A New Beginning: OUAT 2.0

[ParadoxLost]

At this point, everyone from Storybrooke has such an immersion in a cursed "real world" personality that I don't think having them as fairy tale characters interacting with the real world can actually work even if they tried harder with it.

I think I would have preferred if they had plopped a few of them into Hyperion Heights with a bunch of real world characters and no memory of their Storybrooke personalities and they were trying to fit in or take over as their fairy tale character.

Yes, I always end up pining for the Enchanted scenario.

Edited January 17, 2018 by ParadoxLost

[Camera One]

That's a good point.  The "Curse Download" actually takes away the fun of seeing fairytale characters reacting to and getting used to the modern world without magic.  

A character waking up also doesn't mean much when everyone they interact with are from the Disenchanted Forest.  It would be more of a deal if their Cursed life was entangled with regular people, and she would have to continue to interact with them while maintaining a cover.  

Edited January 17, 2018 by Camera One

[ParadoxLost]

I think that is why, initially, Alice was a little more fun.  She was the fairy tale interacting with people that didn't now they were fairy tale characters.

5 minutes ago, Camera One said:

A character waking up also doesn't mean much when everyone they interact with are from the Disenchanted Forest.  It would be more of a deal if their Cursed life was entangled with regular people, and she would have to continue to interact with them while maintaining a cover.

Part of the problem with this is that they made everyone one big happy family.  If they didn't want a bunch of regular people coping with being entangled with fairy tale characters, they could have still had people waking up to realize they were in the wrong story or entangled with their mortal enemy.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but... I think it would have been a ton of fun if Regina and EQ were both in the show as twin sisters who hated each other and eventually woke up to realize they were half of the same person.

[KAOS Agent]

They could have had Hook have a real world partner. They break the Eloise Gardner case and "rescue" her. At some point, Hook wakes up and realizes that she is evil, but he's stuck with a partner who believes they've done a good thing. Gothel could then take advantage of Hook's inability to do/say anything about who she really is. It's an evil magical person using wiles, not magic, to take advantage of the situation the curse has put the heroes in and continue to work towards her ultimate goal.

[Camera One]

7 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

They could have had Hook have a real world partner. They break the Eloise Gardner case and "rescue" her. At some point, Hook wakes up and realizes that she is evil, but he's stuck with a partner who believes they've done a good thing. Gothel could then take advantage of Hook's inability to do/say anything about who she really is. 

That's somewhat what they were trying to do with Woken-Up-Rumple and Rogers.  Rumpleweaver knew Eloise was evil but Rogers thought he was doing a good thing, and we got Weaver doing a super shoddy job of trying to send Rogers on the wrong trail.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

It doesn't help that none of the HH personalities were extremely well defined. And, while Storeybrooke had a whole town of cursed fairytale people, this curse has, like 6 people. Not exactly an epic feeling. The Zelena "I am both!" freak out looked pretty hallow, considering they haven't spent much time on anyone's HH lives, or why they supposedly suck so much. 

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I can't believe I'm saying this, but... I think it would have been a ton of fun if Regina and EQ were both in the show as twin sisters who hated each other and eventually woke up to realize they were half of the same person.

Or better yet - Regina and Wish Queen.

[Mabinogia]

Why oh why aren't you people writing this show?

[Shanna Marie]

I think a lot of the problem with Hyperion Heights is the fact that the rationale for the curse amounts to "the structure of this show is that there are fairy tale characters living in modern America, but they fit in because a curse gave them memories of always having lived there, and then there are flashbacks to their fairy tale lives."

With Regina's initial curse, it may have been the dumbest revenge scheme ever, but it did have a kind of logic to it. While we didn't discover just how and why Rumple was manipulating it all along (which made it make much more sense) until the end of the season, so I guess there's still a chance that we'll learn what Gothel's greater scheme is, even before we knew Rumple's reasons for involvement the curse made some sense from Regina's perspective. She hated Snow and wanted her to suffer, but everything she'd tried had backfired. No matter how she tried to torture and abuse Snow, Snow came out on top. Every horrible thing Regina did to her, Snow somehow managed to turn it to her advantage without even trying. Her suffering put her in a position of making new friends and made people love her even more. Even worse, Regina's poisoned apple sleeping curse had not only been broken, but it had been broken by Snow's True Love, something Regina felt Snow had denied her. On top of that, everyone in the kingdom loved Snow better than Regina, and (from Regina's perspective), they were so stupid and blind that they didn't see what a horrible monster Snow was. The curse was designed to make them all suffer. It ripped people apart from their loved ones. It gave them personalities that were opposite their true selves. At the same time, though, their Storybrooke lives reflected their fairy tale selves in some ways, like with Jiminy Cricket becoming a psychiatrist or Red Riding Hood, known for bringing food to people, being a waitress.

While we wait to maybe learn that Gothel had some real reason for wanting the curse to be cast, we don't have any good reason that makes sense in the meantime. Drizella had a gripe with her mother, but why would she want to curse anyone else? It was Regina, not Gothel, who told Drizella about the curse and taught Drizella magic, so it's not as though Gothel was manipulating everything from the start. It is a reasonably clever twist that Lady Tremaine's cursed identity was as herself, but believing she was the one who cast the curse. There's not really any reason behind any of the other cursed identities. It's not as though most of these identities are punishments, but they also don't really reflect their fairy tale selves. There's not even really any reason for anyone other than Victoria to have a cursed identity. In fact, Regina really shouldn't have, all along. If Ivy was going to wake her so soon to avoid her doing anything to break the curse, why give her a fake identity in the first place? I don't think that Regina running a bar is a real punishment. If she was being punished, she'd be running a greasy spoon diner. If her curse identity was supposed to fit her story, she'd be running a beauty salon, where there were mirrors all around and she talked about turning her clients into the fairest of them all. It could have been a Steel Magnolias style hangout that Victoria wanted to replace with a ritzy day spa.

Cinderella isn't a maid or any kind of servant in her cursed identity. Her working at a fast food joint is so random. Why did Whook and Rumple get turned into cops? The only reason I can think of for Whook is that Hook Prime became a cop in the last 30 or so seconds of season six. His personality didn't change at all, so it's not like they were going with irony of having him be a cop as a contrast to him being a pirate. It seems his only function as a cop under the curse was to free Gothel, but if Drizella and Ivy were behind the curse, why was Gothel locked up in the first place? I can see where Drizella would have had to work for her mother to convince her she cast the curse, but was having Gothel chained up necessary to convince Victoria? After all, she didn't have her prisoner when the curse was cast. Gothel could have been cursed anywhere and wouldn't have needed to be freed.

Was the whole kingdom cursed, or just the people who were targeted? The only other people in Hyperion Heights we've run into have been the patrons at the ballet recital, the extras hanging out in the bar, Jacinda's boss and coworker at the chicken place, and the other cops. Are they all normal people, or are they fairy tale people?

I think if they'd started with the reason Drizella was casting the curse and made the curse identities fit with that reason, it would have all hung together a lot better. Instead, it seems so random.

[Camera One]

I was going to write this in the spoiler thread, on the discussion about Jennifer Morrison and her departure but this "might have been" would fit better here.

Now that we've seen all of 7A, do you see a place where Emma could have fit in, in a way that would have deepened the character and made the storylines more resonant?  Or would the plot have been significantly different if she had stayed?  Whook and Alice are arguably the "best" thing about 7A ("best" in quotes because, well, it's all relative).  Do you think that subplot would have shifted to someone else, or just gone entirely?  

Edited January 19, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

3 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Now that we've seen all of 7A, do you see a place where Emma could have fit in, in a way that would have deepened the character and made the storylines more resonant?  Or would the plot have been significantly different if she had stayed?  Whook and Alice are arguably the "best" thing about 7A ("best" in quotes because, well, it's all relative).  Do you think that subplot would have shifted to someone else, or just gone entirely?  

I don't see how they could have kept the Alice storyline if it had been Hook Prime and Emma, unless Alice was their daughter, and they pulled yet another "child grows up away from parents while parents don't age" storyline. Or I guess maybe Alice could have been Wish Rumple's daughter, and instead of Rumple being Rumple Prime, he was the Wishverse character.

But I wonder if it would have been as huge a reboot if Emma had still been around. Would it have focused on adult Henry, or would we have had Emma and Hook having adventures? As little as the Charmings ended up doing, they could have been conveniently offscreen in any Storybrooke scenes -- Snow actually doing her job and teaching school instead of running off through portals, David off working on the farm. Was the Henry story a punt when Jen said no, or did she say no when she saw their pitch and realized she'd be essentially a background character?

On another note, I found myself thinking of other ways they could have led into the reboot that might have worked better, and I was wondering if it would have helped if we'd seen at least a scene or two of teen Henry in the Disenchanted Forest before we jumped to years later. Say, teen Henry has just arrived (and his motorcycle still has gas), and he nearly runs into the pumpkin coach, but it's a teen Cinderella fleeing the ball just before midnight. She's furious that he impeded her escape because she doesn't want the prince to catch up with her (she was at the ball to spy on the prince, not to murder him). Just then, it's midnight, the coach turns back to a pumpkin, the horses into mice, etc., and she's in rags except for her glass slippers. Henry realizes he's fallen into a Cinderella story, tells her to hop onto the bike, and he helps her get away. She directs him where to go -- not to home, because she's paranoid about being followed and doesn't really want Henry knowing where she lives, but to a place where there's a shortcut to her home. When she runs off, he sees that one of her slippers has fallen off. He grins, because he's found himself in a story. He's the one who got Cinderella's slipper. Then cut to adult Henry, no longer riding the motorcycle because he can't get gas and that whole thing is stupid, and he's still carrying around that slipper. He hasn't been able to track down Cinderella because she ran away from Lady Tremaine's home ages ago, but his persistent search has brought him to the attention of Lady Tremaine, who thinks he may have the slipper that will allow her to find her escaped stepdaughter (did we ever find out why she cared all that much where Ella went?).

[jhlipton]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

As little as the Charmings ended up doing, they could have been conveniently offscreen in any Storybrooke scenes -- Snow actually doing her job and teaching school instead of running off through portals, David off working on the farm.

Or David as the Sheriff and Snow as the Mayor.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Or David as the Sheriff and Snow as the Mayor.

I was going with where the show left them at the end of season six. Plus, teacher and farmer would be easier to keep offscreen than sheriff and mayor. If Emma and Hook were sheriffs and Regina was mayor, then they'd be dealing with whatever stuff and could refer to the Charmings without us seeing them. Like, the monster shows up and Emma remarks, "I'll have to tell my parents we won't make it out to the farm for dinner tonight."

You know, they could have had a twist on their usual formula if the "present" was in the Enchanted Forest/other fairytale world and the flashbacks were in Storybrooke, telling us how they came to end up in a fairytale world. In that way, it would have made sense to focus on the cast members we see in the present, with only glimpses of their lives in the flashbacks, so we could assume everyone was there in Storybrooke, even if we only saw a few people.

But I suspect that ditching Storybrooke was more of a budget decision than a creative decision. Now they can shoot their locations in Vancouver (is Hyperion Heights an actual part of the city, or are they using a backlot at the studio?) rather than having to go out to Steveston, and not having Storybrooke means they could ditch all the recurring cast members and start over with extras who cost less.

[daxx]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I was going with where the show left them at the end of season six. Plus, teacher and farmer would be easier to keep offscreen than sheriff and mayor. If Emma and Hook were sheriffs and Regina was mayor, then they'd be dealing with whatever stuff and could refer to the Charmings without us seeing them. Like, the monster shows up and Emma remarks, "I'll have to tell my parents we won't make it out to the farm for dinner tonight."

You know, they could have had a twist on their usual formula if the "present" was in the Enchanted Forest/other fairytale world and the flashbacks were in Storybrooke, telling us how they came to end up in a fairytale world. In that way, it would have made sense to focus on the cast members we see in the present, with only glimpses of their lives in the flashbacks, so we could assume everyone was there in Storybrooke, even if we only saw a few people.

But I suspect that ditching Storybrooke was more of a budget decision than a creative decision. Now they can shoot their locations in Vancouver (is Hyperion Heights an actual part of the city, or are they using a backlot at the studio?) rather than having to go out to Steveston, and not having Storybrooke means they could ditch all the recurring cast members and start over with extras who cost less.

Or no extras as it appears.

[jhlipton]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I was going with where the show left them at the end of season six. Plus, teacher and farmer would be easier to keep offscreen than sheriff and mayor. If Emma and Hook were sheriffs and Regina was mayor, then they'd be dealing with whatever stuff and could refer to the Charmings without us seeing them. Like, the monster shows up and Emma remarks, "I'll have to tell my parents we won't make it out to the farm for dinner tonight."

"Teacher" was Snow's Cursed job; and farming was what David was born into -- neither was their true chosen profession.  So they would essentially remain Cursed.   Besides, if Emma and Hook spend any time in Storybrooke, they're going to want to visit the Charmings a fair amount.  And with Regina and Rumple gone (please?), the role of the Sheriff in a small town like Storybrooke would revert into locking up the occasional drunk.

[Camera One]

Hyperion Heights is a street in New Westminster, which is another suburb of Vancouver (at least the establishing shots of the police station and Roni's bar).  This suburb would be closer to the studio than Steveton, though, and they don't need to shut down a busy street (since that was the main street of Steveston).  I'm not sure if they've rebuilt part of Hyperion Heights in their backlot... the hill in the slope suggests they were really shooting on location on that random sidestreet in New West.

I think Hyperion Heights was both a creative and a financial decision.  By incorporating pretty much a full new cast, I think A&E were intending for this to be a true requel, with a possibility of more than one season.  It was obvious by Season 6 that they were bored of Storybrooke (jettisoning every single recurring character in town in this reboot really says how little they think of characters like Granny or Blue or Grumpy, etc. in terms of potential storylines).  It would have been harder to think of more stuff there than a brand new Curse and a brand new setting.  Constantly referring to Snowing offscreen would have felt artificial and ridiculous after awhile.  

I had assumed if Jennifer Morrison had returned, Emma and Hook would have Cursed identities separated from each other.  But they returned people's memories (like Regina and Rumple) so quickly, that I wonder if they would have done the same for Emma.  

Edited January 20, 2018 by Camera One

[ParadoxLost]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was going to write this in the spoiler thread, on the discussion about Jennifer Morrison and her departure but this "might have been" would fit better here.

Now that we've seen all of 7A, do you see a place where Emma could have fit in, in a way that would have deepened the character and made the storylines more resonant?  Or would the plot have been significantly different if she had stayed?  Whook and Alice are arguably the "best" thing about 7A ("best" in quotes because, well, it's all relative).  Do you think that subplot would have shifted to someone else, or just gone entirely?  

I don't think they are that creative.  I think Emma would have been the woman that Hook was looking for.  It would have been basically the same story but with Hook searching for a woman that turned out to be his wife rather than his daughter.

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, jhlipton said:

"Teacher" was Snow's Cursed job; and farming was what David was born into -- neither was their true chosen profession.  So they would essentially remain Cursed.   Besides, if Emma and Hook spend any time in Storybrooke, they're going to want to visit the Charmings a fair amount.  And with Regina and Rumple gone (please?), the role of the Sheriff in a small town like Storybrooke would revert into locking up the occasional drunk.

I'm not arguing against that. I really hate that Snow is stuck being a teacher when that was what she was cursed to be, and I hate that they made her stuck in that while Regina got to keep the role she took in the curse, even though Snow was the rightful Queen. Painting "Queen" on Regina's door was infuriating. It's a little less clear with David. He only started acting as sheriff because Emma wasn't around. It didn't seem like he didn't like being a farmer. In fact, he was reluctant to leave the farm. So I could kind of see him choosing to return to that kind of life. With him, it was a choice, something he returned to rather than something he was cursed into. I also wonder about Hook becoming a sheriff. I guess he was kind of an acting deputy all along, since he worked alongside Emma in dealing with the various crises. We just don't know that he ever expressed an interest in making it official. I really wish we'd seen him dealing with the issue of what he wanted to do with his life now that he was in a place where piracy wasn't really an option (or, at least, he probably wouldn't be very effective against modern ships with the Jolly Roger) and the navy wasn't really an option. In my mental happy place imagining what's going on in Storybrooke, Snow has taken over as mayor now that Regina's out of town, it's easy for Emma to juggle motherhood and sheriffing because there's not much going on in town, and she gets a new deputy who's not married to her so they don't have to work opposite shifts to keep the town covered. Hook starts teaching math at the school, using all the math skills he has from being a navigator and using what he learned in running a pirate ship to cope with classroom management. That allows him to be at home every evening with his own kids.

But what I was talking about was a hypothetical based on the situation we were actually given in the show, moving forward based on the end of season six rather than fixing things. As little a role as the Charmings ended up playing in events, and as little as they bother to show character interaction, I think they could kind of have stayed at least partially in Storybrooke and still written out the Charmings, with just occasional references to the fact that Emma's spending time with her parents when she's not stopping the latest person from trying to take over the town. After all, they hate those washing dishes scenes, and we wouldn't see any character who's not involved in the crisis. But, yeah, they were bored with Storybrooke and those characters.

2 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I think Emma would have been the woman that Hook was looking for.  It would have been basically the same story but with Hook searching for a woman that turned out to be his wife rather than his daughter.

Yeah, that's likely. In fact, that almost seemed like where they were going with Rogers' reaction to the picture of Emma. So Emma would have been Eloise. There may or may not have been an Alice (unless she was Emma and Hook's daughter, also separated from them -- if they'd had a baby a year or so after they were married, she'd be a teenager in the present). Gothel would have been elsewhere. Hmm, maybe that explains why they bothered having Gothel cursed as a prisoner, even though she was in control of the curse. They had to stick her into the role Emma would have had. Emma would have had to be neutralized and would have been valuable to the coven, since she had magic and she had some magic even in the World Without Magic.

[ParadoxLost]

18 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But what I was talking about was a hypothetical based on the situation we were actually given in the show, moving forward based on the end of season six rather than fixing things. As little a role as the Charmings ended up playing in events, and as little as they bother to show character interaction, I think they could kind of have stayed at least partially in Storybrooke and still written out the Charmings, with just occasional references to the fact that Emma's spending time with her parents when she's not stopping the latest person from trying to take over the town. After all, they hate those washing dishes scenes, and we wouldn't see any character who's not involved in the crisis. But, yeah, they were bored with Storybrooke and those characters.

I'm going with Snow and Charming taking the kid to Disneyland for a vacation and while they are gone the city limits slam down again.

[Camera One]

30 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

So Emma would have been Eloise. There may or may not have been an Alice (unless she was Emma and Hook's daughter, also separated from them -- if they'd had a baby a year or so after they were married, she'd be a teenager in the present). Gothel would have been elsewhere. Hmm, maybe that explains why they bothered having Gothel cursed as a prisoner, even though she was in control of the curse. They had to stick her into the role Emma would have had. Emma would have had to be neutralized and would have been valuable to the coven, since she had magic and she had some magic even in the World Without Magic.

Wouldn't they still need Gothel as the Big Bad who turned Rapunzel into a baddie?  Maybe Hook would be looking for Emma/Eloise, but he thinks Gothel is Emma?  This gives them the chance to do their favorite storyline - romantic encounters without consent.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

Wouldn't they still need Gothel as the Big Bad who turned Rapunzel into a baddie?  Maybe Hook would be looking for Emma/Eloise, but he thinks Gothel is Emma?  This gives them the chance to do their favorite storyline - romantic encounters without consent.

I think you could still have the Gothel and Rapunzel storyline even without Whook. So far, we haven't seen anything in the plot that makes Alice essential or that makes it essential that Gothel is in the tower. Gothel could just go off and do whatever she did after she got free after Rapunzel refused to let her use Anastasia. Or Rapunzel could imprison Gothel the way she did, there's no Alice, and Gothel gets out in the same way that Alice seems to have been freed. As for the present, either Emma is the one imprisoned and Gothel is free under the curse or they pull a switch, where we know Emma is imprisoned and we think she's the one Rogers is looking for, but then when Rogers finds the captive, it's Gothel. There's no romantic encounter without consent in the past, but Rogers and Gothel might get all romantic in the present (never mind that it would be an ethical violation for a cop to have a sexual or romantic relationship with someone involved in a case he's working on, especially something like this where the other person is vulnerable and he's the rescuer, but clearly ethics aren't a concern here).

I guess without needing to set up Whook, they'd just have had all Henry's parents show up to help him. It would be hard to believe Emma ditching her life and her family to hang out with Henry, so she and Hook could go back home the way they did -- maybe she's pregnant still. It's not as though Whook has done anything during that portion of the story that would be missed, aside from the Alice thing, so it wouldn't change anything to not have him standing in the background in the flashbacks. Then they get caught in the curse when they come over to help Henry come up with a way out of the curse (I guess David's farm is growing magic beans), and their kid is staying with the grandparents, so they don't have to deal with another child.

If this is what they were planning, can't you just imagine the pitch to JMo?

A&E: Jen, we know your contract is expiring, but when you hear what we've got planned for next season, we're sure you'll want to stick around. We're going to do a reboot with a new curse in a new place, and it's all going to kick off when an adult Henry's 10-year-old daughter comes to his door -- just like the way season one started.
JMo: So Henry becomes a teen parent?
A&E: No. He's an adult when he meets and marries his wife.
JMo: So, I'd have aging makeup?
A&E: Why would you need it?
JMo: Well, if Emma's son is an adult when he gets married and has a child, and then his child is that age, then at least around 15 years will have passed. Emma would be pushing 50.
A&E: It will all be clear later in the season. Anyway, the curse takes them to Seattle, so it's grittier and edgier.
JMo: So, it's science fiction? They're in future Seattle?
A&E: No, it's present-day Seattle.
JMo: But Henry is grown and has a child. It has to be in the future.
A&E: It will all be clear later in the season. Anyway, the curse takes them all to Seattle, where Hook is a cop named Rogers -- get it? -- and he's obsessed with finding a missing person. Then at the end of the first episode, we see Emma chained up as a prisoner.
JMo: And then he finds her and they fall in love all over again, in spite of the cursed memories?
A&E: Well, maybe later. But first it turns out that the woman he's looking for is someone else, the villain, and he finds her.
JMo: So Emma stays a prisoner all season? Does she do anything else? What about in the flashbacks?
A&E: The flashbacks are mostly about how this curse came about. Early in the season, we'll show that Henry can call his parents when he needs help. Emma, Hook, and Regina show up to help him, and Regina decides to stay with him while Emma and Hook go home, since Emma is pregnant and not really up to running around, having adventures.
JMo: So, I get to play Emma going through a pregnancy under very different circumstances than her last one and worrying about whether she's up to being a parent?
A&E: No, that all happens offscreen in Storybrooke. Emma and Hook come back into the picture when they come to help Henry again and get caught in the curse.
JMo: What about Emma's child?
A&E: What child?
JMo: The one she was pregnant with who'd be around ten.
A&E: Oh, yeah, that child. It's back at home with the grandparents when Emma and Hook go to help.
JMo: We don't get to see Emma and Hook as parents?
A&E: That's not really what the story's about. No one wants to see that domestic stuff.
JMo: To sum it up, Emma's role would be to sit around and be a prisoner, except for a couple of flashbacks in which she comes to help, and the rest of her life takes place offscreen?
A&E: But it's a new curse, and Emma has a cursed identity. And we're doing some other fairy tales, like Cinderella, only it's a different Cinderella. It's gonna be epic! So, are you in?
JMo: Um, well, yeah, sounds amazing. But I just can't deal with going on with a regular series. I need a break from the weekly grind, and I'd like to get back home instead of spending all my time in Vancouver. And there are other things I want to do.

[Camera One]

Discussing the possibility of Emma on the show sort of highlights how insignificant certain characters are in this requel. 

Alice, for example.  She really had nothing to do with the Curse at all.  All the things her character did in the various episodes could have been cut, without affecting the stories very much.  She tried to stop Henry in the first episode, but let him go so he ended up at the ball anyway.  She told Cinderella about her mother, but Cinderella could have found out from the caterpillar or whoever.  In the present-day, she gave Rogers a false lead, but was discovered anyway.  The only important thing she did was to wake up Weaver. 

Which brings us to how insignificant Weaver/Rumple was to the new story.  He spent the first half of 7A trying to impede Rogers, but pretty much failed.  He sprung Victoria out of jail, and then she ditched him and resurrected Anastasia.  So what if he was looking for The Guardian too?

Of course Tiana could be cut out without any difference.  

And then we come to Jacinda.  Despite all the screentime she had, what difference did she make, other than being Lucy's mom and Henry's love interest?  In the bigger picture, Victoria's attempt to ruin her life was mostly a distraction.  The Writers had Jacinda make one bad decision after another, but none of them had any effect on Lucy's belief.  Until that kiss with Nick which apparently meant nothing before he was MIA in the next episode.  In the past, her role in turning Rapunzel into a villain wasn't even that important.  It was more her mother (another guest character with zero development) which turned the tide.

The same goes for Roni's attempt to break up Henry/Jacinda, only to encourage Henry to go back to Hyperion Heights when Lucy got sick.  

Then, there was the "obstacle" that was Nick.  His presence got Henry to go to San Francisco.  But then, within 2 episodes, Henry immediately came back and reconciled with Lucy (and he did nothing in San Francisco).  It was Nick's kiss with Jacinda that got Lucy to lose ALL hope.  So Nick was pretty important, even though he had practically no screentime and received paper-thin development.  

So it seems like this "new" requel is populated with a bunch of characters who do things that do not matter that much where one or two poorly developed contrivances actually move the plot forward.  I guess this has been their M.O. for a long time, but at least the original characters started off with some depth and development and played important roles for at least a season before they became cardboard standouts standing in the background sprouting exposition.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

She tried to stop Henry in the first episode, but let him go so he ended up at the ball anyway. 

I don't understand the point of that. Henry acting as an interloper in another realm was regarded as a baaad thing. So bad that Rumple had to send out a newly-recruited lackey to warn his grandson of the probable dangers. Alice went from, "I'm going to stay far away when that happens" to "welp, better stick around with Rumple since my dad is here. This tree will protect me, right?" I'd be on board with S7 if Henry's family wasn't supposed to exist and none of it would be happening if it weren't for his meddling. But other than the Curse of Mild Inconvenience, his intervention didn't change much negatively. He and Regina prevented Jacinda from murdering defenseless people. The Alice/WHook angst was part of the timeline regardless of anyone from Storybrooke hitching a ride. The Gothel/Tremaine family melodrama would most likely continue to escalate without any curse. 

[Camera One]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I'd be on board with S7 if Henry's family wasn't supposed to exist and none of it would be happening if it weren't for his meddling. But other than the Curse of Mild Inconvenience, his intervention didn't change much negatively. He and Regina prevented Jacinda from murdering defenseless people. The Alice/WHook angst was part of the timeline regardless of anyone from Storybrooke hitching a ride. The Gothel/Tremaine family melodrama would most likely continue to escalate without any curse. 

Yeah, Henry is pretty much inconsequential except for producing Lucy.  Jacinda decided herself not to murder the Prince in the last minute, so Tremaine would still have killed him and framed her.  In "The Garden of Forking Paths", it was Henry's heart which made Tremaine entice Cinders to kill, so without him, that wouldn't have happened.  Gothel already wanted to use Anastasia, so she would have eventually taught Drizella magic, even if Regina hadn't.  Drizella apparently got the whole "Dark Curse" idea from Regina, but again, Gothel was the mastermind there, so if she wanted a Dark Curse, she would have fed it to Drizella so other way. 

[Shanna Marie]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

So it seems like this "new" requel is populated with a bunch of characters who do things that do not matter that much where one or two poorly developed contrivances actually move the plot forward. 

And not only do the characters have nothing to do with affecting the plot, they also don't really seem to have any kind of character arc. I can deal with character not affecting the plot so much if they have something else going on, but there's not even that much. It doesn't help that most of the good guys are under the curse, so any present-day development (not that there is any) is fake. In season one, Emma was genuinely herself, and she was the one with the growth arc. The other characters were mostly growing back toward their true selves in spite of the curse. But there's nothing going on with any of the main characters now, curse or not.

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Henry acting as an interloper in another realm was regarded as a baaad thing. So bad that Rumple had to send out a newly-recruited lackey to warn his grandson of the probable dangers.

That was a germ of potential, but it's gone nowhere. For a moment, I had hope that their stupid reason for Henry leaving home was actually on purpose and they were going somewhere with it, so he'd learn something about what being a hero really is, but I guess not. There's absolutely nothing to his character. The characters' real selves are so undefined that we can't tell if they're becoming their true selves. Their "growth" in the present amounts to them every so often standing up to Victoria. I guess the closest thing to a character arc might be Whook's quest to become a better man worthy of his daughter, but he seems to have been a pretty good guy from the start. He doesn't seem to have needed to learn anything from the influence/example of Henry, who "always does the right thing." We've seen no sign of him learning anything from Henry.

[KingOfHearts]

Wrong thread, please delete.

Edited January 21, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The characters' real selves are so undefined that we can't tell if they're becoming their true selves. Their "growth" in the present amounts to them every so often standing up to Victoria. I guess the closest thing to a character arc might be Whook's quest to become a better man worthy of his daughter, but he seems to have been a pretty good guy from the start. He doesn't seem to have needed to learn anything from the influence/example of Henry, who "always does the right thing." We've seen no sign of him learning anything from Henry.

Hello, this is A&E here.  This show is like a good book that needs to be read over and over again to see the diamond in the rough.  We will give you a brief rundown of all the growth the characters experienced in just 10 episodes.

Sabine gained confidence and worked towards her goal of opening a restaurant.  Jacinda became more hopeful and confident that she CAN be a mother to Lucy.  Henry realized that he can have love and he can be a hero in his own story.  Roni regained her strength to fight against injustice and learned her son doesn't need her anymore.  Rumple grew to the point where he was willing to give up his immortality.  Whook regretted his past actions and regained his path to find his daughter.  Victoria went from a mean diva who bullied her stepdaughter to a devoted mother who desperately brought her beloved daughter back to life.  Drizella went from a weak stepdaughter bullied by her stepmother, to the person who pulled strings to initiate the Curse.  And Lucy grew taller.

I'm sure some of you don't consider some of these to be examples of growth, but that's because you can't judge in the middle of a story.  And your heart isn't open to appreciate this higher level of enlightenment.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Camera One

[daxx]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

Hello, this is A&E here.  This show is like a good book that needs to be read over and over again to see the diamond in the rough.  We will give you a brief rundown of all the growth the characters experienced in just 10 episodes.

Sabine gained confidence and worked towards her goal of opening a restaurant.  Jacinda became more hopeful and confident that she CAN be a mother to Lucy.  Henry realized that he can have love and he can be a hero in his own story.  Roni regained her strength to fight against injustice and learned her son doesn't need her anymore.  Rumple grew to the point where he was willing to give up his immortality.  Whook regretted his past actions and regained his path to find his daughter.  Victoria went from a mean diva who bullied her stepdaughter to a devoted mother who desperately brought her beloved daughter back to life.  Drizella went from a weak stepdaughter bullied by her stepmother, to the person who pulled strings to initiate the Curse.  And Lucy grew taller.

I'm sure some of you don't consider some of these to be examples of growth, but that's because you can't judge in the middle of a story.  And your heart isn't open to appreciate this higher level of enlightenment.

Dude, you’re starting to scare me... are you ok? ? 

[jhlipton]

On 1/19/2018 at 7:55 PM, Shanna Marie said:

But what I was talking about was a hypothetical based on the situation we were actually given in the show, moving forward based on the end of season six rather than fixing things. As little a role as the Charmings ended up playing in events, and as little as they bother to show character interaction, I think they could kind of have stayed at least partially in Storybrooke and still written out the Charmings, with just occasional references to the fact that Emma's spending time with her parents when she's not stopping the latest person from trying to take over the town.

I think that The Emma and Killian Adventures (with them hopping from realm to realm righting the wrongs) works better than yet another disaster of the week threatening StoryBrooke.  With that plotline, it really doesn't matter what the Charmings are doing, since it all be offscreen anyway.  Obvs, Emma's pregnancy would have to wait, since she would want to be fully involved in raising the new child.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, jhlipton said:

I think that The Emma and Killian Adventures (with them hopping from realm to realm righting the wrongs) works better than yet another disaster of the week threatening StoryBrooke.  With that plotline, it really doesn't matter what the Charmings are doing, since it all be offscreen anyway.  Obvs, Emma's pregnancy would have to wait, since she would want to be fully involved in raising the new child.

Given how long the pregnancy seems to have waited (possibly as much as 8-10 years after the end of season six), they'd have had plenty of time for adventures before they settled down to have babies and raise a family.

Thinking more about the lack of character arcs and character definition ... We made fun of Emma's WALLS and Hook's guilt complex, but at least they were character traits that came from their backgrounds and affected their actions. I don't feel like we have that with the current characters. What is Henry's key character trait? They've mentioned him being a "truest believer," which would have fit nicely with his cursed character refusing to believe until he learned to believe, but have we had any instance of him showing belief? They told us he went off to be the kind of hero who gets written into books, which would have fit with him maybe being a wimp in the present until he learned to take risks to help people, but what has he done that's "heroic" other than helping Ella escape the ball? A more interesting arc would have been him having to learn what being a hero is really about, that it's about doing what needs to be done rather than being about glory, and maybe his cursed persona could have been a blowhard who needed to learn to be a real hero.

Ditto with Cinderella. What is her main character trait? We've seen her planning to commit murder twice, but otherwise, how would you describe or define her character?

Though it doesn't help that they've shown so little of that pre-curse timeline so far, and they've been very narrowly focused stories. Henry and Ella really have had maybe two or three episodes of focus. They haven't had the kind of development that the Charmings got in season one.

[KingOfHearts]

It doesn't seem like the writers give a crap about anything that's happening, because the show is always moving to the next thing. Nick is supposed to be this sexy hotshot lawyer, but we don't see him do anything clever or sexy. Even if he's just meant to be a foil for the Henry/Cinderella relationship, all we've seen him do is kiss Jacinda once. (And she's still totally into Henry, apparently.) In S1, Kathryn was married to David, thought she was pregnant, and made a big deal about how she wanted to make things work. The writers spent time showing how invested they were in what her character was going through. Here? It's just Scarlet Beauty all over again. No one cares about Nick. He's not affected by what's going on. He could go on his merry way and no one would bat an eye. Has he even reacted to anything?

The trouble is that I don't even hate his character or the actor. I don't even have to judge him for pairing himself with Jacinda since he's cursed.

Edited January 22, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

The Writers spent the entire first season keeping Snowing apart first with Kathryn and then with her disappearance, and any time Snowing spent together was meant as a total guilt-trip.  This season, for whatever reason, they didn't sustain the Henry/Jacinda rift for very long at all.  I suppose Henry could have a cow when he finds out that Jacinda kissed Nick, but I'm not sure he even has a right to unless they have Jacinda lying about it for five episodes, which they probably will.  Nick has had way less screentime than Abigail.  

[KAOS Agent]

The writers spent the first season developing the characters and their relationships. It made the audience care about what happened to them. This season is just a bunch of cardboard cut outs doing whatever the script calls for them to do. There isn't any emotional response from the audience because they haven't given a reason to root for the characters. Henry/Cinderella didn't struggle to fall in love in the past and there is no struggle to be together in the present. It doesn't even seem like they cared about each other. The writers seem to think that they can just tell the audience how we should feel and we'll get invested. That's not how it works.

Do I care that Jacinda kissed Nick? No. In fact, I think they might make a cute couple. Do I care if Tiana & Cinderella's food truck is successful? No. Do I care that Lady Tremaine is Rapunzel? Is it meaningful in any way? No. Do any of these stories feel like they might affect anything with regards to whatever Gothel wants and the curse itself? No. It's all an uninteresting waste of time and none of it is going anywhere.

[jhlipton]

14 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

In S1, Kathryn was married to David, thought she was pregnant, and made a big deal about how she wanted to make things work. The writers spent time showing how invested they were in what her character was going through.

12 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

The writers spent the first season developing the characters and their relationships. It made the audience care about what happened to them.

Exactly.  Even though we knew that Mary Margaret and David were Meant For Each Other, we still felt sorry for Kathryn, and even for Abigail (I guess she wasn't musical enough to join "Cleavage of Evil"!).  Nick (as little as we know of him) seems to care about Jacinda, and seems a MUCH better fit than Henry. 

[CCTC]

It was a nice twist when they revealed Abigail/Kathryn was not some two dimensional bad guy.

Another big difference between curse season 1 and curse season 7 were the distinct differences between the cursed and non-cursed personalities.  Mary Margret was meek compared to Snow (although the Snow persona came through stronger as the season went forward.... only to vanish again after season 3...).  Watch how differently Charming handled a situation compared to David Nolan in "whatever happened to Fredrick".   

[Shanna Marie]

19 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Henry/Cinderella didn't struggle to fall in love in the past and there is no struggle to be together in the present. It doesn't even seem like they cared about each other.

The Henry/Jacinda relationship fits the pattern of a Hallmark movie, but without the emotional depth -- we have a meet-cute engineered by the adorable plot moppet child of a single parent, a bit of bickering, then they grow closer as they work on something, but just as they might be about to get together, there's a misunderstanding involving an ex, but then that's quickly resolved when something involving the plot moppet brings them together. There's even less for Henry and Cinderella, where we just had them meet, with her showing how feisty she is, then they barely interact before they go to Wonderland, where they have confirmed True Love, thanks to the necklace, and then the baby is born. Even if they backtrack and do more flashbacks to fill in the blanks, I can't see it helping much because, at this point, do we care what happened in between the necklace and the baby?

I was thinking that it was because the flashback time has been so spread out among characters, but I don't think there were that many more episodes focusing on the Charmings in the first half of season one. The difference was the depth and the fact that they were having to fight to be together. There wasn't anything silly like a necklace assuring us they were true love, but we didn't need it because we saw how they were affected when they thought they wouldn't be together. There were never any obstacles for Henry and Cinderella, and I never got the feeling either of them would have cared much if there were.

5 hours ago, CCTC said:

Another big difference between curse season 1 and curse season 7 were the distinct differences between the cursed and non-cursed personalities. 

For that to happen, the characters would have to have personalities.

Speaking of flashbacks, now that they've shown how the curse came about, what is there to show in flashbacks from that era? There's room to show Gothel's sad villain origin backstory, maybe the Gothel and Drizella side of what's going on as they built up the curse, how Alice got out of the tower and the origin of the curse on Whook, what's been going on with Zelena and Robin, and the relationship between Robin and Alice. But is there anything to tell about Henry and Ella's wedding or how the resistance won now that we know they did?

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

There's even less for Henry and Cinderella, where we just had them meet, with her showing how feisty she is, then they barely interact before they go to Wonderland, where they have confirmed True Love, thanks to the necklace, and then the baby is born.

It doesn't help that Cinderella has confided more to Regina than she did to Henry.  They've given us no reason why Cinderella and Henry are a good match or have anything in common.  In the whole heartwrenching (heh) events before the Curse, did we even see Henry and Cinders keeping each other strong as Snowing did?  I don't even remember if they had a scene together.

Quote

But is there anything to tell about Henry and Ella's wedding or how the resistance won now that we know they did?

Remember these Writers are specialists at squeezing a flashback out of a dehydrated cloth.  There was nothing more to tell about the Bandit Snow/Evil Queen or the Belle as servant of Rumple era, but unlimited flashbacks were continually squeezed out.  I'm sure we will get another Snowing ripoff episode for Hinderella when it's their turn in 7B.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

5 minutes ago, Camera One said:

In the whole heartwrenching (heh) events before the Curse, did we even see Henry and Cinders keeping each other strong as Snowing did?  I don't even remember if they had a scene together.

I don't recall anything. Wasn't Henry even on his own when he showed off his new daughter to his friends? We didn't see the loving couple admiring their newborn together.

I suspect the writers got bored with their "epic" romance and have already moved on. Instead of lots of Hinderella flashbacks showing us more about their relationship, the relationship we'll get more flashbacks about will be Robin and Alice. But, really, I expect far more about Gothel's past. After all, even the Snowing flashbacks after season one tended to be more about Regina or about Snow vs. Regina than really about Snowing -- there was the first wedding, the fight against Medusa (also a Snow vs. Regina), the Excalibur fakeout (also about Snow vs. Regina), and the love sapling, and I guess the eggnapping, but that one wasn't really about their relationship. There doesn't seem to be anyone or anything trying to keep Hinderella apart or targeting them specifically, which means there's not much to show about them.

I'm sure we'll get at least one episode of Gothel's villain origin story, maybe another to explain why she wants a Guardian (probably a parallel to the Bae reveal with Rumple). Possibly one about what she did after she escaped the tower and one in which she cons Drizella. Probably backstory episodes about the other coven members. Fill out the rest with one about how Alice and Whook got cursed and how Alice got out of the tower, possibly mixed in with the backstory on the relationship between Alice and Robin and maybe one about what Zelena's been up to since season 6. Probably one about how Rumple got his sparkle back, which may or may not explain his surprisingly pleasant relationship with Whook. We might see Hinderella in the background of some of these.

[Camera One]

It's almost funny how they made Henry - a characters the Writers generally couldn't care less about - into the "main character" of this requel but by the end of 7A, he was pretty much as irrelevant as he always was.  Now he's doomed to death just like Emma last year.  

[ParadoxLost]

19 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It's almost funny how they made Henry - a characters the Writers generally couldn't care less about - into the "main character" of this requel but by the end of 7A, he was pretty much as irrelevant as he always was.  Now he's doomed to death just like Emma last year.  

I always marvel that no matter what ideas they throw out there, they always scrap the better ones and revert to the dullest version.

It felt, when they were describing the requel, that the flashbacks were supposed to include Henry going to other fairy tale lands not just meeting Cinderella and settling down in one realm and becoming irrelevant.  But I'm beginning to wonder if they really scrapped that at some point or if we were just reading into it something better than what we'd end up getting.

There did seem to be some recognition that Henry and Cinderella weren't working pretty early given how fast they got relegated to background.

[CCTC]

11 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

the flashbacks were supposed to include Henry going to other fairy tale

That would have actually had some potential - but ditch the flashbacks, just have the show being exploring other realms.  Kind of like Star Trek - go explore new world.  If they wanted to do reboot, they could have completely changed the format.  Too many shows that have the flashback format when they start out, seem reluctant to drop them, even when they have become repetitive and no longer bring anything fresh to the show.  If anything holding on to that format helps keep it stagnant.

[tennisgurl]

I actually thought it might have been fun to have an older Henry traveling around world to world, having adventures of the week, with a more overarching plot with a villain to defeat at the end. If they wanted to reboot the show with an adult Henry, I think they should have focused more on what was kind of set up at first, with Henry wanting to explore the muliverse and find himself.  Maybe he is exploring different worlds, and then runs afoul of an villain, or he finds an evil that needs defeating, and he starts traveling around the multiverse getting the pieces that will create some kind of MacGuffin thing that will defeat the evil. Maybe he picks up friends along the way, and a love interest, or gets some allies who can come back at the end for the big show down. It wouldn't exactly be an amazingly complex plot, but if they focused on adventures, world building, and character development, thats fine. It would sure as hell be better than a half assed curse in the present, and an even more half assed rebellion in the past, with boring characters and more plot holes than Swiss cheese. 

But then, I guess that would mean they couldn't just do a carbon copy of the first season, but with all the life sucked out of it. 

[Camera One]

A&E truly believed that if they got rid of the boring characters and could start with new characters with secret twist backstories, they would strike gold again.  But really, these "new" characters are just replaying variations of scenarios that we've seen before.  They didn't realize that the whole Curse setup was played out, as was the gradually parsing out backstories via flashback format.

However, many forummers here have had ideas that could have made Hyperion Heights work.  IF they had focused their energies on things they hadn't done before, like actually exploring fairytale characters interacting with real people and the real world.   But instead, they are just doing Storybrooke in a grungy locale.

Even if they had insisted on following their tried and true (also pointed out by the forummers here), they could have done their homework on the Cinderella tales and made it more convincing that these new characters ARE actually from the Cinderella story, and then developed some personalities and character struggles that the newbies would go through to make us care about them.

But no, the two pinnacles of arrogance refuse to see any problem or issue and keep on doing what hasn't worked for at least two seasons now.

[KAOS Agent]

Quote

There did seem to be some recognition that Henry and Cinderella weren't working pretty early given how fast they got relegated to background.

That would have had to come from the dailies and not audience response because they had six episodes already filmed before they even started airing the season. They must have had another couple of episodes basically written by the point as well. I don't think they saw anything wrong with what they were writing or we would have seen this happen long before we did. This says to me that they just got bored with the whole thing. The way the Cinderella/Tremaine/Drizella story has basically been dumped for Gothel and her crew of coat hangers is further proof of that. 

It seems like they never planned out the entire season because they've got a bunch of regulars who are largely irrelevant. Cinderella, Tremaine, Henry, Lucy and Tiana have nothing to do. If Jacinda & Henry don't have their memories, they are not at all involved in the Gothel storyline because they don't know Eloise Gardner. She and Henry are simply some melodrama in the background to give Regina some reason to care about Gothel's activities. I don't know what Tiana's story is but I hope she rolls her truck out of town and finds happiness away from her awful friend. Tremaine is stuck in a well or something. Lucy is in a coma. 

[Camera One]

I'm guessing one or two episodes in, they realized that Drizella was their "secret weapon", as A&E called the actress.  There was a noticeable shift from Victoria vs. Jacinda, to Drizella and more Drizella.  But now she's in a well.  Onto the next secret weapon.  There has got to be one among that pile of coat hangers over there.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

What was with the secrecy regarding the location of Zelena's farm?  Why would Gothel, in this other Realm of Story, be sending out invitations to completely different Realms of Story?  Doesn't the Jacinda/Trepunzel Realm of Story have its own Wicked Witch of the West?  

If Rumple hadn't returned, maybe we could have gotten an Alternate Beauty and the Beast story where Mother Gothel is the enchantress whose hagged appearance caused The Beast to slam the door in her face.  So she destroyed the entire castle and only left the West Wing Tower, which eventually became Rapunzel's Tower.  Leaving a Enchanted Rose would fit quite well with a Witch overly obsessed with her garden.  

[jhlipton]

17 hours ago, CCTC said:

Too many shows that have the flashback format when they start out, seem reluctant to drop them, even when they have become repetitive and no longer bring anything fresh to the show.  If anything holding on to that format helps keep it stagnant.

The Good Doctor had flashbacks of Shawn's childhood in the first few episodes, but ditched them by episode 4.  We may have more as they explore his teen years, but I don't think there will be too many.

[Free]

19 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

That would have had to come from the dailies and not audience response because they had six episodes already filmed before they even started airing the season. They must have had another couple of episodes basically written by the point as well. I don't think they saw anything wrong with what they were writing or we would have seen this happen long before we did. This says to me that they just got bored with the whole thing. The way the Cinderella/Tremaine/Drizella story has basically been dumped for Gothel and her crew of coat hangers is further proof of that. 

It seems like they never planned out the entire season because they've got a bunch of regulars who are largely irrelevant. Cinderella, Tremaine, Henry, Lucy and Tiana have nothing to do. If Jacinda & Henry don't have their memories, they are not at all involved in the Gothel storyline because they don't know Eloise Gardner. She and Henry are simply some melodrama in the background to give Regina some reason to care about Gothel's activities. I don't know what Tiana's story is but I hope she rolls her truck out of town and finds happiness away from her awful friend. Tremaine is stuck in a well or something. Lucy is in a coma. 

There was never much of a plan to begin with here, it's more of A&E getting bored with the characters so they dumped in other characters to play with or mostly stand around and do nothing.

They didn't know what to do with Tremaine and her family so they got kicked to the curb for Gothel as the main villain and a bunch of random witches.

[KAOS Agent]

This season had a dramatically reduced budget. Ad industry reports are that interest in advertising on the show is minimal and that isn't going to improve when the show has already shed a million viewers from the beginning of the season. If I were an exec at ABC, I'd be livid that the show hired a bunch of regulars that need to be paid to stand around doing nothing for the rest of the season and then needs to pay an additional group of recurring characters because the writers got bored and/or are incapable of writing a story that spans the entire 22 episode order. If they are paying the Lucy actress $15,000 an episode, what are Gabrielle Anwar and Mekia Cox getting paid to stand around?

The general business management of this show is horrendous. They've confirmed that they continue to film a full hour of tape for an episode that only airs 42 minutes. That's a ton of time wasted filming and paying cast and crew, not to mention the extra time it would take to write and edit the show. It's a wonder ABC manages to make any money when they allow their showrunners to waste their resources so spectacularly.

[Camera One]

Yeah, I really don't understand how they were able to hire so many people.  The cast is so crowded it's borderline ridiculous.  

6A (regular & recurring with plot): Snow, Charming, Emma, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Zelena, Regina, Henry, Hyde, Jekyll, Aladdin, Jasmine - that's 13

7A (regular & recurring with plot): Whook, Rumple, Regina, Henry, Cinderella, Lucy, Tremaine, Drizella, Alice, Tiana, Gothel, Nick, Anastasia - still 13

I guess most of the 7A ones get paid less, but still.  

Edited January 24, 2018 by Camera One