so why didn't he take Belle and leave instead of hanging about waiting to die? Mother Superior had come up with the memory potion for everyone, so why couldn't they just leave town with a note that says "Drink the Kool Aid"? Did anyone ever think about throwing the magical object into the Land without Magic and seeing if that worked? I mean, there were a lot more ideas to go through before risking everyone's life and throwing it who knows where and potentially killing a bunch of other randoms. Building their future on Regina's blood is a horrible thing, but I guess killing an entire other world and building their future on that is perfectly cool with them.

[Camera One]

The fail-safe was supposed to destroy Storybrooke and eliminate anything that didn't belong in the World Without Magic, so by that reasoning, it wouldn't do work in a different realm, and they wouldn't be able to escape it by leaving town.  It's dumb but can fit with the dialogue they wrote.

What I don't buy (as someone else said above) is that Rumple would have allowed this fail-safe to be included into the Curse.  Regina herself hardly knew what the Curse did, so how would she put in a fail-safe?  Why didn't she make plans to activate it right after her mother died?

This conversation was the least convincing rationale for Greg and Tamara's actions:

HENRY: You tried to blow up Storybrooke.
TAMARA or GREG: True, but that was never the point.
HENRY: It wasn't?
TAMARA or GREG: We came here to destroy magic, Henry, but then we found something more important something that changed everything. You. 

So what were they going to do to destroy magic before they found out about the fail-safe? 

Spoiler

And didn't Peter Pan know all along that Henry was in Storybrooke?  That's why he had Wendy's brothers try to adopt Henry?  

I forgot how much I hated the prophesy of Henry with that pencil sketch.  We never did find out the origin of that sketch.  Rambaldi, maybe?  It gave me bad flashbacks of "Alias".

Edited October 29, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

hey were trying to send a warm and fuzzy "We are stronger together" message and the power of love.  They tried to do this in the Season 1 finale too with Emma and Regina working together to save Henry (even though once again, it was Regina's fault Henry was in danger in the first place).

That's what is so manipulative about it. In theory, that's a good message, but the show doesn't bother to sell it in any kind of convincing way. At least in S1, Emma working with Regina made sense because that was the course of action most likely to help Henry. If Regina had been able to save Henry by taking his curse on herself, there's no question that Emma would have been all on board with that plan. I think even these writers would have realized that any other course of action would have been absurd. But somehow, when it is a whole town on the line rather than one boy, Snow's willingness to risk everyone for the EQ - who is directly responsible for their being in danger -- is something we should all cheer for.

The larger issue, I think, is that A&E simultaneously wants to write dark subversion of conventional fairytales and a conventional fairytale. So, occasionally we'll get someone like Snow nattering on about hope and goodness winning out, when what we're seeing is a world in which the good consistently suffer terribly. They've "won" in that the curse broke, but that doesn't bring back Emma's childhood, or all the people, from Ava on down to Joanna, who died along the way. 

[Camera One]

I'm using this handkerchief to dry the corners of my eyes.  Why, you might ask?  I just rewatched the scene between Emma and Regina down in the mines, where Regina asked to die as Regina before she sacrificed herself to slow down the fail-safe.  I'm Mary Margaret today.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I just want to give a shout out to the awesomeness of Ginny Goodwin who so hated being stuck in that pink cardigan for half a season that she searched out a big backpack, filled it up and made sure to be shown boarding the Jolly Roger with it on her back. Snow now has numerous wardrobe options for her Neverland adventure.

[KingOfHearts]

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

I'm using this handkerchief to dry the corners of my eyes.  Why, you might ask?  I just rewatched the scene between Emma and Regina down in the mines, where Regina asked to die as Regina before she sacrificed herself to slow down the fail-safe.  I'm Mary Margaret today.

 

Regina's sacrifice would be great if, you know, she actually sacrificed herself. In a vacuum, it seemed like she was finally taking responsibility for her actions. But...

Spoiler

NO REGRETS!

Edited October 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts