S07.E13: Knightfall

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Gothel was more complex because why would she want to kill her own Coven, but maybe they were rebelling against her.  

Or she was trying to steal their powers to magnify hers.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

If Gothel wasn't the killer, you'd think she would have stationed herself and Anastasia by the baker witch's bedside, ready to destroy the real killer, rather than playing games at the police station and distracting them from actually finding the real killer.

Yeah, she was the opposite of helpful to the cops, even though presumably her friends were the victims.

Thinking more about why they had WHook getting distracted from Alice and being punished with the heart curse, I think maybe they were trying to parallel to the present-day story, in which Rogers is neglecting Alice to work on the case. Except it doesn't parallel very well, since Rogers doesn't know Alice is his daughter and he's just trying to do his job to solve a serial killer case and Alice is being a bit of a pest. I don't think she's offering anything of substance or urgency in the context he's aware of. WHook failed his daughter by putting his pride ahead of her and getting sidetracked by something entirely unnecessary. Rogers is staying focused on his job and shutting out a distraction.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

Thinking more about why they had WHook getting distracted from Alice and being punished with the heart curse, I think maybe they were trying to parallel to the present-day story, in which Rogers is neglecting Alice to work on the case. Except it doesn't parallel very well, since Rogers doesn't know Alice is his daughter and he's just trying to do his job to solve a serial killer case and Alice is being a bit of a pest. I don't think she's offering anything of substance or urgency in the context he's aware of. WHook failed his daughter by putting his pride ahead of her and getting sidetracked by something entirely unnecessary. Rogers is staying focused on his job and shutting out a distraction.

That could very well be it. 

Their parallels from flashback to present-day are often quite askew and hit-and-miss.  The present-day plot does not delve into Rogers' mindset in any meaningful or deep way.  It's mainly just highlighting Eloise's strangeness and providing intrigue.

There was also an attempt to tie the past and the present by having Rogers dig out his painting.  Except I don't think it led anywhere.  Granted, I wasn't paying much attention to the episode yesterday, so maybe I missed the deep philosophical implications of Rogers confronting his own work of art.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

There was also an attempt to tie the past and the present by having Rogers dig out his painting.  Except I don't think it led anywhere.  Granted, I wasn't paying much attention to the episode yesterday, so maybe I missed the deep philosophical implications of Rogers confronting his own work of art.

As far as I can tell, the painting thing was just about the tie to Tangled, since that Rapunzel liked to paint. The only hint we've ever had of any Hook drawing or painting was when Rogers sketched out the symbol. The main thing that caught my attention was Rogers's doodle of the ship in his notebook, since it looks a bit like the ship drawings that Colin apparently sometimes includes in his autographs, and since he studied art, I wondered if he drew any of the stuff they used in the show.

Spoiler

And, as far as I recall, Rogers being an artist never came up again.

[Melgaypet]

I wonder how WHook was supporting Alice. Unless the tower magically provided everything he or Alice asked for (which maybe it did, since Alice didn't starve to death after WHook was cursed, though there were still have been ways he could get supplies to her - like a pulley system or something), all that stuff came from somewhere. Did WHook work nearby as a blacksmith or tutor or farmhand or whatever? Did he turn highwayman (land pirate!)? Was there a nearby village market where WHook was a regular customer? Did no one except WHook (and Gothel, I suppose) know Alice existed? I have logistical questions, here.

[Speakeasy]

1 hour ago, Melgaypet said:

I wonder how WHook was supporting Alice. Unless the tower magically provided everything he or Alice asked for (which maybe it did, since Alice didn't starve to death after WHook was cursed, though there were still have been ways he could get supplies to her - like a pulley system or something), all that stuff came from somewhere. Did WHook work nearby as a blacksmith or tutor or farmhand or whatever? Did he turn highwayman (land pirate!)? Was there a nearby village market where WHook was a regular customer? Did no one except WHook (and Gothel, I suppose) know Alice existed? I have logistical questions, here.

The tower must have provided some of the supplies otherwise Alice would have starved to death as an infant, unless Whook was able to smuggle a nursemaid or, I suppose, a lactating dog, into the tower. He was going back and forth in and out of the tower but he could have been out looking for magical ways to get her out or avoiding Gothel every time she came back to gloat at her child about her being stuck in a tower.

Gothel was depending on her being alive in the tower so you'd assume (I know that with this series it's dangerous to make assumptions based on logic but still) that she would set up some kind of system to keep baby Alice safe and alive.

[Melgaypet]

46 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

Gothel was depending on her being alive in the tower so you'd assume (I know that with this series it's dangerous to make assumptions based on logic but still) that she would set up some kind of system to keep baby Alice safe and alive.

I thought Alice just had to be alive for Gothel to leave the tower and afterwards she was free no matter what happened to Alice, but as I've said before, I either ignored or mentally rewrote a lot of this stuff.

And you're right, if the tower didn't supply everything, then WHook would have to find a wet nurse or a goat or something to feed baby Alice. I guess the simplest explanation is that the tower DID provide. That's some powerful and very convenient magic. Which apparently doesn't come at a price? Oh, wait, the show had given up on that idea by this point.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I thought Alice just had to be alive for Gothel to leave the tower and afterwards she was free no matter what happened to Alice

That was my read of things, that she didn't care what happened to the baby. She just wanted someone of her blood to take her place so she could get out of the tower. And it doesn't seem like Alice being free had any effect on her (since she was out and about and perfectly okay while Alice was also free). So her actions in this episode look like pointless spite.

It does seem like the tower would have to have some provision for its occupant, since Rapunzel survived up there for years. Either the tower was meeting her needs or Gothel was sending supplies, since she wanted to keep Rapunzel alive as a Guardian candidate. Gothel also survived for however long, but I guess with magic powers she could have provided for herself.

Even if the tower stocked supplies, there still needed to be someone to look after the baby because the baby wouldn't have been able to feed herself, so Gothel was still essentially leaving her to die and she likely wouldn't have lived if Whook hadn't stayed to care for her.

[Camera One]

7 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Gothel was depending on her being alive in the tower so you'd assume (I know that with this series it's dangerous to make assumptions based on logic but still) that she would set up some kind of system to keep baby Alice safe and alive.

That's what I assumed too in "Eloise Gardener".  I thought the reason why Eloise trapped the child in the tower was because someone needed to be physically in the tower to make up for her own absence.  

Quote

Gothel: The only way I can escape this prison is by leaving someone in my bloodline to take my place.

Usually someone taking your place implies they will stay in your place.

But later on, Gothel is just fine after Alice escapes, so I suppose Gothel was just being cruel by keeping Alice trapped.  I know she's a psycho, but it's still unsatisfying to not know why.

[Speakeasy]

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

But later on, Gothel is just fine after Alice escapes, so I suppose Gothel was just being cruel by keeping Alice trapped.  I know she's a psycho, but it's still unsatisfying to not know why.

I find it hard to believe she cared about either Whook or Alice enough to make that much effort to hurt them if it didn't actually benefit her (granted I'm again assuming that a character and particularly a villain has coherent motives, which is a silly thing to do).

If she went to all this trouble to stop Whook getting to Alice that implies to me that it would have inconvenienced her somehow if he had worked out how to release her. I mean he says in episode 2 that he had to sneak in to see his daughter which implies she was watching Alice the whole time. If she was keeping them apart put of cruelty and didn't need Alice to be in her tower couldn't she have moved Alice to some other prison? It seems like she had plenty of resources for a crazy witch who lives in the forest.

Spoiler

Ok also this is never mentioned so maybe it's not worth mentioning but... Could the fact Alice escaped using her own magic powers have somehow nullified the original imprisonment spell? Like, she wished to be free from the tower and do the wish made 'the prisoner of the tower' free, so there was no longer a Prisoner of the Tower, hence the spell was broken and it couldn't hold either her or Gothel anymore?

17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Even if the tower stocked supplies, there still needed to be someone to look after the baby because the baby wouldn't have been able to feed herself, so Gothel was still essentially leaving her to die and she likely wouldn't have lived if Whook hadn't stayed to care for her.

Thinking about it... She said she needed someone from her bloodline, she never said she needed them alive.

[Camera One]

Gothel herself added the extra security to the tower to keep Anastasia trapped, so she couldn't escape as easily as Rapunzel did, right?  

So if Anastasia had ended up trapped in the tower, and Lady Tremaine (who's related to her) goes into the tower to "take her place", then they could both leave freely after that?  That doesn't seem like much better security.  

Edited November 20, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

So if Anastasia had ended up trapped in the tower, and Lady Tremaine (who's related to her) goes into the tower to "take her place", then they could both leave freely after that?  That doesn't seem like much better security.  

I don't think whoever's in the tower could just leave freely. It would have required external magical intervention, like this week's McGuffin, which was something whoever's in the tower wouldn't be able to find for themself. WHook traveled to another universe, consulted the Dark One, tracked down the object and needed the help of the Dark One to be able to use it to maybe free Alice. If Lady Tremaine had taken Anastasia's place, would Anastasia have had the resources or the knowledge to do all that? Would Lady Tremaine have been able to do all that to free her daughter? Actually, more likely is that she'd have shoved Drizella into the tower to free Anastasia, and then forgotten about her.

I wonder why Gothel needed to keep her Guardian candidate locked up all that time. Why not use her to do whatever she was doing? Rapunzel was locked up because she was a potential Guardian but hadn't yet become one (I'm not sure how she was supposed to develop while locked away like that). Gothel was pretty sure Anastasia would be a Guardian, but would she have had to stay locked up for years?

Really, I think they were stretching to try to fit into the Rapunzel story and made up something without worrying about whether it actually made any narrative sense.

It's interesting that

Spoiler

ultimately, Alice freed herself (with the help of the troll she conjured up). Gothel had similar powers, so could she have freed herself all that time without having a baby, if she'd just thought to use her magic to make a wish?

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder why Gothel needed to keep her Guardian candidate locked up all that time. Why not use her to do whatever she was doing? 

I'm not sure why Gothel didn't have a thousand of these towers to increase her chances of finding The Guardian.  

Heck, why didn't Gothel enact the Dark Curse herself?

Nothing she does make a whole lot of sense.

She doesn't seem to care about targeting Ivy anymore, either.  Speaking of which, shouldn't Ivy be paranoid that Gothel would go after her instead of packing her mother's office?

We still haven't found out why Gothel was suddenly so nice to wake Lucy.  Free Madame Leota!

There aren't really too many reverberations from Victoria's death at all, which is typical of this show.  The neighborhood wasn't affected.  Nothing changed in Jacinda/Lucy's life.   Did Victoria leave Jacinda and Lucy anything in her will?  If Ivy wanted to extend an olive branch, she could just give Jacinda and Lucy an apartment to live in rent-free.  But who needs that anymore now that the beignet business is booming off-screen.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

I'm not sure why Gothel didn't have a thousand of these towers to increase her chances of finding The Guardian.  

Heck, why didn't Gothel enact the Dark Curse herself?

Nothing she does make a whole lot of sense.

It very much seems like she was supposed to be the new Rumpelstiltskin, the evil mastermind behind everything, but no one really took a step back to look at her plan and see if it made sense as a way of accomplishing her goals. So you just have her orchestrating plots and then acting in a creepy and superior kind of way without much justification, though supposedly it makes her look smart and manipulative*

The way she acts with Rogers is a pretty good example. What does this Hannibal Lecter routine of hers accomplish? It makes her look guilty as all hell when she could just claim innocence and play the victim and act like she was hurt that he'd suspect her and he'd probably leave her alone quickly enough after a fairly light round of questioning, cos he'd feel guilty about antagonising a woman he found chained up in a boiler room. Does she want him to leave her alone, though? I don't know... Even having seen the whole series I don't actually know what her medium term goals were here or how they linked in to her long term goals, so it's hard to even say which moves of hers made sense.

*Weirdly I actually find it hard to describe her as manipulative, that seems like it gives her too much credit, she can lie and she can trick people using magic, but she's got this cold detachment and this attitude of underlying malice that makes you wonder why anyone would trust her. Regina was manipulative in season 1, doing everything she could to play a hard working single mother, dedicated public servant and concerned friend. Mother Gothel in Disney's Tangled was manipulative, expertly mixing affection with derision to make Rapunzel dependant on her. Rumpelstiltskin is manipulative in the way he convinces everyone he deals with he is their only option, and in how he plays on his wife's undeserved faith in his better nature... I don't see that kind of subtlety with Disenchanted Gothel

Edited November 20, 2019 by Speakeasy

[Speakeasy]

Something else that occurred to me about the whole Hook and Alice situation:

Being confined to a tower by magic is a curse, surely? In the sense of it being harmful magic. Why couldn't he just kiss his daughter on the forehead and get her out of the tower?

At this point you can't pretend true love's kiss is all that incredibly rare, and if Hades can get one while actively and knowingly deceiving his lover and scheming to get more power, surely Wish Jones can get one with the daughter he's based his life around and given up his centuries-long quest for vengeance to care for (he actually goes to Rumpelstiltskin, his most hated enemy, for advice in order to help her!)

[Camera One]

I was rewatching the deleted scenes, and it's interesting to place them within the episodes.  I think the scene with Lucy going to confront Ivy in Victoria's office about poisoning Henry is from this episode.  It's very difficult to buy Lucy's scenes because her dialogue is so unnatural. 

Anyway, the deleted scene ended with Ivy calling Henry, so I guess that's when he came over to chat.  This scene made Ivy seem less sympathetic since Lucy accused her of going after her mother, and then we see Ivy calling Henry, and it would have made Ivy seem less genuine in her conversation with Henry.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Camera One