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

[jhlipton]

On 3/27/2017 at 10:21 PM, Camera One said:

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

Evil Queen was literally the worst part of Regina -- that was her sole purpose for being!

[Camera One]

More gems from Brigitte.

Librarybelle‏ @librarybelle1  
   @InkTankGirl which character do you find most challenging to write? #BellLetsTalk

Brigitte Hales  @InkTankGirl
   @librarybelle1 I think I've got a handle on all their voices now, but I always have to do an extra pass on Hook's dialogue. No idea why.

--------------

Katherine Keirns‏ @kmkeirns  
  @InkTankGirl what is it like to write the Regina and Snow scenes?

Brigitte Hales‏  @InkTankGirl
  @kmkeirns Snow has a lighter, faster speech. Regina less words and a very specific rhythm.

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LScott23‏ @LScot23  
 @InkTankGirl Knowing Sunday's episode was written around the time of election makes me emotional w/ Regina saying "choose love over hate"?❤️

Brigitte Hales‏ @InkTankGirl
@LScot23 Yes!! It took me days to approach that scene b/c it felt like all of us crying out to the country.

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I just found the last one funny because of the connection between Regina and "all of us".

[Mathius]

11 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I just found the last one funny because of the connection between Regina and "all of us".

Also, we're dragging politics into this?  Really?

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

I just found the last one funny because of the connection between Regina and "all of us".

Regina is the oppressive authority figure representing the oppressed now?

[Camera One]

Adam is still trying to prove to people on Twitter that Jennifer Morrison is indeed filming.  "I'm standing next to her".  And yet you're tweeting...

[Camera One]

Oh for pity's sakes...

Evil Regal‏ @HookedEvilRegal  
@AdamHorowitzLA IS OUAT ENDING?!

Adam Horowitz‏ @AdamHorowitzLA  
@HookedEvilRegal I hope not!

[Rumsy4]

Dear lord...is Adam desperate, or what?

[Camera One]

He had to confirm that Lana was there too.  And then someone tweeted that he was lying since no pictures.  What's the point of replying to these people.  Maybe go check the episode for continuity errors or something.

[Camera One]

I was reading an old interview (teasing) the Season 3 finale, and this quote from Adam summarizes how they justify doing the same repetitive storylines over and over again.

Quote

Horowitz: I don't think anyone has a chapter in their life they're ever completely done with. You overcome and get past things but they're always a part of you and they always make up who you are.

I also found the following quote interesting:

Quote

Adam Horowitz: We've been exploring many spokes of the wheel of evil and they each have their different personalities. Peter Pan had his own conniving, manipulative ways. And Cora with her familial issues that fueled her rage. Now with the Wicked Witch, we've come at her from a slightly different angle. It's all been fun in their own ways. We've been really enjoying Rebecca [Mader].

Interviewer: Is there another spoke in the wheel of evil you want to explore in the future?

Kitsis: One of the biggest evils we all have is the one inside us. That is always a spoke.

Horowitz: We said it all the way back in season one. Evil isn't born, it's made, and there's always room on the wheel for another spoke. We may be seeing more of that.

Kitsis: And the question of what is evil? There's been lots of things presented to us as evil that we found have just been misunderstood.

Biggest evils inside us?  Is he alluding to The Evil Queen split storyline?  Or was he just speaking vaguely?  I suppose it's not a stretch that they already had that idea up their sleeve all this time given how much they love the EQ.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Camera One

[Mathius]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

There's been lots of things presented to us as evil that we found have just been misunderstood.

Um, like what?  As far as I can remember, most of what has been presented as evil was just that: evil.

[Shanna Marie]

3 minutes ago, Mathius said:

Um, like what?  As far as I can remember, most of what has been presented as evil was just that: evil.

That's what I've been trying to think of. Ingrid may come the closest, but with her, she may have started as misunderstood, but when she reached the point she was trying to kill everyone in town, she was plain old evil. Maybe she wouldn't have become evil without the misunderstanding, but she made the choices that turned it into evil. Rumple had a decent motive for the things he was doing, but I wouldn't call him misunderstood, and he went way beyond the bounds of his real goal. I don't think there's anything misunderstood about Regina. She flat-out overreacted and focused on the wrong person, doing a lot of harm along the way. I don't see what there is to misunderstand about her. Zelena and Hook had sad childhoods, but that doesn't make their turn to evil misunderstood. We didn't get enough info on Hades to understand or misunderstand him. Pan was flat-out evil and selfish. Cora may have had bad things happen to her, but she was always conniving. Cruella was a psychopath. Ursula was wronged, but that doesn't make her evil phase "misunderstood." We never really learned what the deal was with Maleficent, but she took her wrath out on total innocents, which is hard to justify. So where does this whole misunderstood thing come in?

[Camera One]

It's like the Writers think it's possible to separate very evil acts from the person committing them.  If they have sob stories this automatically makes these villains "misunderstood".

[Mathius]

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Ingrid may come the closest, but with her, she may have started as misunderstood, but when she reached the point she was trying to kill everyone in town, she was plain old evil. Maybe she wouldn't have become evil without the misunderstanding, but she made the choices that turned it into evil.

And she even says as much!  Right before her redemptive death she outright says "I am a monster....not because of my powers, but because of what I let them turn me into!"  Her powers caused the big misunderstanding which made her suffer, but she chose to respond to it by becoming evil.  Her backstory was a great explanation for why she became a villain, but Ingrid herself ended up differentiating between an explanation and an excuse.

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Rumple had a decent motive for the things he was doing, but I wouldn't call him misunderstood, and he went way beyond the bounds of his real goal.

Also, finding his son wasn't even his full goal - it was to find his son and keep his power.  Similarly, he claimed the reason he became the Dark One was to protect his son, but the power of the Dark One was clearly a huge draw for him (just watch when he talks about it to Bae in 1x08 after learning about it for the first time)...if he just wanted to save his son, he could have just controlled Zoso to do so, not murder him and take the power for himself.  Again, Rumple's background of feeling powerless and put-upon explains this perfectly, but it doesn't excuse it. 

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I don't think there's anything misunderstood about Regina. She flat-out overreacted and focused on the wrong person, doing a lot of harm along the way. I don't see what there is to misunderstand about her.

They seem to believe that because their Evil Queen is able to be sad and cry alot that it means she's misunderstood and not the villainous caricature from the fairy tale and Disney movie...but totally ignore that the kind of evil deeds they have Regina commit (and the sheer amount of them) FAR eclipse the fairy tale and Disney version.  It doesn't matter how sad you make her, when she massacres a village, all sympathy is lost.

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Zelena and Hook had sad childhoods, but that doesn't make their turn to evil misunderstood.

Like Ingrid, it's hard to argue against the fact that Hook was evil when the man himself is constantly admitting that fact and agonizing over it.  Zelena clearly has some kind of mental disorder which makes her pitiable, but she's still evil...er, wicked.

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We didn't get enough info on Hades to understand or misunderstand him.

What we DID get was quite enough to see that he was one evil mofo.  According to his backstory in the storybook pages, he murdered his own father just to claim his power and refused Zeus' offer of forgiveness and redemption.  From what we see of him, he ruled the Underworld as a tyrant and used Zelena - from the get-go he was manipulating her by playing up Zeus stopping his heart for sympathy, only for it to turn out that with his heart beating again, Hades is even more sadistic, vengeful and power-hungry, and free to use his powers on the living which he does with glee.  Yes, he truly fell in love with Zelena, but he was still evil as Hell (pun intended).

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Pan was flat-out evil and selfish. Cora may have had bad things happen to her, but she was always conniving. Cruella was a psychopath. Ursula was wronged, but that doesn't make her evil phase "misunderstood." We never really learned what the deal was with Maleficent, but she took her wrath out on total innocents, which is hard to justify. So where does this whole misunderstood thing come in?

Exactly.  There is no misunderstanding, each and every one of these people are legitimately evil.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Mathius

[Shanna Marie]

I've been trying to think about what a misunderstood villain could really be. I don't think someone could be truly a villain and still count as misunderstood. The closest you might get is someone the heroes initially think is a villain, until they learn the whole story. So, say, the strange old woman who lives on the edge of town and everyone thinks she's a witch. They may even catch her doing some shady things and set out to stop her -- only to find out that the magic she's doing is protecting the town. I read a book recently that had an evil wizard that was in a Dread Pirate Roberts-type situation, only in this case "Evil Wizard" was part of the title, and instead of getting rid of the whole crew in order to pass the title on, there was a magic coat and hat that made everyone see the "Evil Wizard" character even as the person in the role changed. But he was never really the villain of the story. The viewpoint character thought he was because the Evil Wizard forced him to be his apprentice, but there was another villain in the story, and discerning readers could read between the lines and figure out that the Evil Wizard was actually good and trying to help people. It was one of the past Evil Wizards who'd really been evil, and this guy was coasting on that reputation. When that interview about Time After Time calling Jack the Ripper misunderstood, some friends and I were trying to brainstorm how that could be and came up with the idea that the Ripper's victims had all been possessed by aliens who were invading, and the "killings" had really been to rip the aliens out of the hosts (who'd already been killed by the aliens), so they were trying to stop what they thought was a serial killer who was actually out there saving the city.

It's possible that season 2 Hook could have counted as a misunderstood villain if he'd been handled differently. At that time, we didn't know the full extent of his crimes (most of which have only come up in the past two seasons). He had a valid gripe with Rumple, had been truly wronged and didn't have any other recourse for justice, and Rumple was truly a threat to the good guys, so they should have had a common enemy. Hook managed to oppose Team Princess while doing minimal damage (even going to some lengths to save Aurora's heart and give it back) and seemed to also be trying to help them, as long as it didn't get in his way. Written properly, he could have looked evil, until they learned his real story and his real goal, and then they could have teamed up. But Rumple had that bizarre plot armor that makes everyone rally to save him in spite of the evil he keeps doing and the threat he keeps posing, which meant Hook had to be a real villain everyone opposed.

I guess Graham might have counted as a misunderstood villain, since we thought he was Regina's lackey, and then it turned out he had no choice in the matter because she had his heart and was controlling him. But I don't think we saw enough of him in that role before we learned the truth for him to fall fully into the "villain" category. He was acting that way in the episode with Owen and his father, but by then we knew what was really going on with him.

[KingOfHearts]

Elsa was the textbook example for "misunderstood". The kingdom thought she was an evil ice witch for freezing it over, using "sorcery", going off and building her ice castle, etc. In fact, she was originally going to be the villain until the script was overhauled. Yet, she was never really a "villain", hence the misunderstanding. Her actions just made her look like one on the surface, and I think that's what classifies her.

Quote

They seem to believe that because their Evil Queen is able to be sad and cry alot that it means she's misunderstood and not the villainous caricature from the fairy tale and Disney movie...but totally ignore that the kind of evil deeds they have Regina commit (and the sheer amount of them) FAR eclipse the fairy tale and Disney version.  It doesn't matter how sad you make her, when she massacres a village, all sympathy is lost.

Now, see, if Regina was this distant royal who had no idea what her government was doing at peasant-level, she would be misunderstood. For instance, let's say some officials manipulated her into making decisions that would benefit them while hurting her people. If she didn't realize what she was doing, but the citizens only knew her via the deceptive officials, then she wouldn't be a villain. At the core, she would have to have good intentions but be looked at as something much worse than she really is. The reality of OUAT is that she was obsessed with revenge and was transparently evil. 

Edited March 31, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Elsa would definitely fit.  Another would be The Beast (I'm not talking about Rumple, LOL).  

Though Elsa in the movie was hardly the "villain" for long.  She just seemed like someone having a temper tantrum when Anna went to see her.

Now A&E... aren't they the most misunderstood writers?  Let's have a good cry on their behalf.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I think a good example of misunderstood villains would be people like the stormtroopers in Star Wars. Yes, they kill those in the rebellion, but then Finn explains how he was taken from his family at a very young age, given only a number and not a name and then raised only with the ideas of the Empire and trained to support it. Once he sees his friend die, he questions things, but he could just as easily have had the opposite reaction and wanted only to destroy those who'd killed his friend. His whole life he'd been told they were evil and then they killed his buddy. Fighting for the Empire against those who'd harmed him wouldn't make him evil, just misunderstood. He'd be fighting for what he believed in thinking his side was good and just.

Regina would be the Kylo Ren/Darth Vader of Star Wars, not the Finn. Given all the benefits of knowledge and training and wasting it on petty revenge/jealousy/egotism and throwing temper tantrums when things don't go their way. Adam is a huge fan of Star Wars and I can totally see him missing the difference between a character like Finn and one like Kylo Ren/Anakin. He'd miss the part where Darth Vader's ultimate move to kill the Emperor did not redeem him. It saved Luke, but it does nothing to show any remorse or atonement for killing the younglings or the entire planet of Alderaan. Finn/Snow/Emma are heroic, but largely uninteresting to the writers because they're good and can't have real emotions while "tortured souls" like Regina/Rumpel can be evil and fun, but also angsty and sad and "misunderstood".

Edited March 31, 2017 by KAOS Agent

[jhlipton]

8 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

I think a good example of misunderstood villains would be people like the stormtroopers in Star Wars.

In any war, the people on Our Side are the "heroes" and the ones on Their Side are the "villains".  So it would be easy to make a Reb, or a kamikaze or a Hun "misunderstood".

[KAOS Agent]

Sure, but that's why you can frame things as misunderstood. Random German soldiers shooting the troops coming ashore on D-Day aren't evil or villains. They were just on the other side. If either the Allies or the Germans rounded up the captured survivors, disarmed them and proceeded to murder them in cold blood, then they hit the evil side. But if you can show that those doing the killing had some reasonable exculpatory explanation for the murder, then they can be construed as misunderstood. Brainwashed from a young age into believing that all of these people are out to get you and will kill you and all your loved ones if they aren't stopped provides a different viewpoint and understanding of this evil act. It's not a conscious act of evil. It's even heroic in the mind of those committing the crime. It doesn't absolve the person of committing a terrible act, but they aren't a psychopathic evil murderer either. That's how you do misunderstood villain.

It's why the Belle/Gaston/ogre story was messed up. Ogres were destroying villages and killing innocents all over the kingdom. Presumably, this would have been at least the Second Ogre War since Rumpel ended the first one centuries before. So you've got a long history of death and destruction caused by the other side and it seems like the ogres are mindless and without mercy. A young one was caught well inside the kingdom. He's probably a spy. He's definitely got information that he shouldn't have that could harm the kingdom. The writers went with a very black and white reading of this situation. The ogre must be let go. It would be wrong to kill him. It would be wrong to detain him. It would be wrong to use him to gain tactical knowledge of the army destroying the kingdom. Gaston was full blown evil to torture him (the mirror said so!), but no one ever wrote Gaston's side of the story. You want to make him misunderstood? Gaston leads troops into battle. He sees his friends and family die. He's desperate to gain any advantage he can to stop these marauders from further destroying his kingdom, so he's willing to do anything that might help him with that. Is he still a horrible, evil villain for what he did? Or can I suddenly understand why he did the wrong thing? According to the writers, Gaston was evil with a capital E no misunderstanding him.

On the other hand, we have Regina. A "misunderstood" villain according to the writers. Here is a description of one of her evil acts: "She slipped through the flames, relishing in the horror she wrought. But before she escaped, she saw the boy. And amidst the carnage, do you know what she did? She smiled at him." That's the character the writers have decided is misunderstood.

Edited March 31, 2017 by KAOS Agent

[AshhyOut]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Elsa was the textbook example for "misunderstood".

Yes well the problem here is A&E sees Regina as their Elsa. I do remember them saying as much and then the Disney Frozen folks stepped in and we got what we got. The irony here is that original recipe Elsa did sound remarkably like Regina but then they heard Let It Go and overhauled her character by dumping all the villainous acts. They of course recognized there's a clear thick line, practically a wall!, between misunderstood and villain. A&E don't. Probably because they admitted that Regina is their self-insert but that doesn't explain the other folks.

The actors, or some of them anyway also seem to be capable of drawing that line unlike A&E. Elizabeth Mitchell and Robert has never shied away from calling their characters outright villains. Robert's always said Rumple doesn't deserve a happy ending and shouldn't get one. EM said something like you can feel bad for Ingrid but she's a psycho and has to go. I wonder how their conversations go. Like did Robert just stop talking to A&E? And not just them but I wonder about their conversations with Ginny and co. too.

A: Yes Ginny, Snow is evil because she refused to eat Regina's lasagna. Brilliant twist right?

But you know, I'd have to give it to A&E. They sold the hell out of their bullshit because a huge chunk of people bought it.

[Rumsy4]

55 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

That's the character the writers have decided is misunderstood

She's the only character in the Show who has practically everything. And she's the only character who also whines the most, and subsequently gets coddled the most. She is misunderstood indeed, but not the way the writers mean it.

6 minutes ago, AshhyOut said:

But you know, I'd have to give it to A&E. They sold the hell out of their bullshit because a huge chunk of people bought it.

If you devote most of your screentime and PoV to Regina, and keep reiterating how dark the "heroes" can act, it's not surprising that you end up selling that BS about how misunderstood she is to at least some of the audience.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Mathius]

9 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

He'd miss the part where Darth Vader's ultimate move to kill the Emperor did not redeem him. It saved Luke, but it does nothing to show any remorse or atonement for killing the younglings or the entire planet of Alderaan.

OK, I know this is a common thing people forget for some reason, but still...Darth Vader had nothing to do with Alderaan's destruction.

He was there when it happened, and he held onto Leia and forced her to watch it happen, but otherwise Alderaan's destruction was all on Tarkin. Heck, we even see the scene where he thinks up the idea and Vader clearly doesn't get what he's talking about at first.

TARKIN: Perhaps she would respond to an alternative form of persuasion. 
VADER: What do you mean? 
TARKIN: I think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this station. Set your course for Alderaan. 

So yeah, at most Vader was an accessory, but so was everyone on the Death Star so it's nothing unique to him.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Mathius

[andromeda331]

14 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I think a good example of misunderstood villains would be people like the stormtroopers in Star Wars. Yes, they kill those in the rebellion, but then Finn explains how he was taken from his family at a very young age, given only a number and not a name and then raised only with the ideas of the Empire and trained to support it. Once he sees his friend die, he questions things, but he could just as easily have had the opposite reaction and wanted only to destroy those who'd killed his friend. His whole life he'd been told they were evil and then they killed his buddy. Fighting for the Empire against those who'd harmed him wouldn't make him evil, just misunderstood. He'd be fighting for what he believed in thinking his side was good and just.

Regina would be the Kylo Ren/Darth Vader of Star Wars, not the Finn. Given all the benefits of knowledge and training and wasting it on petty revenge/jealousy/egotism and throwing temper tantrums when things don't go their way. Adam is a huge fan of Star Wars and I can totally see him missing the difference between a character like Finn and one like Kylo Ren/Anakin. He'd miss the part where Darth Vader's ultimate move to kill the Emperor did not redeem him. It saved Luke, but it does nothing to show any remorse or atonement for killing the younglings or the entire planet of Alderaan. Finn/Snow/Emma are heroic, but largely uninteresting to the writers because they're good and can't have real emotions while "tortured souls" like Regina/Rumpel can be evil and fun, but also angsty and sad and "misunderstood".

Its also why he died. Why villains like Vader die when they turn or do something good. Yes, Vader killed the Emperor, that was a good thing, he saved Luke and everyone else was saved by him murdering the Emperor. But then he died. After everything he did he can't just go free, he'd be tried, convicted and either spend the rest of his life locked up or executed. You can't have a villain who committed that many acts of evil just walking free after doing one good thing. So they die.   

Edited March 31, 2017 by andromeda331

[jhlipton]

18 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

It doesn't absolve the person of committing a terrible act, but they aren't a psychopathic evil murderer either. That's how you do misunderstood villain.

Amos on The Expanse.  If you just list his deeds, like nearly braining a man to death or not knowing how many people he's killed, he sounds like a villain.  But once you get to know him, see that he recognizes that his moral compass is broken (he has another character who acts as moral compass for him), you see that you did misunderstand him.  Hook realized that his moral compass was broken and took steps to fix it.

Regina and Rumple deny that their compass points e'en a hair off north.

[Mathius]

A&E "address" Graham's death...sort of.

[Camera One]

Yeah, sounds like they really care...

Edited April 1, 2017 by Camera One

[Curio]

I wish this was an April Fool's joke.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Mathius said:

A&E "address" Graham's death...sort of.

They really, really don't get it, do they? This is why we can't have nice things.

[Camera One]

9 minutes ago, Curio said:

I wish this was an April Fool's joke.

This time, instead of just a ridiculous Twitter or interview statement, we even got facial expressions and laughter.  

[Free]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

They really, really don't get it, do they? This is why we can't have nice things.

They had 6 seasons to do so, it's obvious they're never actually going to address 'issues'.

[Mathius]

It's hilarious that they say "some questions are best left unasked".  Is that another way of saying "your questions are pointless"?

[Curio]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

we even got facial expressions and laughter.  

"Hahahahaha! You thought we would randomly bring up some random murder one of our reformed villains committed a long time ago and have Emma learn about it and get upset? What kind of amateur writers would do that? Some questions are just better left unanswered."

[Camera One]

I was reading an interview with another showrunner, and this was his response to a question.

Quote

INTERVIEWER: It appears we might be losing one of the [characters]. [The main character] is told that one of them is dead in the season finale.
SHOWRUNNER: I think you have to think about the reliability of the narrator, the person who is telling him that.

This reminds me of Hades saying that Robin's soul was obliterated and then this year, A&E said that we might not be able to believe what Hades said.

That's just cheap.  Having a character say that is clearly trying to shock the audience and make them feel sad.  You can't just decide afterwards it was just another lie.  

Edited April 2, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

That's just cheap.  Having a character say that is clearly trying to shock the audience and make them feel sad.  You can't just decide afterwards it was just another lie.  

There's a time and a place for an unreliable narrator, and you have to do it right. It needs to be done for a story purpose. There was no reason for Hades to lie to them about Robin's soul, no point to you. You can't just decide after the fact that something was a lie when there's no impact to the story, just because you realize how unpopular it was.

[PixiePaws1]

My heart aches for the actors and the crew. When you think what this show could have been with competent writers who bother to check canon and do thorough world building and determine the rules for the plot devices so the writing and dialog and character reactions are consistent.... and ....well...what we've had.....aarrgghh!! How much trepidation did they feel, especially this season when their scripts arrived and saw the character assassination and appalling dialog.

[daxx]

I watched two tv shows yesterday, Black Sails series finale and Once. The difference is staggering. Truly night and day difference between the dialogue, world building, special effects, etc.  The writing for Once is so subpar it's even more glaring back to back against something of quality. I never once in 4 seasons thought something was ooc on BS, even when characters changed dramatically from the first season it was organic, you can see the why on screen. My son watched one ep with me (one hand on the remote just in case) and he complained that "they sure talk a lot" it really helps if you let your characters talk in a tv show, it's not a movie where you need to keep the action rolling along.

why can't Once let the characters talk? Why when they do talk it's always stupid shit?

my questions are pointless?

[tennisgurl]

Wow. "I honestly don't know if Emma know if Regina killed Graham." Oh yeah, how could you possibly know that? Your only THE WRITERS! You know everything, you idiots! You control this universe! You don't know because you don't care!

Its not every show that can have a main character get raped and murdered by another main character, who then gets redeemed, and the writers just say "meh, she hasn't thought about that in ages. Who cares?"

Edited April 3, 2017 by tennisgurl

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

Wow. "I honestly don't know if Emma know if Regina killed Graham." Oh yeah, how could you possibly know that? Your only THE WRITERS! You know everything, you idiots! You control this universe! You don't know because you don't care!

Its not every show that can have a main character get raped and murdered by another main character, who then gets redeemed, and the writers just say "meh, she hasn't thought about that in ages. Who cares?"

Charming's father, who we've only seen once, is more important than Graham. Mkay.

Edited April 3, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[sharky]

Colin did a podcast recently -- with Adam's brother no less -- where he talked about how he came on in season 2 after they had this huge break out success first season. And my heart just kind of sank. I love these characters, I've become a big fan of the actors who play them. But wow, what happened after that first season? The show was about cursed fairy tale characters in the real world. There was SO much potential! Imagine if Damon Lindeloff had actually been involved in the show after his kind of benevolent anonymous mentor ship of the first season? It could've been epic.

At the same time, I've said it before and I'll say it again. If this show gets cancelled, I need Colin to be the new Doctor Who. If he can make me believe in Captain Hook with the crap writing around him, he can definitely make me believe in aliens on a cheeseball budget.

(good to know about Black Sails @daxx It's on my binge list along with Twin Peaks. I have plenty to catch up on in June.)

[Tiger]

11 hours ago, PixiePaws1 said:

My heart aches for the actors and the crew. When you think what this show could have been with competent writers who bother to check canon and do thorough world building and determine the rules for the plot devices so the writing and dialog and character reactions are consistent.... and ....well...what we've had.....aarrgghh!! How much trepidation did they feel, especially this season when their scripts arrived and saw the character assassination and appalling dialog.

I can't even criticize the IMHO bad acting by the Aladdin and Gideon actors because the writing for their respective characters is ridiculously awful, and after last night I think whoever is directing the episodes is also giving terrible direction.  

I would love to hear what Joanna thinks about the alarming decline in quality since she first started guesting.

[sharky]

11 minutes ago, Tiger said:

I can't even criticize the IMHO bad acting by the Aladdin and Gideon actors because the writing for their respective characters is ridiculously awful

It reminds me of the news this weekend that Hayden Christensen is going to Star Wars Celebration in a few weeks. I think alot of people didn't like his portrayal of Anakin Skywalker but in retrospect realize it wasn't that he was a bad actor. It was that he was given terrible lines. It's amazing how much acting has to be done to save a bad story and how little actors can really do when the writing is just that awful.

[superloislane]

1 hour ago, sharky said:

I need Colin to be the new Doctor Who

I feel really bad to burst your bubble but...the next Doctor is most likely already cast. Sad. Maybe next time though which in Doctor Who world is only like 3 years away because they can't seem to keep an actor any longer.

[sharky]

2 minutes ago, superloislane said:

I feel really bad to burst your bubble but...the next Doctor is most likely already cast. Sad. Maybe next time though which in Doctor Who world is only like 3 years away because they can't seem to keep an actor any longer.

Oh, burst my bubble, I know you're right, but a girl can dream. Maybe the reboot means he knows he's not going to be on the show next year so there's still a chance?

Probably not though. Le sigh....

[Curio]

32 minutes ago, sharky said:

It's amazing how much acting has to be done to save a bad story and how little actors can really do when the writing is just that awful.

It's possible to make a bad movie from a good script, but it's impossible to make a good movie from a bad script.

[KAOS Agent]

Last week, one of the writers was discussing how many iterations and edits they made to the Captain Swan fight scene and referred to it as a "break up". That really wasn't what we ended up seeing on screen, so I wonder if initially it was more intense and it did end with Emma basically telling Hook to walk if he couldn't trust her and their relationship. If the early iterations were like that, then that's the premise that the writers for the last episode would have based their script on. 

As edits went on, they toned down the fight because Emma can't tell Hook to leave if he doesn't trust her and then have him actually planning to leave. That would be really bad. However, they still needed to have reason for Hook to be down at the docks and on the Nautilus, so they created a different scenario where Hook was trying to become a better man for Emma after she told him to go figure it out. Then Gideon shows up and Hook is worried because she's in danger. Makes sense.

So in comes the next episode where the writers are basing it on the original fight. Hook is freaking out because Emma will believe he's abandoned her. Why would he be thinking that when he'd originally actually planned to leave? If we apply the new story that Emma told him to leave if he couldn't trust in them and their relationship, then Hook's thoughts on abandonment make more sense. As do Emma's reactions. Both characters in each episode were reacting to two different fights - the one that actually happened and the one that didn't but the characters seem to think did.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

Last week, one of the writers was discussing how many iterations and edits they made to the Captain Swan fight scene and referred to it as a "break up". That really wasn't what we ended up seeing on screen, so I wonder if initially it was more intense and it did end with Emma basically telling Hook to walk if he couldn't trust her and their relationship.

Sometimes I wonder if they forget what they wrote, if it's the missing stuff that doesn't fit in the episode, if it's a case of multiple drafts, if they changed their minds, or what, but they have a bad habit of doing this. This is just a weird case where they seem to have forgotten in the very next episode, but it's similar to the backstory on Snow and Regina, where they seem to be trying to revise what happened that they showed up happening. The way they talk now, Snow was such a brat that Regina wasn't totally in the wrong to hate her, and Snow was at least partially responsible for everything that happened. What they showed us was that Snow was trying to help Regina when she told Cora, and she was manipulated by Cora the master manipulator. If they'd wanted it to be a gray area, they could have just had Snow tattling when she caught Regina and Daniel together. That would have given us some brattiness and some reason for Regina to resent her, though not full-on wrongness, and Regina's response still would have been misdirected and out of proportion.

Here, I guess maybe they didn't look at the final draft? I would consider giving back the ring to be a breakup of sorts, and maybe you could read between the lines of the fight and what Emma said to him and come up with the idea that he shouldn't come back until he'd learned to trust her and the relationship, but if that's what they wanted to convey, they didn't do a very good job of it. What I saw was a rather vague "we'll talk when you've figured things out" sort of thing that left it very open ended, which was why I was on Hook's side even last week because I felt she needed to be a lot more concrete about what she expected him to do.

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

Hook is freaking out because Emma will believe he's abandoned her. Why would he be thinking that when he'd originally actually planned to leave?

It's possible that he would have let her know before he left when he was planning to leave -- maybe leaving her a voice mail before he boarded the Nautilus or writing her a note and dropping it in a mailbox. But since he changed his mind, he didn't feel the need to wrap things up before he boarded the sub, and so he was caught off-guard. We can't know how he planned to handle things if he'd gone through with it because he changed his mind before he boarded. There's also the scene with Snow in which he said nothing about leaving. He'd know that Snow and Emma might talk and Snow would be able to mention him saying nothing about leaving, which would leave the implication that he was sneaking away, which would then make it more like he was abandoning her (and which seems to be what happened, since Snow didn't even try giving Emma a "don't give up" speech). He seemed to change his mind during the conversation, so he didn't say anything, since he was planning to head back home after saying goodbye to Nemo and Liam. If he had intended to go through with it, he might have told Snow something about going away for a little while with Nemo and his brother, even if he didn't get into why. If he hadn't run into Snow at all, it might have looked less like he was sneaking away by not even mentioning it with Snow. But I shouldn't be having to handwave this. We should have had a better sense of it from the show itself.

[Camera One]

Once again, this might be an example of the Writers working backwards to create a ultra-dramatic scene where all Emma's hopes were lost until she got the shell phone message.  Snow was the last one who saw Hook, but the Writer chose to have Snow ALREADY drunk when Emma got to the bar, and Emma never gets a chance to talk to her (only with Regina).  That could explain why Henry looked completely disinterested, listening to music (maybe like a regular teenager but not like Henry).  The Writers did not want Emma to have hope, so the big climax would be all the more "powerful".  They wanted the suspense of Emma telling Henry to put Hook's stuff in the shed so we will go, "oh no, will Emma get the message?" at the end.  This resulted in a lot of missed character opportunities and some out-of-character actions, but oh well, anything to ramp up the feels at the end.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

52 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Once again, this might be an example of the Writers working backwards to create a ultra-dramatic scene where all Emma's hopes were lost until she got the shell phone message.

And apparently didn't think it through in context to realize that they were juxtaposing Emma giving up on Hook with scenes of Hook trying to move heaven and earth to get back to her. I wonder, since this was written as a team, if one writer wrote the Storybrooke side and the other writer wrote the fairy tale world side, and they didn't pay too much attention to how they linked up. It might have been nice if there had been some specific thing that made Emma give up -- like Gideon framed Hook even worse than he did and she got that extra bit of information, say, glamoured himself as Hook to leave a voice mail saying bye for good. A good frame job that the audience knew about would have really ramped up the tension rather than having the audience going, "Emma, you fickle idiot."

And it would have been nice if any of this had really made sense in light of Gideon's scheme so it wasn't just a transparent attempt to ramp up the feels. If Gideon was going to spill about having kidnapped Hook the very next day, why bother setting it up to begin with? I guess it depends on what he does with the Savior tears, but her knowing Hook was in danger from the start might also have generated tears. As it is, Gideon's scheme seems to be 1) send Hook away and let Emma think he abandoned her, 2) collect tears, 3) reveal that Hook was actually sent away by him and he won't let him come back unless she cooperates. Now, maybe 3 was altered by her getting the message, but if Gideon was going to use Hook as a hostage, he'd have had to tell her at some point. And if all he needed was tears and a hostage, why send Hook away? Why not just tie him up somewhere, like in the cabin or the mansion? Put him under a sleeping spell so he can't escape, still make it look like he fled -- maybe put a veiling spell on the Jolly Roger -- so Emma's not looking for him, then when he's ready to spring the trap, aha, there's Hook as a hostage. They clearly only sent Hook away because they wanted him to have some kind of adventures rather than spending a few episodes tied to a chair. It's so obviously a contrivance by the writers that none of it makes any sense for the characters.

[Camera One]

Nothing about Gideon's plans make any sense.  Look at how they suddenly had him decide he wasn't going to kill Emma and he was going to kill the Black Fairy.  They seriously didn't feel the need to explain how Gideon changed his mind.

Gideon was written to do what he did so Emma and Hook would be separated for a few episodes for a big reunion, nothing more, nothing less.  Throw in a "wouldn't it be cool if the 'girls' had a fun bar night" and "wouldn't it be cool if Ariel, Jasmine and Hook had an adventure", and you got yourself "A Wondrous Place".

Edited April 4, 2017 by Camera One

[Curio]

32 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Throw in a "wouldn't it be cool if the 'girls' had a fun bar night" and "wouldn't it be cool if Ariel, Jasmine and Hook had an adventure", and you got yourself "A Wondrous Place".

The sad thing is those situations should have been cool...and they still ruined them somehow.