S01.E20: The Stranger

[KingOfHearts]

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August promises to enlighten Emma and take her on a journey that will show her how she can beat Regina, and possibly take custody of Henry; and with Mary Margaret returning to work, Regina puts a plan in motion to seduce David. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, with the Evil Queen’s curse about to strike, Geppetto agrees to a plan that will save Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter, but with a proviso that could also save his own son.

[Shanna Marie]

And we have yet another case of Regina is the Worst. I'd forgotten that Emma actually used the word "sociopath" to describe Regina, and it certainly seems apt here, with her being able to act so totally innocent even when talking to Mary Margaret, like she had no idea any of this was happening -- in spite of having gloated to Mary Margaret while she was in jail about knowing she didn't do it. Then there's her whole damsel in distress act to try to seduce David.

Though, in spite of the number of times lasagna comes up on this show, I don't think the writers have ever actually made lasagna that didn't come out of the freezer. If Regina had just bought ingredients to make lasagna, that isn't a "since you're here, you might as well stay for dinner" dish. Even if Regina used a jarred meat sauce (which I'm sure she'd turn her nose up at) and the kind of noodles that don't have to be boiled before the lasagna is put together, it takes at least an hour to make lasagna. If she really came home and learned that Henry wasn't going to be home for dinner, she probably wouldn't even start the process. It's not as though it uses ingredients that are going to go bad if they're not used right away. The whole scene becomes rather more amusing if you consider that she was going through the motions of making lasagna from scratch just to impress David, and David was guilted into hanging around a couple of hours before dinner after Regina pretended that he was going out of his way to give her a ride home -- 15 minutes out of his day was too much, but sure, hang around for a couple of hours while he waits for her to make dinner.

Emma's determination to get Henry away from the sociopath is rather jarring, considering that

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Next season, she's inviting Regina to join the party and later is okay sharing custody with Henry. Regina's behavior in this season is just so egregious that you can't imagine any of these people willingly associating with her again. Mary Margaret knows Regina was behind framing her. Maybe she can take the high road and forgive her, but that doesn't mean she should be groveling to her later or wanting to be friends or family with her. Mary Margaret in this episode is spunkier than the "I need to be Snow again" Snow was in later seasons.

On the other plot, Geppetto is also The Worst, and I guess it's bitterly ironic that if he hadn't been so selfish, he'd have had his son with him all that time and would have been able to see his boy grow up, giving him the kind of guidance that might have made him into a decent person. But by insisting on "saving" his boy, at the expense of Emma and her parents, that meant his son grew up without his father and fell into really bad influences and behavior and he didn't get to have his son. And meanwhile, Emma ended up in the foster system with no one around her. So "saving" his son ruined a lot of lives, including his son's.

I was a little surprised that they gave away August's identity so early in the episode, showing him looking at the hat and then running into Geppetto at the shop, with Gold outright referring to him as August's father. It seems like a better time for making that connection would have been with the revelation that August was the boy who found Emma, and that boy was Pinocchio. It's funny how many times they don't bother to set up something because it will ruin the surprise, and then when they have a situation where there could have been a surprise, they blow it.

[companionenvy]

I actually sympathize a lot with Geppetto, and was  annoyed with Jiminy and the Blue Fairy for acting like he was doing the worst thing ever.  Pinocchio was his son, and Geppetto had a not-unreasonable belief that he might revert back to wood - effectively killing him - in the LWOM. I don't think he was morally obligated to risk his child's life so that another child would get to grow up with her mother. He wasn't dooming everyone, as the prophesied savior was still getting out of Regina's clutches. At worst, he was simply making it less likely that she'd be able to break the curse, especially as he was still sending along someone else who was old enough to offer her a modicum of protection and explain things to her when she was old enough. Yes, it was too great a burden to place on a child, but remember that Geppetto really didn't know anything about the LWOM. There were a thousand things that could have gone wrong no matter who had gone over, and any number of reasons that Emma would ultimately fail to break the curse. 

Finally, I just think there were too many contingencies and uncertainties to have expected Geppetto to risk Pinnochio to merely increase the chances of the curse breaking, because that's all it would have been. There was no guarantee Emma was going to be able to break the curse if Snow had gone with her, and no guarantee she wouldn't if she wound up on her own.

This is even truer before Snow went into labor. In that case, Blue and Jiminy were asking Geppetto to risk his kid's life to make sure that Snow and Charming don't have to be separated, since there's no real reason that Charming and Snow were both necessary to explain things to Emma.

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Of course, all this becomes idiotic after "Awake," when Snow and Charming inexplicably decide that Emma won't be able to break the curse if she grows up with them.

Edited August 4, 2018 by companionenvy

[Rumsy4]

No wonder Pinocchio has a hard time telling the truth. He got it from his dad. I get Geppetto's fear, but it was just as risky sending a seven-year old alone into the Lw/oM and asking him to take care of an infant. 

I liked the scene of August finally working up the courage to talk to Geppetto at the end. 

Regina and David. Enough said.

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Makes the Camelot scene where David teaches Regina to dance all the more creepy. 

[KingOfHearts]

I hate this episode. This was the first retcon that really offended me.

9 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

On the other plot, Geppetto is also The Worst, and I guess it's bitterly ironic that if he hadn't been so selfish, he'd have had his son with him all that time and would have been able to see his boy grow up, giving him the kind of guidance that might have made him into a decent person. But by insisting on "saving" his boy, at the expense of Emma and her parents, that meant his son grew up without his father and fell into really bad influences and behavior and he didn't get to have his son. And meanwhile, Emma ended up in the foster system with no one around her. So "saving" his son ruined a lot of lives, including his son's.

Geppetto does this without knowing what the circumstances of the curse even are. 

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Add him to the list of many people who screwed Emma's life over. What's even sadder is that Snow and Charming make the opposite decision in S6, where they leave Emma alone in order to save everybody else. But that was one was equally as infuriating because the parental instincts Geppetto has here is totally absent in Snowing later. Just ugh. Screw Geppetto, the Apprentice, Merlin, Snow, Charming, Lily, Neal, Regina, Rumple, and August. You all suck for making Emma's life miserable.

5 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Regina and David. Enough said.

Everyone seems to forget Regina had a weird thing for David in S1. 

Edited August 5, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

August and Rumple teaming up to manipulate Emma is just the start of a pattern.

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Where August teams up with other men to manipulate Emma, and we're supposed to feel sorry for them like they had no choice. Of course Adam and Eddy would root for these men over giving agency to a female character that is not Regina.

Because when Whale, Rumple, and Jefferson team up to manipulate Regina, she's the victim. Even though she turned into a mass murdering rapist sociopath, while Emma stayed a decent person.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Rumsy4

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

Everyone seems to forget Regina had a weird thing for David in S1. 

While I really like Abigail, and the fact that she wound up being sympathetic, this episode makes me think it would have been kind of interesting if Regina had been posing as David's wife under the curse. 

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Everyone seems to forget Regina had a weird thing for David in S1. 

I don't know that she really had a "thing" for him. She just got desperate enough to try anything to get between him and Snow. She used her status as his "emergency contact" to intervene in his life, dug up Kathryn as his "wife" to keep him away from Snow, planned the kidnap/murder/frame scheme when Kathryn decided to give her blessing for David and Mary Margaret to be together, then that failed, and about the only thing left to do was seduce David, herself.

23 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I actually sympathize a lot with Geppetto, and was  annoyed with Jiminy and the Blue Fairy for acting like he was doing the worst thing ever.

While I can sympathize with his reasons, the way he went about it was the worst. He essentially held a world hostage in order to get what he wanted, and that amounted to lying to and betraying his friends as well as putting Blue and Jiminy in the position of having to lie to their friends. It would have been better if he'd been honest and presented his concerns to the Charmings. Knowing them, Charming would have willingly sacrificed his position in the tree to save Pinocchio. Then when Snow went into labor early, separating a newborn from her mother and sending her alone into a strange world so that his son could go was extremely selfish. The concern isn't so much that she wouldn't fulfill her destiny as Savior without her parents' guidance. It's whether she'll survive at all. This was a minutes-old newborn who hadn't even been fed being sent without her mother or any adult into an unknown situation. If they'd been farther from the road or if it had been colder or a different time of day, Emma wouldn't have survived, and that would have jeopardized the whole world. Pinocchio wasn't equipped to provide food or much warmth to a newborn, definitely not the way her mother could have.

Unless Maine/Massachusetts (since they seem to treat those states as interchangeable) foster systems are very different, I doubt a newborn would have been put into a group home. My pastor and his wife are foster parents who specialize in babies, and there's an entirely different adult/child ratio for infants. They might keep siblings together with a newborn, but an infant isn't going to be in the kind of foster home they showed. Usually, an infant is the only foster child in the home. And there's still that issue where a healthy white infant girl would have had a waiting list to adopt her. She wouldn't have been in a foster family for years before being adopted. I know that her being on her own is part of the narrative, but they could have still achieved that with a little realism with some minor changes. Say, she gets adopted by a wealthy woman who really just wants a child as a fashion accessory or to humanize her when she runs for political office (basically, Regina). So, she has a home and has nice things, but not much affection, and she's bullied into behaving perfectly. Then she'd have had something in common with Henry, and seeing the way Regina was with him would have been a real emotional trigger. But then when Emma was a pre-teen, her adoptive mother got caught in some kind of corruption and went to prison, and that meant Emma got stuck in the foster system, and she ended up running away to avoid having to go back to her mother when it looked like her mother was being paroled. So, more or less the same result, but with more in common with Henry, but it's at least moderately realistic.

I wonder what name Pinocchio gave the people who found him with baby Emma. He would have had no way of knowing that Pinocchio was a storybook character in this world, and he would have still been in no-lying mode, but what would the authorities have thought about a kid who insisted his name was Pinocchio?

[CCTC]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

the only thing left to do was seduce David, herself.

Yes - I felt it was more just "business" for her and she had no actual attraction to her, although I think there is a small group online that ship them together (as with every other possible combination  - I am surprised there was not a Grump/Snow ship or a Grumpy/Charming ship for that matter).  I was actually surprised (in a good way) how it did not drag out multiple episodes or actually have the seduction succeed.   I was actually thinking that the events during the curse might have 

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had  some repercussions and keep them apart for a bit once there memories were restored in classic soap -- I slept with when I had amnesia fashion.  Realistically there probably should have been some baggage or fallout to work through once they were themselves, although I think the writers would have just botched that up and made it plot-driven and convoluted.

[Rumsy4]

Have you ever heard of...Grumplestiltskin? It's a legit crackship. hehe

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't know that she really had a "thing" for him. She just got desperate enough to try anything to get between him and Snow. She used her status as his "emergency contact" to intervene in his life, dug up Kathryn as his "wife" to keep him away from Snow, planned the kidnap/murder/frame scheme when Kathryn decided to give her blessing for David and Mary Margaret to be together, then that failed, and about the only thing left to do was seduce David, herself.

I say this because...

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In the next episode, she places her hand on his chest and says, "I suppose I can see the allure". It seemed like maybe they wanted to do something with that then chose not to.

[CCTC]

8 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

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In the next episode, she places her hand on his chest and says, "I suppose I can see the allure". It seemed like maybe they wanted to do something with that then chose not to.

 

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I think old school, unapologetically evil Regina had no problem using a handsome man for recreational activities (see Graham and even later to some degree what was her attraction to Robin besides him being dashing and rugged.  The second version of him was more like a generic prince charming than Robin Hood.)  It would have been in character for her to use Charming both for revenge and to satisfy other needs.

[profdanglais]

Perhaps someone abnormally prescient and self-aware in the writers' room realised that if they allowed Regina to 

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sleep with cursed Charming, then there'd be no coming back from that, and that even the doormats that Snowing became in later seasons couldn't forgive her for forcing Charming to commit adultery. By which I mean forcing Charming to commit adultery with Regina, obviously she'd already forced him to be with Kathryn. Can you imagine the extra layer of awkward during Snow's "rah rah adultery" speech to Regina in S4 if she also had to point out that Regina had already slept with her husband, so why get hung up on sleeping with Marian's?

[companionenvy]

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Eh, if Snow could forgive the murder of her father, multiple attempts to kill her, at least a few massacres against her subjects, multiple attempts to kill her daughter, including as an infant, robbing her of her daughter's entire childhood and condemning that daughter to years of loneliness, I'm pretty sure she could have gotten over some sexytimes with Charming. 

To respond to Shanna's point about Geppetto, I still feel like his back was kind of to the wall. If his priority was to save his son, there really wasn't an option other than holding a realm hostage. 

I also think there's some limit to how much realism we can apply to the situation in terms of figuring out how much danger he was potentially putting Emma into. Yeah, sending a nine year old into the unknown with an infant isn't a great recipe for the health and happiness of either. But first of all, as you say, given what did happen - the two of them being discovered - Emma realistically should have had a better fate than she did, and wound up adopted by what probably would have been a perfectly loving family. But if we apply realism to a scenario in which Emma and Snow went through together, some of the options are pretty dire there as well. Despite the later experience of 

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Nealfire

an adult woman from a pre-modern fantasy world should have had an incredibly hard time adjusting to 1980s America, and would have been likely to run into dangers and trouble at every turn. Unlike August and Emma, who as children weren't expected to fend for themselves once discovered, Snow would have had to do something to support herself and Emma without any documentation to prove that she existed, no skill sets that were particularly relevant in the LWOM, and not even enough sense of how the new world worked to know what she needed to avoid saying and doing in interacting with other people to avoid raising major red flags.

Honestly, the likeliest scenario: Snow decides to go back to a life on the run as a bandit to support Emma, but is ill-equipped to do so in the modern LWOM and gets arrested, or discovered sleeping in some hole in a forest. She would have probably wound up in a mental institution, if not jail, and Emma would still have gone into foster care. Obviously, Geppetto wouldn't have thought of all this, but he did know that at best anyone who went through was going into a totally unknown world where chances of success would be uncertain. And Pinocchio was old enough that it was reasonable enough to think that, assuming they didn't land in the middle of a desert wasteland or something, he would be able to at least get help from an adult before Emma died of exposure. Geppetto didn't know from social services; he was probably figuring that August would spin some story about them being orphaned siblings and find some kindly cottager to take them in, possibly allowing August to earn his keep as an apprentice woodworker or errand boy or something. 

[KingOfHearts]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I know that her being on her own is part of the narrative, but they could have still achieved that with a little realism with some minor changes.

I've thought Emma's backstory was a bit unrealistic for a while now. In the Pilot, you just sort of accept it because you don't have many details and it works to the plot's favor. It sets up Emma as the loner archetype who needs to learn the value of family/friendship/whatever. But as the show goes on, it slowly falls apart. The amount of lengths the writers go to maintain this aspect of Emma gets beyond ridiculous. This episode makes things overly convoluted in order to push a backstory for August and Geppetto that no one really asked for. August does not need to exist because he abandons Emma quickly after arriving. She comes to Storybrooke on her own without his interference. This entire plot with Geppetto using the wardrobe as a safety net for his son is ultimately pointless. It doesn't really do anything but make August and Geppetto look like assholes. The only thing August does is take Baby!Emma to people, but was there really no other way for the writers to make that happen? Couldn't Emma magically appear somewhere closer to civilization?

The writers were so allergic to showing Emma have any good moments prior to Storybrooke. Everything in her life had to be crappy, even when it didn't make sense. That, to me, is what made her story so unrealistic. Things did not have be as awful as they were and Emma could've still had the walls up. But there's also not much reason Emma turned out to be a decent person while the villains did not. She didn't have any good influences in her life. She's just nice because she's the hero.

Edited August 6, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

The writers were so allergic to showing Emma have any good moments prior to Storybrooke. Everything in her life had to be crappy, even when it didn't make sense. That, to me, is what made her story so unrealistic. Things did not have be as awful as they were and Emma could've still had the walls up. But there's also not much reason Emma turned out to be a decent person while the villains did not. She didn't have any good influences in her life. She's just nice because she's the hero.

Emma's life is pretty ridiculously grim. The writers would have been better off having her raised by a single, awful and abusive foster or adoptive family that she ran away from in her mid-teens. Which, unfortunately, is something that does happen to real children. But it kind of starts to beggar belief that Emma apparently never found a decent family, a friend, etc over the course of fifteen years in the system. 

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Except for Ingrid, which doesn't count for obvious reasons, and the family that Lily immediately screwed up for her. 

[profdanglais]

Yeah, I've never believed that a beautiful blonde baby girl wouldn't have been snapped up in a heartbeat by one of the many, many people wishing to adopt a baby. 

[Rumsy4]

ETA: Oops wrong thread. Moving my response to All Seasons.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Writing Wrongs]

On 8/4/2018 at 7:21 PM, Rumsy4 said:

I liked the scene of August finally working up the courage to talk to Geppetto at the end. 

That's one of my favorite scenes too. When August sees that carved whale, I get a bit teary eyed.

[tennisgurl]

My favorite scene in this episode is definitely the ending. When August sees the whale, it hits you right in the feels. And its a good reminder of how awful the curse is, and how many people have been screwed over by Regina as collateral damage. 

I wish we had gotten more of Gepetto and Pinocchio this season, as I think if we had gotten to know them more, we could understand his choice in this episode more. I mean, I do get why he did it, and its understandable (thinking his son was going to be turned into a block of wood forever), but its still a messed up thing to do, that ended up causing more problems then it solved, and probably did lead to August/Pinocchio spending his whole adult life making awful life choices, both having to make his way in the world and watch out for a baby as a seven year old, AND his dads bad example probably let him justify him going further and further off the good and noble path. Plus, I just like the guy who plays Gepetto/Marco a lot. I really do buy him as the character he is supposed to be, and comes off as very fairy tale in the EF, while also being Marco in Storeybrooke. 

I forgot that Regina had a thing for David at this point. Oh, its so gross. I really think that, if Charming hadn't been stabbed and in a coma when the curse struck, she would have made David HER husband, with Graham as her side piece. We know how she gets about having attractive men who would normally hate her under her control, and it being the husband of her worst enemy would just be icing on the sex offender cake. 

[Camera One]

I don't want Charming to be raped.  It would have left an even worse feeling than the Curse resulting in Snowing having sex with other people.  Then again,

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Her first impulse in the Season 2 premiere was to strangle Charming to death, so maybe she didn't want him in her bed chamber.

[legaleagle53]

On 8/6/2018 at 1:08 AM, profdanglais said:

Yeah, I've never believed that a beautiful blonde baby girl wouldn't have been snapped up in a heartbeat by one of the many, many people wishing to adopt a baby. 

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She was, until the couple who adopted her changed their minds and sent her back because they suddenly learned that they were expecting their own baby.

[KingOfHearts]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

Quote

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Her first impulse in the Season 2 premiere was to strangle Charming to death, so maybe she didn't want him in her bed chamber.

 

 

Well I mean she did kill Graham when he went self-aware so...

Edited August 12, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[companionenvy]

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Although even that is a somewhat unrealistic level of awful. They must have taken her in almost as a newborn. I really don't think there are many people who are so awful that they would send back a three year old they'd been fostering since infancy with a view toward adoption once they had a biological kid. I actually know a few couples who went through with an adoption after finding out they were pregnant even though the kid they were planning to adopt hadn't even been born yet. 

Even if these people were so horrible that they didn't care about Emma enough to feel that she was already their daughter in every way that counted, frankly, I think the average person would be too embarrassed to do something so transparently horrific.  Especially as they would have to realize that not only were they giving Emma back, they had kept her for long enough that she was now much less adoptable. 

[profdanglais]

What @companionenvy said. Verbatim. 

[Shanna Marie]

About Emma's history ...

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It's extremely unlikely that an infant would be in foster care for three years without being formally adopted, and there would have been no giving her back once she was formally adopted. That's not the way adoption works. Most of the news stories about abandoned infants have the child going home from the hospital with the prospective adoptive parents. Unless there was an active missing person's case with parents looking for a missing infant (in which case she'd have been reunited with the parents she was taken from after an investigation), they'd consider a baby found by the side of the road to have had parental rights severed pretty quickly, clearing the way for adoption. It wouldn't take years for it to be finalized, and once it's final, there's no giving back (also a problem in the way they showed Regina's adoption of Henry). Not only is it a horrible thing to do, at that point, the kid is legally yours, and it would be like surrendering a biological child to the state -- actually, even worse, because there are legal restrictions on what parents can do with adopted kids that don't exist for a biological child. And it's very hard to imagine that anyone who would have been willing to foster and adopt a child could raise a child from infancy to three and be willing to give the child back, even if that were possible.

Since Emma and Pinocchio weren't biologically related -- he seemed to have only claimed to have found her, not to be her brother -- there would have been no need to keep them together in foster care. He might have gone to a group home like the one we saw, but Emma would have been sent directly to a prospective adoptive family that was also certified as a foster family. She wouldn't have been in a group home as a newborn. If Pinocchio had claimed to be her brother, that might have complicated things if they decided they had to be adopted together, so they had to find a family willing to take an infant and a 7-year-old boy, but with a newborn that young, it's possible that they'd have decided they couldn't have bonded much, so they needed to give the infant her best chance. Not that it matters, since August said he said he found her.

[KAOS Agent]

August was also said to have been a "local boy" according to the newspapers. I guess no one let props know the real story (or they didn't actually have that story planned yet), so it became a retcon when August was revealed to have come through with Emma.