David’s lapses

[Slurpeez]

@ Sam993: “He’s looking for answers, basically, and that’s why he’s like going nuts.” That’s why he got a referral by Dr. Whale to start getting therapy. We know from the Paleyfest interviews that he’s going to start seeing Dr. Archie Hopper. I’m really looking forward to how Archie, who knows about Henry’s book, will deal with David’s confusion. I wrote more about this on a different thread: https://oncepodcast.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=267

@filmlovernyc: “And that is why Dr. Whale suggested therapy, to get him back on track with the curse!” Perhaps Dr. Whale is somehow sinisterly involved in mind control. Yet, I think Dr. Archie Hopper, who will actually be David’s therapist, is really there to help David. We know from ep. 5 that Archie is on Henry’s side and that he threatened Regina that he’d testify against her in a custody battle. Also, Archie is a man of great conscience and will be helpful since he knows about Henry’s wacky belief in fairy tales.

I’m really excited to see how Henry responds to David’s condition! Henry is bound to have some insightful theories about what is happening to David. Henry is one smart kid.

[RumplesGirl]

If David is having some sort of flashback to his life in FTL when he was in the woods, then why was he so distant from MM? It’s like he doesn’t even know her. He comes across as someone who is being manipulated or controlled from afar. Even if he had crossed some sort of magical boundary into FTL wouldn’t he still have known Snow/MM? I’d really like to see sometime in FTL if there was a period right after Regina removed the Huntsman heart if he went through something similar. If there was a period where he was a sort of zombie, like David.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[mia]

You know, I’ve been thinking that David’s state reminded me of how Snow looked like when Grumpy found her after she drank the potion … I know the whole thing already happened years ago in FTL, but could it be an after-effect? 😐

[Slurpeez]

@ mia: Interesting observation you had.

David’s state reminded me of how Snow looked like when Grumpy found her after she drank the potion.

Snow White is going to suffer the price of drinking the potion, because all magic comes with a price. What if David’s experiencing the harmful effects of some unknown magic spell?

@ Rumplesgirl:

If David is having some sort of flashback to his life in FTL when he was in the woods, then why was he so distant from MM? It’s like he doesn’t even know her…

I agree that David appears to be looking for something other than Mary Margaret. I posted this theory elsewhere, but I think that what David is searching for is his own heart (the one Ruby found). https://oncepodcast.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=302 Maybe David can no longer feel anything since Mary Margaret’s rejection of him, and for some reason, he’s back to his “dream-walking” (as Emma called it). Mary Margaret’s kiss of life woke up David when he was found unconscious by the toll bridge in ep. 3. Perhaps her rejection of him in ep. 13 had the reverse effect. In a sense, she is reversing “true love’s kiss” when she tells him they don’t have real love. So, he doesn’t know Mary Margaret when in his catatonic, though functional, state. David is left even more confused, which causes a kind of split-personality disorder.

He comes across as someone who is being manipulated or controlled from afar.

One possibility is that Dr. Whale, who seems to be in cahoots with Regina, is adept at mind-control. Maybe Dr. Whale kept David in a drug-induced comma all those years. Maybe he’s drugging David again. He tells Emma what appears to be a reasonable explanation (that the blackouts are the same phenomena that David experienced when waking from a comma). Yet, remember how Dr. Whale lied to Mary Margaret when David showed initial signs of brain activity when David grabbed her hand? Dr. Whale clearly is sinister, and his motives appear dark to me.

Even if he had crossed some sort of magical boundary into FTL wouldn’t he still have known Snow/MM?

I think this is a good point. Why would crossing the line cause the citizens to have amnesia? That would just be counterproductive to what Regina wants. Regina really wants the citizens to have fake SB memories, and it seems like crossing the boundary would free them from that grip she’s so carefully constructed. The only way I could see that theory working is if Rumple set up the system such that by crossing the border, citizens of SB get “reset” to a basic amnesia mode and then have their FTL identities reloaded on to their hard-drives by viewing objects linked to FTL (e.g. Emma’s unicorn mobile would cause David to believe he’s really Prince Charming).

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[riddleraven]

Ok I just have to throw this out there. But I’m starting by saying that I don’t actually believe this theory it just keeps pestering me despite that. Please shot it down. *hands out guns*

When David first woke up and had amnesia and Kathryn appeared and then we found out he had a twin–I really believed that twin was the one who married Kathryn and had that life with her in SB. And once again David was just having to take his brother’s place with Abby/Kat and not get to be with Snow. His brother died in FTL but so much of SB is faked… There are pictures of him and Kathryn together, right? But he never lived that life with her. He was always in that coma. So that could’ve been a picture of his brother. Or pictures the curse created. Is it possible for the curse to create a life for a character that died in FTL too? Maybe that happened. Or maybe the twin wasn’t involved in the SB backstory and all that was extra-made-up by the curse. (Everyone else’s backstory has pretty much actually been lived out in the time they’ve been there, right?)

Anyway, I had a new theory in this episode. Maybe David and his brother share the same body (or David and Prince Charming which is much more likely), like multiple personality disorder. So he really could be a different person when he ‘blacks out’. The reason I keep thinking it’s his twin is because I watch too much TV.

@wikipedia wrote:

Dissociative identity disorder (DID, also known as multiple personality disorder–MPD) is a psychiatric diagnosis whose essential feature, “…is the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states…that recurrently take control of behavior.” The diagnosis requires that at least two personalities (one may be the host) routinely take control of the individual’s behavior with an associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness. Memory loss will occur in those with DID when an alternate part of the personality becomes dominant.

There are stories about people who suddenly disappear and it turns out they believe they’re an entirely different person and they live out that person’s life until they switch back over. And the other personality could even be the opposite gender. And sometimes they know about their other personality and sometimes they don’t. Jean Grey/Phoenix is kind of like this in X-Men (3?)… She has that other (TERRIFYING) personality that The Professor helps her to suppress. And uuuuugh I just drew a HUGE parallel between her and Ruby in this episode. First of all, the red. Second of all, she killed her husband–Cyclops–in that movie while her ‘alternate personality’ was in control, like the wolf was of Ruby. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Although really, Ruby’s was wayyyy worse. That foot! :gag:

[hjbau]

I think that the other Prince James is dead and that the pictures of David and Kathryn are just made up by the curse along with the town. I do think that it is sort of like Charming and David and these two sets of conflicting memories are in one body. That is why David is such a mess.

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