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

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

I would argue that Rumpel has very definitely physically threatened Belle's safety - much more so than Hook since Rumpel's threats were always directed towards Belle for her own actions and not because of who she associates with. Hook was never interested in killing Belle, she was just a tool to harm Rumpel. Simply being with Rumpel was hazardous to her physical well being. The show tries to pretend that Belle is somehow protected from Rumpel, but given that he murdered Milah (twice!) and the murder of total innocents like the mute maid, one can't simply give him a pass on his threats to Belle. This is particularly true once they had him acting on his threats in S6. Once he locked her up on the Jolly, which nearly resulted in her murder, any pretense that Rumpel wouldn't hurt Belle was gone. 

Even before the Jolly Roger incident, Rumple has physically violated her boundaries many times, even if he didn't hit her. In Season 4, he groped her chest pretending to be Hook making a sailor's promise or some such nonsense. He cursed her into being his submissive wife in the Storybrooke AU. And of course there was him stalking her while pregnant and threatening to steal her child, which resulted in her near-murder at the hand of Jekyll. And then, he and the writers have the gall to frame her sending away newborn Gideon via the Blue Fairy as a huge mistake because Clone Queen enacted his threat of speeding up her pregnancy. It's the same moronic logic that framed Emma as Cruella's murderer. 

And all Rumple's lying and deception and cheating (with Clone Queen) and isolation-tactics over the years. He wanted a submissive wife, and he got it. It was textbook abuse.

Edited August 26, 2018 by Rumsy4

[companionenvy]

Oh, Rumple is way more insidious a threat to Belle; no arguments there. And given his history, and general patterns of domestic abusers, I think the threat of escalation to worse, up to and including murder, was always there. But Rumple - at least, arguably, until Belle became more significant as a womb carrying Gideon than as herself, by which point Rumple was willing to take things further -- was  in theory consistently invested in Belle being alive and physically well. Whereas Hook was definitely not. So while Belle's consistent willingness to forgive Rumple is plainly a sign of her delusion, her different treatment of Hook, especially given that she does, ultimately, get over it, has some basis beyond total hypocrisy. 

It is similar to me in some ways to Regina and Henry. Regina is undoubtedly an abuser, and her actions do come very close to killing Henry. Whatever the show wants us to believe, I also think that, given her history, it was totally possible that she could, under certain circumstances, have eventually threatened his life in a more intentional ways: if Henry (and everyone else) actually had persisted in rejecting her, over the course of years, I'm not sure that she wouldn't have gotten vengeful. But as stupid as our heroes wind up being in their forgiveness of Regina, I think there is some basis for, say, Charming in 2A at least not seeming to believe that Henry is in any immediate mortal danger from her. 

[Camera One]

When Rumple's actions towards Belle are listed like that, this makes it very difficult to enjoy the heartwarming episode "Beauty" in Season 7.  But there's nothing a Beauty and the Beast Ballroom Dance can't fix!  

[Shanna Marie]

On 8/24/2018 at 12:32 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I remember in 5A when Regina was appointed the new "leader" because she attempted to sacrifice herself to the Fury. A willingness to put others' lives above your own is a good quality for a leader to have, but she never did anything beyond that. She didn't take charge or inspire anyone to do anything productive.

And even that was just to save her boyfriend. Wasn't it the others who decided to come stand with her? I don't recall that having anything to do with leadership. She was upset when one of her former victims tried to kill her and her boyfriend got in the way, then she insisted that Emma heal him, but didn't realize that would come at a price (for the only time that seemed to have applied to a Dark One healing), then the Fury came and she was going to sacrifice herself, and the others joined in so it was too many souls for the Fury to take, or something like that. It had nothing to do with leadership.

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

Looking beyond "The Crocodile", did Rumbelle need to be on positive terms in subsequent episodes?  Did that add anything to Rumple or Belle's characters for them to be an item? 

I guess they needed to be together enough for Hook to want to use her to get at Rumple. If Belle had been on the outs with Rumple, Archie wouldn't have known to be able to tell Hook about her importance to Rumple, because I don't think anyone knew at that time. She'd been locked up all along. So Hook wouldn't have had a reason to go to the library, looking for her. I don't remember if there's anything else before then.

I think Belle's character would have been improved if maybe she'd stayed away from Rumple at this point and had been independent for a while, being civil to Rumple but not actually dating, then maybe Rumple came to warn her about Hook and told the lie about what happened to Milah, then Belle found the Jolly Roger and had the confrontation with Hook before Rumple beat him -- and then she walked away from Rumple after that. No Lacey needed. Just broken up because she learned he murdered his first wife, lied to her about it, then she saw him go into a violent frenzy. Rumple could still blame Hook since he spilled the beans.

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Belle was reluctant at first to trust Hook though, and she didn't form any kind of bond with him until long after he changed his behavior. She gave Rumple a benefit of a doubt from the get go even after he: attempted to kill an expecting father, tortured a man almost to death, locked her in a dungeon, halfway buried her into the ground, murdered his first wife, verbally abused her, threatened to kill her, nearly beat her father to death, tortured Nottingham in Storybrooke, attempted to murder a defenseless Hook, and attempted to damn Regina after he promised not to. I'm not saying Hook was an angel or that she should've trusted him, but it's clear she had "love goggles" on with Rumple.

That's always been my issue with that whole thing. Hook hadn't really done much of anything that Belle had seen at the point when Belle was going off on him about how awful he was, how his heart was dark and black while Rumple's heart was gold, etc., etc. And yet she jumped to the conclusion that he was utterly evil and incapable of being redeemed. Meanwhile, at that point she'd already seen Rumple doing all kinds of evil and very little good, but she was convinced he was good at heart. If it were other writers, I'd think they did it on purpose later when Belle saw Hook's heart out of his chest with Rumple about to crush it, and it was obviously red and glowing, then later she saw Rumple's shriveled lump of charcoal. So, everything she'd said was proven wrong. She did sort of admit that later, which was nice, but she still ended up with Rumple.

[Rumsy4]

I mean...Hook did try to kill her in the EF because she could tell him nothing about Rumple's weaknesses. Belle does have blinders when it comes to Rumple, but she had legitimate grievances against Hook. So, it was nice to see him trying to make amends for it in Seasons 3 and 6. I really do enjoy their friendship--at least the 2 minutes we saw of it. 

I completely gave up on Belle in Season 6. How she could go back to Rumple after how he terrorized her while pregnant is beyond me. The writers had some really messed up "nice guy" complexes that they were working through Rumbelle, IMO.

[KingOfHearts]

17 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I mean...Hook did try to kill her in the EF because she could tell him nothing about Rumple's weaknesses. Belle does have blinders when it comes to Rumple, but she had legitimate grievances against Hook. So, it was nice to see him trying to make amends for it in Seasons 3 and 6. I really do enjoy their friendship--at least the 2 minutes we saw of it. 

I think Belle side-eyeing Hook is one of the few instances in the show where a character is rightfully mistrustful of a rehabilitating villain and it isn't seen as a bad thing. It's great, but when you compare it to how she treats Rumple, she appears hypocritical. It's not exclusive to Hook, either. Gaston is another example.

Edited August 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

2 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I think Belle side-eyeing Hook is one of the few instances in the show where a character is rightfully mistrustful of a rehabilitating villain and it isn't seen as a bad thing. It's great, but when you compare it to how she treats Rumple, she appears hypocritical. 

Yes, it was entirely reasonable for her to be wary of Hook and to consider him a villain when she encountered him in Storybrooke and during that confrontation on the Jolly Roger. My problem with her behavior was her praise of Rumple and talk about what a good heart he had, even after learning what he'd done and that he'd lied to her about what happened to his wife. And that was after she'd seen the torture of Robin and goodness knows what else he did while she was his prisoner. To cap it off, there was her saying that Hook was trying to turn Rumple's heart dark by letting himself be beaten to death by Rumple. It's not that she shouldn't have criticized Hook. It's that she shouldn't have praised Rumple.

[Rumsy4]

52 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's great, but when you compare it to how she treats Rumple, she appears hypocritical. It's not exclusive to Hook, either. Gaston is another example.

She doesn't love Hook or Gaston. She loved Rumple and she completely blinded herself because of her hero complex. She wanted to be the one to reform the "beast" and that's why she kept going back to him again and again (ad infinitum). The writes lay it out clearly in the second episode of season 2. She says: Don't you see? That's exactly the reason I have to stay.

Edited August 27, 2018 by Rumsy4

[andromeda331]

 I finally gave up on Belle in 4B by that point there was absolutely no reason for her to go back Rumple or believe he had change or still had a good heart. At the point he had lied to her, still committed crimes and no longer had any reasons to do so. He had always claimed he needed his magic to find his son. When she tried to break his curse he got mad because he was still trying to find Bae. Rumple claimed in season two when she found  him using magic it was to find his son. Well, Neal was dead and he gave her the dagger. He then took the Duggar back, set her up as his alibi for it, and had decided to separate himself from the dagger sacrificing the faeries, Emma and Apprentice then later planned to leave Storybrooke with her and Henry, while Ingrid killed everyone in town except for Emma and Elsa. What is there left to think he is still good? It really should have been the very last time. At that point he lied to her every single time, he broke every promise to her, and there was no excuse for what he did or tried to do.  

Edited August 28, 2018 by andromeda331

[KingOfHearts]

14 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

She doesn't love Hook or Gaston. She loved Rumple and she completely blinded herself because of her hero complex. She wanted to be the one to reform the "beast" and that's why she kept going back to him again and again (ad infinitum). The writes lay it out clearly in the second episode of season 2. She says: Don't you see? That's exactly the reason I have to stay.

 

But then in 3B it's, "I loved all of Rumple. Even the dark parts." In 5B, Rumple wanted her to admit she loved the Beast more than the man. Over time she didn't actually want to change Rumple - she just wanted to sit on the moral high ground and feel like the hero taming the savage beast. Whether she blinded herself or not, I still think she's very hypocritical. I can see why she gives Rumple every benefit of a doubt, but imo Belle is a pretty messed up person. Her love for Rumple is nothing more than an unhealthy fixation only a person with Stockholm Syndrome could surmise.

Edited August 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

46 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Whether she blinded herself or not, I still think she's very hypocritical. I can see why she gives Rumple every benefit of a doubt, but imo Belle is a pretty messed up person.

I absolutely agree with this. I'm just saying that people tend to be more forgiving towards people they love than someone with whom they are not emotionally involved. 

[KingOfHearts]

22 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I absolutely agree with this. I'm just saying that people tend to be more forgiving towards people they love than someone with whom they are not emotionally involved. 

Especially in abusive, one-sided relationships.

I think, "What if Beauty and the Beast was the story of abuse naysayers said it was?" is an interesting inquiry. If the show treated Rumpbelle like a textbook example of Stockholm Syndrome, and the other characters knew it was toxic, it'd be fascinating. 

Edited August 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

Really, a lot of this show would be interesting if it was on purpose. Especially the stuff with Regina, who, if they had been trying to tell a story about a villain who is convinced that they're the victim of the heroes, and lashing out constantly at anyone who says differently, and is basically a crazed woman-child with ridiculous levels of magic powers, that could have worked. It could have been really disturbing and fascinating to have this person who just obsessively blames everyone else for her evil actions. Then everyone has to cow tow to her to get her to not kill everyone, and pretend to love her and be her friend, knowing that anyone not on the Regina train could set her off on a rampage.. Like The Twilight Zone episode Its A Good Life, except with an adult instead of a little kid with god like powers. That is actually a really interesting villain, and could be a compelling story. 

[KingOfHearts]

35 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Really, a lot of this show would be interesting if it was on purpose. Especially the stuff with Regina, who, if they had been trying to tell a story about a villain who is convinced that they're the victim of the heroes, and lashing out constantly at anyone who says differently, and is basically a crazed woman-child with ridiculous levels of magic powers, that could have worked. It could have been really disturbing and fascinating to have this person who just obsessively blames everyone else for her evil actions. Then everyone has to cow tow to her to get her to not kill everyone, and pretend to love her and be her friend, knowing that anyone not on the Regina train could set her off on a rampage.. Like The Twilight Zone episode Its A Good Life, except with an adult instead of a little kid with god like powers. That is actually a really interesting villain, and could be a compelling story. 

Or if Snow had this huge guilt complex and that's why she enables Regina. She starts pushing everyone else away and they're disgusted with her adoration of the woman who tried to kill her own baby. What if her "hope speech" didn't save the day? What if she believed in hope instead of taking action, thereby putting her loved ones in danger? (For example, if she decided not to kill Cora.) How would she react to that? Would she have a nervous breakdown? (It actually seemed like the writers were heading in that general direction in the episodes leading up to Cora's death. Snow began questioning her values.)

A&E inadvertently wrote the setup for a genius show. It's eye-opening when you realize half the cast have a psychological disorder. Charming and Hook seem like the only characters who aren't totally screwed up.

Edited August 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

17 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Charming and Hook seem like the only characters who aren't totally screwed up.

Hook has generally struck me as having clinical depression, maybe a dash of bipolar, since he has his manic moments, as well (possibly the kind of bipolar that's mostly on the down side, with only occasional bursts of mania). Everything sends him spiraling downward in self loathing, and in his manic moments, he does something rash and stupid that leads to another downward spiral of guilt and self loathing. Where he's not totally screwed up is the fact that he recognizes he has a problem, and once he starts turning his life around, he's good at spotting his weaknesses and learning from his past mistakes. A large part of all this pretty naturally stems from how messed up his early life seems to have been, so maybe just that self-awareness is enough for him to start getting better. There may or may not also have been a chemical imbalance to go with it, which he's been self-medicating with rum and risk.

[profdanglais]

5 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Hook has generally struck me as having clinical depression, maybe a dash of bipolar, since he has his manic moments

Hook has poor impulse control, which is sometimes associated with ADHD. Not that he couldn't also have depression, but I'd argue that he's not manic so much as just unable to handle his impulses, especially when he's angry. My brother is the same. And Charming is an enabler, codependent with Snow. Everyone is effed up here!

[Shanna Marie]

16 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

Hook has poor impulse control, which is sometimes associated with ADHD. Not that he couldn't also have depression, but I'd argue that he's not manic so much as just unable to handle his impulses, especially when he's angry. My brother is the same. 

Yeah, poor impulse control is probably more accurate. He's intense, but not necessarily manic intense. But the talk about him always struggling with darkness sounds a lot like depression. Then there's the death wish he had for a while and the self-loathing. Even the long revenge quest could have come from not being able to see any light or hope, so he kept driving toward a self-destructive goal.

Archie could certainly have kept busy with that lot of screwed up people -- and we'll just ignore that nonsense about him having nothing to do but officiate weddings after everyone got their happy endings. Like mental health is always linked so closely to circumstances. And I still don't get how defeating one person who never had anything to do with the town somehow meant that everyone in town suddenly got their happy ending and never had any more problems.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, poor impulse control is probably more accurate. He's intense, but not necessarily manic intense. But the talk about him always struggling with darkness sounds a lot like depression. Then there's the death wish he had for a while and the self-loathing. Even the long revenge quest could have come from not being able to see any light or hope, so he kept driving toward a self-destructive goal.

Hook seems more relatable than Regina or Rumple to me because he never seem to revel in doing evil. Whenever he murdered someone, it was either a crime of passion or a necessity to his plan. (It helps we've seen very few of his murders, though we've heard about them.) Anger issues are easier to understand than maniacally kills thousands of innocents out of boredom or minor irritation. Hook was often provoked, but Regina and Rumple rarely needed that much. He seemed to have a conscience and frequently regretted his actions. R&R just don't give a crap to the point they're complete psychopaths.

I can even buy Hook's path to revenge because Milah was the love of his life and Rumple was an easily targeted monster. Regina, on the other hand, didn't have an intimate relationship with Daniel and she blamed a kid who wasn't responsible nor a menace. I could understand Rumple a little bit in S1 because he wanted to find his son, but once it became about vague power, he lost anything anyone could really identify with. Hook was the most "human" of the villains on the show.

Edited August 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[ParadoxLost]

26 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Hook seems more relatable than Regina or Rumple to me because he never seem to revel in doing evil.

I have a tendency to even things out as a viewing habit.  Hook was more relatable to me because he didn't seem like he felt like he deserved or could ever earn forgiveness.  There was always a worry from him that he'd do something and everyone would reject him or he didn't deserve anything good.  But it didn't cause him to slide back into villainous behavior to avoid the consequences of his past or his actions.

It was also easier for me to understand Rumple than Regina. For most of the relationship, it was Belle that frustrated me.  Rumple was at least "honest".  He didn't help any of the heroes unless they made a deal or Belle forced him into it (which wasn't often give how often he made her unconscious to avoid that).  Rumple was the consistently rotten, powerful person and abusive husband that you wonder why no one has banned together to remove from power.  But that happens.  And most of his sob story is like the rationalizing of an abused wife that he had a difficult past and he can do better if only she loved him more and unconditionally.  But no one besides Belle acted like Rumple was anything more than someone they had to coexist with and make calculated (stupid) alliances with when a greater villain showed up on the hope that self interest would hold his worse attributes at bay,

The problem with Rregina was how others treated Regina.  Reina was the classic villain who was never responsible for anything.  To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit.  Regina's not bad.  She's just written that way.  She doesn't get a happy ending because the storybook / author decided she was a villain.  If the heroes treated her like a villain no matter how hard she tried, it would have been easier to sympathize with her.  But as it was, even when she wasn't being awful her motives were usually selfish.

[tennisgurl]

So, I was talking to one of my (high school) students, who is an exchange student from China. We were just chatting, and we started talking about TV, and she said that she used to love Once Upon a Time! She and her friends used to watch, but, as she said "the first seasons were really good, then they got really weird, so I stopped really watching" and she had zero interest in watching Hyperion Heights. She said it was just a bunch of random people she didnt care about. Its not just us!

[KingOfHearts]

1 minute ago, tennisgurl said:

"the first seasons were really good, then they got really weird, so I stopped really watching"

So... basically everyone who has watched Once Upon a Time outside of our Coven. Everyone I've ever talked to has had this same exact reaction. "I liked the first few seasons, then it got weird".

Edited August 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Reminiscing about the 150th episode got me thinking.  Which episode was a better "Hansel & Gretel" retelling - "True North" or "Chosen"?   Or neither?  Or were they both so good it's like choosing between butter or gravy?  

Edited August 30, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Reminiscing about the 150th episode got me thinking.  Which episode was a better "Hansel & Gretel" retelling - "True North" or "Chosen"?   Or neither?  Or were they both so good it's like choosing between butter or gravy?  

That's a real headscratcher. I'm still torn between "Price of Gold" and "Hyperion Heights". They're both such great adaptations of the Cinderella fairy tale. But what about "The Tower" and "One Little Tear"? How do you pick your favorite Rapunzel?!

[Camera One]

I'm thinking if 7A had been a success, A&E would have kept all the new characters on for another season, including Victoria.  Rumple would probably be the only main character who would have left at the end of Season 7.  But would the show be the same without The Beast?  Imagine this... We open a new episode in Season 8 with Gothel, despondent after the events of "Flower Child".  Gothel lives in the ruins of an old estate, taking solace in her vast gardens, after turning all the people into gardening tools.  Her prized plant is a beautiful rose, a small cutting she brought with her from the grove in Seattle.  One winter night, a man who is lost stumbles into the garden, plucking the rose for his daughter.  Enraged, Gothel throws him into her dungeon.  But the man's son Beau comes to look for his father.  He pleads with Gothel to take him and let his father go.  Will Beau tame the Beast within Gothel and convince her to let go of her revenge?  Well, obviously not, since she is still evil misunderstood in present-day.  But in Hyperion Heights, unbeknownst to Gothel, Victoria has a secret.  Why does she have a chipped spade in her shed?  Could she have Beau locked up?  Or does Dr. Facilier have an extra spade in his deck?  Will Lucy find the important gardening tool in the community garden of hope and save the day?  I don't want to ruin the surprise but Victoria's mother was the Queen of Spades in Wonderland who has a past with Tilly (please don't quibble with the timeline until you've watched it, okay?).

Edited August 31, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I didn't totally hate the "Coven" concept with eight (9? 10? Why did they give us an exact number when we never saw them all? Did Zelena or Regina count? Who knows.) witches. It could've worked like the Queens of Darkness as a supervillain clique, but with more Charmed-style witchcraft. But all we got were Coat Hangers and a crazy wood nymph.

[companionenvy]

So, while watching Tallahassee, with its nonsensical "you need to leave Emma or the curse will never break" bit, I realized I had some larger questions about how the curse and Emma's role in it worked, or was supposed to work.

What is unclear to me is to what extent Emma being the savior is a prophecy - in which case, presumably, her destiny would have been to break the curse no matter what, and people wouldn't have had to worry so much about putting her on the right path - and to what extent it is simply something that is possible for her and only her because she is the only one who, as the child of true love, has the power to possibly break the curse. The fact that everyone in the know seems concerned about making sure she breaks it  suggests that it isn't a prophecy. But the idea that this is something that has to happen when she is 28 years old would suggest that it is: if it were simply a matter of fulfilling the conditions in terms of parentage and belief, it would seem that there isn't any reason a much younger or older Emma couldn't have broken the curse just as easily.

Assuming it is prophecy, then basically, this played out the way it had to play out. Maybe something could have happened to subvert it, but the reason the prophecy says it is going to be Emma at age 28 isn't because there is something special about the number 28, or even, necessarily, about Emma (in theory, maybe a non-cursed Snow could have broken it by TLKing Charming) - it is simply a statement of fact based on foreknowledge. In this interpretation, it was basically fated that Emma would wind up going through the wardrobe alone, give birth to Henry, etc, because that was the timeline upon which the prophecy was predicated. 

But if it isn't prophecy - and, as I indicated above, the evidence is mixed -- my question is what exactly needed to happen for Emma to break the curse, and how it might have worked in a world without Henry? In our particular timeline, it winds up being a TLK between a mother and son, which both revives Henry and, apparently, demonstrates sufficient belief to break the Dark Curse as well. It is interesting to note, however, that the curse doesn't break as soon as Emma believes, as she clearly believes in the Dark Curse and magic earlier in the episode, yet nothing happens until she kisses Henry. This suggests something more specific than "Emma Swan shows up and believes" had to occur.

So...let's suppose Emma had been raised by Snowing in the Land Without Magic, having grown up knowing about the EF and Regina and her destiny, and, presumably, never having a kid who she gave up for adoption. What could breaking the curse have looked like in that timeline -or would I just not have happened? Is there a reason it had to wait until Emma was 28? Like, what if she had showed up in SB at age 16? Or what if August hadn't intervened, and she and Neal had been raising their ten-year old and maybe a couple of other kids in Tallahassee by the time she turned 28? Would a TLK with Snow or Charming theoretically have worked? What if she hadn't made it to SB until she was 35?

Of course, the later Savior mythology complicates all of this further...

Just curious to hear other thoughts on this.

[scarynikki12]

I think that an alternative to Emma giving Henry a maternal True Love’s Kiss would be the traditional romantic kind. Maybe with Graham if he hadn’t been murdered, or maybe a timeline where the Charmings (or Snow at least) went through the wardrobe before Emma was born would be different enough that Hook wouldn’t have been preserved under Cora’s dome and would have been in cursed Storybrooke when Emma arrived. 

There also could have been a TLK between Emma and Snow cause you know Regina would have flown into a rage upon discovering Snow escaped and would have tried to find her. The same shady people that Rump hired to help her adopt Henry could also help her find Snow, abduct her, and then Emma could come to town trying to find her. Their big reunion could be Snow kissing her cheek and breaking the curse.  

[Mitch]

On 8/31/2018 at 2:12 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I didn't totally hate the "Coven" concept with eight (9? 10? Why did they give us an exact number when we never saw them all? Did Zelena or Regina count? Who knows.) witches. It could've worked like the Queens of Darkness as a supervillain clique, but with more Charmed-style witchcraft. But all we got were Coat Hangers and a crazy wood nymph.

I would have loved if the..do we see clones of the original EF characters would be in the coven...like Malificent, the EQ, Wicked Witch...who would have been totally disgusted by the piss poor villains the characters from the "other" EF were. It would be funny to see Regina poofed into w wall or chains by their version of the EQ...

[Camera One]

Some comments about the Season 7 deleted scenes.

1. "Ground Breaking":  Apparently, this one is from the first episode.  It does show Victoria mentioning condos, but it still doesn't show much of the gentrification.  Victoria does act a little more evil stepmother-like in this scene, though, and maybe its inclusion would have made the present-day scenes flow a little better.  Maybe.

2. "I Know Who You Are": This one reminded me how insufferable Lucy was.  I guess she did realize Ivy was Drizella.  Which had no significance whatsoever.

3. "I Didn't Expect To See You": This was the cringy Henry at the food truck with Jacinda one.

4. "If She Can Change..." and "Unnamed Scene": I'm surprised they cut these two key scenes from Drizella's last episode.  Gothel was always MIA, so we needed to see her a bit more.  I don't remember the episode well enough though.  If the second scene was after Drizella betrayed Anastasia, maybe it made the happily ever after sister ending ever very slightly more palatable? 

5. "A Promise": Pointless scene with Lucy and Roni.  I literally don't understand the point of any of these lines.

6. The Hopeful Ones": I wanted more Wish Granny, Wish Blue and Wish Grumpy in the finale, but this scene was an insult.  So they became so hopeless they robbed random people?  After they found out she was Regina, Wish Granny/Blue/Grumpy started talking to her like they were Storybrooke Granny/Blue/Grumpy, but they don't know her at all.  Very badly written.  

7. "In a Hurry": Another pointless one.  It was nice of Zelena to suggest poofing, but they never explained why the car, except to give us the "cool" visual of seeing them drive up to the castle.

[KingOfHearts]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

1. "Ground Breaking":  Apparently, this one is from the first episode.  It does show Victoria mentioning condos, but it still doesn't show much of the gentrification.  Victoria does act a little more evil stepmother-like in this scene, though, and maybe its inclusion would have made the present-day scenes flow a little better.  Maybe.

I chuckled at "consider this ground broken". Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't Victoria have complete custody of Lucy? I though Jacinda turned it all over to her. Lucy arriving at the last second didn't really prove Jacinda knew where her daughter was. The line about the "destitute looking up" was too hamfisted and didn't really work for Victoria's character. Rapunzel/Tremaine was more bitter than a snob who despised the rift-raft. The gentrification plot didn't fit her character unless it was about keeping the fairy tale folk separate in order to preserve the curse, but that was never addressed. She was only buying properties to control magical objects or whatever.

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

2. "I Know Who You Are": This one reminded me how insufferable Lucy was.  I guess she did realize Ivy was Drizella.  Which had no significance whatsoever.

Insufferable is a great word for it. I actually felt bad for Drizella and I hate how her character was handled. She could've been really sympathetic and rose up as a surprise protagonist. But uh - nope. She's got to try to murder her sister instead. I shipped her with Henry so hard. Jacinda and Lucy can go move to Idaho for all I care.

Quote

4. "If She Can Change..." and "Unnamed Scene": I'm surprised they cut these two key scenes from Drizella's last episode.  Gothel was always MIA, so we needed to see her a bit more.  I don't remember the episode well enough though.  If the second scene was after Drizella betrayed Anastasia, maybe it made the happily ever after sister ending ever very slightly more palatable? 

 "Sisterhood of the Traveling BS". That's a bit more direct than "The Coat Hangers". It was nice to see Drizella call Gothel out on her crap. "Yeah I know, I'm a bitch" is a good line too, even if its doesn't justify her. I like that Drizella wanted to change because she started caring about people and didn't want to be alone. Meanwhile Regina changed because she wanted that juicy hero worship. The camera in a doll was interesting because it was using modern technology versus magic - a concept too underutilized on this show.

"Charlie Manson crap", lol.

Anastasia was such a bland plot device. Her existence, beyond what the PLOT needed, was so superfluous. Even the show forgot she was there for several episodes.

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

6. The Hopeful Ones": I wanted more Wish Granny, Wish Blue and Wish Grumpy in the finale, but this scene was an insult.  So they became so hopeless they robbed random people?  After they found out she was Regina, Wish Granny/Blue/Grumpy started talking to her like they were Storybrooke Granny/Blue/Grumpy, but they don't know her at all.  Very badly written.  

They were just as hostile in Storybrooke when Alice and Robyn came to town.

[Shanna Marie]

On 9/2/2018 at 2:50 PM, companionenvy said:

What is unclear to me is to what extent Emma being the savior is a prophecy - in which case, presumably, her destiny would have been to break the curse no matter what, and people wouldn't have had to worry so much about putting her on the right path - and to what extent it is simply something that is possible for her and only her because she is the only one who, as the child of true love, has the power to possibly break the curse. The fact that everyone in the know seems concerned about making sure she breaks it  suggests that it isn't a prophecy. But the idea that this is something that has to happen when she is 28 years old would suggest that it is: if it were simply a matter of fulfilling the conditions in terms of parentage and belief, it would seem that there isn't any reason a much younger or older Emma couldn't have broken the curse just as easily.

I've been thinking about this after the discussion about "Tallahassee," and it got me wondering -- if Emma was destined to break the curse, was the whole magical wardrobe thing even necessary? Could she have broken the curse from within? Did the fact that her DNA was woven into the curse make her immune to some of the effects of the curse, like the frozen time, so that she would have grown to be 28 in spite of being in Storybrooke? She wouldn't have needed fake memories, being a newborn with no memories.

I doubt Regina would have allowed Snow to keep and raise her own daughter, so Regina would have probably taken Emma, maybe claiming her as her own daughter, with the curse memories of everyone in town remembering that Regina had just given birth, and isn't she so amazing that she didn't even need to take maternity leave and was able to go right back to work as mayor, and possibly Graham as her curse husband. Or, Regina might have "adopted" Emma. So, basically, Emma is Henry, only from the very beginning of the curse. Emma starts to notice something is odd when she starts first grade and all her kindergarten classmates are still in kingergarten, but Regina tells her she's just moving up and leaving them behind because she's super-smart. It's harder to explain when she starts second grade and her kindergarten classmates are still in kindergarten. Emma quits even trying to make friends when she realizes she's only going to move on to the next grade without them, and the next year they'll act like she was always in whatever grade she's in now, with no memory of having been her classmates (WALLS!). Then she gets Miss Blanchard as a teacher, and her sympathetic teacher gives her a storybook to give her hope. She starts to believe that Regina is the evil queen and Mary Margaret is her real mother, but Regina gaslights her and puts her in therapy. Emma grows up into a rebellious teenager who often tries to run away from home (and maybe she does get away from Storybrooke, and then things play out the way they did, with teenage runaway Emma running into Neal, having Henry, Regina tries adopting again, Henry finds Emma, etc.). It's only when she's an adult and finds the long-forgotten book that she comes to believe again. Time starts moving. She reconnects with Mary Margaret, who doesn't seem to recall being her teacher -- after all, it's impossible, since they're about the same age -- and become friends. After she finally gets Mary Margaret to believe, a mother-daughter True Love's Kiss breaks the curse.

But a story with the level of "destiny" in which everything is predetermined and nothing the characters do makes any difference isn't all that interesting.

[KingOfHearts]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I've been thinking about this after the discussion about "Tallahassee," and it got me wondering -- if Emma was destined to break the curse, was the whole magical wardrobe thing even necessary?

Rumple said "get the child to safety", so I guess she had to be "safe" for the prophecy to work?

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Or, Regina might have "adopted" Emma.

I like your story better than the original, even though you'd have to drastically change the show's premise. Henry feels like an extra layer. Having four generations (Regina, Snow, Emma, Henry) is a little complicated and it's not always clear what story the show was trying to tell. Was it about Regina's feud with Snow, or was it Emma taking her son back? The writers made it work in S1 but focus problems due to being over-complicated plagued the show throughout its entire run.

[companionenvy]

Hmm... maybe being the Savior would have made baby Emma immune to the time-freezing element of the curse. That hadn't occurred to me. Interesting thought.

I think, though, that it is probably a moot point, because once Regina found out about the savior-clause, she added killing a baby to her to-do list. So, she wasn't planning a version of the curse in which Emma was in SB. She was planning to kill Emma before the curse was ever cast. I suppose theoretically, events could have turned out in such a way that both the wardrobe gambit and Regina's efforts to kill Emma failed, in which case presumably baby Emma would have wound up in SB, but it wasn't part of Regina's plan.

If infant Emma had wound up in SB, Regina could have offed her there as well, I suppose, though I've also thought before that her planning to raise Emma would have been consistent with her character. I could see her creating a reality in which Mary Margaret knew she was Emma's bio-mom, but had lost custody of her for some reason - or, to strengthen the parallel with what actually happened with Emma, Henry and Regina -- had given her up for adoption because her life was in a shambles. 

[Camera One]

I don't think Regina would have been able to handle raising Snow's baby.  Her anger would have been too much and the abuse would have been a thousand times worse than what Henry got.  This show hinges on The Evil Queen learning to love by becoming a mother, so it needed to be a baby like Henry with no baggage.

How could Rumple be so sure that Snowing would be able to get the baby to "safety"?  I guess he saw a vision and assumed it was going to happen?  But were there some events that he had to prod along and other events that he let things follow the course of "destiny"?  

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

If infant Emma had wound up in SB, Regina could have offed her there as well, I suppose, though I've also thought before that her planning to raise Emma would have been consistent with her character. I could see her creating a reality in which Mary Margaret knew she was Emma's bio-mom, but had lost custody of her for some reason - or, to strengthen the parallel with what actually happened with Emma, Henry and Regina -- had given her up for adoption because her life was in a shambles. 

I believe theoretically Regina would've chosen to raise Emma, whether through finding her or adopting her. When she sent her guards to kill her, she didn't actually see her. She could order the hit effortlessly because there was a distance between her and the crime committed. I'm not saying she'd reject killing an infant from a moral standpoint, but that if she had met Emma, she might've changed her mind for other reasons. We've seen her try on multiple occasions to fill the void in her life with children. Parenting Emma would give her some psychological control over something she hated, twisting it into her image. In the "Save Henry" flashbacks, she discovered Henry was the Savior's son and drank a memory potion so she could still mother him. Whether or not that's a retcon, it supports the idea she would've spared and raised Emma.

It's worth noting that Regina knew if she killed Emma, the curse would be broken. She had the motivation to keep her alive and under her control.

Edited September 7, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[ParadoxLost]

The curse never made any sense

It transported everyone to another place

It froze time

It wiped memories.

That was one curse.

So why was it dismantled in incremental pieces?

Emma's arrival unfreezes time.

Emma had to have a TLK with Henry to restore memories

That didn't send them back to the EF.

[KingOfHearts]

1 minute ago, Camera One said:

This show hinges on The Evil Queen learning to love by becoming a mother, so it needed to be a baby like Henry with no baggage.

She discovered he had baggage and decided to drink a memory potion, so... *shrug*

[KingOfHearts]

Just now, ParadoxLost said:

The curse never made any sense

The Curse was kind of a convoluted mess from the get-go. It brought fairy tale characters into a small town in Maine with a barrier around it, preventing them from leaving. But wait! They all have cursed memories and believe they're people from our world. But there's also a Savior, who is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, that can only come to break it when she turns 28. But wait! Time was frozen there too, so every day was the same and everyone's memories are hazy. But wait! You also need the heart of the thing you love most, except when you don't. To break it, you either need: a super special TLK fueled by "belief", the death of the designated Savior, or the death of the curse caster. But wait! The curse also transports people in time and can blend people into pre-existing city districts. But wait! The curse also breaks down the "walls between the realms", allowing easier passage between magical and non-magical worlds. But wait! If you rip the curse scroll, everything is reverted and the memories of it are ripped from anyone in the real world. But wait! There's also this failsafe that destroys the town it creates completely if you hit it really hard with a pickaxe. But wait! The curse also leaving everything in its path in destruction, except when it doesn't.  

[Camera One]

29 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

She discovered he had baggage and decided to drink a memory potion, so... *shrug*

I forgot all about that idiotic retcon.

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rumple said "get the child to safety", so I guess she had to be "safe" for the prophecy to work?

That could have just been keeping her out of Regina's way until the curse kicked in -- so, say, we've got Charming battling the knights, but just to protect his daughter. Regina arrives just as the curse really kicks in, when it's too late to kill Emma without breaking the curse.

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

I think, though, that it is probably a moot point, because once Regina found out about the savior-clause, she added killing a baby to her to-do list. So, she wasn't planning a version of the curse in which Emma was in SB. She was planning to kill Emma before the curse was ever cast.

But part of the curse was that if Emma was killed during the curse, it would break the curse, so if she failed to kill Emma before the curse, she'd have been stuck with keeping Emma alive and well.

26 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I don't think Regina would have been able to handle raising Snow's baby.  Her anger would have been too much and the abuse would have been a thousand times worse than what Henry got.

There's that memory potion she drank so she could raise Henry without being aware that he was Snow's grandson. And, as I mentioned, she'd have an incentive to make sure Emma was alive.

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

I could see her creating a reality in which Mary Margaret knew she was Emma's bio-mom, but had lost custody of her for some reason - or, to strengthen the parallel with what actually happened with Emma, Henry and Regina -- had given her up for adoption because her life was in a shambles. 

That was a possibility that I considered in this scenario. In the early 80s, it still would have been scandalous (possibly to a career-ending extent) for an unmarried teacher to be pregnant. So, the curse would have started with fake memories of Mary Margaret having just returned from something like a "study abroad sabbatical" to cover up for her pregnancy and giving her child up for adoption, and with Regina having adopted a child. Mary Margaret might have suspected that Emma was her daughter, but couldn't say anything due to the sealed adoption and the scandal if it got out. Though there is the issue of what would have happened when Emma got too old for Mary Margaret to have possibly been her mother. Would Mary Margaret have initially believed Emma was hers, but as the curse went on, that memory blurred and she remembered having given up a child, but no longer thought it was Emma?

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I like your story better than the original, even though you'd have to drastically change the show's premise. Henry feels like an extra layer. Having four generations (Regina, Snow, Emma, Henry) is a little complicated and it's not always clear what story the show was trying to tell. Was it about Regina's feud with Snow, or was it Emma taking her son back?

When I think through this more, it's really astonishing how little actually does change. All we'd really lose was Regina being redeemed by learning to love by being a mother, which was always pretty weak because it happened so suddenly without her having shown any signs of love for Henry before, and we'd lose Henry being the common bond between Emma and Regina and the reason Regina was part of the "family." I'd be willing to sacrifice that part. Otherwise, if Emma's the one to break the curse and doesn't have to be brought to town, we just lose a lot of cheerleading of Regina, much of the Author plot, and the silly trip to New York. Oh, and season seven. They could come up with another reason to go to Neverland. Without Henry, they'd have had to really deal with the true relationships among Regina, Emma, and Snow and focus on Emma's healing through her relationship with her parents rather than her figuring out whether she could be a mother. I'm not sure where Neal would have fit in. Maybe Emma managed to leave town, met and was betrayed by him and that was what led her to head back to Storybrooke, but without the pregnancy. There's still tension between them when they find out he's Rumple's son, but not with the weirdness of him being Henry's father.

I wish I had time for fanfic to play with this, but if anyone wants to, have fun!

[Camera One]

For me, a big attraction of the premise was that Emma was an outsider coming into Storybrooke.  The scenario above is interesting, and I agree it surprisingly doesn't change too much, but it would have been even more sickening for Emma to play Henry's role of seeing Regina as one of her "mom"'s.  I don't think it would have reduced the cheerleading of Regina since it would still be A&E and it would be Emma doing more of the cheerleading since there wouldn't be Henry.   Emma's bond with Henry was a big reason why I enjoyed Season 1 in addition to her interactions with Mary Margaret.   

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

So, the curse would have started with fake memories of Mary Margaret having just returned from something like a "study abroad sabbatical" to cover up for her pregnancy and giving her child up for adoption, and with Regina having adopted a child. Mary Margaret might have suspected that Emma was her daughter, but couldn't say anything due to the sealed adoption and the scandal if it got out. Though there is the issue of what would have happened when Emma got too old for Mary Margaret to have possibly been her mother. Would Mary Margaret have initially believed Emma was hers, but as the curse went on, that memory blurred and she remembered having given up a child, but no longer thought it was Emma?

This would have been interesting to see.  

Season 6 would have been better if new writers came in, and they just did alternate timelines like this every episode.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

10 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I don't think it would have reduced the cheerleading of Regina since it would still be A&E and it would be Emma doing more of the cheerleading since there wouldn't be Henry.   Emma's bond with Henry was a big reason why I enjoyed Season 1 in addition to her interactions with Mary Margaret.   

That's the problem with any scenario for changing or fixing the show. It would have to have included firing the showrunners because no matter what you did to fix things, they'd mess it up again. If I were writing this changed scenario, Emma would be bitter about Regina gaslighting her and about her taking her away from her mother and would want nothing to do with Regina, and without Henry to be something they shared, she'd have had no reason to be around Regina unless they had to deal with a common enemy. I would definitely miss Emma's season one stuff with Henry and her outsiderness.

Though it might be interesting to explore how Emma felt like an outsider from within as she was the only one who grew or changed. That's something we should have seen more of with Henry, but the curse broke when he was 10. What would it have been like to be a teenager in that town when no one else was growing up and she was aware of it? She wouldn't have friends and would be afraid to date because in a few years she'd be an adult and the guys would still be in high school. Maybe she did run away and spent enough time outside Storybrooke that she felt like an outsider when she came back because she was the only person in town who'd seen the outside world and that gave her a very different perspective. She'd still be the only one who didn't have a change when the memory curse broke. She'd just have memories of our world, so that would set her apart from the other Storybrookers who knew the fairy tale world.

It's interesting thinking of the Regina vs. Emma clashes in season one if instead of them fighting over Henry, it was purely a rebellious daughter striking back at her abusive mother. The chainsaw to the tree takes on a whole new meaning.

[Camera One]

The discussion of Season 2 ratings in the rewatch episode thread made me wonder about the ratings. 

It looks like ratings were relatively stable during 2A.  But the dropping trend began with the second episode of 2B, dropping below 8 million for the first time in the third episode of 2B ("In The Name of the Brother"), and the rest of 2B remained in the 7 millions.  It's ironic the lowest demo all season was for "The Evil Queen".  

So something turned off approximately 2 million of the viewers at the beginning of 2B, and they stayed away permanently.

Then in Season 3, the first two episodes got back into the 8 millions, but from the third episode onwards, it was in the 7 millions, and then dropping to 6 millions for the first time with the seventh episode.  So the Neverland arc shed another million or so viewers by the second half.

In 3B, there was a rebound for the first two episodes, before dropping back down, with a few anomalies.

The front-half 4A bump was more sustained, with four episodes of higher ratings before settling.  By the third episode of 4B, viewers had reached a new low of below 6 million, all the way to the end.  So 4B made another million viewers drop out.

About another million sustained drop occurred midway into 5A.  "The Bear and the Bow" onwards was consistently below 5 million.

It took two episodes into 5B before ratings dropped another million, to the 3 millions.  Weirdly, there was an uptick for the two-hour finale, though demos stayed low.

The next big drop occurred 2 episodes into 6B. 

Season 7 only saw a drop of half a million, and the total audience was surprisingly stable.

It seems like the pattern is that some viewers tend to return for 2 episodes when a new arc begins.  The major sustained drops seemed to have occurred near the beginning of 2B (the biggest drop), then again mid-3A, then early 4B, mid-5A, early 5B and early 6B.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

When comparing ratings, it's better to compare percentage drops vs actual viewers lost because the loss of a million viewers in S2 is a much smaller piece of the audience than that of a million in S7. For example, the drop between the first two episodes of S2 was 13% (1.52 million viewers) while the drop for the first two episodes of S7 is 16% (500,000 viewers). S7 lost a third fewer viewers, but those viewers represented a much larger portion of the audience.

Overall, S4 showed the biggest in-season drop losing over 40% of its audience, but that's a little misleading because of the Frozen bump and also because there were some ratings shenanigans that were going on for the first few weeks of that season that were never properly fixed. S7 also dropped 40% of the audience if you take the numbers for the last episode before the finale (there was a series ending nostalgia bump for the finale that doesn't represent that particular season's regular audience). Next up is S2 with a loss of 35%. Seasons 5 & 6 were in the 25-30% range and S3 showed the most stable ratings losing just about 20% over the season. I skipped S1 because there is no basis for an audience to start with so it's hard to judge people picking up the show vs those becoming bored and leaving.

What this says to me is that the writers majorly screwed up in S2. First right at the start by not addressing the events of S1 properly and then in 2B when things went to hell in a hand basket. They righted the ship in S3 by addressing their screw ups from S2 and putting the main characters in one place interacting with each other and not in 18 different plot lines in multiple realms. It was all downhill from there which is pretty typical of an aging network show. I suspect that without the Disney tie-in and on a more popular network, the show would have been cancelled at the end of S5.

Edited September 8, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[KingOfHearts]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

So something turned off approximately 2 million of the viewers at the beginning of 2B, and they stayed away permanently.

I've got to blame The Cricket Game. It's what killed the show. Going balls to the wall with Woegina really confused people. I don't want to crucify Regina, but whenever I talk to people who stopped watching in 2B, she's often cited as one of the major problems. I don't think viewers were as offended in 2A because Team Princess and the Storybrooke stuff still had positive, hopeful messages. The heroes were still heroes. While Regina had two centrics, they weren't nearly as contrived or manipulative as the The Cricket Game. That episode showed her as a resentful bitch we're supposed to feel sorry for because plot says so. But in "We are Both" and "The Doctor", she was more sympathetic. In the former, she was trying to escape her abusive mother. In the latter, she was dealing with the loss of her loved one. "The Cricket Game" is so manufactured because she dodged her execution via magic and Snow's random change of heart, Snow and Charming get a contrived protection spell made to force Regina into casting the Curse, and Cora's magic in the present made it impossible to believe Regina was being set up. Viewers sensed they were being conned and left because casual audiences had no desire to see Regina being victimized under unreasonable circumstances. A&E spent all of S1 building her up as an evil villain we were supposed to love to hate. S2 created some massive whiplash.

Edited September 8, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

58 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I've got to blame The Cricket Game. It's what killed the show.

Yep. Even when people I talk to can't quite articulate exactly when and why they dropped out, it always seems to have come right around that point, and when people give reasons, they say things like "when Regina got all whiny and they made Snow a wimp" and the timing of when they quit falls around that episode. It really does give you whiplash when they seem to go straight from Emma saying coldly, "It's Regina's fault," to Emma inviting Regina to the potluck. And then somehow, they're all horrible people for believing that a known mass murderer who has been responsible for deaths of people they love might have committed a murder. It was horrible when David thought even for a moment that Mary Margaret had killed Kathryn because murder went against everything he knew about her. She'd shown no signs of having murderous inclinations. She was a schoolteacher and hospital volunteer. She'd broken up with him so he could work on his marriage with Kathryn. She'd urged him to tell the truth. Murdering the rival he wanted to leave would have been way out of left field. But Regina has a vault full of hearts. She murdered Snow's father. She murdered Graham (not that this is acknowledged, but come on, surely they would have suspected retroactively). She tried to murder Snow dozens of times. She tried to put Emma under a sleeping curse. She killed like it was a hobby and hasn't really shown remorse. It's not exactly a stretch to suspect her of murder, and they did bother to investigate, so it's not as though they were being totally unfair.

Going back to the fate concept and the scenario of what if Emma got caught up in the curse ...

Maybe all of it was fate. So, say Emma's been growing up in Storybrooke, feeling increasingly lonely and isolated. Then she gets Miss Blanchard for fourth grade and life becomes better. When the teacher reads fairy tales to the class (regular ones -- the magic book hasn't shown up yet), Emma finds herself imagining the people in the town as fairy tale characters and starts thinking of her teacher as Snow White and her mother as the Evil Queen. But then Emma has to move up and on at the end of the school year. At one point, she slips and lets on that she thinks of Regina as the Evil Queen. Regina panics and thinks maybe she's learned something and starts gaslighting her. It all comes to a head when Emma's in high school and runs into her favorite teacher from elementary school, but her teacher doesn't seem to remember having had her in her class. After all, she wouldn't have been old enough to be teaching when Emma was in fourth grade. That's when Emma has had enough and runs away, getting out of Storybrooke. Then she meets Neal, and it pretty much goes as it did. There wouldn't be an August, but maybe the Apprentice contacts Neal directly. I can't imagine that he'd have called for Emma to go to jail. Maybe Neal panics and calls the cops on Emma on his own, to make sure she can't follow him when he disappears from her life. Since she doesn't have any real legal ID and doesn't want to run any risk of being connected to Regina, that's when Emma makes up the Emma Swan identity. Emma might have been a little leerier of adoption after being Regina's adopted daughter, but she gets to hand-pick the adoptive family and doesn't realize that this adoption ended up falling through, with her kid ending up with the shady agency. But it makes things even more emotionally fraught when she realizes her kid was given to Regina and she has to face Storybrooke and Regina again in order to help him. Would Regina's forgetting potion still have been in effect, so she didn't remember Emma when she showed up? The conflict would have been over more than just Henry, but also over their past. Emma would have been even more resistant to believe that Mary Margaret was her mother, having been burned by having her not remember being her teacher.

Anyway, if all of it was predetermined fate, then what's the point of them even trying? It's all going to work out the same way. That's why the way they handle prophecies is not a great idea. It's too on the nose rather than vague stuff that's hard to interpret.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I rarely got the feeling on the show that David was a farmboy trying to be a prince. He never struggled between a humble upbringing and acting like royalty. His worldview should be completely different from his role's typical perspective, but we don't see that beyond him being pissed at King George for going into an arranged marriage. Most of the time he acts like the courageous prince he represents. 

This was in "Child of the Moon" but I felt that keenly in "What Happened to Frederick".  We've all said how much we liked the "twist" with James/David in "The Shepherd".  But it's like the Writers thought of the twist for that episode, but never bothered to consider it again.  It shows again how they are not writing for the characters (unless it's their fav's) but for the twists.  They didn't build that huge reveal into the actual character of Charming when writing for him past "The Shepherd", so clearly, they never were interested in exploring that Prince and the Pauper dichotomy.  Could an aspect of being a farmboy have helped him to defeat the Guardian of Lake Nostos, or Regina, or Rumple, or win over the people of King George's kingdom?  

I was thinking the other "subplots" David had.  In 3A, he got an external problem of getting poisoned with dreamshade, but the focus was more about Hook's past with dreamshade and being selfless by saving David.  In Season 7, the subplot regarding his dead father was ultimately about Hook's grief and splitting Hook/Emma up.  Child David only got a short cameo in the flashback about his own father.  The story wasn't from his POV.  He finally got his third solo centric in "The Tower", probably only because Ginny Goodwin was pregnant.  They gave him a flashback centric, but in present-day, they never rounded it out with a climatic scene with Emma.  And the less said about "White Out", the better.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

They didn't build that huge reveal into the actual character of Charming when writing for him past "The Shepherd", so clearly, they never were interested in exploring that Prince and the Pauper dichotomy.  Could an aspect of being a farmboy have helped him to defeat the Guardian of Lake Nostos, or Regina, or Rumple, or win over the people of King George's kingdom?  

It's interesting how many of these things there are in this show, where there's some major element of the characterization or some major event in a character's life, and they never end up using it. You'd think that a farmboy becoming a prince would be a major thing in his life that would affect his story, but they seldom dealt with it. We didn't see Snow learning he was a farmboy, not a prince (we just saw when George said Charming wasn't his son). We don't know if he was worried about the princess finding out who he really was. We don't know how Snow reacted when she learned. We don't know when or if the people learned he wasn't really Prince James. That whole "you can't be a leader" thing in "Child of the Moon" kind of fell flat because we'd never seen how people reacted to him in leadership before, so we didn't know if anyone would care that he was a shepherd or whether or not they knew. Aside from when he used his shepherd skills to fight the dragon, I don't recall his farming skills or even his ordinary guy, non-royal background playing much of a role in the story.

It's like how Emma having been a Dark One never mattered again or how Hook having been dead and then resurrected didn't make any difference for him. Or how splitting the evil side of herself out didn't change Regina at all.

[KingOfHearts]

29 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's like how Emma having been a Dark One never mattered again or how Hook having been dead and then resurrected didn't make any difference for him. Or how splitting the evil side of herself out didn't change Regina at all.

Hook's death was probably the only one of those plots that wasn't doomed from the start. Dark Swan and Clone Queen were both awful ideas. They had the potential to be better, but the writers could've chosen thousands of more sensical plots instead. We got Edgy Swan and Edgy Queen.

[companionenvy]

59 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Dark Swan and Clone Queen were both awful ideas.

I think Dark Swan could actually have been a great idea - and even as it was, there were elements of it I liked a lot -- except for the writers turning it into an Emma-shaming angst-fest. Pretty much everyone treats her like she's a rabid dog even when she seems to be under control, her parents give up on her in an inexcusably short time, Regina thinks it's fun to control her with the dagger, she's barred from using her magic - which had been previously established as an essential part of her that she shouldn't have to hide -- and circumstances play out so that she's forced into a wrenching choice in which the "right" decision is letting Hook die. When she, quite understandably, can't do that, the narrative punishes her severely for it, and in the end, the closest we get to a heroic conclusion to the arc is the even angstier turn where she has to kill Dark Hook. Especially given that this is a character whose past includes so much pain and isolation, it simply isn't enjoyable to watch.

This ties in, I think, to some of the posts from earlier about declining ratings. The reason the show lost viewers so quickly was, IMO, a fundamental misunderstanding about what people wanted out of the show. I don't think writers should pander at the expense of story, but it isn't pandering to show some awareness of the kind of narrative you're writing. S1, for what it was, wasn't simplistic - Rumple/Gold was set up as a nicely complex character, Emma's emotional issues were given some depth, the flashbacks offered a couple of interesting inversions of expectations -- but it ultimately worked because it led up to a narratively satisfying conclusion where good wins, and wins with style; before we get the TLK, we have the fun of Emma taking on a dragon with Charming's sword. 

This is a show that was capable of taking on more serious and subtle themes, but in order for it to continue working, it had to stay fun, and it had to be more generous than it wound up being with unambiguous wins that didn't lead to moral crises (or, worse, unwarranted moral condemnation). Let Snow killing Cora or Emma killing Cruella be an actual badass moment to be celebrated. Give us flashbacks of Snowing triumphantly taking back the kingdom, not of yet another one of Regina's or even Hook's crimes. There's a place for moral grayness, even among heroes, but Once wasn't ever going to be Breaking Bad or The Wire, and it shouldn't have wanted to be. Drama doesn't only come from putting characters in super angsty situations and blurring the line between good and evil.

I'm a little more sympathetic to writers regarding the initial drop-off between the first two episodes of season 2, because I actually did enjoy those episodes and can see what the writers were going for, even if I think the separation should have come an episode or two later. But I can also understand why, even at this early point, viewers who had liked season 1 felt jerked around; after becoming invested in Snow and Charming through the flashbacks in S1 and spending the season waiting for them to reunite, having them indefinitely separated again the same day that they've found each other after 28 years is pretty rough.