FAVORITE MOMENTS / LEAST FAVORITE MOMENTS

[the fairest]

My only grip with the episode is that the writers are placing all of Regina’s evil deeds on the shoulders of other people. First it was Snow, then it was Rumpel manipulating her, then it was Jefferson, then it was Dr. Frankenstein. It’s like the writers are trying to sweep all of Regina’s past evil deeds under the rug by blaming other characters, and it’s not realistic. It’s getting tiring and it’s not a good way to redeem someone. In order to redeem someone, you have to accept responsibility for your evil deeds and face them. Not simply chalk it all up to other people. A good amount of Regina past evil deeds have been officially placed on the shoulders of other characters.

You nailed it. I love Regina, I really do. But the way in which the writers are going about her redemption arc is leaving me a bit empty. I’m not buying that all her sins are the fault of others. I can kind of understand Rumpel being partly to blame since he needed her for the curse, but adding Jefferson and Dr. Whale to the list is too much. In fact, this is a problem I’m having with both of our villains’ redemption arcs. Regina’s sins are being swept under the rug by blaming others, and the writers are making Rumpel TOO evil. I love seeing him make small changes for Belle and Baelfire, but his flashbacks are too harsh. It’s like the writers feel that the only way to redeem Regina is by making Rumpel look worse.

So, now we have this dilemma of one villain having zero blame and the other with too much blame. I liked how they were last season. They were pretty equal in the evil department and they we’re the perfect mix of good and bad. But now, it looks like the writers are trying to make up for Regina’s sorry excuse for becoming evil by placing all the blame on Rumpel, Jefferson, Dr. Whale, Snow and Cora. It’s too much, and it’s lazy storytelling.

Ugh, sorry but that was really eating away at me. I enjoyed the episode as whole, but that was too much for me to accept.

[cherish]

^This. 🙁

[melliemd]

Absolutely.

I also hate how they used Whale/Frankenstein as a tool for her redemption. He was so interesting and David Anders is so wonderful… Plus we’ve been waiting for a year to find out who Whale is… And it just felt like a bit of a let down for them to just let his character fall to the wayside of storytelling device. Hopefully the writers will recognize his potential more fully in future episodes.

[the fairest]

^Exactly. After last night’s episode, I’m kind of hoping that David Anders becomes a series regular. His acting was amazing and his story is ridiculously fascinating. I can’t wait to see more of him.

[RumplesGirl]

I completely agree. Regina’s character development is going way too fast. It took–what 19?–episodes for us to get to Stable Boy and see her as anything BUT the Evil Queen and now suddenly she’s all redemptive and we only had 2 episodes this season where she was the EQ we all love to hate? And I think it needs to be stressed by the writers that while she may have been manipulated, she still MADE those choices. She was never cursed or bewtiched, she CHOSE not to move on and become the Evil Queen. She could have turned Rumple down when it came to learning magic. But she loved the power, she said so. So, I’m not really happy with what the writers are doing to her in SB right now. It’s needs to be slower than this.

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

[Daniel J. Lewis]

I enjoyed the heck out of this episode! 😀 I thought it was well done and very fun. David Anders was amazing as well as Robert Carlyle, Lana Parilla and Sebastian Stan. I loved seeing them together. They looked like a group of troublemakers. And technically, that assumption isn’t too far from the truth. 😆

Favorite Moments: Rumpel and Jefferson cracking jokes together. Who would have guessed? 😆

All of victor Frankenstein’s scenes. Once Again, David Anders was amazing.

I always love seeing young Regina. She was so adorable and painfully innocent.

JEFFERSON!!!

RUMPEL!!!

GAH!!!

Now the bad news. I didn’t like how this episode was more of a dedication to Regina rather than Dr. Whale. This was supposed to be his big character centric episode, and the writers gave it to Regina. I was disappointed by that. And like others have already stated, the writers are rushing Regina’s character development a bit too much. I have a feeling that the writers are going to end up excusing all or most of her evil deeds by blaming Rumpel or anyone else who has wronged her. She’s not even the Evil Queen anymore, she’s the Misunderstood Queen. And though that may be appealing to some, I find it bit unrealistic.

[snowfalls]

@The Fairest wrote:

My only grip with the episode is that the writers are placing all of Regina’s evil deeds on the shoulders of other people. First it was Snow, then it was Rumpel manipulating her, then it was Jefferson, then it was Dr. Frankenstein. It’s like the writers are trying to sweep all of Regina’s past evil deeds under the rug by blaming other characters, and it’s not realistic. It’s getting tiring and it’s not a good way to redeem someone. In order to redeem someone, you have to accept responsibility for your evil deeds and face them. Not simply chalk it all up to other people. A good amount of Regina past evil deeds have been officially placed on the shoulders of other characters.

You nailed it. I love Regina, I really do. But the way in which the writers are going about her redemption arc is leaving me a bit empty. I’m not buying that all her sins are the fault of others. I can kind of understand Rumpel being partly to blame since he needed her for the curse, but adding Jefferson and Dr. Whale to the list is too much. In fact, this is a problem I’m having with both of our villains’ redemption arcs. Regina’s sins are being swept under the rug by blaming others, and the writers are making Rumpel TOO evil. I love seeing him make small changes for Belle and Baelfire, but his flashbacks are too harsh. It’s like the writers feel that the only way to redeem Regina is by making Rumpel look worse.

So, now we have this dilemma of one villain having zero blame and the other with too much blame. I liked how they were last season. They were pretty equal in the evil department and they we’re the perfect mix of good and bad. But now, it looks like the writers are trying to make up for Regina’s sorry excuse for becoming evil by placing all the blame on Rumpel, Jefferson, Dr. Whale, Snow and Cora. It’s too much, and it’s lazy storytelling.

Ugh, sorry but that was really eating away at me. I enjoyed the episode as whole, but that was too much for me to accept.

This is exactly how I feel. I want Regina to be redeemed. I want her to get better. But not at the expense of lessening the other characters. I have a feeling the writers are going to end up blaming every character on the show for why Regina is evil. I like what the writers are doing with Rumpel/Gold more. They show how evil he was back in the Enchanted Forest, but then they contrast it with him trying to change for Belle in Storybrooke. The writers aren’t making excuses for Rumpel. His murders haven’t been justified or swept aside. He did the crimes, but now he’s trying to change. That’s more realistic in my eyes. I prefer this as opposed to simply having a character’s sins constantly justified.

[RumplesGirl]

Exactly, Snow Falls. It’s like someone said on the previous page. Redemption isn’t having all your deed excused because of other people, it’s accepting what you did and trying to make amends. That’s why I do like what they’re doing with Rumple in FTL/EF. More of his more heinous deeds are being laid bare, but he’s trying to make up for them now in SB, with Belle, for instance. Much more realistic. And its also not as if he’s suddenly turned into a hero, he’s still Gold/Rumple. He still wields magic and needs to make deals, but he’s much more honest about it, recognizing and admitting out loud it’s because of his cowardice.

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

[elle]

I was hoping to see more of Dr. Whale/Victor Frankenstein’s development. There was a bit of his background from his world and with his brother, but he proved to be very interesting and deserved to have more screen time in this episode. 🙂

I had first thought that there would be more focus on him–I hope this episode will open to more opportunity to allow more screen time. 🙂

[timespacer]

Favorite Moment: The look on Regina’s face when she had to let Daniel die. I thought Lana Parilla gave a great performance. It was also good seeing more of the flashbacks about how she became the Evil Queen. Blaming Snow in The Stable Boy was perhaps an understandable reaction to the shock of seeing what Cora did to Daniel but it was not enough alone to explain how she became so evil. We needed to see this part of her backstory.

I don’t think the writers are going to try to redeem her by blaming all her deeds on manipulation by other people. I think they just feel that she was shown to be *so* evil that some mitigating factors have to be introduced to make her character sympathetic enough for redemption. I agree we will have to eventually see her accept responsibility for her actions and I suspect we will eventually see that, but it may take a long time. That may be part of the reason we didn’t see a scene like the one Golden Key suggested in which Henry would forgive Regina.

Personally, I would like to see a moment where he offers her a little sympathy for the pain she suffered from the loss of Daniel and the pain she had when Henry lied about meeting her for lunch, even though he can’t (and probably shouldn’t) yet forgive her completely and trust her. It could be very dramatic for her to realize Henry is offering support to her in her grief over Daniel even while he is grieving over the possible loss of Emma and MM which Regina caused. Her redemption should be a long and difficult process and right now she has no one but Archie to offer her any support. An occasional nod of support from Henry when she makes a difficult good choice (like not using magic against Charming when he didn’t want to let talk to Daniel) along with admonitions from him when she backslides (which I think will happen) could make her redemption arc more believable and more dramatic.

[Author]

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