A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[Rumsy4]

Oh dear. I forgot Will told Belle about it. So did Adam.

[OnceUponAJen]

This is a problem I have with this show. There is so much going on with all these characters, that it's easy to forget little things that happened. They spend little to no time on character reactions or emotional impact for the characters, so I'm not surprised that information like this gets lost.

[Mathius]

I just reacted to this on the spoiler discussion thread.  This is audience intelligence-insulting at its finest, all for the sake of not having to write anyone giving Regina shit for any awful deed she's committed.  

[KingOfHearts]

I'm surprised this question was even asked. Of all the plots this show should have come back to but didn't, Belle's heart is very low on the list. No one watching this show should be caring about that by this point. It's not like Belle's feelings or reactions have ever mattered. (Except for the 4A finale.)

Edited October 16, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Mathius]

It was asked for the same reason the question about Belle's mother: Belle fans are passionate and want her to be given more importance.  It's admirable, but it's not going to happen, Belle is one of many characters in this cast who have been completely tossed aside by Adam and Eddy in favor of new toys, or old ones they keep on using (Regina and Rumple).

 

And yet despite this, I'll STILL be pissed off when they don't use Belle in some meaningful capacity for the two-hour episode featuring Red, Mulan and Merida.  Belle has connections with all three of these characters (Red is her friend, she adventured with Mulan in 2x11, and will adventure with Merida in 5x06), and leaving her out of an adventure starring the three of them would make no sense....which means, of course, that she's going to be left out.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Mathius

[Delphi]

Oh. I didn't know all three were coming back for the two hour episode. Yay, I guess.

[KingOfHearts]

 

It was asked for the same reason the question about Belle's mother: Belle fans are passionate and want her to be given more importance.

I agree she should have more important, and I understand their passion. There's just better solutions than coming back to the heart device. Belle's mother is definitely worth wondering about because that brief storyline left more hanging. We still don't know how she died or what Moe is hiding.

Edited October 16, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

That's what I was wondering. He's the single parent to a small child who's been through some crazy stuff, and the kid is nowhere to be seen while dad hangs out all day in the diner. Little John should sue for custody. He seems to be raising the kid, anyway.

 

Meanwhile, did Regina suddenly come up with a new requirement for her happy ending that she's off pursuing? For most of last season, all she needed to be happy was Robin, and now she's been reunited with her soulmate and she's nowhere to be seen while he sits alone at the diner. Not that a couple needs to be in each other's pockets 24/7, and we know he was kind of hiding from her so he could look at the sonogram photo (but way to be stealthy, there, sitting in the middle of the diner where everyone in town seems to eat every meal), but the entire last arc was about her trying to fix her life so she could have him as her happy ending, and they barely had a day together (and then the six weeks they don't remember) and even almost lost him, and now he's alone for what seems to be an entire day. It doesn't seem like the "Yes! We can finally be together!" honeymoon phase should have worn off yet. Kind of like the entire arc spent desperately wanting Henry back, and as soon as that happened, she was off with her boyfriend or moping about her boyfriend and didn't even want Henry around.

 

I think this is part of the bigger problem where the writers write focused on plot but give little thought to the individual characters' day-to-day lives outside of the crisis of the half-season.  And that doesn't even include neglecting the individual characters' emotional responses and struggles with their current situation.  What do the merry men do all day?   Where did Regina get that book and how did she know it "came with Camelot"?  They just put the characters into whatever scenario they want to play out that week without paying any attention to the greater context or "world" they're "building".

[Camera One]

I kinda wish we never saw Belle's mother.  They made her as dense as they could come.  Was that better than being an off-screen drunk à la Charming's dad?  Debatable...

Edited October 17, 2015 by Camera One

[OnceUponAJen]

Clarification from Adam about Belle's heart:

https://twitter.com/AdamHorowitzLA/status/655180427485802496

Edited October 17, 2015 by OnceUponAJen

[Rumsy4]

I can't see how they "misspoke". The answer to "Will we see Belle (Emilie de Ravin) confront Regina over taking her heart?" does not depend on when Belle found out. At best they just forgot. Or they were trying to weasel out of having yet another of Regina's (repeat) victims confront her. 

Edited October 17, 2015 by Rumsy4

[Camera One]

And looking big picture, what came out of Regina taking Belle's heart?  Oh yeah, nothing.  If it didn't happen, the same thing could have happened.

[KingOfHearts]

Even the clarification isn't 100% true. Belle knew Regina had the heart up until she told her to forget about everything. Even if they thought the question was about while Regina had the heart, their answer isn't relevant to the question. Whether or not Belle knows that happened to this day is.

[HoodlumSheep]

I kinda wish we never saw Belle's mother. They made her as dense as they could come. Was that better than being an off-screen drunk à la Charming's dad? Debatable...

Save the books!

[KingOfHearts]

Save the books!

 

You know they only put that in to give Belle an origin on her love of books.

[Shanna Marie]

Save the books!

We learned that the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. "The ogres are closing in on us and we must flee! But first, let's sort through the library for our favorite books and discuss which ones are most important to us and why." Which is fitting for an episode that centered around Belle going on a quest to get back the memories of what happened while she was unconscious. I still can't believe no one caught that. It would have been simple enough to rewrite the line to be something about a memory gap, but they pretty much specifically said she wanted to remember what happened after she lost consciousness, which should mean she didn't have any memories.

 

I'm not sure if we were supposed to see something shady about how Belle's mom died or if it was all a McGuffin to send Belle to meet Anna. It could easily have been straightforward, and Belle's mom was horribly killed by an ogre while protecting her and Maurice didn't want Belle to know that her mom died to protect her and her favorite book. Unless there's something else in there that ended up leading Belle to Rumple, I'm not sure what further story there is to tell.

 

Do you really need to give a reason or an origin for a love of books? Aren't books just awesome, anyway?

[YaddaYadda]

What I got from that episode is that Belle knew exactly who Rumple was before she went to him. Too bad we didn't get a scene between her and Anna where Anna was "you married him after I told you how evil he is?"

[KingOfHearts]

 

I'm not sure if we were supposed to see something shady about how Belle's mom died or if it was all a McGuffin to send Belle to meet Anna.

I'm guessing the writers left it open intentionally without promising to come back to it. It's there if they ever show interest in Belle's mom again, but it's close-ended enough to leave it be. That's basically what they do to all residents of Offscreenville.

 

 

What I got from that episode is that Belle knew exactly who Rumple was before she went to him.

That and Moe is shady. Not Blue or Arthur levels, but still.

Edited October 17, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Yes, the whole point of that episode was the "surprise!" about how much Belle knew about Rumple.  And how she needed to earn redemption after that shameful moment when she chose a rock over Anna.  Tsk tsk.  These "heroes" all deserve a good spanking.

[Chaos Theory]

I needed something to watch so I decided to rewatch OUAT from the beginning. Although I still say Regina and Emma have a ton of chemistry and always have I watched in large part to see if I was wrong about Emma and Hook and Regina and Robin. I do now see some chemistry between Emma and Hook but it was when hook was a roguish pirate and I think I got pissed off with him when he went to Rumple to get back his hand. I am not sure why that annoys me so much but after that I stopped seeing the chemistry until the episode where Rumple switched everyone's stories. Then I saw it again but not the same and through it all I still saw chemistry between Regina and Emma that was so much stronger.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Chaos Theory

[Dianthus]

Hook going to Rumple for his hand and trying to blackmail him over the Dagger was really stupid and bothered a bunch of people (myself included) b/c we knew he was smarter than that!

I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded "An it harm none, do as thou wilt" sort of person, but I found there's a line I can't cross, and I think I've made it pretty clear where that is by now. Chemistry is all very well, can't live without it, but it can lead to explosions and other really bad stuff. Overlooking all the hateful, hurtful things Regina's done for the sake of sexy fun times? Pass.

[AnotherCastle]

Re: Belle's mother, the role was cast to be recurring and she was suppose return for 4b:

Frances O'Connor has joined the cast of Once Upon a Time.

The British actress will play Belle's (Emilie de Ravin) mother Colette in the ABC show's fourth season, reports Entertainment Weekly.

Colette will reportedly appear briefly in the sixth episode, before returning later in the season.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/s181/once-upon-a-time/news/a594805/frances-oconnor-joins-once-upon-a-time-as-belles-mother.htm

 

 

AX: Do you have any other projects going on that we should know about?

O’CONNOR: I’m actually just doing a recurring role on ONCE UPON A TIME. I’m playing Belle’s mother, Colette.

http://www.assignmentx.com/2014/actress-frances-oconnor-talks-the-missing-exclusive-interview/

 

In need of some light relief after The Missing’s intense shoot, O’Connor is currently shooting a small role in season four of fairytale-drama, Once Upon a Time.

She is “stoked” to play Collette, mother of Belle, fellow Aussie Emilie de Ravin in the sixth episode, and will return to the series later in the season.

But in typical A&E fashion it got dropped. That's another reason Belle fans keep asking, we know there was suppose to be more to the story and we didn't get it.

Since Belle doesn't get more than one centric per season, Colette would have had to either show up in someone elses flashback or in present day. Some speculation/hopeful thinking was that she was Issac's predecessor as the author, explaining why she wanted to save 'the books' and why they would show her outside of a Belle flashback in the middle of the author arc, the other was that she didn't really die but used magic to save Belle from the Orge, exposing herself to be a fairy living a mortal life and the price of that was that she couldn't see her daughter ever again, tying in to Villeneuve's version of 'The Beauty and the Beast' were Beauty's mother was a fairy, the Blue Fairy being a stickler for rules and Maurice's "All magic comes with a price" comment to Belle in the episode, before even meeting Rumple.

Edited October 18, 2015 by AnotherCastle

[YaddaYadda]

It's not just O'Connor who signed on for recurring, Sebastien Roche too, from one of the interviews he gave. Kind of wonder what they had in mind when they made those decisions. 

[orza]

We don't know if the actors actually had contracts for recurring roles with guarantees for X number of episodes or if they just had discussions with the EPs about their availability for the rest of the season and the possibility of coming back. Actors are not always reliable reporters about such things in interviews. It's part of their job to talk up and make the most of every bit role they have so they get press and in doing so they sometimes overstate the facts to promote themselves.

 

The network has to approve bringing back expensive guest stars and if the people holding the purse strings don't feel that they would be getting sufficient bang for their buck they'll veto the idea and scenes with those actors will be cut or not even written. Networks veto or "request" changes to story arcs all the time. A&E may have pitched some ideas and someone at the network said "Our data shows that this character/story line is not resonating with viewers so please drop it."

 

Or the usual thing happens that everyone agrees that, for sure, the actor will come back later in the season and then the actor takes on other work and the window of opportunity to bring him back closes. They had to literally put Marion on ice for just this reason because Christie Laing was filming another show and Sean Maguire also had a movie commitment during season 4 production.

 

My impression of the scene between Belle and her father was that Maurice was physically preventing Belle from going to her mother because the ogre had left Colette's body mutilated and probably in pieces, maybe with parts missing, and he wanted to spare Belle that as her last memory of her mother. That is the natural and understandable action of a father and there's nothing shady about that at all.

Edited October 18, 2015 by orza

[HoodlumSheep]

Hook going to Rumple for his hand and trying to blackmail him over the Dagger was really stupid and bothered a bunch of people (myself included) b/c we knew he was smarter than that!.

I had more problems with the lack of follow up on it. Yes, it was extremely stupid, but I could sort of handwave it because of his ego and he was getting a big head about it (just like how Rumple suffered from the exact same thing near the end of 4a). I was more upset that they had it as a really big "oh, crap!" Moment at the end of the episode, and then dropped it for 2-3 episodes before returning to it. Talk about wasting all that momentum (same thing can be said about the heart situation).

With S. Roche possibly signed on (or available) for more than an ep, I always figured they were possibly going to delve into what Aurora's family did to upset Mal. I mean, we got to hear about some of it, but I'm thinking we were supposed to see some.

Edited October 18, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[Camera One]

The fact that A&E *considered* having another appearance from these characters is interesting in itself.  Maybe it's the network, but maybe it's A&E who decided against doing more with Belle's mother or Aurora's father.  It's impossible to know.  However, I find it doubtful that the network would veto a character from their animated movie like King Stefan, and expanding on the mythology in "Sleeping Beauty", in favor of some brand new character like Isaac.  I really like the idea of Belle's mother being a former Author.  I doubt those actors had anything to gain by implying the role was recurring, unless they were led to believe otherwise.  Maybe if this was the next "Hunger Games" movie or something.

[KingOfHearts]

 

My impression of the scene between Belle and her father was that Maurice was physically preventing Belle from going to her mother because the ogre had left Colette's body mutilated and probably in pieces, maybe with parts missing, and he wanted to spare Belle that as her last memory of her mother. That is the natural and understandable action of a father and there's nothing shady about that at all.

That's not where the shadiness comes in for me. I found his sudden change of heart at the end of the episode a little weird. His explanation for the mother's death is that she kept the ogres at bay to protect Belle, sacrificing her life. It sounded a bit sappy and unbelievable. (Colette fending off ogres just after hiding under a table. Not even the guards could stop the ogres' progression.) The story was something you would want someone to remember in place of a less honorable circumstance. Belle losing her memory was awfully convenient. Moe claims he kept this from Belle because he wanted to spare her the guilt. I found it kind of week, but YMMV. 

 

I'm not saying there's definitely something up. But if they intended for Colette to be reoccurring, there might have been. They left the door intentionally open. Moe has been very shady in the past (like kidnapping Belle and attempting to push her over the town line), so I wouldn't find a complication all that surprising. But on the other hand, the writers could just do nothing with it and waste a guest star.

[Camera One]

I think Belle's father's motivation seems suspect because they gave him such a nasty personality in the past, without trying to show from his perspective why he would find it difficult to accept the relationship between Belle and Rumple.  The father/daughter relationship was one of the best aspects of "Beauty and the Beast"... no surprise it got thrown under the bus with these writers.  They even had Belle and Maurice reconciling before the wedding for no reason.  

 

In this flashback, I could even understand Maurice wanting to hide the truth about the horrible fate of Belle's mother from Belle, if it hadn't been so obvious. I thought Belle remembered the arrival of the Ogres and hiding under the table, didn't she (if she didn't, I completely missed that key plot point)?  If so, isn't it obvious what happened to the mother?  I mean, even movie Lefou would even be able to figure that out.

 

Then again, IF Belle's mother was meant to be a recurring role, maybe this episode was meant to be ambiguous about what happened to Belle's mother.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

I'm still not sure why Belle had a whole adventure with Anna since plot wise, it amounted to nothing.

[Camera One]

Much better use of her time was showing her life with her parents BEFORE the Ogres arrived.  Heck, they could even have had Anna land near Belle's district.  Why did they have to have Belle lying about not knowing Anna in the present?  The episode seemed to designed to make Belle look bad.  The most interesting scene was the one with the shattered sight mirror, but absolutely nothing came out of that in the long term.  

 

Charming's centric similarly should have SHOWN what happened with his father.  Heck, they could even have Anna showing up and trying to talk the dad into not drinking.  (just kidding)

Edited October 18, 2015 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I'm so tired of the villains' "secret weapon" being a person.  It almost never works out.  Peter Pan had Neal and/or Wendy in a box.  Tamara and Greg had Hook as "the package".  Zelena had Rumple in a cage.  In 4B, they trotted out August.  They really reached a new low of 'who cares' with Merida.  

[Serena]

These are the same parents that put Emma, their newborn, in a magical wardrobe.  Meanwhile there were other methods to get to another dimension that other more resourceful people (Hook, Zelena) have been able to obtain.  They didn't even try to outrun the curse on a ship or something.  They let "hope" do the work for them and put all their faith in a "savior" prophecy coming from Rumpelstiltskin of all people.  I feel bad for baby Neal. He's too young to be emancipated from his parents.  The Charmings are not the sharpest tool in the shed but at least they are pretty.

I think that's unfair. They put her in the tree because, at that point, it was the only method to save her. It's not their fault that the Writers retconned it a thousand times later. Even Rumplestiltskin wasn't able to find any additional method to get to the LWM. Plus, Zelena is magical, while the Charmings are not, so I think it's unfair to compare. 

[HoodlumSheep]

Technically wouldn't it be shady blue's fault? Wasn't she the one who suggested the magical wardrobe as the only way?

And if Snow and Charming had sailed away, where would they have gone? Arendelle? They would have been turned into frozen popsicles.

Edited October 22, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[Delphi]

Also, Snow was supposed to go with Emma. Up until literally the last second. It's hard to makeep an instant change of plans when you go into labor I'd imagine.

[LizaD]

Yeah I don't know why the show act like Snow and Charming shoved baby Emma in a tree for shits and giggles. Even if it had nothing to do with the curse Woegina was like 2 seconds away from killing that baby. It just kills me that they have St. Victim making snarky comments about Snowing's parenting skills in regards to Emma. Like bitch, you were going to kill that baby, shut your piehole.

 

 

Technically wouldn't it be shady blue's fault? Wasn't she the one who suggested the magical wardrobe as the only way?

 

No cause at least she had a solution. It's not like anyone else came up with a better alternative. They should've asked Rump for a way to get baby Emma to safety after he told them what they had to do. It was kind of risky on Rump's part relying on Snowing to get his "key" to safety. Oh and that tree brings up another continuity problem which I'll take there.

[Rumsy4]

Snow made the decision to send Emma away alone so she could escape the Curse and save them 28 years later. She didn't know Regina was on her way to kill baby Emma. It seems a strange decision considering how pathetic the Dark Curse was, but they didn't know that.

[KAOS Agent]

I think you have to look at the other things that Snowing didn't do prior to the part where the curse was coming to judge them with regards to Emma and their whole kingdom. And I judge them plenty for it.

 

1) Letting Regina just walk free instead of imprisoning her or executing her because Snow White couldn't get her hands dirty actually exacting justice for the villagers who'd been slaughtered.

2) Not spending the eight months before Emma was born looking for another hero to unlock the wisdom from the Tree of Knowledge. Really? There were no other heroes anywhere for them to find? David seemingly qualified since he wasn't carrying a potentially evil baby, so they only needed one.

3) Not attempting to find a way to escape the realm in some way, shape or form. It was only getting to the Land Without Magic that was an issue for Rumpel, not traveling between magical realms. Hook never blinked at magic hats or beans and he had a Pegasus sail at one point, so it can't be that such travel was unheard of even among the regular populace.

4) Not even attempting to attack Regina before she could cast the curse. They'd beaten her once, so why not try again? It's not like she wasn't threatening their entire kingdom or anything.

5) Refusing to work with Maleficent to stop the curse because Snow's self righteousness knows no bounds. She couldn't bring herself to work with a villain. Of course, she had no problems stealing her child so she could conduct a little magical genetic engineering, but whatever Snow.

 

There's probably more, but these are just the ones I could come up with off the top of my head. These are the things that I look at and think about how little they actually tried before just going with the wardrobe idea and "hope"

[Shanna Marie]

Unfortunately, most of those things that Snow failed to do come from retcons chipping away at her. In the pilot, the wardrobe idea was presented as the only hope. Through the whole first season, it didn't look like she had had any options in the buildup to the curse.

 

But then they started throwing in all those other ways of realm travel. And showed that Snow actually had Regina as a prisoner and let her go. And then there was refusing to work with Maleficent and the revelation of the tree that could tell them what to do (couldn't they have tracked down Lancelot again for another hero?). Though I guess the awful Medusa flashback showed that they did try at least one thing to go after Regina so she couldn't cast the curse.

 

These writers seem to enjoy undermining their own story because they can't stop tinkering with the backstory, which is dangerous to do when a lot of the backstory has already been presented and is critical to the way the story works. They started with "this is their only hope!" and then proceeded to throw in new events that presented other options, except they don't seem to recognize that this is what they're doing. For example, Snow letting Regina go was presented as absolutely the right thing to do, and no one has bothered to give any blame or told you so about that (killing Cora to stop her from killing everyone else, on the other hand, resulted in all kinds of shaming and guilt). Strangely, Regina wasn't blamed or shamed for still cursing Snow and saying no one ever had her back after Snow showed her mercy.

 

I guess they did the same thing with Rumple, where the curse was the only hope for getting to Bae. And then they revealed later that Bae had actually spent all that time in Neverland, which Rumple could have easily reached at any time and showed that he had a magical device that would have shown him where Bae was. Plus throwing in all those other Realm jumping methods and having Ingrid go from that world to the World Without Magic before the curse.

[Christi]

Oops

[Delphi]

If we're going to start a circle of judgment regarding who failed who I think instead of Snow, I'd rather start with Gepetto. The initial plan would have worked especially before numerous retcons. The toy maker was the one that put his interests above the entire kingdom.

Though, I wonder. If Snow and Emma had gotten through how would Emma save everyone. What would have sent her to Storybrooke? Not Henry, I doubt he'd be alive. Maybe ultimately everything happened the way it was supposed to. Certainly it happened the way Rumple saw it and wanted it to.

[kili]

2) Not spending the eight months before Emma was born looking for another hero to unlock the wisdom from the Tree of Knowledge. Really? There were no other heroes anywhere for them to find? David seemingly qualified since he wasn't carrying a potentially evil baby, so they only needed one.

 

Did they actually need to even find another hero? After the evil baby had been de-eviled, wouldn't Snow have made the second hero? Or were they too badly un-heroed by their egg-napping (deliberately going off to kill Medusa wasn't deemed unheroic though)?

 

I guess they did the same thing with Rumple, where the curse was the only hope for getting to Bae. And then they revealed later that Bae had actually spent all that time in Neverland, which Rumple could have easily reached at any time and showed that he had a magical device that would have shown him where Bae was.

 

Maybe Rumple didn't get his magical globe until after Bae had left Neverland? I at least give Pan credit for keeping a secret that long. A lot of villians would have gone to gloat if they'd achieved something they had previously failed at (getting Bae to join his band of Lost Boys was thwarted the first time by Rumple).

 

If we're going to start a circle of judgment regarding who failed who I think instead of Snow, I'd rather start with Gepetto.

 

He was also the one who futzed around with the wardrobe for so long it was too late by the time it was ready. Just put a door on it already and can the fancy scrollwork. I know your a craftsman, but nobody cares what it looks like.

[Shanna Marie]

Maybe Rumple didn't get his magical globe until after Bae had left Neverland?

The globe was in Rumple's castle, and Bae didn't leave Neverland until after the curse was cast (unless he was more than 15 years older than Emma, which makes it even creepier for him to be over 30 when she was 16-17 and he was sleeping with her). So Rumple should have had the magical globe of finding blood relatives before the curse was cast.

 

There are valid character reasons for Rumple to have done things the way he did, but it would have been nice if the alternatives were acknowledged on the show, like Neal commenting that it was unnecessary for Rumple to have used the curse and messed up the lives of so many people when he could have reached his son in Neverland. Or Rumple having a big "doh!" moment about it. Or Regina getting pissed that Rumple manipulated her into casting the curse and killing her father when he could have reached Bae without the curse. Or Hook gloating to Rumple about whether he really wanted to find his son, since Hook managed to find him quite easily. But since no one on the show has mentioned "Um, but Bae was in Neverland, which you can get to with a magic bean or by Shadow or with a Pegasus sail, or which mermaids can visit ..." it makes it sound like the writers don't realize that they undermined their own premise.

 

They spent season one building a premise full of no-win situations in which their characters felt forced to do things they otherwise never would have done, and then subsequent seasons keep throwing in other ways they could have done things, and it's written as though the writers don't see that they're dismantling the story they set up as they throw in random bits of backstory to service the present-day plot.

[KingOfHearts]

 

So Rumple should have had the magical globe of finding blood relatives before the curse was cast.

He didn't though, because Cora gave it to him in Storybrooke as a gift. It was apparently a very rare object that Rumple himself was astonished to see. It really doesn't seem like he used to own it, judging by the dialogue.

 

Edited October 23, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[kili]

The globe was in Rumple's castle, and Bae didn't leave Neverland until after the curse was cast

 

Yes, I forgot about that. Rumple could have found Bae at any time (Neal was able to quickly find out where Emma/Henry were when he had access to his father's collection of EF stuff). You would think he would have been like Harry Potter and his Maruader's Map constantly checking on where Ginny was the year he was away from school. Why wouldn't Rumple have checked to see where Bae was? Perhaps he was so sure he didn't think to check? But what made him so sure that Bae was alive so many years later? Surely, he should have suspected that Bae would have died of old age? Why was he not panicked to fulfill the prophesy during his son's normal life span? Did he actually know that Bae was in Neverland and not aging, but he was so stuck on his prophesy or so afraid of his dad he never went to get him?

 

They spent season one building a premise full of no-win situations in which their characters felt forced to do things they otherwise never would have done, and then subsequent seasons keep throwing in other ways they could have done things, and it's written as though the writers don't see that they're dismantling the story they set up as they throw in random bits of backstory to service the present-day plot.

 

They should have abandoned the flashback story telling method a while ago because it has long since stopped helping to tell the story and instead actively mucked it up. I'm glad that they found a way to flashback six weeks ago instead (even if they had to throw in a memory whipe).

Edited October 23, 2015 by kili

[orza]

Rumple didn't know that Bae was in Neverland. The magic bean opened a portal to a land without magic and that was where Bae first went to. Rumple knew that. There.was no way for Rumple to know that Bae later went from the Charming family nursery to Neverland via Pan's shadow. He first learned about that when he was standing in Neal's apartment in Manhattan.  Cora gave Rumple the magic globe shortly before he went to New York.

 

The only way to get to Neverland that we saw was either to use a magic bean like Hook and Malcolm/young Rumple did or fly with the shadow like Bae did. Magic beans were very hard to come by and one had to somehow summon the shadow or wait for it to appear to fly with it. So, no, it was not at all easy to get to Neverland. Rumple could not have easily gotten there even if he had known that Bae was there, which he didn't.

[Shanna Marie]

There.was no way for Rumple to know that Bae later went from the Charming family nursery to Neverland via Pan's shadow. He first learned about that when he was standing in Neal's apartment in Manhattan.  Cora gave Rumple the magic globe shortly before he went to New York.

He got that globe then, but Neal found a magical gizmo in Rumple's castle that allowed him to easily locate Henry in Neverland.

 

If entirely non-magical and, per Zelena, "dumber than a box of hair" Neal managed to locate his son and reach him, when his son was in the same place he was all that time and he was in the same place and with the same tools his father had, it does raise the question of how and why Rumple didn't manage to do the same thing when he was also a super-powerful being. Even if there are valid reasons for Rumple to have done things the way he did, you'd think someone might have pointed out that Rumple was doing all those things to reach Bae in one place when he was actually in a different place all that time. When Neal and Rumple were fighting upon Neal's arrival in Neverland, wouldn't Neal have brought that up, that he managed to get to his son right away, so why didn't Rumple?

 

Rumple didn't know where his son was because he apparently didn't bother to look. He made an assumption about where he was. He didn't seem to try to look in on him. And yet he also believed his son was still alive in this other world without magic after hundreds of years.

 

The issue Rumple was having with reaching Bae was that he was in a World Without Magic that was difficult to reach and that he couldn't reach without losing his own power. But actually, Bae was in a magical place that could be reached via magical means -- the beans, other ways of opening portals (like maybe the magical wood they used for the wardrobe), Jefferson's hat, the Shadow, however Hook was commuting while working for Pan and however Hook escaped. It's a nice bit of irony that Rumple missed that all those years and that his worst enemy managed to find his son when he couldn't, but the show seems entirely oblivious to this irony, and that's my problem with it.

[Camera One]

Why OUAT Should Get Rid Of Flashbacks

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/once-upon-a-time/why-once-upon-a-time-should-ge-57835.aspx

 

A&E are not going to get rid of flashbacks.  It's their writing crutch and it's an easy way to slowly unravel a "mystery" while keeping one foot in "our world" and one foot in the magical fantasy world.  The flashbacks to Camelot are not much different from the flashbacks to Arendelle in 4A, the flashbacks to the missing year in 3A, and the random flashbacks to whatever, whenever, in 2B, 3A and 4B.  There is still more than half the episodes left this half-season to show more of Dark Swan in present-day.  Relevant or not, half the time, what's happening in the flashbacks is frankly more interesting than the churning-their-wheels plot in Storybrooke.

Edited October 24, 2015 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I think I'd miss the flashbacks if they cut them out entirely, but I do think they could generally make better use of them. Season one was ideal. The flashbacks were their own storyline that would have made sense (if you put them together in chronological order) even without the present day stuff, while the present day stuff wouldn't have made sense without the flashbacks.

 

The trick is doing that sort of thing now that we know the setup for the present day with most of the main characters, so the only way to do that kind of thing now is to do it with the guest cast. I'm actually not minding the way they're handling things this season. It seems like the Camelot backstory might end up standing on its own while explaining the situation for the present. I don't even much mind the memory thing that makes 6 weeks ago a flashback for the main characters. It's making this season the TV version of a page-turner for me because I want to find out what happened. What will happen is seldom interesting on this show, but at least we know what happened six weeks ago had some consequences.

[Camera One]

I think the 4A flashbacks did a pretty good job of telling a complete story, albeit about the guest characters Elsa/Anna/Kristoffe.  Perhaps for the sake of the newbies joining for "Frozen", they actually told the Arendelle flashback stories pretty much in chronological order.  

 

5A's flashbacks are more akin to 4B's flashbacks since for much of it, we have the main characters there with them, so the guest characters' stories (Arthur/Lancelot/Gwenivere in 5A and Zelena in 4B) are done out of order.

[Shanna Marie]

I like the non-chronological flashbacks because I like putting together the puzzle pieces. And I'd rather have the flashbacks be entirely about the guest characters than shoehorn in regular characters in ways that are bad retconning or that just don't fit. I think that's one reason I'm not minding the Camelot-only past flashbacks (as opposed to six weeks ago flashbacks). I'd rather just watch our people in the present/recent past and have the past flashbacks fit within their own story than have them suddenly reveal that David made annual wool deliveries to Camelot, where Guinevere taught him lessons in etiquette that turned out to be what enabled him to pass as a prince, and Arthur visited the library at Belle's home while looking for a reference book about the dagger, and they bonded over a love of research and we learned that Belle knew even more about the Dark One than we realized, so she looks even shadier about her Dark One fetish when she went into her deal with Rumple knowing what she was getting. And Lancelot hitched a ride on the Jolly Roger after he fled Camelot, but Hook screwed him over when he had the chance to get his revenge on Rumple, only it failed, so he messed up Lancelot for nothing.

 

I feel rather fortunate that we didn't get a flashback of Regina burning Percival's village, because they'd have juxtaposed it with her being called the Savior, with the implication that we're supposed to believe it and not be bothered at all by what she used to do.