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Thanks for starting this topic, Josephine. I saw a similar topic at IMDb yesterday that I’m not sure if someone already did here or not, but I thought would be interesting to answer. It was which season’s first half have you preferred so far, either season 1’s or season 2’s.
Surprisingly, even though both seasons had problems, I actually would go for season 1. Perhaps my memory is more rose colored towards it since I’ve seen season 2 more recently. I mean I know the first half of last season wasn’t perfect since there were a few episodes that I considered duds for me compared to the pilot, “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, and “Desperate Souls” all of which I adored, but overall I found last season stronger because they were able to make different timelines in one episode work much better than they have this year. Plus, there’s too many new characters this season that they really haven’t utilized that well, and they haven’t utilized the older characters either so it’s very frustrating. Not that this season was bad so far, but I hope like last year, a weak first half leads to a much better second half.
@Naomi wrote:
I really want to vote for Tallahassee, but for me the FTL segments (CGI, giant) in that episode were really weak. Crocodile also had a lot of potential, but was packed too full of content, I think.
I had to vote for “Tallahassee” even though the FTL segments were weak, but the flashbacks to Emma’s life were well worth it especially since she’s been almost nonexistent in some episodes or not even in them like in “The Crocodile”. I agree that episode had potential, but there was just too much going on. Plus, as unrealistic as it may be that she actually do so, Jane Espenson should be the only one allowed to write character centric episodes about Rumpel and Nealfire. I think the writers of “The Crocodile” were trying to be like Espenson, but their writing just didn’t have the allure that her writing usually does.
I found “The Doctor” to suffer from the same problem because they had set it up to be that Dr. Whale was finally going to have his own character-centric episode, and then it turned out to be a Regina-centric episode, which greatly disappointed me. Plus, I thought the whole Regina and Daniel story line was really weak.
Here’s my ranking for season 2:
1. “Tallahassee” – Some problems, but the flashbacks about Emma’s life with Henry’s father more than make up for the other problems, imo.
2. “We Are Both” – Overall, I think this is probably the episode with the least amount of problems this season. The present day FTL storyline and new characters were used sparingly, and those two things, especially the former, have probably been the cause of most of the problems with this season so far.
3. “Into the Deep” – Probably the only time this season that I felt that the Storybrooke and current FTL storylines actually worked well together, and it was the first time that I actually found the current FTL storyline to be interesting.
4. “Broken” – A little too much time spent with Aurora, Mulan, and Prince Philip, but overall a pretty strong way to open a season.
5. “Lady of the Lake” – Not a bad episode overall, imo, but not one I love to pieces like “The Return” or “Tallhassee” either.
6. “The Crocodile” – There were parts of this episode I enjoyed, and it’s always great to see more of Robert Carlyle as Rumpelstiltskin, but there was just too much going on overall. Plus, I think they’ve shown Rumpel to be very evil with him killing the mute maid or him turning someone into a snail and then stomping on them, that I don’t think they had to have him rip out the mother of his child’s heart and crush it and also have him turn a young girl to the Dark Side in one episode right after the other. I do think he will eventually work on redeeming himself like Regina is trying to do now, but when they write him like that, it’s hard to believe that he can actually do so because it seems like they’re trying to stack the deck to make Regina look better instead of just writing them both at an equal level. Personally, I think they’re both at the same level, but I found that last season there was more hope for Rumple because he was trying to save his son’s life and ended up getting turned into the Dark One whereas they gave Regina a weak reason, imo, as to why she chose the path that she did. This season so far, it seems they want to retcon last season by making Regina seem like “poor Regina” all the time even if it means making the Charmings look bad, and it just frustrates me because imo, she still has a long ways to go to redeem herself, imo, no matter how much they try to make other characters look bad to prop her up.
7. “Queen of Hearts” – I was very disappointed because “Into the Deep” was such a strong episode, that I thought it would be like last year where “An Apple Red as Blood” lead to an even better finale, but there was too much filler with the Princesses being stuck in the cell. Plus, besides the subtext with Mulan putting back in Aurora’s heart, it was a poor way, imo, to write off two new characters. There was also the “poor Regina” scene at the end which I hated. Not saying that the “good” guys always do the right thing, but if I were the Charmings, Red, or the Dwarves, I don’t know if I would ever forgive the Evil Queen for her actions of taking away my agency for 28 years and making me believe I was someone that I wasn’t not to mention all of the other crimes that she’s guilty of.
8. “The Doctor” – I was disappointed because it should have been a Dr. Whale-centric episode instead of another Regina episode. Plus, it doesn’t make any sense that Regina could have preserved Daniel’s body because she doesn’t even learn how to do magic until later on, and I really can’t see Cora being the type to preserve Daniel’s body for Regina.
9. “Child of the Moon” – It was just very awkward all around. It didn’t really fit in with the other episodes this season because they really haven’t done much with Red except for “We Are Both” despite making her a regular. Perhaps if it would have came right after “We Are Both”, maybe it would have fit in better. There wasn’t only that either, but the whole subplot with the wolf pack. It could have been interesting, but I found it boring overall since everything is resolved in one episode and poor CGI again.[adrotate group="5"]@Gypsy wrote:
I was stating my opinion, not goading anything.
I didn’t say I don’t want ppl talking about Hook, I said he’s in every topic….whether it’s about Hook or not, so, kinda hard to avoid.
I know Hook and Emma are not dating…I didn’t say they were.
As for the poll….yes, there is a reason for it.Yes, Internet polls don’t really mean much because of how they can be manipulated. Plus, the majority of people that watch the show are casual viewers meaning that they watch it every week, but they don’t read/write/vote/tweet/Facebook/etc. about the show on the Internet. It’s the Snakes on the Plane phenomenon all over again when people give too much weight to how much people on the Internet love something. Many in the media overestimated that movie being a big hit, but it was only a modest hit. It happens time and time again when something that is popular on the Internet doesn’t translate well to the general public.
With all that being said, I wouldn’t even classify Hook or Captain Swan really being that popular on the Internet like say Grumpy Cat is now or the house that has the Christmas lights synchronized to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” because those are Internet phenomenon that have crossed over into the mainstream media through newspaper articles or being featured in clips on the news or in commercials.
It all depends on what site is visited. For instance, at Television Without Pity, an Internet site that has crossed over into the mainstream media by being featured on shows like The West Wing or My Name Is Earl, there’s a very small number of Hookers and even smaller number of CaptainSwan shippers that post. Most of the OUaT posters there don’t ship Emma with anyone right now or feel that Emma doesn’t need to be paired up with anyone at all.
At IMDb, which is also what I consider a crossover site, it fluctuates depending on what’s happening on the show or what’s happening in spoilers. Right now a lot of regular posters there do not want Bae to be Neal because of the recent spoilers of Gold being in NYC, but they prefer Neal over Hook for Emma because of Hook’s treatment of women. Before “Queen of Hearts” and the back slapping of Belle scene, the Captain Swan and/or Hookers were definitely a lot more vocal, but after that scene, they’ve mostly disappeared or clammed up about Hook. However, I don’t really think that there’s one dominant Emma ship over there because there seems to be an equal number of SwanFire, CaptainSwan, SwanQueen, MadSwan, HuntedSwan, WoodenSwan, GoldenSwan, RedSwan, and LoneSwan shippers.
At this forum, I think there are probably an equal number of SwanFire/SwanThief shippers versus Captain Swan shippers along with a other posters that have other Emma ships. At FanForum.com, there’s more SwanThief fans, (they don’t call it SwanFire yet), then CaptainHook fans, there’s 62 names versus 53 names that are listed on the crew for each ship. At the Once Upon a Fan Site Forums, I would say that SwanQueen is still the most popular Emma ship.
@Midnight Dreary wrote:
^I’m with you. Looks do not factor into my love for a character. My favorite character is Rumpel/Gold, and he’s not a hot young guy. The depth of his character and the actor’s performance is what makes me love him.
Yes, I totally agree. Just like chemistry being subjective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There’s many attractive men on the show in their own ways, but some of them just don’t do anything for me. Like I think that Josh Dallas is technically the best looking, but he doesn’t do a whole lot for me as Charming/David whereas I am strangely attracted to David Anders because of how funny he can be on the show even when he’s being a total perv. Or I think that Jamie Dornan and Eion Bailey are probably thought of as being prettier than someone like Michael Raymond-James, but I’m attracted to the latter but have never been to the other two men.
Part of it is definitely the acting/writing because I found MRJ very attractive on Terriers and now OUaT, but I didn’t like him on True Blood. Or with Colin O’Donoghue, I think he’s a cutie pie outside of OUaT, but I don’t find him attractive as Captain Hook with the eyeliner and attitude because sometimes he reminds me too much of an emo Captain Jack Sparrow especially before the last two episodes aired. When he’s outside of the show, I think his non-eyeliner looks really would have worked as Prince Eric, but unfortunately I don’t think they’ll combine Hook and Prince Eric into one character. (Not that I have anything against men with eyeliner who look like they’re wearing eyeliner because I loved Nestor Carbonell on Lost and in the new Batman movies. Of course, when he was on Suddenly Susan, he didn’t do anything for me then probably because his character never got to do much except, but then I saw him on The Tick and have loved him ever since.)
@AllThatGlitters wrote:
Yet people want Rumpelstiltskin and Regina to find love and they also did absolutely horrible things. They ruined MANY lives and killed MANY people. We’ve only seen a brief glimpse into into Hook’s background so I think it is too soon to judge exactly what kind of person he is. I can make an assumption that he is so fueled by revenge that he does terrible things but I do think that he has some sort of code. It’s not always what we think is the most correct thing to do, but he does seem to have some compassion i.e. getting back Aurora’s heart. I just think he is a character that still needs to be developed fully. His character keeps us guessing, and I think the writers did that on purpose.
Well I wouldn’t say everyone wants that. There are a lot of EvilRegal and Dearie fans, on the Internet, that want them to find love. However, there’s also a good percentage of fans that don’t have an easy label that only like Regina and Rumpelstiltskin because they’re villains but would never ship them with anyone, at least anyone good, because they want them to stay evil. Or if they’re redeemed have it be a long drawn out realistic process that they go through because they want it for their sake not because of someone else like Henry or Belle. There’s not many of these kind of people here; although on chat, I find that there are, but there are a lot at Television Without Pity.
I sort of vacillate between wanting the Rumpel and Regina redeeming themselves and eventually finding love, but at other times, I just want them to stay who they are because I think the show tends to be better with them as the villains. Maybe if they introduce other villains it will change, but while Cora makes for a great baddie, she still doesn’t compare to Rumpel and Regina to me. Likewise, I love that Hook is doing more villainous things, but he doesn’t compare either, imo.
Anyhow, I can accept Regina and Rumpel eventually getting a happy ending whether that involves love with someone else or not, but they really have to work for it. I also hope that they choose to be good for their own sake and not because they feel they have to, to please Henry, Belle, Bae, or whomever. Right now I don’t think that they’re even close to that point though.
However, I can root for them to get there because the show has given them enough layers, at least for me, that they were good people a long time ago that made the wrong choice at one point, and then they kept making the wrong choices that made them worse and worse inside. With Hook, he’s always come across as a bully to me even before Milah was murdered.
Then, there’s also the fact that while the show can make the villains sympathetic, I feel they don’t all need to be redeemed in fact, I think the show would get very boring, if every villain redeemed himself/herself. So while Cora may have been forced into a situation where her father, perhaps, pushed her into lying to a King or the original Henry about her gold spinning ability or something along those lines, I don’t want to see her next season, in a story line like her daughter is in now. Likewise, King George may have become bitter and mad because of the loss of his true love and then the loss of his son, I don’t want to see him next season trying to make amends to David.
For me, it’s the same as with Hook. While I definitely don’t think Milah deserved to be murdered, and I can understand Hook wanting revenge above all else because of the love that he had for her, I don’t want to see him redeemed through the love of a good woman. It’s too similar to the Rumpel and Belle storyline, imo, and while I think that kind of story of a good woman redeeming the bad boy for them, I don’t think it would work for Emma.
I think it works because Belle is written differently than Emma. She’s strong in her own way, but she’s more naive and certainly less cynical than Emma. With Belle her optimism can also be a flaw, so I think that works well with Rumbelle. It’s just very difficult for me to see Emma being in a relationship where she comes across as naive and wanting to fix the bad boy. If she were at the age she was when she and Neal first were together, then it would make more sense. However, she’s now almost 30, has a son that just came back into her life, and is still trying to get a grasp on everything that she’s learned in the past year, so I don’t really see her being in that kind of frame of mind where she wants to “fix” her partner. If she had a personality like that, it would make sense, but seeing her interact with potential romantic interests over the past one and half seasons, I’ve never gotten the impression that Emma has ever wanted to be the type to want to “fix” her partner.
As for Hook and Emma, there was definitely chemistry there but I’m not sure if the writers are just going to tease this relationship or actually follow through with it. Emma found that Hook challenged her and was a partner in crime that intrigues her since it is similar to the relationship she had with Neal. I think the only way more people will accept the relationship with Hook and Emma (if it happens) is if he goes on a path of redemption and proves to Emma (and the audience) that he is worthy of that affection.
I think that chemistry is very subjective, and that while it’s great if a fictional relationship has a lot of it, there will always be people who think that a couple doesn’t have it. For me, Hook and Emma are like that since many people think that they have it, but I just don’t see it. I think that he has sexual chemistry with Cora, Regina, Milah, and even Aurora, but I just don’t see it with Hook and Emma because he always seems to be trying way too hard. Likewise, I think that Emma has had sexual chemistry with Regina, Graham, Jefferson, and Neal, but I don’t see it in her scenes with Hook, because she always looks bored and about to roll her eyes to whatever he says.
@The Fairest wrote:
@Vampirefan12 wrote:
I love the picture of Rumple and Henry and both of them have their eyes closed.
I noticed that too. I wonder if they’re making a wish or something. Or possibly performing a spell?
…or maybe it’s just a strange coincidence. It’s hard to tell with a show about magic. 😉
Good observation. Wouldn’t that freak out/make Nealfire even angrier when he finds out that his son’s been doing magic with his father? Oooh, I can’t wait to see Robert Carlyle and MRJ have their first scene together.
@Phee wrote:
I think Ethan will be someone more significant than a random real worlder lured back into town. Didn’t they say that he’ll be recurring with the possibility of sticking around next season, or am I making that up? If so, he’s gotta be someone significant.
Yes, here’s the information from the casting call.
The casting call described him as “a major recurring guest star role with an option for next season […]. A character named Barrett. He’s in his 30s, kind and smart, but also has a very dark side and has beliefs and a way of life that he will fight fiercely to defend.”
I also think that he’s not just some random person but most likely some kind of book character, or possibly just an outsider who visited the town several times before and knows that something isn’t right about it. I think it’s more likely the former though because if he’s just an outsider, I don’t know there’s much he could do besides threatening to tell everyone about Storybrooke but even then I don’t know if people in our world would actually believe him. He could be killed off easily too if they went that route, imo, unless he does turn out to be someone really important like in slurpeez’s theory, but if he’s a book character with some kind of dark powers, it’s a good way to have him become the next Big Bad or one of the next Big Bads for next season.
This season he appears innocent because he is laid up in the hospital possibly seeming like he’s on the verge of dying. I could even see him befriending people that have been connected to the hospital like Dr. Whale, Snow, Belle, and/or the Blue Fairy, and everyone believing that he’s a harmless regular guy until they reveal the twist.
@Marilou wrote:
here is my theory on that, there is a massive patch of black ice/permafrost near that storybrook sign that causes everyone that is not aware of it to have a car accident. :ugeek:
lol, that would be pretty funny if that turned out to be the reason why there’s so many accidents the whole time near the Storybrooke’s border.
Thanks Kranen.
It’s pretty cool that those were your questions. The Peter Pan question was definitely the one that I was most interested in because I already knew that Rumpelstiltskin is able to leave town and runs into Nealfire, and that with MRJ saying that he was going to be in a lot of season 2, it was a pretty safe bet that he would have to come to Storybrooke. What I really wanted to know was whether he was Peter Pan or not because even though Colin O’Donoghue said that he didn’t know anything about a Peter Pan story in the works several weeks ago, it seemed like they might go there with Nealfire because that would have been an easy way for Hook to have learned about the Dagger.
So now that it’s been ruled out that he isn’t Peter Pan, I think he’s just Baelfire like Emma is just Emma and Henry is just Henry. This has been what I wanted since I started shipping SwanFire. I wanted them to be different from the rest of the main cast by being the only wholly original characters because I like the aspect of their ship that the writers have created a new fairy tale with their love story. Plus, besides Bae being the reason why the Curse was created, Emma being the Curse-breaker, and Henry being the only aside from the person that created the Curse to see that everyone was under the Curse, I wanted their family unit to be the only original characters in the main cast because that would be another similarity that they have in common.
I took it to mean that Regina will be very surprised to learn that Neal is actually Rumpelstiltskin's son and therefore Henry's grandfather. I think she only added the last part to try to get people to think that maybe Neal isn't actually Baelfire. She only confirms that Regina will be surprised by Henry's father's identity, which she will be because that means that Henry is not only connected to the Charmings but now to Rumpelstiltskin. However, she never confirms that she met Neal before, so she may have or may not have.
Even if she did meet him, he can still be Baelfire if Nealfire was able to travel between worlds like if he was Peter Pan or the White Rabbit.
@MagicKingdomღ wrote:
I meant their relationship issues were easy to resolve. They don’t have any personal issues between them. So the constant back and forth and needless separation is kind of tedious. That’s was proven in “Broken.” When Charming found out about MM sleeping with Whale, the only thing we got were a few funny lines and boom, it was over. Wait…well, Charming did punch him in the face. 😆
Exactly, it was tedious that they kept breaking up Snow and Charming, and then keeping them apart this year too. I expect they’ll keep doing it too, and I somewhat understand because they can’t have their happy ending quite yet. However, it does become a little bit ridiculous and repetitive if they just keep trying to create ways to have them separated all the time.
However, Rumpel and Belle need to sort out their issues. And it’s going to take a long time. And quite frankly, it should.
Oh, I definitely agree with this too, but I just don’t want them to fall into the same pattern that Snow and Charming are in. I want Belle to really break it off with Rumple for awhile, not even any dates, until he finally gets his act together. I don’t them to constantly be in a pattern where he does something bad. She gets upset. They break up, but at the end she takes him back again. Then, the next episode their fine, but in the next episode, he does something bad again. She gets mad. They break up, etc. I’m just worried that they’re heading for that type of pattern. I understand that they’re going to have a lot of ups and downs, but I don’t want it their relationship to become boring and repetitive either.
That’s why I’ve been so disenchanted by Regina’s redemption arc. It’s way too fast and not at all believable. For people who have such deep-seeded issues like Rumpel and Regina, a few episodes aren’t going to cut.
Yes, I’m not really sure if Regina’s redemption is going to take because it happened so fast, and I don’t really think she cares all that much about anyone else except Henry. So I don’t think she’s really learned that much at all right now. I just worry because it seems like the show made the first half of the season about “poor” Regina, like how they tried to make it look like Charming was in the wrong for coming into her house to rescue Henry and the end where she was sad that she didn’t get an invite for dinner, that they actually will redeem her that quickly. I can just see it when Cora starts messing with her mind; then the big reveal happens and Cora is killed or banished, and then everyone feels guilty for not believing poor, little Regina who would never hurt anyone. 🙄
