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s anyone else wondering about the time frame? When are she and Bernard having these conversations? She woke up back with William and Logan.
Yes. In fact, it is unclear to me whether all the events taking place are happening at the same time. There’s reason to think that the MiB story might not be contemporaneous to the other stories, because there are some subtle difference –like the logo and stuff.
Anyway, here are a couple of reactions.
– @RG — the gods theme is on the nose, you’re so right. Of course, this idea of turning the “otherworldy” beings into deities isn’t a new idea in science fiction, this is all over the place, especially with recent Avengers stuff. But… here’s the thing I am confused about. Is, lets call it, ‘shade worship’ an organically emergent religion among the cyborgs that stand in for First Nations, or is it part of their script? And if so, is the act of writing service workers into the script as deities a subversive move, or a protective one? And if it actually isn’t written in, all part of the new narrative being pitched by what’s his face, then speaking of metaphorical language, if religion isn’t a sign of self-awareness and symbolic thinking, I don’t know what is! So this seems like a really provocative little question that the show leaves hanging.
-Ed Harris and Anthony Hopkins are a pleasure to watch. Terrifying to see the benevolent, slightly cookie Dr Ford suddenly turn into a steely edged tyrant, but also kind of amazing and awesome. Like, you want to root for him because he’s essentially telling off the corporation(s) that think they run the show that really, they don’t, and not in the blunt force trauma of the lone hero-scientist standing up to Big Money, but as this ultimate manipulator behind the scenes. It’s like watching campy Dr. Van Helsing with a big side helping of Hannibal Lecter. Similarly, Ed Harris’s MiB is a lot more ambiguous than we originally thought, and it take virtuosity to make the literally “black hat” character take on much more nuance.
– Nihilism. This seems to be a big theme for this time around. Dolores, Maeve, and, to an extent, Hector are all skirting around freshly-found nihilism. Maeve is the most explicit one on this path. Dolores is tittering on the brink. And Hector’s a programmed nihilist (“this whole thing is bound to end badly”) but then stumbles into “real” nihilism, when his world potentially bottoms out as a result of getting caught up in Maeve’s journey. William and Logan seem on the same sort of track. Logan’s take is that “this is all a game, so who cares,” while William seems appalled by this — his sense is that morals should somehow carry over across contexts.
[adrotate group="5"]This episode, to me, felt like the epitome of filler. There’s something about this season that feels like it doesn’t quite gel. Often individual scenes and vignettes are quite good, but the way they come together is more “mystery leftovers salad” than an actual harmonious dish
6/10
Liked
The Evil Sisters bonding and gossiping over mani/pedis. With those ridiculous turbans. It was sort of delightful and absurd, especially with that lumberjack character as one of the salon workers. Ah, Mills women, you gotta love ’em, terrors that they are.
I actually didn’t mind Jasmine/Aladdin, but I thought their story was a bit flat. I did appreciate the one nod to the horrid, horrid class politics on this show — as in, the kingdom’s been suffering for a while, welcome to the 99%, lady. That was actually nice. At least they acknowledge that the nobility on this show are malignantly clueless narcissists, for the most part. And it makes me feel a lot more sympathetic towards Aladdin’s decision to not be a savior. Like, go fix your social justice problem before you go and look for a populist hero to sacrifice himself and distract the peasants from the bad schools and the unaffordable healthcare 😉 Also, hello Snow and the rest of the scooby gang.
Emma finally fessing up, with a little help from her friend “Evil!Archie”
Dislike
I can do without Rumbelle, but no Rumple except in (questionable) mention is a bit sad. I wish they’d actually try to integrate him into the main story in some capacity. It seems like his story is now completely divorced from the rest of the crew at this point.
Lets welcome the new addition to the ever expanding MacGuffin clan: The Golden Shears! They can sit over there, right by that mushroom.
Henry’s dynamic with Emma doesn’t really work for me. It’s like they’re not actually allowing Henry to grow up, and still write him exactly as they did when he was 10. The lack of complexity feels extremely awkward, and they need to address it somehow. And Emma’s focus hasn’t been on Henry — it’s been (and still is) on Hook. Therefore those supposedly touching scenes with Henry fall a bit flat because, lets face it, there’s not much emotional investment that translates on screen. Yes, the dialogue in that scene where Emma says that Henry’s the real magic in her life is lovely. But it needs to be backed up by real emotional weight, and I don’t think we’ve seen that work put into the show over the last few seasons to be able to buy it.
If I were to make a guess as to who will use them, I’m going to assume Regina, and they will sever her from Evil Queen (making EQ killable in the process)
There’s normal and even high fantasy relationship drama. And then there’s Rumbelle.
lol. Somehow this is funny, in a kind of tragicomical way.
This is more abstract than simply speaking Rumbelle, but it strikes me that one of the problems is that the entire narrative armature of the show disallows for Rumbelle to have a successful end. It’s because, as far as OUAT is concerned, we’re in a sort of post-Cold-War era. Seasons 1-3 were largely about a kind of “Cold War” (that sometimes heated up) between the Emma/Snowing faction and allies, and the Regina/EQ + henchman/henchwoman/relative of the week faction. Rumple was, in that configuration, the powerful, but largely unaligned state that went back and forth, helped and hindered both, depending on what suited his needs, and pulled the strings behind the scenes. This was a perfect role for the character.
Once Regina started down the road to redemption, the balance of power that was compelling in the early seasons got completely lopsided. Because now you have Emma + Regina vs villain of the week, and villain of the week is never all that impressive by definition (because the stakes are honestly low, we know they’re leaving). So to raise the stakes of these episodic villains, they have to have Rumple automatically throw in with them to equal out the odds. Since Belle is an allied state (though most of the time she occupies the historical role of Poland, metaphorically speaking), she is always going to side with the good guys. So there you go, this relationship is structurally doomed.
The only way to solve it is to have Rumple throw in with the good guys, but we can’t have that, since there is no big enough threat to balance out the power players. Or to have Belle go shady.
Oh wow, I just had a chance to watch this, so I have a bunch of questions/reactions, but for now they’re all jumbled.
@RG, I was having similar questions to yours, but will get back to this in a later post. But in the meantime, here’s some things I thought were really intriguing from a narrative standpoint (rather than a philosophical one, I have to think about those more):
Who is Arnold? Is he in fact the Man in Black (in that photo, which one is Arnold? The man on the right?)
Is Dr. Ford playing a double game? He disciplined one of the workers who was covering one of the hosts — what was the aim of that little demonstration? Who was its beneficiary? Is this really how he feels about hosts, or is this double-speak? What is his motive?
Were the masked berserkers at the end hosts or guests? They couldn’t be killed with bullets, but I suppose that it wouldn’t be crazy to make hosts immune to bullets if you put your mind to it. If they are actually guests, is this part of the new narrative? And if so, what is to prevent a guest form turning on another guest and potentially get away with murder?
The Stray self-destructed by way of giant boulder — was that a reaction to having the park’s staff attempt to take his head? In that sense, was that simply an act of suicide, or was he trying to destroy evidence? Was he told to do this by the voice?
1×3
– Welp, these guys handle a plutonium core with as much deference and carefulness as a pot roast.
– Lucy’s fiance seems… unbelievably understanding. Is it possible that there is more to this set up than one might expect? I am vaguely reminded of the Blacklist for some reason.
– So Rittenhous sounds like the behind the scenes conspiracy/bad guys pulling the strings, but is that what it is? That seems almost a bit predictable — whether it’s some sort of secret society or an evil corporation, I wonder if this is really where the show would go.
– I wonder how they’re going to pull the different strands together — is Flynn trying to “scaffold” some sort of event, such that each piece of the puzzle is needed (each trip back builds towards a bigger picture), or is what he’s doing more opportunistic? I.e., he goes back in time, tinkers, comes back, checks google if the desired effect was achieved, finds out it’s not, and then wash rinse repeat again?
Like @RG outlined above, I also think this is actually Rumple as he is written now. Is this the character development/choices I would have liked to see? Nope. Not even close. But this is what we get.
If you ask me, the best thing that can happen for those two as characters is to walk away and start fresh somewhere else. I used to adore Rumbelle, but this is a horrible trainwreck at this stage.
But I think you’re onto something . Something’s up with Morphetus/Morpheus. There’s just no good reason for Rumple’s kid to have any connection to Greek mythology. And technically, Hades still had that deal to claim Rumple’s firstborn so my guess is, this somehow played out. And considering the changeling title, my guess is that the baby either (1) isn’t actually Rumple’s, or (2) the baby is taken away by the Greek pantheon to be raised as Morpheus. This of course would explain why the kid hates his dad de facto.
On a side note, A&E did answer the question about whether Morpheus is really Belle’s son positively, but as I recall they never answered whether he is really Rumple’s son. Or did they?
To @RG’s original question whether the ship is done: my understanding is that for a ship to work you need to actually like both characters. Or if we have a villain in the pair, the other character needs to be (1) extremely likable and (2) they must really care about the villain character, thus transmitting some of that emotion to the audience by association.
In other words, since we know Rumple’s currently black hat, for Rumbelle to float we need to adore Belle, and Belle needs to genuinely like/care about Rumple (even if it’s not in a romantic way). But she isn’t written in a way that’s likable this season, and she sure doesn’t seem to like Rumple in any way shape or form — so in a way they are actually turning her into Milah. Belle’s coming across as using her pregnancy and Rumple’s attachment to the idea of a child to wield emotional power. Since they already have a ridiculous power difference, this is a horrible narrative choice if the goal is to retell the BB story and “empower” Belle (i.e. to write a feminist retelling, as A&E like to claim they do on this show). The ship is certainly done, but as it sinks, it does a great job demonstrating the mentality of the writers and showrunners. To me, this is a misogynist narrative, and not just because of Rumple being high-handed, but because of how Belle herself is portrayed — as the walking stereotype of the irrational, manipulative, hysterical pregnant woman. And the dynamic that comes out of this allows for Rumple’s actions to have ethical “wiggle room” because he can be viewed as reacting to and trying to mediate her irrationality.
To say this is problematic storytelling would be an understatement — it’s actually mildly nauseating.
I think the locket Mary’s wearing is the same one Hyde’s holding in the set photos, (then it’s in Rumple’s hand, then Hyde has it again in Gold’s shop. The ribbon is this really distinctive looking gauzy material, so I’m going to assume that the pendant is the same.
But if Lucy put Flynn on his path–either as a mentor or a mother–then Flynn from a time travel point of view can’t hurt her unless he erase his own history, right? Time travel gets weird because some sci-fi shows will claim that whatever happened, happened so Flynn’s own memories and experiences wouldn’t be erased (similar to Lucy actually) but it’s an idea they could play with.
Yes, so the show seems to suggest that even if the timeline changes as a result of your actions, your own experience stays unaltered (so for example, Lucy keeps the locket with her sister’s picture, and doesn’t remember having a fiance). But for some reason all the other characters take the historical changes for granted. I guess if you’re the one traveling, you are somehow exempt from the changes that you create, but that makes very little sense.
I also think it’s interesting that, so far, they’re not going with the idea that history “self-corrects,” which is one of the ways in which time travel is sometimes dealt with.
