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

[Mitch]

18 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

For the Enchanted Forest peasants, the curse must have been a bit of an upgrade -- going from a hovel to a small-town home with indoor plumbing and electricity. But what about the nobility and royalty, going from palaces and being in charge to being just another average citizen in a small town? We never got a follow-up with Cinderella's king. Would he have voted for Regina as Queen of the Universe? For mayor? Even if they did end up liking Storybrooke, would they be okay with having their lives completely uprooted that way?

I do think they should have had at least one episode where the peasants were backing Regina...(stupidly but the average SB'er seemed as dumb as a stump..) cause she gave them plumbing and heat...and Regina cunningly did that to the general population that she could care less about...just so if the curse broke she could say..."I did this for you...to turn the tables on the haves and help the have nots..." which would be a hilarious scene right up there to her..."I know, I feel violated myself!" line...though the A & E would write it as if it were true! Then it would be the royals from other kingdoms that would be pissed off at her (though I have to say, the neighborhood Regina lived in looked nice so she would have had to have had people in those houses and I am sure she would have put other royals there so she didn't have to deal with the peasants when she got her mail...(did anyone HAVE mail???)  At least when Dimbulb Charming was going on and on about returning to the EF I would like someone to say, "Sure, pretty boy, you got a castle, I gotta shit in the woods!"

 

On 9/29/2018 at 12:46 PM, Camera One said:

All they needed to do was to make the use of magic beans more risky or with more of a cost.  

They originally had to use a compass, which would have been cool if they lost it and landed up in weird ass places. They could have at least said that the Sorcerer's House was the home of the actual Hall of Doors seen in Jeffies hat, and he was the guardian of the gates...so then they could use that instead of convoluted reasons, but only after the Sorcerer...or was it the Apprentice..I was half in and out during Frozen and Queens of Darkness so cant remember...approved..if he doesnt you jumped through you die..including Rump. 

13 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Or, if we had pushed the episode off to 3B, after Emma herself has gotten false memories of raising Henry, it could also have addressed Emma's feelings about finding out that those eleven years were based on a lie and now having to deal with the prospect of sharing Henry with Regina.

All of your ideas are great..damn, can we have a do over???

[Camera One]

The scene in "The Queen is Dead" and the entire "The Miller's Daughter" reminded me that the main lessons the "heroes" were supposed to learn on this show were:
- they must resist any survival instinct and be willing to sacrifice themselves
- they must have faith and believe in the villains no matter what 
- they need to go out of their way to save villains' lives 

Where villain is usually defined as a character that starts with the letter R.

If they don't do the above, they are wrong and morally corrupted. 

A&E have said Snow became most like Regina when she emotionally manipulated Regina into putting the heart back in Cora.  But since Snow essentially had no other options against two powerful magic users, that implies what she was supposed to do, was to give up her life (and everyone's lives), and just trust that Regina would do the right thing and stop her mother.  This is reinforced in the Season 2 finale, when Snow admits what she did was taking the "easy" way. 

And then there was the moral preaching that it would be wrong if the heroes refused to risk everyone's lives to save both Rumple and Regina, even when one of them was willing to sacrifice herself.  The villains' lives are worth more than everyone else's.  Robin Hood would have been wrong to let Rumple die in NYC and Neal did the right thing to die in resurrecting his father.  And the heroes would have been wrong if they didn't try to save Regina in the Season 2 finale.

But how many times did we get scenes where Snowing and the heroes decided to have dinner at Granny's (or have a wedding) and wait to die?  

It is usually framed as wrong when a hero doubts an ex-villain, from Belle resisting Rumple's protection with the baby in 6A, to Emma pushing Hook away after finding out he killed her grandfather, to Zelena being punished in 5A.  In "The Cricket Game", Snowing doubting Regina was supposedly an understandable reason for why she joined Cora.   In "The Evil Queen", Snow rejecting Regina after seeing the village massacre was supposedly why Regina continued on her destructive past.  In all those cases, karma came back and bad things happened because they didn't believe in the ex-villains.

Yet when the situation is flipped, when a hero needs to sacrifice themselves (eg. Emma in Season 6), it is wrong for anyone to stop it and they just need to accept death.  

Edited October 6, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

Just replying here since I forgot Tamara hasn't happened yet in the episode thread.

12 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

It really is. They had more then enough to deal with the fallout from the Curse, the Charming family reunited and adjusting to being together with all their baggage, dealing with Cora, dealing with Regina who still should be in jail or on trial for her crimes, Rumple and Bae/Neal, Emma and Neal, Neal and Henry, Hook and Rumple. But no let's add new secret random evil. 

Even if they insisted on not giving Rumple and Neal scenes in Storybrooke (there were a hundred and one things that could have been done with that), they could always have explored Neal and Henry.  Neal could have reassessed his life and decision knowing that he had a son.  Maybe they could have moved him to make a genuine apology to Emma.  Maybe Henry's anger could turn on Neal instead of Emma.  Perhaps Regina could be more rattled that another parent was now in town and maybe Cora ignores her concerns because Cora is actually out for herself.  There were a lot of organic responses that the characters could have had which would have ratcheted the tension even more than "Who's going to get Rumple's dagger!" 

[companionenvy]

ITA Camera One, and it is one of the worst things about this show. The only thing I'd dissent from was the example of Emma pushing Hook away after finding out he killed her grandfather, as I think they had been through so much by then that he deserved far more trust and credit. He was wrong to think about hiding it from her, but otherwise, he had never misrepresented his past as a villain, and has risked his life for Emma and her loved ones countless times. Not to mention dying for them, and being resurrected by a literal god as a cosmic reward. 

As a fun little exercise, I wrote up a post in which I imagine how Once Upon a Time would have approached the famous Trolley Problem. For anyone who doesn't know, the Trolley Problem is a famous philosophical thought experiment: You're the conductor of a trolley, and realize that there are five people tied to the track that you're currently on. You can't stop the train, but you can divert it to a second track, which only has one person tied to it. What do you do?

When asked, most people say that you should divert the train, the moral logic being that it maximizes the number of people who survive. The other position, however, is that by diverting the train, you are actively choosing to kill the person on track two, whereas you aren't to blame for what happens if you stick to the path you were already on; you don't have a moral right to make a decision that will kill the other person, even if it means more people will die if you don't. 

Unlike the majority of people, the Once writers pretty clearly favor the second position; the active choice to harm someone is always wrong, even if the consequences are a net positive. That's not a problem, per se. What is a problem is that not only do they refuse to alter this perspective to account for what should be relevant specifics, they stack the deck absurdly in favor of diverting the train, and then heap condemnation upon the characters who do it. There are a lot of variations to the trolley problem, most of them involving the identity of the people on the tracks. What if the five people are elderly and the one person is a young child, or visa-versa? What if they are terminal cancer patients, or convicted murderers? What if your mother, or son is tied to one of the tracks? And so on. In practice, most people alter their initial answer when the conditions change. Morally speaking, this may not be defensible; it isn't your call to figure out who lives and who dies. But in practical terms, people do see a difference between, say, diverting the train to kill a baby and diverting the train to kill a 90-year-old. 

And here's the kicker: that's just taking it as a thought experiment. As a wonderful episode of The Good Place points out, if you actually put the average person on the trolley, and forced him or her to really make these kinds of impossible choices, what they would be willing to do in practice might be a lot different to what they think is acceptable in theory. Yet K&H put their most noble characters in impossible, wrenching situations and then expect them not to act like human beings - all while selectively applying different moral standards to other characters. 

So, without further ado, I present to you The Trolley Problem, as experienced by various characters in Once Upon a Time:

Snow: The five people on track one consist of her parents and close friends. The person on track two is Regina. Snow nobly decides not to divert the train. Good; this is the right choice! This happens to her twice more, each time with loved ones on track one and Cora or Regina on track two. By the third time, she has discovered that Cora and Regina have, in fact, been the ones responsible for tying people to railroad tracks all along, but this does not change her decision; she's going to do the right thing and hope that somehow things will work out. They don't, but at least Snow has a pure heart! Finally, on take four, Snow decides she is not  making the same mistake again and diverts the train to kill Cora. She is roundly condemned for this by everyone.

David: Has never been the one to make the decision himself, except for that one time where Anna from Frozen was teaching him how to drive trains. In that flashback, David chose to divert the train, but no one acknowledges that this has any moral implications at all. Whenever Snow faces the trolley problem, David argues that she should kill the villain, but eventually comes around to her way of thinking. When Snow actually does kill Cora, Charming instead argues that this isn’t her and agrees that it has put a black spot on her heart.

Emma: Only became conductor of the train reluctantly, after everyone in town begged her and told her it was her destiny. The five people on track one are Henry, Hook, Snowing, and Snowflake. Also, that track ends, so if Emma stays her course, she’ll drive the train off a cliff and die. Diverting the train means running the risk of killing a single innocent person on track two.

At this point, one of two things happens. In the first scenario, Emma diverts the train. The innocent person dies. Everyone condemns Emma for her selfishness and it turns out she didn’t actually save her loved ones anyway, because the people on the track were really their wish-verse doppelgangers, and as it isn’t season 7 yet, those people aren’t real. In the second scenario, Emma declares that she isn’t doing anything because there has to be a third way, which means the train stays on track to hit her family and drive off a cliff. This is the right choice, so a magic McGuffin comes out of the sky and everyone lives.

Hook: In a flashback, Hook hijacks a train. In the course of the trip, he bonds with a child passenger. At a certain point, he has a choice: continue on track one, which will allow him to escape with the loot but will also kill the person on the tracks, or divert the train to track two, which will put him in the path of the authorities. He comes very close to making the right choice when he finds out that the man on the tracks is the father of the child he has bonded to, but at the last minute, he learns that track one, aside from being an escape route, also leads to a portal that will take him to Rumple, and succumbs to temptation. In the present day, he encounters a vaguely parallel situation engineered  by that same child, who has grown up to be a train conductor. Hook guiltily offers to throw himself on the tracks to stop the train and save everyone, at which point the conductor relents, realizing the depth of Hook's desire to atone for his past, and they hug it out. Depending on the episode, there’s an end scene in which David either claps Hook on the back and tells him he’s an OK guy, or calls him a filthy pirate and warns him away from Emma.

Regina: Has tied the Charming family, minus Henry, to track one. There is no one on track two. After some begging from Henry, she diverts the train to track two at the last minute. Everyone declares her a hero, and thanks her for saving their lives.

Robin: Knows from early on in along train journey that at the end, he’s going to be forced to divert the train onto one of two tracks: Regina is on one, and Marian is on the other. He agonizes over this for hours despite knowing that Regina is the one responsible for the deliberately shoddy design that created the situation in the first place. Ultimately, he does the right thing and chooses to save Marian, but he really wishes he could have saved Regina instead. Regina, before dying, declares that it is all Emma’s fault because Marian was only anywhere near the train tracks because Emma loaned her the money for a ticket. Also, Marian is Zelena.

Rumple: Invented trains in the first place because he foretold precisely this situation: he’s driving, and he freezes time and offers the people on track one a deal in which they give him something he very much needs in return for diverting the train. Belle is on the train, but was napping while all the drama was going on; when she wakes up, Rumple sadly tells her that he is a bad man who doesn’t deserve her, but neglects to mention what he has just done. She assures him that he really does have a good heart, and has no reaction when someone else tells her what actually happened on the train. Her belief in his good heart is confirmed a few seasons later, when Rumple bravely swerves his vehicle slightly to avoid hitting Belle herself.

Henry: After consistently blaming everyone except Regina for their choices, he decides that the answer is to destroy all trains.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

Snow: The five people on track one consist of her parents and close friends. The person on track two is Regina. Snow nobly decides not to divert the train. Good; this is the right choice! This happens to her twice more, each time with loved ones on track one and Cora or Regina on track two. By the third time, she has discovered that Cora and Regina have, in fact, been the ones responsible for tying people to railroad tracks all along, but this does not change her decision; she's going to do the right thing and hope that somehow things will work out. They don't, but at least Snow has a pure heart! Finally, on take four, Snow decides she is not  making the same mistake again and diverts the train to kill Cora. She is roundly condemned for this by everyone.

Slight amendment: Not only were Cora and Regina the ones to tie the loved ones to the track, but they're only on the other track because they were trying to set a bomb that would destroy the trolley and the whole town when the trolley hit that part of the track, and they got stuck while setting the bomb. Snow diverting the train to kill either of them (the bomb hasn't been set, so it won't destroy the town) rather than killing the people they tied to the tracks is still considered an act of darkness.

[Camera One]

Another amendment: During her "Bold and Audacious" phase, Regina wants to run over the 5 people on one track and then go backwards and run over the people on the second track too.

[Camera One]

This show was originally trying to avoid fairy-tale clichés like "love at first sight", but eventually, practically every romance we got fell into that category.  Even in Season 1, I was disappointed that Snowing's only sustained time together were the events in "Snow Falls".  After that, it was all obstacles and separations up the wazoo.  Then it got worse and worse, with True Love Kiss for practical strangers like Red and Dorothy or people who don't even speak to each other like Coma Hook's Dad and Nursemaid.  Not to mention stuff like The Sapling of True Love.  It would be one thing if they explained that Love happened differently in the Enchanted Forest.  Did a Sapling of True Love form at the ball when Cinderella met Prince Thomas?  None of that was ever defined.  And almost every romance started with the same formula of two people who hated each other's guts or traded barbs (or worse, trying to kill each other), before they realized they couldn't live without one another.

The concept of friendship was even worse.  We had victims supposedly becoming BFFs with the perpetrators who tried to murder or enslave them or their loved ones.  Regina and Snow & Regina and Emma were supposed to be these super close friends.  They even ended the series with Rumple proclaiming that Whook was his best friend. On several interviews, A&E stated that they just loved these moments, but they clearly don't realize it is possible to write more complex relationships of earned trust WITHOUT that person becoming your BFF.  

Then, there was the concept of family.  Healthy family relationships between heroes were given hardly any screentime; in fact, when they had screentime, it was to cause a rift before ignoring the fallout and moving on.  Meanwhile, most of their screentime regarding "family" was spent pushing relationships between victims and perpetrators like Henry and Regina, or toxic relationships like Regina and Zelena or Regina and Cora, insisting over and over again how they were "family".  

The show insisted that they explored all aspects of "love" - romantic love, friendship and love of family, but all of these were done poorly.  No wonder most of the time, characters just stated the obvious or regurgitated the plot points while they ran around trying to put out fires and defended themselves from people trying to kill them (but not really trying very much at all, but that's a whole other kettle of fish).

Edited October 7, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/6/2018 at 12:31 PM, Camera One said:

It is usually framed as wrong when a hero doubts an ex-villain, from Belle resisting Rumple's protection with the baby in 6A, to Emma pushing Hook away after finding out he killed her grandfather

The weird thing is that Emma didn't push Hook away because she'd learned he'd killed her grandfather. She pushed him away for being afraid to tell her he killed her grandfather. Basically, she was mad that he thought she'd have a normal, human reaction to something he'd done, which is all kinds of warped. I don't really blame Emma the character for this because it's just such a crazy worldview that's inconsistent with Emma's character but totally consistent with this show's morality.

I don't even feel like the writers were framing it as Emma and her family taking into consideration everything Hook had done for them and how much he'd changed since those days and them having already had to make the decision to give blanket forgiveness for everything he'd done in the past before he changed, so that this fell under the blanket forgiveness. It came across as more of a kneejerk "how dare you not trust me!" when what he was saying was that he couldn't live with the memory. And that tilted the deck toward sympathy for Hook, since his inability to live with what he'd done put him in a totally different class from the other villains.

But that whole thing was just a massive mess, anyway. It's almost not even worth discussing because I don't think there was any plan or reasoning behind that plot other than contriving a way to temporarily separate Hook and Emma with a little angst thrown in.

[Camera One]

We were talking about Cora in "The Miller's Daughter" thread and how it's strange and abrupt how she seemed to be planning to move up the ranks in Henry's royal family in the flashback, yet by "The Stable Boy", she's living on a country estate pinning all her hopes on Regina.  

Another motivating factor for Cora is her planned revenge against Queen Eva.  I'm surprised she didn't try to ruin Eva's life while she was alive.  Eva never even found out that Cora was out to get her.  

This was Cora's monologue to the dead Eva in "The Queen is Dead":

Quote

Cora: As for you, poison looks good on you. And death is most certainly your colour. You raised her well. My daughter doesn't love me the way yours does you. Snow would have been a great ruler someday, but that will never happen because my daughter will be queen, and all yours will be left with is knowing how I've felt. How it feels to be the miller's daughter. I will turn Snow White's heart black as coal. That candle won't be her final test. And once I've darkened her soul, it won't just be you I've destroyed, it will be your legacy. 

I mean, is that a convoluted way to get revenge or what?  I can't imagine how satisfying it is that the victim doesn't even know and you're targeting their daughter who has nothing to do with it.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

Agreed, Camera, although let's remember that her teacher was Rumple, master of the Rube Goldberg-esque plots that somehow wind up totally working.

The question on heart-ripping and free will in the Miller's Daughter also thread reminded me of another inconsistency. For Cora, while ripping her heart out doesn't seem to have interfered with her free will (as no one else is controlling it), it does clearly seem to have made her much colder. Not that she was the sweetest and kindest person before that, but I bought that getting re-hearted would make enough of a difference that her dying words would be "You would have been enough" to Regina. Whereas before that, while she has a kind of twisted concern for Regina even while heartless - it isn't real love. That's also why I actually wasn't that horrified by Cora moving into the light in 5B.

But I don't think this is consistent with the depictions of either heartless Regina or heartless Hook. For heartless Regina, removing her heart maybe has the effect of a mild anti-depressant, but otherwise, it doesn't seem to change her, and it, of course, doesn't stop her from doing a TLK. Then, in 4A, Hook is being controlled via his heart, but he really doesn't seem any less emotional. Even granting that both Hook and Regina are far more naturally emotional people than Cora, that doesn't tally with the idea that Cora is incapable of real love without her heart.

This also recalls the similar issue of how much control one has as the Dark One, which also seems inconsistent to me, but at least there, I think the show gives us enough to fanwank some explanations for why Rumple, Emma and Hook all have different reactions to becoming the DO. I don't think that's true with the heart issue. Although I guess in the case of Hook, if I had to come up with something, I could maybe fanwank that Rumple wants him to retain a full range of feeling as part of the torture.

Edited October 10, 2018 by companionenvy

[KAOS Agent]

As far as I'm concerned, the changes they made with regards to how people feel without their heart ruined "The Miller's Daughter". Cora getting her heart back and saying those final words to Regina meant something. Once Regina was able to share True Love's Kiss with someone without her heart and Hook was still completely in love with Emma without his heart, the idea that Cora suddenly felt real love for her daughter because she had a heart was greatly diminished. 

Cora was basically a heartless bitch even with her heart. Look at how she ditched Zelena without a backward glance. Removing her heart might have made it easier for her to make the decision to dump Rumpel and become even more ruthless, but I don't think it really affected her personality. The Regina/Cora moment was meant to be sweet and lovely and pour more fuel on the Snow is evil fire, but it doesn't really work with what we see of Cora both with and without her heart.

[companionenvy]

3 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Cora was basically a heartless bitch even with her heart. Look at how she ditched Zelena without a backward glance. Removing her heart might have made it easier for her to make the decision to dump Rumpel and become even more ruthless, but I don't think it really affected her personality. The Regina/Cora moment was meant to be sweet and lovely and pour more fuel on the Snow is evil fire, but it doesn't really work with what we see of Cora both with and without her heart.

Well, the Zelena thing was a crappy retcon on a lot of levels, but I do think there is a difference to being able to do ruthless things but feeling bad about them, and utterly cold manipulation. From what I remember of that episode, Cora does seem to have an emotional reaction to giving up Zelena. It isn't enough to overcome her ambition, but it is something. That may actually be another way in which pre-heart removal Cora was actually a good match for DO Rumple. He is clearly capable of love - even deep love -- but not, outside of a couple of shining moments, at the expense of his own life and goals. Whatever he may believe, and however sincerely he may regret what he has done as he weeps "I'm ready to go with you, Bae" after the portal closes, I think he'd make the exact same choice time and time again. That's closer to how I see the Cora who gave up Zelena, fell in love with Rumple, and told Regina that she would have been enough. By contrast, heartless Cora really doesn't care about Regina except as a kind of egotistical extension of herself. 

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

As far as I'm concerned, the changes they made with regards to how people feel without their heart ruined "The Miller's Daughter". Cora getting her heart back and saying those final words to Regina meant something. Once Regina was able to share True Love's Kiss with someone without her heart and Hook was still completely in love with Emma without his heart, the idea that Cora suddenly felt real love for her daughter because she had a heart was greatly diminished. 

The retcons really killed a lot of this, but I think the other problem is that even with Cora, before they changed the way losing a heart affected people, they didn't seem to have really put a lot of thought into how this all works.

For one thing, if not having your heart means you can't really love, then it would also mean you can't really hate, since they're opposite ends of the same spectrum and require caring. If ripping out her heart made Cora not care that she wasn't with someone she loved and instead was married to a man she didn't love, then it would also have meant that she really didn't care about Eva. If not having a heart made her ruthlessly cold and pragmatic, then her personal gripe with Eva would no longer matter to her because it would be as much of a weakness as love was. She wouldn't have cared about turning Snow's heart dark or ruining Eva's legacy. She merely would have looked for the most powerful and wealthy king around to marry her daughter to. She wouldn't have held out for that one king just because she wanted revenge and built all her plans around that. She'd have been teaching her daughter to dance and to be dazzling, hauling her to every ball around and making sure she was seen by all the eligible kings and princes.

And that's if heartless Cora who had no sentimentality or qualms hadn't worked her way through her husband's family to get him on the throne and then pulled a Catherine the Great and pulled a coup to put herself on the throne. I still have a hard time believing that hyper-ambitious Cora with magical powers and no real emotion thanks to her missing heart would have been content with making sure her daughter got a throne. I guess she got her throne in Wonderland, but she seemed to have spent Regina's childhood and adolescence just hanging out instead of ruthlessly clawing her way to the top.

Then there's her sudden "you would have been enough" realization upon getting her heart put back. She hadn't had a heart at all during Regina's entire life, so she'd never built up any affection or feelings toward her daughter. Would she have suddenly gained those feelings and the realization that having a daughter would have been enough the moment her heart was returned? It seems like it would have taken time to actually build those feelings, like she was essentially being introduced to a stranger at that moment. Or were all the appropriate feelings happening in her heart in the vault, but they didn't affect Cora while her heart wasn't in her body, and then she got all those feelings when her heart was returned?

[Camera One]

I just had another nice cry when I rewatched a clip of Cora in the Underworld giving back Regina and Zelena's memories.  We've been talking about Cora a lot these last few days, and I think one of the reasons why she is one of the greatest characters created in fiction is because we can all identify with Cora.  I mean, who among us haven't been tripped literally or metaphorically by people who thought they were better than we were?  Who among us haven't seethed with anger for decades and plotted revenge on those of who have wronged us?  What Cora went through on this show were the trials and tribulations of everyday life and self-esteem and self-worth, and her happy ending reminded us that all that matters is family, even if they are murdering psychos.  

Edited October 11, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

I laughed, Camera One, but the reason Cora does more or less work for me, if I ignore the different experiences of other heartless people, is that I don't actually think we're supposed to identify with Cora. We may understand her, but there's nothing woobifying about her backstory, and her goals aren't terribly sympathetic, with or without her heart. I guess that we can identify with her to the extent that we can identify with almost any expression of comprehensible human emotion - most people have experienced anger, and humiliation, and disappointed ambition -- but the more particular nature of Cora and how she responds to these emotions, even before we get to heart-pulling and total evil, is not one that seems designed to elicit sympathy. It isn't like Regina, where even as we see her doing terrible things, we're sometimes asked to be sympathizing with her and prioritizing her pain over that of her victims. I just don't see that with Cora.

The problem with the ethics of the afterlife in Once, for me, isn't that Cora gets to go into the light. A lot of religions include the notion that if you repent, even very late in the game, you can be forgiven, and as someone who is very uncomfortable with the idea that almost anyone would be deserving of eternal hellfire, that isn't a problem for me. What I didn't like was the fact that going to Underbrooke - which otherwise acted as  a kind of purgatory -- and the length of your stay there had nothing to do with justice; it was entirely self-inflicted. If the great majority of people are ultimately going to go to Once-verse heaven, that's fine, but until then there should be at least some level on which Cora is treated differently from Milah who is treated differently from Hercules or Auntie Em. Because the standard shouldn't just be whether or not you forgive yourself. That's a fine theme to play with with Hook, when it comes to whether or not he's willing to accept the magic escape hatch that Emma is trying to offer him. But even there, I would have liked it if his treatment in UB itself was presented as punishment for his past actions, as opposed to Hades screwing with him. Getting the reward of Zeus letting him go back to Earth means less when there's really no punishment other than the self-inflicted one of not being able to move on, which seems to be something that could happen as easily to a really good person with unfinished business.

Back to whether or not heartless and then re-hearted Cora makes sense even before we get to Regina and Hook's behavior when heartless: I think it could, in that I don't think a person without a heart, as the show is presenting it, has to have no emotions. The heart still exists, after all, and if it gets crushed - or, I'd assume, if you/it had a heart attack -- you're going to die; not having it in your body doesn't mean you aren't tied to it. I don't see why the same thing wouldn't apply on an emotional level. And for Cora, whose capacity to hate was always stronger than her capacity to love, that's going to continue having a more profound influence on her, whereas her feelings toward Regina will be much more muted (but not so wholly non-existent that the shock of getting her heart back after years without it can't lead to an immediate emotional outpouring). I think this is actually also consistent with heartless Graham, who seems to mostly be pretty wooden, but is still clearly capable of some kinds of feelings, although it winds up taking a lot to activate a real emotional response, and even there, it is more panic at how he isn't feeling things properly than normal emotions. By contrast, I really don't remember any scenes where heartless Hook seemed any less capable of deep feeling than he normally was; for him, the only effect of not having a heart seems to be the practical one that it allows Rumple to control him.

[KAOS Agent]

This show isn't subtle in how it wants to portray certain things. In this case, the removal of the heart (until they decide you can feel with your spleen or whatever). It's not ambiguous. Look at specifically how Cora's lack of heart is portrayed in "The Miller's Daughter". The show is flat out stating that Cora cannot love without her heart. It's why she removed it.  Here are some choice quotes that are straight out telling the audience that you don't feel love without your heart. 

Cora: Why do you think I had to rip my own heart out? You were my weakness. You are the only man I ever truly loved.

Cora: If the choice is love or power, then even having a heart is a liability.

Snow: She can’t love you, you know. She doesn’t have her heart.
Snow: She can’t love, so she can’t love you.

There's evaluating how heartless people "feel" based on fanwanks and then there's actually taking the show at its word in how it is explaining how the lack of heart thing works. For the first two seasons (and on the Wonderland incarnation of the show), they were very clear. You don't feel love without your heart. Or feel anything really. As Henry says, "The Queen took your heart. She ripped it out. It’s kind of her thing. She never wanted you to be able to feel again." That's pretty explicit and it completely agrees with Graham's self-expressed lack of feeling due to lack of heart:

Emma: You really think you don’t have a heart?

Graham: It’s the only thing that makes any sense. It’s the only thing that explains why I don’t feel anything.

Graham: I need to feel something.

Graham: You don’t know what it’s like with her. I don’t feel anything! 

Graham: It has nothing to do with her. You know, I’ve realized that I don’t feel anything, Regina.

 Graham: Actually, for the first time, I am. I’d rather have nothing than settle for less. Nothing? Is better than what we have. I need to feel something, Regina, and the only way to do that is to give myself a chance.

 

[companionenvy]

That's what they are saying, but I think we have to take it as at least a slight exaggeration or simplification based on what we're seeing. Graham is pretty upset about not being able to feel for someone who isn't able to feel. 

Cora's an even better case. She's cold, sure, but even heartless, she isn't apathetic. She has desires, and gets angry when things interfere with them. She clings to vendettas even when there might be better ways of achieving her ends from a purely practical perspective. These are all things that we would typically associate with emotion. If you can feel negative emotions without a heart, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to feel a certain degree of positive emotions without a heart.

I think the show is clear in seasons 1-2 that a person without a heart cannot experience real love. They certainly shouldn't be able to do a TLK. But that's different from saying a person can't feel any lesser version of something at least akin to love. Snow is right that Cora can't really love Regina, but that doesn't mean Cora is totally indifferent to Regina. There's a lot of middle ground between true love and apathy. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/11/2018 at 9:28 AM, companionenvy said:

That's what they are saying, but I think we have to take it as at least a slight exaggeration or simplification based on what we're seeing. Graham is pretty upset about not being able to feel for someone who isn't able to feel. 

Cora's an even better case. She's cold, sure, but even heartless, she isn't apathetic. She has desires, and gets angry when things interfere with them. She clings to vendettas even when there might be better ways of achieving her ends from a purely practical perspective. These are all things that we would typically associate with emotion. If you can feel negative emotions without a heart, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to feel a certain degree of positive emotions without a heart.

This probably falls into the category of "putting far more thought into it than the writers did," and it's obviously entirely made-up and not related to science at all, since the heart isn't the seat of emotions and if someone rips your heart out of your chest, you die, whether or not they crush it, but maybe not all emotions are "heart" emotions. There may be "gut" emotions like fear and disgust, and emotions that stem from the head, like anger, sadness, and joy. Those may also have a heart element, so they're a lot stronger if there's a heart, but they might still be there without the heart. Love and hate would be a lot more difficult to feel without a heart, and there would be an overall numbness. So, Graham might still feel disgust about sleeping with Regina, but everything else he felt might be muted, and then even though he wants to hate himself and Regina, he just can't, which makes him feel afraid (back to the gut). Alas, this still doesn't explain a TLK without a heart or Hook's ardent devotion to Emma without a heart, or his behavior and attitudes not even being altered. If he didn't have a heart, would he have even cared what Emma thought about him? You'd think the blackmail would have been less likely to work once Rumple ripped his heart out because he would have cared a lot less, so on a purely pragmatic level he'd have been more likely to go straight to Emma to tell her everything, unless Rumple specifically ordered him not to.

On 10/11/2018 at 3:26 AM, companionenvy said:

Because the standard shouldn't just be whether or not you forgive yourself. That's a fine theme to play with with Hook, when it comes to whether or not he's willing to accept the magic escape hatch that Emma is trying to offer him. But even there, I would have liked it if his treatment in UB itself was presented as punishment for his past actions, as opposed to Hades screwing with him. Getting the reward of Zeus letting him go back to Earth means less when there's really no punishment other than the self-inflicted one of not being able to move on, which seems to be something that could happen as easily to a really good person with unfinished business.

Yeah, the unfinished business thing is pretty wacky, and it didn't help that their Good Place vs. Bad Place used familiar Heaven and Hell imagery. It seemed like you only went to the Bad Place if you tried to move on without actually being ready for it. It had nothing to do with how evil you were in life. But then what would unfinished business really be? It seems like it would be nearly impossible to die without something left undone. Is it whatever your cosmic mission is, or is it something you decided to do? And it could get pretty victim-blaming. A murder victim whose death is sudden and unexpected is bound to have unfinished business, so do they get sent to the Underworld because of the way they died? A murder victim who didn't get the chance to tell someone they loved them would go to the Underworld while the serial killer who completed his freaky death art project would go straight to the Good Place? And what if the unfinished business involves someone who goes straight to the Good Place? Is our murder victim stuck in the Underworld for all eternity if the person he was supposed to tell he loved them went straight to the Good Place? Would that mean that this person could only move on if he gave up on love?

I think with the characters, it mostly came down to plot. Aunt Em only seemed to be there to raise hopes of someone to kiss Dorothy, and she got obliterated. Neal apparently went straight to the Good Place (since he died while Hades wasn't letting people move on), but given that he died raising the Dark One in a life-for-life transaction so he could be reunited with his son, but all his actions led to was giving their enemy a pet Dark One to use as a weapon against his son's family and he never saw his son again, in spite of all he did, and he never got the chance to truly be a father who didn't abandon his son, wouldn't that count as unfinished business? But Hook had made his peace and was willing to die when he was first wounded, then he willingly sacrificed himself to save the people he cared about and to destroy the Darkness. That would seem like he wrapped everything up. Did he go to the Underworld just because he'd been a Dark One? Because Rumple hijacked his sacrifice and he didn't destroy the Darkness? There didn't really seem to be a punishment element to the Underworld where people earned a trip to the Good Place. They were just being forced to face and deal with their unfinished business. But Hook needed to be in the Underworld because he was a regular character they wanted to keep, so they needed to be able to bring him back, and they needed to explain why they couldn't bring back other dead characters like Neal, so they had to point out that Neal wasn't in a place he could come back from (and then it turned out Emma couldn't bring Hook back, so the Neal cameo was unnecessary -- which makes me wonder if they'd figured out how they were going to bring Hook back when they shot the arc premiere).

As for Cora, I think the issue a lot of people have is that the only thing she seemed to repent of and deal with was having kept her daughters apart. There wasn't really a mention of all the murders, all the evil scheming. Again, though, I think it doesn't help that the imagery for moving on involved going up into light and clouds, which made it seem like heaven, which we associate with being good or at least with repenting of evil. Cora doesn't seem to have repented of anything other than abandoning Zelena and keeping the sisters apart. She didn't seem to have been punished, and she didn't seem to regret any of the other stuff she did.

[Camera One]

I was listening to a "Lost" podcast, and they had on one of the writers Leonard Dick.  He was talking about some of the guiding principles of the headwriters that they followed, and one of them made me think of A&E and "Once":

Quote

From Podcast:  Another guiding principle on "Lost" that Damon and Carlton were adamant about - whenever we raised a cool question, before we committed to it, we always had to have a compelling answer.  There are many shows... where you say "Wouldn't it be fantastic if..." and you come up with this crazy wild idea... especially with a cliffhanger at the end of the season.  "What if we had someone dangling from a hot air balloon" and then the question become how are we going to pay it off, and you say "We'll worry about that when we get to the next season."  And you put it off and you get to the beginning of the next season and then you say, "How are we going to get this woman off the hot air balloon?  It makes no sense whatsoever!"

It sounds like this is one "guiding principle" that A&E for whatever reason decided not to follow after Season 1.  One example was the whole "Land of Untold Stories" concept they introduced in the Season 5 finale.  They seemed to have no idea what to do with it in Season 6 and then dropped it after a few episodes.  I guess the "compelling" question in Season 4 was "Who was the Author" but the reveal and the explanation was haphazard and incomplete.  The concept still makes no sense.  Or the "How did Hook come to NYC" cliffhanger in the 3A finale, which seemed to be dealt with off-screen (I don't remember exactly).

For people who have watched "Lost", that writer was talking about Season 2, and the reveal of the hatch and how someone was down there pressing a button.  The question was "What if they don't press the button" and they had already decided what would happen, and that was revealed in the season finale.  He also said that if the show was written now, they probably wouldn't be able to wait so long.  With the faster pace of plot on current shows, it might have been revealed after half a season.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Camera One

[profdanglais]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, the unfinished business thing is pretty wacky, and it didn't help that their Good Place vs. Bad Place used familiar Heaven and Hell imagery. It seemed like you only went to the Bad Place if you tried to move on without actually being ready for it. It had nothing to do with how evil you were in life. But then what would unfinished business really be? It seems like it would be nearly impossible to die without something left undone. Is it whatever your cosmic mission is, or is it something you decided to do? And it could get pretty victim-blaming. A murder victim whose death is sudden and unexpected is bound to have unfinished business, so do they get sent to the Underworld because of the way they died? A murder victim who didn't get the chance to tell someone they loved them would go to the Underworld while the serial killer who completed his freaky death art project would go straight to the Good Place? And what if the unfinished business involves someone who goes straight to the Good Place? Is our murder victim stuck in the Underworld for all eternity if the person he was supposed to tell he loved them went straight to the Good Place? Would that mean that this person could only move on if he gave up on love?

To be fair, religions and philosophers have been grappling with these and similar questions for millennia, and no one has ever really come up with a truly satisfactory answer. the OUAT writers are evidently not scholars, so it's likely they just bit off more than they could chew by even trying to deal with this sort of thing. But I agree that the problems are mostly plot-driven. They wanted Hook to have a big, dramatic death scene, but they didn't want him to be actually dead. 

What I wish is that they'd gone with the heart-sharing idea, but made it clear that only True Love (TM) could actually share a heart and restore a life with it. That way, Neal could have been in the Underworld and we could have had some actual freaking resolution with him and Henry and Milah, and everyone acknowledging that Emma loves Hook and would choose him over Neal. I know this might be a quite specific Captain Swan fan thing, but I really wanted to see it. 

[companionenvy]

5 hours ago, profdanglais said:

To be fair, religions and philosophers have been grappling with these and similar questions for millennia, and no one has ever really come up with a truly satisfactory answer. the OUAT writers are evidently not scholars, so it's likely they just bit off more than they could chew by even trying to deal with this sort of thing. But I agree that the problems are mostly plot-driven. They wanted Hook to have a big, dramatic death scene, but they didn't want him to be actually dead. 

There's a difference between expecting a perfectly developed eschatology, and having some minimally coherent version of an afterlife. It is one thing if you have an afterlife that isn't based on any concept of justice - that's actually consistent with the Greek underworld. But the show weirdly seems to want to have their cake and eat it too, where there's some concept of reward and punishment, but the rules as given don't seem in any way likely to lead to what would be a just outcome. And, unlike on the show The Good Place, which also operates based on a highly questionable set of rules, the fact that this is messed up isn't acknowledged. 

As for the practical issue of needing Hook to be in the underworld but not be dead, that would have been really easy to do if they hadn't, you know, had his body taken away on a freaking gurney. If Hook had been pulled down to the underworld while alive, that would have given an obvious out for saving him without setting a precedent in which anyone could theoretically be saved. As it is, it winds up being a moot point since Hook only winds up getting out as a reward from Zeus, and the fact that he and Emma share true love is irrelevant. 

[Camera One]

Another goal of that plotline was to show how unfair it was that Emma got her love interest back from death, but Regina did not.  

In "Welcome to Storybrooke", couldn't Regina have just made some memory potion to feed to Kurt and Owen at dinnertime?  

We also found out after the episode that Regina could easily leave Storybrooke, so as others said in that thread, there was nothing to stop Regina from leaving town with Kurt and Owen since she had already ensured the destruction of Snow's life.  If not, what else was she planning to do?  She clearly did nothing to her for 28 years.

[tennisgurl]

The re-watch is now coming upon the back half of season two, and starting with Welcome to Storybrooke, begins one of the worst runs of episodes this show has ever had. At least, the way I remember. I've actually enjoyed the second season more than I remember enjoying it the last time I watched, which was several years ago (even though its quite frustrating, knowing how little comes of any of it), but, looking what what is coming up, we get the best hits of the worst of Once. Some of its worst Regina worship, some of its worst character assassination, and, without a doubt, its worst and most embarrassing big bads. I am honestly super interested to watch it now, knowing what its all leading up to. 

Also, doesn't Welcome to Storeybrooke make you so happy that Regina has an entire multiverse under her control now? What a happy fucking ending!

[Camera One]

Seeing the first days of Storybrooke again made me wonder.  In the Enchanted Forest, Regina was presumably used to servants.  Yet in Storybrooke, she didn't hire a maid for cleaning or have a nanny for Henry (that we could see).  She also seemed to have learned how to cook.  I can't imagine The Evil Queen slaving away in the castle kitchen.  How did she become the relatable middle class professional that we saw in Season 1?  Why did she eventually gravitate towards pantsuits, when she had full memory of her garb in the Enchanted Forest?  

[KingOfHearts]

22 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

 

Also, doesn't Welcome to Storeybrooke make you so happy that Regina has an entire multiverse under her control now? What a happy fucking ending!

If conquering one realm doesn't make you happy, why not try several?

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/13/2018 at 11:31 AM, companionenvy said:

There's a difference between expecting a perfectly developed eschatology, and having some minimally coherent version of an afterlife. It is one thing if you have an afterlife that isn't based on any concept of justice - that's actually consistent with the Greek underworld. But the show weirdly seems to want to have their cake and eat it too, where there's some concept of reward and punishment, but the rules as given don't seem in any way likely to lead to what would be a just outcome.

Yeah, there's way too much inconsistency here. It's totally okay to have an afterlife that isn't based on morality or justice, but if you then use imagery associated with the Western popular culture versions of heaven and hell -- going upward into glowing clouds, falling down into a fiery pit -- which are generally associated with good and evil (or, in some Christian traditions, repentance and sin), then you can't complain if your audience is bothered when it looks like evil people are going to heaven. If their afterlife isn't based on good and evil, they they needed more neutral imagery, like a door or passage to move on to a new place, not necessarily upward into bright clouds. And they probably needed to ditch the "bad place" concept entirely -- either you move on or you're stuck in the Underworld until you're ready to move on. But there they wanted drama and tension with potential consequences so we'd worry what would happen when the various characters tried to move on. The door shutting in their face or the passage being blocked wouldn't be as dramatic as wondering if the person would fall into the fire or go up into not-heaven.

But then they were inconsistent on what value was being rewarded, what "moving on" was about. Sometimes it was the "unfinished business" thing, like Hercules needing to finish his Labors. Sometimes it was that "forgive yourself" thing, like with Liam. Though it gets kind of gross if the way you get into heaven is by forgiving yourself for your sins. It's one thing if you're merely being hard on yourself for not being perfect, like beating up on yourself for having wasted too much of your life discussing badly written TV shows, but when you made a deal with Hades to let a whole ship's crew die in exchange for personal advancement, it's kind of weird for it all to be okay because you forgave yourself. It's probably the worst people who would have the easiest time forgiving themselves. They might have been better off picking a different value to judge by -- like, the people in the Underworld are the ones still clinging to their past lives and they have to let all that go to move on. That seems to be where Henry Sr. was (still worrying about Regina) and where Hook ended up being (he had to let Emma go to go have a life without him).

On 10/13/2018 at 11:31 AM, companionenvy said:

As for the practical issue of needing Hook to be in the underworld but not be dead, that would have been really easy to do if they hadn't, you know, had his body taken away on a freaking gurney. If Hook had been pulled down to the underworld while alive, that would have given an obvious out for saving him without setting a precedent in which anyone could theoretically be saved.

That's even what we saw before when Rumple died as a Dark One, so there was precedent.

And it still bothers me that we never found out what actually happened with Hook -- was his moldering corpse healed and revived, so his former grave is now empty? Or was his spirit body that he had in the Underworld made corporeal in a form that could return to our world, so there's still a Hook body in the grave even while he's also alive? Why did his spirit body have a hook? Why did Emma think that sticking her heart in his spirit -- since his body was back in the morgue in Storybrooke -- would bring him back to life? It worked with David because the heart was put into his actual body.

If you're going to tackle something as huge as the afterlife, the kind of thing that has had philosophers and theologians debating and thinking throughout human existence, you really need to put some thought into it. You can't just throw a lot of random things in because plot. The way a society views the afterlife has a big impact on that society. These people definitely don't act like a culture in which the way you go to heaven is to leave no unfinished business when you die, and learning this definitively didn't change the way they acted.

On 10/13/2018 at 8:16 PM, Camera One said:

In the Enchanted Forest, Regina was presumably used to servants.  Yet in Storybrooke, she didn't hire a maid for cleaning or have a nanny for Henry (that we could see).  She also seemed to have learned how to cook.  I can't imagine The Evil Queen slaving away in the castle kitchen.

That's like my recurring question about where the Black Knights went. Regina presumably had servants and she had her own private army (many of whom she seems to have controlled via their hearts). Where did these people go in the curse? She seems to have had some control over what became of people in the curse, so she didn't make any of these servants work for her? We could have at least seen a uniformed maid in the background at her house or a gardener working in the lawn. And Graham should have had a whole sheriff's department full of former Black Knights. Even if the curse didn't automatically give Regina maids and a cook, you'd think she'd have hired some pretty quickly. Why make Snow a teacher instead of her personal slave?

These people just don't know how to revenge properly.

[KAOS Agent]

The Underworld had zero coherence to it. It seems pointless to try to make it have some kind of sense. They never put any thought into it other than to have certain characters move on or not. How they did that varied too much and was often dependent on factors not changeable for those in the Underworld. For example, they had people in the Underworld who could not move on of their own volition, but required the action of another to do so. How exactly does that work? Those poor sailors that died because of Liam's deal only moved on when Liam came clean. Milah's unfinished business was with her son, who had skipped the Underworld, so how was she to resolve things with him? Auntie Em and Henry Sr both were similarly afflicted. How nice for Henry that Regina came by. I have no idea how the horse was supposed to move on or why it required Regina to help him. And then there was that poor kid who sat in Granny's all day every day and never spoke and hadn't for decades. How messed up is that? 

People like Cora and Cruella were living quite well in the Underworld while good people like Megara were being tortured. Others just suffered in mindless drudgery. Auntie Em was turned into a mindless husk, as were Milah, Gaston and James. How is that a reasonable ending for them when someone like Cora or even Liam gets to move on?  How come Zeus was letting this madness go on?

I think it might have been better to say that the Underworld was like a different kingdom run by Hades who was stealing the souls of people as they died and trapping them in his domain. Then they could have freed everyone at the end and they could end up in whatever afterlife they originally were headed for. Hook would have still not been saved by Emma in the way she thought, but she would be freeing him to move on and then they could still have gone with the Zeus giving him a second chance at life.

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, there's way too much inconsistency here. It's totally okay to have an afterlife that isn't based on morality or justice, but if you then use imagery associated with the Western popular culture versions of heaven and hell -- going upward into glowing clouds, falling down into a fiery pit -- which are generally associated with good and evil (or, in some Christian traditions, repentance and sin), then you can't complain if your audience is bothered when it looks like evil people are going to heaven. If their afterlife isn't based on good and evil, they they needed more neutral imagery, like a door or passage to move on to a new place, not necessarily upward into bright clouds. And they probably needed to ditch the "bad place" concept entirely -- either you move on or you're stuck in the Underworld until you're ready to move on. But there they wanted drama and tension with potential consequences so we'd worry what would happen when the various characters tried to move on. The door shutting in their face or the passage being blocked wouldn't be as dramatic as wondering if the person would fall into the fire or go up into not-heaven.

But then they were inconsistent on what value was being rewarded, what "moving on" was about. Sometimes it was the "unfinished business" thing, like Hercules needing to finish his Labors. Sometimes it was that "forgive yourself" thing, like with Liam. Though it gets kind of gross if the way you get into heaven is by forgiving yourself for your sins. It's one thing if you're merely being hard on yourself for not being perfect, like beating up on yourself for having wasted too much of your life discussing badly written TV shows, but when you made a deal with Hades to let a whole ship's crew die in exchange for personal advancement, it's kind of weird for it all to be okay because you forgave yourself. It's probably the worst people who would have the easiest time forgiving themselves. They might have been better off picking a different value to judge by -- like, the people in the Underworld are the ones still clinging to their past lives and they have to let all that go to move on. That seems to be where Henry Sr. was (still worrying about Regina) and where Hook ended up being (he had to let Emma go to go have a life without him).

That's even what we saw before when Rumple died as a Dark One, so there was precedent.

And it still bothers me that we never found out what actually happened with Hook -- was his moldering corpse healed and revived, so his former grave is now empty? Or was his spirit body that he had in the Underworld made corporeal in a form that could return to our world, so there's still a Hook body in the grave even while he's also alive? Why did his spirit body have a hook? Why did Emma think that sticking her heart in his spirit -- since his body was back in the morgue in Storybrooke -- would bring him back to life? It worked with David because the heart was put into his actual body.

If you're going to tackle something as huge as the afterlife, the kind of thing that has had philosophers and theologians debating and thinking throughout human existence, you really need to put some thought into it. You can't just throw a lot of random things in because plot. The way a society views the afterlife has a big impact on that society. These people definitely don't act like a culture in which the way you go to heaven is to leave no unfinished business when you die, and learning this definitively didn't change the way they acted.

That's like my recurring question about where the Black Knights went. Regina presumably had servants and she had her own private army (many of whom she seems to have controlled via their hearts). Where did these people go in the curse? She seems to have had some control over what became of people in the curse, so she didn't make any of these servants work for her? We could have at least seen a uniformed maid in the background at her house or a gardener working in the lawn. And Graham should have had a whole sheriff's department full of former Black Knights. Even if the curse didn't automatically give Regina maids and a cook, you'd think she'd have hired some pretty quickly. Why make Snow a teacher instead of her personal slave?

These people just don't know how to revenge properly.

I love and agree with everything you written here. But the bold is definitely my favorite. And is so true! 

[Camera One]

I don't watch "The Walking Dead" but this bit of an article made me think about "Once Upon a Time":

Quote

We're usually tied into a pretty tight timeline. A lot of times, eight episodes will span what feels like half a day.... Specifically, season eight's arc played out over the course of a couple of days...

In the space of this season's first two episodes, more time has passed than passed in the span of the previous three seasons. It's an idea that new showrunner Angela Kang was very eager to explore, both for practical and thematic reasons.

After Season 1, the timeline on "Once" was similarly tight.  Do you think it helped or hurt the show?  Why do you think the Writers kept the timeline so compressed?  I suppose part of it came with the territory of a big bad per half-season arc.  With a constant threat, they couldn't let too much time pass by since villains don't necessarily take breaks.  But it felt like in several of the arcs that the villains DID take breaks.  Cora was MIA for segments of Season 2.  Peter Pan was similarly occupied at convenient times in 3A.  Ditto for Arthur in 5A and Hades in 5B.  

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

After Season 1, the timeline on "Once" was similarly tight.  Do you think it helped or hurt the show?  Why do you think the Writers kept the timeline so compressed?  I suppose part of it came with the territory of a big bad per half-season arc.  With a constant threat, they couldn't let too much time pass by since villains don't necessarily take breaks.  But it felt like in several of the arcs that the villains DID take breaks.  Cora was MIA for segments of Season 2.  Peter Pan was similarly occupied at convenient times in 3A.  Ditto for Arthur in 5A and Hades in 5B.  

I think other shows explain away poky villains better. Usually they weren't an immediate threat, only becoming a real problem toward the end of the season. Maybe they don't have their full power yet, or they don't want to attack right away. Or perhaps something good devolves into something bad. OUAT's schtick is that the villain is always in "ready to pounce" mode from the very beginning. Cora, Zelena, Hades, Ingrid, and Pan all already had plans set in motion when they were introduced. We never had a neutral party decide to be bad later in the game or the possibility of negotiation. It was always full throttle to the "ongoing battle of good vs. evil".

A&E needed to be more creative in stalling the conflict without making the characters look like lucky idiots. Shows like DS9 and BTVS were much better at doing a slow burn.

Edited October 16, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

After Season 1, the timeline on "Once" was similarly tight.  Do you think it helped or hurt the show?  Why do you think the Writers kept the timeline so compressed?

I think a lot of it had to do with cliffhangers. If you end each episode with a cliffhanger, then the next episode has to pick up pretty soon afterward, so there's little time between episodes. Then there are big cliffhangers at the ends of arcs, so the next one has to pick up soon afterward.

Season one seemed a bit less cliffhangery, with more space between episodes. They might have had a big revelation at the end of an episode, but it was more about changing the status quo, not so much "what will happen next?" After that, they seemed to go more with each episode leading directly into the next one. Our biggest gap (other than from 6 into 7), the Missing Year, was built into the plot -- and was really a gap within the finale, since the cliffhanger was Hook showing up a year later, so the next episode still flowed directly from the cliffhanger, with no gap. There was also a bit of a gap in the middle of season 4, but that was the lame "look, there are a lot of books in this house!" cliffhanger (almost as lame as the coathangers) that didn't really lead to anything.

A show that had a really tight timeline, with the whole series taking place in less than two years, but that handled a slow burn well was Haven, and what they tended to do was mix Trouble-of-the-week episodes with arc episodes. In the beginning of the season, they'd be dealing with other cases, and in those cases they'd set up info about the arc stuff, then the arc would gradually take more prominence as the villain got more powerful or ramped up. This is where keeping up with the individual fairy tale cases like they did in season one would have helped, giving them something to do while hinting at the arc until the arc villain was ready to kick into high gear. Then again, they tried that again in season six and it fizzled out, but mostly because they didn't seem all that interested in it.

It's really tricky to do a tight timeline when you have a kid on the show (as they learned with Lost). You can't spend three years on one year in show time when one of your main cast members is a kid without it looking weird (unless the kid's young enough to recast without it being obvious, like baby Neal). A big part of the problem with Henry is that he was maybe about 12 for seasons 3B through 6, was written as though he was 10, but the actor was growing up a lot faster and the writers couldn't keep track of their own timeline, so they didn't know how old he was and he aged two years in dialogue while Neal remained an infant. By season 6, we had a character who looked about 16-17, who should have been 12, who was called 14, and who acted 10.

An advantage most of these other shows had was open borders -- a new villain could show up in town/on the space station and could come and go. With this show, it took a plot device for a new villain to arrive, and getting there was a big enough deal (unless it wasn't) that they couldn't leave once they were there. Or else they had to have been there all along and we just didn't know. So, once Cora was in town, she was there, and she looks silly if she doesn't immediately carry out her plan, but then if she does kick into gear with her plan they have to find a way to drag it out. Zelena was brought by Curse 2 (but at least she had an excuse for waiting to carry out her plan because she had to wait for the baby to be born). Ingrid was supposedly there all along. The Queens of Darkness had to go through some trickery to get to town, then couldn't leave. Then there were the arcs in which our characters were elsewhere, and then they were the ones waiting to act even though supposedly they wanted to carry out their mission and go home.

[companionenvy]

The compressed timeline was also sometimes a real problem for character relationships - even the ones that more or less work. Emma and Hook's relationship had more development and more realistic progression than most others on the show, but still and all, since Neverland is supposed to be taking place over a week, it is a bit much for him to be getting to confessions of love and her to at least be starting to accept him as a legitimate romantic option given that he had been a villain literally days earlier.  Yes, it is a pretty intense week, and Hook bringing his ship back at the end of S2 was a big moment in building trust, but it is still jarring when you think about the actual timeline. Then, of course, there's Neal, who is pursuing Emma days after the woman he supposedly wanted to spend his life with has been revealed as a traitor and then killed. Or Regina and Robin's reactions to Marion's return, which are bad as it is, but far, far worse when you realize they haven't been dating for more than a few days. 

[andromeda331]

I think the compressed timeline hurt the show. As slow as it sometimes was in season one it still felt more natural. There was more of the unfolding of events that happened in the past that were important. They started off showing the Curse about to hit just as Emma's learning of the Curse from Henry. In the past we watch pieces come together, see Charming and Snow's relationship and where they came from. Snow and Regina, eventually Regina's (stupid) reason for casting the curse but her casting it, and Rumple working both sides trying to figure out what his game was. In the present we saw effects of the curse and Emma's small victories as she helped Ashley and Hansel and Gretel. the scope Regina's crimes. After that they shortened the timeline. Neverland took a week? Everything happened in a week. Hook and Emma's relationship developed in a week? Several weeks or months would make more sense. Had they done the same thing or similar as season one give Neverland time to reveal back stories or stuff like Hook's past with Peter Pan, Bae/Neal's time there while rescuing Henry. 3B had they really fleshed it out could have been a running storyline for an entire season with Snow and everyone adjusting to being back in the Enchanted Forest, devoting time to what it really was like for them to be back, were they happy or sad? Did anyone try to bring ideas from LWM to the Enchanted Forest? Democracy? Electricity? Jobs? Granny figuring out how to develop grocery stores and food processing? Show Snow, Charming, Regina, Hook and Neal trying every magic thing they could think of to get back to Emma and Henry and show it each failing and getting desperate. Or maybe finding a way to send Emma a sign for help as their dealing with Zelena. Time battling Zelena, time developing Regina and Robin. There was a lot there they could have really done with that storyline. It amazes me that they didn't learn from LOST's problem with Walt. Walt was suppose to be very important but because the timeline was in days and weeks and not years Walt ended up getting too old. Yet they do the same thing with Henry. 10 year old Henry running around talking about fairytales and stuff its cute and makes sense for his age. But not when he's 14 even if he really did look 14 and not older.  

[companionenvy]

I don't even think we necessarily needed to spend more show-time on all of these plotlines - sometimes that would have helped, and given room for an episode or two that developed backstory, but as far as I remember, I think they spent about as much time as appropriate in Neverland (not delving more deeply into things like Bae and Hook's time in the island was a matter of poor use of time, not of having enough of it - all it would have taken was a single flashback episode). But the show could have established that more time was passing, even if we didn't get to see countless scenes of the Nevengers spinning in circles and not accomplishing anything of meaning. 

By contrast, the six-week time jump between 4A and 4B was helpful because, for instance, it made it possible to imagine that Emma and Hook had been spending some normal couple time together and advancing their relationship. That way, when Emma becomes the DO, they aren't trying to salvage something that had only existed for a very few weeks; what they have is still pretty new, but under the circumstances, you can see it being meaningful enough to really fight for. Not that that absolves the writers of not embedding more character moments in what was on screen, but it also helps to have a sense that these characters have lives and interactions beyond the few minutes we're seeing them together. 

[KAOS Agent]

I always wonder how many of the character moments were ditched in editing. We know that they filmed a full 60 minutes of show for a 42 minute episode, so how much of that was "boring" dish washing conversations that didn't interest A&E? How much of what was cut was actually known by the writers? They spent time writing something and going over it again and again, which means they internalized it all and not remember that what they wrote wasn't what the audience saw. We know Adam was clueless because more than half the time the script teases he posted never even made it into the episode. This is a huge problem. I'm not sure he knows how bad it made him look when he did that. Not just because the fans got pissed, but because it makes him a piss poor showrunner to not even know what made the final cut. Obviously no one was marking up a final script of the episode.

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, companionenvy said:

The compressed timeline was also sometimes a real problem for character relationships - even the ones that more or less work.

I think a lot of the problem there is that the writers didn't keep track of their own timelines. They were writing things taking place in days or weeks but then treated them like they were happening in real time -- the amount of time that elapsed for viewers. So, Emma and Hook's relationship growth in Neverland took a week for them, which is pretty fast, but the writers seemed to forget that and treated it like it had been three months. Where they were at the end of that arc would have been appropriate for three months. Ditto with where they were at the end of season three. It was maybe a week since they'd been reunited after the missing year before they went on their time travel adventure together. I can kind of see Hook being where he was emotionally, since he'd had a year to think about Emma and her impact on his life. Emma had essentially had about a week between the farewell at the town line to them going back in time together. In between, she hadn't been aware he even existed and she'd been on the verge of getting engaged to someone else. It's total emotional whiplash for a week, but works if it was a couple of months (the way we experienced). Neal got over finding out that his fiancee had actually been an undercover operative using him to get access to Storybrooke and then her dying horribly after kidnapping his son and was ready to rekindle things with Emma (after having belittled her suspicions about his fiancee) after a few days, but the writers treated it like he'd had the whole summer hiatus to move on, which might have been appropriate. That's the same problem with Regina and Robin and the Marian situation. In show time, it was at most three days between their first kiss and Marian's return, which makes their extreme emotional reactions to being forced apart utterly ridiculous. But the show treated it as though the characters had experienced as much time as the viewers had, with about a month between that first kiss and Marian's arrival, and then when the show returned and the storyline picked up again in the fall, they seemed to also be counting the summer hiatus and treating it as though Regina and Robin had been together for close to six months, which is more reasonable.

So, we have more mutually exclusive stuff going on. They treated the timeline like it was really tight for the purpose of plot and action, with it taking an entire half season to cover maybe a week or two. But when it came to relationship progression and character interaction, they treated it like it was in real time, with months and years passing.

A problem with a really tight timeline is that unless you really work the "time stamps" and make it clear to the audience how much (or little) time is passing, relationship development will seem brutally slow if it's done realistically, taking years from the viewers' perspective for events spanning months to play out. I remember a lot of complaints in 3B about how Emma and Hook's will they/won't they was being dragged out, how slow their progression was, wondering if there really was a relationship developing since nothing was happening, etc. I seem to recall pointing out that we only saw the highlight reel of the Charmings getting together, but we were seeing the entire progression here, which was going to appear slower. But, really, it was all taking place in a week. Imagine how slow it would have felt to viewers if it had progressed more realistically according to the show timeline.

[Camera One]

When people really want two people together, it's going to feel slow and people will be impatient.   I wasn't a fan of the romance, so I liked the slow burn.

Part of it the tedium of 3B was also the repetition, such as Emma saying every episode she wanted to move back to NYC, without actually exploring her reasons and how torn she might feel, with actual conversations with relevant people in her life.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Part of it the tedium of 3B was also the repetition, such as Emma saying every episode she wanted to move back to NYC, without actually exploring her reasons and how torn she might feel, with actual conversations with relevant people in her life.

My biggest beef with 3B was that it did a lot of nothing. It had four major points - Zelena's introduction, Neal's death, Outlaw Queen, and Emma/Hook's time travel adventure. Everything outside of that was chaff. The Missing Year was pointless. We didn't need the stupid Rapunzel episode, or Snowing meeting Glinda for fifteen seconds, or a new Curse at all, really. Bleeding Through is one of the lowest points of the show because of how boring, tedious, and unnecessary it is. Zelena did not need two centrics to get her story across. It's a wonder how short the timelines are despite all the wasted time.

Edited October 16, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

When people really want two people together, it's going to feel slow and people will be impatient. 

True. With the really hardcore shippers, anything short of kissing is a huge disappointment. But I find that if it's done well, the interesting part is the leading up to the kissing, so I'm okay with a slow burn and think that Emma and Hook should have moved even more slowly because they had a lot of issues to overcome.

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Part of it the tedium of 3B was also the repetition, such as Emma saying every episode she wanted to move back to NYC, without actually exploring her reasons and how torn she might feel, with actual conversations with relevant people in her life.

That's really the key. Slow isn't so bad if there's forward momentum, but it feels even slower if it's just the same beats repeating over and over again. It goes back to the "let people react like human beings" thing. If they'd done that, things could have stayed slow and still been interesting. For instance, both with Emma and Neal, they found out that the person they were planning to marry was actually an enemy agent who was only involved with them to spy on them/use them, and then that person died. That's actually a pretty big deal that you'd think would affect the way they would approach future relationships. Even if they weren't upset by the person they were planning to marry getting killed (in Emma's case, killing him -- maybe) because the betrayal made that not as sad, that huge a betrayal would make anyone relationship gun-shy. But Neal seems to have just shrugged his shoulders, said, "Oh well, I guess there's always Emma," and moved on instantly. Emma, who is otherwise known for her WALLS, spent a few days talking about wanting to go back to New York before kissing and starting a relationship with a guy who has only recently stopped being a villain. As much as I love Hook and the way he was developed, this is really insane when you think about it. She was just duped in a relationship by a guy who turned out to be a villain. You'd think it would have taken a lot more time before she was willing to even consider getting together with a guy she knows has been a villain, who has betrayed her and worked with one of her enemies. The way he proved to be during the time travel adventure should have just been the start of her being willing to even remotely consider him as a possibility. It's way too soon for her to have wanted to start dating him.

An appropriate timeframe could have worked if they'd spent the time in the meantime on other relationships in her life, figuring things out with Henry, dealing with her parents, etc., and with Hook on his own doing more redemption work and establishing relationships with other people. Then they could have had the occasional scene between Hook and Emma in which their relationship progressed.

With most of the other relationships, they'd have had to actually develop a relationship. Like with Robin and Regina, there would have had to be something more than pixie dust and a tattoo. They'd have had to deal with their entirely incompatible chosen lifestyles, her sneering at poor people, his issues with "the rich," etc. (I guess that's the problem there -- if they'd tried to develop that relationship appropriately to reach the level at which them being split up would really have been a tragedy, it would have been painfully evident that there really was nothing there and Robin was far more compatible with Marian).

[Mitch]

On 10/13/2018 at 8:16 PM, Camera One said:

Seeing the first days of Storybrooke again made me wonder.  In the Enchanted Forest, Regina was presumably used to servants.  Yet in Storybrooke, she didn't hire a maid for cleaning or have a nanny for Henry (that we could see).  She also seemed to have learned how to cook.  I can't imagine The Evil Queen slaving away in the castle kitchen.  How did she become the relatable middle class professional that we saw in Season 1?  Why did she eventually gravitate towards pantsuits, when she had full memory of her garb in the Enchanted Forest?  

I can't believe Regina was cleaning toilets for 28 years..I would think a couple of her servants from the EF would have been made her housekeeper and gardner...but we never saw it...(I wanted Malificent to be Regina's put upon secretary at City Hall, and after Emma comes back and starts breaking the curse she gets more and more of her brain back and starts shooting zingers are Mayor Mills...) Welcome to SB had so much potential...(I wanted to see Regina watching Dynasty and then seeing her parading down Main Street with Big Ass Hair and shoulder pads as she thought that is how powerful women in our world dressed..) but as usual with this show, it missed it all to have Regina whine and kill someone...

[tennisgurl]

Of course, the eternal problem of Once, especially as the show went on, was that A&E got super excited about big OMG moments, and just focused on them, instead of using smaller moments to build up to the big OMG moments. I wonder if that all came from the first season finale, where the curse breaking really was a big epic moment that reset the show and got tons of OMG reactions from fans and critics, and I think they spent the rest of the show trying to recapture that magic. Some pun intended. 

Sadly, they didnt seem to get that the reason it was so big and epic is because it was built up with lots of smaller moments, where we got to know the setting and root for the characters, and it was these smaller, character building moments that made us care about the spell being broken. Just having big moments means that the show just seems like a bunch of padding until the final episode or two of the arc, before A&E ditch whatever was in that arc to play with their new toys, because they didnt really care about those moments anymore.

[KingOfHearts]

One of 2B's problems is that it speeds through and downplays things that should be a big deal. Snow finding out Geppetto lied about the wardrobe? One slap and it's over. Neal apologizing for how he treated Emma? Sandwiched between PLOT in the finale, so blink and you miss it. Rumple backsliding because of Lacey? Memory is cured a couple episodes later and Belle doesn't seem to care about it. Maleficent is still alive as a ghost? Hook runs away from her and that's it. The whole plot to use magic beans to get everyone back to the Enchanted Forest is derailed because Greg/Tamara's failsafe plot takes precedent. The characters bring up a lot of serious issues, but the only one that really gets addressed is Snow's guilt over killing Cora. Everything else is thrown into the air but no one sticks around to catch it.

I don't understand why so much was sacrificed on the altar of Greg, Tamara, and Regina. Regina's story is just her being a murderous ass. She doesn't really do anything but move doomsday along because she's an idiot. Her interactions with the other characters, like Neal, Emma, and Henry, suddenly don't matter. To me, the custody issue with Henry and her coexistence with Emma should've been more pressing than Snow's dark spot.

I don't think Emma is the end-all-be-all, but her passive state in 2B really hurts the arc. She doesn't do anything to influence the plot, other than investigate Tamara. But even then, Tamara was going to reveal herself anyway. Emma just reacts to what everybody else is doing and is barely there. It's interesting that in later arcs, whenever Emma is passive, the story tends to suck more.

Edited October 17, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[daxx]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's interesting that in later arcs, whenever Emma is passive, the story tends to suck more.

Because the writers forget it’s Emma’s story, or more likely hate the fact that it’s Emma’s story and they don’t want to write for her when they could be writing for Regina. But that’s just my opinion. 

[KAOS Agent]

Emma didn't have a story in 2B. They had no idea what to do with her and it showed. They brought Neal in, but that largely meant nothing. It was a minor subplot that they'd trot out as the C or D plot of an episode. I think this was yet another reason people were ditching the show in droves in 2B. They sidelined their lead heroine. People were drawn into this story watching real world Emma help save people. You didn't have to like Emma, but she was the audience's self insert to help ground the ridiculousness and with that missing from the show, everything lost focus. Rumpel and Belle are off doing their thing, Regina is alternately crying about what a victim she is and plotting to murder everyone, Greg/Tamara are just stupid, Neal is there, Hook is in the closet for actors with broken legs, Snow is catatonic and/or suicidal and Emma is given nothing to do to ameliorate any challenges the characters are facing.

[Camera One]

They had no idea to do with a lot of the characters in 2B. 

Their "plans" (if they even had any) to have Red become a regular fell through, and so did the supporting characters who got centrics in Season 1, becoming glorified extras.  

Snow and Charming's dilemma about where/how they want to live now that the Curse was over became the C plot, relegating formerly main characters to the sidelines.  In flashback, we never saw them take back the kingdom.  Significant scenes with Emma dwindled.   Snow's guilt was largely to set up everyone rallying behind Regina in the season finale and to even out the morality of the two sides.

Emma's link with her parents were slowly cast aside in this arc.  They brought on Neal, but never explored her reaction and response to having him back in her life.  

Henry became a full-out cheerleader, with Operation Nothing.

Once Rumple found his son, the storyline seemed to come to a grinding halt instead of exploring all the ramifications.  Neal stood around in the background, while there was filler with Belle as Lacey.  

The last six episodes were simply to get everyone on the same "side" so they could board a boat to Neverland.  There were so many more natural routes to get to that endpoint.  Instead, it was unnecessary convolution after unnecessary convolution until the end, most of which were moot.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

46 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

Hook is in the closet for actors with broken legs

You know, I see this invoked a lot by both fans and the actors as a big issue in 2B, and particularly for the relationship between Neal and Hook. But as I've been watching 2B, I'm pretty skeptical that Colin's lack of availability made a major difference. We know that tons of material wound up on the cutting room floor anyway, and so even if he had been able to film, there's a decent chance some of those scenes wouldn't have aired. But more than that, I really can't imagine they were going to have more than one brief, cryptic scene between Neal and Hook prior to the flashback episode, as anything else would have spoiled the surprise. Plus, the show can't even be bothered to devote time to the relationship between Neal and Rumple. I find it hard to believe that there was going to be this major build-up of Hook and Bae's past together in between everything else that was going on.

I also wonder what Hook would have been doing between "Manhattan" and "The Evil Queen." Consensus seems to be that Emma et al. wouldn't have left him locked in a closet in NYC, and would instead have brought him back to SB themselves. That makes sense - a lot more sense, actually, then them just shrugging and leaving him in the LWOM. So, I can imagine a scene during "The Queen is Dead" where Emma and Hook have a conversation - probably as she is locking his ass up again -- in which Emma is like, "WTF is wrong with you?" and Hook is all "Revenge, Revenge, Revenge" and Emma returns with "Maybe you want to reevaluate your life choices." This would have set up the conversation with Regina in "The Evil Queen" where he starts questioning being a villain and whether revenge is worth it. And again, during the same episode, I could maybe buy a very brief exchange with Neal that reinforces that there is some complicated history there. I can't see room for him in "The Miller's Daughter" or "Welcome to Storybrooke." I'm guessing that sometime during "Lacey," Tamara would have broken Hook out of jail, as she wouldn't have had to retrieve him in NY. And as I believe Hook would have to have found out that Rumple was still alive while he was cooling his heels in the cell in the sheriff's station, my guess is sometime  during "Selfless, Brave and True," we would have had a scene where Hook discovers this either from Emma or from Rumple himself. But I really doubt it would have been more than that. 

Apart from timing issues and wanting to preserve the surprise at the end of "Second Star to the Right" where Hook saves Bae, I don't think Neal and Hook could really have had a meaningful conversation at this point because of the Milah issue. There's just no way that any discussion between those two characters after Hook has just effectively murdered Neal's father for killing his lover/Neal's mother could have avoided that particular elephant in the room. But that would mean calling attention to the fact that Neal knows that Rumple killed Milah, and apparently just doesn't care, and I think even these writers would have realized that that was a bad idea. I mean, I suppose they could have been intending to have it come up, and then have that be a stated reason why Neal seems to be avoiding Rumple after their semi-reconciliation in "The Miller's Daughter," but it isn't like Neal didn't have plenty of reasons for avoiding Rumple without that. And again, the fact that Neal and Rumple's relationship is non-existent after the deathbed scene makes me highly skeptical that the show would have found room to do much with Hook.

[KAOS Agent]

4 hours ago, companionenvy said:

You know, I see this invoked a lot by both fans and the actors as a big issue in 2B, and particularly for the relationship between Neal and Hook. But as I've been watching 2B, I'm pretty skeptical that Colin's lack of availability made a major difference. We know that tons of material wound up on the cutting room floor anyway, and so even if he had been able to film, there's a decent chance some of those scenes wouldn't have aired. But more than that, I really can't imagine they were going to have more than one brief, cryptic scene between Neal and Hook prior to the flashback episode, as anything else would have spoiled the surprise. Plus, the show can't even be bothered to devote time to the relationship between Neal and Rumple. I find it hard to believe that there was going to be this major build-up of Hook and Bae's past together in between everything else that was going on.

By including him in that list, it was not my intent to imply that he was integral to the story or that 2B would have been awesome if Colin hadn't gone skiing. I was simply stating that he wasn't available and thus was not onscreen. Hook's role in the middle stages of 2B was that he was in a closet.

The finale was written after Colin broke his leg. My guess is that the "surprise" would have been revealed earlier and led to other things than what we got in 2B. Using Peter Pan outside of Hook wasn't something they got permission for until sometime in the middle of the season and they were eager to get to it.  The actors seemed to know that there was more significant stuff written for the two of them (since they would also have had the next script, I'm sure that they knew what they were talking about). I have no doubt given everything else we got during 2B that it was probably crap, but I do have to cut them a little slack that they'd lost the ability to use a character for three episodes that were already either completely written or close to it in addition to the rest of the episode they were currently filming. They had tons of extraneous footage to fill in, but there was a story there and it would have affected other things in the show as well. Hook features pretty heavily in the last few episodes, which I suspect was a condensed version of their plans for Hook's scheming. Colin was clearly struggling to walk in most of his scenes and I think he had to come back earlier than he should have. They needed Hook to get to the ending they wanted for the finale and losing the actor for a couple of months had to have been a major problem for them in building towards that point.

Edited October 18, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[companionenvy]

Oh, I didn't think you were saying that that was integral to the failure of 2B; your mention of it just reminded me of a thought I'd been having during the rewatch.

I'm sure there were a few substantive Hook scenes that had to be cut out - although again, given how many filmed scenes wound up never making it to air, it is possible if not probable that some of the scenes the actors are referring to would have been nixed anyway. But looking at the episodes we got, I just don't see tons of room for Hook, especially given that the show was already neglecting so many relationships.

Except maybe for Lacey, that part of the season didn't have any "filler" episodes. The show needed to set up Snow's killing of Cora and then deal with the aftermath. It needed to introduce Greg and Tamara, which means, much as I hated it, we need the August-centric episode. So the flashbacks were all pretty much accounted for, and the characters featured in the flashbacks generally wind up getting a lot of attention in the present as well. When you look at the relationships that did get some play without being part of the main plot/flashback of the episode, we're still really only talking about a few scenes; Neal and Emma don't, for instance, spend tons of significant time together between "Manhattan" and "Second Star to the Right" either, and there's more necessary reason for them to be together than for Neal and Hook.

Really, the only way I can imagine Colin's injury leading to massive changes - as opposed to losing a few scenes - is if I assume Belle turning into Lacey was a last-minute replacement for a Hook-heavy episode, as that's the one episode in that sequence that didn't really have ramifications for the season arc. But I doubt that was the case, and if so, that episode, too, was likely to be Hook-lite. 

[Camera One]

I think regardless, they would have left Hook's connection with Baelfire for the finale, since that flashback needed to correlate with his change of heart and his decision not to let everyone die.  

"The Miller's Daughter" is already pretty full.  This one had a deleted scene with Henry and Neal on the ship.  It's possible they could have had another scene on the ship between Neal and Hook or Emma and Hook, or perhaps another episode before returning to Storybrooke?  But they did need Rumple to get back ASAP so I don't know if they would have had time for that.

"Welcome to Storybrooke" was to reveal the origin of Greg, so that would have been in the works.

"Selfless, Brave and True" introduced Tamara, and I think she would have entered the story regardless of Hook.  But episode does have some extra "space", so Hook could have had a bunch of scenes in this one.   

[Mitch]

On 10/17/2018 at 3:35 PM, KingOfHearts said:

One of 2B's problems is that it speeds through and downplays things that should be a big deal. Snow finding out Geppetto lied about the wardrobe? One slap and it's over. Neal apologizing for how he treated Emma? Sandwiched between PLOT in the finale, so blink and you miss it. Rumple backsliding because of Lacey? Memory is cured a couple episodes later and Belle doesn't seem to care about it. Maleficent is still alive as a ghost? Hook runs away from her and that's it. The whole plot to use magic beans to get everyone back to the Enchanted Forest is derailed because Greg/Tamara's failsafe plot takes precedent. The characters bring up a lot of serious issues, but the only one that really gets addressed is Snow's guilt over killing Cora. Everything else is thrown into the air but no one sticks around to catch it.

I don't understand why so much was sacrificed on the altar of Greg, Tamara, and Regina. Regina's story is just her being a murderous ass. She doesn't really do anything but move doomsday along because she's an idiot. Her interactions with the other characters, like Neal, Emma, and Henry, suddenly don't matter. To me, the custody issue with Henry and her coexistence with Emma should've been more pressing than Snow's dark spot.

I don't think Emma is the end-all-be-all, but her passive state in 2B really hurts the arc. She doesn't do anything to influence the plot, other than investigate Tamara. But even then, Tamara was going to reveal herself anyway. Emma just reacts to what everybody else is doing and is barely there. It's interesting that in later arcs, whenever Emma is passive, the story tends to suck more.

 

They missed the  biggest reveal of all, which actually was tied to their "plot" Cora revealing to Regina that Emma has super powerful magic, but doesn't know it, and Emma and Snow don't talk about it..(Emma.."What the hell was that?" Snow: "THAT we can talk about when we get home") and is never discussed by them. For one thing I think Snow knowing Emma had magic would be big, and I would think that Cora would not only warn Regina about Emma's magic, but it would one of the reasons that Regina sides with Cora..knowing that not only is Henry's dad is in town (well,the way I would write it would be that the father's return would be a bigger reveal and happen before Regina hooks up with Cora) and have maybe Emma and Neal talk about taking Henry with them to the LWOM to get away from the craziness, and there is no way to stop Emma except maybe have powerful Cora become more powerful.  That would at least make Regina's motivations easier to understand.