A Thread for All Seasons: This Story Is Over, But Still Goes On.

[Mitch]

48 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Charming dove into the water from the Jolly Roger to save Emma -- but really after season 3 being heroic meant the group marching down the street while someone shot magic out of their hands.    I remember rewatching the series 1 finale last year with the dual Emma/Charming taking on dragons, thinking - wow I forgot this show could do an action sequence.  The season 6 finale was not great, and the beanstalk adventure of Hook and Charming ending up being meaningless, but it showed the fun things they could have done if they had chosen to go more fairy tale fantasy adventure from time to time.

I really hate that they made Emma have magic. She should have always been the hero who used her brains, skills and athletic abilities to beat the bad guys.  They could have still had Cora not be able to pull out Emma's heart with Emma punching her in the stomach...(why do people just stand there when some stupid villain is pulling their heart out and not give them a good knee to the crotch???)Or just because her heart is strong and untouched by darkness that is rejects Cora... I think the show should have shown that magic was useless, or at least weaker, against someone with a strong will and a good heart...(for example, when Regina makes her wallpaper limbs grab Charming..its dimmie Henry who runs in to stop it..so what stopped Regina from killing Charming before? They should have shown Charming using his head and brains by fighting is way out of the limbs and then grabbing Regina by the neck and THEN Henry runs in to stop it.)

After S1 the stakes disappeared with magic, as you knew, that the evil person would overcome a poor hero, unless they were dumb enough to let said hero live or a magic object saved that hero. Boring.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Mitch

[Chaos Theory]

As someone who genuinely enjoyed the show from start to reboot (which I refuse to watch). I think the shows biggest mistake is that it didn’t focus on the main cast of The Charming Family, Regina and Rumple.  It continued to throw Disney product after product with different degrees of success instead of focusing on family drama which actually had a great deal more potential.    I know people have different views on Regina but her relationship with the The Charmings, Emma Henry and heck even Rumple was often the foundation of the show but was often just written badly.   It could have been so much more.  Still I did enjoy the vast majority of the show.  

Edited January 12, 2018 by Chaos Theory

[Mabinogia]

45 minutes ago, Mitch said:

I really hate that they made Emma have magic. She should have always been the hero who used her brains, skills and athletic abilities to beat the bad guys.

This! 100 times this! I liked her a lot better before she was magic, when she was just this seemingly normal person (who happened to have two non magical fairytale characters for parents) who is thrust into this insane story and has to use the survival skills she learned on the streets to defeat seemingly undefeatable villains. I liked when the good guys won because they stuck together, they had the numbers to fight rather than because they had magic. It felt meaningful. Snow White wasn't a hero because she had more magic than Regina but because she was a survivor and she had the support of the people. No matter how much magic Regina had, the entire world was against her. That was a good story. I miss that show.

[andromeda331]

I liked that Emma had magic.  I love that scene when Cora tries to take her heart after Emma jumped into save Snow and she couldn't. It felt like a nice tie into love isn't weakness its strength. It was nice that a hero had magic and enough to blast Cora. After an entire season of watch Rumple, Regina and Cora basically do whatever they want with magic, murder, target Snow and other people who had no magic. It was really nice to see there was finally someone who could fight them with magic and wasn't evil. I love street smart Emma and never wanted to lose that. But it seemed like a nice surprise that there was something even more built into Emma. I know it never would have happened but how fun would it have been for Emma to get back and the next time Regina did something to blast her with magic. Rumple too. With her street smarts and magic Emma really could protect the town. Another potential thrown away.  

[Chaos Theory]

Emma having magic worked for me as a shorthand for how she was feeling.  If I remember correctly there was a storyline where she was feeling kinda jealous of baby Neal and she nearly killed him a couple of times because she couldn’t control her magic or her emotions.  Eventually Snow just had to take a leap of faith that Emma the elder wouldn’t hurt her little bro who was getting the childhood she never got.

i always thought magic in regards to Emma was a good shorthand for emotional growth.

[ParadoxLost]

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 0:04 PM, Chaos Theory said:

As someone who genuinely enjoyed the show from start to reboot (which I refuse to watch). I think the shows biggest mistake is that it didn’t focus on the main cast of The Charming Family, Regina and Rumple.  It continued to throw Disney product after product with different degrees of success instead of focusing on family drama which actually had a great deal more potential.    I know people have different views on Regina but her relationship with the The Charmings, Emma Henry and heck even Rumple was often the foundation of the show but was often just written badly.   It could have been so much more.  Still I did enjoy the vast majority of the show.  

While I whole heartedly agree, I have also finally reached the conclusion that A&E are just flat out incapable of that and can't get out of their own way enough to let the other writers who might have been capable of it do it either.

As much as I hated a lot of the things they did with the characters over the years, I think in retrospect, that the most damaging thing was that no matter what happened there were never any consequences.  There was never any inter personal drama.  It was always one episode and done.  So what did it matter... that Snow didn't believe Emma could be good without removing the potential for evil or Hook killed David's Dad.  It didn't really.  I can't think of a story arc that I liked.  It just became a handful of well done episodes that were well done that just dwindled in numbers over the years.

[KingOfHearts]

50 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

As much as I hated a lot of the things they did with the characters over the years, I think in retrospect, that the most damaging thing was that no matter what happened there were never any consequences.  There was never any inter personal drama.  It was always one episode and done.  So what did it matter... that Snow didn't believe Emma could be good without removing the potential for evil or Hook killed David's Dad.  It didn't really.  I can't think of a story arc that I liked.  It just became a handful of well done episodes that were well done that just dwindled in numbers over the years.

It's written as case-of-the-week, but that doesn't work because of all the crazy cliffhangers and arcs. You can't just go, "hmm, let's do a Rumple episode where he learns about courage!" when Rumple has nothing to do with what's going on. 

[Mabinogia]

They really did screw up just about everything on this show. It really could have been something amazing. But they got self indulgent. They are too aware of the actors playing the characters. They write for the actors they like the best even if those characters have overstayed their welcome or were better in a smaller role or the role they were originally meant to play (mostly the villains who keep getting redeemed because A&E like the actors playing them). Nothing that happens on screen seems to be about the characters as much as it seems to be about the actors playing the characters. 

I know many will disagree but the only redemption that really made sense to me was Regina because her life was 100% about Henry once she adopted him, even if she sucked at being a mother I do believe she loved him and would want to be the person he wanted her to be, but it happened too fast IMO. She was forgiven too fast, by all but Snow White because I believe Snow White to be the type of person to forgive easily, but Emma and the townsfolk should still have been very reluctant. That storyline should have been going on in the background for a few seasons. The show was better, IMO, back when no one really trusted Regina but she wanted so desperately to be a part of the group, which I think is all she really ever wanted, to be loved. 

Rumple never should have been redeemed. He was such a better bad guy than Regina ever was. And the village idiots should not keep forgiving him. He should be the puppet master that Gothel is now, the man behind the other villains. If they wanted him to be the good guy and bad guy, make it so that the village idiots don't realize he's the man behind all the bad guys they have faced. To them he is a sweet fairy godfather type but behind the scene's he is screwing them over. He could place nice but never really is nice. 

They should have spent more time with each story. I feel like they blow through these stories because they want to get to their next "clever idea". 

IDK, I just feel like since the show began they have made the wrong choice with every single decision they made.  

[Shanna Marie]

On 1/12/2018 at 10:55 AM, Mitch said:

I really hate that they made Emma have magic. She should have always been the hero who used her brains, skills and athletic abilities to beat the bad guys. 

I don't think Emma's magic made all that much difference. There were only a few times in the entire course of the series in which she actually got to use her magic for anything useful. Her magic caused more problems by making her a target.

The real problem wasn't so much Emma having magic as it was that her magic was so undefined and unlimited, and her learning to use magic amounted to her learning to believe in herself, until she forgot and had to learn it again, plus the fact that they were wildly inconsistent with what she could do and how she came to have power (at first, Rumple was shocked she had magic, and then later it turns out that everyone knows about Saviors), and they kept coming up with reasons why she couldn't use her power or her magic didn't work.

I think they could have done something really interesting with an ordinary woman from a non-magical world not only finds out she's the daughter of Snow White, but also has magical power -- if they stuck with her being the Savior because of the curse, if Rumple had inadvertently given her powers as a side effect of everything he did to make her a Savior and now there was someone who could challenge him, if people were worried about her having power because light magic in humans was nearly unprecedented and there was some concern that magic could make her go bad, if she could do a few things instinctively but needed to learn to use her power, if Regina's spellbooks didn't work with Emma's magic because of the difference between light and dark magic so Emma had to basically make up her own magic system, and she used things from pop culture, so her magic was a mix of Jedi stuff (all the dark side and light side), Harry Potter, and whatever else came to mind (surely some Bibbedy-Bobbedy-Boo), and her learning had a consistent, gradual curve instead of her instantly being able to do anything, until the next time she forgot everything and had to instantly learn everything again.

All the jazz hands and being able to do anything with a wave of a hand, then losing her power or being unable to use it, then becoming perfect again after learning to believe in herself, until she feared her power and had to learn to believe in herself again, then being able to do anything with a wave of a hand was bad storytelling.

[KingOfHearts]

11 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

I know many will disagree but the only redemption that really made sense to me was Regina because her life was 100% about Henry once she adopted him, even if she sucked at being a mother I do believe she loved him and would want to be the person he wanted her to be, but it happened too fast IMO. She was forgiven too fast, by all but Snow White because I believe Snow White to be the type of person to forgive easily, but Emma and the townsfolk should still have been very reluctant. That storyline should have been going on in the background for a few seasons. The show was better, IMO, back when no one really trusted Regina but she wanted so desperately to be a part of the group, which I think is all she really ever wanted, to be loved. 

I was rewatching more of the Pilot, and it occurred to me that one of two things had to happen for Regina's character arc to work. Either she couldn't have been as evil as she seemed, or she needed hard consequences. 

[Camera One]

And the Writers continually thought it was a good idea to do neither of those things... making her even more evil with massacres and ensuring she avoided any sort of consequence with her victims apologizing to her.  Which was pretty much embodied by the episode "The Evil Queen".

Edited January 15, 2018 by Camera One

[Kktjones]

I thought it was interesting that the writers decided to ramp up the past evil deeds for their villains while they were turning them into heroes in the present. They did it for Regina and Hook (and even Rumple to a certain extent, although his present day actions were pretty bad as well). It's almost like the more redeemed they get, the worse their past gets. Hook, for instance, didn't really have much of a body count or many truly evil deeds in his past until S5 (murder rings, killing his father, murdering David's father). Regina's evil past just seemed to get worse with every single flashback... 

Edited January 15, 2018 by Kktjones

[Camera One]

45 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

I thought it was interesting that the writers decided to ramp up the past evil deeds for their villains while they were turning them into heroes in the present. They did it for Regina and Hook (and even Rumple to a certain extent, although his present day actions were pretty bad as well). It's almost like the more redeemed they get, the worse their past gets. Hook, for instance, didn't really have much of a body count or many truly evil deeds in his past until S5 (murder rings, killing his father, murdering David's father). Regina's evil past just seemed to get worse with every single flashback... 

I think it's one of the best examples of how unaware they are.  As you said, Hook's killing of David's father happened as late as Season 6.  Even in Season 5, they were still featuring victims of Regina's massacres who needed to die (Percival) and there was the bold and audacious head snapping of guards in the musical episode.  Meanwhile Season 6 had the flashback of Rumple giving the poison to Snow's innocent handmaiden and his deal with Hyde pretty much guaranteed her death, yet we were all supposed to be happy that he was invited to the Last Supper.  The Writers couldn't understand why it was a big deal that Regina killed Elderly Snowing or that Zelena raped Robin.  Yet the villains deserved a millionth chance because of sadface.

[superloislane]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think it's one of the best examples of how unaware they are.  As you said, Hook's killing of David's father happened as late as Season 6.  Even in Season 5, they were still featuring victims of Regina's massacres who needed to die (Percival) and there was the bold and audacious head snapping of guards in the musical episode. 

They specifically wanted this contrast and to this day think it's great. I think it's their odd idea to show us just 'how far the villains have come'. I don't think they see any lines crossed - like when someone asked about Regina raping Graham, Adam said 'Well she's evil!'. It was the same response for the Gothel thing. They think it's great to show them doing awful things in flashbacks and then show them as 'heroes' being totally accepted by everyone in the present because it's a juxtaposition and the more they act like heroes in the present the more they have to show just how bad they were in the past. I'm pretty sure they have said in a number of interviews about how amazing it is that the villains have changed so much and you can see this in the contrast from their evil flashbacks. 

Edited January 15, 2018 by superloislane

[Mabinogia]

They are terrible writers. They have no sense of nuance. It is all or nothing. I wish this show had different show runners. It was such a great concept. I've pretty much rewritten the entire show in my head in order to still like these characters because as they are written on the show they are either irredeemably evil or total fucking morons. That's why I can't remember a lot of the actual show backstory, because it was either bad or it no longer makes sense based on the characters as they are now.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

They are terrible writers. They have no sense of nuance. It is all or nothing. I wish this show had different show runners. It was such a great concept. I've pretty much rewritten the entire show in my head in order to still like these characters because as they are written on the show they are either irredeemably evil or total fucking morons. That's why I can't remember a lot of the actual show backstory, because it was either bad or it no longer makes sense based on the characters as they are now.

How fans view characters depends on which episodes they watched the most or when they started watching. If you watch, "The Cricket Game", you'd think Regina was a poor victim who just needed loooove. But if you watch "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", she's a psychotic bloodthirsty rapist. If you watch, "Good Form", Hook is an honorable man with a naval background. If you watch "The Brothers' Jones" or "Murder Most Foul", he comes from a past of moral corruption. The writers mistake inconsistency for complexity. Yes, people interpret the characters differently, but it's not because of ambiguity, nuances, or moral grayness. 

If you started watching in S7, you would clearly have no idea what kind of character Rumple was/is.

Edited January 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Free]

17 hours ago, Kktjones said:

I thought it was interesting that the writers decided to ramp up the past evil deeds for their villains while they were turning them into heroes in the present. They did it for Regina and Hook (and even Rumple to a certain extent, although his present day actions were pretty bad as well). It's almost like the more redeemed they get, the worse their past gets. Hook, for instance, didn't really have much of a body count or many truly evil deeds in his past until S5 (murder rings, killing his father, murdering David's father). Regina's evil past just seemed to get worse with every single flashback... 

It's because A&E want to have both their villains and their redemption stories but they can't balance the two, so it becomes too inconsistent and repetitive to watch the same characters 'learn the same lessons'.

[Shanna Marie]

On 1/14/2018 at 9:54 AM, Mabinogia said:

I know many will disagree but the only redemption that really made sense to me was Regina because her life was 100% about Henry once she adopted him, even if she sucked at being a mother I do believe she loved him and would want to be the person he wanted her to be, but it happened too fast IMO.

I'm not sure I'd use the word "redemption" about Regina because while she did change her behavior, redemption, to me, implies a changed heart -- recognizing that what you did was wrong and feeling bad enough about it to want to change and to want to try to make up for the past wrongs, whether setting them right or doing something else to atone. Regina never really changed her attitude, and that made her so-called redemption ring hollow to a lot of people. She never said that targeting Snow the way she did was the wrong thing to do, never showed any real remorse for what she did, and the attitudes that got her in trouble in the first place never really changed. She still blamed all her woes on other people. The Marian debacle was a good sign of where she'd changed and where she hadn't. Her first impulse was to force Sidney back into the mirror and to try to come up with a way to kill Marian. She doesn't go through with it and does seem a bit disgusted at the view of her past self, but she also doesn't show any sign of remorse for the pain she caused Robin in taking Marian from him in the first place and never shows any empathy for realizing that what she's experiencing is what she put so many other people through when she separated them from their loved ones. All she can focus on is her feeling that something's wrong because she isn't getting her happy ending. Even at the end of season five, she was talking about how much she hated being good. If someone is hating being good, I have a hard time seeing them as redeemed.

10 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

This makes me think, OUAT had an a character who was a shrink, at least in Storybrooke, throw in some scene's with Regina mentioning the therapy she's getting, show some sessions where she breaks down about what she did to Graham, or Snow, or pretty much anyone she's run into. Have her talk about how easy it is to fall back on dark magic to solve all her problems and have Hopper give her alternate ways to solve her problems. If they had just put actual effort into her redemption I think it would have been better accepted.

This was more what we needed. That might have connected the dots between evil Regina and everyone's friend the totally redeemed Regina. They seemed to be going that direction in 2A, when she was seeing Archie and she was avoiding using magic because she'd grown dependent on using magic to solve her problems. Then it was all totally forgotten when Cora came to town, and they never went back there. The problem was that she never broke down about what she did to other people. She never admitted what she did to Graham. She never admitted that Cora was the one responsible for Daniel's death, or that Snow was a child manipulated by a master manipulator and wasn't at fault, and so all the horrible things she did targeting Snow were wrong. She said she had no regrets, that she hated doing good. And it's weird because she was mostly consistent in avoiding bad behavior after 2B. They just didn't really show why or how she was able to so radically change her behavior without also changing her attitudes. If the only thing keeping her from being evil was the realization that she couldn't have both her revenge and Henry's love, then she should have been more like Rumple, doing things she thought she could get away with behind Henry's back. It's also kind of crazy that they were okay hanging around with her when she'd never outright said she was through trying to destroy them. Even Hook and Rumple struck an outright truce before they were willing to work together.

8 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

If you watch, "Good Form", Hook is an honorable man with a naval background. If you watch "The Brothers' Jones" or "Murder Most Foul", he comes from a past of moral corruption.

And then in the musical, Hook doesn't want Snow's money because all he wants is revenge, so why is he bothering with ordinary robbery? He spends a whole song boasting of the bad things he's done, but he murders to cover up a crime? You can't even watch a single season and get a consistent background.

[ParadoxLost]

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's also kind of crazy that they were okay hanging around with her when she'd never outright said she was through trying to destroy them. Even Hook and Rumple struck an outright truce before they were willing to work together.

I think I've said this before, but it would have helped me greatly if they had just one town meeting where they discuss humoring Regina trying to be a better person to avoid the possibility of her casting another curse because she feels "wronged" or "unsupported".

[Shanna Marie]

19 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I think I've said this before, but it would have helped me greatly if they had just one town meeting where they discuss humoring Regina trying to be a better person to avoid the possibility of her casting another curse because she feels "wronged" or "unsupported".

At the very least, they should have clarified her position at about the same time Hook and Rumple struck their truce, before they headed to Neverland with the person who's been trying to destroy them for years, cursed a civilization to make the suffer, and was getting ready to use a magic bomb to kill them all so she could have Henry to herself. Maybe Snow wouldn't have spoken up because she's Snow, but you'd think David might have pulled her aside as they were boarding the Jolly Roger:

DAVID: Wait a second, before you get on that ship, I want to clear up one thing. Can we trust you on this mission?
REGINA: (Offended) What do you mean by that? I'll do everything I can to bring Henry back.
DAVID: But can we trust you not to take this opportunity to kill us, or leave us behind, or anything else?
REGINA: Why wouldn't you be able to trust me?
DAVID: You just set off a magic bomb to kill us all so you could have Henry to yourself.
REGINA: First, I didn't set it off. I merely was getting ready to use it. Second, did you miss the part where I nearly died trying to stop it?
DAVID: You still haven't answered the question.
REGINA: Fine. I'm done trying to destroy you. I won't do anything to you on this mission. I won't try to leave you behind or get rid of you. Happy?
DAVID: It'll do for now.

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

At the very least, they should have clarified her position at about the same time Hook and Rumple struck their truce, before they headed to Neverland with the person who's been trying to destroy them for years, cursed a civilization to make the suffer, and was getting ready to use a magic bomb to kill them all so she could have Henry to herself.

Yes. And yet, she was the only person who also got praised by Snow on their return, who credited Regina specifically for saving all their lives on a mission to save Regina's son. 

[Camera One]

Snow?  You mean Snadam Whitsis?

[Lady Calypso]

The worst thing they've done for this show is have Snow be Regina's biggest supporter. And trust me, there's a lot of bad things they've done for this show! 

[KingOfHearts]

I just realized how many main characters on this show have become parents - Snow, Charming, Emma, Regina, Rumple, Belle, Henry, Robin, Zelena, Jacinda, Victoria, Neal, Hook, WHook. Together, they all produced: Emma, Snowflake, Henry, Neal, Gideon, Lucy, Roland, Robyn, and Alice. There are far too many babies on this show.

[Camera One]

Quote

Adam Horowitz‏ @AdamHorowitzLA

Hey @finaldraftinc -- i just cut and past a scene and the rest of the script exploded into gibberish. Also, no one reached out to me about the problem last time. Even though you said they would.

3:00 PM - 21 Jan 2018

There are just so many jokes that can be made from this tweet.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

I'll go first.

13 minutes ago, Camera One said:

i just cut and past a scene and the rest of the script exploded into gibberish.

This explains a looooot of the writing in S6 and 7.  The software has been slowly malfunctioning for the past couple of years. They only noticed when the mistakes reached a critical mass. 

[Shanna Marie]

And here's the response from Final Draft tech support:

Final Draft @finaldraftinc

Hey, @AdamHorowitzLA, we've watched your show. You can't blame our software for your scripts being gibberish. Try writing better.

[Camera One]

Yeah Adam, I'm getting the problem too.  I cut and paste that scene with Emma and Henry from Season 1 and replaced Emma with Henry and Henry with Lucy, and then dumped it into a story about a rapist Rapunzel corrupting the real Rapunzel resurrecting her dead daughter who is the stepsister of another Cinderella which happened at the same time as Season 1-6, and I don't understand why everything is gibberish.

[ParadoxLost]

Hey A&E, maybe you should film that script.  The timeline makes no sense as it is, so maybe randomly scrambling the script will sort that out.

[Rumsy4]

20 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

Hey A&E, maybe you should film that script.  The timeline makes no sense as it is, so maybe randomly scrambling the script will sort that out.

In fact this is perfect opportunity to test the Infinite Monkey hypothesis. In this case, replace Infinite Monkeys with the 'malfunctioning' software, use a predictive keyboard program, and out comes not a Shakespearean drama, but a script of Once Upon a Time. 

Some people used a predictive keyboard to come up with a new chapter of Harry Potter. It was actually quite funny (X).

[KingOfHearts]

Are we sure it was a cut and paste and not a copy and paste? That's How to Write Rumple/Big Bad Conversation Scenes 101.

Edited January 22, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[ParadoxLost]

25 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

In fact this is perfect opportunity to test the Infinite Monkey hypothesis. In this case, replace Infinite Monkeys with the 'malfunctioning' software, use a predictive keyboard program, and out comes not a Shakespearean drama, but a script of Once Upon a Time. 

Some people used a predictive keyboard to come up with a new chapter of Harry Potter. It was actually quite funny (X).

When I was in college, I had an assignment in a postmodern literature course to cut up an article and randomly construct an essay.  I used Rolling Stone and ended up with  pretty cool episode of the X Files about the return of Elvis.

I used to think about using the same method, cutting up episodes, to write the first paragraph of each chqapter of a OUAT fan fic, just to see where it took me.  So I'm kind of curious if the gibberish script would turn out better than actual episodes.

[jhlipton]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

There are just so many jokes that can be made from this tweet.

Like these?

 

[KingOfHearts]

I noticed in the Pilot that Charming was on the brink of death on the floor, but Snow's kiss didn't save him. Why did it save him in 6x22, but not 1x01?

This show is really difficult to rewatch. Even the good parts. In nearly nearly ever scene I think, "Oh, if only they went a different direction with x." S1, in particular, feels like a completely different the show. It's not just a matter of the cast and crew getting into the groove, but it's like their motivations diverged from the original plan completely.

Edited January 23, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[CCTC]

10 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I noticed in the Pilot that Charming was on the brink of death on the floor, but Snow's kiss didn't save him. Why did it save him in 6x22, but not 1x01?

 

Because they wanted to book end a bunch of stuff from the premiere to the closing of the first book and did a lot of things that were form over substance, and did not follow their normal eye for detail and consistency and logic?

I cannot remember if there was a flash for that kiss, but I also kind of took it that he was knocked out and there was not necessarily anything magical about the kiss, they just liked the parallel.  Although both Hook and Charming basically fell from the equivalent of a very tall skyscraper or greater, and neither really should have been in-tact to walk away much less be kissed looking like they were just taking a nap..

[KAOS Agent]

I was thinking about how the writers have said that they develop the flashbacks first and then create the present story to fit the parallel. I can see how that worked for Season 1 because the past really was driving the present story, but that method of writing needed to be abandoned once they moved into Season 2 and the past was simply informing the present. Even then flashbacks ought to have been used only sparingly to explain new characters' motivations/histories. It floors me that they continued to use this method for all seven seasons. Are they that resistant to change or just too stupid to realize when a change is needed?

[Shanna Marie]

I suspect that the flashback format is largely because they want to show the fairytale worlds to contrast with the modern world. That's probably why there were so few Emma flashbacks, and most of the times when they had young Emma flashbacks in the real world, the present-day action was in a more fantasy-type setting -- Emma was in the Enchanted Forest when they did the "Tallahassee" flashbacks, and she was there again with time travel when they did the flashbacks at the orphanage and at the carnival with Neal, and then her red jacket origin story happened in an episode that mostly took place during the Underworld quest, when they weren't even in "Underbrooke" most of the time, so it had more of a fantasy feel.

With no fairyback flashbacks, you wouldn't know it was even a fairytale-related show. But there are ways they could keep the flashbacks fresh. They could do like they did in season one (and, to a large extent, 5A) and use them to tell a consistent, coherent story, so that the past action is driving the story. They could switch things around so that the present is in a fairytale world and the flashbacks are to the modern world.

Really, though, just better writing overall would keep the flashbacks fresh and interesting. That's the real problem. There's no coherent storyline with any kind of narrative drive or character development anywhere. We'd have the same problem with or without flashbacks, though I do think they've kind of become a crutch, substituting backstory for characterization. Dramatizing an incident from the character's past doesn't do any good if those events don't lead to character traits that are part of the way the character deals with things in the present. It's also as though they don't know what to do with the present story, so they throw in a flashback from the past to give it fake depth.

[KingOfHearts]

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

With no fairyback flashbacks, you wouldn't know it was even a fairytale-related show. But there are ways they could keep the flashbacks fresh. They could do like they did in season one (and, to a large extent, 5A) and use them to tell a consistent, coherent story, so that the past action is driving the story. They could switch things around so that the present is in a fairytale world and the flashbacks are to the modern world.

Lost got around this problem with the flash-forwards, time travel, and flash-sideways. OUAT never really attempted anything like this, and I don't know why. The time jumps never felt like flash-forwards to me.

Edited January 23, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

The thing that really struck me though is that they said they continue to write the flashback first and then develop the present day story. In S1, 5A and 3B to some extent, this works because the past is driving the story in the present. The past was the cohesive narrative and the present could be whatever they needed it to be to fit the past narrative. But why wouldn't they write the present story first and then develop the flashbacks later when the present story is what is driving the narrative? It doesn't make sense to hamstring yourself trying to write a cohesive present day story by first writing random flashbacks that have little purpose in the overall story you're telling and then trying to force the present to fit the randomness. It's exactly why there is no coherence overall in the present and why nothing in Chekov's Arsenal is ever used unless it occurs within a single episode. 

[ParadoxLost]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

With no fairyback flashbacks, you wouldn't know it was even a fairytale-related show.

I understand that and the show has to have part of every episode with that fairy tale element.

What I never understood is why they didn't structure the half seasons where they travelled to another land differently.

As far back as 2A, Emma and Snow were in the Enchanted Forest while David/Regina/Rumple were in Storybrooke.  I never saw the point of adding the flashbacks too.  It seems like it would be easier to make the present day fairy tale land more interesting if they weren't trying to juggle the lesson from the past too.

Same thing with Neverland and the Underworld.   They would have needed to leave part of the characters home to drive the Storybrooke narrative but a lot of them were just standing around anyway.  Would those arcs have been better if they could devote more of the fairyback budget to them? 

[Kktjones]

I think the worst example was Camelot where they had flashbacks within the flashbacks where we learned exciting things about our main characters a bunch of characters that we'd never see again. 

Or maybe the worst was in 3B when they had the missing year as great fodder for the flashbacks, but decided to give us multiple flashbacks of Zelena in Oz and a young Cora getting screwed over by Zelena's father Snow's mother. 

Edited January 24, 2018 by Kktjones

[KingOfHearts]

35 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

I think the worst example was Camelot where they had flashbacks within the flashbacks where we learned exciting things about our main characters a bunch of characters that we'd never see again. 

Ugh, I hated those. The timeline was confusing and there wasn't much difference between the flashbacks and the uh... closer-to-present flashbacks. At least in other arcs, there were stark contrasts between past and present; not just story-wise, but visually and tonally. Even in 3A, with the Neverland flashbacks, Past!Neverland was lush and surrounded with daylight. And then, if there were Storybrooke flashbacks, the color scheme would change to blander shades. But in Camelot? It was exactly the same. Not even the writers could keep track of the when's. They made a bunch of mistakes with the "xxx years ago..." cards.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Lost got around this problem with the flash-forwards, time travel, and flash-sideways. OUAT never really attempted anything like this, and I don't know why. The time jumps never felt like flash-forwards to me.

That just comes back to the fact that it's not the flashback structure that's the problem, it's the writing. The flashbacks can be interesting when they give us a twist in the backstory, set up the history, or drive the plot forward, and there were multiple opportunities to do different things with the flashbacks that they didn't take. Instead, they set up story elements that never end up mattering (so much of Camelot), retcon character histories to sort of fit the big moral lesson of the present-day plot (most of the Hook flashbacks from season 5 onward), or serve as an Afterschool Special-level bit of moralizing somewhat adjacent to the theme of the present-day plot.

25 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

Or maybe the worst was in 3B when they had the missing year as great fodder for the flashbacks, but decided to give us multiple flashbacks of Zelena in Oz and a young Cora getting screwed over by Zelena's father Snow's mother. 

The weird thing about 3B was that they didn't even really tell us that much about Zelena, not enough to make her character three-dimensional. I think we just got two flashbacks with her -- the one where she finds out about Regina and goes to find Rumple and the one in which the idiot Oz witches give her the power-amplifying necklace after she exhibits 30 seconds of emotional stability. And then there was the Cora flashback. That left them six episodes they could have used to work with the missing year in a way that told a story. But instead of telling the story in a logical way, and instead of treating the cast like an ensemble, they did "centrics." I guess a centric was necessary for Hook because the whole point of his side of that story was that he was separated from the others, but for most of the rest of that, they could have used the ensemble better. Neal's episode could at least have started with him as part of the group (which would have better set up all that "he loved us and we loved him so we're naming our kid after him" stuff). The Rapunzel episode was a waste that would have been better focused on the whole group working on the problem.

With Camelot, I'm not even sure why they bothered bringing Lancelot in and showing the sanding stuff, since it ended up going nowhere. The Charmings were cured practically between episodes, and they never resolved it at all. Merida was just one element too many in that season, and they'd have been better off using her two centric episodes for something else. There was a very "kitchen sink" (as in "throw in everything but the kitchen sink") quality to that arc. Come to think of it, there's been that quality to everything from 4B, on. Instead of focusing on one thing, they threw in way too much. So in 4B we have the search for the Author, the Marian/Robin/Regina/Zelena drama, the Rumple trying to fix his dark heart and trying to turn Emma dark stuff, the Maleficent/Eggbaby/Lily story, Cruella (also part of the Turn Emma Dark plot), and Ursula. There was no central thread, like Pan/Neverland, Zelena, or Ingrid. In 5A, we had the Dark One stuff, the Merlin story, the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot stuff, Rumple's empty heart, Merida and her backstory, plus the character drama around Henry's relationship. Merlin could have provided a throughline there, connecting the Dark One stuff to Camelot, but they needed to ditch Merida and if they were going to bring up Lancelot, they needed to deal with and resolve that story. 5B was a little more focused, but they still added unnecessary side trips with the Red/Dorothy stuff (that had nothing to do with anything in the plot) and some contrived additional drama with Belle and Robin. I know Zelena ended up being important to the Hades plot, but I would have preferred to not have that contrived additional connection (like they were trying to justify bringing Zelena into it) and had instead developed Hades as an actual character with motivations and history. Making him all about Zelena weakened him as a character and diluted the story too much. Season 6 was all over the map.

And, wow, I hadn't realized how badly the ratings have been sliding over the years until I looked at the Wikipedia episode guide to check episode numbers and titles to refresh my memory. It's interesting how there tends to be a steep slide right after episodes that are generally reviled. The series never quite recovered from "The Cricket Game." It got 9.10 million viewers, dropped to 8.24 the following week and didn't go above 8 the rest of the season. Previously, there was a bump or at least a steady hold for the spring season premiere, but it looks like the mid-season finales for 4, 5 and 6 didn't exactly encourage people to come back for the spring because there was a drop for the spring premieres. "Murder Most Foul" was also a big turn-off, with a big dropoff afterward that didn't ever really recover.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

The thing that really struck me though is that they said they continue to write the flashback first and then develop the present day story. In S1, 5A and 3B to some extent, this works because the past is driving the story in the present. The past was the cohesive narrative and the present could be whatever they needed it to be to fit the past narrative. But why wouldn't they write the present story first and then develop the flashbacks later when the present story is what is driving the narrative? It doesn't make sense to hamstring yourself trying to write a cohesive present day story by first writing random flashbacks that have little purpose in the overall story you're telling and then trying to force the present to fit the randomness. It's exactly why there is no coherence overall in the present and why nothing in Chekov's Arsenal is ever used unless it occurs within a single episode. 

It's a writing crutch for them, and as  you said, it really explains why nothing fits together in the big picture.  I think it comes from their obsession with "surprise" twists.  They use the flashback/present-day structure to reveal something in the past that is unexpected, so that is why they write the flashback first.  In many cases, the present-day storyline is basically spinning the wheels, delaying the confrontation between the heroes and the big bad.  How many episodes were there in Season 6 where the heroes did something that was ultimately useless towards The Evil Queen (eg. Sapling of True Love?), and then Gideon appeared and turned her into a snake and caged her in a few seconds. 

I've said this before, but with their short attention spans, having a flashback plot and current-day plot means each story doesn't need to be as involved, or as detailed, or as deep.  

Edited January 24, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But instead of telling the story in a logical way, and instead of treating the cast like an ensemble, they did "centrics." I guess a centric was necessary for Hook because the whole point of his side of that story was that he was separated from the others, but for most of the rest of that, they could have used the ensemble better. Neal's episode could at least have started with him as part of the group (which would have better set up all that "he loved us and we loved him so we're naming our kid after him" stuff). The Rapunzel episode was a waste that would have been better focused on the whole group working on the problem.

Centrics would be okay if they did what "Lost" did and actually have the centrics reveal something meaningful about the character the centric is about.  For some characters, like Hook, the centrics often did this.  But it wasn't the case for the heroes.  For example, "A Bitter Draught" was supposed to be a Snowing centric, but while it gave them some screentime, they didn't receive any character development from it.  "Murder Most Foul" was supposedly a Charming centric, but Young Charming was featured for only a short scene, and that episode was basically an hour-lead-in to the big shocker that would separate Emma and Hook for a few episodes.  "Nasty Habits" was more about Rumple than about Bae.  

Edited January 24, 2018 by Camera One

[jhlipton]

How To Get Away With Murder uses two timelines well in the latter part of each half-season.  At some point, we get thrust into the future for a few scenes each episode, and the rest of the hour is spent moving the characters toward that future until the timelines align in the final episode.

[Camera One]

I don't know why practically everything Adam says is funny to me.

Quote

Rini  ?? ?? ??‏ @RiniSouren 14h14 hours ago

@AdamHorowitzLA question: why does everyone wear a coat or jacket inside? like in the charmings loft or granny’s

Adam Horowitz‏    @AdamHorowitzLA

Replying to @RiniSouren   Sometimes it's for continuity -- we need to match scenes outside where they are wearing coats. And we don't want to waste screen time on people taking coats on and off unless it's somehow part of the story. And our cast wears em well!

I guess it might be part of the story if they're putting the coats on those Special Coat Hangers.

[Rumsy4]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

And we don't want to waste screen time on people taking coats on and off unless it's somehow part of the story.

They’re so allergic to writing normal human activities, that they’d rather have their characters behave like puppets.

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

I guess it might be part of the story if they're putting the coats on those Special Coat Hangers.

LMAO!

[KingOfHearts]

Showing a character taking off a coat or jacket takes literally second. It's not like they can't speak while they're doing it.

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

Sometimes it's for continuity -- we need to match scenes outside where they are wearing coats. And we don't want to waste screen time on people taking coats on and off unless it's somehow part of the story.

Maybe I have more imagination than what they expect of the average viewer, but I don't really have a problem imagining that someone took their coat off upon coming indoors without having to actually see it happen if in an outdoor scene they were wearing a coat and then the next time we see them, they're indoors and not wearing a coat. You only need to show them removing coats if the scene shows them coming inside, and then I don't see how it takes away from the scene for the overall scene action to include someone taking off a coat while they're talking. The only one where that's an issue is with Hook, where it might be awkward getting the coat off over the hook, and would take more time, plus the shirt under the coat might not be modified the way the coat is to hide the fact that the hook is over a hand rather than replacing it. But, even there, it might have been nice if they'd occasionally shown that a hook isn't a perfect replacement for a hand and let us see him struggle with something or let us see what his coping mechanisms are.