S04.E21: Mother

[Shanna Marie]

Should Zelena have custody of that child? Nope. Don't give unrepentant rapists custody of children! That's a good ground rule to follow. This show never has, though, so it'd be interesting to see if they start with Zelena.

Well, considering the unrepentant rapist and mass murderer is considered to be an awesome mother and just doesn't want her son to hear about her crimes ...

 

I wonder how Rumple's charcoal heart scheme fits with the previous cleave (ugh) from the dagger scheme. It seemed like he was trying to make himself not be the Dark One while still having power by absorbing all the power from the hat. But it's being the Dark One that's keeping him alive in spite of his failing heart. So, was the magic going to also cure his heart? Or, more likely, did they pull that story out of thin air after the previous arc?

[legaleagle53]

I wonder how Rumple's charcoal heart scheme fits with the previous cleave (ugh) from the dagger scheme. It seemed like he was trying to make himself not be the Dark One while still having power by absorbing all the power from the hat. But it's being the Dark One that's keeping him alive in spite of his failing heart. So, was the magic going to also cure his heart? Or, more likely, did they pull that story out of thin air after the previous arc?

 

It's This Show, These Writers.  What do you think?

[AudienceofOne]

This was a weird episode for a weird season. It started off like a really bad soap opera and I was rolling my eyes like crazy but then it seemed to hit its stride and I enjoyed it more than any other episode this season. What was particularly weird, though, was that it seemed the writers backflipped on a lot of this season's themes. I'm not complaining - the themes sucked. But it was a such a strange narrative choice to go:

 

"Emma's Turning Evil" (No she isn't)
"Lily Will Destroy Everything" (No she won't)
"Snow and Charming are Unforgivable" (No they're not)
"The Act of Killing in Any Circumstances is Villianous" (No it's not)
"Only Fate Has Destroyed Regina's Happy Endings" (No, it was mostly Regina)

 

The themes of turning away from revenge and making your own happy ending is the kind of theme I originally tuned in for and I loved they had Maleficent realise it too. But still... weird.

[darkestboy]

Good episode. Liked the Regina and Cora flashbacks, even if the former went to extreme lengths to get one over on her mother. Good use for Nottingham as well.

Zelena needling about Regina being like their mother was always going to spare her. I have a feeling where Zelena's storyline is going to go as well.

At least Regina figured out that Robin isn't her happiness and that Lily's blood can be used by the Author. That ending was great though.

Nice scenes with Lily and Maleficent in this episode as well. Great that Emma's forgiven her parents too, 8/10

[KAOS Agent]

Theme word update for the week: The heroes took it again with two mentions to the villains one. The heroes currently lead the villains 34-26 for the half season. Note: I did not include the "Heroes & Villains" book title in the count.

 

As for happy endings, it made a major return in this episode with a total of eight uses. That officially put it over the total usage for Seasons 1-3. It would take a huge push in the finale, but we're only 18 uses away from 4B using it more than the entire run of the show.

[Shanna Marie]

One thing I've been trying to figure out: How Maleficent's arc actually works. I love that her response to Lily was "why waste time on revenge when we can move forward?" but I'm not sure I see how she got there, and mostly that's because she's been so undeveloped.

 

Apparently, at some time in the past Mal had issues with Briar Rose (and maybe Stefan, or maybe she's just pissed at him for waking Briar Rose up). We don't know what those issues were, but as a result of her sleeping curse breaking, she went into a deep funk that left her in a drugged stupor long enough for their daughter to grow up and be getting ready to get married. Then young Regina helped her get her evil mojo back, and so she cursed Aurora and Philip. I'm not sure exactly how it all fits in the timeline, but I suspect the next time we see her is when Rumple sends Cruella and Ursula to her place, and after their Chernabog adventure the QOD form. Then they kidnap Belle and get the gauntlet from Rumple for reasons. Probably not too long after this, Charming hides the True Love potion in her. Somewhere along the way, she trades the sleeping curse to Regina for the Dark Curse. Then she's pretty mellow and the voice of reason when Regina demands the Dark Curse back, warning her that it will create a hole in her heart that can never be filled (until it can). I guess after that is when she and her buddies find Snow and Charming on their way back from their honeymoon and all the potential darkness baby nonsense happens, and Snow and Charming take the egg, so she loses her baby. Somehow, Regina traps her in dragon form and imprisons her under the library during the curse, where she's "killed" (sort of, a couple of times). When she's revived, she wants to make Snow and David suffer and talks like she wants revenge, but then when she finds her daughter again, she's the voice of reason and just wants to move forward. She has almost as many ups and downs as Regina, but we don't know the various steps along the way to even try to make any sense of it. They got sidetracked by the eggbaby stuff and forgot to develop her actual fairytale story to explain where she was coming from. Not that I want some kind of "those awful heroes made me evil" backstory, but if we don't know why she was mad at Briar Rose, we don't know whether we should be sympathetic to her. We don't know if turning into a dragon was a thing that was done to her or a thing she was born with or did to herself. We don't know why she became mellower and seemed to have retired from evil before the curse -- another deep funk like before?

[Camera One]

I think the actress who played Maleficent and the adult Lily did a great job in their scene at the end, and the Maleficent actress herself did a excellent job of making her seem sympathetic once she gave up her vendetta, but even with the great acting, I could not buy it for the reasons you gave above.  There was zero build-up to any of her flip-flops.  I think they were a little manipulative with our emotions since they had the gentle heartwarming music playing when Adult Lily was getting out of the car and reunited with Maleficent.  That made it clear how they want us to feel about this.  Last episode, there was a conversation where Maleficent said Snowing will need forgiveness from Lily but this episode they didn't write a scene for that.  Though they did ensure two separate people vocalized that Snow and Charming were being selfish and needs to make up for what they have done.  And yet they started the episode with Regina killing some random peasant on their wedding day.  That act alone should require four full seasons of repentance, or is that a lesser crime because a baby wasn't involved and only truly depraved people would mess with innocent babies.

 

On top of that, resurrecting Maleficent had ZERO relevance to Rumple's plans.  In fact, Rumple telling her about the baby caused her to join the other team.  

Edited May 9, 2015 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

 

On top of that, resurrecting Maleficent had ZERO relevance to Rumple's plans.  In fact, Rumple telling her about the baby caused her to join the other team.

Unless Rumple somehow knew about Lily and decided to use her as a backup in case Emma going dark didn't work?

[Camera One]

That's what I thought too, but if he had known about the egg napping darkness switch, then he would have realized the ink could be made from Lily's blood.  Unless he did know, but he was conveniently so weakened he couldn't walk.  They could have written it to make this work a little better (it would still suck, though), but for some reason, they just didn't.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

But Rumple took a jab at Maleficent by telling her that maybe Lily is the person who will nudge Emma towards the dark side which probably meant that he knew about the whole darkness thing, but Regina is the one who zeroed in on the whole anti-Savior and I'm thinking she got the idea when Lily mentioned that to Emma in 4x19, but Rumple was clueless about what to do since Emma wasn't going to turn dark after all and the Author was disappointed he wouldn't get to screw people over again.

 

Or it was just one of those let's make a character look stupid so that Regina can have another moment in the sun.

[Camera One]

I just have to laugh that we're trying to make sense of basic elements of the plot.  I guess this show has become our brain teaser of the week.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

Maleficent has spent some time looking for her daughter, and finds her now an adult that has many of the traits that Maleficent herself has.  It's almost as if Maleficent falls in love at first sight--and accepts her daughter as she is, no changes needed, dragon breath and all.

That part did work for me. If you've been separated from someone all that time, why would you want to waste the time you could be together on getting vengeance?

 

It was just all the flip-flopping leading up to that point that muddies the waters. If I have the timeline correct, Mal had apparently "retired" from evil to hang with her unicorn when Regina got the curse from her. But then after that she was burning guards alive just to avoid inconvenience and laying waste to a village to create a nest for her egg, so it wasn't as though she went totally good. She really should have had her own arc instead of watering things down with other villains plus Rumple's latest scheme. Her ups and downs alone would have provided half a season's worth of flashback material, and since it's already established that she had a past with many of our main characters, there would have been ways to use the regular cast even in the flashbacks -- not just how her friendship with Regina started, but how that developed and then what led to Mal being trapped as a dragon during the curse; however it was that Hook knew her enough to recognize her ghost zombie form; Will and the mirror he stole, which also involved Robin. And that's not even counting the eggbaby retcon.

[kingshearte]

All of the above few posts are so true. There is absolutely no cohesiveness or coherence to Mal's story, and I don't even know what I'm supposed to get out of it.

[Donny Ketchum]

The only problem I had was when she basically said that she was wrong about the "love is weakness" idea unless she was lying her face off. Which she could have been.

She obviously was.  She used that same line in season two when she nearly ripped out Emma's heart.  So I think she really felt that way.

 

I see the show forgot one important beat in the plot.  When I saw both Henry and Cora in the same episode, I figured the flashback would end with some explanation of how Cora got him to Wonderland in the first place.  I was surprised when she seemed to have left without taking him.

[Camera One]

I see the show forgot one important beat in the plot.  When I saw both Henry and Cora in the same episode, I figured the flashback would end with some explanation of how Cora got him to Wonderland in the first place.  I was surprised when she seemed to have left without taking him.

 

Yeah, one simple scene, and that loose end would have been explained.  Though why she would want to take Henry Sr. who knows.  

 

I wish they said Cora used Will and Anastasia's Mirror to get back to the Enchanted Forest, since I was wondering why Cora never used it once she learned about it.  The Rabbit is just too convenient, and it makes you wonder why she didn't come back more often.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Regina's relationship with Cora got really retconned. I always imagined they played a game of chess between their two realms, never actually facing one another. But to have them meet and have Cora seek amends, a lot of weight is taken from their reunion in S2. The way Regina spoke about her in 2A, she seemed to be terrified at the thought of seeing her in the flesh. But in the 4x20 flashbacks, she really doesn't seem to give a flip. She just waves her hand and says, "Go back to Wonderland, mother."

[Camera One]

And apparently, travelling between the realms was as easy as catching the morning train, so such a foolproof way to get rid of her mother by sending her to Wonderland...

[KingOfHearts]

 

And apparently, travelling between the realms was as easy as catching the morning train, so such a foolproof way to get rid of her mother by sending her to Wonderland...

Kinda retcons Jefferson too, doesn't? Guess he didn't need to work like mad (no pun intended) to create a portal if someone could just pull the White Rabbit by the ears. But I suppose she had to kidnap Henry Sr. somehow. Which, this episode should have shown to give us some continuity besides the oh-so-shocking-but-not-really barrenness. 

Edited February 13, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Cora could also have used Anastasia and Will's magic mirror.  Which Will stole from Maleficent who no longer cares because she had lost all anger towards everyone except those babynappers.

[Shanna Marie]

Ah, the episode in which Regina has the startling epiphany that the audience has been shouting at the TV since she first came up with the idea for her happy ending quest in the previous arc. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't already got Robin back when she had her big revelation or if someone had expressed a dissenting opinion. But she came to the obvious conclusion that negated everything they'd been doing for months and that they made great sacrifices for, and we didn't get to see anyone react to the grand epiphany.

But there are some nice moments in this one. Mal and Lily's meeting was quite touching, especially the expression on Mal's face as she waited for Lily to get out of the car. They did some nice casting there as the two actresses had very similar facial structure.

I loved Hook taunting Rumple in the diner, knowing that if he goaded Rumple into doing something awful, it would only darken his heart more.

I liked Hook's therapy session with Emma. He sort of became ship's counselor somewhere along the way. But it might have been nice to see him talking to the Charmings so that he knew what was up with them.

Spoiler

In season 7 when Regina mentioned how Archie was doing more weddings and his therapy practice had dried up, my headcanon was that really what had happened was people were going to Hook as an informal counselor. After all, it's silly to think that no one had any personal problems or issues just because Emma won a fight by not fighting. Anyway, Hook in that role as voice of reason started in this arc.

Robin is a real piece of work.

[Camera One]

Do you think Cora truly wanted Regina to be happy?  Or did she just want Regina to have an heir?  At this point, what was Cora's goal anyway?  We already saw her inexplicably not pursue power herself, but to have Regina pursue power.  Later on, we found out she wanted supreme magical power and immortality, to become The Dark One.  Had she already coveted that role by the flashbacks in this episode?  

I don't know which episode makes me cry more - "Mother" or "Sisters".  Though that discussion would be better had in the All-Seasons thread.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

Zelena: "If you kill me, Robin will always know that you killed the mother of his child!"

Me: "Well, Regina already did that in one time line already and he didnt really give a crap, so..."

The flashbacks in this episode are a prime Regina flashback, the weirdly specific "lets show Regina being a horrible monster but we should just feel sorry for her oh how sad her life is" kind of flashback they would give to Regina and to other villains. So we get yet another freaking episode about how Regina lost of boyfriend and if she would just let herself be happy the way she deserves to be blah blah blah. I mean, I guess that bride who lost her husband on their wedding day, or the innocent groom she murdered because she was in a bad mood didnt deserve happy endings because...we dont know their names and they arent Regina, so there! Its just so bizarre to me, and they do this so often. Feel bad for Regina as she slaughters a village! Feel bad for Regina as she kills an innocent person! It just reminds us that Regina is a sadistic psychopath who likes to kill and torment random people, not that she deserves happiness or whatever the fuck. 

And The Author being like "your the one who has been screwed over the most" is just laughable. I can name like eleven characters in this show off the top of my head who were screwed over my then Regina, often BY Regina herself! And if we`re looking at the entirety of fiction...well that just cute. Yeah, maybe as compared to, say, the Care Bears, but in all fiction ever? Yeah, whatever Regina. Oh, a mean parent and a dead significant other? I mean, no one in the entire fucking universe has had those things happen to them except for literally a billion people!!!! I just freaking cant with this. So Regina gets the message through her thick thick skull that she should have figured out after five seconds in pre season one. Goodie. 

Nothing like a bad GCI dragon attack to bring the family together I guess. 

Robin really seems like he is just happy to have an excuse to be with Regina, and couldn't care less that Marion is dead. Real classy guy, no wonder he and Regina are soulmates. 

[KingOfHearts]

40 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Zelena: "If you kill me, Robin will always know that you killed the mother of his child!"

Me: "Well, Regina already did that in one time line already and he didnt really give a crap, so..."

Now that you point it out, that line really makes no sense.

41 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Robin really seems like he is just happy to have an excuse to be with Regina, and couldn't care less that Marion is dead. Real classy guy, no wonder he and Regina are soulmates. 

They kind of deserve each other.

[Shanna Marie]

While I like the conversation between Emma and Hook, I do find it interesting that he compares the Charmings to himself, as people who turned their lives around, as though they lived lives of evil before turning themselves around, rather than people who had been good, made one mistake, then got back on track.

On retcon patrol

Spoiler

The way Hook talks about being a good man who went bad and then returned to being good doesn't really fit with what they showed in season five with the flashback to his pre-navy days and the talk about him always struggling with darkness. I don't necessarily think he was bad or dark during that time, even if he was a drunk and a screw-up, but it seems like he does, and they seem to be showing that his time in the navy was a brief aberration in an otherwise messed-up life. He turned himself around when he got into the navy, then went back to his old ways after Liam died, and knowing him (and the way he's subsequently talked about himself), he still considered himself to be kind of bad even then, just managing for a while to keep the darkness at bay before failing. The way he talks in this episode, it sounds more like Lt. Jones was the norm, and then he went bad.