S07.E09: One Little Tear

[KingOfHearts]

Its crazy to me that the writers actually set something really interesting up here. The complex family dynamics could've filled in a lot of story for the first half of S7. You start off thinking it's a retelling of Cinderella, but it gets more complex as you watch each episode. There's a lot of juicy drama and character studies to mine from the setup. It just doesn't get developed enough because we have waste time on characters like Henry, Weaver, Roni, and Lucy who really just walk around doing nothing. Not that I especially like Jacinda, Drizella, or Victoria, but with better acting and more development, their family melodrama could've been fascinating to watch. But uh... Mother Gothel! The Guardian! Lucy's belief! Those are the things we should really care about, right??

[tennisgurl]

I mean, switch out "The Savior" with "The Guardian" from the last few seasons and you basically have the exact same plot function.

Whats crazy is that Rapunzel had really legit reasons to be pissed off and bitter towards her husband and the new family he made while she was locked in the tower, but it seems like all of her anger and revenge is focused on random stuff. Marcus seems like a real wishy washy dick a lot of times, but the biggest thing that changed everything was him saving Ella, which really wasnt his fault! He loved both of them, and had to make a horrible choice in one second, I dont blame him for that. And she has this whole life long hatred of Ella, who was basically an innocent bystander in all of this. Its Regina all over again, get upset about stuff that isnt that big of a deal, and dedicate your life to fucking with someone who had nothing to do with anything instead of the actual people that ruined your life. There is so much to be explored in this family dynamic, and we just get nothing!

Its weird, this is actually the first episode we have really seen Lucy and Victoria really have scenes together, and it hits me that we dont really know anything about their relationship and their dynamic. They are clearly going for a Henry/Regina season one thing, but with them, we knew what their relationship was like (before Regina was ret-conned into the best mom ever) and Henry was clearly unhappy with Regina, who wasnt abusive or overtly cruel but was cold and distant and gas lighted him and it made us want to see him with Emma. We have no clue how Victoria treats Lucy, how they get along, what their history is (even if its just curse history) what her life is like with her, and she seems to be decently happy, going trick or treating and to ballet classes, so it makes the stakes for Jacinda getting her back pretty low. And Henry always seemed like such a sad lonely kid, underneath his belief in dreams and happy endings, who seemed truly desperate for Emma to save everyone and break the curse, while Lucy seems pretty much fine no matter what. She never seems that lonely or miserable with her curse life, she mostly seems precocious and sassy in a TV kid way, and more annoyed that the curse isnt broken then desperate. Like she knows the curse will be broken and she is just in a hurry to move along with it. It makes her story a lot less sympathetic and dramatic.

[Shanna Marie]

Another timeline buster that comes up with this episode: In the previous episode, didn't Alice talk about meeting Cecilia in Wonderland? At least, she knew how she died. But per this episode, Cecilia was poisoned and left before Alice was born (since Gothel didn't get put in the tower until after Anastasia died, which came after Rapunzel and Marcus got together after Cecilia was poisoned). Did Marcus remarry Rapunzel right after Cecilia left, or did he at least wait for the necklace light to go out? Was Cecilia still alive and in Wonderland enough later for Alice to have been old enough to travel to Wonderland? If Alice met her, then Cecilia might have outlived Marcus, depending on how Rapunzel waited to kill him after Anastasia's death.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

In the previous episode, didn't Alice talk about meeting Cecilia in Wonderland? At least, she knew how she died.

Alice said she was having tea with Cecilia and others, and then the Jabberwocky attacked and Cecilia fought valiantly, but Alice was the only one who survived by killing it.  How old would Cecilia be... she had a teenage daughter in the flashback, so she was maybe 35 or so, and when the Jabberwocky attacked, Alice was probably at least 18, so Cecilia would have been at least 53 years old.

That's a good point that Cecilia probably outlived Marcus.  I don't think the necklace light went out, so they assumed the mom was just avoiding them.

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

because we have waste time on characters like Henry, Weaver, Roni, and Lucy who really just walk around doing nothing. 

That was literally what they did most of the time.  Just thinking about them bores me.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

How old would Cecilia be... she had a teenage daughter in the flashback, so she was maybe 35 or so, and when the Jabberwocky attacked, Alice was probably at least 18, so Cecilia would have been at least 53 years old.

Except this event happened two years after the poisoning as specified by Ella, so they blew their entire timeline up.

[Camera One]

I forgot Ella specified it was two years.  Based on that, time had to have moved super slow in Wonderland... what seemed like 2 years to Ella on the outside was actually more than 20 years for Cecilia.  Would that allow a grown up Alice to meet her?  And then Alice staying there made her not age.   I feel there was some other contradictory information that makes not that work.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I forgot Ella specified it was two years.  Based on that, time had to have moved super slow in Wonderland... what seemed like 2 years to Ella on the outside was actually more than 20 years for Cecilia.  Would that allow a grown up Alice to meet her? 

I don't see how it could, since that two years would have still been before Alice was born. Marcus probably didn't remarry until the necklace light went out, and then it was however long before Anastasia died, and then however long Gothel was in the tower before WHook came along. And then Alice was born and had to grow up. Even if time passed differently in Wonderland, Alice was in the same realm as Ella, so she couldn't have been born until after Cecilia died. It might work if the necklace went out because Cecilia ditched it to force Marcus to move on and she then lived a lot longer. But then that doesn't fit the storyline of the necklace only going out because Cecilia died, not because she abandoned them (and doesn't explain why Cecilia would ditch her own daughter).

But then the time passing thing becomes a problem because something else would have had to halt the aging of Ella and Drizella, since they were teens when Alice was born, so even the explanation of time moving differently in Wonderland doesn't entirely work. Rapunzel did age into a new actress, but she was old enough to be the mother of teenagers at around the time the curse would have happened, then add about 30 years, then however many years it's been since the end of season 6 (long enough for Henry to be an adult and Lucy to be born and be the age she is, so probably about 20 years). Even if she started having kids very young, she'd have had to be at least 35 when Alice was born, putting her at about 65 at the end of season 6 and probably around 85 in the present.

[Camera One]

I was looking at what Jacinda said in "Pretty in Blue":

Quote

When I was a girl, my mother abandoned us. My father searched for an entire year, and followed her all the way here to Wonderland. She went into the Infinite Maze. Yeah, he was trying to figure out how to get through when his locket stopped working. She had stopped loving him. He came back home a broken man. He was never the same again. 

So Marcus looked for Cecilia for a year.  Why did he stop looking when the locket "stopped working"?  You'd think he would still want to talk to Cecilia to find out why she left and to discuss the question of Ella.  And if Marcus could somehow find a way to Wonderland (which even Regina had a hard time getting to), then why didn't Jacinda go looking for her mother when she grew up, instead of staying with her ex-hero of a stepmother and her mistreated stepsister?  

12 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It might work if the necklace went out because Cecilia ditched it to force Marcus to move on and she then lived a lot longer. But then that doesn't fit the storyline of the necklace only going out because Cecilia died, not because she abandoned them (and doesn't explain why Cecilia would ditch her own daughter).

That might be a possible "explanation".  Did they definitively say the necklace going out was because Cecilia died?  There might be some wiggle room there, since Alice was rather vague.  The only explanation I can think of for Cecilia ditching her own daughter was what I said before - she thought the poisoned heart curse could also happen between her and Ella.  Or she felt Wonderland was too dangerous.  

Quote

because something else would have had to halt the aging of Ella and Drizella

Dear fan,

It's a shame we were deprived of the opportunity to write a flashback featuring a young Ella and Drizella having an adventure in Wonderland after following a rabbit and becoming enemies but later having their memories erased.  They were in Wonderland for a time, which halted their aging.

You're welcome.

Adam and Eddy

Edited October 24, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

So Marcus looked for Cecilia for a year.  Why did he stop looking when the locket "stopped working"?  You'd think he would still want to talk to Cecilia to find out why she left and to discuss the question of Ella. 

It sounds like he worked harder to find Cecilia (and waited longer to remarry) than he did to find Rapunzel. Isn't seven years customary to consider someone dead when there's no body (especially in a fairytale world, since 7 years was traditionally the amount of time someone kidnapped by fairies would be held)? But he'd apparently been married to Cecilia long enough for Ella to consider him the only father she'd ever known and for things to be too deep for him to step away from wife #2 when Rapunzel returned after only being missing for six years.

Maybe he stopped looking because he knew what the locket not working meant, and he thought it was better for Ella to think her mother stopped loving them than to know she was dead? And why did she think the necklace covered multiple people rather than the person who was wearing it? Would it have kept glowing if Cecilia still loved her but no longer loved Marcus?

Along those lines, I've been trying to figure out how the whole heart poison thing works, anyway. How does it know which person to target? I thought Rapunzel poisoned Cecilia, not Marcus, and he had the mark like Alice, so if we're going by how it affects WHook, then Cecilia would have been the one nearly dying when she went near Marcus. How would the poison know which person to keep her away from? Does it just kick in whenever she goes near anyone she loves? That would explain her leaving Ella, since that would mean she couldn't go near her. WHook said the witch poisoned his heart, and he's the one keeling over when he gets near Alice. If he fell in love with someone, would he not be able to go near her? But he was hoping for a TLK to break the curse, so how could that work? If a TLK would save him even if it first nearly killed him, couldn't he get a TLK from his daughter?

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

And if Marcus could somehow find a way to Wonderland (which even Regina had a hard time getting to), then why didn't Jacinda go looking for her mother when she grew up, instead of staying with her ex-hero of a stepmother and her mistreated stepsister?  

Because she was mad at her mother for abandoning her and no longer loving her. And because Jacinda sucks.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I thought Rapunzel poisoned Cecilia, not Marcus, and he had the mark like Alice, so if we're going by how it affects WHook, then Cecilia would have been the one nearly dying when she went near Marcus. How would the poison know which person to keep her away from?

Those are really good points. I didn't even think about that.  When things happen off-screen, it's so easy to be blind to these inconsistencies.  

[KingOfHearts]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

Those are really good points. I didn't even think about that.  When things happen off-screen, it's so easy to be blind to these inconsistencies.  

No wonder A&E had so much trouble keeping their own stories straight - everything happened offscreen.

[Shanna Marie]

The heart poison thing would have made more sense if it had to be given to both of the people you wanted to keep apart, or if there were two related poisons, one for the person who would be affected and one for the person who would trigger their symptoms. Otherwise, it only makes sense if it's one of those "person you love most" things or even just anyone you love deeply. In that case, it would be a pretty vile (and effective) thing because it would mean a TLK wouldn't cure it, since anyone who loved the person enough for a TLK to work would kill them just by going near them. But that can't be what they had in mind if WHook thought that a TLK with someone else would cure him.

And we don't know how Cecilia knew what was going on.

With WHook, as I recall, Gothel gloated about what she'd done to him.

I doubt Rapunzel fessed up. Was this a well-known poison, so that when Cecilia had a heart attack in the vicinity of her husband and/or daughter, she knew what was going on? If she (or her husband) had serious chest pains when they were nearby, did she (but apparently not him) realize she'd been poisoned? Did she just assume something magical was wrong? And if she did know it was poison, Rapunzel was really the only likely suspect, but she left her daughter with that woman, and that only makes sense if the poison works with her daughter, too.

[Camera One]

They could have had Gothel or the poison turn Cinderella's mother into a tree.  It seems like they didn't bother to re-read the Grimm version of the fairy tale to see what else they could bring into the Cinderella story.  Cecilia was just a random redshirt character they put very little thought into.  She didn't even have a conversation with her daughter in this episode.  You'd think she would have realized in Wonderland (especially if she was friends with Alice) that Rapunzel put the poisoned mushroom into her drink, and she would come back to rescue her daughter from such an evil woman.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Camera One