S04.E03: Rocky Road

[YaddaYadda]

Actually as you go through the shows and the threads, you will see that most of us if not all of us felt that Regina was acting a hell of a lot more maturely than I at the very least expected her to behave.  Robin on the other hand?  Scumbag.  He made a choice and if he made the wrong one then he should learn to live with it.  

 

Regina is making better choices and she is pushing away those instincts she has.  But she is laying the blame for the book on the wrong people.  You can't blame a ten year for ruining your life, because they're ten years old, but a 300 year old wizard who manipulated you when you were at your most vulnerable?  a psycho mother who murdered your boyfriend then married you off to someone twice your age?

 

I hate this book plot so much.

[KingOfHearts]

 

I hate this book plot so much.

If Regina had any solid evidence, maybe I could tolerate it. But she doesn't. It's all speculation from the Woegina Vault of Tears. There's no proof, 

even to this day.

[Shanna Marie]

What do you think Regina should be doing differently that would be keeping her head high and moving on.

For starters, she could take responsibility for her own actions and her own choices and not blame some book/Author. She's in her current situation because of her own actions. First, she rejected Robin when she was first shown him as a guaranteed soul mate because revenge was more important to her. Second, she imprisoned Marian. She probably wouldn't have been with him to get her heart broken if she hadn't broken up their family. Third, Marian is back because Regina threw Emma in her dungeon. These are all consequences of past bad choices Regina made, not random bad luck. Turning good doesn't erase the consequences of past bad choices.

 

Then instead of worrying about the book and whether she should get a happy ending, she should just enjoy the life she has. Spend time with her son on something other than working on finding a happy ending. Interact with people in town without being snarky or bitchy at them. Get a hobby. Learn something new. Start doing something constructive. Whether it's learning to play guitar, taking up painting, starting a book club, learning to sail, just do something other than dwelling on how sad her life is. She'll never be happy while she's more focused on what she doesn't have than on what she does have. Just a few days ago (show time), all she wanted was to have Henry remember her. Now she's got him, and she shuts him out, then when he forces his way back in, all they talk about is her boyfriend. That's not a healthy way to live. I've had the friend who'd gone through a breakup who can talk about nothing else and who is utterly focused on what went wrong and how she can get him back, and that's not a path to happiness. It just makes you more miserable. So she'd be a lot closer to a happy ending if she allowed herself to feel happy that, for once, something evil she did was able to be undone and a family could be reunited, and then she turned her attention to other things.

[Zuleikha]

For starters, she could take responsibility for her own actions and her own choices and not blame some book/Author.

 

As I understand it, her interest in the book/Author is about future possibilities not the past. IMHO, she also has taken responsibility for her actions/choices, although fuller discussion of that belongs in the Regina thread, which I won't go into until I'm all caught up (which should be pretty soon!)

 

Spend time with her son on something other than working on finding a happy ending. Interact with people in town without being snarky or bitchy at them. Get a hobby. Learn something new. Start doing something constructive.

That's not bad advice for real life, but Regina's a TV character. Regina picking up a hobby could be funny for one episode but then she needs something else. Snarkless Regina simply isn't Regina. She may as well be killed off.

 

I'm worried that the negativity about the book plot means its potential will go unfulfilled (like the Snow dark heart plotline, which could have been an awesome funny storyline that let Ginnifer do more bluebird-chasing Snow but was a whole bunch of fluff). However, from where I am in the show where it's all possibilities, the quest for the book's author plotline has a lot of potential. I don't think there is any way Henry would rather bond with Regina than learning more about the magic of the book, so that's a natural way to put those two characters back in scenes and give Regina someone logical to play off of. It gives Regina something active to do that's neither evil nor mopey (yes, she's upset but she's not sitting around crying. She's dealing). It furthers the mythology of the show because the Book has been increasingly portrayed as a magical talisman of some sort that no one really understands and IMHO, the degree of control the Enchanted Forest characters have over their stories has been poorly established due to a general lack of coherent world building.

 

Her meeting the Author, if it happens, also doesn't need to be about rewriting something to put her with Robin... it could create a twist where her pixie dust True Love turns out to be someone entirely different with an identical tattoo (the show did remind us all that she never saw Robin's face, after all). It could be a way for her to confront the question of what defines a Happy Ending and lead to the soul searching many here seem to want to see. 

[YaddaYadda]

I wouldn't worry about the book plot too much since this has been coming since season 1.  If there's one thing they will see through, it's that particular plot.

 

ETA - the general negativity comes from the whole these guys may not have had choices which is not true.  We don't have to go all that far back to see that the book was erased when Emma and Hook time traveled.  The stories were gone until they managed to fix their fuck up and then their part was added to it which makes the book that records history.

 

When they find the Author, he can tell them he wrote the fairytale stories we all know in this world, Captain Hook with a perm and waxed mustache and how Beast is really a beast in his version and so on.  Then he can tell them to take it up with his editor.

Edited March 9, 2015 by YaddaYadda

[Zuleikha]

We don't have to go all that far back to see that the book was erased when Emma and Hook time traveled.

 

IMHO, that could be easily explained away as Emma's Saviorness or a complication of breaking the laws of magic with time travel. 

[KingOfHearts]

Not gonna lie, this is probably my favorite episode from 4A. Elizabeth Mitchell was perfectly cast as The Snow Queen, and Hans is great. The flashbacks are just a lot of fun with the Elsa/Kristoff team-up we never saw in the movie.

Seeing Will Scarlet being "reintroduced organically" into the story still infuriates me.

LOL at Robin failing to TLK his own wife. 

Spoiler

In hindsight, it was probably because she was Zelena, but let's be real - the same result would've happened regardless of her true identity. Robin doesn't give a crap about Marian. He's totally fine committing adultery in the same room as her comatose body.

Edited January 26, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

This may be the best episode of 4A, but that's damning with faint praise. It's not as actively awful as so much of the rest of this arc, and it has some fun moments, but it's also kind of blah. It's sort of a transitional episode, setting things up, but not much really happens, and the good stuff mostly serves to show the potential that they didn't do anything with.

I love the Hook and Elsa team-up, with the case of the blind leading the blind when it comes to adapting her to this world. I would have liked to see more of them working together. They're so different, but they're both outsiders trying to figure this world out.

"The Emma button" is one of this show's great bits. Pity we didn't get to see Emma giving Hook a cell phone and trying to explain it to him. And when did that happen? Apparently after the time travel adventure, but they've barely had a spare moment since they got back. It seems to be the day after Emma was walled up in ice, so I guess they went phone shopping before stopping off at the mayor's office, but Elsa must not have been there, since she didn't know what the phone was.

Emma actually got to be proactive and investigate something, following leads her way (while Hook and Elsa took their own approach).

I liked the Elsa and Kristoff team-up in the flashbacks, but these writers really don't know how royalty works, do they? It's not the queen's responsibility to go on scouting expeditions. The queen more likely would be coordinating things from HQ.

What was up with that huge hunk of hair Elsa found on Marian that was apparently Ingrid's? Ingrid barely touched Marian, and if she shed on her, it would have been a strand or two of long hair, not a short hunk that looked like something hacked off with kindergarten scissors. Not to mention, it looked more like straw than hair.

There are a couple of bits that become irksome in retrospect:

Spoiler

 

I find it hard to believe that Zelena would have been in the situation Marian got into. Wouldn't a powerful magic user have detected Ingrid's magic in the ice cream shop? Wouldn't Ingrid have noticed that "Marian" was under a powerful glamour? And if Zelena was oblivious enough to get the curse cast on her and noticed the spell working on her, would she really have remained stoic and in character rather than using her own powers to do something about it? It's totally out of character for her to be able to stick with her role without flying off the handle when something goes wrong.

Meanwhile, Rumple was really betraying Belle when using her as his alibi with the fake dagger so he could lie about knowing Elsa and Anna and knowing something about Ingrid. It's infuriating that she got back together with him after that, among many other things, but that in particular was a huge betrayal of trust.

 

So, while it holds together okay, has a reasonable plot, for the most part, and has some good moments, it's not an episode I think about or even remember, but at least it's not utterly awful.

Oh, it was really disconcerting doing my rewatch right before watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, especially since this episode was heavy with Kristoff and CEG was a Nathaniel-centric tonight. I kept waiting for Kristoff to burst into song or say, "But I'm nice now."

[andromeda331]

I really love this episode. I love the flashbacks they were really good. I loved Elsa and Kristoff team up. It was really good. I loved Hook and Elsa teaming up. The Emma button. Emma out investigating. One thing I love is when Emma uses her experience in the world. David doesn't realize some thing's off in the ice cream shop because they never had one while Emma immediately realizes something's wrong. I'll never stop wishing they done that more. I really love Elizabeth Mitchell as the Snow Queen. She did a great job.

[Camera One]

21 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

What was up with that huge hunk of hair Elsa found on Marian that was apparently Ingrid's? Ingrid barely touched Marian, and if she shed on her, it would have been a strand or two of long hair, not a short hunk that looked like something hacked off with kindergarten scissors. Not to mention, it looked more like straw than hair.

Hello fan,

That was indeed intentional.  We had a flashback planned for Season 11 where we find out Ingrid was the Scarecrow - thus the straw.  Ingrid and Zelena had a huge rivalry back in the day but sadly, we had no time to tell that story but I'm sure you can see it in all the subtle clues we threw in. 

Thanks for all the comments about this episode, everyone!  

Adam and Eddy

[daxx]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

What was up with that huge hunk of hair Elsa found on Marian that was apparently Ingrid's?

It was Marian’s hair that had been affected by the ice magic, not Ingrid’s hair.

[profdanglais]

11 hours ago, daxx said:

It was Marian’s hair that had been affected by the ice magic, not Ingrid’s hair.

Yeah, this is how I always understood it. Rumple pulled Ingrid's magic out of it because she'd cast the spell on Zarian, but it wasn't her hair. 

Zarian is just epically idiotic. 

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, daxx said:

It was Marian’s hair that had been affected by the ice magic, not Ingrid’s hair.

Oh, duh, I never picked up on that. I guess I was looking at it as light blond and assumed it was Ingrid's, but it makes more sense if it's frozen Marian hair. And to think, going back to the first airing, I've been trying to figure out how Elsa got a clump of Ingrid's hair off Marian. But then Rumple's explanation about using it to find Ingrid makes a little less sense, if you can track someone down by using something from a person who's been affected by their spell. It seems like that would have come in handy a lot of times and made things a lot easier. Like, they could have been tracking Zelena with a bit of Hook's hair in the previous season. Or before they knew who Zelena was, they could have used any blood left by Little John on the ambulance gurney to track back to the person whose magic transformed him. It would also be useful as absolute proof of who cast a curse or spell on someone. Being able to use something from the affected person is so much easier than having to get something from the person who cast the spell.

[tennisgurl]

I like so much in this episode, that its actually decently easy to ignore things that I dont like, or will go on to piss me off later. The flashbacks are really good, and I like the Elsa and Kristoff team up, which we never got to see in the movie. The guy playing Hans is suitably slimy, and even though its yet another "wandering about the woods" plot, it at least has likable characters and some good banter to make it more interesting. I even really like the bit where Elsa mentions that Kristoff also grew up with people who were different than him, being raised by rock trolls. Although, it does crack me up that Elsa is still wearing her blue gown to go hiking in the woods and into a cave. Elsa is the queen, I assume she has other outfits! Maybe something a bit more practical for an adventure? 

I also love the Hook and Elsa team up in the present, and the Emma button is one of my favorite modern day gags on the show. It never stops being charming as hell! Its very blind leading the blind, with these two people from worlds that are very much like the past trying to get along in a modern world, with varying degrees of success. I also love Elizabeth Mitchell as the Snow queen so much! She projects so much into her performance, she can be graceful and elegant, but also threatening, but also seems to really want to connect with Elsa, and seems to really believe that people will turn on her for what she can do. She also has a great look, and I love that her magic is so district. Something that has always bugged me about magic on this show is how generic it all seems to be. Its jazz hands and fire balls for just about everyone, no matter where they come from or if they have "light" or "dark" magic, which makes magic fights rather dull. The Snow Queen has her snow and ice powers, which makes her more unique of a threat, and makes her more visually interesting, and adds to her story. 

Emma also has some good bit, like her telling Regina not to blame her for her own crap, and her self esteem issues after seemingly failing in the past is understandable, and not overblown. And her and David working together is always great. And while Emma and Hook dont get much time together, they got a Big Damn Kiss, and thats the kind of content I look for!

Will...just makes me sad. I miss Wonderland. 

[KingOfHearts]

34 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I also love Elizabeth Mitchell as the Snow queen so much! She projects so much into her performance, she can be graceful and elegant, but also threatening, but also seems to really want to connect with Elsa, and seems to really believe that people will turn on her for what she can do.

Elizabeth Mitchell has this way of coming off both as cold and warm. She's distant and mistrustful, but also motherly and unsuspecting. When she goes into full evil mode, it can be terrifying how different her facial expressions and tone get. The Snow Queen is one of the most sympathetic villains on the show.

I love how the writing treats Regina's decision to help save Marian as some sort of big, sacrificial sign of growth. How many times is Regina going to get a cookie for basic human decency?

Edited January 26, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Let's role play.

You are Marian.  You pass an ice cream store and Roland insists on ice cream.  He says, "Regina let me."

How would you respond?  

Spoiler

Bonus: What would your response be if you were Zelena posing as Marian?

Bonus #2: What would your response be if you were Marian not knowing that you were actually Zelena?

Edited February 2, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was watching the scene with Emma, David and Will investigating the ice cream shop, and the other reason why I didn't like Will on this show (even though I really liked him on the spinoff) is how they made the Emma character so hostile towards him despite his minor crimes.  

It was nice that Emma and David still got some nice moments in 4A even though they no longer existed for Emma and Snow.  

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was watching the scene with Emma, David and Will investigating the ice cream shop, and the other reason why I didn't like Will on this show (even though I really liked him on the spinoff) is how they made the Emma character so hostile towards him despite his minor crimes. 

I think another difference for Will between this show and the spinoff is that the "thief" optics are so different. There's a huge difference between robbing Maleficent's palace in the fairy tale world or stealing to survive in Wonderland and breaking into businesses on Main Street in modern America.

And it's kind of like the way the attitude of a lot of the characters toward Hook works: in a vacuum, the hostility does make sense, but it's totally out of proportion considering the attitude toward other people who've committed far worse crimes. Emma's the sheriff, and here's this guy she caught looting the Merry Men's camp who has confessed to looting businesses during a blackout. She should be really ticked toward him. The problem is that she's far more hostile toward the guy looting businesses in town than she is to the person who tried to murder her and who plotted to kill her whole family. She's just watched Regina attempting to execute her mother and is hyper concerned with Regina's feelings, but she wants to throw the book at the guy who stole some ice cream (or possibly whatever was in the cash register in the ice cream shop).

[Camera One]

It doesn't help we have no idea why Will is suddenly stealing in Storybrooke.  I feel they were partly trying to go for banter between Emma and Will, since Will was all about the banter in "Wonderland".  But here, it just felt forced.  I know they were trying to explain this as Emma cracking down on Will extra hard because Regina said she was useless, but still.  

And yes, nothing makes sense when compared to Regina.  

[KingOfHearts]

On 2/2/2019 at 2:15 PM, Camera One said:

Spoiler

Bonus: What would your response be if you were Zelena posing as Marian?

 

Spoiler

We all know Zelena would've lost her religion and blown her cover immediately.

[andromeda331]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think another difference for Will between this show and the spinoff is that the "thief" optics are so different. There's a huge difference between robbing Maleficent's palace in the fairy tale world or stealing to survive in Wonderland and breaking into businesses on Main Street in modern America.

And it's kind of like the way the attitude of a lot of the characters toward Hook works: in a vacuum, the hostility does make sense, but it's totally out of proportion considering the attitude toward other people who've committed far worse crimes. Emma's the sheriff, and here's this guy she caught looting the Merry Men's camp who has confessed to looting businesses during a blackout. She should be really ticked toward him. The problem is that she's far more hostile toward the guy looting businesses in town than she is to the person who tried to murder her and who plotted to kill her whole family. She's just watched Regina attempting to execute her mother and is hyper concerned with Regina's feelings, but she wants to throw the book at the guy who stole some ice cream (or possibly whatever was in the cash register in the ice cream shop).

 

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

It doesn't help we have no idea why Will is suddenly stealing in Storybrooke.  I feel they were partly trying to go for banter between Emma and Will, since Will was all about the banter in "Wonderland".  But here, it just felt forced.  I know they were trying to explain this as Emma cracking down on Will extra hard because Regina said she was useless, but still.  

And yes, nothing makes sense when compared to Regina.  

Both of these are problems. It would be fine with Emma tracking down and arresting Will and being angry with him. He looted businesses during the blackout which is crappy. Emma really should be treating him that way. But she should be treating Regina even worse. The other problem with Will is if you didn't watch the spinoff you don't really know anything about Will. He just randomly shows up, hangs around for no real reason and occasionally talks about stuff that happened in the spinoff. They never really tell us anything about Will, we don't really learn anything about him and they don't do anything with him. It just there. I know he's not the first or last character the show wasted but its still crappy. They easily could have come up with something.