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Indeed, how very meta of Hook! Of course Emma and Hook weren’t always meant to be! Why? Because it was fate and destiny (A&E) who brought together SF and meant for them to be together.
It makes me wonder all the more how this whole thing went down, and who (or what alliance of forces) was behind promoting CS and getting rid of Neal. For example, do we know if JMo was on board with CS?
It just seems to me that if you take out Gideon and insert Neal in his place, you get a very different story that makes so much more sense emotionally, especially in view of the “light can only vanquish light” prophecy, and of the name Baelfire — as the comments by @Slurpeez and @Rainbow bring up. Then it would make sense why Henry would be prophesizing — it’d be essentially about his parents.
Insert in there somewhere a plot about Neal trying to save a realm of tortured children from the Black Fairy, and somehow becoming heart controlled by her, and you get a pretty symmetrical story that makes a lot of sense. Then along the way you can probably also explain a lot of Rumple’s bad decisions. This doesn’t even hinge on SF being together in the present — it just hinges on the plot accepting that they have true love. And then the final battle and the scene with Emma sacrificing herself would have been absolutely logical and emotionally quite powerful. I do have a feeling that this might have been the original intention behind the “final battle.”
[adrotate group="5"]Overall I thought this was pretty good, though the ideas were better than the execution, and the whole thing was a bit telegraphic. And while I realize that circularity and parallelisms are the bread and butter of fairytales, some of the ways they brought things back was on the nose, but much was either a stretch or didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Also I missed the beginning of the first episode, so this is a review of the two episodes together.
Liked:
The inversions — Henry kissing Emma awake, Snow kissing Charming awake (though why that worked, is beyond be… But I do love Snowing, classist chauvinist jerks that they are)
Henry drawing a book for Emma
The callbacks to the previous seasons: like the Hook and Charming adventure on the bean stalk though it kinda made zero sense of why that was still a thing. Also, considering how fresh those giant cherries looked, they made a strange boulder like noise when they moved — I’d imagine fresh cherries to sound squishier.
I’m glad that Rumbelle got a happy ending, but I also think Rumple’s redemption was a bit too telegraphic considering how much the writers darkened his character because they couldn’t figure out what else to do with him between 3B and now. Here’s a dude who’s made systematically terrible decisions for the last 3 seasons, and here suddenly he flawlessly turns down every single indecent proposal with the grim satisfaction of hanging up on a telemarketer. Really? The accelerated redemption also meant that the show had to make BF evil for evil’s sake — or I don’t know, was she just crazy? At least Peter Pan seemed to have some kind of motivation that was organic to the character, but Black Fairy made very limited sense as a character.
EQ also kind of suffered from the same “suddenly, moral uprightness” problem as Rumple. But you know what? I’m ok with it. I’m a sucker for a happy ending. I’m actually glad EQ and Robin are off to a happy life of capital appropriation and redistribution. I can totally see EQ/Robin experimenting with state socialism — finally someone thinking of the peasants.
The last supper imagery was odd, but the idea of the whole family coming together and literally “breaking bread”, including Belle and Rumple, was lovely. Though there was a giant hole the size of Bae missing from the picture — this whole story would have made so much more sense with Baelfire still there, in the role of Gideon.
We got to see Neal as a toddler.
Confused:
So, why did Gideon’s heart go dark? Why exactly did he turn into a baby?
What did the BF actually want? Change the laws of magic? Snuff out the light? I am so confused by her gratuitous villainy.
Why did Emma’s lack of belief extinguish all the realms? How did those realms get on before Emma?
The slogan of “when evil and good both do the right thing” — Ok, who is the stand in for evil here? Rumple? EQ? Gideon? Because the BF, who seemingly is the biggest evil on the block, didn’t exactly do anything right.
ETA: Emma’s apartment still there — how? In Boston’s insane renting market? Ahahaha. Haha. Ha.
I knoooooow! I am so excited for this week’s episode!
I just finished catching up with Lucifer with my daughter and I can’t believe King Richard from Galavant is going to play God how awesome is that!!
I knoooooow! I am so excited for this week’s episode!
Wait… I totally didn’t put 2 and 2 together. But anyway, this looks like an awesome episode!
Agreed. I would almost prefer an entirely new cast if they want to make everyone different characters. The “wish” versions just never felt like real people, and what this show really needs in my opinion is real people that we can relate to.
Right? I wouldn’t put this past A&E though — I am perfectly ready to believe that they’d come up with the notion that taking the derivative of the derivative of already derivative characters is a sure path to originality.’
“Let’s face it — when darkness wants to prevail for all eternity, destroying light is usually on top of your to-do list.”
This right here is maybe the most asinine excuse for character motivation I have ever encountered.
As one might surmise, given Rumple’s betrayal of the heroes and his and Belle’s desire to save Gideon, “Belle and Rumple are going to be tested,” says co-showrunner Eddy Kitsis.
Oh for crying at loud, at this point this particular plot horse they’re flogging here isn’t just dead, but has long since fossilized.
Snow continues to grate with how insensitive she is to the ordeal of others. Someone’s just “killed/banished” their mother to save Emma? “Oh good, we can have the wedding tomorrow”. Snow seems to get more and more self-centred with every passing season and considering she was such an integral part of season 1 with her selflessness, it’s a shame.
The Charmings in general are pretty vomitous these days (they’ve always been, in a certain way, but it’s getting worse). It used to be that if you’re some kind of anthropomorphic magical creature, the Charmings would relegate you to the “disposable beast” category with nary a second thought (Maleficient and the Medusa come to mind). But now, it’s escalated. Here’s how I imagine Snow’s dialogue to go:
Snow: “Oh, there’s a whole realm of abused children exploited for their labor in magical mines? Well, how terrible. Anyway, where were we, ah, yes, Emma, what corsage palette should we pick?”.
“*to Rumple* Oh you killed your mother? Great, thanks for taking care of that. Anyway, should we have a vegan gluten free option for the wedding cake, or should we ask the guest for their food allergies first?”
The more I watch the Handmaid’s tale, the more Snow reminds me of the commanders’ wives social class.
So, I watched through the 4 first episodes last night. Some random thoughts:
I find the flashbacks really intriguing but also super frustrating. As in, how did that world get to this? I don’t remember enough of the world building in the book to quite figure out what’s happening, but I find myself really curious about the mechanics of the coup, which I think presupposes a particular kind of gendered alliance across other social fractures (like class and race), but also presupposes a homogeneity to the United States that I don’t think is there? Can someone remind me whether Gilead is just New England, or whether that’s the broader US?
There are points where the show’s 1980s feminism sort of shows, in that race is not a dividing line (and class is also sort of skirted around).
I think the dynamic between Ofred and Serena is probably one of the most interesting aspects of the show. From the book, we know that Serena — and women like her — have helped usher this particular world into being, but are now being completely sidelined by the very thing they fought for. With Serena, the way she’s played feels to me so similar to Cersei from GOT — that seething rage just below the surface at her own powerlessness. The main difference is that Cersei was born into that system, whereas Serena actually helped produce it. So I guess I’m interested in the shades of complicity that the show is exploring: for example, I find the Aunties loathsome, but they seem to be simply sadistic religious zealots animated by a very authoritarian, vindictive reading of the Old Testament that got cherry picked to maximize the oppressive message. But Serena is a different kind of creature — is the idea that women like her were complicit with the coup in a (mistaken) bid to maximize their own power and social authority, a complicity that then backfired? And if so, does she buy into the ideology?
Not so shocking when you consider that animals in the meat and dairy industry are routinely subjected to this kind of abuse. I mean, I know this story isn’t about animal rights, but as mentioned above, it comes down to this.
I agree. These are not separate processes though — reducing humans to “bare” animality has been at the heart of all sorts of 20th and 21st century projects of power (think concentration or detension camps for the most obvious example). But if you want to think with industrial ag, I don’t know if the allegory of Ofred’s reduction to her reproductive function is actually animalization — I think that analogy is a little bit off. This isn’t the paradigm within which this world operates: otherwise you’d see mass confinement & artificial insemination, along with all sorts of eugenic logics of breeding the best stock and maximization. Whereas here you’re seeing this really complicated relationship to surrogacy mediated by religious dogma.
Ok, I finally got to watch the first episode (it’s crazy at work right now, so not much free time, sadly). So far, my impressions are based on this first impressions/first episode sort of thing.
So, first of all, there is something about the pace and cinematography that I find profoundly (and very effectively) unsettling. The narrative pace is really slow, but somehow it makes it quite effective — the best analogy I can come up with is the feel of Tarkovsky’s or Lars vor Trier’s work, where the irritation at the slow pace is part of the visceral experience of discomfort that the work tries to produce. There’s an incredible bleakness to the slow pacing and over-intimate close ups that capture minute changes in expression — or their lack.
The other thing that the series makes really obvious is the role of other women in perpetuating oppression. I think it highlights that the patriarchy isn’t simply about men/women in the particular, or gender, but about a system of distribution of power with specific contours. Aunt Lydia’s commentary on the normalization of totalitarian violence is incredible, and terrifying — this will soon feel normal to you feels very much a propos, but it should also feel intensely familiar if we take into account the history of the 20th century. But then it struck me that what’s sort novel here is that in adult fiction, this trope isn’t always at the forefront unless the topic deals explicitly with race and/or class. But it’s totally there in YA literature. So this idea that women are not necessarily each others’ allies isn’t something I pondered when I first read Atwood in my teens — it felt obvious to me that this was the case based on generational rifts — but now that I’m an adult felt a lot more poignant (and also quite prescient of the times).
I’m curious about the political economy of the show’s world, though. As in, those supermarket veggies look a whole lot like the product of industrial agriculture — you can’t actually get such uniform fruits and vegetables without its practices of standardization (including pesticides, genetic lines, and just sheer massive scale that seeks to eliminate variation). So is industrial ag alive and well in Gilead?
That first guitar riff that starts when Hook is introducing himself is really similar to the intro to Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black, and the cadence of “let me introduce myself” sounds just like “Sympathy for the Devil”.
Anyway, I liked the song.
Did you guys see that Snow rubbed her belly after Hook said he has a date with destiny. LOL subtle OUAT very subtle.
Yes, I have frequently thought of Snow as a closet cannibal — I’m glad this is finally all but confirmed.
So I wanted to really like this episode, and to be fair, I loved the acting. Bobby hits it out of the ballpark as per usual, and Rumple’s dynamic with his family, and actually with Emma was really great. I do wish the show had made use of the Rumple/Emma tandem more, I find their bickering quite entertaining, and it brings out elements of Emma’s character that I forgot were even there, and that I really love.
Regina/Zelena were a highlight for me this episode. I usually don’t really like Zelena’s subplots, but the Wicked sisters dynamic was both funny and touching.
But then the overall writing and narrative were a bit of a mess. Why did Fiona magically turn into a fairy? What is this nonsense with using Tiger Lily’s heart, or is the stipulation that it has to be the heart of the thing you love most a byproduct of the combined spell and not the original two spells? If Saviors are born in relation to some kind of great evil that they are meant to defeat in an act of self-sacrifice, then what do we make of the idea that Rumple actually made Emma into the savior by writing her into the curse, or is that a different type of saviorhood? Also, why is there a moratorium on creating new spells?
I’m not sure how I feel about OUAT’s creepily Freudian Goldilocks dilemma in its assessment of motherhood. Joining the motherhood-as-redemption trope we now have the “mothers who loved too much” trope. Sigh. There’s just no winning with these people.
Also, the fairy tulip room with the flower linoleum. I don’t know if I felt horrified or delighted by it. I think both.
