Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[lisas]

Okay I watched last night’s season 4 premiere and I gotta say I was not impressed at all by it.  The only things I liked was  Belle & Rumple’s dance to Beauty & The Beast, I liked the CGI of the Trolls and the Snow Monster.

I’m not really sure what to make about the Frozen stuff yet but I am intrigued by Elsa apparently recognizing Rumple in the newspaper.

I do have to admit the casting for Elsa & Anna and Kristoff is pretty realistic and very much on par based on the animation from the movie.  For a minute there I thought I was watching an animation of Kristoff.

 

The whole Regina/Robin Hood/Marian triangle just doesn’t seem natural at all as matter of fact it seems very out of place.  It felt very wooden to me like they were each just going through through the motions but there wasn’t any heart or depth to it.

Rumple visiting Neal’s grave for the first also fell short.  I normally love Robert Carlyle’s  performances as Rumple/Mr. Gold but the scene was completely unnatural.  It seemed very out of place given how much Rumple loved Neal.   I tweeted Adam last night and I asked him this question based on Rumple’s speech at Neal’s grave.

@AdamHorowitzLA Rumple took on the Dark One Curse to save Bae & other kids in their village why are you changing his reasons to all power ?

— Lisa Stevens (@LisaStevens_AER) September 29, 2014

I doubt very seriously I’ll get an answer but I felt that the question needed to be addressed of why the sudden change  if they aren’t Reconstituting Rumple’s relationship with his son.

Anyway Bobby’s performance really fell short.  The impression I got was that he didn’t really have his heart in this scene.  To me as in the scene with Regina & Company outside of Granny’s Diner it felt very wooden.  There was no heart felt  depth or emotion and that is definitely not Rumple at all.

Now to the Charming Family.  There really isn’t much to say except I agree that the short scenr where David says we should have named him Baelfire was most likely put in there as  Adam’s & Eddy’s and the rest of the writers room way  of saying to the SwanFire & Neal Fans “You guys want to give us a lot of backlash and criticize us for killing Neal and having the baby named after him okay but just know it could have been so much worse”  Basically in my opinion it was their way of telling fans do not criticize us or create anymore backlash on the internet.

The one I got out of Emma & Snow’s scene with baby Snowflake is that Emma really feels guilty over causing Regina pain for saving Marian and I think Emma may even feel guilty about losing Neal and at the same time trying to forge the thing that she has with Hook.

Henry we really didn’t see enough of him the season premiere but I think that although he seems like he is handling Neal’s death on the outside underneath I don’t think he is and that I assume will most likely start to either come out in different ways especially once he finds out about Emma & Hook which wouldn’t shock me if that starts happening next week.   That is probably what starts him on the path to work for Rumple and eventually to help Regina as far as the book goes

 

The Rumple/Belle scenes were about the only things that was actually tolerable, except for maybe the CGI of the trolls and the Snow Monster.  The scene in which Rumple froze Belle to switch the dagger out was okay.  I don’t know about the rest of you but I definitely understand Rumple’s motivations & justification for Killing Zelena in the first place back in season 3.  Believe it or not I get why Rumple felt he had to lie to Belle in order to avenge the death of his son.  Yeah I know realistically that Neal wouldn’t want that but I can understand why Rumple would despite the fact that it won’t bring his son back to life.  Rumple had every reason to want Zelena to pay for what she did to Neal and to him plus I also saw it as Rumple protecting what is left of his family which in his mind would be Bellle, Henry, Emma, The Charmings & Regina.

Now on the Regina, Sidney and the Mirror it was with great anticipation that I was looking forward to seeing Sidney back but those whole scenes really felt hollow there was no depth or feelings to any of them even when  poor Sidney was put back into the mirror

 

Now for Emma & Hook The only thing I took away from their scenes is that Emma feels guilty over her part in what Regina is now dealing with because of her actions in the past to save Marian. And that Emma is avoiding Hook for other reasons then just her guilt over Regina /Robin/Marian debacle.  As I said before I think Emma’s avoidence of Hook may stem from her losing Neal and the guilt she feels over that loss of the only man she’s ever really loved.

 

All in All if I was grading this episode I would give it a D-