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ok, so I havent watched anything since season 3 and was wondering if does it look like hook will be the ultimate villain?
Alas, no.
[adrotate group="5"]As for the battle with he and rump? Rumpz wants his powers back, bro! And instead of just using magic to defeat they are having a duel like last time when rump encountered him in FTL after becoming the dark one.
*twitch* oh dear Lord, I hope you’re wrong. I don’t think I can take another season of Rumple’s nonsensical character development along the line of power for power’s sake, or evil for evil’s sake. Honestly, power hungry Rumple at this point in his story arc (if you can call it that) makes very little sense to me. Not to mention that it would be bloody annoying plot recycling. Ugh. I can’t even.
Incidentally, what’s that thing that looks like a pulpit Rumple’s standing behind? Is he giving a lecture? A sermon? Marrying someone? Maybe Rumple’s giving a TED talk about the DO curse, and the sword fight breaks out because Hook’s been checking his Facebook. That would make more sense to me, honestly. Why not.
he end of this show, i dont see many of the cast menbers, besides bobby to get great jobs
From what I hear from friends who are actors, this career does not come with any sense of job security at all unless you’re really at the top of the food chain, and even then there’s this boom and bust pattern when you can never be sure when (and if) the next project will come along. So I wish every single one of the OUAT actor crew a wonderful and steady career. They got bills to pay, and some of them, kiddos to feed.
Honestly, I think in this case, blaming the middle man (A&E) for what OUAT has become makes most sense to me. They aren’t new kids on the block trying to break into the biz. They ARE the biz. Sure, they have to pitch their projects and hope they get picked up — I get it. But they have a reputation, and hence a certain degree of power. If a lot of the changes in OUAT are happening because of pressure from “above” — or as a result of the audience clamoring for this or that — A&E are, I think, in a position where they could have pushed back. If Bobby is saying that he doesn’t give a hoot about his character, and is in it for the money, then I think OUAT is really and truly done — sure, we might even get a 6th season shambling on, but if you have actors of Bobby’s caliber and commitment, clearly very good at playing complicated, shady characters saying, essentially “whatever,” then you’ve done something really really wrong.
As to the Evil Mouse/ABC execs, they all can get stuffed. Ultimately RG is right, the only thing that matters to that crowd is the bottom line. They sure as heck aren’t in it for the art — or even for the “great entertainment.”
But at least there is fan fiction, S5 re write with Neal and no Hook
Wow, this person is quite talented. Certainly doing a better job than whatever’s coming out of OUAT’s official crackfick central.
It’s especially painful this season because you tell that it was supposed to be Neal doing a lot of what Hook is doing (though with more grace and love). It would have made for really beautiful, logical, and circular storytelling.
This. Exactly this. Of course AE wouldn’t admit to it, but I absolutely agree with you that this season would have made SO much more sense if Neal were in Hook’s place. I agree that Dark!Swan was probably endgame early. But insofar as we’re asked to be invested into the drama of CS in relation to Dark!Swan — the irony is that the darling ship isn’t even well written. I don’t think Neal fans are only grousing over the fact that A&E killed off the character at the heart of OUAT. It’s that what came to replace it makes Baywatch look like Tolstoy.
It’s not just that I don’t particularly like Hook — I don’t, but whatever. It’s that, structurally, Hook is completely peripheral or ancillary to pretty much anyone’s story — no matter how much background info they shove down the audience’s throat, the stakes just aren’t there for me. Of course, there are plenty of people in the fanbase that adore him, and that’s fine.
A and E call killing Neal bold storytelling
Like that?
Ok, it’s way too late for me to be writing this but it’s been one of those days… Sorry if I’m incoherent.
For me, OUAT’s core value now is entertainment, but not in the elevated television-as-art sort of way, but rather in a cheap, tawdry, melodramatic, cheesy, please-tweet-about-me sort of way.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that generating viewership, and hence money is the bottom line for any show. But it’s the way A&E have decided to go about it, which seems to essentially select what they think is the lowest common denominator, and aiming a couple of notches below THAT that I find particularly infuriating. I mean, by all accounts, OUAT began with a fairly smart, creative audience for a mainstream TV show. Instead of raising the bar — or at least, keeping it where it was — they have systematically, and almost patronizingly, lowered it.
I think they dictated that certain things had to happen (CS) and that A and E were backed into a corner and instead of fighting their way out, or trying to find a solution that would appease their Mousey overlords but not totally destroy their show (CS is endgame, but Neal gets to live and be a son/father) they went for the kill (literally) and did a reset (3A finale) and then started afresh meaning that the vestiges of the show-that-was had to be wiped away
(Ok, just a quick note, what comes later ie your analysis of what is shown vs what is told — SQ vs CS — is totally brilliant, so I’m going to take on the first part of the argument instead). So on this point — that A&E were essentially backed into a corner by the corporate overlord. I think that’s probably largely right – the execs say jump, and you have to ask how high. But they didn’t HAVE to kill Neal, and hence change the entire story. They didn’t even have to retain MRJ, they could have written him a life off-screen. There’s a whole conversation on this thread dealing exactly with this point, so I think we’re all pointing out the same problem — whether it’s the way in which talking about Neal has become taboo (per @Slurpeez ‘ point), both for the show and for the fanbase, or whether it’s the constant ship baiting, it’s like A&E have given up on the very idea that OUAT could ever have any sort of metanarrative. And I’m sorry, but plot doesn’t count, especially when so much of it is recycled tropes. I just don’t get it — they were able to secure many amazing actors, regularly work with fairly prominent writers, and yet the show seems to be getting more simplistic with every season. My point is that I don’t understand what the payoff is. My only explanation is that A&E were told that they had to broaden OUAT’s audience, and to do so they decided to turn it into a soap.
I think for all of our sanity maybe it’s worth assuming that OUAT after 3×15 (actually, starting with 3B period) has been replaced with an evil doppelganger. I haven’t tried to do any sort of methodical analysis, but it seems to me that right around that point some of the core messages that OUAT started with were literally reversed or completely jettisoned. Compared to the “original,” Stepford!OUAT is a lot more patriarchal, heteronormative, focused on romance and ships as opposed to family, inconsistent about its moral compass, and plot rather than character driven. Many of its characters have been artificially remolded to suit some kind of new direction. That’s also where a ton of retcon started happening. (I’m sure I’m missing other examples) So, I have two questions. If we take this OUAT as an entirely new killer robot ahem, I mean show, what is it about? What are its core values? And two, what the heck happened???
Have to say that the quote from Rumple is already part of some theory from Cs fans where they say that means emma crushed hook heart to cast the curse to take them to SB and he is sharing her heart bc they are TL. .
Seriously? Oy, that is some impressive crazy right there. Although you never know with OUAT — it’s not like they would ever recycle old plot lines while entirely changing their own stated rules in the process.
My guess is that the writers liked that particular bit of dialogue (it is kinda witty and very Head!Rumple) and inserted it without worrying too much about whether or not it makes sense. It also allows them to establish Emma as the villain in that encounter, while signaling to the audience that she’s perhaps fooling Head!Rumple into thinking that she’s darker than she is.
Head!Rumple is supposed to represent the dark one (as opposed to Emma herself). I think he’s just twisting things, as usual. He represents darkness incarnate; so of course, he’s going to intrepret Emma playing Hook for the cutlass as cut-throat, underhanded and manipulative.
lol I think you’re saying that Head!Rumple isn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Or at least, not the most objective. :)))
I have no doubt CS is endgame (because a happily single Emma is clearly unthinkable, and OUAT won’t float any other ships) I just fail to find it convincing the way it’s written. On the other hand, it seems like a good chunk of the audience is doggedly seeing everything Hook does as another confirmation for the legitimacy of the TL claim. It’s kind of intriguing from a media studies perspective — how is this rift happening? Is it ideological?
Because Hook’s love is selfish…the anti-TL kiss. That is a deliberate thing the writers set up.
The inconsistencies in writing really make me think that the writers don’t talk to one another and just write what they feel like
Now that I think about it, one really bizarre bit of dialogue was Head!Rumple’s reaction to Emma and Hook’s conversation, where he says something about Emma crushing Hook’s heart. Head!Rumple’s interpretation of how that encounter went seems totally off to me — if anything, Hook was the one doing the crushing (whether Dark Emma cares is another question). So either the writers have just lost all grip on reality — which I wouldn’t be too surprised about, considering how many people are cheering Hook’s “resistance” to Emma’s “advances” (cue eye roll) — or they are applying a mass production approach to episode writing, where different people are ghostwriting different parts of the episode. Either way, it’s weird.
Does anyone else think that either Arthur or Guinivere cast the curse using Lancelot’s heart? (probably Guinevere?)
SFG theorized such. It would explain why he is not in SB….. BUT apparently next episode he will be in SB. So… I guess not. UNLESS its a magical disguise. Which wouldn’t be unheard of. Also SFG, Gwengana sounds like an awesomely beautiful and yet terrifying name lol xD
Crackpot theory, but is it possible that Lancelot is, in fact, Morgana (and/or Guinevere) in disguise, in that moment when he appears to Snow? Is there any reason to think that Guinevere, if she’s indeed shady, isn’t also playing Arthur, and therefore sowing distrust among the ranks?
All I’m saying is that the writers know what they’re doing. There is an obvious contrast between the way Regina addressed Emma in 5×2 and the way Hook addressed Emma as “dark one” in 5×3. It’s obvious SQ baiting, and yet they’re also showing just why TLK didn’t work for CS three times.
I definitely think you might be onto something. Especially if we factor in Belle’s repeated comments about what it means to love the DO (the thing about how she loves all of Rumple, even the parts that belong to the darkness, and the bit about it being harder to love the DO than to hate them). There is obviously several contrasts being set up — between Hook and Belle, between Hook and Regina, but also, weirdly enough, between Hook and Robin. I thought it was interesting that in 5×3 there was a line where Robin says he’s not a thief anymore, while Hook says something to the effect of “being a former pirate, I can tell you for a fact that part never goes away” (I forget the exact words). In context, Hook is coming off as particularly hypocritical: darkness never goes away, but Emma’s original “lightness” or “goodness” is forever compromised such that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore because she’s “tainted.” Essentially, Hook has just flunked the whole “in sickness and in health” part of the committed relationship.
I think if the writers are doing this consciously, we will see this play out further down the line — especially if Emma’s is “playing both sides”, trying to fool the part of her consciousness that’s been highjacked by the DO into thinking that she’s going along with the plan. Essentially, I think she’s being earnest when she asks Hook to trust her. At which point Hook fails epically.
The problem is, the way CS has been written so far, even if we do come to that moment of confrontation where Hook says “I should have trusted you all along”, they’ll probably kiss and make-up, to the cheers of a good chunk of the audience. #headdesk
