S06.E17: Awake

[KingOfHearts]

I'm going to assume the Evil Queen gave the fate shears to Regina. If so, why didn't they use them to break the sleeping curse connection between Snow and Charming?

[KAOS Agent]

31 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Was he only able to cut his Shadow out because he was beside Peter Pan's magic tree?  At first, I assumed Tiger Lily meant there was magical stuff stored inside the tree.  But was the tree magic?

There was magical sap in the tree. He cut into the tree with his hook, gathered some and used it to cut his shadow.

[darkestboy]

Finally that curse is over and done with but I still hated that Emma did choose Hook over her parents for a moment though.

Liked Regina and Zelena working together to save the Charmings but the flashbacks did feel a bit of a retcon on what we knew about the first season.

Gideon defying the Black Fairy was nice enough but she's the better character and I liked her scenes with Rumple as well.

Hook and Tiger Lily were an interesting enough team too, 7/10

[asabovesobelow]

Re-read your sentence. Say it out loud.

7 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

There was magical sap in the tree. He cut into the tree with his hook, gathered some and used it to cut his shadow.

This is where we are now. Magical sap in the tree! There were 78 new types of magic in this episode that have never been referenced, used, thought about, or alluded to. It makes the characters seem so freaking stupid when all of these solutions have 'existed' during the battles they've faced and they just didn't come up in conversation.

[Daisy]

Snowing - hate them. That was so incredibly, utterly selfish. It should have been something as someone stated - if we leave now, Regina will know and she could kill everyone. I think as someone also pointed out, this could have been a dreamworld - with the hints of "Hey look! Poppies!!"  (pixies? whatever) so they know that's what they need to beat them in real life. All of this "you did what you had to do.."

No. Nuhnuh. and I think this is why this show bugs me. No one ever really talks. Everyone shoots out barbs but there is never any real consequences. Snow should have been with Emma from the word go. Why couldn't she? Because Marco wanted to save Pinocchio above all else. Emma was supposed to be raised knowing about magic, her parents, and everything like that, and then come back. that was the plan.

Hell. this is what you could have done. (retcon or no). 
David is supposed to be missing. Open the door, David goes through and he's a smart cookie. (sometimes) He'll figure out how to navigate through that world. HE raises Emma. Snow takes the memory curse and no matter what Regina did, she's literally MM again and hey guess what. miserable MM. AND David's missing so no matter what. Snow's still "losing" Emma has her father (and a home), and they somehow to get to Storybrooke because somehow August will point them in the right direction or Henry or Douchefire or reasons. 

Why do I watch this show?

NOW Rumpy knows that Gideon is HeartControlled. Which. again. copout. And blah blah Belle's love is in his soul. Whatever. it's not like Belle is this innocent litttle angel. 

Hi Tiger Lily. Bye Tiger Lily. (this. is what they should have used Rose McIver for. for this episode). 

I agree with someone who said that they needed to have a real consequence of "breaking" this strengthened sleeping curse. drinking a diluted curse makes no sense to me, but 99.9 percent of this show makes no sense to me. It would have made more sense had everyone kissed snowing and that broke the curse (somehow) makes more sense than drinking watered down potions. 

Said my piece on Captain Swan. but as that's not going to change, ah well. 

[Mitch]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I'm going to assume the Evil Queen gave the fate shears to Regina. If so, why didn't they use them to break the sleeping curse connection between Snow and Charming?

Well, I know that I may be thinking this out more then the writers...but the shears themselves were to cut you from your fate...(never mind that in our world there should be no such thing a fate but....) so Regina was "fated" to be the EQ so they had to use the shears to separate. The lil' Nap Spell...(I refuse to call it a Curse" ) was not fated to happen  S and C....the EQ made it happen so they would not have worked...though on this show...

[Shanna Marie]

Something struck me while I was trying to fill in some It Happened Offscreen stuff:

While Tiger Lily hitting Hook with that dart made for a Big, Dramatic Moment (and reunited him with his True Love, the floor), it doesn't make a lot of sense. They're surrounded by enemies that I presume were also drugged, not killed. Unless she has an infinite supply of drugged darts, it's probably best for her to get Hook away from them before they wake up, or else they'll start all this all over again and Hook won't be very useful to her. But how did she get Hook away from them before they woke up, while he was unconscious? He's skinny, but he's still significantly bigger than she is, and unconscious, he's a dead weight. If she drags him by his ankles, that leaves a trail the Lost Boys could follow, and there's the risk of injury to him if he hits his head on a rock along the way. She wants him to be functional, since she's expecting him to run an errand for her. Would she have been able to do a fireman's carry with him? She might have managed the weight that way, but he's pretty tall, which would have made it rather awkward. It would have made a lot more sense for her to hold him at knife or spear point and make him walk to where she wanted to take him. Yeah, there's a bit more risk of him getting away or fighting back, but if she thought she was going to be sending him away on the Jolly Roger with the wand, at some point she was going to have to trust him, and he wasn't acting hostile at all. So, why knock out someone who isn't acting like a threat or like he sees you as a threat, so you then have to carry a heavy dead weight, instead of asking him to come with you and backing that up with a weapon if he resists?

[KAOS Agent]

Eric Keenleyside was listed in the press release for this episode. Was Moe ever shown onscreen? Did he sell the flowers to Snow? Or did some sort of heart to heart with Belle about parents and children not make the cut for the episode?

[Dianthus]

After catching up on the conversation, I just have to say that I find it very difficult to sympathize with those claiming Emma was acting selfishly in this ep when you've got a character like Regina around for comparison. For one thing, she's already saved Reggie's ungrateful ass multiple times. She also risked going full Dark One to save Robin at Regina's request, only for him to die anyway later on. Plus, Emma's now been punished multiple times for her "selfishness," most recently in the wish realm. One wonders if Reggie's hands were still covered in grit from crushing the hearts of Emma's parents.

[Notwisconsin]

the thing is "purity". The heroes are "pure" good, putting the greater good ahead of themselves and their family. Being "selfless" and pure. Self preservation is considered bad here.

[Curio]

1 hour ago, Notwisconsin said:

the thing is "purity". The heroes are "pure" good, putting the greater good ahead of themselves and their family. Being "selfless" and pure. Self preservation is considered bad here.

And somehow, helping someone who you know is in trouble is still selfish.

[Randomosity]

On 4/17/2017 at 7:14 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Remember S1 Emma with the badass leather jackets? Now she's wearing black sweaters and Peter Pan collars. Girl.

Seriously. I wondered if she'd gone and joined the nuns in Hook's absence.

On 4/20/2017 at 1:58 AM, Camera One said:

The fact that 80% of those people were extras was really distracting.

Definitely. Like, why do these people care about Snowing? Have the met Snowing before? Ever?

I won't belabor the point too much, but one quick thing on Emma saving Hook vs waking her parents. Parents insist upon such sacrifices all. the. time. Do parents love the idea of their babies heading off to college, or the other side of the world, etc? No. Parents would selfishly love for the kids to stay with them safe and sound 24/7. But they know the kids have to go live their own lives, and they want them to do so. I saw Snow's instructions to Emma as that. She'd have loved to be awake with Emma, but not at the cost of Emma losing out on her own future with Hook. Parents make sacrifices for their kids.

[Shanna Marie]

It's also ironic that Emma gets blasted for being selfish for saving her boyfriend who's possibly in immediate danger over saving her parents from a curse they've been in for weeks in an episode that's mostly about her parents choosing the well-being of their friends over her. It was kind of framed as her parents making the big sacrifice, and then all the townspeople paying them back at the end, but really, it was Emma who was forced to make the real sacrifice. Yeah, her parents missed out on sharing even part of her childhood with her, but while it was happening, they were entirely unaware of what was happening. Emma lived every moment of growing up alone. Her parents chose the town over her, and she's the selfish one for choosing her boyfriend over her parents?

Not to mention that Hook isn't just Emma's boyfriend. He's a human being who was in trouble, so it wasn't Emma choosing her boyfriend over her parents. It was triage -- save the person most likely in the most immediate danger.

[Camera One]

Quote

It was kind of framed as her parents making the big sacrifice, and then all the townspeople paying them back at the end, but really, it was Emma who was forced to make the real sacrifice.

Not entirely. Snow was portrayed as feeling guilty because that decision "took so much from you [Emma]".  It was meant to be sweet that Snow could now return the favor and make a sacrifice for Emma.  Not that I enjoyed this horrible retcon but it was solely created for that purpose.  People who seem to love taking sides can think what they want and blame away at the characters they hate, be it Emma, or Snowing, or Hook, but that was what the writers were obviously trying to do, in their usual clunky, hit-you-over-the-head, history-altering way.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I think more of the problem is that the episode would be fine on its own if we pretend a bunch of other stuff never happened. For a lot of this show, they try to get away with this and I think they succeed because the audience doesn't remember. Unfortunately, this story affected the most basic premise of the show and they can't pretend it didn't happen. Snow has chosen Regina over the kingdom several times, but didn't do the same for her innocent daughter. This doesn't work for me. It would also help if I wasn't asked to just believe that Emma had to be alone without an explanation. If Snow was meant to raise Emma initially, why is it suddenly not okay now? Why couldn't David just stay "missing" and raise Emma? Throw his hospital gown in the river and let it be assumed he drowned. Snow takes the potion. Problem solved. I shouldn't be able to come up with fifty different scenarios that get around the problem they were trying to sell as unsolvable. 

This decision also puts a different light on Snow's attitude towards Emma at different points in time post-curse. When Snow was forced to put Emma through the wardrobe to save her life, her feelings were more justified because Snow did the only thing she could. It was Emma's "best chance". Now we know that she had an option later and still chose to leave Emma alone knowing that she was sacrificing her happiness. That was not Emma's best chance. It's a retcon of the worst sort because I can't ever go back and listen to Snow's justifications in previous seasons knowing that they are a lie. She chose the kingdom over Emma. It's that simple. It may have been the right choice, but it was not ever giving Emma her best chance.

[Camera One]

16 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

It's a retcon of the worst sort because I can't ever go back and listen

That's what makes me the most angry... some retcons are whatever.  But this one, even though it's more subtle, is on the scale of eggbaby.  There was also the Baelfire retcon from earlier this season.  The bottom line is they don't care about the characters they are retconning.  

Edited April 23, 2017 by Camera One

[Arnella]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

The bottom line is they don't care about the characters they are retconning.

I wish I could like this x 1000.  I've gotten to the point where I just fast forward thru episodes while waiting for the series finale.  I got to the scene where Snowing opened the door to little Emma and talked themselves into abandoning her. 

The first time around, they were willing to be separated so that Emma wouldn't be alone.  Snow was going to train her to be the savior and David essentially gave his life to save her (from murder by Regina btw).  I didn't listen to their reasoning for not taking 1 step forward to give Emma the love and guidance any child needs and figuring things out as a family because somehow going back to sleep and letting the 9 year old figure it out on her own was just REALLY the best idea.

I don't know how Emma can even look at her parents at this point.  I know that it's the writers who love Emma's misery and think any rotten, undeserved thing they do her is ok and we shouldn't protest while any completely deserved misery Regina gets needs to be apologized for by all the characters and we must shed a glistering tear for her...  

[legaleagle53]

On 4/22/2017 at 6:51 AM, Randomosity said:

Seriously. I wondered if she'd gone and joined the nuns in Hook's absence.

Definitely. Like, why do these people care about Snowing? Have the met Snowing before? Ever?

I won't belabor the point too much, but one quick thing on Emma saving Hook vs waking her parents. Parents insist upon such sacrifices all. the. time. Do parents love the idea of their babies heading off to college, or the other side of the world, etc? No. Parents would selfishly love for the kids to stay with them safe and sound 24/7. But they know the kids have to go live their own lives, and they want them to do so. I saw Snow's instructions to Emma as that. She'd have loved to be awake with Emma, but not at the cost of Emma losing out on her own future with Hook. Parents make sacrifices for their kids.

Exactly.  It's a lesson that Snow learned from her mother-in-law Ruth.  Remember when Ruth was dying from injuries she had sustained in a battle during which she had gotten caught in the cross-fire?  Snow had gotten the last bit of water from Lake Nostos, originally as a way to cure the barrenness curse that King George had put on her, but she also knew it would save Ruth's life if Ruth drank it instead.  Ruth insisted, however, that Snow needed to break that curse more than Ruth herself needed to survive, and when Snow showed astonishment that Ruth was so willing to die so that Snow could be healed of her curse, Ruth simply smiled and said something to the effect that someday, when Snow herself was a mother, she'd understand that making great sacrifices for their children is "just what parents do."

The situation with Emma going to rescue Hook is exactly the same situation that faced Snow when she drank the last of the enchanted water to break her own curse rather than to save Ruth's life.

[Notwisconsin]

Hook is dead. This Killian is someone else. Just like Alt-Robin.

[KingOfHearts]

A day early, but I'm finally back in the rewatch sort of! Before I go into what I hate about this episode...

It still bothers me that Tiger Lily was in Neverland the whole time and was never mentioned. Apparently she knew Hook but he never thought to find her in 3A? She's just so random. Her kidnapping Hook just makes her "edgy" for no reason. How the heck did she knew about the Black Fairy being in Storybrooke?

Spoiler

Then she shows up in S7 just because she was in the 6x22 scenes with like one line if that.

Lana Parrilla actually did a decent job of channeling Mayor Mills in the flashbacks. She still has the slightly restrained bitchiness down. It's always nice to see Cursed!Storybrooke again.

Just going to say it - the flowers are dumb. Charming waking up from the Curse because of a random flower is dumb. Snow getting her memories back because of a True Love Handshake is dumb. This whole scenario is contrived as hell. You go back to S1, and you see how difficult it was for people to get their memories back. How hard Henry was trying to get John Doe and Mary Margaret to remember. But I guess all he needed a magic flower that apparently can grow in a Land Without Magic? It cheapens the Curse, imo.

All that being said, it's cool to see Snow and Charming reacting to Storybrooke with their memories intact. It's always been fun on this show to play with cursed personalities and fish out of water situations. Granted this episode doesn't explore it too much, but it would've been cool to see an AU where S1 played out differently. It's funny to watch Snow explain the curse to David and how she's been Mary Margaret for years. Although, I don't know she could've remembered "every terrible minute" of the curse when in S1, everyone clearly had foggy memories of it.

How the heck did the Evil Queen neglect to mention that she baked in a failsafe? Not to give her flack, but I don't see the point in redeeming the Evil Queen and getting information from her about the sleeping curse when it adds up to nothing. Again, the heroes do a good thing for someone and get nothing out of it. The information on the curse was meant to be proof that she wanted to change and wouldn't hurt anyone. 

Again, if Pixie Petals bloom where there's great evil, why didn't Regina or Rumple wake up in a whole bed of them every morning? LOL.

"I practically invented Dark Magic", "I created the Dark Curse..." Yeah, those are both total retcons. The writers were trying to make more like a final villain with ties to the origins of the show, but it's really inaccurate. She doesn't fit the "ultimate Big Bad" title at all. 

Spoiler

Wish Rumple made more sense.

How did the Black Fairy know that Snow and Charming would both be asleep by the end of the day? These villains are sure omniscient when the writers want them to be.

It's cool they hid out in Zelena's farmhouse, but how did that exist before the Second Curse? Nobody lived there and it was abandoned. 

Rumple's prophecy bullshit strikes again. He's totally fine with delaying his reuniting with Bae by hundreds of years in order to keep his magic and do everything on his terms. Now he's claiming if Snow and Charming go find Emma, the Curse will never be broken and she won't fulfill her destiny. So which is it? Are events inevitable when they're prophesied, or can they be cancelled because of a person's actions? Rumple was doing whatever the hell he wanted to get to Bae, so why is he now worried (like everyone else) that if Emma finds a loving home, she won't break the Curse? He said himself in this episode that he had no idea where Emma was or how she'd come to Storybrooke to break the Curse. So how does he know that interfering will prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled?

Also, in the very next scene, Emma says she has to fight in the Final Battle because it's her destiny and that there's "nothing [Snow] can do to change it". Her destiny to break the Curse was modifiable, but her destiny to fight in the Final Battle wasn't?

Did the fairies not have any Pixie Dust?

I don't get the logic behind choosing the town over Emma. It's not even under the pretense that Regina will start killing people if Snow or Charming leaves. The show essentially says if they go to be with Emma, the Curse will never break and everyone will be trapped forever. It's laughable when Snow says Regina is "right" because she's a hero who will never left someone suffer to get what she wants. Isn't that exactly what she's doing by leaving Emma alone? This is framed as a trolley problem. 

I still can't get it out of my head that if someone just killed Regina in her sleep, the Curse would be broken. But because "heroes don't kill", people were subject to decades of being cursed or worse. These characters are so manipulated by the needs of the plot it's not even funny.

Charming's reaction to seeing Young Emma was heartbreaking. It's crazy to me how stone-cold Snow was in the same scene, like she didn't care and only wanted to service the "greater good". She cried a lot when she had to say goodbye to Charming but hardly winced at Emma. Of course, when Emma learned of what happened, she didn't react at all and there were no hard feelings.

If Pixie Dust can be used to open a portal to someone your love, couldn't someone like Rumple use it? Couldn't they've used it in 3A to find Henry? 

I totally forgot Hook proposed to Emma a second time. Sure her parents are asleep eternally and Hook almost died two seconds ago, but let's stop and have a romantic moment. I don't know. The tension in the episode and the sense of urgency clashed with what Hook was trying to do. She didn't really have the freedom to say no.

You're telling me Mayor Mills just let the incident slide and forgot about it? 

It's awfully convenient the whole town agreed to drink the Sleeping Curse. What about their families? This is the same Curse the Evil Queen made so that whoever kissed the victim would be given the same Sleeping Curse. "Sure, let's drink poison being handed to us by a former mass murdering psychopath who killed our loved ones. What could go wrong?" I don't think these characters have any sense of self-preservation.

Regina: "You gave up your family for them."
Snow: "And got a bigger one in return."

The needs of the many outweigh the few, I guess? I have so many questions about this show's morality.

Spoiler

Snow: "No matter what [Emma], you will not face [The Black Fairy] alone."

And then everyone got exiled to another realm and Emma was forced to fight the Black Fairy with minimal help from Henry and Rumple. They went through all that trouble, and it was ultimately about Emma's struggle alone.

Somehow Rumple knew Gideon spared one of the flowers?

And at the end, we get a classic "Rumple stands around talking to the Big Bad in private and almost speaks in code in order to tease the upcoming conflict".

[companionenvy]

I hate this episode so much. 

If the show had actually set up a scenario in which there was actually plausible reason to believe that Snow and Charming raising Emma would put all of Storybrook in real danger, I might have bought them making this painful choice. But that only works if there is - and I can't emphasize this enough - real and credible danger, not a vague and undefined possibility of things having a better chance of working out.

We're back to Neal leaving Emma and setting her up because August told him - with no explanation or justification - that it was necessary for breaking the curse. That didn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now. Only now, it is worse, because at least Bae was at least sometimes portrayed as in the wrong for that decision, and there's in any case a lot of room for ascribing unconscious ulterior motivations for his choice, i.e, fear of getting drawn back into the magical world and, with it, a confrontation with Rumple. With Snow and Charming, their decision makes as little sense, but their choice is presented unequivocally as the good and noble thing to do.

In fact, it makes less sense, because Snow and Charming weren't blindsided by this. They had an original plan for dealing with the curse in which Snow WAS going to raise Emma. That is precisely what would have happened if Snow had gone into labor just a little bit later. Yet ten years later, Charming and Snow, with all of their memories and no reliable new information, except for the unsupported, unexplained assertions of a highly unreliable source, decide that Emma has to be alone to be the savior. I mean...why? What in the prophecy stipulates that Emma has to be separated from her family? Even if the prophecy is contingent -- i.e, Emma is the only one who can save them, but she isn't inevitably destined to save them, if she doesn't rise to the challenge -- there is no reason to think that the scenario in which Emma is a foster-kid who thinks her parents abandoned her is more likely to lead to her becoming the savior than a scenario in which she is reclaimed by her parents at age ten, knows who she is, winds up (likely) better adjusted, and has been prepared for her crucial role. Literally none. A reasonable person would in fact predict that a kid who was, you know, raised to this would be more likely to fulfill her role than someone totally in the dark.

This is all especially dumb when we add in the Season 4 mess with Emma and Lily. Snow and Charming were told that Emma was now free of darkness if they made sure to raise her right. So, not only are they abandoning their ten year old, they are abandoning a ten year old that they believe has great capacity for darkness if not given proper care on the logic that this will somehow make her more likely to be the Savior.

Just insultingly bad writing. And to add insult to injury, the show doesn't even frame the stakes of the choice fairly, as Snow and Charming glimpse child Emma in what seems to have been a rare moment of relative stability and peace, when we know that isn't at all representative of her childhood. If you're going to have them make the choice, at least acknowledge that they're abandoning their daughter to misery. 

[PixiePaws1]

3 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

Just insultingly bad writing. And to add insult to injury, the show doesn't even frame the stakes of the choice fairly, as Snow and Charming glimpse child Emma in what seems to have been a rare moment of relative stability and peace, when we know that isn't at all representative of her childhood. If you're going to have them make the choice, at least acknowledge that they're abandoning their daughter to misery. 

THIS!!! Heaven forbid they open that door on, clearly homeless, freezing little Emma tearing up her storybook to burn in a rubbish bin in the streets to keep warm!!

[tennisgurl]

You get a ret-con! And you get a ret-con! And you and you and you! God this episode fucking sucks. Even by S6 standards, this is just so freaking stupid. I dont buy for a second that the Charmings we first met would leave Emma and go back to the curse just because Rumple told them to. That wasn't even their original plan, did they seriously forget?! Snow was going to go with her and raise her in this other world, the only reason she didn't was because Marcos sent Pinocchio in with her and lied to the Charmings! Why does she have to be without her family to be the Savior? Why was everyone on  the fucking planet conspiring to make poor Emma miserable so that she could fulfill some poorly explained destiny? If anything, her having her parents explain things to her would make it easier for her to prepare to be the Savior, and it wouldn't rely on precocious children and picture books and birds and shit just to get her there in the first place! This is such stupid character assassination bullshit, but its not even surprising, even if I hadn't seen this episode before. This seasons theme is stupid ret-cons and character assassination. Its truly the Lee Harvey Oswald of seasons. 

It was at least fun seeing cursed Storebrooke again, as stupid as  the whole idea of Snow and Charming running around awake was. I really like the idea of some people being awake and some people still being cursed, but that might have actually been interesting and used the shows premise to its advantage, and we cant have that! The actors all stepped into their season 1 personalities quite well, it would have been fun seeing more blending like that.

So of course it used to be super hard to wake people up from the curse, and now you can use some random pixie flower, or hold hands. Nothing on this show means anything  anymore. Its like how hard they are trying to make the Black Fairy seem like the big end game boss, acting like she was the mastermind behind all of this, which...no, you made that up when you realized this was your series finale and you wanted to try and make this more epic than it is. Its just more of the same, but a million times stupider. 

I forgot we actually got a second Captain Swan proposal in this episode. It was better than that sorry first proposal, but still not what I think us fans deserved. It still felt so half assed, like they just wanted to get it out of the way. Not particularly heartfelt or epic, just something that needs doing. And I still want to hear Emma and everyone apologize to Hook for being so quick to think the worst of him for the billionth time, even the woman who  is supposed to be his true love.

So was Tiger Lily just...asleep during the whole Neverland arc? On vacation? And of course she was a fairy, because god forbid anyone not be connected to the same batch of idiots! Smallest multiverse ever!

Edited August 23, 2019 by tennisgurl

[KingOfHearts]

50 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

So was Tiger Lily just...asleep during the whole Neverland arc? On vacation? And of course she was a fairy, because god forbid anyone not be connected to the same batch of idiots! Smallest multiverse ever!

Spoiler

And it gets even worse in S7 when people have connections in a completely different universe that's even more alternate than the Prime Multiverse.

[KingOfHearts]

Sorry for the double post, it doesn't let me add text after the spoiler tag.

This episode gives me eggnapping vibes. Again, Snowing has a secret they haven't told anybody in years when it probably could've had a major impact on scenes like Snow and Emma in Lost Girl, the ending to 3x11, or whenever Snow says "we gave you your best chance" or "we had no choice." BS, it turns out Snowing *did* have a choice.

The only reason Snow giving up Emma in S1 made sense was because if they didn't, Emma could've died and they had no clue what the Curse would do. In this episode, they knew Regina and Rumple were powerless and that the Curse would just continue mundanely another 15 years. They were going to have fight Regina at some point anyway.

And who was to say that Regina, as impulsive as she was, wouldn't just decide to kill someone for no reason some day? This is the woman who murdered people on their wedding day or cracked the neck of a jester she didn't like. With everyone cursed, they'd have no way of knowing she was a threat. All the citizens of Storybrooke were defenseless. Was letting Regina just do whatever she wanted for the next 15 years the smartest thing for Snow's people? 

I realize it was a difficult decision to make, but it just makes Snowing look more culpable for the pain Emma went through.

[Shanna Marie]

58 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

That wasn't even their original plan, did they seriously forget?! Snow was going to go with her and raise her in this other world, the only reason she didn't was because Marcos sent Pinocchio in with her and lied to the Charmings!

It's worse than that. Plan A was for both Charmings -- David and pregnant Snow -- to go through in the wardrobe. Then Marco made the side deal and whoops, there's only enough magic for one, so the plan was for pregnant Snow to go, have Emma in the new world, and raise her. But then Snow went into labor early, so the baby had to go on her own.

Aside from the issue with the Charmings forgetting their plans and forgetting that they were warned about their daughter having the potential to be the Worst Evil Ever if she wasn't raised properly, there's also the problem of adding something to the world in the sixth season that the characters have known about all along and that would have come up before, but didn't.

So, back in 2A, Emma and Snow are trapped in the Enchanted Forest, looking for a way home. Snow's magically certified True Love is back in Storybrooke, Henry's back in Storybrooke and Emma had just given him a TLK, and David's already been able to open a door to Emma. Even if the ogres aren't actually evil and are just carrying out animal instincts and even if Hook is just angry and misguided rather than actually evil, Cora is running around ripping out hearts and slaughtering a settlement to create magical zombies. Shouldn't a whole field of these flowers have sprung up around her? When they came back to the settlement and found all the bodies and Hook, there should have been tons of flowers. Wouldn't Snow have brought this up as an option? "Hey, we just have to follow Cora around, look for the flowers, then we can open a door that will connect us to our loved ones." No need to climb the beanstalk to get the compass and try to use wardrobe dust. Just take advantage of Cora's evil and open a door to get back to David and Henry.

Or there's getting to Neverland -- why bother trusting Hook when they can just open a door to Henry? Surely Tamara would have sprouted a few flowers, or there might have been some residual ones from Regina's mass murder plans. I guess it would have been difficult to use to get back from Neverland, since all their loved ones were there, but Rumple might have been able to open a door to Belle, and surely Pan was evil enough to sprout a flower or two. Couldn't they have used this to find Emma when she disappeared after becoming the Dark One? Her parents, Henry, or Hook could have opened the door, and wouldn't charcoal heart Rumple or free-floating blob of Darkness have sprouted some flowers?

Are these the same pixie dust flowers from Neverland? Do they open doors in addition to letting you fly and marking your soulmate? Or are they different flowers? Didn't the ones in Neverland grow in a tree? Was Malcolm evil enough to sprout one, or was that because of the Shadow? Or are the Neverland ones not sprouted by evil? And what's the deal with having something that's all about love caused by evil? Is that meant to be some kind of cosmic balance, that evil brings about things that only love can use? Would that get frustrating for villains, where the worse they act, the more true love flowers grow around them?

How did Regina being mildly bitchy -- during the curse, so no magic -- sprout a flower, but we've never seen them otherwise? What about during the Evil Queen's reign of terror? Cora, either in the Enchanted Forest or in Storybrooke when she's murdering innocents and scheming to become the Dark One? Regina when planning to use the failsafe to murder the whole town? Rumple when plotting to cleave himself from the dagger by crushing Hook's heart? Cruella? All the Dark Ones ever in town? The Black Fairy doesn't seem all that bad compared to these others.

On 8/22/2019 at 2:27 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I still can't get it out of my head that if someone just killed Regina in her sleep, the Curse would be broken. But because "heroes don't kill", people were subject to decades of being cursed or worse.

I keep going back to "The Cricket Game," where they'd had a fair trial and Regina was found guilty, but Snow took it upon herself to let Regina go. They could have stopped all of this back then. How many villages did Regina slaughter after this? There was the curse and the damage that did to an entire world or even multiple worlds (since a lot of people were frozen in time) and the impact that had on Snow's daughter. All because Snow thought it was okay to let an unrepentant mass murderer go just because there was a spell that stopped her from hurting Snow. Executing Regina would not have been some kind of "heroes don't kill" nonsense. It was a just execution, far more just than anything Regina meted out. True, Rumple probably would have intervened since he wanted Regina casting the curse, but if it had been played that way, then it wouldn't have all come back on Snow. Have Rumple sneak Regina out of her cell the night before her planned execution. That even would have fit the episode better, since it was supposed to be all "poor, misunderstood Regina," and that was hard to show when she's getting inexplicably pardoned for the crimes she actually did. It would have fit better if Snow planned to execute her and Regina was only saved because of Rumple.

This isn't a "jump the shark" because there were good things afterward, but that episode was like the first does of slow-acting poison, eating away at just about everything that came afterward in both the series and in the chronology. In this episode, it makes the Charmings look even worse in refusing to help Emma, since it all would have been unnecessary if they'd just acted like rulers and dealt appropriately with Regina.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

This isn't a "jump the shark" because there were good things afterward, but that episode was like the first does of slow-acting poison, eating away at just about everything that came afterward in both the series and in the chronology. In this episode, it makes the Charmings look even worse in refusing to help Emma, since it all would have been unnecessary if they'd just acted like rulers and dealt appropriately with Regina.

It was one of the rawest looks at A&E's intent for the show. Almost like a reveal of the show's true villain - the permaboner for Regina. What a plot twist.

Edited August 23, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Now that we've expressed our rage and disgust about the contrived magic flower of true love bred by evil and the Charmings rejecting their daughter, there's the other side of the story, the anticlimactic conclusion to Hook's Epic Adventure of Standing Around (When He Isn't Unconscious). I'm sure they meant for Tiger Lily's stabbing Hook in the neck with the dart to be a shocking girl power kind of moment, but it's awfully convenient that they cut to him tied up in her lair without any indication of how she got him there. She's surrounded by temporarily unconscious enemies and she's got to move a dead weight that outweighs her and that's tall enough to be awkward and unwieldy. If she drags him, she leaves a trail that their enemies can easily follow. Knocking him out was a really dumb move. If she didn't trust him, she could have held him at sword point and marched him away under his own power so she didn't have to drag him. Or did she find a remnant of pixie dust, and since he believed deeply in magic while unconscious, he was able to float?

Then there's the whole refusing to believe he could love or that he'd help, when we've previously been shown that during the time when he would have known Tiger Lily, he was friends with Tinkerbell and he was perfectly willing to help Ursula (until her father got involved). He'd put his revenge first, but if it didn't get in the way of his revenge, he was capable of being reasonably nice (though I guess Tiger Lily knew Retcon Hook, who randomly killed a person for no good reason). Then I guess she didn't get the memo about his last visit to Neverland, when he was helping the group of heroes that defeated Pan, set Wendy free, and helped Tink and a lot of the Lost Boys escape. The Lost Boys seem to have been aware of that, so how did Tiger Lily miss it?

But I guess it's good that she didn't do something reasonable like talk to him before she attacked him, because that provided about the only drama or conflict, considering the rescue was essentially Emma opening a door and gesturing to Hook. Who'd have thought that Hook's return to Neverland and capture by the remaining Lost Boys would be so boring?

I can't figure out how the solution to the curse was supposed to work. Maybe if someone is zapping magic around, then dividing it among a bunch of people would dilute it, but if there's a potion, everyone drinking the potion doesn't dilute it for the people who drank it first and who are already affected. And how did the Evil Queen earn a redemption if she left them under the curse and didn't tell them about the failsafe she included? Also, since Regina must not have known about that failsafe before they tried the cure, how did she suddenly know all the details about exactly how it would work and what it would do after it kicked in?

[Camera One]

18 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm sure they meant for Tiger Lily's stabbing Hook in the neck with the dart to be a shocking girl power kind of moment

This has got to be one of the most predictable devices they use on this show.  These strong females are often so abrasive.  As said above, how the heck would Tiger Lily have inside information on The Black Fairy from Neverland?  Was she the specialist on Saviors in the Fairy Community? 

Spoiler

Sorry, Blue.  Didn't mean to touch a sore spot.

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And how did the Evil Queen earn a redemption if she left them under the curse and didn't tell them about the failsafe she included? Also, since Regina must not have known about that failsafe before they tried the cure, how did she suddenly know all the details about exactly how it would work and what it would do after it kicked in?

This was a major thing that bothered me on first watch.  We're supposed to be so happy when The Evil Queen got her happy ending in Page 23, yet she withheld information about the failsafe.  Not to mention Regina and Zelena suddenly knowing all (as usual) once it's too late to do anything about it.  

I guess this episode's retcon would get a place in the future article "Top Twenty Retcons That Hurt "Once Upon a Time" (and Top Twenty Retcons That Helped)".

Edited August 24, 2019 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

As said above, how the heck would Tiger Lily have inside information on The Black Fairy from Neverland?  Was she the specialist on Saviors in the Fairy Community? 

Did she get a, "Help us, Obi-Wan, you're our only hope" message from Blue? (I totally forgot Blue was captured.)

I didn't even remember the wand piece Tiger Lily gave Hook.

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I guess this episode's retcon would get a place in the future article "Top Twenty Retcons That Hurt "Once Upon a Time" (and Top Twenty Retcons That Helped)".

Come on, ScreenRant. Give your two readers what they want.

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Not to mention Regina and Zelena suddenly knowing all (as usual) once it's too late to do anything about it.  

I love how this episode had so many gotcha solutions for breaking the Sleeping Curse. Regina and Zelena tried a nameless magical solution, then it made things worse. Then Snow and Emma went for the flowers, but Gideon destroyed most of them. Then they tried to use the one he spared, and they used it for Hook instead.

It just begs the question - is it possible to run out of magical MacGuffins and deus ex machinas in Storybrooke? It's like every time there's problem, they can just go down the list, whether it be the Black Fairy's wand, fate shears, magic gauntlets, or enchanted pendants.

Edited August 24, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

As said above, how the heck would Tiger Lily have inside information on The Black Fairy from Neverland?  Was she the specialist on Saviors in the Fairy Community? 

And yet she didn't know that Hook had turned good and was the Savior's boyfriend. But she referred to Storybrooke, didn't she?

They pretty much gave up on consistency, continuity, or any attempt at coherent worldbuilding at this point. They just threw a script together without thinking about past episodes and without any plan for future episodes. It's all just "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if ..." and who cares what it contradicts. Besides, it'll all be forgotten in the next episode.

[Camera One]

On 8/24/2019 at 12:27 PM, KingOfHearts said:

Did she get a, "Help us, Obi-Wan, you're our only hope" message from Blue? (I totally forgot Blue was captured.)

I'm pretty sure Blue could appear in Tiger Lily's nightmares through a fairy-group mind connection despite being in a coma.

[Shanna Marie]

It's funny that Snow is considered a terrible, horrible person for getting angry at Gepetto for scheming to send Pinocchio in the wardrobe so that Emma had to be sent without either of her parents. She's utterly awful because she killed Cora, using Cora's own weapon, to stop Cora from becoming the Dark One after learning that Cora murdered her mother and after watching Cora murder her nurse in spite of Snow giving her what she demanded. But the show tells us that Snow was totally in the right for leaving her daughter to grow up alone and for letting Regina go to wreak havoc on the kingdom after she was tried for all her crimes, including mass murder.

[Camera One]

On this show, we're constantly told how we're supposed to feel.  And half the time, it's totally not what a normal person WOULD feel.  Even Ginnifer Goodwin said she didn't understand Snow's actions sometimes.  The actors were always gracious in interviews but I wonder if they were blinded by their love for A&E and couldn't see it, or if they were just being professional.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Camera One