I don’t really have time to review the epi, or weigh in too much right now, but here is a couple of thoughts.
First, just on the acting — we are back to our standard scenario where Bobby and EdR masterfully float an otherwise nonsensical, shoddy script.
You folks have already said a lot of what I was thinking. I thought this writing choice was terrible. It annulled a lot of the progress we’ve seen Rumbelle make in the last few episodes. And really, I understand the necessity of maternity leave, but this is not a good way to approach the problem, from the perspective of characterization.
Belle comes across as, in the best case scenario, incredibly naive verging on self-destructive (but this is a pattern with her: she’s more than willing to give a chance to Hook and Zelena, no matter how much abuse those two have rained upon her and her loved ones. Her hope that her father might be able to TLK her back to life, despite the fact that he has consistently put other interests — his kingdom, and his own personal sense of decorum — ahead of her own, seems to go hand in hand with this tendency to extent infinite credit to people who, by all accounts, don’t deserve it). And at worse, she comes across as a bit manipulative. My biggest issue though isn’t just what @RG mentioned, which is that it might appear that Belle is in fact, yet again, trying to force Rumple’s hand. Rather, it’s the underlying logic: that she is essentially putting herself under because, among other things, she doesn’t want to darken her soul further while getting herself and her child out of the current bind. Instead, she is outsourcing the weight of moral ambiguity to Rumple.
One might argue that Rumple’s already the Dark One, so what’s the harm — he chose his path, so he can take care of business. But to me, it felt OOC — Belle has always wanted to be a hero. Burying her hand in the sand while “things take care of themselves” (read, Rumple kills some more peasants to solve the current crisis) isn’t the moral high ground by any stretch of the imagination. It’s like the mobster’s wife who willfully ignores her husband’s dealings — but still wants to enjoy the wealth without getting her hands muddy, or sitting with the cognitive dissonance. Or, approaching the whole thing with eyes open and a good dose of sobriety, trying to mitigate the damage.
And if this is solely to protect the child, then this also feels like a crazy decision: why does she think that being under the sleeping curse will be essentially harmless to the fetus? Am I remembering wrong, or does her “soul” (or consciousness) get stuck in the Red Room of Fire? That doesn’t seem like a good place to spend your second trimester.
Anyway, point is, I think this is either OOC for Belle, or that Belle’s characterization as a “hero” just took a hit. At least for me.