A New Beginning: OUAT 2.0

[formerlyfreedom]

A spot to talk about everything in the rebooted season 7 of OUAT; production, casting, writing and more! BUT...not the spot for episode talk. Thank you!

[Souris]

I wasn't quite sure where to put this....

Given the ratings dive, do y'all think they will try to "course correct" in the second half of the season? Will ABC care enough to identify what isn't working and force the matter with A&E? Or will A&E simply double-down on their "brilliant" ideas?

Edited October 24, 2017 by Souris

[Rumsy4]

Abc will just let the Show peter out, IMO. There may be more budget cuts in the second half. As for A&E, they'll probably course-correct by making the second half all about Regina. It will be Operation Dumbass 2.0, with Henry, Murderella, & Lucy working to get Regina a boyfriend. Hmm...let's see. How about James Bond from alternate cold-war era England?

Edited October 24, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Kktjones]

I completely agree that the second half of the season will be a complete Regina-fest. She will be the ultimate hero and I wouldn't be surprised if her "romance" took center stage. They've already written through 7x11 at least, so we may not see the changes coming until after that, but I fully expect to see more of both Lana and Colin. Not sure about Bobby. He has stated outright that this is his last season, so I'm guessing they accounted for that when deciding on his arc, so they may not be able to adjust it. Plus he seems to be filming A LOT less than the other regulars, so he may have something in his contract about his work days/hours.

With the writing on the wall, I do wonder how they will wrap the series up. Will they have Henry & family return to Storybrook and try to bring back as many of the original cast for the finale. Or will they just wrap up the HH story and leave the rest open-ended?

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

I'm starting to think even A&E didn't want this reboot, but had their arms twisted by abc.

Given their arrogance, they wanted a Season 7 and think they're writing the TV version of "Star Wars: A Force Awakens".  

Last year, they were pushing to be renewed to the end.  Season 6 is not how any showrunner who loves their show would write a final season.  They made zero attempt to capitalize on the final year on the show for major original characters, nor did they bring back old favorites with a parade of cameos.  The "happy ending" was tacked on in the end.  

3 hours ago, Souris said:

Given the ratings dive, do y'all think they will try to "course correct" in the second half of the season? Will ABC care enough to identify what isn't working and force the matter with A&E? Or will A&E simply double-down on their "brilliant" ideas?

I think right now, they're blaming the inability of viewers to accept change.  I think they will have pressure to reduce the role of Cinderella, and they will brainstorm with a "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and come up with a twist that Cinderella was never Henry's wife or Lucy's mother, and later, they will say they intended that surprise all along (given their interviews, that is definitely not true - A&E truly believed we would enjoy a "greatest hits" of the Hinderella Love Story.  They probably expected us to see Victoria as a Meryl Streep).  

The Powers that be are likely reading the comments and concluding that viewers will only tune in for the legacy characters.  So I agree that Regina and maybe Whook and Rumple will be the main focus of 7B, along with Zelena.   

1 hour ago, Kktjones said:

With the writing on the wall, I do wonder how they will wrap the series up. Will they have Henry & family return to Storybrook and try to bring back as many of the original cast for the finale. Or will they just wrap up the HH story and leave the rest open-ended?

If that happens, it will be the last 5 minutes of the final episode with a dumb montage.  This show could have had an awesome final season, but that ship has sailed, especially since Jennifer Morrison may not come back at all, and Ginny/Josh will likely only do one episode at most.  Great use of them in Season 6 with the alternating naps.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I was thinking that what would work if they wanted to course correct for the back half would be to ditch cursed Hyperion Heights and give Henry/Cinderella/Lucy a happy ending somewhere not on my TV screen. However, in the course of ending the curse, Regina, Hook, Rumpel, Zelena and Tiana/Alice/some other newbie end up trapped on the Jolly Roger leaping from realm to realm trying to find a way home Quantum Leap style. They can have adventures in Enchanted Forests 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 & 6.0 helping different fairy tale characters in each episode. It makes the audience less dependent on a nonsensical overarching storyline other than the easily understood trying to get home and allows for fun fairy tale mashups with all kinds of possibilities for characters to run into their different counterparts, which could even provide the opportunity for flashbacks as the characters remember how the event that is playing out in the present for their counterpart actually played out for them in the past. This is what S7 should have been from the start, but it will never happen because it makes way too much sense.

[Camera One]

I just watched "Up" (don't read if you haven't seen).  I was wondering if Hyperion Heights was inspired by the scene where the old man's home was caught between two construction zones.

They might as well have copied that scene for Victoria's entrance instead of the purposeless "The Devil Wears Prada" rip-off.

[VoicePlaya]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think right now, they're blaming the inability of viewers to accept change.  I think they will have pressure to reduce the role of Cinderella, and they will brainstorm with a "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and come up with a twist that Cinderella was never Henry's wife or Lucy's mother, and later, they will say they intended that surprise all along (given their interviews, that is definitely not true - A&E truly believed we would enjoy a "greatest hits" of the Hinderella Love Story.  They probably expected us to see Victoria as a Meryl Streep).  

That makes me think of an interview that Colin and Robert did, I think at Comic Con, where Colin said something about the audience needing to go into this season with an open mind. It would not surprise me if they're blaming the audience for not being able to accept change instead of themselves for not coming up with storylines people care about. Or, you know, likeable and interesting characters. 

Last night I was skimming through the comments on the Once Facebook page and ouch. The Cinderella hate is brutal! I don't know that I've ever seen so much hate for a character. At least not one that the audience is meant to like. I only saw a handful of comments from people who actually like her, but I had to skim through a lot of negativity to find those. 

I can definitely see them focusing on the legacy characters in 7B. While scrambling to bring back as many others as they can for cameos too, I bet. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, VoicePlaya said:

Last night I was skimming through the comments on the Once Facebook page and ouch. The Cinderella hate is brutal! I don't know that I've ever seen so much hate for a character. At least not one that the audience is meant to like. I only saw a handful of comments from people who actually like her, but I had to skim through a lot of negativity to find those. 

People seem to be over-reacting, and I'm surprised they're using their energy to write about her.  Usually, hate is directed at new characters who are mean to popular characters, or new characters who are thrown into a love triangle or are used to break up existing couples.  While Cinderella is very poorly written and acted, I really can't get that worked up over her.  She's not even as abrasive as Merida to me.  She's just sort of there, along with the other new duds like Victoria.  Maybe people are really protective of the image of Cinderella in their imaginations?   Who knows...

Edited October 26, 2017 by Camera One

[Souris]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

People seem to be over-reacting, and I'm surprised they're using their energy to write about her.  Usually, hate is directed at new characters who are mean to popular characters, or new characters who are thrown into a love triangle or are used to break up existing couples.  While Cinderella is very poorly written and acted, I really can't get that worked up over her.  She's not even as abrasive as Merida to me.  She's just sort of there, along with the other new duds like Victoria.  Maybe people are really protective of the image of Cinderella in their imaginations?   Who knows...

It may also partly be that they're invested in Henry, even New!Henry, and they want his True Love to be awesome.

Also, she may have become a the "face" for everything they're cranky about, such as losing their favorite characters. Since the show/advertising seemed to be trying to push her more than the other new characters, she's become the focus for the fan dislike.

[Camera One]

That's a good point... the response to the post advertising "a tale as old as time" with that photo of Old Belle had mostly negative responses too.  A lot of people seem confused: "I just am really having a difficult time understanding and really not interested in this new storyline", "It came back, and just makes no sense to me", "This show has become so confusing".  My favorite comment was "This tale is really starting to be as old as time".  Nice choice of phrase, promo people.  The joke writes itself.  It doesn't help whoever's in charge of Facebook keeps putting up video clips with Failurella in it.

But then again, I'm actually surprised how many people are posting about this show on Facebook, still.  To the higher-ups, perhaps any social media activity is good activity.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

I'm actually surprised how many people are posting about this show on Facebook, still. 

People are more likely to complain than praise. If you like something, as an average viewer you may just watch it. If they change the thing you like so that you no longer like it, you complain to a place where you think your voice will be heard. It's like any customer service experience. If it goes well, you consider that normal and don't say anything. If it goes badly, you might complain to the management or post a scathing review on Yelp.

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

While Cinderella is very poorly written and acted, I really can't get that worked up over her.  She's not even as abrasive as Merida to me.  She's just sort of there, along with the other new duds like Victoria.  Maybe people are really protective of the image of Cinderella in their imaginations?   Who knows...

I think the problem is that she's the new main character, the new Emma or Snow figure. Merida was abrasive, but she was a guest character whose role was really small and only in a few episodes, and I think she was meant to be abrasive. She could be written out without affecting the plot, and she didn't eat up that much screen time that could have gone to better characters. Cinderella/Jacinda is the love interest for the main character, and we're supposed to be pulling for her. I think we're supposed to find her "spunky" and "spirited" instead of abrasive. We're supposed to feel bad about this poor, oppressed single mom, and they've told us that she and Henry have an epic love story. But what we're shown is an irresponsible single mom who loses her temper at work and quits her job in spite of knowing what the stakes are, and in the flashbacks we see someone who's plotting murder out of revenge without us having any context for it, someone who hurts someone who was trying to help her so she could steal the motorcycle he was using to take her to the place she wanted to go. We've seen her planning to murder an innocent person who had done something good for her. When you look at her actions in the flashbacks, she's basically a villain, but we're supposed to see her as the heroine. At least we weren't expected to see Regina as a victim and heroine until later in the series when they did an about-face with her. We don't know why Henry would have the slightest interest in her, and at the moment, there's nothing keeping them apart other than the fact that she's not interested in him. For this reboot to work, we have to be madly in love with Cinderella. We have to like her as much as we liked Emma and Snow, from the start. We have to ache for the fact that she's not with Henry. We have to feel bad for her and the horrible things that are happening to her that aren't at all her fault. Even being "meh" on her is the kiss of death for the show. And we're stuck with her because the story revolves around her -- it's her evil stepmother driving things, and apparently she had some role in Anastasia's death that is part of Lady Tremaine's plot. She's Henry's wife and Lucy's mother. We can't just open a portal and send her away.

[Camera One]

For sure, though I would have thought most had already reached the point of apathy.  Apparently, that's not the case, so that points to why ABC renewed it and why Netflix financially supports it.  The Netflix involvement I think makes it more likely that execs will ask for immediate change and that might precipitate a complete change of focus for 7B.  I'm surprised for a requel, they didn't do more testing of Henderella before declaring it True Love.

[Rumsy4]

21 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I'm surprised for a requel, they didn't do more testing of Henderella before declaring it True Love.

Especially after the epic failure of Pixie Dust Soul Mates, one would think they would screen-test their main couple before declaring them True Love with a kid to boot. 

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Especially after the epic failure of Pixie Dust Soul Mates, one would think they would screen-test their main couple before declaring them True Love with a kid to boot. 

Yeah, but that would make too much sense. Learn from their mistakes? What next putting together stories that actually have a beginning, middle and end? Giving Snow back her backbone? Allowing the Charmings to see each other and talk to each other longer then ten seconds? Next you'll want balance time for the main characters and not just Regina and Rumple? That'll only lead to success, renewals and lasting longer. That's just madness. Its better to never learn from your mistakes, never notice anything you've done wrong, blame ratings down on those crazy fans, and double down on everything you did.  

[Shanna Marie]

I've been reading a book on story theory, and this season is basically a case study of the opposite of what you should probably do when writing. I think a big problem with the "requel" (UGH) is that, to use Hollywood speak, it's lacking in a rootable protagonist. The protagonist of a story should be someone who wants something, even before the story begins, and who has some kind of inner issue (usually a fear) keeping from achieving that thing. Usually, that's where we get the character arc, where the character has to let go of that fear in order to achieve the story goal.

But Henry, who seems to be our central character here, is a very weak protagonist. In the present -- the part of the story that counts, since the flashbacks are backstory -- he doesn't seem to actually want anything. He's part of the team working to bring Victoria down, but he doesn't have any real stakes there. He seems to like Jacinda, but nothing is keeping him from being with her, other than her initially not being keen on him. He's got the tragic backstory about losing his family, but that doesn't seem to have affected him much. He gave that one speech to Lucy about losing his family, but he doesn't interact with Lucy and Jacinda the way you'd expect someone who'd lost his family to act -- he isn't resisting getting involved because he doesn't want to go through loss again, but he's also not glomming onto them as a replacement family. That bit of backstory seems to be something they've told us rather than something that really shapes the character. There's also no obvious character arc for him, nothing he needs to learn or change, aside from the vague "believe." We haven't yet seem him together with his family to feel the loss of them being separated, and they aren't really separated since they're hanging out together.

I think a big part of the problem is that all the good guys are under the curse, so none of them are real. Their problems aren't real because most of them would be resolved just by the curse breaking. Henry wouldn't need to believe if the curse broke and he knew who he was, and he'd be reunited with his family and aware of it. With season one, Emma and Henry were "real." Their issues and problems were real, and while breaking the curse made the others around them realize who they were, it didn't change the built-in issues for Emma and Henry. She'd still grown up feeling abandoned, he'd still grown up in a cursed town.

Even if you count the backstory as story, Henry's stated goal is to get written into a storybook, which is kind of lame. While we see that as being a character flaw he needs to work on, it doesn't seem like the story sees it that way, so he has no clear character arc. He's not having to struggle against anything. He resolved the issue of being captured by Lady Tremaine by calling on his parents for help, and then they tracked down Cinderella offscreen. There's really no conflict at all involving him, past or present.

Lucy's practically a non-entity, with no real character or character arc. She's a human plot device. Jacinda doesn't seem to want anything but her daughter back, but that got resolved pretty quickly, with Lucy easily hanging out with her. Like with Henry, we can see flaws she needs to work on, but the show seems to depict her as "spunky." It's just that generic "she needs to believe in herself" thing.

Really, if you just look at the way the characters are established and not plot or screen time, Rogers/WHook comes closer to being a viable protagonist. In both past and present, he comes into the story with a goal. Rogers wants to solve the cold case while WHook wants to find his daughter. They're actually both the same goal, so it seems more real than the other curse woes, and breaking the curse won't solve his problem or give him what he wants (unless he found his daughter in the past and then the curse split them up again). In past and present, he had an initial plan for achieving his goal that he ended up changing once the story started. Rogers wanted the promotion so he'd have access to information, and at first he was willing to do whatever it took, but he decided to do things the right way and team up with the others to investigate Victoria. WHook was going to replace real Hook but changed his mind and got a second chance. In both present and past, he's got the makings of a growth arc. In the present, he's up against Weaver and trying to find a way to maintain a moral compass while getting what he wants, and in the past he's trying to be a better man and learn to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, the only character who has the makings of being a good protagonist is a secondary character with a subplot, though I wouldn't be surprised if they course correct along the way and he rises in prominence, since Hook is already a popular character, and Henry and Cinderella don't seem to be catching on.

[superloislane]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

A lot of people seem confused: "I just am really having a difficult time understanding and really not interested in this new storyline", "It came back, and just makes no sense to me", "This show has become so confusing". 

I still don't understand why they didn't just completely reboot the show with totally new characters not connected to the old. They could have still had the show situated in the same Once universe so that they could have cameos from old characters coming across the new. With a complete reboot, you wouldn't have everything be so confusing so the writers don't have to badly explain stuff on Twitter and completely retcon things from the past to make things work. They wouldn't have to say this guy is from a previously fake wish world, you wouldn't have the audience racking their brains trying to figure out the timeline and why no one has aged and why the Storybrooke characters don't know about Hyperion Heights, you wouldn't have Henry randomly decide to leave home and everyone be fine with it...

They could still bring Regina onto the show (because God forbid they get rid of her) but everything else would be new and therefore far less confusing. I just don't get it!

[Rumsy4]

The only other times the facebook crowd came out in droves to vent against the show was with black Rapunzel and the Ruby Slippers LGBT romance. I can't help but think New!Cinderella's ethnicity is part of the reason they're at it again. And as I said earlier, just dropping a weak PoC actress into such an iconic role without adapting the story with cultural elements from other ethnicities was a bad idea. A&E seem to want to please the progressive twitter fans, but don't actually want to put in the effort to make such story choices successful. I'm having a hard time figuring out why both the writing and the casting turned out this badly for the requel. You would think the team would make more of an effort to make the "requel" a success--not phone it in even more than usual. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

A&E seem to want to please the progressive twitter fans, but don't actually want to put in the effort to make such story choices successful. I'm having a hard time figuring out why both the writing and the casting turned out this badly for the requel. You would think the team would make more of an effort to make the "requel" a success--not phone it in even more than usual. 

They don't think they're phoning it in.  This is epic to them, since they're delusional.  They wrote Cinderella as they would have a non-POC actress.  As usual, A&E have no awareness of how things come across to the audience.  To them, Cinder's actions are spunky and kickass, yet another strong female character.  As I said earlier, the fact that A&E cannot identify what it is about the original characters which made them kickass and yet not hypocritical and abrasive, suggests that Damon Lindelof from "Lost" and maybe ABC execs, were the ones who added in the elements that made the characters as awesome as they were (along with the star alignment with the casting).

Edited October 27, 2017 by Camera One

[Kktjones]

52 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The only other times the facebook crowd came out in droves to vent against the show was with black Rapunzel and the Ruby Slippers LGBT romance. I can't help but think New!Cinderella's ethnicity is part of the reason they're at it again.

I definitely think you're onto something with this. I wonder how many of those folks on Facebook are really members of the GA and how many are just part of the (Christian? Right-wing? Nut job? Homophobic/racist) group that came out in droves against Ruby Slippers under the guise of watching the show. As someone here pointed out, usually you don't see so many people on Facebook bothering to comment on a show that already has one foot in the grave. And the fact that SO MANY of the comments are specifically complaining about Cinderella makes you wonder. 

[tennisgurl]

Its possible that fans are posting more than usual because of the whole "reboot" nature of the season, and its making people want to talk a bit more. We have tons of new characters and a new setting now, maybe that got some of the GA interested enough to hit Facebook? 

As for Cinderella, I think its fully possible that some of the negative fan responses have something to do with racism (it sadly happens many times when a traditionally white character is cast as a POC, or a show adds an LGBTQ character or story), but I would stop before writing off all criticism to pure prejudiced. Personally, I was excited to see a Hispanic Cinderella, but the character is terribly underwhelming, in both writing and acting. She isn't written as likable or interesting, and in fact comes across as rather unlikable, and she isn't good enough an actress to make it work. They are building her up as the "new Snow" which are big shoes to fill, and she has yet to show that she can fill them. 

In my years of fandom, across genre and demographic, nothing pisses fans off, and turns them off a character quicker, than when writers try to push a character or pairing down the audiences throat. Want to alienate your fanbase? Tell the fans how much they should love a character or pairing, instead of focusing on making the audience actually love the character or pairing. Pushing Cinder/Henry as the new OTP and Cinder as the new heroine is not helping her already shaky case. 

Edited October 27, 2017 by tennisgurl

[Camera One]

There are a few comments that does relate to racism, but a lot of the comments seem to be from people who are familiar with the show (expressing their disappointment not just with this season, but the last few) and some are explaining why they don't like Cinderella.   So I think it is not solely a case of outright discrimination like with Ruby Slippers.

[Rumsy4]

Oh, I absolutely don't think racism is the only, or even the main reason for the negative comments on facebook. But I do think New!Cinder's enthnicity is part of the reason why the character is not clicking. I'm non-white, for the record. And while I do think it's good that yet another PoC is not being fridged (Marian), killed-off (Merlin) or side-lined (Lancelot), A&E haven't done any favors to advance diversity with their casting and writing choices for New!Cinders. In fact, I think the Tiana actress would have been a better choice for Henry's LI. But that wouldn't have worked with Lucy's casting at the end of S6. They really can't fix this mess at this point. 

[Camera One]

I actually liked the actress in "Heroes", though she seemed to be unpopular there as well.  That's why I think personally it's the writing.  There have been multiple actors that I've loved in other shows, but couldn't stand with A&E's writing.  They include Robin Hood (he was hilarious in "Off Centre"), Belle (really liked Claire in "Lost"), Jasmine (good in "Galavant"), and Jafar (one of my favorites in "Lost").

[VoicePlaya]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

They don't think they're phoning it in.  This is epic to them, since they're delusional.  They wrote Cinderella as they would have a non-POC actress.  As usual, A&E have no awareness of how things come across to the audience.  To them, Cinder's actions are spunky and kickass, yet another strong female character.  As I said earlier, the fact that A&E cannot identify what it is about the original characters which made them kickass and yet not hypocritical and abrasive, suggests that Damon Lindelof from "Lost" and maybe ABC execs, combined with the alignment of the stars in casting, were the ones who added in the elements that made the characters as awesome as they were.

 

I agree. I think that they really believe that she's a great character and can't understand why so many dislike her. They seem to equate strong with abrasive and don't understand how off-putting it can be to watch. 

 

17 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Its possible that fans are posting more than usual because of the whole "reboot" nature of the season, and its making people want to talk a bit more. We have tons of new characters and a new setting now, maybe that got some of the GA interested enough to hit Facebook? 

That's what I think is happening. People got curious about the reboot and that made them want to talk about it again.

20 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

In my years of fandom, across genre and demographic, nothing pisses fans off, and turns them off a character quicker, than when writers try to push a character or pairing down the audiences throat. Want to alienate your fanbase? Tell the fans how much they should love a character or pairing, instead of focusing on making the audience actually love the character or pairing. Pushing Cinder/Henry as the new OTP and Diner as the new heroine is not helping her already shaky case. 

This. They've been pushing Cinderella and Cinderella/Henry so hard that it makes a good chunk of the audience not want to root for them on principle. She was off to a bad start before we saw a single scene of hers, which is too bad for the actress. Even if she'd been the best actress they've ever cast, there'd still be that initial pushback against all the hype. Of course, if that had been the case and if Cinderella/Henry were as wonderful as they've been saying they were, there'd be no need to try to shove them down the audience's throat. The story and acting would speak for itself. 

It was also a mistake to compare them to Snowing. As much as they might want to believe it, Cinderella/Henry are not the second coming of Snowing. They're just not. The chemistry between Cinderella/Henry is nonexistent and all trying to make Cinderella like Snow has done is constantly remind everyone of what we've lost. She doesn't feel like her own character, she's just a less likeable version of Snow. It just makes me miss Snow more. 

So I really don't think her race is the big issue here. That's not to say that people who dislike her solely because of her race don't exist because, sadly, there are some. But the complaints seem to be more about not liking the way she's being written or about the acting itself. 

It's worth noting that people generally seem to like Tiana. I've seen people wishing that she'd been the new female lead instead.

[KingOfHearts]

Remember in 3B when the writers wanted us to think Zelena was the most badass woobified villain there ever was? She didn't get much of a following until S5, when she was organically brought up from the background. When her cackling and pointy hats weren't shoved into our faces, we could decide for ourselves whether she was a good character or not. By the same card, no one is complaining about Tiana because she isn't being forced to drive the story. Whether we cheer for her or not is not going to make or break the show. You have to love Zelena's villainy days to enjoy most of 3B, and you have to adore Murderella as a sympathetic to enjoy 7A at all.

In a pilot, you expect main characters to be poured into your lap, for better or for worse. But this is the seventh season. The only people still watching are hardcore fans wanting to stick it out to the bitter end. Nobody is coming in looking at this as a new show. And even if they did, why would Hook, Rumple, and Regina be here?

Edited October 27, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

9 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But Henry, who seems to be our central character here, is a very weak protagonist. In the present -- the part of the story that counts, since the flashbacks are backstory -- he doesn't seem to actually want anything. He's part of the team working to bring Victoria down, but he doesn't have any real stakes there.

There's also no obvious character arc for him, nothing he needs to learn or change, aside from the vague "believe." We haven't yet seem him together with his family to feel the loss of them being separated, and they aren't really separated since they're hanging out together.

I agree this is a huge problem with this requel.  He is the main character, but aside from the memory loss, he has no real issues to work through.  The actor is reasonably likeable, but the character is just sort of there and blends into the background.  I was watching some scenes of Prince Charming from Season 1, and while on paper, his character is a typical stock hero character, his face is actually surprisingly emotive that makes the character seem more real and more intense.  There was a lot of nuance in all the main characters, including Regina, like something deeper was going on beneath the surface.  All of this is completely lacking in the main new characters from Henry to Lucy and of course Jacinda and Victoria.  

[CCTC]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

The actor is reasonably likeable, but the character is just sort of there and blends into the background.  I was watching some scenes of Prince Charming from Season 1, and while on paper, his character is a typical stock hero character, his face is actually surprisingly emotive that makes the character seem more real and more intense. 

Yes - the actor who plays Henry is not horrible, but besides a brief moment at the grave yard, he largely just looks amused or bemused by the situation as if he is on vacation in some cool space and has met a girl he would not mind having a fling with.  MM and  David often looked like they were completely overwhelmed by feelings they did not understand in Story Brooke and you really felt their attraction, and Snow and Charming were in larger than life situations with Snow dealing with Regina hunting her down with wanted posters everywhere and Charming thrown into a royal world that he was not raised for also dealing with a potentially murderous king that threatened both him and his mother.

Lana played Regina as more than arched eye brows (actually Mayor Mills was often an understated malice) and even the EQ had some nuance in the  early days.  She might have been insane or irrational, but Lana did sell that she was in pain (even though it was self-inflicted). 

[RulerofallIsurvey]

16 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Unfortunately, the only character who has the makings of being a good protagonist is a secondary character with a subplot, though I wouldn't be surprised if they course correct along the way and he rises in prominence, since Hook is already a popular character, and Henry and Cinderella don't seem to be catching on.

While focusing more on Whook would probably help, remember that this is A&E who badly sidelined Hook as soon as he started getting decent fan base when he started winning over Emma.  Of course Whook doesn't have a potential LI right now, so maybe that would help make them not so averse to promoting him more.  The other problem I see though is that since Henry is their self insert character, I don't anticipate A&E sidelining him at all.   For me, the best course correction right now would be to change the Henry/Murderella story line some how so that either Henry isn't really Lucy's dad or Murderella isn't really the mom, even if they have to badly retcon something.  Maybe if Henry, and the audience, had to figure out who actually was the mother it would bring a little mystery and excitement to the show.  Right now there's none.

[Rumsy4]

9 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

While focusing more on Whook would probably help, remember that this is A&E who badly sidelined Hook as soon as he started getting decent fan base when he started winning over Emma. 

With you here. A&E did not anticipate Hook's popularity to rival that of their fav: The Evil Queen. I could be way off base with this spec, but I have a feeling A&E (esp Eddy) loved mocking Hook by making him old and ridiculous in the Wish Realm episode. And have Emma paired off with Wish!August and make fat-jokes.

I don't expect them to give WHook more prominence. If anything, it will be more EQ in 7B. 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

I think I've figured out one reason people aren't taking to this version of Cinderella: A key character trait in almost every version of the Cinderella story is that she's kind. That's the whole point of the story, that the kind girl manages to prevail over the bitchy ones who have all the advantages. In the recent Disney live action version, kindness is a mantra for her, and the godmother helps her because she shows kindness to her when the godmother is disguised as a beggar. In the animated Disney version, she looks after the mice, who all want to gather together to help her. That's similar to the Grimm version, where the stepmother says she can go to the ball if she finishes her chores, then creates impossible chores for her, like throwing lentils in with the ashes and saying she needs to sort them out, but then the small creatures like ants and mice come to her rescue because she's been sharing crumbs of her starvation rations with them. Even if you don't study fairy tales and pay attention to this, you've probably internalized that Cinderella is kind, caring, and sharing, and is the kind of person people want to help because of this.

But this Cinderella is basically a bitch. Maybe they're trying to put a twist on the character, but sometimes you twist so far that she's no longer that character. About the only thing I can recall that this Cinderella/Jacinda has done that might be considered kind was standing up for the co-worker who dropped the chicken, and that was a weird thing to use as a "save the cat" moment because the co-worker was in the wrong there, wasting a lot of food out of clumsiness and inattention. I kept waiting for a revelation of who the co-worker was in the fairytale world that would make this significant, like maybe one of the dogs turned into a footman and made human by the curse (like Gus-Gus in curse one), and that would explain the clumsiness, but it was apparently just there to make her look nice. Otherwise, though, she's been more like Regina post-season 2, where people want to help her for no apparent reason, she seems to expect help, but then she's bitchy to the people who help her and lashes out at them about things that are her fault. She's the anti-Cinderella. We don't see her being truly kind to anyone -- Cinderella would have probably dropped the broom and rushed to help the co-worker catch the tray or would have helped clean up rather than just sassing the boss about it, she'd have been gracious about Henry offering to take her to the ball on the motorcycle instead of hitting him and stealing it from him, people would have rallied around her to help her get to the recital to see her daughter because of all the kindness she'd shown other people, and she'd have been nice about it instead of bitching that she didn't need help.

I know these writers think that nice=boring and they wanted to make her modern and kick-ass, but I think you can make her sassy and spirited while still being kind. It would be interesting to explore how a good, kind person might be pushed so hard that she'd be driven to revenge. Caring and kindness might make an interesting motivation for participating in a resistance movement, if she's looking out for the good of the oppressed people. This Cinderella just seems to be doing it out of hate. They pulled off this balance with Snow, I think, where she got to be sassy and a bandit and fought to defend herself, but she also befriended people easily and looked out for others along the way. A big part of her motivation for fighting Regina was protecting her people from Regina (never mind that she later completely forgot about that part).

[Camera One]

I think the Writers tried to do "Snow Falls" again, basically.  Cinderella does a lot of things that Snow did in that episode, including stealing, hitting... even after they "connected", Snow pushed Charming into the river, which was pretty unkind.  However, they didn't think at all about how "Snow Falls" was the third episode in, that they had Snow make a sacrifice at the end of the episode to save Charming, that Snow's situation was a more a matter of survival than revenge.  

And then in the present-day scenes, Jacinda's personality is pretty much the same, unappreciative, reactive and selfish/weak.  Whereas Mary Margaret in the present-day was a lot more docile, but her kindness was still intact.  It seems like all the new characters are almost too confident, without the vulnerability.

Meanwhile, Victoria, unlike Regina, is totally one-note, and her line delivery is very unnatural, making her unconvincing as a conniving, intelligent villain.  

Edited October 27, 2017 by Camera One

[CCTC]

They did a pretty good job with their early heroines and making you interested in and want them to succeed. , Emma, early Snow, Red, Ariel, and even the Frozen sisters were all likable and had spirit .  I thought Mulan was the one misstep (although she was more bearable later) and Aurora was kind of just there.  Later we had Lily (not a heroine, but I think we were supposed to want her to find her way and feel bad for her), Meridia, and Dorothy.    I guess in season 6, the EQ was the heroine we were supposed to cheer on...

[Shanna Marie]

22 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Meanwhile, Victoria, unlike Regina, is totally one-note, and her line delivery is very unnatural, making her unconvincing as a conniving, intelligent villain.  

Which is weird because that actress is usually quite good. Then again, she publicly admitted that she didn't know anything about the show and only took the role because her teenage daughter wanted her to (mostly because her daughter wanted to meet Colin).

24 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It seems like all the new characters are almost too confident, without the vulnerability.

True. Even tough, brash Emma had a vulnerability about her. She was trying to help people. While she didn't believe in the curse or the Savior thing at first, she stayed in town because she wanted to look out for Henry, and from there she started trying to help other people who needed it. She reached out to help Ashley and the Hansel and Gretel kids. Cinderella is more like the taking the chainsaw to the apple tree without us having yet seen Regina do anything to Emma and without Emma doing anything nice for anyone. Henry could have some vulnerability, but he's just a blank slate. The moment at the cemetery was affecting, but it seemed sort of just stuck in there rather than being truly organic to his character, and in the flashbacks there's really nothing. I think it goes back to the problem of him having no real desire. And we're back to the only character who has what we need being Rogers/WHook, who has a kind of vulnerability about him. He's in a precarious position because he wants to do the right thing, but doing the right thing could cost him his job, and he's still haunted by a case he couldn't solve, a person he couldn't help. In flashbacks, he fears he's not good enough to be able to find and save his daughter.

2 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

While focusing more on Whook would probably help, remember that this is A&E who badly sidelined Hook as soon as he started getting decent fan base when he started winning over Emma.

And that's such self-defeating behavior, for the writers to essentially be jealous of a character (and the actor who plays him) because he's popular. Really, sidelining and downgrading one of your more popular characters because he's too popular? As I mentioned above, they even have at least one cast member who's there because of his popularity. The network is certainly pushing him, so that's where the network might step in. I don't think A&E will course correct on their own, in spite of the terrible ratings. They'll stick to their guns and do the story they planned. But the network might make getting the rest of the season or the potential for a new season contingent on focusing more on the character they think will get better ratings.

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The network is certainly pushing him, so that's where the network might step in. I don't think A&E will course correct on their own, in spite of the terrible ratings. They'll stick to their guns and do the story they planned. But the network might make getting the rest of the season or the potential for a new season contingent on focusing more on the character they think will get better ratings.

I feel like abc won't interfere unless it is to make more budget cuts. They may just let the Show die a slow death.

[Camera One]

Maybe Netflix is monitoring the situation and sending A&E some "must do" notes.  After all, they need people to binge this and I don't know how many episodes of Jacinda and Victoria a human can endure in a row.  Though interestingly, someone I know on a non-Once forum actually said she binged the first 3 episodes of Season 7 and liked it.  So maybe Jacinda and Victoria are better on a heavy dose?  Anyone care to guinea pig for us?  

Edited October 27, 2017 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

So next week we've got Dr. Facilier. I'm sure someone out there is hyped up about that.

We've got a picture of Regina and Young Henry too? If stuff like that keeps turning up, this curse isn't going to stay intact for long. Seems like the heroes get some cheats this time around.

Quote

So maybe Jacinda and Victoria are better on a heavy dose?  Anyone care to guinea pig for us?  

In general, this show is better for binge-watching. I don't think this season would be so bad if we didn't have to spend so much time waiting for it to get better.

Edited October 28, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[KingOfHearts]

So far each episode in S7 has been an allusion to an episode or two from S1.

7x01 - The Pilot/The Price of Gold
7x02 - The Thing You Love Most
7x03 - Snow Falls/That Still Small Voice
7x04 - Skin Deep/Hat Trick

7x05 could break that trend, but it could also allude to another episode from another season. I laughed when Tiana's mom said, "we may have to sell the castle", like castles in feudal societies are easily traded parcels of real estate.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

I laughed when Tiana's mom said, "we may have to sell the castle", like castles in feudal societies are easily traded parcels of real estate.

I'm sure castles in Fictional New Orleans/The Enchanted Bayou had different feudal traditions.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The problem with the Henry/Ivy/Jacinda situation is that even if you go by the fact that chemistry is subjective and not everyone is going to agree that Henry has better chemistry with Ivy than with Jacinda, there's still more potential story with Ivy. Jacinda doesn't seem to have any real character arc going on -- she has to "believe," and she wants her daughter back, but there's not a lot going on with her as a person. There's no real conflict between her and Henry, nothing keeping them apart if they want to be together.

That is a huge problem with many of these characters, and especially with Jacinda and Henry.  We've talked about how Henry is extremely limited in any further development after he remembers everything.  The same goes for Cinderella.  It's not that the character is perfect, but rather she's a total mess.  In the flashbacks, she was weak and murderous, basically all over the place, so I can't even come up with a coherent character journey for her.  Henry also doesn't seem like someone who could help her through it... she has only really confided in Regina in the past.  Once Jacinda and Henry "wakes up", there's nothing to look forward to in terms of what their character can deal with. 

Whereas in Season 1, we wanted Snow and Charming to wake up, not just because they were clearly in love, but we wanted to see how they would deal with missing their daughter's entire childhood and how they would relate to her, and how they would deal with becoming rulers (since Snow never really got a chance to, while Charming was thrust into the role).  Now of course, A&E actually did not deal with ANY of this, but still, the potential was there when the Curse broke.

4 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

At least with Ivy, no one is pretending she's a hero or badass. And her interactions with Henry in HH seemed more genuine than Henry's one-sided crush on Cinders.  The old showing something vs telling us something else. 

At least until A&E decides to show us how Bold and Audacious she can be.  Or they hammer us over the head with how much of a victim she really is.  But yeah, for now, it seems like Henry COULD make a difference in Ivy's life.  Instead of Jacinda's ridiculously defensive "I don't need a Prince Charming to save me" attitude.  

[Rumsy4]

Spoiler

I guess the date the Tiana actress was talking about will happen next week. I think it was a pre-recorded interview byte that was released too early by mistake.

Did Dr. Facilier squash the frog prince in the promo? RIP Naveen. We barely knew ye. He went the way of Gaston and Cinderella Prime's fairy god-mother. 

Edited October 28, 2017 by Rumsy4

[oncebluethrone]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

So far each episode in S7 has been an allusion to an episode or two from S1.

7x01 - The Pilot/The Price of Gold
7x02 - The Thing You Love Most
7x03 - Snow Falls/That Still Small Voice
7x04 - Skin Deep/Hat Trick

7x05 could break that trend, but it could also allude to another episode from another season. I laughed when Tiana's mom said, "we may have to sell the castle", like castles in feudal societies are easily traded parcels of real estate.

How was 7x02 like The Thing You Love Most?

[Camera One]

I was just thinking in the other thread that they could have switched the order of Episode 3 and Episode 4, and it would not have mattered. 

Edit: Never mind, I forgot about the Weaver/Whook stuff, though I suppose Rumple could have been testing if Whook was as morally upright as Hook.

Edited October 28, 2017 by Camera One

[VoicePlaya]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

  Hide contents

I guess the date the Tiana actress was talking about will happen next week. I think it was a pre-recorded interview byte that was released too early by mistake.

Did Dr. Facilier squash the frog prince in the promo? RIP Naveen. We barely knew ye. He went the way of Gaston and Cinderella Prime's fairy god-mother. 

Did he? Ugh. I was actually sort of hoping that we'd get to see Naveen. In human form, that is. 

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, VoicePlaya said:

Did he? Ugh. I was actually sort of hoping that we'd get to see Naveen. In human form, that is. 

He seemed to, but it could've been a misdirect. 

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

How was 7x02 like The Thing You Love Most?

The present day was about Victoria using the police force to frame Henry, much like Regina did with Emma.

Quote

Did he? Ugh. I was actually sort of hoping that we'd get to see Naveen. In human form, that is. 

We'll find out if Naveen appears in the episode with the press release comes out.

Edited October 29, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Only in this show is there a Resistance Movement yet they haven't defined what they're actually resisting.  Why not get the Evil King's soldiers on their side?  What's the point of raiding Lady Tremaine's house?  Hyperion Heights is bad, but the Enchanted Forest Redux Realm is not much better.  It seems like the King/Lady Tremaine's soldiers have no problem finding single people like Cinders or Henry, but they have a problem finding the big elaborate resistance camp?  What was the point of spying at the ball again?  If Tremaine is regularly working with the King, wouldn't the Princes have met Drizella many times before?  She already has so much power by association, so it's not as big a deal that she gets her daughter married into royalty.  

Edited October 29, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I was reading a book on writing that had me mentally using this show as counterexamples for all the stuff you're supposed to be doing, and it really highlighted the problems of this season. One bit that really stood out for me was this: "If your protagonist can simply decide to give up without suffering great personal cost due to his/her inaction, you do not have a story."

That's the problem with this season in a nutshell. Henry seems to be our protagonist, but he could walk away without any problems -- in fact, it kind of seems like his life and everyone else's would be better if he walked away.

In Hyperion Heights, he seems to be kind of interested in Jacinda, but not invested enough that if he just stayed home and worked on his book or remembered that he's supposed to be picking up Not!Uber fares, it's no big loss. He's in Operation Stop Victoria mostly because he's irked by what she had Weaver do to him and because Rogers and Roni are applying peer pressure, but he wouldn't lose anyone but drinking buddies he doesn't seem to have bonded with if he bailed on it all. I guess we know he'd miss out on being with his family, but he doesn't know that, and we've never seen him with his family before the curse to feel the loss. Lucy says he needs to break the curse, so supposedly if he bailed he'd be condemning everyone to stay in this existence, but we've seen no confirmation that he has any role in this curse. In the past, he's barely met Cinderella. If he'd gone through that portal he was trying to meet or if he'd gone home with Emma and Hook, he wouldn't have lost anything, and he wouldn't have put Cinderella in the position of being coerced into taking his heart.

Compare that to season one. Once Emma had brought Henry to Storybrooke and saw what Regina was like -- and after her superpower told her that Regina was lying when she said she loved Henry (never mind the later retcon there) -- she couldn't have lived with herself if she'd left him. She'd given him up because she didn't think she could be a mother and she thought she was giving him his best chance at having a good life. Now that she's seen what his life is like, if she just leaves him there, she'd be no better than her own parents who (she believed) had left her on the side of the road. She'd lose her son again, and she'd betray his trust. Meanwhile, we see in the pilot episode that Henry's right about her role in the curse, so the audience knows that if she walks away, she'll condemn her family to a cursed existence and she'll never be reunited with her family.

Something else that's weird about this season: family was a big theme in seasons one through six. A big part of the plot was families that were separated. The Charmings lost Emma, Rumple lost Bae and was trying to find him again, Emma and Bae felt abandoned. Gepetto lied and schemed to protect his son from the curse, but that meant they were separated. Elsa and Anna were separated and trying to find each other again. Ingrid was trying to create a family. Zelena was trying to rewrite time so that her mother would keep her. The end of season six was the big family dinner. But now in season seven, we have Henry ditching his family because he wants to go be famous, choosing to chase after a girl he's barely met rather than be around for his new younger sibling (not that he had to stay in Storybrooke forever, but he could have gone and had adventures in our world and still popped home to visit in a way that's less likely when he's in another realm, and it's even weirder considering his family's history of painful separation and how much they've missed of each other's lives). It looks like he might even have had a child of his own that his birth mother and stepfather and grandparents may never have met. And now we have Belle choosing to grow old and die in a place where she ages faster than her son, so she doesn't get to see him go through adulthood and possibly getting married and having children of his own, and she's away from her father, who's probably outlived her. After all the talk about how important family is, they ditch them pretty easily.

[Camera One]

In the vein of A&E's ridiculous analogy of "Henry leaving for another realm is just like any other young adult going off to college", Belle and Rumple going off to the Edge of Realm is just like a couple of snowbirds vacationing in Cancun, right?  Seriously, there was no rush for Rumple to become mortal, so at least live out the rest of your life at the same rate of Gideon, so he wouldn't have to watch you die after two visits from college.  I'm sorry, but these characters are not relatable at all.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

And now we have Belle choosing to grow old and die in a place where she ages faster than her son, so she doesn't get to see him go through adulthood and possibly getting married and having children of his own

 

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

Seriously, there was no rush for Rumple to become mortal, so at least live out the rest of your life at the same rate of Gideon, so he wouldn't have to watch you die after two visits from college. 

Especially after what they went through with the BF kidnapping Gideon the first time around, you would think his parents would want to treasure every moment of this second chance they all got.