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

[andromeda331]

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

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."

The Camelot arc, the Underworld arc, you'd almost think they were all salutes to a particular Disney movie and scene.

It fits the climax of almost every ONCE arc so well.

[Shanna Marie]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

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.

Yeah, I think the idea of making Merlin be the Sorcerer could have worked. But they didn't do anything at all to bridge the two storylines. It seems to have all been about the big "aha!" revelation as the Apprentice was dying -- the Sorcerer is Merlin! -- and was an excuse to make Camelot the 5A setting. I was hoping with Merlin we'd get an explanation for the hat, the mansion, the Author, the room full of empty books. It didn't even have to tie into the Dark One stuff other than being related to Merlin, but I felt like we needed a why here. I sort of handwaved a reason for the hat (one of his attempts to deal with Nimue), but the only mention of the Author stuff was using Henry for the spell as someone chosen by Merlin, since he's the Author.

I do think it had something to do with them worrying that Merlin made things too easy. Once he was freed, he could have easily resolved all their problems with no drama, so they had to create drama, and then they had to remove him from the story. Plus, they didn't want to just resolve the Dark One situation and move on. They needed to send Hook to the Underworld to set up the next arc. I wonder when they came up with the Underworld as their 5B plan. Merlin would make sense to have around if they were just going to resolve the Dark One thing and do some other story, but if they decided midway through the arc that they wanted to do the Underworld, then that could explain why so much of the Merlin and Camelot stuff was half-baked and unresolved and why the pacing for the arc was so weird. If they had other plans originally but then decided to do Dark Hook and send him to the Underworld, that's three episodes full of an entirely different story rather than actually dealing with Arthur and the brainwashed Camelot people and Merlin setting all his screwups right. Even if they planned Dark Hook but hadn't planned the Underworld, that's a big chunk of the arc finale that might have been spent on dealing with the plots they started and then forgot about. Emma's actions in Storybrooke don't at all fit what was really going on, but was that always their plan for what was really going on or did they retrofit a new idea onto what they set up? It's like there's a huge "oh, wait, never mind" at some point in the arc, and they lurch off into a new direction that doesn't really fit well with what was set up.

[Camera One]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

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."

This was the problem.  They don't think a step ahead and the focus is always on creating intrigue for the sake of suspense.  They threw out a whole lot of "mystery" about the Sorcerer in 4A, which, as KingofHearts said, was originally to bring in the Sorcerer's Apprentice Easter Eggs like the hat with the stars or the walking broom.  The bigger problem was in 4B when they melded The Apprentice stuff with The Author mythology, having the Sorcerer's Mansion containing the empty books and then the whole Choosing The Author flashback.  At this point, I think they could very well have decided Yen Sid was the Sorcerer.  

That's why nothing about the Merlin/Camelot stuff in 5A meshed with the Hat/Author stuff in 4B.  In fact, Merlin hardly mentioned the Hat or the Pen or his Apprentice.  The Writers hardly made an attempt to make it fit.  

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I do think it had something to do with them worrying that Merlin made things too easy. Once he was freed, he could have easily resolved all their problems with no drama, so they had to create drama, and then they had to remove him from the story.

That has been their pattern all along.  It was obvious Merlin was going to be doomed or useless or both.  It's like how they made Blue and Glinda so toothless.  In fact, they made them that way so Rumple and Regina was eternally used as the well of knowledge and power.  

Quote

I wonder when they came up with the Underworld as their 5B plan. Merlin would make sense to have around if they were just going to resolve the Dark One thing and do some other story, but if they decided midway through the arc that they wanted to do the Underworld, then that could explain why so much of the Merlin and Camelot stuff was half-baked and unresolved and why the pacing for the arc was so weird. If they had other plans originally but then decided to do Dark Hook and send him to the Underworld, that's three episodes full of an entirely different story rather than actually dealing with Arthur and the brainwashed Camelot people and Merlin setting all his screwups right. 

Who knows what they were thinking.  It seems like they change plans a lot.  Or it could just be their shiny toys "Bored now!" syndrome after playing with Arthur for four episodes.  They seemed to make a big deal about Guinevere but to hardly use her was just weird.  And didn't the actress who played Merida thought she was going to play a big role in the climax?  

It's kind of like how in Season 6, they made Aladdin/Jasmine/Jafar seemed like a big deal and then they disappeared midway through the season just to come back for a one-off conclusion.  They brought Arthur back for an episode near the end of 5B for a conclusion.

[tennisgurl]

The thing is, the writers have real struggles with writing good characters with magic powers, or even just magic objects. Almost every good guy who has the ability to use magic are useless (Blue and the fairies, Glinda) not around much (Ariel) their powers cause them seemingly nothing but angst and misery (Emma) or have to make up excuses as to why they cant just fix everything (Merlin). They never really bother with coming up with rules as to what people can and cannot do, so they just have the villains be all powerful and can do whatever they want, while the good guys dither around saying they cant fight the bad guy because "we have to find another way" beside actually fighting them, or just flailing around as the bad guy kicks their ass, or they just are "I cant because...reasons". They have no interest in world building or explaining how magic works, so they can never set limits for them or explain why they can or cannot do anything, and they give the good and bad guys excuses as to not just fight with the people they are currently fighting with, even if they make no sense, just to keep the story going.

Merlin being The Author isnt a bad idea, but its so obvious that it was something that came up later, or else it raised about a billion questions. How could he have been doing all of that stuff in Storeybrooke when he was in a freaking tree? And why a pen anyway? Its a cool idea to combine them, but it was just so poorly thought out. And then he didnt matter anyway because they found their next shiny thing.

Edited May 9, 2019 by tennisgurl

[KAOS Agent]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

They seemed to make a big deal about Guinevere but to hardly use her was just weird.  And didn't the actress who played Merida thought she was going to play a big role in the climax?  

Apparently, she did. There was a huge plot with Merida and Arthur that was cut from the 5A finale for time reasons. They never bothered to inform the actress about the edit though, so she was promoting a whole thing that never happened. Spoilers showed everyone from Camelot leaving through a portal with Merida dragging along a tied up Arthur. One hopes that all those poor people aren't still sanded. That they never gave any conclusion to the Camelot storyline makes the whole thing a huge waste of time. This type of crap writing is why a rewatch isn't interesting to me. I know it's going nowhere and I can't get invested in a story that doesn't have a conclusion. 

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I do think it had something to do with them worrying that Merlin made things too easy. Once he was freed, he could have easily resolved all their problems with no drama, so they had to create drama, and then they had to remove him from the story.

Merlin's story was uneven from the start. What was the point of him going to Young!Emma? If he could see the future (or possibilities for the future) why would he set up events that would lead to the worst case scenario? Why set Arthur on his path? Why not warn Hook that Excalibur was extremely dangerous? He didn't seem to have issues telling people about their future, so why would he not mention pertinent information to help avert tragedy? Why the hell was he brewing a message potion with a message that had absolutely nothing to do with what he was warning them against? The storytelling on this show is awful because it's all about the twists and gotchas and ignores the very basic elements that they've already laid out. 

[Shanna Marie]

Something that's becoming more and more obvious during the rewatch is that as much as this show talks about concepts like heroes and villains, happy endings, darkness, etc., it doesn't actually seem to have a real viewpoint on these things. At least, not deliberately. You don't come away from any of these arcs with a sense of anything being defined or explored in a meaningful way. There's a thing in story theory about how a story can be looked at as a battle between worldviews or philosophies of life, with the protagonist and antagonist each having different views, so their battle is like the views being contrasted, with the winner also being the winning view.

That kind of works in season one, where we have Regina driven by revenge and never happy, no matter what she has, and we have Snow who's driven by love and happy no matter what her circumstances are. Plus there's Rumple, who's driven by selfishness and fear. Emma's torn between all these worldviews and attitudes but ultimately goes with being open to love, and that allows her to save the day. I think we learn a lot about what they're saying about love in that season, with Emma gradually developing a motherly love for Henry and being open to friendship love with Mary Margaret, and meanwhile Regina possesses rather than loves. In the past, there's Snow's facing the world with love -- and even her fatal error with Cora and Daniel comes from her mistakenly assuming that everyone feels about love the way she does and trying to intervene to allow Regina to be with her love. Meanwhile, Regina's so driven by hate that she kills the things she loves in the service of hate.

I can't really find a way to do that with most of the subsequent arcs, even the ones that are heavily themed. Like with the 4B arc of heroes and villains and happy endings. We never really learn what the show thinks a hero or a villain is, what a happy ending is. There's no conflict of worldviews or life philosophies. Regina thinks that villains don't get happy endings, and so she needs the rules of the world to be rewritten. The heroes all think villains don't get happy endings, so they need to get the rules of the world rewritten so Regina can get her happy ending. The villains all think heroes don't get happy endings, so they're trying to get the rules of the world rewritten to get their happy endings. The only real dissenting voice is Ariel, who says villains don't get happy endings because they go about things the wrong way, and the events of that episode prove her right, but this is never really shown as being the right answer for everyone else. Regina later has her "I write my own happy ending" epiphany, but none of the other characters seem to notice that they've been wrong and pursuing the wrong goal all along. The only viewpoint the show itself seems to really take is Isaac's view that heroes are boring and villains are interesting, except that there continue to be characters talking non-ironically about wanting to be heroes, and they're not wrong to do so. I guess the writers are ambivalent about heroism, where they think it's something they should want to be but realize they aren't so maybe heroes aren't actually all that good and they're boring anyway, so who wants to be a hero?

Then there's all the darkness stuff in 5A. I still don't know what they're saying about darkness, what they think it is, what it might represent, what different attitudes about it are. There's Emma trying to get rid of it and Rumple desperately wanting it back and Hook struggling with it but overcoming it, but then they all get what they want. Emma gets rid of it, Hook overcomes it, and Rumple gets it back. Emma and Hook don't seem to be at all changed by their experiences. Rumple just goes on the way he was before his dark heart nearly killed him, and him scheming to get the darkness back isn't even treated like a moral event horizon, given that he ends as a hero (ironically, since he still seems to have had nasty moments even after supposedly turning good and living out the rest of Belle's life, it's not Belle who finally influenced him to truly become good, but rather WHook/Rogers).

And in 5B, there's no telling what they really mean by unfinished business and where people end up in the afterlife or what this says about life.

They just throw out all these high-level concepts without any clear sense of what they mean by them or what they're trying to say.

[Camera One]

The Writers take empty buzzwords or platitudes  and use them with whatever context fits in a particular arc or scene. 

Their messages are also contradictory because different characters are judged by different moral standards.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

The Writers take empty buzzwords or platitudes  and use them with whatever context fits in a particular arc or scene. 

And often they contradict what was in a previous arc or scene.

Sometimes I mourn the show that could have been. With the casting and premise they had, there's so much they could have done, exploring the nature of fairy tales and concepts like heroes, villains, and happy endings. Have fun with the mix-ups and mash-ups, letting the fairy tale princesses compare notes, the princes get together and talk about what they had to deal with (did we even really get the various princes together other than Philip and Charming being in a couple of the same scenes and Charming being at Cinderella's ball with Thomas? We needed Thomas, David, Eric, and Philip all together, though I guess they weren't all in Storybrooke at the same time). The recovering villains support group. The fed-up heroes support group. Culture clashes among the people from various kingdoms thrown into Storybrooke together.

For more depth, really get into what makes a villain, and not just that one bad thing that turns them into an utter psychopath from being a truly good person, and then doing one good thing that turns them into a hero after years of evil. I think they did a decent job with Hook, with it being a process turning him from villain to hero and him doing a lot of soul searching along the way. He might also have been a good case study for how a villain is made, showing the difficulty of his childhood and lack of real parental guidance, then his struggles to turn himself around in the navy, then maybe the gradual slope from turning his back on the king into full-on piracy, maybe turning back again a bit with Milah before going over the edge from one loss too many. We only got to see the main turning points that made it look like he flipped a switch, but there was room to explore if they'd spent even half the time on his backstory that they spent on rehashing every moment of Snow vs. Regina.

Instead of the characters taking stuff like happy endings seriously, have them react to that concept in story books and comment that they only got a happy ending because that's where the story ended. In their case, they might have had a big good moment, but life goes on, and it can't always be all happy. Let Regina learn that she's seeking something that doesn't exist, an endpoint when life goes on. She'll never have a happy ending unless she dies. Other moments will come, and they won't all be good. You sometimes don't even realize what your big happy moments were until you look back. Sometimes the things that seem like big losses at the time turn out to have been good fortune. If you'd been stuck with the thing you thought would make you happy, you wouldn't have had the thing that eventually really did make you happy.

The fairytale motif would have been a great way to explore all kinds of themes and make interesting comments on our society by contrasting it to the fairy tale society, both in the fairybacks and in what they built in Storybrooke.

Plus swashbuckling adventure, the fun of a Disney princess who carries a gun, giving real twists to the old tales (like Bandit Snow or Prince Charming really being a shepherd), fleshing out the stories, and examining and exploring the world where all these things happened.

[Camera One]

The last two seasons showed that A&E are only capable of rehashing the same scenarios.  Sometimes, the show feels random, but it's somewhat consistent in its inconsistency.  In Season 6's "The Other Shoe", we yet again had Cinderella committing the cardinal sin of revealing a secret.  Just because Clorinda was heartbroken, she went along with her stepmother's plan to kill Ashley, who then had to apologize to Clorinda after paying penance by getting run through with Lady Tremaine's cane.   The messed up morality showed up yet again in a one-off episode.  

Then, we have cases where they insist on going the same route again despite controversy.  After the rape of Graham, they then had the rape of Robin and the rape of Whook, by bold and audacious ladies.  

Although Season 7 seemed like it was a tad better than Season 6, how unoriginal can you get than switching the genders of the characters from Season 1 (Emma = Henry, Henry = Lucy) and then having the exact same freak'in Curse except in Seattle (where they didn't bother to differentiate how it worked compared to the Curse being in an isolated town in Maine).   The only enjoyable part was when they actually tried to do something new, with Whook and Alice.  Then again, Hook was the only character who got a fully realized redemption arc.  At the end of the day, he was the one who won out, in all iterations.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Sometimes I mourn the show that could have been. With the casting and premise they had, there's so much they could have done, exploring the nature of fairy tales and concepts like heroes, villains, and happy endings. Have fun with the mix-ups and mash-ups, letting the fairy tale princesses compare notes, the princes get together and talk about what they had to deal with (did we even really get the various princes together other than Philip and Charming being in a couple of the same scenes and Charming being at Cinderella's ball with Thomas?

Yes, especially because this is the only show I've watched that was a true-mashup which wasn't totally silly or meant to be a satire or reworked into the most humorless medieval bloodfest.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yes, especially because this is the only show I've watched that was a true-mashup which wasn't totally silly or meant to be a satire or reworked into the most humorless medieval bloodfest.

We do have to give them credit for that much. They may have forgotten some of the fun factor along the way, but they did mostly find a good middle ground that wasn't silly or farce but that also still wasn't going for gritty "realism." I remember when they first announced the show and I was dreading something like the sitcom of The Charmings. They took the fairy tale stuff more or less straight instead of winking spoof.

[Camera One]

I was trying to look up stuff about fairy dust and re-read part of the script of "Snow Falls".

It struck me that reading the lines, both characters seem really obnoxious and abrasive (à la Merida, Kansas or Murderella).  

More and more, I'm wondering if it was the actors who gave those characters the charisma that they needed to be likeable.  

Though others have raised a good point before... we did first see Snow and Charming in the pilot in more favorable light, so at least that made a better first impression. 

But still, the "banter" dialogue doesn't seem too great on paper considering "Snow Falls" is one of the more liked episodes of the series.  I guess it shows how important actors are in making weaker writing work.

Edited June 4, 2019 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

It helped the show immensely that the actors playing their main True Love couple had crazy chemistry and were falling in love in real life. Imagine if Dania Ramirez was playing Snow and Andrew West was Charming. How far do you think this show would have gotten? Lana Parrilla became a cartoon character by the end, but she was crazy effective as Regina/Evil Queen in early seasons. Robert Carlyle carried Rumpelstiltskin way longer than should have been possible given the writing. The writing on this show was always super cringy, but the excellent cast elevated it beyond all expectation. They could only do so much with the material given though and eventually nothing could cover for the absolute dreck the writers were putting out there.

[andromeda331]

8 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

It helped the show immensely that the actors playing their main True Love couple had crazy chemistry and were falling in love in real life. Imagine if Dania Ramirez was playing Snow and Andrew West was Charming. How far do you think this show would have gotten? Lana Parrilla became a cartoon character by the end, but she was crazy effective as Regina/Evil Queen in early seasons. Robert Carlyle carried Rumpelstiltskin way longer than should have been possible given the writing. The writing on this show was always super cringy, but the excellent cast elevated it beyond all expectation. They could only do so much with the material given though and eventually nothing could cover for the absolute dreck the writers were putting out there.

That's true the show was always lucky that they had so many great actors who manage to elevate the show. As bad is the writing was it never would have made it past the first season if not for the actors doing such a good job. 

Edited June 4, 2019 by andromeda331

[Shanna Marie]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

I really like that alternate flashback.  5B had so much potential, and so much of it could have been rewritten to make a better arc... the flashback with Snow, the stuff with James and David (maybe flashbacks of David's dad could have been here), the return of Red, Hook and Liam, a final scene with Neal and Henry instead of that dumb scene in the car with Emma or the Henry/Apprentice crap, and an alternate set of guest stars who had died instead of Regina's dad, Regina's mom and Regina's horse (that could all have been in one episode, minus the horse).  Heck, even Belle and Gaston's story could have been rewritten so it was actually more palatable and less rage-inducing.

  Hide contents

I'm just sad that we are getting close to the point in the show where it is not even possible to re-write to make it better.  

"Firebird" was the second last (or maybe the last) "good" episode.  Next week is essentially the last decent episode.  The 2-part finale marked the beginning of the end, and Season 6 is pretty much unsalvageable.  

Moving this over from the episode thread so we can discuss seasons in general without spoiler bars (I can't figure out how to remove the spoiler tag from the quote, but it's about season 6).

With 5B, I can figure out how to improve individual problematic episodes, like with my "rewrite" of "The Brothers Jones" or the flashbacks in "Firebird." Fixing the arc would require more substantial rewriting and a different focus. Making the whole thing about Regina's family woes was a big problem, even though that really only involved two episodes. I think part of it was that tying Zelena to Hades came across as pretty random and contrived, like she was the one character they had no idea what to do with, so they hooked her up with Hades. It doesn't help that Hades is the villain who's supposedly driving this arc, and yet he has no story, really. We see him as a character in other people's flashbacks, but we never actually find out what's going on with him. Supposedly, all this is happening because of some issue in the past with Zeus, but we never see what that issue is. Is there any other villain in this series who doesn't get any kind of origin story flashback? There's no building toward the "aha! this explains what he wants and what he's doing and that tells us how we can defeat him" moment with this arc. It's like if we had the Pan arc and they just made an offhand mention of him being Rumple's father without showing us how that came about, or if we'd learned Ingrid was Elsa's aunt and Emma's former foster mother but we didn't see any of that stuff or learn how Ingrid ended up in Storybrooke.

I was going to say that I've mentally fixed season 6, but then I realized that I did so by completely scrapping it and starting over, keeping only a few little things. It started with me thinking that there's no way Emma would have ditched Hook to run off to New York so soon after he was miraculously returned from the dead, and then I realized that her whole reaction to his return from the dead was one of those "this isn't how real people act" things. If her love miraculously returns from the dead after she'd given him up as lost forever and even had a funeral, she's not going to immediately take him to the town diner and barge in on the wake for someone else's boyfriend. She's going to drag him home and celebrate the fact that he's alive. She's the only one who's going to care that much that he's back, so it's not like she has to tell everyone right away. If she and Hook aren't at the wake, then Regina can react more sanely to Rumple's magic stealing stunt and Henry won't worry that she's going to turn evil again, so he won't want to destroy magic. Regina figures out what Rumple did, Henry writes the crystal away, Regina smashes the crystal to return magic. And we're done with all that. No Untold Stories, no road trip to New York, no Jekyll and Hyde potion to create the Evil Queen as a separate entity. Then Emma can tell Regina about Hook privately rather than springing him on her. And we can then move on to tell some other story.

I really feel like the ultimate villain (as in final, not worst, necessarily) should have been Rumple. His stunt to get power back put him beyond believable redemption, and there were all those hints about him having a final showdown with Emma. Having the Black Fairy show up -- but just as some kind of bad super fairy, not as Rumple's mother gone haywire -- might have been interesting after all the references to her, but then maybe do a twist and it turns out she's not actually bad, just so powerful that all the stuff she created ended up getting used by other people for evil, and she's the one who helps them defeat Rumple.

[Camera One]

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think part of it was that tying Zelena to Hades came across as pretty random and contrived, like she was the one character they had no idea what to do with, so they hooked her up with Hades.

It did feel contrived.  Planning the latter half of 5B, I am assuming the Writers already knew they were bringing in The Evil Queen in Season 6, and they wanted to involve Zelena somehow in how Regina loses Robin Hood, so Zelena would have to choose between the two halves of her sister.  

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 Is there any other villain in this series who doesn't get any kind of origin story flashback?

Hades felt almost like an afterthought, despite the setting that teased an adventure in Ancient Greek mythology.  It stands out that he's the only villain not shown a proper backstory.   And on this show, it's always weaker when they tell rather than show.  For some reason, A&E thought the gotcha moment of finding out that Hades was capable of love and he created Underbrooke for Zelena was supposed to be epic enough.  

[Camera One]

I was thinking about the failure of the Land of Untold Stories, and I think one of the biggest problems was we never saw a flashback that was actually fully set in the Land of Untold Stories.

We never knew what it was like there because we saw characters before they went there.  Cinderella's stepsister/stepmother, The Count of Monte Cristo and Jekyll/Hyde's flashback stories generally ended with them entering the portal to the Land of Untold Stories. 

How did Hyde become a leader there?  What was society like there?  How did people spend their time?  All we saw was the marketplace where everyone seemed to get along just fine.  Were Cinderella's stepsister/stepmother suffering there the whole time?  Did Snowing's handmaiden get medical care?  

We never even saw how Jasmine got there, and what she did there all that time.  She seemed to think Hyde was a scary individual.  

Viewers seemed to love seeing a steampunk world, but no time was spent there in Season 6 at all.  That made the Land of Untold Stories (which as I said in another thread, should have been Land Where Time Stood Still because that's what it was) extremely undefined, inconsistent and arbitrary.  

Hyde made a threat at the start of 6A that when the Untold Stories get played out, there will be dire consequences.  But that actually makes no sense once you see the entire arc.  It doesn't mesh with the characters we actually saw from the Land of Untold Stories.

In some ways, it's reminiscent of the problem with 5B.  Hades was the villain, but we never saw the mythology behind the Greek Gods.  So the entire arc was rather unconvincing... too much telling and not enough showing.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Viewers seemed to love seeing a steampunk world, but no time was spent there in Season 6 at all.  That made the Land of Untold Stories (which as I said in another thread, should have been Land Where Time Stood Still because that's what it was) extremely undefined, inconsistent and arbitrary.  

I suspect that was mostly because the writers never cared about it as a world. It was merely a handwave to give them an excuse to bring new characters to Storybrooke. Theoretically, they were trying for a repeat of season one, with Emma bringing happy endings to people who'd had them ripped away by Regina, so they needed new people who hadn't been in Storybrooke this whole time, and now they'd had their happy endings ripped away by being sent to the Land of Untold Stories, or else they'd gone there because they couldn't get a happy ending, or maybe the problem was being brought to Storybrooke. But the actual place didn't matter all that much, aside from being something that looked "cool" for the brief visit during the finale. And they got bored with the concept within a few episodes, so the whole thing became rather pointless.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Did Snowing's handmaiden get medical care?  

Apparently, her condition was frozen by going there, so were she and the Count of Monte Cristo living happily together there, only to have that ripped away when they were sent to Storybrooke and the Evil Queen forced him to keep carrying out the mission Regina gave him?

[Shanna Marie]

The sad thing about the Untold Stories stuff is that as lame, underdeveloped, and underutilized as it was, it was the best part of the season. The Cinderella episode about the stepsister was one of the better ones, the "Jekyll is the really evil one" twist was expected on this show (the worst thing you can be is a supposedly good person) but that was still an interesting episode, especially the fact that killing Jekyll was the only way to kill Hyde (pity they never used that little fact elsewhere), and I liked Nemo (even if I hate the character assassination that led to Liam 2.0 existing and the retcon about having adventures while supposedly frozen during the curse).

The Evil Queen split could have had potential, but these writers were never really going to go to the interesting places. Only on this show could a character with Regina's track record split out her dark side and all her evil into a separate person without changing at all. She was still as snarky, bitchy, bitter, and avoiding all responsibility as ever. Only on this show would the solution to confronting the embodiment of all her evil be to learn to love herself. Only on this show would someone with her track record be treated as though she's redeemed and get a happy ending, complete with romance, while people are still dealing with the consequences of her evil, with side effects and loopholes she didn't bother to warn them about before she went off to have her happy ending.

And then there was the whole mess with the Savior stuff, with the shakes and doom prophecy (but Regina's the underdog who always gets the short end of the stick). And the utterly nonsensical stuff about the Black Fairy, where she sends Gideon to kill Emma so she'll have enough power to open a portal so she can come to Storybrooke and fight the Final Battle with Emma.

So, yeah, bring on the Untold Stories!

[Camera One]

For me personally, Season 6 was dead in the water from the start because I didn't think any of their big picture ideas had much potential. 

The Land of Untold Stories had more duds than successes.  There was the fact that the threat of the untold stories "playing out" made no sense.  There was the travesty of the Monte Cristo episode, where not only was a literary character trashed but we got more of Snowing being completely incompetent and gullible.  There was the Cinderella episode where Ashley had to apologize to her stepsister who colluded with her stepmother to kill her and then be punished with a severe puncture injury.  Looking back, I think I mainly liked "The Other Shoe" because Lady Tremaine was so awesome.  I felt Nemo and Hyde were rather bland.  

The Evil Queen stuff felt like redux and I couldn't buy it from the start.  I don't see any way in which such a storyline would be remotely enjoyable or interesting.  

Add to that the seriously annoying Aladdin and Jasmine, Emma's laughable hand tremors, the anger-inducing treatment of Belle by Rumple followed by another round of true love, and 6A scraped the bottom of the barrel in every respect.  

Edited June 28, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was looking at the failure of the Untold Stories threat, and at the end of the day, it was basically a few people with a grudge against the main characters as per usual.  Liam and Lady Tremaine just happened to come to a place where their supposed enemies lived.  Did Hyde have time to look up and find the specific people who would have grudges to allow him to rule Storybrooke?  He wouldn't have known The Evil Queen was in town, and she was the only reason Edmond Dantes attacked Snowing.  Then, there was Jasmine and The Oracle who weren't threats.  

What was Hyde's endgame anyway?  Did he not care about revenge against Rumple?  

Edited June 30, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

If they wanted to throw a monkey wrench in the relationship between Emma and Hook (since apparently happy couples are boring and they can't be happy and do stuff like team up with the Three Musketeers to fight Mr. Hyde), there was plenty of material there. We just did the Emma WALLS storyline a couple of episodes ago, and she was supposedly cured, so it's boring to do it here. But Hook just came back from the dead due to divine intervention, was horribly tortured in the underworld, died horribly, was made the Dark One against his wishes by Emma and had to deal with Emma being the Dark One. Plus, he learned that his whole self image of being the bad one while his brother was the good one is a lie, since his brother sacrificed a ship full of men to his own ambitions and he was apparently good enough for a god to give him a second chance at life. He's got nightmare fuel there, as well as probably being in need of therapy. I could imagine that he'd be waking up in the night from some bad nightmares and that might make him want to avoid moving in with Emma for a while. He might use hosting Belle as an excuse.

It is shoddy writing that they basically did a reset and ignored everything that happened in Season 5 to Emma and Hook with their Savior arc in 6A.  

Though in some ways, it would be hard to write an enjoyable storyline using the fallout of that storyline, whether it be Hook pushing Emma away or vice versa.  We've already done the storyline of Hook feeling that he wasn't good enough, and ditto x 1000 to Emma and her WALLS™.   

By 6A, the Writers had basically written all the characters into corners with no escape or fast-forwarded or flip-flopped their development to the point where there was nothing left to squeeze out... sadly, even for characters and relationships that formerly had a lot of potential. 

[Shanna Marie]

20 hours ago, Camera One said:

Though in some ways, it would be hard to write an enjoyable storyline using the fallout of that storyline, whether it be Hook pushing Emma away or vice versa.  We've already done the storyline of Hook feeling that he wasn't good enough, and ditto x 1000 to Emma and her WALLS™.   

I think it could have been done, though probably not by these writers. Maybe just use the trauma and the fact that Hook hesitates to move in with Emma because he doesn't want her to know he's having horrible nightmares as what kicks off him going to Archie (since Belle gives him an ultimatum after he wakes her up) and ends up being about him figuring out what he wants to do with his second chance at life. Of course, that would have required him changing costumes and doing some different things instead of just being the same old Hook wearing the same old thing and doing the same things. They could have set up his eventual move into apparently being some sort of cop/deputy by having him consider other careers he could have in Storybrooke. He's old-fashioned enough that this could also be a reason he'd want to put off marriage. He wouldn't want to move into Emma's house that she owns and is paying for without pulling his own weight in supporting his family, which means some kind of job, but piracy isn't an option and Storybrooke doesn't have a navy, so what else can he do? Meanwhile, him taking action and control of his life would help ease the aftereffects of the trauma. This would have made a lot more sense than what we got. PTSD and an identity crisis are reasons to see a therapist, while a death prophecy isn't so much. Emma shutting out Hook because she decided she was going to die (never mind that just deciding she's going to die and not fighting it is wildly out of character for Emma) right after getting him back from the dead makes little sense, since she's not protecting him. Her death is going to hurt him, whether or not they move in together, but them having made the most of the time they had would at least give him some comfort, while losing her after being distanced from her would have been devastating. On the other hand, he'd have had reason to not want her to know he's having some PTSD, since she was at least partially responsible for some of the bad things that happened to him, and he wouldn't want her to feel bad.

Or, if they didn't want to deal with all the emotional stuff they'd established, they could have actually built toward the Henry animosity story by setting that up, and that would have given them some conflict. Have Henry say something to Hook behind Emma's back that makes it clear Hook isn't really welcome to move in with them (it would come out of the blue, but then it did anyway). Hook doesn't want to rat Henry out or come between Emma and Henry, so he doesn't say anything and makes it sound like he feels he needs to stay on the Jolly Roger to look after Belle. He figures that Henry just wants to settle in to the new house before someone new joins them, and with time maybe he'll come around. Emma's a bit baffled by Hook being willing to come over for dinner but always making excuses to leave. Then the Nemo episode comes along, and that's when Henry changes his mind about Hook.

I don't think the Savior Shakes even really went anywhere, did they? They used them as a plot point in a few episodes, for this season's version of "Emma's struggling with her magic, but after one breakthrough she can do anything," but they never explained why that happens, and it just sort of stops somewhere along the way. And I think the Black Fairy plot would have been more effective without all the prophecy stuff, if it had just happened. Most of the time, they avoid doing anything to set up a story, but this time they did all the prophecy and vision stuff, and yet it still seemed to just show up, so it was really about the manufactured angst rather than truly setting something up.

[tennisgurl]

What gets more and more clear as the show goes on, especially as the re-watch goes into season six, is how lazy these writers are when it comes to taking characters from one medium and translating them to this show. Its like they take one trait from every character and ignore everything else that made them a complex and interesting character to start with, and just focus on this one thing even if it makes no sense. 

Like with Mulan, all they seemed to know about her was that she was a soldier, so they wrote her almost all stories based around her being a badass fighter, ignoring the fact that in the actual movie, while Mulan could certainly throw a punch and be a badass fighter, what made her stand out in the army was she was clever and thought outside the box, like shooting a rocket into the mountain behind them instead of at the army that was attacking to take them out, and infiltrating the palace in disguise at the climax to save the Emperor. While they did finally give Mulan some more character development, it was clearly not based on anything that was in her character at first. 

Or with Aladdin, all they seemed to get from him was "thief" so they wrote him stealing diamonds and necklaces and being sneaky and not living up to his savior job, when in the actual movie (and the actual original story) we only saw him stealing food because he was poor and starving, and he was very giving and tried to look out for people when he could. But I guess we cant have him as some savior cautionary tale in this stupid savior retcon then, so now he is just street ray guy and thats all he gets. 

It keeps coming up over and over in so much of the characterization they come up with, but I guess they were lucky, at least they got ONE previously established trait. Look at Dorothy, she has literally nothing to do with either the movie or book version of herself, or the Count of Monte Cristo, who is the opposite of himself from the book or could just be any guy. Its so lazy, its mind boggling.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/2/2019 at 1:03 PM, tennisgurl said:

Its like they take one trait from every character and ignore everything else that made them a complex and interesting character to start with, and just focus on this one thing even if it makes no sense. 

I think to some extent they did that with all the characters, even the regulars. Season one Snow wasn't at all about hope speeches. She stood up to Regina, was snarky, and was willing to fight. The time they made her like the cartoon Snow, she was under the influence of a potion, and it was done as a surprise twist joke, where she just looked like she was being all sweet and whistle while you work, before she went after the bird with her broom. It's only in later seasons that they retroactively made her more like the cartoon and had her be all about naive hope (without any plan for the "better way" she kept talking about) -- except for every other episode when she was all doom and gloom and gave up instantly. Hook did get fleshed out pretty well and got some decent storylines, but the character was never allowed to evolve naturally, the way you'd expect him to, given all his other growth. He never got to really change his costume other than switching from the leather pants to jeans, never got to change some of the key character traits. Emma had her WALLS. Even Regina, their favorite, never really got a storyline other than being worried that being a villain meant she wouldn't get a happy ending.

Going back to the discussion of what storylines they should have done in the aftermath of season five, I have to say that if dealing even somewhat realistically with the effects of a storyline that involved what was essentially a demonic possession, a near death, a death, and torture is too dark for your show, then maybe the storyline involving demonic possession, death, and torture is a little dark in the first place. In a fantasy show, you don't have to go full-on realistic. People do die and come back from the dead without too much trauma, and they go through all kinds of crazy adventures without being too deeply affected, but when you pile things on to that extent and then it's instantly like it never actually happened, you can't tell any difference in the character, and it's never mentioned again, you have a cartoon, not a character. It's like Wile E. Coyote getting smashed by anvils, falling off a cliff, and blown up by an ACME bomb and then a second later it's like it never happened.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Season one Snow wasn't at all about hope speeches. It's only in later seasons that they retroactively made her more like the cartoon and had her be all about naive hope (without any plan for the "better way" she kept talking about) -- except for every other episode when she was all doom and gloom and gave up instantly.

That would be an insult to the cartoon Snow too.  If they made Snow hopeful that would be one thing, but as you said, she was defeatist and needed to be cheered up whenever things got bad.  They kept flip-flopping her between "I'm Mary Margaret here!" and "I don't want to be MM anymore!" to the point you'd think SHE had split herself in two.  I think out of all the characters, Snow was the most destroyed character.  

Second place was Henry, since he didn't have as far to fall.  He was a smart, pretty well-defined kid in Season 1 who saw Regina for who she really was.  He was the first casualty on the Writers' block by having him declare false equivalencies between what Regina did and what the "heroes" (Emma lying about his father and Snow defeating Cora) were doing.  

I would say third place was Belle, except I didn't find her that great even in "Skin Deep".  She was hollow as a character from the start since a big part of Belle was her relationship with her father and they ignored that completely on this show right from the beginning (because this show values family relationship... right).

I was afraid they would ruin Emma in 5A, but they actually didn't.  She didn't do anything that was remotely evil in my books.  Her ruination came in Season 6.   It's not that she became unlikeable.  She just became completely flat and devoid of any spark or personality.

I'm not sure if they put enough energy into Charming to really destroy him, except as a casualty of the Snow character assassination.

For their favorite character, the Writers ruined Regina as early as 2B, by having her kowtow to her mother and acting like she erased all her evil deeds by agreeing to sacrifice herself for Henry.  Not to mention making Regina into a mass murderer, which was totally unnecessary.  And every time they had the "heroes" make excuses for Regina or bend over backwards to accommodate her while Regina responded like an ingrate (oops, I mean sassy strong woman), they actually undermined Regina as a character.  

Meanwhile, Rumple was ruined beyond hope in 4A, less so with what he did to the heroes, but moreso because they had Belle constantly making excuses for his horrible behavior and then writing the story as if Rumple was actually good inside and deserved Belle's love.  That disgusting unearned "romance" just made Rumple less and less bearable, especially when he told Belle he wouldn't change but continue to pursue her resulting in the gag-worthy "Up Someone's Back End" episode.

I think the only character who wasn't ruined by the end was Hook, though not for lack of trying, what with revealing he killed his father and left his stepbrother an orphan, and then deciding he killed David's father.  At least they had the character consistently accept responsibility for his actions and try to atone for his crimes.

The mark of a bad show is by the end, you find you don't care about any of the characters anymore because they had lost all their core characteristics or had become unlikeable.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

Beyond creating one note characters that show little to no growth or human reaction, the recycling of stories got really old. The semi-annual Hook wrongs someone in the past and now is trying to atone in some way episodes were good for showing Hook is indeed a changing, better man, but why must they hit that same beat over and over? If they have so little creativity in their storylines, why not change out the character in the Hook role? Why not actually have Regina do what Hook does so that we see some sort of understanding that she did wrong and needs to work on atoning for past deeds? Or why not try Zelena in that role?

It's an effective tool to show how Hook is working to change and how he understands that it's probably never going to be enough to make up for those he harmed. Why is it that other reforming characters aren't put into a similar position? Regina's victims who show up usually end up dead and no one even cares. The only thing her flashback episodes ever do is show the horrible atrocities she enjoyed committing in the past while in the present, it's all about her suffering when confronted by her victims. Edmond Dantes is laying there dead on the street  (Is he really dead? Did anyone bother to check and see if he was just grievously injured?) and all anyone cares about is poor Regina's feelings about it all. Never mind that she set up the whole thing in the first place. Percival described a horrific scene from his childhood, then he dies and it's all about poor Regina losing her love and who cares if it negatively affects Emma or that it's yet another event that was set in motion due to her actions.

Edited July 4, 2019 by KAOS Agent

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

The mark of a bad show is by the end, you find you don't care about any of the characters anymore because they had lost all their core characteristics or had become unlikeable.

6 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

why must they hit that same beat over and over?

I think a big part of the problem is that both of these things were going on, and most of the change came during season two. It was in 2B when Snow started alternating between hope speeches and despair, and those two beats were hit over and over again for the rest of the series. I think most of the Snow storylines, whether in flashback or present-day, were either about her despairing and being taught to have hope or about her choosing not to do the most appropriate thing to deal with the situation because of some vague idea of hope that some better way would come along. It was in 2B when they started having Regina be super evil in the past but a misunderstood victim in the present, and that was the only beat they hit with her. Even the Robin relationship storyline ended up boiling down to Regina as misunderstood victim who just can't win. Belle's downfall came earlier in season 2, when she saw just how evil Rumple had been and still was and yet she was still championing his good heart. That kept getting reset every season, when she'd be angry at him for something he did, break up, then come back to him, only to be shocked when she discovered that he was evil again. Rumple was seriously ruined in season 4 when he went off on an evil spree about five minutes after giving his heartfelt pledge at Neal's grave to do better, but I think the seed was planted in season 2 when he found his son and it didn't seem to matter at all to him. He no longer had that excuse for his actions, but he got even worse, and he pretty much ignored the long-lost son he was reunited with. Henry was ruined in 2B, as well, when the other characters stopped challenging his childlike declarations ("heroes don't kill!") and when he didn't seem to be all that bothered by what Regina and Cora were doing. Basically, 2B killed the series and most of the characters.

Emma didn't get truly ruined until season six, but the problem was that they just kept hitting the same beats. Every season she would struggle with her magic, have a big breakthrough of believing in herself, then be able to do anything. They supposedly solved the WALLS problem in season 5, but then they're back in a few episodes. I find it utterly bizarre that they took a character whose main issue was a tendency to go it alone and not trust people, and her Final Battle and climactic moment in the series required her to face her enemy alone. Emma's big victory should have involved a group effort, her calling on the others for help. That would have demonstrated how different she was from the person who came to town in season one, and it might have provided a twist in the prophecy, rather than it just playing out exactly as we saw, like if she realized that the problem was that her friends and family were just standing by in the vision, and the way to change things was to get them involved.

While they didn't actually ruin Hook, I think the problem with him was that although he'd changed so much internally and he went through so much, the character didn't actually change. He did the right things and usually said the right things, but they changed as little as possible about him -- same wardrobe, same piratey regalia, still carrying around the flask of rum to sip from in moments of stress (which gets uncomfortable in retrospect since they depicted WHook in season 7 as an alcoholic who stopped drinking when he turned his life around). We'd seen him change his life a couple of times in flashbacks, and in those instances he changed everything, so it makes little sense for him to perhaps make the biggest change of all without really changing.

I guess that's another problem, that there were a lot of mutually exclusive things going on -- Snow is the pessimist who gives hope speeches. Regina is the super-powerful queen/mayor who's an underdog. Rumple always chooses power and does evil but he has a good heart and Belle is right to believe in him. Emma is wrong to have WALLS and always go it alone, but dealing with the current crisis is her sole responsibility as the Savior and she should sacrifice everything for others. Hook is totally reformed and has renounced evil, revenge, and darkness, but he can't change anything else about himself, like the way he dresses, talks, or acts.

[Camera One]

38 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I guess that's another problem, that there were a lot of mutually exclusive things going on -- Snow is the pessimist who gives hope speeches. Regina is the super-powerful queen/mayor who's an underdog. Rumple always chooses power and does evil but he has a good heart and Belle is right to believe in him. Emma is wrong to have WALLS and always go it alone, but dealing with the current crisis is her sole responsibility as the Savior and she should sacrifice everything for others. Hook is totally reformed and has renounced evil, revenge, and darkness, but he can't change anything else about himself, like the way he dresses, talks, or acts.

When it's put like that, the patterns really stand out.  A&E probably believe this was a strength of the series because they considered these walking contradictions to be character depth and complexities.  

8 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Beyond creating one note characters that show little to no growth or human reaction, the recycling of stories got really old.

Yes, that was another huge problem, and as you said, it was pretty much annual or semi-annual.  It's just such a lazy way to brainstorm for a show.  It seemed like when the Writers discussed a centric, they jumped into the particulars taking for granted the basic outline that was set for that particular character (eg. Rumple faced a tough moral dilemma in the past and picks the "wrong" choice).  They couldn't care less when they had to retcon like hell to make it work (eg. Oooh... Baelfire was a bloodthirsty brat all along and it was Rumple who gave him amnesia and made him good again but at Rumple's expense.  Father of the year!).   Jane said that in "Bleeding Through", they weren't interested in Leopold.  Well, fair enough, but you still need to think about supporting character motivations/personalities and write a story that is consistent with previously written material (but why do so when A&E can declare that if you watch "The Stable Boy" REALLY carefully, you can tell Leopold knew Cora... give me a break).

Edited July 4, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

47 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Basically, 2B killed the series and most of the characters.

What confuses me is how the series could still remain decent for three more seasons after that before finally collapsing on itself.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

What confuses me is how the series could still remain decent for three more seasons after that before finally collapsing on itself.

I'm not sure it really did remain all that decent, unless we're considering "decent" to mean "average" and giving it a C grade. It had its moments, but the rewatch has shown me that the faults were already showing. It had become a show of "moments" and there were few truly good episodes.

What helped, I think, was the fact that while they hit the same beats over and over again in a way that ruined the characters, they did have some variety in structure. After 2B, they spent the next arc in Neverland, so we had less of the Storybrooke routine, and during that arc they dialed back the Regina victim stuff (while still showing her being awful in the past). She actually owned up to failing to follow up on the possibility of being with her soulmate rather than acting like the universe owed her. Then in 3B, the flashbacks were mostly of the Missing Year rather than the distant past, which meant there was some variety rather than the usual round of Regina vs. Snow. In 4A, we had Frozen as a distraction, though just about everything else that arc hit all the usual beats -- the David suddenly hates Hook episode, Emma having intimacy issues, Regina feeling sorry for herself, Belle believing in Rumple while Rumple pursues power behind her back. We were just missing the annual Hook flashback of something bad in his past that he tries to atone for now (that came in 4B). 4B was utterly terrible and couldn't qualify as "decent." We had another change of scenery in 5A, with the twist of having most of the flashbacks being about Camelot in the recent past (though, again, we hit the usual beats). 5B was the same setting but different and had the distraction of bringing back a lot of the dead characters, but again, all the usual beats (with a small bit of variety -- this time it was Hook's brother, not Hook, doing something awful in a flashback that he regrets in the present).

6 was a disaster in part because there was no hiding from the flaws. The Evil Queen plot spotlighted the usual Regina story. The Savior Shakes emphasized the repetitive Emma WALLS story. They were in the usual setting, so there was no real distraction, and the Untold Stories characters weren't used enough to make anything feel fresh and new or to provide a diversion (like the Frozen characters did). They even tried to redo the feel of season one, so it was even more obvious how the show had changed (and not in the good way where it feels like progress). And it had become so predictable, so the moment anything was said about David's father not dying the way they thought he did, everyone who's ever watched the show immediately said "Hook did it."

I think it also helped seasons 3-5 that Emma was actually fairly underdeveloped after season one, so she didn't get destroyed along with most of the others, and Hook remained weirdly immune to the kind of destruction they did to the other characters, and even when they did weird things with his backstory, Colin sold it in the present so we believed Hook's shame and guilt. That meant we had at least two characters who weren't shadows of themselves until season six, when the repetition got really tiresome and they were made to act so wildly out of character.

[Writing Wrongs]

I've started my own re-watch now.

So I just realized that the whole time Maleficent and Regina are talking in Episode 2, she has the Love Potion Egg inside her. Ew. How exactly did that work? Did it shrink down when she turned into a human?

[daxx]

I think I may have to end my rewatch. I think I’m going to start over. The season 5 finale and thinking about starting season 6 is sucking the joy out of my fan fic reading. I know from previous experience that starting over always clears my palate when it comes to this show. I just need to stop after season 3 😂.

The more I think about it the more I feel rewatching season 6 will just completely kill any desire to read any CS fic. I might join up again when you get to season 7.

[Shanna Marie]

While rewatching "The Strange Case," I had that "of course the good one is the villain because this show" reaction, but when I started to think about the characters who are traditionally heroes but who were turned into villains on this show, all I could think of was Pan and Arthur. Maybe Jack (as in the Beanstalk), but they didn't treat that one as the twist being that it turned out Jack was the evil one (James was the truly evil one there). It was more of a "hey, this girl is Jack" twist. Red might be a gray area, since her turning out to be the wolf meant she was actually both the villain and the hero of her fairy tale. Possibly Percival falls into this category, since he attacked Regina and nearly killed Robin, but he wasn't around long enough to really be a "villain." In season 7, there's Hansel the serial killer, but that wouldn't have been a factor in the impression for this episode. We may see Merlin as rather shady because he's ultimately responsible for a lot of the problems they faced, but the show doesn't seem to see or depict him this way. Were there any others?

I think a lot of this impression may be helped by the fact that they liked to smear the heroes, so they were still heroes instead of being classified as villains, but because they did a bad thing, they're as bad as the villains. So there's Snow, who's a bandit and is a secret teller (the actual episode doesn't seem to show her as being horrible, but whenever it's referenced later, it seems to be acknowledged by everyone that this was a terrible thing for her to do and she deserves all the blame), and later a murderer, and then there's the eggnapping. Jiminy Cricket tried to get his parents killed and ended up destroying Gepetto's parents. Gepetto and Blue betrayed the Charmings. Emma killed Cruella. Ava told a secret and tripped Cora. Leopold didn't dance with Regina.

And the fact that they generally give sympathetic treatment to villains helps with the impression that of course the one who seems good will be bad and the one we think is bad is just misunderstood. There are a lot of misunderstood/their evil was at least somewhat justified because they were wronged/they're really the victim villains: Regina, Rumple, Hook, Cora, Zelena, Ingrid, Maleficent, Ursula, Hyde.

I guess having a few of the traditional heroes turn out to be villains, plus a number of heroes shown to be "just as bad" as the villains, plus a number of villains who were the real victims or misunderstood adds up to that impression that of course the good one would turn out to be the real villain and the bad one would turn out to just be misunderstood.

[tennisgurl]

As we go further and further into the re-watch, it becomes clear that, while A&E and the writers have seen plenty of shows/movies/plays and read lots of books and such, and they've seen the genres and tropes that they want to use, but they dont really understand them, or why they actually work, or they're too lazy to really put that kind of effort in.

Its especially obvious with the whole stupid Savior Shakes story and their attempts at reconning their whole mythology. The obvious retcon that Emma isnt just the Savior who is supposed to break the Dark Curse, but is some catch all chosen one to save everyone from everything ever, is bad enough, but they clearly have no clue how chosen one style stories even work. Its clear that the Savior stuff is based around Buffy and the Slayer mythology, with some side bits of other chosen one stories like Avatar: TLA, but while those shows explained how their chosen one jobs worked and why some people were chosen and what their actual powers were and used their chosen one natures to explore their respective chosen ones as characters and their world. Its like the writers saw these stories, but went about it with such lazy broad strokes, couples with their lack of interest in world building, that it just came across as a hallow take off of those other, better stories. They dont explain why some people are Saviors and some arent, what their actual powers are or how they came to be, and the whole "Savors all die" prophesy is so stupid for so many reasons, I cant even get into it all. Like I said, its like they saw a whole cake, but only decided to give us a crumb. 

Or Hansel and his crusade against magic that we have to look forward to (bleh) next season. There is a long standing trope of "normal" people persecuting magic people (or aliens or mutants or vampires whatever makes people different than baseline people) or vice versa, or people of different magical factions or species or bloodlines having prejudice against each other, or people of different magical lineages, etc its a super common trope and story in tons of genre work. But, because its Once, when they tried to do that, it totally fumbles because there just arent that MANY people for him to try and attack for having magic, because by season seven we have a cast of like three people who get to do anything, we have no idea how magic works (are people born with an innate talent, or can anyone do it with training? Would Hansel attacks Grumpy or Ariel for being mythical creatures even if they dont really "do" magic?) his reasoning is ridiculous even by the standards of being prejudiced, he is hardly much of a metaphor for hatred or racism (its just one weirdo...), his serial killer games come out of nowhere and just look silly for the two seconds they existed, and it just comes off, much like the Savior story, as super random and almost more of a shout out to a typical story line than an actual one.

For a show supposedly based around stories, they dont really seem to care about the conventions of them. 

[andromeda331]

Reading in Dark Water thread about poptart and Hook. It just made me wish we had gotten to see Hook at grocery store. As someone who sailed around different worlds but most likely always having a hard time getting food that would last. He'd be amazed at the different can and boxed foods that can last a long time. Poptarts, cereal, can vegetables and fruits, and so much more. Clearly he didn't like baloney but we could have seen him excitedly looking at different stuff or stocking up before he went anywhere on his ship. Same with the Merry Men or really anyone else. Or during the lost year back in the Enchanted Forest people trying to re-adjust to having to hunt for food rather then just go to the grocery store.

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Reading in Dark Water thread about poptart and Hook. It just made me wish we had gotten to see Hook at grocery store.

Eddy: "What you wanted to see them go to the DMV?"

The show truly missed out on some fun midseason filler by having characters like Hook or Regina go do mundane things. Remember how entertaining it was to see Rumple freak out in airport security, or Ingrid visiting a sham fortune teller? Just watching fairy tale characters react to random real world things could've been half the fun of the show. It didn't have to all be comedy, either. Fish out of water stories definitely have their dramatic moments.

[KingOfHearts]

On 7/16/2019 at 9:36 PM, tennisgurl said:

As we go further and further into the re-watch, it becomes clear that, while A&E and the writers have seen plenty of shows/movies/plays and read lots of books and such, and they've seen the genres and tropes that they want to use, but they dont really understand them, or why they actually work, or they're too lazy to really put that kind of effort in.

It's funny because I just recently finished S3 of Stranger Things and realized that show was almost nothing but tropes. The difference between ST and OUAT is that the creators of ST actually know how the tropes work, down to the last detail. They have the format, style, and character beats down to a science. Usually it takes writers a season or two to find their show's groove, but A&E never did. They couldn't pin their show's strengths or weaknesses even six seasons in. They got close in S3 but it didn't stick. I can't imagine all the media and movies the Duffer Brothers watch meticulously in order to understand what they're getting their inspiration from. We always joke that A&E only read the back cover of the books or movies that adapt, but it honestly felt so true most of the time.

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Eddy: "What you wanted to see them go to the DMV?"

The show truly missed out on some fun midseason filler by having characters like Hook or Regina go do mundane things. Remember how entertaining it was to see Rumple freak out in airport security, or Ingrid visiting a sham fortune teller? Just watching fairy tale characters react to random real world things could've been half the fun of the show. It didn't have to all be comedy, either. Fish out of water stories definitely have their dramatic moments.

Why yes Eddie I do!

Those were some of my favorite parts of the show. From Emma in the Enchanted Forest both times and trying to navigate it. Emma mentioning to Granny how nice it was not to have to catch food and Granny agreeing saying making meatloaf was a bitch. To Hook complaining about the baloney he was fed in jail and trying to explain the cellphone to Elsa. It was always fun watching Emma use her world knowledge like in the Cinderella episode pointing out to Rumple why a trial would be bad for him, Regina realizing all the evidence about Kathryn's kidnapping was going to lead back to her and Rumple pointing out how much harder it was to kill someone in this world. Fish out of water stories have always been one of my favorites seeing people react to a different place or world. Its just so fun. They really should have done more with it. And used it against or to help them against the various villains that came to town. 

Edited July 18, 2019 by andromeda331

[tennisgurl]

Its like A&E have never noticed that like half of all fanfics are just characters doing random domestic shit together and being cute 😉 People LOVE that kind of stuff, especially with characters they love and/ or ship.

[Kktjones]

3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Its like A&E have never noticed that like half of all fanfics are just characters doing random domestic shit together and being cute 😉 People LOVE that kind of stuff, especially with characters they love and/ or ship.

I agree and especially by the end, they had to know that the only people left were the hardcore fans that loved the characters and the ships. This show lends itself to those kind of quiet, funny, moving or entertaining scenes b/c of the fairytale aspect. Oh well, I think this show will always go down as the one with the most wasted potential. I should have quit in S2 when they failed to pay off S1, but then the last two eps of S2 sucked me back in...

[andromeda331]

7 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

I agree and especially by the end, they had to know that the only people left were the hardcore fans that loved the characters and the ships. This show lends itself to those kind of quiet, funny, moving or entertaining scenes b/c of the fairytale aspect. Oh well, I think this show will always go down as the one with the most wasted potential. I should have quit in S2 when they failed to pay off S1, but then the last two eps of S2 sucked me back in...

For me it was the first couple episodes of season three that sucked me back it. I really wanted to quit after 2B with all the poor Regina crap. I naively thought it was just a sophomore slump and the first two episodes of season three looked like they figured out how to use each character and ditched the poor Regina crap. I really should have quit at the last episode of 2A and kept the season three two part. 

[daxx]

I enjoyed the majority of season 3 excluding a few in 3b but ending after season 3 wouldn’t have been a bad plan.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/18/2019 at 1:52 PM, tennisgurl said:

Its like A&E have never noticed that like half of all fanfics are just characters doing random domestic shit together and being cute 😉 People LOVE that kind of stuff, especially with characters they love and/ or ship.

Plus, showing those "normal" moments helps raise the stakes for the action/drama because you know what's at risk. When they did the dual sleeping curse with the Charmings, we'd never seen their normal home routine, so we had no baseline for really seeing how the curse changed it. We never saw Robin being a part of Regina's life, so it was hard to feel his loss. We'd never seen Emma and Henry at home, being normal, so we didn't know how Hook moving in changed the dynamic. We never saw much of a normal relationship life for Emma and Hook, so we didn't know how the murder/engagement breakup changed their lives. Heck, we don't even know when they started sleeping together. It must have happened somewhere along the way, since I doubt they'd have moved in together without having had sex. Marriage, maybe, if they're being old-fashioned, but if they're moving in together before getting married, surely they've had sex. Not that I wanted a sex scene, but that's a big step in relationship development, and we never had the slightest indication when it happened.

They contrived so much drama but never mined the conflict that was inherent in the characters and situation because they were so afraid of showing "normal" life.

On 7/18/2019 at 5:30 AM, andromeda331 said:

Reading in Dark Water thread about poptart and Hook. It just made me wish we had gotten to see Hook at grocery store. As someone who sailed around different worlds but most likely always having a hard time getting food that would last. He'd be amazed at the different can and boxed foods that can last a long time. Poptarts, cereal, can vegetables and fruits, and so much more. Clearly he didn't like baloney but we could have seen him excitedly looking at different stuff or stocking up before he went anywhere on his ship.

Hee, now I'm picturing a scenario in which, during the time he was offscreen at the end of 3A before the curse reverse, he goes into the grocery store and goes on a drunken shopping spree (when he was trying to get over Emma after telling Neal he was stepping back), buying up a bunch of canned food and filling the hold of the Jolly Roger, with the idea that he was going to go exploring this world. Then after the curse reverse when Blackbeard got the ship, he had no clue what this stuff was or what to do with it, and it didn't do him any good because Hook had the can opener in his satchel.

[KingOfHearts]

This is might be an unpopular opinion, but I beileve the Savior plot in S6 is worse than the Author plot. At least the Author plot had a reason to exist. The Author was part of the show's core mythology and we wanted to know who wrote that book. The Savior mythology adds nothing to the show and you could erase all of it after S2 without skipping a bit. Emma was the Savior because she was a product of True Love built into the Curse, not because she's some sort of weird "Slayer" lottery. At the end of the day, no one cares that she had a pointless death prophecy, or that Aladdin and Rumple were Saviors before using the Shears. As stupid as the Author plot was, it had ramifications all the way to S7. 

I'm not defending the Author plot by any means, but I hate the Savior plot more. The Author plot started as a "hope" that people like Regina could get happy endings, but the Savior plot in S6 was about imminent death from the beginning. It's a bit ironic.

[daxx]

I don’t consider that an unpopular opinion at all. Agree, that and the Hook killing David’s dad were both for cheap drama.

[Camera One]

That's a tough one.  I hate both of the storylines with a passion of a thousand suns, but which one was worse?  

I agree that the Savior mythology is on even shakier ground because it contradicted the original reason why Emma was the Savior in the first place, and the original nature of the role, which was to break the Curse.  I suppose A&E might say they had always meant to explain the "final battle" that Rumple mentioned in the pilot, though that's iffy.  Clearly, everything else about the Savior mythology in Season 6 was made up on the spot and very poorly thought out and poorly defined, from All Saviors die, to Aladdin the Previous Savior, to Rumple The Original Savior, to the prophesy that Fiona/Black Fairy must fight the Savior.  I suppose in Season 6, they also tried to use this mythology to explain the origin of the Dark Curse, which they hadn't done so up to that point and an explanation was needed.

The Author of the Book did beg for an explanation and a backstory.  In many ways, though, it was just as ill-defined, poorly thought out and arbitrary.  Though it was made even worse in subsequent seasons with Page 23 and the varying powers of the Pen and books about the French Snow White, etc.  The one thing that made the Author mythology worse is that it was much more destructive to the show's credibility in worldbuilding, from which it never recovered.  It fully revealed that the Emperors had no clothes.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Camera One

[Writing Wrongs]

38 minutes ago, Camera One said:

In many ways, though, it was just as ill-defined, poorly thought out and arbitrary.

I feel that is a lot of the show.

I just finished my re-watch of Season 4. I still get so annoyed that they used the Shattered Sight curse as slapstick comedy. It could've been so interesting. The whole Lily plotline was pointless and went nowhere. All the flashback retcons of Snow and Charming are frustrating. One of worst things for me was the Cora/Leopold story. I can only assume that Cora wiped memories of her and Leopold's engagement from the realm or it doesn't make fucking sense.

Dark Swan sounded like it would be awesome, but Emma going evil was just a big fakeout. 

[companionenvy]

For me, the Author/Book plot is way worse, both because of what it did to the characters and the sheer level of world-bending lack of logic.

The Savior retcon is dumb, but essentially, it is a baked over but more or less inoffensive Chosen One story. Hero is chosen, hero must sacrifice herself - it's all very paint by numbers. With a little more thought, the writers could even have mitigated some of the inconsistencies (i.e,revealed that there had been a second prophecy about Emma, rather than going with the "in every generation there is a Slayer" nonsense). Or, given the frequency of prophecies in traditional fairytales, it could have been revealed that the "saviors" of various prophecies nearly always met bad ends once their destinies had been fulfilled. I also think that, illogical as it was, given the explanation we did get, the idea of Rumple's mother thwarting his savior destiny was clever and potentially interesting -- had Rumple himself not been so thoroughly ruined as a character by that point.

The Author/Book plot, on the other hand, marked the point at which the show reached the true point of no return with Regina's arc, and started warping all the other characters to serve it. The show was already on really thin ice in trying to redeem Regina at all after depicting her consistently as a sociopath in S1 and then having her fall back into genocidal plotting in S2, but with a little forgetfulness and suspension of disbelief, I could accept her as a grudging member of Team Hero in 3A. 3B was worse, as it went heavy on the Regina pity-party, made her improbably chummy with Snowing, and glorified her more than she deserved with the Henry TLK, but it wasn't irreversible. Once she spent a season convinced that some meanie author had prevented her from getting her happy ending by writing the complete and utter truth about her, however, she was past saving. And that all the other "good" characters backed her in her asinine plan just showed how little the show actually cared about any of those people anymore. 

Plus, the idea of the author raised an existential bombshell that no one seemed interested in addressing. Like, if all of these characters accept that there is an author who might have the power to influence their actions, aren't they a tad concerned about what that means re: free will? Are people in the LWOM also subject to the whims of some other storyteller, or is that just for the fairy-tale folk -- and if it is the latter, are these people in some respects less real than people who weren't being controlled by an author? Yeah, we eventually find out that the author isn't supposed to interfere, but for much of the season, the characters are taking it as a given that the Author is controlling Regina's destiny, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone except on the level of "Oh noes, we must get Regina her happy ending!"

[Writing Wrongs]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

Yeah, we eventually find out that the author isn't supposed to interfere, but for much of the season, the characters are taking it as a given that the Author is controlling Regina's destiny,

 I didn't understand that logic leap. It started as a book that recorded their history as stories, but somehow became something else where the author controlled their fate. WTF? It basically was just another reason for Regina not to take responsibility for her actions. The Author did it! No, my Evil Queen part did it so let's separate my two halves! Again, WTF?

No matter how much they try to wipe out Regina's evil deeds, she still did them and as she told Pan, she has no regrets because it got her what she wanted. And the fact that Snow actually groveled to her for the Cora thing is ridiculous.