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

[Shanna Marie]

My issue with Regina's redemption isn't so much the extent of her crimes -- though it is a bit weird that she's done worse things than just about any other villain (Gothel might be gaining on her) while receiving lighter consequences -- but rather that she's missing the key ingredient for actual redemption: acknowledging that she was in the wrong. Regina changed her behavior, but she's never really said that she's wrong to have done what she did or that she's sorry for having done it. The closest she's come has been admitting to Henry that she didn't have to make things so terrible for everyone in the curse and a grudging admission to Snow that she wasn't a great stepmother (ya think?). For me to accept her as redeemed, I needed to hear her say that she blamed the wrong person, that it was wrong of her to focus so much hate on Snow when Snow was a child targeted by a master manipulator, that she was a terrible queen for tormenting her people the way she did, that she was wrong to have manipulated the genie into killing Leopold, and that the curse was way overkill for all of this.

But she only got even more vindictive after hearing Cora say she set the whole thing up and had schemed to make Regina queen. She let Snow keep apologizing about killing Cora without ever saying anything about her arranging Leopold's death. She let Emma apologize for saving Marian and breaking up Regina and Robin without saying anything about murdering Graham because he left her for Emma. When confronted about slaughtering villages, she got defensive instead of showing any contrition. The way she talked even when at her best made her sound like she still believed she was right and that Snow had really wronged her, but she just maybe shouldn't have gone so far as to cast the curse.

If she'd really been truly redeemed, as in acknowledging that she was wrong, she wouldn't have stayed as mayor and wouldn't have let people call her queen because she'd have admitted how fraudulent that was -- she was only mayor because her curse put her in charge, and she was only queen because her mother manipulated Leopold into marrying her and then she manipulated the genie into killing Leopold, and then she cast Snow (the rightful heir) out and stole the throne. She did acknowledge having stolen the throne, but at that time she was proud of it and boasting. When she was "good," she still kept her position.

But the problem with her wrongs having been so massive is that if she were truly redeemed and acknowledged everything she'd done wrong and knew it was wrong, she'd probably have snapped. Any halfway decent person who confronted those kinds of crimes wouldn't be able to remain sane. She's only survived by being such a narcissist that she still feels deep down inside that she was totally justified, even if she'd make a different choice if she had to do it over again, and by being so numb to other people's feelings that the suffering she's caused doesn't weigh on her.

I question Rumple's redemption because he keeps doing the same things after he's said the right things, which makes it come across as being empty words every time he spouts the same lines. Zelena seems to have gained some self-awareness, so that she realizes it when she goes into jealous mode, and she's making better choices now. Then there's Hook's admission that revenge was a bad idea, his acknowledgement that it's his own fault that people didn't like him, and his self-loathing for all the bad things he did.

[KingOfHearts]

I just don't get the transition from innocent Teen!Regina who wouldn't hurt a fly to the Marie-Atoinette-would-be-jealous evil tyrant. It doesn't flow logically. No one would lose a conscience so quickly with zero reluctance onward. Regina would have had to been a psychopath to begin with, like Cruella. However, that's not what her story is telling. Her story is that she overreacted to tragedy and blamed the wrong person. But emotionally, she would have lost the initial rage. I don't understand how years went by and Snow was nothing but kind to her, yet she still hated her step-daughter to the point of murder. It's as if nothing else distracted her. Someone who wants to be "loved by the people" wouldn't be so stupid to keep burning their homes and offering no diplomacy. It makes you wonder how many times Rumple had to save her ass. It wasn't like all her guards were slave labor. Some of them gleefully carried out her orders. 

Perhaps Regina is just an idiot. There's no way in hell she would have accomplished what she did without Rumple holding her hand the entire way. He had to cover her blunders and she only appeared competent because the board was setup in her favor. Cora was a lot smarter. She knew you couldn't go around killing random people and except to win admiration. Her murders were all strategic. She decided to keep most of her victim's hearts, since a pawn to control is more useful than a lifeless corpse. (And even when she did kill, she her victims' hearts to make them zombies.)

Edited April 28, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

That's a really well thought out backstory, companionenvy.  If A&E had truly wanted to make Regina a multi-dimensional character the audience would want to root for, that should have been what they should have done.

Personally, I actually didn't want Regina to have a more sympathetic backstory, nor did I want to like her more in Season 1.  I didn't mind that her vendetta towards Snow had so little basis and was so irrational.  To me, she snapped when Daniel died and it triggered an unhealthy obsession.  It would have made more sense if she idolized Cora and couldn't blame her.  The 180 from sweet, heroic, feisty Young Regina was once again their pathetic writing crutch of showing a character as opposite of who they became.

I think the actress was charismatic enough to redeem Regina if they didn't make her crimes so horrendous in Season 2 (eg. village massacres and murders of innocent redshirts), if they didn't turn her victims into doormat defenders, and if they had her make amends to individual victims, apologize, take responsibility for her actions and actually acknowledge that her mother was at fault.  That was all very simple to do - in fact, they did it with Hook for awhile.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 minute ago, Camera One said:

I think the actress was charismatic enough to redeem Regina if they didn't make her crimes so horrendous in Season 2 (eg. village massacres and murders of innocent redshirts), if they didn't turn her victims into doormat defenders, and if they had her make amends to individual victims, apologize, take responsibility for her actions and actually acknowledge that her mother was at fault.  That was all very simple to do - in fact, they did it with Hook.  

It's comical how easy it would be to make viewers sympathetic toward someone as evil as Regina. It's not like we care about the redshirts that much, but it's weird when the characters don't. In their world, the redshirts are just like everybody else. All Regina needed was some remorse and consequences. That would have fixed a lot. It's really not that complicated. 

[Camera One]

2 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's comical how easy it would be to make viewers sympathetic toward someone as evil as Regina. 

If you go on social media, most viewers are already there.  As is, with the village massacres, victim kowtows, etc.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

2 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If you go on social media, most viewers are already there.  As is.  

True. It's amazing to me how resilient Evil Regals are. (Just like their queen's heart.) I guess I meant that general audiences outside of that circle would have felt more comfortable about Regina if her redemption wasn't so jarring. Many people got turned off in S2 by how quickly it turned up. No one was ready for that right out of S1.

Edited April 28, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

True. It's amazing to me how resilient Evil Regals are. (Just like their queen's heart.) I guess I meant that general audiences outside of that circle would have felt more comfortable about Regina if her redemption wasn't so jarring.

I think even general audiences fall into that category.  I have several friends on other non-Once message boards (most quit mid-Season 6), and their favorite characters are either Regina or Rumple.

[KingOfHearts]

1 minute ago, Camera One said:

I think even general audiences fall into that category.  I have several friends on other non-Once message boards (most quit mid-Season 6), and their favorite characters are either Regina or Rumple.

Given how much the show's viewership slumped when Regina received more focus, I'm not sure what to think.

[Mabinogia]

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's comical how easy it would be to make viewers sympathetic toward someone as evil as Regina. It's not like we care about the redshirts that much, but it's weird when the characters don't.

This is where I think they failed. There are many of us who love a good villain. Villains are almost always my favorite. They are just so fun and usually the most snarky. Regina had it all. Charmismatic, great fashion sense, snarky comebacks, arch enemy, a tragic backstory (losing her true love is bad enough, having your mother murder your boyfriend when you're an emotional, hormonal teenage girl is a whole new level). I could have bought the show letting her off the hook. She was a great villain. It would have been a shame to loose her. HOWEVER...having the other characters on the show not care about all the rape, murder, pillaging, village burning, enslavement, etc. is just wrong. 

I think the difference is, I know they are fictional characters and none of this is real but they aren't supposed to know that. They are supposed to act like she really did kill all those people and they shouldn't be just shrugging it off. If I met a real life Regina I would feel very differently about her, but she isn't in my world killing my friends and fellow villagers. 

[tennisgurl]

44 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Perhaps Regina is just an idiot. There's no way in hell she would have accomplished what she did without Rumple holding her hand the entire way. He had to cover her blunders and she only appeared competent because the board was setup in her favor.

Thats one of the big ironies of the obsession the show has with redeeming Regina and making her the eternal victim. It actually made her go from a badass chess master type, to an easily led, kind of dim, pawn in the machinisms of other, smarter villains. If you look at her whole story, she`s very rarely had her own agency, constantly being manipulated by either Cora or Rumple, and when she became a good guy, she sometimes helped out with some jazz hands blasting, but she mostly just kind of hung out and made "snarky" comments at first, and then mooned over Robin. Instead of writing her a real redemption arc, they made her a passive victim, which killed everything that I liked about her originally. By the end, I had just dealt with the fact that she would never show real regret for her actions or suffer real consequences, but I also found that the things that made her interesting had been sanded off, and now she was just kind of...meh. Thats what I think about Regina (and her five minutes as Ronnie) this season. She isnt infuriating, but she isnt really doing much that couldn't have been done by someone else, and she is basically just boring now. 

Its really not about her having not enough of a sad backstory, or that other people have had it worse and have come out better (even though thats a big part of it), its that she went so evil so fast, and really never seemed to feel that bad about what she did, I could just never get into her story.

[Mabinogia]

5 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Instead of writing her a real redemption arc, they made her a passive victim, which killed everything that I liked about her originally.

Amen to this! And to her being boring now. Maybe they should have swapped her and Rumple's "redemption", make Rumple the one who is actually trying, for Belle, for Gideon (oh yeah, and the son he did all this for but then pretty much got over once he had a pretty young wife to play with). Make Regina the one who is faking it because when she lost Daniel (her true love, I never believed Robin was a second true love, UGH) something in her broke and though she loves Henry, she knows that she will never experience True Love, that epic romance that Snow and Charming have. Her hatred is fueled by that and she realizes that if she pretends to be "redeemed" and gets into their inner circle, she can cause that much more damage. 

As it is, she got redeemed and became dull and the show keeps trying to say Rumple is a good man while continuing to make him show he's a bad man. If they'd done a proper redemption for Rumple, the coward who found strength in Belle's love and let Regina play the on again off again, because she will never have true love, it would make a lot more sense than what we got. 

[Camera One]

41 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Thats what I think about Regina (and her five minutes as Ronnie) this season. She isnt infuriating, but she isnt really doing much that couldn't have been done by someone else, and she is basically just boring now. 

That's the problem with a lot of characters on this show.  They often get stuff to do that could have been done by anyone.  Even Granny could play the role of the bartender at Hyperion Heights for the majority of Roni's scenes, and there would be no difference.  They've even had Robyn there the last two weeks doing something similar.

I think KingofHearts mentioned the scenes where everyone stands around saying interchangeable lines.  Snow and Charming in particular... you couldn't guess who said what for the majority of their conversations since Season 2.  They're not developing unique characters.... they're using characters as exposition fairies, props and occasionally obstacles.

Especially in Season 7, a lot of these "iconic" characters they've brought on could have been anyone.  Cinderella, Lady Tremaine, Drizella, Tiana, Alice, Mother Gothel, etc... they're so far out from their original characters that they could be costumed differently and be interchanged with other well known characters.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

I just don't get the transition from innocent Teen!Regina who wouldn't hurt a fly to the Marie-Atoinette-would-be-jealous evil tyrant. It doesn't flow logically. No one would lose a conscience so quickly with zero reluctance onward. Regina would have had to been a psychopath to begin with, like Cruella.

I'm sure they didn't intend for her to have been a psychopath all along, but it is possible and it would make things make a lot more sense. Not all sociopaths are evil serial killers. There's actually a frighteningly high percentage of sociopaths leading relatively normal lives, and they tend to be very successful. They may not have a strong internal moral compass, but they're capable of following society's rules. Some of them can even be good people. A surprising number of surgeons qualify as sociopaths, and their detachment is what allows them to be calm under pressure. They do a lot of good and save lives. So young Regina could have had sociopathic tendencies that didn't come out while she wasn't thwarted and didn't have a lot of social interaction (so there was nobody for her to be awful to, which meant she hadn't learned to enjoy the suffering of others). She was fantasizing about killing Snow but still able to be alarmed after Daniel's death, but fantasizing may have started a slide, and then as she gained magical power and defeated her mother her worse tendencies might have started coming out, with committing her first murder being what actually flipped the switch, since she found she enjoyed the feeling of ripping out a heart, having power over that person, and then crushing the heart.

If Daniel hadn't died, then it might have been something else that set her down the bad path, especially since Rumple had seen that Cora's daughter would cast the curse, so he would always have intervened in her life. It's interesting to imagine what might have happened if she'd managed to run away with Daniel and Rumple still got to her. What excuse would he have used to con her into casting the curse then? Or would he have been the one to kill Daniel while framing someone else to give her a reason to cast the curse?

[Camera One]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

If Daniel hadn't died, then it might have been something else that set her down the bad path, especially since Rumple had seen that Cora's daughter would cast the curse, so he would always have intervened in her life. It's interesting to imagine what might have happened if she'd managed to run away with Daniel and Rumple still got to her. What excuse would he have used to con her into casting the curse then? Or would he have been the one to kill Daniel while framing someone else to give her a reason to cast the curse?

 

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

Perhaps Regina is just an idiot. There's no way in hell she would have accomplished what she did without Rumple holding her hand the entire way. He had to cover her blunders and she only appeared competent because the board was setup in her favor. 

That's what makes this show so frustrating.  Many of the characters were just puppets on a string, despite their "choices".  You can bet Rumple would have intervened somehow or another to ensure Regina wasn't happy with Daniel.  He even had to fake that Daniel-resurrection scam to push Regina over the edge to crush a heart.  

[KingOfHearts]

18 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That's what makes this show so frustrating.  Many of the characters were just puppets on a string, despite their "choices".  You can bet Rumple would have intervened somehow or another to ensure Regina wasn't happy with Daniel.  He even had to fake that Daniel-resurrection scam to push Regina over the edge to crush a heart.  

It's super frustrating because characters do stupid things because Rumple or some random prophecy pushes them into a corner. What seems like a plot hole is "fixed" because of a contrivance that forces certain circumstances. (e.g. Snowing leaving their daughter to grow up alone because Rumple told them to.)

Edited April 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Mabinogia]

23 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's super frustrating because characters do stupid things because Rumple or some random prophecy pushes them into a corner.

Exactly. If Rumple hadn't seen that prophecy would it have still come true? Rumple is the reason Regina cast the curse, he orchestrated her life to make sure it happened. Is that why the prophecy existed in the first place? Because Rumple was going to go after whatever name was said? Because I really don't believe Regina would have become the Evil Queen without Rumple pulling her strings. And he only pulled her strings because of the prophecy. So no matter what, Regina was destined to be evil. She had no say in the matter. I hate that kind of storytelling. I find it lazy to say she is evil because a prophecy said she would cast the curse. If they were going to go with that, they shouldn't have made her good to begin with. They should have had her save Snow because she was in on it with Cora, she knew who Snow was and was trying to woo the king herself. Then I would have bought that she was destined to be the Evil Queen and not created by Rumple and to some extent Cora who killed her true love for her own selfish purposes not really worried about what it would do to Regina's psyche. It's just sucks the way it sucked that Snow gave Emma's potential darkness to another infant taking away that childs chance to be good. 

I mean, if you're destined to be evil, why bother trying not to?

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

I mean, if you're destined to be evil, why bother trying not to?

As Cruella says, "Why not splash in and have fun?" She's a murderous psychopath with zero redeeming qualities, yet she's more engaging and her actions make more sense that Regina or Rumple's.

Edited April 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Scarlett45]

@companionenvy your post was brilliant. Can you write for tv fantasy dramas?

[Mabinogia]

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

As Cruella says, "Why not splash in and have fun?" She's a murderous psychopath with zero redeeming qualities, yet she's more engaging and her actions make more sense that Regina or Rumple's.

Cruella was such a fun villain. She didn't wallow in her sad little backstory. She was clearly having a blast with no remorse weighing her down. 

[tennisgurl]

I loved Cruellas backstory, especially because it almost seemed like a deliberate subversion of the Once villain episode formula. Your set up to think Cruella was once a sweet girl abused by her mean mother and is really just a sad woobie like most Once villains...only to find out her sob story is just that, she`s been an evil, manipulative monster from the start, and she truly relishes in her evil. It was great, and I loved her for it. 

Prophesies are such a huge pain, and usually cause all of the problems they were supposed to solve in the first place. I just want for the characters to one day, hear another stupid prophesy, and tell it to shove off. 

Edited April 29, 2018 by tennisgurl

[KingOfHearts]

2 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I loved Cruellas backstory, especially because it almost seemed like a deliberate subversion of the Once villain episode formula. Your set up to think Cruella was once a sweet girl abused by her mean mother and is really just a sad woobie like most Once villains...only to find out her sob story is just that, she`s been an evil, manipulative monster from the start, and she truly relishes in her evil. It was great, and I loved her for it. 

Ursula's story helped the subversion, since she got the classic OUAT sob story about how misunderstood she is. Cruella is one of my all-time favorite characters on the show.

4 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Prophesies are such a huge pain, and usually cause all of the problems they were supposed to solve in the first place. I just want for the characters to one day, hear another stupid prophesy, and tell it to shove off. 

This is why I started to really dislike Emma in S4. The writers ruined her character by making her a pawn of those around her and a subject of prophecy. "You resisted the darkness? Too bad, you're going to become the Dark One anyway. You went to the Underworld save your husband? Too bad, we're going to make Zeus do it instead. You don't want to fight in the Final Battle? Too bad, you're going to have to stand there and die while Gideon stabs you anyway." Emma was meant to be the one to break the mold in S1, then she became more molded than anyone else on the show. By the end of S6, she was nothing but a huge pile of angst and tears.

[Rumsy4]

The shaky-hands plot had no substance to back it up. When we saw Aladdin at the beginning of Season 6, he seemed to be like a kind of consultant healer/savior. One could imagine that healing too many people had drained him of his magical energy and sapped his strength. One can understand why he might have decided cut his destiny away. But with Emma, the writers never let her do any major healing/saving. So that's already one point against this plot. 

The second thing we're supposed to believe is that Emma lost her self-confidence because she heard some dumb prophecy and had some nightmarish visions. This is the woman who defied Nimue saying that she was not nothing and was never nothing. Emma had a good relationship with her son, her parents, and her BFF Regina, and a super-supportive boyfriend who had just come back from the dead. It was OOC of Emma to have suddenly turned so fearful because someone told her she was going to die. 

And finally, for the Final Battle, the confrontation between Emma and Gidiot was  anticlimactic, underwhelming, and frankly insulting. The Final Battle ought to have been fought between Rumple and Emma. He has always been the Big Bad of the series. 

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The shaky-hands plot had no substance to back it up. When we saw Aladdin at the beginning of Season 6, he seemed to be like a kind of consultant healer/savior. One could imagine that healing too many people had drained him of his magical energy and sapped his strength. One can understand why he might have decided cut his destiny away. But with Emma, the writers never let her do any major healing/saving. So that's already one point against this plot. zhe Final Battle ought to have been fought between Rumple and Emma. He has always been the Big Bad of the series. 

I'm still curious about The Oracle.  I wonder if we will find out more about her in the next three episodes?  

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

If Rumple hadn't seen that prophecy would it have still come true? Rumple is the reason Regina cast the curse, he orchestrated her life to make sure it happened. Is that why the prophecy existed in the first place? Because Rumple was going to go after whatever name was said? Because I really don't believe Regina would have become the Evil Queen without Rumple pulling her strings. And he only pulled her strings because of the prophecy. So no matter what, Regina was destined to be evil.

I don't think Rumple knowing that Cora's daughter would cast the curse necessarily means Regina was destined to be evil, and not just because Cora had two daughters, so Rumple chose Regina even though it could have been Zelena. Being evil wasn't really a requirement for casting the curse. We saw in 3A that reversing the curse (which was essentially casting it again, but backward) could be done to save everyone from a threat that would have killed them if they'd remained. In 3B, they cast the curse to reach someone in the other world. Or there was a hostage situation like in season 7, where Regina cast the curse but didn't do it out of evil.

So, say, if Regina had realized Snow was manipulated by Cora and went on to have a good relationship with her, then Rumple could have got her to cast the curse by secretly kidnapping Snow's daughter and sending her through in the magic wardrobe, then telling Regina that the only way to reunite Snow with her daughter would be to cast the curse. Or if Regina had decided not to marry Leopold after getting rid of Cora, Rumple could have told her the only way to save the kingdom from an ogre invasion was to move the whole kingdom to a safe world. But because Regina was hung up on hating Snow, Rumple worked with the material he had and got her to cast the curse out of revenge.

But, really, prophecy is another one of those things way beyond their skill level that they should have left alone. Using prophecy in fiction is really tricky, and they did it very badly. They pretty much just went with "issue prophecy -- prophecy comes true exactly the way they expected." There were no twists like misinterpretations or trying to prevent the prophecy being what brings it about. It was just a cheat for motivation. Instead of coming up with real reasons why Rumple might have discovered Regina and targeted her to cast the curse, it was because prophecy. Instead of coming up with real reasons why the Black Fairy would come to Storybrooke for a big battle, prophecy! (which even turned out to be wrong because she didn't fight the Final Battle with the Savior) Instead of actually dealing with any of the potential conflicts inherent in Emma and Hook having been Dark Ones and Hook coming back from the dead and moving forward with their lives after that, they threw in a random prophecy about Emma's doom.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Being evil wasn't really a requirement for casting the curse.

It's difficult on this show, since there's analyzing the original premise and analyzing the 101 retcons since the premise. 

Regardless, considering casting the curse required killing the thing you loved most, it's certainly easier to find/shape someone who was evil, corrupted or had more grey morality.  A Curse Caster who was so motivated by anger, or obsession with a cause would be more likely to sacrifice someone they loved to get there.  Or in Peter Pan's case, a Curse Caster who was evil and had no one they fully loved would find it easier to kill them.  An evil Curse Caster would also be more willing to rip an entire world away from their home to transport them somewhere else.

The tricky situation was having Snow cast the Curse in 3B, where she would have sacrificed one person she loved to save another (in this case an unborn baby) she loved.  I suppose Rumple could have allowed Regina to fall in love with Daniel and then created a scenario where she had to choose between two people that she loved.  But if you're sacrificing one person for another, who was the one you loved most?  In many cases, it would be the one they saved who they loved most, and they would have killed the one they loved SECOND most.  

Even if being evil wasn't a requirement and Rumple chose this route doesn't mean Regina wasn't manipulated into taking the first few steps into darkness, because she clearly was.  I'm not a huge Regina fan but I think she still could have turned out to be an alright person if she wasn't manipulated in "The Doctor".

Edited: I forgot the name of the episode (just looked it up... "The Doctor").

Edited April 29, 2018 by Camera One

[superloislane]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I'm not a huge Regina fan but I think she still could have turned out to be an alright person if she wasn't manipulated in "The Doctor".

When was she manipulated in The Doctor to be evil?

[Camera One]

40 minutes ago, superloislane said:

When was she manipulated in The Doctor to be evil?

I thought that was the one where Rumple had Frankenstein pretend to try to resurrect Daniel and after that, she snapped and crushed a heart?  I haven't watched Season 2 in years, but I think was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I thought that was the one where Rumple had Frankenstein pretend to try to resurrect Daniel and after that, she snapped and crushed a heart?  I haven't watched Season 2 in years, but I think was the straw that broke the camel's back.

She didn't want to rip out a horse's heart. Then she came back in full Evil Queen attire and murdered a woman she didn't even know.

[Camera One]

3 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

She didn't want to rip out a horse's heart. Then she came back in full Evil Queen attire and murdered a woman she didn't even know.

I'll have to rewatch to figure out if that transition actually made sense within that episode's story.  I just watched two clips to review (beginning of episode and end) and it was totally incongruous.  

Edited April 29, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

15 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I'll have to rewatch to figure out if that transition actually made sense within that episode's story.  I just watched two clips to review (beginning of episode and end) and it was totally incongruous.  

 

The rest of it is literally just Regina begging Rumple to keep teaching her, Rumple shooing her away, and her going with Jefferson to meet Frankenstein. Frankenstein said the experiment failed, and she was distraught. She walked into the tent, laid her head on Daniel's chest and grieved. Next scene was her storming to Rumple in full EQ mode. It didn't make much sense. When most people lose a loved one, they don't instantly become coldblooded murderers. 

That being said, it's really not a bad episode and you can feel for Regina in the present. Killing her dead boyfriend's zombie was actually a good step of growth for her.

Edited April 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[superloislane]

20 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I thought that was the one where Rumple had Frankenstein pretend to try to resurrect Daniel and after that, she snapped and crushed a heart?  I haven't watched Season 2 in years, but I think was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Yeah but all they told her was that they couldn't resurrect Daniel and that he really was dead (and since Whale's resurrection of Daniel turned him into a zombie later on it was entirely true). I just never got how that was a manipulation to turn her evil - 'Oh hey that guy you know for a fact is dead - well he really is dead' isn't something that should make someone go off the deep end and try to murder everybody. If I recall correctly, 2 minutes after this she rips a heart out of a girl and crushes it.

[Camera One]

8 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It didn't make much sense. When most people lose a loved one, they don't instantly become coldblooded murderers. 

 

I guess we got a repeat of this with Gothel on Friday.  Why change a formula when it works?

3 minutes ago, superloislane said:

Yeah but all they told her was that they couldn't resurrect Daniel and that he really was dead (and since Whale's resurrection of Daniel turned him into a zombie later on it was entirely true). I just never got how that was a manipulation to turn her evil - 'Oh hey that guy you know for a fact is dead - well he really is dead' isn't something that should make someone go off the deep end and try to murder everybody. If I recall correctly, 2 minutes after this she rips a heart out of a girl and crushes it.

According to the story being shown, Rumple planned the whole setup, and supposedly Regina ended up exactly where he intended her to.  That's manipulation.  Whether or not it is believable or not is of course debatable.  I'm not saying I was convinced by it, but that's what the writers obviously intended.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Just now, Camera One said:

I guess we got a repeat of this with Gothel on Friday.  Why change a formula when it works?

At least Gothel's story had prejudices tied to it. Regina blamed a ten year old for telling a secret. Gothel blamed humanity for hating and brutally slaughtering her entire kind.

2 minutes ago, superloislane said:

Yeah but all they told her was that they couldn't resurrect Daniel and that he really was dead (and since Whale's resurrection of Daniel turned him into a zombie later on it was entirely true). I just never got how that was a manipulation to turn her evil - 'Oh hey that guy you know for a fact is dead - well he really is dead' isn't something that should make someone go off the deep end and try to murder everybody. If I recall correctly, 2 minutes after this she rips a heart out of a girl and crushes it.

Regina's romance with Daniel wasn't even that epic. It was a teenage fling. Losing him was hardly a reason someone would become a tyrant. There was no political agenda or ulterior motive. Biologically, Regina should have been over it after a few years. 

[Rumsy4]

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Biologically, Regina should have been over it after a few years. 

I guess that episode is meant to show us that Rumple was the one who nudged her along to the point where she never got over it. 

If Whale really had resurrected Zombie Daniel back then, it would have still turned out the same way. There was no reason to manipulate her at all. 

If Regina had managed to run away with Daniel, Cora would have found her and killed Daniel anyway. Then, Rumple would've swooped in and done his number on Regina. The only difference is Regina's vendetta might have focussed solely on Cora and not on a ten-year old.

[companionenvy]

24 minutes ago, Camera One said:

According to the story being shown, Rumple planned the whole setup, and supposedly Regina ended up exactly where he intended her to.  That's manipulation.  Whether or not it is believable or not is of course debatable.  I'm not saying I was convinced by it, but that's what the writers obviously intended.

I agree that Rumple was manipulating her. I just don't think (and I don't think you do either, but I wanted to clarify) that it actually makes her more sympathetic, because her responses were so OTT. Rumple was encouraging her to wallow in pain and anger, but it isn't as if he was feeding her false information and convincing her to, say, do magic that would hurt someone on the impression that she was actually helping them. To use a comparison, obviously, the Author manipulated Snowing into harming Maleficent's baby. But I'd say I still hold them completely responsible for the transfer of the darkness, as, while the author egged (pun intended) them on, they knew fully well what they were doing, whereas I don't hold them fully responsible for separating Lily from Maleficent, because they didn't know that that was a possible result of their actions, and genuinely believed they'd be able to bring the egg back. I don't think Regina was ever working with a knowledge deficit that would meaningfully change her culpability.

If anything, the fact that Rumple was relying on Regina going so far off the deep end that she would become a fitting caster of the dark curse is an example of his Rube Goldberg esque plotting. It just so happens that it worked in this case. 

[Camera One]

18 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The only difference is Regina's vendetta might have focussed solely on Cora and not on a ten-year old.

And since we later found out that Cora hated Eva and wanted to ruin her life, I wonder if Cora wanted Regina to unleash her anger on Snow.  

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, superloislane said:

Yeah but all they told her was that they couldn't resurrect Daniel and that he really was dead (and since Whale's resurrection of Daniel turned him into a zombie later on it was entirely true). I just never got how that was a manipulation to turn her evil - 'Oh hey that guy you know for a fact is dead - well he really is dead' isn't something that should make someone go off the deep end and try to murder everybody. If I recall correctly, 2 minutes after this she rips a heart out of a girl and crushes it.

I think what Rumple was going for was giving her hope and then ripping out of her grasp at the last moment. Killing him the first time didn't quite work, so he had to give her the hope that Daniel would come back to her, and then basically kill him again (or rather kill her hope this time). Not saying it was a good plan, or that it should have worked, but A&E wanted it to work so it did. 

My take on the whole thing is that Regina, like most people, was born neutral. She could have gone either way, like Emma before her mother stacked the deck and threw all her evil into some other poor kid. Rumple just kept nudging her closer and closer to the ledge until something finally made her fall into darkness. 

Edited April 29, 2018 by Mabinogia

[Rumsy4]

25 minutes ago, Camera One said:

And since we later found out that Cora hated Eva and wanted to ruin her life, I wonder if Cora wanted Regina to unleash her anger on Snow.  

She probably did. But I think Cora's plan would have been to engineer another accident--this time to kill Snow White, once Regina became queen. Then, Leopold would have followed Snow to the grave, and Cora would've established herself as the real power, with her daughter merely being a figurehead. Cora was too power-hungry to be satisfied with just making her daughter a queen.

[Mabinogia]

59 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Regina's romance with Daniel wasn't even that epic. It was a teenage fling. Losing him was hardly a reason someone would become a tyrant. There was no political agenda or ulterior motive. Biologically, Regina should have been over it after a few years. 

While true, I watch enough true crime to know that teenagers in love are not rational beings. 

1 minute ago, Rumsy4 said:

Cora was too power-hungry to be satisfied with just making her daughter a queen.

I never quite bought that making Regina queen was her end game. Cora wanted the power for herself. She would not have been satisfied being mother of the Queen. IDK what her plan was, but I don't buy that it was getting Regina on the throne.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Rumsy4 said:

Cora would've established herself as the real power, with her daughter merely being a figurehead. Cora was too power-hungry to be satisfied with just making her daughter a queen.

That has always surprised me and seemed a little unbelievable.  It didn't make sense that Cora didn't kill her way up to become Queen herself.  Even later on, she could have done something but she never did.  I mean, it wasn't THAT hard to escape Wonderland... someone like Cora should have found it easy.  And every time she did get out of Wonderland, she never made a power play.  Instead, she was trying to get Regina to have a baby or whatever the hell the deal was when she paired her with the Sheriff of Nottingham.  

[superloislane]

18 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

My take on the whole thing is that Regina, like most people, was born neutral. She could have gone either way, like Emma before her mother stacked the deck and threw all her evil into some other poor kid. Rumple just kept nudging her closer and closer to the ledge until something finally made her fall into darkness. 

I see it more as he laid out a path and Regina just constantly chose the path he wanted. I guess I see telling her that Daniel was actually dead as a good thing as that would force her to accept it like all normal people have to do with death. And Emma's evil wasn't put into someone else, it was potential darkness meaning it wasn't actually darkness and her normal level of darkness just grew back anyway like the Apprentice said it would.

[KingOfHearts]

24 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

While true, I watch enough true crime to know that teenagers in love are not rational beings. 

But Regina dwelt on it for decades. It's not like she got up and did something irrational out of anger. Eventually, as teenagers grow up, they move onto something else.

24 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

She probably did. But I think Cora's plan would have been to engineer another accident--this time to kill Snow White, once Regina became queen. Then, Leopold would have followed Snow to the grave, and Cora would've established herself as the real power, with her daughter merely being a figurehead. Cora was too power-hungry to be satisfied with just making her daughter a queen.

But she did establish herself as the Queen of Hearts, so she didn't have much to gain other than continuing her lineage through Regina. Technically she did engineer an incident where Snow would die, but she failed due to Henry Sr.'s meddling. 

Edited April 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

5 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

But she did establish herself as the Queen of Hearts, so she didn't have much to gain other than continuing her lineage through Regina.

This is a scenario where Cora didn't get banished to Wonderland. Of the two, I think Cora would have preferred being/ruling with her daughter to ruling alone in Wonderland. 

[Camera One]

Somehow, ruling in Wonderland seemed like a second tier monarchy.  

25 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Technically she did engineer an incident where Snow would die, but she failed due to Henry Sr.'s meddling. 

My memory of this show is really going.  Was this the episode where Regina realized the person she hated most was herself?  Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably.

[CCTC]

55 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

While true, I watch enough true crime to know that teenagers in love are not rational beings. 

Part of the problem with the Regina and Daniel episodes is she looked nothing like a teenager.  If anything the hair style they gave her just emphasized that she was a thirty-something playing dress up as a teen.  It might have been an episode to cast a younger episode, because while Lana is a good actress, she did not pull off the naive teen.

[superloislane]

58 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

While true, I watch enough true crime to know that teenagers in love are not rational beings. 

Wasn't she in her mid 20s?

[Camera One]

Yeah, I think she was in her mid-20s.  Though with this show, it's really hard to tell.  The guy playing Daniel looked super old to me.  I was watching flashback clips of "The Doctor" and Lana played Younger Regina very innocent for most of the episode.  It seemed like the only reason she wanted to learn magic was to resurrect Daniel.  

Edited April 30, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Even if being evil wasn't a requirement and Rumple chose this route doesn't mean Regina wasn't manipulated into taking the first few steps into darkness, because she clearly was.  I'm not a huge Regina fan but I think she still could have turned out to be an alright person if she wasn't manipulated in "The Doctor".

Rumple's blame can only go so far, though. He did encourage her to step into darkness, but he didn't push her so far as to slaughter villages. In fact, he cautioned her against doing that and criticized her for doing so. I don't see how someone who didn't have some pretty nasty stuff deep down inside could have gone in for indiscriminate mass slaughter on the scale she did. Rumple may have manipulated the first steps, but then she ran with it.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

And since we later found out that Cora hated Eva and wanted to ruin her life, I wonder if Cora wanted Regina to unleash her anger on Snow.  

That was the impression I got, though not so much because of hating Eva but because she needed to get the rightful heir out of the way so Regina's child would be the one to inherit. She more or less said as much in that episode when Regina made herself barren to spite her mother (Cora didn't outright say she already knew and manipulated Snow into telling so Regina would hate her, but she did talk about wanting Regina's child).

I just find it hard to believe that Henry Sr.'s older siblings didn't all die of mysterious accidents or illnesses. Would Cora really have married a king's younger son and then happily lived on a country estate instead of scheming her way to the top? It seems far more likely that a terrible plague would have struck the court while Henry and Cora were off somewhere else, and oh dear, what a terrible tragedy, but I suppose we'll just have to step up and fulfill our royal duties. Henry not being skyrocketed up in the succession is about as unbelievable as Cora not teaching her daughter to dance and dragging her to lots of royal balls.

[Camera One]

21 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Rumple's blame can only go so far, though. He did encourage her to step into darkness, but he didn't push her so far as to slaughter villages.

I was only referring to Rumple's influence in the very early stages, as in the flashbacks of "The Doctor". 

However, if you're going with the story A&E were telling, the message of "The Evil Queen" was that all she ever wanted was a friend, and she might have reformed, had Snow not rejected her after the massacre.

21 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I just find it hard to believe that Henry Sr.'s older siblings didn't all die of mysterious accidents or illnesses. Would Cora really have married a king's younger son and then happily lived on a country estate instead of scheming her way to the top? 

That's exactly what I expected.

Edited April 30, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

My memory of this show is really going.  Was this the episode where Regina realized the person she hated most was herself?  Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably.

No, that was when she went to go find Cupid's Arrow after a run-in with Tinkerbell. (This show is ridiculous.)

Quote

I just find it hard to believe that Henry Sr.'s older siblings didn't all die of mysterious accidents or illnesses. 

Cora even said this in 2x16:

Quote

"You know I thought I wanted this. White and bright. All the admiration. Then I look at it - fifth in line to be queen. That won't happen without an awful lot of bloodshed."

Edited April 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts