Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I wouldn’t mind it if Rumple were going to the Underworld as a means to help give his son another shot at being alive, (but MRJ ain’t coming back to this show any time soon). That would be the ultimate redemptive moment for Rumple. But would he even need to be the DO again in order to accomplish that?
I agree with you on all points. And I really wish there was a glimmer of truth to this theory, because at least then there’d maybe be a chance that the writers are not simply taking us for total idiots. But sadly, I doubt this is where they’re going. Remember how a number of us here were speculating that DO!Emma is pulling a long con, trying to trick the other DOs, all the while implementing her secret plan to destroy the darkness ? Because Dark Swan and all, and the show seemingly leading up to it for 4 seasons — to Emma’s hero journey to the dark side and back? Nope. Didn’t happen. Emma was turned into your standard, run of the mill damsel in distress flailing about. And the conclusion of the half arc was that Emma was finally willing to fight for Love.
Wait, wut? Wasn’t that, like, Season 1? Yep. It was. Until they reset her to 0, because these writers have no more original stories to tell about these characters.
So I think what we see is what we get. Rumple is EVILZ and loves POWERZ.
It must be true — Hook said so.
[adrotate group="5"]To say I disliked this episode would be a bit of an understatement. Actually, it started fine, but by the end, it was such a hot mess I don’t even know where to begin. So I’ll start with the few things I liked. I think a lot of people here have already covered most of the things that drove me nuts, so I’ll focus on the show’s mechanics, rather than concrete dialogues or plot points.
Liked:
Zelena. As usual, her sass was entertaining, but I’m glad Regina sent her on her way. While she makes for a good villain, the writers have gone overboard with her — and while I have nothing against the possibility of redeeming her in some distant, abstract future, I honestly don’t care enough to see that story play out. And that, more or less, sums up how I feel about most of the characters on Once at this point. More of this in a second.
Rumple’s speech to the crew about being with their loved ones, and his sending Belle off to see the world. The ending tarnishes it of course, but total character assassination shouldn’t technically color the good things that were there in the script before said assassination happened.
And that is pretty much it for likes.
Mixed:
Snowing and Baby Neal. Others have brought this up, but this has been a systematic problem on this show. Baby Neal is pretty much an accessory to Snow’s outfit, and this is starting to verge on the absurd. We have no sense at all of time passing, but we also have no sense at all of Snow’s (or Charming’s) relationship to their youngest child. That entire scene of goodbyes felt very flat to me. You’re leaving your infant, who it looks like is still at the age where they’re either breastfed or formula fed, and are totally helpless, to a completely uncertain fate. But neither Snow nor Charming seemed all that torn up about it. Yes, that scene was fairly touching, but it also felt completely unrealistic — the emotions I’d imagine would be happening under the circumstances just weren’t there.
Hook’s backstory. I’m not a fan of the character, but am happy to give any character the benefit of the doubt if the writers would actually bother producing a convincing narrative that puts things in context. I didn’t find the PapaJones story in any way interesting. So, another scoundrel abandons his son, who grows up to be evil(ish) and then they are reunited, and the son kills the father We have seen this story, or its variation, too many times on OUAT for it to be interesting. Yes yes, daddy issues. Who. Cares.
Dislikes:
Everything else. But lets start with the epic fail at plot.
Why did we need Camelot? Why did we need 2-3 episodes focused on a stupid mushroom? Why did we need Arthur, Guinevere, and Co? To get Excalibur, right? Speaking of that, I’d like something other than vague handwaving and smoke billowing in the general direction of an explanation for how Excalibur is supposed to work, because I have no idea right now. A 3 year old trying to tell this story would be more logical than this lazy garbage.
Let me get this straight. Hook is a hero because, at the last moment, he decided not to murder a bunch of more-or-less innocent people, including a child (Henry), and took one for the team? No, I’m sorry. A firefighter who dies while pulling people out of a burning building is a hero. An arsonist who sets the building on fire (with people in it) and who, having the choice of seeing a bunch of people burning to a crisp, or going down with the blaze himself, has a last moment pang of conscience and douses himself with the kerosene he saved up for others is NOT a hero. That’s a psychopath with a hail mary conscience pang, nothing more. That’s just not the kind of character whose redemption arc I find myself compelled to give a rat’s tail about.
Rumple is the DO. Again. This is so ridiculous and infuriating, I simply have no (polite) words for it. Other than “surprise! The one character that doesn’t fit the hot white 30 something rich/aristocrat is INHERENT EVIL.” On the tail end of another POC being killed off, on the tail end of a 1/2 season that was meant to be about a woman and ended up being about her boyfriend’s man pain. Thank you, OUAT, for another reminder of how much you like to shove your innocently racist/classist/misogynist/ageist message down our throats. There’s a point where “ooops, that’s just plot” doesn’t cut it anymore.
And before I slip into more ranting, I’ll try to meta it instead. First of all, this totally kills any remainders of Rumbelle there might have been left, and it finishes off Rumple’s character as someone complex and layered. At this point, I’m ready to root for Cora over Rumple — she has more nuance left.
And that’s where I feel this show has completely failed. The writers no longer understand what they’re writing or how to strike a balance. Why would the audience want to see the stories of characters who aren’t compelling? Yes, loathsome characters might be entertaining for a brief moment — say, like the characters on House of Cards. You tune in, prepared to be horrified and disgusted, think to yourself “Thank heavens I’m not exposed to creeps like this, my life’s not so bad!” and tune out. Why would you want to follow their nasty little lives? If I wanted to dig around in the unsightly psychological messes of deeply unlikable, vile people, I’d go read Dostoyevsky. That’s not why one would tune into something like Once.
And this brings me to the second thing that infuriates me about this arc. The amount of story recycling and self-plagiarism. When someone is trying to sell you a product they’ve already sold you under a different name, it’s hard not to feel like they’re trying to pull a con — so either the writers are assuming the audience are amnesiac (or idiots), or they are writing with no plan in mind, the night before, while drunk. Honestly, I’d expect a better product from the latter configuration, so I’m assuming it’s the former.
Ok, folks. I am too irrationally angry to write anything in any of the other threads let alone review this craptastic excuse for a show, but I need some place to vent, so here goes. I love this community, and especially the conversations I’ve had with folks here on SF. But at this point, I think I’m done with OUAT.
I just can’t with this show. For all the reasons that @Slurpeez mentioned, but also because I feel like we’ve been stuck on a hellish carousel of lazy writing, self-plagiarism, utter disregard for the show’s own established mythology, cheap and utterly pointless plot twists and a moral compass that makes me increasingly queasy. And then, for me personally, the proverbial last straw — Rumple is the DO again and Rumbelle is back to the familiar cycle of deception/abuse. No matter how OOC this makes the characters, no matter that it literally tosses Rumple’s original Trickster archetype into the garbage…No, just because apparently these writers decided that Rumple isn’t going to be redeemable, because… Well, because I guess Hook needs to be contrasted with someone and it’s a 0 sum game. Just when I was starting to think “oh wait, they might actually do something interesting with Rumple’s character,” they go and do this.
That’s it, I wash my hands of this piece of garbage. I’ll probably watch on occasion if it doesn’t take me out of my way, or read Lily Sparks’ reviews, or lurk/post here as I enjoy reading y’all comments. But enough of this nonsense. Not that one pair of eyeballs will make a difference to A&E, or the network, but there are better ways for me to spend my Sunday evenings.
Keep up the good fight, y’all 🙂
So, I should know better than to ask a worldbuilding mechanics question but is the Underworld technically just another realm in the OUAT multiverse? Do you folks think it is “fictional” like EF or “fictional London” or is it more meta than that? Does it host dead souls from all the realms, even from “ours”(WWM)?
I just hope that coming back from the UW won’t involve another Dark Curse. *twitch*
Also, wow, that is one spoilery statement from RC. But nice to hear that Belle will at least have some screen time.
That awkward moment where you’re somewhat 100% sure Regina and Hook hit off at least once back in the day….that was too much tension for nothing to have happened at least once.
Hah. And if it weren’t OUAT, I’d agree with you. But this is OUAT, and on this show, woman acting “sexy” = woman EVIL! The showrunners are saying: “This is EQ Regina, look how evil she is, she’s flirting!” (cue in the appalled hissing) You know, just in case the dress and hairdo didn’t give it away. 😀
What a bizarre thing to do. I hope they don’t decide to “Pinochhify” Neal. I’m with @Slurpeez though — the only more or less reasonable way to do this is as a kind of Ghosts of Christmas Pasts for Rumple (or maybe even Hook). Alternatively, perhaps it’s one of the Dark One entities (or something else, like, say Hades) who’s appearing to different people as significant characters from their lives. À la Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, if you’re familiar with the book, or film adaptation(s). Perhaps the people being marked by the DOs need to go willingly, and this is all part of some kind of psychological warfare deployed by the dark ones?
Ugh. If that info is correct, then shame on the show runners. My guess though is that if Belle is being put on the shelf, it’s not so much for story (such as it is), or even because of EdR’s pregnancy, but a question of prioritizing the limited resource of screen time in favor of other plot points/actors.
@Josephine is spot on, the fandom has so much more to offer to Rumbelle fans than OUAT itself at this point. I think that A&E, and the writing team more broadly, have told all the stories they had in them about these characters, but they just don’t know when to stop. I don’t think they particularly care about the quality of their storytelling. It’s just bu$ne$$.With the understanding that “impacted, for better or for worse”:
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Firefly
3. Lost
4. Once Upon a Time
5. Millennium (a totally obscure spin-off of the X-Files that I doubt anyone but me here watched)
6. Twin Peaks
7. Battlestar Galactica
8. Orphan Black
9. Mad Men
10. House MD
I’m curious what people understand by ‘redeemed’ here. The show doesn’t really distinguish individual psychological make-up from social identity. So Evil Queen, Wicked Witch, Savior, Pirate, and up until this season, Dark One were at the same time personalities, social roles, and chosen and enacted identities.
As a result, redemption on OUAT is all too often the dropping of one social identity in favor of another, more positive one: Evil Queen becomes Mother; Street Urchin becomes Savior… with the problematic assumption that with it follows a total makeover of a person’s psychological structure. External trappings stand in for internal states: The Pirate gives up his Ship for Emma, and so without his ship he can no longer be The Pirate => and so is redeemed by love (however temporarily). The Darkness is literally taken from Rumple’s heart and so he becomes, in identity and psychology, “the purest hero.”
So if the question is whether Zelena could switch to the “hero” camp by swapping the Wicked Witch identity for the Mother identity, much like Regina, then, sure – why not? The show has done worse in terms of character reboots. Will that be satisfying character development for the audience? For me personally, not at all. It took Regina many seasons and a show closely focused on her character (and to some extent on Henry) for that to happen. We saw her and Henry’s journey over 4 years. Doing the same to Zelena but extra fast wouldn’t be very realistic, and would also cheapen Regina’s character development — one of the only characters on the show that hasn’t been completely butchered.
Considering that very few of the characters on OUAT are morally spotless, I don’t particularly see the value of such a redemption. The so called heroes are just the ones who aren’t being actively malevolent at this current moment in the story.
*shrug*
But I don’t think the writers have a really sick mind, in that they find delight in rape, wonky consent, and misogyny and write such things because it gives them pleasure.
I personally wouldn’t trust these writers with my grocery list, let alone with an adequate portrayal of the complexities of fraught relationships. But the “soiled” line was over the top.
On the upside, I watched this episode with my niece — who is 12. She actually laughed when Hook said that. And went “Oh my god, did he just say “soiled” about Milah? I mean who says that?”It raises my hopes that the younger audience watching this are a savvy, clever bunch who see through the awful gender stereotypes that this show sometimes unwittingly perpetuates.
