Once Upon a Time - Catch-All (May contain spoilers after show is aired)

Nosferatu wrote:

Could the "Hammy" acting in the Storybook version of realty be because they are storybook characters?

If they wanted to do a storybook effect then they don't go far enough with it. Also the fairy tale reality is actually pretty dark the more we learn about it so those scenes are kind of muddled. You get naive or annoying characters talking about serious matters and it's just goofy. All the cheap green screen effects in the fairy tale scenes don't help either.

Latrine wrote:
Nosferatu wrote:

Could the "Hammy" acting in the Storybook version of realty be because they are storybook characters?

If they wanted to do a storybook effect then they don't go far enough with it. Also the fairy tale reality is actually pretty dark the more we learn about it so those scenes are kind of muddled. You get naive or annoying characters talking about serious matters and it's just goofy. All the cheap green screen effects in the fairy tale scenes don't help either.

And I think they have handled it pretty much perfectly. I like the characters, the balance between light and dark, and I don't think fancier special effects would improve the story or the feel of the show. As I said before, it's not the kind of show some people want, which is cool.

It would probably be much farther down my list of favorite shows this season, but it is high enough up on the list for my daughter and wife that it works as a nice end of the weekend show. We watch it, and my daughter is off to shower and bed. It's a DVR show that works so well in its time slot that always start it before it finishes.

Honestly I'm sort of annoyed that the storybook characters are the happy Disney versions. I love the old world fairy tales, where Hansel and Gretel were abandoned in the woods by their parents intentionally twice because they couldn't afford to feed them anymore, where the little matchgirl dies in the alleyway of the cold.

I haven't found them to be that "happy" of a version. The story of Jimmeny Cricket was pretty dark.

Definitely not the happy Disney versions, even if they're using the Disney stories as the baseline.

kazar wrote:

I haven't found them to be that "happy" of a version. The story of Jimmeny Cricket was pretty dark.

The funny thing is that in the original there was no backstory for the Talking Cricket.

Nosferatu wrote:
kazar wrote:

I haven't found them to be that "happy" of a version. The story of Jimmeny Cricket was pretty dark.

The funny thing is that in the original there was no backstory for the Talking Cricket.

Right and Rumpelstiltkin

Spoiler:

didn't kill the fairy godmother and grant cinderella her wish

It is a unique take on the fairy tale stores. It isn't disney, and it isn't just the grimm stories as they are already known.

Took me a while but I finally caught up on all the episodes. I watch so much I am often way behind on several shows this time of year. While I agree the show isn't spectacular it's not that bad. It certainly doesn't seem to be following any of the Grimm or Disney versions of the fairy tales which kind of keeps things fresh. I love Robert Carlyle's portrayal of Rumpelstiltskin.

Pretty cool origin of Rumplestiltskin.

The Blind Witch was played by Emma Caufield, who portrayed Anya in Buffy.

I caught her name in the opening credits and kept an eye for her but it wasn't until I looked it up online that I discovered who she was that episode.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The Blind Witch was played by Emma Caufield, who portrayed Anya in Buffy.

I caught her name in the opening credits and kept an eye for her but it wasn't until I looked it up online that I discovered who she was that episode.

Even in the blind witch getup, she was very doable.

Paleocon wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The Blind Witch was played by Emma Caufield, who portrayed Anya in Buffy.

I caught her name in the opening credits and kept an eye for her but it wasn't until I looked it up online that I discovered who she was that episode.

Even in the blind witch getup, she was very doable.

Anya was awesome, thanks for mentioning this. I knew the blind witch looked familiar but I couldn't place her. Saves me the trouble of looking it up myself.

I am still enjoying the show, although I hope things start to progress some. I had hopes the huntsmen story might mean we would see some more progress but instead we got a bit of reset by the end.

Gaald wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The Blind Witch was played by Emma Caufield, who portrayed Anya in Buffy.

I caught her name in the opening credits and kept an eye for her but it wasn't until I looked it up online that I discovered who she was that episode.

Even in the blind witch getup, she was very doable.

Anya was awesome, thanks for mentioning this. I knew the blind witch looked familiar but I couldn't place her. Saves me the trouble of looking it up myself.

I am still enjoying the show, although I hope things start to progress some. I had hopes the huntsmen story might mean we would see some more progress but instead we got a bit of reset by the end.

Yeah. It's already getting a bit of a "How I Met Your Mother" feel when it comes to that.

Paleocon wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

The Blind Witch was played by Emma Caufield, who portrayed Anya in Buffy.

I caught her name in the opening credits and kept an eye for her but it wasn't until I looked it up online that I discovered who she was that episode.

Even in the blind witch getup, she was very doable.

Agreed.

Plus when she says, "I want kids" you don't have to worry.

I've been watching since the beginning, was much more interesting than Pan Am to me.

If we were to look at the " remembering" from another perspective we all see the end result of them being called insane, not to mention Emma still doesn't believe. I have a feeling things will speed up again quite soon. She has been gathering quite a following and is getting in the good graces of everyone by standing up to both the mayor and Mr. Gold.

In a way she is slowly building an army she doesn't know she needs and when her army starts to remember and she starts to believe then it isn't too far fetched and the idea that people would call her insane would be much less likely.

My big issue right now is, who is this new guy in town? I'm having trouble thinking of any fairy tales dealing with a writer.

The new guy was one of the Hyena kids in "The Pack" episode of Buffy. Otherwise known as the best episode of any show ever. Some people don't agree, but they are stupid and wrong. Also, I like the idea of a writer coming to town. Maybe he's a representation of the origin of the fairy tales. Who knows? Or just the first person to break the borders of the town. It would make sense to have it be a writer. Or maybe he's the Big Bad Wolf.

Some people don't agree, but they are stupid and wrong.

Preach it, brother.

wordsmythe wrote:
Some people don't agree, but they are stupid and wrong.

Preach it, brother.

That must be why he looked familiar! That was a great episode.

This show is actually growing on me. I think the part I like the most is the fact that the writers are making a concerted effort to make the motivations of the characters more complex than the black and white of most fairy tales. The fact that even the "evil" characters have sympathetic pasts that explain (but possibly not excuse) their behavior and motivations makes them far more watchable.

The fact that Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin's past was one of being bullied and then offered nearly limitless power definitely makes him far more believable. The same goes for the Evil Queen/Mayor coming from an abusive home life.

In an odd way, it sort of feels Buddhist. The whole spinning of the karmic wheel by adding bad to bad or having the opportunity to slow it down by returning good for bad seems to be a central tenet of the storytelling. That and the fact that evil fundamentally stems from fear, selfishness, and anger.

I half suspect that they will eventually wrap it up by giving Gold and/or Mayor Mills a redemptive moment. Gold seems primarily motivated by the dynamic between power and cowardice (and Robert Carlyle plays it to the hilt). Mills' raison d'etre seems to be her sense of loss over her true love and her desire for revenge over the perceived betrayal. I doubt they would go this far, but the shrink session in which she finally comes to term with it and forgives her mom (and herself) for being a true monster would either bust the ratings or jump the shark.

The most recent episode involving Pinocchio and the origins story for Emma had an odd and optimistic twist at the end. The part in which Geppetto unknowingly forgives him seems to stop the wheel and lets them have their happliy (if mortal) ever after.

I think I just watched the season finale of this show, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Has this show been picked up for a second season? If it is, the result of this show should make next season pretty interesting.

It was the Finale. And I do believe that they have been picked up for a second season. Might need to confirm on that though, I could have gotten that news confused with Grimm.

So the series is on Netflix instant and I originally went into it as research to see if this would be a show to nab my sister for Christmas on DVD. I've ended up getting into it, and I just spent today marathoning it from the beginning with my mom. She's watched six episodes:

Spoiler:

Just found out that Charming was originally a Shepard and pulled in to slay the dragon, his real world version Dave having just regained his memory

and I've finished 18 total myself:

Spoiler:

They just found Katherine alive, Mary Margaret/Snow White is still captive, Regina basically just confessed she hates Mary Margaret and knows she didn't kill Katherine. Just discovered Regina's origin story, how her true love, the stable boy, was killed and she blames it on a manipulated twelve year old girl.

Watching it a second time with my mother, you start to pick up on a lot of small details. I'm getting the feeling they had a lot of this show mapped out ahead of time, something you don't get the feeling of from modern television these days where the random plot twist is king. I actually really like that, as it makes watching the show a second time around that much more rewarding.

Also, I actually really appreciate them taking a mostly Disney basis of these classic fairy tales and making them adult without having to make them Grimdark. For example...

Spoiler:

I was actually surprised by how the Red Riding Hood story turned out. Not only good subversion of viewer expectations, but good subversion of the fairy tale as well. Instead of the wolf "eating" Granny, the wolf technically WAS Granny, or at least was at one point. And the fact that Red's attempt to save her beloved turned into his demise by her own hand actually has me curious to see more of her fairy tale backstory.

It was possibly the darkest retelling of one of their stories, but as I said, it didn't feel Grimdark. It wasn't Frank Millar'ed up. It was adult, it was tragic, but the world is still filled with light-hearted silly fairytaleness.

Basically, there's just enough typical Disney cheese in there to be fairy-tale style, but they are throwing in a lot of themes of loss, sacrifice and vengeance. At times I'm not sure which has me coming back more, the real world storyline or the fairy tale storyline.

The concern I have is that season one will feel awfully tight knit with its backstory and origins, and then seasons following will try to squeeze all these extra stories in between that don't quite belong. Unless they didn't finish their story in season one or end up changing the formula, but there are few television stations willing to do such things.

Also, it's nice to see a story about fairy tale folks sucked into the real world instead of the typical real world person sucked into a storybook world.

On one hand, this isn't exactly one of my top favorite shows. On the other, I'm really surprised by how well it was put together.

Also: I'm starting to feel like Amy Acker is in anything on television that has a remote chance of being described as geeky (except for Chuck). It was also nice to see Bucky Barns in an interesting role, though I first saw him in the TV show Kings (which really should have had more seasons).

I'm one episode back, but I just finished watching the Frankenstein episode. I Really enjoyed it.

In fact I am really enjoying the whole 2nd season so far. No Tale is off limits it seems. I think they are doing a pretty nice job of meshing all the stories together.

Honestly, it feels like they're just randomly grabbing from wherever they can at this point. It doesn't feel like there's a consistent theme going. While the first season also grabbed from a variety of fairytales, the backstory managed to all weave into each other much more smoothly.

Also: Mulan was a real person that Disney made an inaccurate interpretation of. It feels silly for her to be in there.

I'm still enjoying it, and time will tell what I really feel. As I said, watching a bunch of the first season a second time revealed a lot of little things that had been clearly planned out from pretty early on. Thus far there's little indication of that in this season, but I wasn't paying so much attention to little details the first time either.

I've been keeping up with it. It's juuuuust good enough to keep me watching each week.

So far my wife and I have both enjoyed the second season's pace, stories and weaving of the back stories. I think this season is so different, becuase the first season they were trying to play the whole Swan disbelief card.

I do have a hard time believing that no body has tried a revenge kill on Regina or Gold.

Gold did try it on Regina though.

I think most of the townsfolk realize that magic did return together with their memories so that's preventing them from going after the two directly. Except for the angry mob instigated by Dr Whale at the start of the 2nd season.

Falchion wrote:

Gold did try it on Regina though.

I think most of the townsfolk realize that magic did return together with their memories so that's preventing them from going after the two directly. Except for the angry mob instigated by Dr Whale at the start of the 2nd season.

True, but I expected more retaliation, even if it is in the form of vandalism, etc. If I was given a new life, separated from my family and never got to see my daughter grow up, I doubt I would be very rational.

Bonnonon wrote:

True, but I expected more retaliation, even if it is in the form of vandalism, etc. If I was given a new life, separated from my family and never got to see my daughter grow up, I doubt I would be very rational.

Which might explain what Belle's father tried to do. But no, he's pretty much an ass.

One thing that seems to be in play but they don't really touch on, is how everyone that was in Storybrooke is dealing with having two lives, some of them completely different, worth of memories and habits and experiences in their heads. Some seem to be handling it better than others and have integrated both sides pretty smoothly, Charming/David being the prime example as well as Archie/Jimminy. Some seem to switch back and forth and are inconsistent, Dr Whale/Victor being the case here and Belle's dad. Some others still seem to have abandoned the "fake side" and revert to their original selves like Snow, the dwarfs and Belle (of course in her case, fake Belle was a mental patient).

They might be too busy getting to know themselves again to focus on Gold and Regina for the time being. We haven't seen really seen how Red, Granny and the fairies are dealing.

The odd ones out are of course Regina, Gold and Jefferson. Regina is the same person both sides but that's because she cast the Curse in the first place and that was her clause, but its currently her experiences in Storybrooke, especially with Henry, that are winning out.

Gold is actually different from Rumple, because he was affected by the curse but was the first to remember (his own backdoor to the Curse since he wrote it), so its been very interesting to see Carlyle play yet another version of the character different from the various versions we see him play in the flashbacks. Of the whole cast, I think he's the only one who could have pulled it off as well as he has.

Jefferson seems to be the same as we first saw him in Storybrooke before the Curse broke, but his Curse was to remember everything anyway and he was "mad" before that too. So he's the real wild card and is most likely the same as Regina in not having an actual Storybrooke personality.