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At least they were kind enough to give us a “series finale” type episode (minus the redundant last scene) before all the mess started. For that I’m greatful.
[adrotate group="5"]"All your questions are pointless"
I watch the show because it is hard for me to not finish something I stated and got invested in it (I still watch Grey’s Anatomy). I had two friends who used to watch it, but one stopped after 402 with no intention to ever see it again, and the other stopped at the beginning of the current season, she might return to watch it sometime if she has the time. My mother and sister only watch it only because I do.
I don’t think the show can disappoint me anymore after 5A, it took me a long time, but finally I accepted that the show I used to love is over, it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. Now, instead of being angry, I just laugh at what they’re doing, take everything more lightly and come here and enjoy a discussion and other people’s insights and read critical reviews that I enjoy even more than the show itself.
"All your questions are pointless"
If they really had done that, it was because they needed someone who looked like dylan. I honestly don’t think they have any long term plans for Neal, they made it pretty clear that it’s Hook they want, no matter how it doesn’t make sense and that they had to sacrifice characters for this pairing to make any kind of sense.
This is just not true. They planned for Neal to be Emma’s love interest. Everything about how his character was introduced and discussed all through Season 1 then opening Season 2 showing him in New York suggests that. The fact that they decided to keep Hook on after he filmed an episode doesn’t mean he was wanted or part of the plan. He became part of the plan when they threw out the original plan.
I misunderstand me and I can see why, I really didn’t write that well.
I realize that Neal was originally supposed to be Emma’s love interest, but I don’t think that’s the reason they hand picked him, but rather someone who looks like Dylan or Robert is more plausible reason.
My comment about what their lack of plans for neal was about after they killed him and replaced him with Hook. NOW they don’t have any plans for Neal cause they gave everything to Hook.
I still don’t think Hook was ment to be just in one episode, not with the way The Crocodile set him up. He was clearly supposed to be a reccuring antagonist, he became unnecessary when they turned him into Emma’s love interest.
"All your questions are pointless"
They planned S1 and S3A well, there was a good build up and a lot of pay off in both seasons, I think when they decided to do the show: Snow White, Rumplestiltskin and Peter Pan were always their top stories they wanted to do on the show. S1 was Snow White, S2 was passing time till Peter Pan rights were available, S3 Peter Pan.
This is not even remotely true. They did not plan Neverland from the beginning.We know that to be true because they said they had another plan for Season 3 and changed it at the last minute. They may have always wanted to do Neverland characters, but they always wanted to do a bunch of stories. Neverland isn’t special in any way anymore then they wanted to do Wonderland characters or Sleeping Beauty characters or any of the other stuff they have done.
After that, after the main storylines for each character were resolved: Snow and Charming finally together, Rumple finding his son and doing the right thing and being brave at the end, Emma having a second chance at being Henry’s mom, Regina realizing her mistakes, learning to let go of Her son because that’s what’s best for him and sacrificing her happiness by helping other – mirroring the pilot, the curse was undone and the fairytale characters returned to be only stories. This is what they planned for the story, this is when the story ended. After that what we got was subpar, ships, rushness, Frozen, millions of characters, infantilized characterization, cheap unplanned twists for the sake of shock value only, etc… – Everything just seems unplanned – which it is, they just want to keep their job, which I get, I don’t have a problem with that, but they should just stop lying about everything just to make excuses for their lazy writing, they should just stop talking and avoid social media.
Everything has been unplanned since mid season 2 when they tossed out their plan and decided to do Neverland, everything has been unplanned since they randomly kept Hook even though he was supposed to be in only one episode and that’s it. This show has been a mess for awhile. This season they had clearly not planned the end when they wrote the beginning.
Like I said, they planned Neverland, but didn’t know when they’ll do it because of copyrights issue. I agree that once they had the chance, they tossed everything away (Cora suddenly defeated midseason and not at the season finale like it should) in order to do it.
Hook was definitely not ment to be just in one episode, at least not how The Crocodile presented it.
"All your questions are pointless"
The Swan Keychain is another thing they want us to forget – the last time it appeared was in 4×11 (Emma Ingrid flashback), now we have Hook’s ring, that’s just great.
"All your questions are pointless"
I know that everyone wants MRJ’s new show to go well for him, but honestly i don’t think it looks very good. If he wasn’t in it then i wouldn’t even try it. I have a hard time imagining that staying on the air, but who knows maybe it will be better then it looks. The problem being that if it looks bad a lot of people won’t even give it a chance.
Eh. TV viewing is highly subjective and individualized. There’s a niche for everyone, be it fantasy, procedurial, medical, or cerebral. GoS look intriguing enough for me to check out (and even if I don’t continue then I hope Mikey/it does well) even if it’s not the usual thing I go for (fantasy and high art/cerebral)
MRJ could make time for both shows.
Mikey making time is not the issue. ABC and NBC sharing a star is. It doesn’t happen for a reason: it’s a business more than art.
If they really had done that, it was because they needed someone who looked like dylan. I honestly don’t think they have any long term plans for Neal, they made it pretty clear that it’s Hook they want, no matter how it doesn’t make sense and that they had to sacrifice characters for this pairing to make any kind of sense.
Completely disagree. First, they did handpick MRJ. The casting call was for “Jack’ but they used that to throw people off. They brought in MRJ, sat him down next to a pic of Bobby-as-Rumple and said, “that’s your dad.” I think they did have a long term plan and there are portions of what that we see playing out now. A and E aren’t telling a brand new story; in a lot of ways they are telling the oldest story there is: light vs dark/ good vs evil. The show is ultimately about Emma’s hero journey toward selfhood and finding her place in the world with her incredibly large and weird extended family. The main point of SF was that the concept of Tallahassee can be found together even if it’s not in a literal Tallahassee. It was about the lost boy and the lost girl coming home. I have no doubt that they always intended Emma to go dark (Hero Trope!) but they replaced Neal and his role with Hook. I wrote this much clearer three-four months ago after 505. *goes digging* *obnoxiously quotes self*
My friend (@dontstopbelivin) has a great metaphor for OUAT that I think I’d like to share. The story of OUAT was a bridge and it was really Emma’s fairy tale. When we meet the Swan, she is broken hearted and closed off and has her famous walls but over the course of the show, in the end, with villains and magic and plot along the way, she opens up and becomes a fully realized Savior. Emma was always supposed to go dark (heroes journey 101) but on the other side of that darkness were her home and her family. Part of this narrative bridge was Neal and SwanFire. It was part of the structure that held up that bridge. The story of Emma becoming the fully realized Savior and a fully realized Emma Swan was finding a new kind of Tallahassee with Neal and Henry in the town of Storybrooke with the Evil Queen, Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumple, and Belle and everyone else. It was the idea that Tallahassee need not be the actual Floridian city but a feeling–it was the feeling of home. Never forget that this entire series began with Emma being cast out of her home. The ending is clear: Emma Swan comes home at long last and is embraced by and embraces all those she loves with open arms. What happened, along the way, was the the show removed those structural beams and replaced them Styrofoam. The narrative is still there: Emma will still go on her heroes journey and still rise as a fully realized Savior and fully realized Emma Swan but the poetry, the magical poetry of OUAT, is long gone. Instead of Neal, we have another character who doesn’t have the same resonance and poetic appeal that Neal did in terms of Emma’s journey to find her home and now with our current plot of Emma’s battle with the darkness. Who better to know what it means to be lost to the power of the Dark One if not Nealfire Cassidy? This entire show centered around a young boy who watched his father be over taken by the Darkness, flee from that father, and then that father seek out a way to find him again and create a Savior in the process. Hook’s character is periphery to all of that and that’s why the narrative bridge is now so lackluster and full of holes. It can’t hold up under the scrutiny it once did because it has removed its support beams
I meant they don’t have any plans for him now after they killed him off and replaced him with Hook.
I agree that it was very clear that Neal was supposed to be Emma’s main love interest from season 2 (Tallahassee, Manhattan, Second Star to the Right), and killing him off to make way for Hook was only fanservice/abc exec pushing it/ratings (pick whatever answer suits you).
"All your questions are pointless"
I know that everyone wants MRJ’s new show to go well for him, but honestly i don’t think it looks very good. If he wasn’t in it then i wouldn’t even try it
I think it’s definitely a “niche” show — but then again, so is OUAT. But I bet it’ll bring in fans from different fandoms. It’s from the same execs as Saturday Night Lights, and that has a serious audience and was very very well received by critics, so I bet at least some of those fans will give GoS a whirl. Didn’t they also do CSI? Suskunlar’s plot isn’t all that original, but every time it’s been done, it’s gotten critical acclaim: (similar plot lines were in The Sleepers, Mystic River… and maybe a stretch, but The Kite Runner has some of the same themes). I’m gonna guess they changed things up for the American version, but I’m betting that the network picked it up because that sort of story has done pretty darn well with both critics and audiences in the past. I know it’s based on a foreign show, but the formula is well-tested on a US audience.
Everything just seems unplanned – which it is, they just want to keep their job, which I get, I don’t have a problem with that, but they should just stop lying about everything just to make excuses for their lazy writing, they should just stop talking and avoid social media.
What I personally don’t get is, if they were drawing up at least one 5-year long contract (if the rumors about Bobby’s contract are indeed true), how in the blue hell did they not plan this further ahead than 2.5 seasons? I mean, that math just doesn’t add up — that’s only half way. And really, 3B is when they started “improvising.” If they were reasonably confident that they could stretch the show to 5 seasons, you’d think they’d have done their homework, and planned ahead far enough to not have egregious plot holes, character assassination, and just an overall mess. We should have seen a quality drop in Season 6, not half-way through season 3. Ugh. It just seems irresponsible. I sympathize with a “pantser” writing style, some people really do think as they write, but they have a whole team working on this, and bouncing ideas off each other. You’d think it’d be enough brain power to at least get all the world building straight and eliminate most plot holes. Unless they don’t talk to each other, which I think is really likely.
A lot of TV show runners have said: don’t make a tv series if you don’t have at least seven year plan.
When you think about it, OUAT is really headed towards its 8th season, so it’s not like they didn’t have material, it just that they try to rush everything in 9-11 episodes every season. They could have done great if they planned things properly, remained true to their characters and developed them properly.
"All your questions are pointless"
But if it’s true that MRJ did not want to leave the show and he was not fired and it really WAS “bold storytelling”, than maybe. MRJ could make time for both shows. After all, I heard A and E handpicked him and Belle. Maybe because they knew these two will have a very small but hugely significant part…? Maybe hook and pan would be the big bad and underworld is the new neverland? Why would A and E hand-pick actors? Pan: “you look so adorable, its hard to tell wich one to kill firt” Pan: “no it is’t, you. You first.” So next Belle will die and Pan will win until Golden Hero fights back by sacrificing more than just his life, this time etc.
If they really had done that, it was because they needed someone who looked like dylan. I honestly don’t think they have any long term plans for Neal, they made it pretty clear that it’s Hook they want, no matter how it doesn’t make sense and that they had to sacrifice characters for this pairing to make any kind of sense.
"All your questions are pointless"
I think that after they killed Neal, a character that was vital to the storyline, that the writers just no longer care about their story. They could kill Snow and Charming because the writers don’t care about writing a good story. Neal dying just randomly a few episodes into 3B to be forgotten as if he never was is proof of that. If this show made sense and cared about it’s character then Snow and Charming would be safe. The writers don’t care and anything could happen on this show because they don’t care.
They planned S1 and S3A well, there was a good build up and a lot of pay off in both seasons, I think when they decided to do the show: Snow White, Rumplestiltskin and Peter Pan were always their top stories they wanted to do on the show. S1 was Snow White, S2 was passing time till Peter Pan rights were available, S3 Peter Pan. After that, after the main storylines for each character were resolved: Snow and Charming finally together, Rumple finding his son and doing the right thing and being brave at the end, Emma having a second chance at being Henry’s mom, Regina realizing her mistakes, learning to let go of Her son because that’s what’s best for him and sacrificing her happiness by helping other – mirroring the pilot, the curse was undone and the fairytale characters returned to be only stories. This is what they planned for the story, this is when the story ended.
After that what we got was subpar, ships, rushness, Frozen, millions of characters, infantilized characterization, cheap unplanned twists for the sake of shock value only, etc… – Everything just seems unplanned – which it is, they just want to keep their job, which I get, I don’t have a problem with that, but they should just stop lying about everything just to make excuses for their lazy writing, they should just stop talking and avoid social media.
"All your questions are pointless"
We’re meant to forget that Arthur is still technically running around Storybrooke because we’ll never see the Camelot crew again and apparently Arthur just gave up on his evil plan because nothing is going to come of it now that the show has moved onto the next arc. They even filmed Arthur getting his comeuppance but it was deleted which is stupid because that was the resolution to the Camelot arc so now Arthur’s story has just been left hanging.
This gif accurately sums up how I feel about the storytelling of Once now
Once upon a Time- A great show that has fallen so far.
The worst thing is that they kept poor Guinevere in her mind raped state until they “feel like” and “have the time” to adress that *facepalm*. Guinevere is a symbol of everything that is wrong in this show (their treatment of women, poc and rape culture).
"All your questions are pointless"
