Season one finale title revealed:
http://twitter.com/#!/AdamHorowitzLA/status/182252164754849794: A Land Without Magic
Once Upon a Time (ABC) - 1x02 till the bitter end
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
- Start date
Is Rumpelstiltskin channeling his inner Darth Plageuis which would make Emma Anakin...?
Yeah the Star Wars resonances are very weird and entertaining in this context, aren't they?
In that Rumple backstory episode, I couldn't help noticing it was basically the Prequel Trilogy, except told right, and in under an hour. They make it look so easy.Not everyone feels the Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold love. The backstory doesn't explain how a man with a limp is the man who ran, which plainly shows the backstory is decidedly incomplete. But mentioning Gold reminds me that he too is one whose fairy tale story doesn't have a happy ending, and thus, like Red, might be better off in the real world.
Or on a horse.
Just to specify, I'm referring more to the excellent Japanese subplot from Season 2, and the exploration of Sylar's different personalities. I saw no reason why it was rejected the way it was. The show did lose its way bigtime later, but it didn't start to go downhill as fast as some folks say. The audience just got impatient. And that pushed the writers into "let's throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" mode, ergo the bad writing.
The fortunate part is OUAT has attracted and kept enough viewers who aren't demanding a weekly resolution and are happy with bits and pieces of the story being filled in over multiple weeks (thank you, Lost). For example, I have no doubt that we'll learn why Mr. Gold has the limp. But it may be something we won't find out about until next season - was it an injury received while as Rumple, or did something happen soon after Storybrooke was created? In fact there's a whole storyline that hasn't been explored yet - we have yet to see what happened in the early days of Storybrooke. Did it arrive fully formed, or did Regina spend time molding everyone into their characters?
I don't think OUAT is overly complex for its audience (someone accused it of being so). While the show undoubtedly rewards viewers who tune in each episode (for example, the opening of this week's episode with Red Riding Hood doing her thing, which might have people who missed the previous episode going WTF), I don't get the feeling that missing an episode would put me hopelessly behind in following the story, which was an issue I had with Lost and 24.
Alex
As dark Rumpelstiltskin he was the most powerful magician in the land, I'm sure he could heal himself quite easily. But now in the real world he has lost his powers and everything he got with them.
They may explain it more later, but I don't think they really need to.
What excellent Japanese subplot? I don't remember anything from S2 that I'd call "excellent." That samurai stuff was a bore. And the exploration of Sylar's personalities was a total catastrophic mess. They never did figure out what the character was all about, so they just jerked him around incoherently, trying to create stuff for him to do to fill up the required airtime.
It was obvious that the original plan was never to keep Sylar after S1 because they hadn't laid the groundwork for a character that could survive much scrutiny. Zachary Quinto's great performance screwed up that plan, so they were left with a great actor playing an unworkable character.
What was there to be patient about? I stuck with the show the whole time and it never rewarded my patience. It just got worse and worse. The people who bailed early were the smart ones. I only kept watching because I can be psychotically stubborn.
And maybe I was morbidly curious to see just how bad it could get.
Not just him. Heck, the original plan was to get rid of all the characters after the first season. I think the ratings scared them off that idea.
That would have been a huge mistake, since the characters were the show's strength, largely because they were played by good actors, or so-so actors who were at least cast well for the part and had good on-screen chemistry.
As the subsequent melt-down proved, the writing just wasn't there. Heroes just lucked out with the casting in S1 and had someone, probably Bryan Fuller, to make the writing shape up. If the characters hadn't been retained, we would have had bad characters and bad writing, ugh. Kring's intolerably sappy Touch just shows what the problem was all along. He can't write worth spit.
OUAT is on the verge of renewal for S2. Not surprising but official.
As the subsequent melt-down proved, the writing just wasn't there. Heroes just lucked out with the casting in S1 and had someone, probably Bryan Fuller, to make the writing shape up. If the characters hadn't been retained, we would have had bad characters and bad writing, ugh. Kring's intolerably sappy Touch just shows what the problem was all along. He can't write worth spit.
OUAT is on the verge of renewal for S2. Not surprising but official.
Good to hear. I coulda sworn that decision was made before the break, so, it's good to hear it's made now
I liked the characters but I always felt that Heroes' first season appeal was the plotlines and mysteries. A large part of the characters' roles were simply being exposition-dumpers and action figures--with such a large cast and frenetic pacing from one scene to the next we had little time to spend on them. And I felt their arcs were done by the end of season one and the fact that Kring kept them around is what partially contributed to the weak writing--he simply had no interest or longterm plans for them since he was going to rotate out the cast.
That's actually one of the things I hate about a lot of shows these days with fast pacing and a large cast--you don't get the extended scenes and the same characters week in and week out that a more leisure paced drama with a modest ensemble allows for. I would love tv shows in the future to go back to this and not tie themselves down with ADD pacing, flashcutting between scenes and an expansive cast. They could also get rid of complicated mythologies opting instead for more manageable season long arcs where the mysteries and unanswered questions don't need to be drawn out for the life of the series.
I mean just look at all the failed LOST wannabes--Harpers Island, Invasion, Surface, post S1 Heroes, Alcatraz, FlashForward, The Event, The 4400, V etc.
I don't know if I'd call The 4400 a failed Lost wanabe, first off it started before Lost, and it ran for four years. Not to mention the fact that the whole style of it was not at all similar to the kind of feel the Lost imitators tend to go for.
I'm on board for that.
I've been behind on watching OUAT, but today I just went through a marathon of the latest 3 episodes. A thought crossed my mind as I saw Charming wandering through the woods without conciousness...
In fairy tale land, Charming is confident and brave but in the real world Charming is filled with doubt and constantly second guessing what he should do. Red Riding Hood was adventurous and righteous, but Ruby behaves like a directionless soul and doubts her own abilities. If the land of fairy tale is enchanted, then our land is not simply a land without magic but the land of disenchantment.
In fairy tale land, Charming is confident and brave but in the real world Charming is filled with doubt and constantly second guessing what he should do. Red Riding Hood was adventurous and righteous, but Ruby behaves like a directionless soul and doubts her own abilities. If the land of fairy tale is enchanted, then our land is not simply a land without magic but the land of disenchantment.
