The Writers of OUAT: Because, Um, Magic, That's Why

[Rumsy4]

44 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder if that was the original idea, that Regina was "misunderstood" rather than actually being evil and Snow was really a brat.

That's an interesting thought. Then A&E probably got really into Regina's sociopathic tendencies, and they didn't even bother to paint Snow an actual brat, and just told the audience that she was one (well the remaining episodes of this season may take care of that). 

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Rumsy4 said:

 (well the remaining episodes of this season may take care of that). 

You think they are still going to drag Snow through the mud this close to the end?  Never mind...

[Rumsy4]

8 minutes ago, Camera One said:

You think they are still going to drag Snow through the mud this close to the end?  

We need to keep hoping they don't, but whatever you do, don't make a wish!! ;-)

[Shanna Marie]

4 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Then A&E probably got really into Regina's sociopathic tendencies, and they didn't even bother to paint Snow an actual brat, and just told the audience that she was one 

That's where I'm wondering about the original premise and them veering back to it in spite of selling the show as a different thing -- so they originally wanted to do it from the POV of Regina as misunderstood and an underdog, with Snow White as a brat, and Regina always getting the short end of the stick because she was stuck with the villain label, which kept her from getting a happy ending, so she had to go to/create Storybrooke to have a chance at a happy ending (I'm guessing at some of this, but it's all based on things they've said in interviews or things said in the show). The networks went "um, I don't think we can go for the Evil Queen as the heroine, but I like the idea of fairy tale characters in a small town in Maine, can you give us something else with that concept?" So they regrouped, got some help, and created the idea of Emma to be the protagonist who could break the curse, and that's what the first season of the show was, with the network making them not kill Charming in the pilot, so that the romance between Snow and Charming was part of the centerpiece of that season. The show's a success, so there's less adult supervision in season two, and although they've already established the series with Emma as protagonist and Regina as a villain, with it very clear that Snow didn't deserve all Regina's vengeance, the original concept starts leaking through, so Regina becomes a co-protagonist, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her and see her as misunderstood. But they also really love the Evil Queen villain they created, so they're still doing the villainy and ramping it up. It's like they're trying to have it both ways, doing the series where Regina was the villain and did awful stuff and Emma's the Savior, but also doing the show about the Evil Queen being an underdog who can't get a happy ending and this is so unfair, as a metaphor for their struggles to make it as TV writers.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

The show's a success, so there's less adult supervision in season two, and although they've already established the series with Emma as protagonist and Regina as a villain, with it very clear that Snow didn't deserve all Regina's vengeance, the original concept starts leaking through, so Regina becomes a co-protagonist, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her and see her as misunderstood. B

That was the problem they were clearly trying to rectify with the Snow-kills-Cora-and-is-shamed-for-it subplot in 2B.  And then Snow casts the Dark Curse in 3B.  And Snow kidnaps a baby and separates a mother from her daughter for 28 years in 4B.   It's encapsulated by Belle's immortal words... "What have we been doing to EACH OTHER."

[Rumsy4]

Of these, the eggnapping was the actual real evil thing Snowing did. But it's so bizarre and OOC, that I still have trouble accepting it as canon.

[Camera One]

It's a problem when viewers don't "buy" what the writers are selling.  For example, we are SUPPOSED to believe that Snow killing Cora was deeply immoral, and they haven't been very subtle about telling us what we're supposed to think about it, over and over again, for multiple seasons thereafter.  Ditto for the Eggnapping.  You're not supposed to still believe it's OCC or a retcon.  Yet the Writers have this assumption that we will bow down and swallow everything they give us.  Even this latest week... so Baelfire was actually pure evil inside ordering his father to kill Beowulf in cold blood, and that's why Rumple was forced to stay The Dark One evermore.  Give me a freakin' break, A&E.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Camera One

[oncebluethrone]

For me, the show's lowest points have been the end of Season 2 and the majority of 5B.  They both had good scenes, but they just felt "off" to me. Especially 5B when I wasn't really interested in any of the side stories that were being told and there were a good amount of those that half.

[Camera One]

2 minutes ago, oncebluethrone said:

Especially 5B when I wasn't really interested in any of the side stories that were being told and there were a good amount of those that half.

Interesting... which of the side stories were you not interested in?

[Mathius]

I can't believe nobody's brought this up: 4x11 ("Heroes & Villains").  THAT, to me, was the show's Jump the Shark moment.

And it jumped another shark with Henry's dumbass speech in the S5 finale.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

9 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder if that was the original idea, that Regina was "misunderstood" rather than actually being evil and Snow was really a brat. We keep slipping into the alternate dimension of that other show they wanted to make, and it's disconcerting because we've been watching the show that came on in this timeline.

This could have worked if they'd really gone for it, and as you said, showed Snow being a brat in the past, and maybe some deaths happened 'accidentally' for which Regina got blamed hence the 'villain' label - but not after all the village massacres - oh, and how the Dark Curse was enacted in the first place.  A woman who rips out her own father's heart (whom she loves!) to punish a kid for telling a secret is not simply "misunderstood".  

If they'd have killed off Charming in the pilot, I would have never watched the second episode.

8 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Of these, the eggnapping was the actual real evil thing Snowing did. But it's so bizarre and OOC, that I still have trouble accepting it as canon.

This, for me was the Jump The Shark Moment.  I mean, Snow White and Prince Charming kidnapping a baby and putting all the evil from their own daughter into it?  After everything the Evil Queen had already done to them?  No.  Just No.  

I don't have a problem with the concept (and very rarely the execution) of showing fairy tale characters as real people who aren't always 'good' or 'evil'.  But that was too extreme for a 'real' couple to do, imo.  

[RadioGirl27]

6 hours ago, Mathius said:

I can't believe nobody's brought this up: 4x11 ("Heroes & Villains").  THAT, to me, was the show's Jump the Shark moment.

This!! This was my "jump the shark" moment, the moment when I realised this was never going to be the show I wanted and I changed the way I was watching it. 

[OnceUponAJen]

The Jump the Shark moment for me is when the Hook's heart arc ended with Emma shoving it back in his chest and then going to have shots with Regina.  Unbelievable after all the buildup of that storyline.

[Curio]

Yep. 4x11 is the episode where I sat up, literally said to my television, "What is going on?!", and felt betrayed by the show unlike any other episode. That was the point in which all gears shifted towards giving Regina her happy ending, and giving her that happy ending meant sacrificing a whole bunch of plots and characters. The writers devoting most of the episode to Robin/Regina drama when everyone expected this episode to be the big Frozen sendoff and the resolution to the Rumple/Hook drama, Belle discovering the dagger off screen and not being able to use any of Chekhov's arsenal to realize Rumple was betraying her, Emma's lie detector not working and only realizing Hook was in trouble because Anna said the most random comment ever, Emma and Snow finding Rumple and Hook off screen, Emma not putting Hook's heart back in right away in the clock tower but instead waiting to do it quickly next to a bathroom, ditching her nearly-dead boyfriend to go have shots with the woman who still hasn't confessesed about Graham (even though Emma name-dropped him a few episodes earlier and the whole Marian situation kind of mirrored Graham and Emma) nor apologized about her hypocritical and lousy behavior in "Breaking Glass", and Emma, Henry, and Regina deciding to embark on Operation Dumbass even though Emma would never agree to doing something the easy way... That was the moment where the show fundamentally changed for me. Before that, I always had a little bit of positive energy and hope that maybe the writers would deliver a good story, but I've been jaded ever since.

[daxx]

That was the first time I started truly feeling negative about the show and the first (not last) bad hiatus where I realized the show I wanted was only going to be found in fanfic. I was super salty about the resolution to the heart arc and the shots with Regina, simply cutting the scenes different or a single line explaining Hook was resting would have helped. I can headcanon that Emma wanted to ask Regina about returning a heart before actually doing it.

[Rumsy4]

43 minutes ago, Curio said:

even though Emma would never agree to doing something the easy way...

That's an excellent argument for 4.11 being the Show's Jump the Shark episode. It really made no sense as to why Emma of all people would agree to go along with Henry and Regina's dumb idea about finding the author and making him give Regina a Happy Ending.

And yes--I'm always going to bitter over Emma shoving Hook's heart by the bathroom and going to have shots with Regina 5 minutes after. That's also when Adam got defensive and said he too would like to show us Hook and Emma kissing for 40 minutes, as if that's what people were asking for.

[OnceUponAJen]

52 minutes ago, Curio said:

Yep. 4x11 is the episode where I sat up, literally said to my television, "What is going on?!", and felt betrayed by the show unlike any other episode. That was the point in which all gears shifted towards giving Regina her happy ending, and giving her that happy ending meant sacrificing a whole bunch of plots and characters.

I realized at this point that the show wasn't what I had been led to believe.  S1 convinced me that this was Emma's fairytale. But, every time Emma had an important moment in her story,  we didn't really get to focus on it. That should have been repairing Emma's relationship with her parents, saving her boyfriend's heart,  the marriage proposal. A lot of these moments have felt rushed or tacked-on, and this has become mostly about Regina's transformation into a hero. If that transformation had been more organic, I could have bought it.  I think Robin could have played a big role in it, but he was sidelined and somehow the Charmings became responsible for her.

Edited March 26, 2017 by OnceUponAJen

[Rumsy4]

5 minutes ago, daxx said:

simply cutting the scenes different

The "shots" scene should have been part of the "six weeks later" bit, after Anna's pre-wedding scene with Elsa.

2 minutes ago, OnceUponAJen said:

somehow the Charmings became responsible for her.

to the point where Snow mothers Regina over her actual children, and Charming teaches Regina to dance. 

[Souris]

1 minute ago, Rumsy4 said:

That's an excellent argument for 4.11 being the Show's Jump the Shark episode. It really made no sense as to why Emma of all people would agree to go along with Henry and Regina's dumb idea about finding the author and making him give Regina a Happy Ending.

And yes--I'm always going to bitter over Emma shoving Hook's heart by the bathroom and going to have shots with Regina 5 minutes after. That's also when Adam got defensive and said he too would like to show us Hook and Emma kissing for 40 minutes, as if that's what people were asking for.

That was actually Eddy. Which is why I always side-eye when fans call him a CS shipper.

4x11 was also the episode when I lost faith in the show and realized everything would ALWAYS take a backseat to Regina. I will never forgive them for having Emma shove Hook's heart back in his chest and then running off to have shots with Regina. I came ::thisclose:: to stopping watching the show right then. I think in retrospect I should have.

In other writer news, Adam blocked a fan on Twitter for an untagged tweet -- "Imagine being as stupid as Adam and Eddy." As if people aren't allowed to have negative opinions of him! This fan rarely if ever tweets at him. So he's clearly still searching "Adam and Eddy" looking for drama and what people are saying about him. He's so unprofessional. That isn't even close to what some people have tweeted tagged to him and he hasn't blocked them. 

[oncebluethrone]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

Interesting... which of the side stories were you not interested in?

It wasn't really that I wasn't interested in them , but more like I thought they weren't done very well.  They were the Hercules/Snow flashback, the Rumple/Milah/Bae stuff, the Belle/Gaston/Rumple stuff, and Ruby/Mulan/Dorothy stuff.  The season finale also wasn't very good either.

[Olivia Y]

33 minutes ago, Souris said:

In other writer news, Adam blocked a fan on Twitter for an untagged tweet -- "Imagine being as stupid as Adam and Eddy."

Weird. How did they find the fan or the tweet if it wasn't tagged? 

[Rumsy4]

17 minutes ago, Olivia Y said:

How did they find the fan or the tweet if it wasn't tagged? 

Adam does this all the time. He probably searches in the search box with just his name or the show's name. 

[Mathius]

51 minutes ago, Souris said:

4x11 was also the episode when I lost faith in the show and realized everything would ALWAYS take a backseat to Regina.

And then after 4B, we got outright verbal confirmation of this:

"There’s just so many people that it’s like, it’s sometimes hard to do that story and sacrifice Regina’s story. That’s just showbiz."

[KingOfHearts]

I never thought the show had a hard "jump the shark" moment, because as some have already pointed out, it was a slow burn. It's pretty easy to single out steep drops in quality, though. The show has recovered from some of them, but not all of them. 2x10, 2x17, 4x05, 4x11, and 5x21/22 come to mind. 

Quote

4x11 was also the episode when I lost faith in the show and realized everything would ALWAYS take a backseat to Regina. 

4x05 had already sealed the deal for me. I don't think 4x11 could be "jump the shark", because it didn't offend the show as a whole, but just 4A. Its flaws had already been present in some form or another for quite some time. It did give us the Belle townline scene, which was arguably one of the best scenes in the show to date.

Edited March 26, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Souris]

1 hour ago, Olivia Y said:

Weird. How did they find the fan or the tweet if it wasn't tagged? 

He searches "Adam and Eddy." He's done it before when an untagged tweet contained that phrase. ?

[andromeda331]

For me its 3B that jumped the shark with the eggnaping and Regina suddenly having white magic. There was the shift in season two beginning with Regina's sad face as her victims left to go their first family meal together in 29 years. But I assumed it was sophomore slump. There was some weirdness in 3A with Snow not caring about being separated from Emma when David couldn't leave Neverland or her weird championing of Neal (did she know he sent her to prison for his crimes), but also when Snow talking to Emma that Tinkerbell's place reminded her when she was on the run. Snow and Emma both hard lives and we weren't getting to see them talk about being on their own Emma had no one, Snow had no one and everything stolen from her. But 3B the eggnaping was so out of the blue and nothing that fit with Snow or Charming's characters. Regina's white magic, they wanted Regina to save the day and be the hero, but never bother to give a good reason for Emma, Hook, Snow and Charming being sidelined. Emma's magic was gone because she had to give mouth to mouth to save Hook? Suggesting Hook go with Emma even though they knew that. Regina's horrible reaction to meeting Marion, you know Robin's wife that Regina killed?

4A just re-forced the Jumping of the Shark and at the same time grossing me out. Crypt sex, iced Marion, zero effort or care from Robin about his wife and mother of his child who Regina murdered in the original timeline, Henry acting as if Marion was the problem, Snow cheering Regina on for cheating (don't forget Regina arrested Marion because she knew where Snow was and wouldn't tell) while on a stroll to save Emma. The early scene with Marion outside Granny's like she was the weird one, wrong or "bad" because she was angry at the Evil Queen and didn't understand why no one else was to Regina's other victims. How insane is that? Its right up there with Regina wanting a happy ending and everyone thinking she deserves it.

Edited March 26, 2017 by andromeda331

[Mathius]

Um, the eggnapping was in 4B, not 3B.  Snow casting the Dark Curse by crushing Charming's heart was in 3B.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Mathius

[Camera One]

Quote

Snow and Emma both hard lives and we weren't getting to see them talk about being on their own Emma had no one, Snow had no one and everything stolen from her.

Their last actual meaningful conversation lasting a minute was in "Lost Girl" and to think, that was actually an accident since the conversation was initially for Emma/Hook.  If they had kept it that way, then 2A truly is the last time we would have seen Emma and Snow connect on an emotional level.  As you said, there were many reasons why Emma and Snow *should* be able to relate due to past experiences.  

Time and time again, they choose not to look for Emma's connection with her parents.... most recently being Charming's centric, where he had practically no scenes with Emma even though they were both traumatized by the unknowns of what happened to a parent.  This problem stretched all the way to "The Tower", when they didn't give Charming/Emma a scene at the end of the episode to round out his emotional struggle - which was his worry that he would never be a good father.

Quote

The early scene with Marion outside Granny's like she was the weird one, wrong or "bad" because she was angry at the Evil Queen and didn't understand why no one else was to Regina's other victims. How insane is that?

Yes!  That's a really good example of how the Writers present the scenes in such a stilted way that you know who you're supposed to side with and whose POV we're watching from.

For me, I still have positive vibes from 4A because there were a lot of isolated moments I enjoyed.  I really liked how they actually developed Emma accepting her magic, with the help of Elsa.  They found some parallels between them and really built some good conversations around them.  Compare those to the ones in 6A between Emma and Aladdin, which completely fell flat because they didn't lay the groundwork in building a plausible premise and didn't think enough about the characters' experiences to identify what they had in common (eg. Aladdin losing his parents, having to fend for himself as a kid, etc.).  Those "character" scenes instead felt completely shoe-horned in.  

The deleted scene between Snow and Elsa about Elsa's parents and what Snow was going through meant more than those pointless chats between Snow and Jasmine, which again did not zone in on the similar struggles that these two princesses *should* have in common (eg. growing up with a single father, expectations for a princess vs. what they wanted out of life, lack of confidence in becoming a ruler), and instead based it around the hard-to-believe subplot about Snow's lack of confidence in teaching.  Snow confronting finally what happened with her father and the Genie could have given Ginny some worthwhile scenes to play.  Instead, Snow idiotically suggested Jasmine and Aladdin summon a Genie.  No one in the Writers room cares about telling the "boring" characters' stories.

These little writing problems is why Season 6 has practically no worthwhile "moments" that are genuinely moving.  

Edited March 26, 2017 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

13 minutes ago, Mathius said:

Um, the eggnapping was in 4B, not 3B.  Snow casting the Dark Curse by crushing Charming's heart was in 3B.

Oh, your right! I forgot it was in 4B! 3B was that and in Storybrook Snow didn't think it was strange that Zelena was the only new person she met or how very interested she was in Snow's pregnancy.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Quote

The early scene with Marion outside Granny's like she was the weird one, wrong or "bad" because she was angry at the Evil Queen and didn't understand why no one else was to Regina's other victims. How insane is that?

Yes!  That's a really good example of how the Writers present the scenes in such a stilted way that you know who you're supposed to side with and whose POV we're watching from.

::snort::  Or not.  I remember still siding with Marian in that scene.  Guess the Writers failed.  

[Olivia Y]

5 hours ago, Souris said:

He searches "Adam and Eddy." He's done it before when an untagged tweet contained that phrase.

Wait...you mean he searched for someone who wasn't talking to him to block them from talking to him? That's a special level of narcissism. 

[Shanna Marie]

There's a good case to be made for 4.11 to be the beginning of the end, the start of the big downward spiral, but it's hard for me to consider it a true Jump the Shark moment. I tend to think of those as single events that the writers/producers are proud of but that are actually a death knell. While I hated that Emma just magically teleported to where Hook was in jeopardy with no connecting the dots and was frozen yet again and never got to react to what was happening to Hook, I did like Belle getting to stop Rumple, getting him to take them to the town line and then kicking him out. So, it wasn't all bad. Most of the problems with that episode were with the context. It was badly written, but not in a big, epic way, like Henry's "believe in magic" speech.

I think it was mostly an ongoing decline, with some big lurches, though unless there's a major improvement later this season, I think it's all been downhill since Henry's speech at the fountain.

10 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

This, for me was the Jump The Shark Moment.  I mean, Snow White and Prince Charming kidnapping a baby and putting all the evil from their own daughter into it?  After everything the Evil Queen had already done to them?  No.  Just No.  

I don't have a problem with the concept (and very rarely the execution) of showing fairy tale characters as real people who aren't always 'good' or 'evil'.  But that was too extreme for a 'real' couple to do, imo.  

With that, it just doesn't compute. Not only is it too extreme, but it's so detached from everything else that's been shown on the series that you can't make yourself imagine that it theoretically always happened that way. There's been zero sign of it having any effect on Emma -- her having her native darkness removed didn't even play into the Dark One stuff. We saw the Charmings go through a second pregnancy without one mention of what happened earlier. They reunited with Emma without any curiosity or concern about how she was affected. For something that huge and extreme, it's had no effect on anyone involved, so it's very easy to just ignore it. If the writers are now pretending it never happened, the viewers should be allowed to.

[KAOS Agent]

Quote

There's been zero sign of it having any effect on Emma -- her having her native darkness removed didn't even play into the Dark One stuff. 

Even at the time it was written, it was acknowledged that it didn't do anything. Emma had her potential for Darkness removed and Snowing were told that it wouldn't mean anything if she wasn't guided as a child, which she wasn't, so Snowing kidnapped a baby, destroyed her life and were told before they did it that it wouldn't really be all that effective. It was character assassination for pointless plot drama at its finest and it meant nothing. It's when the audience realizes that they'll do anything to their characters to shove a square story into a round hole that the show loses the interest of those watching.

The writers stopped respecting their characters in Season 4 and it's gotten worse and worse. Viewers identify with their favorites and tune out when they are turned into puppets where you can see the writers pulling the strings instead of seeming like real people with emotions and whose actions organically fit the story that is being told.   

[Mathius]

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

The writers stopped respecting their characters in Season 4 and it's gotten worse and worse. Viewers identify with their favorites and tune out when they are turned into puppets where you can see the writers pulling the strings instead of seeming like real people with emotions and whose actions organically fit the story that is being told.   

Very true.  All the way through Season 3, there were at least several writers on the team who made the effort to respect the characters despite the gradual turning of them into puppets which had been going on since Season 2.  Starting with Season 4, the only writers who seem to occasionally still do this are Jane Espenson and David Goodman, and again - only occasionally.  The rest of the time, the characters are just pawns on a chessboard.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Mathius

[Camera One]

Oh LOL.

Melissa Waltz‏ @waltzedaway
@AdamHorowitzLA I'm really not okay with the message that you can just cut yourself off from the parts of yourself that you don't like

Adam Horowitz‏ @AdamHorowitzLA  Mar 26
@waltzedaway that's actually exactly the OPPOSITE of the message of the episode.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Camera One

[Curio]

I mean, how else do you interpret the episode? Regina physically cut herself in half using magic shears and then sent the other half of herself away to a different realm. She may have come around to liking that other half at the last second, but she still cut parts of herself away and may never get them back.

[Camera One]

NoSpoilersDearie‏ @dwsherlockfan 
@InkTankGirl I loved the scene where Henry told the Evil Queen that he doesn't believe she's the worst part of Regina. That was wonderful!

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl 
@dwsherlockfan Agreed! David Goodman wrote that. I worship at his feet.

---

One point off for David Goodman.

[Rumsy4]

12 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Oh LOL.

Melissa Waltz‏ @waltzedaway
@AdamHorowitzLA I'm really not okay with the message that you can just cut yourself off from the parts of yourself that you don't like

Adam Horowitz‏ @AdamHorowitzLA  Mar 26
@waltzedaway that's actually exactly the OPPOSITE of the message of the episode.

What the even??! 

[Mathius]

As I said before, not even David Goodman has been able to do well with writing for Regina.  None of the writers have any objectivity about her.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Mathius

[Souris]

Adam is either lying, utterly clueless or the writers are soundly incapable of conveying what they intend to convey. I vote one or both of the last two. It's not the first time they've said the message they clearly conveyed isn't the message they conveyed.

[Camera One]

Here are more quotes from Bridgette Hales which are more general..

Quote

Mr Gold  @ThatTownMonster  
 @InkTankGirl your honest opinion on Rumplestiltskin ?

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl  
 @ThatTownMonster Love him!

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl 
 @ThatTownMonster I think he's a tragic figure who deep down has the capacity for good, but can't overcome his demons.

Mr Gold ?‏ @ThatTownMonster  
 @InkTankGirl do you want him to ?

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl
@ThatTownMonster Not sure I do want him to change. The writer in me certainly doesn't.

And that's why the writing just goes around in circles.

Quote

Katie O‏ @kelkatie11  
@InkTankGirl Did you realize that was the first ever one on one scene between Snow & Hook? It was lovely & the snow just added to it!

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl
@kelkatie11 Not sure I knew that, but I was aware there hadn't been many. Whenever you write an unusual pairing you can feel it.

 

So they knew there haven't been "many".  But whenever you write an unusual pairing, "you can feel it"?  Did she know it or did she "feel" it?

The quotes function on this forum is just horrible.  It just took me 5 minutes to make that work and thank goodness Curio replied so I could just cut and paste what I wrote after I lost it.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Camera One

[Curio]

2 minutes ago, Camera One said:

So they knew there haven't been "many".  But whenever you write an unusual pairing, "you can feel it"?  Did she know it or did she "feel" it?  

It sounds like the OUAT writing team knows they don't include many (any) Snow/Hook scenes, so she must have felt a little bit awkward writing it because there were no previous scenes she could base their relationship on. Now if only there was a way the writers could have included more scenes between Snow and Hook over the past five years...I heard there are these things called letters, and when grouped together they form words and sentences, and those sentences can be used to make television scripts.

[Mathius]

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

@ThatTownMonster I think he's a tragic figure who deep down has the capacity for good, but can't overcome his demons.
@ThatTownMonster Not sure I do want him to change. The writer in me certainly doesn't.

So is this subtle confirmation that Rumple might end up going down for good as a villain, no redemption?  (Wishful thinking, I know.)

Of course, what does it matter if he does at this point?  Baelfire still gets the blame anyway.

[scenicbyway]

I think the point was that Regina learned to love herself to the point where she was able to accept the darkness from the heart of the EQ. What I don't get is making her a whole separate person?

I also don't buy that "hugging it out" between the EQ and Regina was ever apart of their original plan.  It's a complete cop out and she get a happy ending before anyone else?  Come  ON!

[Souris]

Katmtan had said earlier that Once wraps this Friday. Somebody asked Adam about that on Twitter and he said that's not true, they film longer than that. Well, apparently Bex said in her panel at the weekend con that, lo and behold, the show wraps this Friday.

What is even the point of lying about something like that that's so easily verified??? He doesn't seem to be able to help himself.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Souris

[Curio]

Filming for some of the main actors could end this Friday, but additional shooting for others could go into April? I'm actually going to trust Adam on this one.

[orza]

Adam said they are doing pickups for multiple episodes for the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, principle filming wraps this week but tying up loose ends continues.

[ParadoxLost]

20 hours ago, Curio said:

I mean, how else do you interpret the episode? Regina physically cut herself in half using magic shears and then sent the other half of herself away to a different realm. She may have come around to liking that other half at the last second, but she still cut parts of herself away and may never get them back.

I hate sticking up for the writers and they definitely didn't convey a clear message, but...

How do we interpret Regina deciding to merge the dark heart and light heart and giving a "balanced" heart to EQ and Regina other than learning the lesson that she can't cut out all the darkness and not share the goodness?

[Curio]

15 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

How do we interpret Regina deciding to merge the dark heart and light heart and giving a "balanced" heart to EQ and Regina other than learning the lesson that she can't cut out all the darkness and not share the goodness?

I'm not saying that wasn't one of the learned lessons, and Regina did have a huge breakthrough with learning to accept the darker side of her personality, but the fact is she literally cut herself in half and sent a part of herself away. The Evil Queen had memories and personality traits "Good" Regina didn't have, so there are parts of Regina she may never get back. Apparently the Evil Queen had to tell Regina about how to break the curse, so it's not like Regina gained all of the Evil Queen's memories by merging the hearts, so there are pieces of Regina that will always be empty because she sent a piece of herself away. 

Regina truly accepting the Evil Queen should have meant forging the two back into one full person, but now it's totally ambiguous about whether or not Regina is responsible for the Evil Queen's acts. They're two separate characters now essentially. It's confusing because "Good" Regina's personality never actually changed at all without her inner Evil Queen—she didn't become a goody-two-shoes, she didn't lose her magic, and she still murdered people. It's just kind of a mess. The main thing that makes the moral confusing is that Snow, Zelena, and everyone in Storybrooke still consider Regina and the Evil Queen to be two separate people. That's not what the resolution to this arc should have been. Unless we see Regina behaving differently with this darker heart, it's going to look like she just got rid of her Evil Queen personality by cutting it away.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Curio

[Mathius]

1 hour ago, Curio said:

Regina truly accepting the Evil Queen should have meant forging the two back into one full person, but now it's totally ambiguous about whether or not Regina is responsible for the Evil Queen's acts.

The way Snow referred to her, the Evil Queen was to blame for all the evil and persecution, while Regina was blameless.  That's why it was the Evil Queen who ended up apologizing to Snow while Regina never did.  Seriously, Snow acted like the Evil Queen redeeming herself was something entirely different from Regina, who was and is the Evil Queen, having already redeemed herself.  It's so ridiculous.  This entire arc was horrendous.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Mathius