S04.E12: Heroes And Villains

[KingOfHearts]

I actually love the Queens of Darkness as a concept - the Mean Girl villain squad that's tired of the heroes winning all the time. Having Maleficent, Cruella, and Ursula on the same team is hilariously contrived.

Spoiler

But instead of playing with the fun camp, the writers gave us that sappy Lily story and made Ursula nothing but a useless pair of tentacles. At least Cruella was constantly entertaining and had one of the best centrics ever. It's a real shame we didn't get more Team Hero vs. Team Villain stuff.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

I actually love the Queens of Darkness as a concept - the Mean Girl villain squad that's tired of the heroes winning all the time. Having Maleficent, Cruella, and Ursula on the same team is hilariously contrived.

The concept was definitely fun.  I mean, the story was bad, but that scene with the three of them threatening Belle was mildly entertaining in a campy kind of way.  It was probably one of the top 3 scenes in this horrible episode.

[KAOS Agent]

Wasn't this one of the episodes where the full shooting script was sold? I think I remember that the script has Emma & Hook making out in the hallway and then Regina comes walking through all sad faced and Hook tells Emma to go (let's be real though, those two would have been in Hook's room about ten seconds after that heart return scene faded out). This was the episode the show never recovered from. Nothing after this point ever ends up being truly excellent again. Welcome to the beginning of the end and the start of the execrable 4B.

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

What was it supposed to look like when an Author writes Regina a happier story?  Does she not want to choose her life?  She's fine with the Author making some random stuff up for her?  Or was the Author supposed to ask her what she wants, and the Author writes it?  If the Author does that for her, why not do it for everyone else?  

That's one of the great unanswered questions. You really need to define the endpoint of the goal, and it's so vague. The main problem is that endings only happen in storybooks. Living people go on and on until they die, so how can you say whether or not someone is getting a happy ending? All these villains (former and otherwise) are still alive and not being punished while other villains like Ingrid had to die, so isn't being alive a win for a villain? Maleficent had years of triumph with Philip and Aurora being cursed. Is it not winning or a happy ending if they eventually broke the curse (I mean in the flashback before Regina locked her in the library basement)? Regina had 28 years of the curse working. Was that not a win? And they don't know what will happen later to them. Not getting what you want now doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting an unhappy ending. I can look at lots of things in my life that I really desperately wanted at the time, but looking back I can see how they weren't my "happy ending." How does Regina know that Robin doesn't fit into that category? (I mean, other than Pixie Dust)

I can kind of see the current villains wanting to change the rules so that they can win for good (though we still have that problem where they're actually doing pretty well). That makes for a good evil scheme. But for a former villain to want to do the same thing as the villains are doing because she's not getting exactly what she wants, right now, but it's a good plan when she does it, that makes this a mess.

And I still think that Regina not being able to be with Robin is actually a sign that she's now a hero because a hero wouldn't be allowed to profit from her past evil. Being a hero means she has to find a new happy ending that's not built on suffering she caused.

8 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

let's be real though, those two would have been in Hook's room about ten seconds after that heart return scene faded out

There are two ways things could have gone, based on Emma's fears as stated earlier in the season: She could have faced her fear and been relieved that she didn't lose Hook, in which case off to his room to celebrate him being alive. Or she could have panicked, put up her walls, and shut him out after almost losing him. The latter comes a bit closer to the way things looked in this episode, since he's the one all excited about having his heart back and surviving, and she's pushing him away and going off to check on Regina. Watching this, you expect maybe not an actual outright breakup, but maybe a slow fade where she's a lot more guarded and avoiding him because she's experienced what it was like to think she might lose him and doesn't want to go there again.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Or she could have panicked, put up her walls, and shut him out after almost losing him. The latter comes a bit closer to the way things looked in this episode, since he's the one all excited about having his heart back and surviving, and she's pushing him away and going off to check on Regina. Watching this, you expect maybe not an actual outright breakup, but maybe a slow fade where she's a lot more guarded and avoiding him because she's experienced what it was like to think she might lose him and doesn't want to go there again.

I could see that.  On top of the above, did Hook have a chance to give the full story about how he got ensnared with Rumple?  How did Emma feel about all that?  Was Emma disappointed that Hook didn't tell her what had happened, even though she understood why he couldn't?  Maybe Emma was frustrated with herself for not seeing that Hook's heart was being controlled and Rumple was playing her by offering to take away her powers in the 2-hour episode earlier in the season.  All of that could have prompted her to get away from the situation and "fix" something else - make Regina feel better.  

Edited February 23, 2019 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

On 2/22/2019 at 9:19 PM, Camera One said:

What was it supposed to look like when an Author writes Regina a happier story?  Does she not want to choose her life?  She's fine with the Author making some random stuff up for her?  Or was the Author supposed to ask her what she wants, and the Author writes it?  If the Author does that for her, why not do it for everyone else? 

I think that this idea could have worked if what the Author was going to do was rewrite Regina's horrible actions in the past. I could even see everyone else getting on board with this idea because then it's not about the mass murdering tyrant getting a free happy ending with no repercussions for past evil and villainy. It's about Regina acknowledging and undoing her past wrongs which would technically undo her villain status and restore others' happy endings and possibly open the door for Regina to find one for herself. Instead, it's about some crazy idea where Regina is not responsible for her evil, she's just written that way and now she totally deserves to get her happy ending dammit!

The return of Marian and removing her murder from Regina's list of bad deeds would have been the start. Emma or Snow or Henry could have drawn from that experience to show Regina that she was exactly the villain the book portrayed her as, but maybe the Author could change those actions. They could even later find out that it requires Regina to actually want to do this and not simply pay lip service to the idea to get what she wants. That way she'd really have to prove that she's over Snow's "betrayal" and all the other things. It could make for an interesting tale as events where Regina was simply murdering people because she was annoyed that day would be easily overturned, but events where Regina was truly angry and unforgiving couldn't be undone (this would also have the benefit of them not worrying about reversing the original curse). 

[daxx]

I hate everything about this episode. That is all I have to say about that.

[Camera One]

17 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I think that this idea could have worked if what the Author was going to do was rewrite Regina's horrible actions in the past. I could even see everyone else getting on board with this idea because then it's not about the mass murdering tyrant getting a free happy ending with no repercussions for past evil and villainy. It's about Regina acknowledging and undoing her past wrongs which would technically undo her villain status and restore others' happy endings and possibly open the door for Regina to find one for herself. 

That's an interesting idea.  Maybe she should have been looking for The Absolver instead of The Author.   It would have been more palatable, though I guess the religious undertones would be hard to avoid.  Maybe it could have been The Queen of Karma.  

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

Maybe she should have been looking for The Absolver instead of The Author.   It would have been more palatable, though I guess the religious undertones would be hard to avoid.  Maybe it could have been The Queen of Karma.  

I still say what we needed was a fairy tale version of My Name is Earl, with Regina making a list of all the wrongs she'd done and going about to either set things right or do something good to balance out the bad, and that way try to earn a happy ending (maybe realizing that doing good along the way was a happy ending in and of itself). Her just wanting to be handed a happy ending made her "redemption" a lot less convincing, especially since what triggered it was one of her acts of evil being undone.

Or maybe something like Being Erica -- a Canadian show about a young woman who realizes that her current dead-end life is the result of bad choices she made along the way. Her therapist makes her make a list of the things she wished she could do differently, and next thing she knows, she's being sent back in time to those pivotal moments, getting to relive them. But nothing she does significantly changes time. What happens is that there are subtle differences to herself along the way, since a lot of the time the thing she thought was a bad decision was actually the right one, and realizing that changes the way she sees herself. Except it would be hard to do the subtle changes rather than completely changing the world when the bad choices are things like "slaughtered a whole village" or "murdered my father to cast a civilization-destroying curse" rather than "maybe I should have joined that literary secret society in college" or "I should have joined my friends for that summer abroad." Though leave it to this show to come up with a way to show that slaughtering a village was actually the right decision at the time.

Spoiler

They did seem to show that casting the curse made things work out better for everyone.

[tennisgurl]

Dont leave us Frozen! You were one of the only bright spots of the season! While I wish we had more time to deal with the fall out from Ingrid, especially with Emma having these memories now of being super close with her as a kid, I did like the little bit of follow up we got. Really, I would have loved to watch Ana, Elsa, and Kristoff (with assistance from Sven!) take back their throne, instead of watching Rumple cackle evilly or Regina cry for a few extra scenes. 

"I thought I smelled a combination of gin and desperation." I actually do like the start of the Queens of Darkness here, with the evil mean girls kind of vibe, its campy and funny, and wanting to rewrite stories so that they win is a solid evil scheme. It really is hilarious how out of place Cruella looks in her big fur coat in the EF. 

So when Henry was looking through the book at all the "bad things that happened to his mom", did he just skip all the pages where his mom was the one doing terrible things to people? I guess he saw all those dead villagers or the man who she raped and murdered (who Henry even knew) and said "yeah, but what about how SHE felt? They all had it coming for not telling her how wonderful she is!" or just conveniently ignored them. I mean, not to be an asshole, but in the world of fictional characters who had bad things happen to them, Regina isnt even in the top 100. So you see her dead boyfriend, her mean mom, and her boyfriends wife coming back, and you get "Oh she has suffered so much and she has never done anything to deserve it!" I just roll my eyes and wonder why this show seems to act like Regina has suffered just so terribly, when almost everyone on this show has suffered even more, often at her own hands! Its like a teenager on Tumblr wrong this about their "unproblematic fav" or something. Yeah Henry is a kid, but how stupid is he? This whole plot is so nonsensical, I cant even wrap my mind around it. 

What does a happy ending even mean anyway? Technically, stories dont end until the person dies, and since we know this world has an afterlife, I dont even know what that would mean.

So Emma gets a weird feeling that something is up with Hook, and it goes nowhere! You should get that super power checked again, Emma, its on the fritz again! And of course she gets to kiss her boyfriend, who was just controlled and enslaved by his worst enemy for days, before she goes off to be besties with Regina, who, as we all know, has suffered more than anyone, including her boyfriend. But, Regina had to break up with her boyfriend of a few weeks! Oh the horror!

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Dont leave us Frozen! You were one of the only bright spots of the season! While I wish we had more time to deal with the fall out from Ingrid, especially with Emma having these memories now of being super close with her as a kid, I did like the little bit of follow up we got. Really, I would have loved to watch Ana, Elsa, and Kristoff (with assistance from Sven!) take back their throne, instead of watching Rumple cackle evilly or Regina cry for a few extra scenes. 

"I thought I smelled a combination of gin and desperation." I actually do like the start of the Queens of Darkness here, with the evil mean girls kind of vibe, its campy and funny, and wanting to rewrite stories so that they win is a solid evil scheme. It really is hilarious how out of place Cruella looks in her big fur coat in the EF. 

So when Henry was looking through the book at all the "bad things that happened to his mom", did he just skip all the pages where his mom was the one doing terrible things to people? I guess he saw all those dead villagers or the man who she raped and murdered (who Henry even knew) and said "yeah, but what about how SHE felt? They all had it coming for not telling her how wonderful she is!" or just conveniently ignored them. I mean, not to be an asshole, but in the world of fictional characters who had bad things happen to them, Regina isnt even in the top 100. So you see her dead boyfriend, her mean mom, and her boyfriends wife coming back, and you get "Oh she has suffered so much and she has never done anything to deserve it!" I just roll my eyes and wonder why this show seems to act like Regina has suffered just so terribly, when almost everyone on this show has suffered even more, often at her own hands! Its like a teenager on Tumblr wrong this about their "unproblematic fav" or something. Yeah Henry is a kid, but how stupid is he? This whole plot is so nonsensical, I cant even wrap my mind around it. 

I hate that part and what's worse is season one and first part of season two Henry knew all that. That's why he went to Emma in the first place. He realized his mom had done all those things and cursed the town. After Graham was killed Henry knew Regina had killed him. That's why he wanted to stop Operation Cobra because Regina killed Graham when he figured out who he was and was scared that she would kill Emma. He saw her almost kill David in the first episode of the second season and doesn't want to see her anymore. In the second episode he only goes with Regina because she's throwing fireballs around and he's doesn't want anyone to get killed. Then suddenly they act like all that never happened and Henry totally believes Regina got raw deal.