What if Disney was a TV show? Well, that’s the basic idea behind Once Upon a Time. Unfortunately, just like any other TV show, it can have some moments that can trigger the fandom.
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- metaceejay97: Two words can describe Season 5A for me: Utterly. Shit. Sure, the Zelena Arc in Season 3 wasn't great, and season 4 is a slightly confusing mess, but this is something special. It has a good premise: A heel Emma Swan goes against her former friends. Meanwhile in the flashbacks, using the Camelot mythos, the group desperately tries, and fails, to stop Emma going to the dark side. Sounds good? The writers seemed to think so, as instead of letting it go naturally, they decided to make the arc stretch out as much as possible. That, and the fact that heel Emma Swan wasn't completely evil even though she was the Dark One, the show's equivalent of Satan, until the actual Satan, or rather, Hades, came along. It's a bad sign that the best episode was not actually relevant to the main storyline other than setting up the magical ale for later on in the season and ended up giving Merida more of a character. The worst aspect of this arc were the characters. Who were good characters in this arc? Merida and Mulan? Too little screen-time to the point of having scenes cut. Zelena? Alright, but 99% of her dialogue was about her baby, giving me horrific Other M flashbacks. Merlin? ...alright, he's legitimately good. The rest of the characters, especially the villains, are either boring or pointless. Heel Hook returned, but only for a collective ten minutes. King Arthur was a gutless sack of tripe, though thankfully Season 5B makes him more honourable and makes him king of the Underworld. And then there's Nimue. Fuck her. Her backstory is interesting, being Merlin's former love who ended up becoming the first Dark One. Good, right? Well, she's boring as all hell. And she ends up hijacking the Big Bad role and dies as quickly as she appears. THANKFULLY, Season 5B MORE than makes up for it, but GOD! This arc was awful. The best thing to come out of it? This arc was NEVER mentioned again, for the better, making this entire arc, and Emma sacrificing her goodness in Season 4B, completely pointless. I choose to do that.
- Mystic Birdsong: David and Mary Margaret's affair in Once Upon a Time. Call me old fashioned but, Heavens above that was bad! Okay so, here's how it went. Snow and James were already together in the fairy tale world, of course; but, their 'real world' counterparts were not. In fact, David (who was in a coma for a good portion of the plot, up until about an episode after his introduction) was already married to Katherine. That said, this causes a bit of a problem with Mary Margaret and David's "destiny" of being together. So, what do they decide to do? They decide to have David absolutely break Katherine's heart by cheating on her with Mary Margaret! Now, let's think of it this way, shall we? Your husband had been missing for awhile, you are insanely worried about him. Eventually, they finally find him again!... but, he's in a coma. You are still afraid that he might never wake up and you are genuinely concerned for his well-being. When he finally does wake up, you couldn't be happier! Except... he doesn't really act the way you remember, and he doesn't really even know you anymore. Well... you can rebuild your relationship, right? You can still have a chance at a normal, happy life, right? Nope! Because your husband is now cheating on you with the school-teacher on the premise of "true love". That is what Katherine had to go through here. What's even worse is that David hardly gets any word from the town for this. No, it's Mary Margaret that gets all the hate here, even having the word "tramp" spray-painted onto her car (sure, it was Regina who did that but, the audience didn't exactly know it at the time, and it is very easy to assume that a regular townsperson could've done the deed). Now, you very well could make the argument that the townspeople knew and trusted Mary Margaret and thus were upset to learn that she was having an affair with a married man but, the fact that David still doesn't get any time of day for it still seems to come off as a cold Double Standard. Overall, the writers could've easily avoided this by having Katherine be David's fiance or something (as she actually was in the fairy tale world) and still have the same effect, without the hot topic of adultery. With all of this, it's no surprise that this whole thing caused a massive case of Abandon Shipping.
- Blackjack 254: For me, it has to be the whole "Black Heart" storyline introduced in "Welcome to Storybrooke", where Snow has a black spot on her heart because she killed Cora in the previous episode, a woman who had already murdered her mother, the maid who was a mother figure to her after the fact, and Snow also knew Cora and Regina were planning to kill her and her entire family. Plus, when Regina caught her in the vault Snow had no choice but to trick Regina into putting Cora's cursed heart back into her body, thus killing her. The alternative was death for her, her family, and countless others. What kind of a sick twisted world would exist where "good" people aren't allowed to defend themselves and everything they hold dear without being branded as evil? Not to mention Snow and David were in a war to overthrow King George in the Enchanted Forest; they killed several people there, yet they weren't corrupted then.
- Green Wings: One life being put on the spot at that moment being seen as more valuable than the many that will be lost later happens a lot on the show. In one episode, Regina and Cora are trying to get Rumple's dagger, so they threaten to kill Snow's former caregiver if she doesn't hand it over. This dagger will give them the ability to force Rumple to kill everyone in Storybrooke, Snow, her husband, her kid, her grandchild and the caregiver included. The caretaker is telling her to let her go. So Snow hands it over. And of course, Cora kills the caretaker anyway. What a shock.
- DIGIFAN 99: For me it is the whitewashing of the rapes, murders, emotional abuse, mental abuse, verbal abuse, neglect, mind rape, rape-by-proxy, wrongful imprisonment, kidnappings, attempted murders, enslavements and many more crimes that Regina has done and now we are supposed to believe that the book made her do all those things, support her when she whines like a four year old over a two day relationship, plans to kill an innocent woman, puts a man into slavery, and everything else that she does in season 4 that is for her own self-interest.
- SG_741: I remember the exact moment when I started to not enjoy the show anymore. It was during episode 2x10 – The Cricket Game, when OUAT came back from its winter hiatus. In this episode, a flashback reveals that Snow and Charming finally caught the Evil Queen and were going to execute her for her crimes. Snow is reluctant to do so because she still loves her stepmother. Literally at the last second, Snow stops the execution (this despite Regina's would-be last words were about how much she's NOT sorry for trying to kill her). Ok, fine - it's in Snow's character to be merciful. My DMOS is what happens later – Snow and Charming let Regina go! That is to say, they banished her. Now, had banishment been an actual punishment, it MIGHT have been okay, but we know from Season 1 that prior to casting her curse, Regina had been living an otherwise luxurious lifestyle, seemingly free to come and go as she pleased. What kind of punishment is that?! It's all justified in that Snow and Charming are magically protected from Regina and the latter can never directly hurt them again. Proof of this is shown when Regina stabs Snow immediately after Snow opens her prison cell door, and the blade doesn’t harm her. Okay, fine, THEY'RE protected; but what about the people who suffered and died under Regina's oppression? Where's their justice? And, of course, Regina is now free to cast her curse. That episode, this moment, marked the beginning of Snowing's
character assassination, leading to the aforementioned whitewashing of Regina's crimes and Snow's black heart storyline. OUAT stopped being canon for me after 2x09 for dozens of reasons, most of them related to Regina. - Charleston Man: The whole premise of Operation Mongoose, the idea that some powerful author controls the characters' fates through writing the book, is ludicrous. There is not a shred of proof that this is true beyond Regina's delusions, in fact the season 3 finale showed the opposite, that events happen and the book merely records them. But not only does every character blindly consider Regina's idea a sound one and go along with it, but the focus is all on getting Regina the happy ending she "deserves". Yeah, because someone who committed all those crimes as stated above and still complains when she's punished for them or called out on having committed them really deserves a happy ending. There is no logic or consistency to this storyline, only proof that Regina has officially become the Creator's Pet.
- Emperor Oshron: I think this whole arc was just terrible in general, to the point that I skip over it completely when rewatching the series on Netflix, but the dumbest thing in all of it was simply the inclusion of Cruella de Vil. Why? Simply why? There have to be at least a dozen other, much better Disney/fairy tale characters who could have been used to round out the trio of evil sorceresses besides those already included. Maleficent has always been an antagonist even as the unnamed "Evil Fairy" in the original Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and, later, in Tchaikovsky's ballet; Ursula was just an undersea sorceress in the original but rewritten as a concerted evil witch in the Disney version and she demonstrates her powers quite effectively. Cruella is literally just a Rich Bitch who wanted to make coats out of puppy dogs, and that's it. If they wanted another evil sorceress, why not Yzma, or Madam Mim? Even Lady Tremaine from Cinderella would be more fitting! I heard that fans wanted her but that's no excuse for including her. They already stretched the definition of fantasy/fairy tale by including Dr. Frankenstein, but at least that had the decidedly fantastical use of electricity to reanimate the dead. Cruella being included—as a magic-user, no less—was just plain stupid.
- Silverblade 2: "Heart Of Gold", so we have the "reveal" that Marian was actually Zelena all along, who killed and replaced her since season 3 finale in a incredibly contrived plan to piss off her sister Regina. This is wrong for multiple reasons. First this is a nonsensical Ass Pull that raises many questions such as how Zelena could know that Regina's prisoner was Robin's wife when even Emma and Hook didn't. Bringing back Zelena isn't a good idea when the story arc already has Gold, Ursula, Cruella, Maleficient and the Author as antagonists. Also Marian being dead all along conveniently allows Robin to reunite with his "true love" Regina, you know, the one who killed Marian in the original timeline. Robin cheating on Marian earlier in the season is in consequence immediatly forgiven. To add insult to injury, Gold immediately sides with the one who murdered his son just when I thought that his Character Derailment couldn't get worse. Really even if the season was already bad, I was willing to give it a chance until that point.
- fairygirl567: Man, you beat me to it, this was a horrible twist! Firstly, Zelena was never a favorite of mine, she was a horribly whiny character whose backstory was so contrived she could write the book on contrived backstories. Dead parent, check. A parent who resents them, check. Found out her life was a lie, check. Possesses powers, check. Evil for the sake of being evil, check! And she made a mockery of the Wicked Witch. I don't want to sound biased, but I think the musical Wicked had the best portrayal of the Witch Witch ever and this version was terrible. The actress herself was good, but man was she annoying and the whole twist that she's related to Regina made it worse. Now they bring her back, something no fan asked for, and bring her back in the dumbest of ways and it makes no sense at all. The viewers never get a hint, flashback or anything, just because we didn't see it coming doesn't make the twist a good one! It's like the writers are saying, she's back, deal with it! And the only reason they brought her back was to create drama, a love triangle because now she's pregnant with Robin's baby and he can't leave her and now it'll be even harder for Robin and Regina to be together. All so we can feel incredibly bad for poor Regina (even though she already has a huge fan base, me included). At least Regina had a reason to turn evil, at least Gold had a reason to turn evil; they had really crappy things happening to them. Shoot, the Author had a sort of good reason to be in the show and be evil. Zelena just had a few bad things happen to her that could've been fixed. Snow had a harder life than her! But Rumple deciding to work with her after she killed his son was what really did it for me! I love OUAT and always will, but sadly this show has a gotten a bad case of Running out of ideas-itis!
- Miniatures: The season 3 finale killed it for me. Emma and Hook are sent back in time, and instead of using that opportunity to tell past!Rumpelstiltskin how to save Neal (who had just died), Emma insists that Rumple let Neal stay dead so his sacrifice won't have been in vain. And Rumple agrees... for some reason, despite having spent centuries with the single goal of reuniting with Neal. Even worse, Emma says this while in the process of changing the timeline by saving Marian from Regina's dungeon! She can save what she thinks is a random stranger, but not the father of her child, whom she said she would always love? Even if she isn't in love with him anymore, he was still a good man and an important figure in her and Henry's lives. It was completely ridiculous, and Emma's reasoning was obviously a result of the writers trying to force Neal out of the way for the Emma/Hook ship. All they had to do was make Emma and Rumple act completely Out of Character.
- Lady Pedantica: The whole Author arc was pretty terrible (hello contrived mirror universe!), but the part that stands out the most to me is the way Snow and Charming try to "erase the evil" from the unborn Emma. Even if their actions are a result of control by the Author, it's still stupid and pointless. Neither Emma nor the planned recipient of her evil side act purely good or evil, ever. It seems like an attempt at making Prince Charming and Snow White seem more flawed, but it's completely out of character, and again, someone else made them do it, so once that's pointed out they no longer have to deal with any negative consequences of their actions.
- Byron Fenetre: Briefly surmising many of these opinions, which I share along with some different perspectives of my own, the second half of Season 4 was like a highway pileup wreck. Mainly it’s the storylines, one: the three queens of darkness, one (Ursula) walks away happy with her dad, the second (Cruella) is killed, and the third (Malificent) could have been a promising story lead along with her daughter. Instead they fade into the background. All is the consequence of colliding with the second subplot of Rumple and the Author, the latter being given a devious and pernicious character and (sadly) given a Jewish name and background (as if the writers were venting anti-Semitic reservations in creating a Shylockian antagonist). Finally is the return of Zelena, who is given attention for a couple of episodes before she and Malificent’s daughter are folded into a finale plot focused squarely on Mr. Gold and the intentionally insidious and presumably offensively written author Isaac. And in the next season, Dark One Emma was as much of a turn-off as Elsa was a turn-on at the start of Season 4 in regards to gaining viewers for a series. The notion that the forces of darkness are like an angst-bucket of a drug or liquor which when ingested forces the investor to be unapologetically and inexplicably evil because he or she is the Dark One feels like a weak plot. It also made me give up watching the show ever again after the season five premiere because despite the interesting characters they add to the story, many promising candidates for spots in the main plot are pushed aside for the same old same old which with the exceptions of Regina, Henry, Killian, Emma, and Gold have become redundant and unimportant (ie: the Charmings, the dwarves, Zelena, etc).
- Star-Lady: Having gone into the show knowing Emma and Hook were going to end up together (being a fan of Foe Yay Shipping), I was excited to see how it unfolded. Unfortunately the show completely botched their first kiss. In “Good Form”, Hook saves Charming’s life (sort of, they know the cure will wear off once they get off Neverland and neglect to tell the others that, but I digress) and Hook taps his lips and tells Emma he believes some gratitude is in order, I.e he thinks he is entitled to a kiss for doing something honorable. Emma rightfully tells him that’s what her thanking him was for. Now this could have been an opportunity for Hook to learn that becoming a hero doesn’t automatically mean you are owed a kiss and you should do heroic things out of the goodness of your heart, not so someone will like you. But no. Hook proceeds to ask her if that is all her father’s life is worth (I.e. guilt-tripping) and Emma gives in. Now, I will admit Emma clearly seems to be enjoying the kiss and it seems she did want it after all. But that’s beyond the point, you should never tell someone to kiss you as a form of gratitude. No matter how heroic you are, you are not entitled to a kiss. But the show completely glorifies this and acts like it’s romantic to request a kiss as a reward for heroism and implies that if you don’t kiss someone for saving your father’s life, you don’t think his life is worth much. It is typical “Nice Guy” behavior to demand a kiss for moral goodness. I’ve read fics that do Emma and Hook’s first kiss better than this show did.
