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Rumple is being forced to ensure a happy ending for the woman who killed his son and mind-raped him for a year. And we are supposed to be excited by her return. Once Upon A YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG
Emphatically, this!
Also, can someone explain to me why Zelena is back? In order to bring her back, the writers had to do some pretty impressive — and seemingly badly executed — retconning to the past few seasons. The continuity of the show now looks like something that’s been hacked apart with a dull steak knife and then put back together with duct tape, super glue, and a lot of faith. (And now ambulating around, making vague inarticulate growling noises, and I think it’s trying to eat my brains, too). And honestly, for the life of me, I can’t understand why. What is the purpose of this exercise? I mean, if you’re writing the show, it seems you’d have to weigh payoff to drawbacks when introducing something this disruptive to the canon. The payoff is either in character development, or in plot advancement. So let’s see what we’ve got so far:
1) Rumple ~ Zelena: Oh look, a plot repeat! Zelena psychologically and physically tortures Rumple. Again. Because of all the things I felt nostalgic about from OUAT’s previous seasons, this was what I really looked forward to revisiting. O_0
The only possible reason to do this that I can think of is that this is the writers’ idea of how to elicit if not some sympathy, then maybe some pity for Rumple. So the logic here is that by making a now evil character tortured by an even more evil character, the first character appears less evil? Except no, that’s not how it went. The result of this whole ordeal is that Rumple, apparently suffering from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome, is actually thinking he has an understanding with Zelena, and is now blackmailing Regina into betraying either Robin or Emma.
2) Robin ~ Zelena
Oh look! Another plot repeat! It’s Robin’s valiant battle against himself, where duty wins over feelings, except the nature of the duty in question is so clearly phony that we must wonder whether he is maybe a little daft? Despite being admittedly estranged from his wife to the point of not quite recognizing her, deeply uncomfortable with her (lack of) moral compass, and very clearly in love with another woman, Robin goes off and declares his undying love for this admitted stranger, and his dedication to keep the relationship going. Either Robin is lying, or Robin has split personality disorder.
3) Zelena ~ Regina
Oh look! (need I say it?). “Sister, I will spoil all your happy endings.” “No, I won’t let you!” “I will, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nya nya nya, I win!” Meanwhile Rumple, who has apparently caught split personality disorder from Robin, instead of seeking revenge on the woman who has killed his son and tortured him now repeatedly, establishes some kind of alliance with her whereby he uses her as leverage against Regina. To turn Emma dark.
What am I missing? Is this about it? It feels like we are stuck in a postmodern remake of Groundhog Day, with the added bonus that the actors are now actually playing several characters at once, only some of which are known to the audience.
Sense. This episode makes none.
[adrotate group="5"]Robin obviously does recognize something is wrong but really who thinks, hey my wife who I haven’t interacted with for 5 years is acting kinda strange, maybe she’s NOT my wife but my True Loves demented sister back from the dead and posing as my wife in the Land Without Magic?
Sure, that’s probably not the first thing that’s going to pop into one’s head. 🙂 But there really are those small things that people do almost at the level of unconscious bodily habits that make them them. I’m talking at the level of how someone likes to wear their hair when no one else is around, or how one hugs, for instance. They’ve been together for a long time, and they were adults, not a teenager romance, so there’s been enough time to settle into these little habits of familiarity. Have enough things off, and it would ring alarm bells. I’m simply saying that I could imagine that he would know that something was off beyond her apparent gaps in knowledge that she is seemingly able to cover up like a natural born spy! Beyond the sense of estrangement, I feel like there would be a feeling that something’s off on a profound, existential level. You might not think they’ve been replaced by a killer alien robot, but you certainly would wonder where the personality makeover is coming from.
I don’t know. Maybe this whole Marian swap is actually an insidious commentary on gender relations on E&A’s part 😉
So let me get this straight. Zelena doesn’t share Marion’s knowledge, and we are shown this, but she presumably also doesn’t know any of her mannerisms, tastes, daily habits, little rituals… everything that emerges in contexts of familial intimacy, and that constitutes a person. And yet, she is able to fool her loving husband, and more importantly, her son?
Pardon the naive question, but is anyone else perhaps struck by the incredible irony of a show allegedly about the irreplaceability of love and family to have one of its main supporting male characters and his kid not being able to recognize that their wife/mom has been replaced by a leprechaun… I mean wicked witch?
Exactly, dealing with the medical issues of my parents I know immediately that the first thing he’d have were tests for clotting and immediately on blood thinners and, you’re right, likely transfusions. And also, if he was to the point he needed a vent he’d probably be in a medically induced coma (believe me, I’ve been through this process many times) and then he would have to be weened off. It would not be a brief two day stay. Like you said, all it takes is a little thing called Google. In this day of information at anybody’s fingertips, it does smack of laziness.
First off, so sorry to hear about you having to deal with this in real life. For what it’s worth, that whole scene, while I think meant to impress on us the perversity of Zelena, to me seemed to display a lazy, and frankly insensitive attitude to people who are going through what, in actuality, is an incredibly invasive and terrifying intervention.
Ok, I won’t launch into a rant about the many ways in which this episode fails — looks like people are already addressing it in a couple of places on this forum. But … I just can’t… “something about diet and exercise?” “The curse has thickened my blood”…”I had a heart attack”… “My problem isn’t physical?”
So much bad, handwavy writing in the general direction of Rumple’s “physical condition” that somehow isn’t “physical” that even Bobby looked vaguely annoyed with his character’s sudden and unexplainable failure at basis medical literacy. While one might make the excuse that, being from the EF, he wouldn’t know a thermometer from a frying pan, I do not buy, for a second, that he’d be such a ditz when he’s admittedly dying. Rumple has been around for a while. Wouldn’t he spend at least part of that time learning stuff about how AWWM works?
Now, if this wonderful diagnosis of “thicker blood” is a question of blood viscosity, and that’s Rumple’s translation of what the docs told him, then I seriously doubt they would tell them that ‘diet and exercise’ is what he needs. They’d hydrate him, put him on blood-thinners, and maybe do a transfusion. Not to mention that the link between blood viscosity and heart attacks is actually a lot more complex than they make it appear – stroke and deep tissue thrombosis, yes, but a first year med student could have told the writers that. Or Dr. Google.
Lazy writing is lazy.
Emma’s role is more than just savior, it’s the bring the balance between the heroes and the villains. To ensure that they both get their happy endings, that one set getting their HEA does not mean the other loses theirs, something that has been thought to be the case since the very pilot of this show in which Regina told Snow that THIS (The Original Dark Curse) was her Happy Ending.
^-^ Yes to so many of these points and theories! Actually, I wanted to throw something out there from a slightly “lighter” register than the Moorcockverse, and while we’re on the Gaiman topic (sort of) — I don’t know if anyone here is familiar with Good Omens, which was a collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (and is an absolute delight), but it’s another one of those examples where there is a lot of tongue-in-cheek playing with the concepts of good and evil. The story follows, among others, two apparent opposites — a “demon” and an “angel.” The rub is that the two have been around on Earth for so long (sent by their respective parties to watch for signs of the Apocalypse and to either bring it into being or prevent it), that by the time the events of the novel take place, they are thoroughly humanized, which is to say, they’re neither all good nor all bad, and mostly bumble through things without any more insight anyone else does. And actually, the whole book is about the idea that evil isn’t born, it’s made: but it looks at what happens when someone who’s supposed to be evil by birthright just doesn’t really end up that way. My point with the analogy is that there are a couple of neat things about the narrative that might actually apply to OUAT. First, characters can never fully anticipate the results of their actions, and even if they act “out of good” or “out of evil,” the consequences in fact rarely line up with their original intent. Second, there’s this separation between good and evil “in theory” and good and evil in practice. And third, in the end, the point, like in the Moorcock example, is the perpetuation of the world in a state of balance.
Anyway, just a thought.
Concerning the belief aspect, sounds very similar to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
I’ll respond more properly to the thread at large in a few minutes but until then I just need to *drool* Easily one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life.
I second that wholeheartedly.
Then Rumple wouldn’t be such a terrible person and antagonist to precious Killy Willy Poo and Emma. So much wasted opportunity!
This, here, made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
This is pure speculation, of course, and I doubt the show writers would go there, but wouldn’t Rumple’s HE technically involve never giving up Bae in the first place? To be there as his son grows up, and hence actually break the cycle of parental abandonment, but in a situation where he is powerful enough to not get pushed around and hence not lose his boy? And for that, he’d have to not be a coward. So, is it possible that in AU, he actually did fight the ogre wars, survive, get recognition, becomes an actual (war) hero… although, unless there is some deux ex machina intervention, he still dies an natural death, Mila probably stays with him (since he’s now no longer the town coward), Bae never meets Emma, Henry is never born… I’m sure they won’t do this. But to me, this would be the most logical “AU” for his character.
If any of this is true, I can’t be certain that the Sorcerer is all good. Lost Reference time: in some ways the Sorcerer is shaping up to be the Jacob of OUAT. Thoughts? What do you think the Author’s motivations are?
I think this is a really interesting theory. Concerning the belief aspect, sounds very similar to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I wonder if it could be that recorded stories/fairytales are what “maintains” these realms as they are, as “stable”?
I agree that I don’t think we can yet come to any conclusions about where the Sorcerer and the Author fall on the morality spectrum. I like the idea of the Sorcerer being OUAT’s Jacob actually. Then who would be the Man in Black?
