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

[companionenvy]

The explanation is Regina being the unlikeliest Canon Sue to ever Sue. She wasn't the only factor that kept the show from achieving its potential -- but she was a big one, and had a ripple effect on everyone and everything else. 

[tennisgurl]

So many issues with this show stemmed from them deciding that Regina was the real hero, and retooling the show to be about her. It just messed so many things up, led to so much backstory being retconned, and the morality of the show going from "good vs evil" to "its complicated" to "Regina is always right, and anyone who doesent love her is evil" and that really hurt the show. So many characters and their arcs were ignored in favor of giving her more screen time, the whole show just got sucked into this weird Regina vortex, where they suddenly had to make everything about her, even when it shouldn't have been.

Its something I've increasingly noticed on TV lately, especially with villains. Show runners totally fall in love with a character, often a bad guy, and they basically rewrite the show to be all about them, or keeps them around WAY beyond their expiration date, and the show suffers. Regina is the most extreme version, but there are many more.

[companionenvy]

The thing is, I often like the move from "Good vs Evil" to "Its Complicated." The issue here is that it wasn't actually complicated at all. EQ era Regina was written as a narcissistic sociopath who actively enjoyed causing people pain whether or not it was necessary to her goals. While she had legitimately suffered in the past (abusive mom, Daniel's murder), that suffering was laughably inadequate as a meaningful explanation for her crimes; there was never a sense of "Well, obviously she's doing terrible things, but I can understand how a fundamentally decent person might be twisted into this under the circumstances." This is especially true given the horror show that is the backstory of most characters on the show. Compounding it is the fact that her life was, for pretty much the entire period of her reign, one of extraordinary power and privilege, and one that left her with tons of agency.

Within the "present day" timeframe, Regina is the acknowledged villain of season one, and in that capacity is as sociopathic as she is in her flashbacks. She reverts to form in the second half of season 2, and as late as season 4 is doing things like contemplating murder as a solution to her sads. Inexplicably, we are asked to sympathize with her throughout this.

To compensate, the show then has to drag down other characters. But the showrunners consistently demonstrate a warped sense of both context and proportion. Sometimes, they frame legitimate acts of self-defense or moments of righteous anger as atrocity and darkness. In other cases, they have heroes do legitimately bad and sometimes OOC things, but even beyond the character assassination of it all, it doesn't work because even the worst actions by the "heroes" don't hold a candle to Regina's crimes. Like, Snowing were dead wrong to do what they did to Lily, but there's simply no comparison for an isolated, selfish action taken guiltily on behalf of one's own child and a parade of gleefully performed atrocities.

The reason, I think, that the show wound up being commercially successful in spite of this is that casual viewers - the vast majority of any audience -- generally accept the narrative being presented on screen at any given moment. They may not even have seen every other episode, and certainly haven't watched them twice or pored over them on internet forums. So, if the show is being written as if Regina is redeemed and has a sympathetic past and is now worthy of being a member of team hero - or, you know, Queen of the world -- the casual viewer isn't going to go "Wait, that's a total retcon." They may question the morals of individual episodes, or sometimes have a "Why are Regina and Snow suddenly besties?" reaction, but it isn't going to become the show-killer it is for more attentive viewers. 

[Melgaypet]

The thing that kills me, the writers' obvious love for Regina was as detrimental to her character as it was to all the characters who had to prop her up, and I don't get how they never saw that. I don't even mean how the show became All Regina, All The Time, although that was a big problem, but the coddling. Author Lois McMaster Bujold once described part of her writing process as asking "what is the worst thing I could do to my characters?" and then doing that. But the writers of OUAT seemed determined to pull every narrative punch with the character and it made her impossible to like at all. She gets her magic back, her victims make exactly one half-assed attempt to exact some justice, no one connects the dots with Graham's death, her son decides he loves her after all, Snow grovels to her for killing the woman who was threatening everyone in Storybrooke with Regina's aid, the so-called "price" of Henry losing all memory of her isn't permanent, her boyfriend doesn't think the fact that she nearly murdered his wife is any big deal, literally no one cares when she imprisons poor stupid Sydney in a mirror again (and had been keeping him locked up in her asylum before that, which WTF!?), Henry decides the book is wrong about her (that's literally the opposite of what he knew in Season 1, but that Henry was the smart Henry, before he had the Heart of the Truest Dumbass), she murders Wish Realm Snow and Charming only that doesn't count because it's a magical holodeck except when it's totally, totally real, and everyone thinks she deserves a happy ending. This is just off the top of my head! Regina whined a lot (because she's a sympathetic character, see!) but the writers didn't want her to actually suffer much.

I enjoyed her as the unambiguous villain of Season 1 and I had no doubt there would be a reckoning once the curse was broken. I was even cautiously optimistic about her possible redemption in early Season 2. I still can't believe they botched it so badly.

Edited April 3, 2019 by Melgaypet
correcting my tenses

[daxx]

1 hour ago, Melgaypet said:

I enjoyed her as the unambiguous villain of Season 1 and I had no doubt there would be a reckoning once the curse was broken. I was even cautiously optimistic about her possible redemption in early Season 2. I still can't believe they botched it so badly

I expected all those things too and was bitterly disappointed.

It’s obvious the show runners fell in love with their character and wanted her to have every good thing. So much similarity to Lana Lang in Smallville, she got all the things. 

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I don't even mean how the show became All Regina, All The Time, although that was a big problem, but the coddling. Author Lois McMaster Bujold once described part of her writing process as asking "what is the worst thing I could do to my characters?" and then doing that. But the writers of OUAT seemed determined to pull every narrative punch with the character and it made her impossible to like at all.

That's the thing that has always baffled me. Usually, when writers have a favorite character, that character gets put through the wringer and made to suffer, which then means that the character gets great scenes and all kinds of growth and depth. But Regina has, to use the wording in that tumblr questions thread, an arc that's really more of a straight line. She stops murdering, but she doesn't really change. I guess she gets self control, but otherwise it seems like she's still the same inside, with the same impulses and feelings. Instead, they wrote her like she was a real person and wanted to make things as easy as possible for her. It was bad for the show and for the character. It doesn't help that apparently Lana had a similar attitude toward her character, wanting her to get good stuff. She talked about asking for a better relationship between Henry and Regina and wanting a love interest. I've joked that she has pictures of the writers doing bad things to goats because the general impulse of writers when actors start making "requests" for their characters that would be bad for the story is to make things even worse for them, marginalize their characters, or even kill them off.

There was an article over at tor.com about the way Game of Thrones works to make audiences develop empathy for characters you'd think it would be impossible to have empathy for, and in particular the stuff about Jaime struck me as a drastic contrast to Regina. One of the first things he does onscreen is push a child out a window, but a few seasons later he's almost a hero and you find yourself liking him. That's because he goes through so much -- the greatest knight ever gets defeated in battle by a kid and taken prisoner, he loses his sword hand, he's tormented and humiliated, and he starts to change (I think it works better in the books than in the show). Regina may actually be worse than Jaime. Most of his body count is in battles, not slaughtering helpless people. But she doesn't go through much of anything. She never loses her mansion, never has to live anywhere but a palace. Even when she's utterly defeated, apparently she's still living in a palace. She never loses her magic (other than during the curse, but that was her own doing). She only temporarily stops being mayor a couple of times, and one of those times it's because she quits, and then she just gets the job back. Almost all the bad things that happen to her are actually bad things that happen to other people that make her sad -- Daniel dies, Robin's forced to leave town with a wife he no longer loves, ends up being raped by his wife's murderer, then gets killed. When Regina gets cursed, she's a sassy bar owner. She doesn't seem to be suffering the way she made people suffer in her curse.

I think I could have handled a hero Regina at the end of the series, but she would have had to be taken down before being built up again. She would have had to lose everything -- not be mayor, get kicked out of her mansion, have to find another job to pay the bills, maybe not get her magic back or have it not work as well in Storybrooke, never have Henry get his memories back of her being his mother. Then rebuild it all as she changed. She would have had to gain a lot of empathy. The Missing Year and being away from Henry should have made her realize what she did to the people she split up during the curse, and she should have apologized to Snow and to Jefferson. The whole situation with Marian should have made her realize what she did to Emma with Graham, and she should have confessed and apologized. Being forced to live Snow's life in the AU should have made her empathize with Snow and apologize to her for what she put Snow through. Without that, it doesn't seem like she went through any actual growth. Her end rewards, both at the end of season 6 with the dwarfs bowing to her and painting "queen" on the door and being named queen of the universe at the end of season 7, are hollow and artificial.

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

That's the thing that has always baffled me. Usually, when writers have a favorite character, that character gets put through the wringer and made to suffer, which then means that the character gets great scenes and all kinds of growth and depth. But Regina has, to use the wording in that tumblr questions thread, an arc that's really more of a straight line. She stops murdering, but she doesn't really change. I guess she gets self control, but otherwise it seems like she's still the same inside, with the same impulses and feelings. Instead, they wrote her like she was a real person and wanted to make things as easy as possible for her. It was bad for the show and for the character. It doesn't help that apparently Lana had a similar attitude toward her character, wanting her to get good stuff. She talked about asking for a better relationship between Henry and Regina and wanting a love interest. I've joked that she has pictures of the writers doing bad things to goats because the general impulse of writers when actors start making "requests" for their characters that would be bad for the story is to make things even worse for them, marginalize their characters, or even kill them off.

There was an article over at tor.com about the way Game of Thrones works to make audiences develop empathy for characters you'd think it would be impossible to have empathy for, and in particular the stuff about Jaime struck me as a drastic contrast to Regina. One of the first things he does onscreen is push a child out a window, but a few seasons later he's almost a hero and you find yourself liking him. That's because he goes through so much -- the greatest knight ever gets defeated in battle by a kid and taken prisoner, he loses his sword hand, he's tormented and humiliated, and he starts to change (I think it works better in the books than in the show). Regina may actually be worse than Jaime. Most of his body count is in battles, not slaughtering helpless people. But she doesn't go through much of anything. She never loses her mansion, never has to live anywhere but a palace. Even when she's utterly defeated, apparently she's still living in a palace. She never loses her magic (other than during the curse, but that was her own doing). She only temporarily stops being mayor a couple of times, and one of those times it's because she quits, and then she just gets the job back. Almost all the bad things that happen to her are actually bad things that happen to other people that make her sad -- Daniel dies, Robin's forced to leave town with a wife he no longer loves, ends up being raped by his wife's murderer, then gets killed. When Regina gets cursed, she's a sassy bar owner. She doesn't seem to be suffering the way she made people suffer in her curse.

That's what surprises me too. Usually when writers fall in love with a character that's exactly what happens. They start getting the better storylines. Better writing and all kinds of experiences, adventures and stuff. They save the best for them. But that's not what happened. They mostly just gave Regina stuff. They gave her a boyfriend but he was never his own character, he was basically a boyfriend for Regina and a male cheerleader for her. He listened to her when she talked. He never really said or did anything at all. There was zero reason as to why either loved each other. They just did. Same with Henry they just gave him back to her with the total recon of their relationship. But they don't really become mother and son. He becomes a character who agrees with everything she says, doesn't care about any of her crimes, tries to help out when she's sad about her new boyfriend and wishes Marian was dead because his mommy couldn't have her boyfriend back. All of the regular parenting stuff was still Emma's job. Regina dropped Henry whenever she was sad or didn't care. 

Quote

I think I could have handled a hero Regina at the end of the series, but she would have had to be taken down before being built up again. She would have had to lose everything -- not be mayor, get kicked out of her mansion, have to find another job to pay the bills, maybe not get her magic back or have it not work as well in Storybrooke, never have Henry get his memories back of her being his mother. Then rebuild it all as she changed. She would have had to gain a lot of empathy. The Missing Year and being away from Henry should have made her realize what she did to the people she split up during the curse, and she should have apologized to Snow and to Jefferson. The whole situation with Marian should have made her realize what she did to Emma with Graham, and she should have confessed and apologized. Being forced to live Snow's life in the AU should have made her empathize with Snow and apologize to her for what she put Snow through. Without that, it doesn't seem like she went through any actual growth. Her end rewards, both at the end of season 6 with the dwarfs bowing to her and painting "queen" on the door and being named queen of the universe at the end of season 7, are hollow and artificial.

That is what I thought would happen too when they started giving us Regina changing scenes in the beginning of season two. She lost everything including Henry. She tried to do better, and went to therapy for magic. I assumed this was her rock bottom or she was about to hit rock bottom and they'd start building her up again. To be the hero. But that's not what happened either. They just declared her a hero, ignored all the storylines and past and basically made all the characters agree. I probably could have lived with that. But that's so not what happened. 

[KAOS Agent]

I was not a fan of Regina in later seasons for most of the above mentioned reasons, but I did enjoy her in S1 and into S2. She was a great villain who seemed genuinely scary. This is mostly true for Mayor Mills and less the Evil Queen. As later seasons made her more and more of a cartoon, she wasn't particularly interesting to me. However, I think the biggest mistake they made with Regina was taking away her agency. I don't mean that she wasn't making her own decisions and shouldn't have responsibility for them, but more that they kept having other people use her very predictable reactions to manipulate events. Regina stopped being scary or a threat when everything that had made her seem smart and formidable was ultimately revealed to have happened because someone else was orchestrating things behind the scenes.

Rumpel using her to cast the curse was cool and made sense. And even if she was manipulated into it, it was still a win for Regina. However, as time went on, other people were constantly using Regina to do their dirty work. She always responded exactly the way they planned. She was basically a puppet. It removed a lot of what made her such a threat. If Regina was the one planning and acting to get to a certain outcome, she's a highly intelligent, powerful woman. When it's revealed that her actions are very carefully managed by others to achieve their goals, she's not all that formidable.

Worse, it showed that Regina was mostly just a petulant, spoiled child. Her magic made that petulance dangerous and particularly awful, but she wasn't a cunning villain. She destroyed lives not because she had some grand plan to rule the world or whatever, but because she was sad or because she enjoyed it or simply because it was Monday. They removed her intelligence and left her without a high level motive (revenge on a secret telling ten year old doesn't work to explain mass murder). This is what destroyed the interesting character from the early seasons and it most definitely fed into my complete lack of belief in her redemption.

[Melgaypet]

I hope you guys don't mind if I switch gears slightly, but I wish they had done more with the whole Resistance thing in the Disenchanted Forest (and many kudos to whoever coined that term!). By more, I mean, anything. It just seemed an excuse for all the regular characters to just hang around their woodland camp together, I never got the sense they were honestly struggling against anything. Tiana, yes, she's the leader and she recruits Cinderella, they both have reason to hate the royal family and Lady Tremaine. Henry just seemed to hang around in hopes of getting in Ella's pants, Regina is there because she has apparently nothing in life except Henry, and Hook is not looking for his missing daughter but instead just hanging around for...reasons. Because Emma told him to stick with Henry? Because he had about ten seconds of flirtation with Tiana? I don't know. And Alice finds him, which would be a cool twist if in fact he'd been looking for her at all, but no. Then she flees back to Wonderland to search unsuccessfully for a cure for the poisoned heart curse and returns to spy on her papa and have a meet-annoying with Robin. I say that takes about a year, minimum, because Henry and Cinderella had their first kiss during that adventure and baby Lucy was born by the time Alice returned.

Which raises other questions, now that I'm thinking about it. Did Henry and Ella decide to have a baby (and get married, I assume there was a wedding somewhere in there) while living in a resistance camp that is presumably vulnerable to attack at any time and while fighting against a corrupt government? Was Lucy unplanned? Is there no contraception in the Disenchanted Forest? How did Regina react to becoming a grandmother? I would've pegged Regina as being the mother-in-law from hell, how do she and Ella get along? (Should I even bother wondering if Emma knows about any of this?)

Then, hey look! The resistance has prevailed. Somehow, though we get no details, but Tiana is now queen. Then it's years later, Lucy is 8 and the Dark Curse is coming. Zelena and Robin have been living on a farm, while Alice lives in a cabin in the woods taking care of Rumple. Regina, Ella, Henry and Hook are all part of of Tiana's inner circle, doing...what, precisely? Just hanging out some more, only this time in a castle. I don't know why any of these people are here or what they want. At least let Tiana make Hook commander of Her Majesty's New Navy, or something. Regina is magical advisor. Make Henry and Ella - close friends and counsellors - some sort of nobility as a reward, maybe gift them all of Lady Tremaine's confiscated lands. Henry is now motivated to improve the kingdom that is partially his daughter's birthright.

But before all this, Alice should have run afoul of the Tremaine/the Royal Family somehow - maybe while looking for a cure? - which motivates both her and WishHook to be in the Resistance. Maybe Robin too. Maybe Drizella works both sides, with Regina - who wants to reform her student - being her secret contact and when that comes out it causes conflict between Regina and the others. Show how all these people interact with each other, or it doesn't much matter when they're separated by the Curse.

This post feels very rambly and I begin to fear I'm not making a lot of sense, my apologies. I've just never seen a show so committed to squandering all it's potential.

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I've just never seen a show so committed to squandering all it's potential.

This is what we refer to as Once Upon a Time in Offscreenville. The show we didn't see -- the missing pieces that should have been developed but weren't, the important scenes that took place during the commercial break, the parts that were skipped -- was a lot more interesting than what we did see.

Once Upon a Time in Offscreenville included things like showing how Emma figured out based on Anna revealing that she'd met Rumple that Rumple was up to something right then and Hook was in danger, as well as Emma and Hook's immediate reaction to his near-death. It showed the scene where the Charmings told Emma about the eggnapping. It showed Hook's adventures in getting from Agrabah to wherever Blackbeard was. It showed the resistance movement, WHook looking for his daughter, and Ella and Henry getting together.

Plus, getting back to the Regina discussion, it gave us an actual romantic storyline for Regina, with some sexual tension, some will they/won't they, maybe some angst about falling in love again for the first time after Daniel rather than "here's your guaranteed soulmate" and then an insta-relationship the moment she saw the tattoo. It gave us Regina having to gradually earn Henry's trust again and having to learn how to be a real mother. It gave us Regina having to work to gain a place in the community and growing and learning empathy. This is all stuff you'd think they'd have wanted to write for their favorite character. There was so much material for juicy, dramatic storylines, but they squandered it all in their haste to give Regina all the good things.

8 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I say that takes about a year, minimum, because Henry and Cinderella had their first kiss during that adventure and baby Lucy was born by the time Alice returned.

I hope it took multiple years because otherwise that puts Hook and Emma's visit with Henry when they announced their pregnancy at around 14 or so years after they got married. Robyn and Zelena show up around the time Lucy was born, and Robyn was 16 at the time, and she was an infant when Emma and Hook got married. I can't figure out a way to make it less than 10 years after they married, given Henry's apparent age and the fact that it would be a long time for them to be living in a camp before winning the kingdom back, and that's still a rather long time for them to wait to have a baby, putting Emma at around 40. But never mind, when they go back in time to before Henry left home, Emma and Hook have already had their baby daughter.

[Melgaypet]

Oh, the timeline. I can't even with the freaking timeline. It is genuinely impossible to reconcile, so I don't feel any compunction about adjusting it however I like. For example, I decided that all of Henry's realm-hopping meant more time had passed for him than in Storybrooke. Like, say, in "A Pirate's Life" for Emma, Hook, and Regina it had been about a year since he left, while it had been 5+ years for Henry himself. Enough to age into another actor, anyway. I don't even try to make sense of Robin and Zelena. Maybe Anton's new crop of magic beans lets you travel back in time as well as between realms, whatever. I mean, the Dark Curse can apparently do that now, so why not? I don't believe Hook and Emma waited a decade and a half to have a baby, I'm sorry. Even the five years that is my personal headcanon is pushing it a tad.

Lets not even get into the fact that Emma and Alice would have been born at roughly the same time!

[Camera One]

The Season 7 timeline gives me a headache.  Even reading that paragraph above confuses me.  

And there was also Lady Tremaine apparently switching sides and helping the heroes?  Isn't that something we should have seen?  Not to mention Dr. Facilier, whose invented past with Regina is even less convincing when we have no idea where the hell he could have fit.  

I'm sure A&E were planning to fill in all the pieces in Season 8 and 9.

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/3/2019 at 10:45 PM, Melgaypet said:

Lets not even get into the fact that Emma and Alice would have been born at roughly the same time!

And Ella was a teenager when Alice was born.

I made an attempt at figuring out a timeline last year, and I wasn't able to reconcile everything:

Something is out of whack no matter what you do. You can't align Ella's timeline, Whook and Alice's timeline, and the ages of the characters or Emma's original encounter with Whook in the Wishverse. Either Alice is in her 40s and Ella is about 56 when Henry meets her or Alice was about 4 when Emma met old, fat Wish Hook.

On 4/3/2019 at 10:45 PM, Melgaypet said:

I don't believe Hook and Emma waited a decade and a half to have a baby, I'm sorry. Even the five years that is my personal headcanon is pushing it a tad.

Depending on which age of Henry's you're going with (per the age given for him in the pilot, he should be 17 in the spring of 2018. They were saying he was 14 in season 6, but Snowflake, who was born when he was 12, is still an infant who isn't even walking at the end of season 6, and no matter how I try to figure the passage of time, the most I can figure is that Henry might have barely turned 13 by the end of season 6), in the second timeline, Emma and Hook had their baby 2-4 years after getting married, which seems reasonable. I don't know why that timeline is different from the original one, since the baby would have already been born before Henry left town and was already born before the time traveling cursed gang showed up. I guess they thought it would look bad for Henry to head off to be a hero if he had a baby sister at home. Or they needed a reason Hook and Emma wouldn't have stuck around to follow Henry on his adventures and the baby was convenient.

It might have worked better if they'd done the "writing Emma and Hook Prime out" episode using teen Henry, like he needed to call on them for help early into his adventures, they announce the pregnancy, and he teams up with de-aged Wish Hook to go adventuring. Then later he meets Ella, etc.

That still doesn't fix the wacky ages for the adult characters in the "present," where it's been 26 years since season five, so Regina is probably in her 60s (since she seemed to have been about 10 years older than Snow).

On 4/3/2019 at 11:01 PM, Camera One said:

And there was also Lady Tremaine apparently switching sides and helping the heroes?  Isn't that something we should have seen?

Yeah, you'd think the villain switching sides should have happened onscreen instead of in Offscreenville.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Shanna Marie

[Writing Wrongs]

This popped into my head the other day: why did Regina lie to Emma about knowing who Jefferson was?

From Broken:

Quote

Emma: The hat. You had it all along.
Regina: What do you mean?
Emma: That's Jefferson's hat.
Regina: (A pause) Who's Jefferson?

What was the point of the lie?

[Camera One]

I was thinking how A&E mostly avoided adapting any of the Disney movies or fairy tales involving talking animals.  We know that some talking animals became humans with the Dark Curse, like Gus the mouse from "Cinderella" and Jiminy Cricket (though I guess he didn't count since he was originally human).  Pongo was an odd exception since he was still an animal in Storybrooke.

Anyway, what if the creator of the Dark Curse created it, in order to turn talking animals into humans?  Maybe a half-animal like Ursula or Maleficent made a deal with a fully animal villain like Scar, to turn them into people so they could pursue their villanous agendas and be allies against the forces of Snow and her animal friends like Bambi, Dumbo, The Three Little Pigs, etc.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

For a show that spends so much time talking about heroes, heroism, being a hero, etc., they really have a mixed-up mess when it comes to whatever their thesis about heroes was supposed to be.

I was thinking about this when the rewatch showed us that Arthur, who was a good enough hero to be able to pull the sword from the stone, was actually a villain. And Rumple, one of the worst villains ever, whose heart was so dark that he almost died of it, was able to pull the sword after he got the darkness sucked out of him and he did one good thing. In a town full of great heroes, the one who's "worthy" of Excalibur is a villain with an artificially pure heart (and yet the same mind who came up with all the awful things he did) who did one brave thing (and who immediately reverts to evil and schemes to get his powers back).

So, is this the "heroes aren't really so great" thesis at work? Is this a deconstruction of the idea of what heroism means? That's pretty much what Isaac was saying, but he was a villain. So, did the writers agree with Isaac or disagree with him? So many times, this show seems to give the message that heroes are the real villains.

On the other hand, characters on this show are always talking about wanting to be heroes, and they do things just because it's something a hero would do. In most other shows, books, movies, etc., someone who says they want to be a hero is questionable because that means it's all about glory and ego. That's the person who's going to be cut down to size. The real heroes are the people who are just trying to do the right thing, and it's other people who call them heroes. But this show never questions the goal of being a hero. It's something that adults say with a straight face, and the people who say it aren't taken down a peg and shown that it was their ego talking.

So it's a show in which people strive to be heroes, and that goal is never questioned, but at the same time heroes aren't so great. A villain doing one good thing is equal to (or better than) a hero who's done a lifetime of good but screwed up once.

[Melgaypet]

Random OUAT Thought of the Day: I wish the show had done more with Captain Nemo. I admit, this is solely because I love Faran Tahir, and want him to be in everything. He plays a lot of terrorists and other bad guys - and he's good at that, certainly - but when cast against that he really radiates a sense of authority and decency. I liked his fatherly vibe with Hook and it's pretty nuts that Emma never even met him onscreen. (I suppose it's even more nuts that she never met Liam the Younger onscreen either, considering that he's Hook's brother and all, but, truthfully, I found The Younger to be a big ball of bland, so I will judge that narrative choice intellectually without actually caring that much.)

I wish Nemo (or The Younger, I guess) had been Hook's best man at the wedding, instead of stupid Henry. Or Belle could have been his best woman, I generally enjoyed their friendship.

[Shanna Marie]

19 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I wish Nemo (or The Younger, I guess) had been Hook's best man at the wedding, instead of stupid Henry.

It is rather ridiculous that they broke continuity, story logic, and characterization, as well as cheapening the concept of a True Love's Kiss, to create Liam 2.0 and establish his presence (though mostly that was about illogically inserting Regina into a key role in the story). Then when they could have taken an easy out ("It was all just a mindgame from Regina and never really happened -- she did a spell on him there in her castle before sending him to Wonderland"), they broke continuity again (no one was actually frozen while time was frozen -- you could travel and have adventures and change the status quo) to introduce 2.0 as an adult. Then apparently Hook and his brother reconciled fully and developed enough of a relationship for there to be hugs, though all this happened offscreen, along with Hook developing a mentor relationship with Nemo. And then Hook got married a couple of episodes after showing that they had a hugs relationship, but his brother -- his only living relative -- wasn't at the wedding, and there was never another mention of him. (It might have been fun to run into Wish 2.0, who should have been much older looking than his much-older brother.)

Come to think of it, we never even learned if Nemo and Liam 2.0 survived after they went back to the ship to either save it or die with their crew.

I remember we were so excited about the prospect of Hook going on an ocean adventure with Nemo, his brother, and Ariel, and it ended up just amounting to a bit of standing around and talking while everything interesting happened offscreen.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

And then Hook got married a couple of episodes after showing that they had a hugs relationship, but his brother -- his only living relative -- wasn't at the wedding

I agree with everything in your post.  I just wanted to add that I personally would have skipped that wedding too if I had received the invitation.  That wasn't quite the "happy beginning" I would have wanted to take any part in.  

Edited April 16, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

29 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I agree with everything in your post.  I just wanted to add that I personally would have skipped that wedding too if I had received the invitation.  That wasn't quite the "happy beginning" I would have wanted to take any part in.  

True, given that they held the wedding when they knew a curse was about to hit the town. Anyone who was outside of town would have been smart to stay away. I was going to say that they didn't know they'd be under threat when they scheduled the wedding, but they did, didn't they? There was a whole episode about how they weren't going to get married until they dealt with everything, and then suddenly in the next episode they're planning the wedding for the next day, or something like that. I could understand the impulse to just want to be married before everything goes to hell, but not to have the full, planned formal wedding. That's when you have one of those "do you take, do you take, man and wife" moments as the curse approaches. And the whole musical routine was just silly.

But it might have been nice if, when Hook was asking Henry to be best man, he'd said something about "unfortunately, my brother can't make it, on the last shell phone call, he said they were still trying to get kraken ink, so they can't get here in time, so would you like to be my best man" so we'd know they remembered he actually did have a brother.

[Camera One]

7 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

There was a whole episode about how they weren't going to get married until they dealt with everything, and then suddenly in the next episode they're planning the wedding for the next day, or something like that.

That was very jarring and abrupt when I rewatched it with a friend last month in binge-watch style.  She was so confused, thinking we had missed an episode or something.  

Edited April 16, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

That was very jarring and abrupt when I rewatched it with a friend last month in binge-watch style.  She was so confused, thinking we had missed an episode or something.  

This kind of thing makes the writing look so very sloppy. I mean, yeah, maybe the people who remembered all the specific details of how Regina made Hook go to Wonderland to kill Cora from back in season two are nitpicky nerds who need to get a life, and most regular viewers wouldn't remember that in season five, so the writers didn't need to rewatch that episode or even clips before writing the season five script, but when they completely contradict the previous episode and act as though they didn't remember what they just wrote, it's rather ridiculous. Then again, this is the same arc that had Gideon sent to town to kill Emma in order to get the power to open the portal so the Black Fairy could come over ... so she could fight the Final Battle against Emma. It was only a fluke that brought Emma close enough to death for Gideon to get the power but saved her life in the nick of time. Gideon wasn't planning to stop before she died. The plan was for Emma to die, which didn't at all fit with what they later revealed the Black Fairy's goal was. I think that whole season they just couldn't be bothered. They clearly didn't have any plan in place and were making it up as they went, without worrying about fitting with what they'd already written.

[Melgaypet]

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

They clearly didn't have any plan in place and were making it up as they went, without worrying about fitting with what they'd already written.

Yeah, I agree. And, am I wrong, or in a season whose arc was ostensibly about the Savior fighting a climatic Final Battle, was Emma weirdly passive most of the time? Jennifer Morrison, bless her, held onto some character integrity by her fingernails, but it never felt like Emma did much of anything, which is not only rather antithetical to who Emma is supposed to be, but also a failure of Protagonist 101. I mean, she brooded about her visions/tremors, she brooded about Hook, she brooded a little bit about her parents' new sleeping curse, she learned that it was For The Best that she grew up an unloved orphan because of psychotically vengeful Regina or she'd have grown up a useless fool (yeah, still not over that nonsense), even in the finale she was a passive figure while Henry did all the work getting her to believe again, and then her victory was to allow Gideon to kill her. That's a whole lot of being kicked around by the plot without doing anything to drive it.

[Camera One]

In Season 1, Emma came to town as a strong woman who wanted to be in control of a situation but had her walls up.  By Season 6, Emma still had her walls up but she learned again to put down her walls and by the end of Season 6, she was willing to just die and dance and sing instead of doing anything about impending doom.

In Season 1, Snow was a strong defiant woman who stood up to the tyranny of Regina to try to save her beloved daughter.  By Season 6, Snow had become a Regina apologist and instead of fighting for her family, she just danced and sang the time away.

In Season 1, Rumple was a selfish egomaniac who was willing to let others suffer for his own personal mission.  By Season 6, Rumple was a selfish egomaniac who was willing to let others suffer as long as he got to have his precious Belle.

Which is better?  A 180 character flip, or a character staying pretty much static?

Edited April 17, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

17 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

And, am I wrong, or in a season whose arc was ostensibly about the Savior fighting a climatic Final Battle, was Emma weirdly passive most of the time?

Yeah, that was one of the (many) problems of that season. She gets a vague vision and prophecy, and she's like *shrug* "guess I'm gonna die." No fight, no spunk. She gets the option of removing her Savior destiny and refuses to do it because she might be needed, but she doesn't do anything with her Savior status or powers before the big sing-off. If she'd clipped her destiny, then the Black Fairy would have had no reason to come to Storybrooke, and everyone would have been better off.

It's rather rich that when Regina pretends to be the Savior, she gets a ball thrown in her honor, but all Emma gets for being Savior is a death prophecy and shaky hands.

Plus, that Final Battle is incredibly anticlimactic and perfunctory, like everyone involved was just going through the motions. And it's boring to have a prophecy be exactly what it seems to be. In fiction, that's terrible. It needs to be something they misinterpret or that's out of context. Having a prophecy that just comes true is lame. The only thing missing was Emma coming back to life, which I still don't really get, and I'm still irked that they gave that TLK to Henry when Emma just got married. There's not even a moment to mourn her, just a quick peck, and everything's okay.

Come to think of it, every one of the big curse-breaking TLKs involved Henry -- Emma kissing Henry in season one to break the memory part of Curse 1, Henry kissing Regina in season 3 to break the memory part of Curse 2, Henry kissing Emma to break whatever was going on at the end of season 6, then Henry and Regina again in season 7. So I guess Henry was the real Savior. Plus he broke the AU spell in season 4, though not with TLK. Emma got all the hassle of being Savior but didn't actually get to do anything with it. When you think about it, although her characterization was supposed to be that she was a take-charge woman of action, she ended up being rather passive through the whole series. She was usually frozen or stuck on stand-by while someone else saved the day. About the only times she was key to the resolution of the arc were the season one TLK, her defeating Hook and being immune to Cora's heart ripping in 2a, her adding power to Regina to stop the failsafe in 2b, and her lying down and dying in season 6. She was frozen and helpless in 3a, had her powers stripped in 3b, was frozen and helpless in 4a, didn't get to do much in 4b other than take on the darkness, just had to stand and watch and then stab Hook (finishing his plan) in 5a, stood and watched in 5b, and had to let herself die in 6. She was expected to put her life on hold as the Savior, but then never got to do much saving.

[tennisgurl]

Emma's final arc was not only so sad, to see such a brave, confident person like Emma reduced to a hallow shell of her former self all because of some stupid prophesy, it was just stupid. Like, since when is any of this even a thing? Why are Saviors suddenly all doomed to die? Why are there like a million of them, and what exactly are they supposed to do other than...save stuff? And the whole prophesy is so vague, it comes off as silly. The Savior will...die! Well, yeah, I assumed Emma would die at some point...being a human...everyone does that...

It wasnt even handled in a way that made sense for her character. I can see Emma, after everything she went through, basically experiencing massive burn out or PTSD that messed her up, but it was just played like she had just assumed she would die, so she fell apart, and then her whole journey as a hero ends with her standing on a street, waiting for death. What the fuck kind of heroes journey is that?

[Camera One]

57 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Why are there like a million of them, and what exactly are they supposed to do other than...save stuff? 

As far as we can tell, they're all losers except for Emma.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

It wasnt even handled in a way that made sense for her character. I can see Emma, after everything she went through, basically experiencing massive burn out or PTSD that messed her up, but it was just played like she had just assumed she would die, so she fell apart, and then her whole journey as a hero ends with her standing on a street, waiting for death.

There really should have been a lot of PTSD going on in that season, given the previous season's events. Emma should have been coping with the aftermath of being the Dark One, having to kill Hook, and then not being able to save him but then miraculously getting him back. You'd think she wouldn't have wanted to let him out of her sight, and if she thought she was going to die, you'd think she'd either be fighting desperately to find a way out of it or wanting to spend every possible moment with him. Hook really should have been rather messed up, given what he went through trying to help Emma, then getting nearly killed, turned into a Dark One against his wishes, behaving terribly as the Dark One, dying, being tortured in the Underworld, learning that his supposedly perfect brother was rather less than perfect, and then being miraculously saved by Zeus.

But they didn't once mention any of that during season six. It was like it never happened. You could skip all of season five except the last few minutes of the finale and not be the least bit confused in season 6. None of that stuff seemed to have affected any of them. Belle was under the sleeping curse and stuck in that box when Hook came back, so the last thing she knew was that he was dead and in the Underworld, but when she sees him again, she's not at all surprised that he's alive. It's like the writers forgot that one of their main characters spent half a season dead. A character became the thing he hated most, died, and miraculously came back to life, and it didn't seem to affect him one bit, didn't change anything about him or about the way others reacted to him.

[Camera One]

Dear Abby,

I would like to capture/store/erase some memories.  Would you suggest The Dark Curse, a wave of the hand, Grand Pabby stones, dreamcatchers, water from the River of Forgetfulness, or memory loss tea? 

[ParadoxLost]

20 hours ago, Camera One said:

Dear Abby,

I would like to capture/store/erase some memories.  Would you suggest The Dark Curse, a wave of the hand, Grand Pabby stones, dreamcatchers, water from the River of Forgetfulness, or memory loss tea? 

Dear @Camera One

If these memories are such that you truly feel the need to erase them, then I implore you not apply such parlor tricks to do the job.  They will inevitably fail you.  Instead, I suggest you find a calling that will bring you not only permanent relief from the memories that plague you but also monetary gain and the opportunity to share your gift with others...television writer

Edited April 19, 2019 by ParadoxLost

[Camera One]

It's interesting re-reading some of the old posts from Season 5 and by the fifth episode, many were tired of how the story was dragging its feet.  It took five episodes for the main characters to get to Merlin, and then it took a break for the sixth with The Merida Hour (regularly scheduled programming will resume next week).

If these pacing and planning problems were happening in a half-season arc, who thought it was a good idea for A&E to do a full-season arc for Season 6, which didn't even have a goal.  At least in 5A, the point was for Emma to get rid of the Dark One-ness, and to find Merlin.  In Season 6, it was direction-less from the start.  

[Shanna Marie]

After realizing that I barely noticed that Robin essentially disappeared for a whole episode, I found myself wondering if their many attempts to get rid of him were because they realized the character was kind of a dud and he had zero chemistry with Regina, but since they'd already magically declared them to be soulmates, they couldn't just have them break up like a normal couple. So they sent him away with Marian, but then there was outcry and offscreen drama, so they brought him back, but then that just reminded them that there was no "there" there, so they sidelined him as much as possible (really, he's barely in season 5), then killed him in a totally permanent way, but there was outcry and drama, so they brought in Wish Robin and sent him away with the Evil Queen -- so they did prove to be soulmates, but they didn't have to deal with him or his relationship with Regina anymore.

And it looks like he was only really soulmates with the Evil Queen side of Regina. Maybe that was why they were so blah when they were together and she was regular Regina. It's like the relationship that only got started because all their friends said they'd be soooo cute together but they really had nothing in common, but they couldn't break up because it would disappoint all their friends so much.

[Camera One]

51 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

After realizing that I barely noticed that Robin essentially disappeared for a whole episode, I found myself wondering if their many attempts to get rid of him were because they realized the character was kind of a dud and he had zero chemistry with Regina, but since they'd already magically declared them to be soulmates, they couldn't just have them break up like a normal couple.

A&E are usually bored with the goody-two shoe characters, so I do think they got bored of writing for Robin.  Heck, they hardly even know what to do with Snowing.  

It seemed like they couldn't use Robin Hood like they did Belle, who was basically a prop for Rumple.  I'm surprised they didn't get tired of writing that merry-go-around of dupe-and-forgive (oops, I meant epic love story for the ages).  Maybe it was easier to use Belle because at least the actors had some chemistry, though personally their scenes had left me cold by Rumple's betrayal in Season 4.

The other thing was Regina herself was becoming a better person, and she didn't need Robin to keep her on that path.  He served zero purpose.    

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

A&E are usually bored with the goody-two shoe characters, so I do think they got bored of writing for Robin.

I never got the feeling they were ever interested in writing for Robin. Apparently Lana asked for a love interest for Regina, and in their haste to give Regina All the Things, especially those things Emma had, they seemed to feel like they needed to give her a love interest, but it doesn't seem like their development went beyond that. There was potential material there, since they were total opposites from very different backgrounds, and there was that whole thing about her imprisoning his wife, but those things were never actually brought up at all. Plus, there's the issue that when you tell us before the characters even meet that they're soulmates/true love/meant for each other, it makes the development of the relationship utterly boring. Maybe if just the audience knows but they don't, and we can be amused at how they don't realize what's going on with them, and even there you have to show us as well as tell us. But when the characters know they're guaranteed soulmates, it takes all the intrigue out of it, especially when the writers leave it at that, and we're supposed to be on board with the whole thing just because some magic thing glowed. Or if the characters know, then they have to resist it to be interesting and there has to be mad chemistry -- I refuse to accept that you're my soulmate because you smell like the forest/you're everything I've been fighting against, but I can't seem to resist you. What we got was "Oh, you're my soulmate. Okay, I guess we should start dating."

See also Henry and Murderella.

And since they skipped all the potentially interesting parts of the relationship, the only way to make it interesting was to make it will they/won't they and split them up over and over again, but since they'd already declared them soulmates they couldn't have them break up or have a fight, so it had to be external circumstances tearing them apart and allowing them back together again. Ultimately, killing Robin was the only real way out, and then hooking up Wish Robin with the Evil Queen was a good handwave to resolve it with a happy ending while getting him off the show.

[KingOfHearts]

The YouTube clip for the scene where Snow and Charming almost visit Emma as a child came up in my recommended. It made me think - if Emma knew her parents had the opportunity to find her and didn't, wouldn't she be pissed? Wouldn't Snowing feel tremendous guilt for not only allowing their child to grow up as an orphan, but also seeing her face and turning away? Whether it was morally right or not, something like should've had some serious ramifications for those characters. You're telling me Snowing just forgot about that incident? I feel like Snow especially would've told Emma at some point. She's not the kind to keep things bottled up. (Unless it's about eggnapping.) It's so bizarre to me that Snowing woke up during the Curse, had the ability to meet Emma, and yet none of that changed the story. You could remove that flashback from the show and nothing would be missing.

(And yeah, I still think it's super dumb that they ignored Emma. Wasn't the original plan they go with her, anyway?)

Edited May 4, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

27 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

The YouTube clip for the scene where Snow and Charming almost visit Emma as a child came up in my recommended. It made me think - if Emma knew her parents had the opportunity to find her and didn't, wouldn't she be pissed? Wouldn't Snowing feel tremendous guilt for not only allowing their child to grow up as an orphan, but also seeing her face and turning away? Whether it was morally right or not, something like should've had some serious ramifications for those characters. You're telling me Snowing just forgot about that incident? I feel like Snow especially would've told Emma at some point. She's not the kind to keep things bottled up. (Unless it's about eggnapping.) It's so bizarre to me that Snowing woke up during the Curse, had the ability to meet Emma, and yet none of that changed the story. You could remove that flashback from the show and nothing would be missing.

(And yeah, I still think it's super dumb that they ignored Emma. Wasn't the original plan they go with her, anyway?)

The original plan was for Snow to go with Emma. They had a good reason for Snow not being able to go had they use it. Snow was Regina's target. It makes sense she couldn't go or that Regina would flip out and kill everyone or something if Snow disappeared. But it doesn't make sense for Charming not to go. He was in a coma. Even if he went into the real world Regina would still count that was keeping Snow from reuniting from her husband. He could have walked through the door and been with Emma the whole time.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

if Emma knew her parents had the opportunity to find her and didn't, wouldn't she be pissed? Wouldn't Snowing feel tremendous guilt for not only allowing their child to grow up as an orphan, but also seeing her face and turning away?

Actually, off-screen, Emma threw a "Thank You" party to Rumple for convincing Snowing to take a forgetting potion and not to reunite with her, and also a special "Thank You" to Regina for threatening to kill Archie so Snow would be worried for her friends' safety.  Because if not for R&R, Emma would never have grown up to be the person she is today and she wouldn't have Henry.  Emma knows she owes R&R a great debt that she will have to repay for the rest of her life.

[Melgaypet]

I've never understood the logic behind this so-called choice. According to "Awake" if her parents go to Emma and raise her, she won't become the Savior and break the curse. Why the hell not? The characters all just state this as if it were fact! First of all, wasn't she destined to break the curse? Second of all, the original plan was for pregnant Snow to go through the wardrobe and raise Emma. In fact, the original original plan, before Gepetto got involved, was for both Charming and Snow to go, so this "choice" is predicated on a completely false premise and it makes Snowing seem stupid as well as callous.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Melgaypet

[KAOS Agent]

They shit on the whole Charming family with "Awake" simply so that they could have the random magical flower that opens portals. That moment where they closed the door on an innocent little girl's happiness was awful. That it was brushed off by Emma and never mentioned again made it all the worse. An action like that needs to have consequences. Snowing didn't forget that moment happened, so it should reflect on all previous interactions with Emma in earlier seasons. This exactly the type of storyline that shows how unrealistic it is for the audience to believe everything is all sunshine and roses in the Charming family. There's no way these people who have no real history with each other and only met a couple of years earlier when all were adults would be able to play happy families with no serious issues. A biological link isn't enough to get past the choices Emma's parents made that affected her life so badly.

And it's not like the writers don't understand this. The way they developed the Emma/Henry relationship in S1 is a direct reflection of this. Henry showed up at Emma's door and neither was immediately overcome with familial love for each other. They didn't even experience a real connection until several days later and that was more of an understanding of each other than an emotional connection. It took the entire season for their relationship to grow and reach the curse breaking level. And Emma/Henry was a simple case of a young mother who couldn't care for her baby and gave him up so that he could live a better and happier life than she would ever be able to provide. There may be some issues to work through with that (and they actually did spend screen time doing that), but it's not like it's this huge barrier to having a loving mother/son relationship. There was no darkness-ectomy or self-righteous rejection of options to take out Regina without needing a Saviour or weird age difference or sacrificing a child's happiness for everyone else or crazy expectations that Henry give up his life in service of other people's problems.  

Edited May 5, 2019 by KAOS Agent

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

They shit on the whole Charming family with "Awake" simply so that they could have the random magical flower that opens portals. That moment where they closed the door on an innocent little girl's happiness was awful. That it was brushed off by Emma and never mentioned again made it all the worse. An action like that needs to have consequences. Snowing didn't forget that moment happened, so it should reflect on all previous interactions with Emma in earlier seasons. This exactly the type of storyline that shows how unrealistic it is for the audience to believe everything is all sunshine and roses in the Charming family. There's no way these people who have no real history with each other and only met a couple of years earlier when all were adults would be able to play happy families with no serious issues. A biological link isn't enough to get past the choices Emma's parents made that affected her life so badly.

And it's not like the writers don't understand this. The way they developed the Emma/Henry relationship in S1 is a direct reflection of this. Henry showed up at Emma's door and neither was immediately overcome with familial love for each other. They didn't even experience a real connection until several days later and that was more of an understanding of each other than an emotional connection. It took the entire season for their relationship to grow and reach the curse breaking level. And Emma/Henry was a simple case of a young mother who couldn't care for her baby and gave him up so that he could live a better and happier life than she would ever be able to provide. There may be some issues to work through with that (and they actually did spend screen time doing that), but it's not like it's this huge barrier to having a loving mother/son relationship. There was no darkness-ectomy or self-righteous rejection of options to take out Regina without needing a Saviour or weird age difference or sacrificing a child's happiness for everyone else or crazy expectations that Henry give up his life in service of other people's problems.  

Yes, they did do all of that and they took the time that was needed. They also did that with Emma's and Snow's friendship in season one too.  It was slow. Snow bailing Emma out, Emma turning down Snow's room which made it great when she showed up at Snow's door at the end of the episode. Emma had her walls up, trust issues and she and Mary Margaret didn't become instant friends. They worked towards it. It paid of in the Mad Hatter episode at the end when Emma convinces her to stay and saying she couldn't lose her family which touched Mary Margaret. The show used to take time and build relationships because the people in them had issues, problems and things to overcome. If we had the writing from season one for the Charming family the rest of the series it would have been so much better. We would have had the slow build of the family of four. Things to overcome and for them to work out. All four would have had issues with themselves and each other. But they stopped being interested in the Charming family. It really stinks. That was one of the best parts of the showing. Watching Emma  and Henry slowly build their relationship and Emma and Mary Margaret.

[daxx]

1 hour ago, andromeda331 said:

If we had the writing from season one for the Charming family the rest of the series it would have been so much better. We would have had the slow build of the family of four. 

Then at some point in season 2 it started to become the Regina show. The lasagna scene was the first look at what they really wanted us to dwell on, Regina’s pain. I know there was a producer in season 1 that was guiding them I think that is the loss we feel between seasons.

[andromeda331]

35 minutes ago, daxx said:

Then at some point in season 2 it started to become the Regina show. The lasagna scene was the first look at what they really wanted us to dwell on, Regina’s pain. I know there was a producer in season 1 that was guiding them I think that is the loss we feel between seasons.

We really do. That producer seemed to keep the show grounded. 

[daxx]

Looked it up, Damon Lindelof. It’s a shame he wasn’t officially attached to the show and continued with it. I guess once they were renewed they just stopped seeking out his advice, since they were now master storytellers, ya know.

https://www.tvguide.com/news/damon-lindelof-once-upon-a-time-abc-1036165/

[Shanna Marie]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

Emma knows she owes R&R a great debt that she will have to repay for the rest of her life.

And Regina owes Snow at least a fruit basket because if Snow hadn't "ruined her life," she probably wouldn't have ended up as Queen of the Universe. She'd have probably just been a mildly resentful wife, either living in poverty and on the run with Daniel or forced to marry Leopold. I guess Rumple still would have manipulated her to cast the curse because Prophecy, but would she have risen to her levels of greatness if she hadn't become so evil so that she could then become a great hero?

[Camera One]

28 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And Regina owes Snow at least a fruit basket because if Snow hadn't "ruined her life," she probably wouldn't have ended up as Queen of the Universe. 

Snow still needs to apologize because Regina could have become the Queen of the Multiverse, not just the Universe.  And remember, Regina still doesn't have her one true love Daniel, while Emma & Hook and Snow & Charming enjoy their True Love bliss.  Why is the world so unfair!!!

[Melgaypet]

22 minutes ago, Camera One said:

And remember, Regina still doesn't have her one true love Daniel, while Emma & Hook and Snow & Charming enjoy their True Love bliss.  Why is the world so unfair!!!

Or her other true love Robin Hood, which I'm sure is Snow's fault. Somehow. Like, if Snow had never had Emma, Hook would have never fallen in love with her, there would never have been an Operation Firebird and Robin wouldn't have died. Damn that evil Snow White, will she ever stop ruining Regina's happiness!?

[KAOS Agent]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

And remember, Regina still doesn't have her one true love Daniel

I think the show has demonstrated that Regina's One True Love is Henry. Now she's got two of them. 

[KingOfHearts]

On 5/5/2019 at 12:09 AM, Melgaypet said:

I've never understood the logic behind this so-called choice. According to "Awake" if her parents go to Emma and raise her, she won't become the Savior and break the curse. Why the hell not? The characters all just state this as if it were fact! First of all, wasn't she destined to break the curse? Second of all, the original plan was for pregnant Snow to go through the wardrobe and raise Emma. In fact, the original original plan, before Gepetto got involved, was for both Charming and Snow to go, so this "choice" is predicated on a completely false premise and it makes Snowing seem stupid as well as callous.

And they were trusting Rumple - the guy who is notorious for screwing people over. He's also the guy responsible for the curse in the first place, so they were just falling right into his hands. The fact of the matter is that if they did go off his "prophecy", it could've mucked things up for him. He could've made the "28 years" thing up and orchestrated everything in such a way that that time frame would work best for him. He could've seen a bunch of possible futures and picked that one. The prophecy could've been bullshit.

[Shanna Marie]

As we get to the end of 5A in the rewatch, I'm utterly baffled at what the point of Merlin was supposed to be. I don't think we were supposed to see him as evil or incompetent, but for the most part, he was either useless or a screwup.

We never got any explanation for the Author and the magic pen that uses Dark Savior blood to rewrite reality, except you're not supposed to use it (unless you're Henry). I guess the hat might have been one of Merlin's attempts at coming up with something to contain/control Nimue, but then why would he have also made it be something that could help untether a Dark One from the dagger? And it couldn't contain the Darkness from Rumple, so it probably wouldn't have worked to contain Nimue. Was destroying it not an option, or did the poor Apprentice have to devote the rest of his long life to babysitting one of Merlin's screwups? The Sorcerer's Mansion also makes no sense. Merlin had no input into Curse 2. He was in a tree. He wasn't transported in that tree into Storybrooke and put into the mansion. So where did that come from and why was it in curse 2 but not in curse 1?

Then there's Excalibur. It turned out to have absolutely nothing to do with choosing the king of Camelot. It was supposed to be able to cut Merlin loose from the Grail power, but then he split off the dagger to try to control Nimue, and he buried the rest of the sword in the stone to keep it away from Nimue. I guess making it so that only someone good and pure could draw it would keep it out of the hands of the Dark One (ironic that it was a former Dark One who did draw it), and I suppose that someone that good would also make a good king (unless someone that good went evil soon afterward, as happened with both people who drew Excalibur from the stone, so maybe Merlin didn't do such a good job with that), but it was nowhere near the way of indicating the true king that it was in the Arthurian mythology. And if he wanted Arthur drawing the sword to unite it with the dagger and get rid of the Dark One, then why did he apparently bother whispering all that Make Camelot Great Again stuff to Arthur and talking to him about being a great king? That was what made Arthur snap and go evil, that sense that he was supposed to be a great king and he couldn't be with a broken sword. Maybe instead of filling Arthur's head with fancies about being king, Merlin could have actually told him what Excalibur was and what he needed to do with it. I'm also still not sure what Merlin's warning to Emma was all about, given that it had nothing to do with what happened.

Since the Apprentice was still alive while Arthur was going mad with his sword obsession, maybe he could have provided some guidance -- if he wasn't too busy babysitting that hat in an entirely different place from Camelot.

And maybe Merlin should have warned them about the danger of Nimue in his voice mail rather than talking like she'd be at all helpful.

The basic concept of their version of Merlin was interesting, and the casting was unconventional but ended up working well. But they totally screwed up the execution and didn't seem to know what to do with him. I think part of the problem was that they set it up so that he'd be too easy a solution, so they had to take him off the board almost immediately after having him appear. And there was the problem that they'd already given him credit/blame for too many random things that ended up not fitting together, since they combined the Sorcerer with Merlin.

[KingOfHearts]

I think combining the Sorcerer and Merlin was a smart move that made too much sense, but it wasn't set up well. The very presence of the Sorcerer in S4 was bizarrely contrived. His mansion ended up in Storybrooke after the second curse, we don't know why he had the Hat and much less why it was laying out on an end table, and the Author thing is just ridiculous. A&E were only interesting in the Sorcerer's Apprentice imagery and having an elusive sage character. Nothing about the Camelot arc was setup in S4, and none of the Sorcerer's actions had anything to do with Merlin's backstory. You can't go back to S4 and say, "oh, this was all about Nimue and Excalibur."

Edited May 8, 2019 by KingOfHearts