Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Yes, it tries to remove a lot of the blame Milah (and to a much lesser extent, Hook) shoulder and instead placed it on Rumple’s shoulders. Suddenly Milah isn’t just bored and unhappy; suddenly she’s been denied her own agency over her future.
Yup, whitewashing Hookah has the added bonus of making Rumple look worse.
And I’m usually the first one to point out OUAT’s ridiculous writing, but I actually thought they did find a certain balance there, in the sense that Milah was made more sympathetic (i.e. understandable), but not in any way more likable. I think what we’re meant to see is that Milah’s utterly repulsed by Rumple – physically and emotionally. This isn’t about a marriage that’s flawed but fixable. This is about the kind of relationship where the mere sight of your partner makes you want to claw your own face off. That scene where she tells him to go off and kill the “healer” and kisses him for good luck, I kept expecting her to wipe her mouth — instead she promptly takes a swig of ale, with an expression of deep distaste. So I think what we’re being showed is a woman who feels desperately trapped in a marriage in which she finds her partner revolting. It seems open to interpretation whether the MacBethian encouragement to kill might not be one way to either make Rumple into what she thinks she wants him to be — “masculine” in a very particular way — or get him killed in the process. Similarly, when he returns with the potion, it seems she is more excited about the fact that he potentially lived up to her expectations of masculinity than about saving her kid. I’m not necessarily buying the desire for more children — after all, we know that Milah wanted to travel, rather than be stuck with “responsibilities”. She does seem to have a fairly rigid idea of what her life should be — 2.5 kids, a dog, a white picket fence. But Rumple’s not providing that, and besides, she doesn’t really want it.
Anyway, we’re also not seeing Rumple through her eyes — Milah is an unreliable narrator in this case. The audience sees a Rumple we’ve been shown before — weak, but loving, good at heart and not prone to violence. Prone to terribly short-sighted decisions, but not to evil, as such. I think the tragedy of it all is that Rumple’s right, to some extent — she did contribute to making him who he is now, and he to her. They are utterly responsible for each other.
[adrotate group="5"]What I find annoying is that the writers don’t seem to be able to move RumBelle beyond the cycle of he lies, she leaves, they get back together. Every season they repeat this cycle. I wish the writers would do something different. How about if the darkness starts to corrupt Belle making her more Lacey/Dark Belle like. Rumple would then have to make a decision, does he keep the power and have to watch as Belle is dragged down by the darkness or does he give it up to save her? That is a true love vs Power decision with some real stakes.
Ahhh! This is brilliant! ABC, take note 😉 The problem you’re pointing out actually affects all the couples (and characters) though. So I’m irritated but not surprised that this is affecting Rumbelle too — I mean, just look at Hook (again with the revenge!), Emma (again with the walls!), Snow (again with “Am I a hero?”), and then Robin and Charming (flatlining for the last 3 seasons) etc etc. None of the characters are really evolving: they are either utterly stagnant or they cycle.
Why on earth would Cora risk having the same thing happen by getting pregnant with Rumple’s child? Cora’s many things but she’s not stupid.
I’ve always assumed that magic users in the EF had some kind of control over their reproductive capacities. More generally, for a “medieval” society, there seems to be an extremely low birth rate, and low maternal mortality rate. These folks should all be having 8-10 children over a life time, with a couple of dead ones along the way, resulting in, say, 3-4 kids total reaching maturity. Instead, we are getting very small families, with 1-2 children at most, and many cases of infertility. So my “sociological” assessment of the EF is that either contraception is widely available (through magic or herbs), or there’s a population-level health issue that’s limiting fertility. 😛
If a woman chooses to sleep with her husband, and he doesn’t tell her that he’s become the CEO of a company planning world-domination, does that make any difference? He is still her husband, she chose to sleep with her husband. I think the same applies to RumBelle. Although Rumple hasn’t told Belle he’s the DO, he is still Belle’s husband and Belle chose to sleep with her husband.
You know, it’s funny, I was thinking along a very similar metaphor. So on this consent issue, I tend to agree with you, @POM. Sure, it’s absolutely problematic — and the fact that she gets pregnant specifically that time feels like an especially cheap shot. But I don’t think it’s so much an issue of consent, as it is of a profoundly flawed relationship. But I think I’ve learned to apply a sliding scale to how this show interprets consent anyway, because it’s got such a horrible track record so far. *sigh*
I have a different problem with this part of the story, actually, and it has to do with Belle. I find it extremely irritating that the only way in which the writers are able to tell Belle’s story is through a damage narrative. Even in this context of her pregnancy, which should be a joyous news, there’s this potential damage looming over her. Which is to say, that Belle is only interesting when she’s a victim of something (Rumple, Hook, circumstances, the curse, etc and now potentially Hades). She temporarily overcomes her circumstances, but it’s fleeting, and she’s the victim again. This is a classic trope for a lot of narratives that deal with the “subaltern” — minorities, the poor, and for a long time, women. Like the only thing that’s worth knowing about them is how damaged they are (or how they are being progressively damaged further). This type of story doesn’t seek to find other narrative strands, other than occasional examples of doomed resistance. For a show that claims to be feminist, this is a very serious problem precisely because a feminist show would refuse this sort of story, choosing instead to portray a different kind of dynamic, even if it’s acknowledging all the bad things that are happening to Belle. What I dislike about it in particular, is that Belle is one of the only women on the show who is not “strong” because she’s not by and large like a man. I can’t help but get the message that, on OUAT, the only way to be a strong woman is to be as man-like as possible, and if not, then you are a woman, and hence the victim, the passive object. This is tediously patriarchal.
I thought overall this was a flawed episode, but it was so vastly better written than anything we’ve seen this season, in terms of both narrative and dialogue, that it stands out in the sea of mediocrity that was this season so far.
Liked:
I actually liked the Rumple/Milah dynamic. I thought the writers did a good job at showing how this dysfunctional relationship progressively spiraled further and further out of control. In a sense, Rumple and Milah are portrayed as both codependent and incompatible, and they both — very systematically — bring out the worst in each other by being who they are. I though Milah was a lot more sympathetic, even in the way her liaison with Hook played out, but I also didn’t think Rumple was really all that retconned. WoobieRumple has been portrayed as someone utterly unable to calculate the consequences of his actions, or really face them when they come up. At the same time, I don’t think it’s because he’s an idiot, as Milah said — after all, he’s capable of very complex schemes once he’s the Dark One, and I don’t think it’s just the curse. Rather, Rumple spent most of his human life feeling like he’s up against the wall, and blinded by his panic. So actually, I thought the writing was quite good — this episode showed them both as very flawed, but not entirely unsympathetic. At the same time, they are utterly destructive of each other.
Finally! Praise the gods, Emma found out about the Hook/Milah/Neal connection. Better late than never. The dialogue with Rumple was sort of priceless.
Hades makes for an excellent villain so far.
Cruella is a delight. Bambi’s mother? That was sick but hilarious.
Neal was actually at the center of this episode, even if it was just his absence. At least it was acknowledge to some extent.
Mixed:
Cultural-Appropriation-Joe, aka Fendrake the Healer. So, apparently, when the dude with the Mongolian yurt, generic medicine man necklaces, crystals, little alchemy vials, and culturally undecided facial tattoos isn’t offering shamanic workshops over the internet and promoting his new best seller “How to get rich and enlightened in 10 easy steps”, he’s swindling the peasants out of their second borns. I don’t know if this is a brilliant critique of hodge-podge New Age cultural appropriation, or a tedious barely veiled colonial-era metaphor on the medicine-man as charlatan (with potentially demonic associations). Because of OUAT’s track record with race and different cultures, I’m veering towards the latter.
Disliked:
Hook. I don’t love that character anyway, to say the least, but at this point I find he really needs a new goal in life. Trying to kill Rumble for revenge is getting so incredibly old and boring. The writers really need to think what they want to do with him.
This is a more general dislike, but OUAT really doesn’t know where to draw the line sometimes. The snake/100 gold pieces/second born/kill the healer thing is sort of in that same category as transferring the potential for darkness. I can see what they’re trying to set up — an impossible choice, that also then moves the plot along — but it’s entirely too convoluted and hand-wavy. I get it, complicated morality is complicated, but I think there could have been a more convincing way of telling that story.
So Cora and Rumple, heh. Well, I’m not surprised, that’s fine. Squicky. Well, I didn’t really think they were playing scrabble either, but still a bit squicky.
@Rainbow — I am mildly confused. Are you saying the actors (Colin and co) made comments that CS love is epitomized by both their names being on the Excalibur (once it was tethered to the Darkness, right)? Or is it something that the CS fandom coughed up it its bottomless brilliance? I mean, that’s like saying that CS is special because they had their names engraved on the first atomic bomb. I literally can’t even.
And Queen Lana has spoken, it is officially the end of that horrid rumor.
Apart from character development and narrative reasons that folks have laid out here, I am additionally hoping that it’s not Robin because the fandom’s reaction to the spoilers has been so off-the-wall, bat-guano crazy that not having it be Robin would at least momentarily shut up the gossip warriors. Well, maybe it would. Ye gods, who are these people and where did they crawl out of? *shakes head*
@The Watcher – I can see that. But that’s more of a feature of the fandom (and its rabid shipping culture) than the nature of the narrative, or of TV shows more generally. Take BTVS for example — the Buffy/Finn relationship was allowed to run its course, in all its complexities, without needing a death to end it.
As to wanting RH to be off the show, by all accounts it seems that they’ve been meaning to do this for a bit, as others here have said. If so, then they certainly had the opportunity to plan ahead, without having to produce more narratively lazy melodrama. And if the problem is that they’re afraid of the fandom’s reaction, and hence are trying to make the actor’s exit bullet proof, then I have zero sympathy. A&E largely cultivated this fandom to be crazier than an outhouse rat. It’s just too bad that this happens at the expense of the actors, and the quality of the story.
What bothers me is that they think that the only way he can leave the show is by killing him, it’s not. They think that death is the only way that a couple can be broken up, well it’s not. There are couples in real life that realize that the relationship is not what they want anymore and simply split, an Robin could simply return to the EF with his son and daughter.
THIS! Although they’ve put too much effort into making OQ sea worthy to sink it with anything less than a death. The problem is that in OUAT, relationships become rather static after the “hook up” phase (the only other thing they know how to do is the Rumbelle on-again, off-again carousel of hell). So OQ hasn’t evolved much, one way or another. But the depiction of the sort of estrangement you’re describing requires careful writing and characterization, and simply put, screen time spent telling the story. Not OUAT’s forte.
But it’s so utterly stupid and senseless that when Emma parrots it back to him, I had to laugh for a good long while.
I’m just ceaselessly amazed with Bobby’s ability to deliver his lines with just the right amount of quiet thread and gravitas that for about 5 seconds you’re like “Yup, seems legit” 😉 Bless that man. But yeah, this is one harebrained plan right there.
If Hook gets his sins washed away by forgetting them with the help of Lethe, there will not be enough tables for me to flip.
Oh dear Lord, in what universe would this make any sense? Surely, even this writing team must realize that giving someone amnesia doesn’t automatically wash them clean of their past deeds? I mean, wasn’t this the point in that final scene in S1 when Dr Whale realizes he’s Victor Frankenstein, and is just sitting there utterly crushed by what he’d done? It was one of the main themes of S1 — that your past is always there to haunt your present. Also, they’re all old enough to have watched all those “killer-with-memeory loss” movies in the early 2000s (Memento, The Machinist etc). Ugh. I so hope they don’t got there, but when it comes to this show, I err on the side of pessimism.
