Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
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.Quote
I so agree. It was Emma as the new fairytale character. That was the show. A show that should have hit all the beats that Emma’s journey should have been. That has all fallen completely apart with the removal of Neal. I hate how the writers still talk about the show being about hope. There is no hope with Neal dead. There is no happily ever after for Rumpel with Neal did. There is no resolution for Emma and Henry with Neal did. The complete structure of the storytelling fell apart when they made Hook a love interest and then randomly killed of Neal. It doesn’t work story wise which is so much more important then which character is more attractive.
[adrotate group="5"]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.
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.
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.
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.
Nick, you have made your point. Hook could die. We get that. I think it is very very unlikely. That’s all.
The way Regina was written in season 2 was horrible, however they managed to fix it with 303 and 309. I don’t recall that the heroes hung out with her except the awkward dinner in 210 that no one paid any attention to her, and Emma kind of invited her as an obligation, and they never forgave her until 3B.
I do agree that they have made the problems with Regina’s redemption arc better over time. I still don’t really forgive the horrible writing of it in Season 2 as well as some problems in Season 3. Also she still waffles back and forth from ripping threatening Pinocchio as a child one moment, to worry about the adult Pinocchio being murdered by Rumpel the next. To taking Belle’s heart one moment, to yelling at Emma for ripping out a girl’s heart the next. Though she has at least in recent seasons expressed some regret for the wrong things she has done. That’s something. Still i think the writing was just bad in Season 2 with regards to Regina though it is amazing compared to now, it was still the first real problem with the show and the first decline.
Really disagree with you here. I think Regina’s story from evil queen to redemption might be the only arc they have done well. Is she better evil? Maybe. But her struggle on screen, (and Lana Parrila’s acting) I’ve actually really enjoyed, and would not loop into the jumping the shark conversation at all.
I am not saying that Regina’s redemption arc is jumping the shark. I am saying that it is the bad writing that led to the decline. I understand if you disagree, people like her arc. That’s fine. I just think a lot of people at the time were talking about Regina crying and the silliness of scenes such as them showing Regina about to cry because she wasn’t invited with the family to diner after Snow and Emma finally got back to or the scene in flashback when Owen ran across the town line and behind Regina Kurt is being arrested by the controlled Graham, later who Regina both murders, and Regina cries and we are supposed to feel sorry for her. I didn’t feel sorry for Regina during either of these moments and those are not the only moments. It is terribly bad writing, in my opinion. I am not alone in that opinion.
And I also disagree with this. I think Hook was compelling up until he became Emma’s love interest. Colin O’Donoghue was so good at playing an evil pirate, and the he got so soft in season 4. It was tough to watch. what compelled me the most about Hook was trying to figure out where he stood and sided with. He was a mystery but also had very obvious intentions. And he knew he had to walk a tight line with working with Cora and getting his own revenge on Rumple when he himself possessed zero magic and could get screwed in a second. And yet, he talked his way out with words. And then, he fell in love with Emma and his character became bland and awful. The struggle didn’t feel real like it was with Regina. He just became boring and decided he was done being all revengy and what not. If you’re going to say the show jumped the shark before season 4A, the point where they made CS shippers happy by putting Emma and Hook together was it.
We are not disagreeing. I thought Hook was fine as a villain, my point was his character was awful, he was an evil villain up until they flipped a switch at the end of Season 2/the beginning of Season 3 and all of the sudden out of nowhere he was a love interest. I do think he became pretty bland near the end of Season 2, but Colin broke his leg so they wrote him out of a few episodes. I never thought he was that exciting, but he was funny. Cora was way more interesting to me and was still the major villain for the season and her arc was more connected because it was connected to Regina, Snow, and Rumpel.
I do believe though the creation of a triangle, making Hook a love interest out of nowhere, was the first big jump the shark moments. There have been others since that moment, but i think that Hook being a love interest, creating the triangle, was the moment the show was irrevocably changed and it has never recovered from it.
I don’t think that the Emma/Hook relationship is the single cause for the decline in the show. I think the way Regina was written in Season 2 was the first major problem with the show. She was written as doing all of these horrible things, but we, the audience, were supposed to feel sorry for her. The good guys hung out with her and forgave her in a way that did not make any sense at all. I think that was the initial problem that caused the decline in the show as well as then having entire episodes with pretty much no Snow and Emma. Hook was not even remotely a love interest in Season 2, in my opinion. That was created for Season 3. That was jumping the shark.
Hook had til that moment been awful, trying to kill Emma and Snow, working with Cora, trying to keep Snow and Emma from getting back to Storybrooke, shooting Belle to hurt Rumpel, being locked up in jail and then wandering off to help Cora again, taking part in the torture of Regina, stealing the bean. It was only when the writers decided to change their intention for Season 3 and do Neverland and they decided to do a love triangle with Emma, Neal, and Hook that they jumped the shark. As i said before, i believe the show was declining and making Hook a love interest, creating a love triangle, was the gimmick they thought would keep the viewers interest, a failed gimmick, which i believe was the point at which the show strayed irretrievably from it’s original formula.
I am not even sure if Emma and Neal would have gotten back together. This is not about that. I just do believe that Neal and his relationships with Emma, Henry, and Rumpel were central to later plot points. That Neal’s connection with Neverland as well as being the son of a dark one, now a significant other of a dark one, via Emma becoming the dark one would have made much more sense in light of Neal then Hook. I think the complication of dark one Rumpel’s son and the true love couple Snow and Charming was supposed to be central to the show. I believe that the moment they decided to make a love interest of Hook as a gimmick that they thought would bring in viewers as jumping the shark and that it irretrievably changed the show from it’s original formula.
Actually, I believe Brigitte said that she was co-writing her episode with somebody else, which would make sense since she’s a new writer. She might be writing 519 with Jane. Also, you’re forgetting that we have 12 episodes in 5B this time around, not 11. So yes, we should be getting a 523 this Season.
We don’t know for sure if there is going to be 23 episodes for season. That information was suspect. That was amidst the confusing discussions about which episode would be the finale of 5A. There may be, but there might not be.
