S03.E05: Good Form

[daxx]

One major quibble I have with his episode is the burning of the Pegasus sail. No sailor in his right mind would set a sail on fire. Rip it down and throw it in the sea maybe. Setting anything on fire on a tall ship in the middle of the ocean means everyone dies. All the rest of the sails would have caught fire and burned the ship to cinders. I’ve seen this one so very many times I don’t have any new insights,

Spoiler

other than hating what they did to Liam in season 5. 

There was a theory in the fandom that Liam and Killian were the heirs of a deposed royal which is why they were abandoned. I think that would have been more interesting.

[KAOS Agent]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

I mean, what if they had to rip out the Lost Boy's eyes to communicate with Henry?  Would Snow have been unwilling to "fight" if she were against that?  Ripping out a heart was supposedly brutal, albeit reversible.  How would black-and-white-thinking Henry have felt about it if the whole issue hadn't been forgotten with zero actual consequences?

Except ripping out someone's eyes wasn't the option. I think Emma would have been against that too.  She also wouldn't go there when Regina wanted to take the same tack later but it was going way past simply delivering a mirror and into torturing a bunch of kids for information.  The issue is morally gray, but there is a point where picking the "right" thing could be more harmful than doing something else. There may have been other options and they had explored one of them by trying to reason with the kid and bribe him and then were given information that Henry is quickly falling to Pan and had harmed that same child earlier in the day, which actually puts me in the mind that maybe black-and-white thinking Henry wouldn't have cared about the heart ripping at that point either. It gave them a better sense that time was running out. Do they have time to spend looking for the "harder path"? What are the consequences of Pan winning Henry over? Does he gain unlimited powers and now all children in every realm are his to control and make Lost Boys? One kid loses his heart for a few minutes vs countless kids becoming Lost Boys into infinity, which is worse?

Part of the issue I take with Snow is that she is so smug about being good. It's really off-putting. Given her history of making the "right" choice leading to hundreds of deaths, it's hard to take. She's got tons of blood on her hands, but refuses to acknowledge the harm her doing the right thing does. Does she feel anything at all for the people whose lives were destroyed because of her choices? Maybe it's the utter lack of emotion I get from her. I wonder about her willingness to fight for her daughter because I question how she would respond if Pan was holding a gun to Emma's head. If the only way to save Emma was to kill Pan, would she do it? That's a clear cut situation for me, but I see Snow debating things. She'd start thinking about taking the harder path. Emma dies, Pan is incarcerated instead of dead. Sad for Emma, but Snow did the right thing in not killing Pan.

[andromeda331]

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

Maybe Snow was more sensitive to ripping someone's heart out, because she actually experienced it recently and knew how painful it was.  It would have helped if they had something built into the world-building of this show that doing morally questionable things actually had a price and there was a good reason to choose the morally correct path. 

But there really wasn't in the dog-eat-dog world of the Enchanted Forest and beyond.  If so, then there would have been an argument for finding the "harder" way to communicate with Henry.  Which actually existed in this case, unlike the situation with Cora in 2B. 

I mean, what if they had to rip out the Lost Boy's eyes to communicate with Henry?  Would Snow have been unwilling to "fight" if she were against that?  Ripping out a heart was supposedly brutal, albeit reversible.  How would black-and-white-thinking Henry have felt about it if the whole issue hadn't been forgotten with zero actual consequences?

Yes, this is where it would be nice if they did some world building and also we had more insight into Snow. Why is she so determine to do the right thing? Is it who she is and she can't understand or do things that Regina and Emma can (which is how I took it watching it the first time) or is there more to that? Her parents tried hard to teach her to do the right thing especially her mother. Snow's mother died because Snow did the right thing and didn't use the candle. Considering all she lost including both of her parents being murdered maybe she clings to it because that's what they would do? Its hard for her to change from that or let them down? She probably would look at things and think of how her father would do things or her mother. Her way to cling to them? It would be really helpful to know why Snow feels that way especially when doing the right thing hasn't help her at all. Her parents were still murdered, she was on the run as her stepmother took everything from her and tried to kill her several times. Was it something she clung to? Which is possible its easy to see who the right one is when one is the Evil Queen murdering everyone and everything while Snow was the rightful princess. Maybe she hoped when it was all over she'd end up ruling just as her parents had. Or maybe her guilt? If she had done the right thing maybe Regina wouldn't have ended up going Evil?  

[companionenvy]

The problem is that, with the exception of this episode, most of the time the show seems to think that Snow is right to be obsessed with doing the "right" thing to an absurd, self and others-destructive way. Like, they really don't see a difference between Snow potentially using the candle to save her mother at the cost of an innocent life (which actually would have been wrong, if understandable given Snow's age and the temptation), and Snow risking her family and entire kingdom multiple times in order to save Regina (which is lunacy, and ultimately selfish). 

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, companionenvy said:

The problem is that, with the exception of this episode, most of the time the show seems to think that Snow is right to be obsessed with doing the "right" thing to an absurd, self and others-destructive way. Like, they really don't see a difference between Snow potentially using the candle to save her mother at the cost of an innocent life (which actually would have been wrong, if understandable given Snow's age and the temptation), and Snow risking her family and entire kingdom multiple times in order to save Regina (which is lunacy, and ultimately selfish). 

Snow's character could be really interesting if her obsession with choosing the "right" path was treated as at least somewhat unhealthy. It would be true to Snow White, since she's always been a symbol of purity and virtue. What happens when you take HOPE too far and ultimately put your loved ones in danger because of that? How would Snow reconcile that? These questions were raised in 2B, but the show went in the wrong direction with it.

Edited November 18, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Snow's character could be really interesting if her obsession with choosing the "right" path was treated as at least somewhat unhealthy. It would be true to Snow White, since she's always been a symbol of purity and virtue. What happens when you take HOPE too far and ultimately put your loved ones in danger because of that? How would Snow reconcile that? These questions were raised in 2B, but the show went in the wrong direction with it.

Also, how she still has hope after everything that's happened to her. Her life has pretty much sucked since her mother died. The woman who saved her life ended up her stepmother and became a complete psycho towards Snow for reason Snow doesn't even know until many years later, murdered her father, stole her kingdom, slaughtered entire villages her people, she was on the run trying not to get murdered. She met Charming, fell in love and they took the kingdom back but how long did that last? From her stupid decision to let Regina go (which makes zero sense Snow of season one wouldn't do that!) to having to send her baby away and Cursed for 28 years. The curse broke and her family is together but she and Charming still missed out on their daughter's entire childhood, and it has to hurt more for Snow she was originally going to go with Emma. Its hard to see how or why Snow still has hope. 

[KingOfHearts]

6 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Its hard to see how or why Snow still has hope. 

She started acting like an actual human being in 2B when she started questioning where being "good" really got her. The problem was that the show treated it like she was completely wrong for having any doubt whatsoever, even when that doubt saved her family from annihilation. In general, the theme of HOPE made less sense over time. Things kept getting bleaker and...

Spoiler

the only reason it was a "happy ending" was because everyone got lobotomized. (Including Regina.)

Edited November 19, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

6 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Also, how she still has hope after everything that's happened to her.

One of the annoying things is that only in some episodes does she have hope against all the odds. In random other episodes, she's willing to give up at the first obstacle.

In this case, I think the heart ripping was the "better way," at least the best of the options they had available. They'd already tried being sympathetic and offering kindness. They'd tried bribery. While the heart ripping isn't pleasant, it was probably better than torturing the kid into compliance.

And do they know how old that "kid" really is? There's a good chance he's older than they are.

[Camera One]

On rewatch, it was very difficult to care about that whole B plot.

Spoiler

Ultimately, communicating with his two moms didn't make an ounce of difference for Henry.  At the end of the day, he fell for Peter Pan's tricks hook, line and sinker.  

Showing Killian before he became Hook, and having him interact with his brother humanized him, so I liked the flashbacks overall. 

Spoiler

Until I remember that fun "twist" in 6B with Liam's deal with the devil.

I still can't fully enjoy the poisoned arrow storyline.  Its only purpose seemed to be to give Hook a chance to show that he wants to be a better person. 

Spoiler

It did nothing for Charming as a character, gave people yet another reason to dislike Snow, and Emma hardly had a chance to react to it.  It was another example of how they had nothing for their protagonists to do except to react to external threats.  While the ex-villain (Hook in this case) was the active character who grew from this situation.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

I really liked this episode when it first aired, and I will always love it for being the episode that got me not only on broad the good ship Captain Swan, but also the Charming/Hook bromance. And I still enjoy the episode a lot, even if I can pick some nits now. Its fun seeing Hook as upright Leutinient Jones, who even tosses rum out in disgust, and his backstory works for me, and lines up pretty well with what we know about Hook. You can see him as a former good guy who went bad after having his world rocked, even if I think that his turn to piracy, as well as his whole crew, was way too fast. But, we also get our Captain Swan kiss, AND Charming and Hook bonding, and I can get behind all of that. 

I find the whole heart rip thing to be...weird, mostly. I actually like Emma being alright with doing something morally ambiguous to save Henry, without the show losing its mind in judging her, and Regina doing this is more of the kind of ambiguity that I can get behind from her. Snow and her never ending "there must be another way!" chorus is already a massive pain though. What is that "other way" Snow? You seem to rely on blind luck, or the villains just backing out if stuff at the last minute. Not making tough choices has basically led to everything being cursed or dying, so...

Charming is such a stubborn ass sometimes, but I did like the banter between him and Hook, and him giving Hook credit to the rest of the gang was a nice moment. And he and Snow were quite cute actually, and we in general had nice group dynamics throughout. Granted, we are more or less doing Onces favorite thing yet again (traipsing through the forest), but the character dynamics are at least interesting. 

Pan and Hook also have an interesting dynamic that I would have loved to explore more. "One handed pirate with a drinking problem" is still one of my favorite lines in the whole show, it just never fails to make me laugh. You know, Pan is really the only person who comments on Hooks obvious drinking problem, which is kind of darkly hilarious to me. And the flying ship is still a great imagine.

Spoiler

I am still super bitter that we never got more backstory on what world Hook was from, as it seemed like they were being intentionally vague about it. They never named the king, or the kingdom, and it seems more technologically advanced than the EF, so I assumed that he was in a different land, or time period. I also thought that they were going to reveal something about his land or king, like its a future Charming or Henry, or it was Snows father, or something like that, but nothing comes of any of that. We only have Liams retconned deal with the devil to look forward to. Awesome. 

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

 

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I am still super bitter that we never got more backstory on what world Hook was from, as it seemed like they were being intentionally vague about it. They never named the king, or the kingdom, and it seems more technologically advanced than the EF, so I assumed that he was in a different land, or time period. I also thought that they were going to reveal something about his land or king, like its a future Charming or Henry, or it was Snows father, or something like that, but nothing comes of any of that. We only have Liams retconned deal with the devil to look forward to. Awesome. 

 

Spoiler

Me too. I wanted to know  who the King was. They were being vague on purpose it seemed like they were going to come back to it. Was it Snow's family kingdom? Henry's? Or someone else? Also we never got to find out why the King was resorting to this. Was he an evil king? Was he losing the war? What if he was fighting the Ogres would it be necessarily be bad considering what we know how bad the Ogre wars go with at one point recruiting fourteen year old or the second one that Granny mentioned. If the king was evil how was it that no one in the entire ship knew that? They thought they were following an upstanding King. If they were losing the war it seems like they'd know and that's why the king wanted  that poison. Or did the King keep them away from the action so they didn't really know what was going on? It doesn't make any sense. 

[Camera One]

I guess the sailors thought he was The Good King.  But by using this tactic, he was The Evil King but not the bold and audacious type.

[KingOfHearts]

On 11/19/2018 at 12:00 AM, tennisgurl said:

Regina doing this is more of the kind of ambiguity that I can get behind from her.

I like Regina in 3A because she contributes to the group in her own way. She can be ruthless, but this time it's for a good cause and she's not being pointlessly cruel. She took the Lost Boy's heart because she needed to communicate to Henry, not just to kill the Lost Boy because she had a bad day. There's a big difference. Regina can fit on the side of the heroes if she suggests more aggressive solutions that are less considerate than Snow's. If she wants to, she can get crap done.

Spoiler

But Redeemed!Regina ultimately becomes a snore and just angsts over her own stuff. She doesn't bring that the same energy to being good as she does being evil.

[Iju]

only 6 episodes in and i feel like i've been given 3 gallons of water after wandering the desert for an entire year. for one thing, when i went to check this episode i was shocked to see i wasn't even in the double digits, as i had been spamming and actually enjoying this season. i still don't like emma (and doubt i ever will) but since there are more characters they can be expanded on, and since they're split up they don't have to either revolve around her or henry or regina. so in that sense i can take her more than i used to.

i don't care for hook much but i am a sucker for sibling storylines (SPN fan here) so i wasn't complaining. and while i'm at it killian is such a beautiful male name. but i really don't see why he would have any attraction to emma. and yes i did just say that i didn't like her, but looking at the facts, they barely spent any time together. and every time they met, she was 100% focused on henry so she wasn't really interacting with him anyway. okay well maybe i can see the attraction, for a one night stand maybe. but i don't know why he wants to pursue a relationship with her on his small knowledge of her. 

but i remember thinking after this episode ended, why i enjoyed it so much. for one thing the actor for pan is an excellent choice. not quite a boy, not quite a man, dark in his intents. i can't imagine anyone playing pan like this. but i was still thinking on what made this enjoyable and i realised: no regina. previously we had 40 condensed episodes of nothing but her and honestly i can't not say that i had to repress needless rage whenever she appeared on screen. but now her character is slightly changed, GREATLY reduced in screentime and almost charming as a villain. it actually makes me despairing to think of her go back to her original awful self after henry is rescued.