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

[PixiePaws1]

Anyone here really believe Liam would have been so rude to Emma?? I think his entire personality was retconned in s6.

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, PixiePaws1 said:

Anyone here really believe Liam would have been so rude to Emma?? I think his entire personality was retconned in s6.

Hook's entire origin got retconned. Any dimension the navy days added was negated by 5x11 and 5x15.

Edited February 14, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

All of these are great/awful, and some of the ones I find most infuriating (eggGate, Liam killing a bunch of sailors, Bae being power crazy, Hook kills Charmings dad), but the one that really pissed me off was the ret con of Emma's job as Savior. originally, it was very clear that her job as a Savior was to break the Dark Curse...and that was it. She would always have magic powers, but after the Curse was lifted and everyone got their memories back, her job was very clearly supposed to be over. That was established right away, that Emma was supposed to save her kingdom, and thats why her birth was such a big deal and why they had to dump her in the Land Without Magic even without her family. They had to get her out before the curse hit so she could stop it.

Than, they randomly decided that, after she successfully got everyone's memories back, she was still the Savior for some reason, but now being a Savior was her actually job now, and she was Buffy the Curse Slayer who had to keep fighting random evil until she died, and then...another one gets born? Or something? This wasn't the character assassination that a lot of the aforementioned ret cons were, but it REALLY hurt the mythology of the show, and made something really simple into something needlessly complicated. She was established to do one thing, and now she is apparently doomed to be one in a long line of people who just fight all evil forever, even though that was never talked about before. They never explained how Saviors work, how many there are/were, and how their job works. The Savior was easy to understand at first, but, later, does she just keep fighting all evil, forever, or what? Are there new Saviors in every world? When Emma dies, will a Savior be born in our world or in whats left of the EF? What are their powers? What is their point? It never made sense, and it made everything a mess, and led to Emma becoming a broken shell of her former self, all for the sake of "angst". The whole thing hurt everyone, and created more questions than answers, which is the opposite of what ret cons are supposed to do. 

[andromeda331]

You've all pretty much named them all. The eggnapping, Bae wanting Rumple to kill, Neal teaching Henry how to get rid of magic, Liam kills everyone on the boat, Hook murders Charming's father, Hook murders his own father as a test, Snow and Charming deciding not to execute Regina, the Dark ones, the Savior, Cleo, Lily, Snow and Charming wake up,  Regina with light magic.  

[CCTC]

I am confident there will be at least one plot point in 7B that will fit in well with that list.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

This wasn't the character assassination that a lot of the aforementioned ret cons were, but it REALLY hurt the mythology of the show, and made something really simple into something needlessly complicated. 

Agreed, the shifting definition of "Savior" and Emma as Savior was yet another category of retcon that hurt the mythology.  Also in that category of retcon would be:

- True Love (and by extension, True Love's Kiss) becoming as common as discarded straws outside a fast food joint

- The Dark Curse being as simple to cobble together as Ikea furniture, with different requirements every time

- The never-ending supply of The Last Magic Bean™

- Realm Hopping becoming easier than flagging an Uber (now with new routes to The Land Without Magic!)

Edited February 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

44 minutes ago, Camera One said:

- True Love (and by extension, True Love's Kiss) becoming as common as discarded straws outside a fast food joint

- The Dark Curse being as simple to cobble together as Ikea furniture, with different requirements every time

- The never-ending supply of The Last Magic Bean™

- Realm Hopping becoming easier than flagging an Uber (now with new routes to The Land Without Magic!)

These are great examples of retcons that not only made no sense, but turned past plots into complete nonsense. More in this vein: 

- Wish Realm people being fake, then not fake, then fake, then not fake and interacting with people from other realms before they even existed.

- Multiple copies of everyone in multiple versions of Enchanted Forest (how specific does one need to be to not end up in version 3001 of the Enchanted Forest instead of version 2001 when using a Magic Bean?)

[tennisgurl]

47 minutes ago, Camera One said:

- True Love (and by extension, True Love's Kiss) becoming as common as discarded straws outside a fast food joint

 

Totally agree. Everything that was special and unique during the first season or two became common place and boring as the show went on, with no explanation as to why it was once such a big deal. True Loves Kiss especially went from something magical and amazing to as magical as making a run to CVS to get some Ibuprofen. TLK was killed first by Red and Dorothy having a TLK after about three days of knowing each other, that mostly was just them arguing, and then when Hades and Zelena had TLK after one date!

[Camera One]

13 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

- Multiple copies of everyone in multiple versions of Enchanted Forest (how specific does one need to be to not end up in version 3001 of the Enchanted Forest instead of version 2001 when using a Magic Bean?)

Yes, those last two were the latest retcons involved in the creation of Season 7.  It's seriously ridiculous, when a Wish Realm Regina could tell Wish Realm Hook to go to a Completely Different Realm Version of Mother Gothel (all before the Wish Realm had even been created), and he can somehow easily get back again, to the Wish Realm and not to the Mirror Enchanted Forest Realm, nor to Yet More Completely Different Realms.  At the very least, they should have made it EXTREMELY difficult to get to a completely different universe.  But everyone and their dog (Rumple, Henry and Whook, all independently) have gotten to Jacinda Land.  It's hard to even talk about this because it's hard to specify which place we're talking about. 

The ABC execs probably didn't want to hear another nonsensical presentation from A&E, because I'm sure they found a way to make all of this even more convoluted for Season 8.  "Our idea for the next season is to have Lucy, not this Lucy but Lucy #2 show up at the door of Emma, but not the original Emma but a different Emma, let's say Emma #8 in a cross-dimensional Boston which is actually New York, but not New York from our world, but New York created by a Wish Authoress which funnels new Guardians and Saviors through a time tunnel where a grown-up Lucy would be living in Storybrooke #3.

Edited February 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

All of these are great/awful, and some of the ones I find most infuriating (eggGate, Liam killing a bunch of sailors, Bae being power crazy, Hook kills Charmings dad), but the one that really pissed me off was the ret con of Emma's job as Savior.

That probably had the biggest big-picture impact on the show. The other things were infuriating but ended up being meaningless because they were so quickly forgotten (though that in itself made those things infuriating because it was character assassination for no good reason), but the Savior thing messed up a lot of the show. It was a detriment to Emma's character because in a lot of respects it removed free will from her life. It would have been so much more meaningful if she had chosen to use the magic she got as Savior and her other skills to deal with things because she's a good person and can't stand watching innocent people be hurt than it was when it was an obligation for her that took over her whole life and ended up being a fated destiny.

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

She was established to do one thing, and now she is apparently doomed to be one in a long line of people who just fight all evil forever, even though that was never talked about before. They never explained how Saviors work, how many there are/were, and how their job works. The Savior was easy to understand at first, but, later, does she just keep fighting all evil, forever, or what?

It didn't even seem like the Saviors did any good. Aladdin didn't accomplish anything, had to run off and hide, and got the hand shakes. Emma broke the curse, but then mostly after that she had to have other people step in and she just got stuck with the shaky hands and the destiny of doom. Is she still a Savior after the Final Battle, or did she get to retire? They make it sound like the fight against the Black Fairy was what brought on all the happy endings, like maybe Emma finishing her destiny brought peace to Storybrooke, even though most of the bad stuff that came to town had nothing to do with her. It probably has more to do with Rumple leaving town.

Oh, and there was the "Dark Savior Blood" that's required for the Author's pen. What the everloving hell?

I think I'd add the Author mythology to the list of worsts. Very little about it made any sense -- Merlin supposedly started the Authors, but why? They could alter events, but why, when they weren't supposed to? Why give them that power in the first place? Or was the Dark Savior Blood an illicit thing that gave them powers they weren't supposed to have? Where did the Apprentice come in? Why was the mansion brought to town in the second curse, and how could it have been the Sorcerer's mansion if the Sorcerer was Merlin and he was trapped in a tree all that time? If it was the pen and ink that had the magic, then what was the deal with all the blank books?

[Camera One]

The Apprentice's actions were nonsensical.  This guy knew about Merlin being stuck in a tree but stayed in Storybrooke and talked to no one.  He decides it's important to tell Lily that Snowing ruined her life because???  He supposedly did that because he was sooooo guilty, so why didn't he talk to Snowing and Emma?  How did the Apprentice even know about August?  How was he able to track him down in Phuket?  Why was he brought over in the second Curse, or was he in Storybrooke all along?  

Edited February 14, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

54 minutes ago, Camera One said:

At the very least, they should have made it EXTREMELY difficult to get to a completely different universe.  But everyone and their dog (Rumple, Henry and Whook, all independently) have gotten to Jacinda Land.  It's hard to even talk about this because it's hard to specify which place we're talking about. 

My fanwank was that there were separate sets of "multiverses". You've got the realms in Jefferson's Hat, then you have an alternate set of them. The show never really explained any of these mechanics, or even bothered to tell the audience that Alice's Wonderland was different. Henry mentioned briefly in the premiere that there were multiple versions of classic stories from different countries, and that was it.  It should be pretty mindblowing that there are a bunch of AU's out there, but the writers have never taken advantage of it. That's the problem - they don't need to exist. You could switch the names of the S7 characters (except Tiana and Gothel), and throw the "alternate Cinderella" concept out the window. It's obvious this show cares so little about what it's already done that it needs to go out and do it over. 

[wingster55]

10 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

My third choice is the "Baelfire was evil all along" retcon. This may seem trivial compared to the rest, but this retcon touched the very premise of the Show and sort of ruined the very foundation it was built on. It is basically the "Han shot first" retcon for Rumple. 

Hang on...when did that happen?

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, wingster55 said:

Hang on...when did that happen?

In episode 6x13, Baelfire used the Dagger to force his father to murder Beowulf. Rumple then promptly made him lose his memory with memory tea in order to "protect" him.

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

That probably had the biggest big-picture impact on the show. The other things were infuriating but ended up being meaningless because they were so quickly forgotten (though that in itself made those things infuriating because it was character assassination for no good reason), but the Savior thing messed up a lot of the show. It was a detriment to Emma's character because in a lot of respects it removed free will from her life. It would have been so much more meaningful if she had chosen to use the magic she got as Savior and her other skills to deal with things because she's a good person and can't stand watching innocent people be hurt than it was when it was an obligation for her that took over her whole life and ended up being a fated destiny.

I remember thinking it was so cool that Emma had magic. The set up for the reveal was really good. Jumping in between Cora and Snow while Cora was trying to take her heart only to try and take Emma's instead. And she couldn't. It was so nice to see a villain being defeated and in a way that she always won. By taking hearts. She couldn't take Emma's and got blasted back. It was so nice that a good person had magic. That love was power not weakness. It really seem to fit with Emma helping people and bonus or perk when going up against villains. How happy would people be that there was a good person with magic? Who could help them and save them. Instead of yet another villain with unlimited power that no one could really go up against. I wondered if the magic came because she was product of true love or a Savior. Or a side effect of the Curse that no one knew about since Rumple didn't actually create it. Of course it came to nothing.     

[daxx]

The thing with Hook killing David’s Dad could have been in character and made sense easily and used far less screen time than that silly thing with his dad trying to save James.

Hook and his men in a tavern doing what pirates do. David’s Dad falling off the wagon as was originally written and starts bemoaning the fact he sold his son to the king. I could easily see Hook ambushing him on the road and killing him for that.

The Dad is dead and Hook is completely in character, two short scenes, we now have more time for something else. David could have still gone after George but have it be a false lead.

[CCTC]

Speaking of George, I always thought they should have given him a more prominent role in season 2.  I thought maybe he could team up with Cora, and they could have been a great super couple of evil for everyone to fight (back when they fought and did not just march down the street and watch two people get into a magical light stand-off).   Plus, I think Hershey and Dale would have worked well together.

In retrospect, that would have put too much focus on David and not enough on someone named Regina or Gold.

[superloislane]

Worst retcons/stories:

Rumple was born a Savior...I haven't been as angry with the show as I was when that happened. I'm still angry about it - this idea that Rumple, who was basically shown as the devil in the show, had any Savior qualities at all made me sick but even worse was this idea that he was the Savior to kill the Black Fairy and not Emma! I'm just glad that was the end of the show because I would have dropped it then anyway.

Wish realm people aren't real...oh wait yes they are! And they will never explain it either!

Snow and Charming could have gone to get Emma but chose not to for her to keep her destiny which made no sense because there was nothing to indicate that Emma needed to be alone and unloved to be the Savior and in fact they showed in the exact same season that you needed magical shears to rid you of your destiny and nothing could prevent it otherwise...

The idea that the Dark Curse can be created with any magical potion at all as long as you crush a heart in it like Dark Hook did - that was just stupid.

Hook killing Charming's father for shock value and then never doing anything with that

Hook killing his own father I was fine with but then we're supposed to believe that he swore Regina to secrecy about this for absolutely no reason. They have Hook be randomly concerned about keeping secrets in order to retcon his past all the time - with this and the Charming's dad thing. 

Edited February 14, 2018 by superloislane

[Writing Wrongs]

I opened a Pandora's Box of WTFs. :)

[CCTC]

54 minutes ago, superloislane said:

Hook killing Charming's father for shock value and then never doing anything with that

What do you mean?  Charming might have discovered this and come to terms with this completely off-screen, but we saw him pat Hook on the shoulder saying all was good. 

I did not care for the Hook murdering the father the way they did (although thought it was a great episode besides that), but since they went in that direction, there probably should have been a little more time spent on the resolution between David/Hook/Emma.  They really like to go from shock factor and/or crisis to the next shock factor and/or crisis  without taking any time to mine some of the emotional pay-off the conclusion of an arc should have.  They usually rushed the pay-off so they could set up the next arc.

Edited February 14, 2018 by CCTC

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, PixiePaws1 said:

Anyone here really believe Liam would have been so rude to Emma?? I think his entire personality was retconned in s6.

I don't so much care about retconning Liam, since he only appeared in two episodes. It was just everything else surrounding that retcon that was so awful. To start with, they had the reunion of Killian and Liam take place during a commercial break. We had the door opening and Liam standing there, then return and they seem to have been talking for some time. We missed the initial reunion, the initial reaction to seeing each other, to Liam learning what had become of his little brother, missed seeing Liam meeting Emma. And then later, Henry and the Charmings are working with Liam in the search for the pages, but there's no indication that they have any idea who he is.

Then there's the theme of the episode, about forgiving yourself. We had Regina talking about how hard it was to forgive herself -- like that's ever been a problem for her. Her problem has been that she's never considered herself to be in the wrong in the first place and she gets mad when the people she's wronged are still upset about it, since she's an entirely different person now. Hook should feel bad about the stuff he's done because he's done some bad stuff. I don't think he's really to blame for what happened when he was a Dark One, since that was done to him when he was extremely weak and vulnerable and it was the Darkness that seemed to be driving his actions, but he's done some awful stuff he should feel bad about. The important thing is that because he feels bad, he's made an effort to change. He's atoned for the bad things he's done, and considering that he actually died helping others, he could really and truly say he's a different person now. It undermines his change to just say that the brother he thought was perfect turns out to have been a mass murderer, too, so everyone can forgive each other and themselves. If they wanted to show his worthiness to have a second chance at life, they should have shown how much he'd changed, like choosing not to take revenge.

And then there's the mess with the timeline. I guess it depends on how old Liam and Killian were supposed to be in the flashback, but Killian's timeline only works at all if he's 16 or so in this flashback, which would have given him at least four years in the navy, then a couple of years as a pirate, then at least eight years with Milah before going to Neverland, and he could still be physically in his early 30s when he meets Emma. But while Colin looks young for his age, you can't even squint and pretend he's a teenager here. The way they got into the navy was pretty lame (you got a gem, we'll appoint you an officer!), and they wouldn't have necessarily advanced the way they did without experience and the skills to back it up, but it undermines their achievement if Hades did it all for them. I'm still iffy on the idea of Killian having been a useless drunk before becoming upright Lt. Jones, so he had only spent a few years in his "good man" phase.

[Rumsy4]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

We had the door opening and Liam standing there, then return and they seem to have been talking for some time.

They didn't even freaking hug!!! Every single moment of baseline human behavior is skipped by the writers. Maybe they're aliens who don't really know how humans work? That's my next conspiracy theory.

Quote

It was a detriment to Emma's character because in a lot of respects it removed free will from her life

That was the worst way to develop Emma's story. Emma's S1 quote: 

Quote

People are gonna tell you who you are your whole life. You just gotta punch back and say, "No, this is who I am". You want people to look at you differently? Make them! You want to change things, you're gonna have to go out there and change them yourself, because there are no fairy godmothers in this world.

was one of the most iconic lines on the Show. And yet, they completely undermined it. "You can't escape fate" is a pretty crappy moral for a fairy tale show to leave behind. 

[Shanna Marie]

2 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

They didn't even freaking hug!!! Every single moment of baseline human behavior is skipped by the writers. Maybe they're aliens who don't really know how humans work? That's my next conspiracy theory.

That was one of the big disappointments. Hook had been talking about his brother since season three, they're reunited, but if there was a hug, it happened offscreen. I have sometimes wondered if maybe they're on the spectrum somewhere, so that they don't quite grasp or understand emotions or relationships, but that usually comes with an obsessive attention to detail. If they were actually non-neurotypical so that emotions were a foreign thing to them, you'd expect the worldbuilding to be really intricate, with a precise set of rules, and there would be no continuity problems.

3 hours ago, CCTC said:

I did not care for the Hook murdering the father the way they did (although thought it was a great episode besides that), but since they went in that direction, there probably should have been a little more time spent on the resolution between David/Hook/Emma.  They really like to go from shock factor and/or crisis to the next shock factor and/or crisis  without taking any time to mine some of the emotional pay-off the conclusion of an arc should have.

The problem with the Hook murdering David's father plot (well, one of the many problems) was that it wasn't even a shock. The moment Josh and Colin referred to Hook and David having something from Hook's past that would get in the way of their relationship, we all said that Hook probably killed David's father, and that was in the summer before the season. Then when the Evil Queen brought out the coin that was a clue about David's father, we all said Hook must have killed him. During the episode, when it was looking like it had nothing to do with Hook, that Hook was able to comfort and counsel someone on an issue that wasn't at all his fault, that was the surprise. It was a really powerful episode. And then we got to the last few minutes, and dammit! They ruined what could have been one of the better episodes of the season, and it ended up not amounting to much, in spite of all the character assassination it brought with it.

There's Emma, being utterly oblivious to the fact that Hook is clearly in misery and very drunk, but still more or less demanding a proposal right then. Who would do that? Generally, if you find an engagement ring, you put it back and keep your mouth shut because that probably means that he's planning a proposal. You don't go waving it in his face and demanding the proposal. Then when she caught him burning the dreamcatcher, how could she have known from the slightest glimpse of what she saw from across the room what it had anything to do with? She jumped to the worst possible conclusion about him when he disappeared, said he'd never loved her, but all was okay once she thought she might be separated from him for good. Meanwhile, he was never hurt or mad about the way she acted once he was separated from her. They never actually resolved the issue. It was just "whew, thought I'd lost you, but you're back, so all's good." Not to mention all the interesting parts of his adventures happening offscreen.

[Rumsy4]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

There's Emma, being utterly oblivious to the fact that Hook is clearly in misery and very drunk, but still more or less demanding a proposal right then. Who would do that? 

It's unbelievable that Emma was so blind to Hook's misery and self-loathing that she would steam-roll over him like that. It's not about whether David would forgive or not, it's about how guilty Hook felt. She seemed to only trust and care for Hook as long as he was being supportive to her. The second something went bad, she freaked out completely. She herself kept the prophecy of doom and savior shakes from him because WALLs and expected him to understand and be supportive. However, she never gave him the benefit of the doubt. Then, she got pissed because he left after she kicked him out of the house! Did she assume he would attain self-realization by sitting under the Storybrooke Bodhi tree for 30 minutes and be back in time for dinner? And then, she took out all Hook's possession out to the shed and decided to "move on", but changed her mind when she realized that her faithful puppy dog hadn't left her willingly. I was already left with a bitter taste from the Wish Realm episode where she told Wish August that she "sort of lived" with Hook. This just made everything worse. Even in Season 4, despite the infamous bathroom-heart-shove, Emma was supportive and trusting, and yet we're expected to believe Emma would act like this after the Dark One and Underworld arcs. None of Emma's behavior in S6 was natural or believable. 

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

And then, she took out all Hook's possession out to the shed and decided to "move on", but changed her mind when she realized that her faithful puppy dog hadn't left her willingly. 

Oh, I'd even forgotten about that. Yeah, the fact that he'd left his most prized possessions behind wasn't a clue at all, so off to the shed with them! (Conveniently, so she'd be able to hear the shellphone call while Gideon approached her.) And she gave up so quickly. You'd think that a guy who once gave up everything he owned for her and who died for her a couple of times would at least get the benefit of the doubt, with her taking more than a day to not only give up on him but also declare that he'd never loved her. Basically, that arc turned her into the heroine of a bad Hallmark movie, the kind who sees the guy talking to a woman, jumps to the conclusion that he's involved with someone else and either cheating with her or cheating on her, refuses to talk to him so that he doesn't even know what's going on, and then when she learns she was wrong about the conclusion she jumped to, everything's okay. I guess serious jeopardy and having to rescue the guy from mortal peril does wonders for fixing relationship issues, because him not having told her what was going on in 4A (during the time he could have) or her being oblivious to something being seriously wrong with him and all the issues in this arc never really were dealt with. It was all resolved with peril followed by a reunion.

[Souris]

Y'all are making me line up a whole bunch of tables remembering all the colossal narrative stupidity, LOL.

[tennisgurl]

It really does seem like the writers had no idea how actual humans actually act around each other, and the Hook and Emma fight after Hook realized he killed Charmings dad is a prime example. They could have made it into a way to explore Emma's issues with abandonment and her insecurity about herself, but instead they just half assed the whole thing and had Emma and everyone being all "well, Hook left all his stuff here and from all accounts he was upset and probably just went off to think after his girlfriend freaked out on him while he was clearly drunk and depressed" even though it made no sense whatsoever. And, worse, it made Captain Swan looked just as dysfunctional and weird as every other couple on this show, and that is unforgivable damn it! 

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

They didn't even freaking hug!!! Every single moment of baseline human behavior is skipped by the writers. Maybe they're aliens who don't really know how humans work? That's my next conspiracy theory.

I think maybe they didn't want to include them talking about what has happened in their lives since they last saw each other, because that would be "boring" exposition. 

They've probably done this other times that I don't remember, but another time when there was a big reunion was in "Manhattan" with Emma and Neal. It was just so awkward how the "transition" was Neal saying let's talk at a bar.  Why, exactly?  I thought it really broke the flow of that conversation.  

[tennisgurl]

8 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

They didn't even freaking hug!!! Every single moment of baseline human behavior is skipped by the writers. Maybe they're aliens who don't really know how humans work? That's my next conspiracy theory.

Quote

But how could they have time to show that? They had to show Regina scratching her nose or some shit! That is MUCH more important than a major character moment that has been building for several seasons!

[CCTC]

If they did season 1 premiere/pilot now they probably would have Charming  kiss and wake Snow up off screen.

[Camera One]

Well, they did want to have Charming die.  

I wonder what their original plan was for Snow.  I wonder what love interest they would have saddled her with?  I think in the original conception of the show, she was a nun, and I guess she has an illicit affair breaking her vows?  I think that would have weakened Season 1.  One of the reasons why we wanted Snow to "wake" would have been taken away.  Talk about a bittersweet awakening to finally be reunited with her daughter but realizing her husband was dead.  That's just so hopeful.  I guess it's dark but not bleak.

[Rumsy4]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

They've probably done this other times that I don't remember...  

For example, when Snowing confessed the eggnapping and fetectomy to Emma off-screen. Even that one reporter who typically is very pro-A&E seemed a bit stunned at that.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

That's just so hopeful.  I guess it's dark but not bleak.

Sometimes, I really really want to sarcastically tweet a constant stream of Adam and Eddy's interview quotes at Adam. 

[KAOS Agent]

These lists you all are posting have really clarified for me why I had so little interest while watching S6 and why I wasn't at all upset when half the cast left at the end of the season. It was so bad and unbelievable that I couldn't even work up the energy to get angry. However, I still clung to them not destroying the last bits I liked, which is a challenge I'm sure they would have met had they had the opportunity in S7.

[KingOfHearts]

You know it's bad when Disney characters, known for being shallow and idealistic, have more organic development and humanity than the OUAT characters. Fairy tales, as cut-and-dry as they are, are probably closer to real life and have sounder world views.

Edited February 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Talk about a bittersweet awakening to finally be reunited with her daughter but realizing her husband was dead. 

Yeah, talk about a good news bad news scenario. "Hey Snow! I've got good news and bad news! On the good side, heres your daughter, your friends, and your actual memories and personality! On the crappier side, here are your last memories, which are of your husband bleeding to death. You take the good you take the bad!" 

I really have no idea what the original plan was for Snow. Maybe they could have made getting memories back a more bittersweet thing, which they played with a few times but didn't do much with, or would have given her a new romance. They couldn't have given her the same plot in season 1 as she has, because her angst with David was being invested in a comatose stranger, and then her attraction to a married man. The whole tragedy of David Nolan and Mary Margaret was that they felt pulled together, but their love felt wrong, and they couldn't be together without screwing up their lives and hurting people. That was the whole curse. Maybe if they kept the plan of her being a nun, but that doesn't really have the same bite to it. 

[Rumsy4]

Snow coddling Regina already seemed birazze and inexcusable. Can you imagine her doing that even if Regina had killed her husband and True Love? Would she still have thanked Regina for giving her hope? "Thank you for murdering my husband. If not for that, I would never have understood the value of moving on..."

Edited February 15, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Camera One]

Oh, that's a given.  If her husband wasn't killed, she wouldn't have her happy ending with the new man that A&E would have in mind for Snow.  Hmm, let's see Minister Frollo maybe?  And Emma can of course thank Regina for killing her dad.  

I forgot to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day.  The day we think of Cupid, and how his arrows can be used to find the person you hate the most.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Oh, that's a given.  If her husband wasn't killed, she wouldn't have her happy ending with the new man that A&E would have in mind for Snow.  Hmm, let's see Minister Frollo maybe?  And Emma can of course thank Regina for killing her dad.  

I forgot to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day.  The day we think of Cupid, and how his arrows can be used to find the person you hate the most.

Regina, Rumple incoming! 

[Free]

9 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Snow coddling Regina already seemed birazze and inexcusable. Can you imagine her doing that even if Regina had killed her husband and True Love? Would she still have thanked Regina for giving her hope? "Thank you for murdering my husband. If not for that, I would never have understood the value of moving on..."

Yes, she was already chastised for defending her family from Cora and the show tried to act like what she did was the most horrible thing ever including darkening her heart, trying to equate that to the mass murders Regina did as the Evil Queen.

[Shanna Marie]

With the series coming to an end, I started thinking of the common tropes we see in science fiction/fantasy series and how many of them have been used in this show:

• Magical impersonation of characters (Zelena posing as Marian for longer term, so very many in the short term)
• "Mirror" universe (the Author AU where villains were heroes and heroes were villains)
• "Wishverse"
• a Jekyll/Hyde split of a character into good and evil sides
• child taken away to a place where time moves faster, so he grows to an adult almost instantly
• spell that makes everyone angry or violent
• death isn't permanent!
• magical indication to prove true love
• time travel that allows characters to witness/participate in an event important in the history of the show
• character in mental institution, suggesting that all the supernatural stuff we've seen is a delusion
• a character clone -- double of a main character created by magic/science gone awry or from another universe joins the cast
• recasting explained by magic (Robin Hood)

I'm sure there are more. But what about the common tropes we haven't seen yet? The ones I can think of are:

• A Groundhog Day time loop -- it's actually rather surprising that they haven't done this because just about every genre show does it eventually. That might have made for an amusing way to break down Emma's WALLS, if she was the one conscious of the loop and got started feeling like it was always going to re-set, so there were no consequences to what she did, so she told everyone how she felt, and that was the time the loop ended and didn't re-set. Though with these writers, it would have been Henry outside the loop trying desperately to save Regina.
• A Freaky Friday body switch -- they sort of did this with Pan and Henry, but that functioned more as a magical impersonation by a villain to infiltrate the group. The Freaky Friday trope is more about forcing people to see the world through each other's eyes. That would have been a much more interesting way to overcome David's animosity toward Hook than the stupid murder plot -- magic spell going awry makes Hook and David switch bodies and David gets a sense of how Hook is generally treated and what Emma feels for him (while awkwardly trying to avoid any physical affection with her). Meanwhile, Hook as David gets stuck babysitting Snowflake and has no clue what he's doing but also gets a glimpse into ordinary domestic life. But on this show, they'd probably do something like having Regina and Zelena switch places, or maybe Emma and Regina, with Emma being the one to learn all kinds of things about how difficult it is to be Regina and Regina learning nothing.
• Rapid aging or the characters being reverted to children -- I rather hate these and am glad they didn't go there. We did get some of the characters in old-age makeup, but it wasn't like any of those Star Trek episodes that used either of these tropes.
• Spell makes adult characters revert to their teenage selves (while still played by the adult actors) -- probably for the best that they didn't do this, since they already were using the adult actors to play their teen selves in flashbacks.
• Amnesia spell -- they did a lot of memory spells, and there were the curses that gave fake identities, but they never did a more general amnesia spell, where everyone forgot who they were and then had to try to piece together their identities from clues. That might have been interesting in Storybrooke, where they'd have had clues suggesting their modern lives, but also fairy tale elements.
• False prophecy -- I think every prophecy turned out to be more or less correct. We didn't get anything like on Angel where someone was manipulating events by planting fake prophecies.

Any other tropes that always come up that we either saw or didn't see?

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Any other tropes that always come up that we either saw or didn't see?

• Powerful, enigmatic identities with generic names. The Author, The Guardian, The Sorcerer, etc.
• Using the power of friendship to save the day, whether it's holding hands to stop a Fury or Snowing's clique diluting a sleeping curse.
• Strange town or place that seems normal on the outside. (Such as Eureka, Haven, Sunnydale.)

One trope we did see what throwing two characters, usually at odds with each other, into a dangerous situation isolated from everyone else. Star Trek did this so many times I lost count, however OUAT didn't do it that often, I don't think. Normally with this trope, one of the characters gets injured and the other has to drag them around. (Usually the uninjured one is viewed as "Good Samaritan" type, unlikely to help the other person because of surrounding circumstances or personal views.) The one shining example I can think of this is 3x05, where Hook and Charming went off to find the sextet. Usually OUAT would only pair characters that already worked well together or groups of more than two. (Such as Team Princess or Wicked Hero.)

I really, really wish we could have seen more odd character pairings. Snow and Hook, Regina and Belle, Charming and Zelena, etc.

Totally unrelated side note: Does anyone remember what happened to Belle in the Camelot flashbacks? She went off with Merida in 5x06, but I can't remember her being there at all after that.

Edited February 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

One trope we did see what throwing two characters, usually at odds with each other, into a dangerous situation isolated from everyone else. Star Trek did this so many times I lost count, however OUAT didn't do it that often, I don't think. Normally with this trope, one of the characters gets injured and the other has to drag them around. (Usually the uninjured one is viewed as "Good Samaritan" type, unlikely to help the other person because of surrounding circumstances or personal views.) The one shining example I can think of this is 3x05, where Hook and Charming went off to find the sextet.

True, we really didn't get that, and even with Hook and Charming, Hook deliberately came up with that mission to get Charming away so he could cure him, so all their danger was manufactured by Hook. It wasn't the same as the away mission with two characters stuck together and forced to get over their differences to survive. Maybe Henry and Hook captured by Liam 2.0 fits in here, though I don't think they delved into that in the way that any Trek series or even the Star Wars Rebels cartoon has. And there's Emma and Regina in the Wishverse. But I'm surprised they never stuck Hook and Charming in a mine cave-in or Emma and Regina in a villain's lair. Hmm, maybe we'll get a Whook and Rumple episode like that in the rest of season 7 and that will explain why they were on such good terms when the curse was cast and why Weaver still seems to like and trust Rogers, even after getting his memories back.

[KingOfHearts]

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But I'm surprised they never stuck Hook and Charming in a mine cave-in or Emma and Regina in a villain's lair. Hmm, maybe we'll get a Whook and Rumple episode like that in the rest of season 7 and that will explain why they were on such good terms when the curse was cast and why Weaver still seems to like and trust Rogers, even after getting his memories back.

I guess it sort-of-kind-of happened in 4x02, when Emma and Elsa were trapped in the ice cave.

[Shanna Marie]

53 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I guess it sort-of-kind-of happened in 4x02, when Emma and Elsa were trapped in the ice cave.

That was definitely a subset of the away team stuck together story, with a regular cast member stuck with (and usually helped by) someone they thought might have been an enemy, but being stuck together allows them to get to know each other and realize they aren't enemies.

You know, Hook and David could have been this show's Bashir and O'Brien, starting out not getting along, then getting to know each other and gaining respect when they were stuck together in a crisis, gradually becoming friends, starting to hang out together, then eventually becoming best friends but sometimes having that friendship tested by a crisis. It even fits, with David having reasons not to like Hook at all, Hook wanting to make friends with David (because it would make things easier, given his interest in Emma). Hook isn't the young and naive person to David's wisdom and experience, but Hook does have a tendency to be a bit full of himself while David's more of the quiet, stoic type. Instead we got David thinks Hook is a no-good pirate until they have to work together on something and he ends up thinking Hook's great, repeat once a season.

[tennisgurl]

The weird thing was that you could tell that Colin and Josh were doing a traditional "uptight heroic guy and roguish bad boy start out enemies, and then warm up to each other" in a way that was natural, while the writers kept making their relationship skip around all over the place. They had great chemistry, and you could often see them in the background talking, and laughing, and even hugging (!) each other, but then the writers would decide that either A. The relationship wasn't important enough to focus on mostly or B. It only existed for ANGST. Or, momentarily angst anyway.  

In general, platonic relationships suffered as the show went on. The show started with out with a lot of platonic relationships (parent/child, friends, other relatives, etc.), but by the end, it was mostly all about who can hook up with who, and anything else was kind of shuttered away except for some ANGST for an episode or something. 

[KingOfHearts]

7 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

The weird thing was that you could tell that Colin and Josh were doing a traditional "uptight heroic guy and roguish bad boy start out enemies, and then warm up to each other" in a way that was natural, while the writers kept making their relationship skip around all over the place. They had great chemistry, and you could often see them in the background talking, and laughing, and even hugging (!) each other, but then the writers would decide that either A. The relationship wasn't important enough to focus on mostly or B. It only existed for ANGST. Or, momentarily angst anyway.  

Same thing happened with Sean. You could tell they all got along really well off camera. Out of the few scenes Sean did have with Colin, they had good platonic chemistry. (See: the sonogram picture of Zelena's baby.) There was another scene where they were laughing in the background at the loft, but it wasn't part of what was going on at all.

I can't see a good reason for why they killed Robin off. It's not like they added new characters in S6.

Edited February 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

The weird thing was that you could tell that Colin and Josh were doing a traditional "uptight heroic guy and roguish bad boy start out enemies, and then warm up to each other" in a way that was natural, while the writers kept making their relationship skip around all over the place. They had great chemistry, and you could often see them in the background talking, and laughing, and even hugging (!) each other, but then the writers would decide that either A. The relationship wasn't important enough to focus on mostly or B. It only existed for ANGST. Or, momentarily angst anyway.  

The annoying thing was, it wouldn't even have taken a lot more screen time to develop things better, just not reverting them every time an episode focused on them. There was still potential for drama and angst because they were so different. In early season 4, the first time they reverted badly for no reason, they didn't even need Hook and David to be at odds over Emma (which made David look like a jerk after the events of the season 3 finale). They could have had different opinions of how to deal with things. Then in season 6, David could have been concerned with finding out what happened to his father without insulting Hook. There are ways to have conflict without going back to "you're a terrible pirate who isn't worthy of my daughter."

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

One trope we did see what throwing two characters, usually at odds with each other, into a dangerous situation isolated from everyone else. 

There was that fan favorite, "I'll Be Your Mirror", where Regina and Emma were stuck together in Mirror World.  

 

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

• A Groundhog Day time loop -- it's actually rather surprising that they haven't done this because just about every genre show does it eventually.

Maybe they thought they covered it with "Welcome to Storybrooke" and Regina living the Groundhog day over and over again and poor dear starting to get bored of her revenge.

Quote

• Rapid aging or the characters being reverted to children

There was August reverted to a child, but he didn't have his memory so it's not the same, I guess.  

Rumple (I think?) also rapidly aged a nun... don't remember what episode that was.

Quote

• False prophecy -- I think every prophecy turned out to be more or less correct. We didn't get anything like on Angel where someone was manipulating events by planting fake prophecies.

We only got Charming planting fake Excalibur swords.

[KingOfHearts]

21 minutes ago, Camera One said:

There was that fan favorite, "I'll Be Your Mirror", where Regina and Emma were stuck together in Mirror World.  

Regina and Emma weren't really at odds with each other, though. They weren't exactly an "odd couple" at that point. If something like that happened in 3A, maybe. 

Quote

Maybe they thought they covered it with "Welcome to Storybrooke" and Regina living the Groundhog day over and over again and poor dear starting to get bored of her revenge.

I count this. I was actually watching parts of this episode earlier today. (Don't ask why I torture myself.) What's funny is that there's actually some really good stuff to mine from that episode, what with showing Cursed!Storybrooke and how it affected Regina. It didn't take a turn for the worst until it became about Regina's pain. As for Kurt and Owen trying to get the hell out of there, it showcased just how creepy Mayor Mills could be.

Edited February 16, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[CCTC]

23 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

it showcased just how creepy Mayor Mills could be.

As much as they tried to distinguish Story Brooke Regina from The Evil Queen in later years, Mayor Mills really was an effective villain in her own right.   It was interesting to see her use her brain and scheme and manipulate before she regained her powers, and it does make you wonder if they made a mistake giving her back her magic so early in the series.