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

[maryle]

I did watched it( Dead of summer )  Actually, the murder mystery is more my taste than a soapy show like Once and was curious about the  new A and E project.

The critic seems a little harsh it was a average summer show with very cliché character. The Elisabeth M. can sound interesting and the Elisabeth still character has some similarity with Emma( the unpopular and rejected girl who want to find her place ) Could tank or have enough rating to go on a bit.

But, there was nothing special there for sure mostly curious about the rating.  I do like the critic to tell the truth. I hoped people who watched it love  flashback because obviously they are going to overuse it.

[Shanna Marie]

It's scary how many of those review quotes sound like they were copied and pasted from this forum about this show.

I quit watching Lost and nearly dropped this show in the first season because of that centric flashback format. I felt like they were substituting backstory for characterization, especially since there seemed to be very little forward movement in the present that gave the characters an opportunity to act in ways that defined who they are, and they seemed to think that telling us the history of these people was all they needed to do. When I saw that this show was setting up to do the same thing, I came close to bailing.

The problem with the writing isn't so much the twists as it is the writing around the twists. Twists are awesome, but you can't rest on that. Once you know the surprise, the story still needs to hold up. A good surprise twist should make the story better even after you know the twist -- you can go back and see how the twist was set up and how the writers cleverly misled you into not putting together all the clues or the twist gives you an entirely new perspective on what happened before now that you know what's really going on. On this show, the twists just undermine everything that went before because they're so out of the blue that they render everything that went before pointless. Once you know that Rumple's hat/heart/stars scheme is going to be undone by Belle stumbling across something in the shop that we've never seen before, then there's no fun in rewatching that arc and spotting all the little clues that seemed to have been set up, like the voice mail message, Hook's strange behavior, his struggle to send a signal to Emma in spite of Rumple's compulsions, him not being affected by the shattered sight spell, Will knowing what a heartless person looks like. None of it mattered. The gauntlet was a surprise, but it made the story less interesting rather than more interesting.

[Curio]

34 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Once you know that Rumple's hat/heart/stars scheme is going to be undone by Belle stumbling across something in the shop that we've never seen before, then there's no fun in rewatching that arc and spotting all the little clues that seemed to have been set up, like the voice mail message, Hook's strange behavior, his struggle to send a signal to Emma in spite of Rumple's compulsions, him not being affected by the shattered sight spell, Will knowing what a heartless person looks like. None of it mattered. The gauntlet was a surprise, but it made the story less interesting rather than more interesting.

I'm always curious if they purposely went out of their way to avoid using those clues because they wanted to keep the gauntlet reveal a surprise until the very end, or if they didn't even realize those clues would have been enough to provide Belle with the information she needed in the 4A finale. Both options are unflattering—either the writers are so stubborn that they'd rather leave red herrings everywhere instead of using Chekhov's Arsenal, or they don't know they unintentionally set up the clues to begin with. 

[KAOS Agent]

It is possible to write a story that leaves clues while the writers still haven't committed to the conclusion. In Season 1 of Veronica Mars, the writers admitted that they didn't know who had killed Lilly Kane until well into the season. They had two potential killers in their minds (and a few possible others thrown at the audience) and left enough clues such that either one could believably be the killer when it was eventually revealed. At the same time, with two plausible suspects, some of the clues laid out were red herrings, but they never felt like dropped threads or worthless pieces of information. The audience still gets the shock reveal of the killer and what really happened, the writers had the ability to change the killer if they felt like the audience had caught on too fast and all the pieces were there for either way to work. If the Once writers had been in charge, random character X would turn out the be the killer and Veronica would have figured it out because the murder weapon fell off the shelf while she was getting her coat out of the closet. 

The fact that they admit to writing twists exactly because they don't want the audience to figure things out just tells me that I'm exactly right in ignoring anything and everything they write leading up to the end that might seem like a clue. They've trained me at this point not to care about any plot point because it will either be dropped or end up completely irrelevant. The more they go to plot, plot, plot and drop what little characterization they had, the more this type of storytelling fails to keep me entertained.  

[Writing Wrongs]

I know some people hate the flashback stuff, but since Lost that has become a staple in alot of shows. Arrow has used it since it started. It's one of the reasons I keep quitting watching it. I started not caring about the flashbacks, especially when they started retconning what we were told and shown previously. 

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, Curio said:

I'm always curious if they purposely went out of their way to avoid using those clues because they wanted to keep the gauntlet reveal a surprise until the very end, or if they didn't even realize those clues would have been enough to provide Belle with the information she needed in the 4A finale. Both options are unflattering—either the writers are so stubborn that they'd rather leave red herrings everywhere instead of using Chekhov's Arsenal, or they don't know they unintentionally set up the clues to begin with. 

I get the feeling that their primary storytelling value is surprise, and that if you surprise the audience, that's good. They don't really care about emotional resonance or intricate setup. If you're shocked, that's great. It's that alien vampire bunnies thing -- the alien vampire bunnies show up at the climax to save the day, and because this is a fairy tale show, we didn't expect that, so we're shocked, and they think that means they've done a great job, but not all surprise is good if the surprise came out of thin air, made no sense, and has no emotional resonance.

It would have been so easy to fix the gauntlet thing -- what if Belle thought of using it because she'd put clues together and had reason to doubt Rumple? As it was, it made her look like she didn't care so much about what Rumple was doing as she did the fact that apparently he hadn't actually put her first back when he traded the gauntlet for her (never mind that him getting it back says nothing about his feelings for her -- was he supposed to let the Queens keep it once Belle was safe, just to prove his feelings for Belle?). But the gauntlet was a surprise, so yay. A few red herrings are to be expected. But absolutely everything shouldn't be a red herring.

Though I also get the feeling that they weren't aware of just how many red herrings they were setting up. They don't seem to have given a moment's thought to Will, so they may have forgotten that he went so long without a heart and might have recognized Hook's behavior. They said all along that Rumple ditched Emma's phone, so they don't seem to have ever planned for anyone to hear Hook's message and didn't seem to understand why we wanted payoff for that. There's no excuse for nothing coming of Hook overcoming the compulsion enough to try to signal Emma, though.

[YaddaYadda]

9 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I know some people hate the flashback stuff, but since Lost that has become a staple in alot of shows. Arrow has used it since it started. It's one of the reasons I keep quitting watching it. I started not caring about the flashbacks, especially when they started retconning what we were told and shown previously. 

There are flashbacks, and then there are flashbacks, you know. 

I used to watch Arrow, and the flashbacks filled their role just fine, because we were finding out what happened to Oliver in the 5 years he was gone, the same way we were finding out what went down in the Enchanted Forest before Regina enacted the dark curse. Flashbacks for the missing year would have been fine too, because they're filling the gap. The flashbacks on Orange is the New Black are fine because they tell me more about the characters, and why they are where they are. And most recently, we got the flashbacks for Game of Thrones because that part of the story is really important.

The flashbacks for Once are now a crutch. They weren't needed for the 100th episode. At all. Plus like you mentioned with Arrow, it's the retconning. And then there's the piling on. Do I really need another flashback to tell me that Regina and Snow hated each other? As a viewer, I didn't need a Hook flashback in 5x15, or even in 5x11 to tell me about the character. We already knew. Hook looked up to his brother, he felt he couldn't measure up, he was the best person he ever knew. Episode 5x08, when Hook was explaining his rings to Emma, we got all of that in one line, and from 3x05. Boom! Done!

I find the writers go out of their way to not write character moments, or character development when they use flashbacks all the time.

5x21 was a good episode. It had no flashbacks. Plus the story flowed much better. It had a start, a middle, and an end.

[Curio]

Quote

As a viewer, I didn't need a Hook flashback in 5x15, or even in 5x11 to tell me about the character. We already knew. Hook looked up to his brother, he felt he couldn't measure up, he was the best person he ever knew. Episode 5x08, when Hook was explaining his rings to Emma, we got all of that in one line, and from 3x05. Boom! Done!

I totally agree that the 783435th rehash of Snow vs. Regina wasn't needed in the 100th episode, but the Hook flashbacks were actually perfect examples of the writers showing us important missing details from Hook's past while also giving them a twist. (Granted, the twists were terrible, but the opportunity was there to create something far more interesting.) For a show that's reaching the bottom of the barrel in terms of revealing character details from the past, those events were still huge plot holes that needed to be filled in. Television is a visual medium after all, and I had been waiting years to see if his father was Davy Jones and how he and his brother ended up in the navy. Just because the writers fucked up the execution doesn't mean those flashbacks weren't needed—if they had stuck the landing, then everyone would say those flashbacks were needed.

Seeing the visual of an event is a lot more impactful than just summing it up in one line, which is why I'm still pissed off we never got to see how Hook outran the curse during the missing year and the bean trade. That was an important flashback and it makes no sense to me why the writers didn't deem it important enough to dedicate an entire episode flashback for it. These writers apparently thought showing us a random flashback of young Cora and her baby daddy was more important than a huge plot mystery. It makes no sense to me at all. 

Edited June 30, 2016 by Curio

[Camera One]

I don't hate flashbacks, even though some of them were duds in recent seasons.  Without the flashback, some of the new characters would have felt emptier.  I think Merlin for example gained a lot from his first flashback.  I too find it more emotionally resonant to see a past event rather than to hear about it.  The whole dialogue about Charming's father fell flat.  That should have been shown instead of "How Anna Gave David Courage".  I still think "Lost" made good use of flashbacks in its earlier seasons which illuminated how the characters acted in the present.

However, I do agree flashbacks are a crutch for A&E.  As I've said before, it allows them to write two shorter stories each episode while not really going into depth into either, stringing things along until the major reveal for the episode.  

The bigger problem is the utter lack of character moments or significant character conversation for all the main characters, not just Regina or CS.  The 5B finale had no flashback but it was one of the worst episodes ever.  

[maryle]

Sometime even  in Lost that I loved the flashback was a little too much.

I never understand why who have to have it every week. It lost the suprise factor when it is always the default tool.

 But, I do not hate it. It can add to understand the inner Though of character and add emotion to scene but even sugar can be too much. Flashback like every narrative too should be use wise and not to kill time like I too often felt about Once.

But, also felt it was a little bit cause the fans always asked for centric of their fav. It seems centric are =flashback. I do not necessary it think that flashback should be completely stop just not use every episode.

[Camera One]

Even flashbacks, they have had a few different patterns thus far.  Every season does have exceptions, of course.

1. Mostly Flashbacks to the Main Characters' Distant Pasts:  Season 1, Season 2, Season 3A, Season 5B (Season 4B)

2. Mostly Coherent Flashbacks to Guest Characters' Pasts: Season 4A

3. Mostly Flashbacks to Missing Time Period of Amnesia: Season 3B, Season 5A

I'm not sure where 4B would go... it tended to be a mix... I placed in #1 for now.

Flashback back to the main characters' distant pasts (#1) is scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point, and almost every one of those are ret-cons.  You can't do amnesia (#3) that often, so that one needs to be used only once in a while.  And "Frozen" was an exception for #2.  Even if they plan to do that for the Land of Untold Stories characters' this year, it will be piecemeal whereas the Frozen flashbacks basically told a coherent story.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Camera One

[Curio]

44 minutes ago, maryle said:

But, also felt it was a little bit cause the fans always asked for centric of their fav. It seems centric are =flashback.

Yeah, I don't understand why the writers think that the only way to give a specific character focus is to give them a flashback. But I also don't understand the need for "centrics" at this point. It's a convenient writing tool in the first couple seasons of a show because it's a way to intimately introduce a character's past and motivation to the audience, but by Season 6, we should be well beyond that kind of storytelling convention.

Some of my favorite episodes of the show aren't full-on centrics. The Pilot, Snow Falls, Going Home, the Season 3 finale, Birth, and Last Rites are all episodes that feature a well-rounded focus on multiple main characters. Sure, two or three characters might have more screen time than the others, but it's not like "This is the Belle episode!" If we had an entire season of non-centrics, I might fall in love with this show again instead of only loving a few characters and trudging through watching entire episodes.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Curio

[tri4335]

The other thing about the flashbacks especially for the villains is that A & E think it conveys how "far" the villain has come when I think it shows how much more they have to atone!

[Curio]

I think a good test of seeing "how far" a character has come in the present is to only watch the present scenes with no flashbacks. If we only watched the Storybrooke scenes in Mother, we'd have no fucking clue why Regina changed her mind about the author and Zelena at the last second. It would seem like she's bipolar and just randomly changed her mind out of nowhere. Hook fares at least slightly better with his turnaround in Swan Song. We could have skipped all of his flashbacks and still understood that at the last second, seeing Emma nearly die by the hands of Nimue was enough to turn himself around.

[Camera One]

Quote

Some of my favorite episodes of the show aren't full-on centrics. The Pilot, Snow Falls, Going Home, the Season 3 finale, Birth, and Last Rites are all episodes that feature a well-rounded focus on multiple main characters.

Those tend to be the finale or the major climax episodes, when finally, something is allowed to happen.  So it's only natural those tend to be the predictable favorites.  Centrics allow the writers to spin their wheels and ensure they've checked off the list of fandoms.  
 

Quote

If we only watched the Storybrooke scenes in Mother, we'd have no fucking clue why Regina changed her mind about the author and Zelena at the last second. It would seem like she's bipolar and just randomly changed her mind out of nowhere.

That would be a good exercise, actually.  I imagine a lot of the present-day scenes actually do not stand alone too well.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

I like how the second we see a spoiled title for an episode, we right away know whose episode it will be, and prepare accordingly for it. 

It's become this psychological thing, where I'm either ready to love, or ready to hate the episode.

[Camera One]

Half the "fun" of this show is to predict the patterns of these Writers.  It's basically a psychological exercise.

[Curio]

8 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That would be a good exercise, actually.  I imagine a lot of the present-day scenes actually do not stand alone too well.

And this is exactly why the pacing never feels "right." If the present Storybrooke scenes aren't strong enough to stand on their own without the flashbacks, then maybe the writers should focus more of their efforts on making the present interactions more important than the things that happened in the past. It's rather ironic that they always have characters saying, "You're not that person anymore, you've changed!" or "Whatever happened in the past, I don't care." ...but the writers are the ones who can't let go of the characters' pasts because they always want to use flashbacks.

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

1. Mostly Flashbacks to the Main Characters' Distant Pasts:  Season 1, Season 2, Season 3A, Season 5B (Season 4B)

And there are subsets to this category:

1. Flashbacks that set up the situation in the current day plot -- the character relationships, magical gizmos, curses, events. (Seen during season one when we gradually learned the reasons behind the curse)
2. Thematic flashbacks that echo the current day plot -- in the present a character needs to learn to believe in herself, an otherwise unrelated flashback about a character learning to believe in herself (most of 3A)
3. We haven't seen the Evil Queen in a while. How can we shoehorn her into this story? (Almost every Evil Queen flashback since season one)

I like the general idea of flashbacks because I like the contrast of the fairy tale world with the mundane world of Storybrooke (it's the only way we get to remember that these are fairy tale characters, since that doesn't seem to matter at all in Storybrooke), but I prefer the kind in subcategory #1, where they're integral to the plot or tell their own coherent story.

[Curio]

Slightly off topic from the current conversation, but I forgot to mention an interesting anecdote from my trip to the ATX Film Festival. I somehow managed to share a few drinks with a Lost/The 100 writer and he chatted a little bit about his writing room stories. When he was discussing his Lost adventures, I asked what his experience was like working with A&E. I was met with a terse, "No comment." Make of that what you will.

[Rumsy4]

43 minutes ago, Curio said:

Slightly off topic from the current conversation, but I forgot to mention an interesting anecdote from my trip to the ATX Film Festival. I somehow managed to share a few drinks with a Lost/The 100 writer and he chatted a little bit about his writing room stories. When he was discussing his Lost adventures, I asked what his experience was like working with A&E. I was met with a terse, "No comment." Make of that what you will.

OMG!! Hah...

[KingOfHearts]

I love how A&E (or the marketing) love to brag about the fact they worked on Lost. They wrote some of its worst episodes, except for a few Hurley centrics. 

Edited July 1, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

I actually liked quite a few of their episodes.  I think their weakness is more in being headwriters and showrunners, with major weaknesses in planning, pacing, worldbuilding, long range character development, the list goes on and on.  When they're told what they MUST do in a single episode, they can do fine.

Edited July 1, 2016 by Camera One

[Curio]

42 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I think their weakness is more in being headwriters and showrunners, with major weaknesses in planning, pacing, worldbuilding, long range character development, the list goes on and on.

Those are kind of show runner essentials...

I'm not entirely sure A&E could give thoughtful, intelligent answers about what motivates Robin and Charming or what those characters' favorite colors are. They probably could give you every detail about Regina, Rumple, and Emma, but I don't think they spend much time developing minor characters. A show runner should be able to rattle off hundreds of tiny details about all of their characters and know weird character factoids that might never make it to air. I doubt they even know the backstory on what Robin's life was like after Regina killed Marian in the original timeline, how many years Killian served in the Royal Navy, or what job Neal had in New York. Television is a constantly changing and organic medium so they have wiggle room to make things up as they go, but some of these details are crucial things that they should be excited to think about and already have head canons floating in their minds, but it's clear that they don't even think about most of these things until the last second. (A good example of this was The Brothers Jones retconning. A&E had years to develop a detailed head canon about Killian's days in the Royal Navy, but the episode seemed like a last-second pitch because they realized they had a Hook-centric episode quota to meet.)

Edited July 1, 2016 by Curio

[iamsheilaoncer69]

4 hours ago, Curio said:

Television is a constantly changing and organic medium so they have wiggle room to make things up as they go, but some of these details are crucial things that they should be excited to think about and already have head canons floating in their minds, but it's clear that they don't even think about most of these things until the last second. (A good example of this was The Brothers Jones retconning. A&E had years to develop a detailed head canon about Killian's days in the Royal Navy, but the episode seemed like a last-second pitch because they realized they had a Hook-centric episode quota to meet.)

From BTS photos, as well as the choppiness of the episode, it looks like Brothers Jones was heavily rewritten and edited. Horowitz also held the title release for weeks, finally releasing it on Twitter after having already released titles for episodes after it. It was odd, but the sloppy, seemingly last minute backstory probably actually was last minute. Only it was probably as a result of their other major sin, constantly changing their minds after having already aired episodes with relevant plot points they're now going to drop.

[Souris]

On 7/1/2016 at 2:37 PM, Curio said:

Slightly off topic from the current conversation, but I forgot to mention an interesting anecdote from my trip to the ATX Film Festival. I somehow managed to share a few drinks with a Lost/The 100 writer and he chatted a little bit about his writing room stories. When he was discussing his Lost adventures, I asked what his experience was like working with A&E. I was met with a terse, "No comment." Make of that what you will.

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. Hmm. I wonder if they're jerks, or they think they're just awesome, or otherwise difficult to work with? There was also that story Shanna told of them blackballing the TV reporter they thought was too critical of the show. And then their history of seeming to screw over guest stars (or even regulars like Michael Socha). I'm rather getting the picture that they're not exactly swell guys.

[Camera One]

I don't know how, but I've never read this 2014 article that A&E wrote about how they choose writers for their Writers' Room:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/once-a-time-showrunners-reveal-703429

It's great advice.  :snerk:

Edited July 4, 2016 by Camera One

[daxx]

If you don't have something nice to say shut it? I hope they only meant for the interview but I suspect not.

[Rumsy4]

"And then we hired him. But only because he didn't smell like Doritos."

Genius.

[Curio]

15 hours ago, daxx said:

If you don't have something nice to say shut it? I hope they only meant for the interview but I suspect not.

I have a feeling this is how we got the REC.

[OnceUponAJen]

19 hours ago, daxx said:

If you don't have something nice to say shut it? I hope they only meant for the interview but I suspect not.

There's a difference between being mean and giving valid criticism.

[KingOfHearts]

Right now, I'm putting Once Upon a Time in Wonderland over Dead of Summer. I'm not sure if that's unfair considering DoS is not on the same channel, but it does feel like a filler show in some ways since it's airing in the summer, written by A&E, and includes a couple Once actors. Wonderland had a rocky start, but I found it much more engaging in its first two episodes than DoS in its. While Wonderland's acting was wooden and the writing not very good, it executed its idea much better. In other words, it fit "crazy adventure in Wonderland" more than DoS fit "80s summer camp horror". 

Wonderland got better as it went on, so hopefully DoS will do the same. What's odd is that with Once, it's gotten progressively worse over time instead. Flashbacks weren't as big a problem in Wonderland, probably because they taught us new information and the characters were interesting.

Edited July 5, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[tri4335]

I just can't watch DoS because I refuse to be taken in by these writers again. I'm stuck on the Once train because of the actors and though I like some of the actors on DoS another A & E show is just not worth my time.

[Shanna Marie]

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Flashbacks weren't as big a problem in Wonderland, probably because they taught us new information and the characters were interesting.

I think it helped that the flashbacks in Wonderland were an integral part of the story. They showed us how things got to where they were now and set up plot points. We got to see how Jafar came to be what he was. We learned how Cyrus became a genie and how his story intersected Jafar's through the mother he wrongly used magic to save. We saw how Will and Ana came to Wonderland and what happened between them as she became the Red Queen and he became the Knave. We saw what happened in Alice's previous trips to Wonderland. I guess in an abbreviated single season they hadn't yet reached the point of "in the present, Alice needs to believe in herself, so here's a flashback about some other person learning to believe in herself." It also felt like the backstories of all the characters were planned from the start, that it was one long story, starting chronologically with Cyrus and his brothers risking all to save their mother and moving on to Jafar growing up as the unwanted bastard son of the sultan, then Alice returning to Wonderland and finding Cyrus and Will and Ana stealing the mirror from Maleficent and coming over, to Alice losing Cyrus and going home, then Will coming to get her and them going on their adventure to save Cyrus. They just chopped that one story up into bits and told it out of order. That made it all seem a lot more coherent than the way the Once flashbacks are going now.

[Camera One]

First season flashbacks are always going to be better and easier to write, no matter what show.  There is the novelty of the new situation which allows for more genuine surprises and twists in the characters' true backstories.  That's the reason why "Once" guest character's first big flashbacks are often pretty good (with exceptions aka Merida).  In the first season, characters are still imperfect or working through major issues and the flashbacks can show the most influential event of that character's life.  Throughout the first season, the flashbacks can tell the coherent story of how the events in the series premiere came to be.  That is A&E's M.O.  

It will be interesting to see if you feel "Dead of Summer" gets better, KingofHearts. If the flashbacks are already weak in Season 1, it really says a lot about their ability to create a new universe.  I have watched shows where the first season flashbacks were already pretty bad, which reflects on the quality of the writing.  One show that stood out in this regard was "Flashfoward".  I couldn't care less about the characters.  That's another automatic fail.  If the main characters don't resonate, the flashbacks won't work, no matter how wild the twists.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/5/2016 at 5:15 PM, Camera One said:

First season flashbacks are always going to be better and easier to write, no matter what show.  There is the novelty of the new situation which allows for more genuine surprises and twists in the characters' true backstories.  

I think the arc structure still allows for this kind of thing, if they weren't so tied into focusing on certain main characters regardless of their role in the story and weren't stuck on that "centric" model. Season two wasn't too bad, other than the weird thing of doubling down on Regina's Evil Queen evil at the same time they were starting to play Poor Regina and whitewash her in the present. Up until they got into the wacky Owen and Tamara thing, most of Season Two's flashbacks seemed to involve the Hook and Cora backstories -- them individually as well as how they ended up working together, with some one-offs and centrics mixed in.

Season three A might have worked better if instead of going thematic, they'd told the story of Neverland -- from the formation and the "birth" of Pan to the first recruiting of Lost Boys, to the realization of needing "The One," to Hook's first visit, to Hook's second arrival and Bae's early time there, to Hook's deal with Pan, to the events leading to Tink's arrival, to the evolution of Bae and Hook's friendship, to Hook's departure, to Bae's escape -- only told in pieces and out of order. I guess they could have slipped in the Ariel backstory to give us our Evil Queen quota. Then we'd have had some of the character surprises as well as getting the info we needed to set up what was going on in the present. Three B was just made for this kind of thing, as the flashbacks of the Missing Year could have told the story of that year, from arrival to curse, rather than doing a few random centrics while the good guys apparently twiddled their thumbs, and then leaping ahead eight months in one episode to them finally deciding to do something.

4A did a better job of telling the story of Ingrid's magic, her return, and her effect on Elsa and Anna. 4B was just an incoherent mess all around, and there's no way they could have found any single story to tell in flashbacks that could have supported the present-day story. I thought the flashbacks worked well in 5A, mostly just telling the Camelot story. 5B flashbacks were just terrible all around, somehow managing to not tell us anything truly useful and sometimes just messing up the continuity. The Hercules one was okay but so very extraneous in the long run. The best one was probably the Rumple and Milah one because that slotted pretty well into the existing backstory while adding new shades to it and it was critical to the present-day plot. What we probably needed instead was more on the background of Hades and Zeus and Hades' attempts to escape, with maybe more relationship development with Zelena to set up the idea of a TLK.

So it's not so much that they couldn't do good flashbacks later in the series. It's that they've missed or ignored the opportunities they could have used.

[KingOfHearts]

Flashbacks have been used to remind the audience who the main characters are supposed to be. They've threw in random Snow vs. Regina flashbacks in 3A to touch base with the show's core premise. But if their present day story was compelling and true to the characters, they wouldn't need to do that. Usually the heroes and villains are too busy playing cat and mouse for their identities to be properly portrayed. I'm not saying they need to jam in more iconography present, but the writers need to keep the characters consistent with how they've been written over the course of the series. We shouldn't need flashbacks in S1-type settings to remember what show we're watching.

[Camera One]

Quote

I think the arc structure still allows for this kind of thing, if they weren't so tied into focusing on certain main characters regardless of their role in the story and weren't stuck on that "centric" model

It does, but as mentioned, flashbacks today work moreso for new characters than the original characters.  Hook and Cora were the newbies in Season 2; thus, their first flashbacks were still novelty and revealing their pivotal moments.

At this point, there is no way that they could do the Season 1 type of flashback for the main characters, whose pivotal moments have already been told.  Even if A&E were not repetitive as hell with the flashbacks, the missing pieces that we still have not seen (and there are still some for Snowing, Emma, etc.), should have been told in Season 2 or 3 rather than the same old Bandit vs. Queen tales they've served time and time again.

To make the flashbacks relevant to the main characters, they've occasionally done the arcs telling what happened during their times of amnesia (3B or 5A), but I haven't found these types of flashbacks to be effective in character development.  I suppose on paper, they might be.  If you look at Charming, the Writers could argue "The Tower" delved into his fear of not being able to protect his daughter.  And in "Siege Perilous", it explored his desire to be seen as more than Snow's Prince.  I don't think those episodes were successful but A&E might believe they were.  Can anyone pinpoint why?

Edited July 7, 2016 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I stopped watching Dead of Summer. I got tired of having random craziness thrown at my face without any rhyme or reason. Lost, at its most confusing point, was easier to follow. DoS doesn't give the audience any useful information and instead gives us pointless flashbacks of the characters we don't care about. (Which, sadly, are the main ones.) Rather than use any structured worldbuilding to give the camp some creepy backstory, we're treated to angsty teen drama made of cardboard. I couldn't go through it any more because it just doesn't go anywhere.

Once is in a similar boat. Time is spent on flashbacks we don't care about and the worldbuilding is not executed well at all. But, six seasons in, I'm still watching it because the characters are compelling. Though, sometimes it feels like the writers are throwing whatever they want at the screen whether it makes sense or not. The story doesn't organically interweave elements. It just twists and turns each week arbitrarily. 

Edited July 13, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Curio]

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I stopped watching Dead of Summer. I got tired of having random craziness thrown at my face without any rhyme or reason.

I'm still forcing myself to watch Dead of Summer, but only because I find it interesting to analyze A&E's writing on that show and compare it to OUAT. For example, in tonight's episode, Elizabeth Mitchell's character made a comment about how the camp counselors shouldn't show the younger kids Harold & Maude at movie night because she didn't think it would be appropriate for them, yet that's the exact movie Henry wanted to show Violet on his date. So what the heck are they trying to tell us about Henry's mental state on this show?

The flashback structure where they focus on one character the entire episode only works if they have decent actors. OUAT can get away with it more because the actors try to rise above the cheesy writing, but on Dead of Summer, it's painful when you have to sit through an entire centric for a character who's boring and the actor is wooden.

24 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

DoS doesn't give the audience any useful information and instead gives us pointless flashbacks of the characters we don't care about.

Yes! It's the exact same tactic they use on this show. They refuse to feed the audience enough clues and nuggets to guess what's going to happen next, so you're forced to watch the next episode to see what the surprise is.

[Camera One]

Quote

Elizabeth Mitchell's character made a comment about how the camp counselors shouldn't show the younger kids Harold & Maude at movie night because she didn't think it would be appropriate for them, yet that's the exact movie Henry wanted to show Violet on his date. So what the heck are they trying to tell us about Henry's mental state on this show?

Oh LOL, thanks for suffering through the show to provide the laugh of the night.  

I realized Freeform has the full first episode up on Youtube for a free preview and I'm watching it now.  Even the actress who played Anna doesn't seem like she can rise above this dreck.  And Elizabeth Mitchell is doing her patented coyness as someone else mentioned previously.  It was annoying in her early episodes of "Lost" and it's annoying here too.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Camera One

[Camera One]

Given this was a pilot and written by A&E, that was weak.  There were a lot of similarities in the writing with "Once", such as super vague dialogue so there could be another flashback later (New girl had to move here because... "Our situation changed"; Deputy's answer to why he was at the camp... "Looking for something...").  And still pulling out the "What's in the box" trick, I see.

Their pacing was absolutely horrible as per usual.  There was zero momentum, and the present-day plot was plodding, consisting mainly of the main character seeing random disconnected "scary"/creepy stuff.  The flashbacks were tedious and ultimately underwhelming.

The worst part has got to be the poor character development and the tenuous link between the flashbacks and the present-day in terms of the main character's arc.  The only character which could be assessed from this first episode was Amy, and neither her behavior in the flashback nor her "revelation" in the present makes any sense.  They repeated "sometimes you have to do things that scare you" even though there's no context for why that line has any meaning, except oooh, scary TV show, go to scary camp, how ironic!  Amy suddenly decided to go to the wild party and to camp because of the uptight mom yelling?  For all we know, she knew the friend for 2 days.  And then in the present-day, after the big flashback reveal, Amy joyfully jumps into the water, and suddenly loves being there and develops instant camaraderie with everyone?  Alrighty then...

The pilot reinforced that A&E can't develop characters from scratch, when it's not adapting a previously created character, which they are able to do on "Once".  They can sometimes strike gold re-telling an old tale with a twist, but Amy's backstory was duller than Cleo's dishwater.  I agree with what others said above that this younger cast can't pull off the incredibly cheesy lines.  The actress who played Anna acted like she was half asleep and suffering from lethargy.  Not to blame her since her character's backstory revealed absolutely nothing about her at all since her internal pain probably stems from what happened way back when her family situation "changed" (since she was already her lethargic self heading into the new school, so it's not like the incident with the friend had changed much).

Edited July 13, 2016 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

What I'm getting is that A&E shouldn't be head writers. They should be somewhere near the bottom of the pile, and leave the character development and world building to people that are actually comptent.

They should come in after the ground work has been laid. 

I wonder how the show is doing ratings wise. I think they might have written all the episodes so far with that Goldberg guy.

[Curio]

I don't know which is worse: Braces+Townie or Kansas+Wolfie.

What I find interesting is that A&E said Dead of Summer was their midlife crisis show. What do they consider OUAT? An obligation at this point? Eddy made a remark at the ATX Television Festival that he felt more freedom to say what he wanted to on stage for the Dead of Summer panel because he wasn't dealing with the OUAT crowd, which I took to mean he didn't have to worry about cussing or insulting any fandom ships.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

1 hour ago, Curio said:

Eddy made a remark at the ATX Television Festival that he felt more freedom to say what he wanted to on stage for the Dead of Summer panel because he wasn't dealing with the OUAT crowd, which I took to mean he didn't have to worry about cussing or insulting any fandom ships.

He's not even the one dealing with "OUaT crowd". You know, the reason you get to write another bad show is because of the loyal OUaT "crowd", so fuck off with that. They created the little monsters. Plus it's usually comments like "we can't sacrifice Regina's story by giving other characters stories" that stirs shit up.

Also, I just noticed that one of the episodes is titled "The Dharma Burns". Can't get away from Lost, can they? This is how you know there are no creative juices flowing. 

Edited July 13, 2016 by YaddaYadda

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

I don't know which is worse: Braces+Townie or Kansas+Wolfie.

Oh goodness. I can't stand the nicknaming. The characters are so bland it's hard to keep them and their relationships straight.

Quote

 which I took to mean he didn't have to worry about cussing or insulting any fandom ships.

They want to get away from their ships by creating more ships? DoS is so desperate to get people to pull for ships and choose sides. It's sad, really.

Quote

 They repeated "sometimes you have to do things that scare you" even though there's no context for why that line has any meaning, except oooh, scary TV show, go to scary camp, how ironic!  Amy suddenly decided to go to the wild party and to camp because of the uptight mom yelling?  For all we know, she knew the friend for 2 days.  And then in the present-day, after the big flashback reveal, Amy joyfully jumps into the water, and suddenly loves being there and develops instant camaraderie with everyone?  Alrighty then...

Typical A&E trope. A character learns a moral lesson, but by applying what they've learned, bad things happen to them. Amy does scary things, only to have her friend die and then get electrocuted at a haunted summer camp. Same thing with Once. Emma learns to accept her family, only to have them abandon her. She opens up to love, only to have her boyfriend die immediately afterwards. Meanwhile, characters that don't learn anything are pitied for having pebbles stuck in their shoes.

Edited July 13, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

What I'm getting is that A&E shouldn't be head writers. They should be somewhere near the bottom of the pile, and leave the character development and world building to people that are actually comptent.

They should come in after the ground work has been laid.

I think it's more the opposite (though I haven't watched this new show). Let them come up with the big-picture concept and the general character concepts, then turn it over to someone else to really develop it, do the world building and the actual character development, as well as the day-to-day writing. Basically, lock them in a room and let them brainstorm and play "wouldn't it be cool if ..." games, then record the output and let real writers build it into something. With Once, they did come up with an interesting concept and good characters, and they have the occasional good twist. They just needed someone to mold and shape it and to handle the writing between big twists so that the twists are set up and so that there's payoff in the aftermath.

[Camera One]

Quote

I think it's more the opposite (though I haven't watched this new show).  Let them come up with the big-picture concept and the general character concepts, then turn it over to someone else to really develop it, do the world building and the actual character development, as well as the day-to-day writing.

"Dead of Summer" sort of told me that without the fairy tale crutch, the "original" characters they create are actually lame.  I mean, that connection audiences had in the very first scene with Snow White and Charming in the "Once" pilot was solely based on the performances and chemistry of the actors, combined with what we had in our minds about Snow White and the iconic moment of the kiss.  Without that, they came up with a bland summer camp with a bland heroine with a bland backstory and a bland assortment of stereotypes as supporting cast (compare that to the intrigue of seeing the story behind Red, Grumpy, Gepetto, etc. in Storybrooke, mainly because we know the traditional fairy tales and wonder what their role is in this universe).  

Maybe I need to see more of "Dead of Summer" to find out if the big-picture concept is all that great, but I didn't come away from the pilot with that conclusion.  The world-building of the summer camp, at least given in the first hour, was random as hell and not interesting in the least, which again makes me think that they can't create an interesting universe that isn't derived from some adapted source.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

So basically watching Dead of Summer is appreciating Once Upon a Time? 

[Shanna Marie]

I guess the interesting part of the Once characters is finding the twist on the traditional characters we think we know, and it's hard to do that when you aren't starting with characters the audience has any preconceived notions about. If you don't have any ideas about who Snow White is, it's not at all shocking when she shows up as a bow-wielding bandit. But I would think that a teen summer camp setting would allow you to do that with character types that we're familiar with, and then show a twist behind those types that make you challenge your assumptions about characters like the bratty rich girl, the shy nerdy girl, etc.

What I thought was great about the concept of Once Upon a Time was the story reason to have the fairytale characters living in a modern American town. It's so unique and specific that I haven't been able to find a way to achieve the same thing (and then fix it all the problems with it in my own version) without it being an obvious ripoff. Unfortunately, they didn't use that to its full potential and make good use of the fact that fairytale characters are living in modern America.