A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[KAOS Agent]

I think one of the more disappointing aspects of Season 3 for me was the poor use/complete lack of world building. In a fantasy story oftentimes the land/environment is almost a character all on its own. In 3A, they had Neverland and used it fairly effectively. The constant night, the endless jungle with deadly plants, the cries of children, the strange magic. All of it gave off a creepy vibe and I could see how the dark atmosphere could be eating away at the Nevengers. It was a positive step for the writers that they put  this new fairytale land to good use as a challenge for everyone.

 

In 3B, we returned to Storybrooke which was most welcome and fine, but at some point in time, Storybrooke lost its uniqueness. In some ways, I think the renewed curse having lost its previously existing rules erased what made Storybrooke an interesting place. Suddenly, there were new people but they didn't have fake memories and the town line issue didn't seem to be a problem except for flying monkeys (and I fail to see why they couldn't all climb in a bus or something and bust through those monkeys). They chose not to explain what the hell was up with the new rules for Storybrooke. Did Robin and his Merry Men get a World without Magic download? Can outsiders still find the town? Why is there magic in town when there wasn't with the first curse? Now that Zelena's gone can everyone get the hell of Dodge? I don't know any of this and it's a failing on the part of the writers that this is still unknown because yes, Storybrooke is a "character" and it got no development at all.

 

Also in 3B, we went to Oz and I am so highly disappointed in the waste of what could have been a really interesting place. Zelena may as well have been any old witch from any realm because other than making her green and really stretching on the whole heart, brain & courage thing, they did nothing to make her represent Oz. Glinda was an idiot, Dorothy may as well have not been there, there was zero explanation on why Zelena's father was so wary of magic in world run by "good" witches and they killed off the Wizard in the first episode. Oz never became the developed world that it should have been, it was just a land with a green city. What a waste of a potentially great new "character".

 

And lastly, we have the Enchanted Forest. You know the previously desolate, completely destroyed world that was overrun with ogres. Our intrepid heroes ought to have had all kinds of challenges rebuilding and organizing things upon their return to this world. What did we get instead? Nothing. The ogres were gone, apparently everyone can live in the Queen's castle and an entire society was able to reform with no difficulty. It's ridiculous and yet another handwave of the negative effects of the original Dark Curse. You'd think the writers could have made at least one of these places interesting in 3B. I guess it's just more "characters" that got screwed over by the writers' obvious character bias. 

Edited June 20, 2014 by KAOS Agent

[KingOfHearts]

Oz has so much lore from the original thirteen books that could have worked so well in the Once universe. Even the Wizard of Oz MGM movie had more Ozian detail than what was shown on the show. There were four witches in the books, all with different personalities and backstories. On the show we have two extras, Blue Fairy 2.0 and Zelena. Dorothy was accurate, but was written blandly. I thought for sure she'd have a bigger role in things, turn up in the Land Without Magic, or be revealed to be one of the main cast. Oh, and Dr. Whale should have totally been the Wizard of Oz.

 

This was my original theory: Emma was Dorothy as a kid in the foster system. She was living with foster parents in Kansas. After her adventure in Oz, no one believed her. She ended up surmising it was only a dream, and forgot about it growing up. Oz was untouched by the Cora-Dome, and Zelena's pendant gave her agelessness. Once Zelena comes to Storybrooke, Emma begins to have flashbacks. In these flashbacks, she finds out how she can defeat Zelena.

Edited June 20, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[stealinghome]

I may change my impression as I rewatch more of it, but my recollection of season one was that when it was good, it was amazing, but when it was bad, it was truly awful.

No more awful than the Pied Piper episode or 'Quiet Minds' or 'Selfless, Brave, and True' or 'The Evil Queen,' though. I'd still take 'Dreamy' over any of those episodes any day. And I maintain that even S1's worst episodes are still on par with a lot of S2...gratefully S3 didn't have nearly as many clunkers as S2.

 

I think the thing with S1 is that the first 7/8 and last 8 episodes are excellent (mostly), but 1x09-1x14 are such a drag*, mostly on the Storybrooke side of things. It's funny to look back, but I really think that in some respects S1 had the opposite problem the show has had since...the writers didn't have enough plot to fill the Storybrooke side (and didn't bother to get creative), so you had Mary Margaret and David running around saying "we will be together...we will be together" like robots while Emma temporarily became the Truest Stupid. But if you just skip that middle chunk of episodes, the first 8 and last 8 make a great TV season. Whereas neither S2 nor S3 really had any comparable sustained run of really good episodes.

 

*I still really like 'Skin Deep,' and '7:15 AM' is okay, but they're surrounded by some truly bad episodes.

 

S1 had a giant story arc covering the whole thing. S2 was the complete opposite - it remained totally random throughout its run.

ICAM.

 

And lastly, we have the Enchanted Forest. You know the previously desolate, completely destroyed world that was overrun with ogres. Our intrepid heroes ought to have had all kinds of challenges rebuilding and organizing things upon their return to this world. What did we get instead? Nothing. The ogres were gone, apparently everyone can live in the Queen's castle and an entire society was able to reform with no difficulty. It's ridiculous and yet another handwave of the negative effects of the original Dark Curse.

Yeah, I think the huge missed opportunity of the Missing Year may actually be my biggest disappointment in S3. As noted above, one of the things that weakened the S2/S3 fairybacks is that they weren't conceived around one overarching story, they just became "whatever the writers want to talk about this week." 3B provided a GREAT opportunity to get back to that mode of storytelling--to conceive of the fairybacks as a single, unfolding story. That they didn't do that is just so disappointing. (And I will never, ever get over the fact that we had to have three--THREE!--f'ing flashbacks about Zelena. jfc, writers! She's a ten episode character!!!) Honestly, the only decent things about the 3B flashbacks is Snow and Charming saying goodbye in 3x19, and Snowing snarking at Regina. The rest is very forgettable.

Edited June 20, 2014 by stealinghome

[KingOfHearts]

A large part of what makes Once popular is the candy factor - the dragon, the Wicked Witch, Snow White and Prince Charming, CGI, New York, etc. It's all like candy to viewers. It's everything you've ever wanted to see growing up, all mashed up into one epic. I do enjoy scenery chewing, but I also love the deep relationship dynamics the characters have. You can have candy, but you need some veggies too!

 

Casual viewers will happily gloss over the plot holes if there's enough Disneyfication on screen. Regina is a prime example. People love watching her as the Evil Queen because she's a big-time Disney villain, but they don't care how she got that way or why she hasn't changed. Outlaw Queen is definitely a Disney-style romance, so it gets all the fawning over as well.

 

Frozen is going to be an entire factory of sweets.

Edited June 20, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

In Season 3, significant conversations between the characters were still seriously lacking.

There may not have been as many as we would have liked, but there were more than in season 2, and I think in 3B there were more than in 3A, other than the Cave of Plot Contrivance. So maybe they're getting better. I mean, Emma actually exchanged words with those people she was struggling to accept were her parents. Should there have been more? Definitely, but they do seem to have backed off from the "no kitchen sink conversations" thing, considering Mary Margaret and Regina actually had a talk in the kitchen while washing dishes.

 

Even though the flashbacks had to do with the ongoing arc, a lot of them were plot plot plot (especially 3B since we were finding out what happened in the lost year), heavy on Regina and/or Zelena and/or repetitive of what we've seen before (Pied Piper with Rumple and Bae; more Regina hunting Snow with Ariel).  So a lot of them were just not very emotionally satisfying to me.

I'm actually okay with flashbacks being plot plot plot because otherwise they're doing backstory=characterization, which doesn't work. I think the best flashbacks serve multiple purposes -- they're part of an independent story taking place in the past, they provide set-up for the present story, and they reveal character. When it just reveals character and removing the flashback from the episode wouldn't change the story or the way we perceive it at all, then it's just a lazy way of presenting characterization. Save the character stuff for the present, where it has the potential to change things. The past has already happened, so there it's the events that matter.

 

Really, they'd do best if when they're plotting the present-day story they'd also plot the past story and use that for the flashbacks, so that the flashbacks are telling a story, too. They actually kind of did that with Zelena, though the problem there was that she didn't really interact with our regular characters, which meant they were spending their flashbacks on a temporary character. Maybe we should have seen more of her interacting with the Enchanted Forest gang during the missing year. When you look at it, the memory spell didn't actually change anything, and getting their memories back didn't really help. They should have given them more to have forgotten and actually told a story there instead of just having Zelena show up to cackle at them a couple of times. We should have really felt the sense of threat and the ticking clock that built up to the decision to cast the curse again.

 

I think the thing with S1 is that the first 7/8 and last 8 episodes are excellent (mostly), but 1x09-1x14 are such a drag*, mostly on the Storybrooke side of things.

Maybe they should have cut out the S1 filler and broken the curse before the end of the season, then spent the rest of the season re-establishing the situation without the curse and dealing with the aftermath, and then they could have gone into season 2 with more of a foundation. I'm about to get to the dragging parts in my rewatch, so we'll see how I feel. I enjoy watching "Still, Small Voice" because Raphael Sbarge is so wonderful in it, but, really, it's a pointless episode. The flashbacks don't really lend anything to the present story, and they don't actually discover anything in the present. The only meaningful things are Emma accepting the deputy job and Regina forcing Archie to gaslight Henry, which they've since pretended didn't happen.

[stealinghome]

Maybe they should have cut out the S1 filler and broken the curse before the end of the season, then spent the rest of the season re-establishing the situation without the curse and dealing with the aftermath, and then they could have gone into season 2 with more of a foundation.

Adam and Eddie said at some point that when they initially conceptualized the show, they imagined Emma breaking the curse at about the two-thirds mark of the first season. I've always thought that's why the middle third drags--because they realized that putting the cursebreak at the end was better (imo, it was, I think Emma breaking the curse around episode 16 would've been too soon), but they were lazy and didn't bother to really come up with a plot for the intervening episodes.

[Camera One]

Save the character stuff for the present, where it has the potential to change things. The past has already happened, so there it's the events that matter.

 

Events in the past, or even moments in the past can change one's whole perspective and one's life path, and there-in lies the potential magic of flashbacks when they are well done, when the past informs the present and vice-versa.  

 

 

 

When it just reveals character and removing the flashback from the episode wouldn't change the story or the way we perceive it at all, then it's just a lazy way of presenting characterization.

 

For viewers who are looking for an in-depth character study, that is definitely not true.  Without those sorts of episodes, the show would have lost me as a viewer.  While I understand that different viewers watch for different things, it was the balance in S1 which attracted those who focus on the present plot, and those who want a weaving of plot and character even when the former is sacrificed for the latter once in a while (since it's so often the other way around).

Edited June 20, 2014 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

At least in Season 1, some of the filler episodes delivered Emma giving happy endings to still cursed characters. Hansel & Gretel were reunited with their father, Cinderella got back with her boyfriend and kept her baby, etc. The overarching plot was what kept me really interested, but the happy endings being found in a Land without Magic was really nice to see. They were also able to use these as character moments for Emma back when she actually got reasonably paced development. That was also back when Emma was still the Saviour and the heroes were allowed the occasional win. I think part of what worked with this dynamic is that while Regina was winning on the big issues, Emma was slowly eating away at the edges of the curse, acting as the Saviour without even knowing it.

 

In Season 3, the "heroes" had exactly one win in 22 episodes. Emma captured the shadow that allowed them to leave Neverland. That's it. That's a glaring issue with the last season. This was made even more obvious when Hook tells Emma she defeated Pan (no, that was Rumpel) and she defeated the Wicked Witch (no, that was Regina) and she broke the curse (she broke the first one, but again this time around that was Regina). Do the writers even recognize how ridiculous it was to have Hook say that?  What did Emma or any of the heroes do in 3B? Emma may as well have stayed in NYC. Catering to the redemption arcs of their villains has sidelined the heroes to an extent where I wonder why they even bother to have them on screen. My plea to them for next season is to please, please, please let the heroes actually contribute. Maybe they could have a villain who is difficult to defeat, but everyone (and this includes Regina & Rumpel) makes a solid plan and they spend the next several episodes putting it into action. Everyone contributes, everyone wins. And please never again remove the powers of one character, so that you can raise another character above everyone else. It's not cool and it's extremely cheap storytelling.

[YaddaYadda]

KAOS Agent, your post above is exactly why they need to take the magic away from Rumple and Regina.  Otherwise, they will always magic their way out of trouble/problems and whatever else.

[KingOfHearts]

Even when Rumple and Regina save the day, they hadn't actually got any crap done before their hero moment. Rumple didn't help anyone in Neverland until his contrived shadow-gives-dagger moment at the end in Going Home. Regina didn't do anything in 3B until Zelena's contrived light magic weakness was revealed and Henry cheered her on in Kansas. Rumple/Regina only won at the last moment because of contrivances and conveniences. 

 

Only Rumple and Regina could have gone to Neverland and won. Snow, Charming, Emma and Hook weren't even necessary to saving Henry. In fact, they slowed things down by opening the doors to drama. If Regina and Rumple can just use overpowered magic with an arsenal of location, teleportation, killing and morphing spells, why were the Nevengers even necessary?
 

Witch Hunt brought some criminal investigation back to the table that harkened back to S1, which I loved. Seeing Team Hero work as a team to find Zelena was great, but none of the investigation actually helped at all. They didn't uncover Zelena until Rumple told them plainly who she was. Then when Emma was supposedly the one to save them all, she isn't - it's Regina. I'm still at a lost why Emma even feels the need to be in Storybrooke. It seems everyone (minus Hook) is getting along just fine without her.

 

It's either there's a pay-off without a strong arc or a strong arc with no-payoff. Outlaw Queen had an entire half-season, only to be bulldozed in the finale. Emma decides Storybrooke is her home in the finale, but with little to no build-up.

 

 

Adam and Eddie said at some point that when they initially conceptualized the show, they imagined Emma breaking the curse at about the two-thirds mark of the first season.

 

I'd like to see what the season finale would have been about to top that. What's more shocking or concluding than breaking the curse?

Edited June 20, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Even when Rumple and Regina save the day, they hadn't actually got any crap done before their hero moment. Rumple didn't help anyone in Neverland until his contrived shadow-gives-dagger moment at the end in Going Home. Regina didn't do anything in 3B until Zelena's contrived light magic weakness was revealed and Henry cheered her on in Kansas. Rumple/Regina only won at the last moment because of contrivances and conveniences.

 

There is never any build-up or real planning until the last moment.  The "good guys" hardly ever show a flash of intelligence, and even when that happens, it ends up being pointless, which makes it hard to cheer, which is what you want to do in an epic hero vs. villain (though in this show, it's tainted hero vs. poor misguided villain with a sob story).  

 

And then funny enough, half the stuff the villains do are useless as well.  Zelena could have accomplished everything she wanted so much more easily.  Why not just kidnap Regina the very day everyone returned to Storybrooke and pull out her heart then and then she could have gloated from then on out?  Why not just kill Emma in New York, or have Walsh hold her captive, or put some other spell on her?  Or alternatively, arrange a little accident for Hook before he gave the potion to Emma?  Why bother becoming friends with Snow White?  Since she didn't even care when Rumple revealed her identity.  She could have just magicked herself to the birthing room without the heat of people looking for her.  Since Glinda was a prisoner, who put in the door that could only be crossed by someone pure of heart?  Zelena?  

Edited June 20, 2014 by Camera One

[kili]

Only Rumple and Regina could have gone to Neverland and won. Snow, Charming, Emma and Hook weren't even necessary to saving Henry. In fact, they slowed things down by opening the doors to drama. If Regina and Rumple can just use overpowered magic with an arsenal of location, teleportation, killing and morphing spells, why were the Nevengers even necessary?

 

Hook was necessary because he provided transportation to and from Neverland. Hook also provided the intel required to free Neal (Pan's information and how to get the Echo Cave to work). Neal provided information about the Shadow and Emma captured the Shadow so that they could come home. Emma also got the Lost Boy's to crack. Tink wasn't needed in Neverland (she was already there), but she did prove critical for killing the Shadow and taking him out of the equation. They may not have dealt the death blow to Pan, but they at least did something that proved there was some value in team work.

 

Unlike in Season 3B.

 

Then when Emma was supposedly the one to save them all, she isn't - it's Regina.

 

That barn scene was ridiculous. There were three jobs to be done there. Hit Zelena with white magic, get the neckace and get the dagger. Couldn't they throw one of the other character's a bone so that they weren't completely extraneous to that scene? Must Regina have done everything? She even threw in a bonus "Hero" lecture.

 

I'm still at a lost why Emma even feels the need to be in Storybrooke. It seems everyone (minus Hook) is getting along just fine without her.

 

She was needed there so she could bring back Henry so Regina could be rewarded for saving the day.

 

Meanwhile, Charming must be a little bummed that he sacrificed his heart for nothing. He should have just been a better wingman in the Enchanted Forrest and helped Robin make it with Regina so she could get her white magic on. One trip to Storybrooke no longer necessary.

[Shanna Marie]

They may not have dealt the death blow to Pan, but they at least did something that proved there was some value in team work.

Yeah, I'm not sure they'd have made it out of Neverland if they hadn't all been there, and the things Emma did (catching the Shadow, winning over most of the Lost Boys) would have effectively stripped Pan of much of his power and stranded him in Neverland for good if he hadn't managed to catch a ride by swapping places with Henry. Rumple only had to deal the death blow because that crew of idiots didn't think to keep an eye on the kid Pan had been desperately trying to steal and actually left him alone before they were safely home (that still amazes me: two birth parents, one adoptive parent, three grandparents and one sort of quasi step-grandparent, three of them fairly powerful magic users, the rest fairly formidable fighters, and they left the kid unguarded enough for the enemy to get to him).

 

As for Hook giving Emma all the credit, I guess he's still at the stage of besotted where he's like "You mean there were people other than Emma there?"

 

On the character vs. plot of the flashbacks, I think flashbacks need to tell us more than some character detail that doesn't matter much now (which is what happened in a lot of the "filler" episodes). One of the better "character" flashbacks may have been "Good Form." There doesn't seem to be a real big-picture plot arc to Hook's backstory (unless they decide to develop one later), so it was more character-driven, but take it away from the episode and the plot doesn't make as much sense, or else there'd have had to be a lot of talking about the nature of dreamshade and how Hook learned about it. Without the flashback, the current situation would have been far less emotional. And then there's the way the character turning points mirror each other. In the past, we're seeing how a good man started to become a pirate. In the present, we're seeing a pirate in the process of becoming a good man. I'm also not sure how well Hook's redemption would have worked if we hadn't seen where he went wrong, that he wasn't always a pirate, that he did have that core of goodness in him. He's not having to find something that never existed.

 

I actually think the fairybacks in the Cinderella episode were very plotty because they were a big part of the arc: how Rumple came to be Snow and Charming's prisoner so that he was where he was when they and Regina consulted him about the curse. That also set up the prison cell that was used in season two. In the present, the situation told us a lot about Emma and was a big part of her growth in accepting the idea that she was really a mother, plus it established her relationship with Gold and set up the favor that came into play in season 2. An important part of the story is missing if you skip this episode.

[Camera One]

One of the better "character" flashbacks may have been "Good Form." There doesn't seem to be a real big-picture plot arc to Hook's backstory (unless they decide to develop one later), so it was more character-driven

 

That one is easy to explain.  "Good Form" was Hook's first actual flashback which was devoted to his pre-villain self.  A villain's first flashback revealing their distant past tends to be the easiest to write and the best one, since it shows the reason behind their transformation.

 

I actually think the fairybacks in the Cinderella episode were very plotty because they were a big part of the arc: how Rumple came to be Snow and Charming's prisoner so that he was where he was when they and Regina consulted him about the curse.

 

It was very plotty and thus that was the first truly disappointing episode of this entire series for me.  The present-day stuff was much better than the flashback for that very reason.  I was also irked that they used Cinderella as a prop for Rumple and basically ruined that fairy tale's potential right from the start.  It didn't help that the actors chosen for Cinderella and the Prince were a little wooden.  The episode also ended with Emma doing something stupid (from the perspective of the viewer who saw the flashbacks) - making a deal with Mr. Gold.  

[stealinghome]

I remember being meh on the Cinderella episode simply because Cinderella wasn't the greatest actress and her prince was TERRIBLE, like actually a block of wood terrible. So that episode might've gone better for me with better casting. I also think airing it back to back with That Still Small Voice was a mistake. The pilot, second episode, and Snow Falls had built up some great momentum, but it's hard to sustain that when you shift away from the main characters for two episodes (though I suppose at that time Archie was a "main" character, as he was still a regular).

That said, I've always wanted them to recycle the clothing Snow and Charming wore for Ashley's wedding, since both outfits were GORGEOUS.

[Shanna Marie]

I found myself liking "The Price of Gold" more this time around, in spite of the terrible acting from the guests and the barely-used Cinderella concept, mostly because we got to see Charming being all take-charge, tough and strategic in the past (imagine, a good guy getting to be tough and even kind of ruthless in order to neutralize a villain!) and because in the present Emma was so wonderful, both tough and vulnerable, with her no-nonsense compassion for Ashley and her willingness to stand up to Gold. It helps knowing that the "favor" she owed him turned out not to be that big a deal for her.

 

Though they mentioned Ashely's stepsisters being in Storybrooke. I wonder how that fits with Anastasia being in Wonderland. Did she get yanked to Storybrooke by the curse, like Will and Jefferson, and then popped back to Wonderland when everyone else was sent home, and then the whole Wonderland spinoff present-day story happened after that, or was someone else unrelated stuck in the stepsister role in Storybrooke?

[Camera One]

Spoilers for "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland" below:

 

 

 

Though they mentioned Ashely's stepsisters being in Storybrooke. I wonder how that fits with Anastasia being in Wonderland. Did she get yanked to Storybrooke by the curse, like Will and Jefferson, and then popped back to Wonderland when everyone else was sent home, and then the whole Wonderland spinoff present-day story happened after that, or was someone else unrelated stuck in the stepsister role in Storybrooke?

 

Anastasia was already in Wonderland (and already the Red Queen) when Regina enacted the Curse (since Anastasia as the Red Queen interacted with Cora, and before enacting the Curse, Regina got Hook to remove the heart of Cora and bring her back from Wonderland).  This means Will had returned to the Enchanted Forest by that point, so he got carried along with the rest of the Enchanted Forest inhabitants with the Curse.  Anastasia stayed in Wonderland, where only Jefferson was taken because Regina specifically wanted to punish him.  

Edited June 21, 2014 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Wasn't the only mention of Cinderella's stepsisters in Storybrooke "she has two stepsisters she doesn't talk to"? Perhaps, with the fake memories, they thought Anastasia lived in another city.

 

In regard to Regina/Rumple being OP and the heroes being next to useless, I noticed they never really struck a blow to Pan in Neverland. Pan was always on the winning side until the contrived Tree of Regret let Regina win. I know Emma convinced the lost boys, but if it weren't for Regina and the tree it wouldn't have helped at all. The only reason Regina even won against Pan was because Pan was in shock by her ability to escape the tree, so it took him by surprise. He couldn't run. The heroes might assist Regina/Rumple, but they almost never win against the villain themselves in S3. They don't pull a punch at the enemy, they just push Regina/Rumple a little further toward their contrived victory.

 

I don't think Charming or Snow were needed in Neverland at all. Hook was the transportation, Regina was the brute force, Rumple was the brain, and Emma was the leader. Snow and Charming really did nothing but argue over the dreamshade poisoning. They've always been drama magnets, really. S1 was full of Snowing drama, then Snow being framed, being apart in S2, Cora murder guilt, having a baby that Zelena wanted, being fooled by Zelena, etc. I predict the "splitting heart" thing will add some drama in S4 as well.

Edited June 21, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Serena]

Lord, I had forgotten that Regina won in Neverland by being so psychotically without regrets that even Psychopath #1 Peter Pan was shocked. 

[Camera One]

I don't think Charming or Snow were needed in Neverland at all. Hook was the transportation, Regina was the brute force, Rumple was the brain, and Emma was the leader. Snow and Charming really did nothing but argue over the dreamshade poisoning.

 

I agree.  Beyond the first two episodes, they were used as the C plot, while Charming was used as a prop to rehabilitate Hook.  So in the grand scheme, they were useless.

 

I suppose Adam and Eddy could argue that:

- Without Snow talking to Emma at the end of "Lost Girl". Emma may not have admitted that she was a lost girl and the map wouldn't have shown itself.  But Tinkerbelle could have led them to Pan's camp anyway, so...

- They needed Charming and Snow's "confessions" to build the bridge to Neal, who was needed to tell them about Dark Hollow?  Though Peter Pan pretty much wanted the intrepid heroes to go the Echo Cave so...

 

I think that was it.  

Edited June 21, 2014 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Well, it's not that they didn't do anything, but from a logical perspective they weren't absolutely necessary. There could have been a million other alternate ways Neverland could have played out. Adam and Eddie gave them small things to do, like Lost Girl pep talks, but they only wanted them in Neverland to keep the main cast together. They weren't integral to the plot at all.

 

The dreamshade plot was really dumb, in my opinion. It was just for angst. It was solved with ease because of another contrivance involving "redeemed" villains. (AKA Rumple with his heal-all dreamshade elixir.) Now if Charming actually died from it or stayed on the island with Snow, it would have held more weight. But since we can't lose main cast favorites, that was off the table.

Edited June 21, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

The thing is--all the the big climactic moments with swelling background music and lots of spectators--went to Rumple and Regina in Season 3. It's not that the rest of them didn't do anything (at least in 3A they did), but they were all downplayed when compared with the victorious moments of Rumple and Regina. 

[Serena]

I think the problem with the dreamshade plot is that it was resolved without any sacrifice or consequences involved. Like, of course they weren't gonna kill Charming, clearly they were gonna find a way to cure him - but it should have left some negative consequence.

[Dani-Ellie]

I still think the biggest missed opportunity in the whole dreamshade business was not having Emma cure her father from the poison with her magic. Like, no lie, I was 100% convinced that was going to be the solution. But that would have required 1) Emma and Charming to share more than two minutes of quality screentime, and 2) Charming family bonding, and apparently we couldn't have that.

 

Even better would have been if she'd just done it without even trying to.

Edited June 21, 2014 by Dani-Ellie

[kili]

In regard to Regina/Rumple being OP and the heroes being next to useless, I noticed they never really struck a blow to Pan in Neverland. Pan was always on the winning side until the contrived Tree of Regret let Regina win.

 

Not everything went Pan's way. Neal did squid ink him and if he had not gone on to be a complete dumba$$, Henry would have been freed. Neal was not part of the plan.

 

Pan was twice thwarted by Hook who refused to play into his head games (which must have vexed Pan at least a little). Hook declined to kill Charming, saving him instead. He also declined to hide Neal's presence, which Pan no doubt was planning on cheerfully announcing to the group once Neal was dead. In a land where believing is so important, having the heros doubting themselves and each other was important. If Hook had killed Charming or left Neal to die, Pan would have powerful demoralizing messages he could deliver to the heros which probably would have prevented Emma from capturing the shadow and trusting Hook to take them back on the Jolly Roger (and if Neal was dead, how do they get home)? Pan gave Emma the useless map because it got her to focus on feeling hopeless and lost. He worked on Henry to feel deserted. Pan's whole modus of operandi was to break people down and then get them to buy into him being the mesiah (like most present day cults). Hook worked to prevent that from happening.

 

But Tinkerbelle could have led them to Pan's camp anyway, so...

 

Tinkerbell was completely useles in Neverland.  Despite living there for over 30 years, she had nothing to offer other than access to the camp, but Neal already knew how to find it (and quickly did find it during his squid ink play). How he didn't know where the Thinking Tree (aka Tree of No Regrets) was, I'll never know.

 

- They needed Charming and Snow's "confessions" to build the bridge to Neal, who was needed to tell them about Dark Hollow?  Though Peter Pan pretty much wanted the intrepid heroes to go the Echo Cave so...

 

I got the impression that the bridge in the Echo Cave was sized to fit the group that was there. If you had 10 guys in the Echo Cave, each truth would get you 1/10th of the bridge. If you had two people, two truths would be enough. Otherwise, if they had successfully gone searching for Neal without Emma, they wouldn't have enough truths to build the bridge.  I think the purpose of the Echo Cave was, like many things that Pan created on Neverland, to demoralize and sow dissension amongst the group. There are reasons why things are your deepest secrets. Hook's secret would typically have caused Emma to run for the hills and Charming to punch him. Snow's secret could leave Emma feeling unwanted and Charming feeling hopeless since he cannot leave Neverland (and how are you supposed to have a kid in Neverland if nobody ever ages)? Charming's secret did cause issues with Snow because now she was mad about his secret. Emma's secret made her and Hook feel bad (and led to the fight over the lighter that almost got them killed).  I suspect that some of the men Hook lost in the Echo Cave were killed due to the group fighting.

 

Snow and Charming were kind of useless in Neverland, but I'm okay with that. If you end up having the perfect set of people going to Neverland, it seems contrived.  Maybe during the next adventure their skills will be necessary.

 

ETA

I still think the biggest missed opportunity in the whole dreamshade business was not having Emma cure her father from the poison with her magic. Even better would have been if she'd just done it without even trying to.

 

But then that makes Snow's "murdering" of Cora even worse because if Emma can cure Dreamshade poisoning without even trying, why could she or Rumple do it for Rumple?

 

I think that Dreamshade should simply have ceased to work once the three key components of Neverland were gone. Keep that Charming can survive in Storybrooke as long as he has Neverland water. Then when they all get yanked to the Enchanted Forrest, you can have some C plot where everybody fears Charming is going to die (because he runs out of water or the water doesn't make the trip). When he doesn't, Regina (since she always saves the day) can realize it is because Tink killed the Shadow, Rumple killed Pan and the hourglass ran out. Once Neverland ceased to exist, Dreamshade lost its power. Then we don't need the deux ex machina potion Rumple cooked up.

Edited June 21, 2014 by kili

[Shanna Marie]

But then that makes Snow's "murdering" of Cora even worse because if Emma can cure Dreamshade poisoning without even trying, why could she or Rumple do it for Rumple?

Because Emma's magic is powered by love, and she loves her father but has zero reason to love Rumple. A big surge of love with the emotion of "don't die on me, Dad" might have done the trick. She's also further along in magic than she was when Rumple was poisoned. Rumple doesn't have love magic and was the one dying, so he wouldn't have been able to save himself.

 

Though I think the way things were written, even magic can't cure dreamshade (except when it can, I guess, since Rumple did come up with a cure). We've seen that Rumple can heal injuries, but apparently the entire reason Hook went back to Neverland was to get dreamshade, since it was the one thing he could use on Rumple that Rumple wouldn't be able to just cure himself of with a wave of his hand.

 

But, yeah, that huge dilemma was handwaved away. I guess there was some difficulty in that they were forced to save Rumple from Pan before they could leave so that he could cure David, but the ease with which it was cured makes you feel bad for poor Liam. If only they'd known ... (Then again, he was warned, and he was an idiot about it. Gee, no wonder Killian's so fond of Neal. He must have really reminded him of his brother. And I wonder if Neal's death gave him flashbacks.)

[Dani-Ellie]

Because Emma's magic is powered by love, and she loves her father but has zero reason to love Rumple. A big surge of love with the emotion of "don't die on me, Dad" might have done the trick.

 

Exactly. My thinking was that it was going to be one of her "makes it work in the clutch" things. There was precedent for it; she jumpstarted Regina's magic way back in "Broken" without meaning to. If not, it could have at least been a panicked "I've got to be able to do something because I can't lose him" kind of thing.

[Souris]

I'm curious. How many seasons do you think TPTB expect the show to last? How many seasons do YOU expect it to last?

 

I think five would be about right. Which probably means it'll go seven!

 

Though, I cannot imagine that Robert Carlyle would want to stick with the show that many seasons. This is based on nothing whatsoever except a hunch.

[Camera One]

That's a tough question.  On the one hand, this show doesn't seem to be working towards anything concrete, so in that sense, it could actually last many seasons if just does a different villain every half season.  Of course, that could become tiresome fast, especially since they can only do "This villain is actually ______'s half brother twice removed" so many times.

 

Another way to think about it is, what would the show want to accomplish by the end?  I'm assuming:

- based on what they've done so far, an attempted full redemption of Regina

- Rumple no longer being the Dark One with a ton of angst and maybe the ultimate sacrifice

 

That's about it.  So technically, they could wrap that up in one season if they wanted to.

 

Even though I was disappointed with S3, I still really like these characters, I wouldn't mind 7 seasons.  Since each season only provides about 5 minutes' worth of emotional moments between Emma/Charming/Snow, that would give 5x4 = 20 minutes of quality family time between them before the end.

Edited June 22, 2014 by Camera One

[stealinghome]

Honestly, I hope the show won't go more than 5. They're pretty obviously creatively bankrupt as it is; I shudder to think what plots ("plots") we'd see in a sixth or seventh season. If S3 was a "good" season, can you imagine what Once would look like when it was limping to the finish line? Please, let us go out on some semblance of a high note!

 

I also agree that they'd have to back the Brinks truck up BIGTIME to keep Carlyle after his contract expires. He's clearly interested in pursuing other opportunities, and imo you can tell he's over what a hot mess the show has become. Unfortunately, he's also the most vital actor on the show. I think most of the rest of the cast would be game to stay--individually, Goodwin and Dallas are the ones I suspect would be most likely to want out after Carlyle, but there's no way they'd voluntarily walk away from a job that lets them work together, and certainly Parrilla and Morrison would both want to stay--but imo the show would just lose so much without Rumpel.

Edited June 22, 2014 by stealinghome

[Camera One]

The show would lose a lot without Rumple, but at the same time, I don't think it's a deal-breaker if he goes, and you just know they'll give him a helluva exit storyline.

[retrograde]

I'm curious. How many seasons do you think TPTB expect the show to last? How many seasons do YOU expect it to last?

 

I think five would be about right. Which probably means it'll go seven!

 

Though, I cannot imagine that Robert Carlyle would want to stick with the show that many seasons. This is based on nothing whatsoever except a hunch.

He might not have a choice if he is contracted on the show for seven seasons, which wouldn't be unusual. (Though I assume they will all get to renegotiate at some point).

 

Likewise, I doubt the longevity of the show will have much to do with what the show runners and writers want (and whether the show should end), and will ultimately be dictated by a) whether it is still making money for ABC, and b) whether ABC has anything that could make more money to replace it with. (Though because it is a particularly expensive show to make, it is harder to predict whether either of these are the case based solely on ratings). 

 

Now when should the show end? I'd say season five. I agree with Camera One that it theoretically has more juice than most because they can just keep adding new fairytales and worlds to the mix, but ultimately, they can only keep throwing so many spanners into the main characters' happy endings before it gets really annoying. Snow and Charming basically have theirs already, Emma seems to be close (though I guess they could switch focus to her relationship with Henry as he gets older), and even Regina and Rumple seem to have found their show-approved true loves (even if there are a few spanners to deal with next season, and one or both will probably turn evil again at least one more time). And once the audience stops caring about the main characters' personal stories and development, it doesn't really matter how many popular Disney franchises they add to the mix. 

[Serena]

I think, if the actors are contracted for 7 seasons (and normally, all actors are; though it's possible Carlyle has a special contract), the show will go for seven seasons. It's a huge moneymaker for ABC. Also, they own it, so they don't only get ad money, but also DVD and Blu Ray sales, merchandise, etc. It's actually very weird to me that they aren't selling more OUAT stuff, considering it's Disney. If they only put a bit of thought in some cute merchandise, the fandom would eat it up.

[kili]

I agree with Camera One that it theoretically has more juice than most because they can just keep adding new fairytales and worlds to the mix, but ultimately, they can only keep throwing so many spanners into the main characters' happy endings before it gets really annoying.

 

That's another reason why I can't understand the turbocharged race to put Robin and Regina together if they are endgame. Snow and Charming are baked into the mix. They started out as a True Love couple and will stay that way. Rumple and Belle hit out of the park in Season 1 and became the second end game couple (although there will be angst for them in S4, it won't last long because Belle can't stay mad at him because he has a "good heart").  They've been careful to slow bake Hook and Emma because they need a sustaining story arc.  There are still a few believable roadblocks they can throw in the way (guilt about saving Marian's life is not one of them). 

 

But Robin/Regina went from nothing at the start of 3B to further ahead than Hook/Emma by mid-way through. They should have used Regina's endgame relationship as the next slow burn. Sure, Marian is going to cause trouble for an episode or two (at the latest they will save the Regina/Robin re-union as the climax for 4A), but then you have all your major players in an endgame relationship except for Henry. Where do you go from there? I really hope they give up this Robin/Regina relationship and find somebody new for Regina. Since the writer's have a perma-boner for her, it will have to be somebody important and hot (that's why the decided to break up a canon True Love couple for her by handing her Robin), so despite how I think she would connect well with a lot of the side-kicks (she could use a little fun in her life) we may have to break up another TL canon couple for her. How about Phoebus? Esmeralda can marry Quasimodo who deserves some love. Hot, good and reasonably pragmatic, Phoebus could work if he just loosened up a bit. Or Alladin (Jasmine is a bit of a blank slate)? He's fun and clever (I'd like to see the good guys steal from his playbook and have a non-magical defeat a powerful magical creature with their wits). Kuzco is a little unknown, but he doesn't have a love interest. Grown up Arthur getting over his wife running out on him? Woody? Bo Peep seems to have been lost to the Thrift Shop.

[Serena]

That's another reason why I can't understand the turbocharged race to put Robin and Regina together if they are endgame. Snow and Charming are baked into the mix. They started out as a True Love couple and will stay that way. Rumple and Belle hit out of the park in Season 1 and became the second end game couple (although there will be angst for them in S4, it won't last long because Belle can't stay mad at him because he has a "good heart").  They've been careful to slow bake Hook and Emma because they need a sustaining story arc.  There are still a few believable roadblocks they can throw in the way (guilt about saving Marian's life is not one of them). 

 

It's actually typical A&E writing. They got the idea for a omg!shocking!twist for the season finale - aka Marian is back and Regina killed her - and wrote the relationship with that in mind. 

There are very few relationships that it seems A&E are actually interested in writing because they're interested in the relationship, and not simply in whatever "twist" they have in mind. Emma/Henry and Emma/MM in season 1 and Hook/Emma are the only relationships where I could see they had actual interest in the dynamic. 

That's similar to how they had an idea for the finale - Emma goes back in time, sees her parents, blablabla and so decides to stay - and they wrote Emma's whole I <3 NY arc in 3B to serve the finale. 

[yeswedo]

Some of the recent discussion in this thread is better suited to either the Speculation or Wishing on a Star topics.  A little of that is ok here but let's not let it take over. This topic is for what has already happened on the show.

[angelwoody]

I don't think I'll be able to deal if Rumple invites Hook for earl grey and cucumber sandwiches.

Now I totally want a scene like this - only super awkward for both of them.

[Shanna Marie]

Still continuing my rewatch, with "Desperate Souls" last night. I found it interesting that they established that far back that Rumple's wife had left him because he was a coward. Were they already planning the Hook storyline then, or did they later decide to add Hook and found a place where he fit into the story that was established? The knight was mocking Rumple about Bae not really being his son. I wonder if that's meant to be true or if it was just to mess with him. It wouldn't necessarily change how Rumple feels about him (I had a friend who was pretty sure, based on his wife's behavior and the way the child looked, that his son wasn't biologically his son, but he refused to get any kind of DNA test and paid child support when they divorced because he thought of the child as his, regardless of DNA), though it muddies the waters with Milah if she cheated on her husband, had a baby that wasn't his, then left that baby with her husband to run off with yet another man. I'll have to wait until I get to that point in the rewatch to see what fits best with the relationship we actually see, but I don't recall their relationship before he went to war looking like the kind of relationship where she was fooling around on him already.

 

Although early Regina's hold over the town is frustrating to watch, it's so very refreshing to see the characters before they got Regina Lobotomies. It's weird that they hated her more when they didn't remember all the horrible things she'd done and just thought she was a bitchy, control-freak mayor, and they're so much more accepting of her after they remember the slaughter of villages, stealing of hearts, various murders and the curse.

[Amerilla]

I suspect in "Desperate Souls" they were still playing with various concepts of wife's abandonment/Bae's paternity. That was early enough in the series when they were still leaving themselves lots of open doors - rather than relying on gaping plot-holes and retcons like they do today. I'm sure the concept of Hook was scribbled on a post-it somewhere, but as a vague "we'll fit him in somewhere if we get clearance to use Peter Pan characters" sense.

 

My recollection of the marriage as presented in "Manhattan" was that they were a solid couple until Milah learned that Rumpel had wounded himself, immediately after Bae was born, which would indicate that she wasn't stepping out on Rumpel until much later....but even then, they left some wiggle room in terms of the pregnancy's timeline. See what you think when you get there, but I felt that Bae's paternity wasn't totally settled until Rumpel used his blood to track Neal in NYC and Henry to Neverland - along with Neal's use of "blood magic" to uncover Rumpel's Closet of Uselful Magical Items in the Dark Castle in early 3a.  

 

I actually always thought it would have been an interesting twist if Bae had turned out not to be Rumpel's bio-son. But, it turned out that the showrunners didn't have any interest in exploring the relationship - so I guess it didn't really matter one way or the other.

 

I was thinking generally about the problems with S3 and what we're potentially facing in S4. The split season, while great from a scheduling standpoint, simply highlights all the flaws in A&E's approach to plotting. Pacing has always been a problem, but now they added (and completely self-inflicted) pressure of using the last two or three episodes in each half-season to force the story into shape for the next arc.

 

So *bam,* Robin and Regina and Hook and Emma are all suddenly making out like a bunch of bunnies and *BAM,* Rumpel and Belle are engaged and married within the space of two days under the shadow of a completely unnecessary lie - not because any of it makes any sense or feel all that organic or thoughtful, but simply to line up the pins for "drama" next season. I don't foresee that getting any better in 4a or 4b. I think it's just what we're stuck with now.

[Camera One]

Well said, Amerilla.  The whole concept at the end of "Going Home", the whole concept of Emma getting to live a false life that she had only dreamed of, the concept of having that year and a half erased from her memory, the concept of Snow and Charming having found their child and then lose her and having to deal with it... that could have sustained a good four or five episodes of real character exploration, where the threat of Zelena would be a background danger and a mystery for Emma to uncover.  But the way they played it - basically undoing that huge game changer in an episode?  All the lost potential, and a huge letdown.  

 

In the writing backwards department, even if the showrunners just had five planned outcomes when planning the overall 3B arc:

1. Emma and Hook will kiss

2. Emma will go back in time and realize her home is in Storybrooke

3. Regina will find love, with Robin Hood

4. Rumple and Belle marry, but with a lie hanging over them

5. Emma will bring back Marion

 

There were just so many different ways to get up to those outcomes.

Edited June 26, 2014 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I remembered the blood tracking and blood magic later today, so duh for me on that front.

 

As I get further into season one, I must say I really miss the way the fairybacks told their own story, with the fun of piecing it all together. Back on the TWOP relationship forum when people were getting impatient with the progress of Emma and Hook (pre-finale), I remarked that if Snow and David had been the present-day plot and linear, we'd have been even more frustrated by all the things keeping them apart than we were with the relatively minor obstacles for Emma and Hook. But I really love watching their story play out in flashbacks. It probably helps that we see the ending first, so we know they get together, and this is just their extended "how we met" story. I don't think I'd mind fairybacks about a half-season villain if they were told in an interesting way like this, where we get to piece together the story, and if there's some intersection with a variety of our regulars. Though I guess that won't happen with Elsa, since I doubt she's had much interaction with any of our regulars other than maybe Rumple, unless she was urned very recently (well, recently before the time jump).

 

The more I watch, the more I find myself loving Emma (aside from her dose of mindblowing stupidity with Sidney), and the more I hate Regina -- and not even in a "love to hate" way. Okay, so maybe she has a beef with Snow, but what gets me is her casual cruelty to everyone. She's so selfish that she's willing to hurt Henry in order to score points against Emma, and doesn't even care (or notice) that she's hurting Henry. She drags Kathryn through all kinds of pain just to try to keep Mary Margaret and David from being together. She was going to send Hansel and Gretel off into separate group homes, just to score a victory against Emma, and in the Enchanted Forest she split them up from their father just because she was mad that kids who'd just learned she sent them into a potentially fatal situation didn't want to live with her (imagine that!). She manipulated and used Sidney to kill her husband. And this is long before we saw her get into village slaughtering. Even if she had a valid grudge against Snow, she loses all sympathy points from the way she acts like everyone else in the universe only exists to serve her needs.

[Camera One]

I don't think I'd mind fairybacks about a half-season villain if they were told in an interesting way like this, where we get to piece together the story, and if there's some intersection with a variety of our regulars.

 

They did try to do this, but it wasn't that successful... why was that?  

 

3A's mystery was supposed to be why did Peter Pan want Henry and what was his agenda, and they showed it piece by piece

 

Episode 4:  Rumple and Peter Pan has met before, when Peter was the Pied Piper

Episode 5:  How Peter Pan met Hook

Episode 8:  Peter Pan's backstory as Rumple's father revealed

 

3B's mystery was similar... what did Zelena want and how is she connected with the characters.  

 

Episode 2: Revealed Zelena is Regina's sister 

Episode 5: Zelena's origin story of how she started on the path of witchiness

Episode 7: Backstory of Zelena's paternity, birth and abandonment

Episode 9: Zelena's continued origin story of how she turned away from good and further witched herself

 

Episode 4 & 8 were major puzzle pieces episodes relating to Neal/Rumple and how the New Curse was enacted, and Zelena had an important role in each of those.

[Shanna Marie]

They did try to do this, but it wasn't that successful... why was that?

I think it didn't work as well because the season 3 fairybacks were mostly vignettes, not an overarching story. Take the season one fairybacks and put them together in the right order and you've got a standalone story that doesn't need the present-day stuff and that has its own beginning, middle and end. I don't think you could say the same for the season 3 fairybacks. And maybe it was in chunks that were too big -- all of the backstory of who Pan was came in one episode, all the backstory of who Zelena was, where she came from and what she was mad about came in one episode, so there was no ongoing mystery, nothing on the level of "how will David and Snow ever manage to get together?" to drive the story. Plus, in the season one backstories, there were actual protagonists and antagonists. With Zelena, we couldn't actually pull for her, no matter how "sympathetic" they tried to make her, but there was nobody else in her backstory that we much cared about. They wasted the missing year by having Zelena only pop up to mwa ha ha at them. There were no real interactions between her and the other characters, no times when they were actually in opposition to her and doing something about it. She and Regina could have built a kind of relationship in that missing year, during which Regina learned the truth of her background (and then she'd have had something to forget in the curse). The good guys could have been trying to come up with a plan against her, and we could have seen bits of that plan in various episodes rather than having one line of dialogue about "nope, haven't found anything useful."

 

With Pan, they wasted a real opportunity to show how Rumple, Neal/Bae and Hook's stories converged due to Neverland. The fairyback story arc could have shown the origin of Pan and Hook's first trip to Neverland, but then also showed what Hook and Bae were doing there during their long stay, what their relationship with each other and with Pan was like and how they got away. It would have been a story with a beginning, middle and end. Bae's story in Neverland could have mirrored Henry's story. We could have seen the contrast between past Hook and present Hook to show how he was changing in the present. And if we'd seen the apparent friendship between Hook and Bae, it would have made Hook's reaction to Neal's death more resonant. But I guess it was more important to get in a couple of Regina flashbacks, since Neverland is traditionally all about the Evil Queen from Snow White, right?

[KAOS Agent]

There were so many interesting stories that should have come out of the set-up of "Going Home" and they threw them all away. We never saw Emma struggle with regaining her memories of her lonely life and giving Henry up for adoption, we never saw the Charmings struggle with losing their child again, hell we never saw Snow show any kind of interest in Emma's life at all, we never saw any struggle to rebuild a kingdom that had been completely destroyed by the curse and as of a few months earlier had been overrun with ogres. We barely even saw the lost year and now they're done with it. Nope, instead because they are tied into a villain for every 11 episode arc, all of that was dropped for a poorly developed Zelena story, random trips to Oz and plot, plot, plot that led nowhere. 

 

Season 1 dragged for a bit in the middle, but allowing the plot to breathe helped fill out the characters a lot. I also think that unlike every other seasons' villains, Season 1 had a villain trying to stop the good guy, not the other way around, which helped a lot. It made for a more interesting story because both sides could have wins and set backs without it seeming like all anyone was doing was chasing a MacGuffin and killing time until the finale. They were building a story, but I was never really sure as to when it would all come to a head. Now it's overly predictable because I know when it's going to end and nothing big will happen until then.

Edited June 26, 2014 by KAOS Agent

[stealinghome]

I think it didn't work as well because the season 3 fairybacks were mostly vignettes, not an overarching story. Take the season one fairybacks and put them together in the right order and you've got a standalone story that doesn't need the present-day stuff and that has its own beginning, middle and end. I don't think you could say the same for the season 3 fairybacks.

This. The fundamental problem is that both the Pan and Zelena backstories only provided enough material for 1 episode, but the writers tried to stretch each's backstory over 2-3 episodes. The villains didn't have a real story, just an origin story, if that makes sense. And that's why 3B blew it--because they had a great opportunity to go back to the "the fairybacks form their own complete story" model and they blew it.

[KingOfHearts]

Emma: "So, what happened during the Missing Year?"

Snow: "Besides getting pregnant and Zelena fooling all of us? Nothing to write about."

Edited June 26, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Amerilla]

I was trying to think of a single scene in S3 that summed up my feelings about it, and damn if Michael Raymond-James didn't hand it right to me: the WTF expression on Neal's face when 'Killian' suddenly bear-hugged him in the hospital in "Quiet Minds." It was awkward, it was random, it hinted at a relationship we were never shown and at a secret knowledge Hook turned out not to have about Neal's fate, and it was completely lost in translation that since Neal and Rumpel were still sort of a condo unit at that moment, Hook was hugging on his mortal enemy as much as his once-for-five-minutes-a-century-ago-quasi-step-son/current romantic-sexual rival. Seriously. WTF?  

 

Looking at the Big Bads of S3, each had something of a different problem beyond just that they weren't going to be around for long enough for us to care much one way or the other. Shows can wrest quite a bit from Cardboard Baddies and Mustache-Twirlers, so long as they serve to move the main characters along their stories. That didn't happen in either half of this season.

 

Pan/Neverland was an interesting concept, but only inasmuch as it could have been used to move along key relationships, parimarily the Pan/Rumple/Nealfire/Henry lineage, since that was the one that should have been at the core of the story.

I have no problem with Pan being Rumpel's father/Neal's grandfather/Henry's great-grandfather. I don't even have a problem with the idea that Pan held his own grandson captive in perpetual adolescence for century or more and then cast him out into the world to produce the Truest Believer, or that Pan would later kidnap his own great-grandson to strip him for parts. I have a huge problem with that never being explored or explained.

 

Malcolm/Pan's cruelty and abandonment, we're told, is what made Rumpel into father he became - which is to say, one so desperate to hang on to his child that he was willing to sell his soul to protect him and destroy an entire world to find him. Neverland was the longest part of Nealfire's life, and from the looks of things, it was mainly a lonely, frightening existence in a very dark place, trying to escape, trying to find a way to "home" - a life that turns him, in the end, into the type of person who is so desperate to hang on to his child that he'll do anything to  get back to that, to the point where it gets him killed. And Henry, absorbed with tales of heroism and magic, is no different - willing to sacrifice his own heart because he'to protect his rapidly-expanding family. This is the start of Henry's version of the Stiltskin family journey.

 

All of that is the foundation of an amazing story. But what we got was random and awkward. Nothing was ever really clarified. Rumpel and Bae and Henry spent most of the arc isolated their own little parts of the story. Neal's story got so needlessly tangled up with CS (since A&E knew by this point that they were going to kill Neal off in the back-half of the season) that he was never given a moment to show any reflection or emotion about his return to Neverland. Henry's story was framed as it's always been - as Emma and Regina's son and Snow and David's grandson, rather than as part of a wider family that now includes Rumpel and (temporarily) Neal and Pan. Massive plot points were reduced to a couple lines of dialog. The reconciliation of Rumpel and Bae, two and half seasons in the making, took place in a scene lasting less than a minute. Henry and Rumpel have barely interacted in all of S3, and even though Neal is now dead and Henry is now Rumpel's only living link to Bae, there's very little sense going into S4 that there going to explore that, because the emphasis is clearly going to be on the lie to the new Mrs. Gold and how that impacts their relationship - and, of course, defeating the new Big Bad. 

 

How screwed up is this? Jared Gilmore was with the gang at a con in Paris this weekend, and he and was asked what he most wanted for Henry going forward. The first thing he mentioned was that he wanted Henry to have a relationship with Rumpel. Even a child can see it.   

 

For Zelena - look, I like Bex Mader, and I think she did the best she could with what she was given, but Zelena made Pan look like Hamlet by comparison. In the end, she turned out to be a nine-episode plot device for Captain Swan - removing Neal as the 'competition,' giving Hook the world's first case of magic-stripping herpes, and setting the stage for 'Back to the Future.'

 

It could have been more, even if they never came up with a plausible motivation for her beyond Pure Envy. I love that idea, Shanna Marie, that they could have had Regina and Zelena form some sort of relationship in the Missing Year and have Regina slowly learn the truth. It would have been great to parallel something like that with the OQ animosity in the Enchanted Forest vs. the sudden lust in Storybrooke. And they wouldn't even have had to give up what was my single favorite part of 3b: the thaw in Snow and Regina's relationship. (It's wrong on so many emotional/narrative levels, but Ginny and Lana are so good together.)

 

I could go on, but now I'm exhausted. And slightly depressed.

[KingOfHearts]

3B felt mostly filler to me. The Tower, The Jolly Roger, Bleeding Through, and It's Not Easy Being Green probably seemed to be the most filler-ish. Small things happened in them, but the plots weren't that interesting to me. Even the filler episodes like True North in S1 had more entertaining stories. 

 

3B was just Zelena monologuing, Emma's ship with NY, Snowing baby brain, Outlaw Queen gettin' it on, and a random character death. The whole thing just felt random and episodic. Even the finale was a standalone from the rest of the season. Contrived!

Edited June 26, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

One advantage that season one had was that all the characters were "new." They didn't have established characters and newcomers, and because of that, we had no way of knowing if anyone was likely to be temporary. By season 2, we had a cast of regulars, so that there was the "new" vs. "regular" split for screentime, and by the end of season 3, we had the pattern of knowing the season villain was going to be temporary.

 

And they wouldn't even have had to give up what was my single favorite part of 3b: the thaw in Snow and Regina's relationship. (It's wrong on so many emotional/narrative levels, but Ginny and Lana are so good together.)

Wouldn't it have been interesting if Regina had actually gained some self-awareness and apologized at least a little to Snow in the Enchanted Forest, and that was what provided the subconscious background for their Storybrooke thaw? Like if when Regina was moaning about being separated from Henry and Snow pointed out that she knew exactly what it was like to be separated from a child, Regina had actually apologized for that.

 

I've been thinking about how the fairybacks in season 3 could have been done better. In season one, all the flashbacks (with a couple of one-off exceptions) were about the story about why and how the curse came to be cast, and part of what made it fun was that the different plot threads related to that were all on different timelines. Once their story got going, after the first episode that showed the kiss, wedding, birth and curse, Snow and David's story was mostly linear and moving forward in time. Regina's story about the curse was less linear and mostly moving backward, starting with her casting the curse, bouncing around a bit in the middle, and working back to the point where she became hellbent on revenge. Then Rumple's story of why he wanted the curse to be cast was mostly out of order, but still working toward the revelation of his motivation.

 

I can't think of any overarching plot thread for season 2's flashbacks, but I'm really rusty there, so that analysis will have to wait. For season 3a, it was sort of about Pan's backstory and history with Rumple, but with a lot of digressions, so there's no actual story. That's where I think it would have worked better to focus on past and present in Neverland, showing Bae's struggles to stay alive and escape, his relationship with Hook, and what Hook's deal with Pan was. In the episode when they were hunting the Shadow to escape, we should have seen Bae's triumphant escape from Neverland and his second arrival in our world.

 

With Zelena, we sort of get her backstory, but it's not very interesting or illuminating. There's no twist to it. She doesn't interact with our regulars in a meaningful way. Maybe they should have waited to show her green form in the lost year so we didn't know that the woman in Storybrooke was the baddie, and they could have done an initial flashback of her unhappy life in Oz and her quest to get to the wizard before the reveal that this was the wicked witch. Then we might have had some sympathy. As it was, by the time we got her sad story, we already knew she was a psycho bitch. They set up a potentially great conflict with Regina deciding that having someone to destroy gave her a reason to live, but then Regina did absolutely nothing to act on that. We needed a good bitch vs. witch magical Dynasty catfight or two in the lost year. They could have built up to recasting the curse in a way that made it seem like a desperation move when they had no other way out and all was lost.

[stealinghome]

I can't think of any overarching plot thread for season 2's flashbacks, but I'm really rusty there, so that analysis will have to wait. For season 3a, it was sort of about Pan's backstory and history with Rumple, but with a lot of digressions, so there's no actual story. That's where I think it would have worked better to focus on past and present in Neverland, showing Bae's struggles to stay alive and escape, his relationship with Hook, and what Hook's deal with Pan was. In the episode when they were hunting the Shadow to escape, we should have seen Bae's triumphant escape from Neverland and his second arrival in our world.

You're correct--Season 2 didn't have any sort of overarching plot tying it together. If anything, S2 seemed to want to be united by a transformation--Regina turning into the Evil Queen (as if they're two separate people)--but they made a hash of that, didn't they?

 

Re: the lack of Neverbacks in 3A, I actually wonder if that decision was influenced by the decision they had already made (supposedly) to kill Neal off in 3B. That may well be why they didn't want to put any eggs in the Young Bae basket--why waste the screentime on a character you're killing off soon? (If only they had that feeling on Pan, Zelena, and every half-season villain-du-jour.) Also, then they would have had to actually hammer some of the mythology out, and we all know that can't happen!

 

Will never, ever understand why they didn't do more with the fairybacks in the Missing Year. Great opportunity to not just go back to the "fairybacks tell their own separate story" mode, but also to actually make Zelena seem even vaguely threatening. She was such a dud, at the end of the day, and could have been given real teeth in the fairybacks even if she wasn't really allowed to hurt the main characters in Storybrooke.

Edited June 26, 2014 by stealinghome