S03.E16: It's Not Easy Being Green

[Shanna Marie]

I don't think Zelena has read the fine print, either. She never understood why Rumple was casting the curse, and she's impatient, so I could see her going through the steps and ingredients without thinking it through, just going "yeah, I've got this." Her magic seems to be instinctual, so she just does it without understanding all the elements and steps. I could see her ticking "true love baby" off the list because it was part of the curse without realizing that could be her undoing.

[Zuleikha]

I can't decide what I think about Zelena. I felt bad for her in this episode because it is hard to have no one in your corner. At the same time, she is unhinged. I just keep thinking that it's a shame she doesn't realize that everything she wants is actually horrible. Bad as her father was, she was almost certainly better growing up with him and a loving mother than abusive, cruel Cora, and Rumple is worse. If Zelena had been willing to talk to Regina, maybe things could have gone better for both of them. 

 

I thought Rumplestiltskin's rejection of her made sense despite her power. Rumple doesn't care about mentoring or having powerful allies. All he cares about is having a tool to manipulate for the curse. Choosing Regina meant that Rumple actively interfered in Regina's life to make her as desperate, unhappy, and evil as possible. Zelena was already unhappy but what she wanted was acceptance. It wasn't just that what she loved most at that time was Rumple--that's something that could have changed in the future--it's that the more Rumple accepted her, the more stable and happier Zelena would become (and thus, the less likely to cast the curse).

 

This episode did remind me that as much as the show seems to want me to see Rumple as an ambiguous figure, he's just a horrible, horrible person. 

 

I'm also caving on Robin/Regina. I hate the way the relationship was set up, and it makes zero sense for a character like Robin Hood to pursue a character like Regina without more of an adventure to bind them together but dang if their scenes together haven't been hot. If there must be a forced romance storyline, at least the actors can bring the chemistry. 

[KAOS Agent]

 

Zelena was already unhappy but what she wanted was acceptance. It wasn't just that what she loved most at that time was Rumple--that's something that could have changed in the future--it's that the more Rumple accepted her, the more stable and happier Zelena would become (and thus, the less likely to cast the curse).

 

No, Zelena was mentally ill. She was and never would be stable because she was sick. All of the villains on this show have been nutjobs, but I always felt that there was some sanity behind them. Zelena wasn't all there and needed psychiatric help. It's hard to remember what things happened in which episodes, so I won't go into specifics, but the more details and backstory we were given about Zelena, the more uncomfortable I became with the way she was portrayed. It was upsetting. I was never rooting for her defeat, I just wanted her to get the help she needed.

[Zuleikha]

No, Zelena was mentally ill. She was and never would be stable because she was sick.

 

Perhaps Rumple's acceptance wouldn't have made Zelena healthy, but it does seem like it would have made her happy. Which still would have made her less likely to cast the Storybooke curse. 

 

In any event, my point was that Zelena was seeing Rumple's approval as some kind of referendum on her worthiness when really all it had to do was with his selfish need for a tool. Regina would have been better served by Rumple leaving her alone. With Zelena it's less clear to me and it sounds like there's more to be revealed, but she certainly would have benefited from a fuller understanding of Rumple's agenda.

Edited March 2, 2015 by Zuleikha

[Mari]

Perhaps Rumple's acceptance wouldn't have made Zelena ill, but it does seem like it would have made her happy. Which still would have made her less likely to cast the Storybooke curse. 

But for how long?  As unstable as she was, even if Rumple had picked her and mentored her, how long would it have been before some minor "slight" would start the cycle again?  Maybe I've watched too much Criminal Minds, but people who are obsessed and unstable have a completely unrealistic set of expectations and demands set up in their heads--and any deviation from that can be devastating.

 

Rumple feeling off one night and not wanting a meat pie or thinking she looked better in orange could've been enough.

Edited March 2, 2015 by Mari

[KingOfHearts]

 

Perhaps Rumple's acceptance wouldn't have made Zelena healthy, but it does seem like it would have made her happy.

We had a glimpse of this sort of scenario in Kansas. It transpired just as Mari explained it - one little thing caused Zelena to go haywire once again.

 

I agree Zelena was mentally ill right off the bat, even before she met Rumple. She always seemed more deranged and not thinking clearly than "evil". Who turns people into flying monkeys from what they saw on a circus poster, anyway? She was just so insecure and ridiculously paranoid that I can't buy she was simply a good person who made wrong choices.

Edited March 2, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Perhaps Rumple's acceptance wouldn't have made Zelena healthy, but it does seem like it would have made her happy. Which still would have made her less likely to cast the Storybooke curse.

The real issue about the curse casting was that it required the caster to kill the thing she loves most, which in Zelena's case seemed to be Rumple. He wasn't worried about her becoming too emotionally healthy to cast the curse. He couldn't have her cast the curse because that would defeat the purpose of even doing it if he was dead. He seemed perfectly willing to let her keep living in his castle and studying under him, but he still wanted to focus on Regina as the curse caster. That was the dealbreaker for Zelena. Even if she had the things she wanted, she couldn't deal with him still also training Regina. It didn't seem to sink in that no one would want to be the one to cast the curse, that she was the one actually getting the better deal in all this -- she got the magical training without the sacrifice. She had the most poisonous kind of jealousy, where not only does she want something, but she doesn't want anyone else to have it.

[KAOS Agent]

The highlight of this episode is Zelena kicking Regina's ass. I'd take more scenes of Regina flying through the clock tower.

[daxx]

The funeral is really lovely. The camerawork and visual direction is amazing on this show, I forget that sometimes when I’m railing about the writing.

Zelena tormenting Rumple during the funeral is pretty bad even for a villain.

Shouldn’t magic be accepted in Oz, I mean it’s Oz!

Colin doesn’t like sharp things near his face, 😂 

Leather conditioner and eyeliner, 😂 look at that Hook, her heart is melting just a tiny bit.

Don’t even bother with her Tinkerbell.

Bex really is gorgeous and towers over Regina.

oh, the sister drama, which is no drama at all since we know this already.

The Emerald city cgi looks decent compared to some. I like the silver slippers.

“I always thought it was about me.”  This is the most Regina line in the entire series.

Once again Rumple shows himself to be an excellent teacher. Tells Zelena to use her anger, which works for her, worked for Regina also. Back in season two told Emma to think of who she is protecting, which worked for Emma.

Oh no Rumple, you are Zelena’s happy thought. 

The sextant is exactly like a gps, not, poor Hook. Love this conversation. He looks good for freezing at night near the shore in January. 😂 

“You’re turning green dearie, envy will do that to you.” 😮

What was the deal with Zelena’s bright green gloves and Regina’s bright red? They look so odd.

“You’re insane.” “Besides the point. “

”You’ll have to kill me.” “Well if I must.”  Bex and Robert play well off each other.

Why does she keep burying her heart in the woods, isn’t there a better way to hide and protect it?

gag, “can’t steal something that’s been given to you.”

“You cant just take him back to New York and pretend none of this was real.” Oh, we’ll be hearing this a lot. Hook is right so of course Emma shuts him out and runs.

Walsh again, weird they added him back as the wizard but never even used it for anything and Emma never found out. Kinda pointless.

[Camera One]

It's interesting to read the old posts, since we were transitioning from TWOP at this point in the series, so we're finally getting to stuff we wrote when the show was airing for the first time.  

I liked the beginning of the scene where Zelena went to see Oz, and it was sort of like the books.  But that video replay of Cora giving Zelena up was too much.  So magic could basically pull up "video footage" of anything that had happened before?  Why was there a need to figure anything out?  Why not just do a replay?  How did the Wizard magically put the shoes on Zelena?  

Rumple taught Zelena all his tricks?  Was he really that stupid?  

[KingOfHearts]

15 hours ago, daxx said:

“I always thought it was about me.”  This is the most Regina line in the entire series.

Doesn't she say "It's always about me" in some episode?

[KingOfHearts]

15 hours ago, daxx said:

Shouldn’t magic be accepted in Oz, I mean it’s Oz!

It would've been interesting if Oz had this prejudice against "wicked" magic, while folks such as Glinda had "good" magic. But Zelena should've been outcast because she was green or used dark magic, not because she had magic at all. So Zelena had an abusive adoptive father... so? Did everyone else in Oz mistreat her? Was her father the only who hated magic, and if so, why? Zelena's backstory doesn't make all that much sense. Being super jealous of Regina's existence all of a sudden just because of what the Wizard said feels very contrived. Most people would be envious of Regina's lifestyle, so why is Zelena the only one who turns green over it? I like the "green with envy" idea, but Zelena never seems envious of anyone or anything else. Just Regina. 

[Camera One]

That's exactly my problem with the whole backstory.  Zelena changed the moment she found out about Regina not being able to do magic.  It was essentially another 180 flip in personality.

They might as well have made Zelena become green because she was mean to Kermit the Frog.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

16 hours ago, daxx said:

Shouldn’t magic be accepted in Oz, I mean it’s Oz!

This goes back to the utter lack of worldbuilding. They never could figure out how magic fit into the worlds. Sometimes, people are all like "eh, whatever." Sometimes it's like "OMG! Magic! I've never heard of it!" Sometimes it's "Magic is evil and unnatural!" but it's so inconsistent. Here, the Wizard is apparently in charge of Oz, and he doesn't seem to be a tyrant (even if he is a fraud), so magic seems to be known and accepted, so why does Zelena's adopted father hate magic so much?

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

Being super jealous of Regina's existence all of a sudden just because of what the Wizard said feels very contrived. Most people would be envious of Regina's lifestyle, so why is Zelena the only one who turns green over it? I like the "green with envy" idea, but Zelena never seems envious of anyone or anything else. Just Regina. 

The really crazy thing is that the thing that sends Zelena over the top and starts her turning green isn't Regina's lifestyle. By that time, Zelena was living in Rumple's castle, so she had a similar lifestyle, and probably with fewer restraints while not having to live with people she hated that she had to pretend she liked. Zelena had one-on-one magical lessons from Rumple. What flipped her out was the fact that Regina still also had these things and that she wasn't the one chosen to do the spell that would require her to give up the thing she loved most. Rumple probably could have explained it better and with less sadistic cackling, but he did explain the cost and that being chosen for the curse wasn't a good thing, but that was still what started her turning green.

If it's something in the bloodline that gives her magic, then you'd think it would happen to Regina, too. Regina should have turned all kinds of colors, given the way she felt about Snow. She never outright said she was envious of Snow, but I think that's a lot of what it came down to, especially when she was upset that people liked Snow more than they liked her.

16 hours ago, daxx said:

What was the deal with Zelena’s bright green gloves and Regina’s bright red? They look so odd.

I must confess that I liked Regina's bright red gloves enough that I got a pair. I'd just bought a new winter coat that was black, while my old one had been bright blue. All my accessories were black, so I was thinking of adding some pops of color, and when I saw Regina's outfit in this episode, I got some red leather gloves and I knit a bright blue scarf out of that fun fur yarn.

I thought the funeral scene was well done, if a bit overwrought considering how little most of these people knew Neal. It was a nice touch for Hook to have been essentially treated like the chief mourner, going first with the dirt on the grave, since of those people he probably knew Neal the best. And it was a nice touch for the ex-Lost Boys to be there (I wonder what happened to them during the curse reverse), since they also knew Neal.

I really liked the dynamic here between Hook and Henry.

Spoiler

There was so much potential to that relationship hinted at during this arc, and then suddenly Henry was anti-Hook, except when he wasn't. It got to be like the Captain Charming stuff, where there would be the one big episode in which abruptly David would hate Hook but change his mind about him. I would have liked to have seen more like in this episode, where Hook was teaching Henry things from his world and Henry was eager to learn.

[tennisgurl]

Zelenas backstory...well it aint exactly Wicked. 

Her backstory really is rather contrived, so much of it seeming to exist just to get Zelena to the point where she wants to get to Storeybrooke and start the plot, preferably with Regina, for once, not actually doing anything to deserve getting revenged on. There are some aspects of the backstory I like. I like Walsh actually being the Wizard of Oz, although I wish they had used him more. I like the green with envy as a metaphor for one of her big issues as a character, although I do wish we had gotten more on how and why this is happening (is this just something that happens to magic users when they get jealous? Are there tons of green witches and wizards running around?), but it works alright. However, her jealousy about Regina is pretty ridiculous, as the show has bleated on for three seasons now about how much it sucks to be Regina, and how Cora was the Worst Mom Ever, so her jealousy just seems really stupid and petty. I guess Regina and Zelena really ARE sisters! They both launch violent renege campaigns over stupid petty accidental slights!

Also, what is it with this show doing "people hate and fear magic users" plots out of nowhere every once in awhile? Its so random, and poorly thought out. Its pretty consistent with A&Es approach to tropes, with them seeing other, better stories doing stuff (like, for example, prejudiced against magical creatures or people with powers), and they try to do it too...just without any of the world building or plot threading that those stories used to make those tropes work. I mean, why does Zelenas adopted dad hate magic so much? The guy lives in freaking OZ, magic is everywhere! They live within walking distance of the WIZARD of Oz! Its so poorly explained and stupid, and seemingly only exists to push Zelena towards the Wizard, and her road to villainy. I mean, is magic generally feared by the public? What about Glinda and the good witches? Is her dad just the local bigot, who also goes on tirades about munchkin immigrants taking all the jobs when he gets a few drinks in him? 

The funeral is really well shot and and acted, even though the constant drama about his death is super overwrought. Most of these people dont even know Neal, or have no memories of him, and while I can see everyone feeling bad about his death, or at least feeling bad for Emma and Henry, all of the sadness is seriously melodramatic. I do really like the plot with Henry and Hook though, its really well done, and I really can feel the care that Hook had for Neal, and his sadness over what all happened with him,

[KingOfHearts]

I do wonder how Regina reacted to Neal's death. That had to be a little awkward, considering she didn't know him that well and he's Henry's dad. It had to be weird going to the funeral. She's just kind of there because everyone else is. Why did she even decide to go? It's like there's this "group mentality" where everyone shows up to random plot things only because they're main characters. There's not much of a reason for her to be there. Did the other characters think it was rude of her to skip out? She never had an ounce of respect for Neal. The only time she ever acknowledged his existence is when she referred to him as "this person". Did she just go for Henry's sake? She's there looking sad and it's treated like a big deal, but Neal's death is actually quite inconsequential to most of the people there. 

Of course, Regina immediately forgets all of it when Zelena walks into Granny's. (But then again, everybody but Emma did. It's pretty convenient Henry wasn't there.) Zelena's monologue was a way for the writers to quickly move to the next shiny thing. 

Edited December 28, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

I always thought most everybody at the funeral was there for Emma and Henry (mostly Emma since Henry didn't remember his father). Hook, Belle, Tink and the Lost Boys would be the only people who were there for Neal himself.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

Hook, Belle, Tink and the Lost Boys would be the only people who were there for Neal himself.

Belle was probably just there on behalf of Rumple. At this time, she doesn't remember having spent time with him in the Enchanted Forest. Did she even speak to him otherwise? Without memories of the Missing Year, she hardly knew him, so she was probably sad for Rumple's sake but not exactly mourning on her own.

[Jynnan tonnix]

On 4/7/2014 at 4:18 AM, lucindabelle said:

But Zelena in Czech etc has a short e. zehlena. Not zeLIna. Nice catch though.

I agree the motivations are not convincing, though I prefer the idea of romantic rivalry to sibling rivalry.

This show really has it in for adopted parents, doesn't it. First there's young Henry hating the only mother he's ever known (until the last few seasons) because he's convinced she's the evil queen (I really loved it when there was the possibility he was just plain wrong about her).

Now, one out rust from drunk daddy and her whole upbringing by Peasant Mommy doesn't count.

Anyone else feel that what Zelena saw in the past isn't the whole truth? I think there's going to be more to the abandonment story.

And in Polish (which I speak), it's zielenia - one of the forms, meaning more "greenery" than "green", per se. Pronounced, roughly, zhe-LEN-ya. I didn't make the connection either.

 

[CCTC]

 

 

I like the actress,

Spoiler

I thought she did a good job when she was not full villain later in the series,

, but her Wicked Witch of the West is not really compelling enough to carry off a 7 or 8 episode arc.  I blame that more on the writing not really fleshing out the character than the actress.  Her reason for turning pure evil is not really that much better than Regina's, and at least with Regina they showed enough of her backstory where you see her go more evil over time.  Her seeds of revenge against Snow were planted when Daniel died, but it kind of simmered and grew over time as she gradually slipped into darkness.  Zelina just comes off as unhinged right off the bat.  If she was so upset about getting robbed of having a family (although it seems like her Mom might have loved her), how about introducing yourself to your sister and try to form a normal relationship.  You still had a chance for a family at that point.

I am too lazy to find and pull up the previous episode, so will tag this onto the funeral observations.  The Neal's dead moments might have had more poignancy if had had not been missing and interacting with no one in the previous episodes (and really he was separated from the group for much of Neverland).   Same for the reason for his less than intelligent action that led to his death.  You never really see this strong bond with his son that would make him do something so out of character as be dumb enough to not know that there would be a terrible price for bringing back Rumple, esp since he was actually told there would be a terrible price.  I also never really bought his grief for Rumple was so deep that he would  do something so rash to bring him back.  When Rumple died, I felt like the actor was sad that he was gone, but there was a lot of water under the bridge and when he died he seemed resigned to hoping his father had at last found some peace.

 

[Camera One]

17 hours ago, CCTC said:

Zelina just comes off as unhinged right off the bat.  If she was so upset about getting robbed of having a family (although it seems like her Mom might have loved her), how about introducing yourself to your sister and try to form a normal relationship.  You still had a chance for a family at that point.

I think they latched onto the whole "green with envy" idea and forced that in without trying to make it fit organically.  I too grew to appreciate the character more later on, but in 3B, her character was very tiresome and her motivations weren't convincing, which made the entire plotline hard to swallow.  3B had so many supposedly "clever" ways to reference the Wizard of Oz, but all of them were half-baked.  I think the story became especially bloated by the pathetic attempt to insert Zelena into both Regina and Rumple's backstories.  

[KingOfHearts]

On 7/2/2020 at 12:51 PM, Camera One said:

I think they latched onto the whole "green with envy" idea and forced that in without trying to make it fit organically.  I too grew to appreciate the character more later on, but in 3B, her character was very tiresome and her motivations weren't convincing, which made the entire plotline hard to swallow.  3B had so many supposedly "clever" ways to reference the Wizard of Oz, but all of them were half-baked.  I think the story became especially bloated by the pathetic attempt to insert Zelena into both Regina and Rumple's backstories.  

Zelena's character has gotten criticism for not being true to the Wicked Witch of the West, but the original character didn't have much to go off of anyway. That wasn't really the problem. Although, one thing I would've done instead was cast someone other than Rebecca Mader. Zelena was supposed to be someone unwanted, despised by society, and bitter. I can't the actress akin to Elmira Gulch or any other adaptation of the Wicked Witch for that matter. I didn't hate the "green with envy" idea because it's actually kind of a clever way to explain the green skin, but Regina shouldn't have been the one for her to be jealous of.

Spoiler

If anything, that should've been Glinda, one of the other witches, or Dorothy.

I hate the way the writers shoehorned her into the main story by giving her a "relationship" with Rumple and being Cora's daughter. You could take all of that out and nothing would change. I could see her as Regina's rival and Ozian counterpart, not a long forgotten half-sister. 

[Camera One]

I wouldn't have minded the Green with Envy idea if there was any rhyme or reason behind it.  Why her and nobody else?  She clearly could easily glamour it away whenever she wanted.  

I too would have preferred envy of Glinda or the other witches in Oz.  Of course, with these Writers, the alternative would have been 

Spoiler

envying Mean Victorian Girls in Oz

Not having much to go on for the Wicked Witch from the original story or the MGM movie meant all the more that the various morsels needed to be included and incorporated organically so it was Ozian.  The connections to Regina and Rumple made her more an Enchanted Forest type character.  Plus all the points people have mentioned before about how you would think people in Oz would be more used to magic since they were ruled by Witches, so her whole childhood story needed to make more sense.

I think they overloaded us on Zelena in 3B, compared to the villains of the previous arcs.  Peter Pan wasn't in every episode, and neither was Cora.  I was so sick of hearing the word "wicked" by this point that I was turning green of the vomit variety whenever I saw her onscreen.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/1/2020 at 7:14 PM, CCTC said:

Her reason for turning pure evil is not really that much better than Regina's, and at least with Regina they showed enough of her backstory where you see her go more evil over time.  Her seeds of revenge against Snow were planted when Daniel died, but it kind of simmered and grew over time as she gradually slipped into darkness.  Zelina just comes off as unhinged right off the bat.  If she was so upset about getting robbed of having a family (although it seems like her Mom might have loved her), how about introducing yourself to your sister and try to form a normal relationship.  You still had a chance for a family at that point.

The thing that made her unhinged wasn't even about family. It was about not being chosen to cast the curse and being too stupid to grasp that this wasn't a bad thing. She wasn't chosen to be Rumple's patsy who would be forced to kill the thing she loved most. It might have kind of worked if he'd just sent her away entirely, but she had the family-like thing with him. She was getting to live in his palace. He was teaching her magic. She flipped out over the fact that he was also still teaching Regina and was planning to use her to cast the curse because Zelena doing it would have meant killing him, which rather defeated the purpose of the curse.

On 7/2/2020 at 12:51 PM, Camera One said:

3B had so many supposedly "clever" ways to reference the Wizard of Oz, but all of them were half-baked.  I think the story became especially bloated by the pathetic attempt to insert Zelena into both Regina and Rumple's backstories.  

I feel like it was their usual routine of doing what they needed for that episode or to set up whatever big thing they had planned rather than doing anything organic. They were setting up the whole "there's no place like home" theme, so they based the arc on the Wizard of Oz, but with Zelena's only character traits being "wicked" and "green with envy," and the only way they knew to create emotional stakes was to make her related to someone in the main cast. Then they couldn't resist the "wicked vs. evil" thing, so Regina it was, even though that required a lot of retconning. From there, they handwaved some motivations that made no sense at all if you looked at them together in context.

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

Plus all the points people have mentioned before about how you would think people in Oz would be more used to magic since they were ruled by Witches, so her whole childhood story needed to make more sense.

Yes, this. So we have a woman who was adopted at birth by a loving mother and an inexplicably hateful father, ostracized as she grew up because she had magical powers (in a land ruled by good witches), turning wicked and going green with envy because the mentor who took her in planned to use her half-sister to get a curse cast that would require the caster to sacrifice the thing she loved most. None of that makes any sense, and a character who is so irrational that none of her opinions and nothing she does make any sense isn't all that interesting.

Amusing thought ... what if she'd actually been Hook's sister? That sprang to mind just because of the British accents, but what if both of them had snapped in different ways because of what had happened to them? Maybe the sister ended up being sent to a different master after the father ditched them, and that's when she learned magic and got corrupted, and she hates her brothers who never came to rescue her, while Hook had thought she was either dead or in a better position that he didn't want to disrupt. You'd have to have a reason she was also still alive and reasonably young, but that wouldn't be too hard to do. And it would be a lot more complex emotionally than "wicked vs. evil" if he's overjoyed to find his sister again while she wants to kill him, and then he feels he can't judge her for going bad, given what he's done, but he wants to help her. He has the hook as the sign of him going wrong and she's got the green skin (maybe from trying a forbidden spell to get more power, and this is an unfortunate side effect), and both of them are a bit ashamed to run into each other with those obvious signs.

[KingOfHearts]

 

On 7/4/2020 at 11:59 AM, Shanna Marie said:

The thing that made her unhinged wasn't even about family. It was about not being chosen to cast the curse and being too stupid to grasp that this wasn't a bad thing. She wasn't chosen to be Rumple's patsy who would be forced to kill the thing she loved most. It might have kind of worked if he'd just sent her away entirely, but she had the family-like thing with him. She was getting to live in his palace. He was teaching her magic. She flipped out over the fact that he was also still teaching Regina and was planning to use her to cast the curse because Zelena doing it would have meant killing him, which rather defeated the purpose of the curse.

Zelena never seemed to be jealous of Belle, which is odd. If she was spying on people in the Enchanted Forest on the daily, you'd think she'd know that Rumple moved onto another love interest. There was also zero reaction in Storybrooke. I don't think the writers ever thought of that. 

Edited July 5, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

8 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Zelena never seemed to be jealous of Belle, which is odd. If she was spying on people in the Enchanted Forest on the daily, you'd think she'd know that Rumple moved onto another love interest. There was also zero reaction in Storybrooke. I don't think the writers ever thought of that. 

That's a really good point.  The Writers just zone in on one thing.

Spoiler

It's kind of like in 4B, when they completely ignored Maleficent's vendetta against everyone except Snowing.  It's always whatever's convenient for the story they choose to tell.

 

[KingOfHearts]

3 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That's a really good point.  The Writers just zone in on one thing.

I'd argue this is a testament to one of the show's biggest writing problems. The writers only had a few relationships in mind whenever writing any given episode. That's why you only saw certain pairings and many characters were not allowed to interact with another, even when it made sense for them too. The writers rarely considered the implications for anything, including how any given character in the ensemble may react to certain events. 

Spoiler

It's still bizarre to me that Zelena was stuck as Zarian in an arc all about someone being rejected from their parents for having magic.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Zelena never seemed to be jealous of Belle, which is odd. If she was spying on people in the Enchanted Forest on the daily, you'd think she'd know that Rumple moved onto another love interest. There was also zero reaction in Storybrooke. I don't think the writers ever thought of that. 

I guess maybe there was no need for her to be jealous of Belle while she was the one who had Rumple locked up as her slave and under her total control. Rumple was with her, not Belle. And I think her main jealousy was over Regina. She wanted to be chosen over Regina. She didn't care so much for Rumple as she cared that Regina had him and she wanted to take him from Regina. Someone else having him wouldn't be as big a problem for her.

Spoiler

And it was almost like she forgot Rumple existed once she saw that he was no longer in tight with Regina. She didn't want him when Regina was no longer in any way special to him.

But otherwise, yeah, they can only deal with one relationship at a time. If Zelena's primary trait was jealousy, it shouldn't have been limited to one person. She should have been upset at anyone who had something she wanted and felt she couldn't have. She should have been jealous of Henry for having a family, jealous of Emma for having a father who loved her even though she had magic. Her jealousy of Regina should have included things like her leadership position in the town and her friends.

Spoiler

Come to think of it, she also got outrageously jealous of Dorothy, who had nothing to do with Regina, so, yeah, she should have been jealous of Belle.

 

[legaleagle53]

On 7/4/2020 at 9:59 AM, Shanna Marie said:

The thing that made her unhinged wasn't even about family. It was about not being chosen to cast the curse and being too stupid to grasp that this wasn't a bad thing. She wasn't chosen to be Rumple's patsy who would be forced to kill the thing she loved most. It might have kind of worked if he'd just sent her away entirely, but she had the family-like thing with him. She was getting to live in his palace. He was teaching her magic. She flipped out over the fact that he was also still teaching Regina and was planning to use her to cast the curse because Zelena doing it would have meant killing him, which rather defeated the purpose of the curse.

Amusing thought ... what if she'd actually been Hook's sister? That sprang to mind just because of the British accents, but what if both of them had snapped in different ways because of what had happened to them? Maybe the sister ended up being sent to a different master after the father ditched them, and that's when she learned magic and got corrupted

Rumple never taught Zelena magic. You're forgetting that like Emma, she had her powers from birth (she instinctively created the magic cyclone that took her to Oz when she was just a baby right after Cora abandoned her). She considered herself the rightful choice to cast the curse because she'd always had magic and didn't need to be trained in its use to the extent that Regina and Cora did.

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Rumple never taught Zelena magic. You're forgetting that like Emma, she had her powers from birth (she instinctively created the magic cyclone that took her to Oz when she was just a baby right after Cora abandoned her). She considered herself the rightful choice to cast the curse because she'd always had magic and didn't need to be trained in its use to the extent that Regina and Cora did.

She had powers at birth, but he was still teaching her how to better use them, just as Emma needed some training to know how to use her inherent powers. Zelena was mad that he kept on teaching Regina, who didn't have her natural talent and struggled more, even after she showed up. And her natural abilities still didn't negate the fact who cast the curse had nothing to do with who had the most power or who was best, but rather was about who could be conned into killing the thing she loved most -- and whose thing she loved most wasn't Rumple. She didn't seem to grasp that even after he explained it, though I don't think he did a good job of explaining that it wasn't an honor, that he was grooming a patsy. He was kind of snide and dismissive in the way he explained it, which probably made it harder for the facts to sink in past all her emotional issues.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

She didn't seem to grasp that even after he explained it, though I don't think he did a good job of explaining that it wasn't an honor, that he was grooming a patsy. 

You'd think she would have figured it out after her initial emotional shock.  She never realized the requirements of the Curse was the thing she loved most, and that she loved Rumple?  Instead of Evil vs. Wicked, it should have been Dumb vs. Stupid.  Can you imagine how the "iconic" lines would have sounded?  "I'm not just dumb... I'm STUPID" and "Stupid always wins!"

Edited July 6, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

You'd think she would have figured it out after her initial emotional shock.  She never realized the requirements of the Curse was the thing she loved most, and that she loved Rumple?  Instead of Evil vs. Wicked, it should have been Dumb vs. Stupid.  Can you imagine how the "iconic" lines would have sounded?  "I'm not just dumb... I'm STUPID" and "Stupid always wins!"

If stupid always wins, that must be how the heroes always seem to stumble into victory.

It wouldn't have worked between Zelena and Rumple since Rumple had zero feelings for Zelena, but if someone had intentionally hid the price of the Curse from a potential caster, that would've created some nice dramatic tension. I can see it now - Dark One finds someone to cast their curse, but they fall in love with them, so they hide the price from them and keep putting it off.

Edited July 7, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It wouldn't have worked between Zelena and Rumple since Rumple had zero feelings for Zelena, but if someone had intentionally hid the price of the Curse from a potential caster, that would've created some nice dramatic tension. I can see it now - Dark One finds someone to cast their curse, but they fall in love with them, so they hide the price from them and keep putting it off.

The thing with Zelena and Rumple was just weird. In the flashback, it seemed a lot less romantic and more icky paternal, like she's found the daddy she'd never had, but since she didn't know how to deal with love, it came out in inappropriate ways. She was being the bratty kid with sibling rivalry issues -- you always liked her best, it's not fair. Rumple definitely seemed more paternal with her, playing a mentor role. But then in Storybrooke it seemed a lot more sexual with the way she dealt with him, and he then played into that with her.

That would be a real dilemma if the person looking for someone to cast the curse ended up with that person developing feelings for him, and they were mutual. He'd need to keep her on a string to ensure she cast the curse, but if he got too close, then she'd have to kill him. And now I kind of want to steal this. Surely there's more than one fictional curse that requires sacrificing the thing you hold most dear. Just don't make it be a curse that creates a small coastal town in Maine and transports everyone there from a fairy tale world.

Rumple did hide the price from Regina for other reasons. He had to get her to where she was absolutely determined to cast the curse and was utterly convinced that it was the only way she could ever be happy before she learned the specifics. I'm not sure she'd have even gone through with it if she hadn't already tried it with the horse and failed. If she'd known up front that she'd have to kill her father, she might have balked. I think he was safer with Regina than with Zelena because Regina wanted the curse due to having lost a love, so she wasn't likely to fall in love with anyone else anytime soon, while she also had a loving relationship with her father. Zelena was so starved for affection that she was sure to latch on to the first person who gave her any kind of consideration.

[KingOfHearts]

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The thing with Zelena and Rumple was just weird. In the flashback, it seemed a lot less romantic and more icky paternal, like she's found the daddy she'd never had, but since she didn't know how to deal with love, it came out in inappropriate ways. She was being the bratty kid with sibling rivalry issues -- you always liked her best, it's not fair. Rumple definitely seemed more paternal with her, playing a mentor role. But then in Storybrooke it seemed a lot more sexual with the way she dealt with him, and he then played into that with her.

Spoiler

It gets even ickier later when we find out that every Mills woman apparently had the hots for Rumple, including Regina.

It's hard to pinpoint what was actually going on with the Zelena/Rumple dynamic. There's obviously meant to be some kind of sexual tension going on with the creepy shaving scene and the...

Spoiler

weird date thing later when Rumple tries to distract her for the dagger. 

Even if Rumple wasn't into her, Zelena was mostly definitely attracted to him, even if only through lustful desires. Choosing her to cast the curse set something off in her, but there seemed to be more to it later as she became more dependent on him because daddy issues. It's all supposed to be gross and messed up, but then what was the point of it all? Just to show she's a dirty promiscuous villain? Sex appeal? It didn't seem to affect the plot all that much. 

[Camera One]

26 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's all supposed to be gross and messed up, but then what was the point of it all? 

To show how edgy and sophisticated A&E were.  It's not your grandmother's Oz!  This half-season perfectly pairs with the best-selling romance novel "Hot for Daddy!".  

Edited July 7, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's all supposed to be gross and messed up, but then what was the point of it all? Just to show she's a dirty promiscuous villain? Sex appeal?

The sad thing is, the paternal thing was pretty much handed to them on a silver platter and had a lot of meat on it to work with. We've got a girl who grew up with an adoptive father who treated her terribly and called her wicked for having magic, who then learns that her mother abandoned her but had another daughter who got to grow up as a princess. Then she finds a mentor who, instead of hating her magic, thinks her magic is impressive and is willing to let her live in his palace and coach her in using her magic. She's got a replacement father figure who's giving her what her mother gave her sister and who likes her because of her magical powers -- but then it turns out he's also training her sister. She can't even have this much for herself.

Meanwhile, Rumple feels he failed as a father because he lost Bae, but now he gets another chance at being a parent with a young woman he gets to bring up and train. She's the daughter of a woman he loved who betrayed him, so it's like he's getting to be a father to a girl who could have been his daughter if things had worked out differently. At the same time, his own son rejected him because of his magic and wanted to take him to a place where he wouldn't have magic, but this girl actually likes him because of his power. She wants him to use it instead of losing it. But he has to keep training her sister, even though he knows she'll see that as a betrayal, because the curse requires the sacrifice of the thing the caster loves most, and he's afraid he's become that to his protege.

You could even throw in that moral dilemma mentioned above -- maybe Regina's training isn't going so well, and he's starting to despair that she'll ever be able to cast the curse. It's like a gift from above when this girl shows up, and she's also Cora's daughter, and she has great power. Maybe she's the one to cast the curse! But then they start bonding and start to feel like father and daughter, and he realizes that he's the thing she loves most, so he has to rely on Regina, but his surrogate daughter will see that as a betrayal.

It practically writes itself. Adding the weird sexual angle only sidetracks from the emotional core.

[Camera One]

That might have made Rumple's presence in this arc more meaningful.  Most of his scenes in 3B were boring and pointless.

[KingOfHearts]

20 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

It practically writes itself. Adding the weird sexual angle only sidetracks from the emotional core.

I wish Zelena hadn't been written to be as petty as Regina. Unlike her sister, she has legitimate reasons to feel she got the short end of the stick. But she turned out to be so whiny and superficial. Detaching her from the Wicked Witch persona and looking at her background, I could see her being a sympathetic character. Rebecca Mader could've done a lot with that. Making her likable would've actually support Regina's character arc as well. For most of Regina's life, she's been no. 1 and an only child. I'd think she'd be furious to find out Rumple cared about and enjoyed training someone else more than her. If anything, she'd be the one green with envy. Rumple only ended up choosing Regina because of the price. It didn't have anything to do with his opinion of either sister. The fact Zelena saw that as complete rejection just shows how petty she was in the show that actually got written.

Edited July 8, 2020 by KingOfHearts