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

[LizaD]

 

The other problem is A&E actually thinks they put character scenes in.

 

Well the world might end tomorrow but I'm going to have to agree with them. They do. It's not good stuff for sure or the type of character stuff some fans might want but they exist. And they might not be for the character you want them for but it's for some character somewhere-usually Woegina.

 

Take the egg-napping story. That's a character beat for Snowing. They explicity said the point of that "story" was to show that Snowing are capable of evil just like the bad guys. It's the difference between "Snowing egg-napped Mal's child" vs "Snowing are hypocrites." The former is a plot description and the latter is a character description-adjective and A&E's goal is the latter. They didn't do it well but that's a different bone to pick.

 

So yes I can see why they don't bother planning the plots out in advance. They don't care that it doesn't make sense because their goal isn't to tell a story. That's why they have these stupid glib responses to questions that ask about plot. It doesn't matter cause it's magic, cause it's a fantasy, cause it's offscreen, cause I said so etc. What matters is that Woegina is sad or Belle is brave or Snow is evil. Their goal is to show all these character moments. 

 

The problem is that they spend so much time and energy on nonsensical plots to get these characters to that one big "epic" character scene because they can't figure out how to get them there organically. Just about the only real plot-story they have is "A curse was cast and Emma breaks it" and it's no surprise that's the only "story" they planned way in advance.

 

 

Emma and Snow chatting about stuff while washing dishes in the sink. I always compare OUAT to Eureka, which was a Sci-Fi show that had a million plots going on all the time. And yet, the characters managed to have those "boring" kitchen-sink conversations so important for well-rounded character development in between dealing with time travel, alternate realities, and existential crises.

 

This is where I think they're kind of misunderstood. The washing dishes sink thing is them saying "2 women bonding over washing dishes is boring and no one wants to watch that." Because they secretly want to be writers for the Young and the Restless they're saying "but 2 women bonding over adultery while chasing a daughter on magic suicide is so much more exciting." The end goal is the bonding right? So you guys got bonding damn it and we don't care that the bonding is stupid or doesn't make sense. These writers just think they have better and more "creative" ways to show that bonding than washing dishes. Like what's the point of watching Hook and Emma watch Netflix? To show them together and enjoying being together? Well they can do that by having Hook and Emma chase after snow monsters. They just don't like quiet simple moments. They don't get less is more or simple is better. They exemplify the worst stereotypes of nouveau riche except in this case it'd be nouveau fanfic writers.

[Shanna Marie]

A&E have mentioned in several interviews that viewers are always asking them to add character scenes, and yet, they are utterly convinced that the fans "won't really like it".

They also seem to have a weird all-or-nothing mentality about it. Like with their response to the complaints about lack of follow-up to the Hook's heart plot, that they couldn't do 40 minutes of kissing, like that was what was being asked for. Or they talk about how an episode of watching Hook and Emma watch Netflix would be boring. Well, yeah, an entire episode of anything, even non-stop action with no room to breathe and no character development, is boring. But nobody's asking for an entire episode. We just need the characters to be allowed to react to events like human beings, and when characters have gone through something, we want to know how they're affected. Walking across town with Hook's heart out of his chest and waiting 20 minutes or so to put it back in the hallway outside the bathroom at Granny's isn't reacting like human beings. We don't want to see twenty minutes after the crisis. We want to see right away -- what did Emma do the moment she was unfrozen? How did she react? How did Hook explain what was happening? How did he react in that moment -- rather than later when he'd had a chance to collect himself and put up his cool front again?

 

I'll agree that watching people watch Netflix would be boring, but I would like to see more characters having conversations in reaction to things. Let us see Snow and David tell Emma about the darkectomy, not just the aftermath. Let us see how Henry and Hook are getting along in the sailing lessons. Let us see what Hook and Emma talk about when they're not dealing with a crisis. If they mined the emotions inherent in the plots they've set up, they wouldn't have to resort to oddball contrivances for conflict. There's plenty already if they let the characters react to things like people would.

[KingOfHearts]

Storybrooke, and even the main characters, don't seem very lifelike without adequate kitchen sink scenes. From the impression Once leaves, they're constantly in a state of peril and never get chances to live like normal human beings. The show loses the illusion that there's a living universe they all live in with day-to-day operations.

With this being a small town setting, you would think checking in with the various citizens would be quintessential. Gilmore Girls, Eureka and Haven all know that constant action/drama is not how you portray a close community. You need to slow down at some point in order to let the audience breathe, thus staying on course and not getting lost so easily. The writers know how to do this from S1, but they think it's boring now. They should've realized that fairy tale characters living in a seemingly-mundane setting was a big part of the show's initial success.

Edited August 27, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[YaddaYadda]

Storybrooke, and even the main characters, don't seem very lifelike without adequate kitchen sink scenes. From the impression Once leaves, they're constantly in a state of peril and never get chances to live like normal human beings.

 

The thing is, the in between can be done. They did it in the season 3 finale where you have essentially these two people stuck in the past, trying to figure out a way back, trying to fix their errors, but in between all of that, you had waltz and drinks and conversations by the fire.

 

They just choose to skip over it. The constant state of peril gets old.

[tennisgurl]

The constant state of peril also makes the world seem really small, whereas in the first season, the world seemed rather large. Thats especially ridiculous on a show with a multiverse that can basically hold ALL FICTION EVER. 

 

Because we do not have those small character moments, because we don't focus on the community and the supporting characters anymore, it seems like this whole world has about 5 people in it, plus various villains and unnamed extras running from peril in the background. Its taken a show that felt like a whole community, and downsized it to be about whatever is going on, and whoever it is directly affecting. 

[Shanna Marie]

They should've realized that fairy tale characters living in a seemingly-mundane setting was a big part of the show's initial success.

That was the main reason I watched. I love the juxtaposition between the real and the weird. Haven is a good comparison. It's strayed in later seasons when things got a bit too intense, but a lot of the charm in the earlier seasons came from how grounded it was, how it felt like a real town that just happened to have these strange things going on, so the strangeness was even stranger in contrast to that idyllic small-town setting. The characters all felt like they had a history. There was the one outsider newcomer, but everyone else really felt like they'd known each other all their lives. I feel like that's missing in Storybrooke. Yeah, a lot of these people only just met, and the curse threw people together who hadn't known each other before, but they did go through 28 years of Groundhog Day with each other, and a lot of them had known each other for a long time. There should be layers of complex relationships going on now, a mix of their Storybrooke selves' relationships and their Enchanted Forest relationships. Haven also did a good job of the "kitchen sink" conversations. The cops had running conversations throughout their days. We didn't hear the whole thing, but we'd catch enough snippets of what they were chatting about at the police station before they got a call, what they were talking about in the car as they arrived at a crime scene, and what they talked about at the bar at the end of the day to get a feel for what they talked about when they weren't talking about work. They talked about things other than the crisis of the day, and it was woven into them dealing with the crisis of the day. That's really missing in Storybrooke. I don't even know what Snow and David talk about when they're not talking about the latest cleavagey magic user to show up in town. What would all these people be doing if they weren't having to deal with crises? I don't get the feeling that they have lives that are being interrupted.

[YaddaYadda]

I like how in dialogue, they have Emma who lives from crisis to crisis (exactly like the show) being given advice about how she should learn to live in the moment or she'll miss out on her life or that she should stop existing in her life and start living it instead.

 

I don't know if they mean it ironically.

[KingOfHearts]

I like how in dialogue, they have Emma who lives from crisis to crisis (exactly like the show) being given advice about how she should learn to live in the moment or she'll miss out on her life or that she should stop existing in her life and start living it instead.

A little hypocritical of the writers. I don't think they themselves know how to live in the moment. You can't blame Emma for being constantly on her toes the way these scripts go.

Edited August 27, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Curio]

I don't think I've ever watched a show where I view it through the TV writers' lens as much as Once. With most of the shows I watch, I'm able to lose myself a bit in the fictional world and actually believe that these characters could exist somewhere; it feels like I'm watching a window into their world through my TV screen.

 

But with this show, every scene feels so manipulated by the writers that I no longer watch the show as a viewer but as an analyst. The characters aren't motivated by things in the show, they're motivated by whatever the writers want them to do for the plot. Characters aren't redeemed, the writers force their redemption upon them using manipulative tactics that fly right over the non-observant general audience's heads. I can talk about Walter White as a character with his own fictional identity, but any time I talk about Regina*, I have to put in an asterisk that says she's being manipulated by the writers. It makes it difficult to discuss a show and its characters when everything loops back around to how the writers don't let their characters be organic.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Curio

[Rumsy4]

 

But with this show, every scene feels so manipulated by the writers that I no longer watch the show as a viewer but as an analyst. The characters aren't motivated by things in the show, they're motivated by whatever the writers want them to do for the plot.

 

That is so aptly put! You are right--I am unable to lose myself in the story. I'm always looking for the reason behind plot development (because they don't often make sense), and trying to figure out whether it was an acting choice, or what the writers intended (because there seems to be a disconnect between the two). When it comes to TV watching, I do tend to look at the creative process to a certain degree. That usually enhances my experience, but is not necessary for my enjoyment. But with ONCE, the puzzle doesn't seem to make sense without further discussion on message boards, or clarification from the writers (which tends to hurt more than help). It's not a cohesive self-sufficient story. 

Edited August 28, 2015 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

It makes it difficult to discuss a show and its characters when everything loops back around to how the writers don't let their characters be organic.

That's another factor in them not living up to the premise. If you're giving us the concept that these aren't just stories, they're real people, and the story isn't as black-and-white and simple as you'd think, then they need to be allowed to act like real people. They might be heroes who are a little more stoic than the rest of us or they may be so accustomed to saving the world that it's no longer a big deal to take on the Ultimate Evil (so far, until the next Ultimate Evil comes along), and they might even be more forgiving than ordinary people, but they still should have human emotions and human reactions.

 

If Regina has decided she no longer wants to murder Snow or ruin her life, then that suggests that she's realized or decided that this was a wrong move or a bad idea, and that should mean she's having a massive existential crisis about having wasted her whole life and murdered her father to get revenge that ended up being hollow. Meanwhile, if she was so mad at Snow because she believed Snow was responsible for Daniel's death for telling a secret, why isn't she more angry at Rumple for manipulating her into ruining her own life and murdering her father so he could get the curse cast without giving up anything? This should be a fascinating character, but by making her their Mary Sue they've robbed her of all nuance and depth. Her arc should have been long and painful, not just "I'm redeemed now!" Then how can we relate to Snow, David, and Emma, who are all just over it? Anyone would feel bitter about what they went through at Regina and Rumple's hands. Heroes might still save their lives, because that's what heroes do, but building even the slightest desire for friendship should have taken a lot longer. When Hook comes within a split second of getting his heart crushed by his oldest enemy, it would be nice to see at least a moment when his devil-may-care facade cracks a little and we see how scared he is rather than skipping ahead half an hour to where he's managed to get back to "Yeah, I'm a survivor" mode, and it would be nice to see Emma reacting in some way to yet another boyfriend almost dying on her. As it is, she looks either uncaring or robotic. Henry's been through all kinds of hell. Shouldn't he be wising up a bit? Being the Truest Believer almost got him killed by his great-grandfather. That should change a person. He shouldn't still be the same naive 10-year-old who believed strongly enough in fairy tales that he set out on a quest to find his birth mother so she could defeat the Evil Queen -- especially since he's almost as tall as his parents now.

 

One good brainstorming session listing what these people have gone through and what unresolved issues they have should create several seasons worth of plots, but instead they focus on bringing in outside conflicts and then ignore all the existing material to make their stick figures deal with the outside conflicts in a way that fits their plot.

[KingOfHearts]

 

One good brainstorming session listing what these people have gone through and what unresolved issues they have should create several seasons worth of plots, but instead they focus on bringing in outside conflicts and then ignore all the existing material to make their stick figures deal with the outside conflicts in a way that fits their plot.

There can be exterior conflict while still managing to focus on the core characters. 3A had the entire cast in another land with a whole other variety of dangers and characters to deal with. The show was never so out of its element as it was in that arc. Yet it didn't distract from the main stories and character emotions. In fact, the writers utilized it to bring them all together for some great development. Neverland was the surrounding tension, but you still had the core. The writers didn't forget that all these characters were coming straight in from S2, where they were still at odds with each other.

 

3B is where it got murky. Some of the cast got quarantined (Rumple with Zelena, Henry memoryless, etc.), the villain's interactions with them was stale, and the actual development was minimal. (Except Emma learned Storybrooke was home and Regina started a romantic relationship.) It was all over the place and the current threat was just kind of there. It didn't really drive the characters or push them into new areas.

 

Outside forces should be more productive than just suiting its own purpose. It should help drive the main plot, not derail it. Zelena, Ingrid, Ursula and Cruella really did little in the grand scheme of things.

Edited August 28, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Amerilla]

From the Spoilers thread, regarding Hook being elemental to saving Emma in S5 (#nospoilers).

 

 

 

He's the one character who devoted his entire life to finding the Dark One's Dagger and destroying the Dark One, so he should be the most knowledgeable about the Dark One's powers and its history.

 

Maybe he should be the most knowledgable about the Dark One, but that's not how they've shown his character. Hook was built to be driven and obsessed, but because he was never going to achieve his goal, they didn't have to bother to make him particularly knowledgeble.**

 

What we saw in S2 was that Hook knew exactly one thing about the Dark One - that the Dagger could kill him - which he knew only because of the incredible good luck of Bae landing almost directly on his head in Neverland. His entire focus for centuries was finding the Dagger and killing the Crocodile.

 

And even that one fact wasn't completely accurate. Bae was focused on the fact that the Dagger could kill his father, period.  Hook didn't even seem to know that if he were to stab Rumpel with the Dagger, the DO would pass to him.

 

To be fair, knowledge of the Dagger was more than most people knew. In S1 and early 2, they implied that this was largely a secret to all but a very few. That's why Rumpel killed the maid back in S1 - because he didn't want word to get out. We know Snowing didn't know much about it until Storybrooke. When Belle and Neal went to the Dark Castle in S3, Belle thought their might be information in the library, but wasn't sure. Blue implied way back in S1 that the Dark One originate elsewhere, and that's apparently accurate. But until they need it as a deus ex machina, the treasure trove of Dark One lore doesn't seem to exist. 

 

Admittedly, there's always been discontinuity. I don't think we ever found out how August knew so much about it, or where he got the detailed drawing, or how he knew to summon the Dark One. It seems unlikely that Neal would have told him all that, or even knew most of that after 100+ years. Cora knew all about it, but we don't know how...even Rumpel-in-Wuv shouldn't be stupid enough to betray his one true weakness. Zelena shouldn't know anything about any of it, but does. The Dagger is so much a part of the show now, it should have its own agent and spot in the opening credits.

 

Still, to date, Hook has only ever been shown to know one thing: find Dagger, kill Crocodile. That's not really going to be helpful here.

 

Of course, he is now "good at research," because research and babysitting are the two approved activities for secondary characters. So, maybe he has found The Big Book of Dark One-ology. TS. TW.

 

** Two other examples of this are his interaction with Belle in the EF and his attack on Rumpel in Manhattan. They were things that had to happen to move the plot of other characters, so they rely on contrivance to put him there - not intellect.

 

The scene with Belle in her cell did a bunch of things: it put him in the EF before the Curse, it established how he would later know Belle was important to Rumpel, and it tied him to Cora, thus explaining how he ended up in the Coradome. I doubt the writers put much thought into how he would have found Belle. Hook doesn't burst into the cell knowing much more than what would have been common knowledge: that Belle had been taken by the Dark One to save her father's village. He could have heard she was being held by Regina via one of the tower guards at the local tavern. (Claude, the guard Hook killed, was the one who turned Belle in to Regina in the first place, so he knew a good deal of the story, for example.) As far as we know, Rumpel was the only one who thought Belle was dead - and no, there's no logical reason he should have believed Regina, or not looked for her, or that his ability to see the future should have gone all wonky, but it's not at all clear how deeply held a secret this was.

 

The writers weren't even thinking about their own internal timeline. If this is just before Regina casts the Curse, Rumpel has already been captured by Snowing months earlier - and it's hard to believe that news hadn't gotten around. While he was there voluntarily, he was still contained, and his Dagger is elsewhere, making him theoretically more vulnerable than at any point in memory. Nothing in the dialog of that episode indicates that Hook knows anything about this. That's why Cora can easily  manipulate him into playing the long con and staying in the Coradome. 

 

Same with Manhattan. In a matter of hours (since Manhattan and The Queen is Dead seem to happen on one single, long-ass day) Hook manages to sail his magic, invisible ship into one of the busiest ports in the Land Without Magic and aims like a missile at one man in a city of eight million, and - what luck! - gets the drop on him, managing to infect him with a magical poison (in the Land Without Magic) before Emma stops him. There, his luck ends. For some reason, the totally mortal Gold starts to feel the magical poison, but someone does not bleed out from having a gigantic hook plunged into his heart, lasting long enough for Neal to find the magic, invisible ship in one of the world's busiest posts (how?) and sailing it to a place where there is magic...and then we get into Miller's Daughter, and you know the rest. You could come up with reasons how Hook managed to do what he did, but it's more "because, um, magic?" It needed to happen to make other things happen, and that's pretty much it.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Amerilla

[YaddaYadda]

I don't think we ever found out how August knew so much about it, or where he got the detailed drawing, or how he knew to summon the Dark One.

 

The Apprentice? It's all contrived BS, but the Apprentice went to Lily and told her everything she needed to know about Snowing, the Evil Queen, the curse, Storybrooke, her having Emma's darkness inside of her. 

 

And the Apprentice apparently told August about Henry's book too. I'm guessing he told him how to find Storybrooke since there's no way August was going to just find it, unless I forgot something from season 1. Ingrid needed a scroll that was provided by the Sorcerer through the Apprentice.

 

I think that after every episode this season and for the duration of the Dark Swan arc, I will be putting this at the end of my posts;

 

#BecauseMerlin

[Shanna Marie]

There can be exterior conflict while still managing to focus on the core characters.

Obviously, there needs to be some kind of exterior conflict or you've just got a soap opera, but by brainstorming the inherent conflicts in your characters, you can come up with exterior conflicts that work with what you've already got or find interesting ways of making the inherent conflicts tie into the exterior conflict. I don't know what the creative process behind 3A was -- it may have just been "Peter Pan! Cool!" -- but that did work with the character situations they'd set up (even if the execution didn't quite live up to the promise). They took these people who had just been opposed to each other and gave them a mutual goal. Emma was thrown together with both her parents in a stressful situation that brought back (or should have) a lot of her childhood pain, since the populace of the place was all lost kids. Regina was forced to work with her greatest enemies. In dealing with her, the others were all with someone who'd just been trying to kill them. In taking them all there, Hook had to return to the place where he'd spent at least a century in torment and had to face his old employer/enemy. Pan had some kind of psychological angle to use on all of them -- Emma, Henry, Rumple, Neal, and Hook were all "lost kids." Emma, Regina, Snow, David, Neal, and Rumple were all parents who'd lost their kids in some way at some point.

 

Compare that to the half-sister Regina never knew about who had no real connection to anyone else in town and didn't poke at any of their sore places, other than Snow and David losing another baby. Or the forgotten foster mother who had no connection to anyone else in town (aside from the newcomers) and who didn't have anything about her that poked at any of their sore places. They're throwing in antagonists without digging into what they've already set up about their characters.

[Camera One]

Obviously, there needs to be some kind of exterior conflict or you've just got a soap opera

 

Soap opera writing also relies extremely heavily on external conflict.  

[Shanna Marie]

Soap opera writing also relies extremely heavily on external conflict.

Of the "outsider with plans to destroy the world/rewrite history/take over the world must be defeated" variety? Though I must confess that I never watched soaps, other than when I was visiting people who had them on, but I thought they were mostly about character conflict rather than saving the world. The bits I've seen were all about people being angry at each other for past wrongs or having difficult relationships. That was what I meant by being soapy if they didn't bring in something for a plot arc and just relied on character drama. As much as I'd love to see the occasional scene of Emma and Snow getting to know each other enough to understand each other, Regina and Snow hashing out their old issues, or Emma and Hook just spending time together, I wouldn't want that to be the entire series. I would like them to have some bad guy to defeat, evil scheme to stop, or quest to complete. Unfortunately, these writers aren't good at finding a balance and seem to think that the only way they can deal with the character stuff is if that's all there is. If you ask to see Hook and Emma watching Netflix, they tell you that a whole episode of that would be boring. Well, yes, it would, but no one asked for that. What's wrong with a minute of it before it gets interrupted by the crisis of the day, and then maybe a few remarks as they chase monsters, with him asking questions and trying to understand the movie they were watching?

[Camera One]

Of the "outsider with plans to destroy the world/rewrite history/take over the world must be defeated" variety? Though I must confess that I never watched soaps, other than when I was visiting people who had them on, but I thought they were mostly about character conflict rather than saving the world.

 

No of course the external forces are not of that variety.  Soap operas are generally of questionable writing quality since they are less driven by organic internal character conflicts and struggles, but rather by external obstacles like an ex suddenly coming to town to blackmail a character, or an enemy messing with paternity results to break up a couple, etc.  That is why the Zelena pregnancy subplot was straight out of a soap opera.  Daytime soaps rely on manufactured drama, exaggerated tenfold by contrived circumstances.  In contrast, I don't consider a good-quality dramatic film depicting someone's troubled life, or a film about friendship, to be a "soap opera", even though these do rely on character drama and are talky.  

 

There is no need for the entire show to be characters talking to each other with nothing happening.  There still has to be conflict.  A perfect example of good character moments from Season 4 would be the conversations Emma and Hook often got at the end of episodes, where they have an emotional conversation which naturally flowed from the events that occurred.  If other relationships on the show, in particular Emma/Henry, Emma/Snow, Emma/Charming, got equal time, then the show would already have a lot more balance.  As LizaD said above, A&E already allots character moments for Regina, but unfortunately, they lack development and thus believability, so aside from a moment here or there (eg. the Regina/Gepetto conversation was quite meaty and significant in Regina's character journey), they don't usually work for the viewer.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Camera One

[Camera One]

There's been no official confirmation about what happened to Elsa/Regina, but sometime during the spring season 3 episodes presenting Elsa and the fall episodes about Elsa, they went from making comments like "Elsa and Regina have so much in common." to an Emma/Elsa friendship story with Elsa absolutely nowhere near them.

 

Fandom scuttle is that they were told by Disney officials that they were not to pair Regina and Elsa.  It's never been stated by anyone officially connected to the show, though.

 

I have doubts about that fan speculation.  They needed Regina to interact with Robin, as that was one of the three cliffhangers of Season 3, so having Emma as the main character to interact with Frozen made sense.  The first arc of the season is generally not as focused on Regina anyway, and they were setting up Regina for Operation Mongoose in 4B.  Their end-goal was more the Emma/Regina friendship, so they used Elsa to support that.

 

In 4A, they did make parallels between Regina and Elsa's commonalities, even if they didn't share too many scenes.  With Emma/Regina behind the doors, Regina was representing Elsa not letting people in.  Same with Henry/Regina one episode later; again, Regina was Elsa, not letting people in.  Elsa's struggle with accepting herself fit more with Emma learning to deal with her magic, so it was more natural for them to be paired.  I mean, to Regina, Elsa would be pretty much another goody-too-shoes.  Why would Regina be motivated to help her look for Anna?

Edited September 6, 2015 by Camera One

[Mari]

I don't necessarily buy the fandom speculation or not, but I find it at least plausible.  

 

It's been a while now, so I may easily be exaggerating in my head how quickly they went from "Elsa is Regina" to "Elsa is Emma."  I do not know what caused it, but  I do think they had some sort of serious shift in their thinking.

 

In the early interviews, they seemed to talk about how much Elsa had in common with Regina--how misunderstood they both were.  When the season was closer, they started talking about how closed off and lonely both Emma and Elsa were.

 

On top of that, did Regina and Elsa share a single scene?  I know they didn't seem to be alone at any point.  They might have made Regina into Elsa in the Regina/Emma relationship, but they didn't actually seem to have Regina and Elsa interact.

 

Again, I don't know that I buy that Disney intervened.  

 

I do believe that something shook up their initial vision of Regina and Elsa--whether it was realizing what you said--that Regina wouldn't be particularly interested in Elsa, and they planned on the Robin story anyway, or something else, I don't know.

[Camera One]

I am guessing they made those comments before they began writing details.  Since they love Regina, their natural go-to is the similarities between anyone and Regina.  I think in practical terms, they just didn't have the need or the time for Regina/Elsa interactions.  Elsa had enough to do.  It's not like Elsa got to interact with Rumple very much either.  I just think thematically, they did both Elsa is Emma AND Elsa is Regina (and Snow is chopped liver but that's another story, lol).  Having Emma chasing Regina around in "Breaking Glass" was an entire episode built around Emma as Anna following Regina as Elsa, refusing to let her become a recluse and desperate to show them they were loved.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Camera One

[mjgchick]

I thought that episode was about Emma being Regina in the situation she had with Lily. At least Elsa pushing Anna away was her thinking it was the only way to protect Anna. Regina was just being a butt to Emma. While young Emma had every right to push Lily away. That whole episode made zero sense.

[Curio]

Well, at least the writers are self-aware enough to admit that there's a ridiculous amount of portal options to travel between the realms now.

[Camera One]

A problem they themselves made much worse in Season 4 when they decided the Apprentice could open a Door to the Land Without Magic anytime he wanted.  At least previous to that, you could explain away the options like mermaids can't carry people to other worlds, Shadow Air shunned Rumple, etc.

 

LOL at the new writer posting her thoughts when rewatching, which basically translates to exclaiming how brilliant everything is.  

Edited September 15, 2015 by Camera One

[Serena]

Well, she's only on episode 4 of season 1. Lots of things were brilliant then.

[Camera One]

I guess it's the linking to the present which I found particularly self-congratulatory.  "Because that's what we do on Once!"

 

For example: "Tallahassee is mentioned in a throw away line here. Becomes v. important later. TV writers live for payoffs like that"

 

I don't find name-dropping to be that impressive.  I wouldn't consider finding out why Tallahassee to be important to be too much of a "payoff".  Not that we ever saw Emma in Tallahassee.

 

Another tweet: "Brilliant opening. Rumple interrupts an iconic fairy tale moment, ultimately rewriting it. That's OUAT in a nutshell."

 

I'm personally still waiting for an entire episode about the fairy godmother or at the very least Blue getting angry about her employees being murderered.  And maybe a price for that particular crime?  If anyone could use the wand, why does anyone need training to be a fairy god-mother?  Hopefully the writer is thinking about things like this when she's writing Season 4.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Camera One

[daxx]

I saw a gif set on tumblr. From the pilot Rumple saying that only Snow and Charmings child can defeat the darkness. Now they never actually referred to the dark curse as the darkness like that other than that instance. So did they always intend for Emma to take on Rumple's dark one curse? Or was it just a lucky turn of phrase? Obviously at the time we assumed he was referring to the dark curse, but maybe not?

[YaddaYadda]

So did they always intend for Emma to take on Rumple's dark one curse?

 

I think they always intended on having Emma become the Dark One. It's a trope. Any show I've ever watched with a hero like Emma has had their turn on the dark side. It was never not going to happen on Once. 

[DigitalCount]

I think they always intended on having Emma become the Dark One. It's a trope. Any show I've ever watched with a hero like Emma has had their turn on the dark side. It was never not going to happen on Once.

This, absolutely. I don't think they had any idea how it would happen, but this was pretty much inevitable.

[orza]

They said in interviews four years ago that they pitched a 5-year high-level story arc to ABC. It is normal for this kind of serialized show that the producers have to demonstrate to network executives that they have a long-term plan so they have a chance at getting an order for a pilot.

 

Season 1 was a setup for the entire series and lots of things casually mentioned or shown in season 1 have been referenced in the following seasons.

[Mathius]

I think they said in an interview they they originally had a 5-year plan, but for some reason or other the plan got derailed when doing a Season 2 and that made them decide to plan each season at a time rather than have any long-term plot.

[Mari]

I think they said in an interview they they originally had a 5-year plan, but for some reason or other the plan got derailed when doing a Season 2 and that made them decide to plan each season at a time rather than have any long-term plot.

 

That would make sense.

 

They did seem to have a big plan in season 1.

 

But, since then, they've  talked about stories they didn't intend to do, as well as characters they meant to use more or less, and the changes they've made since their initial plan.

 

It's also impossible to count how many interviews I've read that had a variation of:

 

"We'd love to do that . . ."

"We're going to  . . . . in the next half season."

"We have big plans for . . ."

 

For every thing they've referenced from season one in later seasons, there's something that they built up for what seems to be no reason whatsoever.    Whatever their original plan was, they've firmly scuttled it.

 

I can believe that they hoped to eventually make Emma the Dark One.

 

I can't believe that this is the plan they originally intended to use.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Mari

[Shanna Marie]

I've been ranting about my love/hate relationship with this show on my blog, and once I started thinking about the things that frustrate me, most of it comes down to sloppy writing. Some key points that I've identified:

 

• Inadequate worldbuilding, and not even thinking about the relationships between the characters and their world. This includes the way they just did the one "we are both" moment and since then seem to have more or less forgotten that most of these people have two identities in their heads now. They haven't shown how Storybrooke was affected by the breaking of the curse -- have people wanted to go back to some elements of their fairy tale lives, like their family members or occupations? Have they set up any social structures from their world in Storybrooke? It also includes the way they didn't at all address the return to the Enchanted Forest -- did anyone miss things about Storybrooke? Did anyone try to recreate things from Storybrooke in the Enchanted Forest? If Snow likes her short Storybrooke pixie cut, why wouldn't she cut her hair when she got back to the Enchanted Forest? (for instance)

 

• Related to that, they're very inconsistent with remembering which characters had the Storybrooke identity/memory download and what they'd know. Like Hook, who shouldn't know that "Snow White and Prince Charming" or "the Wicked Witch of the West" are at all culturally significant to Emma's world, snarking about how ironic it is that Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter is surprised that the Wicked Witch of the West exists. Or Hook in season 3 snarking about how Zelena could have used the telephone instead of kidnapping him, since they're in Storybrooke, then in season 4 calling a phone a "talking phone" and admitting that he doesn't know how it works aside from pressing the Emma button. Or the fact that we can't even tell whether the people who weren't in curse 1 but were in curse 2 got any kind of memory download or cursed personality that didn't take because they never lost their original identities. Robin seemed to get along just fine in our world, without even the learning curve Hook had.

 

• Also kind of in worldbuilding is the issue of accents, where we've got most of the Enchanted Forest people speaking with North American accents, except for Belle and her father with Australian accents, Rumple and his father with Scottish-like accents (and Malcolm going from Scottish to English when becoming Pan), Gepetto with his Italian-like accent but his son with an American accent. Then there are the random British-like people, like Milah, Hook, Blackbeard, and Robin, with no explanation for their accents, no one wondering where they're from or making assumptions about them because they speak differently. Sometimes, the accent seems to come with the source of the story (the Peter Pan characters are all British), but then there are the Oz characters, who are American except for Zelena, and that's an American story. It doesn't even have anything to do with the actors, since there are North American actors doing accents, foreign actors doing American accents, and foreign actors doing other foreign accents. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it.

 

• Then there's the time issue, where the writers don't seem to pay attention to their own timeline. Season one took place more or less in real time, spanning as much time as it took to show it, but every season since then has spanned just a few weeks, at most, with the one-year gap between 3A and 3B. But the writers talk about Regina and Emma growing close "over the years," when aside from the gap year when they didn't even see each other, they've only been interacting without outright hostility for maybe a couple of months. They had Regina acting like she'd lost a long-term boyfriend when she and Robin had only been seeing each other for a couple of days, even if that took about a month to show, and then there was the summer hiatus. Regina might be the type to get all overwrought like that, but nobody else ever said anything about it being a matter of days. On the other hand, there's the crazy inconsistency of Bae and Hook's timelines.

 

• And finally, there's the way that the characters all act the way the plot demands rather than them behaving with any consistency to go with their characterization and situation. They very seldom have a reaction that seems honest and realistic. The time issue comes into play there, where the writers sometimes seem to forget that a character might have gone through a terrible trauma two days ago. Or it's wonky morality, where they seem to think it's wrong or evil to react realistically. Or it's the Mary Sue issue, where no one is allowed to be mad at Regina for things that any reasonable person would be mad about and they all end up trusting and liking this person who has spent years trying to kill them and who has never said she's done with that or that what she was doing was wrong and who constantly insults and belittles them. It's hard to relate to characters who don't act like people.

[KingOfHearts]

From what I've seen, there are two kinds of story flow. You either follow logic and organic character development, or you follow emotions and what the audience wants to see. A lot of the Disney movies fall into the second formula. Not everything in the story or the resolutions make sense, but they're satisfactory because they draw on your feelings. There's no logic behind the objects in Beauty and the Beast coming to life, but you don't really care because they're charming and sing classy numbers. You want to see Snow White ride off with her prince, even if they've barely met, because it's sweet and happy after all the angst built up.

 

I think Once tries to do both and fails miserably. It wants to be the next Lost but is also wants to be a Disney movie. You can't have a super deep world with adult situations and drive a bus over details. It teases us as being a prime-time drama, but sometimes My Little Pony has more layered consistency. The writers have accumulated so much debt from all the characters and stories they've introduced over the seasons. They've been bitten off more than they can chew. It's too complicated for what little they actually accomplish.

Edited September 29, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

There's no logic behind the objects in Beauty and the Beast coming to life, but you don't really care because they're charming and sing classy numbers. You want to see Snow White ride off with her prince, even if they've barely met, because it's sweet and happy after all the angst built up.

But how much of that is the difference between an hour-and-a-half movie vs. an ongoing TV series? You do have to gloss over details and use emotional shorthand to follow the flow of what makes a satisfying ending in a relatively short film, but in a series with hundreds of hours vs. about 90 minutes, you have to have logic and organic development. It's like the difference between a short story and a novel -- a short story can focus on that one incident without going in-depth into the context, backstory and consequences, but a novel needs a lot more development to work. If we're continuing to see these characters after a particular story concludes, we expect to see the consequences of that story. We don't worry about delving into how spending however long as household objects affected the servants in Beauty and the Beast, or how unfair it was that the servants were punished along with their master, but if we continued to spend an hour a week with them, we'd expect to see more of that delved into and dealt with.

[KingOfHearts]

 

But how much of that is the difference between an hour-and-a-half movie vs. an ongoing TV series?

Yes there is a difference. My point is that it attempts to copy this formula in longer strands of time and it doesn't work. I think it can work in small doses, like during a PLOT PLOT PLOT finale (1x22 or 3x21/22 for examples), but every arc and episode seems to repeat the same concept. In some ways it's like crack and it makes the audience feel good after watching it. But in other ways it's off-balance because they lose a lot of the story depth at the same time. While there are less bookended short stories and one-offs these days, the show is more episodic and repetitive due to the arcs repeating what the writers already did.

 

It's shoving shallow storytelling into a complex multiverse setup after staying true to its nature for a whole first season. In S2 the writers didn't know what to do with this so things got trapped in a transitional period where it went from an adult drama to Saturday morning cartoons. The writers are trying to have both sides of the coin and it doesn't work in this serialized setup.

 

They want to preach, "This is a prime-time drama in our carefully planned universe! Our characters are deep human beings and our conclusions are philosophical!" while also saying, "Look at our shiny new toys for five minutes, then we'll get new ones! Aren't they totes coolz?"

Edited September 29, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Actionmage]

•And finally, there's the way that the characters all act the way the plot demands rather than them behaving with any consistency to go with their characterization and situation. They very seldom have a reaction that seems honest and realistic. The time issue comes into play there, where the writers sometimes seem to forget that a character might have gone through a terrible trauma two days ago. Or it's wonky morality, where they seem to think it's wrong or evil to react realistically. Or it's the Mary Sue issue, where no one is allowed to be mad at Regina for things that any reasonable person would be mad about and they all end up trusting and liking this person who has spent years trying to kill them and who has never said she's done with that or that what she was doing was wrong and who constantly insults and belittles them. It's hard to relate to characters who don't act like people.

 

Imagine Dexter, where instead of being hunted for killing killers, Dexter Morgan is lionized for his civic duty and anyone who hassled him is thrown in jail because Mr. Morgan is a hero.  Or Walter White is asked to consult with ATF due to his extensive knowledge of the drug trade and anyone who disagrees with his help is suspicious because why can't they see he's helping folks, never mind the lives he's trashed with his drug empire and the murders in establishing the same. Walter's brother-in-law, the cop, would deduce what Walter was up to and then work very hard to protect this law-breaking math teacher/ in-law/ drug kingpin because of their wives (iirc).  Or no one hating Gaius Baltar for siding with the Cylons and nuking the homeworlds. That he was protected not from murderous crowds, but from folks who also made mistakes in judgement and just wanted Baltar to know they were there for him.

 

Those would be insane portraits of reactions to what those characters did because, as has been pointed out, that's not how people work.  Trying to make OUaT work in other show's  frames makes me feel a bit saner, but if you are trying to show someone else, outside of us here, how skewed the show is? Just take other shows where "bad people" have to deal with consequences and instead give them the old "Evil Queen" treatment from this show. 

 

I will give the show, and the folks here, props for helping me examine how I want to have characterization and character interaction in any story I write going forward.

[Curio]

From the Snow White thread:

Why did Regina have to be the one to bring in Emma's baby blanket? Why couldn't that task been given to Snow?

I have a sneaking feeling that was meant to show that Regina had a tender side, demonstrating how well Regina knew Emma and how she was wordlessly demonstrating her apologies to Snow over what she did in the past through symbolism with the blanket.

 
I get what the writers were trying to accomplish, but it still doesn't make sense based on what we've seen on screen about where Emma keeps the baby blanket. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the last time we saw the blanket during the final scene of 4x05 where Emma allows Hook to look at her childhood items? That box was locked away in a drawer at the sheriff station, so logic tells me that Emma would have put the blanket back in the box and locked it back up. Based on this canon, Hook should be the only character besides Emma who knows where the blanket is, but by having Regina bring the blanket to the diner in 5x01, Adam & Eddy force the viewers to do mental gymnastics and create an #ItHappenedOffscreen event in our minds where Regina just happens to know where that box is locked away. If they were going to force us to accept something that happened off screen anyways, why not give that moment to Snow who is a much more believable character to know where Emma might have kept those items and desperately needed something to do in the premiere?
 
It shows how Snow is such an afterthought to the writers when she can't even have a small scene where she brings in her own daughter's baby blanket. Instead, she and Charming just stand idly by the entire premiere and wait for Hook and Regina to do stuff. Why not have a quick scene in Granny's diner where Snow, Charming, and Henry debate what kind of portals they can use? "There has to be another way. What about the door in The Sorcerer's mansion? That helped Elsa and Anna return to their world." "But we don't even know which world Emma is in right now." And then Belle can barge in with a book on portal hopping, Henry can grab it from Belle, and then sit at the counter. "349 pages...this requires an extra large cherry soda." Boom...now Henry doesn't look like a lazy kid who just drinks soda and reads books during his free time when a crisis is going on. And then Snow can ask Belle where she found that book, Belle can offer to show Snow and Charming the portals section of the library, and then they can leave the diner and believably be looking for a way to find Emma while being off screen for most of the episode. 

I feel like there's a basic common sense person missing on the writing staff who can help tie in these moments better. But I suppose logic and common sense isn't much of a priority for these writers when they have Hook retcon something again with Regina's heart removing potion that never existed. Between Hook forgetting that Belle was in the room when she told everyone about her past with Anna, Hook forgetting he saw Regina use the dagger to free the fairies, and now Hook forgetting how Regina enchanted his hook, maybe we should be concerned about the amount of times Hook has been knocked unconscious. The poor guy has serious long-term concussion issues. 

Edited September 30, 2015 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

I get what the writers were trying to accomplish, but it still doesn't make sense based on what we've seen on screen about where Emma keeps the baby blanket. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the last time we saw the blanket during the final scene of 4x05 where Emma allows Hook to look at her childhood items? That box was locked away in a drawer at the sheriff station, so logic tells me that Emma would have put the blanket back in the box and locked it back up.

 

No, you're right. I'm sure there was magical shenanigans involved in finding the blanket. After 4x05 aired, I thought it was interesting that Emma kept those personal items at the office instead of where she lived. 

 

I need to really pick at that stupid wand.

 

The wand is forged in light and dark and is filled with light magic and can only be wielded by a counterpart, someone who is filled with darkness.

 

The more things add up, the more intensely I side eye Merlin and how these things that he makes seem to enable awful people.

 

• Dark Curse (I'm assuming that's his brilliant idea) which reminds me of a line Maleficent uttered in 1x02 about how the person who created that makes them look like angels.
• The hat that can suck in magical creatures and separate the Dark One from the control of the dagger by basically crushing someone's heart
• The Apprentice's wand
• Excalibur (or at least part of it)

 

Am I missing something? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something. Like the feck, man!

 

There are also cryptic, scary prophecies that mean nothing to a 6 year old. Whatever happened to "stranger, danger."

[Camera One]

Don't forget creating the role of the Author and giving them a Pen that can change events and control his own Apprentice.  A&E are creating these new "rules" as they go along and they are getting harder and harder to swallow.

[YaddaYadda]

A&E are creating these new "rules" as they go along and they are getting harder and harder to swallow.

 

That's because they don't think about what they're doing.

 

Their thought process starts and ends with "wouldn't it be cool if..."

[Curio]

I need to really pick at that stupid wand.

 

The wand is forged in light and dark and is filled with light magic and can only be wielded by a counterpart, someone who is filled with darkness.

 

I honestly don't understand what they were trying to say with the wand's magical rules. Adam & Eddy try to sound all mysterious and vague with their descriptions, but it just comes off sounding like nonsense.

 

So the wand is apparently all light magic, but "in order to cross realms, it must be wielded as it was forged, with both sides of the coin. Light and the dark." Does that mean the person who uses it has to be 50% dark and 50% light? A lot of people seemed to interpret it that way, like Regina was 60% good and 40% evil, and therefore it didn't work. Or does it mean the person who uses it has to be a completely dark magic user because that counteracts the completely light magic wand? There's no way in hell that Zelena is 50/50 light and dark, so it makes me think that they meant that the wand user has to be totally 100% dark. But then why did Regina immediately think that was her? We've seen her use light magic before. It just makes her come off all melodramatic when she says, "There's my cue. Oh, I'm always a villain! It must be me! I've never used light magic before!"

 

But why did the writers even feel the need to introduce yet another dues ex machina wand? Why did Zelena need to use that specific wand to conjure the tornado? Couldn't she just use one of Rumple's or Regina's wands? And why is there suddenly a new rule where the magical user automatically gets de-powered when they open a portal? How did Regina know that when we've never been shown that on screen before?

Edited September 30, 2015 by Curio

[coops]

I agree with all of the above though at this point I try not to look into the 'rules' of magic in this show because, well, you will only see the gaping cracks. What I found harder to ignore was Henry going along with Hook's plan to free Zelena. To me that was a case of a character doing what the plot wants instead of what the character wants. I just don't believe he would do that even to get Emma back seeing as he knows how evil Zelena is and how much she wants to harm his family.

[YaddaYadda]

So the wand is apparently all light magic, but "in order to cross realms, it must be wielded as it was forged, with both sides of the coin. Light and the dark." Does that mean the person who uses it has to be 50% dark and 50% light? A lot of people seemed to interpret it that way, like Regina was 60% good and 40% evil, and therefore it didn't work. Or does it mean the person who uses it has to be a completely dark magic user because that counteracts the completely light magic wand?

 

 

I have no clue. All I know is that it opens the doors for much fuckery. It's like why would you create something powerful that can be exclusively used by someone whose morals are fucked up enough that they are considered dark?

 

Hello, logic? Are you there?

 

What I found harder to ignore was Henry going along with Hook's plan to free Zelena. To me that was a case of a character doing what the plot wants instead of what the character wants. I just don't believe he would do that even to get Emma back seeing as he knows how evil Zelena is and how much she wants to harm his family.

 

I didn't have a hard time buying it because Henry has been quite the delinquent. And that's the kid who shoved his heart inside Pan to save magic, so I think he's willing to release Zelena to save Emma. The thing they didn't count on was Zelena chopping her hand off to release herself from the cuff, because who the hell does that? What I had a hard time with was Hook carrying around that butcher knife. How convenient!

 

Also, what was that about the bank statements? Has Henry been embezzling from his mother? Like WTF!

Edited September 30, 2015 by YaddaYadda

[coops]

Didn't Henry steal Mary Margaret's credit card in the very first episode? Wouldn' t surprise me if he had been embezzling from Regina!

[Curio]

It's not like money matters in Storybrooke, anyways. Regina can just magic herself hundred dollar bills and no one would know the difference. Can Storybrooke citizens even climb up the economic ladder in Storybrooke? It seems like everyone is content living in their current social status forever. You'd think Snow and David would want to move into a bigger house now that they have a new baby.

 

It's like why would you create something powerful that can be exclusively used by someone whose morals are fucked up enough that they are considered dark?

 

Merlin is seriously so shady. Yes, let's create a portal-hopping wand that can only be used by a dark magic practitioner. But then why did The Apprentice have it? Isn't he a good magic user? Did the writers think this through? Did Merlin just give the wand as a gift to The Apprentice because it looked cool? It was basically a paperweight gift to Mickey because he isn't dark enough to use it himself. 

Edited September 30, 2015 by Curio

[Camera One]

But why did the writers even feel the need to introduce yet another dues ex machina wand? Why did Zelena need to use that specific wand to conjure the tornado? Couldn't she just use one of Rumple's or Regina's wands? And why is there suddenly a new rule where the magical user automatically gets de-powered when they open a portal? How did Regina know that when we've never been shown that on screen before?

 

As usual, it was a clunky way to get to the contrived endpoint of the episode which they clearly decided upon before filling in the details with filler.  They needed Zelena to be instrumental in opening the portal, since A&E decided she should be a series regular.  Thus this convoluted new object and rules.  In the past, the portal caster just thinks about where they want to be, and that's the destination.  With this new wand, they need an object to guide the destination, which allows Regina to step in and use the Twister to guide the portal to where Emma is.  One of the reasons why I could not enjoy the premiere was because these mechanical machinations just stood out too much, and it didn't feel natural to me, despite my trying to like the episode.  

[KAOS Agent]

I usually try to give the writers some leeway on details (I'll point them out, but I do understand how hard it can be to write 22 episodes and maintain complete clarity on details). However, I was really, really surprised at just how many details were screwed up by the writers in the premiere. And because it was the premiere, they had plenty of time to recognize that what they were doing was incorrect or made no sense. Six year old Emma did not live in Minnesota. How the hell does a baby found in Maine end up in Boston as a baby, then Minnesota by age six and then back in Boston by age twelve? That's just sloppy and it's not something that should have made it out of the first round of edits. Truthfully, Baby Emma being in Boston never even made any sense since Maine has a foster care system and that's where the baby would stay, she wouldn't be shipped two states away for Massachusetts residents to pay for her care. Further problems were the hook enchantment potion, Zelena needing a wand to create a twister (she made one just by waving her hand as a freaking newborn!), and how the hell Regina knew that Emma had a baby blanket that was important to her and that it was locked up in her office. All of these things can seem nitpicky, but when there are so many and they all occur in an episode where they had time to fix them, I just get annoyed. Also, they take me out of the episode because I do sit there and think, no that's not how it happened. 

[Shanna Marie]

All of these things can seem nitpicky, but when there are so many and they all occur in an episode where they had time to fix them, I just get annoyed. Also, they take me out of the episode because I do sit there and think, no that's not how it happened.

Add to that Zelena's protection spell on her heart, that she said she put on "eons" ago, when we saw Regina rip her heart out while she was disguised as Marian, and Zelena was unconscious and frozen at the time, so she wouldn't have been able to quickly drop any protection spell to avoid giving herself away.

 

This episode was very sloppy. Is there no equivalent to a copy editor in TV, no one who checks things against a show bible or style sheet? Nobody on the writing staff with a halfway decent memory to say, "Hey, wait a second"?

[Curio]

This episode was very sloppy. Is there no equivalent to a copy editor in TV, no one who checks things against a show bible or style sheet? Nobody on the writing staff with a halfway decent memory to say, "Hey, wait a second"?

 

I think one of the writers mentioned on Twitter that Andrew Chambliss kind of plays that role. But ideally, the show runner(s) should be the ultimate source for copy editing their own scripts because they're the ones who have the final say for what goes on screen.

 

I think a big issue is that they don't have someone on staff who goes back and watches what actually gets shown on screen. I'm sure there are plenty of times where they've written something and it ended up being changed, altered, or deleted by the time it ended up on our TVs, but they only remember what they originally wrote during the first round of writing.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Curio