S02.E05: The Doctor

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

While Regina continues to try and stop using her magic in an attempt to win back Henry’s affections, she begins seeing what she believes is a ghost from her past; and when Mary Margaret and Emma discover a lone survivor from an ogre massacre, Emma begins to question whether or not he’s telling the truth. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, Regina finds herself failing at learning the dark arts from a dark master because something from her past is preventing her from using her magic for evil.

Edited August 31, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[companionenvy]

This is the first S2 episode that was mostly a misfire for me. I wasn't invested enough in Regina/Daniel's bland romance to care much about his reappearance in the present, especially as it was so obviously going to end poorly, and the flashback was unpleasant to watch without being meaningful mitigation for Regina, IMO. It isn't like Rumple engineered a scene where she was forced to kill, leading her further down a dark path, or even where there was some legitimate temptation in the form of this woman being someone Regina might reasonably want dead. It was just Regina being sad and lashing out by killing an innocent, which isn't particularly sympathetic. This episode also shows evidence of Rumple's Rube-Goldberg esque plotting at its worst, in that as Regina's turn deeper into darkness isn't really a foreseeable extrapolation from what happens, it seems excessive to have gone to all that trouble under the assumption that renewed grief over Daniel would push Regina over the edge. Like, even if I bought that as the result, it isn't predictable enough for it to work as a reasonable plan. 

I am, of course, fond of Emma and Hook's first encounter in the present day, and Emma seeing utterly through his bullshit. 

[KingOfHearts]

19 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

This is the first S2 episode that was mostly a misfire for me.

I actually really like this episode as a Regina centric because she makes strides in the present day. Daniel was one of her core issues that needed to be addressed on the show, and this is only of the only times it's not about Snow. It's pretty tragic that she had to kill her own undead boyfriend and see him crumble to dust in front of her eyes. But it's her motivation (to protect Henry and the town) that really makes it shine, because she's essentially getting rid of something old to make room for something new. It shows she's more invested in being a better person in the present instead of gripping onto the past like she did in S1. It may not seem like much of a sacrifice, since Daniel was a monster, but it was to her. Lana's acting really shows us the amount of devastation Regina was feeling. It was great to see a side of Regina that wasn't about getting revenge on Snow and to see her making healthy choices, even when it hurts.

I don't have the same level of admiration for the flashbacks. It's nice to see Frankenstein and Jefferson during his hat-hopping days. Regina was written way too wide-eyed and naive. Going from "I should've let her die on that horse" to "I couldn't hurt even an animal" is a bit counter-intuitive. Younger!Regina was more believable in The Stable Boy and We Are Both. We're supposed to believe Daniel's "failed" resurrection was the moment she turned into The Evil Queen, but it's a load of BS. No sane person would become trigger happy just because they couldn't bring back their dead boyfriend. To be disgusted with Cora's heart collection or even mind-controlling a horse, then killing for no reason, is stupid and cheapens Regina's character beyond belief.

19 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

I am, of course, fond of Emma and Hook's first encounter in the present day, and Emma seeing utterly through his bullshit. 

I love it so much. For once, Emma didn't get stuck with the idiot ball.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Regina was written way too wide-eyed and naive. Going from "I should've let her die on that horse" to "I couldn't hurt even an animal" is a bit counter-intuitive.

Yeah, that was bothering me. She was way too girlish, even more than she was early in "The Stable Boy." She way overdid it.

Archie really should have said something about Regina's lack of empathy for Whale. One of her biggest problems is thinking that she's the only one with pain and not considering how what she does affects other people. Her cold reaction to Whale's distress would have made for a good jumping-off point for that. The magic was only the tool she used. Her actual problems were elsewhere, and Archie doesn't even begin to address that. Not to mention the fact that

Spoiler

the whole "don't use magic" thing quickly falls by the wayside. Here, it's treated like a huge problem that she used magic to save Henry's life, but later she's using magic left and right, and no one cares.

I'm a bit irked that David seriously referred to Snow being responsible for Daniel's death. I guess the writers really do believe that's what they wrote, but Cora was responsible for Daniel's death. Snow told Cora something that Cora probably knew about anyway or would have found out about pretty quickly. But even Snow's husband frames it that way rather than giving her any benefit of the doubt. Not "the one your mother killed" rather than "Snow was responsible for his death"?

David wasn't a very good teacher. He just left Henry alone with the horse without teaching him how to safely move around it or showing him how to brush it. A kid who's never been around a horse could get himself in trouble trying to much out a stall without knowing what he's doing. I couldn't help but wonder who owned the horses. Was the one David gave Henry a horse he'd owned before the curse? And I still wonder where the rest of the horses from their world went in the curse. Surely there were more than four horses.

I've never been able to figure out whether Hook was genuinely wigged out when they found him or if he was playing them. Emma was suspicious from the start, but she seemed to be having to study him a lot to figure out that he was lying. Maybe he was doing the thing where the best lies are built on truth -- he was lying about his assignment to get in close to them and the fact that he was working with Cora, but he was telling the truth about what happened and he was really and truly wigged out by what had happened. Cora might have set it up that way -- they agree that he'll get in good with Team Princess, he prepares to play his blacksmith role when the girls return to base, then she starts ripping hearts, he freaks because that wasn't the plan, she flings him under the pile of stuff and before she flounces off, she tells him this should make it easier for them to trust him.

[daxx]

28 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Cora might have set it up that way -- they agree that he'll get in good with Team Princess, he prepares to play his blacksmith role when the girls return to base, then she starts ripping hearts, he freaks because that wasn't the plan, she flings him under the pile of stuff and before she flounces off, she tells him this should make it easier for them to trust him.

That would actually make sense. He seems to be telling the truth when he says they are far safer company.

[KingOfHearts]

Hook was able to fake being a blacksmith for two months?!

How the heck did Regina constantly slip out to do lessons with Rumple if she was the queen? How did she preserve Daniel's body before she knew how to use magic? I'm surprised she stopped at Frankenstein and didn't become obsessed with bringing Daniel back to life. That seems to be something she would do.

But there's also some nice continuity in this episode.

Spoiler

Jefferson gives Rumple the crystal ball Neal uses to find Emma in 3A. He also mentions the slippers that "got moved to another land", which are Zelena's silver slippers that get taken with Dorothy. Although, you can tell the writers originally intended for Dorothy to be from the Land Without Magic. Rumple said he needed the slippers to "get to that other land".

Edited September 1, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Hook was able to fake being a blacksmith for two months?!

I was wondering about that. It would have been nice if he'd been visible in the background during the previous episodes set in Haven -- not focusing on him or drawing attention to him so that we knew he was more than an extra, but just there. We might or might not have recognized him when we "met" him as Hook, but it would have been fun upon rewatching to see him just being a part of the settlement.

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

How did she preserve Daniel's body before she knew how to use magic?

I also wondered about that. It seemed to have been at least a few days before Rumple approached her and she started learning even the basics of magic. They'd had time to make a wedding dress for her. And here she still isn't quite adept. But she managed to do a spell to preserve a body? Maybe Rumple stepped in and offered that to her as part of winning her trust, but we should have seen that.

In figuring out how much of the truth Hook was telling, I can't figure out what their plan actually was. If Hook was really supposed to have been a plant among Team Princess, what was he supposed to have done? Cora had the ashes and Cora had the knowledge and the magic to go after the compass. If they'd just gone straight to the beanstalk without killing everyone in town and then going through the charade of planting Hook among Team Princess, they could have made it to Storybrooke without Team Princess having a clue what was going on. The clever evil scheme just meant that Team Princess learned about the ashes and the compass. It feels more like the writers were setting things up and putting the various characters in place than like the characters were making plans based on their goals.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

It feels more like the writers were setting things up and putting the various characters in place than like the characters were making plans based on their goals.

This is definitely A&E's MO.

By this point, I was decidedly disappointed in the Princess adventure.  The Snow/Emma moments were now rare and the characters seemed to be going from one place to another killing time without a clear, concrete plan.

Edited September 1, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

38 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

In figuring out how much of the truth Hook was telling, I can't figure out what their plan actually was. If Hook was really supposed to have been a plant among Team Princess, what was he supposed to have done? Cora had the ashes and Cora had the knowledge and the magic to go after the compass. If they'd just gone straight to the beanstalk without killing everyone in town and then going through the charade of planting Hook among Team Princess, they could have made it to Storybrooke without Team Princess having a clue what was going on. The clever evil scheme just meant that Team Princess learned about the ashes and the compass. It feels more like the writers were setting things up and putting the various characters in place than like the characters were making plans based on their goals.

There seemed to be a lot of time for Cora to just sit around and twiddle her thumbs. There's no reason for Hook to be a plant because Cora had the ashes and knew about the compass. That seemed to be a running trend with the show - the villains sitting around doing nothing while the heroes stumble into whatever they're supposed to do.

Spoiler

Gothel was the worst case of that. Then there was Pan disappearing in 5B for no reason.

Edited September 1, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

There seemed to be a lot of time for Cora to just sit around and twiddle her thumbs. There's no reason for Hook to be a plant because Cora had the ashes and knew about the compass. 

Yeah, I was thinking that too when I first watched.  

Spoiler

It's telling that they still had the SAME problem seven seasons later, with Mother Gretel.

[Shanna Marie]

34 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

There seemed to be a lot of time for Cora to just sit around and twiddle her thumbs. There's no reason for Hook to be a plant because Cora had the ashes and knew about the compass. That seemed to be a running trend with the show - the villains sitting around doing nothing while the heroes stumble into whatever they're supposed to do.

I guess it would have cut the season short if Cora had got the ashes, then she and Hook had got the compass, and they headed straight to Storybrooke while Team Princess was still wandering, not knowing what to do, and they were stuck in the Enchanted Forest. They needed the good guys to learn a way home, and they needed Hook and Emma to meet.

What they needed was a better plot that would accomplish their story needs of getting Team Princess the info they needed and introducing Hook to Emma while still making sense in terms of what Hook and Cora needed. It would have made a little more sense if Hook really had completely betrayed Cora, like if he barely survived her rampage after he questioned her, and she hadn't realized until later that he'd stolen what they needed to get the compass. You'd have to come up with a reason she didn't figure out what he'd stolen and for her to have left him alive instead of ripping his heart out along with everyone else, but it does work better if Hook joining Team Princess wasn't a plan but was his desperation move because Cora had wigged him out too much and he was throwing his lot in with someone else he thought could get him what he wanted without them being raging psychos. It would be appropriate if Cora's murderous temper tantrum was what foiled her plans and lost her an ally. There's no real reason for her to have ripped all those hearts, but I guess it's in character.

ETA: Another possibility: Team Princess has something Cora needs (maybe without them even knowing what they have), so there's a real reason to plant Hook among them to get it, and opportunist Hook thinks it would be better to cast his lot in with Team Princess to have the thing, get the compass, and go back and get ashes when it looks like he won't be able to con Team Princess to get the thing for Cora.

But as it is, there was no need whatsoever for Hook to ever interact with Team Princess. Cora and Hook could have got the compass and gone to Storybrooke with no trouble if they hadn't messed around with the complicated scheme to get Team Princess to trust Hook.

Edited September 1, 2018 by Shanna Marie

[profdanglais]

Hook does say that his mission was to find out what he could about Storybrooke so Cora would know what she was getting into by going there. It's a bit thin as a motivation, but I could buy that Hook would have done just that if Emma hadn't rumbled him and forced him to offer up something to make himself valuable to them. I also believe that he would then switch sides with no qualms and that he was being honest when he said they were safer company. He just wanted to get to Storybrooke and would have done whatever he needed to accomplish that. Team Princess and the opportunity to flirt with Emma were just side benefits that gave him a good excuse to turn on Cora. 

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, profdanglais said:

Hook does say that his mission was to find out what he could about Storybrooke so Cora would know what she was getting into by going there. It's a bit thin as a motivation, but I could buy that Hook would have done just that if Emma hadn't rumbled him and forced him to offer up something to make himself valuable to them.

I guess it would be consistent with the way Emma acted earlier with Cora for her to just blab everything to a random guy and not be at all suspicious that a wounded blacksmith from the Enchanted Forest would be intensely curious about details about life in Storybrooke, so maybe that is something Cora would have thought of. But I can't even think of what Hook would know to ask, since that world is so foreign, or how he would ask it. And talk about overly convoluted overkill. Cora would have had to assume that Team Princess would have gone back to Haven, then killed the whole town and arranged Hook to be found so that maybe, just maybe he could get them to trust him so she might learn a detail or two that might be worth delaying just going to Storybrooke. I guess she might have learned that there was magic in Storybrooke, but what else?

Spoiler

And she was being really dumb to set all this up after telling Hook about the compass and giving him the enchanted beanstalk-climbing cuffs, given that Hook was allied with her because he flipped on Regina. If she was going to send him into the enemy camp to get info, it would have been wisest not to clue him in on everything and even give him the stuff. I can't think of a reason for that to have been part of the plan, unless it really was all about conning someone else into climbing the beanstalk so she didn't have to.

[KAOS Agent]

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

There seemed to be a lot of time for Cora to just sit around and twiddle her thumbs. There's no reason for Hook to be a plant because Cora had the ashes and knew about the compass. That seemed to be a running trend with the show - the villains sitting around doing nothing while the heroes stumble into whatever they're supposed to do.

What's weird about this is that they initially planned for the whole arc to go on much longer than it ultimately did. The network stepped in after the ratings came in and suggested changes to reflect what they believed was losing audience. This episode was written and probably filmed before those ratings came in, so if they were already stringing things along in episode 5, what was their thinking on Cora's plans? She wouldn't have needed to climb the beanstalk. She could have just poofed there before Hook and Team Princess even arrived. Or she could have poofed to Team Princess and taken the bracelets back. The problem with all powerful magic users is that there is nothing the others could do to stop her, so instead she simply disappears for a while because they want to do a beanstalk adventure never mind that it makes zero sense for Cora to sit around doing nothing and let the others take her compass. 

[tennisgurl]

So Hook was not only a pirate, but also able to be a deep cover agent (and also knows how to blacksmith!) for months without anyone catching on that he was sketchy? But it all falls apart when Emma shows up? Yeah, glad to see her super power is working again after watching it be on the fritz for awhile as she was played by Sydney for several episodes. Cora's plan seems rather...convoluted to me. I can appreciate having multiple plans going on at once, but this is a bit much. Couldn't just appear, take their shit, and go, while waving? See, this is what happens when your magic doesn't have rules, show!

Onto flashbacks land, this episode really highlights the weirdness of Regina's backstory, and how all over the place she seemed to be. We go from "never give up on happiness young Snow!" to "I wish the horse had killed her" over one episode, then we get Regina trying to escape her mom and suppress her darkness, but is willing to get rid of mom and work with Rumple, to "I wont use magic for evil!" to "crush hearts with my medieval leather jacket of evil!" just because her boyfriend cant be resurrected? Its like moral whiplash! I mean, thats all it takes to turn her dark? She cant do the thing that no one in the world can do? I am pretty convinced that Rumple chose Regina as his spell caster not only because she is Cora's daughter, but because she is essentially a magical thug. Very powerful in magic, but none too bright, and easily manipulated, so therefore not much of a real threat to him. In their attempts to make her more sympathetic, they really made her look really dumb, and even more evil. "My boyfriend cant be brought back after I creepily kept his corpse saved in a magic fridge! So now I kill everyone!" Its practically like that Eddie Izzard bit about Hitler becoming a mass murderer after being a painter. "I cant get the tree DAMN I WILL KILL EVERYONE IN THE WORLD!"

I do enjoy seeing Jefferson back when he was traveling, and Sebastian Stan really does do a good job showing this side of him. He seems like the same guy, but also radically different, and I thought he had interesting chemistry with Rumple and Frankenstein. And I know some people thought bringing Frankenstein into the story was out of place, but I really liked it, and found it interesting to see the characters from a magical world interacting with a character from a Gothic science fiction one. I also LOVE that his world is in black and white, and looks so different than the EF and Storeybrooke. It really sells the idea that this is a new universe with different rules, and is different on every level, and seeing those interactions (like Frankenstein using a magic heart and lightning to raise a monster) was what made the show so much fun. 

Spoiler

This was before every single part of the multiverse seemed to be an endless string of paths through endless medieval European forests...

I do like Regina going to see Archie, and I admit to feeling for her a bit when she had to kill Daniel, but as always she struggles with a lack of empathy. She not only cant help Whale, she clearly doesn't care to, and despite trying to be less of a psycho, she is still keeping those hearts in there. So many hearts she cant even keep track of all of them!

[andromeda331]

28 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I do enjoy seeing Jefferson back when he was traveling, and Sebastian Stan really does do a good job showing this side of him. He seems like the same guy, but also radically different, and I thought he had interesting chemistry with Rumple and Frankenstein. And I know some people thought bringing Frankenstein into the story was out of place, but I really liked it, and found it interesting to see the characters from a magical world interacting with a character from a Gothic science fiction one. I also LOVE that his world is in black and white, and looks so different than the EF and Storeybrooke. It really sells the idea that this is a new universe with different rules, and is different on every level, and seeing those interactions (like Frankenstein using a magic heart and lightning to raise a monster) was what made the show so much fun. 

I loved his world too! It looked so interesting and it seemed to confirm what Jefferson said about different worlds each with their own set of rules, some with magic and some without.