S01.E18: The Stable Boy

[yeswedo]

 

Emma continues her exhaustive search for evidence that will prove Mary Margaret's innocence in the murder of David's wife, Kathryn. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was and before evil blackened her soul, Regina must choose between betraying her mother, Cora, and marrying for true love, or betrothing royalty and living a regal - but loveless - life; and the event that caused the Evil Queen to loathe Snow White is revealed.

 

Note: please use spoiler tags when referring to events that happen after this episode to allow new viewers to choose to be spoiled.

[Alex]

Wow! Thanks to different time zone I'm the first one to post in here!

Three things caught my attention:

1. ladies bowing instead of curtseying? I can't say I liked it!

2. Cora saying to Snow "It warms my heart how you two share anything, already". Cora is a fantastic villain and a great manipulator, but she seemed sincerely sad when she said "already".

3. Mary Margaret apologizing to Regina, and saying she was sorry although she didn't know what she could have ever done, made me cringe. (But that's a very personal opinion of mine: an apology is true when the person apologizing understands what (s)he did wrong, otherwise it's just air.)

After seeing what happened later on, Cora's "Love is weakness" sentence and all that speech makes, obviously, more sense.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Alex

[legaleagle53]

After seeing what happened

with Jonathan

, Cora's "Love is weakness" sentence and all that speech makes, obviously, more sense.

It also makes sense when you remember that that's what she was told in "The Miller's Daughter" by Henry's father after

she confessed that she didn't really love Henry. It was that conversation that inspired her to take her own heart out to keep her emotions from stopping her ambitions.

 

 

But yes, Cora's experience

with Jonathan

would definitely have made her determined to keep Regina at all costs from repeating what Cora would have viewed as the same mistake that she herself almost made.  Looking at it from that perspective, murdering Daniel in front of Regina made perfect sense.

 

And yes, Regina, it would have happened eventually whether Snow had said anything or not.

Edited June 17, 2014 by legaleagle53

[yeswedo]

I haven't rewatched this episode yet and have an unreliable memory. @Alex and @legaleagle53 - can you check your posts above and add spoiler tags for anything significant that happened in a later episode (if necessary)? I forgot to include that request in with the episode description. Thanks!

[Alex]

Sorry yeswedo.

I modified a sentence, as I absolutely don't know how to tag spoiler :/

[KAOS Agent]

I haven't seen this episode since it aired, but it was very interesting to rewatch as I was paying more attention to the little things outside the main storyline.

 

I miss sneaky Rumpel. Making a deal with Regina to have something "tragic" happen to Kathryn was so classic Rumpel. Of course, Regina jumped to murder. The devil's in the details, Regina. He held to his part of the deal. Kidnapping is tragic after all. 

 

Given some of the confusion surrounding Regina and her origins, I also took note of the home they were living in and it does seem to be extremely nice. A huge manor house with towers or turrets or something. It would fit as a country estate for royalty or the very upper classes. It's no royal palace, but still very, very comfortable.

 

During the interview with the DA King George, it's interesting that they referred to David and Mary Margaret's relationship as an affair and Mary Margaret does not deny it. I take that to mean she and David were indeed sleeping together even though we never saw it.  Also, why the hell was Regina allowed to watch that interview? Not that the DA to interview was at all realistic anyway.

 

I liked Emma's little conversation with David. I'd forgotten how deeply unimpressed she was with him. Cursed!David was such a jackass and I love that Emma's not at all hesitant to let him know what she thinks of him.

 

I was so glad that this episode was the end of the let's make Emma act like an idiot so we can stretch things out forever storyline. I hate it when someone acts so out of character for plot reasons. There's no way Emma with her complete lack of trust and her ability to at least have a clue when someone's lying to her would believe Sidney the way she did. There would be a huge amount of skepticism about him and any claims he'd make. 

 

ETA: Incidentally, Daniel refers to him and Regina as True Love.

Edited June 17, 2014 by KAOS Agent

[yeswedo]

@Alex no worries and thanks for editing your post. Spoiler tags are not that difficult once you get some practice. If you have any trouble with a post and aren't able to edit it yourself you can always use the report button and ask a mod to make the changes.

If you want to try out spoiler tags or anything else there is a test zone http://forums.previously.tv/forum/690-test-zone/ for this purpose.

[myril]

Given some of the confusion surrounding Regina and her origins, I also took note of the home they were living in and it does seem to be extremely nice. A huge manor house with towers or turrets or something. It would fit as a country estate for royalty or the very upper classes. It's no royal palace, but still very, very comfortable.

 

 

More comfortable than any of us will ever live, even in this world, and even more so compared what our status would be if living in the Enchanted Forest. Snow and Regina were both rich brats. Although made me snicker, that Regina didn't seem to have much of a lofty style, obviously to the horror of her mother. Didn't seem to know much about courtly manners or never learned to care about them.

 

Let's be nice and say she was in her early twenties then (despite that Lana Parrilla sure didn't look like it), it is interesting that she seemed to have kept some of her independent and free mind, seemed to be not a broken personality at that point. Watching your love being murdered by your own mother is traumatizing regardless age, and early twenties we are still quite impressionable, but already have developed some sense of her own. Makes it somewhat harder for me to find plausible what followed. 

 

During the interview with the DA King George, it's interesting that they referred to David and Mary Margaret's relationship as an affair and Mary Margaret does not deny it. I take that to mean she and David were indeed sleeping together even though we never saw it.  Also, why the hell was Regina allowed to watch that interview? Not that the DA to interview was at all realistic anyway.

 

For many it is worse if someone has feelings for someone else than if they were sleeping together. Not that I would be shocked or see it as impossible, but I don't think that it meant, that they were sleeping with each other. 

 

Small town, almighty major - of course Regina was allowed to watch. And when crime shows sometimes don't get it right, why should a fairy tale show be any better? ;) But yeah, sometimes such detail can annoy me as well.

 

1. ladies bowing instead of curtseying? I can't say I liked it!

 

 

What do you expect from

a Miller's daughter and granddaughter

? ;) Cora's looked like a low curtsy just with too much of a bow to it, a woman can bend her knees quite low to show greater respect, but still should keep her spine pretty much upright and only bow her head and lower her eyes. Guess Regina liked to skip her etiquette lessons whenever possible to take a ride.

Edited November 6, 2014 by stacey
Tagging spoiler

[Alex]

What do you expect from

a Miller's daughter and granddaughter

? ;) Cora's looked like a low curtsy just with too much of a bow to it, a woman can bend her knees quite low to show greater respect, but still should keep her pretty much spine upright and only bow her head and lower her eyes. Guess Regina liked to skip her etiquette lessons whenever possible to take a ride.

 

Cora is a Miller's daughter, but Regina is a prince's daughter...

She should know how to curtsey.

It looked very manly to me, Actually, Regina, notwithstanding the low cut dresses, has never seemes particularly feminine to me.

Edited November 6, 2014 by stacey
Spoiler tag

[Shanna Marie]

I finally got to this one in my rewatch, and I found it almost painfully unwatchable now. On first viewing, I could at least assume that we were meant to see Regina's revenge as entirely out of proportion to Snow's "offense," that Regina framing her for a murder she didn't commit wasn't at all warranted by what Snow actually did to her. Now, though, I'm kind of afraid that they really thought they were totally justifying and explaining Regina's vendetta and we're supposed to sympathize with her.

 

One thing I'd totally forgotten: Regina herself feel for Cora's act. When Cora confronted her and Daniel in the stable and said that as a mother she knew she had to do what was best for her daughter and what would make her happy, Regina totally believed that meant Cora was going to let her be with Daniel. She ran and hugged and thanked her. If Regina, as an adult who grew up with Cora and knew exactly what she was like, fell for it, how could she possibly blame a child who didn't know Cora at all for not seeing through Cora's manipulations?

[Mari]

If Regina, as an adult who grew up with Cora and knew exactly what she was like, fell for it, how could she possibly blame a child who didn't know Cora at all for not seeing through Cora's manipulations?

It's not rational--but neither is Regina.  I think it was a combo of desperately wanting it to happen, followed by Regina's usual habit of having completely different standards for herself than for other people.

 

I've wondered how much time Regina actually spent with Cora, growing up.  Could she have spent a great deal of time at another house with a nanny?

[KingOfHearts]

 

When Cora confronted her and Daniel in the stable and said that as a mother she knew she had to do what was best for her daughter and what would make her happy, Regina totally believed that meant Cora was going to let her be with Daniel.

 

She believed it because she wanted to. She desperately wanted Cora's approval, despite all the abuse growing up. She didn't want to believe her mother was as evil as she appeared to be.

 

Regina did the same thing in S2 when Cora came to Storybrooke.

Edited July 4, 2014 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

It's not rational--but neither is Regina.  I think it was a combo of desperately wanting it to happen, followed by Regina's usual habit of having completely different standards for herself than for other people.

We know it's not rational because we're sane. But I'm rather worried that the writers think they created a perfectly reasonable motivation/excuse for Regina being evil. This episode was written as though they wanted to show that Snow wasn't at fault at all, that she fell for Cora's act the same way Regina did. Every possible angle seems to have been covered -- Snow had positive motivations for what she did because she didn't want Regina to be estranged from her mother, wanted Regina to be able to be with her true love, and was willing to give up the stepmother she desperately wanted so that Regina could find happiness. She was making a sacrifice for Regina. Cora was evil and manipulative, and so good at it that even Regina believed her, and we'd just seen Cora abusing her pretty badly. Snow had no idea that anything bad could possibly have happened to Daniel and seriously thought Regina was preparing for her wedding to Daniel. Cora turned out to have engineered the whole situation to begin with. There's no way that Snow is in any way, shape or form to blame for what happened. If the justice system worked for this case, Cora would be 100 percent guilty, and nothing would even be considered to need to be done against Snow. Snow would be considered one of Cora's victims.

 

And yet, I don't get the sense from within the show that this is the way they see things. It doesn't even seem to be the way Snow sees things, given the number of times Snow has apologized. Mary Margaret apologizes in this episode, and Regina rejects it. Snow apologized in her letter in an earlier episode. I just need someone at some time in the show to at some point say, "It's not your fault" to Snow. What a horrible burden of guilt to carry.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Shanna Marie

[Serena]

You know, I remember before this episode aired, but when we already had some inkling that the motivation would be "Snow got Regina's boyfriend killed", that I thought Snow may have possibly done it on purpose. Like, not on purpose to get him killed, but her motivation for tattling to Cora could have been "Regina is gonna run off with her boyfriend and you need to stop it and convince her to be my mommy instead!". Like she thought Cora would just give Regina a stern talking to about her responsibilities.
I think it would have made Snow's guilt more understandable, as well as part of Regina's anger. Snow would have still just been a child who just did something selfish like every child does, and who deserved nothing of what Regina put her through, but at the same time Regina being angry at her would have been more justified because she did try to break her and Daniel up on purpose.

[Shanna Marie]

I think it would have made Snow's guilt more understandable, as well as part of Regina's anger. Snow would have still just been a child who just did something selfish like every child does, and who deserved nothing of what Regina put her through, but at the same time Regina being angry at her would have been more justified because she did try to break her and Daniel up on purpose.

That's why I'm rather baffled by this episode. If they had wanted to go the route of "there are two sides to every story, and there's no such thing as black or white, only shades of gray," they had plenty of opportunities to write it that way. They could have had Snow break up Regina and Daniel on purpose for selfish reasons. They could have had Regina not fall for her mother's manipulation so that it looked like Snow was ridiculously naive to fall for it. Instead, they seemed to have gone out of their way to dot every i and cross every t to make it 100 percent clear that it was absolutely insane to blame Snow for Daniel's death and for ruining Regina's life. And yet that's not the way it seems to have been dealt with since then. But to discuss that, I'll take it to the Regina thread.

[Camera One]

They could have had Snow break up Regina and Daniel on purpose for selfish reasons.  They could have had Regina not fall for her mother's manipulation so that it looked like Snow was ridiculously naive to fall for it.

 

For me, that would have been worse.  I was already annoyed that they were going to try to justify Regina's evil by giving her a sob story.  But I was fine with the fact that they had Snow make a naive mistake, since it was understandable given Snow losing her own mother (from the way Cora played that conversation).  Regina did go overboard and misplaced the blame, but given the loss of her true love, that was also believable, since someone in grief might not think straight.  In that sense, this stayed true to the story that the Evil Queen was after Snow White unfairly, which would not have been the case if Snow was an active perpetrator.  That would have given Regina even more ammunition and justification for her evil deeds and we would have had to see Snow apologize five times more than she already has.  No thanks to that!

[Zuleikha]

I'm back on Team Regina with this episode. Regina's tragic and Kathryn's alive. :)

 

The way I see it, with no knowledge of what's to come after this point, is that the writers aren't expecting to justify Regina's actions towards Snow but rather are explaining it. Regina's evil and (at least at this point), the show is pretty clear on this. But she's not evil because she was just a bad seed. She's evil because she completely lost her chance at love and happiness and the only way she could keep herself going was to embrace vengeance. She's just like post-potion-drinking Snow. 

 

Also, she's still under Cora's thumb and that is an influence that leads to no good. My guess for what happened in the in between of now and the Sidney episode is that Regina throws herself into evil queen studies with Cora until she's able to do something stealthy but horrible to Cora (since Cora's gone by Sidney). She buries all spark of goodness under vengeance and magic so that she doesn't have to deal with her emotional pain. It's not like Regina would have had deep reserves of emotionally healthy ways of dealing with pain. I'm sure if she ever got her true vengeance on Snow, it would be a very temporary happiness because of course, what Regina really needs is a lot of quality therapy. But it's too painful for her to look inward, so she just focuses on the outward.

 

But there is a spark of goodness there, which is why I'm back on Team Regina. I'm a sucker for the evil character with the almost-certainly futile shot at redemption. I think that's also why I have some issues with Emma and Henry. Regina's love for Henry seems to be genuine. I wish that rather than just give up on Regina, Henry had tried to use that love to redeem her. I mean, at this point, I don't blame them for just wanting to take her down because Regina's true evil is pretty there. But the way Henry seems to have no love for Regina at all and to view her as a fake placeholder mom to Emma's real mom leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's too real world meta with an implication of adoption as fake in a way that I don't like. Regina's complicated relationship for Cora seems more real, and I wish Henry had that, too. I'm fine with him wanting to stop her and break the curse (because yes, she's evil), but I wish the show wrote him as loving her and having some conflict about her ultimate fate.

 

I also feel more confident that the writers view Regina as evil than Rumple. I keep feeling like they're expecting me to cheer Mr. Gold on, especially when he one-ups Regina, and I think he's at least as evil (and arguably more evil) than she is. 

[FabulousTater]

Regina's love for Henry seems to be genuine

Out of curiosity, what specific actions by Regina towards Henry gives you the impression that her love for Henry is genuine?

I'm not being snarky, that's a sincere question. I'm honestly curious because I just never saw it.

 

I just don't see how Regina choosing to adopt a baby because a curse she cast for malicious reasons left a "hole in her heart that could never be filled" ("a hole in the heart that can never be filled" was part of the price for casting the curse), and so she decided "Oh, I know! I'll get a baby to solve my problems!" is in anyway "loving". And then when the kid grows up and starts noticing that no one in the town ages, that he out grows and out ages his peers all the time, and that no one has specific memories about anything, Regina throws the kid in therapy under the guise that he's delusional (crazy) even though she knows full well that he's not.

 

I just don't see how any of the above can be construed as "loving". At best , it can be described that Regina loves Henry like you love a dog; a faithful companion that follows you around, does what you tell it, and fulfills your needs, but not as a person let alone a growing child that has needs, thoughts and feelings of his own that deserve as much respect and value. (And even this interpretation I think gives Regina more credit than she deserves because imo she's incapable of loving him because she doesn't see him as a person but rather as a means to an end.)

 

It seems to me that Henry went and got Emma out of self-preservation not because he wanted a "real mom". Just because Regina may "love" her dog, Henry, it doesn't make her any less of an abusive parent. Henry seeking Emma out has nothing to with being anti-adoption, but rather making a statement that Regina's abusive behavior is unacceptable. Abuse is not love. And making someone think they're crazy is mental abuse. Just because Regina was raised in unhealthy/abusive home environment doesn't give her the excuse to do the same to others, and those that are victims of Regina's abuse are not obliged to tolerate her abuse just because she's had a rough life. Seems to me many of the other characters had a rough life and yet none of them became a raging murderer. Perhaps Henry would've been more willing to "reach out" to Regina if she wasn't mentally abusing him.

 

I don't see how one could place the blame on the child here for failing to have enough faith in Regina and not trying hard enough to reach out to her. It's not Henry's job to redeem Regina. He's the child in this situation. There's a reason the real world has a Department of Child Protective Services. Because it's the adults job to protect and nurture the children, not the other way around.

 

Also, no one can redeem Regina but Regina. It's not something that happens from outside forces. Regina has to want to be redeemed and it's her job to get herself on that road. But Regina doesn't want redemption. She only wants to fulfill her own evil desires and when she doesn't get her way she kills people (R.I.P. Graham) and hell she kills to people to get what she wants (Henry Sr.) because she's a sociopath. If Regina had really wanted to change she could've admitted to Henry that the curse was true. But she didn't and so Henry did the only thing he could to save himself, he went and found The Savior.

Edited November 7, 2014 by FabulousTater

[Crimson Belle]

Emma stayed in town for one reason, she knows that when she asked Regina if she loved Henry, Regina lied when she said yes. Emma's superpower was known to work quite well then. Plus, part of casting the curse was that Regina could not love. Henry knew she didn't love him.

[Zuleikha]

I'm not being snarky, that's a sincere question. I'm honestly curious because I just never saw it.

 

There is nothing I can easily point to and say oh, it was here and here. It's just the way the scenes come across to me. There also have been some points where Emma's gotten Regina to do things by evoking love for Henry or threatened Regina with Regina's love for Henry, so I think the show switched from the implication in the pilot that Regina did not love Henry to implying that Regina does. The gaslighting aspect is also not as horrible to me as it is to you. Given that she had no intention of breaking the curse or confessing about the curse, putting him in therapy with Archie was probably the second-most loving thing she could have done for him. Henry needed to find a way to be emotionally healthy within the reality he had to deal with, and her hope was that the therapy sessions would do it. Sure, if Regina was a better person, she may conclude that she needed to break the curse for Henry's sake (and I'm still holding out hope that will happen!), but I don't think parental love has to always be that level of self-sacrifice to be real. I think Regina did her best to meet Henry's needs and to further his happiness. I don't think she physically harmed him in the past or that he had any reason to believe she would physically harm him in the foture or, as she would understand it, emotionally abuse him. When Henry first talked to Emma, he seemed so sure that Regina didn't love him and like his life was so horrible, but based on what I'm actually shown, it just doesn't seem to be that bad.

 

Also, I have seen no scenes with Henry where he talks about what life was like for him in detail Storybrooke and the problems with noticing that he ages when no one else does, so it's very hard for me to have an emotional understanding of how hard/easy that was. The closest that I can remember is him talking in the pilot (or second episode?) to Emma about people being frozen in time or in a fog or something like that. That is one of my consistent complaints with the show--that it didn't do a good enough job of establishing the rules for how Storybrooke-under-the-curse actually works.

 

I don't think Henry was obligated to actually redeem Regina. But his lack of love for her and conviction that she's utterly evil to me just comes across as so cold based on what the show's shown me of how she treats him. In real life, kids love parents who do horrible things. In this show, Bae still loved Rumpel after Rumpel killed people right in front of him. Regina still sought Cora's love despite years of clear abuse. I find that level of complexity more compelling than Henry's nothingness for Regina, especially because as I said, it feels like the writers portray it that way because they view Regina as a fake mom and Emma as a real mom. It's just a preference for wishing the writers had made different choices about how to portray Henry's feelings towards Regina.

[KAOS Agent]

I'm going to preface this by saying I hate Henry. He's a manipulative child and that the adults in his life all run around doing what Henry wants pisses me off. But anyone who thinks that Henry went to Boston to find his mother is wrong. Henry went to there to find the Saviour. He wants the fantasy. He wants Emma to break the curse and prove him right. That's his mentality, which is fine because he's ten, but there is no consideration for anyone else's feelings in his plan. In this case, you should also consider that as part of his manipulations, he plays a part where he's just so unloved so as to make Emma feel sorry for him - though this does not mean that Henry doesn't actually feel unloved, just that he's more than willing to sell it really hard with Emma. While she's onto that, it's also hard to resist. Henry is almost always nice to Emma because he worries if he pushes back she'll leave. And again, there's the fantasy of his mother being the Saviour.  He's mean to Regina because he's a kid and that's what kids do. It doesn't mean he doesn't love Regina.

 

Emma is a realist. She doesn't buy into his silly curse idea and she knows that she cannot stay in his life indefinitely. She spends a hell of a lot of time desperately trying to keep him at arms length because she knows how painful it will be to give him up again. There's a reason she always calls him Kid. Had Regina ever quit screwing with Emma and hurting Henry, she'd have taken off long ago. The more Regina pushes though, the more worried Emma is about leaving Henry in her care. Whether she can prove it or not, at this point, she knows Regina is just an evil person (not the Evil Queen) and she just can't leave him. It's not about her regretting the adoption and wanting to be his mother, it's about Henry's safety and well being. She just has not a clue what to do about it.

 

I'm fine with him wanting to stop her and break the curse (because yes, she's evil), but I wish the show wrote him as loving her and having some conflict about her ultimate fate.

 

On this topic, I think you're assuming that Henry has considered the consequences of what happens when the curse breaks. He's ten. All he's thinking about is the awesomeness of all these fairy tale characters remembering who they are and being happy again. And that he'll be a hero for bringing the Saviour to town to save them all. He's not thinking about how they are going to react to the woman who cursed them. Henry doesn't want Regina dead, he wants to be proven right.

Edited November 7, 2014 by KAOS Agent

[FabulousTater]

Thanks for answering my question, Zuleikha. :-)

 

It really just does come down to our own perceptions, doesn't it. I can't really say I agree with you, but everyone's mileage varies.

 

Though I will say, regarding this part:

The gaslighting aspect is also not as horrible to me as it is to you. Given that she had no intention of breaking the curse or confessing about the curse, putting him in therapy with Archie was probably the second-most loving thing she could have done for him. Henry needed to find a way to be emotionally healthy within the reality he had to deal with, and her hope was that the therapy sessions would do it.

While the show doesn't spell it out, it's pretty clear that no one in Storybrooke ages. All the kids that were in kindergarten when Henry started school would still be in kindergarten now, whereas he's moved on and out aged them all. And as Henry grew and became aware of these oddities of Storybroke (which is what led him to realize that the town was cursed, along with the storybook), no amount of therapy would ever fix this because it's an outright lie that Henry could see with his own eyes.

 

And what was Regina's plan when Henry was old enough to want a family of his own? Because time wasn't moving, no one was aging. They all stayed physically the same every day except for Henry, so there existed absolutley no possibility for Henry to ever have a relationship with anyone outside of Regina. That's why he was a lonely kid. And that's all on Regina. She knowingly brought a child into a town that was stuck in time. No on ever remembered anything and he was the only one growing and remembering things. Henry was a prisoner of Storybrooke just as much as everyone else was but worse because he was aware that time was passing. Henry would grow up to have no life outside of a Norman Bates style relationship with Regina. And if Henry wanted to leave Storybrooke when he was older, what was Regina gonna do? Chain him up so he wouldn't realize he had been brainwashed as a kid and as a result put her curse in danger?

 

Regina putting Henry in therapy to brainwash him into believing a lie (a lie that in no way would benefit him now or in the long run) is in no way the "second-most loving thing" Regina could do for him. She wasn't thinking of Henry at all. She was purposely manipulating him so she could protect her curse. She was messing with his head because her curse was more important to her than her own kid's sanity and more important than his future. That's not loving at all. 

 

TBH, I actually hate Henry (on a good day, I dislike the kid) so I'm not defending the character out of some sort of bias, but Henry is in the right here. Regina doesn't love Henry and he knows this, and her behavior is indicative of her only thinking of herself.

 

ETA

Sure, if Regina was a better person, she may conclude that she needed to break the curse for Henry's sake (and I'm still holding out hope that will happen!), but I don't think parental love has to always be that level of self-sacrifice to be real. I think Regina did her best to meet Henry's needs and to further his happiness.

I'm kinda flummoxed here. To me there's a difference between parents self-sacrificing for their kids (such as giving up their careers to stay at home to raise them or adding to their personal debt to be able to send their kids to a good school) and everything Regina does. Regina isn't being asked to be self-sacrificing. She only has to do the right and moral thing and let an entire civilization's worth of people that she's holding prisoner free, or at the very least admit the truth to Henry. I guess from the point of view of a sociopath like Regina, that could appear to be a "sacrifice" on her part, but lbr, what is being asked of Regina is basic human decency and not "self-sacrifice".

 

Expecting someone to abide by basic human decency and not keep an entire society of people as brainwashed prisoners (robbed of their identities, of their loved ones, and of their happiness), forever trapped in a town because it gets their rocks off is not anywhere in the realm of "self-sacrifice", not by any stretch of the word. And Regina not being able to meet the minimum standards for human decency (simply because it would rob her of her revenge) is certainly not doing her best to meet Henry's needs (and it's evil!). What Regina is unequivocally doing is her best to meet her own needs.

Edited November 7, 2014 by FabulousTater

[Dani-Ellie]

I don't think Henry was obligated to actually redeem Regina. But his lack of love for her and conviction that she's utterly evil to me just comes across as so cold based on what the show's shown me of how she treats him.

 

I think what we'd seen in the show up to this point is Regina attempting to make it up to Henry because she knows he knows (or at least suspects) the truth. She's essentially trying to butter him up so he'll forget this silly fairy tale nonsense and go back to being complacent.

 

I also think that Henry, more than anything, is hurt and angry. Speaking as a child who at one point felt like a parent didn't love her anymore, that shit hurts and is very confusing. You're hurt and you don't understand what you did wrong and yes, you're angry. And you don't feel like that after one or two fights with a parent. You feel like that after the fighting and the coldness becomes a pattern of behavior on the part of the parent. I saw a lot of 15-year-old me in 10-year-old Henry, essentially. (My relationship with my dad is better now but for a while there, yeah, very hurtful and confusing.) What we're seeing between Henry and Regina is the boiling point, not what led up to it.

 

I've long thought that Regina thinks she loves Henry a lot more than she actually does. No loving parent intentionally hurts her child to win a point over another adult. No loving parent puts their kid in therapy to try to convince him he's wrong about the truth. (And what's even more insidious about putting Henry in therapy is that if/when it got out, everyone else in town would think he was crazy, too. So it's not just Henry she was trying to convince but everyone else, all, "Don't listen to him. The poor dear is very troubled." ) And even if she did love Henry, we've also seen that even keeping what she loves most won't stand in her way, since she killed her father to cast the curse in the first place.

 

I think love for Regina is a very possessive kind of thing, where it's not about the other person at all, but how the other person makes her feel. There's no real reciprocation. Even all the doing nice things for Henry we'd seen up to this point came across to me as "If I'm nice to him, he won't be angry with me and he'll shut up about me being the Evil Queen" rather than a real attempt at apology for Henry's sake.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Dani-Ellie

[Shanna Marie]

Henry would grow up to have no life outside of a Norman Bates style relationship with Regina. And if Henry wanted to leave Storybrooke when he was older, what was Regina gonna do? Chain him up so he wouldn't realize he had been brainwashed as a kid and as a result put her curse in danger?

Oh, gosh, I hadn't even thought about the long-term implications if the curse hadn't been broken. Just what did Regina expect to become of Henry? No matter how good the brainwashing, eventually it would have had to stop working or else he'd have had to be fully convinced that he was clinically insane and delusional because it would be ragingly obvious that something was wrong when he was 40 years old while the kids he started kindergarten with were still in kindergarten and his mother was now younger than he was. Was she planning to find a way to put him under the curse and keep him a kid forever? Would she have let him go away to college, or would he have become the adult loser who lives in his mother's basement for his entire life? I'm pretty sure she had zero plans for him getting married and starting a family of his own because she wouldn't want to share him with other people.

 

It's really, really horrible the more you think about it. Even if Snow had acted vindictively and told Cora about Daniel on purpose to break them up and force Regina to marry her father, the curse is going overboard because it does so much collateral damage. There's no way you can stretch to justify imprisoning an entire society and robbing them of free will, freezing them in time, and then bringing up a kid with no option but to be horribly lonely as a response to anything Snow might have done. By the time the curse was cast, Regina had already done so much more damage to Snow than Snow had ever done to Regina. The curse was sheer overkill. It really boils down to the idea that Regina's happy ending requires everyone else to be unhappy.

[Mari]

Oh, gosh, I hadn't even thought about the long-term implications if the curse hadn't been broken. Just what did Regina expect to become of Henry?

Looking at Regina's overall behavior, I don't think that concerned her;  Henry wasn't supposed to have a life beyond her.  His purpose wasn't to grow, find someone and be happy--his purpose was to give Regina's life meaning and make her happy.

 

Seeing how life impacts other people is not something Regina's shown any great skill at.  It likely didn't even occur to her that he would want people in his life that were not her, or that he wouldn't stay her child.  It's like the parenting version of someone who doesn't realize that puppy or kitten will not stay a puppy or kitten, and you need a plan for that, too.

[stealinghome]

or, as she would understand it, emotionally abuse him.

I guess I'm not sure why Regina's intentions in gaslighting and emotionally abusing Henry matter. That, to me, is like suggesting that if someone runs a red light going 70mph and hits another car and kills the other car's occupant, their actions are less heinous because they didn't intend to kill the other person.

I don't think Cora saw what she did to young Regina as emotional abuse, but it definitely was, and Cora's lack of realizing this doesn't make what she did to Regina okay. By the same token, just because Regina can justify the crappy stuff she did to Henry, that doesn't make what she did to him okay.

[Rumsy4]

I dislike Henry and can't stand to see him on-screen most of the time, but he was being emotionally abused by his mother. Some people tend to view emotional abuse as not as bad or valid as physical abuse, but that is wrong. When your mind is being messed up, it can make a huge difference to find someone to validate you and tell you that you are not crazy for thinking a certain way. He was unhappy, trapped, and made to think he was mentally disturbed. The Storybook finally helped Henry to make sense of his world, which basically didn't make any logical sense. His whole quest to find Emma and make her break the Curse was largely driven by his desperate need for validation. The bond Henry and Emma are developing just naturally grows out of their interactions. This is not about adoption vs biological relationships. It's about emotional harm inflicted on a vulnerable and powerless child by a parent. 

 

Even if Regina physically took care of Henry's needs, she refused to let him grow normally and made him think he was crazy. That's not being less than a stellar parent--that's abuse. I'm sure Regina never had any plans beyond having a child. She probably had never worked out how she would handle things once Henry grew beyond childhood, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that she would have tried to control him with some kind of potion so he wouldn't realize things were wrong. 

Edited November 7, 2014 by Rumsy4

[Zuleikha]

I guess from the point of view of a sociopath like Regina, that could appear to be a "sacrifice" on her part, but lbr, what is being asked of Regina is basic human decency and not "self-sacrifice".

 

Yes, that was exactly what I meant. To present-day Regina, basic human decency would be a self-sacrifice because it means sacrificing her life's purpose of torturing Snow. If I were the writers, I would have developed S1 to end with Regina making that sacrifice for love of Henry and starting the path to redemption. I don't think the episodes have done a great job paving the way for that because there's not a lot of room for Emma to be the savior in that story, so I'm not optimistic, but I do think this episode paved the way for it (and I still hold out hope... Regina's got to stay on the show some way and she can't just always be the main villain because that's boring). Anyway, within the constraints of what Regina was capable of conceiving as possibility, having Henry talk through issues with a good-hearted therapist was a good thing.

 

I think a lot of the disagreement about whether Regina loves Henry or not turns on the notion of how love is defined. I don't think parental love always leads the parent to do what's most respectful of a child's autonomy or what's actually best for the child. For example, I would buy a backstory for Cora that has Cora truly loving Regina, even though Cora's love (if real) completely destroyed Regina's happiness, and in a sense, Regina. But if something happened in Cora's life to cause her to really, truly believe that the best thing for Regina was to amass power and shun love, I can believe that Cora loved Regina. The alternate explanation is that Cora did what she did so that Cora could advance socially and Regina was just a tool to that end. In that version, I would say that Cora did not love Regina. At this point, I think the episode left Cora's personality and character ambiguous enough that they could write Cora either way should she reappear.

 

How this applied to Regina/Henry, my interpretation of their relationship and events to date is that Regina is so locked in her singular purpose of tormenting Snow that the option of ending the curse is not even in her worldview. It's just a given. So to her, what's best for Henry, is for him to have an understanding of the world that lets him be happy within the Storybrooke curse world. Of course, that's impossible, but current Regina is incapable of understanding that or seeing the way in which she's reproducing everything wrong that Cora did to her. It's tragic to me that Regina essentially turned into Cora instead of gaining meaningful independence by rejecting Cora's values and methods. I also see a lot of parallels between Cora/Regina, Regina/Henry, and Rumple/Bae but I'm trying not to open too many new topics at once. :) So when I say that I think Regina loves Henry, it doesn't mean that I think Regina is in the right or not emotionally abusive or actually acting in Henry's best interest, but rather just that I think Regina's worldview is so skewed that she sincerely believes she is acting in Henry's best interest.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Zuleikha

[Mari]

I guess I'm not sure why Regina's intentions in gaslighting and emotionally abusing Henry matter. That, to me, is like suggesting that if someone runs a red light going 70mph and hits another car and kills the other car's occupant, their actions are less heinous because they didn't intend to kill the other person.

I don't think Cora saw what she did to young Regina as emotional abuse, but it definitely was, and Cora's lack of realizing this doesn't make what she did to Regina okay. By the same token, just because Regina can justify the crappy stuff she did to Henry, that doesn't make what she did to him okay.

 

 

 Anyway, within the constraints of what Regina was willing to do, having Henry talk through issues with a good-hearted therapist was a good thing.

 

I think a lot of the disagreement about whether Regina loves Henry or not turns on the notion of how love is defined. I don't think parental love always leads the parent to do what's most respectful of a child's autonomy or what's actually best for the child.

 

I guess, personally? 

 

There's a difference between what Regina did  and the way she parented, and being the best parent you can figure out how to be, and making choices with the best of intentions for your child, and  not understanding what your child needs--that's a mistake.  Parents make them. 

 

Regina deliberately, repeatedly, did not take Henry's welfare into consideration when making decisions about what would go on around him--what she thought about was what was in her best interest as she saw it, and did not worry nor consider about how those actions would affect Henry--and, in fact, occasionally used Henry's pain to torment other people (Emma, Snow).

 

That's not parenting with mistakes.  That's not parenting with inadequate resources or knowledge, and  making understandable mistakes.  It's treating your child like a plaything, and it's abusive. If Regina was too selfish to see that, she should not have been a parent--children shouldn't be tasked with making their parents not be sociopathic narcissists any more..

 

Regina failed basic parenting 101--your child's health, sanity, and happiness is more important than your entertainment. 

Edited November 7, 2014 by Mari

[KAOS Agent]

 

I think a lot of the disagreement about whether Regina loves Henry or not turns on the notion of how love is defined. I don't think parental love always leads the parent to do what's most respectful of a child's autonomy or what's actually best for the child. For example, I would buy a backstory for Cora that has Cora truly loving Regina, even though Cora's love (if real) completely destroyed Regina's happiness, and in a sense, Regina.

 

I don't think the problem is how you define parental love vs how we do. I think the biggest disconnect in your arguments vs how everyone sees Regina is that we are all well aware of Cora's background, we know how Henry feels towards Regina and her actions because they have been explicitly laid out in the text and shown onscreen. You have a headcanon to explain your thoughts, we have actual canon and sadly, this cannot be expressed due to spoilers. The issue then, of course, is that though many things have been mentioned in show, they have not been as explicitly defined as they are later in the series. So for example, we've seen Henry's unhappiness, we've seen how his mother treats him and his reactions thus far in Season 1, but we have not seen Henry say, "Mom, you did XYZ to me and this is how I feel about it." Since I know exactly what Henry would say in that conversation, and I have plenty of evidence to support it that has been shown onscreen, I can state my argument, but my opinion is heavily influenced by events I cannot mention. 

 

The other unfortunate piece of this is that what's happening onscreen in the present day (by this I mean late Season 3 and now 4) is highly affected by what's happened in the past and how that has been addressed in show. So while your opinion is fresh and new, ours is tainted by years of disappointment and frustration.

Edited November 8, 2014 by KAOS Agent

[Zuleikha]

If Regina was too selfish to see that, she should not have been a parent--children shouldn't be tasked with making their parents not be sociopathic narcissists any more..

 

I don't think there is any question that Regina should not have been a parent, at least not without many years of therapy first. As for anything else, I'm done with S1, so I'm going to go talk in the "A Land Without Magic Thread." :)

[daxx]

Her reason for hating Snow was so petty and narcissistic. 

[companionenvy]

And here we get to exhibit A in "how not to write a villain backstory." 

The key to a good villain backstory is that by the end of it we have to find it, not justifiable, but understandable to see how they got from point A to point B. And that just doesn't happen for me here, at all. First of all, the fact that Snow is so innocent in all this immediately makes Regina's reaction - even if it had been much more narrowly targeted to Snow than it wound up being -- completely psychotic. 

But beyond that, young Regina is not remotely believable as a version of older Regina. Fine; "evil isn't born, it is made"; I get it. Great. Someone can start off as a good person and wind up being corrupted. But compassionate, loving, sane people do not flip a switch to psychopathic evil because of a single tragedy, no matter how terrible. And Regina's determination, immediately after Daniel's death, to go through with the marriage to Leopold (presumably to gain power) and declare that she should have let 10-year old Snow die on horse shows that she was pretty far on her path to the dark side basically as soon as Daniel was dead. To be charitable, I suppose that Cora's abuse might have been a factor, but again, younger Regina, after being raised by Cora for her whole life, is depicted as decent person capable of love and other normal emotional responses, so her transformation is still abrupt to the point of not being credible.

As I've noted in the Thread for All Seasons, Regina isn't just a person who does bad things. She is a person who does horrific things for very minimal reason in a lot of different situations - and who, crucially, shows no capacity for love or affection toward even people she should care about. Even apart from the curse and everything that goes with it, Regina really isn't ever shown being warm or really loving toward Henry; at best, she's a rigid and dutiful parent who provides for her son's basic health and safety without showing any awareness of a child's (again, non curse related) emotional needs. She is plain nasty to Sidney, who is devoted to her. She hasn't, evidently, made any friends in Storybrooke, and when she does, she casually has her (she thinks) killed as a tool in her plot against Mary Margaret, just because that's the easiest way she can think of to hurt her. To me, that simply isn't a reasonable evolution of the young woman we met.

I will say - and again, I mentioned this in All Seasons a couple weeks back -- that I believe that there's room to inject at least a little psychological complexity into the Regina/Snow relationship if you read it as a covert way for Regina to punish herself. I'm actually more convinced of this after the rewatch of the past few episodes. Snow's crime is, essentially, getting duped by Cora, which is exactly what happens to Regina - she believes that her mother has come around just before Cora kills Daniel. As written, young Regina is Mary Margaret , to a great extent: she is sweet, good with children, and believes deeply in the power of true love. I think Regina, post Daniel's death, sees aspects of her more naive self in Snow and hates her for it, maybe, on a subconscious level, even more than for her innocent role in the tragedy. Even the scene a couple of episodes ago where she was trying to get Mary Margaret to confess by talking to her about how a good person might become evil was obvious projection; while part of her, of course, was just gaslighting MM, I also think that even as she knows she's making it up, she's once again relishing the opportunity to essentially use Mary Margaret as a scapegoat for her own more negative feelings about herself. Regina isn't the warped person who snapped; Snow is. 

[Shanna Marie]

I almost quit the show over this episode when it first aired because Regina's reason for hating Snow made so little sense. I remember shouting, "Seriously!" at the TV at the revelation. But they'd kind of written themselves into a corner because Regina's villainy was so extreme that anything short of the revelation that Snow had done something truly monstrous would be lame. But even the "Snow was the real villain!" twist wouldn't work because Regina's evil was so unfocused. That might have worked if we'd only seen Regina going after Snow, but once we've seen her sending children to their deaths and plotting Kathryn's murder, there's not much Snow could have done that was worse than Regina.

Really, even if we'd seen adult Snow ripping Daniel's heart out of his chest and crushing it, Regina's response would have been an overreaction.

The only thing that makes any sense is that if we're supposed to not see Regina as even the slightest bit sympathetic or understandable, if the entire point is that she's a psychopath and it wouldn't have taken much to set her off.

It occurred to me on this viewing that Snow actually had the right idea to begin with, to tell her father that Regina didn't want to marry her. I'm sure he wouldn't have gone through with forcing Regina to marry him, and he might have tried to do something to protect Regina from Cora, like maybe giving Daniel a position at the castle so he and Regina could live there. Yeah, Cora might have still tried scheming, but it would have been a lot harder.

It's also really hard to watch the present-day stuff with the knowledge of what really happened in the past. Regina is torturing someone who doesn't even remember, who made an innocent mistake as a child. And meanwhile, Emma is being an utter idiot. If you give a character the trait of being able to tell when someone is telling the truth, you can't build the plot around her believing people who lie to her and deceive her.

More gorgeous textiles -- Snow's cloak, Cora's outfits. I especially like the one with the embroidered bolero-like jacket. That might be a reflection of the fact that Henry Sr.'s family (kingdom?) is somewhat Hispanic seeming.

And no matter how hard I look for it

Spoiler

I can find no sign at all that Cora and Leopold had ever met, no matter how much they later claimed that it was obvious.

[KingOfHearts]

9 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And no matter how hard I look for it

Leopold seems tremendously naive or ignorant. He's kind of too stupid to live in retrospect.

Spoiler

Although, part of me wishes we had gotten another flashback with him to show what really went on during his marriage to Regina.

Edited July 29, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[CheshireCat]

12 hours ago, companionenvy said:

But beyond that, young Regina is not remotely believable as a version of older Regina. Fine; "evil isn't born, it is made"; I get it. Great. Someone can start off as a good person and wind up being corrupted. But compassionate, loving, sane people do not flip a switch to psychopathic evil because of a single tragedy, no matter how terrible.

I think disliking Regina is one thing, she was the villain after all. But ignoring aspects of the story to justify hating her is another one.

She never flipped a switch and became evil. Yes, she got angry at Snow and she blamed Snow but she didn't turn evil in that moment. We don't even know how intense her anger was. (More about that below).

I admit that there is some irrationality to her anger. The obvious choice to be angry with would be her mother. But a mother is a still a mother. The feelings Regina (and probably most everyone else) has for her mother are a lot more complex than those she has towards a future step-child. And who really reacts rationally, appropropriately and measured after a lifetime (however short) of abuse and witnessing a murder as cruel as the one Regina witnessed? I don't think there are many who can say that they do. (Heck, even my grandfather had a time when he put some blame on his neighbors over my grandmother's death).

As far as turning is evil is concerned

Spoiler

the show clearly establishes that she was manipulated into it. She didn't turn evil until the episode with the gypsy (I believe it was) when she declared the queen is dead, long live the evil queen or something along those lines.

When she got rid of her mother, she did so because she wanted to leave the castle and move away. Maybe she would have continued to hold a grudge against Snow, maybe she wouldn't have, we will never know. Fact is, she was willing to leave it all behind, she was willing to move on. Just like it is fact that it was Rumple who didn't let her. It was Rumple who nurtured the anger inside her, who turned it into hate and a need for revenge. He used her vulnerability to manipulate her into what he needed her to be so she would cast the curse and there are plenty of flashbacks which show us that. (One of the most prominent and cruelest examples of how he toyed with and manipulated her is probably the episode that deals with Whale's background).

Edited July 29, 2018 by CheshireCat

[KAOS Agent]

I think the problem with Regina's turn to evil is that we've seen too much of her getting off on hurting other people. I can see where Cora killing Daniel and Regina choosing to blame Snow makes some sort of sense (although her long term reaction to a ten year old being manipulated is way over the top), but it doesn't fit with her turn to complete psychopathy.  Even with the manipulations of others pushing her towards wanting power, nothing explains the lack of empathy or conscience.

The rape and murder of Graham, the plan to murder Kathryn, her actions towards children like Hansel and Gretel and the many, many other events depicted later are all completely heinous. Where does this completely conscienceless reign of terror come from? It's not because evil is somehow forcing her to make these choices. Even Dark Curse Rumpel has to ability to not be evil and he's got a much harder row to hoe with his evil decision making. She enjoys it. She likes inflicting pain and suffering. That's where there is this huge disconnect between the Young Regina and the post Daniel death Regina. Some twisted need for revenge on Snow is one thing, enjoyment and conscienceless murder of innocent children is another.

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, CheshireCat said:

I think disliking Regina is one thing, she was the villain after all. But ignoring aspects of the story to justify hating her is another one.

She never flipped a switch and became evil. Yes, she got angry at Snow and she blamed Snow but she didn't turn evil in that moment. We don't even know how intense her anger was. (More about that below).

I admit that there is some irrationality to her anger. The obvious choice to be angry with would be her mother. But a mother is a still a mother. The feelings Regina (and probably most everyone else) has for her mother are a lot more complex than those she has towards a future step-child. And who really reacts rationally, appropropriately and measured after a lifetime (however short) of abuse and witnessing a murder as cruel as the one Regina witnessed? I don't think there are many who can say that they do. (Heck, even my grandfather had a time when he put some blame on his neighbors over my grandmother's death).

As far as turning is evil is concerned

Of course she didn't start terrorizing villagers overnight. But I would say that the cold way she says she should have let Snow die, combined with the decision to go through with the marriage to Leopold (and totally insincere explanation to Snow about same), suggests to me a drastic personality change in fairly short order, not someone who was going into the marriage with a genuine desire to make the best of her situation and be a loving stepmother to Snow. 

There's a difference between not acting rationally or appropriately after a tragedy and sustaining your rage at a ten year old who told a secret with good intentions for any length of time, let alone doing so for decades and using it as a pretext for any number of often tangentially related atrocities. For a moderately normal person, reacting inappropriately might have meant slapping Snow in the moment, or being cold and distant to her longer-term. Not anything close to what Regina did. Again, the fact that, decades later, she's framing Mary Margaret for murder as she whispers "We did it, Daniel" - as if the apparently kind and decent stable boy we just met would be happy that Regina was getting delayed revenge on a little girl, to the tune of destroying her life, having first killed an innocent woman in order to do it -- is simply batshit. And that's not even getting into all of the more collateral damage to her revenge plot, like all the children she sent to the witch.

I know everyone reacts differently to trauma, and don't want to minimize what Regina went through with Cora. But first of all, as I said before, the fact that Regina at age early 20s had an apparently normal emotional life means Cora's abuse did not totally warp her ordinary senses of compassion, affection, and morality; that only changed as a direct result of what happened to Daniel (and yup, some manipulation later on, but her plans were still all conceived and framed as a direct response to Daniel's death).  More than that, while again, people have different reactions, Regina is living in a narrative world where tons of characters have suffering from incredible traumas. Emma grew up an unloved foster child, got betrayed by the first man she loved, and had to give up her child for adoption. Snow, by the time she was roughly flashback Regina's age, had lost both her parents, one (she knew) to murder, had her throne usurped, and was reduced to living as a bandit on the run. Red had learned she was a werewolf responsible for many deaths, including her boyfriend's 

Spoiler

(and, we later learn, her mother's, though in a different context)

 

Geppetto's parents had been turned into freaking puppets. The dwarves are members of a slave race. Even in the real world, there are unfortunately many people who have suffered unimaginable levels of trauma, up to and including being survivors of genocides that killed their entire families, and very few of them become murderers, let alone indiscriminate mass murderers. It isn't just that Regina's backstory doesn't give her a pass. It really doesn't fall into the realm, IMO, of normal or believable human behavior, and certainly doesn't make her sympathetic. 

[CCTC]

I do remember his episode being one of my first "Huh?" moments, because in the media they had been talking up this great twist of how Snow had some responsibility for the creation of the evil queen.  

I know Regina later

Spoiler

did vague general apologies for her bad behavior, but did she ever specifically address how foolish she was for blaming Snow for Daniel's death.  When she worked out some of her issues with her Mother did she ever finally fully lay the blame on her for killing her boyfriend?

Cora really was not the nicest lady or Mother of the Year, which is why later it is was kind of jarring

Spoiler

is that all she had to do was help reconcile her daughters, as if their fractured relationship was the only bad thing she ever did, to redeem her enough where she could step into the light.  

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, companionenvy said:

There's a difference between not acting rationally or appropriately after a tragedy and sustaining your rage at a ten year old who told a secret with good intentions for any length of time, let alone doing so for decades and using it as a pretext for any number of often tangentially related atrocities. For a moderately normal person, reacting inappropriately might have meant slapping Snow in the moment, or being cold and distant to her longer-term. Not anything close to what Regina did.

Yeah, a normal, healthy person might have had a burst of anger, maybe took it out on the kid briefly, then would have calmed down and eventually realized that Cora was the one at fault, since she was the one who actually killed Daniel, and maybe even realized that Cora was a master manipulator, so a sheltered kid like Snow, who'd only experienced having a good mother, wouldn't have had a chance against Cora. To react the way Regina did, she would have had to already have some character flaws that allowed her to go as nuts as she did without feeling a twinge of guilt. It's one thing to be angry because someone wronged her, and maybe growing up with Cora for a mother might have meant she didn't have great role models, but what Regina ended up doing is just so far out there, where she's enjoying being cruel to random people who didn't really do anything to her. A really good person would have come out of all this with empathy, feeling bad for anyone separated from their loves. Regina couldn't tolerate other people being happy.

When August was talking about writing to Emma, I think he gave A&E's philosophy of writing. He talked about writing something, then getting a new idea midway through that changes everything. Only, whatever August actually wrote, he could probably go back and revise based on the new idea. On this show, what they started with was already out there when they got a new idea, but that didn't stop them from just going off in new directions that didn't fit what they'd already established. These guys have so many self-insert characters. There's Regina, who represents their struggles to make it as writers, then there's Henry, and I think August is also their mouthpiece.

Continuity issue: When Leopold meets Regina, he talks about having lost Snow's mother years ago, but

Spoiler

Didn't Snow's mother get sick on Snow's 10th birthday, and Snow talked about having been 10 years old when Daniel was killed? Eva was barely cold in the ground when Leo was looking for a new wife.

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Didn't Snow's mother get sick on Snow's 10th birthday, and Snow talked about having been 10 years old when Daniel was killed? Eva was barely cold in the ground when Leo was looking for a new wife.

Spoiler

I think it was right before her birthday because she had Snow trying on her dress for the party.  I've always wondered if Leopold's rush to find a new mother for Snow was guilt on his part for not being there when his wife became sick and died and leaving his daughter all alone to deal with that. But they never came back to it.

[Rumsy4]

On 7/28/2018 at 2:26 PM, companionenvy said:

But compassionate, loving, sane people do not flip a switch to psychopathic evil because of a single tragedy, no matter how terrible.

On 7/29/2018 at 2:33 AM, KAOS Agent said:

Some twisted need for revenge on Snow is one thing, enjoyment and conscienceless murder of innocent children is another.

This episode falls flat in giving the reason for Regina's hatred of Snow. This makes Regina out to be a two-dimensional cartoon character who goes berserk after a single tragedy. The disconnect between the fairy tale realms and the Land Without Magic should have been played up with this aspect in mind. Like in the movie Enchanted, where Giselle becomes more three-dimensional after she comes to our world. The writers expect the viewers to sympathize with Regina like a real person, while writing her as a cartoon villain. Can't have it both ways. 

Spoiler

Regina turned into a conscienceless monster who never regretted her actions. That's not a character I can root for, even if they really had suffered The Worst of tragedies. Which Regina did not.

Irrational projection of anger and blame on another person is natural enough. But Regina's overnight switch into a cold and calculating person doesn't make sense unless the writers intended her to turn into Cora solely because of genetics. 

Spoiler

Rumple may have manipulated her into evil. But he didn't turn her into a sociopath. She turned into one of her own accord.

On 7/29/2018 at 9:09 AM, CCTC said:

  Hide contents

did vague general apologies for her bad behavior, but did she ever specifically address how foolish she was for blaming Snow for Daniel's death.  

 

Spoiler

Nope. She never did. Not even a vague apology. All she conceded was that she was not a great step-mother to Snow. Ya think, Regina? But that's okay, because Snow was a brat, and deserved it.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Rumsy4

[tennisgurl]

Oh, this episode. So begins seven freaking seasons of the shows very favorite character, Poor Regina. Oh Poor Regina, her mom is such an asshole! Oh poor Regina, her boyfriend died! Oh poor Regina, no one ever suffered as much as her...except for, like, everyone else, but still! Poor poor Regina, how can we blame her for anything?! 

Sorry, I need to focus on this episode as it is, not my general issues with Regina. I actually remember liking this episode when it first aired, and thought it was a decent backstory for Regina, at least to start with. And, credit where credit is due, there are good things here. The casting for young Snow is spot on, as is Barbara Hershey as Cora, who is just perfect as the evil magic stage mom from hell. And Lana puts on a good performance as young, sweet Regina, and really does come across as younger,and different than the Regina we know, without having to resort to wigs or silly outfits or anything. And its nice to see Katherine not being dead. Mr. Gold is also in top form this week, running deals, playing all the angles, and generally being that morally ambiguous wildcard that I love about Gold/Rumple. I especially loved the eye roll when MM started ranting to DA King George about how Katherine ruined her life. Like he was just thinking "oh my god, the shit I must put up with."

However, the backstory stuff is just so deeply underwhelming. Its insane how fast Regina jumped from sweet nice girl to sadistic psychopath with a body count that could rival most dictators. And its just so obvious, even to Regina, that Snow was manipulated by Cora, using her good intentions against her, it makes this massive grudge seem so overblown and petty. I mean, for this to be even remotely justified, young Snow would have had to have personally hacked Daniels head off, as well as Regina's horse, her puppy litter, and then told her that she never pulled off that riding outfit. And even that doesn't count for all the innocent random people she killed in her revenge quest, or that she just killed because she felt like it. I just hate seeing her smug, awful face telling poor MM how she deserves all of this, especially knowing how much she totally doesn't! And what was that "we did it Daniel" crap? Because, while we dont know the guy well, I dont see Regina's sweet, salt of the Earth horse whisperer boyfriend being thrilled at his girlfriend becoming a total psychopath waging a pointless war over a child who told a secret after being manipulated, while trying to help her. Really, thats kind of another issue. We dont know much about Daniel, or his romance with Regina. This whole backstory, and the instigating event of the whole show, is all around the death of a character we dont really know, and a romance we hardly get to see. 

Spoiler

And yeah I know they try to show her kind of transition from sweet Regina to Murder Regina, with the manipulations by Rumple but they dont do it very well, at least for the level of sadistic murderous horror we will get from Regina throughout the show. To justify her as a future hero/Queen of the Universe, they would have to give her a MUCH more sympathetic backstory, or make her actually mentally ill, or show more of a gradual journey, not just this, and one other episode where she shows herself as a pawn for Rumple and Cora. 

[KAOS Agent]

I'm still confused about how Regina thought she could just run away with Daniel and Cora wouldn't do anything about it. Even if Snow hadn't said anything, Cora would have been on their tail immediately and then killed Daniel anyway. It wasn't something that was ever going to work out for them, which makes the whole thing even worse to me. The whole backstory was full of holes.

Even if Regina had managed to escape Cora somehow, now they're on the run. Her husband will have no job and no references. Regina was raised as royalty and has no basic life skills to be able to function in a Medieval world. She also has a massive disdain for the peasantry, which isn't something that would reasonably manifest as a result of Daniel's death, so the seeds of that must have already been in her at the time. Their lives would have sucked and I don't see Regina living on love for long.

Edited August 1, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[Rumsy4]

^ This was my strong impression during the rewatch as well. Daniel may have spoken of them as True Love. But to me, it seemed more like young love that doesn't think too far ahead. There's nothing wrong with that--it happens to most people. But reality sinks in sooner or later, and it's then that love and character will be tested. Even if Cora had not been a murderous witch, Regina and Daniel's lives would still have been fraught with difficulties.

In a way, it was Daniel's tragic death that elevated their romance to "epic" status in Regina's eyes. If they had successfully run off and eloped, maybe disillusionment would have stared her in her face instead of romance. I can't imagine the Regina we have seen so far living a life on the run like Bandit Snow. She was an excellent horsewoman, but as for basic life-skills, it's extremely doubtful she had any. As you say, Cora would've caught up with them and murdered Daniel sooner than later.

Spoiler

And Rumple would have manipulated Regina into casting the curse to punish her mother. 

Edited August 1, 2018 by Rumsy4

[KingOfHearts]

12 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

And its nice to see Katherine not being dead.

I remember my mom watching the series for the first time. She'd only watch one or two episodes at time. But once she saw the Kathryn cliffhanger, she said, "Okay, now I HAVE to see the next episode!" and immediately watched a third. I actually like when characters turn out to be alive because it's often more shocking than their deaths. (If it's in a show or medium where character deaths are the norm.) Sometimes there's more ramifications for a character to be alive than dead.

12 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

However, the backstory stuff is just so deeply underwhelming. Its insane how fast Regina jumped from sweet nice girl to sadistic psychopath with a body count that could rival most dictators

"I should've let her die on that horse" was such a dumb line. I can buy that the events of The Stable Boy were the catalyst for Regina's downturn, but they couldn't have been wholly responsible for making her a murderous psychopath. It's so obvious that line was thrown into to bang a hammer on the audience's head. "Don't you SEE that THIS is what made Regina evil?!" 

Spoiler

Then in "The Doctor", Regina is all, "I could never hurt anybody!"

 

10 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I'm still confused about how Regina thought she could just run away with Daniel and Cora wouldn't do anything about it. Even if Snow hadn't said anything, Cora would have been on their tail immediately and then killed Daniel anyway. It wasn't something that was ever going to work out for them, which makes the whole thing even worse to me. The whole backstory was full of holes.

Spoiler

You could probably say the same about Regina and Robin Hood. I'm sure she could court him and run off with him without any consequences whatsoever. Leopold would definitely just stand by and wish them well.

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

In a way, it was Daniel's tragic death that elevated their romance to "epic" status in Regina's eyes

I feel like if we had seen more flashbacks in other episodes of them together and shipped them, we'd feel more badly for Regina in this episode. We'd share her loss to some degree. Instead it was more like, "Oh, we're going with this cliche."

Spoiler

There's still some good material to mine her, specifically with Regina and her parents. It makes me mad the writers didn't take full advantage of Cora's abuse in S2 to change the course of Regina's character. Those two have a dynamic the audience can somewhat sympathize with (the controlling mother-in-law but up to an eleven), which really worked to explain a lot of Regina's behavior. The stuff with Regina realizing she was like her mother in how she parented Henry was really good. But uh... nope. Let's blame Snow some more and try to kill everybody with a failsafe. That's just what the narrative demanded for a REDEMPTION ARC.

Edited August 1, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 12:25 AM, KAOS Agent said:

I'm still confused about how Regina thought she could just run away with Daniel and Cora wouldn't do anything about it. Even if Snow hadn't said anything, Cora would have been on their tail immediately and then killed Daniel anyway. It wasn't something that was ever going to work out for them, which makes the whole thing even worse to me. The whole backstory was full of holes.

Even if Regina had managed to escape Cora somehow, now they're on the run. Her husband will have no job and no references. Regina was raised as royalty and has no basic life skills to be able to function in a Medieval world. She also has a massive disdain for the peasantry, which isn't something that would reasonably manifest as a result of Daniel's death, so the seeds of that must have already been in her at the time. Their lives would have sucked and I don't see Regina living on love for long.

I can't see them working out either for the same reasons. Regina is really going to be able to live on the run from her mother? Or a tiny hovel? We've never really seen her roughing it. Whether in Storybrooke or EF she lives in a castle or palace, or in a mansion. She has made it clear her distain for the peasantry but she really thinks she could have lived like one? Yeah, right. 

[legaleagle53]

On 7/31/2018 at 9:06 PM, tennisgurl said:

We dont know much about Daniel, or his romance with Regina. This whole backstory, and the instigating event of the whole show, is all around the death of a character we dont really know, and a romance we hardly get to see. 

True, and 

Spoiler

even later on when Regina finally succeeds in "resurrecting" Daniel (only to have it fail in the end), Zombie!Daniel is the one who finally tells her to suck it up, get over his death, and move on with her life.

[Shanna Marie]

It occurred to me that although Daniel did seem to be fully consenting in the relationship, there was a rather drastic power imbalance there, since Regina was the daughter of his employer. If he hadn't been into it, rejecting Regina could have had serious consequences for him, if, say, she made up something to tell her parents he did. Knowing what we do about Regina's personality, it makes you wonder how things would have gone once they were away from her parents and on more equal footing.

On 8/1/2018 at 12:04 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I feel like if we had seen more flashbacks in other episodes of them together and shipped them, we'd feel more badly for Regina in this episode. We'd share her loss to some degree.

Yeah, it's really hard to tell when all we saw of them was some stolen kisses in the stable and her abusing him in front of her mother. It's hard to say what Regina really lost or if they would have managed to make it work, so it's hard to feel much of a sense of loss. I'm mostly thinking that maybe Daniel lucked out in being killed rather than having to live with Regina. I'm pretty sure they didn't intend to show that she was a budding sociopath all along, but she flipped so completely to evil and was so awful that it's hard to imagine that she would have just gone through life being nice and happy if this one bad thing hadn't happened to her. Something else might have set her off, and her complete lack of empathy would have created a wedge in the relationship. As it is, she never seems to think "poor Daniel." All she ever thinks about is "poor me."

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

As it is, she never seems to think "poor Daniel." All she ever thinks about is "poor me."

If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was intentional that we didn't see much of the relationship. It seems like a teen fling and Regina hoisting it up to "epic" levels, when it has no practical value. It's really about Regina and her feelings, not anyone else involved. It's disingenuous to hang her entire character motivation around this one event because A) she didn't love Daniel much beyond hormones, and B) there were so many other instances in her life that contributed to who she came to be. To portray this as her tipping point or the origin of the Evil Queen is cheap and doesn't make much sense. But we know that's what the writers were going for when they wrote this episode.

Losing a loved one is a pretty big deal if it the loss was so powerful you go batshit. But here, Daniel is largely irrelevant. I feel bad for her in the flashbacks but she didn't lose anything more than heroes on the show have.

Edited August 2, 2018 by KingOfHearts