7×18 "The Guardian" Favorite/Least Favorite Moments

[hjbau]

I said this last time, but Rumpel and Regina using their new fake names is just ridiculous. That should not be happening. It makes no sense at all and pulls me out of the scene every time it happens. I don’t like any of the characters who have their memories using the third fake names when they are talking to other people who also have their memories. It should stop right now.

Rumpel pointing a gun at someone seemed really silly to me. It just felt really out of character to me. Sure, Rumpel will threaten people or murder people, but not with a gun. I just can’t imagine that being his weapon of choice.

I have never been a Rumpel fan and i think his crying scenes are usually really badly done. I know many may disagree, but that is just how i feel. I thought this was only the second time where i felt that his crying scene worked and felt true to the emotion. The scene under the troll bridge where he was crying was good. I still think that they didn’t do a very good job making the obvious connection of Rumpel being a father who was separated from his son and whose son didn’t get to grow old while Alice is the child who was separated from her father and that Rumpel didn’t want to see her lose what Bae lost. How Bae lost the chance for a life and a love and to grow up with his true love and child and all that. The connection was too obvious to me and for them to not mention that seemed ridiculous. The only nod to that being Regina mentioning that Henry was Rumpel’s grandson.

The connection they made instead was that Rumpel lost his chance to grow old with his love because of the dagger and the immortality and that he didn’t want to do that to Alice, but it still felt slightly awkward because the Bae connection seemed much more on point.

The actual acting in the scenes though in this episode were solid and i liked the Alice and Rumpel scenes a lot, as well as the Rumpel and Regina scenes. The plot, world building, lack of building the narrative, lack of connecting to the history, was what was awkward and that is still the big writing problem that just can’t be fixed at this point. It is what it is.

So, while i am not a big Rumpel fan, if i take the fact that the show is just badly written out of it because of the story building problems, then this was a solid episode all by itself. Good moments.

I loved Alice and Robyn’s dates in Storybrooke. I liked the introduction of he fourth true love object. I, also, think they should have introduced their relationship at the beginning of the season and really leaned into it way back then because it’s great.

I still think that Henry learning that he is Lucy’s parent through a paternity test is just really stupid. It is just a piece of paper and there is no reason that someone couldn’t have just created that on a printer and calling the hospital is stupid and meaningless because we know a witch was holding that piece of paper. There is just no emotional resonance to that and i don’t care about it and i know people wanted Emma to do that with Snow and Charming in Season 1, but, for me, it just isn’t interesting this way. That curse needs to break already though and be done with because there is no mystery in that and trying to logic your way out of a situation when magic is involved and when people who have their memories are involved when Henry does not have his memories just doesn’t work.

[Gaultheria]

Roni, Kelly, and Weaver never murdered or raped anyone. If I’d committed a number of terrible crimes and just wanted to move on from my past rather than taking responsibility for it, I’d cling to an identity that would let me pretend I was no devil.

Gaultheria's fanvids: http://youtube.com/sagethrasher

[hjbau]

It is just a pretense though. They are all still mass murders and serial killers, and Regina, Zelena, and Hook are all rapists. The name thing doesn’t change that and they aren’t tricking the audience into thinking that they are different either. The audience doesn’t even want them to be different. The We Are Both thing never made any sense, even in the second season, and now it feels like the writers are kidding themselves.

It is just a symptom of the major writing issues on the show. The writers don’t get what is interesting. They don’t get what makes a good story. They don’t get what the audience wants. They don’t get the importance of the character’s history and layering their characters as they build their story. They just don’t know what they are doing and calling them these names is a symptom of that. I am in the fandom and they have said names before and i didn’t know who they were talking about.

They have four episodes left. I want to see Rumpel’s end and Regina’s end and Henry’s end. I want to see Alice and Robyn who know each other. Enough of this cursed, fake memories nonsense. The end is near, let’s show something that matters. And they did in this episode. This episode was about Rumpel, so people should not be calling him Weaver. It is Regina who would do anything for her son. It was Zelena in the last episode that we saw change. The pretense is pointless and distracting.

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