Making this post because 1) I'm curious if anyone is still here and remembers this blog from 10 years ago and 2) OUAT has kinda come back around into my life as I'm in the middle of doing a rewatch of season one, may even press into the other seasons and the ones I didn't end up watching at all because I had to rage quit at the time lol, in that vein, I've been thinking of MAYBE taking up this blog again to write more (hopefully funny) objective criticisms of the show, maybe starting from season one.
I've also been rereading my old critiques and takes and arguments with fans from way back when. What a time, am I right?? I've changed a lot since last putting anything on this blog and I can kinda recognize now, in hindsight and at my bigger age, that at the time I was dealing with a lot of inner rage and frustration at the lack of control in my life over different things that now don't matter, but at the time the blog (and the show and the fandom) became kind of an outlet for me to project that anger- albeit in a funnier, 'healthier' way because at least doing that kept me from lashing out IRL at a time when I didn't have as good emotional awareness and control as I do now. Given that time has passed and I'm in a better place now mentally, I couldn't help but wonder if my opinions of things back then would change at all. Would I now view characters I DESPISED back then with a bit more objective understanding and nuance, for instance? Well, yes and no. It depends on the character I think lol.
The truth is though, for all of OUAT's flaws and ridiculousness and full-on offensiveness at times, I can say 10 years down the line that I love this stupid mess of a show regardless. I love it while recognizing those flaws and wanting to talk about them more, but there is still a deep-seated love and appreciation for OUAT there at the heart of it all. I think over time it will, oddly, become something of a comfort show for me. WEIRD TO SAY OUTLOUD GIVEN HOW ANGRY I'D GET AT IT BACK THEN BUT HERE WE ARE!!!
So yea, tl;dr, I'm kinda back on my OUAT bullshit, thinking of reviving this blog with discussions/metas/criticisms as I'm doing a rewatch. Maybe this time I'll focus a bit more on the things I do like, the areas where I think the show manages to succeed in what they're going for, etc. Though I do think, as regards season one, that I'll probably do more of a full season summary rather than go episode-by-episode, as MOST of the first season eps are pretty strong on their own and don't really need individual picking apart, if you get me.
Anyway that's it!! If you're still here, I love you.
Had the privilege of coming across some promo with Regina/Lana for this current season.
First of all, let me once again express my utter shock and disdain that this show is still on. I think I keep hoping that if I look away long enough it’ll just dissipate into nothingness, sort of like if I had been keeping a reanimated corpse chained up in my closet with the hope that it might just do us all the mercy of dying on its own...that a dark enough metaphor for you? I was thinking in terms of The Walking Dead, I guess.
Also, this is some Power Rangers-level acting coming from Lana. I don’t blame her. If I had been playing a character like Regina on this show for the past 7 years, I too would be phoning it in something terrible by this point. I think if you look close enough you can see her blinking out a message in Morse Code. Something like, “GOD PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME, I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE A 3, MAYBE 4 SEASON ENGAGEMENT. I’VE BEEN FORCED TO SIGN CONTRACTS IN BLOOD”
What’s hilarious too is the fact that she did this completely over the top, Rita Repulsa act for a green screen while holding out a ball of nothing in her hand. Mad talent or cruel and unusual punishment? You be the judge.
Lastly, you gotta love the pitch for the second half of this current season; “The battle of good versus evil rages on!!!!”
Translation: There are absolutely no original ideas being implemented at this point in the show.
Wow, the battle of Good Versus Evil??? You mean, the thing you guys have been rehashing and failing miserably at for the past 4 seasons? WELL, HOW CAN I RESIST THAT TEMPTING OFFER???!?!?
In all honesty, I am tempted. I miss having a writing outlet that allowed me to be snarky and unforgivable, to tear apart some shitty source material as the whim allowed. Granted, I have a lot of catching up to do and if I chose to take up this hobby again I’d try to do it a little less sloppily. Maybe. Probably not tho.
So I finally returned to OUAT after abandoning this blog around my watching of the early second half of s4. Have no real idea what happened with s5, never got there and probably never will.
In returning to OUAT this season I gave thought to taking up this blog again (even though a lot of the views I spouted before have since changed). It was fun ripping this dumb show to threads while sincerely enjoying the cringe.
But so far what I’ve seen of season 6 is just...boring. Incredibly, incredibly dull, not even laughably bad anymore. It perhaps goes without saying that the characters long ago lost anything that made them endearing to me. There was a time I found them all abhorrent and now...? I just find them all, as I said, boring. Dull. Uninteresting husks. I’ve sat there halfheartedly watching these past couple episodes wondering why I should care about any of this in a positive and/or negative way.
Oh, there were moments that I found compelling but...they were very few and far between. What’s more, it really feels like the writers have run out of ideas and are just recycling and rehashing over and over- which, in some ways, is even worse than the bullshit they were doing before because it’s just BORING. It’s old, it’s overdone.
How much longer can we string out Regina’s morality crisis? How much longer can we butcher and smash and destroy Belle and Rumple’s marriage (we get it, their marriage sucks- can we just have one of them die or get written off the show and move on from this)? How much longer are we going to play around with this who’s really good and who’s really evil thing until it’s completely meaningless (I think we’re past that point now)? Seriously, why is Hook still here if he’s just going to be Emma’s arm candy and never contribute anything else to the plot other than being a prop/human sex doll? (Not unlike Belle was for a time- kind of feel like those two should get together and escape. It would be infinitely more interesting than whatever the hell is happening on the show right now) How much longer are we going to do this ‘is the savior not infallible after all’ and Emma’s can’t control her power bullshit?
This latest Count of Monte Cristo ep had to be the most dull and lifeless episode I’ve seen in awhile. I’m not even slightly exaggerating when I say that I almost fell asleep at several intervals and found the laundry I was folding much more engaging. Didn’t care about the Count, didn’t care about his weird arbitrary fixation with random boring handmaiden that I’ve already forgotten the name of. Didn’t care when he died, didn’t care when she died. They were a means to an end for Regina and nothing more and OH MY GOD WHO CARES.
Still don’t like any of the pairings I didn’t like before but not for some bleeding heart social reason. I’m done with things like that. I just don’t like these pairings because they’re boring, because despite the fact that nothing more can really be told about them without being redundant they continue on. And on. Rumple and Belle will continue to have a shitty on-and-off relationship that never gets better because the writers don’t know how to make them compelling otherwise (and, in turn, have just made them that much more boring), Emma’s character never really stood to benefit from having a love interest (at least not from any that were provided for her, imo, except for MAYBE August) and yet she’s got Hook tacked to her side just BECAUSE (as it is now, I kind of feel bad for him given how peripheral he is), Robin is apparently dead and yet Regina continues to writhe and whine about him as if nothing else ever mattered to her.
Anyway, just boring. I know it may seem from this post that I have a lot to say but these are just collective thoughts. If I tried to go back to writing entire episode summaries I’d never finish them out of boredom. In fact, I’m getting bored right now.
Point being; this show sucks and it’s no longer bad enough to even laugh at. It’s rehashed. It’s dull. It’s pointless.
Apparently there’s an OUAT-themed convention still in existence...? I mean. If that’s your thing, you do you, I just...wow. I’m trying to imagine what such a thing would even be like.
Extremely pathetic? Extremely insane? Somewhere in the middle?
Nvm. Just looked at the website and saw a middle-school esque dress code that will be enforced. No spaghetti straps, guys, or you’ll be in lunchtime detention.
See, personally, at this point in the flashbacks I think Snow is on the right path. Like, yeah, the way she refused Mal’s help comes off as unnecessarily snotty but I think not being willing to trust the help of someone who just betrayed you and who is “evil” (we don’t get a lot of flashbacks about Mal but I think given her past with Aurora’s family she isn’t on the path of good) is the right move, especially if you’re worried about your child’s future morality.
So, I can understand why she’d be so gung ho about only doing the right thing to the point where she isn’t willing to risk it with an alliance with someone who is kind of shifty. Mal says she’s going to help but trusting her would be a fool’s move and Snow only makes those where Regina is concerned.
That isn’t in defense of what happens next with Lily though which was honestly just stupid and truly horrible. Exploring how the Charming’s black and white viewpoint can mislead them and end in them doing the wrong thing could have been such a good storyline and I think it even started off so in this flashback but of course that isn’t really the point of this arc. The point is just to push the villain redemption’s further by screwing over Snow and Charming’s characterization so that the standard of what makes a hero is so low those aiming for redemption can practically limbo under it. .
I’m gonna have to stick with my point and disagree. Granted, it would’ve been helpful if Mal had popped up with a concrete suggestion. If she had said, “I have a plan that involves throwing all the kittens into the river” or “I have a plan that involves taking money from all the poor people” then, yeah, I’d agree with you that Snow would be in the right, but she didn’t even hear her out, despite the fact that Mal showed up without her cronies, despite the fact that she appealed to their shared interest as mothers. Nothing about that to Snow made her think Mal even deserved to state her case. What’s more, rejecting her outright is effectively outright rejecting a possible opportunity to save the kingdom, something Snow is willing to toss aside just to make sure her child is the glimmering beacon of goodness. This isn’t the first time Snow has plopped her kingdom on the chopping block for her own self-interest, something that I don’t think the writers even realize is as selfish as it is.
Also I’m having a hard time remembering when Mal betrayed them. She did kind of kick them to the curb after the Wisdom Tree idea didn’t work, but I wouldn’t see that as betrayal. At this point The Villainess Trio just want to stop the curse and, quite frankly, they’ve been more proactive about finding a solution than David and Snow who’ve instead just been standing around, biting their fingernails and getting pregnant on their honeymoon at their summer castle (while everyone else has to work in shacks down in the villages, hoping their totalitarian leaders will save them from Armageddon). In the end, it’s not only only snotty of Snow, it’s selfish and heartless too. It’d be fine if it was handled appropriately by the narrative, if it was treated as selfish and an unfortunate result of the Charmings black-and-white thinking, but it wasn’t. At best it was ignored and seen as ultimately inconsequential, at worst there was the feeling we needed to be proud of Snow for not ‘succumbing to darkness’ even if she didn’t know for sure if that’s what Mal’s plan entailed. It would have even been honorable if it had been a ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ sort of thing, but despite the Charmings being cast in this benevolent, selfless leader light, they rarely ever act out of something other than self-interest/bias, often at the expense of their helpless subjects.
Besides this, as I said, Snow had been willing to work with her to visit the Wisdom Tree, which was actually a pretty good idea until she got rejected. I don’t understand what was supposed to have changed between now and then to make her say, “Nope, nevermind, you’re evil”. In the end, it’s just bad writing. Pretty much any ambiguity you run into on OUAT can be explained by laziness and ineptitude.
So, on this point I think we agree; Snow and David’s characterization is getting butchered seven ways to Sunday in this season and all because the ‘villain’ characters (Regina, in particular) need to be given their undeserved happy endings without actually doing anything to earn them.
Actually there are two ways to count. A&E count as one episode labeled 408, while abc counts them as two episodes labeled 408 & 409.
That’s so confusing, but I shouldn’t expect different from one of the most convoluted shows in history. When I recap I check back a lot on Wikipedia and the various script sites I use to keep the storyline straight. They follow this way of counting the episodes so I’m just going to do it this way. Heck, I was so messed up the other way I was calling that last recap the wrong title and number. Smh.
I’m not sure anyone noticed except for me just now, but back at the criticism of the two-parter episode 8, I got confused and labeled part II as episode 9. Since then I’ve had incorrect episode numbers. Contrary to what I wrote before, the last episode I recapped and critiqued was episode 13, which was Unforgiven, not Enter the Dragon. MY BAD. Sorry if there was any confusion!
EDIT: Forgot to add, all episode numbers have been corrected in titles and tags now, so you should have an easier time navigating. I’m terrible at tagging anyway, something like this was bound to happen.
s4 ep 13: “Unforgiven” or “How to Succeed in Making Characters Unlikable Without Really Trying”
The convoluted storytelling continues in this second installment of the second half of OUAT’s jam-packed 4th season. It just goes to show that season 4 probably should have of either been entirely The Villainess Trio or Frozen, but that would’ve require Adam and Eddy to pay attention to one thing for a significant period of time and, well. That ain’t gonna happen.
In this episode we start to see just how selfish and repulsive the Charmings can be and always have been, either because of bad writing or in poor attempt to make a juxtaposition to the former villains.
Glenn Close’s reaction to the level of ineptitude in this writing. I think she’s having a mental breakdown, I don’t think she’s amused.
Our episode opens with Snow waking up to Neal’s cries, one of the few times we actually get on-screen recognition of the fact that Neal’s a living thing with consistent needs. This turns out to be an anxiety dream, however, as the trio of arbitrary female villains pops up and threatens Snow’s family because of what she and David did to Maleficent, yet to be disclosed to the audience at this time (though, as all of us know who have watched past this episode, it’s quite a doozy). When Snow wakes up and slinks off to the kitchen, she finds David engaging in Storybrooke’s favorite past-time: drinking heavily and mumbling about how they just need to kill/do away with so-and-so so they don’t have to answer for whatever awful thing they’ve done in the past (not, you know, in the interest of Neal’s safety). David also expresses his gratitude that Maleficent is dead so she can’t hold either of them accountable for what they did.
Just so we’re clear, folks, Prince “Charming” and Snow didn’t exactly just knock over Mal's trashcan or forget to water her plants while she was on vacation. This isn’t an act of simple inconvenience that they’re beating themselves up over. We have to remember the show’s new theme of playing with what’s REALLY bad and what’s REALLY good, flipping it on its head and all- which would be fine and a natural progression of things if it wasn’t all in the name of haphazardly redeeming Regina. Of course, it makes sense.
But, as always, OUAT is especially gifted at making characters repulsive. When we learn exactly what it is that Snow and David did to Mal, when we go back and we think about David kicking back his whiskey and muttering to himself about how grateful he is that the Dragon bitch is dead so they don’t have to be held accountable for what they did...well, it kinda makes you throw up in your mouth a bit. Honestly though, this was foreshadowed from the moment we saw David beating up a woman for making him pay for his farm back in Mistenchantedforesthaven, even after she had tried to work out reasonable payment plans with him.
Where “Charming” will be by the end of this season. Let’s be honest, he’s basically just turning into Stanley Kowalski.
Don’t be mistaken, folks. When Snow and David inevitably get found out for what they’ve done they’re only going to be sorry they got caught. Still, we’ll be expected to still like and sympathize for them after this ‘bad is good/good is bad’ bullshit gets forgotten about.
We then open to Granny’s Diner at about 11 am, so, naturally, everyone’s buying shots. With Cruella that makes reasonable sense, though Granny refuses to serve (or even acknowledge) her or Ursula because she is business owner of the year. Restaurant owners have a lot to learn from the way she just bails on her diner now and then to go wandering around, verbally abusing her friends, the way she just refuses service to paying customers due to personal bias. She’s an inspiration.
Little by little, every character on this show becomes disgusting and unlikable, even the peripheral ones that A&E long stopped caring about but still have to acknowledge thanks to contracts. It’s all part of some master plan, I’m sure.
Regina saunters in and gets angry at Cruella and Ursula when they list off some of the more heinous things she did in her time of being evil (that the show now treats like they were her rebellious teen/college years or something) while Henry’s in ear shot. Because god forbid Henry’s allowed to know the full extent of his mother’s depravity before he dedicates his remaining teenage years to playing cheerleader for her.
This causes Cruella and Ursula to blow the joint and head over to Gold’s pawnshop, prompting some more hand-wringing from the Charmings and a brush past Hook and Emma, the former of whom acknowledges that he once knew Ursula. To be sure, Emma asks about it and his reply is a vague, “I encountered many a vile creature on my voyages”. I’m guessing this means they had a fling and naughty, unspeakable acts were committed with Ursula’s tentacles and Hook’s orifices. I’m basically saying Ursula is the Amber Rose to Hook’s Kanye West.
#StorybrookeClapback
David pops up and insists to Emma that Cruella and Ursula are “up to something” and they need to go “pick up the trail” while they can. You could probably still see them making their way over to the Pawnshop at the time David is saying this, yet he still feels they need to “pick up the trail” (the trail of cocaine and fish food, I guess? YES, I MADE A FISH JOKE, A&E ARE BAD INFLUENCES). Also he has no reason to believe they’re up to anything specific other than getting drunk in the middle of the day, but Emma no longer needs actual explanations for things so she’s keen to just stalk these two women and ignore any other issue the town might be having at the moment (keeping in mind that Emma and David are still the only two cops this town has).
At Gold’s Pawnshop Cruella and Ursula have strolled in to congratulate Belle on fucking up Rumple, shoot the breeze a bit, buy a cool hood ornament and then leave. Or rather, that’s what Belle’s keen to believe because she’s extremely stupid and naive in the name of making one of the many unhealthy pairings work (even as it is temporarily broken up). Cruella and Ursula obviously have bigger aspirations than chatting with Belle; they manage to steal a box of something or other thanks to the Stretch Armstrong-like quality of Ursula’s tentacles.
Meanwhile in the Mayor’s office, Regina and Henry are once again sussing through Operation: Redeem Queen Shit Monster Without Making a Real Effort. As per usual for these moments, Regina whines about how undeserving she is of a happy ending for the mere purpose of nudging Henry into assuring her that she is. He, like many other characters in this show, has fully adapted to his new role as emotional crutch for the undeserving villain. This is totally the kind of healthy relationship a 16 year old should be having with their 40 year old parent, by the way; instead of the parent being there to support the child emotionally, given the vast amount of life experience the parent has in comparison, the TEENAGER should be the one to reassure the middle-aged PARENT anytime they start to “doubt” themselves. Really, anytime. All the time.
Let me ask you a thing, reader. How often do we see Regina offering Henry emotional support to the extent that he does for her? Because details are easy to forget on a show this convoluted, I’ll allow for some 10 sec moment this season or any others when Regina offered Henry some halfassed platitudes in the wake of an upsetting event she did nothing to protect him from (because lord knows there’ll be someone wanting to split hairs into atom-sized fragments about it). Sure, that might have happened. Much more often though, we see Regina dodging her opportunities to be there for Henry to go fuck married men instead and maybe playing damage control afterwards, if she doesn’t have anything better to do. Henry, as he always has been, is her tool, her crutch, her prop, the kind of kid that’s never going to be allowed to grow up, get married or have a life of his own without her dominating every aspect of it. The only difference now is that he’s been given a character lobotomy and is more than willing to enthusiastically play along, at the very time in a young man’s life when he should start really craving independence. The show wants us to believe this is a happy, well-adjusted family situation and it’s probably one of their best goofs so far.
Henry defending his mother. In real life, this would definitely be a Bates Motel situation.
Anyway, the purpose of this scene is to establish that August may or may not know more about the book than they do. As you may recall though, back in season 3 (I think?) August was turned back into a child because he was once sort of teased as a love interest for Emma while simultaneously having a really important connection to her and A&E wanted absolutely no obstacles for their fap material/Captain Swan. Neal was killed, August was aged down and forgotten about (like all children on this show) until now. Which one got the worst treatment, I wonder? Kind of a toss up.
Meanwhile, Emma and David are on a Cruella and Ursula stalking campaign. In a rare display of character consistency (which means pretty much nothing anymore) Emma finally asks David why they’re pursuing two people with no cause for immediate suspicion and, predictably, he gives her a vague answer. They finally catch up with the two villainesses, David insists to search their car after Belle reveals that a box is missing from the back room of the Pawn Shop. He finds something but keeps it to himself. Hang on to your hats, because this isn’t as low as Charming’s about to go.
When he gets back to the loft he shows Snow the dragon baby rattle he stole from Cruella’s car, that was stolen from the Pawn Shop. They put their lack of wits together to deduce that there must be a plan in the works to resurrect Mal with this totem. Living up to their name, the two of them (or, rather, David, because violence against women is his new schtick) decide they need to go get what’s left of Maleficent's corpse and throw it into the harbor, all in the name of circumventing responsibility for the atrocity they inflicted on her. OUR STALWART HEROES.
Back in Regina’s storyline someone decides it’s a good idea to expose her to more children in the name of this self-centered happy ending effort. For the first time since his transformation, we get some actual insight into what it’s like for August/Pinocchio to be a child again; he’s been mentally and physically restored to some random point in his youth and doesn’t remember anything he did as an adult (given that one of those things was sleeping with prostitutes in Thailand that’s probably for the best). Emma does her best to appeal to his memory (uncomfortably dodging some of the romantic implications of their friendship when he was August) but he doesn’t remember. Predictably, Regina loses her shit and verbally assaults him to the point of upset. It’s pretty satisfying when Marco reams her out and says she doesn’t deserve some freebie happy ending after ruining everyone else’s lives. Enjoy it while it lasts because you can bet Marco is gonna back peddle on that SO FAST by the end of this episode.
It wouldn’t be OUAT without a confusing parallel flashback to Enchanted Fuckme Haven of the past, so let’s get that one out of the way. Snow, David and the Villainess Trio decide to work together to stop Regina from casting the curse. They travel to the Wisdom (a.k.a Plot Device) Tree to get some answers. In keeping with arbitrary magic laws, this Tree will give answers to the most Valiant of Valiant Heroes or something, but it ends up rejecting Snow and David because Snow is pregnant and her child has the capacity for darkness in them. Given that she’s not even showing yet I’m not sure her zygote has the capacity for a brain let alone a capacity for ‘darkness’, but we’ve got to push this plot, dammit.
Later on, Mal visits Snow and suggests they work together for the sake of their children (Mal’s got a dragon egg stewing, herself). Even though Snow was more than willing to work with her to find the Wisdom Tree, suddenly the idea of being in cahoots with Maleficent to save the kingdom is unthinkable. She’s got it in her head that working with a villain will ensure that her child is evil, even though what Mal is proposing would give a better chance of saving the lives of the Kingdom’s people. Doesn’t seem very dark or evil to me, but what do I know, I’m not a corrupt, selfish Queen (and I ain’t talkin’ about Regina this time). No wonder Emma had the capacity for darkness even then. Her parents are hardly the Charming/Heroic duo the show wants us to believe they are.
I like to imagine the angry apple tree from Wizard of Oz was the Plot Device Tree.
Meanwhile in Storybrooke of the present, Snow and David sneak off to dispose of any incriminating evidence- which, to be fair, makes them just like any other corrupt leader. This was apparently all a ruse orchestrated by Maleficent, Cruella and Rumple; they didn’t need a personal totem to resurrect Mal, they needed the blood of the people who wronged her most, which is...kind of a weak plan that relies a lot on assumption and chance. Maybe they had some Plan As or Plan Bs lying around in the event that Snow and David didn’t make the exact choices necessary to pull this contrived, oddly specific plan off. When Mal is resurrected she makes some vague threats about destroying Snow and David’s world (whatever that means, if indeed it’ll mean anything) and the two of them decide they need to go ahead and come clean about what they did- but only upon coercion, you understand.
Regina’s storyline wraps up in a pretty predictable fashion; she shows up at Marco’s house, offers a halfhearted apology for yelling at his child, and he not only forgives her but hands over the exact reason she even bothered expressing false remorse in the first place- August’s bags full of happy ending cheat codes.
There’s also been a completely pointless Captain Swan side plot wherein Emma has gotten mad at Hook for withholding information about his past history with Ursula. She even goes so far as to accuse him of lying to her about it, though I think there’s a pretty big difference between sending clear signals of “I’m not comfortable talking about this” and outright lying. Also, given the things Hook has kept from Emma in this season alone that she still doesn’t know about, offering a “I don’t remember what happened” instead of a full report is kind of small potatoes. Of course, Emma doesn’t know that and I’d be surprised if she ever does. Anyway, the minor misunderstanding that the show is trying to pass as sincere conflict for this couple is quickly resolved when Emma tells him to keep his secrets, it’s fine (why she was so perplexed and curious about what might have happened between her philandering boyfriend and a woman in his past is a little beyond me, like, take a wild guess) and gives him more gold stickers for his ‘Hero’ column in case any of us forgot that was a thing for him now.
Also David and Snow show up, hear her singing their praises for being the most honest parents in the world, feel guilty and back out of telling the truth. When Emma asks why the Villainess Trio is trying to fight them Snow explains that it’s because “they’re villains and we’re heroes” and that’s good enough for the butchered remains of Emma’s character.
To round off this episode, Snow seeks Regina’s help in infiltrating the Villainess Trio and stopping their plans of destroying everyone’s happy ending. She reveals to her that the cause of Mal’s vendetta against them is that they made her lose her child- sacrificed said child is a better description, but that’s for next time on Once Upon a Infanticide.
