Once upon a time (season 1)
Jan. 20th, 2013 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI fulfilled one of my fannish new year's resolutions and marathoned the first season of this show. Which I thought might be a candidate to fill the Merlin spot in my viewer life, now that Merlin is over, but as it turns out it fills the Lost spot instead. Flashbacks! Non-linear storytelling of interconnecting storylines! Dull love triangles in present day on the one hand, brilliant onion-layer character development for guy introduced as villain on the other (Mr. Gold, meet Mr. Linus - surely someone must have written that?). Mind you, there are also differences (most of all in the show's respective treatments of their female characters in general), but still, the flaws and virtues are a pretty good match. With that in mind...
....does Disney own ABC, or vice versa? Because I can't help but notice that the non- Grimm fairy tale characters (Gepetto, Jimini Cricket & Pinnoccio, Belle from Beauty & The Beast, the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, all of which hail from literary works) all have starred in Disney movies, that the choice of costume for the fairy tale incarnations is pretty close to their Disney incarnations (most noticable with Cinderella, Belle and Snow White in the hilarious scene where the Disney red hair band and the cute bird are all present but she goes bonkers instead of singing), the dwarves at one point even sing the Disney song, so methinks the Mouse would sue if there wasn't shared ownership. (Or is the song out of copyright by now, what with the Disney movie in question hailing from the 30s?)
Another trivia observation: I'm willing to bet that "a small town in Maine" doesn't just make me but a sizable part of the reading world population immediately think "Stephen King". Of course Storybrooke has to be in Maine. This kind of stuff always happens there. In fact, I can see inhabitants of Derry and Castle Rock visiting and wearily declaring, eh, been there, done that, and at least you don't have serial killers on the lose?
On to the show proper: By and large, I am, no pun intended, charmed. Some of the twists to various storytelling tropes the show comes up with are really inventive, a lot of the characters endeared themselves to me, and I also approve of the cast. I'll get the complaints out of the way first, as is my want, so that I can move on to the praise.
1.) The dreariness of the Mary Margaret/David/Kathryn triangle which has a lot to do with the mid season slump before things pick up again. Now as opposed to the Lost triangle (later quadrangle) of dreary doom, this one becomes even drearier by the contrast to the way the characters' fairy tale counter parts are depicted, because the Snow White/Charming romance is incredibly appealing, and the way Charming interacts with his unwanted fiance Abigail is ever so much better than how David acts towards Kathryn. On a Watsonian level, I suppose we can blame the curse, but none of the other fairy tale characters changes personality so much as Snow White to Mary Margaret and Charming to David in Storybrook. On a Doylist level, the reason for the contrast is pretty obvious. Snow White and Charming both are depicted as active characters in fairy tale land. Their scenes, with each other or other people, are different each time. Mary Margaret and David are both extremely passive characters who keep having the same "I love you/we can't be together/I love you/" conversation for many episodes in a row, and while Mary Margaret also has a role as Emma's sounding board that is not David related, she doesn't have anything else to do, whereas Snow White is doing heroics in fairy tale land, and while Charming when temporarily separated from his beloved and believing she doesn't love him occupies his time saving his fiance-by-political-necessity's true love from a dire fate, David does nothing but indulge in woe-is-me scenes. I should add that this changes after Mary Margaret's imprisonment, for both characters, during the last third of the season, but verily, the incredible soapiness of mid season Mary Margaret/David is a trial.
2.) Henry Mills (the Younger) and his utter lack of affection for his adopted mother. I'm actually going to and thro about this. It has a certain fairy tale logic that Henry doesn't love Regina, because the way she gained her victory and Storybrooke was by sacrificing her father, who loved her and whom she loved. (Also, the show has been careful to show that Regina isn't unlovable per se, or that children automatically take against her; child!Snow White adores her, both the Genie and Sydney love her unconditionally, Maleficent has enough genuinenly friendly feelings for her to warn her about the curse.) It therefore makes fairy tale sense that her karmic punishment, so to speak, is the second Henry not loving her back. Also, the fact that Regina does love her son (and that the show is crystal clear on this) despite not getting anything back from him contributes to make her more dimensional. But. In terms of anything approaching psychological verisimilitude, this is where my suspension of disbelief breaks down. Because Regina was the one to raise Henry; she's sometimes strict with him but never mean, and he's evidently not meant to be a sociopath but shown as a kid with a clear sense of right and wrong and attachments left, right and center, to anyone but Regina, and I just can't buy that. Just two examples from other fiction as a compare and contrast: in Stephen King's and Peter Straub's novel The Talisman, the best friend of Jack, our hero, Richard, is also the son of the main villain. Richard is a good and sympathetic character. Who has a hard time believing in his father's evilness, and when the evidence is finally there, it's incredibly heartbreaking and traumatic for him. Moving ont o tv, one of my all time favourite tv shows, American Gothic, has at its heart a boy, Caleb, who is also the son of the may-or-may-not-be-the-devil town sheriff, Lucas Buck. There is an ongoing struggle for Caleb between Lucas on the one hand and the show's various good guys plus Caleb's ghostly sister Merlyn on the other, much as there is an ongoing struggle for Henry between Emma and Regina. Caleb initially rejects Lucas (for very good reasons, including the fact Lucas kills Merlyn in the pilot) but through the season their relationship becomes much more complicated. Caleb, of course, while generally an endearing kid isn't all sweetness and light and has his own dark side. I find both Richard and Caleb far easier to believe than Henry, and also better crafted from a storytelling point of view (as I think that if Henry were genuinenly conflicted between Emma and Regina instead of immediately appointing Emma his heroine and rejecting Regina entirely, it would make for a more interesting character).
Having stated these two major issues of disgruntlment for me, on to the good stuff, or why I kept watching and ended up really liking the show. The pilot was your standard basic set up of premise and introduction of central characters, but brought nothing unexpected; the very next episode, number 2, however, did, by showing us the Evil Queen/Regina's side of pilot events, leading up to her killing her father in order to make the curse work. From being an evil plot device who does things because she's evil, she became a character who makes choices, who has alternatives. Who also has relationships; with her father, with Maleficent, and the dynamic between her and Rumpelstilkin which is crucial for the entire show, the verbal sparring and trying to outplot each other was set up right there and then. The third episode, Snow Falls, was conversely the one which fleshed out Snow White and Charming, making them real and making one care for them instead of taking it for granted one would because they're on Team Good, and the show went on to do similar things for various other fairy tale characters and their counterparts - and then struck, inevitable pun is inevitable, gold when it gave us the Rumpelstilskin origin story.
(Side note: it is very distracting for me to type "Rumpelstilskin" instead of "Rumpelstilzchen", the later being the way we spell it in German, and also , the pronounciation is quite different. But such is life.)
I can't say enough about both the writing (mostly done by Jane Espenson, who wrote the R-centric episodes) and the acting of the entire Rumpelstilskin storyline: Robert Carlyle pays essentially three or four different characters and yet makes it believable they're all the same man. (Evil trickster!Rumpelstilskin, enigmatic Mr. Gold, human downtrodden!Rumpelstilskin, magical powered but still in transition before the loss of son!Rumpelstilskin.) Best of all, this is a story about choices on every level, presenting its character as tragic but also responsible for his own fate. Rumpelstilskin ending up with dark magic may have been in order to save his son; his keeping said powers and what he does with them is for himself, and as the season continues, we see several points afterwards where he could have chosen differently but ended up making things worse by keeping going for power (and losing both Belle and his son). Which, again, isn't explained by some innate evilness, any more than his continued ability to feel love is equated with excusing everything or being redemption in itself. The Beauty and the Beast episode, in which Jane Espenson lets Regina quip "we can't have a woman kiss the man who abducted her, what kind of message would that send?" is one of the examples of the show coming up with a genuinenly fresh and inspiring twist on a well-worn trope. Belle doesn't redeem Rumpelstilskin. Falling for Mr. Layered Villain is all very well and understandable, but if he doesn't want to change, it gets you absolutely nowhere (or rather, in a locked cell because he's engaged in a power play with the show's other main power player). Storybrooke is created by Regina and Rumpelstilskin, and it's to the show's everlasting credit that it provides both of them with reasons for it and indeed makes the bit by bit revelation of Rumpelstilskin's true goals through the season an incredibly compelling storyline, culminating in the very last scene, in which he does that thing where you think, well, OF COURSE, inspite of not having guessed it at all until then. (Well, I didn't.)
Another great virtue of the show is that no one has the burden of being "the girl" and being stuck with embodying all of feminity. Instead, we get a rich tapestry, and the relationships between the women in particular are crucial (Emma versus Regina, Regina versus Snow White obviously, but also Emma & Mary Margaret, Snow White & Red, Red/Ruby and her Grandmother, Emma & Red). There are friendships and alliances between female and male characters that aren't set ups for UST or romance. (Emma & Archie, Snow White & Grumpy, Charming & Abigail.) Emma gets the traditional stoic prickly hero role still more usually given to male than to female characters. When female characters get captured, they usually save themselves. Several of the twists to the traditional narrative of the fairy tales are all about agency: Belle goes with Rumpelstilskin partly because she wants to be a hero; there is no huntsman saviour when we finally get to the Little Red Riding Hood backstory, and instead, we have that inspired amalgan with the werewolf trope (Angela Carter would have approved, though she took a quite different twist on it) where both Red and Granny are the wolves and end up being able to use that for good; and when we finally see the iconic scene where Snow White takes the apple from the Queen, Snow White doesn't do it in ignorance, and it's not because Regina envies her beauty, but it is a conscious choice.
Bits and pieces:
- as soon as Sebastian Stan showed up in the credits, I knew there would be a scene where he gets to do his angry teary eyed stare. I'm still waiting for the big angry teary eyed starathon between him and Tom Hiddleston. All kidding aside, Jefferson was a good way to underline that parental love for a child does not automatically a saint make. (Again, hello Lost and Michael.) I mean, obviously Rumpelstilskin is another case in point, but his are particular circumstances.
- I should have recognized Brad Dourif as the beggar right away, but I didn't until rewatching some scenes from Desperate Souls, at which point, duh, self. Of course he'd be THAT GUY.
- I'm probably alone in that assessment, but I think it was a good choice to kill off Graham/The Huntsman when the show did. Because while Regina had done a number of dastardly deeds in fairy tale land, but not in present day Storybrooke until then, and if you want to get across your villain isn't just good at sarcastic threats flung into the heroine's direction and otherwise gets foiled, having her kill off a character the audience cares about is a really efficient way to do it. (It also establishes that the fairy tale characters can and do die if you kill them in Storybrooke, Maine, which raises the stakes for our ensemble.)
- Amy Acker, otoh, was immediately recognizable; but learning about how the dwarves are made to serve in the mines made me want to start a dwarf revolution. I mean, I know my sci fi, and they're basically the Jem Ha'dar with better tempers from DS9 or the Replicants from Blade Runner.
- a quick glance at the AO3 tells me that Emma/Regina is known by the portmanteau of "Swan Queen". That... actually is a good name. Normally I hate pairing names, especially the smushed ones, but "Swan Queen" is a clever label. Speaking of names," Emma Swan" is a good one for a fairy tale heroine. I also like some of the aliases, like Sydney Glass (Giancarlo Exposito as Completely Unlike Gus) for the Genie/Mirror, Mr. Gold, and of course Regina is called Queen in Latin.
In conclusion: that was surprisingly delightful. Who knows what the future will being, but I enjoyed this first season enormously.
....does Disney own ABC, or vice versa? Because I can't help but notice that the non- Grimm fairy tale characters (Gepetto, Jimini Cricket & Pinnoccio, Belle from Beauty & The Beast, the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, all of which hail from literary works) all have starred in Disney movies, that the choice of costume for the fairy tale incarnations is pretty close to their Disney incarnations (most noticable with Cinderella, Belle and Snow White in the hilarious scene where the Disney red hair band and the cute bird are all present but she goes bonkers instead of singing), the dwarves at one point even sing the Disney song, so methinks the Mouse would sue if there wasn't shared ownership. (Or is the song out of copyright by now, what with the Disney movie in question hailing from the 30s?)
Another trivia observation: I'm willing to bet that "a small town in Maine" doesn't just make me but a sizable part of the reading world population immediately think "Stephen King". Of course Storybrooke has to be in Maine. This kind of stuff always happens there. In fact, I can see inhabitants of Derry and Castle Rock visiting and wearily declaring, eh, been there, done that, and at least you don't have serial killers on the lose?
On to the show proper: By and large, I am, no pun intended, charmed. Some of the twists to various storytelling tropes the show comes up with are really inventive, a lot of the characters endeared themselves to me, and I also approve of the cast. I'll get the complaints out of the way first, as is my want, so that I can move on to the praise.
1.) The dreariness of the Mary Margaret/David/Kathryn triangle which has a lot to do with the mid season slump before things pick up again. Now as opposed to the Lost triangle (later quadrangle) of dreary doom, this one becomes even drearier by the contrast to the way the characters' fairy tale counter parts are depicted, because the Snow White/Charming romance is incredibly appealing, and the way Charming interacts with his unwanted fiance Abigail is ever so much better than how David acts towards Kathryn. On a Watsonian level, I suppose we can blame the curse, but none of the other fairy tale characters changes personality so much as Snow White to Mary Margaret and Charming to David in Storybrook. On a Doylist level, the reason for the contrast is pretty obvious. Snow White and Charming both are depicted as active characters in fairy tale land. Their scenes, with each other or other people, are different each time. Mary Margaret and David are both extremely passive characters who keep having the same "I love you/we can't be together/I love you/" conversation for many episodes in a row, and while Mary Margaret also has a role as Emma's sounding board that is not David related, she doesn't have anything else to do, whereas Snow White is doing heroics in fairy tale land, and while Charming when temporarily separated from his beloved and believing she doesn't love him occupies his time saving his fiance-by-political-necessity's true love from a dire fate, David does nothing but indulge in woe-is-me scenes. I should add that this changes after Mary Margaret's imprisonment, for both characters, during the last third of the season, but verily, the incredible soapiness of mid season Mary Margaret/David is a trial.
2.) Henry Mills (the Younger) and his utter lack of affection for his adopted mother. I'm actually going to and thro about this. It has a certain fairy tale logic that Henry doesn't love Regina, because the way she gained her victory and Storybrooke was by sacrificing her father, who loved her and whom she loved. (Also, the show has been careful to show that Regina isn't unlovable per se, or that children automatically take against her; child!Snow White adores her, both the Genie and Sydney love her unconditionally, Maleficent has enough genuinenly friendly feelings for her to warn her about the curse.) It therefore makes fairy tale sense that her karmic punishment, so to speak, is the second Henry not loving her back. Also, the fact that Regina does love her son (and that the show is crystal clear on this) despite not getting anything back from him contributes to make her more dimensional. But. In terms of anything approaching psychological verisimilitude, this is where my suspension of disbelief breaks down. Because Regina was the one to raise Henry; she's sometimes strict with him but never mean, and he's evidently not meant to be a sociopath but shown as a kid with a clear sense of right and wrong and attachments left, right and center, to anyone but Regina, and I just can't buy that. Just two examples from other fiction as a compare and contrast: in Stephen King's and Peter Straub's novel The Talisman, the best friend of Jack, our hero, Richard, is also the son of the main villain. Richard is a good and sympathetic character. Who has a hard time believing in his father's evilness, and when the evidence is finally there, it's incredibly heartbreaking and traumatic for him. Moving ont o tv, one of my all time favourite tv shows, American Gothic, has at its heart a boy, Caleb, who is also the son of the may-or-may-not-be-the-devil town sheriff, Lucas Buck. There is an ongoing struggle for Caleb between Lucas on the one hand and the show's various good guys plus Caleb's ghostly sister Merlyn on the other, much as there is an ongoing struggle for Henry between Emma and Regina. Caleb initially rejects Lucas (for very good reasons, including the fact Lucas kills Merlyn in the pilot) but through the season their relationship becomes much more complicated. Caleb, of course, while generally an endearing kid isn't all sweetness and light and has his own dark side. I find both Richard and Caleb far easier to believe than Henry, and also better crafted from a storytelling point of view (as I think that if Henry were genuinenly conflicted between Emma and Regina instead of immediately appointing Emma his heroine and rejecting Regina entirely, it would make for a more interesting character).
Having stated these two major issues of disgruntlment for me, on to the good stuff, or why I kept watching and ended up really liking the show. The pilot was your standard basic set up of premise and introduction of central characters, but brought nothing unexpected; the very next episode, number 2, however, did, by showing us the Evil Queen/Regina's side of pilot events, leading up to her killing her father in order to make the curse work. From being an evil plot device who does things because she's evil, she became a character who makes choices, who has alternatives. Who also has relationships; with her father, with Maleficent, and the dynamic between her and Rumpelstilkin which is crucial for the entire show, the verbal sparring and trying to outplot each other was set up right there and then. The third episode, Snow Falls, was conversely the one which fleshed out Snow White and Charming, making them real and making one care for them instead of taking it for granted one would because they're on Team Good, and the show went on to do similar things for various other fairy tale characters and their counterparts - and then struck, inevitable pun is inevitable, gold when it gave us the Rumpelstilskin origin story.
(Side note: it is very distracting for me to type "Rumpelstilskin" instead of "Rumpelstilzchen", the later being the way we spell it in German, and also , the pronounciation is quite different. But such is life.)
I can't say enough about both the writing (mostly done by Jane Espenson, who wrote the R-centric episodes) and the acting of the entire Rumpelstilskin storyline: Robert Carlyle pays essentially three or four different characters and yet makes it believable they're all the same man. (Evil trickster!Rumpelstilskin, enigmatic Mr. Gold, human downtrodden!Rumpelstilskin, magical powered but still in transition before the loss of son!Rumpelstilskin.) Best of all, this is a story about choices on every level, presenting its character as tragic but also responsible for his own fate. Rumpelstilskin ending up with dark magic may have been in order to save his son; his keeping said powers and what he does with them is for himself, and as the season continues, we see several points afterwards where he could have chosen differently but ended up making things worse by keeping going for power (and losing both Belle and his son). Which, again, isn't explained by some innate evilness, any more than his continued ability to feel love is equated with excusing everything or being redemption in itself. The Beauty and the Beast episode, in which Jane Espenson lets Regina quip "we can't have a woman kiss the man who abducted her, what kind of message would that send?" is one of the examples of the show coming up with a genuinenly fresh and inspiring twist on a well-worn trope. Belle doesn't redeem Rumpelstilskin. Falling for Mr. Layered Villain is all very well and understandable, but if he doesn't want to change, it gets you absolutely nowhere (or rather, in a locked cell because he's engaged in a power play with the show's other main power player). Storybrooke is created by Regina and Rumpelstilskin, and it's to the show's everlasting credit that it provides both of them with reasons for it and indeed makes the bit by bit revelation of Rumpelstilskin's true goals through the season an incredibly compelling storyline, culminating in the very last scene, in which he does that thing where you think, well, OF COURSE, inspite of not having guessed it at all until then. (Well, I didn't.)
Another great virtue of the show is that no one has the burden of being "the girl" and being stuck with embodying all of feminity. Instead, we get a rich tapestry, and the relationships between the women in particular are crucial (Emma versus Regina, Regina versus Snow White obviously, but also Emma & Mary Margaret, Snow White & Red, Red/Ruby and her Grandmother, Emma & Red). There are friendships and alliances between female and male characters that aren't set ups for UST or romance. (Emma & Archie, Snow White & Grumpy, Charming & Abigail.) Emma gets the traditional stoic prickly hero role still more usually given to male than to female characters. When female characters get captured, they usually save themselves. Several of the twists to the traditional narrative of the fairy tales are all about agency: Belle goes with Rumpelstilskin partly because she wants to be a hero; there is no huntsman saviour when we finally get to the Little Red Riding Hood backstory, and instead, we have that inspired amalgan with the werewolf trope (Angela Carter would have approved, though she took a quite different twist on it) where both Red and Granny are the wolves and end up being able to use that for good; and when we finally see the iconic scene where Snow White takes the apple from the Queen, Snow White doesn't do it in ignorance, and it's not because Regina envies her beauty, but it is a conscious choice.
Bits and pieces:
- as soon as Sebastian Stan showed up in the credits, I knew there would be a scene where he gets to do his angry teary eyed stare. I'm still waiting for the big angry teary eyed starathon between him and Tom Hiddleston. All kidding aside, Jefferson was a good way to underline that parental love for a child does not automatically a saint make. (Again, hello Lost and Michael.) I mean, obviously Rumpelstilskin is another case in point, but his are particular circumstances.
- I should have recognized Brad Dourif as the beggar right away, but I didn't until rewatching some scenes from Desperate Souls, at which point, duh, self. Of course he'd be THAT GUY.
- I'm probably alone in that assessment, but I think it was a good choice to kill off Graham/The Huntsman when the show did. Because while Regina had done a number of dastardly deeds in fairy tale land, but not in present day Storybrooke until then, and if you want to get across your villain isn't just good at sarcastic threats flung into the heroine's direction and otherwise gets foiled, having her kill off a character the audience cares about is a really efficient way to do it. (It also establishes that the fairy tale characters can and do die if you kill them in Storybrooke, Maine, which raises the stakes for our ensemble.)
- Amy Acker, otoh, was immediately recognizable; but learning about how the dwarves are made to serve in the mines made me want to start a dwarf revolution. I mean, I know my sci fi, and they're basically the Jem Ha'dar with better tempers from DS9 or the Replicants from Blade Runner.
- a quick glance at the AO3 tells me that Emma/Regina is known by the portmanteau of "Swan Queen". That... actually is a good name. Normally I hate pairing names, especially the smushed ones, but "Swan Queen" is a clever label. Speaking of names," Emma Swan" is a good one for a fairy tale heroine. I also like some of the aliases, like Sydney Glass (Giancarlo Exposito as Completely Unlike Gus) for the Genie/Mirror, Mr. Gold, and of course Regina is called Queen in Latin.
In conclusion: that was surprisingly delightful. Who knows what the future will being, but I enjoyed this first season enormously.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 10:57 am (UTC)I understand that some of the things about Henry and Regina that annoy you get better in the second season.
According to interviews, the death of the Huntsman wasn't just about making Regina more of a threat, but also of making it absolutely clear that the fairy tale backstory really did exist and that Henry wasn't deluded.
I'm amused by the fact that you don't mention August/Pinocchio at all, which suggests you have the same lack of interest in him as I do.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 01:02 pm (UTC)making it absolutely clear that the fairy tale backstory really did exist and that Henry wasn't deluded.
Hm, that this was even an option had not occured to me, because, well, we start with a fairy tale scene. I suppose there could have been a twist that every single fairy tale scene just took place in Henry's imagination, but we did see the town clock not moving in the pilot and then starting to move at the very end (which happened not immediately after Emma's entry in the town but hours later, after her decision to stay), and that was current day.
Good to know about Henry and Regina in s2!
Re: American Gothic: there is of course also the whole deal making element (which reminds me that Mr. Gold/Rumpelstilzchen hasn't yet collected his favour from Emma) - Lucas Buck would certainly recognize Gold's modus operandi.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 11:00 am (UTC)I agree about killing off the Huntsman, but until now I thought I was alone in that! It gave Emma a greater position of responsibility, it raises the stakes in that death is real and permanent, and it shows Regina does commit evil in both worlds.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 01:10 pm (UTC)Bearing The Stable Boy in mind, Snow's on-a-vengeance-path episode when she's without the memories of having loved and the statement therein that if she killed Regina, she would become Regina gets another layer. (BTW I expected Regina to kill her mother and acquire her powers at the end of The Stable Boy and was surprised when she didn't, but I suppose that's something left for s2.) And for all my complaints about young Henry's attitude, the show gave the other child Regina raised, to wit, Snow White, all the mixed feelings in the world (even after the death of King Leopold and going as late as the apple taking).
I can so see Charming and tv!Richard Cypher as similar types, yes!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 11:42 am (UTC)ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company as of 1996 and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group, formerly ABC-TV.
And I don't think the House of Mouse lets ANY of their copyrights expire. I mean, ever.
I've always seen the name written as "Rumpelstiltskin," not "Rumpelstilskin." Is the show changing the spelling?
Where have you caught up on the episodes?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 01:12 pm (UTC)Name spelling: as I said, I'm used to the German spelling, which is Rumpelstilzchen, so the English spelling is something I'm bound to get wrong.
Episodes: I caved and bought them on itunes.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 01:42 pm (UTC)And yes, Mr. Gold and Regina are the two characters that make this series interesting.
I haven't watched Season 2 - for an extremely silly reason: They introduce, yet, another Disney character, namely Mulan, and the character was so utterly unconvincing (looks, acting and costume) that I hated her more than I liked the other characters and the premise. I may resume watching, if I come across ecstatic post about the show ^^
PS: Are you watching Utopia?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 07:22 pm (UTC)Worth watching!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 02:27 pm (UTC)I... have my issues with the show, to put it mildly, but I do credit it for being consistently female-centric, and offering up several varieties of possible female character types, both as heroes and villains (and roles in between). I could live without their overuse of the Evil Mom trope, but that's Lost writers for you. ;)(There is also a dastardly guyliner villain in Season 2, who is fairly likely an homage to Jack Sparrow, but I chose to view him as a callback to Richard Alpert. And some old acquaintances!)
And there is femmeslash! Especially in Season 2, which offers up two new possible pairings - not spoiling who, but you don't know all of them yet. For almost the first time in my life I find myself tempted to ship.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:19 pm (UTC)I only got about half way through season 1, basically because of the 2 listed as your dislikes, but I've heard enough positive that I want to come back and catch up at some point. Interesting review!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:28 pm (UTC)I love the women-centric nature of the show. By and large, their stories in either land are of interest to me and their characterizations remain basically the same from one world to the next. Not so with David/Charming, he is quite different in Storybrooke versus his very likeable self in FTL.
When season one ended, I was uncertain if the writers could follow through in season two with ongoing stories that would hold my interest. They have done so. I think you will enjoy season two.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 03:36 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly. It made her genuinenly dangerous in this world. Good to know about season 2!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 02:10 am (UTC)I've found Season Two to be an improvement over Season One in that it has no boring love triangle, Henry's relationship with Regina is more nuanced, and so far it doesn't drag horribly in the middle. Also they introduce even more female characters and develop the existing relationships between them as well as adding new ones. I also really like the platonic relationships between the men and women, of which there are also more coming.
Sheriff Graham's death was the moment I really fell for the show - it was a genuinely shocking plot twist and demonstrated a willingness to raise the stakes.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 07:30 am (UTC)It made sense to me because Regina was gaslighting Henry for years, trying to make him think he was crazy for noticing that he was the only person in the entire town who was growing or changing (Ella was pregnant for 28 years!), so I completely understand why he felt like he couldn't trust her.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 06:27 pm (UTC)- Regina still loving Cora after Cora killed Daniel right in front of her
- Baelfire still loving Rumpelstilskin despite being horrified (and justly so) at his father's ever higher body count and general change
- Snow White at the very least having still mixed emotions towards Regina even after her stepmother killed her father and tried to kill her (I mean, if you after being told that your stepmother sent you with a killer spend what you think are your last moments writing a letter to her in which you talk about your regret and your love for her...)
Now, having started s2, I'm glad that basically the show addresses this, which is all I wanted. Not for Henry to suddenly pro Regina or ignore she has done horrible things (including the gaslighting), just for him to show some emotional conflict regarding her.
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Date: 2013-01-21 11:45 pm (UTC)ETA: And it rang true to me as a behavior because it's something that I myself have done in response to feeling deeply hurt/betrayed by someone that I had loved -- I completely cut myself out of the person's life. Henry can't do that physically because of his age, but he can do it emotionally. So, I could see it as a believable response because it resonated with something that I myself have done.
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Date: 2013-01-23 07:10 pm (UTC)I hated the love triangle in Storybrooke in the middle, but I am so glad that the writers (quite rightly) did not pit Mary Margaret and Kathryn against each other and very clearly called out David's role in what happened, and I really loved how they managed to flesh out Abigail in fairy tale land. I'd like love triangles much more if they were treated this way more often!
Also, I didn't realize people disliked the death of Graham! It was actually the point I really started to pay attention to the show. I am so used to shows starting out with many female characters and then slowly shifting the focus to the more attractive male characters that I think I had just been expecting that, so when they fridged Graham, I was pleasantly shocked. Even more so when they actually ended up fridging a few more guys. (Note to TV characters: never become engaged to characters named Daniel! It only ends in misery!)
I do wish they hadn't gone with the Magical POC stuff re: Sydney Glass/the genie.
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Date: 2013-01-24 03:53 pm (UTC)As for woobification, so far I've kept from most Rumpel-centric fanfic precisely because I'm afraid of that, but in canon he continues to be fascinating yet un-woobified.
Re: Sydney Glass/the genie, well, given the nature of the show (i.e. fairy tales are real, lots of magical characters about), I think him having magic doesn't make him a magical poc in the sense one uses the term. Far from solving anyone's problems, dispensing words of wisdom and nobly dying, he's used and set up by Regina in past and present (and also doesn't die), and the one life changing successful thing he does for her (killing her husband) actually is accomplished without magic (via the snakes). It doesn't make him a strong character, but then not everyone has to be. Now whether they should have cast Sydney with Giancarlo Esposito or given him another part is another question. (He'd have been excellent as Mr. Gold, no doubt, but also a lot like his Breaking Bad character. Casting him as Archie/Jiminy, hm, then he really would have fallen into the cliché of the advice-to-white-people-giving poc.) As the Huntsman/Graham, he'd have been killed off mid-season. Hm, Gepetto maybe?
(S2, btw, has a recurring heroic female Asian fairy tale character, if you're looking for poc with a more positive arc than Sydney's.)
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Date: 2013-01-24 07:19 pm (UTC)Re: Sydney, I think of him more as a Magical POC character largely because in S1 at least, his entire motivation was basically Regina. I was happy when it looked like he was going to go independent and team up with Emma, but that turned out to be a scheme of Regina and Sydney's. I do read him as having some agency in the bit where he tries to befriend Emma, but ultimately, we get extremely little about his character that isn't about helping Regina, which I found disappointing.
Frex, Pinocchio, the Mad Hatter, and Jiminy all have bits in their backstories illuminating their characters. I think the Huntsman is one of the other more minor recurring characters whose backstories is much more Regina-centric. I wish they had a bit more about Sydney feeling betrayed by Regina or moral qualms about betraying his rescuer, or just... something more than him acting purely on behalf of Regina.
Have heard about the Asian character in S2 and am looking forward to it! Ha, after all this discussion I really should get aorund to watching it.