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

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I don't really mind them alluding or adapting established material, but they do it so poorly. The Frozen stuff was probably the most note-for-note rehash, but it worked because the emotional connections were still there. It made sense within both the context of the show and the source material. Ingrid added a new spin to it to keep it fresh, but the unifying theme was still there. Seeing pre-established franchises on screen is a major part of Once Upon a Time's appeal, and that's not a bad thing. It's the way the writers "utilize it" in later seasons that sucks.

I'm not really talking about using characters, settings, and stories from other things, since that's basically the DNA of the show. I'm talking about when they rip off a scene or moment from something else and play it out with entirely unrelated characters, just to invoke the emotions from the original thing. So, having Elsa and Anna show up is fine. What wasn't fine was when they played out the "Do you wanna build a snowman?" bit of the two girls sitting on opposite sides of the door, but with Emma and Regina instead of Elsa and Anna. They wanted us to feel the things the original Frozen scene made us feel, but apply it to Regina and Emma's situation, even though the two situations were nothing alike. In Frozen, it was about sisters who had been close but who were now being kept apart, with one sister feeling rejected and abandoned because she didn't know that her sister was staying away from her to protect her. In Once, Regina was sulking because Emma stopped her from murdering her boyfriend's wife, and Emma was begging Regina to be friends with her.

They went overboard with doing that kind of thing in season 7, where they weren't bringing in the characters from other stories. They were just using elements from other things and having their characters play them out, and then were acting like they were brilliant for doing all those homages. I guess the Rapunzel thing is a gray area, since they had Rapunzel as a character, but since she had nothing in common with Tangled Rapunzel other than living in a tower, I still feel like using the Tangled lanterns was a bit of a ripoff as opposed to building a real story using the characters and situation from Tangled.

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's like a writing a research paper using sources you got from a random generator instead of picking ones that actually logically support whatever your thesis is.

I think season 7 was more like writing a research paper by copying and pasting text from relevant Wikipedia articles, and every so often throwing in a paragraph from an entirely unrelated article because it was a really good paragraph. Never mind that it has nothing to do with the topic of the paper. The language is really good and the description is so vivid, so that paragraph is sure to make the paper better.

[Camera One]

35 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

"Do you wanna build a snowman?" bit of the two girls sitting on opposite sides of the door, but with Emma and Regina instead of Elsa and Anna. They wanted us to feel the things the original Frozen scene made us feel, but apply it to Regina and Emma's situation, even though the two situations were nothing alike. In Frozen, it was about sisters who had been close but who were now being kept apart, with one sister feeling rejected and abandoned because she didn't know that her sister was staying away from her to protect her. In Once, Regina was sulking because Emma stopped her from murdering her boyfriend's wife, and Emma was begging Regina to be friends with her.

Interestingly, they used that moment twice.  The second time was with Henry and Regina on opposite sides of the door.  Was that a closer fit with the Frozen scene?

[Shanna Marie]

16 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The second time was with Henry and Regina on opposite sides of the door.  Was that a closer fit with the Frozen scene?

I don't recall the Henry one, but were they sitting back to back on opposite sides of the door like in the movie? Or do you mean when he was standing outside and yelling at Regina about letting him into his own house? And I still don't think it fits because it's still about Regina sulking because her boyfriend wants to go back to his wife since she didn't get to kill her. She's not reluctantly staying away from someone she loves because she's afraid she'll hurt them while the other person wants her to come out and is feeling abandoned because she doesn't know it's to protect her. It might have been a better fit later in the season if they'd done it with Emma and Henry when Emma's powers were going haywire, but even then I think it would have been hijacking the Frozen thing to steal the emotions from that scene and paste them onto other characters instead of writing a genuine scene that's actually about those characters. It's particularly annoying when the Frozen characters are right there. It's like, "We'll just borrow this thing from your life to tell this other story."

The wink-wink homages and sly cultural references can be fun, but this show seemed to use these "homages" as a shortcut. Instead of writing a real scene about these characters and their situation and doing the work to make viewers feel emotions about these characters, they just grabbed a scene from some other work that had the emotions they wanted, pasted their characters' faces over the original characters' faces, and then expected audiences to bring over the emotions from the original thing and apply them to these characters, even when the original situation has nothing to do with this situation. Like the Up thing. They just ripped off that opening sequence that made everyone cry even though there are no parallels between that story and Belle and Rumple and even though Up had nothing to do with this show. It ended up falling flat for me because it wasn't giving me the Up feelings since I knew it was Belle and Rumple, but since it wasn't really about Belle and Rumple it seemed superficial and not organic to those characters.

[Camera One]

29 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Or do you mean when he was standing outside and yelling at Regina about letting him into his own house?

Yeah, I was thinking about that scene.  Since he began with knocking and "I know you're in there..." which was a lyric from the song.  This time, Regina did open the door which indicated growth since she was willing to let someone in.  

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but this show seemed to use these "homages" as a shortcut.

The shortcut used with Rumbelle annoyed me the most.  Like with the Beauty and the Beast dance in the 4A premiere.  That was clearly trying to evoke nostalgia from our memories of the movie hoping it would transfer to Once's version of the characters which were nothing like their movie counterparts.  

The homages work when the character is very similar, like with Cruella.  But it's annoying when the character is the polar opposite.  Like evoking the "Tangled" imagery in Season 7 with a Rapunzel which aged to be a sadistic murderer.  Not to mention have a rapist impersonate her.  

Edited October 13, 2019 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was just thinking about Snowing vs. Henry/Jacinda, and in hindsight, A&E didn't do a great job writing for Snowing in Season 1 either.  I remember being disappointed that they basically fell in love because of the events in "Snow Falls".  I had expected another episode with them developing their friendship or gaining trust in one another.  After "Snow Falls", they already began throwing in soap opera-ish obstacles to keep them apart.  I suppose A&E could say that Henry and Jacinda were given more friendship scenes before their True Love locket glow in "Pretty in Blue".  So maybe the fact that Snowing worked had more to do with seeing Snowing as a devoted couple in the pilot before we saw how they met, and the chemistry of the actors and their ability to elevate the dialogue to make simple lines feel deeper, so we could see the connection in their facial expressions.  

Imagine "Once Upon a Time" Season 1 with a different cast.  

• Snow/MM is played by Jacinda
• Prince Charming/David Nolan is played by Adult Henry
• Emma is played by Merida
• Young Henry is played by Lucy
• Regina is played by Victoria
• Rumple is played by The Black Fairy

I think that show would have been cancelled midway through Season 1.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

16 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

they just grabbed a scene from some other work that had the emotions they wanted, pasted their characters' faces over the original characters' faces

They did as poor a job as the Black Fairy did with those photos of Belle, LOL.

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Like evoking the "Tangled" imagery in Season 7 with a Rapunzel which aged to be a sadistic murderer.

I don't mind too much what they did with Rapunzel's story, but I can't look at her and go "oh that's the Rapunzel from Tangled". While the imagery was similar, the two characters couldn't be written more different. That's when I think they can use the character from the original story but not allude so much to the Disney version. Cruella, Elsa, and S6 Tremaine all felt so much like the Disney characters that the iconography wasn't distracting. But with characters like Rapunzel and Belle, that's like telling and not showing. What we're being told and what actually happens are two different things. It's lazy and doesn't support A&E's narrative.

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I just thinking about Snowing vs. Henry/Jacinda, and in hindsight, A&E didn't do a great job writing for Snowing in Season 1 either. 

Snowing was compelling mostly because of the acting chemistry and our preconceived images of Snow White and Prince Charming. It was more "in spite of" the writing than "because" of it. Henry and Jacinda didn't have any chemistry and they weren't a famous iconic couple. Captain Swan wasn't a famous pairing either but because the actors had good chemistry and they weren't shoved down our throats from the get-go as a romance, it was able to enter our hearts in its own organic way. If you're going to have a couple like Henriella or Snowing where they absolutely 100% have to sell as an epic romance, you're betting a lot on the acting, likability of the characters, and their chemistry within very little screen time. Though, in the case of Henriella, even if they had an entire season to develop their relationship, it would still suck because Jacinda is a horrible person and has more synergy with a slice of bread.

Edited October 13, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

20 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yeah, I was thinking about that scene.  Since he began with knocking and "I know you're in there..." which was a lyric from the song.

I never made a connection with Frozen from that scene, I guess because it made sense in the context of the show, even without any Frozen references. Henry had a reason to want to be allowed back in his home (never mind that they forgot that he hadn't lived in that home since the end of season one, and never mind that you'd think Regina wanting him to get lost because she was sad about a breakup would have damaged their relationship). On the other hand, the one with Emma and Regina sitting on either side of the door was an obviously contrived Frozen reference shoehorned into the episode that wouldn't have made sense if you hadn't known they were trying to make a Frozen reference.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was just thinking about Snowing vs. Henry/Jacinda, and in hindsight, A&E didn't do a great job writing for Snowing in Season 1 either.  I remember being disappointed that they basically fell in love because of the events in "Snow Falls".

I think the key is that Snow White and Prince Charming are a canon couple, and their canon relationship is entirely underdeveloped, so the little development they got in this show was a lot more than they usually get. Having them even talk before the TLK (or, in the fairy tale, he jars the bit of poison apple loose while taking her coffin home with him) was an improvement. I think we have different standards for classic fairytale couples than we do for new couples that we expect to fit more modern romance stories, where there's the meet cute, some attraction, some conflict and obstacles, and several "meant to be" scenes along the way.

Jacinderella is a far cry from any version of Cinderella, so we can't really draw upon that tale in our expectations, and they didn't even try to make Henry into Cinderella's Prince Charming, so they're just an ordinary new couple we don't bring anything to, and we expect to have them go through the usual romance process, not just have them find a magical gizmo that tells us they're true love.

There was an even bigger problem with Robin and Regina, where not only are they non-canon, but he has a canon love, so they really needed to show that they belonged together instead of just giving us pixie dust and a tattoo.

[KAOS Agent]

It was pretty obvious that the Robin/Regina thing didn't have nearly the effect on the audience that Snowing, Captain Swan or even RumpBelle had, so the fact that they cribbed one of their biggest fails with that relationship's development  (magic pixie dust = True Love) and threw it at Henry/Cinderella when all of the other cribbing from better received storylines didn't work is kind of hilarious to me. I guess we should just be happy that they didn't go with the tried and true sex on the dead wife & kid's grave with those two.

[Camera One]

I think they tried to make it seem like Henry and Murderella wanted/were strongly drawn to one another, but it just wasn't very successful.  Henry was clearly head over heels for her from the beginning, so that half of True Love didn't need any convincing.  Murderella's acting didn't get it across, but in the writing, a number of steps were taken to show that she had some feelings for Henry.  Murderella left the glass slipper for Henry in Episode 1.  In Episode 3, she was almost willing to kill the old cobbler to save Henry's life.  In Episode 6, Henry and Murderella were repairing his motorcycle together, so clearly, she was willing to spend time with him.  And then in Episode 8, Henry and Jacinda were swordfighting together and having a fun time doing it.  They had a "moment" there and another "moment" when they were caught in a net in Wonderland (in a scene lifted off "Lost").   Murderella and Henry embraced after she saved him from Drizella and that was when the locket glowed.  The backstory from "Pretty in Blue" was also trying to tell us that Murderella was fighting "love" because she was jaded from what happened between her mother and her stepfather but that was "fixed" by learning the truth.  Again, none of this was written or performed effectively, but there was a deliberate attempt to build this relationship beyond the pixel dust/soulmate debacle. 

Edited October 14, 2019 by Camera One

[daxx]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

Again, none of this was written or performed effectively, but there was a deliberate attempt to build this relationship beyond the pixel dust/soulmate debacle

The lack of chemistry between them was the killer. Not even lack, negative chemistry, is that a thing?

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

Again, none of this was written or performed effectively, but there was a deliberate attempt to build this relationship beyond the pixel dust/soulmate debacle. 

When you think about it, Henry and Murderella spent a lot more time together before they reached "true love" than the Charmings did. They were living in the same camp for at least a few weeks, while the Charmings had only met a few times. The issue is that almost all of the time Henry and Murderella spent together happened offscreen, while we saw pretty much all the time the Charmings spent together. We saw all their big moments and turning points, we saw the moments when they realized they were attracted to each other, and we got a good sense of why they were attracted to each other. With Henry and Murderella, we saw more of the day-to-day stuff, which is probably more important for a real world relationship, but it's not that interesting for a fictional relationship. We also don't really get a sense of why Henry finds Murderella interesting other than the fact that she's Cinderella. He's basically being a fanboy. I guess she might have been impressed that he helped her escape from the ball, but why is she interested in him otherwise?

When it comes to cursed Henry and Jacinda, I can't think of any real reason either of them would be into each other. They don't seem to have much in common, and they don't seem to like each other all that much. With the Charmings, there was the fact that she visited him while he was in a coma (and we know from Brennan Jones that this is enough to get a TLK) and she was the one who found him when he was lost and nearly dead. They had an instant strong connection that was quite obvious, while Henry and Jacinda seemed kind of oblivious to each other, even a bit irritated.

But I think the real problem with Henry and Jacinda compared to the Charmings is that they stopped developing the relationship after the necklaces glowed. We barely saw them together after that in the past. I don't feel like we saw enough of what they were like as a couple to feel any loss. We didn't see their wedding. We didn't see the pregnancy. We just got an after-the-fact announcement of Lucy's birth. We may have only seen the highlights of the Charmings, but at least we saw the highlights. The writers seemed entirely uninterested in Henry and Murderella.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But I think the real problem with Henry and Jacinda compared to the Charmings is that they stopped developing the relationship after the necklaces glowed. We barely saw them together after that in the past.

I had to look up when we see Henry and Murderella again (chronologically) in flashback form, and I think it was Ep 16 with their engagement.  I agree it wasn't enough to buy them as a romantic couple (not that I was asking for more but skipping the whole courtship made the whole thing feel incomplete).

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We also don't really get a sense of why Henry finds Murderella interesting other than the fact that she's Cinderella. He's basically being a fanboy. 

I figure he was just physically attracted to her.  He was willing to forgo the portal for her in Episode 1, and I doubt it was her sparkling personality.  

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When it comes to cursed Henry and Jacinda, I can't think of any real reason either of them would be into each other. They don't seem to have much in common, and they don't seem to like each other all that much.

I just rewatched the first scene between them in Hyperion Heights and it looks like Henry was into her for the same reason - physical attraction.  He stares and can't take his eyes off of her when she first enters Roni's.  He's speechless and stares deep.  He's clearly smitten, and immediately flirts.  In Episode 2, Jacinda is angry at him, so he goes out of his way to make it up to her for what he did.  Though some of Henry's facial expressions have turned into dead fish stares and/or exasperation.  They do have a one-on-one conversation at the bar at the end, and he's back to his flirty demeanor.  He asks her to drink with him but she has a late shift.   Episode 3 also has a Henry/Jacinda/Lucy conversation at the end.  Episode 4, Henry wants to ask Jacinda out on a date but he's too afraid to, and he helps to find Lucy.  Episode 5, Henry has run cold  (don't remember why) and Roni advocates the relationship with Jacinda over Ivy.  Episode 6, He wants Jacinda again but she's mad at him for Ivy's instagram photos, but he wins her over with the ghettoblaster.  Their first unofficial "date" is him helping her to work on the food truck.  Henry ends the episode happy with his budding romance with Jacinda.  Episode 7, Henry and Jacinda start off celebrating at the bar and then Roni is "forced" to dissuade Jacinda and she very reluctantly is too busy to have a proper cover band date with Henry.  And that brings us to Henry meeting Nick in Episode 8.  I don't think Mary Margaret and David got that much screentime together in the first 8 episodes of Season 1, did they?

Now, I need some hazard pay for scanning these episodes for scenes with Henry and Jacinda.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Nick as a character tries to fill too many roles. He's Abigail, Jefferson, Hansel, and Henry's best friend Jack the Giant Slayer. As much as he gets to do, he's surprisingly forgettable and has little impact on the plot. It seems like the writers struggled to pad out the story for 22 episodes so they inserted the random Jack/Hansel subplot nobody cares about. At least Kathryn/Abigail was unknowongly part of Regina's scheme and her murder was the catalyst for Emma standing up to Regina. Even if it was used to manufacture drama and pad out S1, the writers really tried to connect it to everything in a meaningful way. Nick/Jack is clearly on his own plot thread and has nothing to do with the main story outside of "I hate witches".

Edited October 15, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Writing Wrongs]

I was thinking about the different versions of characters from different lands. One of the earlier ones must be Jacqueline. She is "Jack the Giant Killer" and she also mentions slaying The Jabberwocky in Wonderland. That is a different Wonderland than Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, because they had The Jabberwocky on it and presumably also a different Wonderland than the one S7 Alice went to.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Writing Wrongs

[KingOfHearts]

9 minutes ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I was thinking about the different versions of characters from different lands. One of the earlier ones must be Jacqueline. She is "Jack the Giant Killer" and she also mentions slaying The Jabberwocky in Wonderland. That is a different Wonderland than Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, because they had The Jabberwocky on it and presumably also a different Wonderland than the one S7 Alice went to.

I might need to hear the line again, but I think all she did was imprison the Jabberwocky with the vorpal blade, as was shown in OUATIW.

[tennisgurl]

29 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Nick as a character tries to fill too many roles. He's Abigail, Jefferson, Hansel, and Henry's best friend Jack the Giant Slayer.

Yeah isnt it so great how Lucy just straight up tells us that Nick is the Katherine of this scenario? I love when shows tell me things instead of showing them, and awkwardly explain how this season is a poor rip off of the first season to the audience, as if we couldn't figure it out on our own. And Nick wishes he was as cool as Abigail/Katherine! She was actually an interesting and well developed character who had her own hopes and dreams that made sense and led to her having an arc. Sadly it was abandoned and she wasnt used very well in the end, but at least she got some closure with Frederick. Nick, while played by a decent actor, just makes no sense, especially when we get to the whole stupid serial killer twist. 

[Writing Wrongs]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I might need to hear the line again, but I think all she did was imprison the Jabberwocky with the vorpal blade, as was shown in OUATIW.

"Jack: Magic. A piece of mushroom from a far-off land. I once slayed a Jabberwock that was terrorizing a village, and they… They couldn’t pay me in gold, so they paid me with this, instead. If you eat it, it will change your size. Its effects are temporary, but we have more."

I guess slayed could mean imprisoned.
 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Writing Wrongs

[Shanna Marie]

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

I figure he was just physically attracted to her.  He was willing to forgo the portal for her in Episode 1, and I doubt it was her sparkling personality. 

I do think there's some element of fanboying in there -- he gets the chance to go after Cinderella! He was practically squeeing over the pumpkin coach and glass slippers. I think this is where trying so hard to make it mirror the Charmings in season one hurt them. There was potential to have had fun with this scenario, like making Henry end up being the prince Cinderella meets at the ball. He's just gone to the ball, almost as a tourist, to see the Cinderella story play out, and he meets and starts dancing with a girl, not aware that she's Cinderella. Only later does he notice the glass slippers and realize he's basically hijacked Cinderella, so she doesn't meet the prince, but by the time he realizes this, she's running because it's almost midnight, and then he's the one who finds the shoe. Has he ruined the story, or was he meant to be the prince and has he found his story? Though I guess that doesn't get us Cinderella on a motorcycle. But in trying to map it so closely to "Snow Falls," while still being so different, it ended up being kind of hollow.

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

I just rewatched the first scene between them in Hyperion Heights and it looks like Henry was into her for the same reason - physical attraction.  He stares and can't take his eyes off of her when she first enters Roni's.  He's speechless and stares deep.  He's clearly smitten, and immediately flirts. 

I think, to some extent, we were supposed to realize that this was the truth about them coming through their cursed identities, like with Mary Margaret and David, but we hadn't really seen them together as a couple in their real identities. The attraction really doesn't make a lot of sense in context. With Mary Margaret and David, even if you disregard the curse, it makes some sense that the lonely woman who visits a coma patient might develop some kind of infatuation with him, while her visits might have unconsciously imprinted on him, and then she was the one who found him when he was feeling very lost. She was the first person he remembered meeting. With Henry and Jacinda, he's a man still grieving the loss of his wife and daughter when some kid shows up at his door, claims she's his daughter, and steals his laptop, and he meets this woman when she shows up to return it. I think most people would be more annoyed than smitten, like "What kind of mother are you that you raised such an obnoxious kid?" The only thing that makes his reaction make sense is if it's his real self, deep down inside, remembering his actual wife.

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

I don't think Mary Margaret and David got that much screentime together in the first 8 episodes of Season 1, did they?

I don't think they did, but there was definitely an intensity to their screentime that I feel is lacking with Henry and Jacinda. The stakes seemed a lot higher. I think that's the problem overall, that there's no big loss if they don't get together, nothing keeping them apart. With the Charmings, we know they end up together because they started with the TLK and then the wedding, but then things seem really rocky along the way. He's losing his mother's ring (and we later see why that's so important to him). He's being forced to marry someone he doesn't want. There's imprisonment, near executions, him risking his life a couple of times to save her, her giving up her chance to get rid of Regina for him. There's the near-miss of them trying to be together, but George intercepting her and her giving him up to save him. In the present, there's the bait and switch, where it looks like they'll be together, but then Kathryn shows up. Just when it looks like he's going to choose Mary Margaret, he gets his memories "back" and really feels like he's married.

There's not the same intensity with Henry and Murderella. There's nothing keeping them apart, no obstacles to overcome. Their equivalent of Kathryn is dispensed with in one episode, when she chooses Henry over Nick, and there's nothing other than Lucy tying her to Nick (and Lucy isn't even an issue because she's convinced Henry is her father). She doesn't even have to break up with Nick. There's no George in the past who's going to kill him if he goes off with her (or vice versa). No one even mildly objects. The fact that they have nothing to overcome and it still takes them a while to get together makes it all rather ho-hum.

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

Now, I need some hazard pay for scanning these episodes for scenes with Henry and Jacinda.

You may need some kind of detox or therapy after putting yourself through that.

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Nick/Jack is clearly on his own plot thread and has nothing to do with the main story outside of "I hate witches".

I think you could cut that entire plot line and not change the outcome at all. Ditto with all the Lady Tremaine and Anastasia stuff.

[KingOfHearts]

Yeah isnt it so great how Lucy just straight up tells us that Nick is the Katherine of this scenario?

It's like she walks around with a copy of the script. 

[Camera One]

Lucy doesn't talk like a kid and it sounds disingenuous, like that whole Kathryn comment.  In Season 1, Henry's dialogue didn't sound like a kid either, but at least there was a reason... he grew up with very little interaction with other kids and basically had Regina as his model, plus his seriousness reflected his desperation to find love.  Lucy has a sass that is more annoying than endearing, like when she commented that Adult Henry's apartment was a dump.  I mean, Young Henry had sass too, right from the pilot, but it didn't seem as obnoxious.

So I turned on the pilot episode to compare Young Henry with Lucy, and the episode pulled me in and I watched the whole thing.  For a strong woman with WALLS™, Emma shows a lot of vulnerability in the pilot.  She isn't abrasive to everyone, just because.  Rewatching this, there were so many things that A&E could actually have copied for the Season 7 premiere, such as starting with an iconic moment from "Cinderella".  I think their attempt to tease us by holding out on the backstory of who cast the Curse and the lead-up to the Curse made Season 7 aimless and failed in making the audience care.  Why does watching Emma interacting with the mother she didn't know give us a tingle, while watching Adult Henry with Regina at the bar led to nothing?  

The pilot gave two possibilities of "what if's" the show could have explored in Season 6.  What if Snow had made it into the cupboard before giving birth?  What if Emma had left Storybrooke in the pilot instead of staying, and then an 17-year-old Henry came to find her years later?  

[KAOS Agent]

The Pilot had much higher stakes than anything S7 could possibly give. First of all, the original premise had the negative consequences of the curse on full display. We watch Snow sobbing as Baby Emma is taken from her arms, David fighting his way to the wardrobe and then "dying" and then see what happened to that same baby 28 years later. She's lonely, unloved and cut off from emotion having been tossed on the side of the road like garbage and passed from foster home to foster home her whole life. She meets her mother and there's nothing there. How can we not root for Emma to realize she wasn't garbage and how much her parents loved her? Or to see Snow reunited with the child who was torn out of her arms? Even beyond that, we see other side characters equally miserable separated and/or fighting with their loved ones. Wouldn't we want to see Emma defeat the Evil Bitch who'd caused so much pain? The same one who was now causing her son so much pain? There was a lot of showing of emotion going on in the Pilot.

Contrast that with the beginning of S7.  Lucy is the same age as she was when the curse was cast, so no one is missing much. She's still with her mother. No one's life seems locked in a horrible endless loop. Jacinda isn't doing the best, but it's not like she couldn't better her life if she tried. Henry is still pretty lame, but that's not really a change. We never see the loving family desperate to hang on to each other being torn apart by the curse. Lucy doesn't really seem all that distraught that her father doesn't know her.  Nothing is keeping Henry and Jacinda from getting together. And we don't even really know who is to blame because there isn't an Evil Queen moment where Jacinda is holding a dying Henry in her lap while Ivy gloats about how she's now won. There's only Lucy telling us that it's a repeat of the original curse, which is funny because it really is like a copy of a copy in that everything is muddied and watered down.

[daxx]

8 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

it's a repeat of the original curse, which is funny because it really is like a copy of a copy in that everything is muddied and watered down.

It is so watered down they didn’t even need an actual heart crush to jump start it this time. Over the seasons they made the dark curse a complete joke. Which is sad, it was supposed to be the worst thing, unstoppable and evil. 

It started with Snowing not paying the price in season 3. I would have preferred that Zelena using the dagger force Rumple to use Neal’s heart to enact the curse. I mean they were killing him off anyway, give Rumple a reason to go off the deep end and completely give in to the darkness. Let him be the monster at the end of the book.

Edited October 17, 2019 by daxx

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, daxx said:

It started with Snowing not paying the price in season 3. I would have preferred that Zelena using the dagger force Rumple to use Neal’s heart to enact the curse. I mean they were killing him off anyway, give Rumple a reason to go off the deep end and completely give in to the darkness. Let him be the monster at the end of the book.

This seemed like the most obvious route to go in. It wouldn't make Neal an idiot for killing himself nor whitewash him, Rumple would have a better reason to be pissed, and it would've made Zelena more evil as the Big Bad. It would be very messed up, but in a poetic sort of way. Rumple would ultimately lose his son because of both the Dagger and a person he screwed over. Sad, but makes complete thematic sense.

I've been trying to think about how you could rewrite S7. I think one thing that would keep people watching is having the goal be to save the old regulars, like Snow, Emma, Hook, etc. Put them in some kind of frozen prison (like the original curse), and have Henry and the Young Nevengers (Robyn, Snowflake, Gideon, and maybe Hope) on the outside trying to save them. Maybe Henry tried to save them for years, but eventually gave up and become a jaded adult. Perhaps the Young Nevengers would become sort of like the new "Home Office" and Henry played the role of Professor X? If we had to bring old characters back, we could always use flashbacks or Wish characters. I'm not sure how all that work with timelines and ages, but the stakes would be higher and there would be less randos like Jacinda nobody cares about.

Personally, my favorite S7 theory was the "Henry sucks" theory. You can keep the first couple of episodes without really changing anything. But - surprise! - Jacinda never actually liked or became romantically involved with him, Lucy isn't his daughter, and he failed to do anything about Lady Tremaine's tyranny. The entire curse is a hoax invented by Henry using his Author powers so he could be the "Savior" and the hero of the story. He altered the memories (and maybe his own) of everyone around him, and that's why their actions don't make sense and why Lucy just randomly appeared at his door.

Edited October 17, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

The Pilot had much higher stakes than anything S7 could possibly give.

I think the stakes and consequences are the key, and not just big-picture, but the little things. When young Henry came to Emma, she had to give up her home, her job, and whatever life she had in Boston to go to a new town in a different state and essentially start over. She had to find a home when Regina was coercing everyone in town not to rent to her, and she had to find a job and then win an election in order to keep it. She may or may not have been able to leave, given that the one time she did, the wolf got in her way and she had an accident. Adult Henry just had to start drinking at a different bar to get involved. He kept his job, stayed in his home, and getting involved in Lucy and Jacinda's life just meant going to a different neighborhood when he felt like it. If at any time he'd decided he wanted out, all he had to do was not go to that neighborhood anymore. Nothing much would have changed for anyone if he had.

Young Henry was living with a mother who, per season one, didn't really love him, who was gaslighting him into not believing the truth. He got put into therapy. Lucy got put in ballet lessons. There were zero consequences to all her ravings about them being under a curse and Henry being her father. They all just seemed to smile and nod and humor her without showing any concern or having her checked out. Young Henry was having his beliefs constantly attacked. There was Regina setting up Emma for Henry to overhear her saying she didn't believe. There was his fear about losing the book. Regina tore down his playground castle. Graham died and he felt guilty and tried to stay away from Emma in order to protect her. Nothing much happened to Lucy or to anyone else so that Lucy was worried it was her fault. She didn't feel she had to stay away from Henry to protect him, she didn't really lose anything. Even when she was made to live with Victoria, she didn't seem to suffer all that much, and she still got to see her mother. About the only bad thing to happen came midway through the season, when just seeing Jacinda kissing Nick made her lose all her belief so that Victoria was able to use her for a spell. Much worse happened to young Henry without him losing his belief. He was willing to risk death to help Emma believe.

13 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

There's only Lucy telling us that it's a repeat of the original curse, which is funny because it really is like a copy of a copy in that everything is muddied and watered down.

"Watered down" is a good way to describe it. It's like the plan for season 7 was to make it just like season one, except without any stakes, consequences, conflict, or intensity.

[Camera One]

21 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

First of all, the original premise had the negative consequences of the curse on full display. We watch Snow sobbing as Baby Emma is taken from her arms, David fighting his way to the wardrobe and then "dying" and then see what happened to that same baby 28 years later. She's lonely, unloved and cut off from emotion having been tossed on the side of the road like garbage and passed from foster home to foster home her whole life. She meets her mother and there's nothing there. How can we not root for Emma to realize she wasn't garbage and how much her parents loved her? Or to see Snow reunited with the child who was torn out of her arms? Even beyond that, we see other side characters equally miserable separated and/or fighting with their loved ones. Wouldn't we want to see Emma defeat the Evil Bitch who'd caused so much pain? The same one who was now causing her son so much pain? There was a lot of showing of emotion going on in the Pilot.

What struck me on this rewatch of the pilot was how raw the emotion was.  Snow and Charming in the past, and Emma and Henry in the present all express a lot of pain and anguish over what they were/had gone through.  It's jarring to see how much the Curse and Regina/Rumple hurt them, after having recently rewatched seasons where their pain was minimized and cancelled out by retcons so that they could all become one big happy family having the Last Supper at Granny's.  Regina was taunting Snow as she lay the floor distraught over her dead husband and losing years of her daughter's life.  There is no way I could have envisioned them becoming friends (and that's why I still don't).

[KAOS Agent]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Regina was taunting Snow as she lay the floor distraught over her dead husband and losing years of her daughter's life. 

Honestly, I think the worst part was where Regina was planning on killing an innocent newborn. There is nothing to redeem her from that. Watch the Black Guards and you can see them aiming for the baby. And then of course, there's a later flashback from that same time where Regina actually says that killing a baby just made her to do list. There is no way any of the Charmings should ever have had anything to do with this woman.

Edited October 18, 2019 by KAOS Agent

[KingOfHearts]

59 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

Honestly, I think the worst part was where Regina was planning on killing an innocent newborn. There is nothing to redeem her from that. Watch the Black Guards and you can see them aiming for the baby. And then of course, there's a later flashback from that same time where Regina actually says that killing a baby just made her to do list. There is no way any of the Charmings should ever have had anything to do with this woman.

I don't even think Regina would've done that. She'd probably do what she did with Henry and adopt her. I think the best thing the writers could've done was make Regina completely unaware of the Snowing's baby and the Savior. (Or at least have her believe the baby was taken to safety without ever being given the chance to order her guards to kill her, so it would be more ambiguous.) This is all assuming the writers wanted Regina to be redeemable. Claude Frollo was also an attempted baby murderer, but he was never shown to be sympathetic in any way. The writers did nothing to give Regina any flashes of humanity or redeemable qualities. She was the worst of the worst of the worst.

[tennisgurl]

13 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Honestly, I think the worst part was where Regina was planning on killing an innocent newborn.

She also sent tons of kids to the Blind Witch who she knew would eat them, plus several village massacres that certainly included children, plus the many kids she separated from their families in the Dark Curse, I would say its pretty consistent that Regina has no problem with hurting children. Watching the first season, they really go super hard on Regina being evil, having her catapult over the moral event horizon (thanks TV tropes!) countless times with zero signs of remorse or being conflicted, and really showed her to be a terrifying sadist, so much that them being like "oh she was just sad and conflicted because of her dead boyfriend and mommy issues but she really hated herself and was soooo sad" is just a blatant ret-con. Then, even more bizarrely, they just kept doing it, even after we were supposed to feel sorry for her and see her as redeemed. Like, you want me to feel sorry for her crying over Daniels grave right after murdered some poor innocent guy on his wedding day? You want me to cry for her as Snow says there is no coming back for her after she had a whole village slaughtered and their bloody corpses are right there? You want me to be all "oh no poor Regina she suffers the most!" after we heard about yet ANOTHER massacre that she has no remorse for, and the person who tried to get justice is dead on the floor? A&E just loved Regina so much they were convinced that we would love her just as much ans forgive her for everything, no matter how awful it was. 

[KingOfHearts]

5 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

She also sent tons of kids to the Blind Witch who she knew would eat them, plus several village massacres that certainly included children, plus the many kids she separated from their families in the Dark Curse, I would say its pretty consistent that Regina has no problem with hurting children.

But then in S3, when she finds out Henry is the Savior's son, she's mother of the year for taking a forgetting potion. Funny how someone so paranoid about keeping the curse going would just willingly forget an important detail like that. Out of all the children and babies she's harmed, Henry is somehow special because...?

It's like the writers wrote Regina as two separate characters.

Edited October 18, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

I never understood how Regina taking the potion to forget about who Henry is made her some kind of wonderful mother. It wasn't a binary choice. It was not a matter of take the potion and keep Henry or don't take the potion and social services is taking him away. She took the potion because she didn't want to lose her toy, but couldn't love him knowing who he was. This was an entirely selfish decision. She took the easy way out. If she'd kept Henry despite remembering that he could be the end of her revenge, I'd be impressed with her making a sacrifice for her baby.

Her little fairy tale to Henry before drinking the potion was pretty disturbing about her mental processes. 

"Once upon a time, there was a Queen. And she cast a glorious curse that gave her everything she wanted - or so she thought. She despaired when she learned that revenge was not enough. She was lonely. And so she searched the land for a little boy to be her prince. And then she found him. And though they lived happily, it was not ever after. There was still an evil out there lurking. The Queen was worried for her prince's safety. While she knew she could vanquish any threat to the boy, she also knew she couldn't raise him worrying. No. She needed to put her own troubles aside, and put her child first. And so the Queen procured an ancient potion of forgetting. Oh, it's all right. If the Queen drinks the potion, she won't forget her child. She'll only forget her worries, her troubles, her fears. And with those gone she and her prince can indeed finally live happily ever after."

Nothing in that story gives any reason for Regina to take the potion other than for her own convenience. In fact, if Henry was truly in danger from some evil, Regina not remembering would actually put him in more danger. I just don't understand the idea that she was sacrificing for Henry in some way. This was also in the episode where Regina said she regretted nothing she'd done (and she's done a whole hell of a lot) because it got her Henry. The whole thing makes me sick.

Edited October 19, 2019 by KAOS Agent

[daxx]

2 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

This was also in the episode where Regina said she regretted nothing she'd done (and she's done a whole hell of a lot) because it got her Henry

This is exactly when I stopped believing Regina would ever be properly redeemed. I stopped caring about any storyline that included her.

[Camera One]

That whole retcon of Regina knowing Henry's true identity and still adopting him made zero sense.  It felt like such a pathetic attempt to tell us how much Regina loved Henry.  I could never buy it.  

I wonder why I kept being so interested in the show despite the fact that I never bought some of their basic tenets.  I never believed that Regina selflessly loved Henry, or vice versa.  I never believed that Snow would consider Regina to be a friend.  I never believed that Emma would be that desperate to be Regina's friend.  I never believed that Rumbelle should be together.  And yet they tried to hammer these points with retcon after retcon and over and over as the show progressed.  I think with a lot of these relationships, I kept going back to the pilot and their writing just didn't convince me that their feelings towards one another could do a 180.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

That whole retcon of Regina knowing Henry's true identity and still adopting him made zero sense.  It felt like such a pathetic attempt to tell us how much Regina loved Henry.  I could never buy it.  

It didn't need to happen. Regina didn't have to know Henry's true identity. It's funnier that she adopted a boy from Phoenix, raised him, and only finding out years later that he's the Savior's son because his mom comes to town. 

Maybe if the writers wanted us to believe Regina was such a good mother, maybe they should've shown her... I don't know... just being a good mother? Doing something nice for Henry at a young age? Feeling remorseful because of the curse's effects on him? You really can't show any of that because it doesn't jive with the fact she abused him for years. You can't both say she was a good mother and that she was awful. This is why we get crappy A&E style flashbacks that try to meet in the middle and fail miserably. The entire thing was pointless and added nothing to the story nor the dynamic between Henry and Regina.

4 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I never understood how Regina taking the potion to forget about who Henry is made her some kind of wonderful mother. It wasn't a binary choice. It was not a matter of take the potion and keep Henry or don't take the potion and social services is taking him away. She took the potion because she didn't want to lose her toy, but couldn't love him knowing who he was. This was an entirely selfish decision. She took the easy way out. If she'd kept Henry despite remembering that he could be the end of her revenge, I'd be impressed with her making a sacrifice for her baby.

I believe the writers were trying to say she was prioritizing Henry over the curse, but it's one of those things that falls apart if you think about it longer than 20 seconds. I think if Henry were just a toy, she'd just go out and get another one. She wouldn't stick with the one child who could ruin her curse and destroy everything she built. She was far too paranoid for that. I think it makes little sense that she'd keep Henry, let alone drink a forgetting potion. It's not like she didn't have options.

Edited October 19, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I believe the writers were trying to say she was prioritizing Henry over the curse, but it's one of those things that falls apart if you think about it longer than 20 seconds. I think if Henry were just a toy, she'd just go out and get another one. She wouldn't stick with the one child who could ruin her curse and destroy everything she built. She was far too paranoid for that. I think it makes little sense that she'd keep Henry, let alone drink a forgetting potion. It's not like she didn't have options.

But she just fell in love with that baby Henry.  He had her heart already (not literally) and you know how strongly Regina loves.  Like how she obsessed over Owen, just because.  She had to have him and him alone, and to hell with his dad (literally).

[KAOS Agent]

Maybe trying to illegally procure another baby would have been too hard. How many baby selling rings are out there that cursed Rumpel would know about? How long would it take to get another baby? She was very dissatisfied with the idea of going through the process legally and having to wait a few years, which again showed that it was never about the baby's needs. It was always about her.

Didn't she initially try to give Henry back because he cried a lot or something? It seemed like she only really wanted him when he got cute for a little while and smiled at her.  The whole thing was really upsetting to me because her early reactions to the baby were very similar to her treatment of Henry in S1. That they tried to retcon the whole thing made little sense when we saw her react the same way to Henry as a baby and as a ten year old. When he acted like she wanted him to, she was all smiles and "loving" mother. When he acted less than perfect, she went all mommy dearest on him.

I still think she saw him as an object to feed her needs. Trying to pretend that she was somehow prioritizing Henry's needs over hers makes no sense given her treatment of him even into S2. Not to mention her endless clinginess when he was a 30-something adult in S7.

[KingOfHearts]

Why does every main character on this show except for Henry have a body count? Killing and murder are used way too often as a plot device. It's almost like the writers don't know how to do anything else. Want to make a good character "dark" or edgy? Have them kill someone n self-defense. Want a bad character to be the hero? Let them kill another villain. Want to give a character a dark, painful past? Make them responsible for the death of a relative or someone else's loved one. 

Snow killed Cora, Charming killed a bunch of guards, Percival, and his brother, Regina and Rumple killed countless innocents, Belle killed Gaston,  Zelena killed Marian, Hades, and random munchkins, Emma killed Cruella, and Hook killed both his and Charming's fathers. I'm not saying every killing was immoral or unnecessary for the story, but it's such an overused device.

[Camera One]

19 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Snow killed Cora, Charming killed a bunch of guards, Percival, and his brother, Regina and Rumple killed countless innocents, Belle killed Gaston,  Zelena killed Marian, Hades, and random munchkins, Emma killed Cruella, and Hook killed both his and Charming's fathers. I'm not saying every killing was immoral or unnecessary for the story, but it's such an overused device.

If you're a female hero, killing someone means you have blackened your heart and you must pay.  If you are a male hero, it usually doesn't matter.  If you're a female villain or a quirky impish male one, it's bold and audacious and really fun to watch.  If you're a reforming male villain, it's really disappointing and shameful.  In the last three categories, there is no need to mention the killing again.  In the first category, it must be mentioned as often as possible.

- from A&E's Writing Playbook.  Available as an e-book.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Camera One

[RolloTomasi]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why does every main character on this show except for Henry have a body count? 

How quickly we forget the Author’s pen 😞.

[Shanna Marie]

In the episode discussions, we've been mentioning how they seem to be trying to cover a character's entire slide to evil in one episode rather than developing it. That made me think about how the flashbacks were used in season 7 vs. season 1 (the obvious comparison because it was a season rather than two distinct arcs and because so many of the plot elements were designed to mirror season one). The situation is somewhat similar because the flashbacks were mostly designed to tell the background of how they came to be where they were in the present.

In season one, I identified four main categories of flashback. There was the story of how Regina came to cast the curse, mostly told in reverse chronological order, going from her casting the curse in the pilot, back through her Evil Queen days, killing the king, and ending up back at Daniel's death. There was the Charmings' story about how they met and had all those obstacles to get through in order to be together, which started at the "end" in the pilot and went back to the beginning and moved forward. There was Rumple's story, telling his background and building to why he wanted the curse cast, told in no particular order, but ending with the story about Bae and the portal. And there were the character centrics, focusing mostly on one-off stories that didn't progress any of the other plots (though sometimes with crossover appearances by the other characters). There were some overlaps where it could have gone either way, but I gave it to the storyline that was highlighted in the present and where it seemed to have the narrative weight. There were 12 episodes that were focused on either Regina's story or the Charmings' story, six character centrics that didn't really fit either of those two timelines, and four Rumple episodes.

In season 7, the flashbacks seemed to fall into the categories of Henry/Ella, character centrics in the Henry and Ella timeline (happening around them but about other characters), and deep background that's outside that timeline. Adding together all the stories in the Henry/Ella timeline, including the centrics happening then, you get 12 episodes, with 9 deep background episodes. If you pull out the "deep background" centrics involving Gothel into their own category, as with Rumple, the numbers line up a lot like season one. That was surprising.

I think part of the difference is that they divided the "Regina" role between Lady Tremaine and Drizella, but even combined they didn't get the same number of flashbacks as season one Regina. There was Drizella learning magic from Regina and then Gothel's Fight Club, and there was the Rapunzel episode. So, they divided the time between two characters and still gave them both less development than season one Regina. We never saw any transition to evil for Drizella. She went straight from little girl who'd bonded with her stepsister to cruel, cold woman who wants to curse everyone. Meanwhile, although Gothel is in the Rumple role of the real villain who's pulling the strings, she's actually only the focus of one flashback. Otherwise, she's a secondary character in other people's stories. But I guess "cross between Carrie and a tree" doesn't require a lot of development.

I think a big difference between seasons 1 and 7 is that they devote a lot more backstory time to other characters, so there's less focus. There are two episodes focused on Tiana, who doesn't actually play much of a role in the plot. You could pretty much cut her out of the story without changing anything (other than that Robyn and Alice will need to steal a different vehicle to go to Storybrooke), and her backstories exist in a silo, without really intersecting with other characters. She's sort of the Red of this season, but Red's backstory episode was also about Snow and continued her story, picking up from after the Huntsman let her go. I guess Robyn and Alice are the Dreamy and Nova of this season, since they got an episode focused on their relationship in the past, but they actually managed to get together in the present, too. WHook is the big change, since there's no equivalent to his role in season one, and in this season he gets two "deep background" (outside the main flashback timeline) episodes of his own, plus is a central figure in a couple within the main flashback timeline (where his presence is explained, and then his LARP for Henry). Since there's no similar character in season one, his flashbacks seem to have come out of the "Regina" allotment. I'm not entirely complaining about that because he got some of the better material, but it does mean that the villains didn't get much development (and then the "Regina" characters got ditched midway through the season, so it's probably for the best). The episodes that went to Regina's journey toward the curse in season one were divided among the other characters, so there's less of a sense of focus or of any kind of building or momentum.

Henry and Ella got the same number of episodes sort of focused on their relationship as the Charmings got, and then they were part of the overall group for a number of other episodes, but their relationship still managed to be underdeveloped. Nothing much happened in their relationship. It also doesn't have the sense of momentum that the Charmings had. Since theirs was the story told mostly chronologically, it built from their first meeting toward Charming fighting the dragon and rushing to get to Snow after the poison apple. That also seems to have been a pretty tight timeline, maybe a few months, at most. Henry and Ella's story doesn't build. It just sort of happens, and it spans about ten years, which means there's no narrative drive there.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Shanna Marie
Argh. Proofreading.

[Shanna Marie]

Doing that flashback analysis comparing season one to season seven made it clear how scattershot season seven was. In season one, just about everything revolved around the core plot of the Charmings (and Emma, by extension) vs. Regina. The flashbacks were mostly either about the Charmings trying to get together and being hampered by Regina and her allies, or they were about Regina's slide into evil that led to the curse being cast. The present-day plot was almost entirely about Regina trying to hold on to power in the town and doing whatever she could to thwart the weakening of the curse, whether trying to undermine Emma or desperately trying to keep the Charmings apart. The plot about Rumple and his role in the curse was woven throughout that as an extra layer, but even if you removed his agenda, the Charmings vs. Regina story would still have held up. There was some padding in the season, but almost everything still related to that main plot. You could probably ditch the flashbacks about Archie and Grumpy/Dreamy, but the present-day plots in those episodes still progressed that main story. Almost everything in the flashbacks was a critical piece of the progression toward the curse, and almost everything in the present was an important part of the escalating conflict between Emma and Regina that would build to the point that Regina tried to poison Emma and Henry intervened.

Season seven is all over the place, and there are huge chunks you could cut without changing the outcome (and it might even make the story stronger to cut them). There is no central conflict. Ivy is sort of the Regina, the one duped into casting the curse, with the fakeout of it looking like Victoria cast the curse, but all Ivy really cared about was sticking it to her mother. It's almost like if the main conflict in season one had been Regina vs. George, with the Charmings and Emma just sort of flitting about the perimeter and occasionally getting caught in the crossfire. Then Victoria and Ivy disappear midway through the season. Gothel turns out to be the main villain, but she's not really set in opposition to any of the other characters. Her plan has nothing to do with them. They're just useful pawns. There really is no protagonist. Henry breaks the memory part of the curse with a TLK, but that happens after Ivy's out of the picture, so it's not like it was a goal he was driving toward while Ivy tried to thwart him, and the memory stuff is practically irrelevant by that point. Alice defeats Gothel, but Alice wasn't even a main character and barely knew Gothel existed up until the end. Rogers/WHook probably comes closer to being a functional protagonist, since he's in opposition to Gothel the whole time, but he doesn't get to do all that much but be made uncomfortable by her.

Because there are so many random plots that end up having nothing to do with the main plot, there are huge chunks of the season that you could eliminate without changing the outcome. None of the Cinderella-related stuff ends up mattering. Gothel ends up using Regina as the patsy to actually cast the curse, so Drizella wasn't necessary. The only thing Lady Tremaine did that ended up mattering was put Gothel in the tower, where WHook would end up finding her. Skip the Cinderella stuff and just have Rapunzel escape, then when Gothel catches her and tries to put her back in the tower, Rapunzel uses her own spell against her and goes her merry way (without also being Lady Tremaine). Lucy and Murderella end up being irrelevant because Henry has the curse-breaking TLK with Regina rather than his wife and daughter. Without Lady Tremaine and Anastasia, we don't need Lucy to wake Anastasia, and Weaver doesn't need to do anything shifty like work with Victoria or sell out his grandson and great-granddaughter to try to get the Guardian. Then him getting to go straight to heaven makes a bit more sense. The only thing Lucy does that matters at all is getting Henry into Hyperion Heights, but it's not like she has to drag him there from another state. He lives in the same city and is a Not!Uber driver, so odds are he'd have ended up there eventually. The mirror to season one could have been him showing up in Roni's bar, since they're the TLK anyway.

That's a huge chunk of screen time from the first half of the season that ends up being utter irrelevant to the real story. You could also entirely delete everything to do with Tiana without changing things. Alice needed a job, but she could have worked for a random food truck. Her end of the story isn't changed based on who the food truck owner is. Just have Regina and Zelena figure out how to cure Henry, and we don't need Facilier.

About the only part that ends up being truly relevant to Gothel as the real villain is Alice and through her, WHook (since he had to be raped for Alice to exist, and then Gothel used him as a hostage to force Alice's cooperation). I guess we kind of need Regina and Henry for the curse-breaking TLK, since getting their memories back affected the showdown with Gothel. Zelena's only real contribution was bringing Robyn around, and I guess she was important for the finale story because she was able to go after help in Storybrooke.

As much as we rolled our eyes at the serial killer plot, it ended up being more relevant to the real story than any of the Cinderella-related stuff. Him going after Gothel's coven led to her remembering she had a daughter she could use, and Alice being framed for the murders led to her bonding with Rogers. So I guess we can keep Zelena, since she was the real target there.

Season one is focused on Regina vs. the Charmings (and Emma) with Rumple playing both sides to ensure that the curse got cast and broken. Season seven has wicked stepmother vs. Cinderella, wicked stepsister against her mother and Cinderella, Regina with/against Facilier, Facilier against Tiana, the serial killer against witches and Zelena, Gothel just being annoying against everyone without doing much of anything until she decides to end the world and they have to stop her. And our supposed hero, Henry, isn't directly involved in any of these plots. Plus, you could cut most of the episodes of the season and most of the cast without changing the outcome of the story.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

That's a huge chunk of screen time from the first half of the season that ends up being utter irrelevant to the real story. 

Again, it's hard to tell if that was a result of their changes of plans, or their lack of long-range planning.

Quote

As much as we rolled our eyes at the serial killer plot, it ended up being more relevant to the real story than any of the Cinderella-related stuff. Him going after Gothel's coven led to her remembering she had a daughter she could use, and Alice being framed for the murders led to her bonding with Rogers. So I guess we can keep Zelena, since she was the real target there.

That makes sense because this was the latter half of the season and had to lead right into the climax.

It surprises me how little they used Gothel even in the back-half, considering she was a major villain and seemed to be a successor to Rumple.  I wonder how early on they planned the Green Carrie story since they waited so long for that and had no attempt to give Gothel the type of backstory that Rumple got.  There was also little attempt to flesh out the Coven.  Did the Writers plan for them to remain coat hangers?  

I doubt we'll ever get a candid interview with A&E.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Camera One

[daxx]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

I doubt we'll ever get a candid interview with A&E

Yeah, the lack of self awareness in those two would absolutely preclude them fessing up to any mistake. They do self identify as master storytellers.

[Shanna Marie]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

I doubt we'll ever get a candid interview with A&E.

Our best hope is that someday someone else on the writing staff will give the inside scoop on what really went on. I'd love to know how much of the scattershot nature of season 7 was just them having no long-range planning and how much was an abrupt change of plans when it became obvious that none of the Cinderella stuff was going over well with viewers. And even there, given their lack of self-awareness, I can't see them willingly admitting that their brilliant, innovative writing that put Cinderella on a motorcycle was falling flat. Either they just got bored with that storyline and moved on to other things or it was imposed from outside when the network saw the episodes and the ratings.

But it is entirely possible that the bait and switch was the plan, so everything would be surprising -- you think Victoria's the villain, but surprise! It's Ivy! Except not really, because it's really Gothel! And they were so afraid of "spoiling" their big surprises that there ended up being no through-line. Their big bad was someone the characters weren't really even aware of until almost the end, no one knew her plan until the moment they had to stop it, and all that meant that there was no real protagonist to her antagonist.

Regardless of how it all came about, they managed to write a season in which their supposed hero actually had no role other than as an observer.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I can't see them willingly admitting that their brilliant, innovative writing that put Cinderella on a motorcycle was falling flat.

A&E get this image in their head they can't let go of, then the rest of the plot has to revolve around it to make it work. I think in some cases, you can write a story to fit something you really want to do, but it takes a level of creativity. CS Lewis had the image of a faun with an umbrella in the snow holding an umbrella before he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. Although, many times you have to cut your losses in favor of telling a good story. That's what happens in editing rooms on a consistent basis. A&E's writing usually feels like a first draft. Instead of editing that draft, they write more to "fix" what they already wrote by either retconning or going in a different direction. I understand they were pressed for time and on TV you can't just go back and change something because of a future development. However, they break a lot of cardinal rules in writing and seem to constantly forgo conventional story structure. It shouldn't take longer than two minutes to go "oh maybe making Cinderella a murderer doesn't make her likeable as the new female lead/love interest".

Edited October 24, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

30 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It shouldn't take longer than two minutes to go "oh maybe making Cinderella a murderer doesn't make her likeable as the new female lead/love interest".

Or they should at least know that they have to make us like her and give a good reason for her to want to murder before they make her a murderer. They had Snow on her way to kill Regina, but we'd already seen Snow being victimized by Regina and Regina doing horrible things and we'd seen Mary Margaret being a decent person.

With Murderella, that was our first impression of her, we'd never seen the prince she was heading to kill, and we had no reason to feel that her desire to murder was justified.

Plus, Snow White vs. the Evil Queen came from the fairy tale. In Cinderella, the prince was supposed to be her True Love. Cinders wanting to kill the prince is a shocking twist, but to pull it off, there needs to be some setup. At the very least, they needed to start with that for the shock, then flash back to show how they came to that point. But they never actually showed the prince doing anything.

And writers shouldn't get blindsided by one of their actors asking the most obvious question about their clever image in the middle of a Comic-Con panel. Someone on the writing staff should have wondered where Henry was getting gasoline for his motorcycle.

[Camera One]

16 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'd love to know how much of the scattershot nature of season 7 was just them having no long-range planning

It really seems to indicate that the help they had in crafting Season 1 was significant, whether from ABC approvals or advice from the headwriter of "Lost".  There was a coherent story in Season 1 that revolved around Snowing and Emma vs. Regina with connections to Rumple.

But if we looked at A&E's original plan - to have the pilot end shockingly with Prince Charming dying - one would wonder how that would have changed Season 1 and whether it would have devolved into the convoluted mess of Season 7.  Without Charming around, all the flashbacks showing how they met and their relationship struggles would likely have been lost.  How would they have filled the time? Mary Margaret would likely have gotten some random love interest who would have gotten flashbacks disconnected from the rest of the plot, unless she fell in love with the Huntsman.  Though at least Season 1 would still likely have kept the same villains instead of constantly adding new ones.

14 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It shouldn't take longer than two minutes to go "oh maybe making Cinderella a murderer doesn't make her likeable as the new female lead/love interest".

Yes to a normal person, but I don't think A&E responds like normal people.  I wouldn't be surprised if they're still proud of having Cinderella on a motorcycle (never been done!).  These are the guys who thought mass murderers and rapists could be pretty likeable as long as viewers understand they're watching fantasy.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

They're also the people who thought that their biggest mistake in Season 2 was the Taser of Doom.

[KingOfHearts]

On 10/24/2019 at 11:20 AM, Shanna Marie said:

Or they should at least know that they have to make us like her and give a good reason for her to want to murder before they make her a murderer. They had Snow on her way to kill Regina, but we'd already seen Snow being victimized by Regina and Regina doing horrible things and we'd seen Mary Margaret being a decent person.

Context really is everything. When Charming met Snow, we were on episode 3. We had already seen Snow's heroism and the first two episodes were all about how terrible Regina and her curse were. If you're going to tell us the Prince from the Cinderella fairy tale (normally a good character) is evil, you really have to show us. The Evil Queen was self-explanatory. 

[Camera One]

The first episode of Season 7 needed to be Cinderella being bossed around by Lady Tremaine.  Maybe Adult Henry meets her when she's doing chores or something, and Tremaine tells Cinderella that the prince murdered her father.  Then, in Episode 3, Henry could meet her again en route to murdering the prince and we could have that incredible Cinderella on a motorcycle scene.  Alternatively, they could have copied Season 1 and the flashback could have been Henry, Lucy and Jacinda right before the flashbacks from the Season 6 finale, so we see how they got separated (the flashbacks in "The Eighth Witch", though I can't say they were strong enough for a premiere).  The success of all these would still depend on Henry being a better piece of bread for Jacinda to work off of.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

The first episode of Season 7 needed to be Cinderella being bossed around by Lady Tremaine.  Maybe Adult Henry meets her when she's doing chores or something, and Tremaine tells Cinderella that the prince murdered her father. 

Or, if we're mirroring season one, start with one of the iconic moments in their story, when the prince tries the glass slipper on Cinderella, over her stepmother's objections -- and then, twist, the prince turns out to be adult Henry! We see the stepmother going ape over this and threatening that Cinderella will never be happy, or something like that, so that it sounds like she's threatening a curse. Flash forward to Lucy's birthday party, and maybe someone warns them about the curse that's coming. Then the bit from the end of season six.

Then episode three is essentially the earlier part of the Cinderella story, with poor, abused Cinderella learning that the prince killed her father, so she decides to go to the ball to kill him, running into Henry along the way.

Though it still doesn't work too well because the whole murdering thing never really goes anywhere. Maybe just skip the murdering part and Ella is going to the ball to publicly shame and confront her stepmother, but Lady Tremaine kills the prince and frames her for it, so she has to fight her way out with Henry.