Spoilers Once Upon a Time season 6

I liked the Frozen movie but it seemed when they got the characters into Storybrooke they really did not know what to do with them- it was like they had four episodes of plot and tried to stretch a season out of it.

This show has kinda lost me. I liked the earlier seasons but they kept spreading things out, introducing new characters at the expense of the ones already there. My wife loved this show and introduced me to it, now she doesn't bother to watch it at all (skipped the last season entirely).

Personally I feel they should have wound things up in Season four instead of introducing Peter Pan (who happens to be Gold's father??).
That is my biggest gripe with the series- everyone has to be related to somebody else, no matter what story universe they came from. OK for some characters, but it is really getting old.

When this show started off it had some fantastic twists on traditional characters- Red Riding Hood being a werewolf for instance. Now it has turned into a game of jumping through hoops finding some new story franchise to provide the main characters something to do.

I watched part of the first new season opener and just have not felt motivated to go back and finish it.

 

I'm still enjoying it, although it's not as good as it used to be.
The only thing that kind of bugs me now, is that most of the time they now just do direct adaptations of the animated versions of the characters. It can be kind of fun to see that, but I did like it better when they did their own more unique things.
One thing that bugged me with this one was the disappearing step-sister. We saw both of Ella's step-sisters in the first flashback scene, but then after that they only showed and talked about one of the sisters, without even a mention the other.

 

At this point in the show, I want the Frozen model: new cast of characters from a Disney movie appears for half a season, main cast interacts with them but its their story. This places the dramatic weight off the main cast, which avoids repeating the same beats over and over again with them. Rumple and the Queen turning good/evil/good/evil over and over again.

 

I'm really hoping this whole Evil Queen story going on right now will finally cement her place as a fully good or fully evil once and for all.

 

I doubt that will be the case until the show's last season, or maybe never. I saw an interview with the writers/creators in which they stated that Regina is supposed to represent the audience, someone who has an internal struggle between good and evil that basically never ends, with the message being that life is all about choices, we're never truly all good or evil, blah blah blah. If that's really how they see her character, then I doubt there will be much resolution for her until the last episode.

 

^ On a related note, I have to say that I am really impressed by Parrilla's acting. She has been great since the beginning of the show, but after the recent "character split", her body language is even better in distinguishing the character's two parts. (Also in contrast to Morrison who, IMO, has very limited acting skills and only one face expressions for all emotions.)

 

She's always been the best on the show in my opinion. I honestly think she should have been Snow White. I mean, there's just no way any magic mirror is going to say that Ginnifer Goodwin looks better than Lana Parrilla. It's not even close. (Doubly so when the mirror is in love with Parrilla's character to begin with...)

 

I really wish that they had explored Emma's character at this level. She has become the most uninteresting character I have ever encountered on this show, aside from Henry. They couldn't even explore her potential for evil with any depth.

 

I like pretty much everybody on the show, but Regina and Rumple are my favorites by far.

 

I must admit I liked it a little better when the show focused more on the fairy tale elements of the Enchanted Forest, but that's not to say I don't like the current literary characters like Jekyll and Hyde, The Count of Monte Cristo, et al. I didn't mind, of course, when Cruella DeVil or Hades were included because they still had fantastical elements about them. I didn't even know Cinderella had made an appearance in the first season, but it was a good thing they tried to incorporate her into the Land of Untold Stories arc.

 

Tonight's episode, imho, was by far the best one I've seen this season. I liked the two international actors who played Aladdin and Jasmine (a Turkish Australian guy and an Indo-Canadian British actress, respectively). They were well cast for their roles. (The Thief of Agrabah had amazing pecs, by the way.)

There was just one thing that seemed off. Aladdin said when he gave up his magic, he fled to Enchanted Forest and was eventually whisked away to Storybrooke like everyone else. In the flashback, the events in Agrabah took place "many years ago." We know that Emma broke Regina's 28-year curse many years ago too, when Aladdin was already presumably in Storybrooke. Are we to believe that Aladdin has been living in Storybrooke for decades, which is inconsistent with the flashback?

The only other explanation is that Aladdin's arrival took place during the "Wicked" storyline that brought Robin Hood and company to modern day.

 

I don't get your reasoning. How is it inconsistent with the flashback for Aladdin to be living in Storybrooke for decades considering the "many years ago" is vague enough to cover any time from say ten-twenty years ago and hundreds of years ago.

As far as the episode itself, I really liked it but it does make me wonder about something. We know Walt Disney was an Author. We also know Disney movies such as Mulan, The Sword in the Stone, and Aladdin exist in the OUAT universe. So what I'm wondering about is how is this so and why are there differences between the movies and what happens in the OUAT and what is the exact relationship between the OUAT universe and the Disney animated multiverse.

 

Really cool to see the Aladdin movie done. One the one hand it's disappointing not to have a Genie in on it. On the other hand, who the hell could replace Robin Williams? The only suggestion I would have is the fellow playing Genie in the Disney's California Adventure stage production, I saw that a few years back and he was really good.

Also, I'm madly in love with Karen David from Galavant

 

Seriously? Where I live, no one ever says "many years ago" to refer to decades. We might say, "25 years ago, decades ago, or a long time ago." Surely I've never heard anyone say "many years ago" to refer to hundreds of years into the past! From a narrative standpoint, I've seen "Once upon a time."

If you had $1.25, it would be impractical to say, "I have many cents; I've got 125 of them" or "12 dimes and a nickel." I'm not saying you'd be wrong; it would just be silly.

 

^^ "Many years ago" is their gentle way of saying that time has no meaning on this show.

It was definitely great to see Princess Isabella from Galavant again (and her arch enemy is now on SHIELD. Hopefully she'll be sticking around for a while. Unfortunately, like the other mini-epics this year, the story was lacking something. If Aladdin was just a thief, why did she have such unbounded faith in him from the moment they met?

 

The guy playing Alladin was pretty good but Karen David was perfectly cast. I'm looking forward to seeing Faran Tahir tonight as Captain Nemo. He knows a bit about playing the captain of a ship I'd say.

 

I wish Regina would just deep six the evil queen already, or absorb her back into her psych a'la Kirk.

 

Nemo was cool. I saw the twist about the first mate coming the moment Hook casually dropped the exposition.

 

The series has proven that even Snow White, Emma and the others are all like that. Wasn't that the point of the speech Snow had given to Regina back in Season 4? That all of them have both good and evil within them? Renewing this whole Regina/Evil Queen split strikes me as somewhat regressive for the series' narrative.

I suspect that Kitsis and Horowitz find Regina to be a more interesting character than the others, save for Rumpelstiltskin.

 

Agreed. The writers have a tendency to go over well-worn territory and Regina is the prime example.