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

[companionenvy]

I loved Pan as a villain, and as a really brilliant twist on the Peter Pan story, which is quite creepy in Barrie's original. I also think the arc managed some great character work - no, the show was never Tolstoy, but for what it was, Neverland may have been the peak in terms of actually dealing with emotional issues and interpersonal dynamics in some kind of sustained way.  Yeah, it wound up being pretty terrible for Snow, but otherwise, we had solid development for both Captain Swan and for Hook as an individual, the Captain Charming broTP, Regina productively working with the team for a valid reason without having to retcon her into a saint or their best buddy, and what would have been a satisfying end for Rumple's arc. Regina's closing sacrifice was also probably her best moment in the series.

3B was shakier. I was never a huge Zelena fan, and the less said about the idiocy where she curses Hook's lips, the better. But the first episode, with Hook finding Emma and Henry in NY, was fun, and of course we get Captain Swan's jaunt back in time at the end of the season. I didn't like the twist of Regina being the one to TLK Henry, which was a foretaste of much, much worse to come, but in the context of the season, it wasn't yet totally offensive to me; she had actually made a legitimate sacrifice for Henry's sake at the end of 3A, and at this point she wasn't yet routinely being given Emma's powers and plotlines or fawned over by everyone and sundry, so I could handle and even acknowledge it as somewhat narratively fitting. 

[tennisgurl]

In so many ways, all the flaws that would go onto define the show in later seasons are all here now, just in lesser forms. The world building is inconsistent and nonsensical at best and bizarre and disturbing at worst, characters frequently have to act out of character to move the plot along, Emma is manipulated by others constantly, the supporting cast is underused after their one episode, etc. I admit, I think I've romanticized season one in my head a bit as an amazing, almost perfect season of television that was ruined by its own show runners later on, when, in reality, season one had its problems too. Especially bad was the Katherine stuff, which just seemed like pointless filler, and how Emma seemed to fall for just about anything in the middle of the season, and instead of her slowly putting things together using her investigation skills or her almost always busted superpower, she just goes from spending a whole season like "nothing weird in this town silly Henry" to "holy shit, its all real!" in the last episode. 

However, I still think season one holds up pretty well, and the good definitely outweighs the bad. They had some good twists on fairy-tales, season one Storybrooke was an amazing location filled with mystery, the supporting cast had way more to do, and they really spent time building up the main relationships, both in flashbacks, and in the current timeline. With so much good, I can kind of hand wave some of the stuff that I dont care for, and still enjoy the awesome moments that this season had to offer, and its overall vibe. But, in other ways, this season makes me more frustrated than any of the other one, even the ones that make me tear my own hair out in hatred. There is so much potential here, to build a really compelling and fun story, and a HUGE multiverse to explore and they blew it. They blew it in a way few shows have in the history of TV. They had this great premise, and after this season, its clear that this was all they had. 

[Shanna Marie]

We'll see how I feel upon rewatching it again, but I think 2A is my favorite arc in the series. It wasn't what I wanted it to be when it first aired because I really wanted some follow-up to the season one finale. I wanted an even bigger comeuppance for Regina, I wanted Charming family bonding, I wanted emotional fallout. But when I later rewatched the arc with more tempered expectations, it's a lot of fun in a way that I don't think the show ever managed again. I like the Team Princess adventure, which gives us Snow getting to be a badass plus the epic crossover of multiple Disney princesses and Emma really being out of her comfort zone in going straight from just starting to believe the fairy tale stuff to being in the fairy tale world. Regina was actually realizing where she screwed up and making an effort to change (too bad that was all immediately dropped). Cora was a great villain. Hook was a lot of fun and added a huge jolt of energy to the series. The David and Henry bonding was sweet. I don't recall any of the doom and gloom that came later. So, what will I think in the coming weeks when I rewatch?

[andromeda331]

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

We'll see how I feel upon rewatching it again, but I think 2A is my favorite arc in the series. It wasn't what I wanted it to be when it first aired because I really wanted some follow-up to the season one finale. I wanted an even bigger comeuppance for Regina, I wanted Charming family bonding, I wanted emotional fallout. But when I later rewatched the arc with more tempered expectations, it's a lot of fun in a way that I don't think the show ever managed again. I like the Team Princess adventure, which gives us Snow getting to be a badass plus the epic crossover of multiple Disney princesses and Emma really being out of her comfort zone in going straight from just starting to believe the fairy tale stuff to being in the fairy tale world. Regina was actually realizing where she screwed up and making an effort to change (too bad that was all immediately dropped). Cora was a great villain. Hook was a lot of fun and added a huge jolt of energy to the series. The David and Henry bonding was sweet. I don't recall any of the doom and gloom that came later. So, what will I think in the coming weeks when I rewatch?

I did like season 2A for those reasons. I loved Team Princess and Snow and Emma together, Emma seeing where she came from and learn how cool her mother was. All she knew was the school teacher not a badass with a bow and arrow. I think Emma really needed to see her in that light. I don't think she would have if they remained in Storybrooke she'd still see her as Mary Margaret. I loved seeing Emma out of her comfort zone. Her expressions and reactions to everything was really great. I liked seeing Charming and Henry bonding together it was really good. I liked seeing Hook and loved that Snow and Emma saw right through his act. Cora was a really great villain and I did like Regina realizing she was her mother and trying to change. I do wish we had gotten more of the emotional fallout that should have happened from the Curse breaking. The impact and how the entire town dealt with it. And of course Regina still needed to be punished for her crimes.

[tennisgurl]

One of my favorite things on this show will always be Henry calling Charming Grandpa when the curse is broken. Them bonding, especially when we saw a lot of it in 2A, is too cute for words. 

[Camera One]

I had a timeline question.  I was going to give A&E a call but I figured someone here could probably answer it more accurately.

How much time was there between the enactment of the Curse and Belle's disappearance?  As I said in the episode thread, I don't buy that Rumple wouldn't have hunted down Maurice immediately (not to mention why he waited that long to destroy Moe's business in Storybrooke).  

[companionenvy]

51 minutes ago, Camera One said:

As I said in the episode thread, I don't buy that Rumple wouldn't have hunted down Maurice immediately (not to mention why he waited that long to destroy Moe's business in Storybrooke).  

I think you're right, but for me, this is one of those things within the realm of legitimate writerly fudging, and something I think you'll find in almost any narrative with characters with extraordinary powers and abilities. Somehow, the uber-powerful villain isn't quite uber-powerful enough to have yet killed the hero, even if he or she otherwise seems practically omnipotent and omniscient. Or the super-convenient spell/technology/McGuffin shows up for just long enough to serve when it is needed, and then is inexplicably not mentioned as a possibility in another circumstances where it would logically seem to serve. Good stories minimize these moments, but I consider some level of contrivance a feature of most sci-fi/fantasy worlds.

Sometimes, I think an in-universe explanation, even if slightly flimsy, is called for, but in other cases, I'm OK with fanwanking or just living with the inconsistency, and this is one of them. Yeah, Rumple would almost definitely have killed Maurice within minutes of learning that Belle was dead, but that would have caused other problems for the story, so I can deal with assuming Rumple had other things on his mind and was planning on going after Maurice later. 

If we are going to fanwank, I also do think that, both in the past and present, there were other psychological factors potentially at work. Regina didn't say that Maurice had executed Belle; he had caused her to despair to the point where she had taken her own life. And, as Rumple's words as he's beating Mo suggest, Rumple realizes that he, too, may very well have been a significant contributing factor in Belle's depression and desperation. 

I think it is Shanna who has suggested in the past that the only real explanation for why Rumple didn't find another way to get to Baelfire years earlier is that he was terrified to confront him; playing a long, long game with Regina allowed him to convince himself he was doing something while indulging in cowardly delay. I'm not sure that this is actually what the writers had in mind - at the time they created Rumple's plan, they hadn't yet made crossing realms as easy as hopping a Greyhound -- but regardless, it would be consistent with Rumple not actually wanting to go after Maurice because he was afraid of what he might hear or learn if he looked further into the circumstances of Belle's death, and instead deferring his revenge to some unspecified later time. 

Edited August 13, 2018 by companionenvy

[Camera One]

I'm willing to take a "leap of faith" and develop an explanation for a missing piece, if an explanation flows naturally and makes sense.  Rumple intentionally taking the long way to find Baelfire because he was delaying it due to his fear is a logical explanation that would fit very well with his character flaw, so I can buy that as the reason it took him so long.  Another explanation we've bandied about was Rumple using specific clues from the Seer's visions to construct his path back to Baelfire.  

Rumple never bothering to confirm Belle's death or look for Maurice needed a more convincing explanation before I could overlook it.  It would have literally taken him half a second to get to Maurice, faster than that drawn-out montage of him smashing all the glass in his cupboard.  Your suggestion that maybe his guilt stopped him from looking for Belle is a possibility, I think.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

10 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

One of my favorite things on this show will always be Henry calling Charming Grandpa when the curse is broken. Them bonding, especially when we saw a lot of it in 2A, is too cute for words. 

I love that especially the first time. When Snow and Charming are all hugging Emma and it doesn't really occur to them yet that ah, their grandparents. It was a cute way to ah let them realize that. I love how Snow immediately starts laughing. I really wish we had gotten to see that first dinner with the family after Snow and Emma got back. What was it like? What did they talk about? 

[KingOfHearts]

28 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

I love that especially the first time. When Snow and Charming are all hugging Emma and it doesn't really occur to them yet that ah, their grandparents. It was a cute way to ah let them realize that. I love how Snow immediately starts laughing. I really wish we had gotten to see that first dinner with the family after Snow and Emma got back. What was it like? What did they talk about? 

Who cares? Regina felt left out and that's all that matters.

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

I do wish we had gotten more of the emotional fallout that should have happened from the Curse breaking. The impact and how the entire town dealt with it. And of course Regina still needed to be punished for her crimes.

I've been trying to figure out how I would fix the problems without losing what we got. I think it's important that Emma got thrown into the Enchanted Forest world before she'd had a chance to come to terms with anything in Storybrooke, so maybe what needs to get fixed is 2B, let her have all the family emotional fallout when she returns to Storybrooke. Meanwhile, a big issue overall and going forward is the fact that in season one, Regina is pretty much written as irredeemable. She's a full-on psychopath who is incapable of empathy. She doesn't understand forgiveness, so I don't think she'd seek it for herself or trust or understand it if it were extended to her. She seems to care about Henry as a possession, but until the sudden burst of tears at the end of the season, she doesn't seem to care much about him as a person. She shows him no affection at all, not even attempts that he rebuffs. She doesn't try to spend time with him, doesn't attempt to have a conversation with him (other than giving him orders or gaslighting him). He's supposedly the reason she starts to turn around, but she wasn't willing to try with him when she felt she was competing with Emma, so why would she start trying for his sake now? The only way I could see her maybe starting to be redeemed was if she really and truly realized how she screwed up and was so mortified by what she'd done to everyone that she pulled an "Angel" and left town to start over somewhere new, where she devoted herself to helping people, and only after getting her act together did she venture back to Storybrooke, possibly because they needed her help. It's impossible to believe her suddenly just stopping her quest for revenge (without any acknowledgement that she was wrong) and living among the people she's been tormenting. Even with 2A's somewhat attempted change, with her giving up magic and her therapy sessions with Archie, it doesn't fit with what we saw in season one. She's the most evil villain we've seen on the show, with the biggest body count and the biggest impact on the main characters, so she seems more like someone who should have been thoroughly defeated, or at least someone who pulled an Ingrid and died while undoing her own evil after she realized how badly she'd screwed up.

9 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I think it is Shanna who has suggested in the past that the only real explanation for why Rumple didn't find another way to get to Baelfire years earlier is that he was terrified to confront him; playing a long, long game with Regina allowed him to convince himself he was doing something while indulging in cowardly delay. I'm not sure that this is actually what the writers had in mind - at the time they created Rumple's plan, they hadn't yet made crossing realms as easy as hopping a Greyhound -- but regardless, it would be consistent with Rumple not actually wanting to go after Maurice because he was afraid of what he might hear or learn if he looked further into the circumstances of Belle's death, and instead deferring his revenge to some unspecified later time. 

I also think that in season one there was no indication that it had been at least a hundred years since Bae left. That only came up in season two, when Hook came into the picture, and even there, we don't know how long Hook was supposed to have spent in Neverland. I think it was only at the end of season two when we saw that Bae went straight to Victorian London that we knew a long time had gone by (and I think there was maybe a line of dialogue by Rumple somewhere along the way). I don't know when they started thinking along those lines, but if you put season one in a vacuum, it's possible to imagine that it's only been a few years. At that time, we didn't even have the connection between Cora and Rumple before Regina was born, and we didn't know when Rumple started manipulating Regina. In season one, it's also more vague how long Belle was with Rumple or how long this was before the curse. The timestamp we have comes in with Robin and Marian in season two and knowing how old their son is in the present. Just going by season one info, Belle might have gone right before the curse.

As for why Rumple didn't track down Belle right away, there is the possibility that it wasn't just that he was afraid what he would hear, but there's also the fact that Belle being dead made his life easier. With her around, he was distracted and tempted. He knew she wouldn't let him go through with the curse. She'd push him to be better, might even get beneath his guard to actually pull off a TLK and remove his power. So, while he might not normally have taken Regina's word for it and might have looked into the truth, it was convenient (if painful) to believe Regina so he could focus on his goal and feel like someone else was to blame for Belle's fate. He got to play the tragic martyr with a lost love while doing exactly what he wanted to do.

[KingOfHearts]

Could the writers have written Regina differently and still given S1 what it needed? Could she've had a few flickers of redeemability and still hold her own as the primary antagonist? I'm personally okay with Evil!Regina and Redeemed!Regina, but not both. Either she needed to be humanized or defeated. But was it possible to make her less of a psychopath in S1 without tarnishing the tension over the course of 22 episodes?

Edited August 13, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

52 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Could the writers have written Regina differently and still given S1 what it needed? Could she've had a few flickers of redeemability and still hold her own as the primary antagonist? I'm personally okay with Evil!Regina and Redeemed!Regina, but not both. Either she needed to be humanized or defeated. But was it possible to make her less of a psychopath in S1 without tarnishing the tension over the course of 22 episodes?

I don't think her psychopathy really added all that much to the tension because it was so ridiculous. Her raping Graham was unnecessary. She could still have controlled him with his heart without the "send him to my bedchamber" thing. His murder would have been a little more understandable if it had been because he'd remembered everything and was about to tell Emma rather than having even a trace of a spurned lover about it. The whole plot to murder Kathryn and frame Mary Margaret was just silly. It made everyone look bad and was a final nail in the coffin for me because she was willing to murder the one person who really considered her a friend in order to get what she wanted. If they'd done something like have Emma gradually discovering clues and Regina frantically working to cover her tracks, mislead Emma, or play a public relations war against Emma -- something like "this outsider is trying to change our way of life in Storybrooke!" -- I think it would have been more interesting and less unbelievable when Regina was redeemed because she might have tried to do something to make things less miserable for anyone other than Snow. There still would have needed to be more of a process between evil and redeemed, but I might have been able to buy the redemption. As it is, it's hard to imagine season one Regina being fully redeemed by anything short of sacrificial death, and I can't imagine season one Regina even being capable of that kind of sacrifice. She's such a psychopath that she seems physically incapable of doing what's necessary to be redeemed.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Could the writers have written Regina differently and still given S1 what it needed? Could she've had a few flickers of redeemability and still hold her own as the primary antagonist? I'm personally okay with Evil!Regina and Redeemed!Regina, but not both. Either she needed to be humanized or defeated. But was it possible to make her less of a psychopath in S1 without tarnishing the tension over the course of 22 episodes?

I never thought she was beyond redemption in Season 1.  My problem was more with the so-called path to "redemption" and easy forgiveness by her victims.  If that's what the writers wanted, it needed to happen over multiple seasons of uneasiness.  I didn't mind her treating Henry like a prize to be won, but that meant they couldn't have Henry becoming her number 1 fan and accusing everyone else of being just as bad as Regina half a season later.  At no point in the show should Snow be thanking Regina for what she did to her or the subjects of the Enchanted Forest be electing her to be their beloved leader and making Regina a major source of light magic.  

I think the actress already threw in as many sadfaces as possible to humanize her, so in the first season, I didn't see her as a total black and white villain .  I suppose they could have cut out some of her more egregious crimes in Storybrooke.  It wasn't necessary for the story for Regina to order Katherine to be killed, though I'm not sure that was necessarily any worse than what Rumple did over the course of the show.  

Edited August 13, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Could the writers have written Regina differently and still given S1 what it needed? Could she've had a few flickers of redeemability and still hold her own as the primary antagonist? I'm personally okay with Evil!Regina and Redeemed!Regina, but not both. Either she needed to be humanized or defeated. But was it possible to make her less of a psychopath in S1 without tarnishing the tension over the course of 22 episodes?

It is possible to write a show nuanced enough that your primary antagonist is also genuinely complex and even sympathetic character, but even assuming the writers wanted to preserve some version of the classic good vs. evil fairy-tale vibe, I think they could have toned it down without totally destroying the tension or radically altering their plans.

The first thing would have been eliminating some of the more senseless acts of evil, like what she does to Hansel and Gretel (both in the EF and SB), and even acts that were theoretically tied to her plan, but were so over-the-top as to be absurd, like trying to have Katherine killed in order to frame Mary-Margaret, whom she could have made - and was already making -- miserable in any number of other ways.

The second would be to show more warmth in her relationship with Henry prior to the last episode. Even apart from curse-related shenanigans, Regina is a pretty terrible mother. If she had been desperately fighting to preserve a loving relationship slipping away now that he was old enough to see the obvious problems with Storybrooke, that would have been more humanizing than what seemed to be mostly a power-play with Emma. 

The third is to alter her backstory to give her something closer to a psychologically compelling motivation. Start with making Snow slightly older when they meet, and having her tell Cora the truth for selfish reasons. Then have at least one more flashback episode set at some point between Regina's marriage and Sidney's arrival that gives Regina more reason beyond Daniel's death for Regina to have at least a somewhat more legitimate beef with both Leopold and Snow, and probably with the rest of the kingdom as well. 

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I never thought she was beyond redemption in Season 1.  My problem was more with the so-called path to "redemption" and easy forgiveness by her victims.  If that's what the writers wanted, it needed to happen over multiple seasons of uneasiness.  I didn't mind her treating Henry like a prize to be won, but that meant they couldn't have Henry becoming her number 1 fan and accusing everyone else of being just as bad as Regina half a season later.  At no point in the show should Snow be thanking Regina for what she did to her or the subjects of the Enchanted Forest be electing her to be their beloved leader and making Regina a major source of light magic.  

See, I do think that she was beyond redemption, sadfaces notwithstanding, because of the OTT, senselessly sadistic nature of so many of her crimes, but I kind of agree with you in that I don't think a redemption arc for Regina had to be totally show-killing based on S1. I would have considered it something of a retcon that would have required suspending my memory of her worst acts, but I might have gone for it; even in the S1 finale, I find myself feeling legitimately bad for Regina at times, despite knowing that I'm being manipulated into feeling that way. 

But you're right, the main problem was that very quickly, everyone stopped reacting realistically to her, and the show lost all sense of perspective in writing for or about her. 

[KingOfHearts]

2 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

The third is to alter her backstory to give her something closer to a psychologically compelling motivation. Start with making Snow slightly older when they meet, and having her tell Cora the truth for selfish reasons. Then have at least one more flashback episode set at some point between Regina's marriage and Sidney's arrival that gives Regina more reason beyond Daniel's death for Regina to have at least a somewhat more legitimate beef with both Leopold and Snow, and probably with the rest of the kingdom as well. 

If they had shown Leopold being neglectful or mentally abusive to any extent, it would've gone a long way. 

[Camera One]

I've never been a fan of writing that drags down the heroes to make them to justify the villains' anger.  I had no problem with the psychotic reason for Regina's vendetta against Snow because I could see her having a psychotic break.  I didn't need to see Snow or Leopold "deserve" it more.  But they needed to keep the target on Snow and not on innocent children or villagers, a line they crossed many times, the most egregious in "The Evil Queen" in Season 2.  By the end of Season 1, both Regina and Rumple were still salvageable, despite both of them clearly getting off on other people's suffering.

23 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

See, I do think that she was beyond redemption, sadfaces notwithstanding, because of the OTT, senselessly sadistic nature of so many of her crimes

To me, most of the villains on the show (and many other fantasy/sci-fi shows) are beyond redemption.  Both Rumple and Zelena committed very evil acts towards innocent victims and even Hook was party to and at the very least a bystander to a massacre.  But on a show like this, remorse and earned repentance can go a long way, not necessarily in fully redeeming the character, but at least providing a reason why they should be allowed to live a decent (maybe even a happy) life and why the other characters should give them the light of day.  To that end, A&E failed miserably with both Regina and Rumple by Season 6.  They were more successful with Hook and to a lesser extent Zelena.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I think of Regina as irredeemable not so much because of the scope (body count) or nature of her crimes, but because of the personality traits that are related to her crimes that I see as incompatible with redemption. For one thing, there's the sadism. She seems to truly enjoy being cruel -- in fact, there's almost an impression that she gets sexual satisfaction out of it (which may just be because Parilla overdoes the campy crazy eyes and isn't really intended, but it's on the screen, so we have to consider it as part of the character). People generally tend not to stop doing things that they really enjoy. There's her utter lack of empathy, her tendency to see even the people she claims to care about as merely tools to help her achieve what she wants -- she'll murder her father to cast the curse, crush Henry in order to win against Emma, murder Kathryn in order to destroy Snow. Supposedly, she starts to turn around because she really loves Henry and doesn't want to become her mother, but there's no sign throughout all of season one that she cares what Henry thinks about her. Her competition with Emma over Henry is all about destroying Emma, even if it hurts Henry. She never tries to win Henry. In fact, a lot of what she does is pretty much guaranteed to turn Henry against her. She's willing to destroy Hansel and Gretel because it will mean Emma fails in Henry's eyes, but her holding firm on sending them out of town is going to make Henry upset at her even if she "wins." She destroys his castle to win against Emma, and never mind that this upsets Henry. So, why would she suddenly start caring what Henry thinks about her, to the point she's willing to give up on the goal that's driven her for decades?

There's also the problem that she doesn't think of herself as evil. In her view, she's totally justified because Snow is a monster and murderer. Everything she's done has been okay because she needs to find her happiness. If she doesn't believe she's wrong, how can she be redeemed? This is one of the weaknesses of the redemption story they end up doing, that she never admits that she was wrong. She apologizes for things around the edges, like gaslighting Henry, and she admits that she didn't have to make everyone's lives miserable in Storybrooke, but she never acknowledges that her vendetta against Snow was misguided.

What we see in season one is a woman who believes herself to be totally justified in everything she does, who sees herself as the victim and wronged party, no matter how much damage she does, who is incapable of empathy or seeing that anyone else has feelings or needs, who shows no sign of caring what Henry thinks about her, who doesn't let her personal relationships get in the way of getting what she wants, and who gets an almost sexual amount of pleasure from doing harm to people. I suppose someone like that might change, but it would take something big, like hitting bottom, and would require a total personality change.

[companionenvy]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

 I've never been a fan of writing that drags down the heroes to make them to justify the villains' anger.  I had no problem with the psychotic reason for Regina's vendetta against Snow because I could see her having a psychotic break.  I didn't need to see Snow or Leopold "deserve" it more. 

It's a fine line to walk, but I think the show could have done more to make Regina's anger understandable without making her actions justifiable. A twelve-year old doing something selfish, or a teenager acting snotty to her stepmom, is pretty developmentally standard behavior that I don't think would have constituted throwing Snow under the bus (as opposed to having her kidnap Maliicent's child, which very much was throwing the character under the bus), but it would have at least moved Regina more toward the spectrum of rational human behavior then holding a ten-year-old eternally responsible for being manipulated by a master. As for Leopold, the show didn't need him to be a monster, but he wasn't an important character and Regina was, so having him be a more obviously problematic husband would have, I think, been a good choice. 

 

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think of Regina as irredeemable not so much because of the scope (body count) or nature of her crimes, but because of the personality traits that are related to her crimes that I see as incompatible with redemption.

This. One thing I like about sci-fi/fantasy is that it allows us to explore possibilities that aren't available in realist works, and one of those possibilities is creating scenarios in which people who, in any modern, realistic world, would justifiably be on death row get a chance to grow, change, and maybe earn redemption. And I agree that in assessing these characters, I'm much less concerned with the scope of their crimes -- which, past a certain level of evil, often has to do more with opportunity than any meaningful moral distinction -- than the circumstances and pathologies that gave rise to them. Someone guilty of mass-scale atrocity while laboring under the grip of a warped extremist ideology might be potentially much more redeemable, in my worldview, than someone who senselessly tortures a single child. 

We could also call it the country-music scale of bad, where at one end we have "Caught my wife with another man, and it cost me 99" and on the other we have "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." So, a horrific crime of passion vs. cold-blooded sociopathy. 

[Shanna Marie]

57 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

It's a fine line to walk, but I think the show could have done more to make Regina's anger understandable without making her actions justifiable.

One possible way out would be to not have had Regina witness Daniel's death, and Cora somehow blames Snow for it -- like she says Snow went out riding when she wasn't supposed to and Daniel went to save her but was run over by her horse or was bitten by a poisonous snake, or something, and Cora doesn't want to hurt the child's feelings or upset the king, so they have to keep the real cause of Daniel's death a secret. So Regina had good reason to believe that Snow was responsible. Snow might not have known what happened, just thinking that Daniel went away or died in an accident (since Snow wasn't actually there when he died), so she wouldn't have known that every attempt she made at sympathy or consoling Regina was just salt in the wound because Regina thought she was gloating. Then Regina would have been somewhat (mistakenly) justified in thinking Snow was a murderer and monster. It still wouldn't justify the extremes Regina went to, and it would mean that when Cora later spilled her whole scheme in the clock tower, Regina would look even worse for not getting over her anger at Snow, but it would all make a lot more sense without dragging Snow down. And it would be totally in character for Cora.

[daxx]

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

He got to play the tragic martyr with a lost love while doing exactly what he wanted to do

This is exactly why he didn’t seek further information about Belle’s death, it fits his personality perfectly.

[Camera One]

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

One possible way out would be to not have had Regina witness Daniel's death, and Cora somehow blames Snow for it 

I like that solution.  The problem is A&E rarely thinks about how their plotting comes off and how it reflects on the characters.  So they're surprised when viewers suddenly get the "wrong idea".  A lot of the plotlines through the season needed to be reworked like that, so the message A&E intended actually came through.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

The problem is A&E rarely thinks about how their plotting comes off and how it reflects on the characters.  So they're surprised when viewers suddenly get the "wrong idea".  A lot of the plotlines through the season needed to be reworked like that, so the message A&E intended actually came through.

One of the frustrating things about this show is not so much the flaws as how easy the flaws are to fix, with just a little thought. I get the feeling they're often aiming for a particular effect or revelation without thinking through the implications. Like, they wanted the shock of Regina seeing Daniel die (probably because that ups the "poor Regina" factor), but didn't consider that it makes her look like a lunatic when she watched Cora murder Daniel but still considers Snow the murderer. I could kind of see her blaming Snow for not keeping the secret, but it's a big leap to go from there to "murderer." How was a child to know that the consequence of telling a secret would be murder? Did Regina even have the slightest idea that her mother was capable of murder before she killed Daniel?

There would be less "poor Regina" if she wasn't forced to watch Daniel die, but she'd have been a lot more sympathetic if her mother had come to her looking shocked and told her something terrible had happened to Daniel, and it was because of Snow, but they couldn't say anything because that would be a huge burden to place on a child, and they wouldn't want to drag the king into it. Regina might suspect Snow had done it on purpose to get Daniel out of the way so Regina would have to marry Leopold, and because of that, everything Snow did to be nice to Regina would look to Regina like gloating. By the time Regina told Snow why she hated her, she wouldn't be willing to believe Snow's denials. This doesn't change the plot at all, other than, as I mentioned, them pretty much having to make Regina flip on Cora when she learns the truth (though, really, she should have the way it actually was), but it makes Regina look more rational.

Back to the redemption topic ... In season one, I think Rumple looks a bit more redeemable because he's doing all this for the sake of his son. He becomes Dark One to save his son, and then all the curse stuff is to reach his son again. At that point in the series, you could almost believe that once he reaches his son again, he'll have learned his lesson, and he'll step back. He's shady, but most of his shadiness has been ultimately helping the good guys (even if it's for his own purposes). Of course, that impression is totally changed later, but season one Rumple looks like he might still have a chance. His redeemability is totally ruined when he gets a second chance at life without changing at all, and ruined still more when he gets a chance to not be the Dark One anymore, and he schemes to get the power back.

I think we get glimpses of Hook's potential for redemption when he says that he's the worst person who ever lived. This isn't someone convinced that he's in the right, which means he might be able to change because he recognizes the need for change. His vendetta against Rumple may be justified, but he seems to recognize that he's gone down a very bad path toward it.

ETA -- Just realized that Rumple's admission of his own flaws (like we see in "Skin Deep") may have a lot to do with the season one impression of him as a redeemable character, as well. Rumple/Gold never seems to act like he thinks he's good and totally justified. He knows he's a nasty piece of work.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Shanna Marie

[Camera One]

7 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Back to the redemption topic ... In season one, I think Rumple looks a bit more redeemable because he's doing all this for the sake of his son.

The other reason is in Season 1, it was possible to believe that maybe just having the Dark One-ness in him affected Rumple's thinking and was at least partially to blame for warping his behavior or personality.  Of course, that totally went out the window later on once they expanded on the "mythology".  By Season 6, the character was pretty much dead to me in terms of any sympathy or potential for redemption.

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

The other reason is in Season 1, it was possible to believe that maybe just having the Dark One-ness in him affected Rumple's thinking and was at least partially to blame for warping his behavior or personality. 

It's muddled, but I still think that's true to an extent, as both Emma and Hook (especially Hook) do things as the Dark One that they wouldn't have otherwise done, and I don't believe Rumple the weaver, even if somehow given the magical power to do so, would have been quite as casually murderous as we see him being in "The Return" if not for the curse. 

That's not to say being the DO totally overrides his free will; Emma never does anything that terrible, and Killian flips out for a millisecond, comparatively speaking, before sacrificing himself.  And it definitely builds on pre-existing flaws. But I do think the fact that he's literally been infused with extra darkness remains a potential mitigating factor.

The problem is that he becomes so much worse even relative to his previous, also DO self in S4, for much less understandable reasons, and after he's already supposedly gone through a redemption arc. And then, of course, chooses to become the DO again for completely selfish reasons in S5. 

[Shanna Marie]

Season One Rumple is a delightfully gray character who could go either way -- he's got supervillain potential, but he also seems redeemable. On the one hand, he's a nasty piece of work in past and present, and he seems to delight in having power over people. We see him beat Maurice almost to death, he murders a fairy godmother, he murders Gaston, he turns someone into a snail for an accident and murders his mute maid out of fear that she'll tell someone about his one weakness. He murders in order to become the Dark One. We see him twice choose power over love, refusing to let a True Love's Kiss with Belle free him from being the Dark One and letting his son fall through the portal alone because he can't bring himself to go to a world without magic. But on the other hand, much of what he does is done for the sake of his son. He becomes the Dark One in order to save his son, the snail thing was because his son was hurt, and all of his maneuvering to get the curse cast is so he can reach his son. He helps Emma against Regina and even softens what Regina would have done, only kidnapping and hiding Kathryn rather than killing her and returning her in time to save Mary Margaret. He admits that he's a bad person, a weak person who's really messed up, and he knows he's difficult to love. As of the end of season one, you could see him maybe being able to change, perhaps with Belle's influence, now that she's back in his life, and maybe if he finds his son again and wants to rebuild his relationship with him.

Unfortunately, he starts season two trying to kill Regina (not that I blame him), and it goes downhill from there. We learn he murdered his first wife for leaving him and shows no remorse, still seeing himself as the victim for having his wife "stolen." We learn he flayed Robin Hood and would have killed him. His treatment of Belle in "Skin Deep" wasn't so bad (he came across as being more bark than bite then), but we see him keeping her in the dungeon and mocking her weeping. He keeps Belle in the dark about her father's presence in town. When he finds his son, he barely seems interested in him and he goes off into his old, bad ways when Belle becomes Lacey and is no longer judging him. Still not irredeemable entirely, but it's looking less likely. The end of 3A and much of 3B offers some hope, but when he gets resurrected and gets a new chance at life, he actually becomes worse, with all his schemes to get even more power. He gets yet another new chance at life without being the Dark One, and he schemes to get the Darkness back.

While I did kind of like his ultimate outcome, it was hard to totally buy "good" Rumple in season 7, given how many redemptions he'd already had by that point. The only reason I can buy that this one stuck is that he died and the series ended. If they'd had another season and Carlyle wanted to come back, he'd probably have been revived some way and come up with yet another evil scheme to get more power.

[Camera One]

I was thinking about a possible spinoff called "Once Upon a Cleo".  The series would basically explore the origin story for Cleo, who gave birth to a baby girl and had to give her up for adoption.  The father turns out to be a Young August.  It turns out that Cleo used to live in the Enchanted Forest (since she was the fish from Pinocchio).  Her father was Flounder, who sent her away in a magical clamshell because Ursula (not the three we have seen - this is another Ursula - had threatened to enact The Dark Jinx, which would send all the waters from the Enchanted Forest to the Ocean Without Magic (which lost its magic because of a very special episode involving water nymphs).  So in flashback, we see that the Baby Fish Cleo was left on the beach in the form of a human child.  She went from foster home to foster home, and that was where she eventually met August.  It was teenage love at first sight.  But Cleo was being hunted by an evil villain - the Siamese Cats from "Lady and the Tramp", who were working with Lucifer, who was Victoria's cat from the Disenchanted Forest.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

I still hate that we never got to see anyone's reaction to their LWM version of their lives. How did Snow and Charming feel about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? How did Hook fill about Hook with Robin Williams or any of the ones where he gets his butt kicked by an annoying child? Perms? About parts of their life that was changed for the stories? How do they feel about kids dressing up like them for Halloween? Ashley watching a bunch of different Cinderellas and deciding which one she liked best? 

[andromeda331]

You know I wonder who wrote the LWM stories about Peter Pan it would almost make sense for Pan to write the stories himself in order to get kids more willing to go with his shadow in LWM. What kid would turn down a chance to meet Peter Pan if they had the chance? A character from their own stories. They don't know he's evil until they get there and can't leave. And less likely to be afraid of a shadow. Bae was the only one who didn't want to go and tried to talk Wendy out of it because he knew Pan was bad.  Wendy only realized it later and Bae sacrificed himself.  What version of stories did the Cursed people know? David apparently had memories of Mad Hatter and Mary Margaret was surprised to hear that Snow White had a kid. Why wouldn't Regina have taken the chance to fill Cursed people with memories that Snow was evil and Regina was the poor victim? Maybe she worried an outsider would be confused? But why? Was she expecting any outsiders to come to town? It didn't seem like it. I'm not sure if Emma would have found that weird seeing how none of the stories played out how they happened in the Disney and other versions.          

[KingOfHearts]

Just heard a quote from Henry in the musical episode. "Grandma made a wish for everyone to sing to remind you that you were never alone". That doesn't actually work. Snow wished they had, "what they needed to help Emma, to give her a chance at a happy ending". The song in your heart thing was completely a retcon and didn't actually help Emma at all. It's not like Emma was an aspiring singer and music brought her through a tough life. We saw exactly one scene where Young!Emma was listening to a Walkman and being interested in a talent show or whatever. What makes it grosser is that we saw two episodes prior that Snowing had the opportunity to be with Emma and didn't. Whatever the hell "song in your heart" means doesn't replace parents or actual caretakers. 

It should also be noted that the eggnapping and the fetus lobotomy occurred before the 6x20 flashbacks. What else more would they do?

I rewatched the scene where Snow wishes on the star and I had to laugh because we've seen this same scene so many times. Snow barges in all panicked over Regina's threats and Charming runs to console her. By the end of the scene, one of them gets an idea and the flashback's plot goes into motion. We saw this after the wedding ceremony, after their honeymoon, after they go to see Rumple, and after the war council meeting.

[companionenvy]

2 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Why wouldn't Regina have taken the chance to fill Cursed people with memories that Snow was evil and Regina was the poor victim? Maybe she worried an outsider would be confused?

I don't think Regina had that much control over the curse. She couldn't have, actually, not without substantially more awareness of what life was like in the LWOM than she could plausibly have had. For Regina to have played with the stories, she would first have had to know that people in the LWOM were telling stories about Snow White and the Evil Queen.

[KingOfHearts]

7 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

Why wouldn't Regina have taken the chance to fill Cursed people with memories that Snow was evil and Regina was the poor victim? Maybe she worried an outsider would be confused?

I liked how in S7, Victoria thought she cast the curse. Instead of erasing memories, it would've been diabolical for a villain to give fake memories that weren't just real world personalities. For instance, in the Missing Year, what if everyone remembered Zelena as this great person who helped them out back in EF? 

Edited August 16, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

12 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I remember Emma saying it, but when did Neal say "I had no choice" after apologizing? My memory is just a little foggy.

 

This was from that episode.

NEAL: I wanted to go to jail for you.
EMMA: Neal -
NEAL: It kills me that I let August talk me into letting you go.
EMMA: I don't wanna hear it.
NEAL: No, okay, but I have to say it. I wanted to look for you. I just... I was too afraid.
EMMA: Of what?
NEAL: That you would never forgive me, cause I never forgave myself. There hasn't been a day that's gone by that I don't regret having left you. I'm sorry, Emma, for everything. 
EMMA: Me, too. 

Then, it cuts to Tamara and Greg.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

The scene I remember was from the episode in which Neal died. As I recall it, when they're walking in the woods together, Emma makes some reference to him abandoning her or her being in jail, he starts to say something, and she says, "I know, you had no choice," but her tone didn't come across as absolving him, but rather as "yeah, yeah, I know, whatever" But that could all just be my warped brain's impression, adding layers based on what I think.

[Camera One]

I was listening to the interview with two of the composers and they mentioned that the only time they used a full-out Disney score was with Beauty and the Beast, as they did the ballroom dance in their Disney costumes.

It's like they were over-compensating with Rumbelle, as if they needed to remind us that they were supposed to be Beauty and the Beast.  I think it had the opposite effect on me.  It felt forced.

[Camera One]

8 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

The writers never explained what exactly the Curse was. Isn't Storybrooke part of it?

Later it just became a mass-transport spell, except then it wasn't when the Black Fairy cast it. 

So the Dark Curse created by the Black Fairy would have banished all children to the land without magic.  And all these kids would be living in a quaint seaside town in Maine, with Cursed memories?  Or did that "ingredient" get added later?  

How did the Curse come to be guarded by the Chernobog again?  

[Rumsy4]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The scene I remember was from the episode in which Neal died. As I recall it, when they're walking in the woods together, Emma makes some reference to him abandoning her or her being in jail, he starts to say something, and she says, "I know, you had no choice," but her tone didn't come across as absolving him, but rather as "yeah, yeah, I know, whatever" But that could all just be my warped brain's impression, adding layers based on what I think.

He also said the "I had no choice" mantra when he woke up in the hospital and Emma told him that Henry didn't have his memories. The show pretty much accepted that BS from then on and canonized him as a saint. Lbr, it was fanservice to placate the Neal fans because the writers were too lazy to actually write a decent arc for Neal.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Rumsy4

[KingOfHearts]

32 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

He also said the "I had no choice" mantra when he woke up in the hospital and Emma told him that Henry didn't have his memories. The show pretty much accepted that BS from then on and canonized him as a saint. Lbr, it was fanservice to placate the Neal fans because the writers were too lazy to actually write a decent arc for Neal.

It's one of those things where you don't want to pin it on the character because you know A&E had some ulterior motive going on. I'm usually the last person to defend Neal, but I thought he was much more self-aware about his flaws up until the end of 3A. 

[Camera One]

Remember when people freeze-framed the pictures in the storybook from The Land of Untold Stories, thinking we would see those stories in Season 6?  LOL.  

I was in the library today and saw the entire Season 6 DVD on the shelf.  I read the back cover description:

Quote

Brace yourself for a high-stakes, game-changing leap of tested faith, twisted fate and tantalizing fantasy in ABC's Once Upon a Time: The Complete Sixth Season.

After Regina crushes the heart of her Dark Half, it appears Storybrooke will finally enjoy an era of tranquility.  But this reprieve is short-lived when the Evil Queen reemerges and wreaks a level of havoc and terror that makes her previous cruelties pale by comparison.

Uh, what?  The only way the Evil Queen could outdo her "previous cruelties" would be to torture and murder every person in town one by one, instead of en masse.  What she did in Season 6 was child's play!  

How was Season 6 "high stakes"?  It was hardly "game-changing".  Unlike every previous half-season or full-season arc, there was zero innovation in Season 6.  

Continuing on...

Quote

Desperate to right her counterpart's wrongs, Regina fights the ultimate battle against her nemesis, but can one survive if the other is destroyed?

How about writing her own wrongs?  According to Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, no, one can't survive if the other is destroyed but Regina is always an exception.

Quote

Meanwhile, Gold's attempt to win back Belle before their child is born has heartbreaking consequences

Yes, his attempt to "win back" Belle by imprisoning and threatening her was so heartbreaking.  

I'm not bothering to type the rest because it's about the boring characters, semicolon'ed with the sentence about Gold in the last paragraph.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

The Evil Queen? More like The Inconvenience Queen. All she ended up doing was shacking up with Rumple, killing the redshirt Oracle, and bestowing the Curse of Intermittent Napping. Oh, and Emma was briefly sent to a world where she was blissfully ignorant for a few hours. Whoop-dee-do.

You could've replaced her with Rattigan from The Great Mouse Detective and it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

Edited August 18, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

The Evil Queen? More like The Inconvenience Queen.

She was an embarrassment. Clone Queen completely killed what little was left of the Evil Queen's original charishma. Lana's was at her campiest as Clone Queen.

[Camera One]

This show has a lot of examples of actors who rise above the material and salvage a character.

But there were also some examples of the opposite so the writing pretty much prevented the character from being any good.   On "Alias", Sark was such a fan-favorite, but Dr. Whale was so bland and never got a chance to have a personality.  I really liked Sean Maguire on "Off-Centre" but I can hardly think of an episode where I was rooting for Robin Hood.  I also loved Claire on "Lost" but Belle was written to be so weak that she wasn't as likeable on this show.  

[daxx]

Sean was good in Timeless as well. Guest star but still more personality than Robin ever showed.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

She was an embarrassment. Clone Queen completely killed what little was left of the Evil Queen's original charishma. Lana's was at her campiest as Clone Queen.

I'll admit, there were moments I actually kind of liked Clone Queen. Her concept was stupid, but there were times she laid out truth bombs and had no craps to give. Meanwhile, Regina was brooding and all the fun got sucked out of her. Clone Queen was a horrible antagonist, but at least she wasn't Woegina. The characters, for some reason, actually treated her like they should've been treating Regina.

Clone Queen had some elements that could've been used for another character, like Zelena or Regina herself. 

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I also loved Claire on "Lost" but Belle was written to be so weak that she wasn't as likeable on this show.  

Claire was even pregnant, watching her baby, or just screaming most of the time. She was mostly useless. Yet somehow her character was less annoying than Belle.

Edited August 19, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

Sean was even fine in the OUATiW episode he guest-starred in, but in the main show, he played Robin as such a dip. And the pained sort of grimaces he made were so awkward. The writing for him sucked, but no actor could have elevated that sort of crap.

Edited August 19, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Camera One]

Adam was explaining on Twitter why they changed the name from Anna Swan to Emma Swan.  

Quote

Legal department told us the name did not "clear" -- probably meaning someone named Anna Swan lived in the Boston area. Glad that happened. Emma Swan is a better name.

[Rumsy4]

Haha. Wut?

[Shanna Marie]

59 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Haha. Wut?

Apparently, that's a network legal thing. They can't use a name shared by real people in a real place if there are few enough of them. So, if there are something like 20 or more in the area, it's okay. If there's no one with that name, it's okay. If there are just a few, they can't use it. The writers of Haven talked about how frustrating it was for them because Maine is so sparsely populated that they used the whole state as the area that had to clear, even though the series was set in a fictional town. They had to add an "s" to the last name of a character who was in the book the series was based on because there was a person in Maine with that name, and it was only one person, which made it get close to "identifiable" for libel law (and it doesn't seem to apply to books, just TV, probably because of the broader reach). But a name like John Smith, where there might be 20 or so people in the area they're checking, would be okay. So I guess there were one or two Anna Swans in Boston. It's probably for the best, given that Frozen came later, and that would have messed things up if there were two Annas in town.

[Camera One]

I was reading an interview with A&E from the Season 1 finale.

Quote

KITSIS: You plant the seeds. Whether they get to grow or not, you still have to plant them. Somewhere around Christmas, we started to say, “Okay, well, they picked us up for a full season. Provided that the second half of the season does well, we should start thinking about Season 2.” You just start dropping in little things. You have to because you’re telling one large story. What you want is for the audience to go back and say, “Oh, okay, they did set it up.” If people go back and watch Season 1 on DVD this summer, they’ll see that a lot of the stuff we did this year was set up in episodes way before. We showed the puppets that turned out to be Geppetto’s mom and dad, a couple weeks before we even told that story.

He seems to think throwing in a prop is it for "set up".  The ironic thing is if people look back, you see many many more things that were NOT set up.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was reading an interview with A&E from the Season 1 finale.

He seems to think throwing in a prop is it for "set up".  The ironic thing is if peoplelook back, you see many many more things that were NOT set up.

I can't stop laughing at that. If that's what they think "set up" looks like I hated to see what they think throwing it together looks like.