1) Zelena: justifiably angry or unhinged whiner?
Neither. I found Zelana’s jealousy trip as justifiable or unjustifiable as Regina’s vengeance against Snow. Neither Regina nor Snow were responsible for the suffering, they were scapegoats, while the true culprits got away.
While the showrunners are not getting tired to babble, that evil isn’t born, it sure looks quite different by now on the show: There seem to run a legacy of psychopathy or some evil craziness in the female side of the Mills’ family (the men seem to vanish or turn into more or less drunken wimps). While with Regina at least nurture could play a role, she was raised by Cora, though her father seemed to be a nice, caring guy, there is nothing of that with Zelena. It’s the biggest problem I have with the character. She was abandoned by her mother for ignoble reasons, but then found by a couple, of which at least the woman seemed to be a nice and caring person, the guy maybe a bit fearful but not so bad either. It looked liked Zelena was raised by friendly people, who had no riches but never seemed to lack, she was maybe struggling with her magic, and her foster parents told her to never show it, or did all to hide it, but still doesn’t seem like Zelena had much of an unhappy childhood. I couldn’t buy that Zelena was going from naive country wallflower to jealous magic nerd and then sexy, sassy green revenger in more or less no time. Rumple has some toxic effect on the Mills’ women, has he. If they’d put Zelena more into a kind of Oliver Twist situation, found by a couple running an orphanage in bad old style, exploiting the kids as workforce – that could have explained Zelena as damaged goods a lot better. Besides they could have explored parallels to Emma, tie in her character in the season’s bad guest star story arc that way, and made the final episode so much more connected to the rest of the half season. They tried that with the premise of Dorothy and Oz, but it didn’t work well.
I could buy into Zelena’s jealousy towards Regina if changing the background story this tiny bit, Siblings can be terrible rivals and very unreasonable and destructive ones. It is soap operatic, but have seen it to some degree in real life as well.
I could get somewhat, that Zelena got obsessed with the idea to go back in time and change things, though I am not sure in which direction that should have gone. Never be abandoned by Cora? Regina never born? Zelena as Rumple’s puppet and Curse caster? Did she hope to get a family and home and love that way? Was it about family or about approval and career so to speak? Or was it just to destroy Regina’s happiness as a parallel to what Regina tried to do to Snow? Maybe a bit all of it and maybe even Zelena had no clear picture, what her goal was – I sure was wondering.
2) Do you think ONCE’s take on Oz/ The WWW was successful?
There was Oz in it? As I see it, they found the green Wicked Witch intriguing, but didn’t look to me like they had much of an idea what to make of Oz. Maybe they would have fared better to make it a spin-off mini series quite like Wonderland. Well, they still in theory could, but doubt after the rating disaster of Wonderland they will do it, and not with the task at hand to work with Frozen. (Seeing the potential of OUaT as it could have become the Star Trek franchise of this century, though think they blew that already, it could have been an idea, to start workshops for screenwriters at the beginning of a career, take the best of them, let them write under good supervision of seasoned writers and showrunner miniseries and expand the OUaT universe, and it doesn’t always have to be a primetime show, while helping to bring new people into business: yeah, I know the big networks are way too anxious too take such risks – as if they hadn’t their fingers in smaller networks as well).
No, Once’s take on Oz was rather a failure. When even I feel like I had to do too much thinking to find something of the story and mythology of Oz and not just marvel at some flashy props from that world… You know I love digging and thinking. But guess for many the flashy references where enough, who cares about story and meaning anyway. Not even the Wicked Witch made much sense to me, besides that this was the green season in a way (Neverland and Oz, somehow both have connections with the color green. Could be something to give every season a color theme – nah, too ambitious for this show.)
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