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Has anyone theorized that Rumple will try and separate himself so that the “lighter” side can wake Belle?
Nope, but *jots down for podcast tonight*
Since Belle has a tendency to leave Rumple whenever he’s on his “better” behavior, and while that might not be an objective assessment of Belle’s real preferences, I do suspect it factors into Rumple’s perception of what she likes about him. Which makes me think that he probably doesn’t think it’d work, but who knows, I can definitely see the show going in that direction.
Another alternative is that I wouldn’t be surprised if Rumple, who is at his “darkest” in this season, takes the serum because he feels that the weak/light part of him is slowing him down. And then it’ll be up to Spinner Rumple to actually step up to the plate.
1) What was your favorite episode of S5B?
A tie between Our Decay, Sisters, and Untold Stories.
2) What was your least favorite episode of S5B?
Brother Jones // Last Rites
3) What did you think of Hades and the Underworld?
I thought Greg Germann’s portrayal of Hades was, for the most part, fantastic. I wasn’t a fan of the ear popping/blue hair effect, and Hades could have used a more fleshed out back story. As it stood, I still have no idea who Hades really was or what motivated him. UB was alright, but the world building ended up being shoddy, as usual. OUAT would do so much better if they actually treated the world it’s set in as an actual character — which, as I recall, was the explicit premise of Lost, right?
4) What was your favorite and least favorite moment?
Favorite: Neal and Emma in the bug; some of the complex dialogues between Rumple/Belle; Regina/Emma; and Gold/Regina. Every time we got to see Barbara Hershey. Cruella.
Least favorite: Robin dying. Emma and Hook making out in front of Robin’s casket. Actually, increasingly, everything to do with Emma. I’m hoping they don’t reboot her character yet again in S6. Also, every time Rumple does something because Powerz and Evilz, and where an actual exploration of what (ought) to motivate the character is replaced by a facile retcon.
5) We had a lot of old favorite (and least favorite) characters return this arc; which character did you most like seeing?
Cora, Cruella, Ruby, the Blind Witch, Henry Sr, and of course Neal.
Who do you wish we saw?
Graham. Also, is King George still alive? (not that I want to see him, but he’s been in those mines an awful long time).
6) Thing you’re most looking forward to in S6?
More of an exploration of darkness/light. Hoping for the romance sub-genre which has dominated the show for a few seasons to recede into the background a bit and let some other themes breathe. EQ and maybe other characters’ evil sides becoming enfleshed and running amok. More than anything, I will breathe a sigh of relief once we move beyond Disney. I’ve never been a huge fan of Disney to begin with, probably because I didn’t really grow up with it, and so I don’t associate it as much with a sense of childhood nostalgia. Coming to it more as an adult, I can’t help but see the “darker” side of it — like the latent misogyny coupled with just plain old capitalist greed. So while S1 was this really intriguing reconceptualization of really famous fairytales, with many renditions (Disney one among many others), the subsequent focus on “Disney brand” products (Frozen, Brave) started feeling really opportunistic and narratively lazy, probably in part because copyright issues prevented the show runners from taking liberties with the plot. I know I’m probably in the minority here in terms of my distaste for Disney, but I am relieved that S6 might be moving away from it. I think if the set-up for S6 had been another Disney movie, I would’ve called it quits, but now I’m actually intrigued by what S6 might bring. Stevenson, Verne, Cervantes etc might all be really fun authors to explore, and both Stevenson and Verne were terrifically prolific writers, so there’s a ton of stuff. I would also love for them to stick with the “gothic horror” aesthetic for at least part of the season.
7) Overall grade and final thoughts on S5B?
As an overall arc, the writing didn’t hold together. Individual episodes had some really interesting and chewy themes, and some witty dialogues, but the overall narrative didn’t gel. The acting, though, was really really good, and sometimes just stellar. B-/C+?
Robin hasn’t been dead for all of a two weeks, and some Oncers are already shipping Regina with this Hyde guy!!!???!! Seriously??? They’ve already named the ship Ryde?!!
*sigh* Oncers gonna ship.
Are they shipping Regina, or EQ though (the pic looks like an EQ outfit)?
On that note, if OUAT goes with the whole separate out the darkness plot line, and has more than one character affected by it, I can imagine that it would lead to some pretty messy romantic entanglements. (Say, if Hook is divided into Killian and Captain Hook, which one is Emma dating…? It gets even more messy with Rumple.) And what happens if EQ likes Hyde but Regina doesn’t? (I assume that EQ survived because she’s Regina’s psychic siamese twin).
Is anyone else super annoyed that Snow basically threw Belle under the bus to save Hook, Charming and her own skin? (I doubt she dives a darn about Zelena). Snow just couldn’t keep her big fat mouth shut and basically planted the idea in Hyde’s mind to target the dark one’s wife and unborn child. Ugh!
I was. But that’s typical of Snow and the rest. None of them give a flying rodent’s backside about Belle. So while it’s all well and good to berate Rumple (he is being a questionable jerk, as he does, no argument from me), he’s also the only one batting for Belle’s team on this show, ever. So while he did, certainly, screw up with that crystal (because PLOT needs Rumple to do this), I think it’s useful to put this in context. None of the “heroes” are going to lift a finger to help Belle. Not even her father will lift a finger to help Belle.
The girl needs better friends.
Right he certainly is in the novella….but there’s something quasi-heroic about him bringing all the forgotten stories to SB so that they might finish out their narratives.
I get the feeling that OUAT’s Hyde is at the “misguided fanatic” end of the evil spectrum. Doesn’t he come across like a bit of a cultist? Come to think of it, OUAT never really had an “ideologue” villain to date, right? I can’t think of anyone, except for GOAT, but they hardly count.
I can see Hyde getting Jekyll to manufacture a large dose of serum and dumping it into SB’s water system, in order to liberate each person’s “stronger” self from the sniveling morass of morality. Or something like that. Maybe this ties into the unfinished stories — perhaps Hyde thinks the stories are unfinished because their protagonists are weak, and need an injection of ooomph.
I think there’s an interesting question in there somewhere about what constitutes “villainy” on OUAT.
However, I’m still waiting for a rather large villain to show after Hyde. But maybe I’m wrong.
I definitely think they are gearing up to a “civil war” theme for S6. It would certainly be a way to get the existing audience to re-invest in the show and stick around. If they continue with what they’re setting up with EQ, Rumple, and J/H, the new theme is “morality/goodness/”light” is weakness.” I suppose it’s a reprise of Cora’s little mantra “love is weakness,” and we know Cora recanted at the end, so that’ll be the trajectory here too. The other theme is “you can’t stuff the darkness under the rug.” It’s less clear to me how they might handle that one.
It doesn’t help that natural human lifespans are so short compared to Rumpel’s. The people in his life must seem like badly-behaved pets, and he has to start preparing to lose them to old age from the moment he meets them.
LOL I think this might be my favorite description of Rumple ever 🙂 There is something to be said in assuming that Rumple isn’t actually human. And therefore the scale we’re using to measure him is a bit off.
More generally, to @RG’s prompt — I think Rumple’s character is asked to do two mutually exclusive things. On the one hand, he is asked to fill every plot hole and villain vacuum that shows up on the show, which requires him to literally know every single magical or relevant creature in all the realms, and to tug at all the strings, and embody a kind of realpolitik ethic. At the same time, he serves as a power-up for whoever is the villain of the week, where he’s put in the position of serving someone else’s agenda, until he manages to wiggle himself out of it, because lets face it, none of these villains without Rumple would get anywhere. On the other hand, he is required to be a shortsighted idiot when (1) it comes to protecting the people he loves, and (2) when the plot demands it. As a result he’s occasionally making both morally and intellectually dimwitted decisions (Crystal Gate, Hyde deal). But this results in exactly what we’re discussion here. So there are two readings of Rumple:
1) Rumple’s a clever dude, how can he be such an idiot? He must love power/be evil incarnate.
2) Rumple’s a bit of a social idiot when it comes to his loved ones, and also has a long list of insecurities. It’s a wonder he didn’t do something even more stupid and destructive. He doesn’t mean mean, unless you’re a disposable peasant or the villain of the week who tried to enslave him.
I think the scene is left ambiguous. Nor do I think the toddler vs laptop vs cat analogy holds. We’d have to assume that your toddler is asleep in an indestructible miniature safe, where he/she is more or less frozen in time and can come to no harm. Said toddler is also, for all intents and purposes, in a coma, and depends on you to find a cure to bring them back to life. Your previous efforts to do so with Baby Advil and Tiger Balm have failed. So toddler’s indestructible, but not strictly speaking alive. Imagine that your laptop holds — whatever, your dissertation, your latest novel, the cure for cancer, what have you. What do you grab? (Also, who doesn’t back-up these days???)
If Rumple thought Belle was safe in the box, no matter what realm she was in, and that by having the crystal he’d have access to magic/ability to open portals and go looking, then I can see how he might go for the crystal. Rumple at this point must think like an immortal. Belle’s on ice. He’s in no hurry, as long as he can hold on to his magic. Also, considering Storybrooke is a megalomaniac villain magnet, having magic seems like a good call.
I have mixed feelings about this one. Only You I wasn’t at all crazy about. Untold Story was a lot better, but I think it still suffers from a lot of the problems OUAT’s been suffering from lately: random plot devices, illogical or erratic character behavior to fit with the plot, hand-wavy and poorly developed cosmology that must constantly retcon itself to make any sense.
Liked:
There was some amazing acting (mostly from Lana, who stole the show, and RC who seems to be back in the swing of things, very Season 1 Gold-esque), and some really good dialogue with rich themes embedded in what is otherwise a long string of nonsensical camp.
Regina and Emma’s dialogue. These two are so much more interesting together than with their respective significant others (RIP Robin, though).
I adore the Rumple/Regina dynamic. Despite the utter ridiculousness of the rain of MacGuffins that otherwise peppered this episode, those two just knock it out of the ballpark. I had to re-watch that scene where they are walking together down the street and discussing the nature of darkness and light.
Some of the themes. The question that Rumple raises with Regina: is darkness best repressed or balanced out? Does being good/light make you weak? Is Regina destined to be miserable unless she literally kills off a part of her (the EQ), and if so, where does that leave the rest of us who don’t have access to such nifty tools? We know Rumple’s wrong, from OUAT’s perspective — liking the darkness isn’t a good place to be, because The Dragon says so — but is there a way to acknowledge what he is saying without dismissing him? I don’t love how Rumple’s written these days, but he’s got a point. Trying to shove it all under the rug isn’t the way to transcend the duality.
Mixed:
Good grief, but the MacGuffins. It’s like MacGuffins should be their own category of people at this point, who get their unfinished stories. OUAT as a post-modern study of agency and materiality. Let’s see: there’s the Dark Grail, presumably the illegitimate love child of the Sorcerer’s Hat and the Holy Grail; Pandora’s Box; the Crystal Tip from Zeus’s Olympian Tool; the Spinning (BPA-Free) Water Lotus; the assortment of wands of which I have lost track; the Syringe of Red Doom; and the utterly useless Silver Tray. Did I forget anything?
Jekyll/Hyde. I didn’t necessarily mind the story in and of itself, but I have this vivid memory of seeing the 1990 adaptation with Michael Caine when I was a kid, and being utterly utterly terrified. In comparison, this is so silly and Marvel-esque that I can’t help but feel sad over the loss of the horror of the initial novella, and some of the really brilliant screen adaptation.
Disliked:
I cringe when OUAT decides to do its potpourri cultural appropriation. I like The Dragon’s character, but it’s also a bit offensive in how much of an over the top cultural stereotype they made of him. Also, I do hope he’s not really dead.
Snow and Emma talking Regina into killing her alter-ego. Isn’t there a moral quandary over this? I mean, if, once separated, EQ becomes her own person, that seems rather anti-heroic. But this is one of my biggest dislikes about this show — the absolutely naive self-centeredness of the Charming clan. It works like this: if anyone who isn’t the Charmings takes the realpolitik approach, they are villains and sliding into evil. If it’s Snow or Emma, they’ll have a nice hopeful talk about family, pat each other on the back, and that’ll be the end of it. I just wish, for once, that Emma or Snow would actually acknowledge that sometimes they make ugly decisions and give ugly advice, and that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s all good because they’re heroes.
So Gold’s default persona/role is sort of the Henry Kissinger of OUAT. He’s a realpolitik kind of guy, and makes no bones about it. And that’s just fine. But where there is a new villain on the scene, the writer’s favorite trick is to somehow make Rumple subservient to that villain. Either through the dagger, or through a deal, or through some silly plot revision we’ve never heard about before. That’s their shtick. And honestly, it’s getting old, because it requires for Rumple to act out of character, i.e. be dumber than he is. But he’s asked to do both for the sake of the plot: to be the master manipulator who tugs at all the strings and somehow knows every single character in all the realms, and also make idiotic and short-sighted decisions for the sake of drama (going after the crystal) and plot (making a deal with Hyde for something that sounded like a wild goose chase if I’ve ever heard one).
Can Henry be more of an idiot? I understand that he’s a teenager, and prone to black and white thinking, but good grief. Also, while I understand the intent of the wishing fountain scene, it was a cringe fest. Lana, RC, and Emma carried it, but it fell pretty darn flat.
