Once Upon A...SHOULDA HAPPENED THIS WAY!

[daxx]

6 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Henry also knew his family was about to battle Cora and Regina in season two who were on their way to Gold's shop to murder him. What did he think was going to happen? Someone was going to end up dead in that situation.  He gets mad that Snow murdered the biggest threat at the time? The woman who would have most likely murdered his entire family and destroyed the town. Why isn't he mad at Regina? She sided with her mother to murder his grandfather and become the Dark One. 

He’s not mad at Regina because of the REC (Regina exception clause) no bad thing applies to Regina and all good things are given to her, see the return from Neverland when Mary Margaret gives her all the credit for getting Henry back, her son that duh of course she would be helping instead of crediting the pirate who gave up his revenge, provided transportation, a bean and his own services to help a child that wasn’t his and arguably did more to get shit done than Regina.

[Free]

7 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Henry also knew his family was about to battle Cora and Regina in season two who were on their way to Gold's shop to murder him. What did he think was going to happen? Someone was going to end up dead in that situation.  He gets mad that Snow murdered the biggest threat at the time? The woman who would have most likely murdered his entire family and destroyed the town. Why isn't he mad at Regina? She sided with her mother to murder his grandfather and become the Dark One. 

Because that was when Adam and Eddy tried to force in the notion of Snow 'darkening' her heart when she stopped Cora in self defense from killing her family to the point of having Snow beg Regina to kill her and that was when any backbone she had at that point completely disappeared before becoming a fully fledged Regina cheerleader.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Free

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

And Henry freaking out about heroes killing people is especially laughable considering his mom he worships has a body count so big she cant even remember all the people she has had killed, or killed personally. 

I suspect that this is a case where he has higher standards for heroes than he does for villains turned heroes, because he expects more of heroes. Heroes have to be perfect while villains are allowed to be flawed. Emma said something similar when Hook called her out on being harder on her parents about the eggnapping than she was on him and Regina, when they'd done far worse. The problem is that the show seems to be saying that this attitude is valid. I guess from Henry's perspective, all of Regina's killing while she was a villain doesn't count, and as a hero she just killed the Count and the Wish Charmings in season 6 (though she still has a higher body count than Snow, and she killed good people, not villains). Though there's also still the problem that the Charmings fought a war that was mentioned in the book. Snow was a bandit who threatened people with a bow and arrow or sword. Did no one ever call her bluff and force her to use violence? Didn't she shoot people during the escape from the dungeon with the dwarfs? Charming's fight against the Black Knights was also in the book. Henry shouldn't have been under any illusions that heroes never kill people.

6 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

He gets mad that Snow murdered the biggest threat at the time? The woman who would have most likely murdered his entire family and destroyed the town. Why isn't he mad at Regina? She sided with her mother to murder his grandfather and become the Dark One. 

That's part of the huge problem with 2B. In 2A, it was a big deal when Regina used magic to save Henry from Zombie Daniel. He was disappointed in her for her lapse. Then in 2B, he doesn't seem to have any problem with Regina siding with Cora and using magic while Cora is trying to become the Dark One, and later he doesn't have any problem with learning that Regina had planned to use magic to destroy the town and kill his entire family. All is forgotten and forgiven when she's part of the team coming to get him in Neverland. For the rest of the series, aside from the season 5 finale, he has no problem at all with Regina using magic. He doesn't criticize her. He only occasionally worries that she'll go evil again. It's like their entire dynamic from 2A is totally forgotten. We get a very different show if his attitude is consistent and he continues trying to hold her accountable. Regina breaking her word to him and teaming up with Cora should have been a bigger betrayal than Snow stopping Cora from murdering his grandfather by using Cora's own magic against her.

I think 2B is when I turned against Henry for good. I loved him in season one and even in 2A, but he becomes a pod person starting in 2B.

If you rewrote this series keeping the characterizations consistent and letting the characters have honest human reactions to events and make the obvious choices that most people would make, by 2B you'd already have entirely different stories, and it would diverge so much that you'd end up with a completely different series. It would be difficult to even follow the same plot lines. Like, season 5 wouldn't have happened because Robin wouldn't have bothered saving Rumple's life, so he'd have died outside the town lines, and the Darkness wouldn't have been a threat. 4B wouldn't have happened because they'd have all told Regina to grow up and deal with it instead of rushing around, trying to find the Author.

[Inquirer]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

If you rewrote this series keeping the characterizations consistent and letting the characters have honest human reactions to events and make the obvious choices that most people would make, by 2B you'd already have entirely different stories, and it would diverge so much that you'd end up with a completely different series. It would be difficult to even follow the same plot lines. Like, season 5 wouldn't have happened because Robin wouldn't have bothered saving Rumple's life, so he'd have died outside the town lines, and the Darkness wouldn't have been a threat. 4B wouldn't have happened because they'd have all told Regina to grow up and deal with it instead of rushing around, trying to find the Author.

You could still have 3A, 3B and 4A, even if in modified forms. But yeah, 4B, S5, S6 and S7 would all be rendered impossible. 

[Shanna Marie]

43 minutes ago, Inquirer said:

You could still have 3A, 3B and 4A, even if in modified forms.

The Frozen stuff and the Rumple stuff would still work in 4A, with some modifications (like the date between Emma and Hook and the Hook's hand plotline, plus Snow would be a lot more interested in her own daughter and Emma would be struggling with her feelings about her younger brother). Anything involving Regina would have to change. Emma wouldn't rush to introduce Marian to Regina. Emma would be really freaked out by having seen Regina try to execute Snow and would want to stay well away from Regina. Everyone in town would be Team Marian, including Robin, who would be grossed out that he'd kissed the woman who'd imprisoned and tortured his wife. Henry's reaction to Regina saying she'd get the Author to write her a happy ending would be "Um, I don't think it works that way." (Though Henry and Regina's relationship would be very different at that point if Henry is reacting like a normal person. He's probably still living with the Charmings and only starting to warm up to Regina, and he's a lot closer to Emma after they spent that year together, really bonding.)

I have a deadline (and really shouldn't even be here now), but I may play with how everything would have to change, given normal human reactions to things, when I have time.

[profdanglais]

Perhaps Henry meant that heroes don't kill real people, whereas no one cares if you kill redshirts. Redshirts on OUAT being mostly Black Knights or other guards and random villagers or people in the forest. That would wipe out most of Regina's murders, and I imagine quite a few of Hook's as well. 

[Inquirer]

The ONLY three times the "heroes don't kill" thing was actually valid were:

1. Regina stopping Gold from killing Zelena, who was now defenseless and neutralized as a threat, so killing her would just be straight-up murder.

2. Merlin begging for Nimue to not kill Vortigan, since she'd be doing so with holy power and doing that would corrupt both it and her.

3. Emma not killing Gideon, making it clear that she could but refusing because she wanted to save him as well as everyone/everything else since he was a controlled innocent. Had she just killed him, she would be no better than Regina and how she handled the Count of Monte Cristo situation (finally that stupid episode gains some relevance!)

Every other time it came up (Cora, Cruella, etc.) was just nonsense. It was especially bad when Snow evidently felt more guilty about killing Cora, a mass-murdering psychopath, than she did at almost killing Mulan back in 2x08 (seriously, rewatch that episode and that moment near the end - she was actually gonna freaking do it!)

Edited May 30, 2018 by Inquirer

[KingOfHearts]

33 minutes ago, Inquirer said:

1. Regina stopping Gold from killing Zelena, who was now defenseless and neutralized as a threat, so killing her would just be straight-up murder.

I still think it's ridiculous that Rumple got away with that and Belle fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I'm surprised Zelena never blackmailed Rumple by threatening to tell Belle.

Edited May 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[companionenvy]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I still think it's ridiculous that Rumple got away with that and Belle fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I'm surprised Zelena never blackmailed Rumple by threatening to tell Belle.

Eh, by this show's standards, and especially given everything that Rumple has done, a vigilante kill is such small potatoes that I don't mind that it didn't come back to bite him. 

It is only a problem because people's reactions are so different when a hero kills a villain even when that villain is an active threat, as in the case of Cora and Cruella. 

4 hours ago, Inquirer said:

3. Emma not killing Gideon, making it clear that she could but refusing because she wanted to save him as well as everyone/everything else since he was a controlled innocent. Had she just killed him, she would be no better than Regina and how she handled the Count of Monte Cristo situation (finally that stupid episode gains some relevance!)

This recently came up in the Thread for All Seasons - I agree that Emma not killing Gideon was not based on the same "heroes never kill" nonsense, and made sense given the situation. My issue with it is that the show constructed a narrative in which allowing yourself to likely be killed rather than kill your opponent was the right answer, leaving Rumple to commit the actual murder. 

That's still evidence that, in the perspective of the show, killing even with justification is wrong and bad, which is why they pick a cop-out scenario in which Emma doesn't need to get her hands dirty. Whereas I would have much preferred it if at some point on the show, one of our unambiguous heroes had wound up killing a villain without it being framed as problematic and soul-corrupting, something I don't think ever happened. There were EF flashbacks where it seemed pretty clear Charming and Snow were killing people in battle, and of course the nonsense in which Charming kills Percival, who was seeking righteous revenge against Regina, and apparently never has a moment's regret over it, but when it came to non-redshirts, we never got a clear cut case of a hero killing a villain in battle. The closest we come is Emma killing Dark Hook, which happens with Hook's consent and can be seen as an act of love, under the circumstances, and Hook himself killing Jekyll/Hyde. That sort of counts, since Hook has moved clearly into the hero camp by that point, but he's still a reformed villain who has killed many in the past, and J/H doesn't wind up being a Big Bad with a ton of narrative prominence. 

What makes the finale worse, to me, is that it continued a pattern of Emma being taught the lesson that she shouldn't act or can't save someone. In 4B, we're told about her propensity for darkness, leading to people getting very freaked out when she kills Cruella with total justification; the show compounds this by confirming that Cruella was actually bluffing, which Emma couldn't have known but still robs her action of heroism. In 5A, as they will in the finale, the show constructs a scenario in which Emma using her powers is bad and wrong, especially galling given that the idea of accepting her power had been such a big part of 4A. In 5B, she then has to accept that she can't save Hook from the Underworld; I actually thought this was a good decision, and it led to the great payoff of Hook earning his own way home, but it was still part of the pattern. Back in Storybrooke, other people then tell Emma that she has to "sit out" the fight with Hades because she's too emotional after Hook's death, and her role in defeating Hades thus winds up being a quite passive one. And then, of course, season 6, where her heroism is accepting that the savior is going to wind up a martyr, culminating in her permitting Gideon to kill her. 

[Rumsy4]

5 hours ago, companionenvy said:

one of our unambiguous heroes had wound up killing a villain without it being framed as problematic and soul-corrupting, something I don't think ever happened.

Hook killed Jekyll to save Belle. However, he was a reformed villain at the time, and not a "hero" like Charming, and nobody blinked when the latter killed Percival. In both cases, David and Hook were defending either the villain of the story (Regina) or the villain of the story's love interest (Belle). If the person they had been defending was either Emma or Snow, then, they would have been blamed for turning Dark.

In earlier seasons, it seems as though Snowing and her loyalists were killing off black knights left and right (with Red chomping down on a few of them for good measure). The "heroes don't kill" nonsense only started in S2.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Rumsy4]

Both the killing of the Black Knights and the Flying Monkeys was never explained clearly. Many of the black knights were being heart-controlled by Regina, and the flying monkeys were mostly innocent people turned by Zelena. But the "heroes" had no scruples shooting them with arrows or bullets. Whether the flying monkeys actually were killed when they disappeared was never explained. The world-building on this show is so exasperating! That's something the writers should have thought of. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by Rumsy4

[companionenvy]

Even weirder, the heroes went beyond refusing to kill villains; they twisted themselves into knots to find ways of saving them. The biggest mystery was why Robin viewed saving Rumple as such a moral imperative in 4B that his first hint that Marian wasn't Marian was her eminently sensible suggestion that just maybe they should let the mass murderer die.

I wonder if a more consistent pattern would emerge if we looked at who had written each episode. I'm a recent binge-watcher, so individual episodes kind of blur together for me, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain writers whose scripts consistently bought into the screwy morality and certain writers who mostly avoided that and even provided the occasional corrective. Like, were the episodes where Snowing and crew mow down black knights written by the same people responsible for "Heroes don't kill" and shaming Snow and Emma for killing Cora and Cruella? 

[Mitch]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Both the killing of the Black Knights and the Flying Monkeys was never explained clearly. Many of the black knights were being heart-controlled by Regina, and the flying monkeys were mostly innocent people turned by Zelena. But the "heroes" had no scruples shooting them with arrows or bullets. Whether the flying monkeys actually were killed when they disappeared was never explained. The world-building on this show is so exasperating! That's something the writers should have thought of. 

And how easy it would be to explain...they shoot a monkey it falls and turns into Friar Tuck or someone. "Oh my God are you okay..I didn't know it was you!" and they say, "What happened? I don't remember anything until I wake up and I have this arrow laying on my chest..it must have broke that witches spell." So the good guys..I refuse to use "heroes" cause heroes DO things and solve things and work hard and this crew never does...have a reason to shoot at the monkeys. Simple.

Don't get me started on how dumb it was that the monkeys were easily magiced into monkeys with a wave of a hand..instead of the cool scary monkeys that were controlled by the magic cap in the book. So if Zelena could do that why not just turn EVERYONE into monkeys especially Snow to get the baby?

[Inquirer]

10 hours ago, companionenvy said:

What makes the finale worse, to me, is that it continued a pattern of Emma being taught the lesson that she shouldn't act or can't save someone. In 4B, we're told about her propensity for darkness, leading to people getting very freaked out when she kills Cruella with total justification; the show compounds this by confirming that Cruella was actually bluffing, which Emma couldn't have known but still robs her action of heroism. In 5A, as they will in the finale, the show constructs a scenario in which Emma using her powers is bad and wrong, especially galling given that the idea of accepting her power had been such a big part of 4A. In 5B, she then has to accept that she can't save Hook from the Underworld; I actually thought this was a good decision, and it led to the great payoff of Hook earning his own way home, but it was still part of the pattern. Back in Storybrooke, other people then tell Emma that she has to "sit out" the fight with Hades because she's too emotional after Hook's death, and her role in defeating Hades thus winds up being a quite passive one. And then, of course, season 6, where her heroism is accepting that the savior is going to wind up a martyr, culminating in her permitting Gideon to kill her. 

True. Emma electing to sacrifice herself in order to save everyone and everything COULD have been great had it not been for all the other times the show had denied her any action before. The S5 finale of Buffy worked because Buffy was always allowed to be an active hero and kill the bad guys, and it makes it all the more special when this time that can't resolve the situation at hand and her sacrificing her own life has to instead.  If Emma had allowed to be more like Buffy and actually resolve problems through decisive action and killing her enemies before, then her acceptance of death would hold real significance to it. Also, she should've been the one to kill the Black Fairy.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Inquirer

[coops]

On 29/05/2018 at 2:35 PM, Shanna Marie said:

That's part of the huge problem with 2B. In 2A, it was a big deal when Regina used magic to save Henry from Zombie Daniel. He was disappointed in her for her lapse. Then in 2B, he doesn't seem to have any problem with Regina siding with Cora and using magic while Cora is trying to become the Dark One, and later he doesn't have any problem with learning that Regina had planned to use magic to destroy the town and kill his entire family.

And this continues through the rest of the show; the time she pricked Lily to make her mad and change into a dragon or the time she stole Belle's heart and controlled. It all happened when Regina was supposed to be on the "good" side and everyone concerned themselves by running around like headless chickens fretting over her getting her happy ending. The trouble is the plot sometimes demanded she do evil things but the writers didn't want the character to be punished for it. I'd have been happy to see Regina remain evil until the last season or so, then once she finally learns how to redeem herself the reward can be getting Henry's love and acceptance. 

[andromeda331]

Or forced Emma to do things when she was controlling her with a Daggar. The first thing that really needed to go was the REC that put a stranglehold on the show. Emma, Snow, and Charming couldn't develop or use their own backstories as plots or arcs. They had so much they could have worked with but couldn't because all of it steams from what Regina did. We can never get not even one seen of Snow going off on Regina for everything she did and pointing out that Cora murdered Daniel and Regina instead targeted an innocent person. Neither could Henry he could only serve to excuse everything Regina did while blaming the Heroes for getting rid of the bad guys. The show would have been so much better without it. Same with the rest of the people caught up in the Curse.  In Season Two after the curse breaks Regina could have gone to different ways. After Henry left in the second episode she could have finally hit rock bottom and worked her way back up. Or double down on her being a villain. Same with Rumple they could have kept him as a villain too or made him a good guy. But none of this he's a good guy except for all the times he kills and betrays the heroes.  

[companionenvy]

This. The problem wasn't the things Regina did; it was that no one had a normal reaction to her. It was hard enough to believe that the EQ was redeemable at all, except maybe in the limited sense that she genuinely loved Henry and could plausibly do good to save him. It would have been worse if she had been depicted as total sweetness and light. But then other people have to treat her like the barely redeemed half villain that she is, not a best friend/confidant/family member who is deserving of all the good things. Season 3A was probably the high point for Regina; she was helping the heroes because they all wanted to save Henry, but they were still allowed to be fairly antagonistic to each other. At the end of the season, she then made - for really the only time -- a real sacrifice that showed growth. But after that, she gets to keep treating her former victims like crap on a regular basis, flirts with backsliding into total evil at least once (when she almost kills Marian), and continues to engage in actions that are quasi if not fully villainous (taking Belle's heart, trying to rewrite reality, selfishly separating herself from the EQ, unleashing the latter on the world). And again, that would be OK - if everyone treated her accordingly. But they don't. Emma apologizes to her for saving one of her victims, and begs to be allowed to be her friend. Snow often shows more concern for her than she does for her own daughter. Charming gets a cutesy scene teaching Regina, who was raised a princess, to dance, rather than getting a similar interaction with Emma, who was raised in foster care and not by him because of Regina. Snow admits to being a "brat," as her stepdaughter even though we only see her acting snotty before Regina enters her life, and Emma, after seeing that her Wish self, raised by Snowing, was a weak damsel in distress, concludes that she has Regina to thank for making her strong. When Regina announces her moronic plan to get the Author to give her a happy ending, no one points out the extremely obvious facts that a) she is depicted as a villain in the book because she was a villain, b) there's thus no evidence the book is preventing anyone from getting happy endings in the future; it is recording what actually happened, c) she doesn't deserve a happy ending, and d) even if she did, altering the past is a selfish way of obtaining it, and actually somewhat akin to the casting of the Dark Curse. Instead, they're all on-board team Regina. After season 3A, no one seems to question that she should be co-parenting Henry, and Henry seems entirely to have forgotten her previous abuse, even though he had been terrified of her only a year or so earlier. She gets to keep her job as mayor - and, of course, she's finally made Queen of all Queens. It was disgusting, and baffling. 

[coops]

I agree, sometimes characters would make a statement about or to Regina, about how she deserves her happy ending or is admirable she somehow is, and it was so jarring. The conflict between Emma and Regina in season 1 was the most compelling part for me and after this Emma's subsequent desperation to be Regina's buddy took me out of the show because it was so bizarre. 

On another note, season one was more compelling than the other seasons to me for several other reasons. As viewers we were all in on a secret that nobody else, apart from the villains, Regina and Gold, knew about. Knowing all the characters were cursed and couldn't remember their previous lives gave us something to crave for, a goal we wanted the characters to reach and made Regina, at that time, a fascinating character because she was the only one who knew what everyone's true history was. Once the curse was broken the show never found something to fill that void. I'm not saying that I never wanted the curse to be broken, but I do wish they had found some way to replace that wonderful dynamic Once had when none of the characters could remember who they were. The show worked on so many different levels, scenes with Emma and Snow became more poignant because knew they were really mother and daughter, Regina had more agency as a villain because was privy to information the heroes weren't, the heroes themselves were cursed, and not just plain stupid or gullible. I think the writers might have even figured this out themselves, because how many times was a curse that wiped their memories repeated? But it never worked as well as season one, they needed to find something new to replace what they lost in their heyday but they couldn't seem to come up with any ideas. How I would have dearly loved to see a whole season that worked as a complete "switch" to season one. Fairy tale characters in the Enchanted Forest with no recollection of our world. Emma and Henry could have perhaps have been trying to convince everyone that they had all been cursed in Storybrooke for 28 years and there could have been some new formation of how the curse takes away what the characters love. Instead we got was Regina dumped in the role of the bandit/hero and later on the hero is the wishverse.  The nearest we got to this was when Emma and Hook went back in time and Snow/Charming didn't know who they were. Funnily enough, with Emma in the hero's role, those two episodes were damn near perfect. 

Maybe Once should have simply been some sort of feature film or miniseries? It sure would have saved a lot of disappointment in the long run, haha!   

[Shanna Marie]

Okay, I met one deadline (yay!), so an initial stab at the rewrite to let everyone have normal human reactions. I'm not trying to fix anything else, just sticking as close as possible to the actual show events, but letting the characters react in a more realistic way. Of course, we have to go with "realistic" for fictional fairy tale characters because real, ordinary people experiencing these things would just snap.

So, starting with the breaking of the curse, I think Henry would still want to stop the mob from getting Regina, and Emma would support him for his sake. I think Emma would even have tried to save Regina from the portal. The Team Princess side of things would probably go pretty much the way it did (story lines without Regina tend to be more "realistic" emotionally), though I suspect that WALLS! Emma wouldn't have been so quick to trust Cora and tell her everything, even before Snow told her who Cora was. But things in Storybrooke would have been very different. The townspeople wouldn't have stopped with the one torches and pitchforks mob. Even if they didn't directly attack Regina, they'd have made her life miserable, possibly to the point that she'd have fled town -- maybe to the farmhouse Zelena later took over. That would have made her jumping to join Cora make a lot more sense. I suspect Henry would have been pretty traumatized. Yeah, he believed all along that she was the Evil Queen, but actually seeing it would have been a shock. After nearly dying from the poisoned turnover and then being captured and held by those vines when he tried to escape, I don't think he'd have jumped so quickly to trying to help Regina reform, even if she did realize what she was doing wrong and stop it. She'd have had to work a lot harder to regain his trust. Meanwhile, there would have been utter chaos in the town, with some real dilemmas involving real identities that were incompatible with curse identities, like if people had spent the whole curse married to someone other than their real spouse. Which person do they want to be with after the curse breaks, if they've come to love the curse spouse? And all of this would make them hate Regina even more because she totally screwed up their lives. Maybe Henry would have started speaking to Regina again when he started having the nightmares and they needed magical help -- but then the fact that he was going through all this because she tried to poison Emma would have made it awkward. She may not have been targeting Henry, but she was targeting Emma, and she also did this to Snow. Then when Rumple convinced her to help him block the way so Cora couldn't come through, the fact that she started to work with Rumple on that and Henry had to beg her not to block Snow and Emma would have counted as much as the fact that she did stop once she was begged. I know they're proud of the moment when she's all sad because she didn't get to join them for their first family dinner, but really, would she even have wanted that? She hated those people. She might have wished Henry had chosen to be with her, but it was an unrealistic wish, given what she'd put him through. Otherwise, at that time she still considered Snow to be a monster, and Emma had ruined everything. She would have had no expectation of being invited to join them and no desire to join them.

2B is going to take some time, since just about everything would change.

[Rumsy4]

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

would she even have wanted that? She hated those people.

Regina always seemed to want the love and validation of the people she hated and despised.

[KingOfHearts]

11 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Regina always seemed to want the love and validation of the people she hated and despised.

Which doesn't make any sense. It makes her look like a complete idiot. Even Rumple admits her complaining is a non-sequitur. 

Quote

Regina: "I don't understand them. I offer these peasants a fortune, and they still protect Snow White. Why are they loyal to her and not me? I'm their queen!"
Rumple: "You did just slaughter an entire village. Maybe that's why they call you the 'Evil Queen.'"
Regina: "But I'm not evil. They call me that because of her. She's the evil one."
Rumple: "They're her people, dearie. You're going to have to be content with the fear. They'll never love you."
Regina: "They will. When she is gone, when Snow is dead, then they will see my kindness."
Rumple: "Through the charred remains of their homes. I'm sure that will be perfectly clear."

Regina could've taken a lesson or two in evil dictatorship from Machiavelli. Doesn't she know it's better to be feared than loved?

Edited May 31, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

That conversation made Regina seem like a total idiot.  Who needs to be told that murder and village razing wouldn't be endearing?  Clearly, the Writers didn't learn the lesson because later on, we got the Love of the People™ stuff with Zelena.  

44 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But things in Storybrooke would have been very different. The townspeople wouldn't have stopped with the one torches and pitchforks mob. Even if they didn't directly attack Regina, they'd have made her life miserable, possibly to the point that she'd have fled town -- maybe to the farmhouse Zelena later took over.

That alone would have made Season 2 better.  I mean, Regina did have some reflective moments in 2A which were decent, but if they were going to have her turn, they could have left all that for 2B or Season 3.  As suggested by many, Regina should have been the one to decide to turn against Cora in 2B.  Finding out that Cora went after Snow's mom should have evoked some sort of response rather than a shrug (and never mentioning it again).  

In light of what came after, 2A seems like a masterpiece, but I was really quite underwhelmed when I watched it.  A lot of the Team Princess arc was walking from here to there, with very few actual meaningful conversations, beyond the third episode with Snow and Emma in the burned out nursery.  On the Storybrooke side, they should have done a lot more community building.  This would have been the time to flesh out the supporting players like Granny, Red, the Dwarves, Blue, etc. with the re-establishment of order.  They could have explored some of Charming's insecurities as leader given his humble upbringing and how some people in town would not see him as a King.  

Edited May 31, 2018 by Camera One

[Mitch]

I think the big point of Regina reforming would have been with FrankenDaniel... When they talk he would say something like, "You punished people because of me? That was not what I wanted...you have become your mother!" or something to that effect...it would have given Regina a chance to act our her grief.."I was so angry..I had to hurt someone, and ." and then come to a resolution...(instead of poofing Daniel away..which is stupid..I would have her pull his tainted heart out and crush it ...re-enacting both what Cora did and what she did with the Underwear Model Guy...only this time to help someone. Charming, instead or walking away would send that brat home with a firm hand and then he would have seen what she did...giving him a reason to feel compassion for her and that she could change.

As I said a million times I would have made magic harder to come by in SB...and drag out Regina getting it back...so she would be more vunerable to attacks from the townpeople..giving her a reason to seek the Charmings protection and making her want to get her magic back for a valid reason. Cora would have been the one with the spell book which would give her back more magic...to hold over he head. After that I would have kept her struggling..not  outright evil but really tempting and really trying..then I would keep her an anitheroine...everyone not trusting her and she not trusting anyone else..kind of like Zelena was when first coming back to SB...

[crash476]

So I've been thinking about this topic for a long time that I've been needing to get some ideas out there (and moving cross country also means I've no one to ramble too). Anyway, I honestly think the problems with OUaT have been there since the very beginning in that A&E had no idea how well the series would do. After watching seasons 1 and 2, I got the sense that they had planned everything up to "Welcome to Storybrooke", probably expecting to get cancelled after that. But that didn't happen and they were basically pantsing the entire series until the end. It makes me wonder what the end game would have been if the show had been cancelled at, say, season 4 or 5. But that's a different tangent. 

The other major problem was over who the main character was. Obviously A&E thought Regina was the protagonist. But we the audience were told that Emma was to be the main character and our audience surrogate. That didn't happen, of course. I honestly think a more Emma focused show probably would have gone very differently. Like by focusing on her training in magic could give us more worldbuilding for the Enchanted Forest, the nature of magic, the history of the Dark One, fairies, etc. Also have a lot more focus on Emma's bonding with her parents and son and the weird situation the curse has put them in. Maybe still keep her issue with keeping people at arms length, but have her actually deal with it. She's a woman who's never known a stable home life or relationships and desperately wants a family. I'm working on a AU, initially departing at the end of 3A (but have set it back to the beginning) where Rumple stays dead and we get a new Dark One.  Given Emma's swan motif, fitting the Swan Lake characters in would work. And Rothbart would make for a good Dark One. Throw in a strange obsession with Emma and maybe end in a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now-like arc to finish the series and I might have something good if I actually stick to it. The big thing is that Emma could be a "Saviour" without any big prophecies or destinies involved. I think the writers messed up with her "human lie-detector" trait by barely ever using it and being very inconsistent with it's usefulness. Maybe it could have been termed for ten-year-old Henry as being able to detect lies, but in reality Emma has a massive capacity for empathy. She can understand anyone, see both the good and bad in them, and this is both a strength and a weakness that she must learn to work with.

As for Regina, well she's a pretty unique character but A&E handled her in the worst way possible. In my eyes, she has serious mental health issues (probably Borderline Personality Disorder), but not fully sociopathic. She's fully capable of being redeemed, but it would take serious hard work. Every year I make time to reread the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which greatly expands on the movie (go read it if you haven't). Anyway, Princess Kushana gets a lot more fleshed out, we learn of her backstory and her motivations. Her narrative purpose is to act as Nausicaä's shadow, and in a moment of self reflection, when facing her own mortality, she comes to a fascinating revelation about herself. Kushana get's the revenge she wants every easily, but it leaves her hollow due to how easy and senseless it was. Facing her death, she casts aside her hatred and rage, following Nausicaä's lead, and comforts her men while they hide from the giant insects. And they're spared. They survive something Kushana was sure would kill her and her men! A far wiser person pointed out that when forgiveness is impossible, letting go of hatred is the next best thing. It doesn't condone what the person did, but in an act of self love, the person can get back onto the right path. I wish Regina had a moment truly like that. I'm thinking that a moment I might use is when Cora's about to kill Rumple for the Dark One powers. Regina has Cora's heart in her hand, Snow's poisoned it, but Regina choses to end the cycle of revenge and hatred, and crushes Cora's heart. Cora's beyond saving, anyway, and there's got to be an endpoint somewhere. Regina doesn't demand any sort of forgiveness, but she tries to do good. Maybe it starts off with a selfish streak in the beginning (especially trying to get Henry's love and trust back), but grows to be selfless. 

[tennisgurl]

What this show needed, and I mean really needed (other than A&E removed from the set) was a Series Bible. I listened to a podcast the other day about writing, and one show runner they interviewed said the most important thing for any show,especially one with fantastic elements, is to create a Series Bible, where they list out exactly how the world works, its history, and who the characters are, as well as their personal histories. Then start to actually write the plot and the show in general. It needed to establish, from day one, what the rules for magic in this world are, what the lands government, history, and culture are, and the backstories of the characters. Where does the magic in the EF come from? Who can use it? Is it something your born with, or can anyone learn? How many mythical creatures exist here, and how to they interact with normies or other creatures? Whats the line of succession? We dont need to know everything about the world, but we sure as hell need to know enough that we know whats going on at any given time, and so the writers arent just making shit up out of nowhere, or adding endless retcons because nothing was properly established in the first place! For the audience to get invested, they need to know whats going on!

That doesn't mean you mean everything has to stick to the exact script forever though. Sometimes, your story just naturally changes from the course you planned, like a couple originally planned to be the OTP but the chemistry isnt there or something, and the characters would be better off with other people. Then, its fine to change things up, or you end up with something god awful like the How I Met your Mother finale (much worse than either Once finales) because you wont change something that doesn't fit, or is restricting your story. For another example, in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was established that vampires are totally evil animated corpses of demons, and that demons and such are always evil monsters. That worked fine when they just needed monsters for Buffy to fight, or to be used as allegories for various teen issues. However, around season two or three, the writers seemed to realize that it would be more interesting and fun to add some different shades to the supernatural creatures around. So later on, they start saying that demons are more of a species, instead of a moral judgement, and we meet more demons and supernatural creatures that are perfectly nice sorts who can be reoccurring friends or allies (especially on the spin-off Angel, where demons were even sometimes used in the classic "supernatural people as metaphors for victims of racism" plot lines) and more complex characters than nameless mooks. Even vampires, while still evil 9 times out of 10, were allowed to show more complex feelings, and could feel real loss, kindness, friendship, and love, even while still being evil and blood thirsty. That changed a bit from what was originally established about the world at first, but it worked before it made for a more interesting show and universe. However, they did stick to the big stuff. Its not like in season six they randomly decided that Buffy was never the real Slayer and everyone just accepted it for no reason. Like how Emma was a random Savior for no reason after awhile. They can change stuff, or remove stuff that isnt working if it makes for a better show, but you have to have some kind of foundation!

[Camera One]

These guys barely have an outline plan for a season, so a Series Bible would be totally out of their league.  Heck, these writers couldn't even be bothered to check the scripts of episodes they themselves wrote to avoid inconsistencies!  At bare minimum, when they decided on something new, like the Wish Realm, or The Land of Untold Stories, or The Author, or The Guardian, or The Savior, etc., they needed to flesh it out for themselves but it always felt like a wallpaper job.  The details/timeline guy was apparently Andrew Chambliss who left at the end of Season 6.  He did a pretty shoddy job, but I guess the gaping inconsistencies in the Season 7 timeline showed that without him, things could get even worse (who knew, eh?).

[Guest]

@tennisgurl  You are right, a series bible is exactly what this show needed.  And its inexcusable that they didn't do one especially when considering it had to have been easier than on a show that they would have created entirely out of their imagination.  There was a ton of literature and other adaptations to draw on.  What are the quintessential things that define these characters across all versions.  What defines Snow White,?  What cursed personality would you give Snow White and why? Why were they cursed and how does the curse work?  FFS, if you plan to break the curse after one season, then how does post curse show work?  How do the personalities reconcile?

I've been thinking about the shows I've been watching lately and they seem to fall into two categories.  There are the ones like OUAT where I really loved the first season.  More than was healthy probably.  But they just fell apart somewhere along the way.   Looking back on them, it seems like all the mysteries and theories were invented by the viewers based on hope of what could have been.  That's one thing I'm going to keep an eye on during the rewatch..  Did they ever really give any kind of hint that there was something more to this story or were all the things I saw in the show early on my(or our collective) thoughts about what should have, could have been?  These types of shows leave me vaguely (or outright) disappointed and not at all inclined to want to rewatch because of the show itself.

Then there is the other kind which thankfully I've got at least two or three of now.  I'll watch them early on but they don't grab me.  I'm might not even watch all of the first season, but I'll catch enough that when I go back to give it another shot in season 2 or 3, I know who people are and a chunk of the history and I'm blown away.  Because they had a plan.  And they tied together plot points from multiple seasons.  And suddenly you can see how smart the show is and how clever or funny or a ton of other superlatives and when you go back and watch earlier seasons its better than you realized and that makes the latter seasons better too.  And then all of the sudden you love the entirety of a show.  I'll spare you the gushing about the Expanse because I know you know:)

[tennisgurl]

@ParadoxLost Now The Expanse is something I can gush about for ages! And have, and will continue to! Those are people that have clearly laid out their shows universe and characters, and have a clear set of goals they want to achieve, plus an interesting and well thought out world, and interesting and complex characters. 

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

There are the ones like OUAT where I really loved the first season.  More than was healthy probably.  But they just fell apart somewhere along the way.   Looking back on them, it seems like all the mysteries and theories were invented by the viewers based on hope of what could have been.  That's one thing I'm going to keep an eye on during the rewatch..  Did they ever really give any kind of hint that there was something more to this story or were all the things I saw in the show early on my(or our collective) thoughts about what should have, could have been?  These types of shows leave me vaguely (or outright) disappointed and not at all inclined to want to rewatch because of the show itself.

For me, a lot of these one-good-season shows had an excellent premise/mystery which was played out in the first season, but the first season finale broke that formula, and the Writers were not able to come up with a viable course after that.  Sometimes, shows try to re-create the first season formula with a new mystery and new characters, but when it doesn't work, it becomes a one-good-season show.  

Other shows re-invent themselves in the second season successfully, and this could be done by focusing on logical character arcs, by broadening the scope and exploring more of the supporting characters and the setting, or by switching up the format which may no longer work in the second season.

A&E failed to do any of these.  They did not devote much time to logical character arcs, such as Snowing getting to know Emma, Emma dealing with her true background, or Regina/Rumple facing the wrath of the town and Henry/Belle.  They ignored the supporting characters and the "world" of Storybrooke, essentially making characters like Granny or Grumpy glorified extras and entrenching the idea that the town was basically Main Street.  They continued to force flashbacks that didn't fit the current-day narrative.  The major thing they did change - bringing magic to Storybrooke - erased the main element that separated "real world" Storybrooke from the Enchanted Forest.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Camera One

[LeeOnceObsessive]

Hey! Just now hopping on the bandwagon! But I’ve always felt A&E could’ve done so much more with the Oz arc. Particularly with Zelena! I mean, I was so excited to see the Wicked Witch of the West was coming to Storybrooke, but was massively disappointed when she turned out to be “Cora’s other daughter.” My question is how would you guys have done the Oz arc and how would you have included Zelena into the story without making her Regina’s sister? 

[daxx]

58 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Sometimes, shows try to re-create the first season formula with a new mystery and new characters, but when it doesn't work, it becomes a one-good-season show.  

Sleepy Hollow is a perfect example of this, then it all went downhill. I didn’t even watch the last season.

[Shanna Marie]

Okay, now on to 2B in the "let the characters react like human beings" rewrite. Again, this isn't an attempt to fix all problems or even make it the way I wish it had been. This is trying to keep events as close as possible to the show while having the characters react in a reasonably authentic way, given that they are characters from a fairy tale world.

I didn't address Rumple and Belle in 2A because although a lot of people would have seen Rumple's behavior in not telling Belle where her father was to be a red flag, I have, unfortunately, known a lot of people who would have reacted exactly the way Belle did in refusing to hear anything her father said about Rumple and what he'd done and who would have lasted five minutes of being on their own before wanting to date him again. But it's hard to imagine her still getting in a car with him at night and going to the edge of town after learning that he murdered his first wife (and lied to her about it) and then watching him completely lose it and beat someone almost to death. She might have ended up back with him, but she'd have taken a bit more of a timeout. I guess Rumple would have had to force someone else to go with him to the town line so he and Hook would have the confrontation there that led to Greg's car wreck. But then that makes you wonder -- how was Hook even there in the original version? I don't think he had any idea where/when Rumple and Belle were going so that he could go lie in wait for them. They were in a car, and he was injured and on foot, so he couldn't have followed them there and made it so soon after they arrived.

As for the rest of the plot, no one would have even considered inviting Regina to the celebration. The fact that Regina stopped from blocking them from returning at the last second wouldn't have been enough for her to get in their good graces, given that she had even started in the first place. Emma had just seen the disaster caused by the curse, along with what she was denied in life, and she'd even said that it was all Regina's fault. Regina had nearly killed Henry by trying to kill Emma. I seriously doubt Emma would have been the least bit concerned about trying to co-parent with Regina or be on good terms with her. If the town had been allowed to react normally in 2A and Regina had been forced out of town, then the terrible fake murder plot would have been unnecessary. And what is the deal with their fondness for that "I'm framing you for a crime to show you how awful those people are so you'll love me" story? They did it here and with Elsa, and didn't they do it another time? It might work to some extent if they didn't tell the person what they were doing. Like, do the framing secretly, and then be all "no matter what they think, I believe in you." But when they admit "I framed you for murder so you'd see how much they hate you," how does that even work? Besides, they already knew Regina was a murderer. The only question was whether she'd committed that particular murder. Showing that people were willing to believe that a murderer was a murderer didn't prove anything. So if Regina has already been run out of town, Cora doesn't have to frame her to show her that the whole town is against her and she needs to team up with Cora.

There's also the problem of the backstory because I find it extremely hard to believe that Snow would let Regina go after she'd been tried and convicted. Yes, I could imagine Snow not wanting to just kill her, but after she's had a trial and been convicted, just letting her go free is ridiculous. Maybe Rumple could have helped Regina escape before the execution, since he needed her to cast the curse, or else they could have defeated her, but she escaped and went underground.

They have a huge dilemma when it comes to the scene in the clock tower. If Regina is a good, decent person deep down inside, then she can't stand with Cora after seeing her kill Johanna. If she stands with Cora, then she's a villain, through and through. Either version is potentially a normal reaction, but it defines the character.

I'm going to have to do the rest of 2B in a different post because there's just so much.

[andromeda331]

15 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

There's also the problem of the backstory because I find it extremely hard to believe that Snow would let Regina go after she'd been tried and convicted. Yes, I could imagine Snow not wanting to just kill her, but after she's had a trial and been convicted, just letting her go free is ridiculous. Maybe Rumple could have helped Regina escape before the execution, since he needed her to cast the curse, or else they could have defeated her, but she escaped and went underground.

Yeah, I can see Snow not wanting to kill her but there's no way she'd just let her go free. She'd want her locked up. It really made no sense to me that Regina got caught. Cornered yes, surrounded yes, but I could just see her poofing away and no one knows where she is or hear from her. Maybe she's with Rumple since she's part of his plan or he helped poof her away. He could wrap up the convince Regina to cast the Curse plan which she would already be interested in since she just lost everything to Snow. It really wouldn't be that hard to convince her at that point.

Edited June 2, 2018 by andromeda331

[Rumsy4]

Letting Regina go free after she was convicted, and after making sure she wouldn't kill Snow made it seem like Snow never gave a crap about anyone but herself. She knew Regina was razing villages, and yet, she set her free. And then, sat down and enjoyed her own life becasue that was best sort of revenge, and advised the survivors of razed villages to do the same. And let's not forget the time she put all of Storybrooke at risk (including David, Emma, and Henry) becasue she couldn't live with the knowledge that Regina would die stopping the failsafe that would have destroyed Storybrooke. 

But this same person would put the Storybrooke people ahead of her own little daughter when she was briefly awake during the Dark Curse, and was fine with letting her grow up alone, even after seeing her with her own eyes. It actually fits with the Pilot, becasue even then, she is the one who makes the decision to put Emma in the wardrobe, even before the Black Knights come for the child. Both times, David agrees with her decision. 

Snow's priorities seem to be Regina>David>her subjects>>>>>>Emma. 

The writers started coming up with the most convoluted scenarios to explain why Regina had failed to kill Snow so many times, and why Snowing had never bothered to prevent the Dark Curse from being cast. This ruined the character of Snow, and by association--David.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Letting Regina go free after she was convicted, and after making sure she wouldn't kill Snow made it seem like Snow never gave a crap about anyone but herself. She knew Regina was razing villages, and yet, she set her free.   And then, sat down and enjoyed her own life becasue that was best sort of revenge, and advised the survivors of razed villages to do the same. 

Personally, my mind just automatically go behind-the-scenes.  The episode with Snow letting Regina go was "The Cricket Game", so clearly, they came up with the village massacre later in "The Evil Queen".  The other thing is, they needed to write flashbacks that fit with what happened later.  They needed a reason for Regina to be free to waltz into her wedding.  Having Rumple be the one to set Regina free would have been a lot less character assassinating.  At the end of the day, A&E didn't care about the redshirts or the regular people, so why would they realize that the characters need to care about the redshirts or the regular people?  A&E also didn't care about developing Snowing as rulers, so we got what we got.

[Shanna Marie]

More of 2B if the characters were allowed to behave like normal people and have reasonable emotional reactions:

The whole Emma/Neal/Henry/Tamara thing has never really worked for me. I feel like Neal has way too big an emotional hold on Emma for the circumstances. They weren't together that long, and then they were apart for more than a decade. Yeah, she had his baby, but she didn't raise his baby, so she didn't have that reminder around. If she still had strong emotions for him, they'd have been negative because of his betrayal. Given everything that happened, and given her personality, I don't at all see the "I never really stopped loving you" thing, especially after their reunion, when he was such a jerk to her the whole time. The idea that he had to send her to jail for her to achieve her destiny makes no sense because there's no reason that she couldn't have been the Savior after they lived a quiet life in Tallahassee for a decade, especially if he knew what she'd have to do -- "Hey, babe, I hear Maine in the fall is spectacular. Why don't we take a road trip to celebrate your 28th birthday?" The only reason it couldn't have worked that way is if he would have got in her way because he wanted to avoid his father. So, basically, he let her go to jail for his crime because he was too big a weenie to face his father. That doesn't exactly inspire the "I never stopped loving you" response. Plus, he threw her under the bus with Henry and let Henry blame her for Henry not knowing about his father rather than owning up to the way he treated her, and he was a real jerk about shoving Tamara in her face. If she'd been the one to dump him, I could see him being all "Hey, here's my fiancee." But he dumped her, and yet he's still flaunting his fiancee and accusing Emma of being jealous. Her big "I love you" at the portal is so eyeroll-inducing because it seems more likely that her reaction to him would be "whew, dodged a bullet there!" I also find Henry's response to Tamara to be unlikely. Yeah, he was willing to help Emma try to spy on her, but it seems likely he'd have been a lot brattier, given that he had a big "you're not my real dad" hissy fit with Hook when he was a couple of years older, when Neal had been dead about a year, when he'd known Hook for some time and had been through adventures with him and had even picked out a house with him. An 11-year-old Henry who's been fantasizing about having a traditional family with his birth mom and dad and who's seen his parents reunited only to have his dad spring a surprise fiancee on them is probably going to have an epic brat attack. Then there's David's response. As nasty as he was to Hook for trying to help Emma, it's hard to imagine him being even remotely nice to Neal when he knew Neal got David's teenage daughter pregnant and then had nothing to do with her, even without him knowing about Neal's role in Emma going to jail.

As for the Cora death/dark heart plot ... I can kind of see why an idealistic kid like Henry might be stunned by Snow White killing someone. In most of the fairy tales, even if the villains get a comeuppance, it's seldom directly at the hands of the heroes, particularly the princesses. The king may order a fitting punishment, or else the villains fall into their own traps or rip themselves apart in a fit of temper when they lose. It seems like Henry's book does depict some of the war, but not any direct killing of specific, named characters. It's the response of the adults that doesn't quite ring true. David and Emma should have chimed in to correct Henry. And Snow had every right to be angry at Gepetto. It's not a sign of having a dark heart to be angry that a friend lied to you and that lie forced you to be separated from your newborn.

The whole anti-magic thing should have made for an interesting dilemma for the whole town. That plot line was half baked. Greg and Tamara should have been doing more research around town and should have been winning allies. You'd think that, given what the townspeople had gone through, there would be a lot of takers for an anti-magic group.

And it's astonishing that there was really no reaction whatsoever to Regina's plan to murder them all and run away with Henry. Yeah, she ended up stopping the failsafe and nearly sacrificing herself to do so, but she didn't do it because she had a change of heart and realized she was wrong. She did it because it got hijacked and her plan was ruined. They could have been grateful that she helped stop it while still being horrified that she'd planned it in the first place and being concerned about what else she might do. That would have added an interesting layer of conflict to the Neverland story, where they had a common goal, but could they really trust her? Would she try to ditch them all and strand them there once she got Henry?

With Belle, she never reacted at all to the things she did as Lacey or to the things she saw Rumple do while she was Lacey. It doesn't seem to have given her a moment's pause that Rumple gets excessively evil when he doesn't have her telling him to be good. You'd think that when she got her true self back, she'd have been horrified, but she didn't have time to react, and they were right back to being true love.

[Camera One]

22 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The whole Emma/Neal/Henry/Tamara thing has never really worked for me. I feel like Neal has way too big an emotional hold on Emma for the circumstances. They weren't together that long, and then they were apart for more than a decade. Yeah, she had his baby, but she didn't raise his baby, so she didn't have that reminder around. If she still had strong emotions for him, they'd have been negative because of his betrayal. Given everything that happened, and given her personality, I don't at all see the "I never really stopped loving you" thing, especially after their reunion, when he was such a jerk to her the whole time.

The triangle never worked for me either and was incredibly uncreative considering there were tons of issues for the characters to work through yet the Writers needed to bring in some outside force.  But I didn't have a problem with Emma still having positive feelings for Neal, and I thought Jennifer Morrison played it well.  Emotions aren't always logical.  Like it or not, in their short time together, Neal was someone that Emma trusted and loved.  Considering she put up a wall after that relationship (or at least we thought she did, up until the Cleo retcon), I don't find it far-fetched that seeing Neal again would bring all those unresolved feelings back to the surface, to know that he did have a reason for doing what he did, even if it was out of cowardice.  

In Season 2, Hook was an accomplice to a Safe Haven massacre, so I remember comparisons of his transgression to Neal's was a non-starter back then and delayed my eventual sympathy with the Hook character.  For sure, Snowing should have had more problems with Neal, but so should Regina given Henry's father was back in his life.  Clearly, A&E had no interest in developing the character or his relationship with anyone (I mean, even Rumple spent more time with Lacey).  

But yeah, the whole thing was poorly written, all-round.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

As nasty as he was to Hook for trying to help Emma, it's hard to imagine him being even remotely nice to Neal when he knew Neal got David's teenage daughter pregnant and then had nothing to do with her, even without him knowing about Neal's role in Emma going to jail.

I've always head-canoned that both David and Mary Margaret were so accepting of Neal becasue his sin against Emma was similar to theirs. They all variously justified themselves for abandoning Emma "for her own good" and so she could save everyone. If they started questioning Neal's true intentions, they would have to deal with their own sense of guilt and Emma's hard life in consequence. It was probably easier to displace his own discomfort by channelling it on the "pirate" who was more ostensibly the rake and villain than a well-meaning but weak regular guy like Neal.

The out of story reason was "drama". The writers made David antagonistic to Hook becasue they were intending to develop the Hook/Emma relationship. They needed to let it go at some point, but kept dragging it on until the end.

[crash476]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

More of 2B if the characters were allowed to behave like normal people and have reasonable emotional reactions:

The whole Emma/Neal/Henry/Tamara thing has never really worked for me. I feel like Neal has way too big an emotional hold on Emma for the circumstances. They weren't together that long, and then they were apart for more than a decade. Yeah, she had his baby, but she didn't raise his baby, so she didn't have that reminder around. If she still had strong emotions for him, they'd have been negative because of his betrayal. Given everything that happened, and given her personality, I don't at all see the "I never really stopped loving you" thing, especially after their reunion, when he was such a jerk to her the whole time. The idea that he had to send her to jail for her to achieve her destiny makes no sense because there's no reason that she couldn't have been the Savior after they lived a quiet life in Tallahassee for a decade, especially if he knew what she'd have to do -- "Hey, babe, I hear Maine in the fall is spectacular. Why don't we take a road trip to celebrate your 28th birthday?" The only reason it couldn't have worked that way is if he would have got in her way because he wanted to avoid his father. So, basically, he let her go to jail for his crime because he was too big a weenie to face his father. That doesn't exactly inspire the "I never stopped loving you" response.

Like, the writers could have just let the cops catch up to Emma and Neal, they get arrested, and Neal takes all of the responsibility. I mean, they weren't being very careful about not being caught on camera. So Emma gets a sentence that's long enough to have Henry in prison, short enough that she's out in like... a year. Neal gets sentenced to like 5 to 10 or however long robbing gas stations warrants. They lose touch, they get back together. You could completely delete Tamara. And August could be completely out of this, idk, sipping cocktails in Thailand.

[Rumsy4]

One way to make Neal more sympathetic was to have made it all the fault of August. If Neal had no idea that Emma had gone to jail--let's say August induced Neal to run off to Canada that same night, and had orchestrated Emma's capture on his own, his later behavior to Emma wouldn't have felt so disappointing. 

ETA: or what @crash476 said.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

53 minutes ago, Camera One said:

But I didn't have a problem with Emma still having positive feelings for Neal, and I thought Jennifer Morrison played it well.  Emotions aren't always logical.  Like it or not, in their short time together, Neal was someone that Emma trusted and loved.  Considering she put up a wall after that relationship (or at least we thought she did, up until the Cleo retcon), I don't find it far-fetched that seeing Neal again would bring all those unresolved feelings back to the surface, to know that he did have a reason for doing what he did, even if it was out of cowardice.  

I could maybe see her having a bit of confused emotions right after their reunion, but then the day-to-day stuff once they were in Storybrooke would probably have killed it, from him freaking out about her having magic to him flaunting Tamara and scoffing at her "superpower." He was such a loser and jerk that it seems to me like an adult Emma who'd been through so much since they were together would have been more likely to have the "I was ever with this loser?" reaction than the "I never stopped loving you" reaction. More needed to happen between them to get the scene at the portal -- maybe something more along the lines of the Mary Margaret/David/Kathryn triangle, where Neal is engaged to Tamara, but he obviously has much more of a connection with Emma and they're clearly drawn to each other. I didn't get that sense at all. And with Neal it was like flipping a switch, going straight from defending Tamara and claiming Emma was jealous to being all about Emma the moment he learned Tamara was actually evil and playing him. All the rivalry with Hook in Neverland was less than a week after Neal was engaged to another woman who then betrayed him and died. He didn't even have any kind of emotional reaction to anything about Tamara, and yet he supposedly loved her enough to want to marry her. It was like, "Oh, well, that didn't work out. Next!"

1 minute ago, Rumsy4 said:

I've always head-canoned that both David and Mary Margaret were so accepting of Neal becasue his sin against Emma was similar to theirs. They all variously justified themselves for abandoning Emma "for her own good" and so she could save everyone. 

It's not just Neal's abandonment. You'd think a guy as old-fashioned as David, who was policing who his grown daughter associated with and who seemed to expect Hook to seek his permission and blessing to be with Emma, would have had issues with a man sleeping with Emma when she was a teenager and they weren't married.

[Camera One]

Originally, it could also be explained if the Snowing believed in the fairytale notions of "First love" being true love.  That could have been a culture clash.  But there is no worldbuilding on this show.  We don't even know if Snowing were first loves.

A&E couldn't even do math, much less cobble together a scenario that makes sense.  It seems like they are tone deaf to how plots affect characterization.

[Rumsy4]

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

You'd think a guy as old-fashioned as David, who was policing who his grown daughter associated with and who seemed to expect Hook to seek his permission and blessing to be with Emma, would have had issues with a man sleeping with Emma when she was a teenager and they weren't married.

The same old-fashioned attitude might lead him to believe that Emma and Neal needed to be married becasue they had a child together. 

Edited June 2, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

3 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The same old-fashioned attitude might lead him to believe that Emma and Neal needed to be married becasue they had a child together. 

Then he would have reacted very badly to Neal being engaged to someone else. Right now, I'm only dealing with 2B, so this is the time between the return from New York to the failsafe. At that time, David wasn't really reacting one way or another, as I recall, but we should have seen some kind of reaction from David, some kind of "now are you going to man up and do the right thing?" conversation. There was a rather stunning lack of reaction to Neal. I don't think we got to see what Regina thought, what Neal thought about the fact that the Evil Queen had adopted his son. I don't remember seeing the Charmings reacting to him beyond the initial phone call and "good thing we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in our world" response.

I didn't like Neal as a person, but as a character I felt he was incredibly underutilized, given the connections he had to almost every other character in the show. Bringing him to town was throwing a huge monkey wrench into all the established relationships, and they just didn't bother.

[KingOfHearts]

9 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Then he would have reacted very badly to Neal being engaged to someone else. Right now, I'm only dealing with 2B, so this is the time between the return from New York to the failsafe. At that time, David wasn't really reacting one way or another, as I recall, but we should have seen some kind of reaction from David, some kind of "now are you going to man up and do the right thing?" conversation. There was a rather stunning lack of reaction to Neal. I don't think we got to see what Regina thought, what Neal thought about the fact that the Evil Queen had adopted his son. I don't remember seeing the Charmings reacting to him beyond the initial phone call and "good thing we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in our world" response.

I especially don't understand Regina's lack of a reaction. She asked in the pilot if she needed to be worried about Henry's birth father and she seemed stunned when she learned from Rumple that he was Henry's grandfather. As protective as she is over her motherly role, I don't see how she wouldn't see a third parent as a threat. She was so apathetic she called Neal "this person".

Edited June 2, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Just now, KingOfHearts said:

I especially don't understand Regina's lack of a reaction. She asked in the pilot if she needed to be worried about Henry's birth father and she seemed stunned when she learned from Rumple that he was Henry's grandfather. As protective as she is over her motherly role, I don't see how she wouldn't see a third parent as a threat. 

Cora could have used Henry's father's arrival to make Regina feel even more threatened.  Another example of setting up the groundwork and completely ignoring all the potential ramifications that could have made for a great drama.

[KingOfHearts]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Cora could have used Henry's father's arrival to make Regina feel even more threatened.  Another example of setting up the groundwork and completely ignoring all the potential ramifications that could have made for a great drama.

Cora didn't even know who he was, though. He came to Storybrooke the same day she was killed.

Edited June 2, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Cora didn't even know who he was, though. He came to Storybrooke the same day she was killed.

I haven't seen 2B since it first aired.  It will be interesting to rewatch.  

[KingOfHearts]

5 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I haven't seen 2B since it first aired.  It will be interesting to rewatch.  

It'll be interesting when we get to it in September, lol.

[Shanna Marie]

Of course, the real lack of reaction to Neal was Rumple. He spent more than a century desperately trying to get to his son again, then finds him and can't be bothered to even try to interact with him because he's too busy trying to impress the girlfriend who doesn't remember him.