A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[Camera One]

It was too obvious that almost everyone was an extra in the scene where citizens drank the Sleeping Curse to "dilute" it.  At the very least,  keep the same extras ("Lost" did a good job of doing that for the first few seasons).  Emma's wedding was a tad better, but they didn't even bother including more scenes with Granny, Blue, etc. even though they were actually there.  You really have to strain your eye to see the two of them in particular.  

The Writers are bad enough with romantic relationships and worse with family relationships, and they value friendship even less.  Except when it's with people you really shouldn't be friends with.

The big threat in the Season 6 finale was very ill-defined, given the "stakes".  Jasmine said something about how they hardly had enough time to get their people out of there... uh, all 4 of them, judging from how many people were in the circle at the end?   No one expressed any worry for their "friends" Elsa and Kristoff.  

Edited July 5, 2017 by Camera One

[Writing Wrongs]

We're on page 108. hahaha. 

[Shanna Marie]

Another thing about the shrinking world ... something I miss from season one is the sense of the fabric of the town. There was at least one newspaper (you wouldn't think that town would have more than one, but there were multiple reporters present when Regina announced that she was appointing Sidney to be sheriff). There was an election. That was while everything was still more or less under Regina's control. Wouldn't that have intensified when everyone was free? The newspaper was still being published, since we saw the occasional front page, but we never saw a reporter. Who took over running the newspaper after Sidney was locked up (and later freed by Ingrid)? They had that "Good Morning, Storybrooke!" on the DVD extras, but that sort of thing needed to be in the show. I'd love to have seen a normal American newspaper reporting on stuff like the ice wall, the aftermath of the Shattered Sight spell, the blob of darkness on Main Street, the visitors from Camelot. A reporter interviewing Arthur, trying to get a comment from the Black Fairy. There's so much potential for that. Hey, that might have given Belle something to do. It would have fit both her love of reading and her longing for adventure to be an intrepid girl reporter, the Lois Lane of Storybrooke. Henry could have become a junior intern to set up him becoming the Author, and he could have done more of that once he became the Author because he considered writing the stories of the town to be part of his job.

We focus a lot on what Graham's death should have meant for the relationship between Emma and Regina, but I'd forgotten just how much it affected Henry, and he knew what had happened. It's so weird that he apparently got over that completely and had no ill will toward Regina later on, and he never reminded Emma of it and pointed out that he was right. It's also weird that Emma was perfectly happy co-parenting with Regina after hearing what Regina said about wanting him to be disappointed and to not have hope because that was more realistic. The woman was boasting about doing things that hurt him and then claiming it was for his own good. This is not a fit parent.

Whatever happened to Emma listening to loud rock music when she was angry or upset? I'd have loved to see Hook's reaction to that. What would he think of modern rock music?

[KingOfHearts]

Desperate Souls is an underrated episode. It was provided a ton of worldbuilding, and was the only episode to deal with the aftermath of Graham's death properly. We learned about the Dark One and Rumple's history, while also seeing Storybrooke politics at play in the present. It really gave Rumple's piece of the pie more meaning and brought him into the ring. It also showed Regina had a weakness and could be beaten. I freaking loved the dynamic between Emma and Rumple. Their uneasy alliances worked because they respected each other.

I have to give a shoutout to Dreamy for giving us Miner's Day. It really made the town feel alive and lived-in, despite being fake. 

Edited July 6, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

21 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Desperate Souls is an underrated episode. It was provided a ton of worldbuilding, and was the only episode to deal with the aftermath of Graham's death properly. We learned about the Dark One and Rumple's history, while also seeing Storybrooke politics at play in the present. It really gave Rumple's piece of the pie more meaning and brought him into the ring.

I didn't even remember much about it. I may have skipped it in rewatches, mostly because it's rather difficult to get through, especially when you know that Regina doesn't ever get any payback. I get actively angry when she's playing the victim and trying to guilt-trip Emma over Graham's death, as though Emma isn't respecting her grief enough. I may have shouted, "Yeah, cry me another one, you murderous cow." Hmm, maybe that's why Regina never fessed up -- she blamed Emma, in one of those "you made me do this" things, so she mentally rewrote the whole thing as being Emma's fault and felt no guilt.

I'm still finding it hard to believe they ended up "redeeming" Regina. The more you get into the first season, the worse she is. It just struck me that since no one remembered Hansel and Gretel's mother, she cursed children into being homeless orphans. Nothing changed during the curse, so they were on their own all that time. That's after sending them out into the woods alone and holding their father prisoner because they didn't want to be adopted by her. Not to mention all the kids she sent to their deaths. And she was willing to let them die in Storybrooke (since she knew the curse wouldn't let them leave the town) in order to make Emma look bad. Generally, a character who kills children is considered irredeemable, and doubly so when doing so for petty reasons. Someone who murders children in order to make a rival look bad is just low.

Meanwhile, Rumple comes closer to looking like the character who'd get turned into a good guy. He gets the sympathetic backstory in the first half of the season, where he's a poor peasant being oppressed by the duke (more shrinking world: is there nobility in their world, and what happened to it? Is everyone a king or queen? Are there no dukes, barons, and earls, other than this one?) who's driven to desperate means to save his son and who has good intentions for his power. That's a drastically different villain origin reason than Regina's misguided and disproportionate revenge. And we have Rumple helping Emma, including giving her the info on Hansel and Gretel's father. He may be helping for his own agenda, but he actually does some good things and shows some sign of humanity, something we don't see from Regina in the first season. He looks far more like someone with the potential to be turned around than Regina does.

[Shanna Marie]

Back on my rewatch, and I've reached the middle of season one, where I almost gave up on the show in the first place. There's some I like about "7:15" because I like season one Mary Margaret so much. They may have decided in retrospect that she was meek, but she's actually pretty spunky. It's hard to watch her and David because you know they're right, that they're being manipulated into thinking they're committing adultery when, really, David is committing adultery when he's with Abigail. I cut him a lot of slack here because all his memories are false, and he didn't get the false memories until the curse was already weakening, so the fake memories never really set in the way they did with all the other cursed people. I'm mostly mad at Regina because she's so petty about it all. She has the power to kill Snow, so if that's what she wants in revenge, why not just do it and get it over with? Why all this petty tinkering with people's lives?

I noticed that people were actually watching TV in this episode. It seems like that went by the wayside in later seasons. Do they no longer want to watch television now that they remember they're from a world that doesn't have TV? Do they not have weather forecasts anymore? The only thing I can recall was the snippet of a radio broadcast giving the forecast in town and near the ice wall (a touch I loved and wish we got more of that sort of thing).

And I'm curious about the timeline. It starts with August telling Henry he needs to get to school because a storm's coming. Then we see Emma watching the weather forecast while eating breakfast while Mary Margaret is rushing to get ready because she needs to be at school early -- so a student is dressed and leaving for school before the teacher, even though the teacher is leaving far earlier than she needs to? And then we see Mary Margaret shopping, getting storm supplies, then we see her walking in the woods. She has time to find the bird, get the bird to the animal shelter, and then return it to the woods before the storm August warned Henry about hits. Is this all in one day? Did Mary Margaret skip school? Or does the walk in the woods come the next day? But then does that mean August warned Henry to hurry to school so he could get there before a storm that was coming a day or so later? Was this a hurricane kind of storm? Because I don't know of any other kind of rainstorm where it's forecast that precisely in a "you'd better stay inside two days from now and get supplies" sense.

And then I hit the episode I had to stop because I just couldn't: "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree." In the present, Emma gets a personality transplant and goes from street-smart and WALLS to blindly trusting someone she knows has been siding with Regina all along. In the past, the Genie is a class A jerk to even spend five minutes considering going after the wife of the man who gave him his freedom. No matter how much she made the doe eyes at him and gave him the sob story, her husband gave him his freedom and asked nothing else of him. I think this episode was almost a breaking point for me, and I'm just going to have to skip it.

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

And then I hit the episode I had to stop because I just couldn't: "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree." In the present, Emma gets a personality transplant and goes from street-smart and WALLS to blindly trusting someone she knows has been siding with Regina all along. In the past, the Genie is a class A jerk to even spend five minutes considering going after the wife of the man who gave him his freedom. No matter how much she made the doe eyes at him and gave him the sob story, her husband gave him his freedom and asked nothing else of him. I think this episode was almost a breaking point for me, and I'm just going to have to skip it.

You could draw parallels between "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" and "Breaking Glass". Both of them feature Sidney. The first is about how Sidney got under Regina's control, the other is how he obtained his freedom. Emma is under Regina's thumb and Regina lies about her mirror in both episodes. I think they each sacrifice Emma on the altar of Regina for different reasons. In season one, the writers were trying to solidify Regina as a formidable opponent and showcase how much control she really had in Storybrooke. In season four, they were showing the audience how Regina was deserving of Emma's groveling. 

[MadyGirl1987]

I am in the middle of rewatching season 2, and am up to the episode where they almost execute Regina. When asked if she has any last words she starts speechifying about how she regrets she wasn't able to cause more pain and especially how she wasn't able to kill Snow White. This is Exhibit A why I will never buy Regina's redemption. Someone like this is too far gone to redeem. Why would the town have anything to do with this woman after incidents like this? I get execution isn't ideal but why not freeze her or jail her like Rumple. Yet they "banish" her (even though she can magic around from place to place).  Worse yet, the Charmings get a protection spell from Rumple to protect themselves from Regina. What about their subjects?! I guess they can fend for themselves against her! Not to mention her having the STUPIDEST excuse for her hate for Snow White. She blames Snow for her mother killing Daniel when she should blame  Cora 100%. Argh... I like when the Evil Queen is allowed to be evil but Regina and her "redemption" just gets me ragey.

Edited July 18, 2017 by MadyGirl1987

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, MadyGirl1987 said:

Worse yet, the Charmings get a protection spell from Rumple to protect themselves from Regina. What about their subjects?! I guess they can fend for themselves against her!

And we find out in Season 6 that Regina was still going around razing villages, and all Snowing had to offer was that the best revenge was to forgot those losers who died and be happy. Really, the later seasons did a huge disservice to Snowing and established them as criminally selfish and neglectful rulers and parents.

[MadyGirl1987]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

And we find out in Season 6 that Regina was still going around razing villages, and all Snowing had to offer was that the best revenge was to forgot those losers who died and be happy.

I don't remember that from this season. What episode was that?

And yeah, Snowing was definitely sacrificed on the alter of Regina the Martyr. They made her look bad in comparison to them so they had to be brought down so she would look better.

[Rumsy4]

5 hours ago, MadyGirl1987 said:

I don't remember that from this season. What episode was that?

The fake!Monte Cristo episode.

[KingOfHearts]

6B is just a string of wasted potential. We find out who the Black Fairy is!... except she's not even really a fairy, and has little to do with Blue. We learn the origin of the Dark Curse!.. except it didn't even start with crushing the heart of the thing you loved most, and Storybrooke was not part of its original objective. Emma and Hook are getting married!... on the eve of Emma's imminent death, and it's in the middle of fighting the Black Fairy. We get a musical episode!... except very few of the songs are actually relevant. Aladdin and Jasmine get a story, and Jafar back!... except they suck and Jafar is barely there.

Edited July 19, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

6B is just a string of wasted potential. We find out who the Black Fairy is!... except she's not even really a fairy, and has little to do with Blue. We learn the origin of the Dark Curse!.. except it didn't even start with crushing the heart of thing you loved most, and Storybrooke was not part of its original objective. Emma and Hook are getting married!... on the eve of Emma's imminent death, and it's in the middle of fighting the Black Fairy. We get a musical episode!... except very few of the songs are actually relevant. Aladdin and Jasmine get a story, and Jafar back!... except they suck and Jafar is barely there.

Hook has an "epic" realm-hopping adventure ... that mostly consists of him either standing around in the background or getting knocked unconscious, and all the "adventure" parts happen offscreen.

The Final Battle lasts about 30 seconds and is immediately resolved with a perfunctory TLK.

[Shanna Marie]

I'm in the middle of the "adultery arc" of season one, which is really hard to watch now, in light of Regina's own adultery arc. Did she ever apologize at all for what she did to Snow during this time? I seem to recall her mentioning that Snow was under a curse, but there was no empathy. It's not so much what she did to Snow, though, that bugs me. It's the way she's acting like a friend to Kathryn in a way that seems genuine and seems to be touched by Kathryn seeing her as a friend, and yet the whole time she knows she's manipulating everything to make them all miserable. She wants Kathryn to stay with David because it hurts Snow, not because that's what Kathryn really wants. Kathryn/Abigail would want to be with Frederick.

I ranted in the Unpopular Opinions thread about "Skin Deep," but another somewhat unpopular opinion might be that I think "What Happened to Frederick" is an underrated episode. I never see it in lists of favorites. It's not necessarily outstanding, but there's a lot I like about it. I love the twist that Abigail is actually pretty cool. You think of her as this cold bitch, but then we find out what's really going on with her. In the present, I love that Kathryn is starting to take some kind of control of her life. Unfortunately, it gets her in trouble with Regina, but it's great to see someone really breaking away from the curse. Also, I love Abigail's costume in this episode. They managed to resist the temptation to go all crazy with the cleavage, and it's got a gorgeous Renaissance feel to it.

The timeline gets a bit screwy around here. "Skin Deep" took place at Valentine's Day (one of the few actual timestamps we've ever had on this show). But the next episode looks like autumn. Not only are there fall colors in the scenes in the woods, but it looks like the Leaf Lady went stark raving nuts in downtown Storybrooke, with the streets covered in oak leaves. The camera even focuses on the leaves as people crunch through them while walking down the street.

One thing I was thinking of during "Skin Deep" is the fact that this is one of the few times Emma actually acts like a cop. She investigates the break-in at Rumple's place, tracks down the stolen goods, and later arrests Rumple for beating Moe. There's been a lot of debate over whether they brought back magic too soon, but I think the key issue isn't so much the magic as it is the kind of villains they brought in along with the magic. It started to be that Storybrooke was the Mecca for supervillains who had the grand ambition of taking over a small town in Maine. Maybe it might have worked better if they'd spaced out the supervillains and spent some time dealing with internal, small-town conflicts, which could have been made worse by the existence of magic. Surely Regina and Rumple weren't the only villains brought over by the curse. We know there were at least a few pirates, since Smee was in town the whole time, and probably some others in Hook's crew. There were Regina's villain friends. 2A had mostly internal conflicts in Storybrooke. There are a lot of stories they could have told about the magical sheriff dealing with strange stuff in a small town full of fairytale characters and magical objects.

[KAOS Agent]

I find it difficult to watch S1 due to the Emma/Snowing relationship and how it was handled later on. Giving up Emma so she could have her best chance worked when they were forced to send her in the wardrobe to save her life. Until we saw in S2 that Regina was only loose because Snowing were morons who let her go because they couldn't dirty their hands by executing her (never mind the multiple village massacres she'd been responsible for both before and after) and apparently they couldn't lock her up like Rumpel because reasons.  And then they refused to work with Maleficent to try to stop Regina from casting the curse because they're too pure to work with a villain or something. Eggnapping was so much better!

Then we actually see that they made a choice to not give Emma her best chance. They abandoned her to her miserable childhood, sacrificing her happiness (David's actual words) for everyone else. It all falls apart and it makes me so sad that the wonderful relationship between Emma and Mary Margaret in S1 and even early S2 is significantly tainted. Remember Snow's upset that Emma wasn't happy about the family reunion in "Broken"? Look at that with the context of Snowing closing the door on Young!Emma in S6. It pisses me off. 

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm in the middle of the "adultery arc" of season one, which is really hard to watch now, in light of Regina's own adultery arc. Did she ever apologize at all for what she did to Snow during this time? I seem to recall her mentioning that Snow was under a curse, but there was no empathy. It's not so much what she did to Snow, though, that bugs me. It's the way she's acting like a friend to Kathryn in a way that seems genuine and seems to be touched by Kathryn seeing her as a friend, and yet the whole time she knows she's manipulating everything to make them all miserable. She wants Kathryn to stay with David because it hurts Snow, not because that's what Kathryn really wants. Kathryn/Abigail would want to be with Frederick.

I ranted in the Unpopular Opinions thread about "Skin Deep," but another somewhat unpopular opinion might be that I think "What Happened to Frederick" is an underrated episode. I never see it in lists of favorites. It's not necessarily outstanding, but there's a lot I like about it. I love the twist that Abigail is actually pretty cool. You think of her as this cold bitch, but then we find out what's really going on with her. In the present, I love that Kathryn is starting to take some kind of control of her life. Unfortunately, it gets her in trouble with Regina, but it's great to see someone really breaking away from the curse. Also, I love Abigail's costume in this episode. They managed to resist the temptation to go all crazy with the cleavage, and it's got a gorgeous Renaissance feel to it.

The timeline gets a bit screwy around here. "Skin Deep" took place at Valentine's Day (one of the few actual timestamps we've ever had on this show). But the next episode looks like autumn. Not only are there fall colors in the scenes in the woods, but it looks like the Leaf Lady went stark raving nuts in downtown Storybrooke, with the streets covered in oak leaves. The camera even focuses on the leaves as people crunch through them while walking down the street.

One thing I was thinking of during "Skin Deep" is the fact that this is one of the few times Emma actually acts like a cop. She investigates the break-in at Rumple's place, tracks down the stolen goods, and later arrests Rumple for beating Moe. There's been a lot of debate over whether they brought back magic too soon, but I think the key issue isn't so much the magic as it is the kind of villains they brought in along with the magic. It started to be that Storybrooke was the Mecca for supervillains who had the grand ambition of taking over a small town in Maine. Maybe it might have worked better if they'd spaced out the supervillains and spent some time dealing with internal, small-town conflicts, which could have been made worse by the existence of magic. Surely Regina and Rumple weren't the only villains brought over by the curse. We know there were at least a few pirates, since Smee was in town the whole time, and probably some others in Hook's crew. There were Regina's villain friends. 2A had mostly internal conflicts in Storybrooke. There are a lot of stories they could have told about the magical sheriff dealing with strange stuff in a small town full of fairytale characters and magical objects.

I loved Abigail in "What Happened to Frederick?" she was so cool and strong.  It was a good flip from someone we first met as cold. Abigail cracked me up in the flashback from the season three finale with her deadpan snark "My hero" and her expression as she walks off.  I liked when Emma acted like a cop it could have been really cool to see more of it. It also would have fit with how Rumple and Regina would remark how things were different here. Magic was different. Killing someone was different. When Regina learns Kathryn's alive she actually does realize that all the evidence will lead back to her. They could have found a way to balance magic with "our world" rules making the villains have to be creative. Emma really should have been able to use her real world experience against villains arriving from elsewhere. The way cameras should have caught Arthur giving poison to his friend in jail or Rumple forgot about them when he killed Zelena(even if he immediately gets around it) .

[Shanna Marie]

The "who killed Kathryn" arc gets so frustrating because Emma is running with the idiot ball full-time and Regina is being even more nasty than normal, all while acting all sanctimonious about it. It's even harder to watch now when you know that there are absolutely zero consequences for Regina. The people she's tormenting now will soon be best buds with her and consider her family, without her saying so much as a word of apology. I can kind of see forgiving a former villain who's repented and changed her ways if it's more an awareness of the former villainy -- like if they left the place where they committed their evil acts to start over again and you're not the people they were tormenting. But it's harder to see not only forgiving but becoming close friends with someone whose crimes were so personal and so recent. Yeah, there's the murder, attempted murder, village slaughter, and all that 28 years ago. But in relatively recent history, there was the sanctimonious slut shaming while Regina knew that Snow was, in fact, with her own husband and it was only "cheating" because Regina was manipulating the situation, and then scheming to murder Kathryn and framing Snow for it, plus treating Emma like she was incompetent. It was all so malicious and so personal. I can't imagine ever getting over that, not even with groveling apologies. It's really hard to see how they could get over all this when there never was an apology, not even when Regina went through similar things herself and should have gained some retroactive empathy. There's a lot of stress knitting while watching these episodes.

Meanwhile, I may take back everything I've said about how they need to do more worldbuilding. When you look at what little worldbuilding they do, they really suck at it, and doing more worldbuilding might have made the show even worse. Look at the time they created their own race and culture, spinning off from existing characters/folklore. We got fully grown (and clothed -- what the hell?) men hatched from eggs, bred to be slave laborers and forbidden from having personal relationships. Just think if they'd applied the minds that came up with that to deeper development of all the other story elements. Shudder.

I'm also not so sure we want more of Sheriff Emma because she's actually not all that good at it. It's that idiot ball thing. Supposedly, she has WALLS and is cynical and untrusting, and she's got a superpower that allows her to know when someone's lying, and yet she totally falls into all of Regina and Sidney's traps. Like letting Sidney get the "phone records" (that apparently Regina put together in MS Word and printed out in her office) from his "friend" rather than getting them directly from the phone company. That wouldn't be valid evidence because there's no chain of evidence in how she obtained them, and she has no warrant. If she's ever to use those as evidence, she's going to need the warrant anyway, so why not start there? And when David denied making the call and she believed him, wouldn't that have triggered verifying it with the phone company? Though there we have that issue of what, exactly, the relationship with the outside world was. They later showed that the town wasn't visible to someone on the outside, and they said no one ever came to the town from outside. But Henry was able to do Internet searches. Kathryn apparently was able to communicate with the law school in Boston, and Emma was able to call them. Is the phone company outside the town? Would Regina have controlled that, too? And what about the DNA results and fingerprints? Does a town that size have a DNA lab that Regina controlled, or wouldn't it have to be sent to an outside lab?

Red got so robbed. I think the character would have been better served by letting her reconcile with Granny without going back to work for her because she was awesome working in the sheriff's office. She could have been the dispatcher/receptionist/occasional searcher, and that would have given her more to do that would have involved her with more of the plots. But having made her go back to work for Granny with the idea that she was going to end up owning the business, it's insane that they negated that by suddenly having her leave the entire world to go looking for the pack she rejected that rejected her, when she's living and working with someone who's like her and who is the only relative who stood by her. Also, the scene when Henry tries to help her find a new job by going through the Little Red Riding Hood skill sets may be one of my favorite scenes in the whole series, and the most I ever liked Henry. That's the sort of thing I wanted more of in this premise. Why did the people act more like fairytale characters when they didn't know who they were? They just became ordinary people when they got back their memories of being fairytale characters.

[KAOS Agent]

The show went a long way away from its original premise, "There is a town in Maine where every story book character you’ve ever known is trapped between two worlds, victims of a powerful curse. Only one knows the truth and only one can break her spell." It's really disappointing when you think about just how rich this story could have been if they'd followed through with them being fairy tale characters in deed instead of just name once the curse broke.

[Rumsy4]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

it's insane that they negated that by suddenly having her leave the entire world to go looking for the pack she rejected that rejected her, when she's living and working with someone who's like her and who is the only relative who stood by her. 

Yeah. That made zero sense. Besides, she ended up causing her mother's death to protect her human friend. Would any werewolf pack accept her??

[Shanna Marie]

Nerds get a bad rap for obsession with continuity, those "in episode 1.5 this character said this thing but in episode 4.8, they said something slightly different, so what's the deal?" convention questions, but the thing about continuity is that it's all about building a world and characters. Those "trivial" facts are part of the fabric of the story. There may be a few details that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but for the most part, when things vary widely from episode to episode, it means you're not actually building anything. You're throwing random story stuff out there, and the world unravels. So if in season one, Leroy is able to fix the wiring for the lights at the festival and knows how to take out the power so they can sell candles, it may seem trivial that in season 4 he's so baffled about the power being out that he has to drag in a woman who gave birth a couple of days earlier to start a generator, and that later scene may be more about her discovering her abilities than about Leroy's skills, but what it gives us then is characters who come across like jerks and a town that doesn't work. You know Regina wasn't running around starting generators when she was mayor. She may have micromanaged people when it served her purposes (when she wanted to keep an eye on making sure Snow suffered), but she wasn't out starting machinery or sweeping the streets. Did nothing break while the town was cursed? Did she not have a city maintenance staff? Was there no better way to show Snow gaining some confidence as a leader than fixing a generator? And if you bother to do an entire B plot about that, then why have her give up that job offscreen like it was no big deal a few episodes later?

The stuff with Red was just disrespectful to the character, really throwing random stuff at the story, and mostly to cover for the fact that they can't take criticism, so they shot off their mouths in an interview and then had to carry through on what they said they'd do, and they had no idea how to do it. They did a whole episode about Red's relationship with her grandmother that concluded with her choosing to stay with her grandmother and with the idea that she was going to take over the business. Then they did a whole episode about her choosing her human friend over her pack, even over her mother. Every story after that time period (since this apparently happened very soon after Snow left the palace, so the other flashbacks were later) showed her being all-in as a friend of Snow and David's. They were essentially her new pack. You can't then suddenly say that she's unhappy without her pack and willing to use a supposedly rare magical bean to go hopping around worlds in search of this pack (and would they even have been there -- were they in the Coradome, or would they have been brought to Storybrooke?). It came across like they wanted a recognizable female character to throw into a same-sex relationship after they promised one, and she was neither in an established relationship (aside from some shipping hopes about Whale and the idea of Frankenstein and the Wolf Woman getting together) nor under any kind of Disney control, so they contrived an excuse to throw her into a one-off story. If they wanted her for that story, there are any number of ways they could have explained it, but going in search of her pack made no sense to the character. You might as well say the same actress was playing a new character because she had almost nothing to do with the Ruby/Red of seasons one and two.

I guess you could almost say the same thing about Regina. I know she's supposed to have changed after seasons one and two, but there's the growing kind of change and there's an entirely different person with different relationships with every character and with her entire history apparently wiped clean. If someone frames me for murder because she's determined for me not to ever be happy and desperately trying to keep me away from someone I love, I'm not going to become best friends with her, no matter how much she supposedly changes. I'm not going to be supportive of her love life and give her pep talks about being with the person she loves. I'm not going to apologize for having been a brat when I was ten, as though that excuses murder. The more I watch of season one, the harder it is to believe they would ever do a redemption arc with this character. There's nothing redeemable about her in the entire season. The only times she's acting moderately human and kind, she's lying and faking it and responsible for the problems she's pretending to show sympathy for.

[CCTC]

Since it seems like they always intended to redeem Regina, it is a bit amazing how little shades of gray or internal conflict they gave her in season 1.   She is smug, gloats, murders, frames for murder, attempts to murder the mother of her son, is cruel to Henry and they really show no true affection between the two of them.  She shows no compassion to anyone even her allies.  Her reason for hating Snow is a head scratchier and makes her seem even more of a sociopath.  The first time you see any remorse out of her when Henry is dying due to her scheme, and even after that, she is looking evilly gleeful with the return of magic.   I would say similar things about season 2B when she so enthusiastically joins forces with Cora and laughs as she does things like throw innocent old ladies to their death.   The lack of conflict there is even more confusing, because by then for sure they were trying to redeem her and her full and easy backslide negated what they had done in season 2a and they never really addressed her later betrayals with Cora later on - her evil deeds were always framed as if they were in the long past.

Mayor Mills was actually a pretty interesting, resourceful villain.  I am not sure they could have maintained her long term in that guise, but regardless of whether the redemption was deserved or not, I am not sure they did the character any favors making her a hero.

Edited July 22, 2017 by CCTC

[Rumsy4]

To me, somehow, the revelation that Regina had been raping Graham from even before the Curse seemed the irredeemable point. And then, A&E made the flippant remark about Regina and Graham playing chess in her bed-chamber in the official podcast. For a time I really wondered if they were going to show a flashback that Regina hadn't actually slept with Graham at all. No such thing. Instead Regina makes Robin's rape all about herself, and berates Zelena for doing a "vile" thing. Really, A&E have as little self-knowledge as Regina. 

[Anna35]

I don't believe they always intended to redeem Regina. I think they fell into it when the character was more popular than they imagined she would be. To keep her on the show they had to redeem her, so that's what ended up happening.

In the first season redemption isn't a theme like it becomes later on. In Regina's case, the idea of her going "good" doesn't even get mentioned before season 2.

[andromeda331]

I don't think they intended to either. But I think it came when A&E learned how much she was hated and/or how much fans were looking forward to her comeuppance. They expected fans to feel bad for Regina when Cora killed Daniel and side with Regina against Snow. They didn't expect people to side with Snow and think Regina was insane for targeting a ten year old when she saw her mother kill Daniel.  They were shocked that people didn't see Regina as sassy and cool with Graham instead saw her as a rapist who murdered her victim when he decided to leave her. They want us to see everything Regina does as cool and amazing by the end of season one they were surprised by how many people hated Regina and thought she was a villain. So they switched gears so everyone would see what a great sassy hero Regina was. 

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Anna35 said:

I don't believe they always intended to redeem Regina. I think they fell into it when the character was more popular than they imagined she would be. To keep her on the show they had to redeem her, so that's what ended up happening.

I might think that based on what's actually on the show, since it in no way looks like a character being set up for a redemption story, but during season one they gave interviews about how their vision for the show was that it was about the place the Evil Queen could get a happy ending. That would imply either a redemption that would allow her to have a happy outcome or being in a villain-friendly place. I'm not sure I'd classify cursed Storybrooke as being Regina's happy ending, since she wasn't happy. I don't know if it was the network that ended up making them do a more straightforward villain and hero setup or if they really were clueless enough to think they were making Regina sympathetic and setting her up for a redemption story. Given the things they've said about Graham and other stuff that happened in season one, I might lean toward "clueless." They seemed to really think they were showing her as conflicted and sympathetic when she looked sad as she murdered Graham, and they've referred to that relationship as "fun and flirty." It's also consistent for them to be so afraid of spoiling their shocking twist that they don't bother to set it up, so they may think they were being clever in depicting Regina as irredeemable before, surprise!, redeeming her.

I think they still could have done a redemption arc after season one, but it should have been a longer, tougher road. She'd have had to gain some empathy, do some atoning, have to work to mend fences with her victims. As it is, there's no way I can connect the dots between the various phases of Regina. Every handwave I come up with just creates or highlights another inconsistency. She's 100 percent, all-in, fully believing she's right and justified, and then she abruptly switches sides and stops trying to torment Snow without ever acknowledging she was wrong, without saying why she changed, and without gaining a shred of empathy. There's not even an equivalent of Hook's "vengeance wasn't very satisfying, revenge didn't fix anything" epiphany. To get to that place without transition, you need a softer starting point, showing her potential for good in season one, making her a sympathetic enough character that we aren't entirely sure we want Emma to succeed in breaking the curse. Make her a benevolent despot, where she may be controlling everyone's lives and making them love her, but she's doing it by being the perfect ruler/leader -- Storybrooke's a happy utopia, and everyone adores the mayor who keeps it that way. Emma may be able to make time move and bring back everyone's memories, but then reality would rush in, and it would all become ordinary, with real problems.

[tennisgurl]

I was actually on board Regina's redemption train at the start of season 2, when she was in more of an uneasy alliance with Charming, and was still rather prickly, but had some sympathetic moments, especially with Henry. I would still need a whole lot of learning on her part, and the chance for her to face real consequences for her actions (especially the rape and murder of poor Graham) but I was open to it. Then Cora showed up, Regina immediately took her side and threw away all the good will she got in the first part of the season, and I was done with her bullshit for most of the rest of the show. She showed herself to be an opportunist whos attempts at redemption would always be self motivated, but based around any real growth. Then, we started on the "feel bad for Regina" retcons, and the "how dare people be mean to poor Regina" trend, which I always found to be incredibly disturbing. Like, when the kid who she tried to make the new Henry came back, after she tried to kidnap him and killed his dad, he was a villain who wanted to destroy the town and kill Regina, and we are supposed to see him as an irredeemable villain now. The whole narrative is set up to make Regina's victims retroactively unsympathetic so we can feel bad for her. Then, in one of the worst Regina moments, in my opinion, she was going to destroy the town, killing everyone but her and Henry, but then, when she realizes her and Henry cant leave, she tries to stop the explosion, and then WHAM she's a hero now. Yeah she was going to sacrifice herself to stop the explosion, but she was the one who STARTED the whole problem in the first place, and if she could have, she would have run off with her son and never looked back on all the dead bodies she left in her wake. Also, the seasons after season one started the bizarre trend of showing Regina murdering random people in flashbacks where we are supposed to feel bad for Regina. We get the episode where she murdered a random groom on his wedding, then we are supposed to feel bad for her at her dead boyfriends grave, or when Regina massacres a village and we are supposed to feel bad for her when Snow says she's irredeemable. Its just weird and uncomfortable, and somehow manages to make Regina's redemption even harder to shallow than in season one where she was the actual villain!

I've made my peace with Regina being around now (to her credit, she's been a good guy for awhile now) but they seriously made her so damn evil and awful, and have spent so little time on actually making her show remorse or make up for past evil deeds, that it makes it hard for me to sympathize with her.

[Writing Wrongs]

I watched The Tower episode this weekend and I have some real world questions. I'm not sure how long Rapunzel was supposed to have been up there, but where/how did she bathe, use the toilet, get food and water, etc? She looked pretty fresh for someone who was there long enough to grow her hair that long.

What a terrible episode.

[Shanna Marie]

I'm getting close to the end of season one, and "The Stable Boy" still baffles me. Even when I look really hard at that episode, I don't find any indication whatsoever that we're in any way supposed to blame Snow. Cora's manipulation is off the charts as Cora plays the devoted mother and plays on Snow's innocence, while Snow is constantly intent on Regina's happiness. Regina even figures out that Cora set the whole thing up. And yet Regina went on an epic, decades-long vendetta against Snow. Then in the present we get the hypocritical "apology not accepted," which is rich from someone who later expects to have all her sins forgiven.

So, yeah, still not seeing even the slightest hint of her being redeemable without a lot more work, and it makes even less sense for Snow to ever so much as tolerate being in the same room with her. Emma was also angry enough about the frame job and then weaseling out of it by throwing Sidney under the bus that it's hard to imagine her ever having the slightest interest in being friends with Regina. As I've said, I could see them maybe being willing to forgive a repentant villain, but Regina's acts were so personal, so petty and vindictive, and such a huge betrayal, that it's hard to imagine a reconciliation, especially without any apology on Regina's part.

The whole frame/murder arc has me wanting to throw things at the television. I'm glad I'm past it, but now I'm in the heavy August episodes, and I'd forgotten how much I disliked him. He wasn't quite so smug in the more recent seasons, but wow, he was pretentious. It's interesting that they didn't make him be the one who became the Author. That seems to be what they were setting up, but I guess they couldn't resist giving that to their self-insert, Henry.

But it gets better for the last couple of episodes, though I still want to reach into the TV and slap Regina.

[Shanna Marie]

Now that I've finished season 1 and am in the second episode of season 2, I have to say that the writers destroyed Regina with her love. If the aftermath of her story had gone differently, she'd have been the best villain in the entire series. In season one and the first couple of episodes of season 2, she's pure evil. There's nothing redeemable about her. She's utterly lacking in any empathy. Even while standing over her possibly dying son and facing his loss, she refuses to help reunite Jefferson with his daughter, claiming that the deal's no good since Emma isn't dead, even though he did his part and the failure was on her. She can't feel empathy or sympathy even then. She's petty and vindictive, and her actions are entirely out of proportion with her motivation. She's playing the long game and manages to succeed for 28 years, but like any tragic hero (and to some extent, you could look at her as a Macbeth-like tragic protagonist), she brings about her own downfall through her tragic flaws. And then they totally undermine it. If she'd faced reasonable consequences for her actions, then you could look back on season one as brilliant. They should have made the finale a two-hour, tacking the first episode of season 2 onto it. The good guys would still have tried to protect Regina from the wraith because they're good guys, but let them fail in the second attempt before they shove the wraith into the hat, and then Emma and Snow end up going through accidentally, and cliffhang the end of the season on Emma and Snow being discovered by Mulan and Aurora. That gives poetic justice in that Regina is brought down by her own actions and Rumple rather than by the good guys being vindictive. They're better people than she is because they help her in spite of the way she treated them. But the curse broke because she had to have Henry all to herself and she tried to kill Emma. Rumple's on a vengeance kick because she stiffed Jefferson in the deal to reunite him with his daughter and he went to free Belle, so Rumple knows what Regina did to her. She has whatever happens to her coming.

But keeping her around with no consequences and everyone treating her like a hero, even though she was probably the worst villain they've encountered and lesser villains have worse outcomes, undermines season one and turns an awesome villain into a sad sack. If they wanted to set up a redemption arc, they needed to do it a different way, and they needed to write an actual redemption story instead of just declaring her redeemed.

They're definitely inconsistent with the way they portray what happened in the Coradome. Philip and Mulan say they were frozen and weren't able to go searching for Aurora until time started moving, which doesn't fit with what they showed of Hook during the curse.

I noticed that Regina wasn't able to make the hat work until Emma touched her -- the first hint of Emma's magic? It wasn't Regina's power, but rather Emma's being channeled through her?

I'd forgotten that Belle walked out on Rumple from the start based on what he was doing, but then she came back right away. She's dumber than I remembered.

I really wish they'd done more with Philip and Aurora -- actually tell their backstory with Maleficent, actually show how they saved Philip. Heck, they could even have eventually brought Regina back after her being taken by the wraith, and we'd have had at least some sense of her having suffered for her crimes.

[Camera One]

2 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I really wish they'd done more with Philip and Aurora -- actually tell their backstory with Maleficent, actually show how they saved Philip. 

I thought from the first episode in Season 2 that the flashbacks for the season would tell the Sleeping Beauty story.  I guess their tendency to start something and completely not follow through was already evident.  Did they not realize Philip being freed off-camera would have been unsatisfying?  Did they plan on dropping the whole story in 2B?

[Rumsy4]

49 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I thought from the first episode in Season 2 that the flashbacks for the season would tell the Sleeping Beauty story.

That will be told when they reboot the Show for Season 14. But it will about Sleeping Beauty from another Realm. The Savior of the story will be a grown-up Lucy. 

Edited July 27, 2017 by Rumsy4

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

I thought from the first episode in Season 2 that the flashbacks for the season would tell the Sleeping Beauty story.  I guess their tendency to start something and completely not follow through was already evident.  Did they not realize Philip being freed off-camera would have been unsatisfying?  Did they plan on dropping the whole story in 2B?

That's what I thought too. That would have been fun to see. Plus, Maleficent had plenty of reasons to go after most of the main cast in the present. Regina for trapping her 28 years, Emma for attempting to kill her, Charming for shoving the egg inside her, Rumple who told Charming to do so plus owned the curse in the first place, they had so much to work with by making that season Sleeping Beauty. 

[Camera One]

And then when Maleficent finally showed up in Season 4, she let go of all her anger towards Rumple and Regina just like that.  

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

And then when Maleficent finally showed up in Season 4, she let go of all her anger towards Rumple and Regina just like that.  

Well, eggnapping is the second worst sin of all after telling a secret.

[Camera One]

That reminds me.  Is anyone else worried we might not be able to explore Lily again without Emma on the show?

[KingOfHearts]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That reminds me.  Is anyone else worried we might not be able to explore Lily again without Emma on the show?

I'm more worried about August. What's he going to do without his BFF?

[InsertWordHere]

In Season 12, we'll find out what happens when August and Lily have a fling. Can the puppet survive dragonfire? How will offscreen!Emma react? 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, InsertWordHere said:

In Season 12, we'll find out what happens when August and Lily have a fling. Can the puppet survive dragonfire? How will offscreen!Emma react? 

In all honesty, there needs to be August/Lily fanfiction out there. Not that anyone would want to write for them, but they would totally date imo.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, InsertWordHere said:

In Season 12, we'll find out what happens when August and Lily have a fling. Can the puppet survive dragonfire? How will offscreen!Emma react? 

Offscreen!Emma will be the one who sets them up. After all, who doesn't want her two best friends/people who screwed over her childhood the most to get together? And then they and her and Hook can double date. Offscreen. Of course, it would have been offscreen even if Emma were still around because that would be a character thing involving conversation.

I should be making a list of dropped storylines as I do this rewatch. There are a lot around the Sleeping Beauty story, which makes it odd that it never got its own arc. There's the backstory of why Maleficent had a problem with Aurora's mother, and apparently that's the original Sleeping Beauty story. We'd need to see where the feud started, how that curse came about, and how it was broken (well, we know it was a kiss, but what did Stefan have to do to find her to kiss her). If that's the one with the anger about the baby shower and the curse about being 16, and all that, then we need that part, too. It looks like Aurora's curse was just because Maleficent got her groove back, thanks to Regina. Though, in season 2, Aurora knows about Regina as the evil queen, but in season 4, we see that she's put in the sleeping curse while Snow is still relatively young, while Leo is still alive and before Regina reveals her true colors. Aurora should have been surprised that the quiet wallflower of a queen (who never dances at balls) from the neighboring kingdom would have done something so evil as to cast the Dark Curse. Or, I guess, since it was done the other way around, Regina should have given Mal her pep talk years later, after she was already the Evil Queen. They really don't watch their own show or keep track of their stories, do they? A show like this desperately needs its own Wiki for easy reference. Anyway, then we also need to see how Philip was saved from the Wraith, which was supposed to be an incurable problem, then poof, he's all better offscreen. And did Philip and Aurora move? Their castle in season 2 was in a kind of dry, desert-looking area -- maybe high plains, like Eastern Colorado. But they were hanging out in the Enchanted Forest in season 3 when everyone came back. And then there's all the Maleficent and Lily stuff, with Lily's father, and where's Philip, and what do they all think about being in town with Mal?

[Mitch]

On 7/5/2017 at 10:34 AM, tennisgurl said:

You know what makes me really sad about this show in retrospect? As the series went on, as the universe got bigger, the scope of the show weirdly seemed to get smaller. In the first season, we saw the town as a real, decent sized town, with lots of characters and people who were a part of the story, even if they were just in the background or in supporting parts. Than as the season went on, we saw the glimpses of a larger multiverse, and the whole "everything fictional is real somewhere" thing that the show increasingly used. That made the universe even bigger, and made it seem like we were watching just one part of a MUCH bigger story, in a much larger universe. We had lots of characters, lots of stories, and lots of worlds to get stories from. Then, as the show went on, and the show became more narrowly focused on creating convoluted backstories for the main characters and focusing on their pet characters (mostly Regina and Rumple), the shows scope started to shrink, rather ironically, considering the universe itself was growing. By the time we got to the Author plot line (one of the shows greatest disappointments to me) we had this huge multiverse built up, with possibly countless worlds and characters to pull from (the show has DISNEY behind it, that's half of the entertainment world at this point!), and yet it just focused on this one small group of people, the shows pets, plus the Charmings, who the writers were basically stuck with, even as they clearly cared less about writing for them. Suddenly, everyone is related to the main characters, or has some big connection with them (Its a small multiverse after all!), all of our main characters have somehow met each other or affected each other without knowing it in the past, and the supporting characters just sort of disappear. We get glimpses of the larger multiverse, with a lot of one off characters and arcs in other worlds, but they just seem so small and without imagination. Like, without Abu and the Genie and the magic carpet, Aladdin is just Epcot Saudi Arabia. And, again, EVERYONE is connected to everyone, making all of these worlds seem tiny, and easy to travel around. Like, Ariel and Jasmine met up one time, and ran into each other AGAIN with Hook! What are the odds?! Plus, as I have said before, the show just lacks creativity when it comes to their awesome premise, focusing on a never ending series of forests to wonder through, instead of getting creative with cool characters and worlds. Like, what if our gang ended up in a sci fi world, where their magic didn't work? Or they actually went out into the real world and had to fight the magic that was totally there the whole time? It just felt like they just got stuck in their magical rut, where everything had to be connected to our main characters, so they couldn't really venture out into other genres like it seemed like they would.

Look at the last episode. This is the implosion of the entire multiverse! This should be utterly huge and epic! Instead, it looks like a dozen people are affected by this in the entire multiverse. I get that its television and there are budget constraints and you cant get all the old characters and sets back without a ton of work, but it was like "oh look! Its people wearing costumes from some other place! Three of them! This big yall!", without any real sense of scale. Its just so weird how when the show was only one town, it felt a million times more epic and magical than the last season, where, while we had strait up magic fights in the streets and characters from all over the multiverse showing up, it felt like a minor skirmish between Rumple and his absentee mother.

Good point! I think the main point was that S1 magic and their universe was still mysterious..it was when they began to explain things that things got really stupid, as they would change whatever rule they came up with..."Magic is different here..."  uh no it isnt????

[Shanna Marie]

One thing that's really striking me in this rewatch is how inconsistent they are with how their world works. In season one, there's no sense whatsoever that "heroes don't kill people." When they're raiding George's castle in the attempt to rescue Charming, Snow throws a knife into a guard's chest, the dwarfs stick their axes into guards' heads. They shoot arrows into people. We see the blood. But then they do a complete about-face later in season two. Snow angsts more about killing Cora -- the woman who murdered her mother and bragged about it, who conned and betrayed her and set off Regina's vengeance spree, who's on the verge of becoming even more powerful -- than she did about all the guards she knifed and shot, when they were probably just grunts drafted into George's army. But I guess they aren't relatives of regular characters, so they don't count.

Then there's magic. Not only do they never really seem to work out that whole "magic comes at a price" thing to show what the price actually is, when it's paid, and who pays it, but they aren't at all consistent about how magic works in our world and whether it's good or bad. In late season one and early season two, they talk about how magic is unpredictable about how it works in our world. That got dropped quickly. Then there was the thing in season two that using magic at all was bad. Belle made Rumple promise not to use magic at all, then flounced when she caught him making a potion without even asking what he was doing. Regina had to go cold turkey on magic, and they treated it like some horrible dilemma when she had to use magic to stop Zombie Daniel, then like a failure when she did use magic there. Henry was violently anti-magic with her, where he treated her using magic, even to save him, as a bad thing. Then quite abruptly that attitude changed and we never heard of it again. He was totally okay with all magic, and even was willing to use the Author power to do things. I did like that Archie addressed it as her never learning any other way of dealing with the world, but then that was also dropped.

I still think they did a far better job of setting up Hook as a character with redemption potential than they did Regina. She didn't do anything I'd count as "good" until maybe "The Doctor" when she lets Daniel go (I don't count her letting Henry go live with David, considering her "good" deed was not holding him prisoner). With Hook, they got a jump on that Justice Equation I've mentioned in the morality thread, where we feel like things are more just when suffering plus good deeds equals or exceeds bad deeds. Hook's a jerk in "The Crocodile," but his suffering in that episode is greater than is earned by his obnoxiousness, and then in the next episode, he may be lying, but he's also being held captive, tied up, and held for ogre bait. We still haven't seen him do anything outright villainous. We know he's working with Cora, and we know he's Captain Hook, so we know he's a villain, but we meet him mostly as an underdog before he starts getting truly nasty. It's like they're frontloading the equation. I also don't recall them announcing in advance that he was meant to be a love interest for Emma. There was no PR telling us that this would be an epic love story. I wonder when they decided that, if it was always planned but they were waiting to see how it played out onscreen and what fan reaction was, or if it was maybe a possibility and once they saw how it worked and what fan reaction was, they went for it. Either way, that seems like a smarter strategy than announcing an epic love story up front or declaring a couple to be soulmates before they share a scene. Let viewers decide for themselves if it's "epic." Meanwhile, is Colin aging in reverse? He looks older in his earliest appearances than he does now. I think it's the beard. Then he had closer to a real beard, and they seemed to have darkened it. Now it's more of a scruff than a beard, and they're letting it stay red so it's lighter and less harsh on his face.

A while back, someone posted about not liking "The Crocodile" in the unpopular opinions thread, and now that I've watched it straight through for possibly the first time since it aired, I might have to agree. I like the flashback story, but the Storybrooke side of it makes little sense and is a bad case of idiot plotting. I mentioned Belle flouncing when she saw Rumple working magic. The whole problem could have been resolved from the start if he'd given her the same explanation then that he did at the end of the episode. Then there's her father not even talking to her before kidnapping her and then ordering her not to associate with Rumple. What about going to her and then talking to her about what happened? If he'd found her, mentioned that Rumple had known where he was the whole time and had been hiding that he was looking for her, then told her what Rumple had been doing during the curse -- being the landlord from hell, beating him almost to death -- she might have been a lot more open to listening. Not that she would have made a smart decision because she kept going back to him even when she knew what he'd done, but maybe if her father had handled things differently from the start, she wouldn't have had reason to jump into defiance and defending Rumple. It's rather horrifying that they juxtapose Rumple murdering his first wife because she said she hadn't loved him with Belle talking about going on a date with Rumple after he gives her a library.

[daxx]

I like the flashbacks in The Crocodile but not the Storybrooke scenes at all. But I'm pretty anti Rumbelle.

I consider it an almost perfect anti hero introduction/backstory, even though it's technically from Rumple's POV.

[Camera One]

I'm curious how Comic-con "teases" pan out, so I decided to read a teaser interview from July 2016.  

Quote

“[Jasmine] is a strong character with an agenda all her own,” co-showrunner Adam Horowitz tells The Hollywood Reporter, but he notes that how the character will be introduced will be a “surprise.” 

It was hardly a surprise.  She was also not a very strong character at all.  Her "agenda" was one-note as hell.  She only wanted to find Aladdin, to save Agrabah... how progressive and strong.

Quote

Horowitz and fellow co-creator Eddy Kitsis could not say if the show's newest Disney characters — Aladdin (Deniz Akdeniz), Jasmine (Karen David) and Jafar (Oded Fehr) — would stick around for the whole season, but they did reveal that they will intertwine into the “Savior mythology.” 

Funny how they "would not say" if they would stick around for the whole season.  These teases made it seem like Aladdin would be integral but it felt shoe-horned in much moreso than previous injections of guest characters.

Quote

Adam: It was always about the right time and when it would fit into the storytelling the way we wanted to.  With the Land of Untold Stories and with Jekyll and Hyde I think you'll see that the Aladdin, Jasmine, Jafar story folds in neatly.

The Untold Stories stuff had very little to do with the Aladdin stuff.

Quote

Adam:  I think with the Aladdin story and how it meshes with the Once Upon a Time story, the same will hold true. We're not going to pull any punches with Jafar in terms of being a really dark and evil character.

Oh yeah, super evil.  Here are some magical shears, Aladdin.  Agrabah in a snowglobe.... ooooooh, evil personified.  

Quote

Interviewer: You do have a lot of other characters coming in, like Monte Cristo and Morpheus. Will there be a laundry list of new faces coming in from the Land of Untold Stories? 

Horowitz: I'd say a lot of it is akin to some of the season one stuff. For example, the Hansel and Gretel story in season one was a one-off episode, but what was really important about it was how Hansel and Gretel's journey affected Emma. That's what we're really focusing on. There'll be some characters where there will be some greater emphasis on them, but there'll be some where we meet them in an individual episode and it's really more about: How does this reflect on Emma? How does this reflect on Snow? How does this reflect on the Evil Queen? 

What is he talking about?  Which Untold Stories character answered the question "How does this reflect on Snow?"  

Quote

Kitsis: I think it's much more like we did in season one and season two where there are mini-arcs throughout the season but longer character arcs. The audience got used to us going to a new land, spending 10 episodes there, defeating the villain and coming home. I think the audience will see that the Hyde-Jekyll, the Land of Untold Stories, doesn't overwhelm the show. The show is back in Storybrooke, and it is fairytale characters in the modern world who need help.

Yeah, Hyde-Jekyll and the Land of Untold Stories doesn't "overwhelm" the show since it's written out four episodes in.

Quote

Interviewer: Did that feel like coming home to you, to go back to basics with the one storyline?
Kitsis: It really is and, as a showrunner, every time the audience starts to figure out the show, you want to change it.

Ah, his "classic" quote.  

Quote

Kitsis: Thematically, we want the Evil Queen to really look inside herself. We've seen her be redeemed, we've seen her realize that she can't just resort to the Evil Queen to get what she wants. This year, we really want to get in her head and wonder: Can you separate the darkness, or is that a part of you?

And look how well that turned out.

Quote

What kind of place are Emma and Hook in now?
 

Kitsis: The last time Emma saw Hook, she kissed him and said, "I love you." She said she wanted to tell him then when they weren't dying, when they weren't running, when there wasn't extreme drama. We see that Emma is starting to try and put her life back together and keep her walls down and move forward. We're going to see those two try to grow.

Didn't her walls go back up immediately in the first episode once she found out she might die?

Edited July 30, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, daxx said:

I like the flashbacks in The Crocodile but not the Storybrooke scenes at all. But I'm pretty anti Rumbelle.

The flashbacks really are beautifully done. It helps that they had the real ship and shot the exteriors (other than the confrontation in the alley, which is clearly bad CGI) on location. It's funny to watch the confrontation on the ship between Hook and Rumple after hearing Colin talk about that being his first moment as Hook, and he's acting opposite Robert Carlyle, who was one of his heroes, so it was all very surreal with the costume and the ship, and all. I'm imagining him being star-struck, but it doesn't show at all, other than perhaps adding to the energy of the scene. I love Milah's pirate outfit, though it does look like they basically used the same pattern as the Warrior Princess Snow outfit, just with different fabrics and colors. I'm intrigued by what little we see of the pirate crew and the way they support both Killian and Milah (they're also a nicely diverse bunch). It makes me want to see more stories about the years with Milah. I guess I'm just fascinated by Milah because I'm intrigued by the idea of a woman so unhappy in her marriage and feeling so constrained that she faked her own death to run away with a pirate so she could see the world.

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

Which Untold Stories character answered the question "How does this reflect on Snow?"

I don't really see how any of the Untold Stories characters reflected on the regulars in the way the season one stories did. I guess there was Liam reflecting Hook's former desire for revenge, and them undoing that, but Liam himself wasn't really an Untold Story. Aladdin was in Storybrooke all along, so he wasn't an Untold Story reflecting on Emma. Monte Cristo was more about Regina. But they gave up so soon on that concept that I guess they didn't get around to it.

Back to my rewatch ... There were a couple of little bits during the Storybrooke side of things that suggest the culture clash and people reverting to their fairytale personas while in Storybrooke, with some shots of signs in windows that suggest people were going back to their old professions. I wonder if those were spelled out in the script or if the set design people did more worldbuilding and put more thought into it than the writers did.

[Camera One]

4 hours ago, Kktjones said:

This just got me thinking about how pathetic the writing is on this show, that they can't even write a simple high school story that makes sense.  I'm talking about "I'll Be Your Mirror".  Violet stands Henry up twice.  And the explanation is that she couldn't figure out if she's a jock or a nerd or a whatever.  Huh?  The actions and the reason don't even fit.  If she's having problems adjusting to school, why didn't she open up to Henry about it?  I know most people are not fans of Henry, but if there were many possibilities they could have explored, from Violet's adjustment to a modern school, to how other other kids see Henry... is he popular?  hated?  ignored?  Though it's not surprising given that idiotic episode they wrote for Snow where she teaches refugees from The Land of Untold Stories about Newton's second law and is aghast they can't solve an equation for x.  Do these Writers even have half a brain between them?

Edited July 31, 2017 by Camera One

[superloislane]

15 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Though it's not surprising given that idiotic episode they wrote for Snow where she teaches refugees from The Land of Untold Stories about Newton's second law and is aghast they can't solve an equation for x.  Do these Writers even have half a brain between them?

Damn that was funny. She had a class full of kids who never had a physics lesson in their entire lives, told them about a law they've never heard of and then gave them a test 10 minutes later and she's shocked they didn't get it! And then she's inspired to use her archery skills to teach them but...she was annoyed they couldn't solve for x and shooting a bow and arrow won't exactly help them solve for x! 

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Violet stands Henry up twice.  And the explanation is that she couldn't figure out if she's a jock or a nerd or a whatever.  Huh?  The actions and the reason don't even fit. 

Plus there's the fact that the writers seem to have forgotten that every kid in that school except Henry is from a fairytale land. Violet who grew up in Camelot should fit in pretty well with kids from the Enchanted Forest. She doesn't have the memory download that lets her understand cell phones and the Internet, but they should still understand her pretty well, and she should have been just fine with the Untold Stories kids. Would they even have nerds, jocks, etc., in a school made up of fairytale kids? Wouldn't it be more like peasants and nobles, or groups from different kingdoms -- the Enchanted Forest faction, George's land's faction, Midas's land's faction, etc.? If anything Henry should be the odd one out, since the kids he started kindergarten with are now in maybe second grade, he's the son of the mayor who cast the curse, the grandson of one of the teachers, and he misses huge amounts of school every few weeks and seems able to skip with impunity. Oh, and in season one, Snow specifically said she was teaching fourth grade, so how is she now teaching physics? Did someone else get her 4th-grade slot while she was realm hopping and on maternity leave, and this was the only teaching slot that was open when she decided to come back?

But really, all that "I'm going to be Snow now" stuff is nonsense. In early season 2, right after the curse broke, she was going by "Snow," and she was fierce and assertive. That "I'm Mary Margaret here" routine and her being meek and wishy washy and later deciding to be Snow again, but then also wanting to go back to how things were is a total retcon. They had to wimpify her to prop Regina up.

It's funny watching the beanstalk climb, knowing that those two crazy kids ended up married to each other. I don't know why they started declaring relationships ahead of time when that one was pretty successful with the audience largely because we weren't sure what would happen. I don't think it would have been half as interesting if we'd already seen some magic spell showing they were destined for each other or if the writers had been doing interviews teasing the epic love story between Emma and Hook. With "Tallahassee," it's like "hmm, there seems to be some chemistry, he's into her, that's some intense eye contact, whoa, he tied the bandage with his teeth, are they going there?" but then she ditches him and he's awful to her in subsequent episodes, and I don't recall being sure that they were setting up a relationship until maybe the kiss in "Good Form," and even then they brought Neal back right after that, so I wasn't sure, after all. They kept us guessing, and they let the relationship speak for itself without any pixie dust or declarations of epic love. The guessing was part of the fun of it. I'm not even sure how much they had planned at that time, since apparently a lot of what came across as the intense chemistry came down to acting choices Colin made that weren't necessarily scripted, like the intense eye contact and tying the bandage with his teeth, which happened because they keep forgetting Hook has only one hand. But just about every episode since then, they've been pretty up front about it either in something onscreen or in interviews offscreen, telling us that it's going to be a great romance before we even see anything. I do think it was a smart move to have Emma betray Hook before he did anything bad to her. I'd have had a hard time pulling for the relationship if he'd done anything to her first, but her screwing him over gave him a slightly positive karma balance before he went into villain mode.

I also don't know how they could watch the scenes between Emma and Snow during the Team Princess adventure and get bored with writing that relationship. And if they were so keen on strong female friendships, what about Snow and Red, or what about the friendship that was developing between Belle and Red? None of those involve cozying up to someone who tried to murder them and never apologized. You know, if they wanted a twist and wanted to go for diverse relationships, they could have had Belle go for Ruby, realizing that she was the real "Beast" for her. We've still got Beauty and the Beast, but in a different way. But all of that was entirely dropped.

I need to start a list of threads that were dropped or forgotten about along the way. There's so much material they never did anything with after setting it up.

[superloislane]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't know why they started declaring relationships ahead of time when that one was pretty successful with the audience largely because we weren't sure what would happen

They were the only relationship on the show that we didn't know was actually going to happen. Snow/Charming would always be together, Belle/the Beast would be together and they declared Robin/Regina soulmates before we even got to see them or see if they had chemistry (which was a HUGE mistake) but Emma and Hook, as even Hook said, were never predestined. I don't know if I'd have liked it if the writers kept saying they were going to be a big love story and we're all going to love them, especially since he was a villain fighting against her at the start. The exciting part came about because you could slowly see the characters fall for each other and be attracted to each other and their chemistry was off the charts. It might sound corny but, I think that adds a little mystery for the audience and it makes the audience feel like they're the only ones who can see this happening since it was never declared, so it's exciting to watch.

Knowing a couple are supposed to end up together can definitely work and I've seen it work but, I think they have to already be a known property. Lois and Clark from Smallville were going to end up together but you just didn't know how, in Gotham you know Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle will have a romantic relationship, or any relationship on any of those prequel shows. You know Barry and Iris will be together on the Flash and so on. But those have years of history behind them already so a relationship like original character Henry and Cinderella 2.0 can't really be declared (especially since we have already seen Cinderella 1.0 end up with her traditional prince!).

[KingOfHearts]

Rewatching portions of 4A. There is a ridiculous amount of talking head scenes, mostly involving Ingrid. It's usually just her standing around making vague threats. The arc really drags midway through to the end, then 4x11 just goes nuts with its crazy pacing.

Edited August 2, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Ugh, I've hit the 2B wall. There's some good stuff in 2A, although some of it was later retconned, like the whole episode about Red finding her pack, choosing Snow over them, and killing her own mother to save Snow, which probably would have booted her from the pack. All totally forgotten for the "I need to find my pack because I don't fit here" excuse later. I loved the friendship between Snow and Red, and it's a pity they just forgot about it entirely, mostly to push the friendship with Regina. I'm also not crazy about what they later did with Mulan. It was pretty clear that she was in love with Philip -- given that she hadn't met Aurora yet and even Aurora picked up on it. She was intense about protecting Aurora because Philip asked her to. It was a major act of honor for her to devote herself to protecting someone who was essentially her romantic rival due to her love for the man who loved the rival. I feel like it weakened her story when they later made it text that she was in love with Aurora and had her contemplating telling Aurora. That was less honorable, if she was protective of Aurora out of her own interests and if she'd consider moving in on her friend's love. It's noble of her to put her own feelings aside out of her love for Philip and to do what he wanted. It's less noble for her to fall in love with Aurora and start to approach her to tell her she loves her.

"Into the Deep" is an underrated episode. I never see it mentioned in lists of favorites, but it may be one of the best episodes of the series. It's really well structured and well paced, possibly because it's all happening in the present, with no flashbacks. The two sides of the story are well integrated. It's a nice trick for really amping up the stakes when David goes into the sleeping curse so he can communicate with Snow, and it becomes not just that Snow and Emma have to get back because they want to get back, but also because it's the only way to save David (well, unless Henry could have TLKed him, but that never comes up). Meanwhile, there's Hook bouncing back and forth between teams and coming across so sincere, no matter who he's talking to, that even though I'd seen it before and knew what would happen, I found myself believing him -- possibly because he was actually telling the truth the whole time, just leaving things out. The one downside of the episode is the weird time/distance stuff -- that "far journey" that they can get to and back before sunset in the same day.

The conclusion of the arc follows on from that and is strong -- up to a point. There's a spot near the end of "Queen of Hearts" in which you can tell that something changes in the tone. It's when they give Regina full credit for being a hero for backtracking on doing something evil, even though the only reason she pulled back was that Henry caught her and tearfully begged her. She'd have gone through with it if he hadn't caught her. And that's when it pivots to the "hero" and "victim" narrative. Did they have a meeting while they were working on that episode? Did Lana come up with incriminating photos? It's just bizarre that Emma flips entirely from "It's all Regina's fault" for the curse to "we have to give her a chance." There's a big difference between giving someone a chance and inviting someone to a party with all the people she's been tormenting for decades. As Snow pointed out, she just tried to kill them that day, and right before Snow and Emma were sent away, she'd tried to kill Emma and tried to frame Snow for murder. It should take a lot more than her stopping trying to kill them after being caught in the act for her to be invited to be part of the social circle. It's like Emma got a lobotomy somewhere along the way. I couldn't even make myself watch all of "The Cricket Game."

I'm kind of dreading the rest of this season. I may have to start using the FF button more. It's just bizarre that there was such a steep decline in quality and such a tonal about-face. They literally went directly from "villain" to "hero" with little space in between, and then back to "villain" and then back to "hero."