407: Critical Analysis

6 and 1 are related and are really bugging me. Will’s advice, which in part followed the same pattern as we saw with Belle/Mulan’s beliefs about fighting for love and works for his own relationship a la Wonderland (assuming they haven’t completely obliterated that with whatever they did to get him on the show), is in its effect just AWFUL.

Marian inspired Robin Hood. What has Regina inspired in him? A belief in a second chance? But now he doesn’t need a second chance at love with her–he needs it with his wife. His story only made me feel more strongly that he belongs with Marian, and choosing Regina is The Wrong Choice. He as much as said it when he said he was throwing out his whole moral code to be with her.

You do NOT ruin your life and others’ lives to be with someone you think is hot. Even if you have a deep, awesome connection (a connection, mind you, that we’ve seen portrayed as mostly consisting of “we lost our first loves, so we can understand each other” and a dash of pixie dust). If the other person loved you, they wouldn’t WANT you to ruin your own life for them, no matter how it benefited them. And if you have to hurt other people to be with your love, you’re doing it wrong. That’s why Lacey was such a terrible thing for Rumbelle–she, unlike Belle, encouraged Rumple’s darker side. And the influence of that was that he strongly considered killing his own grandson.

No matter how much Roland likes Regina or Robin’s over Marian, OQ hurts both Roland and Marian by splitting up their family. And Marian’s done nothing wrong to deserve the man that from her perspective loved her only a few days ago–loved her so much he was willing to face the wrath of Rumplestiltskin–suddenly rejecting her just because he got the attention of a hot queen. She didn’t even have a choice in the matter of being brought back.

I honestly cannot see a way for Regina and Robin to be together at this point that I could accept. If you kill Marian or even have her acquiesce to Robin leaving her for Regina, that just reinforces Regina’s destructive belief that the only way she can have her happy ending is by taking happy endings away from other people (like, all the people caught up in her curse, Snow & Charming repeatedly, Rumplestilstkin when she kidnapped Belle as insurance, Hansel & Gretel & their father, Owen & Flynn, etc etc etc. She’s believed it for a very long time).

My only hope is that they’re going to have OQ crash and burn and Robin eventually realize he was better off with Marian and Regina realize that she’s become too good for a man who would dump his entire moral code to be with her.

1) Morality in love and romance. Does pixie dust give you permission to cheat? Marian’s love made Robin want to be a better man, more than just a petty thief. Regina’s love makes Robin want to throw away all his honor, his code, his self respect and hurt those he cared about.

As it stands, the show is sending a really bad message about romance, like it’s more important than family, honor, or vows. I have trouble with that notion. Maybe the point was to show that the love that Robin and Regina have is selfish whereas the love Robin and Marian had was selfless. Being with Marian made Robin want to be a better man, while being with Regina doesn’t. Robin doesn’t even seem to care about saving his wife, if even just for his son’s sake. The way Robin is talking about love is like it’s just an undeniable feeling, rather than a choice, which I find wrong and backwards; I think love is a choice, rather than a feeling. I think Robin may have misunderstood the point of the talk he had with Will. I don’t think Will meant to encourage Robin to have an extra-marital affair, but rather, he meant to remind Robin that the love Marian and he shared helped make him into a better man. If Robin wants to part ways with Marian after he saves her, then so be it, but the way he isn’t even trying to save her is very unheroic.

Spoilers reveal Marian is going to be unfrozen, so something positive must happen to release her from that spell. Either the Snow Queen and her magic are defeated once and for all (a la sorcerer’s hat) or Robin finds a way to fall back in love with his wife. Maybe something good will still come of Robin’s affair with Regina still, like self-realization. I dunno. But if I were Marian, I’d leave Robin once I woke up again. Seriously.

2) Inconsistent character writing with Snow White

Seriously, what is up with Snow White? I get that she’s insecure about being a “first-time mom” with the second baby, seeing as she had to give up her first child. Yet, Snow’s reaction to Emma’s magic makes her seem unsympathetic towards Emma. In previous seasons, we’ve seen Snow and David be impressed with Emma’s magic (e.g. that time Emma save Snow from Cora, that time that Emma helped Regina save SB from the diamond of doom, the time Emma helped Regina save Henry). David and Snow seemed proud of Emma. Now Snow is scolding Emma like a child for something she couldn’t control? I really hope the writers use Snow and Emma’s relationship hitting rock bottom as a way to help mother and daughter eventually find a new commonground, because Emma and Snow’s estrangement is getting old. I hope Snow is the one to help Emma learn to re-control her magic through maternal true love, much like how Anna helped Elsa learn to control her magic through sisterly true love.

3) Rumple. Just…Rumple. World domination, trying to get his son back, trying to make sure he never loses anyone ever again. Which is it? Consistency or not?

Rumple wanting world domination just doesn’t mesh with all of his previous characterization. Yeah, he’s had a nasty habit of self-preservation, but the love of his son always helped to counter balance it. And Rumple never sought to dominate Enchanted Forest directly through his power, since the land still had kingdoms ruled by royalty. He did control it indirectly through the deals he made, but that was never his end goal, since his end goal was to find Baelfire. If the writers just make Rumple into a power-hungry villain like every other villain who’s basically existed outside of the Once universe, then I’ll just laugh in dismay. Total world domination is too one-dimensional for a multi-faceted character like Rumple. Yet, sadly, I wouldn’t put it past the writers to destroy Rumple completely. They’re already courting disaster with the way he’s currently descending into darkness.

6) Truly terrible life advice like, “true love is worth ruining your life over”

I have a big qualm with this notion. I don’t think love is worth ruining your life over. Yes, true love might cause someone to make a self-sacrifice if it means saving the one you love, but as an everyday, how to live with someone you love piece of advice, just no. This is a destructive and harmful notion, at best. That just sounds like justification for staying in an abusive relationship.

willowfan21 wrote:

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen adultery explored on the series.

I said this in another thread….the MM and David affair was still bad, but they were actually married in their real lives and living under an evil curse that wiped their memories. Robin has no such excuse.

Fundamentally, adultery is still adultery. From the perspective of the characters (the audience possessing knowledge that they themselves did not), the Mary Margaret/David affair WAS adultery.

willowfan21 wrote:

I’m not really sure how Snow’s reactions in this episode were inconsistent; she simply screwed up in reacting to Emma’s magical freak-out, and later fully acknowledged it (although she ‘spread the blame’, as it were)

Snow has never been scared of Emma or her powers. She has been worried about who teaches Emma, but never Emma herself.

The thing that is fundamentally different now is that Snow is being fiercely protective (some might say OVERPROTECTIVE) of Neal in an effort to compensate for what happened as a result of Regina’s Curse. She herself admitted that she screwed up, so it’s not as if the writers just had her react the way she did and behaved as if it wasn’t a big deal.

willowfan21 wrote:

Why you’re taking Ingrid’s assessment of what Rumple wants at face value has me puzzled.

I’m speaking more to the fact that we have absolutely no idea what Rumple wants (which is frustrating) but that what both Ingrid and Rumple have said seems inconsistant (partly) with his character.

I’m not seeing any inconsistencies with Rumple’s character vis a vis this whole situation, primarily because we don’t know enough about what he wants for there to BE any inconsistencies to be seen.

willowfan21 wrote:

Please elaborate on what you mean.

Emma was a smart cookie and got Elsa out of the room with Elsa started having her buttons pushed by Ingrid. But Emma can’t do the same thing with herself. Ice freezes glass. This is not hard. Break the glass! Get an ice pic. Get something hard and heavy. Ingrid saved her sisters from a kidnapper but it apparently is enough to make her feel incredibly monster like for her entire life.

1) Emma was doing her job as Sheriff; you can’t do your job if you remove yourself from the situation just because somebody’s trying to push your buttons emotionally.

2) It was quicker to go to Rumple than to try and scramble to find something with which to break in to the station.

3) Ingrid’s fear of her own abilities was exaggerated in her own mind. You become so fixated on something that it consumes who you are and you cause your own destruction/unhappiness/misery.

willowfan21 wrote:

Again, please elaborate on what you mean

There were just some very clunky pieces of dialogue and ideas. “We failed today…”

I don’t see how that’s clunky, but to each their own.

willowfan21 wrote:

That was so not the point of that scene

Ok, so the point was? It was bad advice. Terrible advice. Will doesn’t know what Robin is going through, no, but on the whole, that’s bad advice. Ruining your life for love? Eek.

The point was that if you value love, it’s worth pursuing even if doing so screws your life up.

willowfan21 wrote:

How did the episode retcon Will’s storyline? The only new information we got out of his scenes with Robin were that A) he was with the Merry Men longer than “Heart of Stone” had previously led us to believe (which is consistent with the way this show expands its storylines) and B) Marian was with Robin at the time Will knew him. Neither of those new pieces of information retcons anything.

I do believe you are mistaken. Robin was not with (romantically) Marian when we met him OUATinWL, hence Robin’s distrust of magic “for a woman” (say the man who later stole a wand for Marian). Adam tweeted as much back during WL. And Will was with Robin, at most for a few days. That was what WL established, perhaps with more leeway than I’m giving the show, but not enough to hear this story “three dozen times” (even accounting for exaggeration).

Even if they DID retcon certain elements of previous storylines, why is that a bad thing? Creators retcon stuff all the time.

However, before we jump immediately to the conclusion that things have been retconned, there is another possibility to consider, which is that Will came crawling back to the Merry Men at some point after Alice got his heart back for him, at which point Marian would’ve been with Robin and may have convinced Robin to give Will a second chance, but that Will again did something to sour – or at least sever – the relationship prior to the casting of the Curse.

However, before we jump immediately to the conclusion that things have been retconned, there is another possibility to consider, which is that Will came crawling back to the Merry Men at some point after Alice got his heart back for him, at which point Marian would’ve been with Robin and may have convinced Robin to give Will a second chance, but that Will again did something to sour – or at least sever – the relationship prior to the casting of the Curse.

I have watched only a few episodes of Wonderland, but from what I caught, Cora ripped Will’s heart because she convinced him, that way he could survive the heartbreak he felt over what Anastasia did, that she had left him. I don’t know, where he kept his heart all the time, but I know he did keep it for a while in Storybrooke, that’s where Alice retrieved it from. Distinctly remember the latter, because when they arrive, Alice and her boyfriend (what’s his name?) nearly got hit by a car on the street and then we see the red car of Red drive by. From the few episodes I gathered, that the timeline of the present events in Wonderland were pretty much in sync with Storybrooke. So Will couldn’t have crawled back after he got his heart back to the Merry Men in the Enchanted Forest and met then Marian, because at that time Marian was either dead (old timeline, before Emma’s trip into the past) or had vanished because taken into the future.

I haven’t fact checked though what exactly was said, hinted at, showed in Wonderland about Will’s time with the Merry Men, but in my experience the impression of retcon comes often from a different interpretation of what has been said and shown on screen, and some uncertainty (things left ambiguous and thus open for head canon interpretations) or things remembered in a different way than shown. No offense, but we have highly emotional charged discussion here at times, and that shows.

I couldn’t care less if Robin is committing adultery in the sense of being in love with Regina while he is still married to Marian. I am sure there are some people on this board particular who see that differently and believe in marriage being a sacrament, but I am an atheist. All I see is a contract between people, those married and the community surrounding them eventually, because marriage often includes in some matter a different legal standing than unmarried and single person have. Now it’s pretty hard to include in a contract something as factual elusive as feelings of love, so no surprise that in laws mostly it’s something more verifiable like physical contact requested to break the contract. Can Robin betray Marian in matters of love if he simply doesn’t love her anymore? I know, some sure will answer yes, but I say no. He has betrayed Marian, because he was dishonest to her maybe, having not sorted out his feelings while feeling bound to some ominous code. If it was just this stupid code making him stay with Marian, go, kick it, that is a crap code.

The problem I have with Robin is a rather different one. And it mostly comes down for me to predestined (one) true love or soul mate concept, pixie dust induced or whatever. What Robin is showing IMO is not healthy care and love for Regina, it’s obsession. But I am quite sure, the show runners think, they show something different, an unwavering love, a love not giving up, trying hard to overcome all obstacles, believing in being meant for each other no matter what. Sometimes there are only nuances between a healthy, mature, unwavering love, and a rapid all consuming obsession and illusion. I guess they think they showed a conflicted man, torn between his feelings and his sense of duty and obligation, but that is not what I perceive. It might be a combination of writing and acting, but I don’t get much of a conflicted vibe from Robin, more a rather obsessive expression. One thing is lust, desire, attraction, what a lot of people confuse with love, another is trust and building rapport. The latter is something that takes time in my experience even if you feel a very strong, deep going connection with someone on first sight – and it doesn’t explode in dramatic love confessions. But maybe that’s just my experience.