A New Beginning: OUAT 2.0

[Mabinogia]

33 minutes ago, Souris said:

I do think he'll stick with the show til the end.

On the one hand I admire his loyalty. On the other hand, dude, get out before it's too late!!!!!

Ah, I say if he's still enjoying playing Hook, why leave? He's making good money, doing what he loves. I don't know that one or two more years is going to make or break his career because, as much as I love him, I don't see him becoming a big huge movie star or anything. He'll get more work in ensembles like he has now so there is no need to move unless he gets an offer he can't refuse. Same for all of them, really. This might be the biggest show they work on. None of them are going to really get much better. Adelaide maybe, but I don't see her being the next Jennifer Lawrence or anything. 

[tennisgurl]

I would put up with a LOT of crap for Colin, and will follow him to whatever his next project is, hoping and praying that its at least a little better than this. Of course, Ive made my peace with the fact that I am with Once until the bitter end, God help me. I've committed this long! 

6 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

I can just see the evil villain club meetings now. "Hello Druzilla, have you blamed a child for ruining everything today?" "Not yet but..." "GET OUT! And don't come back until you blame Lucy for ruining your life somehow!"

Its sad that a show that originally prided itself so much on giving its villains more complicated motivations beyond "Because EVIL" ended up giving most of their villains motivations that are somehow even more convoluted and stupid than in the original stories. 

[Mabinogia]

7 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Its sad that a show that originally prided itself so much on giving its villains more complicated motivations beyond "Because EVIL" ended up giving most of their villains motivations that are somehow even more convoluted and stupid than in the original stories. 

At this point I'd prefer a villain be evil just because. I'm sick of the convoluted backstories that mostly seem to be "my family is the worst!" 

[tennisgurl]

17 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

At this point I'd prefer a villain be evil just because. I'm sick of the convoluted backstories that mostly seem to be "my family is the worst!" 

Really, if I have learned anything from this show, its to never fall in love, have kids, or stay in touch with your parents. Its a one way road to Hell!

[Rumsy4]

23 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Most likely, Season 8 will be Grown-Up Lucy's son knocking on her door and declaring he's her mother.

That thought did cross my mind. It’s a new season. A new day. A new Dark Curse. This time, they’re all cursed to a galaxy far far away...

[jhlipton]

7 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

Cora deserved to die. This is a woman who destroyed her own daughter for her personal revenge.

The day before she was killed, she threw an innocent woman out of the clock tower just for yucks.

3 hours ago, Kktjones said:

I have a sinking feeling he will stay with this show to the very end. It would be very difficult for him to line something else up while shooting Once full-time.

That's what an agent is for.  The agent shops various pilots while Colin is working and should something come up, negotiates a departure.

[Mabinogia]

2 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

The day before she was killed, she threw an innocent woman out of the clock tower just for yucks.

When in Storybrooke...

[Camera One]

Funniest quote I read in an old interview from October:

Quote

Kitsis pointed out that Victoria’s arc speaks to the season’s theme of community and the universal importance of sticking together

Uh... what?!  We've watched her arc and I need help understanding how it relates to those themes.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Camera One

[Lady Calypso]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

Funniest quote I read in an old interview from October:

Uh... what?!  We've watched her arc and I need help understanding how it relates to those themes.

Uh...what arc?!?! Victoria appeared in about ten scenes total in the first eight episodes! It wasn't really an arc for me.

[CCTC]

Did we even see Victoria successfully manage to evict anyone?  There really was not a lot of tension in Seattle-brooke until the end when Lucy lost hope and collapse.  Will the community garden be saved (have people even been back to it since it was saved?),, drama about the food truck, and making it to the cheapest looking $500 a ticket ballet fundraiser.  I was not exactly on the edge of my chair to see if they would be able to achieve these things.  I know Victoria as the main villain was kind of a fake-out in the early episodes, but they still could have made her a bit more scary and efficient.

[Rumsy4]

This season is so poorly defined. At this point, I feel like A&E are knowingly phoning it in. They don’t seem to care all that much for a renewal. In fact, I’m half wondering if they didn’t necessarily want Season 7 either; at least they weren’t expecting it to be renewed. I’m sure they would rather move on to a new project.

[jhlipton]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

Funniest quote I read in an old interview from October:

Quote

Kitsis pointed out that Victoria’s arc speaks to the season’s theme of community and the universal importance of sticking together

 

 

1) Victoria hasn't done much for or against "community" and "community" certainly hasn't affected her
2) If they're talking about her other "versions", Tremaine and Repunzel have done even less!

Her "arc" seems to be "if you treat your daughter like crap, you'll get treated like crap.  Take your aggression out on your step-step-daughter; she'll do your dirty work for you"

[Camera One]

4 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

At this point, I feel like A&E are knowingly phoning it in. They don’t seem to care all that much for a renewal. In fact, I’m half wondering if they didn’t necessarily want Season 7 either; at least they weren’t expecting it to be renewed. I’m sure they would rather move on to a new project.

I think it would have been easy for them to call it a day at the end of Season 6 with all the contracts expiring.  They seriously thought they could start a whole new era of this show with Hurlerella and Lucy.   They want to milk it for all it's worth.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Camera One

[RulerofallIsurvey]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

They want to milk it for all it's worth.

^This.  A paycheck's a paycheck at the end of the day.  And there's no guarantee that they will get another project - at least not any time soon - and not with the way the ratings have fallen this season.  Maybe if they'd quit at the end of last season, it would have been better for their chances to land another project.  I don't know the way tv show stuff like this works, so I'm thinking about it purely from a business standpoint.  As a manager (network exec) I'd be hard pressed to chance the success of another expensive project on a team that had some limited early success and then steadily drove a show into the ground. 

[Mabinogia]

I think if they had anything lined up they would have ended last season, but it is pretty silly to quit your job when you don't have another job waiting. I can't really think of anyone who doesn't like getting a paycheck. So returning for another season of this means they probably weren't getting any nibbles out there on anything they might have been pitching, if they had anything they were pitching. If you don't have a life boat available, might as well stay on the sinking ship until the bitter end. lol

[AnotherCastle]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think it would have been easy for them to call it a day at the end of Season 6 with all the contracts expiring.  They seriously thought they could start a whole new era of this show with Hurlerella and Lucy.   They want to milk it for all it's worth.

I agree, they will milk OUAT for as long as they can, especially since none of their other shows made it past Season 1 (TRON: Uprising, Wonderland, Dead of Summer).

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

If you don't have a life boat available, might as well stay on the sinking ship until the bitter end.

At this point, I think the ship has sunk and they're desperately clinging to the wreckage and flying the ship's flag from the bit of wreckage they're clinging to, insisting that the ship is just fine. It's not a bit of wreckage, it's a reboot (reboat?).

[Mabinogia]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

At this point, I think the ship has sunk and they're desperately clinging to the wreckage and flying the ship's flag from the bit of wreckage they're clinging to, insisting that the ship is just fine. It's not a bit of wreckage, it's a reboot (reboat?).

The question is, which one is Jack and which one is Rose? Wait, can they both be Jacks? hahaha

[Lady Calypso]

33 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

The question is, which one is Jack and which one is Rose? Wait, can they both be Jacks? hahaha

I think they're more like J. Bruce Ismay, the one who helped create the White Star Lines and, at least in the movie, was determined to believe that the ship couldn't sink until it did and then watching from a distance as it slowly goes down. 

[Souris]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

At this point, I think the ship has sunk and they're desperately clinging to the wreckage and flying the ship's flag from the bit of wreckage they're clinging to, insisting that the ship is just fine. It's not a bit of wreckage, it's a reboot (reboat?).

Can I like your post multiple times for "reboat"? LOL!

[CCTC]

I think the one thing that would be clear is that the Billy Zane character would have been misunderstood and end up being  the hero that saved everyone at the end (except for the hundreds of people who perished in the lower-class level, but they would be the equivalent of the nameless peasants torched in villages prior to  the villain/hero's redemption - they don't really matter).  Also, Billly Zane would be recast as a woman with low cut gowns.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Lady Calypso said:

I think they're more like J. Bruce Ismay, the one who helped create the White Star Lines and, at least in the movie, was determined to believe that the ship couldn't sink until it did and then watching from a distance as it slowly goes down. 

Though I don't think they're watching from a distance, safely in a lifeboat (unless they have some new project in the works that I haven't heard about). They're J. Bruce Ismay floating on the door, kicking Jack and Rose off the door, pulling a few random people up with him, putting up the White Star Line flag, and claiming that the door is a new, better version of the Titanic and we should care as much about the new random people as we did about Jack and Rose after seeing their story play out. I suppose he also pulled the Billy Zane character up with him and declared him to be a saint because he changed, and he's the new moral center of the door.

[Mabinogia]

23 minutes ago, CCTC said:

I think the one thing that would be clear is that the Billy Zane character would have been misunderstood and end up being  the hero that saved everyone at the end

Well, it's not his fault he was a mysogonistic, classist ass. His father was a cruel, cold, heartless man, literally, his heart had been ripped out by Cora ages ago and kept in a jar in her bathroom over the toilet. He once stepped on the hem of her dress, that asshole! Anyway, poor Billy's mother was locked in a tower while he was growing up and the only real parenting she could do was when she would throw down little bits of paper she'd written stories on. Unfortunately one day she wrote something lovely to him, but it was magically changed to something dark and ugly and poor Billy thought his mother hated him. That is why he is the way he is. But fear not, once he realizes that one act of good from him will save everyone and reunite him with his true love, which was NOT Rose, he will use his magic pocketwatch to reverse time and use his smoldering charms to melt that ice berg away. What? You say he never had such powers before? Well, he just didn't know about them until he was put in this high stress situation. What, you say he never mentioned a true love? Well, he was just too heartbroken to ever talk about her, but he thought about her every single second. It's all there, we intended it from the very start. You're just stupid if you don't realize how brilliant this is! :P

 

It's official. We could definitely write this show 100 times better than A&E. I would watch the hell out of Billy Zane, Hero of the Door!

Edited January 10, 2018 by Mabinogia

[cappoe]

You have to think of a couple of things. The Veterans contracts are wrapping up. Colin had no choice but to do S7. Could he come back for S8? Sure but do I think he will, he experessed at cons this past summer that this was his final season. Lana and Bobby both seem done as well.

I've always stated that this season was a pass the torch season and after it, the show would be about the newbies. But is it even worth the risk, lets look at facts.

Right now OUAT is the lowest rated show on ABC. That's a fact, everything beats OUAT including repeats of things. 

They will be suffering their DST annual drop, which means 7B will bring in likely a 0.4/0.3 rating. 

S8 will suffer another drop, as it always would, so that'd be a 0.2? At that point it's not worth it. That's bottom tier CW and ABC is not the CW. Plus they'd have to cut costs once again which is where cutting the vets comes in. For S8 they'd need new contracts for Lana, Colin, and Bobby + adding Alice, Robin, and Bex back on as regulars. It's just too expensive for a show that will be performing at horrific numbers in S8.

The fact they announced this coming con is the final one of OUAT is also something that suggests it's the final season. I don't believe what Dungey said, it's the TCA's they will not speak ill of any of their shows, even their cancelled ones. I mean The Mayor was cancelled cause of the "political climate" is the biggest load of BS I've ever heard.

There's nothing the network or ad buyers benefit from another season of this show. Especially when S7 has been so universally panned.

I expect the announcement will be made before it returns in March and it will be "mutual agreement" to end the show then. Even though we all know that will be a lie. This whole thing was PR, simple as that.

Edited January 10, 2018 by cappoe

[Shanna Marie]

23 hours ago, cappoe said:

The Veterans contracts are wrapping up. Colin had no choice but to do S7. Could he come back for S8? Sure but do I think he will, he experessed at cons this past summer that this was his final season. Lana and Bobby both seem done as well.

A lot of whether the veterans would return or be asked to return depends on how their contracts were structured. If Lana and Bobby had 7-year contracts, then they got a new contract for this season. They may have made that an automatic seven years, or just one year, subject to renewal. Colin would be negotiating a new contract to stay after this season, and that would mean he'd pretty much have to get a raise. When he got the initial contract, he was basically unknown, but now he's got a fan following and is second billed on the series (aside from Bobby's "and" special billing at the end of the credits). That means likely even a bigger bump than someone who started out at a higher level would get. It would be up to the producers and/or network to decide whether it's worth it to the budget to keep him for maybe two or three featured episodes and otherwise just a few lines per episode. If (big if) the show gets renewed, they may drop the budget further, to go with a drop in ad revenue, and they may phase out the veterans, since their presence hasn't exactly helped the ratings. Or they may decide it's worth paying the veterans and focus on them, with the rationale that losing them would mean even worse ratings because the remaining viewers are only hanging on for those characters/actors. And a lot of that depends on whether the network's even tracking audience response in some way other than Twitter. Do they know or care how the new storyline and characters are being received and whether that has something to do with the ratings? I'm not sure at this point they'd consider it worthwhile to conduct nationwide surveys and focus groups (and it would have to be nationwide to get an accurate read because this show's audience tends to be rather Heartland, so they can't just survey people in LA. Its peak popularity seems to be in Utah) to try to revive a sputtering seventh-season show, especially when they don't seem to have done anything like that at any time along the way. But it's also not worthwhile to keep going the way they have without doing any course correction because it will just keep slipping. It is interesting that they'll have to pitch their plans going forward to have a chance at renewal, which suggests that they're not just getting a go-ahead on the show's existing merits. It sounds like they'll have to make a case, and I'd imagine that case would involve something the network would perceive as improving. That could mean a total reboot, wiping the slate clean and starting something else or it could mean a focus on the veteran characters and less on the newbies. I really can't imagine the network giving a renewal for another season of Murderella and Hyperion Heights.

The fact that the present-day events are taking place in 2017-18 even though they're as much as 20 years into the show's future gives them some opportunity to do a hard reboot. I'm still kind of pulling for Regina to call her 2018 self and tell her not to let Henry leave home the way he did, and then none of this will have happened. Then they could start over some other way.

[KingOfHearts]

23 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The fact that the present-day events are taking place in 2017-18 even though they're as much as 20 years into the show's future gives them some opportunity to do a hard reboot. I'm still kind of pulling for Regina to call her 2018 self and tell her not to let Henry leave home the way he did, and then none of this will have happened. Then they could start over some other way.

That would have some moral implications, considering Lucy would cease to exist. However, that would be interesting to tackle. (Which means that's not where it's going.)

[Shanna Marie]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

That would have some moral implications, considering Lucy would cease to exist.

I think I could live with that. But hey, she's dying anyway, and her living means Henry dies. Which I could also live with. But I'm not sure Regina could. Which is worse, rebooting time to start over, which means there are some people who wouldn't be born, or someone actually dying? It would be an interesting quandry, but I'd think Regina would choose to save Henry, with the idea that if Lucy was meant to be and if Henry and Ella are really meant to be together, they'll find each other some other way. Maybe Henry leaves home later, runs into Ella at a different time. Or Regina doesn't blab to Drizella about the Dark Curse. But stopping Henry from leaving when he does and changing that part of things also means Henry doesn't die as a young man. From a story perspective, it means they could start over and tell a different "grown-up Henry has adventures" story and introduce different characters.

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

I think I could live with that. But hey, she's dying anyway, and her living means Henry dies. Which I could also live with. But I'm not sure Regina could. Which is worse, rebooting time to start over, which means there are some people who wouldn't be born, or someone actually dying? It would be an interesting quandry, but I'd think Regina would choose to save Henry, with the idea that if Lucy was meant to be and if Henry and Ella are really meant to be together, they'll find each other some other way.

Realistically, both Lucy and Henry will live. These writers like to have their cake and eat it too. I almost laughed at the finale because it was supposed be some big conflict for Regina and Zelena to angst over. Like, pleaaaase. It's this show - there's not going to be any consequences. Were they not around for S5? Or any season since S3 for that matter? 

[Shanna Marie]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Realistically, both Lucy and Henry will live. These writers like to have their cake and eat it too.

I was thinking more in terms of consequences for the writers. This season has pretty much been a flop. The ratings have tanked. It doesn't seem like the new characters have been at all well received, especially the ones most associated with adult Henry, Ella/Jacinda and Lucy. Using the fact that they've apparently traveled in time back to before Henry left in the first place gives them an opportunity to trash anything that wasn't working and start over with a magical version of Bobby coming out of the shower. Henry will never know what he lost, so it's not like what's onscreen would be all that sad, and it seems that most viewers would respond with a big "whew!" if it all got erased. I keep thinking there has to be a reason why they went so far forward in time, only to bring the action back to 2017. It would have been far simpler to have had Henry leave home in 2017 and go to a place where time passes more quickly. That would explain WHook and Regina's ages (and maybe Zelena's), though I guess not why no one aged during Lucy's childhood. But they've specifically said that Henry left home after 2017, so there's been time travel, which makes you wonder why.

Any reboot that doesn't scrap the Ella and Lucy stuff is probably not going to be any more successful than this season has been, but then the show gets bogged down in woe if Henry has lost a wife and daughter (and is aware he's lost his wife and daughter, as opposed to being a teenager who never experienced any of this). I guess their other option is to kind of pull what they did with all the other existing characters and let someone else get spun off elsewhere -- say, Henry, Jacinda and Lucy are happy in Hyperion Heights and no longer on the show, while Whook and Alice, maybe Robin and Zelena, go back to their world and have more adventures (and end up cursed in 2018 London, or wherever, because they can't seem to write without some kind of curse that puts them in modern times).

Though it is hard to imagine the show getting renewed, given the current ratings, the downward trend, and the fact that everything else, including reruns, does better in that time slot. There would have to be something else going on, some other consideration -- funding from an outside source like Netflix, the Disney corporation considering it as advertising, hitting a demographic that's hard to reach, not having anything in development that would work to hit that audience.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

21 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

That would have some moral implications, considering Lucy would cease to exist. However, that would be interesting to tackle. (Which means that's not where it's going.)

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think I could live with that.

Lol!  I was just going to say that it wouldn't be so bad if Lucy weren't around anymore!  :)  Then I was also going to say the same thing about 'if she was meant to be', that they could find a way to have her on the show - even if it was a slightly older actress who could act better (or get her some acting lessons during the summer.)  They like Back to The Future so much, they could do sort of a rip off of II where Lucy from the future has to come back in time to 2018 to save Henry and Ella.  This would especially lend itself to an older Lucy, I think.  Maybe we could even get a different Ella, since she wouldn't be the exact same Ella.  But they really need to streamline their story telling, imo for any success - either in the second half of S7 or a possible s8.  There are just too many wild, nonsensical tangents currently. 

[jhlipton]

On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 6:31 AM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

I don't know the way tv show stuff like this works, so I'm thinking about it purely from a business standpoint.  As a manager (network exec) I'd be hard pressed to chance the success of another expensive project on a team that had some limited early success and then steadily drove a show into the ground. 

I've found that show runners (almost exclusively white men) can have quite a few flops before they get kicked to the curb.  But any woman who is even rumored to be "hard to work with" (she won't sleep with the showrunner?) becomes box office poison.  Doubly true for black women (see Nicole Beharie)

[Camera One]

This show loves hiring people to stand around doing nothing.  An example is Nick.  He is just so obviously a contrived obstacle that becomes not an obstacle depending on which episode it is.  It really struck me when he appeared in the flashbacks in the winter finale with nary a line.  

Even if they didn't want to flesh out his character, it would have helped developed Henry's character if we had seen an episode with them together on some sort of adventure.  As it is, we hardly know anything about this Adult Henry and what he was doing all these years as he sought to "find his own story".  

Now that we know the whole story of Gothel and Drizella's plans, we can clearly see it doesn't match up with the actual Curse that resulted.  Why would Gothel have herself be imprisoned by Tremaine?  Why would they let Tremaine decide where Anastasia's coffin would be hidden?  And as mentioned before, why would Drizella put herself in a position to be verbally abused by Tremaine for two years or however long the Curse has lasted?  Why would they have people who could thwart their plans like Weaver or Alice or Roni or Henry live in Seattle?  Why not drive them off?  Why didn't Drizella start waking up the rest of the Coven early on?  Why was the Coven even Cursed in the first place?  As per usual with this show, the big reveal with the flashbacks was the opposite of "Ohhhhhh... now it all makes sense."

Edited January 13, 2018 by Camera One

[ParadoxLost]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

This show loves hiring people to stand around doing nothing.  An example is Nick.  He is just so obviously a contrived obstacle that becomes not an obstacle depending on which episode it is.  It really struck me when he appeared in the flashbacks in the winter finale with nary a line.  

This has been a problem for a long time.  They've got this big cast of characters and they just stand around doing basically nothing.  Even the main characters don't really do very much or have any depth.  It feels like they don't really have any story ideas and throw out random one dimensional characters to fake having a story to tell.

[Kktjones]

Question for those still watching the show closely. Two things A&E talked about in interviews were the "gentrification" storyline and the fact that HH would comprise both fairy tale and regular people. In regards to the first, has there been more to that beyond Victoria trying to buy Roni's? And in terms of the second, have we met any regular people in HH (beyond the background police officers/restaurant workers)? So far every regular/guest character has a FT counterpart, right? Do you think they originally planned to do more with these two aspects, but realized people weren't interested?

[Camera One]

43 minutes ago, Kktjones said:

Two things A&E talked about in interviews were the "gentrification" storyline and the fact that HH would comprise both fairy tale and regular people. In regards to the first, has there been more to that beyond Victoria trying to buy Roni's?

Aside from that, there was Lucy telling Adult Henry that Victoria was "trying to bring people from this world in, so all the fairy-tale characters move out.  Move away.  Get separated.  Just like you lost Cinderella..."  and Adult Henry saying "That's an up-and-coming neighborhood".  In Episode 3, Victoria says "I moved up my plans to build my condos.  Demolition starts today."  This was regarding that idiotic community garden everyone promptly forgot about in the second half of the half-season.  The most recent time this was brought up, was Roni saying Zelena was forced out and went to San Francisco.

If they got bored with it, that was in record time.  It's pretty hilarious that A&E was going on and on about that gentrification stuff in the summer interviews, but it amounted to nothing.  Were they writing Episode 3 at that time?  Maybe that was the reason?

In general, their teaser interviews seem to dwell on the first 20 minutes of what we will watch.  Right before Zelena's return, their interviews and Mader's interviews were all about Zelena's shocking Cursed identity and how different Kelly was.  Except Kelly was Kelly for two scenes and then it was Zelena again.  So who the hell cares that she was a crossfit instructor or whatever.

Quote

And in terms of the second, have we met any regular people in HH (beyond the background police officers/restaurant workers)?

I don't think anyone has been identified as definitely being a regular person.  Being Cursed vs a real person in Seattle has had zero bearing on the plot.  

Quote

Do you think they originally planned to do more with these two aspects, but realized people weren't interested?

They stopped before there was any audience reaction.  So more likely they lost interest, or they totally forgot, or they never intended to explore it in the first place.  It was just a premise to differentiate Hyperion Heights from Storybrooke.  Except Hyperion Heights is pretty much a dirtier, more "urban" Storybrooke.  Weaver doesn't need to follow any real procedure and can pretty much do whatever he wants (eg. initiative a search for a child who was missing for 30 minutes, have his own private evidence room, easily spring a criminal out of jail).

Edited January 14, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I don't understand how they're introducing so many new characters, despite how (obviously) low the budget is. They couldn't even show us the island Jacinda pointed out to Lucy. Not even with CGI. Jane had to write out a costume change. But now there's a coven of eight Coat Hangers and a fiance for Zelena? Neither Hyperion Heights nor the Disenchanted Forest feel real or living at all. It's obvious they skimmed on extras and side characters.

Edited January 14, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Does anyone have any serious guesses about how the still-Cursed characters like Whook and Alice will find out about the new villainness Gothel?  Will it be revealed that Eloise Gardener was actually an evil mob boss?  Will Weaver tell Whook that Eloise is missing again?  Is everyone in the Coven going to conveniently use that Very Special Symbol so they can be easily tracked down?  What's the story behind that murdered convict who had the tattoo of the Coven anyway?  What idiot drew the giant symbol on the bridge with the troll?  

So will the other set of Cursed characters - Henry, Jacinda, Tiana, etc. be in a completely separate plot away for the Gothel plot?  About what?  Success of the food truck?

Any predictions about how many episodes before Lucy wakes up and whether Anastasia will be killed off sooner or later?

Edited January 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

Your questions are pointless. 

As is likely every single plot they set up in 7A. There will probably be some random new thing the characters be dealing with in 7B. 

[KingOfHearts]

Just now, Rumsy4 said:

As is likely every single plot they set up in 7A. There will probably be some random new thing the characters be dealing with in 7B. 

I'm guessing Victoria and Ivy will either be killed off or taken away by the fourth episode. Anastasia will most likely sacrifice herself so Lucy may live. 

[Camera One]

The new Coven and their agenda (and Gothel's agenda and backstory) seems to be the overriding mystery of 7B.  In a way, it was a half-season arc they did in 7A... by the end of it, the two villains Tremaine and Drizella were incapacitated, and by unwittingly falling into a coma, Lucy had succeeded in Jacinda and Henry rallying together. 

[Free]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

Does anyone have any serious guesses about how the still-Cursed characters like Whook and Alice will find out about the new villainness Gothel?  Will it be revealed that Eloise Gardener was actually an evil mob boss?  Will Weaver tell Whook that Eloise is missing again?  Is everyone in the Coven going to conveniently use that Very Special Symbol so they can be easily tracked down?  What's the story behind that murdered convict who had the tattoo of the Coven anyway?  What idiot drew the giant symbol on the bridge with the troll?  

So will the other set of Cursed characters - Henry, Jacinda, Tiana, etc. be in a completely separate plot away for the Gothel plot?  About what?  Success of the food truck?

Any predictions about how many episodes before Lucy wakes up and whether Anastasia will be killed off sooner or later?

Lucy?  Probably soon, it's been apparent that A&E would get bored of the curse like they did last time.

22 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I don't understand how they're introducing so many new characters, despite how (obviously) low the budget is. They couldn't even show us the island Jacinda pointed out to Lucy. Not even with CGI. Jane had to write out a costume change. But now there's a coven of eight Coat Hangers and a fiance for Zelena? Neither Hyperion Heights nor the Disenchanted Forest feel real or living at all. It's obvious they skimmed on extras and side characters.

I don't either, but it's a recurring problem for A&E, they easily get bored of their characters and just keep dumping in new characters every story arc/half season.

Of course, the same problems with world building persists, A&E is completely allergic to that.

[Camera One]

Quote

Brigitte Hales  @InkTankGirl Jan 13
No matter how many times I do this, I always forget how hard it is to write a script so fast. Never. Gets. Easier.

Maybe that's why scripts are not checked for continuity?  Because of their short deadlines and the rushed writing?  Then again, are the deadlines on this show shorter than on other shows?

[jhlipton]

On 1/14/2018 at 3:30 PM, KingOfHearts said:

They couldn't even show us the island Jacinda pointed out to Lucy.

The island they promptly forgot about (like everything else) by the next episode.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, jhlipton said:

The island they promptly forgot about (like everything else) by the next episode.

Not to mention that they didn't explain until many episodes later that Jacinda had signed away custody of Lucy so that it would make any sense at all why it was such a big deal for a mother to try to go somewhere else with her daughter. The reaction at the time was, "Well, then why not just go? She's your kid." The cops letting Ivy take Lucy to Victoria made no sense at all until they told us near the end of the half season that Victoria had legal custody, so Jacinda running away with her counted as kidnapping. They couldn't have told us that from the beginning? It's not like it was any kind of shocking surprise. I guess the surprise was that Jacinda had willingly signed over custody rather than Victoria taking custody, but it would have made everything a lot clearer if we'd known Victoria was Lucy's legal guardian from the start.

[Rumsy4]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

but it would have made everything a lot clearer if we'd known Victoria was Lucy's legal guardian from the start.

They probably didn't think of it until people started asking questions on twitter. "Magic" was likely their original explanation.

[Shanna Marie]

20 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

They probably didn't think of it until people started asking questions on twitter. "Magic" was likely their original explanation.

Nah, more like they didn't think through the realities of child custody or the fact that they're supposedly in the real world, not in an enclave like Storybrooke. If Mayor Mills in Storybrooke had objected to something a mother did and took the kid away from that mother (and you kind of have to wonder why she didn't, given all her maternal urges -- wouldn't that have been an easier way to get a kid?), we'd have said that was something she could get away with because Storybrooke wasn't really subject to US laws. They seemed to be trying to write Hyperion Heights in Seattle as like Storybrooke, where characters could do anything the story needed, and instead viewers were going "child custody doesn't work like that. A step-grandmother would have no say in what her stepdaughter does with her child, and she couldn't just swoop in and take her like that." So they had to retcon that Victoria had legal custody all along and that Jacinda had signed Lucy over.

[KingOfHearts]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Nah, more like they didn't think through the realities of child custody or the fact that they're supposedly in the real world, not in an enclave like Storybrooke. If Mayor Mills in Storybrooke had objected to something a mother did and took the kid away from that mother (and you kind of have to wonder why she didn't, given all her maternal urges -- wouldn't that have been an easier way to get a kid?), we'd have said that was something she could get away with because Storybrooke wasn't really subject to US laws. They seemed to be trying to write Hyperion Heights in Seattle as like Storybrooke, where characters could do anything the story needed, and instead viewers were going "child custody doesn't work like that. A step-grandmother would have no say in what her stepdaughter does with her child, and she couldn't just swoop in and take her like that." So they had to retcon that Victoria had legal custody all along and that Jacinda had signed Lucy over.

It's pretty crazy that Storybrooke aligned closer to US laws than Hyperion Heights, since it should be the opposite.

[ParadoxLost]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Nah, more like they didn't think through the realities of child custody or the fact that they're supposedly in the real world, not in an enclave like Storybrooke. If Mayor Mills in Storybrooke had objected to something a mother did and took the kid away from that mother (and you kind of have to wonder why she didn't, given all her maternal urges -- wouldn't that have been an easier way to get a kid?), we'd have said that was something she could get away with because Storybrooke wasn't really subject to US laws. They seemed to be trying to write Hyperion Heights in Seattle as like Storybrooke, where characters could do anything the story needed, and instead viewers were going "child custody doesn't work like that. A step-grandmother would have no say in what her stepdaughter does with her child, and she couldn't just swoop in and take her like that." So they had to retcon that Victoria had legal custody all along and that Jacinda had signed Lucy over.

It seems to come down to them deciding that they want to turn the premise of the show slightly on its head by making it fairy tale characters in a real city.  But when it comes right down to it, they don't put more thought into it than that.  They did an uber montage and call it Seattle so that checks the box of establishing the setting.  No need to make it work like the real world or have real people in it.

[KAOS Agent]

They spent a lot of time in the beginning of the season stressing that this was in the real world and they were living with and working with regular people, but they've yet to introduce one character that isn't a fairy tale character. Why even bring this up when it has nothing to do with anything that the audience sees onscreen? The idea would be awesome if they actually did something with it, but it's this show, so it ultimately means nothing.

[Camera One]

They've already introduced a bit of magic that selected characters/objects can wield in Hyperion Heights, so we're also not really seeing characters try to outwit each other or get the upper-hand using "real world" techniques.