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

[Rumsy4]

10 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I certainly didn't ask for two Reginas on my screen.

Pretty much no one did. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/12/2018 at 12:44 AM, Camera One said:

I was listening to part of the video commentary from "Skin Deep" with Robert Carlyle and Jane Espenson.  She was saying how it's rare to have a show with two villains and it's great and how Gold is so likeable and you want to like him.  I'm not sure that's how I personally would describe my feelings about Gold.

Yeah, there's nothing all that likeable about Gold or Rumple. Gold is a sleazy landlord who'd evict nuns and who tries to force a teenager to give up her baby. What a great guy! I want to be friends with him! Not. Meanwhile, even before he was actually evil, Rumple was a selfish, sniveling coward, and you get the impression he'd throw his best friend under a bus to save his own skin. Actually, I get that same impression about Gold, but without the sniveling. If there's something he wants, he'll get it, regardless of who it hurts. Friendship means nothing to him. Family barely means anything to him.

[companionenvy]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Friendship means nothing to him.

True, but slightly deceptive in that he doesn't really have any friends. Which is itself telling, but is a different kind of pathology than willingness to sell out your friends, IMO. 

 

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Family barely means anything to him.

I disagree - family means a lot to him. Even when he hates members of his family (Pan, the Black Fairy), he's deeply affected by encounters with them. And as screwed up as his relationships with Neal and Belle are, it would be really hard, I think, to argue that they don't matter deeply to him; this is extended to Gideon in season six (although, bizarrely, he gets totally forgotten in S7). While this dissipates in later seasons, Rumple also clearly cares for a time that Henry is his grandson; it isn't enough for him to not seriously consider killing him when he believes Henry will be his undoing, but that certainly factors into his thought process, and he risks himself for Henry's sake even when he believes Bae is dead. Later, at his worst, he's planning on getting Belle and Henry out of town before it is destroyed. It is a fairly fragile bond that, I think, winds up not being strong enough to withstand Henry's relative indifference (he has plenty of family, after all), and Rumple's own development of a far more emotionally intense investment in his unborn/newborn/magically aged up child with Belle. But again, the fact that Henry is his grandson is hardly irrelevant to him.

I do think that Rumple's love is invariably tainted by selfishness. This manifests itself, most obviously, in his general inability to put the needs of even his few loved ones over his own, but more subtly, I think, in the relationship between his capacity to love and his desperate need for validation. He is able to love Belle in large part because she reflects back to him a particularly flattering image of himself as a good man - one that, in self-aware moments, he admits is far too generous. I don't think his love would have survived if Belle had actually stuck to one of her rejections of him long-term; even in early S6, when Belle wants nothing to do with Rumple, he becomes much more interested in gaining access to their child than in winning back Belle. He's happy to have her back when she softens and starts looking at him as a good-hearted potential hero again, but I don't think them setting up a respectful co-parenting relationship in which a somewhat reformed Rumple understands that he has hurt Belle too often and too deeply to resume a relationship was ever in the cards.

This is even, I think, consistent with one moment that I (and I know some others) initially saw as perhaps not believable for the character - his decision to drink the memory potion after he helps Emma during her trip to the past, and she tells him that Bae is dead. Given his centuries-long obsession with reuniting with his son, it didn't seem credible that he'd give a damn about preserving a timeline in which Bae died, hero or not. But she also tells him that he and Bae eventually reconciled, and ultimately, I think that is actually more important to him than even Bae's own happiness or survival. Both after becoming the DO and after reuniting with Neal centuries later, Rumple is always convinced he can win back his son's love; he's able to live perfectly well without him, but he's not able to live with the idea of his son hating him, because that cuts at the core of Rumple's own sense of self. He's much more self-aware than Regina in that he knows that his actions are villainous -- yet he still expects the few people he loves to treat him like a good guy and largely validate his behaviors. 

That's one reason his life prior to Belle's death didn't prove much to me in terms of reformation. Rumple's dream is basically a world in which his loved ones adopt his perspective that their little family are the only ones who matter. So, how dare Bae be angry at him for killing some guy who tripped him -- Rumple would never hurt Bae, and actually, he's doing it for Bae, isn't he? So Bae should be appreciative, and just recognize that people who aren't him and Rumple and maybe one or two other people who might theoretically be able to earn admittance to their circle don't count. Rumple living a life in which he's apparently not interacting with anyone but his wife and son thus doesn't represent meaningful redemption.

On the other hand, Rumple's death in the finale (minus the cheesy reunion with Belle in heaven) did work for me, because for the first time it involved him making a sacrifice for a person clearly outside the family circle, who had a life and goals that had very little to do with Rumple, and who in fact was a version of someone he really ,really hated for ages. 

[KingOfHearts]

58 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

This is even, I think, consistent with one moment that I (and I know some others) initially saw as perhaps not believable for the character - his decision to drink the memory potion after he helps Emma during her trip to the past, and she tells him that Bae is dead.

It's hard to analyze the true intentions of the characters sometimes when it's obvious that they're only doing what the plot demands them to. Sometimes there just isn't another option, but it's so frequent on this show. Rumple took the memory potion because if he didn't, the timeline would be further altered and A&E didn't want to mess with that. (How weird would it have been if they came back to find Neal still alive because Rumple insured it somehow?) It makes a lot of sense story-wise for Rumple to drink the potion, but whether it speaks from his inner psyche is up for interpretation, imo. That happened in S3, when the writers still used a little ambiguity and you could draw different conclusions from some of the characters' actions. Rumple didn't become a clear cut asshole until S4.

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

On the other hand, Rumple's death in the finale (minus the cheesy reunion with Belle in heaven) did work for me, because for the first time it involved him making a sacrifice for a person clearly outside the family circle, who had a life and goals that had very little to do with Rumple, and who in fact was a version of someone he really ,really hated for ages. 

It worked, but at the same time I wonder if he had survived - would he dip his toes into villainy again if it meant he got to see Belle?  I know Rumple made that whole statement about how you should do good without expecting anything in return, but that counters what actually happened. Rumple did a good thing and got to see Belle. There's way to tell if he did without expecting anything in return. 

[companionenvy]

40 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It worked, but at the same time I wonder if he had survived - would he dip his toes into villainy again if it meant he got to see Belle?  I know Rumple made that whole statement about how you should do good without expecting anything in return, but that counters what actually happened. Rumple did a good thing and got to see Belle. There's way to tell if he did without expecting anything in return. 

Realistically, I think he probably would have backslid, just like he did every time. Not everyone capable of a moment of heroic self-sacrifice -- which he had actually achieved all the way back in S3 -- is going to be capable of sustaining that. A redemptive death is in some ways much easier than real reformation, but I still think the former is significant and satisfying in its own right. 

Based on my understanding of the mythology, I don't think Rumple could have expected he was going to be reunited with Belle, so I don't think the fact that he is robs anything from the sacrifice, any more than the fact that Emma survives letting Gideon kill her in S6 robbed anything from hers. What I didn't like was the show removing the ambiguity, especially as this one act doesn't outweigh everything that Rumple has done and shouldn't be an immediate ticket to heaven. Except under the perverse moral rules of the OuAT verse, where as long as you don't have any more regrets, you don't have to do time in purgatory, and can go straight to heaven on the basis of a single good deed.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

Realistically, I think he probably would have backslid, just like he did every time. Not everyone capable of a moment of heroic self-sacrifice -- which he had actually achieved all the way back in S3 -- is going to be capable of sustaining that. A redemptive death is in some ways much easier than real reformation, but I still think the former is significant and satisfying in its own right. 

Rumple's backsliding in S4 was realistic, I agree. I just wish his goal was more concrete than, "I just want more power". Other than losing Bae, he had all his ducks in a row. The PTSD from Zelena wasn't enough thematically to push him over the edge. (To lie about the dagger yes, but not go for The Hat.) The Hat was very contrived. What a coincidence that it was laying around the Sorcerer's Mansion in plain sight and that Ingrid was once a holder of it. I think Rumple should've been more threatened by something to turn on his self-preservation instincts. "Um more power" doesn't do it for me because it over-simplifies his character and makes him a two-dimensional villain. 

5A was the nail in the coffin. Any complexity Rumple had as a character was just gone, because as it turns out - he was an evil asshole the whole time, with or without the temptation of the dagger whispered in his ear. Again, he betrayed everyone and suffered no consequences for it. He just trapped everyone in an Alternate Universe not unlike the original Dark Curse, but for some reason he needs to be saved. Yeah, okay, no. Only Belle should be drinking that Kool-Aid. Then in 5B, where he had to be blackmailed, still no one cared about whatever he was doing. He murdered Milah. I really doubt Hook or Emma would've believed his lie that Hades showed up, but they did because Grandpa Rumple is tooootally trustworthy. 

[Shanna Marie]

6 hours ago, companionenvy said:

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Friendship means nothing to him.

True, but slightly deceptive in that he doesn't really have any friends. Which is itself telling, but is a different kind of pathology than willingness to sell out your friends, IMO. 

But wouldn't you say that if someone manages to live more than a century with the closest thing he has to an actual friend being a colleague who has to work in a team with him and who is cursed into having a different identity that makes him forget his history with him/his counterpart in another universe, then friendship has to mean nothing to him? I was just going by his willingness to sacrifice just about everything to get what he wanted and his unwillingness to bend the least bit to make his wife happy and extrapolating the way he'd act if he actually had a friend.

6 hours ago, companionenvy said:

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Family barely means anything to him.

I disagree - family means a lot to him. Even when he hates members of his family (Pan, the Black Fairy), he's deeply affected by encounters with them. And as screwed up as his relationships with Neal and Belle are, it would be really hard, I think, to argue that they don't matter deeply to him; this is extended to Gideon in season six (although, bizarrely, he gets totally forgotten in S7).

I'm not sure how much his family matters to him other than as possessions. Yes, he spent all that time trying to reach Bae, but it wasn't about Bae or about family. It really was about proving something to himself (given that he more or less forgot about Neal the moment he found him). He treated Belle like a possession, with her wishes not mattering much to him. Ditto with Henry, for the most part. He completely forgot about Gideon in his quest to get his own happy ending. He talked a good show about family, but he didn't live like his family really mattered to him. They could very easily be abandoned or forgotten if there was something else he wanted more, and what they wanted seldom came into the picture.

[Camera One]

Rumple acted like he couldn't care less about Henry in the Season 6 finale.  And then in Season 7, he used the magic that could have cured Adult Henry, who could have died at any moment.  In Season 1, I bought that Rumple did care about Baelfire.  It makes it all the more odd that he cared so little about Henry.

[Shanna Marie]

29 minutes ago, Camera One said:

In Season 1, I bought that Rumple did care about Baelfire.  It makes it all the more odd that he cared so little about Henry.

And that he cared so little about Neal once he found him. It was like he checked that item off his to-do list and moved on with his life because it was more important to impress the new version of his girlfriend than to make any effort to build a relationship with his son.

[Rumsy4]

52 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm not sure how much his family matters to him other than as possessions. 

That's the impression I was left with too. That's at the root of why he killed Milah. His treated his family as extensions of himself. 

[Camera One]

36 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And that he cared so little about Neal once he found him. It was like he checked that item off his to-do list and moved on with his life because it was more important to impress the new version of his girlfriend than to make any effort to build a relationship with his son.

I guess he told Robin in 4B that he didn't feel Adult Neal was his son or something to that effect?

[ParadoxLost]

The one time I really felt that Rumple was being honest was, in 5B,  when he basically told Belle he liked power and that he wasn't and didn't want to be this idealized version of a good man that she wanted to believe he was deep down.

That is when I lost all respect for Belle because she refused to face facts and leave permanently.

[Camera One]

It took losing Belle and almost destroying, uh I mean saving Alice, for him to learn the lesson that he could be the good man that Belle saw inside of him.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

2 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It took losing Belle and almost destroying, uh I mean saving Alice, for him to learn the lesson that he could be the good man that Belle saw inside of him.

And he only learned his lesson because the writers ran out of seasons to spin him in circles with.

[andromeda331]

45 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

That's the impression I was left with too. That's at the root of why he killed Milah. His treated his family as extensions of himself. 

Mine too. I bought his love and regret what happened to Bae in season one. That ended when he found Bae/Neal and tried to convince him to let Rumple turn him back into a 14 year old. Then didn't speak to his son after that one conversation. Nope he was more interested in Lacey then trying to make up with his son or find a way to get the real Belle back.  

[KAOS Agent]

51 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I guess he told Robin in 4B that he didn't feel Adult Neal was his son or something to that effect?

I forgot about that gem. That was such a wtf moment for me. Rumpel destroyed countless lives in his quest to get back to Bae and then here he basically said Neal wasn't the  son he raised and his belongings were meaningless to him. It was kind of funny in that he was expressing the audience's feelings that there was such a huge disconnect between Bae and Neal, but it's such a destruction of his character's motives for the entirety of the series that it was unbelievable for him to act that way.

[Camera One]

I wonder what storylines we might have gotten if Rumple did turn Neal back into a 14-year-old boy in Season 3.  Henry would have a dad who was only a few years older than him.  Bae would have to accept his new stepmommy. 

That storyline would never have happened though.  The Writers needed Baelfire/Neal gone in all his permutations so the yo-yo show with Rumple could begin.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

Another quote from the audio commentary of "Skin Deep"...

Jane Espenson: "The theme of this episode actually changed in the writing of it which is really unusual on this show because normally, the guys know exactly what the episode's about and you go in knowing it and it never changes.  But this one started out being about Rumple chooses power over love and then we sort of realized during the writing of it, going through drafts and talking to the guys about it... this is what Rumple wants to think he's doing, but really, it's about how he doesn't think he's lovable or worthy of love, and it just getting deeper and deeper as we worked with it." 

[companionenvy]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm not sure how much his family matters to him other than as possessions. Yes, he spent all that time trying to reach Bae, but it wasn't about Bae or about family. It really was about proving something to himself (given that he more or less forgot about Neal the moment he found him). He treated Belle like a possession, with her wishes not mattering much to him. Ditto with Henry, for the most part. He completely forgot about Gideon in his quest to get his own happy ending. He talked a good show about family, but he didn't live like his family really mattered to him. They could very easily be abandoned or forgotten if there was something else he wanted more, and what they wanted seldom came into the picture.

This may be in part a matter more of phrasing than of perspective on the character. I agree that Rumple's love is fundamentally selfish, which arguably means that we can't categorize it as real love at all. But  in the first place, I'm a little bit leery of totally dismissing even a love steeped in selfishness, because I think that plenty of relationships, if we interrogate them enough, might be found to be mixed with arguably tainted motives. Parents, and not just awful ones, do sometimes fall into seeing children as extensions of themselves. Romantic love gets mingled with things like infatuation and attraction and idealization.  In other words, there are gradations, and just because someone might not be capable of the highest level of love doesn't mean, I think, that he can't feel something that resembles what we would frequently categorize as at least a form of love without stopping to ask about whether person A really loved person B or only what she represented.

To use other examples from the show -- and even ignoring the show's definition of true love -- I do think that Regina loved her father, even though that didn't stop her from killing him and was, IMO, steeped heavily in what he offered her emotionally, rather than in his own wants and needs. To use a very different relationship, I think we could have a long conversation about the extent to which Snow and Charming really loved adult Emma as Emma. They knew that she was the child they had lost, and so extended to her the unconditional parental love they had once felt for their newborn, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure that they love her in the way that they love either each other or Snowflake. For that matter, does Emma love Mary Margaret and David because they'v established a deep connection, or simply because she knows that they are her parents and she is supposed to love them? I think over S1, she genuinely comes to love Henry for reasons other than the fact that he is her biological son; I'm not sure that the same can be said for her relationship with her parents. Even so, I wouldn't want to start asserting that the Charmings don't love Emma, or she them, because love is complicated and often fraught with questions over motivation and projection. 

In either case, whether you call it love or not, what is getting to me is the wording of saying he doesn't care about family. Because to me, that would imply that the fact that someone is his family makes no difference to him, which I think is demonstrably not true. Rumple may be number one, but even if we question the exact nature of his devotion to Bae or Belle, he clearly puts them in a vastly different category than anyone else, and there are any number of circumstances in which the fact that someone is family drives his actions and influences his thinking, for better or worse. 

I also kind of dismiss Rumple's apparent abandonment of Gideon, since the show so obviously simply didn't want to deal with him in S7. If we wanted to apply normal-person standards, we could say that Belle apparently didn't care about Gideon either, since she evidently was A-OK with living in a time stream that meant that she was going to die when he was still a very young man, and I don't think we're supposed to think that, just as we're apparently not supposed to think that Henry leaving on what would appear to be a more or less one-way ticket to the EF and not seeing his family for years on end is just like leaving for college. It is so transparently a matter of the show's narrative needs that I don't see it as evidence of Rumple's indifference to Gideon.

His attitudes toward adult Bae are complex, but I don't ultimately think he didn't care about him. I think he had trouble coping with him, because since his love is so selfish, he has a really, really hard time with accepting a version of Bae who not only hated him, but appeared in many ways to have moved past him. Here's the dialogue after Neal first comes into the apartment to stop Rumple from hurting Emma:

Rumple: You came back for me.

Neal: No, I came to make sure you didn't hurt her. I've seen what you do to people who break deals. 

Rumple: Please Bae, just let me talk.

Neal: I have no interest in talking to you. You can go. 

Of course, ultimately, Neal isn't as done with his father as he claims. But the dialogue is nonetheless telling. Rumple immediately wants to see Bae coming back as All About Him, whereas for Neal, it isn't. And then Rumple immediately realizes that Emma and Neal have some sort of preexisting relationship, followed by the revelation that Neal is Henry's father; this consequently makes Henry a far greater priority for Neal than Rumple is. And while I think Rumple imagined a reunion with Bae where Bae was furious, he didn't count on a reunion with Bae in which Rumple himself wasn't even the most important figure in the scene. So, back in Storybrooke, I just don't think Rumple knows how to cope with Neal, and specifically, with a Neal who is more concerned about his son, his fiancee, and his complicated relationship with his ex than he is about Rumple himself. I'm not surprised he wouldn't be interested in Neal's things in S4, because Neal's NYC apartment and its trappings represents the life that Bae had without Rumple, and that's the last thing Rumple wants to acknowledge.

And again, we could have a semantic discussion over whether or not a love that compromised counts as love. But it is a lot more complex than indifference. 

[Rumsy4]

9 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

That is when I lost all respect for Belle because she refused to face facts and leave permanently.

Yeah. I too lost all respect for Belle after that. In season 6, she went back to him after he had terrorized, stalked, and magically imprisoned her while she was pregnant. Rumbelle is like a paean to domestic violence. 

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

"...But this one started out being about Rumple chooses power over love and then we sort of realized during the writing of it, going through drafts and talking to the guys about it... this is what Rumple wants to think he's doing, but really, it's about how he doesn't think he's lovable or worthy of love, and it just getting deeper and deeper as we worked with it." 

The writers want to pretend that the root of Regina and Rumple's villany is self-hate, but the show has never supported that reading of their characters. To me, it made more sense that Rumple rejected Belle's love because he was afraid he would never find Baelfire without magic. 

3 hours ago, companionenvy said:

And again, we could have a semantic discussion over whether or not a love that compromised counts as love. But it is a lot more complex than indifference. 

I don't think anyone is arguing it was indifference. But isn't this the excuse typically used to mitigate abusers? Rumple is the quintessential abuser who uses the excuse of "love" to mistreat the people who love him. He never respected Belle. Can one have love without respect? I do think he loved Baelfire, though it got twisted by his selfishness, but I'm not convinced he ever loved Belle. Only the idealized version of her (and vice versa). They both loved the version of the other they wanted them to be. Rumple turned Belle into what he had wished Milah to be. 

--Both Milah and Belle were interested in travelling. Rumple preferred a quiet village life. Milah ran away. Belle twice gave up her desire for travel in order to be with Rumple (5A finale and post Season 6). 

--Milah chose another man over her husband. Belle briefly dated another man (Will), but came back to Rumple when he was dying, and told him that she still loved him.

--Milah sacrificed her life for her lover. Belle sacrificed a normal life to live in a lonely realm with Rumple, away from all her family and friends.

--Milah gave up her son to go live her own life. Belle she gave up her chance to be in her son's life, knowing she would age and die faster in the edge of Realms, in order to save Rumple. 

--Rumple wanted to turn back the clock on Neal so he would be able to "redo" being a father to Baelfire and get a second chance (bet he still would've messed up becasue of his obsession with being the Dark One). He got that second chance with the son Belle gave him so he could fix his "shit". 

--Milah only ever saw him as a selfish coward. Belle idealized him even at the height of his abusive treatment of her.

--He murdered Milah because she left him for another man. Belle took him back even after he had an affair with the evil clone of Regina. 

If Belle had fallen short of any of this, would Rumple have still wanted to be with her? He tried to force this life on Belle with the authorial AU, but ultimately, he got Belle to do this of her own accord. He molded Belle into who he wanted her to be. 

Edited June 14, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, companionenvy said:

This may be in part a matter more of phrasing than of perspective on the character. I agree that Rumple's love is fundamentally selfish, which arguably means that we can't categorize it as real love at all. But  in the first place, I'm a little bit leery of totally dismissing even a love steeped in selfishness, because I think that plenty of relationships, if we interrogate them enough, might be found to be mixed with arguably tainted motives.

I wasn't really trying to argue whether or not Rumple was capable of love. In the context of the original discussion, this goes back to the idea of whether Rumple is likeable. I was looking at it as whether anyone who knew Rumple would like him or want to be friends with him. He doesn't have any friends, so you can only judge what kind of friend he'd be based on how he treats his family, and judging by the way he treats his family, I'd extrapolate that he'd have been willing to throw his friends under the bus to save himself or get what he wants. That's all I was really trying to say in this particular discussion, that I wouldn't call Rumple at all likeable.

10 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

The writers want to pretend that the root of Regina and Rumple's villany is self-hate, but the show has never supported that reading of their characters.

Yeah, I don't see that at all, either in "Skin Deep" or when Regina mentioned learning to forgive herself in season 5 or learning to love her whole self in season 6. With Rumple, this is where making Rumpelstiltskin/the Dark One also be the Beast doesn't really work. Rumple may be worthy of love in the sense of all God's children being deserving of an agape kind of love, but he actually isn't worthy of romantic love at that point in the story. He's holding a woman prisoner and making her be a slave, he casually murdered Gaston, and during this period he was flaying Robin Hood. This is not someone who should have anyone romantically in love with him. And someone who consistently puts his own desires ahead of everyone else and who enjoys flaunting his power doesn't really have a problem with self love.

I had to roll my eyes when Regina was spouting off about forgiving herself, as though she related to Hook's self-loathing, when we'd just had an entire season of her feeling like the universe was out of whack if she didn't get a happy ending because she totally deserved one now. Not to mention the fact that she'd never apologized for her evil acts, never accepted any responsibility. That's not a person who has trouble forgiving herself.

Rumple wanting to keep his power so he could get to Bae is really the only thing that makes sense in that episode.

[Rumsy4]

I think I've seen this posted here before, but anyway, this is the script from the infamous 4A finale scene where Emma shoves Hook's heart in the bathroom hallway and then runs off to console Regina. 

Hook tells Emma to go console Regina, and maybe it makes things a little better. But I still don't like the tendency of all the characters to drop everything and everyone and run off to coddle Regina as if her being sad precludes everyone's else's happiness. They really should have had that scene as one of the "three weeks later" scenes. 

[Rumsy4]

34 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

I have to rewatch to discuss because I can't remember any details.  Its practically being unspoiled.

I haven't rewatched this show in a long time. So, I don't remember many of the season 1 dialogues (other than some iconic ones). It's almost like watching a different show when compared with the vibe and the writing from later seasons. 

Edited June 16, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Camera One]

Same here.  Many episodes in Season 1-2, I've only watched once.  Starting with Season 3 to 6A, I've watched episodes twice.  The second time was when my friend visited, since she didn't have cable and didn't care enough about the show to watch herself.  She hasn't visited for a long time, though, so I haven't seen 6B or 7 with her yet.

Edited June 16, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

13 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

I think I've seen this posted here before, but anyway, this is the script from the infamous 4A finale scene where Emma shoves Hook's heart in the bathroom hallway and then runs off to console Regina. 

LOL, the script makes it even worse:

Quote

 

Emma is happy, until she SPOTS REGINA, alone, entering Granny's.  Hook follows her gaze.  Gets it.

HOOK: Go

 

He gets what?  

[Rumsy4]

I always used to watch episodes twice, usually on the day of airing and one more time within a week. I stopped doing that in Season 6. Even one time was too many. I don't remember doing a whole series rewatch past the Season 2 hiatus. I just used to dip into episodes and scenes I liked here and there. 

Just now, Camera One said:

He gets what?  

That his girlfriend's need to coddle Regina is greater than her concern for him?

[Camera One]

3 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I always used to watch episodes twice, usually on the day of airing and one more time within a week. I stopped doing that in Season 6. Even one time was too many. I don't remember doing a whole series rewatch past the Season 2 hiatus. I just used to dip into episodes and scenes I liked here and there. 

I couldn't imagine watching episodes twice the same week.  No wonder people here have such encyclopedic knowledge of the show.  :)

I have watched clips, though... Youtube is always recommending them.  This show is better in "moments".  

[Camera One]

Four episodes into Season 1, and the concept that villains couldn't get happy endings in the Enchanted Forest was a load of BS.  Before the Curse, Cinderella lost her Prince and the Fairy Godmother was murdered, while Rumple got what he wanted.  Gepetto's parents turned into puppets, while Archie's corrupt parents continued their scheme.  This wasn't the fairytale world where good was rewarded and evil was punished.  It was a medieval society except with magic.

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/15/2018 at 8:00 AM, Rumsy4 said:

But I still don't like the tendency of all the characters to drop everything and everyone and run off to coddle Regina as if her being sad precludes everyone's else's happiness.

This really struck me when I was rewatching "The Shepherd." I may have yelled "Hypocrite!" at the screen a few times when Regina was lecturing Mary Margaret about how pursuing David would be destroying a lot of lives. It's hard to watch all of Regina's maneuvering here, knowing that her victims will later be coddling her when she's going through what she put them through. Regina knew that David and Snow were really married to each other and that Abigail was with Frederick, but she's forcing David and Kathryn together and then acting like Mary Margaret is some horrible homewrecker for wanting to be with her actual husband. It would have been within everyone's rights to point and laugh at Regina when Regina found herself in love with a man who turned out to have a wife. It's really bizarre for them to be working so hard to console her and encourage her after what she did to them. Plus, if Regina is really all that reformed, she should be realizing the parallels. If she's a good person, she should be feeling guilty about what she did to them and making the connection to what she did, realizing how she hurt them. What happened to her was an accident and wasn't anyone trying to harm anyone. She did it to them on purpose to hurt them.

And it continues to get worse in the next episode with what happens to Graham. I only got through these episodes at the time by telling myself she'd get a comeuppance and pay for it. It's hard now watching, knowing that she'll get all the sympathy and be treated like a put upon victim when something less serious and less deliberate happens to her and that she won't show any empathy or remorse for what she once did.

As I mentioned in the thread for "The Shepherd," this episode really got undermined by future events. Not only was the Regina stuff rendered ridiculous later, but I feel like they changed their minds about a lot of things in David's past. His mother didn't talk at all like the wife of an alcoholic who (she thought) had lost her husband in a drunk carting accident, so I'm pretty sure that came out of thin air to suit the needs of the season 4 episode. It's still hard to believe that David had to learn courage from a princess. James was an arrogant jerk, but he was a totally different character from what we see in future episodes, where he's sleazy and downright evil. His knights seemed to be decent sorts, and they liked and respected him. I don't think they'd have respected the character we see in future flashbacks. George was harsh with David, but he was concerned about the good of his kingdom and mourning his son. He didn't seem to be the all-out villain we start to see later in the season. George and James seemed to have a good, loving relationship, and George wept at James's death. That could have been our positive adoptive parents story, but they retconned that later into George being disgusted with his horrible son, and still later into George being so awful that James tried to run away as a child, and James hating David in the afterlife for not having been given up to be raised by a king.

I'm pretty sure they didn't mean to send this message, but it keeps looking like the Charmings are very selfish people as rulers because they keep choosing to do things that make them feel good rather than doing what's good for their kingdom. If things really were so dire for George's kingdom that the only way to save it and help the people was for George's son to marry Midas's daughter, then it's kind of a jerk move for David to have backed out on that to be with Snow without doing something else to help that kingdom. Did him marrying Snow end up saving the kingdom? That doesn't seem to come up. And then there's them letting Regina go because Snow can't bear to execute her, but never mind all the villages she slaughtered and what she went on to do after they let her go.

[Camera One]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I feel like they changed their minds about a lot of things in David's past. His mother didn't talk at all like the wife of an alcoholic who (she thought) had lost her husband in a drunk carting accident, so I'm pretty sure that came out of thin air to suit the needs of the season 4 episode. It's still hard to believe that David had to learn courage from a princess.

David's mother talking about her husband was something that also jumped out at me.  Though this wasn't surprising since it was pretty blatant how David's backstory was slapped together with minimal thought, moreso than almost all of the other main characters.  He also got the fewest flashbacks.  It disappointed me after rewatch moreso that they made an effort to create a potentially interesting backstory for him in Season 1, but once they got more freedom, decided they couldn't care less.  

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James was an arrogant jerk, but he was a totally different character from what we see in future episodes, where he's sleazy and downright evil. His knights seemed to be decent sorts, and they liked and respected him. 

I was also surprised when David asked one of the soldiers about his brother, it wasn't an insult, since I've been so used to remembering James as a jackass.  

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George was harsh with David, but he was concerned about the good of his kingdom and mourning his son. He didn't seem to be the all-out villain we start to see later in the season. George and James seemed to have a good, loving relationship, and George wept at James's death. That could have been our positive adoptive parents story, but they retconned that later into George being disgusted with his horrible son, and still later into George being so awful that James tried to run away as a child, and James hating David in the afterlife for not having been given up to be raised by a king.

George did become an outright villain in "The Shepherd" to me the moment he whispered into David's ear that if he didn't do what George wanted, he would kill him and his mother.  Just because he wept at James' death doesn't mean he wasn't evil.  

Quote

I'm pretty sure they didn't mean to send this message, but it keeps looking like the Charmings are very selfish people as rulers because they keep choosing to do things that make them feel good rather than doing what's good for their kingdom. If things really were so dire for George's kingdom that the only way to save it and help the people was for George's son to marry Midas's daughter, then it's kind of a jerk move for David to have backed out on that to be with Snow without doing something else to help that kingdom. Did him marrying Snow end up saving the kingdom? That doesn't seem to come up. 

I didn't make that leap from this episode.  They didn't fill in any of the blanks in the "taking over the kingdom" plot, so a lot could have happened.  First of all, maybe George's kingdom was in dire straits because George was a bad king and he spent money on himself and the royal family (or on war) instead of the people.  That wouldn't be difficult to believe with absolute monarchies.  It is implied that the people in the united kingdom were at least peaceful under Snowing, so perhaps they distributed the wealth.  As an ex-farmer, David could have ideas for how to help the peasantry.  It's the type of worldbuilding that clearly A&E weren't interested in.  Not to mention it was a shame that we never got to see David learn to adjust to be royalty.

[profdanglais]

It really was cruel of Regina to force people who don't care for each other into "marriage" and sex. Of course, we see that she has no real understanding of consent with what she did to Graham, but still, it's gross. Plus, she seemed really touched that Katherine wanted ti be her friend, yet she still forces her to sleep with someone she doesn't love. Does Regina know about Frederick? Is he in Storybrooke? I can't remember if we ever got resolution for that. 

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Not to mention it was a shame that we never got to see David learn to adjust to be royalty.

This, this, this. I would have loved to see David have prince lessons. They give him this backstory and then it has no effect on him at all, other than that he sometimes mentions that he was once a shepherd. I suppose he just learned all the royal protocol by osmosis? 

[Camera One]

In 5B, instead of Regina and Zelena becoming BFFs, we should have seen "The Prince and the Pauper", with Young James and Young David exchanging places and teaching each other some skills.  And then George's wife finds out and asks Rumple to erase their memories.  

18 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

Does Regina know about Frederick? Is he in Storybrooke? I can't remember if we ever got resolution for that. 

Frederick is in Storybrooke and we saw him in "What Happened to Frederick".  I think the reunion between Abigail and Frederick was cut.  Because who needs resolution for supporting characters A&E don't care about.  

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Plus, if Regina is really all that reformed, she should be realizing the parallels. If she's a good person, she should be feeling guilty about what she did to them and making the connection to what she did, realizing how she hurt them.

Exactly. But she never did. She remained a narcissistic sociopath, except without the mass murder and rape. Of course that means she deserves to be Queen of the Multiverse according to the morality of this show. This is the parable of the lost sheep and the story of the prodigal son taken to their extremes and turned into a mockery. 

1 hour ago, profdanglais said:

It really was cruel of Regina to force people who don't care for each other into "marriage" and sex. Of course, we see that she has no real understanding of consent with what she did to Graham, but still, it's gross.

Absolutely. There were probably many others like Charming/Snow and Abigail/Frederick who were roofied into relationships. She made Red, and later Lacey, the town sluts. Not to mention poor Graham, who never got justice. I hope he's happy in the afterlife, peaceful in some heavenly forest with his wolf friend.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

In 5B, instead of Regina and Zelena becoming BFFs, we should have seen "The Prince and the Pauper", with Young James and Young David exchanging places and teaching each other some skills.  And then George's wife finds out and asks Rumple to erase their memories.  

Why do people keep coming up with more awesome ideas than the show ever did?! lol

[Camera One]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Though there was one thing that confused me a bit: the dragon was attacking Midas's kingdom, right? That's why he wanted a hero. But Abigail and Charming are traveling from George's kingdom to Midas's kingdom at the end for the wedding. So, it seems like Charming had to go fight the dragon in Midas's kingdom, then go back to George's kingdom to present Midas with the dragon's head, which Midas then gilded. Or did he present the head to Midas in Midas's kingdom, and then they all traveled back to George's kingdom to sign the treaties? And Midas brought his daughter to George's kingdom, but then they traveled back to Midas's kingdom, via Snow's kingdom.

That's a great point and highlights the Writers' problems with geography (in addition to math, literature, civics, science, history, business, law, home economics - cold beignets, etc.)  

The Fairy Godmother who is the patron of George's kingdom is also active in Cinderella's kingdom, so that's another political entity very close by.  

Edited June 16, 2018 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm pretty sure they didn't mean to send this message, but it keeps looking like the Charmings are very selfish people as rulers because they keep choosing to do things that make them feel good rather than doing what's good for their kingdom. If things really were so dire for George's kingdom that the only way to save it and help the people was for George's son to marry Midas's daughter, then it's kind of a jerk move for David to have backed out on that to be with Snow without doing something else to help that kingdom. Did him marrying Snow end up saving the kingdom? 

While I won't disagree about the Charmings being bad leaders (Wanna be our new sommelier? I know your village was just slaughtered, but we've found that our happiness is the best revenge.), I think Abigail had something to do with David being free to get together with Snow. I think David had pretty much given up on being with Snow, but was willing to potentially sacrifice himself to free Frederick and give Abigail her True Love back. It's possible that Abigail and Midas were happy to provide David and his kingdom with a reward for his actions.

Edited June 17, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[Rumsy4]

King George starts losing sympathy points for making Snow infertile. She was an innocent victim in this situation. Threatening to kill "James" would've been enough to motivate Snow into rejecting him. Cursing her the same way his wife had been cursed was needlessly cruel. And later we learn that the original prince James was extravagant and had emptied the royal cofferes with his partying lifestyle. Mismanagement of finances must be a prevailing condition in that kingdom--from the prince down to the sheep farmers. Everytime they get bailed out, they fall right back into debt. 

Speaking of the infertility curse, Snow should have told David about it before she agreed to marry him. It's kind of an important thing to reveal. What if Ruth hadn't sacrificed her life so Snow could get pregnant? Would she have confessed after five years of trying for a child and failing to conceive? I'm sure David would have still married her and rightfully blamed George if he had known, but Snow wasn't doing the right thing by keeping this from him. This show has always had a problem with people keeping important secrets from loved ones. It's especially ironic how many secrets Snow has kept from Charming or Emma, considering how much she was vilified (or made the butt of jokes) for her inability to keep secrets. 

[tennisgurl]

On 6/15/2018 at 10:07 PM, Rumsy4 said:

That his girlfriend's need to coddle Regina is greater than her concern for him?

Its my headcannon that Hook gets that when Regina isnt instantly coddled by everyone, she is likely to start hurling fireballs at pedestrians or teaming up with the first villain she meets who compliments her boots. Its a sacrifice for the greater good. 

19 hours ago, profdanglais said:

Plus, she seemed really touched that Katherine wanted ti be her friend, yet she still forces her to sleep with someone she doesn't love. Does Regina know about Frederick? Is he in Storybrooke? I can't remember if we ever got resolution for that. 

That really makes her behavior even worse to me. Her being an asshole to people in Storeybrooke is bad enough, but her acting like Katherine's best friend, and encouraging her marriage (and all that entails) to David, all the while knowing that Katherine has her own true love, right there in town, who she is keeping her from, and is sticking her with David and making them live out the arranged marriage that neither of them wanted, separating them from their real spouses, is even more evil. She acts all touched that Katherine considered her a friend, but she would go on to continue to force her and David to be together and have sex, even knowing its not what they would want in their actual minds, and would then kidnap her and dump her in a hole somewhere to frame MM/Snow for murder. She might have developed some warm feelings for Katherine, but she never really saw her, or anyone, as anything but pawns to get her revenge and her power. And we did see her and Frederick together at a Granny party for one scene, I think, and thats all we got of them. No big reunion, no follow up, I dont even think Frederick got any lines. Because, of course, A&E dont care about anyone who isnt named Regina or Rumple. 

Edited June 17, 2018 by tennisgurl

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

This show has always had a problem with people keeping important secrets from loved ones. It's especially ironic how many secrets Snow has kept from Charming or Emma, considering how much she was vilified (or made the butt of jokes) for her inability to keep secrets. 

That's a really good point because not being able to keep secrets was supposed to be Snow's biggest flaw.

Then again, they used it again for Cinderella in Season 6.  She had to apologize to her stepsister Clorinda for spilling her secret and even had to get run through with a cane as punishment while Clorinda didn't have to say "I'm sorry" back for luring her into a trap to kill her.  

Retcon secrets always make characters seem horrible.  Another damaging one was revealing that Belle knew about Anna all along but she couldn't say anything because she chose a rock over saving the girl.  

Edited June 17, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was thinking about our conversation in "That Still Small Voice" about the pieces of the glass coffin being found leading nowhere, plot-wise.

Could this possibly be an example of them "learning" something and doing this differently in Season 7?  I mean, yes, Lucy going underground was done much more poorly than Henry going underground.  But the piece of the Cinderella glass slipper she found did come into play much later in the season, making Henry believe and serving as the cure for his cursed heart.  Of course, the following episode Henry promptly stopped believing, so it was ultimately still pointless, but not as much as in Season 1.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

I think the initial idea was that there was no Enchanted Forest anymore. The Curse had completely destroyed it. I’m sure that was the significance of the glass coffin in the mines.

Then in early S2, Regina said there was one small pocket of land that was unprotected. Later we find that only people and maybe some of their things are transported by Dark Curses. Later world-building (or rather world-muddling) turns a lot of season 1 plotlines meaningless.  

I think we as viewers can have unrealistic expectations on how far ahead TV writers can plan storylines. IMO, it doesn’t really matter if a bulk of the writing is “made up” as they go along, as long as it fits well with the theme and vibe of the Show.

However A&E’s weakness in expanding their show’s mythology and world building is that they don’t care about fitting it in properly with previous scenes and storylines. That’s why everything feels like a retcon and viewers are left feeling confused and cheated. 

[profdanglais]

7 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I think we as viewers can have unrealistic expectations on how far ahead TV writers can plan storylines. IMO, it doesn’t really matter if a bulk of the writing is “made up” as they go along, as long as it fits well with the theme and vibe of the Show.

I think a lot of this is a result of the rigid and cutthroat nature of American network television. Every show has to have 20 odd episodes, regardless of how many they need to tell their story, and they have to hold on to their viewers or they risk cancellation. This encourages both the plot-irrelevant filler episodes and the kind of "OMG twist!" attitude to writing that caused so many problems on this show. It also means that successful shows have to keep their lead actors happy and busy to justify their salaries and the fact that they are basically held captive for eight months of the year, unable to take on other projects. Hence, we get Rumple and Regina in every.single.flashback. 

In the UK, shows tend to have a lot fewer episodes, and the whole series will be planned, written, and filmed way before it airs. TBH, I like that system a lot better, it makes for tighter and more consistent storytelling and characterisation, and means that you usually don't have to watch a show you once loved slowly mutate into a twisted shadow of its former self (there are exceptions of course, see: Sherlock). I sometimes wonder if OUAT's concept wouldn't have been better as a shorter, tighter, UK-style show with more of an ensemble cast. 

[Camera One]

I agree that the American network television schedule does constrain writing and results in artificial cliffhangers and often questionable pacing.  However, there's something to be said for head writers and showrunners who can still create a strong story under such constraints.  With shows I like, I enjoy the extra hours of "filler" because I've never been the type of viewer to care too much about the overarching story or "what happens next" if I enjoy spending time with the characters.

With A&E in charge, though, this show would still have been a convoluted mess with the UK model.  These guys can't even figure out a coherent story within a half-season, much less a full season or multiple seasons.  They made a conscious decision to ignore all the interesting character fallout from the Curse in the second season.  That's on them.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/16/2018 at 12:15 PM, Camera One said:

George did become an outright villain in "The Shepherd" to me the moment he whispered into David's ear that if he didn't do what George wanted, he would kill him and his mother.  Just because he wept at James' death doesn't mean he wasn't evil. 

I think it somewhat depends on context. If we'd seen people in the kingdom struggling and starving, and if in the palace, once you got beyond the public spaces you saw that all the rich furnishings were gone, the walls were bare, and obviously everything that could have been sold was sold, and if Regina's army was massing on the border, ready to invade but he didn't have the funds to pay troops, then it might have come across like a desperate person getting frustrated with this idiot getting in the way of his plan to save the kingdom. However, if he's still living in luxury and the kingdom is in trouble because of poor management, he's a lot more evil. I'm not saying George wasn't evil in this episode, but he's a lot grayer than he became later in the series when he was doing stuff like making Snow barren just because he was a jerk, being a terrible father to James, and murdering Gus to frame Red. Here, it's more of a pragmatic ruthlessness, but later he was doing evil stuff just because.

15 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

While I won't disagree about the Charmings being bad leaders (Wanna be our new sommelier? I know your village was just slaughtered, but we've found that our happiness is the best revenge.), I think Abigail had something to do with David being free to get together with Snow. I think David had pretty much given up on being with Snow, but was willing to potentially sacrifice himself to free Frederick and give Abigail her True Love back. It's possible that Abigail and Midas were happy to provide David and his kingdom with a reward for his actions.

I don't remember exactly how it all lined up, but I got the feeling that David would have ditched it all for Snow fairly early on if he could have managed it, even before Abigail gave him the out, especially with the way they set it up with him refusing to consider marriage to someone who could have helped them save the farm because he wanted to marry for love. I'm sure they mean it to be a positive, but he comes across as naive and kind of selfish.

5 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

King George starts losing sympathy points for making Snow infertile. She was an innocent victim in this situation. Threatening to kill "James" would've been enough to motivate Snow into rejecting him. Cursing her the same way his wife had been cursed was needlessly cruel. And later we learn that the original prince James was extravagant and had emptied the royal cofferes with his partying lifestyle. Mismanagement of finances must be a prevailing condition in that kingdom--from the prince down to the sheep farmers. Everytime they get bailed out, they fall right back into debt. 

That's the stuff that feels like retcon to "The Shepherd." In this episode, James is a bit arrogant, but he's a solid fighter who has the respect of his men, not a party boy who spends all his time and money on drinking and women. George is harsh and ruthless, but not someone who would curse an innocent girl with infertility after what he and his wife went through.

55 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I think we as viewers can have unrealistic expectations on how far ahead TV writers can plan storylines. IMO, it doesn’t really matter if a bulk of the writing is “made up” as they go along, as long as it fits well with the theme and vibe of the Show.

However A&E’s weakness in expanding their show’s mythology and world building is that they don’t care about fitting it in properly with previous scenes and storylines. That’s why everything feels like a retcon and viewers are left feeling confused and cheated. 

I think it's possible to make things up as you go, as long as you've done at least some development up front and are consistent with what you present. Once you've put something on screen, it becomes part of your world as it's established, and you're stuck with it. I would hope that you'd do enough development up front to know what's going on with your major elements: how does magic work, what's the organizing principle of your world (can villains ever win?), what did the curse actually do, what is a Savior. And I'd hope you'd have the key bits of background and characterization for your major characters. You can add to it as you go, but whatever you add has to fit with whatever you've shown before, and once you show something, it becomes part of the history.

I think my major complaint about this retconning is that it makes things less interesting. I think George is a more interesting villain if he's a good father who's trying to be a good king, but he lost the son he was counting on and is now stuck with an imposter who looks like his son but isn't his son, and he doesn't have the same emotional bonds -- and maybe doesn't want those emotional bonds -- but he's also utterly ruthless in looking after his kingdom and will utterly crush anyone who gets in his way. Instead, they made him into a rather ludicrous cartoon figure. Likewise with James -- it's more interesting if he's not totally evil, if he's a lot like David, but he was just raised differently and had a different attitude. But they also made him a cartoon character who was over the top in how awful he was.

[Camera One]

19 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't remember exactly how it all lined up, but I got the feeling that David would have ditched it all for Snow fairly early on if he could have managed it, even before Abigail gave him the out, especially with the way they set it up with him refusing to consider marriage to someone who could have helped them save the farm because he wanted to marry for love. I'm sure they mean it to be a positive, but he comes across as naive and kind of selfish.

David was definitely naive, but I think he had a right to be selfish.  He had lived his whole life on a farm and was being blackmailed into marrying some woman he didn't love and living a life he didn't want.  He had no obligation to save the kingdom from its finances, and what's to say that the new money will filter through to the commoners?  

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That's the stuff that feels like retcon to "The Shepherd." In this episode, James is a bit arrogant, but he's a solid fighter who has the respect of his men, not a party boy who spends all his time and money on drinking and women. George is harsh and ruthless, but not someone who would curse an innocent girl with infertility after what he and his wife went through.

I don't remember if we ever see James with his soldiers in future episodes, but other than that, I didn't see these two as huge retcons because later developments don't necessary preclude what we saw in "The Shepherd".  James could have been a hero AND spend all his free time on drinking and women.  That type of behavior might have been expected for a Prince and celebrated by his men.  We hardly saw James in this episode and got one or two comments from his men which could have been out of fear that David would spill what they said to the King.  George's ruthlessness may have caused him to choose that very punishment because he wanted to hurt David in the worst way possible that he knew.

To me, retcons bother me most when they blatantly go against what we've seen in the past or going way too far, with previously good-natured people like Liam being willing to sacrifice all the sailors on the ship, or Baelfire egging Rumple on to kill a man.   I think I've had to accept additions to character backgrounds considering this show keeps adding new flashbacks.  I do agree that it would have been more interesting if James hadn't been outright evil, but I think they intended George to be that way pretty early on.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

20 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Here, it's more of a pragmatic ruthlessness, but later he was doing evil stuff just because.

This is a problem for most of the long-standing villains on the show. Regina and Rumple (especially Rumple) used to be much more pragmatic with their evil deeds. Their sins were almost always a means to an end. Later, they just started murdering people for shits and giggles. I don't find a villain very engaging when they're evil for the sake of being evil. Psychopathic serial killers are too common and rarely done right. What makes it worse for OUAT is that those two characters are meant to be "humanized" and redeemable. In earlier seasons, you could tilt your head and go, "they're blinded by their goals of revenge/reuniting with their son". But now we know they took many, many detours that had nothing to do with their prime motivations. 

Anastasia's redemption arc worked well in part to the fact she assumed she could go back in time and undo all her atrocities. She wasn't running around laughing about killing jesters or screwing with people for funsies. 

[KingOfHearts]

This duplicate post was made in error. Please delete.

Edited June 18, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

It really became a thing for the show to add more evil deeds to previously good, or morally ambiguous, characters, didnt it? They seemed to exist to make villain looks better (Gaston was evil the whole time, so its ok that Rumple killed him! Eva was mean to Cora, so its ok that she killed her and set up her family to be destroyed!) or to pointlessly get heroes to make bad choices (egg-napping, Bae wanting Rumple to kill people) just to create drama) or to make already established villains more evil for the sake of evil, even when they had previously been established to be more understandable in their villainy (Regina and her many village killings, George making Snow infertile, Rumple smashing random villagers for nothing) or at least had some goal beyond being an asshole. 

Some of that is probably just because they refused to give up the flashback structure, even when it had clearly run its course. By season six, we had long gotten to Lost and Arrow style pointlessness (what do Jacks tattoos mean?) and retcons (there were like 70 people on that seemingly deserted island Oliver was on) and they just kept going. Even Lost and Arrow eventually stopped with the standard flashbacks, but Once just kept on keeping on!

It really became a thing for the show to add more evil deeds to previously good, or morally ambiguous, characters, didnt it? They seemed to exist to make villain looks better (Gaston was evil the whole time, so its ok that Rumple killed him! Eva was mean to Cora, so its ok that she killed her and set up her family to be destroyed!) or to pointlessly get heroes to make bad choices (egg-napping, Bae wanting Rumple to kill people) just to create drama) or to make already established villains more evil for the sake of evil, even when they had previously been established to be more understandable in their villainy (Regina and her many village killings, George making Snow infertile, Rumple smashing random villagers for nothing) or at least had some goal beyond being an asshole. 

Some of that is probably just because they refused to give up the flashback structure, even when it had clearly run its course. By season six, we had long gotten to Lost and Arrow style pointlessness (what do Jacks tattoos mean?) and retcons (there were like 70 people on that seemingly deserted island Oliver was on) and they just kept going. Even Lost and Arrow eventually stopped with the standard flashbacks, but Once just kept on keeping on!

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

This is a problem for most of the long-standing villains on the show. Regina and Rumple (especially Rumple) used to be much more pragmatic with their evil deeds. Their sins were almost always a means to an end. Later, they just started murdering people for shits and giggles. I don't find a villain very engaging when they're evil for the sake of being evil. Psychopathic serial killers are too common and rarely done right. What makes it worse for OUAT is that those two characters are meant to be "humanized" and redeemable. In earlier seasons, you could tilt your head and go, "they're blinded by their goals of revenge/reuniting with their son". But now we know they took many, many detours that had nothing to do with their prime motivations.

I mostly agree with you, but one thing I've been noticing on rewatch is that Rumple/Gold  actually does quite a bit that isn't pragmatic in the early episodes. He had a reason -albeit a rather convoluted one -- for wanting Cinderella's baby in the past, but why does he want Ashley's? I think someone suggested that he wanted Emma to owe him a favor, but presumably he made the deal with Ashley before Emma came to SB, and couldn't have anticipated using it as a bargaining chip with someone he didn't yet know existed. Similarly, why does he give Jiminy the tonic? Given that Gepetto's parents wind up in his shop, was he trying for that result, or was he just slumming around peddling nasty magic to middle-aged man-children for shits and giggles? As I continue watching, I'll keep an eye out for more examples, but I'm wondering if the sense of him as more pragmatic actually just comes from the fact that he was so mysterious in these early episodes. He obviously had an agenda, and we couldn't know what did and didn't serve it, so it wasn't always apparent when something was just random cruelty and love of power.

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

think it's possible to make things up as you go, as long as you've done at least some development up front and are consistent with what you present. Once you've put something on screen, it becomes part of your world as it's established, and you're stuck with it. I would hope that you'd do enough development up front to know what's going on with your major elements: how does magic work, what's the organizing principle of your world (can villains ever win?), what did the curse actually do, what is a Savior. And I'd hope you'd have the key bits of background and characterization for your major characters. You can add to it as you go, but whatever you add has to fit with whatever you've shown before, and once you show something, it becomes part of the history.

I'll go even further and say that I don't even mind some retcons if there's sufficient reason for it. The problem I think we had in OuaT is that, along with their wonky morality meter, the writers also didn't have a good sense of what should and shouldn't be fair game for a retcon. For instance, the fact that pregnant Snow had originally intended to go through the portal and raise Emma herself, and only had to change the plan when she gave birth too early, was a major plot point in S1. So it then makes absolutely no sense that in "Awake," Snow decides she and Charming can't raise Emma because she needs to break the curse - Snow was actually supposed to have raised Emma all along, with the assumption that she'd still be able to break the curse on her 28th birthday. That's just too big a retcon to accept. 

The same is true, I think, of other aspects of world-building. Those of us that hang out here are obsessives, which means we're going to pore over logical gaps and inconsistencies. I'm not sure that we can hold the show entirely responsible for all of these; almost any show involving things like magic, time travel, etc, especially one, as profdanglais pointed out, subject to the constraints of an American network TV season, is sometimes going to have to take shortcuts and leave some questions unanswered (and rely on the fact that the average audience member isn't going to ask). But I think there's a big difference between so called "fridge logic," - defined, as I understand it, as a case in which something seems reasonable while you're watching, but then maybe when you're walking to the fridge later on you suddenly say, "Hey, that doesn't quite make sense" -- and something that's just straight-up absurd. To refer to a discussion we were having in the episode thread for "The Shepherd," I'm actually OK with not knowing exactly how David Nolan's curse download worked and having to wonder whether it really makes sense that he evidently understands the basics of 21st century life but otherwise has no curse memories until Gold's machinations. I'm a lot less OK with the fact that the show never bothers to deal with the various practical or emotional ramifications of the curse breaking. Similarly, I don't really care that it is, as far as I can tell, impossible to make Hook's flashbacks exist as part of a consistent timeline, but I do care that that s7 ends in a mess of massive time paradoxes that render the entire plot incoherent. Part of writing for a show like Once is figuring out what you can and can't handwave if you want to have a universe with any kind of integrity. 

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I swear, I spend half the time during this re-watch saying “poor Graham” over and over. When Emma found him coming out of Regina’s house, he really just looked more stressed and sad than anything else. He clearly doesn’t like her, and if someone asked point blank why he was sleeping with her, he probably couldn’t give them an answer. 

It makes next week, and what follows, even more of a horrible tragedy.

I had totally forgotten that "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is next week already in the rewatch.  It felt like Graham was around longer than he actually was.  It seems like the pacing in 1A was appropriate with gradual changes that occurred because of Emma's actions. 

I remember when I first watched Season 1, it was a huge letdown that the big breakthrough with a character (Graham) actually starting to remember and Emma being witness to behavior that corroborated Henry - this big breakthrough had zero consequences and 1B began with everything in terms of belief and the "crack" in the Curse pretty much reset.  That puts a bit of a damper even on the rewatch.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

It felt like Graham was around longer than he actually was.

Yeah. I felt that too. He definitely made a big impact with the audience, even though Jamie Dornan himself was less than stellar in his acting, to be honest.