S07.E01: Hyperion Heights

[Noneofyourbusiness]

10 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

ITrue - but then that contradicts your statement that "If they say her threat is real, then we're meant to take it as such regardless of whether it would be realistic in real life or not."  IMO, the the show implicitly stated that the threat was real, otherwise, they'd have just pulled out toy wood swords, not big metal ones.  And if we're meant to assume that the threat of injury during combat with metal swords is real, then real injuries must have been sustained during said combat.  You seem to want to have it both ways: handwave the injuries/casualties, but have the fight be 'real'.  I think I'll just agree to disagree at this point.  

No, quite the opposite. In both cases the showrunners are asking us to suspend disbelief, or they're ignorant of what would have happened in reality and we're to just go along with the story they tell us. There's no contradiction. The threat from a sword is only as real as the creators' knowledge of what that sword can do. They know swords are dangerous, but not the specifics. It's not an all-or-nothing between toy swords and realistic swords. Likewise, they believe (or want us to believe) that the custody threat is serious, so it is.

Sigh. I'll concede that there's not enough evidence to say whether anyone died or not. But if they don't show dead bodies or have peasants talk about how horrible it was that Henry and Cinderella killed all those guards at the palace, they clearly don't consider it to affect the story.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Noneofyourbusiness

[RulerofallIsurvey]

1 minute ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

But if they don't show dead bodies or have peasants talk about how horrible it was that Henry and Cinderella killed all those guards at the palace, they clearly don't consider it to affect the story.

No, I think they clearly just didn't consider how it looked at all.  Just like they clearly never thought it made Regina look horrible to have murdered all those Black Guards.  (And the peasants never talked about that either.)  I mean, they were only Black Guards, after all - who cares about them, right? 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

13 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Which Cinderella?  Jacinderella? 

Yes, when she was talking to the Prince about how he didn't recognize her.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

6 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Sigh. I'll concede that there's not enough evidence to say whether anyone died or not.

::snort::  Gee, thanks?  Fwiw, I wasn't trying to convince you of anything or get any kind of concession - except that we are both entitled to our opinions.  I really don't have a problem with it if you want to believe no guards were killed.  Unfortunately, I don't get the same vibe in return.    

5 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Yes, when she was talking to the Prince about how he didn't recognize her.

Ah, okay.  I really don't remember that part.  However, if that was from the show, she could have been lying to the Prince.  After all, she did want to kill him, so it makes sense to me why she might not want to give away her real identity.  

[Noneofyourbusiness]

24 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

:Ah, okay.  I really don't remember that part.  However, if that was from the show, she could have been lying to the Prince.  After all, she did want to kill him, so it makes sense to me why she might not want to give away her real identity.  

No, she was telling him why she was about to kill him, that he was responsible for the death of her father and that he didn't recognize her from her poor, simple family, so she had no reason to lie.

[CheshireCat]

2 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Did the stepmother really have a better social standing than Cinderella though?  I'm not sure the Disney version ever addressed how Lady Tremaine became Lady Tremaine.  That is, was she a 'Lady' before she married Cinderella's father, or did she become a 'Lady' as a result of the marriage? 

In Perault's version, "A wealthy widower marries a proud and haughty woman as his second wife."  I think it's easy to presume that the second wife didn't have as much money as Cinderella's father, so he - and by direct relation - she would have higher social standing than the in-laws.  

In the Brother's Grimm version: "A plague infests a village, and a wealthy gentleman's wife lies on her deathbed. She calls for her only daughter, and tells her to remain good and kind, as God would protect her. She then dies and is buried. The child visits her mother's grave everyday to grieve and a year goes by. The gentleman marries another woman with two older daughters from a previous marriage."   But again, no mention of whether the second wife had a lower, equal, or higher social standing than the 'wealthy gentleman'.  

And if the Disney version pulled elements from the times in which the stories were set, then would a 'Lady' still be a 'Lady' if she married beneath her social standing?  For some reason, I don't think so.  So, if I am correct in that, then either Cinderella's father and Lady Tremaine were of equal social standing or Cinderella's dad was of higher social standing than the step-mother.  

I have no idea about Lady Tremaine's original social standing. In one of the many Cinderella story movies, she was a baroness or countess before her marriage and became the other after her marriage.

But Cinderella was a girl and girls/women didn't inherit a father's title back in the days and somehow I seem to recall that Cinderella would have lost her social standing/title when she became an orphan.

And who knows what E&A have in mind about either lady's origin ;-)

[KingOfHearts]

There doesn't seem to be much purpose to the alternate fairy tales except to A) give license to the writers to reuse icons of the Disney library, and B) solve the plot hole regarding Authors writing about them before the 1980s. There's still plenty of time in the season, but I don't know if they're going to actually take advantage of the concept. Will characters meet alternate versions of themselves? Will there by any origin to these alternate universes other than "its just an infinite multiverse"? Henry could have met any other Disney princess of any ethnic background and the writers could have easily written a storyline around it. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to choose Cinderella. She's just iconic enough for new viewers to grasp who she is.

It just seems like the alternates are serving the writers' needs. I'm not sure if it's part of the story's natural flow yet. We'll just see how it unfolds, but you know - TS,TW.

Edited October 11, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

This whole "different cultures different stories) thing has potential, I guess, but ts mostly just super confusing. What version of Cinderella is this? Yeah her trying to kill the Princes is...different, but what culture is this from? I thought the premise of the whole show was that we were seeing the "real" Snow White here from the original Author who saw it happen, and the other Snow Whites were just variations that other normal storytellers added later? Why does it look just like the EF world? Also, is Tiana from the EF in this universe? Is there another Tiana from another universe who is from New Orleans in the 20s? Does this just keep going and going in an infinite number of multiverses that are never ending? Thats a little too deep for this show I think. 

This show has interesting ideas for world building, but they always fumble by making everything somehow too complicated, and overly simplistic. 

[Camera One]

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

She's just iconic enough for new viewers to grasp who she is.

That's the only reason as far as I can see.  Eddy said they chose Cinderella since they didn't explore her too much.  He also chose to re-do Alice because he loves Alice and "no one" watched the spinoff.  So to me, it was solely an excuse for re-using these characters because they want to.  Putting this second Cinderella in the iconic blue dress again was for buzz and marketability.  They didn't use any other elements from the original story for this version of Cinderella.  I had been hoping to see her talking to her mother at the tree at the very least.  They have no interest in exploring folklore from other cultures, as shown by their disinterest in even giving Mulan her own backstory, or expanding beyond Aladdin in Arabian Nights.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

Eddy said they chose Cinderella since they didn't explore her too much.

Yet we've seen her in two centrics, and her story was alluded to in OUATIW. (Which was later retconned in S6.) 

Edited October 11, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

They have no interest in exploring folklore from other cultures, as shown by their disinterest in even giving Mulan her own backstory, or expanding beyond Aladdin in Arabian Nights.

Yeah that bugs me. Instead of going on about Cinderella stories from other cultures, why not actually explore other cultures folk tales? There are so many interesting books and stories and legends (basically the entirety of fiction!!!!) out there, but they just go with the same stories that everyone knows, that they've done already. On the other hand, whenever the show does dip into other cultures, it never really leads to much, so maybe its for the best that they dont drag even more mythologies into this madness. 

The only "new" character I thought was interesting was Alice, but whats the point? We had a whole show with Alice, and she was awesome! Why bother with this other version? 

[Rumsy4]

4 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Why bother with this other version? 

And it seems like she's about as much "Alice" as the Count of Monte Cristo was anything like his literary namesake. One weird trip to Wonderland does not an Alice make, to misquote her own words. A&E continue their trend of famous literary namedrops who turn out to be as "real" as Elvis look-alikes in Vegas. 

[Camera One]

We must love Alice because she's a female Rumple who spews cryptic messages that can launch a thousand theories (judging from this thread, so far we're so intrigued there have been none).  The only "Alice" thing about her was that "Drink Me" bottle.  What was the point of drugging Henry if she just let him go right away?  

[CCTC]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

Yeah that bugs me. Instead of going on about Cinderella stories from other cultures, why not actually explore other cultures folk tales?

Plus, they are not exactly exploring other cultures with this Cinderella.  They have cast a Latin American actress - which is nice to have some diversity - but otherwise everything else  - the dress, the forest, the palace, the other people, the music etc.  could have been taken directly from the classic white bread Cinderella story.  

Edited October 11, 2017 by CCTC

[RulerofallIsurvey]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Will characters meet alternate versions of themselves?

That would be fun and interesting!  So, of course not.

37 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The only "Alice" thing about her was that "Drink Me" bottle. 

I have a theory that Alice is not really "Alice" but the Cheshire Cat in disguise.  Really, it already makes more sense if you think about it...

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

No, I think they clearly just didn't consider how it looked at all.  Just like they clearly never thought it made Regina look horrible to have murdered all those Black Guards.  

No, they would not have considered it at all.  To the Writers, the lives of non-recurring characters do not matter.  All we were supposed to get out of the scene was that Cinders was kickass and it was so epic for she and Henry to fight together.  We're not supposed to give another thought to the soldiers doing their jobs. 

Likewise, the lives of victims like the Fairy-godmother doesn't matter, just like the deaths of Charlotte, the Count of Monte Cristo, the groom, etc. didn't matter.  All we are supposed to get out of it is "Isn't Lady Tremaine, or The Evil Queen, or Rumplestiltskin so deliciously evil?"  None of those victims are expected to get a second thought, even when Rumple gets to sit with the heroes at the last supper (who cares that he condemned Charlotte to death) or Regina is now hero (but it's okay to have her snap the necks of Black Guards for kicks in the musical episode since past body counts don't matter).

In this episode, I lost more hope from the sadness of the Fairy godmother's senseless murder, than gained from the wish at the fountain/blooming flower or the end of Writers' block.  Yeah, the show is never bleak... except for the homicide victim.

[Camera One]

I found it interesting that Henry named the main character in the book after himself?  Did he write it as if it were autobiographical?  Because he told Lucy that he didn't fly with Peter Pan, Snow White isn't his grandma, his shrink isn't Jiminy Cricket, etc.

[andromeda331]

6 hours ago, CCTC said:

Plus, they are not exactly exploring other cultures with this Cinderella.  They have cast a Latin American actress - which is nice to have some diversity - but otherwise everything else  - the dress, the forest, the palace, the other people, the music etc.  could have been taken directly from the classic white bread Cinderella story.  

Exactly, if their going to do different Cinderella then they need to do a difference Cinderella. Pick one of the many different Cinderella type stories and explore that one or several different ones. That would be a lot of fun. Get the costumes, the scenery and really have fun with it. Nope, same dress, same forest, same palace, but their "different". 

[RulerofallIsurvey]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

I found it interesting that Henry named the main character in the book after himself?  Did he write it as if it were autobiographical?  Because he told Lucy that he didn't fly with Peter Pan, Snow White isn't his grandma, his shrink isn't Jiminy Cricket, etc.

Huh - I hadn't even thought about that.  (There was too much other ridiculousness that had me rolling my eyes.)  Well, it was mentioned upthread that Henry didn't get a new cursed name either - it's still Henry Mills.  But I wonder how that works with his lost-memories cursed self.  For his cursed self, if he named the character after himself, that's so Mary Sue I'm surprised the book sold at all.  Yet, it was supposed to be a best seller in the 'real world' right?  Unless he used a pen name that wasn't Henry Mills.  But then, how would Lucy know he wrote the book, unless she remembers pre-curse Enchanted forest stuff?

[KingOfHearts]

5 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Exactly, if their going to do different Cinderella then they need to do a difference Cinderella. Pick one of the many different Cinderella type stories and explore that one or several different ones. That would be a lot of fun. Get the costumes, the scenery and really have fun with it. Nope, same dress, same forest, same palace, but their "different". 

Then even used the same music. Like what? You're trying to convince us this is another version of Cinderella, but you didn't even bother to give her a soundtrack of her own? She's a main character. I guess the budget must be that low.

[CCTC]

Another reason Regina had so much power in Storybrooke is she arranged for their cursed personalities to be meek and submissive.  It was especially apparent when comparing Mary Margaret vs. flashback Snow and to some degree waffling David Nolan and Charming.  (I only wish Snow would have reverted more to her EF personality post season 3 -- David was pretty much Charming post-curse.)   The cursed personalities slowly started to crumble but it was not instantaneous.    In this version you saw a little bit of that with Hook.  Roni was different than Regina to some degree, but she was not some meek wallflower.  In some ways she was an improvement because she was Regina without the angst and self-pity.  Jacenda and Henry seemed to be exactly the same as their non-cursed counter points.  The way Mary Margaret acted - you could see her being some timid school teacher cowed by Mayor Mills.  Jacenda was already feisty and spirited when you first see her, so it is not as believable that she would remain in her situation.

Regarding her job - it was not a great job -- but she is in a city with multiple restaurants like that.  It is not like she could not get a job at a fast food or semi-fast food place down the street.  I suspect she will soon have a job at Roni's.

[Shanna Marie]

17 hours ago, CheshireCat said:

But Cinderella was a girl and girls/women didn't inherit a father's title back in the days and somehow I seem to recall that Cinderella would have lost her social standing/title when she became an orphan.

This only applies for certain to the British system and for relatively modern times, and since we're dealing with a made-up world, they could make up their own system, but women get their title/status from their fathers and/or husbands. The daughter of a nobleman would be a "lady," and she would keep that title through the rest of her life, whether she married or her father died. At marriage, she would get her husband's title, and she might use that one if it was a trade up in status. To use the Downton Abbey example, Mary was "Lady Mary" because her father was an earl, and she remained "Lady Mary" through both marriages, even though she married commoners who didn't have titles. If Matthew had lived long enough to inherit the earldom, Mary would have become the Countess of Grantham, or, for short, Lady Grantham. Her full name and titles would have been Lady Mary Crawley, Countess of Grantham. In contrast, her mother came into her marriage without a title, so she was never "Lady Cora," only "Lady Grantham."

"Lady Tremaine" sounds like a title she would have got from her husband, since if she'd got a title from her father, she would be "Lady Victoria" (or whatever her first name is). I don't know that a widow would keep her husband's title after she remarried, but as much of a status seeker as she sounds like, that might be something she would have done even if it wasn't totally proper and legitimate. You'd have to pry that "lady" out of her cold, dead hands once she got it. Or she gets "Lady Tremaine" from her marriage to Cinderella's father, which means Cinderella would properly be "Lady Ella."

There's a common conception of the Cinderella story as rags to riches, but Cinderella was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who just happened to be abused. Kate Middleton would be a parallel of the degree of status jump (though without having a wicked stepmother who abused her and treated her as a slave) -- she's the daughter of a wealthy businessman and married a prince in line for the throne. However, even that would have been a shocking match just a generation or two ago. Queen Elizabeth's parents' marriage was considered kind of iffy at the time because her mother was "only" the daughter of an earl, and a prince was expected to marry royalty, not mere nobility. He was only allowed to marry that "low" because, at the time, he wasn't expected to end up as a king. At the time these fairy tales were being recorded, a non-princess marrying the heir to the throne would have been truly shocking and very unlikely, since they would have moved in very different social circles. Royalty and nobility wouldn't have interacted socially with someone who did something so low as earn money. That's why the ball in the Cinderella story was such a huge deal. It would have been a huge change for every woman in the kingdom to have been invited, and it would have been the only opportunity for people in Cinderella's class to have a chance of meeting the prince.

So, in summary, Cinderella could have been the daughter of a wealthy merchant and still be a "nobody" to a prince, but it's hard to tell exactly what story they think they're telling here, whether they're acting like Cinderella is some kind of peasant or if she should be wealthy but is having her life stolen by her stepmother.

16 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Another reason Regina had so much power in Storybrooke is she arranged for their cursed personalities to be meek and submissive.

That's where I think they're somewhat hampered by keeping the casting of this curse as a surprise to be revealed later. Without knowing who cast it and why, there's no obvious pattern. They mostly seem to be living similar lives to their real selves, with the only real difference being separated from their spouses. Hook is a cop and a good man, which is exactly what he is in current (pre-curse) Storybrooke. Rumple is shady and working a lot of angles. Henry's a failed writer whining about his lot in life, so he's not that different from the teenager we saw at the beginning of the episode. Cinderella is under her stepmother's thumb. Henry and Cinderella presumably found some kind of independence and happiness, and that's been ripped away, but nothing seems quite as drastic or as purposeful as the original curse, which was designed to punish Snow and to make Regina the unquestioned ruler who's respected by all.

2 hours ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Well, it was mentioned upthread that Henry didn't get a new cursed name either - it's still Henry Mills.  But I wonder how that works with his lost-memories cursed self.  For his cursed self, if he named the character after himself, that's so Mary Sue I'm surprised the book sold at all.  Yet, it was supposed to be a best seller in the 'real world' right? 

I think the book was supposed to be a failure (it was Isaac's book that was a bestseller). That's why he's driving for not!Uber instead of being a successful author. But I do wonder if the character was named "Henry Mills" or if he changed the name for the character, or maybe used a pen name. I think most agents and editors would just laugh at you if you submitted a novel whose main character has the same name as the author, unless it's some kind of post-modern piece where that's the point (I have read a novel that was a fake autobiography, the author writing her life as it might have happened if it had been in totally different circumstances, but it was very literary, and she was an established author). Maybe you could pull it off in a first-person, "No, really, this all happened to me" humorous way. Otherwise, even if they did read the book instead of instantly rejecting it, the first thing they'd say would be, "You have to change the name of the character to something other than your name because that's just weird." Or possibly it's just that Lucy is reading between the lines because she knows these things happened to Henry for real, and the character has a different name. Let's hope. Otherwise, it's really dumb.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

This only applies for certain to the British system and for relatively modern times,

Ah, thanks for the lesson!  I knew someone would know more about it than me!  :)

9 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

There's a common conception of the Cinderella story as rags to riches, but Cinderella was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who just happened to be abused.

In the Italian version I ran across, Cinderella is a princess, (daughter of a prince) but is abused by her governess.  Also another where she is abused by a wicked step father who wished to make his own daughter's dowries larger.  

But as you said, who can tell what they are actually trying to do with this Cinderella?

16 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think the book was supposed to be a failure (it was Isaac's book that was a bestseller).

Ah, okay.  I thought I remembered Lucy saying something about how she expected a bestselling author like him to have a nicer place.  So what was Henry's first book then?  Or did he just publish Isaac's book like The Brother's Grimm collected stories without actually being the authors?

[Shanna Marie]

2 minutes ago, RulerofallIsurvey said:

I thought I remembered Lucy saying something about how she expected a bestselling author like him to have a nicer place.  So what was Henry's first book then?  Or did he just publish Isaac's book like The Brother's Grimm collected stories without actually being the authors?

I don't remember the bestseller part, but I haven't rewatched. I thought the writers said in interviews that his book was a failure, and that's why he's driving for not!Uber. Even if he had a bestseller, if he was so blocked that he couldn't write another book, he could still have financial difficulties. A book can be a "bestseller" without making a ton of money (I was surprised to learn how few copies it takes to make a list. The trick is selling them all in one week rather than spread out over time). Or they could have been playing with the popular perception that having a book published makes you rich, and therefore the surprise at the "dump" he was living in. But since she checked for dust on the windows, was the "dump" comment about him living in squalor or the relative merits of his apartment? It sounds like his book was the first six seasons, and then maybe introducing his meeting with Cinderella at the end. But that story would make a terrible novel because there's no real throughline and no good structure. I guess you could make it Emma's story, from Henry finding her to her winning the final battle and living happily ever after in Storybrooke with her family, except the final battle was a lame climax to a story arc, let alone to Emma's entire story. But then it sounds like he wrote it as his story, from finding Emma to meeting Cinderella, and then there's even less structure and development. Maybe you could make it work as a series of novels -- Storybrooke vs. the Evil Queen, Storybrooke vs. the Evil Queen's mother, the journey to Neverland, Storybrooke vs. the Snow Queen, Storybrooke vs. the Queens of Darkness, etc. -- but as one novel it would be an epic hot mess.

[iMonrey]

Quote

I think all versions of the fairy tales are told as "here's what really happened" and are only a "this is what could have happened" version if you think about it. Many fairy tale characters, including Snow White, existed but they're still just stories because no one wrote them down originally. And the concept that many Versions exist of these stories isn't something that Once invented. I mean, how many Cinderella/Cinderella-like stories are out there? I can think of four from the top of my head.

And that's fine . . . if you have an all new cast. Or - if this Regina, Hook and Gold are different characters from some parallel realm, not the Regina, Hook and Gold we've been watching for the past six seasons. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. This is a different Cinderella from a different realm with a different story than the one we watched back in Season 1. So how the heck do our Regina, our Hook and our Gold fit into this? How would this stepmother (or whoever cast this curse) have even known about them if she's from some alternate realm that has the same basic characters? Why didn't she take her realm's version of Regina, Gold and Hook? 

[Writing Wrongs]

I'm listening to Once Podcast for this episode and they are as confused as me about what was going on. They point out how in the the original pilot, so much got established while in this reboot, you don't know what's happening or what the new rules or curse even is.

How they think new people can come in and understand or how longtime viewers will care, I don't know.

[Rumsy4]

8 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Why didn't she take her realm's version of Regina, Gold and Hook? 

Either becasue they don't exist, or they do, but their lives didn't intersect with Alt!Cinderella and Henry. Regina, Gold, and Hook from the Prime OUAT universe presumably got tangled up with the Alternate Enchanted Forest characters because of Henry. 

I do agree that all this is needlessly complicated. I don't have a hard time getting the concept, but I do find it extremely difficult to post about it. It involves using complicated modifiers to explain who and what I mean. They should have done the reboot with all new charatcers and just Henry from the Prime Universe. Or set in the WishRealm, as some of us had speculated. 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Rumsy4

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

I do agree that all this is needlessly complicated. I don't have a hard time getting the concept, but I do find it extremely difficult to post about it. It involves using complicated modifiers to explain who and what I mean. They should have done the reboot with all new charatcers and just Henry from the Prime Universe. Or set in the WishRealm, as some of us had speculated. 

Even the Wish Realm made more sense, since it was tied to the Prime Universe. It wasn't just some random alternate dimension. It was relevant to the main story. Henry could have stumbled into any of the universes. There's no reason it just so happened to be Murderella's. (At least that we know of so far.) 

Edited October 11, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

I don't have a huge problem with the multiple universes with multiple versions of the stories because it makes sense, given that we do have so many versions of these stories. That was one thing where the Author concept made some kind of sense, and this makes it make even more sense. When the Grimms were Authors, they recorded one version from one universe. When Disney was an Author, he recorded a different version from a different universe. We saw Isaac's version play out. Now there's this other version that will be recorded by a different Author -- Henry, maybe? Or is some other Author responsible for that universe, and that's how Henry gets himself written into a storybook?

Where it gets confusing is that they shifted from the season one premise that the stories are all true, but they didn't necessarily happen the way you heard. That never made a lot of sense, given that these events happened long after the stories started to be told. There was a line in the first season about crossing time and space, but then they made it clear that our world and the Enchanted Forest world line up, time-wise. But then there are apparently other worlds that don't line up, since Henry grew to adulthood while his parents didn't age.

The other thing that messes up the concept is how they set it up and explained it in this episode, with Henry talking about there being multiple versions in terms of other cultures. Yes, there are a variety of versions of these stories. Most cultures have a Cinderella-like story about a commoner going to a ball/festival/party in disguise and marrying the royal she meets there. But then we saw the exact same Cinderella setup as in the Disney movie, down to the names of the stepmother and stepsister and the blue dress, just with a Hispanic actress playing Cinderella, and with her wanting to murder out of revenge. It wasn't a Spanish or Latin American version of the basic Cinderella-type story. It was the same Disney story. The other issue is something they're wildly inconsistent about with the Author/storybook mythology, and that's the fact that sometimes they talk about the Author recording events, and sometimes they talk like the Author is responsible for creating events. They showed us that the Author is supposed to only record events and it's wrong to create events, and yet it sounded like Henry wanted to go jump into these other versions that had already been written, instead of making it clear that he was going other places where stories could happen around him. It seems like what's going on is that if you go to one of these storybook worlds, you may find yourself running into the same basic archetypes of characters and stories, but they play out in slightly different ways, and he was hoping that by going to other storybook worlds, he might find himself playing a role in one of these stories as they happened, and that would be how he ended up in one of those books. And yet he was bummed about not being in the books, in spite of the fact that he wasn't there for those events, so that doesn't make sense.

[tennisgurl]

I kind of wish that, if most of the cast wanted to leave, they would have just made it a completely unconnected story, like an anthology show for each season. I know that Wonderland didn't get amazing ratings, but it was a really good show, and maybe if it was the only Once show around, people would be more willing to give it a shot? That way they can actually explore other fairy tales and cultures, without the pain of connecting it with the main story line and some of the past characters. It could have been a cool way to expand the world and see some of the other millions of universes, maybe with a new theme (science fiction world? action world? anime world?) but instead its just a retread of what we`ve already seen. 

[Camera One]

To save anyone from having to rewatch, I think Lucy said Henry was her favorite author, not a best-selling author.  

Henry only began writing as Author in Season 5, so did he go back and write his experiences from Seasons 1-4?  (no wonder no one bought it... 2B would have received horrible word-of-mouth)  

In Season 6, this was said ("When Bluebirds Fly"):
"What happens at the end of the book?"
"The Savior fights The Final Battle."

So... why would there be an extra chapter about Henry crashing into Cinderella?

And what is Henry saying in the premiere about not being in any of the books?  He's in the one he's writing!

This Author stuff STILL makes no sense and Season 4 was a long time ago.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

And what is Henry saying in the premiere about not being in any of the books?  He's in the one he's writing!

That's what's so weird about him being so bummed out about not being in the other books. They take place in other worlds. Why would he be in those books? They're books about what's happened, and he wasn't in those other worlds, so why would he be in those books? We've got a recent high school graduate (apparently), who's essentially upset because he wasn't in his history textbooks, so he's heading off to the beaches of Normandy, hoping he'll end up in the history books.

It would have made more sense if he was upset because he hadn't done anything that would make it into a history book -- except he's helped break two curses, flown with Peter Pan, traveled to an alternate universe where he pulled off a jailbreak that freed his mother and then broke the spell that created an alternate universe, traveled to Camelot, visited the Underworld, where he helped people find and finish their unfinished business so they could move on in the afterlife, destroyed and revived magic, and saved his mother from being killed in the Final Battle. It also wouldn't be odd for a teenager in a small town to want to leave and go to a place where exciting things are more likely to happen -- except he's from a town where powerful magical villains show up and try to take over the town and/or the world every few weeks, or there's a big chance of being sucked through a portal to another world.

If he's not in the book that chronicled all these events, then it's his fault because he was the Author. If he's in that book, then why is he upset about not being in other books? He would have sounded a lot better if he'd phrased it as having been in other people's stories and needing to find his own story. Or if he had to go off and carry out his author duties in other realms. But leaving because there are books he's not in is just weird and makes him look like he's looking for fame and glory.

[Rumsy4]

58 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Or if he had to go off and carry out his author duties in other realms.

This was the simplest explanation. The writers don't even use their own material to build up present day plots. They're lazy, and that's why so many episodes feel completely disconnected from the rest of the Show. This problem grew worse in later seasons.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Rumsy4

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Henry only began writing as Author in Season 5, so did he go back and write his experiences from Seasons 1-4?  (no wonder no one bought it... 2B would have received horrible word-of-mouth)  

Ha! This maybe my only favorite part of the season A&E's book bombed out. I mean Henry's. I can't imagine how it failed. Was it the incoherent storylines, the dropped storylines, confusions on the Heroes being blamed forever everything and villains getting away with everything? Characters that suddenly disappeared from the stories, idiots dying and being declared heroes, and no one caring what happened to Graham, the village massacres and no one ever returning the vault of hearts? Even in their own fantasy universe no one likes what they write. 

Edited October 12, 2017 by andromeda331

[Noneofyourbusiness]

10 hours ago, iMonrey said:

So how the heck do our Regina, our Hook and our Gold fit into this? How would this stepmother (or whoever cast this curse) have even known about them if she's from some alternate realm that has the same basic characters? Why didn't she take her realm's version of Regina, Gold and Hook? 

As we'll see in future episodes, they were in the New Enchanted Forest when the curse happened, because Henry called on them for help.

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The other thing that messes up the concept is how they set it up and explained it in this episode, with Henry talking about there being multiple versions in terms of other cultures. Yes, there are a variety of versions of these stories. Most cultures have a Cinderella-like story about a commoner going to a ball/festival/party in disguise and marrying the royal she meets there. But then we saw the exact same Cinderella setup as in the Disney movie, down to the names of the stepmother and stepsister and the blue dress, just with a Hispanic actress playing Cinderella, and with her wanting to murder out of revenge. It wasn't a Spanish or Latin American version of the basic Cinderella-type story. It was the same Disney story.

And yet he was bummed about not being in the books, in spite of the fact that he wasn't there for those events, so that doesn't make sense.

He was using the multiple cultures' versions in the real world as an analogy in terms of there being different versions of the same stories in the Sorcerer's Mansion, but didn't mean the different versions he had read represented different cultures.

He said he was bummed because there were no Alterna-Henries. And since there were no stories about a Henry, he had to go live one (though, as pointed out, he *is* in the book he had finished writing, only not as the central hero).

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

To save anyone from having to rewatch, I think Lucy said Henry was her favorite author, not a best-selling author.  

In Season 6, this was said ("When Bluebirds Fly"):

"What happens at the end of the book?"
"The Savior fights The Final Battle."

So... why would there be an extra chapter about Henry crashing into Cinderella?

You are correct. She said "favorite", not "bestselling".

There isn't. The book Henry was writing ends with the Final Battle. The New Enchanted Forest is part of a different magical book with a different Author. Henry's non-magical novel would include both because it's an autobiography.

[Rumsy4]

9 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

He said he was bummed because there were no Alterna-Henries. And since there were no stories about a Henry, he had to go live one (though, as pointed out, he *is* in the book he had finished writing, only not as the central hero).

If that's what he was really saying, then it makes him sound even more of a narcissistic glory-hound. He knows there are no other versions on him out there, so he's intentionally going to insert himself into the stories of multiple realms knowing that there is no "other" version of him to interfere with him. He basically wants to be a hero in multiple realms. 

[Mitch]

44 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

If that's what he was really saying, then it makes him sound even more of a narcissistic glory-hound. He knows there are no other versions on him out there, so he's intentionally going to insert himself into the stories of multiple realms knowing that there is no "other" version of him to interfere with him. He basically wants to be a hero in multiple realms. 

AND he knows the outcomes as he read the book before. How could anyone not be a hero if you know what the other people were going to do,who to trust, who to not trust...and the solution of the problems if you already know them? Henry in any form is a delusional annoying idiot. Though it seems by inserting himself in these stories he screwed them up, which would be good if the writers would show that there are repercussions to his actions but no, they will say he is a "Hero!" And I know this was brought up, but are these people stories. or are they real? They keep saying that he is part of a story, not of events which actually transpired that somoene else wrote down. So is he going back through time, or do these stories stay the same, running in a loop in some weird world?

Edited October 12, 2017 by Mitch

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Mitch said:

So is he going back through time, or do these stories stay the same, running in a loop in some weird world?

I think maybe he's going to other worlds where these stories haven't played out yet, hoping to run into the stories as they're playing out and insert himself into them. So, he discovered that there were multiple Cinderella (and other) stories in multiple worlds, and so now he's jumping across the multiverse, hoping to stumble into a story as it's playing out and then become a player in it so he'll end up in a storybook.

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

He knows there are no other versions on him out there, so he's intentionally going to insert himself into the stories of multiple realms knowing that there is no "other" version of him to interfere with him. He basically wants to be a hero in multiple realms. 

And it's weird to be bummed out that there aren't other versions of himself, that he isn't a standard-issue fairy tale character archetype. I'd think most people would think it's cool to be unique rather than being a story "type." His parents aren't known characters who exist in multiple versions across realms. Emma came along after the usual "happily ever after" part for Snow White, so she wouldn't be in most of the storybooks, and therefore Henry wouldn't be.

This whole thing is so garbled that it seems like either there's some serious groupthink going on in the writing staff, or perhaps the other writers aren't allowed to question things, because I can't imagine that no one at any part of the process wouldn't have asked questions about how that worked or raised concerns about Henry's motivation here, or mentioned that he could be carrying out Author duties. Then there's the motorcycle fuel issue. They sort of laughed that off when Colin brought it up on the ComicCon panel, but if you look at their initial reaction, there was a real "oh, crap" moment, like they'd never considered it before, and it's hard to imagine that this was the first time someone had asked that question when the scene was already filmed. Or I wonder if A&E do their scripts on their own without any collaboration or review by the rest of the writing staff, so nobody else had seen it before they started shooting it -- they may break the episodes as a group and as the bosses they may review other people's scripts, but there's no review process for their scripts. And I wonder if this is one of those shows that only gives the cast the parts of the scripts that involve them, so they only see the scenes they're in rather than the whole script, so that really was the first Colin saw of the Henry scenes.

I've also been wondering about the fact that the original book "ended." Henry leaving town in order to have adventures that will end up in a book suggests that nothing much is happening in Storybrooke now, that it's a peaceful town that has gone for years without a villain showing up and trying to curse them or take over, when before that happened every other month or so. That suggests that the "final battle" really was a final battle and Emma's destiny was fulfilled, but most of the villains coming to town had nothing to do with Emma. There was Regina's mother and sister and evil side, Rumple's father and son and the darkness that got sucked out of him and his "angels." And Rumple himself, who couldn't stay good for more than about five minutes before he got tempted by a new evil scheme. So, did all that suddenly stop because Emma fought a 30-second battle that wasn't even the battle that was foretold? Was Rumple able to stay good for several years without doing anything that sent the town into turmoil, to the point that it became such a boring place that Henry had to leave home to be a hero?

[Camera One]

Wouldnt it be cool if Cinderella rode a motorcycle, period.   What else is there to discuss?  Next shocking twist now.

[KingOfHearts]

I don't even want Henry and Murderella together. They're both selfish and have no chemistry whatsoever. 

[jhlipton]

On 10/10/2017 at 6:13 AM, daxx said:

Yeah, it didn't look like everyone came away uninjured. Unlike the scene in the season 3 finale where it was pretty clear Hook was knocking out all the black guards.

There is a HUGE difference between "knocking out all the black guards" and knocking out all the Black Guards"!  LOL

On 10/10/2017 at 10:23 AM, CheshireCat said:

And the concept that many Versions exist of these stories isn't something that Once invented. I mean, how many Cinderella/Cinderella-like stories are out there? I can think of four from the top of my head.

I once (upon a time) read a story about a man who had quest to help women find their shoes -- it drew on variations of the story not just from Europe, but from Japan as well.

On 10/10/2017 at 8:45 PM, Camera One said:

All we were supposed to get out of the scene was that Cinders was kickass.

And has boobs.  These "guys" (more like teens in men's clothing) love their cleavage!

[Noneofyourbusiness]

44 minutes ago, jhlipton said:

I once (upon a time) read a story about a man who had quest to help women find their shoes -- it drew on variations of the story not just from Europe, but from Japan as well.

I read a Native American version once from the library in either middle or high school.

[KingOfHearts]

If I have to come up with something positive about this episode, it's that I liked the Not!Uber scene. Henry seeing happy families and whatnot behind him was a clever way to convey his loneliness. Maybe it was the actor's choice not to, but I would have liked more of a reaction. That was the only scene where the storytelling was remotely imaginative.

Edited October 17, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

On 10/6/2017 at 7:18 PM, bmoore4026 said:

Why couldn't they have gotten someone like Mother Gothel or Dr. Facilier to be the new big bad?

Spoiler

This post was prophetic... it predicted the two ultimate "big bads" by the end of the season.

[Shanna Marie]

Some of those old posts really were eerily prophetic. So, fess up, who went and killed a seer?

My main impression from rewatching this episode was how sloppy it was. This is laying the foundation for what's essentially a new series, and it's so half-assed, like they aren't even trying. There are some serious structural issues, but so many of these things could have been easily fixed with just another draft. It makes me wonder if there was anyone reviewing A&E's work. They needed an editor or a critique of some sort.

But there must not have been because we got stuff like the motorcycle that's still running a decade or so later in a world without gas stations and the cell phone that still has battery power. All it would have taken was one line from Regina mentioning that she put a power spell on Henry's stuff, but I get the feeling that the issue didn't even occur to them until Colin said something on the Comic-Con panel. Their "oops" reaction was way too genuine. Oh, and them apparently not being able to find the same sweater Henry wore in the coda to last season, so that his sweater changes color for the clip they took from that episode that's inserted into a new scene (could they not have reshot that to match the new episode?).

But there are a lot of other weird little things. Like Henry's explanation of why he has to go on this journey, where he talks about how "I'm the only me" in all the storybooks and that's why "it's time to find out where I belong." But I would think that if he's not in those other books, maybe that's a sign he doesn't belong there. It doesn't mean he has to go put himself there. It's like they were frantically handwaving an excuse for Henry to leave Storybrooke and grow up elsewhere so they could recast him, which is crazy because they had a built-in reason with him being an Author. He could have received some kind of message that it was time for him to go off and do his realm-hopping Author job. Plus, in that scene, Regina's all worried about that being the only magic bean he has, but then we see him having portal alerts on his phone, like he can just find or conjure them. Where did he get the portal app while traveling through non-technological worlds?

Or there's stuff like Lucy doing her big, dramatic speech to Henry about how the curse is tearing the fairytale people apart and forcing them to leave the neighborhood so they'll be separated from each other, but then later when Jacinda's car breaks down, Lucy says it's because the curse wants them to stay in the neighborhood. Which is it?

And we have people doing things because the plot needs them to rather than because it's a rational thing to do. Like Henry teaching Cinderella how to drive the motorcycle when he's planning to give her a ride. He just needs her to know where to sit, where to put her feet, and how to hold on. She doesn't need to know how to use the throttle and brake, and they're in a hurry, so there's no reason for him to stop and teach her things she doesn't need to know. The only reason for him to do so is that the writers really wanted the imagery of Cinderella riding the motorcycle, and while they didn't think about it needing fuel, they did at least consider that someone who'd never seen a motorcycle before might need to learn how it worked before she could ride it. Or there's the fact that Victoria seems to know where Henry's car is, so was she responsible for it being "stolen," and if so, why? At the time it disappeared, she didn't know that Jacinda was trying to run away with Lucy, so she didn't have it stolen to give her leverage to force Henry to tell where Jacinda was going. She just wanted Henry to leave the neighborhood, which he would have gladly done if his car had still been there. The only reason for Henry's car to be stolen was so he could meet Rogers and then Victoria could get him to tell her about Jacinda in order to get it back. If Victoria wasn't responsible, then how could she find it when the police couldn't?

They really misfired with their introduction of Jacinda/Cinderella. She's intensely unlikable. There was no reason for her to hit Henry and steal his bike when he was giving her a ride. They just wanted to show her as a Strong Female Character™️. Then there was Jacinda's introduction, in which we're apparently supposed to think her boss is an unreasonable tyrant for being upset that she's late for work (with a weak excuse that comes down to bad planning, and it sounds like this is habitual behavior) and for being upset that another employee clumsily ruins a whole pan of the food they sell. I noticed that in a scene set against Murderella plotting her killing of the prince, they had a present-day scene in which she kept using the word "kill," talking about how Victoria would kill her if she didn't get Lucy to her on time, she'd kill Lucy for running off, Victoria would kill both of them. I wonder if that was intentional to have Murderella's favorite word being "kill."

But the big problem is that they give us no real reason to care about these new people or about Hyperion Heights. We get Roni's big speech about what a special place it is and how she's going to fight for it, but we've never seen anything special about it. There were no customers in Roni's bar. We've seen no interaction on the streets. The only people we know are fairytale characters are Victoria, Ivy, Jacinda, Alice, and Jacinda's roommate, along with our returning regulars. As far as we can tell, everyone else is an ordinary Seattle person, so why do we care about Lucy's overly dramatic speech about them being torn apart?

Speaking of Lucy, she really got on my nerves, and I realized that it's because she's got a bad case of Child Soap Opera Actor Syndrome, in which she's just a bit too polished to be at all believable. If you look back at the early Charlie Brown animated specials, there's sometimes a stilted quality to the voice acting because they were using real small children who sometimes struggled to either remember or read their lines, but it still worked because they were authentically children. But with Lucy, there's something very artificial and calculated about her line delivery -- it has emotion, so it's not stilted, but it's a little too overly emotional and dramatic -- and at the same time, even though she is an actual child, she doesn't come across as an authentic child. She's like a 30-year-old with some growth/maturity-stunting disease who's playing child roles even though she's forgotten what it was like to be a child.

Now, looking back after having seen the rest of the series, I find this episode even more frustrating because

Spoiler

we never learn how/why Lucy decided that the book was a true story and Henry was her father. She was surprised to realize that Roni was Regina/the Evil Queen and Henry's mother, so it's not like she recognized anyone from the illustrations. That seems like a huge logical leap to leave unexplained. And then there's Alice's cryptic warning about bad things happen when you get involved in someone else's story, which never goes anywhere, unless they're saying that all of this was a bad idea and Henry should never have left home.

[Camera One]

I can't believe I willingly watched this episode again.  Season 7 is still on my PVR so perhaps I had an unconscious attachment to this season, LOL.  

This season would be really tough to rewatch.  There is really nothing enjoyable about any of the characters except Officer Rogers.  Without the "fun" of guessing what contrived rabbit hole A&E might go down next (and knowing now that the rabbit hole leads to unsatisfying dead ends galore), it's just boring. 

I don't think I felt too differently.  I still think Jacinda and Victoria's acting in particular are distractingly stilted.

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But with Lucy, there's something very artificial and calculated about her line delivery -- it has emotion, so it's not stilted, but it's a little too overly emotional and dramatic -- and at the same time, even though she is an actual child, she doesn't come across as an authentic child.

And this summarizes what I thought about Lucy as well.  

My memory about this season is extremely limited, though, so I don't feel like I can analyze this episode in terms of whether the actions made sense based on the "answers" we were later given because I don't remember the answers or the details of what occurred later.

One thing that struck me is that the biggest threat Lucy gave about Victoria was that she was driving fairy tale characters out of Hyperion Heights, separating them forever.  So you would think it would be a journey to stop this from happening and reuniting these fairy tale characters again.

Spoiler

But when the Curse finally broke, did they address all the separated families?  We pointed out on first watch that Victoria's demoviction and its impacts were just stated and never fully shown, so it's hard for the audience to care.  But actually, this whole problem is ignored soon after as they pivot to the "twist" that it was Drizella/Ivy holding the reins.  

This episode kept using the phrase "living your own story" or "find your own story" but it was just so nebulous to the extent that it had no meaning.  What did that even mean?  

When Lucy announced to Henry that she was his daughter, you'd think he would have been worried for a bit that it could possibly be true.  The bond between Henry and Lucy never grew strong enough to be meaningful this season because it was just so obvious to Curse Henry that Lucy was not his.  If Lucy was in the foster system and there was a twinge of doubt, that might have made Henry sticking around more believable.  

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Like Henry's explanation of why he has to go on this journey, where he talks about how "I'm the only me" in all the storybooks and that's why "it's time to find out where I belong." It's like they were frantically handwaving an excuse for Henry to leave Storybrooke and grow up elsewhere so they could recast him, which is crazy because they had a built-in reason with him being an Author. He could have received some kind of message that it was time for him to go off and do his realm-hopping Author job.

This.  The reason for Henry leaving Storybrooke was basically a platitude and just so lame.

Quote

Or there's stuff like Lucy doing her big, dramatic speech to Henry about how the curse is tearing the fairytale people apart and forcing them to leave the neighborhood so they'll be separated from each other, but then later when Jacinda's car breaks down, Lucy says it's because the curse wants them to stay in the neighborhood. Which is it?

LOL, that's a nice one.  I didn't notice that the first time around.

Jacinda's pipe dream about the island was so unrealistic that it was obvious not attainable. 

Spoiler

Plus we never hear about the island again nor did it connect to any of the subsequent flashbacks.  It must not have been that significant a dream if she never mentions it again.

Quote

Or there's the fact that Victoria seems to know where Henry's car is, so was she responsible for it being "stolen," and if so, why? At the time it disappeared, she didn't know that Jacinda was trying to run away with Lucy, so she didn't have it stolen to give her leverage to force Henry to tell where Jacinda was going. She just wanted Henry to leave the neighborhood, which he would have gladly done if his car had still been there. The only reason for Henry's car to be stolen was so he could meet Rogers and then Victoria could get him to tell her about Jacinda in order to get it back. If Victoria wasn't responsible, then how could she find it when the police couldn't?

That's a good point.  On first watch, I think I assumed that Victoria did know Jacinda was going to disappear with Lucy and that's the reason why she stole Henry's car - to find out where Jacinda was.  But that doesn't mesh with the scenes unless Henry stayed a lot longer at Roni's.  

Or did Weaver (thru Alice) steal the car so Henry would stick around Hyperion Heights.

Quote

Spoiler

And then there's Alice's cryptic warning about bad things happen when you get involved in someone else's story, which never goes anywhere

Alice did seem intriguing on first watch, but yeah,

Spoiler

It really goes nowhere.  And do we ever find out why Rumple went out of his way to send Alice to stop Henry from getting involved with Murderella?  I seriously don't remember.

Edited September 14, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

This season would be really tough to rewatch.  There is really nothing enjoyable about any of the characters except Officer Rogers.  Without the "fun" of guessing what contrived rabbit hole A&E might go down next (and knowing now that the rabbit hole leads to unsatisfying dead ends galore), it's just boring. 

I'm getting my entertainment by spotting all the inconsistencies and plot holes, laughing at the things they seem to be setting up that I know will go nowhere. It becomes a comedy when you know where it's all going.

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

One thing that struck me is that the biggest threat Lucy gave about Victoria was that she was driving fairy tale characters out of Hyperion Heights, separating them forever.  So you would think it would be a journey to stop this from happening and reuniting these fairy tale characters again.

And the only fairy tale characters who seem to be separated from their loved ones are Henry and Murderella, and they're reunited early in the episode, with nothing to keep them apart, aside from maybe the fact that it's really weird that they met because her daughter insists that he's her father, when he and Murderella have no memory of having met.

That's one of the problems of their "look, we're repeating our old patterns! Isn't that profound? Don't you care deeply?" type of writing. Instead of developing the current situation, they're just pasting it on top of the past situation and hoping that our feelings about the past situation will transfer, even though the current situation doesn't fit the past situation. With Emma and Henry, even if all the storybook stuff was a childish fantasy, they knew that Emma was Henry's biological mother and he was deeply unhappy with his adoptive mother. With Lucy and Henry, there's no reason for Lucy to think Henry is her father. He and her mother have never met, so there's no grounds for their relationship to be at all real. Lucy's living with her biological mother and happy with her, so it's not like with Henry where there's reason to believe the storybook fantasies are an unhappy, lonely kid's coping mechanism, so there's reason for the (supposed) biological parent to get involved. The only reason they've given us to care is that it's just like Emma and Henry in season one.

They've also given us no reason to care about Henry and Murderella getting together again other than that they echo the Charmings in season one, right down to her hitting him at their first meeting and her being on her way to kill someone. But the Charmings were a canon fairytale couple, so we already had all the associations of Snow White and her prince, the series started with their iconic True Love's Kiss, and the pilot showed their wedding, their pregnancy, the birth of their daughter, and their tragic separation, well before we saw their first meeting, with her hitting him. Plus, Snow was hitting someone she believed was an ally to the Evil Queen, and we'd seen the harm done to Snow by the person she was heading to kill. We have nothing like that with Henry and Murderella. They're not a canon couple, so if you're splitting up Cinderella and the prince she meets at the ball, you've got to do double the work to convince us they're meant to be. We haven't seen them having any kind of connection before she hits him when he's trying to help her, and we haven't seen any evidence that the person she's planning to kill has it coming.

It might have been more interesting if it turned out that Henry was the prince she met at the ball, so Henry was actually Cinderella's prince. They could have even done a gender flip, so that he's the one who vanishes from the ball (when Alice drugs and kidnaps him), so she's the one having to track him down based on a clue he leaves behind.

Spoiler

Especially since we know the murdering the prince thing never actually goes anywhere, and we don't get a real explanation or backstory about what the prince did.

Speaking of clues, that's another weird inconsistency -- Henry tells Murderella about Cinderella leaving a shoe as a sign, and she says she doesn't believe in signs. But she means she doesn't believe in omens or indications that things are meant to be, while he was talking about Cinderella deliberately leaving a message. Was she saying she didn't believe in leaving messages? That got all muddled.

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

LOL, that's a nice one.  I didn't notice that the first time around.

I mostly noticed because I started taking notes, there were so many lines of dialogue that seemed to contradict other lines of dialogue. I had noticed Lucy's earlier speech because that's when I realized it sounded like preternatural child soap opera acting, so it really struck me later when she said the exact opposite.

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

Or did Weaver (thru Alice) steal the car so Henry would stick around Hyperion Heights.

But then how would Victoria have known about it unless she ordered it? And since he got the car back, he was able to leave the neighborhood right away again, though I guess by that time maybe he was emotionally involved.

They must have got Rogers' cop uniform from a costume shop rather than making it (since he becomes a detective at the end of the episode and they don't need the uniform again) because it fits terribly. Then again, so does Murderella's ballgown, and they did make that. The costume people on this show really don't know how to deal with breasts. All they can do is cleavage and everything else fits badly around the bust.

[Camera One]

If you skipped the scene where Jacinda punched Henry and jumped right to Henry arriving at the ball and hitting on Jacinda, you would never have known there a physical assault had happened.  It made Henry seem like an idiotic puppy dog desperate for any female attention.

[tennisgurl]

So now its time for OUAT season 1: The Lame Version. This episode is just so hard to watch, not because its riddled with ret-cons or character assassinations or victim blaming mixed with villain white washing like in earlier seasons, just because its so half assed and boring. It really just seems like no one really cared at this point, they just kept trying to hit the old bits that the pilot hit, but without anything that made those elements work. 

The most obvious is the meeting of Cinderella and Henry, which is so obviously supposed to be a call back to Snow and Charmings first meeting that they might as well have had Cinderella call Henry Prince Charming. Except with Snow and Charming, we understood why she attacked him, and when he saw her again, he was pretty pissed about it, and they only teamed up at first because they needed each other, and it was only later that they started falling in love. Plus, we already saw them together in love, with Snow being a sweet and strong leader and wife. With this, it all just comes off as really weird and makes Cinders look like an asshole, and Henry look like a dumbass. This is an AWFUL introduction to our new supposed leading lady, she just comes off as a jerk in both realities, especially in the fairytale world, where she just about earns her Murderella nickname in, like, her second scene. The writers clearly think that she is a Strong Female Character and a Badass for punching Henry out and stealing his motorcycle, which to me just makes her a thief who smacked and stole from someone who tried to be nice to her (and was laughing like a maniac as she zoomed away) when he just said that he was trying to get home, and all to try and kill somebody. Then in the Hyperion Heights world, she is late for work (with a bunch of really lame excuses as to why) apparently not for the first time, then yells at her boss and calls him a jerk, which, yeah he seems like kind of a hardass, but she seems like a really shitty employee. And for such a jerk, he sure did give her a job back! With the murder attempt and stealing the bike, this Cinderella just seems awful, and this is our first time ever seeing her! Unlike with Snow, we dont have any other mental imagine of her beyond this, so this is what we get. A thief and an almost murderer in one life, and a crappy employee who has no idea how custody laws work in the other. And Henry smiling after her when she punched him and stole his bike, and then following after her and apparently deciding that he is all about this person, just makes him look like a massive chump, or a person who tragically falls in love with abusive people. But then, with his mom, maybe he just reminds him of Regina? Its clear that they just had the imagine of Cinderella, with her ball gown and everything, on a motorcycle, in their head and thought it was super cool and wanted to put it in the show, regardless of context. 

Also, where the hell did she get those fighting skills? Isn't she just a maid at this point? Does she tale sword fighting classes on the side? And "Operation Glass Slipper?" Really Henry? It was already humiliating when you were a teenager, and you're a grown ass man. Stop with the "Operation" stuff. 

Lucy is clearly supposed to be our young Henry, but she just doesent come off as a real kid, she comes across as a plot exposition dumper, she is so precocious, that she never comes off as real. 

There is also a weird amount of darkness in this episode, like Victoria coldly murdering Cinderellas fairy god mother (how did she manage to knock her out and clip her wings? We will never know, Henry's curse backstory of losing his family, Cinderella almost murdering the prince, but it never seems to really fit with the tone. They are going for for something kind of whimsical, and they end on Ronnie giving the big hope speech (which Victoria just sat there and listened to for ages?), but they also add all of this darkness that never seems to add anything or gets followed up on, making it all pointless, and all it does is hurt the shows tone. 

It was cool seeing the Troll in Seattle, as I saw it in person earlier this summer for the first time. The real one is covered in graffiti and always has tons of people around it taking pictures, but it does look really cool and magical, so its fits here really well. Or for the vibe I think they're trying to go for, I think. 

Yeah so there are different versions of the same character for different cultures, huh? Much like I said way back in 2017 here, what the hell version of Cinderella is this exactly? Cinders is Hispanic, but I dont think this is a part of any Cinderella story I've ever heard from any part of Latin America (Cinderella wants to murder the prince for poorly explained revenge), the story still has all the imagery of European versions of the story and the same plot points, until the murder, so...just admit that you wanted to put Henry with Cinderella and are annoyed you already used her, so are making up excuses to use her again. Its emblematic of the whole season, its lazy, boring, and makes zero sense. I swear, I could break down every single scene to describe everything wrong with every second of it, and how lazy it is.

Edited September 16, 2019 by tennisgurl

[Shanna Marie]

If Henry's "novel" is basically seasons one through six, with the scene of him meeting Cinderella as the coda, then Lucy would know that the previous curses were all broken by Henry having a TLK with one of his mothers. And yet she's trying to introduce him to Jacinda to break this curse. Wouldn't it make more sense for her to try to get him to have fatherly true love with her, to match the way the first curse was broken? Though I guess she was on the right track by having Henry and Jacinda go to Roni's bar to hand over the stolen laptop, since that introduced Henry to Roni (Regina), and they've also had a TLK -- except Lucy doesn't seem to know that Roni is Henry's mother or that she was the Evil Queen before. Are there no pictures of Regina in Henry's book? I find that really hard to believe (since Regina is the center of the universe).

And, speaking as a novelist, I find it odd that Henry's not doing double takes at meeting these people who are characters in his book. I don't even base my characters on real people, but I have a pretty good mental image of them, and if I met someone who looked like the way I imagined them, I'd be a little astonished. Henry's characters are people he really knew, even if his memory is fogged so that he thinks he made them up, so running into the real people should be disconcerting. Even without his memories, he has illustrations in his book that he supposedly drew, so he has to have some pretty strong mental images. Why is he not astonished when he meets Roni, since she's exactly the way he imagined Regina, or when he meets Rogers, who looks just like Hook and even has a missing hand? Does he not recognize Jacinda as the Cinderella the character Henry runs into at the end of the book?