A New Beginning: OUAT 2.0

[Rumsy4]

2 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Have they explained how they have met yet? It kind of seemed in their first scenes that he knew her in her original EQ stage, but that would not make sense

I assumed we would get a flashback to explain where and when they had met, but with so few episodes left, I doubt we're getting any explanation beyond Facilier saying in the latest episode that Rumple was always coming between them. Which doesn't make sense either as Rumple seemed unaware of Facilier at the Temple of the Dead. 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

I assumed we would get a flashback to explain where and when they had met, but with so few episodes left, I doubt we're getting any explanation beyond Facilier saying in the latest episode that Rumple was always coming between them. Which doesn't make sense either as Rumple seemed unaware of Facilier at the Temple of the Dead. 

If Regina and Facilier had been revealed to be together earlier in the season, the writers could have fleshed their dynamic out more and made the angst better. We would have time for their flashback.

[jhlipton]

On 4/21/2018 at 9:37 AM, CCTC said:

It might just be me, and it is a close call, but I think Snow and Charming might have had more chemistry as a couple than Henry and Cinderella.

Not just you, and not even remotely a close call.

On 4/21/2018 at 9:56 AM, Rumsy4 said:

I think it's good that Knight Rook is not the central conflict, as the writers would have messed it up.

Rook Knight sounds like a great title for a chess-based thriller!

17 hours ago, Camera One said:

increasing the danger to Henry with a cold-hearted and unethical guardian like Regina.

Who was "always his favorite"!

5 hours ago, CCTC said:

their relationship seems purely plot driven and does not really make any sense on its own.

On this show?  Say it ain't so!!!!

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

If Regina and Facilier had been revealed to be together earlier in the season, the writers could have fleshed their dynamic out more and made the angst better. We would have time for their flashback.

The first step would be to make it believable that Regina would care two cents about this loser.  I have a feeling that they made this up much later, or else they would have included something in Dr. Facilier's first episode in the fall.  

5 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

I assumed we would get a flashback to explain where and when they had met, but with so few episodes left

That's what I expected too, but as you said, there are four episodes left including the finale.  If anything needed a flashback, it's this one, because this is one of the ten plot points this season where the timeline makes no sense.

Other things that were never explained includes Zelena and Robyn's farm.  I thought that would have been addressed in the Zelena centric last week, but instead, they revisited a time period we've seen before, which made Nick's age make zero sense, if that was pre-Original Curse.  Unless the Hansel and Gretel events happened after Zelena was banished from Storybrooke in 5A, around the time when Adult Dorothy was in Oz and met Red?  But it seemed like Zelena was supposed to be much younger, when she fell for Hansel and Gretel's father.

Edited April 22, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

I mean, on paper, it would be a big deal to remember their life together and their child, but we've hardly seen any significant events in their life which would be worth remembering.  

They do seem to be skipping the major relationship milestones, unless the glowing necklaces were supposed to cover all that.

I'm still blaming the writing more than the actors' chemistry. Good writing can create chemistry, or at least the illusion of chemistry. If there's good subtext with strong emotions, conflict, or sharp dialog, you get the sense of chemistry.

I was trying to think of ways they could have made this relationship more interesting. For the conflict with each other style of tension, that would have been challenging because it depends on actor chemistry, and there has to be a reason they're thrown together. I guess for the past they could have had Henry not be impressed with Murderella's murdering ways, while she thought he was a whiny do-gooder, but they're stuck on the run together because they're both wanted by the king. It's harder to come up with a reason they'd be hanging around with someone they hated in the present. There was plenty of potential material for external forces pulling them apart. Whatever happened to Lady Tremaine and the king's men looking for Murderella and going after Henry? That was utterly dropped after it was merely a plot device to give an excuse for Hook and Regina to show up. Or Henry could have had to do more to find her again that get his mommy to do a locator spell. One or the other may have been captured and rescued by the other. In the present, Nick would have added a lot more conflict to the story by being Lucy's father who was far more successful than an Uber driver/podcaster and therefore a more stable father figure for Lucy than he did by being a serial killer whose whole plotline was pretty much pointless. For internal issues, wouldn't Ella have had some self esteem issues after being treated like a slave? Or she might refuse to consider a relationship until she'd avenged her father. Henry might have been torn between this world and his home world -- would getting involved with a woman from another world keep him away from part of his family?

The potential is built into what they've written. They just seem to be entirely unaware of what they created, as usual.

[Camera One]

Not that I'm clamoring for more Jacinda, but they have done very little to develop her character beyond Henry, Lucy and Tiana (even with them, it's very minimal), and she's very isolated from what's happening with characters that she had connections with.  For example, Jacinda supposedly has all these fake memories with Nick, but we don't even see her find out that he died.  More egregious is we never saw Jacinda finding out that Anastasia was alive again (though I suppose she wouldn't have remembered her anyway).  We never saw Jacinda finding out Lady Tremaine had died, nor that Drizella was a target for the serial killer, nor that her two stepsisters left town.  

In 7B, they seem to have forgotten that Jacinda is supposed to be in business with Tiana and we never see her working in the Rollin' Bayou.  The whole making-ends-meet-as-a-single-mother subplot is completely ignored.  Even the internal conflict she might have felt when Lucy told her not to see Henry was ignored, because Lucy changed her mind. 

Just looking at a single character, the horrible writing and character development is clearly evident.  

[Shanna Marie]

3 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Just looking at a single character, the horrible writing and character development is clearly evident.  

Unfortunately, she seems to be a prop for a prop. She only exists to have produced Henry's spawn and to give Henry a love interest. And Henry mostly exists to prop up Regina. She was never developed beyond "love interest for Henry." We don't know why she likes him. We saw him fretting over being worthy of him, and he's talked about her to others, like with Hook and Regina. But she never talked about him to anyone. Jacinda only seems to be into Henry because Lucy pushes it. She's one of those characters who could be replaced with a lamp because she doesn't make any decisions that drive the plot. She's something for someone to win. They just threw in a few "strong female character" traits -- she punches Henry! She has a sword! -- without actually developing a character. I guess they thought that making her Cinderella was enough to make her a character. But then that's a big problem with a lot of this season. They're relying too much on work other writers have done to develop characters, but then don't make much of a real connection between those iconic characters and their characters. They've got all the dimension of paper dolls wearing the costumes of familiar characters.

[Camera One]

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But she never talked about him to anyone. 

I think she has talked about him to Sabine.  But I don't remember what she said.  Not planning to rewatch to find out, LOL.

It's hilarious this show has prop of a prop.  And Regina is practically a prop herself this season.

Edited April 22, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

25 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It's hilarious this show has prop of a prop.  And Regina is practically a prop herself this season.

We had Emma as the supposed main character, and Regina as the actual main character in the previous seasons, but there is no strong protagonist in this season. Henry is technically it, but he was just a device to introduce the new setting. 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

We had Emma as the supposed main character, and Regina as the actual main character in the previous seasons, but there is no strong protagonist in this season. Henry is technically it, but he was just a device to introduce the new setting. 

Neither Henry nor Jacinda do anything to affect the plot. Their decisions just don't matter. Henry made two decisions in the premiere - pursue Jacinda, and stay in Hyperion Heights. Since then, other characters have put the pieces together for him. Lucy, Nick, Regina, etc. I almost feel sorry for Jacinda (keyword: almost) because after her centric in 7x08, she became nothing more than window dressing. One of the glaring problems with this season (as well as past seasons) is that nearly all of the characters are passive. They don't choose to do anything that changes the status quo. They're forced into these intense scenarios through contrivances and illogical developments.

Lucy is just an intermittent mouthpiece for the plot's demands. Her need to break the curse and get her parents together only surfaces once every few episodes.

[tennisgurl]

Now that I think about it, what do we really know about Jacinda? Either in the HH world or in the fairy tale world? We know she`s Cinderella, we know she falls for Henry at some point, and we know she sometimes tries to kill people. We know that in HH she has a temper, kind of likes Henry, and loves her daughter, and...thats about it. What other personality traits does she have? I have been racking my brain to try to describe her (in either world) in a way that actually describes her personality, and not her jobs, relationships, or physical appearance. All I got is "angry a lot", and that was really only in the first few episodes. Now, she`s just kinda nice, and basically reacts to things that happen around her in a meh kind of way. Even her supposed baby daddy being a serial killer just gave her a "huh, didnt see that coming" reaction. And its not even really her being stoic or internal, she just doesn't really show anything to us, or have any development.  I have no idea what she`s actually like as a person, so how can I get invested in her? She was supposed to be the female lead, but now she`s been demoted to Henry baby mamma. 

I mean, few of the new characters (or new identities) have really been jumping off the screen with how interesting or memorable they are, no one has really developed beyond finding out who they actually are (except for Tilly, and maybe Sabine), and a lot of the more memorable character traits tend to be informed and not last long (did you know Sabine/Tiana is a work-a-holic? We didnt, until this week, and she wont be again), but at least I can name maybe one or two basic personality traits of most of them. With Jacinda, I got nothing. 

[Camera One]

The more I think about it, the weirder it is that Zelena left.  Isn't she worried about Mother Gothel potentially hurting Robyn?  I mean, she had kidnapped her daughter once before.  And Gothel still has that resurrection amulet thingy.  

Nick woke that day in the hospital and he immediately made plans to kill that doctor and deliver chocolates to her?  We still don't know why he was collecting their hair.  

Another super spotty subplot is the one with Drew.  I thought he was a way to incorporate Sabine into the story a bit more.  Maybe she starts being suspicious of him, and he trusts her enough to reveal he was being blackmailed.  I suppose that can still happen, but time is ticking.

[KingOfHearts]

45 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The more I think about it, the weirder it is that Zelena left.  Isn't she worried about Mother Gothel potentially hurting Robyn?  I mean, she had kidnapped her daughter once before.  And Gothel still has that resurrection amulet thingy.  

Even putting the writing issues aside, I don't know why Zelena came to begin with. She didn't do anything to help Regina. She ghosted her fiance for weeks and called her daughter into town from Tibet, but now she's back in San Francisco. Either she shouldn't have stayed at all or she should have actually done something and made sure Chad knew she was okay. It doesn't make any sense that she would come to help take down Gothel, then leave right before the showdown. 

[jhlipton]

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's harder to come up with a reason they'd be hanging around with someone they hated in the present.

If Victoria, Ivy or Gothel had been more of a threat to them (like, at all), they could be banding together to defeat her.  They kinda sorta did that a little bit in 7A, but once Jacinda got her community garden (whooo hoo!!), they dropped the threat entirely. 

[KingOfHearts]

Why wasn't Mama Odie one of the Coat Hangers? They were doing Princess and the Frog, and Facilier was using Nick to kill witches. It would have fit perfectly.

[Camera One]

Why would there even be a Guardian of the Dagger.  Did Merlin create that job position too?  

Welcome to the offices of The Sorcerer Inc.  We are looking for The Author, The Apprentice, The Savior and The Guardian.  Please apply within.  The Dark One need not apply.

Edited April 24, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

However, I definitely don't want the WHook/Alice/Robyn/Zelena stuff to have never happened. 

Has it been made clear why Old Whook stopped looking for Alice and basically gave up?  How old was Old Whook supposed to be when Emma met him?  Did he go through rapid aging syndrome?  

[Camera One]

When Gothel was covered in mud, she looked a little like Sparkly Rumple.

I wonder if that was the original plan for Season 8, to have Gothel as The Dark One, and eventually, she will mellow because she wants to have a better relationship with her daughter Alice.  This would have allowed Robert Carlyle to leave.

Then, we would still have Lana, Colin and maybe Rebecca as the anchors to the past, and they would continue on with Adult Henry as the combination of Emma/Charming, Jacinda as Snow, and Lucy as Young Henry.  Plus Alice, Robyn, Tiana and Naveen as the supporting heroes, and Dr. Facilier as the love interest.

I wonder if they considered cutting Henry/Jacinda/Lucy, but the problem is that to keep Regina on the show for Season 8, you need Henry. 

Otherwise, they could have done a Season 8 with Alice, Robyn & Whook vs. Gothel and then bring on a bunch of new shiny toys.

[Hanahope]

Ok, so I've been watching this show since the beginning because my youngest daughter loves it.  I admit that I don't always pay the closest attention to the details, so I'm hoping someone can give me a brief summary of the background, as I'm a bit lost (though yeah, I should just go with it, since it won't be going for more longer anyway).

I get that this season came about because adult Henry decided to venture about and forge his own tale.  But I'm trying to remember where this different fairy tale land came from.  Is it something Henry created because he's the Author?  Or is it the land that Emma was a princess (wasn't that a genie wish?) or is it just an alternative universe fairy tale land?

I know that Regina came to help Henry in this land, and I know that Hook is the formerly fat Hook (wasn't that also from Emma's fake land?) and somehow Gold came to this land too (though he first was with Belle in the 'edge of the world' area)

I guess the main question is when fake hook lost his hand to the crocodile, aka the dark one, it seems to be the same 'dark one' we've known from the begining, but shouldn't that land have had its own 'dark one?'

Where is Hyperion Heights supposed to be?  I thought it was part of San Francisco (like a suburb or something), but when Zelena was going to go back to San Francisco, there was a comment about it being just a 90 minute plane ride away.  So, is HH like Los Angeles?  or San Diego?

[Shanna Marie]

8 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I get that this season came about because adult Henry decided to venture about and forge his own tale.  But I'm trying to remember where this different fairy tale land came from.  Is it something Henry created because he's the Author?  Or is it the land that Emma was a princess (wasn't that a genie wish?) or is it just an alternative universe fairy tale land?

Henry met Cinderella in an alternative universe fairy tale land where there's a different Cinderella, Alice, and Rapunzel, but also other characters like Tiana. But the Wishverse where Emma was a princess also comes into play, and they seem to travel back and forth between those worlds quite easily.

9 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I guess the main question is when fake hook lost his hand to the crocodile, aka the dark one, it seems to be the same 'dark one' we've known from the begining, but shouldn't that land have had its own 'dark one?'

That land does have its own Dark One Rumple, and we've seen him in a flashback. The Wishverse formerly fat, old Hook had moved to the alternate universe fairy tale land (we've been calling it the Disenchanted Forest) to raise his daughter but went back to the Wishverse to get that Rumple to help him free her from the tower. I don't think we've seen that Rumple again. He's presumably still in the Wishverse. The Rumple we're seeing in the present in the Disenchanted Forest and in Hyperion Heights is our Rumple.

12 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

Where is Hyperion Heights supposed to be?

It's in Seattle.

[Hanahope]

Thanks @Shanna Marie  

I think my head hurts though, so will try not to think about logistics too hard.  Only a few more episodes to go anyway.

[Shanna Marie]

5 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I think my head hurts though, so will try not to think about logistics too hard. 

Yeah, thinking about it too much will only make your head explode. And, whatever you do, DO NOT try to make sense of the timeline. That is utterly impossible to reconcile. Just go with the fact that all the characters are more or less the same age, even when some of them are parents of the others and there's not even a plot reason like time being frozen for some of the characters for 28 years, like in season one.

[tennisgurl]

"And now I've gone cross eyed"-any poor soul trying to make sense of this universe/timeline. The more they try to explain, the more confused we all get.

[Free]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's in Seattle.

Which makes the new curse all the dumber, the original one took place in a small town where the characters couldn't cross the town line and was pretty much hidden away by almost everyone else.

[Mabinogia]

34 minutes ago, Free said:

Which makes the new curse all the dumber, the original one took place in a small town where the characters couldn't cross the town line and was pretty much hidden away by almost everyone else.

The dumbest part is, I think they went with Seattle because they wanted to show fairy tale characters interacting with average Joes and yet, Hyperion Heights ended up being  even more cut off from the "real world" than Storybrooke.

[CCTC]

2 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

The dumbest part is, I think they went with Seattle because they wanted to show fairy tale characters interacting with average Joes and yet, Hyperion Heights ended up being  even more cut off from the "real world" than Storybrooke.

And the pre-season talk was going to be how Victoria was going to keep them all apart to prevent them from figuring out the curse, and they spent about a half of episode halfheartedly keeping Lucy from Jacinda.  They really did nothing with the city environment.  It all seems pretty generic - right down to Ronnie's Bar.  Story Brooke had little touche that added some character, Granny's and Gold's pawn shop, but even little touches like Regina's wall paper that was a forest.

[Mabinogia]

35 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Story Brooke had little touche that added some character, Granny's and Gold's pawn shop, but even little touches like Regina's wall paper that was a forest.

I loved Storybrooke. It was charming and had that fairytale vibe to it, even though it was in our world. It was enchanting in the way quaint New England fishing villages are. There was something slightly otherworldly about it. And I covet that wallpaper! And Didn't Grannies have some really cool wallpaper too? (I looked it up, yes the forest wallpaper!!!!!)

The sets, like the costumes, were just better then. Ah, the good old day. lol (Now I feel really old!) 

There is, as you say, nothing special about HH. I guess that stupid troll is supposed to be cool, but if you showed me 3 bar sets I wouldn't be able to tell you which was Roni's. Same with Victoria's office, the precinct, anyone's apartment, etc. But I could pick Grannie's out of a line up, Regina's office, Snow's apartment, the creepy tunnels under the hospital. lol It was all just more stylish and special. Now it's generic. Like Once Upon a Time, now brought to you by Walmart. 

[tennisgurl]

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

I loved Storybrooke. It was charming and had that fairytale vibe to it, even though it was in our world. It was enchanting in the way quaint New England fishing villages are. There was something slightly otherworldly about it. And I covet that wallpaper! And Didn't Grannies have some really cool wallpaper too? (I looked it up, yes the forest wallpaper!!!!!)

 

Oh I miss Storybrooke so much, especially in the first season! Its was charming and otherworldly and slightly odd in a magical way. It had so much personality, it really felt like a distinct place, that was familiar to our world, but also magical and strange in a way that felt mysterious, and yet inviting. It was filled with fairytale touches, while also being a quaint little coastal town. It was so memorable. 

On the other hand, Hyperion Heights is just...some random part of a city. The whole point, originally, was that Victoria was messing with the fairytale people by gentrifying their neighborhood, but we never got a feeling for that, or why HH was even worth saving. It doesn't seem like magic mixing with the modern world, or fairy tale meets cityscape, it just felt so generic. Even looking back at the pilot, and at the first episode of this season, and the difference is staggering. When Emma got to Storeybrooke, it looked like basically a normal, cute little fishing village, but when you looked harder, you could see the fairy tales leaking through. The giant broken clock on the closed library, the apple trees in Regina's yard, the wolf that stopped Emma from leaving town, it just felt so magical. When we got to HH, we got the set of every show set in a big city ever. Boring bars, boring apartments, boring police station. Nothing looks district, or speaks of a community. The big community garden project has vanished, and now it just seems like some boring set that exists to hide the boom mikes. It doesn't even have the charm and character of our regular Seattle! 

[Free]

5 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

The dumbest part is, I think they went with Seattle because they wanted to show fairy tale characters interacting with average Joes and yet, Hyperion Heights ended up being  even more cut off from the "real world" than Storybrooke.

Yeah, they did absolutely nothing with the new location, it's usually stuck in the same bar where the characters hang out and stuff or Jacinda's place.

[ParadoxLost]

22 minutes ago, Free said:

Yeah, they did absolutely nothing with the new location, it's usually stuck in the same bar where the characters hang out and stuff or Jacinda's place.

As it turns out, Storybrooke was another "character" lost to the reboot and I think it hurt them as much as losing some of the mains.

I think they left Storybrooke, primarily so they could leave all the departing characters with a happy ending where their lives go on while the focus of the story shifts elsewhere.

But the show lost all its sets and all of the viewer emotional shorthand attached to them.

And to make it worse, they didn't have the budget to build a new neighborhood and maintain the flashbacks.  Or at least they didn't have the budget that these showrunners needed to make a new neighborhood seem "real."  A&E have never seemed particularly capable of writing or planning around budgeting limits in a way that doesn't flash like a neon sign across the screen.

[Free]

5 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

As it turns out, Storybrooke was another "character" lost to the reboot and I think it hurt them as much as losing some of the mains.

I think they left Storybrooke, primarily so they could leave all the departing characters with a happy ending where their lives go on while the focus of the story shifts elsewhere.

But the show lost all its sets and all of the viewer emotional shorthand attached to them.

And to make it worse, they didn't have the budget to build a new neighborhood and maintain the flashbacks.  Or at least they didn't have the budget that these showrunners needed to make a new neighborhood seem "real."  A&E have never seemed particularly capable of writing or planning around budgeting limits in a way that doesn't flash like a neon sign across the screen.

Exactly, they were already struggling in S2 when they tried to move on from Storybrooke with Emma/Snow's FTL adventures before quickly moving back to Storybrooke.

[Mabinogia]

They should have stayed in Storybrooke, had the main characters return back to EF and Henry, as mayor, brings in new fairy tale characters from other realms to try to revive his dying town.

[Shanna Marie]

The additional timeline confusion from the latest episode got me thinking: "When" are we in Hyperion Heights time? They had a Halloween-set episode around Halloween, but how much time has passed since then? Are they moving in real time, so it's now springtime and Christmas happened offscreen, or was time compressed, with each episode covering only a day or so and no time passing between episodes, so that they're still in mid-November? Most episodes seem to take place in one or two days, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of time in between episodes, but there also seem to be a couple of episodes that are farther apart. And then there are storylines that seem to have taken more time while others haven't. Like, it seems as though time passed between the last couple of episodes because Tilly and Robyn have started a real relationship and Gothel mentioned that Tilly wants to spend her life with Robyn, which seems a bit much if no time has passed offscreen (then again, on this show, one conversation can mean true love). But at the same time, nothing seems to have happened between episodes for the cop/investigation side of things.

[Mabinogia]

50 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The additional timeline confusion from the latest episode got me thinking: "When" are we in Hyperion Heights time? They had a Halloween-set episode around Halloween, but how much time has passed since then? Are they moving in real time, so it's now springtime and Christmas happened offscreen, or was time compressed, with each episode covering only a day or so and no time passing between episodes, so that they're still in mid-November? Most episodes seem to take place in one or two days, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of time in between episodes, but there also seem to be a couple of episodes that are farther apart. And then there are storylines that seem to have taken more time while others haven't. Like, it seems as though time passed between the last couple of episodes because Tilly and Robyn have started a real relationship and Gothel mentioned that Tilly wants to spend her life with Robyn, which seems a bit much if no time has passed offscreen (then again, on this show, one conversation can mean true love). But at the same time, nothing seems to have happened between episodes for the cop/investigation side of things.

I'm guessing it totally depends on which characters you are talking about. I'm sure Tilly and Robyn are living in a different day/week/month than Henry and Jacinda who aren't in the same time frame as Regina or Gothel or anyone else. I'm pretty sure each character has their own time bubble they travel in. This is why Henry can now be the same age as his parents and grandparents and Robyn is now grown while her mum is still exactly the same. Different time bubbles.

I am a Doctor Who fan and their wibbly wobbly timey wimey explanation still can't even begin to cover the nightmare that is this shows timeline.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Mabinogia

[KingOfHearts]

It's amazing to me how little show has done in the realm of time travel and alternate timelines, yet still manages to botch up its quite linear timeline. Of course, this season we've had realms moving in time at different rates, but we've seen very few instances of this. We've got Zelena/Robyn's farm world moving quicker and a large discrepancy between Disenchanted Forest and the Land Without Magic. I can't think of anything else. It really doesn't have to be such a head scratcher. I don't see the point in realms moving at different speeds, except to keep the Storybrooke citizens young next to Adult!Henry. But even then, it should have been more clear like when Gideon aged up in the Dark Realm. There was zero point in Robyn being 25 when Regina saw her next. 

[Shanna Marie]

38 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Of course, this season we've had realms moving in time at different rates, but we've seen very few instances of this. We've got Zelena/Robyn's farm world moving quicker and a large discrepancy between Disenchanted Forest and the Land Without Magic.

And then they backtracked on that with Robyn's age, where she was in Storybrooke until she was 18, came to the Disenchanted Forest when Lucy was born, and was 26 when Lucy was 8, so it seems that time didn't move any differently wherever Zelena was, so that whole scene was weird. It was like they came up with the story about how and when Zelena and Robyn left Storybrooke after their first appearance this season and forgot that they suggested time was moving more quickly for them. Now that line from Regina asking Robyn's age as though it's hard to keep track while time moves differently explains nothing. Storybrooke isn't moving at a different rate -- or if it is, it's moving quicker. So Hook, Emma, and Regina didn't age at all while Henry grew to be in his 30s, but they were in the same place as Robyn, who aged 18 years since the end of season 6. Zelena has been in the same realm as her daughter all along, but she hasn't changed between the time her daughter was born and her daughter was 26. Or there's Emma running into despairing Old Hook 18 years ago, although his daughter is about the same age as Robyn and we saw him looking only slightly aged when his daughter was about 12.

Come to think of it, Wish Blackbeard seemed to be the same age as Original Blackbeard the last time we saw him, not 28 years older (like WHook was) plus the 10-15 years since Emma was in the Wishverse. Did they forget about everyone from the Wishverse being 28 years older? Or did Wishbeard de-age himself like WHook? And what about Wish Smee? He seemed to be about the same age when they were LARPing with Henry as he was when WHook first went to the Disenchanted Forest.

[jhlipton]

On 4/30/2018 at 4:37 PM, CCTC said:

And the pre-season talk was going to be how Victoria was going to keep them all apart to prevent them from figuring out the curse, and they spent about a half of episode halfheartedly keeping Lucy from Jacinda. 

Remember how Victoria was "gentrifying" HH to kick characters out?  She's been gone for ??some?? time (goodness knows how long!) but the only one to come back was Zalena and now she's leaving again.  We never got to see who all left HH in the first place.

21 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

As it turns out, Storybrooke was another "character" lost to the reboot and I think it hurt them as much as losing some of the mains.

Some merchants didn't like the disruption OUAT caused, but I'm not sure if there were enough for the town to say "Bye, Felicia!"

4 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

I'm pretty sure each character has their own time bubble they travel in.

OMG!!!!  You solved it!!!!!!  This has to be the solution.  Now I'm  picturing dozens of "Good Witch of the North" bubbles, which merge and separate as the characters interact!

[Free]

9 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

Remember how Victoria was "gentrifying" HH to kick characters out?  She's been gone for ??some?? time (goodness knows how long!) but the only one to come back was Zalena and now she's leaving again.  We never got to see who all left HH in the first place.

All of her storylines as well as Drizella's ended up being completely useless, it went nowhere.

[Camera One]

Based on the Henry/Jacinda subplot in "Flower Child", this episode seemed to have happened soon after the last one, where Henry told Jacinda about the paternity results and how his book might be real.  Drew in custody and Rogers interviewing him also suggests very little time.  I think ever since the first episode with the disenchanted blind witch, episodes have followed one another very closely.

I was confused about Wish Smee too.  I suppose they could say he and Blackbeard were in Wish Neverland or something.  Though it's more likely the Writers didn't even think about that at all.

They play so little attention to the details that it's rather appalling that these are professional writers.  Mistakes like these are careless and lazy and completely avoidable with more thought and care.

[Rumsy4]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Mistakes like these are careless and lazy and completely avoidable with more thought and care.

They don't want to avoid it though. That's why they're careless. 

[superloislane]

9 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Some merchants didn't like the disruption OUAT caused, but I'm not sure if there were enough for the town to say "Bye, Felicia!"

Really? I would have thought the tourism the show brought to the town would more than make up for that. I'm pretty sure they even sell merchandise in a few of the stores there.

[Camera One]

I'm guessing there were several reasons.  They were ultimately trying to reboot, with a new setting that could sustain more than one season so it had to look different.  They probably didn't want Storybrooke constantly reminding viewers of the past.  The suburb where they film Hyperion Heights is closer to studio than where they film Storybrooke, and has fewer businesses so the timing may be more flexible than cordoning off all of Main Street.  

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

I'm guessing there were several reasons.  They were ultimately trying to reboot, with a new setting that could sustain more than one season so it had to look different.  They probably didn't want Storybrooke constantly reminding viewers of the past.  The suburb where they film Hyperion Heights is closer to studio than where they film Storybrooke, and has fewer businesses so the timing may be more flexible than cordoning off all of Main Street.  

Hyperion Heights wasn't that bad of a concept per se if they could explain how the curse mingled fairy tale and real world characters. They needed to do something different to separate S7 from the rest of the series. The problem was that while Storybrooke had extensive worldbuilding in the first couple seasons, HH has had next to none. How can it feel like a city when we see the same dozen characters? There should be more passersby with dialogue. The only side characters we haven't seen connected to fairy tales are Remy (who lbr could have been a talking rat in Fictional Paris), Jacinda's boss in the first episode, the cop at the police station, and Zelena's fiance who isn't even from HH. That's one city person per 5 episodes.

[tennisgurl]

I wonder if, when they decided to use Hyperion Heights, they wanted to go more straight up Urban Fantasy, with mixing modern life with magic in more obvious and creative ways than they could in small town Maine. They could have more fun trying to mix things up with the normies, or even try to hide the truth from the average normal person. However, none of that has really happened. Theres no real mixing of magic and the supernatural with the "regular" world (certainly not as much as in actual Urban Fantasy), no characters who arent fairytale people, and nothing really interesting or memorable about the setting at all. I think it could have worked, but A&E have the attention span of ADD goldfish, and before they could do anything with the Once in the City concept, they had already moved on.

[KingOfHearts]

28 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Theres no real mixing of magic and the supernatural with the "regular" world (certainly not as much as in actual Urban Fantasy), no characters who arent fairytale people, and nothing really interesting or memorable about the setting at all.

The Coven could have had a cruder magic more akin to witchcraft, which would have felt more "real world", if that makes any sense. That also goes for Facilier. But we've got random teleporting and magic beans. There's nothing particularly dark or gritty about the Coat Hangers or Facilier. 

[Camera One]

It is really quite astounding how they created this premise of fairytale characters living among regular people in Seattle and they literally only did ONE thing with it - Zelena's normal boyfriend for 10 minutes, except he didn't actually find out anything and hand-waved being engaged to a murderer who set a teenager on fire.  

8 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

the cop at the police station

Since he was able to wake the entire Coven, I'm not sure how "normal" he actually was.  

They have basically been writing Hyperion Heights as if it were Storybrooke.  I don't see any difference at all.  

I suppose it's not a surprise since Rumple was shooting magic out the top of that high-rise in NYC in the Season 5 finale, and there was zero consequence to that.  

[Camera One]

It was confusing me why Lucy was expecting the Curse to break when Henry and Jacinda kissed.  I looked back at the episode, and I think this presumption first came up in "Wake Up Call", when Ivy woke Roni.

IVY: I woke you up because I need your help.  I am on the verge of showing my mother what true suffering is.  I can't have anyone breaking the curse now.
RONI: You mean Henry and Jaci Cinderella.
IVY: We both know you will do whatever it takes to stop True Love's Kiss from happening.  That shouldn't be too hard for the Evil Queen, right? After all, breaking hearts is kind of what you're best at.

-----

But as people have said, in Season 1, no one expected Snowing kissing to break the Curse.  Plus two unbelievers can't True Love Kiss.  This new Curse has no Savior baked into it.  How can they expect people to look forward to the Curse breaking, when three episodes before the end, they still haven't clarified what it takes for this stupid Curse to break?  

[Mitch]

16 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The Coven could have had a cruder magic more akin to witchcraft, which would have felt more "real world", if that makes any sense. That also goes for Facilier. But we've got random teleporting and magic beans. There's nothing particularly dark or gritty about the Coat Hangers or Facilier. 

Agreed...I was looking forward to a more edgy , adult, darker season with the urban setting, but it just seems to be even more flat then SB. Why not make Henry something other then a doufas for once...have the curse make him an alky or a least a heavy drinker..angry at the world...it might be tasteless but the Curse could implant memories of him being on duty in the Middle East and now he is cynical and angry...he is a pacifist now which makes it even wose when he wakes up and find out his mother was a mass murderer!

I thought the addition of the coven would naturally lead to an earthier use of magic,  especially since we now find out that the magic came from this world. I always found their airy fairy Disney magic to be kind of just stupid..unlimited power, unless the plot calls for it or you are a good person, animated "rays" and smoke, and dumb characters (i.e. Henry) who "believe" in "magic" but are always screwed over by it (I would think in SB they would have rounded up every magic user and cuffed them to prevent further issues.)  I know AHS did this and Salem also,  but..instead of "thousands of years ago" make it that a small pocket of magic users lived in this world and tried to do good, until they were killed off by Puritans who thought their power came from Satan.. Gothel is immortal and could not be killed but was changed up and walled in a cellar..where she was left to go insane until...completely unrelated to her...Driz casts the curse and the the neighborhood built up around her...people from an actual land with magic different from hers but usefull just the same in her revenge....same basic storyline, just more "realistic" (and a new title card..."hundreds of years ago") 

[KingOfHearts]

Characters like Facilier are meant to have ambiguous intentions until the big reveal episode, but I hate how it doesn't matter leading up to it. There's no real clues to hint at what they're actually planning. The writers could go two completely directions because of how vague the character's actions are. Most of the time, it doesn't even make sense.

[Shanna Marie]

20 hours ago, Camera One said:

Since he was able to wake the entire Coven, I'm not sure how "normal" he actually was.  

I keep expecting him to show up in one of the flashbacks so we'd see what his fairytale identity was.

The city setting didn't have to take away the fairytale feel. Grimm managed to do that quite well, making Portland into a kind of fairytale kingdom even while it was a modern American city. And it's not that the characters don't know they're fairytale people, since Storybrooke was at its most fairytale in season one when they had their fake identities. The thing was, they played out the imagery with those characters in their lives. We could tell who was supposed to be which character even before they got a centric. In Hyperion Heights, there's been nothing more than Jacinda sweeping once and Victoria and Ivy being a bit bitchy to allude to their fairytale identities.

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

But as people have said, in Season 1, no one expected Snowing kissing to break the Curse.  Plus two unbelievers can't True Love Kiss.  This new Curse has no Savior baked into it.  How can they expect people to look forward to the Curse breaking, when three episodes before the end, they still haven't clarified what it takes for this stupid Curse to break?  

They also haven't clarified what will count as "breaking" or what, exactly, it is that will kill Henry. It doesn't seem like poison will kill him just for remembering who he really is (then again, there was Hook not knowing he was a Dark One just because he didn't remember), so would breaking the memory part of the curse do it? If it's that it was a magical poison and the only way to save him was to get him to the World Without Magic, then wouldn't Anastasia and Gothel doing magic all over the place have meant there was enough magic in the world to hurt Henry? It's no longer a World Without Magic. The idea that there was no Savior baked into the curse should have been a big deal that meant they had to get creative about how they could break the curse because a TLK from the Savior wouldn't do the trick. It shouldn't have meant that any random two people could break the curse with a TLK. That's easier to break than the first curse, not harder. I don't even know why everyone automatically jumped to the conclusion that Henry and Jacinda would be the ones to break it with a kiss. I can see them wanting to err on the side of caution and not take any chances that a TLK would work, but why assume they would be it when it's never worked that way before? And why not worry about the other pairings? It seems more likely that they'd need to keep Henry and Lucy and Tilly and Hook apart, since a parent/child kiss broke it before. Lucy believes, so that comes close to the Henry/Emma thing because she's a believer. Alice is the Guardian, so that comes close to the Emma/Henry thing because she's something like a Savior. But Rumple didn't have a qualm about throwing Rogers and Tilly together and Regina never worried about Lucy and Henry. Then on the romantic front, there's Robyn and Tilly -- again with Alice being a Guardian -- and nobody worried about that.