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

[Camera One]

I just watched a scene from later in 3A where Henry is holding his "heart of the truest believer" and he says "It's going to save magic.  It's going to save all of you" to Emma, Neal and Regina.  Someone needs to cut that and edit it with what Henry says beside the well in 2B about wanting to destroy all magic because it's the cause of all problems, or his scenes in 5B in NYC.  A&E's MO is taking a character and treating them like a pendulum at each of the two extremes.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

57 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I just watched a scene from later in 3A where Henry is holding his "heart of the truest believer" and he says "It's going to save magic.  It's going to save all of you" to Emma, Neal and Regina.  Someone needs to cut that and edit it with what Henry says beside the well in 2B about wanting to destroy all magic because it's the cause of all problems, or his scenes in 5B in NYC.  A&E's MO is taking a character and treating them like a pendulum at each of the two extremes.

 

This is what A&E call "complexity". Now I know if I wanted to write three-dimensional characters, all I'd have to do is make them blatantly contradict themselves.

Edited November 3, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

I was on a deadline last week, so now I'm getting caught up on all the discussion.

I'm finding it harder to get through this rewatch because of how negative this show actually is. I think I was able to deal with it before the show ended because I had hope that it was going somewhere. A big part of what makes a story entertaining or enjoyable is catharsis -- building up to a big emotional release. That doesn't necessarily require a happy ending. You can get the same thing in tragedy. You just need the buildup and emotional payoff. And that's what this show never really got to. The negativity should have led to a huge turnaround with a big burst of joy, or it should have led to a big emotional burst of grief. But they were too busy rushing off to the next plot to really deal with it. And now that we know we'll never get that payoff, it's harder to rewatch. Emma's life really does suck, and I think that would have been easier to take if it had built toward some big moment of triumph, but I don't think that her being passive for Gideon was enough to get that payoff, nor was her bland wedding with Hook, especially because we kind of got a coda with her in the final season in which a major thing in her life (her second child, with her husband, and really having a family) happened offscreen and she was reduced to being essentially a member of the audience. If Emma had been given a true triumph that paid off all this other stuff, the whole series wouldn't have felt so negative.

Game of Thrones is an interesting comparison because that series doesn't try to lay claim to any particular moral viewpoint the way Once does. There are obvious things that the audience knows, like how sadistic murder is bad, but the show doesn't try to put too many labels on things. It's more or less amoral, where the good thing to do is one that causes the least harm, but that may be a killing. There's nothing about how good triumphs. Smart triumphs, and doing something "good" but stupid will get a lot of people killed, so is it really good? The Once attitude of "heroes don't kill people" or "there's got to be a better way" would get them all killed in a heartbeat. In the Game of Thrones universe, Snow would have been dead soon after letting Regina go. Even if Regina couldn't kill her, one of Snow's own people would have taken her out for letting Regina go after they just fought a war to stop her. Then again, in that universe, Snow would have been allowed to make the tough calls. She could have executed Regina without being considered a villain or without the guilt that she could have found a better way. She would have been hailed as a hero for taking out Cora. It would have been perfectly justified for her to have run Regina through with a sword after seeing the village massacre, and then she could have marched into her own castle holding Regina's severed head and prevented the war. Or she could have used the hug at her father's funeral as an opportunity to slip a dagger between Regina's ribs as she whispered, "I know you murdered him." Any of these actions would have prevented numerous deaths. In the GOT world, that would have made Snow a hero. In the Once world, her doing these things would have been considered dark. Which is more moral?

[Camera One]

Heck, even in a Disney movie, no one is crying that the evil villain has died.  The heroes ride off in their happily ever afters, NOT feeling guilty that they didn't lay there waiting to be killed.

The "Let's take the harder path" is usually
(1) Let's do nothing, or
(2) Let's surrender, or
(3) Let's do something random hoping it would work, or
(4) Let's wait for the magical deux-ex-machina to appear to solve all our problems, or
(5) All of the above

[companionenvy]

25 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm finding it harder to get through this rewatch because of how negative this show actually is. I think I was able to deal with it before the show ended because I had hope that it was going somewhere. A big part of what makes a story entertaining or enjoyable is catharsis -- building up to a big emotional release. That doesn't necessarily require a happy ending. You can get the same thing in tragedy. You just need the buildup and emotional payoff. And that's what this show never really got to. The negativity should have led to a huge turnaround with a big burst of joy, or it should have led to a big emotional burst of grief. But they were too busy rushing off to the next plot to really deal with it. And now that we know we'll never get that payoff, it's harder to rewatch. Emma's life really does suck, and I think that would have been easier to take if it had built toward some big moment of triumph, but I don't think that her being passive for Gideon was enough to get that payoff, nor was her bland wedding with Hook, especially because we kind of got a coda with her in the final season in which a major thing in her life (her second child, with her husband, and really having a family) happened offscreen and she was reduced to being essentially a member of the audience. If Emma had been given a true triumph that paid off all this other stuff, the whole series wouldn't have felt so negative.

I made a similar post about how depressing the show is a few days ago. Even though it happens largely offscreen, I do find the fact that I know that Emma finally winds up happy consoling, but knowing how thoroughly so many of my hopes and expectations are going to be disappointed makes the rewatch tough going. I think where it is going to be the worst is Season 5, which I actually enjoyed a lot the first time around. I thought both the Dark One/Camelot and Underworld arcs were interesting premises, and both included some great scenes. But much of the pleasure of watching 5A, for me, came from the expectation that Emma's capacity for love would be what allowed her to defeat the darkness. Instead, after spending so much of the previous few seasons being told she needed to let down her walls and, more recently, embrace her magic, suddenly, both using her magic and acting on her love for Hook is a bad thing that needs to be narratively punished. Similarly, having Emma fail to save Hook and have Hook save himself in 5B isn't such a bad idea on its own terms, until you realize that the show isn't going to end with a grand triumph for Emma. As you said, a character sitting back and letting someone else kill her just doesn't provide that level of satisfaction.

Beyond its morality being in some ways less troubling, Game of Thrones actually provides WAY more satisfaction than Once. Off the top of my head, I can think of tons of moments of unmitigated triumph in Game of Thrones to counter the scenes of death and doom. In Once, it's a real struggle, unless I start counting moments in which Regina or Rumple get big wins. I suppose that's what is bound to happen when your moral code treats any proactive response on the part of heroes as a sign of incipient darkness.

[Shanna Marie]

On 11/3/2018 at 9:37 AM, KingOfHearts said:

It's weird that Regina would choose to hang out with the people who should hate her.

It's weird that Regina chooses to hang out with people she hates. She never said anything about realizing Snow wasn't a murderer or a monster. She never stops making snide remarks critical of Emma. So why would she want to spend time with these people?

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's weird that Regina chooses to hang out with people she hates. She never said anything about realizing Snow wasn't a murderer or a monster. She never stops making snide remarks critical of Emma. So why would she want to spend time with these people?

Good question

[tennisgurl]

I think they tried to make it seem like Regina cared about the rest of the Charmings and their friends, but I never really got that vibe from her. Maybe its because Regina just never projects any real warmth in her interactions with anyone, even with Henry, who is supposed to be the most important person in her life. She has her moments, especially in the last few seasons, and she could give off feelings of affection, but I just never got that she really liked anyone, or cared a whole lot about them, she just likes when people like her. Especially with the Charmings. She always acts like she just tolerates them, even while they beg her to take them to prom, especially Snow.

[Camera One]

From "Lost Girl" episode discussion:

21 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The flashbacks should be about the Neverland characters or about the aspects of their lives that are related to Neverland. 

Most of the flashbacks in 3A should have been about Neverland, but that was the exception rather than the rule (eg. Hook's flashback with Liam was one).  I wonder if that was because they didn't want the present-day set in Neverland AND the flashback set in Neverland.  

[Shanna Marie]

7 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Most of the flashbacks in 3A should have been about Neverland, but that was the exception rather than the rule (eg. Hook's flashback with Liam was one).  I wonder if that was because they didn't want the present-day set in Neverland AND the flashback set in Neverland.  

I think at one point I counted, and Regina was involved in the majority of the flashbacks in spite of having no real history with Neverland and no link to the Peter Pan story. So I'm guessing that's the real reason for the flashbacks we got. They wanted Regina to get her moments in the spotlight. Setting variety came far down on the list. And they did flashbacks set in the Enchanted Forest in 2A when much of the present-day story was set in the Enchanted Forest.

There was a lot of potential material in Neverland. We never did get to see the fairies Wendy told Bae about, just Tinkerbell, who didn't show up there until much later. We could have seen some real Lost Boys vs. Pirates battles. We could have seen what Bae did to escape Pan. We could have seen Hook making his deal for cake runs with Pan. We could have seen Hook watching over Bae and them becoming friends (I know this show's standards for friendship are really low, but the bit we saw of Bae on the Jolly Roger really doesn't account for the way they talked about whatever relationship they had). We could have seen Bae's eventual escape. For related stories, we could have seen some of Emma's past that made her a Lost Girl or Snow's time lost and alone soon after she was orphaned. I guess they'd have had to focus on Regina for the Tink story (though I'd be okay with totally changing Tink's backstory and skipping the Robin Hood pixie dust). And I guess we needed Snow vs. Regina for the Ariel backstory (I almost forgot that she first showed up in a Snow story, since Ariel later became primarily associated with Hook).

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And they did flashbacks set in the Enchanted Forest in 2A when much of the present-day story was set in the Enchanted Forest.

Maybe they were okay with that because most of the 2A episodes also featured Storybrooke, so there was already variety in locations.

3A definitely had a plethera of missed opportunities in terms of backstories.  Considering we still had Neal on the show, you'd think we would have gotten more of his past as Baelfire.  We never saw Neverland in its heyday in terms of events from the "Peter Pan" movie or novel.  A lot of the Peter Pan characters (Hook, Tink, Tiger Lily) focused on what happened to them BEFORE their Neverland years.  

It is also really telling that A&E couldn't care less what happened to all the Lost Boys.  It could have been a very happy satisfying reunion when they got to be with their families again but once the climax was over, it was more like Lost Boys who?

Edited November 6, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

They should have done the flashbacks like Season one let them unfold and tell a story. Neverland's story Hook and Pan dealings, the pirates and lost boys, mermaids, Bae and his time there, how did he escape, how does he and Tinkerbelle know each other. Did Hook watch over Bae after turning him over? Rumple and Pan should have been two powerful magic users who battled each other many times not father and son. It wouldn't be a stretch that Rumple crossed Pan and Pan crossed Rumple. His wanting Bae and later Henry were ways to get back at Rumple or get him to come to Neverland where he has the advantage.  Another missed opportunity was Snow and Emma bonding over their crappy teen years. Like when they find Tinkerbelle's home and Snow recognizes it because she had one like it. Emma seemed surprised. These two should have talked about that. That would have been a great way for Snow to relate to her daughter. Both ran away from home although for different reasons and had to learn to survive by stealing. We could have seen how Snow learned how to do all that or from who.  Season Two should have been the fallout of the Curse with the unfolding of Sleeping Beauty. They already had enough reasons for Maleficent to hate almost the entire main cast and want them dead and went to the trouble to cast Aurora and Philip. It would tie the stories together. We could see Regina-Maleficent friendship or maybe that's Regina's get out of jail free card since they used to be friends. Season one flashbacks worked because they mostly were telling a story how the Curse happened and why, how Snow and Charming met, Snow met Ruby, Rumple, and other main characters. 

Edited November 6, 2018 by andromeda331

[KingOfHearts]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

3A definitely had a plethera of missed opportunities in terms of backstories. 

As bad as 3A was in terms of missing opportunities, 3B is so much worse. 3B actually overcompensated for its backstory with Zelena, but then we got next to zilch for the Missing Year or non-Zelena-related Oz. But hey - we got to see Rapunzel, Lumiere, and Zelena's douchebag dads!

Edited November 6, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

20 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think at one point I counted, and Regina was involved in the majority of the flashbacks in spite of having no real history with Neverland and no link to the Peter Pan story. So I'm guessing that's the real reason for the flashbacks we got. They wanted Regina to get her moments in the spotlight.

What was so ridiculous about this was that they took unrelated Regina stories and shoved them into Neverland rather than actually having Pan mess with Regina in the way he did everyone else. They went out of their way to remove Regina from the psychological games Pan was playing with everyone and it made zero sense. She was the first person he should have targeted because she was so obviously the weakest link.

She basically wandered around contributing nothing but disdain for the others who had to struggle with the stuff being thrown at them by Pan. She was conspicuous in her absence in the Echo Cave thing. It had to have deliberate for her to have been left alone. There were numerous ways they could have incorporated her into the Neverland games and they ignored all of them.

[tennisgurl]

As much as they talk about how Neverland was this super magic hub where anything and everything is possible, I always felt that it never really lived up to its potential. By saying that it was a darker time in Neverland or whatever, it robbed it of most of what made Neverland Neverland. It could have been any island, just it was one with a skull island and evil Peter Pan. 

Of course, that would go onto be a hallmark of the show, with every new land just looking like the last one, with slightly different aesthetics sometimes. 

[companionenvy]

What's crazy to me with Neverland is that it would be a comparatively easy fix. This show has some fundamental problems, but a single flashback episode involving Hook, Pan, Bae and maybe Tink in Neverland would have gone a long way to addressing this particular glaring hole in the story. I can understand the showrunners not wanting to make the arc too Hook-centric, especially as they wanted Rumple's backstory with Pan to be the one that carried the most dramatic weight. But in an arc that has such essential flashbacks as Charming tricking Snow into believing in herself, they had ample room for some treatment of the traditional Neverland story. 

Like...you have two regulars who have spent years on Neverland. One of them is the iconic villain of the traditional Peter Pan story. But instead, you decide that the stories you need to tell involve Peter Pan being the Pied Piper and the father of Rumplestiltskin, and Captain Hook's brother dying on a non-Pan related jaunt to Neverland. Not that I didn't like "Good Form" - and, unlike a lot of people, I actually thought Pan being Rumple's father was a good twist as well -- but even so, at a certain point, you need to give me some version of the actual story. Alluding to a period of well over a century in which Hook is grudgingly working for Pan while also sometimes engaging in fierce battles with villainous lost boys and apparently helping Bae in some capacity and also probably sleeping with bitter ex-fairy and sometime-ally Tinkerbelle, and then never showing any of it on screen, is writerly malpractice. 

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

As much as they talk about how Neverland was this super magic hub where anything and everything is possible, I always felt that it never really lived up to its potential.

They didn't even manage to show the Neverland Wendy described. Neverland might have been drained of magic by the present, but Hook and Bae were there not long after Wendy's visit, so we could have seen the fairies and more mermaids in flashback, along with battles between pirates and Lost Boys. It was supposed to be the land of fun adventures for boys who didn't want to grow up, but it seemed like a pretty boring place.

22 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Another missed opportunity was Snow and Emma bonding over their crappy teen years. Like when they find Tinkerbelle's home and Snow recognizes it because she had one like it. Emma seemed surprised. These two should have talked about that. That would have been a great way for Snow to relate to her daughter. Both ran away from home although for different reasons and had to learn to survive by stealing.

That really would have been nice. It seemed like Emma felt like her mother couldn't understand her because how could a fairy tale princess get what it was like to be a homeless teenager, so learning more about Snow's life might have forged a real connection between them.

2 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

What was so ridiculous about this was that they took unrelated Regina stories and shoved them into Neverland rather than actually having Pan mess with Regina in the way he did everyone else. They went out of their way to remove Regina from the psychological games Pan was playing with everyone and it made zero sense.

That is interesting, now that I think about it. They usually can't resist inserting Regina front and center into everything, but they left her out of it. It goes back to that thing where they treat her like a favorite person, not like a favorite character. With a character, the one you like is the one who gets the interesting stuff written for them -- like all the psychological games. With a favorite person, you don't want bad things to happen and you want it to be easy for her.

[profdanglais]

8 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I can understand the showrunners not wanting to make the arc too Hook-centric

Can you? Because it seems pretty pointless to even bother with Neverland if they weren't going to do anything with Hook. Why not just go to a different part of the EF if they wanted to do Rumple and his dad? 

I think part of the problems with Neverland are the lack of imagination from the writers and their character preferences, but I can't help wondering if it also came down to budget. Mermaids and fairies and battles must be expensive. I like this arc much better now than when I first watched it, but I realise that's pretty much just because of the CS development. At the time, I was mostly wondering if they were ever going to stop wandering around through an unconvincing jungle and actually do something. That question still needs an answer. 

[companionenvy]

58 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

Can you? Because it seems pretty pointless to even bother with Neverland if they weren't going to do anything with Hook. Why not just go to a different part of the EF if they wanted to do Rumple and his dad? 

Well, I love Hook, so I would personally have been thrilled if he had become one of the unquestioned leads of the show. But as he wasn't a character from the hugely successful season 1, and was just being upgraded from secondary villain status in the previous season, I can see being anxious about centering too much of the season around a relative newbie. In the end, I think this kind of fear wound up being destructive; it is the reason the show couldn't move past still more EQ and Snowing flashbacks, or give Rumple lasting development. But I can in theory understand why they weren't willing to give us an extended flashback Neverland arc. While they did that, in effect, for the Frozen characters, those were reliably, wildly popular characters, and even there they made sure that many of the flashbacks had Anna intersecting with main canon characters like Charming, Rumple and Belle.

There's no excuse, however, for not giving us something of the Neverland backstory on screen. 

[Camera One]

I think A&E would feel that they did tell the Neverland backstory in the sense that they were more interested in the characters from the Peter Pan story and how they came to be, rather than the land itself.  It's possible they didn't clearly define in their minds how Neverland was unique as a place - it was simply a land that "runs on belief".  I'm not even sure what that means or if that was handled consistently.  In 3A, they showed how Peter Pan came to be.  I don't think they cared or even conceived what Peter Pan was doing all those years since his rationale of wanting to become a "kid" (more like a young man) forever simply meant he didn't want responsibility.  I guess eventually, he was trying to find the prophetic Henry, so they told the story of what happened to the Darlings.  They had a flashback showing how he got the Lost Boys.   In the present, it seems like "playing" was just the "boys" hurting each other so maybe that was all that went on during those "magical" years of Neverland.  They had a flashback showing Captain Hook's origin story and how he became Pan's lackey.  They had another flashback showing Tinkerbelle's origin story.  The fact that they had the Baelfire actor back and chose to do that Pied Piper episode showed that their interest was in Rumple.  How Baelfire escaped was told in the present-day by Neal.  After the Season 2 finale, they seemed to have lost interest in telling Baelfire's POV.  

Edited November 7, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

As we enter the holiday season, I'm still disappointed we never got Santa Claus to be on the show. Maybe in the Enchanted Forest, he was actually evil? That seems to be the angle the show would go with. I wish we could've gotten more folklore characters, like the Tooth Fairy, Cupid, etc.

Edited November 9, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

It would have been so cool to go to a holiday world type place, like the ones we saw in Nightmare Before Christmas. They could have even had it as a Christmas or Halloween episode or something! Did the EF have holidays? We know they dont have Thanksgiving (lol), but did they have anything else? 

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I wish we could've gotten more folklore characters, like the Tooth Fairy

I'm assuming Blue fired her too.

[Camera One]

I was thinking about Season 6.  Could you imagine an alternate Season 6 which had all the same new actors, but it was set in Storybrooke instead of Hyperion Heights?  So Emma, Snow, Charming, Belle, etc. would be offscreen until the season finale (fine, Emma and Belle could appear once before the finale).  We would only see Hook, Regina and Rumple with the new characters.  Could you conceive a story where this might work?

Edited November 9, 2018 by Camera One

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was thinking about Season 6.  Could you imagine an alternate Season 6 which had all the same new actors, but it was set in Storybrooke instead of Hyperion Heights?  So Emma, Snow, Charming, Belle, etc. would be offscreen until the season finale (fine, Emma and Belle could appear once before the finale).  We would only see Hook, Regina and Rumple with the new characters.  Could you conceive a story where this might work?

When the first started talking about the reboot/finale casting spoilers, I legit thought this was what they would do. 

Henry leaves for college. 

Curse gets cast again.  Storybrooke redux of Ground Hog day and alternate personalities.

Something happens that causes Henry to be disillusioned or self loathing and cut ties from Storybrooke, not finding out what happened.

A kid, Emma's and Hook's (previously seen in the Henry leaves for college montage and unaged relative to Henry), breaks free of the curse (tru love kid magic) and goes to find her brother to save everyone.

When Henry crosses into Storybrooke, time restarts and they redux season 1 with new characters. Some we know, some from Henry's life outside Storybrooke, and some who are mysteriously new to Storybrooke.  But there are also many glaring and mysterious absences making Storybrooke eerily empty, providing the necessary budget cuts.

The central mystery becomes who cast the curse, how can it be broken, and how is the Charmings disappearance related to that.

Curse gets broken at mid season and the central arc becomes a quest to find Emma, her parents (and any others that are missing) across fairy tale lands (which was also frozen until time started in Storybrooke) with Storybrooke as home base. Emma is probably under a sleeping curse and Hook wakes her with TLK in the series finale.

 

 

.

[andromeda331]

I know its well known that Rumple's a coward. But after reading some of the latest replies on this thread and the re-watch Regina's every bit of a coward as he is.  She dresses it up in her power and like she doesn't have any choice. But she's had so many choices. Before casting the Curse her father suggests they leave and start over. Regina could have done that. Maybe gone to a different world and had a new start. No she refuses to because all her power would be gone and still needing revenge. Way back when Regina gets rid of Cora. She didn't have to marry Leopold then. She was free to call off her engagement and could have done whatever she wanted. Remain at her family's nice estate or left. She instead chose to marry. In Quite a Common Fairy she complains about how horrible her life is. Except she has all the power of Queen and clearly none of the responsibility, she can come and go as she pleases and has all the time in the world to meet with the Dark One for magic lessons. Then also in the episode she gets a chance to meet her soulmate. So if she was as miserable as she claims, this was a chance to leave. Or even just meet him and see what she thought. She could have left and started a new life with her soulmate. Instead she bails and goes off on Tinkerbelle. Blaming her when all she did was try to help her. So at least three times Regina had the chance to start over and she turned it down. Three times. Then after the Curse breaks and she doesn't end up paying for anything she's done (still angry about that) Regina sticks around. She doesn't like anyone in Storybrooke and probably hates everyone. But she won't leave. She could cross the town line and start over. She could go back to EF land or any of the other lands and started her over. But she won't. She's a coward. She'd much rather stay in a life she doesn't want or stay in a town with everyone she hates except Henry then to leave and start over.   

[KingOfHearts]

The show's storytelling gets a little wonky whenever it's telling a different story but wants to keep the main characters relevant. Regina was in five separate flashbacks in 3A. That's almost half of the episodes. But how would you appropriately give her a connection to the Neverland story for her centric? She had no business being in Ariel's story. Were the "Save Henry" flashbacks the only ones that made any narrative sense? She had to be slotted in somewhere.

Edited November 11, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

She had no business being in Ariel's story. 

But then we wouldn't have that brilliant twist that there was another Ursula that would never appear again.

3A is a beautiful chapter in the love story to Regina.  In the flashbacks, we saw the journey from her lonely existence and deep wish for a soulmate in "Quite a Common Fairy" to finding an avenue to express the love she had deep within in "Save Henry".  In between, she was able to work together with her former enemies in the present, while treating us to some wonderful "harm some civilians" classic Evil Queen moments in the past.  Regina had regrets and had no regrets and is a vulnerable tyrant.  It takes master storytellers to write a walking contradiction, a once-in-a-generation feat.

[KingOfHearts]

28 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It takes master storytellers to write a walking contradiction, a once-in-a-generation feat.

She is truly the deepest and most complex character ever written in the history of mankind. Only master storytellers could turn a mass-murdering tyrant into the benevolent Good Queen of the universe. 

Edited November 11, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Now that we're watching 3A, would you write in a cameo or an episode for Tiger Lily into this half-season?  If so, where/when/what?  Would it have added anything to the story?  

Edited November 11, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Now that we're watching 3A, would you write in a cameo or an episode for Tiger Lily into this half-season?  If so, where/when/what?  Would it have added anything to the story?  

The problem is that she's a fairy. There's not a reason to have two exiled fairies on the same island. It probably would've made more sense if Tiger Lily had been replaced with Tinkerbell in S6/S7. (Except for Hook's rescue. That'd have to be reworked.) Maybe Tiger Lily's family could've lived on the island as the caretakers before Pan or the Shadow arrived? Maybe she's the last surviving one?

[Camera One]

26 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Maybe Tiger Lily's family could've lived on the island as the caretakers before Pan or the Shadow arrived? Maybe she's the last surviving one?

That would have been pretty awesome.  

Though I wouldn't want to change perfection (A&E's Tiger Lily).  I'm tearing up right now thinking about all she did to try to help Fiona.  Need to grab my tissues.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

The problem is that she's a fairy. There's not a reason to have two exiled fairies on the same island.

Except Wendy specifically mentioned fairies as one of the wonderful things about Neverland after her brief trip. Tink wouldn't show up until much later. So there should have been other fairies there. Maybe not exiled fairies, but there should have been some kind of fairies.

[Camera One]

Tiger Lily would have been there.  This deleted scene might help.

------

A LONG TIME AGO

In the sky, a FAIRY flies rapidly towards the Flower Petals Office.  

TIGER LILY:  Blue!  Blue!  Where are you!

Flower Petals open to reveal the BLUE FAIRY.

BLUE:  Yes, I'm here.  There is no need to shout.  What is the problem.

TIGER LILY:  Malcolm - Fiona's husband - used a bean to get to Neverland and now he's the ruler of the realm.  

BLUE: Well, whose fault is that?  If you hadn't tried to help Fiona, we wouldn't be in this mess.  Now where did Malcolm get the magic bean?  

TIGER LILY: The Spinner sisters gave a bean to the boy, Rumplestiltskin, and he gave it to his father.

BLUE: How did the Spinner sisters get the bean?  Mauve!  Dirt Brown!

MAUVE FAIRY: We're here, Blue.  

BLUE:  You and Dirt Brown were in charge of the magic bean delivery last month.  I have been told that a wayward bean ended up in a village.  Tell me how that happened.

DIRT BROWN FAIRY:  We are so sorry, Blue.  You see, we were trying to help a poor misunderstood young man named Bluebeard who is an outcast because he has a blue beard.

BLUE: Do you know who Bluebeard is?  He kills his wives!  

MAUVE FAIRY:  Everyone deserves a chance to turn their life around.  We wanted to help him find his soul mate, the lady with the unicorn tattoo.

DIRT BROWN FAIRY: He didn't want our bean and threw it out the window but we couldn't find it anymore.

BLUE:  I CAN'T STAND YOU BLEEDING HEARTS ANYMORE!!!!  Tiger Lily, Mauve and Dirt Brown, all three of you have been demoted and your assignment for the next thousand years will be to watch Malcolm and Neverland.  Now fly to the second star on the right, and I don't want to see you again until magic starts running out in Neverland!

Edited November 11, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Neverland was originally created by Blue as a penal colony for bad fairies. The Shadow is the combined "questionable choices" of all the fairies who've been imprisoned there.

[KAOS Agent]

7 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Regina was in five separate flashbacks in 3A. That's almost half of the episodes. But how would you appropriately give her a connection to the Neverland story for her centric?

Regina was overloaded in the backstories for an arc based on Neverland, but I think some of that was because they had three Snow-centrics early in the season to accommodate Ginny Goodwin's pregnancy and possible limited availability later on. They had zero creativity in giving Snow a flashback that didn't involve the Evil Queen - and they adore the Evil Queen anyway - so we got lots and lots of Regina.  That said, I think it would have been very easy to create a Regina-centric that fit in Neverland. As I mentioned a bit ago, Pan messed with all of the characters except Regina. This was a huge mistake in my mind and this is how they could easily have given her a Neverland-based story in the present while using an Enchanted Forest based flashback. Just have Pan playing psychological games with her in the present, while someone else (either Rumpel or Cora probably) playing games with her in the past. The parallel comes with her reacting differently and positively affecting things in the present, which would give her a much better redemptive moment than acknowledging murder, torture and curses and not regretting it at all because it got her what she wanted. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

Neverland was originally created by Blue as a penal colony for bad fairies. The Shadow is the combined "questionable choices" of all the fairies who've been imprisoned there.

I was thinking about the lame origin story for the Land Without Magic (Season 6.  Gothel and the Mean Girls.)

What if Blue and Merlin were friends (maybe even in a relationship), and dealing with magical problems in the Enchanted Forest.  Blue feels that irresponsible magical users need to be banished, but Merlin does not agree.  A realm (maybe Camelot) is threatened by Morgan le Fay, and to stop Morgan le Fay from killing everyone, Blue siphons all the magic from that world to create a Land Without Magic.  This drastic action drains a lot of Blue's original power.  This separates Merlin from his people, creating a rift between Merlin and Blue.  Blue swears off men and starts an order of Fairies which would reward those who "deserves" it and regulate the growth of magical beans which they would use to banish evil magic-doers.  But even though Morgan le Fay is gone, she leaves a vessel with her Darkness in a vault, which becomes The Dark One vault.  Blue is powerless against Dark Magic and her quest over the centuries has been to banish this Darkness to the Land Without Magic, without success.  She also seeks out magical leaders to look after various realms (eg. she finds and appoints Glinda to be the caretaker of Oz).

Edited November 12, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Robbie Kay really is a great presence in this show, he walks a fine line between charming, and creepy, and he really does come off as a twisted variation of the original Peter Pan, and the one from the animated version. At this point in the show, I am already rolling my eyes at how every single story ever is wrapped up in the same couple of people, but I do like this version of the Pied Piper, it actually fits the Pan story really well. And, knowing who Pan really is and his real connection to Rumple, their interactions really are quite interesting, and Pan is even more sinister in that context. 

It's interesting to look at which character adaptations on the show worked and which didn't. While their backstories were wildly different, villains like Pan and Cruella felt faithful to the material while also fresh. Other characters, such as the Frozen gang, were played more verbatim and that worked too. I'm not sure if it's the iconography/"essence" that makes it work, since characters like Maleficent and Zelena had the look but not the vibe. It really does seem to be on a case-by-case basis.

Edited November 12, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's interesting to look at which character adaptations on the show worked and which didn't. While their backstories were wildly different, villains like Pan and Cruella felt faithful to the material while also fresh. Other characters, such as the Frozen gang, were played more verbatim and that worked too. I'm not sure if it's the iconography/"essence" that makes it work, since characters like Maleficent and Zelena had the look but not the vibe. It really does seem to be on a case-by-case basis.

And then there was Hook, who bore very little similarity to his book/pop culture counterpart but still worked. On the other hand, Belle, who had the look and a lot of the iconography but pretty much missed the point of the character entirely.

We won't even go near Aladdin and Jasmine or any of the season six versions.

[KingOfHearts]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And then there was Hook, who bore very little similarity to his book/pop culture counterpart but still worked. On the other hand, Belle, who had the look and a lot of the iconography but pretty much missed the point of the character entirely

Cora was a very good twist on the Queen of Hearts. While Zelena became my favorite character in later seasons, green skin and flying monkeys didn't automatically make her the Wicked Witch of the West. The Wicked Witch is meant to be unattractive, haggish, and authoritative. Zelena's whole jealousy spiel and glamorous disposition just didn't match the character. She wasn't dark or scary - she had too much charisma. Rebecca Mader brought too much of herself to the role, imo. (I really like her, I just wish she played a different character.) I suppose the writers could've done something like Hook and made Zelena her own identity (which they they kind of did), but that didn't work either until too late in the game. 

Edited November 13, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

The twists on the characters were typically clever, but it was the execution and the duration that caused problems. Look at their first main villain, the Evil Queen. They held to a very similar story but made the character's history and motivations more complex. I find the secret telling to be ridiculous, but the additions of Cora and Rumpel to her backstory made her an interesting villain. She worked very well for the first season. The problem is that she stuck around for another six seasons. Her past was played out by the end of S2. The more atrocities you pile into her past, the less interesting she becomes. Once she was seen slaughtering an entire village (and smiling and relishing in the horror), she stops being a complicated woman and turns into a sociopathic monster.  Six years in and she's a complete cartoon. 

Rumpel is another character who lost his complexity over time. Constant flip flopping and his endless involvement in every single story ever told were too much. Emma and Hook sacrificing to defeat the Darkness forever only for Rumpel to grab it back was the final straw. I was willing to believe that the Darkness was a curse dragging him down, but once he was free of it he screwed everyone over to get it back. His struggle was always shown to be against his worst impulses and cowardice. That he consistently failed in this struggle while the Dark One made sense. That he failed again when free of the curse removed any interest I had in the character. It was just another turn around on the Rumpel carousel. 

Hook had similar longevity, but as a individual he was frequently shelved and his story was mostly Captain Swan oriented. It helped that he was consistently shown to be growing. He could slip, but he would also make a good choice. However, by S6, Hook had lost most of his interesting characteristics too. It's just that it took longer to get to that point, so I didn't spend years being totally bored by his character's history.

[tennisgurl]

Sometimes it seems like they spent so long on a character, that they lost the heart of the character (Robin, Regina) or other times, they half assed the character so much, and only used the classic iconography that they lost everything that made the character special (Aladdin, Dorothy) and, often, just made them an asshole, and passed that off as making them interesting or "bold and audacious" or whatever. It was all rather inconsistent. 

[Camera One]

With Aladdin and Jasmine, I think they had the "look" down.  So it really came down to their script and how they wrote their personalities.  

Jasmine pretty much started off the animated movie as an independent Princess who wanted to take charge of her life and make her own decisions.  A&E made her into a whiner, constantly looking for/asking a man to save Agrabah.  So in some ways, her "character journey" in Season 6 was to become that strong person.  But I don't think that happened until the very last episode she appeared in, so that made the character grating and annoying.

Aladdin on the show started off in a similar place as the movie, an irresponsible young man who lacked confidence in himself.  They just had the "Once" version lack courage and double down on his tendency to run away from his problems.  Which made him even more of a loser.  They had Emma give him confidence, and Aladdin "redeemed" himself by becoming the Genie.  By then, I think the damage might have been done already.

Now, did they try these approaches successfully with any other characters in other seasons?  Because both Aladdin and Jasmine were epic fails.  Perhaps because they didn't approach it by starting with the source material - they were trying to stuff these characters into a very poorly conceived Savior mythology that they didn't think through.  Like who the hell was the Oracle supposed to be?  Did they intend for her to become completely irrelevant?  If we asked this question to all the writers in the room, what would they say?  

Edited November 13, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

Jasmine pretty much started off the animated movie as an independent Princess who wanted to take charge of her life and make her own decisions.  A&E made her into a whiner, constantly looking for/asking a man to save Agrabah.  So in some ways, her "character journey" in Season 6 was to become that strong person.  But I don't think that happened until the very last episode she appeared in, so that made the character grating and annoying.

I thought Jasmine's casting was pretty spot on. Karen David had a lot more energy in Galavant, so I know it was the writing/directing and not the acting. I can't say the same for Aladdin's actor, though. He looked dead inside in all his scenes.

[Camera One]

7 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

Up until the reveal that he had the crystal ball that would have clearly shown him that Bae was in Neverland for a century, I always thought that Rumpel understood that there were other options to get to Bae, but he needed to have his magic available too. It's how Rumpel works. He claims it was all about Bae, but his magic was still more important. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. As far as I can tell, none of the other methods of getting to this world would have allowed him to return to the Enchanted Forest. It would have left him stuck here because there was no magic in the world. He knew that there was a prophecy that he would reunite with Bae, so there wasn't a worry about that. He had time to figure out a way to have it all.

I was wondering about the Magic Slippers that Zelena had which Rumple was trying to get his hands on.  If he had gotten it, would he have forgotten about the Curse and use the Slippers to get to Bae?  Then again, we now know that Dorothy used the Slippers to get to Fictional Kansas World, so maybe it couldn't take him to the Land Without Magic.

[Mitch]

On 11/11/2018 at 8:21 PM, Camera One said:

I was thinking about the lame origin story for the Land Without Magic (Season 6.  Gothel and the Mean Girls.)

What if Blue and Merlin were friends (maybe even in a relationship), and dealing with magical problems in the Enchanted Forest.  Blue feels that irresponsible magical users need to be banished, but Merlin does not agree.  A realm (maybe Camelot) is threatened by Morgan le Fay, and to stop Morgan le Fay from killing everyone, Blue siphons all the magic from that world to create a Land Without Magic.  This drastic action drains a lot of Blue's original power.  This separates Merlin from his people, creating a rift between Merlin and Blue.  Blue swears off men and starts an order of Fairies which would reward those who "deserves" it and regulate the growth of magical beans which they would use to banish evil magic-doers.  But even though Morgan le Fay is gone, she leaves a vessel with her Darkness in a vault, which becomes The Dark One vault.  Blue is powerless against Dark Magic and her quest over the centuries has been to banish this Darkness to the Land Without Magic, without success.  She also seeks out magical leaders to look after various realms (eg. she finds and appoints Glinda to be the caretaker of Oz).

That would be a great story! I like the idea that the LWOM was the epicenter of magic and it was drained...creating all the magical realms (and why we have their stories which came to people in dreams  and they twisted them.) And you solved the problem of why Blue was so totally helpless in times of need.  Blue's banishment of magic left the LWOM thinking that dragons and Camelot were all legends and stories.  Morgan Le Fay should have been the "Final Battle" instead of a stupid Black Fairy and then a dumb tree nymph, and they could have followed much of 26's finale with Morgan bringing magic back to the entire LWOM meaning it was drained and obliterating the realms. How I would love to see Morgan kicking Regina's butt and bringing Rump a dump to his knees, and only Emma left to fight.

[Shanna Marie]

From the "Other Fairy Tales" thread:

On 11/12/2018 at 10:30 AM, daxx said:

This colors my entire rewatch. The lost potential, things they wrote and didn’t even see. It irks and saddens me.

That's my biggest frustrations. I've said before that these writers are idiot savants. They somehow come up with some really great stuff, and yet they don't realize it and don't use it. For instance, their construction of Hook and Rumple as dramatic foils is the kind of thing good writers put a lot of time and effort into constructing, and I'm not sure these guys even realized what they wrote. They may have been aware of the Rumple=coward/Hook=brave thing, but the rest of it I'm not sure they realized just how many parallels they drew. Both were abandoned by their fathers as children because their fathers had some other selfish aim they wanted to pursue, and both ended up killing their fathers. They both took a really bad turn in life because of something they did initially out of love that took over their lives. I wonder if they realized that they wrote that Rumple was unwilling to try to fight for Milah while Hook was willing to fight even against a Dark One or if they were just paralleling the scenes to show Rumple getting payback. Did they intend for everyone important in Rumple's life to end up with Hook when they got fed up with Rumple? There was Milah running away with Hook, then Bae ending up with Hook in Neverland, then Belle becoming friends with Hook and taking refuge with him when she left Rumple. I'm inclined to believe that they didn't realize they'd done this. It was all driven by the plot. They made nothing of the fact that all the time Rumple was trying to get to Bae, he was with Hook. Forget the romantic triangle, that's the triangle that could have been really interesting, with Neal caught between two father figures who loathe each other. If they'd realized what they were doing, they wouldn't have bothered with Belle's romance with Will because it saps some of the potential dramatic tension. After Rumple has already lost one wife to Hook, it should have driven him nuts to see Belle with Hook, and Belle's limp relationship with Will just serves to defuse that tension, since it shows that it's not Milah Round 2. Of course, we the audience know Hook has eyes only for Emma, but from Rumple's perspective, seeing Hook and Belle being so close that Belle was willing to trust "Hook" enough to give him the dagger should have been crazy-making and they shouldn't have included anything that would have reassured Rumple.

There was so much potential there with two characters who are so different and yet who have so much in common and whose lives are so intertwined because they love the same people. We never even got any kind of closure between them, after all the things Rumple did to Hook. There was no showdown, no reckoning. It was nice that Rumple ended up dying to save the life of a Hook, but Rumple and Hook Prime just sort of fizzled from eternal loathing to Hook providing cake (or balloons? or something) to Rumple's kid's birthday party.

I even think there was potential in the anti-magic "Home Office" story because it's something that should have been explored.

They created what should have been a really complex society with elements of the fairy tale world and elements from modern America, but they didn't explore it at all.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

We never even got any kind of closure between them, after all the things Rumple did to Hook. There was no showdown, no reckoning. It was nice that Rumple ended up dying to save the life of a Hook, but Rumple and Hook Prime just sort of fizzled from eternal loathing to Hook providing cake (or balloons? or something) to Rumple's kid's birthday party.

I know I cried when Rumple told Wish Hook that he was his oldest friend, so that was the closure we all wanted and received.  Off-screen, Hook Prime was touched when he found out from Wish Hook what Rumple said.  And let's just hope someone saved Milah from the River of Lost Souls because that wouldn't have put a crimp in Rumple and Hook's reconciliation at all.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

One thing I really like about 3A is that all the characters' traits are amplified. The Nevengers get to act like themselves without any "Rumplestiltskin" or "Mr. Gold" personas to fulfill. Snow is Snow, Regina is just Regina, etc. It's a level playing field. There were only a few arcs in the show's history where the external conflict was used effectively to create character development for the mains. They didn't need a bunch of soap opera drama to have conflict or growth. Sure, there's plenty of mistrust and romantic tension going around, but it's fueled by the stress of the situation they're in, not contrivances. (Like Evil Queen clones or Hook holding the idiot ball.) Stuff like Neal coming up alive makes for good drama without feeling too tacked on. It's entertaining to see the characters go straight from a newly established comfort zone (Storybrooke) to a place where survival is not guaranteed. (Neverland)

3A does setup and drama very well. It just has issues with pacing and its four-episode climax is very all over the place. (Which we'll get to.)

[Camera One]

I find myself remembering why I got less interested in the show from 3A onwards.  In addition to the Regina and Rumple show, it became the Hook-is-the-only-person-who-understands-Emma-awww-aren't-they-sweet-together show.  From then on out, the show was basically catering to three specific fanbases.  I'm glad those fanbases were able to continue to get enjoyment out of the show, but it just feels sad to be outside of that and it's worse now, knowing it would be that way until the end.  The show and the community became more exclusive.  It started in Season 2 somewhat, but the silos were established and gradually cemented in 3A.  David potentially spending his entire life in Neverland became a Snowing concern, since Emma was segregated to her new romance and the triangle.  Belle literally was a vision who only interacted with Rumple, until her pairing with a guest star.  The supporting cast (who basically became glorified extras in Season 2) were left behind in Storybrooke, and when we see them again, they would just be extras, not even glorified.  While the show was still going on, there would always be a twinge of hope, but that is gone now knowing the result.  

Edited November 24, 2018 by Camera One