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

[daxx]

Falling in love with the characters is what kept me invested. I was pretty into it until 4b before I really started getting disillusioned. There were moments before that that I rolled my eyes but the scene where Emma gives Hook his heart back then drops him to have shots with Regina in the next scene with no transition was jarring and I started to be far more critical after that. Not saying Regina shooting light magic out her flying arse didn’t piss me off but I was able to snark and get over it.

[Kktjones]

Yeah, I think the 4A finale is when a lot of us realized that the writers had no interest in pay-off or closure on emotional storylines - they just wanted to move along to the next plot. I'm not a big fan of angst and did not enjoy the Rumple/Hook storyline in 4A, but the positivity police were out in full force telling us all that it would be worth it when we got that heartfelt conversation about why Hook felt the need to get his hand back and how he slipped into his old ways by blackmailing Rumple. It seems almost funny looking back on it that people actually expected that! If I recall, even Matt Mitovich at TVLine mentioned the lack of pay-off for Emma & Hook fans leading to A&E's famous "well, we can't just do 40 minutes of them kissing." That's when I really pulled back from the show and started only watching for my favorite characters. Obviously without 3 of my 4 favs (and really it's a different Hook, so 4 out of 4), Season 7 held no interest b/c the plot and the writing is just not strong enough to overcome their absence.

[Rumsy4]

58 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

the positivity police were out in full force

Some of those in that crowd are now the most violently set against the Show, the writers, and the fans who continue to watch. They don't seem to get that different people can enjoy different things. They are personally offended when people express different viewpoints. 

Edited April 11, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Mitch]

On 4/7/2018 at 8:30 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I think I'm actually okay with Cinderella being more part of the fabric of their world than an actual plot. Unless you add a lot of extraneous stuff, there's not really enough story in Cinderella to sustain a multi-episode plot -- as we saw in season 7 when they threw in Rapunzel and a lot of other stuff, and it was still pretty weak. Cinderella works best as a rather intimate character study. I think that's one thing that worked in the Branagh version, where Lady Tremaine was just a woman desperate for financial security in a world where women's positions are precarious. It's hard to take that to a broader scale where she's a threat to even a small town. The heroes might want to protect Cinderella from her stepmother and help her find happiness, but there's not a lot at stake for anyone but Cinderella. The way it was handled in season one was just right, with Emma helping reunite her with her prince and her then becoming part of the group of friends. It might have been nice if they'd been able to keep that up and maybe have Lady Tremaine making appearances as that bitchy woman who's always calling the police on her neighbors or trying to take over the garden club (and, regardless of what they later said, I'm sticking with the headcanon that Ana from Wonderland was one of the stepsisters). Having Cinderella and her stepmother as part of the town's citizenry would have just added to that sense of a town populated by storybook characters.

Maleficent is more of a threat, since she has magical powers and can turn into a dragon. I could see her being an arc villain who was a danger to the town. She had reason for vendettas against Regina, the Charmings, and Rumple, and there was whatever was in her history with Aurora's family -- which we never learned, even when she was supposedly an arc villain. If she'd been a sole villain rather than diluting her with two other villains plus Rumple plus the Author, they could have really developed her story, along with Aurora and Philip, and then they could have used the other Queens of Darkness for another story arc.

Lol..Tremaine would make a perfect...Ms..Whatsherface, that kept calling Regina in S1 complaining about things..

Maleficent is one of this shows biggest failures...She is the BIG BAD in the Disney cannon who makes the EQ look like a wannabe. So..I think that was one point against her. Another point was the shows reliance on stunt casting..so the actress, who was tied up with her other show, couldn't make regular appearances.

It would have been SO much better if they had everyone but a few, transported to Storybrooke, so they didn't have to have the lame..."So and so found a bean" that made Rumple look like an idiot. I..as I said a million times, would have also not made their silly magic so easy to come by..so Rumple Regina and the Fairies have the majority of magic..and the rest of the villains would have to lay in wait to get enough magic to pose a threat.  Say Charmings dad and other royalty were sick of both the Charmings and Regina, AND living in a democracy and wanted power, so they steal magic to raise Maleficent to take them all on.

I know A & E REALLY wanted to dump SB and do magic land hopping but I though the most interesting part of the show were these people  stuck in a small town in our world. Cruella, well it was stupid to make her a big bad, with magic. and kill her off...she is a great supporting antagonist who should be used as comic support...drunkingly swaggering down main street, coming on to Charming and insulting Rumple( I LOVE that she was one of the few characters who was not afraid of him and openly insulted him...) We should have seen more of that, like Little Bo Beep as a mob mama..that was one of the few times the show lived up to its crazy ass potential.

[companionenvy]

Yeah, for me it comes down to characters. By the end of S6, the only characters I consistently liked were Emma, Hook and Charming, and the only other two I even really cared about at all were Snow (mostly out of residual affection from early seasons) and Henry, but that was enough to keep me going.

One other weird element of the show is that there are scenes that can be very ,very good if you basically pretend that the narrative the writers think they're writing is actually what they've shown on screen. Like, if we pretend that large parts of seasons four never happened, Rumple actually has a fantastic arc; the problem is that the writers made him so bad after supposedly granting him a measure of redemption that it is really, really hard to invest in his journey. But if I turn my memory and moral compass off and pretend that, post Bae's death and marriage to Belle, Rumple did not attempt to fill Emma with darkness, let a bunch of villains into Storybrooke, and get the Author to create a reality where the bad guys all win, I think most of his story actually does work, and I can accept him as someone who has better impulses and inclinations but is constantly struggling with his own pathological need for power -- and, more sympathetically, with his willingness to do absolutely anything, no matter how immoral, to save the very few people he loves. The problem is that the fact that his promises to Bae and Belle ultimately count for so little that he can't even manage to avoid trying to destroy the entire town to save himself within months of the events of S3 undermines what has come before, and leaves him too far gone to really invest in his redemption. Like, the man (barring 5A, when he isn't the Dark One) basically makes all of the most selfish choices possible for at least two seasons after supposedly going through a genuine transformation in which he is willing to die to save Henry, defeat Pan, and become the father he should have been to Bae. 

Even Regina's struggle can work at times if we pretend that she is, actually, someone worthy of redemption who has sincerely worked to make up for her past, and not an barely-repentant (and the "barely" is generous) sociopath.

[Shanna Marie]

Bringing this over from the 2.0 thread because it's about the series as a whole:

8 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

That is what always cracks me up about this show. They will make this HUGE deal out of something, the curse, the inability to move between realms, the Dark One, the Guardian, the Savior, True Loves Kiss, as if all of these things are some elusive unicorn that take years and luck and absolute dedication to find. And then, once they are found, they are suddenly everywhere.

This is in line with their bizarrely anticlimactic plotting -- with entire episodes focused on "we have to find the thing to do the thing, or we're doomed!" only for the big surprise twist to be that the thing we've been trying to find doesn't matter at all, doesn't work, or isn't an option. There was "only Emma the powerful light magic user can defeat Zelena, so we'll cast a curse to reach her -- never mind." There was "we must get the ambrosia to save Hook -- oops, all gone." There was the magic baby tree thing that ended up being just casually destroyed. There was the quest for the magic bean they never used. I guess you could even include all the clues that something was wrong with Hook in 4A that ended up being utterly irrelevant.

Up to a point, this isn't entirely bad writing. It would make a pretty boring story if the characters came up with a plan, were able to get the thing they needed, and then it worked the way they planned. The trick is that the thing that ends up happening needs to be even more interesting than the original plan would have been, and the plan B needs to have been developed along the way, just as much as the plan A was, so that you didn't waste a lot of time on a story that went nowhere. So, the thing about saving Hook from the Underworld worked for me -- there was plan A of sharing Emma's heart, which didn't work because he'd been dead for too long. There was plan B, the true love test and quest for Ambrosia. But that didn't feel like it was wasted time, even though it didn't work, because it was an emotional journey for the characters, and there was a result even if it wasn't the one they wanted, with Hook being willing to accept his fate and let Emma go to carry on with her life, and her bravely preparing to face life without him. And then the final result ended up being even more satisfying when it was something he earned on his own.

On the other hand, there was wasting an hour talking about the magic baby tree thing, only to have that just crushed, and no plan B or twist that challenged them further. Or the quest for the magic bean that ended up not mattering at all. I think another key of handling that twist is that the time spent on plan A can't have been a total waste. Something needs to come of it that matters, even if it wasn't what they originally planned. In these two cases, I don't think the events mattered at all to the characters. They didn't learn anything about themselves along the way, didn't discover something else. It was just wasted screen time.

[tennisgurl]

I got into Once both because I fell hard for the characters real fast, and the premise was so interesting and had so much potential, and had so much room to explore and play with genre and world building. It even seemed to be edging towards meta fiction, something that I have always loved, so this seemed like it was made for me. The show promised a quirky, fun, but also dramatic look at classic fairy tales and how they could exist in a modern world, and eventually expanding that world even beyond fairy tales, and into stories in general. Even during rough patches in the first few seasons, I still saw the characters that I loved doing things that made sense and were interesting, and I felt like the potential of the show was getting closer and closer to being fully realized. Then, things started going downhill. I still liked a lot of the show, but some things that had always been issues started becoming more and more prominent (the villain whitewashing, the contrived plots, the shoddy world building) but I stuck with it, hoping things would get better. Instead, it got worse. The things and characters I liked started becoming less prominent, and we got more of the crap I hated. But by then, I was already so invested, I had to see what happened next. And, as others have said, the show became bad in ways that were fascinating and unique, to an extent. Not so much in what happened that was crap (I've seen plenty of shows that squandered potential, built heroes out of assholes without much work, etc.) but how hard it doubled down on it, and how it failed so largely. It didnt just slip, it full on belly-flopped into garbage, splashing bullshit all over all of us. It was like watching a train wreck. Horrible, but also impossible to look away. 

And yet...there is still stuff here that I truly enjoy. Maybe I am just a big sucker, especially as all the characters I love are long gone, but I think some part of me is still waiting for that brilliant concept to pay off, and for that potential to finally be realized. I just cant quit this show, because I so desperately still want the show that I was promised. 

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

There was "we must get the ambrosia to save Hook -- oops, all gone." There was the magic baby tree thing that ended up being just casually destroyed. 

The latter in particular is an example of their one-off filler episodes.  At least the first one was actually a trap set by the villain and its bigger purpose was to give Emma and Hook some alone time and an emotional goodbye.  The magic sapling was clearly a wild goose-chase that served no purpose.  Were there any other really blatant examples of those?  

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Bringing this over from the 2.0 thread because it's about the series as a whole:

This is in line with their bizarrely anticlimactic plotting -- with entire episodes focused on "we have to find the thing to do the thing, or we're doomed!" only for the big surprise twist to be that the thing we've been trying to find doesn't matter at all, doesn't work, or isn't an option. There was "only Emma the powerful light magic user can defeat Zelena, so we'll cast a curse to reach her -- never mind." There was "we must get the ambrosia to save Hook -- oops, all gone." There was the magic baby tree thing that ended up being just casually destroyed. There was the quest for the magic bean they never used. I guess you could even include all the clues that something was wrong with Hook in 4A that ended up being utterly irrelevant.

Anticlimactic but at least they could be quick when they needed to be. I mean they strolled to save Emma from giving up her powers.  Strolled.  

[daxx]

49 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Were there any other really blatant examples of those?  

Climbing the beanstalk in the season 6 finale.

[Camera One]

39 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

Anticlimactic but at least they could be quick when they needed to be. I mean they strolled to save Emma from giving up her powers.  Strolled.  

Was this the extra hour ABC gave the show in Season 4 with "Smash the Mirror"?  I know it's "difficult" to slot in more time when they had already written the episode, but of course, the extra scenes included Snow being a prop to Regina.  Yet they still left some scenes on the cutting room floor, like the conversation between Elsa and Snow.  Plus how the episode started (where it seemed like they were going) didn't really mesh with the rest of the episode.  With most shows, one would be ecstatic to get an extra hour but with this show, the episode became a bloated mess.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

This show's concept is so broad, there was a billion-and-one possibilities for each season. It only get broader as time went on, when it expanded from Grimm's/classic Disney, to classic fiction, to pretty much everything under the sun up to modern day in an infinite multiverse. (That's limitless yet has its own "Edge of Realms") With stories in such big universes, you have to take a very thin slice of the pie and choose which one carefully, because each is a different flavor. If all fiction exists, which stories or genres will you focus on? What will you explore while also referencing the fact there's a lot that you aren't? It's a formidable challenge that you can't really pull off without good writers. The problem is that it's easy to feel like you're either missing out on something or there isn't enough focus. In OUAT's case, I think a lot of audience members got turned off by how broad it got. A&E's ADD style writing made it even worse.

I personally didn't mind seeing Frankenstein, Blackbeard, Cruella, or Frozen. The showrunners didn't start busting my buttons until the "infinite AU's" concept launched with the Wish Realm. It brought up too many unanswered questions without adding much to the story. S7 took what I hated and amplified it times one hundred. When the universe gets too big without really fleshing anything out, it becomes bloated and the content gets diluted. The characters become less important in the grand scheme of things. 

Quote

Was this the extra hour ABC gave the show in Season 4 with "Smash the Mirror"?  I know it's "difficult" to slot in more time when they had already written the episode, but of course, the extra scenes included Snow being a prop to Regina.  Yet they still left some scenes on the cutting room floor, like the conversation between Elsa and Snow.  Plus how the episode started (where it seemed like they were going) didn't really mesh with the rest of the episode.  With most shows, one would be ecstatic to get an extra hour but with this show, the episode became a bloated mess.

Do you think that Page 23 was tacked on to fill the second hour as well? It was never explained, yet I was surprised it ever came up again. 

Edited April 12, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

21 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

This show's concept is so broad, there was a billion-and-one possibilities for each season. It only get broader as time went on, when it expanded from Grimm's/classic Disney, to classic fiction, to pretty much everything under the sun up to modern day in an infinite multiverse. (That's limitless yet has its own "Edge of Realms") With stories in such big universes, you have to take a very thin slice of the pie and choose which one carefully, because each is a different flavor. If all fiction exists, which stories or genres will you focus on? What will you explore while also referencing the fact there's a lot that you aren't? It's a formidable challenge that you can't really pull off without good writers. The problem is that it's easy to feel like you're either missing out on something or there isn't enough focus. In OUAT's case, I think a lot of audience members got turned off by how broad it got. A&E's ADD style writing made it even worse.  I personally didn't mind seeing Frankenstein, Blackbeard, Cruella, or Frozen.

 

I think this is one of the most unique aspects of this show, and one of the reasons why I love it (caveat: I'm using "love" as defined in the show, eg. "Rumbelle").

The mash-ups are the funnest aspects of the show, and it is totally understandable that they need to be selective with such a large universe.  What irks me is their utter lack of effort in finding out more about the source material to create finely crafted episodes or arcs.  As the seasons wore on, it seems like what they brought on to the show became more and more "in name only".  If they DID make a selection, they should have really dove in.  Remember when we expected an exploration of Oz and then Glinda was just in one episode?  Or we anticipated Camelot and Merlin was a blithering idiot?  Or we looked forward to Greek myths and got a single scene with Zeus?  There was no meat to the bones.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

As the seasons wore on, it seems like what they brought on to the show became more and more "in name only".  If they DID make a selection, they should have really dove in.  Remember when we expected an exploration of Oz and then Glinda was just in one episode?  Or we anticipated Camelot and Merlin was a blithering idiot?  Or we looked forward to Greek myths and got a single scene with Zeus?  There was no meat to the bones.

It's a skimpy smorgasbord. You get a little bit of everything, but nothing substantial. "Hollow bunnies", as it is. I wish they would have nosedived into each realm, instead of tossing in a couple of flashback episodes. I would rather see the core characters reacting to new environments and situations instead of more irrelevant flashbacks of their pasts. The only way to make this show sustainable across over many seasons is to structure it more like as an anthology, with each arc mimicking a spin-off of sorts. 

[Mitch]

I too wish they had used the source material more and used that as a jumping off point instead of what is the most "Disneyfied" and watered down version for the viewing audience.  I was so excited ( yes, I am a dork) when the Wicked Witch was going to be a big bad.  But they screwed it all  up from the start using a mishmash of Baum, MGM and Wicked and that stupid Oz Great and Powerful..  OZ itself with its hundreds of books has the best universe already built with tons of characters to use...( for children's books they have more magical rules and consistency then Once could ever dream of..) Glinda is a nobody overpowered by Zelena and apparently trapped in a Winter World??? Dorothy is not the brave, smart girl who takes on witches and Gnome Kings but...just a girl who is tricked into giving up her power and later, as a supposed "Warrior" ineffectual as every other good character on this show.

Not everyone had to be related or have a connection in the past..it just makes everything chaotic and they have to break their own rules to make it work. I like Zelena, but she is not the WW..no matter how often someone refers her to that and they dress her up. Why couldn't Zelena just have her own story and not try to shove her into the a costume and name. She could have had the same history, she was just Cora's abandoned daughter who held a grudge.  They could have used the WW in her own arc.. no sob story, she is just an bad ass witch...who was defeated by Dorothy but the bucket of water was the magic well water which transported her to the EF.. which without Rump, Cora or Regina had a power vacuum and she took over, taking Zelena under her wing , etc. Why did that goofy Frozen girl have to teach Charming how to fence, etc.

One thing I do like about this season is that the CInderella story is not the Disney version...despite the bad casting it has a little more meat and angst then the one told before..

[superloislane]

14 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

It didnt just slip, it full on belly-flopped into garbage, splashing bullshit all over all of us.

That is the most perfect description of what happened to this show.

[superloislane]

26 minutes ago, Mitch said:

I like Zelena, but she is not the WW..no matter how often someone refers her to that and they dress her up.

I actually forgot Zelena was supposed to be the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz - I can't see her as that at all. She's just Zelena, jealous sister of Regina.

[KingOfHearts]

24 minutes ago, superloislane said:

I actually forgot Zelena was supposed to be the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz - I can't see her as that at all. She's just Zelena, jealous sister of Regina.

Zelena is a bit of special because in the book and the MGM film, the Wicked Witch of the West has no backstory. She's just a crazy bitch with green skin and flying monkeys. Other than the iconography, I'm not sure how anyone could say, "Oh, yep. That's totally the Wicked Witch." The writers needed to write an original story for her, but they should have gone with something more Ozian. Making her Regina's jealous sister from the Enchanted Forest doesn't translate at all. I also don't think they should have gone with Wicked route of woobifying her.

Did anyone else notice that the majority of the Oz scenes took place at night? The only two that weren't took place at Zelena and her father's house.

Edited April 12, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Mitch]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Zelena is a bit of special because in the book and the MGM film, the Wicked Witch of the West has no backstory. She's just a crazy bitch with green skin and flying monkeys. Other than the iconography, I'm not sure how anyone could say, "Oh, yep. That's totally the Wicked Witch." The writers needed to write an original story for her, but they should have gone with something more Ozian. Making her Regina's jealous sister from the Enchanted Forest doesn't translate at all. I also don't think they should have gone with Wicked route of woobifying her.

Did anyone else notice that the majority of the Oz scenes took place at night? The only two that weren't took place at Zelena and her father's house.

As much as I liked Wicked the book and the play...(the play a bit more as Glinda became more like the Buam's Glinda at the end...and the book just had her be a silly shallow girl..) I HATE that they...as you day woofify a bad ass like the WW...its like  the movie "Maleficent" you have a great actress to play her and she just misunderstood. As people have said a hundred times..you can give a villain solid motives without wussing them out.

I didnt notice the night scenes in Oz until you mentioned it...I know CGI is easier to disquise on a dark background and maybe it was to make the Emerald City look brighter in contrast? All I can think about is in last season's finale how did Zelena manage to get sent back to Oz...see the destruction, find the hat to get back to the EF and apparently make friends with the Munchkins when the Charmings and Regina barely woke up...the WW friends with Munchkins!!?!?!?

[Rumsy4]

2 minutes ago, Mitch said:

All I can think about is in last season's finale how did Zelena manage to get sent back to Oz...see the destruction, find the hat to get back to the EF and apparently make friends with the Munchkins when the Charmings and Regina barely woke up...the WW friends with Munchkins!!?!?!?

I don't remember any of this. Either I was paying even less attention that I thought, or this happened in an alternate universe. 

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Mitch said:

I too wish they had used the source material more and used that as a jumping off point instead of what is the most "Disneyfied" and watered down version for the viewing audience.  I was so excited ( yes, I am a dork) when the Wicked Witch was going to be a big bad.  But they screwed it all  up from the start using a mishmash of Baum, MGM and Wicked and that stupid Oz Great and Powerful.

While the use of the Wicked Witch was kind of iffy and they never delved into all the potential of Oz, compared to what came later, Zelena was handled reasonably well. She was a major player in a whole arc focused on her rather than her just showing up and going "Hi! I'm the Wicked Witch of the West. You may know me from The Wizard of Oz. Okay, bye now" like far too many characters who came later. They used some of the iconography surrounding her, including the flying monkeys, the Wizard, and Glinda and Dorothy (though, yeah, Dorothy was a mess), and her scheme used thematic stuff from the original story, with her needing heart, brains, courage, etc.

They completely lost it starting in 4B, where they just threw in Maleficent, Cruella, and Ursula, and they weren't even really major players in the story. Ursula was practically a one-and-done character who got redeemed without us seeing what she'd actually done. Maleficent had material worthy of her own arc, but just about everything related to her story just got dropped, from Philip being taken by the wraith to Philip and Aurora being in Storybrooke at the same time as Maleficent without them even encountering her, to no backstory development of her issue with Aurora's family, to the whole story of her daughter and her daughter's father that just got forgotten. I don't know if there's enough story material for Cruella to have starred in her own arc, but with the impediment on her being able to kill, she could have been someone who just stayed around in Storybrooke and added to the local color.

Then there was the Camelot stuff, which managed to play a role in a half-season arc without being developed much at all. Merlin was supposedly behind so much of the stuff that plays a major role in the story (like, they never got into what he had to do with the Author), but he barely appeared before being killed, and we never did learn the outcome of things for Guinevere and Lancelot. In 5B, Hades showed up with his flaming blue hair, but with no development at all beyond a hint that he had a conflict with Zeus and a bicycle ride with Zelena. Hercules showed up to say "Hi, I'm Hercules. You may know me from the movie of the same name. Bye."

They completely gave up even bothering to develop the storybook characters in season six. They threw in bunches of people to do no more than stand there in the background, but they acted like our deep emotional connection to these people should be enough to get us excited about these storylines. Season 7 is maybe a little better. They're mashing up a lot of stuff -- Cinderella plus Rapunzel plus Alice plus Hansel and Gretel plus The Princess and the Frog, but they're actually trying to sort of weave these stories together, and there's some development of each of them. Still, I feel like a lot of the problem is that there's too much that's too shallow. They'd be better off picking maybe one core story and a few characters from other tales, and then really developing everything rather than flinging dozens of random characters around, with little more than a name drop.

[Mabinogia]

49 minutes ago, Mitch said:

its like  the movie "Maleficent" you have a great actress to play her and she just misunderstood. As people have said a hundred times..you can give a villain solid motives without wussing them out.

Sleeping Beauty did that, IMO. Maleficent was pissed at being left out, that's something I think a lot of people can relate to, she just took it to an extreme because she's evil, it's what she does. They didn't need to go any further than that. It was enough and Maleficent (NOT the Once version whom I loathe) is my all time favorite Disney villain. She was an unrelenting, vengeful badass who could turn into a dragon. Once made her a wuss. I will never forgive the show for that.

I do like Zelena as a non wizard of Oz character, but her connection to WoO boils down to having green skin and a saying my pretty. Not sure why they had to drag Oz down into that mess. And they just got worse and worse at incorporating characters. Now they aren't even trying. Rapunzel resembles NOTHING from original Rapunzel or Disney Rapunzel. I don't get how she was Rapunzel other than they needed her to link to Mother Gothel who really doesn't remind me of Mother Gothel anyway, so they are just making up characters and using familiar names. They are just relying on brand recognition at this point.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

I do like Zelena as a non wizard of Oz character, but her connection to WoO boils down to having green skin and a saying my pretty. 

Don't forget "Wicked always wins".

[tennisgurl]

You whats really weird about Once? I mean, beyond the obvious, you know what really weird about Once as a show, especially in the context of its genre? Its such a unique premise* but its execution just ends up being so...bland. 

So, lets be real, and I say this with nothing but love and affection, but when it comes to fantasy (and its sister genres like science fiction, superheroes, and such)...there are only really so many plots. Now, I dont want to make a banner statement, and there are definitely things that have very unique premises, but most of them fall under a variation of a few bare-bones plots:

1. Normal person finds out they're actually magical/an alien/a member of a ninja cult/a superhero/chosen one, and are often a part of the weirdly specific "Gee thanks mom/dad/guardian you really left a few very key details out about your and our past and now its biting me in the ass so thanks for that" genre, but not every time. You could say that Emma's story started that way, especially when they doubled down on the whole Savior thing. Sometimes they are already the chosen one when the show starts, and are very aware but that still counts, especially if they're trying to fight against their chosen one destiny. Oftentimes, this plot will morph into plot number two...

2. Heroes travel around, often on the edge of society, fighting evil/chasing bounties or scores/avoiding people trying to kill them/exploring stuff/are on a quest to look for something to transport something. Often a part of the "ragtag bunch of misfits trying to escape evil empire, will often end up having to fight said evil empire" genre, but not always. 

3. We Fight Crime/Solve a Crime. Possibly the most simple plot synopsis, as its exactly what it sounds like. Somebody, for some reason, fights crime or evil of some kind, or has to solve some kind of mystery. This genre often overlaps with the other two, but it doesn't have to. 

4. Political shenanigans in a weird location. An increasingly popular one, its basically a political drama but in a fantasy/science fiction/fantastic setting. Known for having loads and loads of characters and subplots, each subplot will often be influenced by the aforementioned plots as well. Some shows will morph into this if they have enough characters and factions who show up Often described as "The Wire in..." wherever by critics who dont want to admit they like a show with magic or space ships. 

Now, this is just a very simple synopsis of what I have tended to see in my genre TV. Really, most types of stories start to sound alike after awhile (heroes journey and all that), but the devil, and the success, is in the details. You can easily come up with the most cliche of concept for your show, but if you do something exciting with that premise, if you have interesting, well acted and defined characters, and create a fascinating world, then who cares if the basic premise is generic? Thats just the building block, the true art is in what you do WITH those blocks. To me, it comes down to those three things. Where does the plot go? Are the characters interesting? Is the world carefully built and defined? There are other important things too (good effects, memorable cinematography, can take risks, good dialogue) but to me, those are the most important things to make your story unique and worth while. 

Weirdly, Once kind of did the opposite. While you can certainly see bits of those genres on Once (especially the first one) it had the potential to be totally its own thing, and blaze a new trail in the fantasy genre, combining and playing with tropes and expectations, and finding a truly new voice, while paying dues to whats come before. Instead, after awhile, it ignored what makes genre shows work. Characters became bland or unlikable (or just were ignored or ret conned into being jerks), the plots became convoluted and stupid, and the world building just got worse and worse. While good genre shows (or books/movies/whatever) can take a premise that we`ve seen before and make it new and fun and interesting by building upon that plot and making it their own, Once had a unique idea, and eventually sucked out that uniqueness and made it bland and even uncomfortable at times. We could have had it all!

*Not that Once is the first thing to ever do the "fairy tales in the real world" thing, but its the first one to add the memory loss and curse and such in the way that they did, with the addition of the fictional multiverse. 

Edited April 13, 2018 by tennisgurl

[Souris]

On 4/11/2018 at 11:44 AM, Kktjones said:

Yeah, I think the 4A finale is when a lot of us realized that the writers had no interest in pay-off or closure on emotional storylines - they just wanted to move along to the next plot. I'm not a big fan of angst and did not enjoy the Rumple/Hook storyline in 4A, but the positivity police were out in full force telling us all that it would be worth it when we got that heartfelt conversation about why Hook felt the need to get his hand back and how he slipped into his old ways by blackmailing Rumple. It seems almost funny looking back on it that people actually expected that! If I recall, even Matt Mitovich at TVLine mentioned the lack of pay-off for Emma & Hook fans leading to A&E's famous "well, we can't just do 40 minutes of them kissing." That's when I really pulled back from the show and started only watching for my favorite characters. Obviously without 3 of my 4 favs (and really it's a different Hook, so 4 out of 4), Season 7 held no interest b/c the plot and the writing is just not strong enough to overcome their absence.

Yep, that 4A finale was what killed my trust in the show. That was probably the angriest I've ever been after an episode of the show. Before, I believed they would actually have payoff for storylines. I had hope. But after that, I knew they never would. I came ::thisclose:: to giving up the show. I absolutely knew that I should have, because it was clear it wasn't going to be what I thought it should be. A&E's douchey comments after the finale made it doubly clear. But my affection for the characters, especially Emma and Hook, kept me watching. But the bitterness wouldn't go away.

[Camera One]

34 minutes ago, Souris said:

I had hope. 

Ironic that this show is supposedly all about hope, but it basically made us bitter and jaded and thoroughly extinguishing all faith and hope.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Ironic that this show is supposedly all about hope, but it basically made us bitter and jaded and thoroughly extinguishing all faith and hope.

 

It's depressing because the past few years have been turbulent (to put it lightly) for me, and OUAT used to be my optimistic escapism for the week. Storybrooke was a place I wanted to go. Now it's more akin to an unhealthy obsession that complements everything else wrong in my life, LOL.

Regina said it back in S1, "We all lose our heroes at some point."

Edited April 13, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

There's nothing more healthy than spending Friday night re-examining the motivations of Mother Gothel towards Lady Tremaine's family and assessing the threat that the Wicked Witch of the West and Snow White's grandson faces from Hansel.

I think the fact that we're still watching means that we still have inside of us the Spring of Eternal Hope.   

Edited April 13, 2018 by Camera One

[Mitch]

19 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

I don't remember any of this. Either I was paying even less attention that I thought, or this happened in an alternate universe. 

She casually strolled into Knifington Palace with Jeffie's hat and a couple of Munchkins..so somehow she got zapped to Oz, apologized to everyone, saw the destruction, got Jeffie's hat, grabbed some Munchkins and head to the EF.

[Camera One]

5 minutes ago, Mitch said:

She casually strolled into Knifington Palace with Jeffie's hat and a couple of Munchkins..so somehow she got zapped to Oz, apologized to everyone, saw the destruction, got Jeffie's hat, grabbed some Munchkins and head to the EF.

The whole dire scenario was ridiculous.  Why did the Realm Destruction always hit the palaces/castles last?  Jasmine/Aladdin were like, "We barely got our people out"... uh, Agrabah had 15 people?  And then Zelena, instead of explaining why she had to escape, goes "It's easier to show you."  How did she know the Curse Destruction hadn't aleady destroyed Emerald City?

[KingOfHearts]

Why didn't the Black Fairy freeze time in other realms like the first curse?

[Mitch]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why didn't the Black Fairy freeze time in other realms like the first curse?

I wish they had the Black Fairy cast the curse a few episodes earlier so we could have it play out more. Why send the Charmings and Regina back with their memories? Why leave Henry with his? What a half ass curse for a series "finale"

I would have had sent the Charmings and Regina back with they and everyone else thinking she had failed the first curse...( I have no idea what to do with that dumb baby they saddled the Charmings with but I will, like the writers ignore inconvenient plot points..)so they were still enemies. So they would be busy trying to kill (and of course, failing) each other and not even remember SB ,etc so the BF could think they were properly taken care of and not going to be a bother to her.  That would last an episode where we could finally get some resolution from Snow and Regina and why they cant kill each other and let Snow give Regina hell and for Regina to realize, on her own as the EQ..the sh*t she was pulling was all because of her mother and no one else and to stop...its Regina's owning up to her own faults that breaks their part of the memory curse and then they work on trying to get back to SB.  Of course in my version it would not be Emma but Henry who was in the nuthouse...(I know they couldn't do that with their extra special precious Henry) and have Emma back in Boston..No one in with any kind of sense would create a curse where Henry was their kid!!!   I would have had both Blue and Rump conspire together not to loose their memories and both of them to take Blackie down.

Well, at least Regina isnt the realms worst curse caster anymore.

[Rumsy4]

42 minutes ago, Mitch said:

She casually strolled into Knifington Palace with Jeffie's hat and a couple of Munchkins..so somehow she got zapped to Oz, apologized to everyone, saw the destruction, got Jeffie's hat, grabbed some Munchkins and head to the EF.

Thanks. Well...this shows how much attention Ii was paying the the crapfest happening on-screen.

[CCTC]

43 minutes ago, Mitch said:

Why send the Charmings and Regina back with their memories? Why leave Henry with his?

Spending an episode or two back in the EF with Regina and the Charmings not remembering they were no longer enemies and dealing with some sort of inner conflict of killing each other and not fully realizing why would have been interesting.  I agree, it could have been a good way for them to really explore their issues with each other.

I remember thinking at the time, how inept was the Black Fairy to leave Henry and Emma in close proximity and have Henry with some knowledge and memories.  Although they did not even bother to have that mean anything, since Henry never did reach Emma and the curse was broken without her doing anything to help break it.

[KingOfHearts]

45 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Spending an episode or two back in the EF with Regina and the Charmings not remembering they were no longer enemies and dealing with some sort of inner conflict of killing each other and not fully realizing why would have been interesting.  I agree, it could have been a good way for them to really explore their issues with each other.

Bonus points if the Charmings are agonizing over sending Emma through a wardrobe for no reason.

[KAOS Agent]

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Bonus points if the Charmings are agonizing over sending Emma through a wardrobe for no reason.

I don't know why this would be an issue. They literally closed the door on their child's happiness and never seemed bothered about it post-curse. It was all Emma's fault for not reacting more positively to finding her parents and being unable to connect with them in the way Snow wanted. S6 has a lot to answer for and the episode with the true love flower portal destroyed a lot of Snowing's previously displayed feelings and expectations of Emma. 

[Camera One]

11 hours ago, CCTC said:

Although they did not even bother to have that mean anything, since Henry never did reach Emma and the curse was broken without her doing anything to help break it.

Yep, everything Henry did was pointless and irrelevant.  Everything Emma did was pointless and irrelevant.  Back in the self-impoding Enchanted Forest, everything they did was pointless and irrelevant too.  It all boiled down to Rumple getting really mad and killing his mother.  If The Black Fairy had just let him be happy with Belle, everyone in the Enchanted Forest would be dead and Emma would never remember.

Edited April 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

It all boiled down to Rumple getting really mad and killing his mother. 

What a wonderful moral!

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/12/2018 at 9:51 PM, tennisgurl said:

While you can certainly see bits of those genres on Once (especially the first one) it had the potential to be totally its own thing, and blaze a new trail in the fantasy genre, combining and playing with tropes and expectations, and finding a truly new voice, while paying dues to whats come before. Instead, after awhile, it ignored what makes genre shows work. Characters became bland or unlikable (or just were ignored or ret conned into being jerks), the plots became convoluted and stupid, and the world building just got worse and worse. While good genre shows (or books/movies/whatever) can take a premise that we`ve seen before and make it new and fun and interesting by building upon that plot and making it their own, Once had a unique idea, and eventually sucked out that uniqueness and made it bland and even uncomfortable at times. We could have had it all!

I think that's where we come back to that thing of them believing that surprise is the most important thing. They think they're being brilliant and innovative by avoiding the tropes or by doing the unexpected at every turn, but surprise in and of itself isn't always a good thing. It's not good when the trope is more satisfying and interesting than the trope twist. It's not good when something is only surprising because there was no setup and it requires the characters to act out of character. In their desperation to avoid anything viewers might be expecting, they usually ended up making decisions that were even less interesting than a full-on cliched trope would have been. So it's like "Aha! We fooled you! You were expecting that magic bean Hook and David went to find! Surprise!" But them just falling with the beanstalk and somehow being totally okay, and then the whole thing being undone anyway due to nothing they did was just boring and anticlimactic. We were expecting Hook to use the magic bean to save himself as he fell and to simultaneously reach Emma to help her break the curse, and while it might have been less surprising (since we expected it), that would have been a lot more interesting.

Some of their trope twists work, but at the same time, they often don't make a lot of sense. At first glance, Emma breaking the initial curse with a True Love's Kiss with her son was like a fun twist on the romantic TLK trope from fairy tales (really, mostly from Disney movies, since that trope isn't actually in the fairy tales -- Snow White was revived when moving her glass coffin dislodged the poisoned apple, in some versions of Sleeping Beauty she's awakened after she gives birth following the prince raping her while she was asleep and her baby sucks the poisoned spindle sliver out of her finger, and in the frog prince fairy tale, she turns him back into a prince by throwing him against a wall). But it doesn't really hold up if you think too much about it. It doesn't sound like anyone had any idea how Emma was supposed to break the curse, so it didn't play on our expectations. Emma had no romance in her life at that time, so we weren't expecting a romantic TLK to break the curse. Emma knew and accepted from the start that Henry was her son, so it wasn't a change in attitude on her part that made any difference. Henry wasn't affected by the curse at all, so it didn't make a lot of sense that she could break the curse by kissing someone not affected by it. Her kiss could have awakened him from the entirely separate sleeping curse, but why would breaking that entirely unrelated curse also break Regina's curse? It would have made a lot more sense thematically for Emma to have broken the curse by kissing Snow, since Snow was the target of the curse and it would have been a much bigger leap of faith for both Snow and Emma to have accepted their relationship. But they pat themselves on the back for being so innovative in having a mother-son TLK to break the curse.

And then there's their Chekhov's Arsenal issue, where they set up all kinds of possibilities and use none of them because it won't be as big a surprise if they don't pull the solution out of thin air at the last second. Why bother with the voice mail, Hook's odd behavior, his struggle to break Rumple's control, and Emma even noticing the odd behavior if we never saw Emma figure anything out?

Or there's the It Happened Offscreen problem, where the most interesting part of the story happens offscreen, as with Hook's realm-hopping adventure in season 6. What we see onscreen is him mostly just getting bonked on the head until Emma opens a portal to rescue him. Offscreen, he had to get from Agrabah to the Enchanted Forest and track down Blackbeard, then had to fight for survival in Neverland.

I find it baffling how they keep managing to come up with the least interesting resolution to everything when they set up all kinds of other things they could have used.

[Camera One]

36 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And then there's their Chekhov's Arsenal issue, where they set up all kinds of possibilities and use none of them because it won't be as big a surprise if they don't pull the solution out of thin air at the last second. Why bother with the voice mail, Hook's odd behavior, his struggle to break Rumple's control, and Emma even noticing the odd behavior if we never saw Emma figure anything out?

Or there's the It Happened Offscreen problem, where the most interesting part of the story happens offscreen

And they're still relying on this to the very latest episode.  Suddenly, there exists a moss that can cure Henry's poison that has never been mentioned or alluded to before.  I know we don't know if it works yet, but Regina is very confident and where did that information even come from?  

[Camera One]

So I was watching a clip on Youtube from the recap special right before the Season 6 finale "Three words how fans might feel about finale".  I don't know if they intended the clips of them showing the cast pondering the answer to be suspenseful, but I imagined that the actors truly could not come up with three words to describe that finale.  Some of the words chosen seemed a bit odd.  

[KingOfHearts]

It occurred to me that one of the crucial issues with Emma's Savior role is that she never sacrifices herself as the Savior to save everyone. Sure, she took the darkness in the 4B finale, but that wasn't tied to her "Savior" arc in a way that made sense. She didn't really experience anything close to death. By the next episode, she was still herself and even as the Dark Swan, there weren't really any direct consequences. The Final Battle tried really hard to provide the ultimate sacrifice that normally comes with a Savior/Chosen One arc, but that didn't make sense either. Emma didn't save anyone by dying. It was senseless and only happened because prophecy. Buffy, on the other hand, saved pretty much the entire planet by sacrificing herself. Resurrecting her was a big hassle that had consequences that lingered through the next season. On OUAT, Emma was woken up five seconds later with a simple kiss from Henry. Yeah, okay, show.

Maybe if Emma fell under some sleeping curse to break Dark Curse #1, that would have been more thematic. She needed a "Jesus" moment to warrant such a pretentious, well-known title like "Savior". At the end of the day, it wasn't about saving her loved ones. It was about prophecy, which should only be half the story.

Edited April 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Maybe if Emma fell under some sleeping curse to break Dark Curse #1, that would have been more thematic. She needed a "Jesus" moment to warrant such a pretentious, well-known title like "Savior". At the end of the day, it wasn't about saving her loved ones. It was about prophecy, which should only be half the story.

I think the main problem is that they originally weren't thinking in terms of the "Savior" being anything more than breaking the curse and later turned it into a bigger deal. It worked for me when she was the one who would save them from the curse. It all fell apart when they made it an all-purpose Savior, where she was expected to be savior of everything and multiple people had to carry the title, with the duties so undefined. With Emma, it's like she had all the responsibility but none of the opportunity or power. She felt like she had to give up her life and live according to duty because of being the Savior, and yet she never really got to do anything and got sidelined whenever she might have been needed. It was shown as a horrible idea to cut away her Savior destiny so she wouldn't have to fight the Final Battle, even though she ended up doing nothing and her Savior status had no bearing on the outcome. All they did for the Saviors was give them challenges, but no accomplishments. There were the shakes that kept them from being able to do anything, and yet giving up the status was frowned upon.

I don't feel like a "Jesus" moment was necessary when it was just curse-breaking. When it was a bigger thing, we never saw any Savior do anything Savior-like.

[Camera One]

I'll bet they had no idea what the hell a "Savior" was until the summer before Season 6 when they decided Aladdin was another Savior and all Saviors had shaking hand syndrome.  

[tennisgurl]

On 4/13/2018 at 8:41 AM, Camera One said:

The whole dire scenario was ridiculous.  Why did the Realm Destruction always hit the palaces/castles last?  Jasmine/Aladdin were like, "We barely got our people out"... uh, Agrabah had 15 people?  And then Zelena, instead of explaining why she had to escape, goes "It's easier to show you."  How did she know the Curse Destruction hadn't aleady destroyed Emerald City?

Oh my God, that whole thing had to be one of my favorite, terrible moments of the show. I mean, supposedly the entire multiverse was about to implode, and yet it seemed to affect, like, a half dozen named characters, and about a dozen extras wearing costumes it looked like they got off the Halloween rack at Walmart. I have no clue how they managed to make a destruction of all reality look so boring and lame. Thats the weird thing about this show. Thanks to all its contrived connections between the characters, and its lack of interest in world building, it somehow made its world smaller, even as it grew to expand an entire multiverse. The stakes were supposed to be the highest they've ever had, and it was just the saddest, most half assed finale ever seen. 

It makes me think that this little cluster of the multiverse is basically a No Fly Zone to every other part of the fictional multiverse, and I giggle like a loon when I think about people with the ability to travel to other worlds getting warnings not to bother with this weirdo section of the verse, or they have some kind of grid up to keep everyone else from getting sucked into their bullshit. "Oh sure, jump around from timeline to timeline, leap frog from one parallel universe to another, maybe pick up some Maguffin thing or learn a life lesson, whatever floats your boat. BUT, for the love of your deity of choice, do not go anywhere near the Enchanted Forest, or any world connected to it. Its super weird. People will scream at you and call you a monster if you step on a bug by accident, but if a random serial killer tries to cut your eyes out and wear them as earrings, they'll yell at YOU for making the serial killer have to go to the store to get earrings after you faught back. Because someone told that serial killer her hair only looked meh one day, so her killings are totally justified. Plus, these losers keep casting these stupid convoluted spells on each other and riding their stupid motorcycles around from verse to verse screwing with the laws of reality for shits and giggles. It takes the combined might of dozens of universes to keep their bullshit from infecting all of us, and if anyone gets through, it could be a disaster (they could make us sing for no reason! Sing!), so, for the good of us all, KEEP AWAY FROM THE EF AND ANY WORLD THEY'VE INFECTED!" 

[superloislane]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Emma didn't save anyone by dying.

Didn't she save all the realms and Gideon?

[andromeda331]

9 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I have no clue how they managed to make a destruction of all reality look so boring and lame. Thats the weird thing about this show. Thanks to all its contrived connections between the characters, and its lack of interest in world building, it somehow made its world smaller, even as it grew to expand an entire multiverse. The stakes were supposed to be the highest they've ever had, and it was just the saddest, most half assed finale ever seen.  

They have a real talent for this. With all the fairytale characters, backstories, magic, and fairytale lands they have managed to make everything so boring and lame. The Final Battle? Boring. The Black Fairy was boring, all the stuff with the Savors was boring and went no where, the actual battle didn't really happen,  Emma never really fought or fought back she basically just took it. Everyone else in the Enchanted Forest mounted to nothing.  5 finale? Boring Regina and Emma off to New York chasing after their stupid son, Snow and everyone getting swept up into another land was a little more interesting but ended up meaning nothing. 4 finale? They finally had a chance to write the villains in the "Hero" positions whatever Rumple would think his hero self would be and same with Regina and didn't. Nope we got basically the retelling of the same story with Regina as Snow White. Right, because that's exactly what Regina would pick for her "Hero" story.  Who knew all characters from all fiction literature could be so boring?        

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, superloislane said:

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Emma didn't save anyone by dying.

Didn't she save all the realms and Gideon?

I'm pretty sure she did.

[KingOfHearts]

6 hours ago, superloislane said:

Didn't she save all the realms and Gideon?

Rumple saved all the realms by killing the Black Fairy. All she did for Gideon was choose not to fight back. (Was it really impossible to incapacitate him?) 

[Camera One]

When both good and evil did the right thing, faith was restored.  Or something.  I don't remember the details.