100 Reviews: 74
Jul. 29th, 2013 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthSo I wanted to do something slightly different tonight, so back to the OUaT requests (see the suggestion box isn’t just for show).
OUaT: 1x09: True North
This is an episode I had all but forgotten about since it aired. And it’s not all that interesting now either. Hansel is worthless, I wonder if the Woodsman is related to the Charming family with his “family always finds each other” stance, it does have some good character stuff for Emma and her relationships with Henry and Mary Margaret, Regina is as over the top as she is on her worst day, it has some fairly noticeable plot holes, and it is responsible for introducing August who is basically worthless.
Hansel is worthless –
He really is. Neither of the kids is particularly well acted but he is noticeably worse, and the character is just noticeably an idiot. A little of it would have been helped if it had been expressed that the kids were really hungry since they hadn’t eaten in a day or so, so that Hansel taking about 10 seconds to give into eating stuff would seem less dumb on his part. Still a little dumb, and then raising the question why Regina didn’t feed the damn kids before sending them in there, as she’d be considerably more likely to get the apple out if the kids weren’t starving when they went in. And the fact that Hansel and Gretel are supposed to be twins really hurts, because Hansel looks and acts a fair bit younger than Gretel. Plus he almost goes for Regina’s offer in spite of the fact that she’s clearly evil, and not (seemingly) out of fear of what she would do if they refused.
Anyway, this plot makes me think I should try and watch Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters at some point since I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun. Or maybe I should just go read the first couple chapters of Red Hood’s Revenge where Team Princess runs into Hansel and Gretel as over-zealous witch hunters. And if I haven’t recommended it before, go read Jim Hines’ Princess series, they are great fun to read about kick ass princesses.
The Lie –
I actually have way more to say on this now than if I had reviewed this last year when it was initially requested. At the time is seemed just kind of bland; the fact that it was a lie was pretty obvious or at least not surprising when it was revealed to be a lie and it seemed a little designed to keep from having to settle down Emma’s past at this point in the story. And I still think that’s true, I suspect they had a few different ideas for what to do with Emma’s past and they hadn’t hammered it out yet; the problem is that it was kind of important to the story to know more about Emma since she’s basically the main character. We have already gotten a pretty good view of who Emma *is* but not much of anything on who she *was*. At least not in that phase, we do get some opening up regarding her childhood, but mostly just vague stories and why it’s important to her to keep it from happening any more.
The thing is, while I can’t support the lie, I do understand mostly it; and when they did reveal Emma’s past they did it in such a way that it’s still understandable. As far as Emma’s concerned, Henry has been let down by enough parents already, he doesn’t need to know how screwed up she and Neal were; and she doesn’t want him to know it either. Henry has demonstrated a need to believe in heroes and good triumphing over evil and to believe in love that he’s been largely denied; and from Emma’s POV, the fairy tales have been a way for him to find that and she can both keep that childlike faith alive while putting it in a more real world context that may get him out of the fairy tale version of reality, or at least not push him further into it the way the truth would. While I do think she partly lies because she just doesn’t want to admit the truth, I think a lot of it she does for him thinking...she has time to tell him the truth as it’s not like it’s going to just show up and reveal itself before she can get to it.
The stuff with Emma and MM is, as usual, pretty good. I’m not particularly drawn to the ‘oh the irony’ elements, but there’s plenty of good stuff in spite of that.
Plot holes –
-Regina knows the kids can’t leave Storybrooke, so what was her game here? She can’t *want* Emma to reunite them with their father (that would show the Curse weakening, especially on one of her pet unhappiness projects) so she’s not creating a ticking clock. Maybe...maybe she thinks there will be a car crash as Emma tries to take them out of town and then Emma will be hurt? That would work, but it’s a bit complex not to actually hint at in the story.
-What was Regina’s original reason for kidnapping the Woodsman? Was she pissed that he was chopping down trees and the kids’ involvement was an accident? Did she know about the kids and was just setting up a situation where she could use them? Doesn’t this mean she then backed up to, or at least turned around and kept coming back to intercept the kids? Did the writer give any thought to Regina’s actual motivation in this episode?
-Even barring feeding the kids before sending them into the candy witch’s house (which seems easy enough for the magical queen to do) why not tell them why they can’t eat anything in there? Hansel may not be over burdened with intelligence but even he might have been able to resist eating if he knew the consequences.
-Given that we know Jefferson’s daughter got absorbed into a new family by the Curse, why weren’t Hansel and Gretel? Surely there were other ways of keeping the family apart and unhappy without giving her town a problem with homeless children.
-The presence of the big lie makes Emma not even considering it when it comes to the kids kind of an issue for me. Maybe their mom told them pretty stories about who their father was and the compass was just a cool thing that she attacked a mythology to for their sakes. Wouldn’t it have sucked if she got their hopes up on a clue akin to “my dad liked pumpkin pie”? What if their dad had been a Neal like figure (the way Emma perceived Neal at this point) that their mom kept them away from for a good reason, or was even dead as in Emma’s tale of not-really-Neal? I really don’t think it would bother me so much if not for the Lie being in the same episode, but it is and it’s a problem.
And then the show introduces August. I did notice Emma was looking at clippings of her backstory before he rode up, which is kind of a fun bit of foreshadowing I suppose. And August gets a pretty cool intro to (I believe) round out the first chunk of episodes. But in retrospect...I just don’t really like August terribly much, so I’m not exactly getting excited over his arrival on the show.
Next time:
Probably back to one of the usuals, but not sure which.
See, the suggestions in the box might get answered
OUaT: 1x09: True North
This is an episode I had all but forgotten about since it aired. And it’s not all that interesting now either. Hansel is worthless, I wonder if the Woodsman is related to the Charming family with his “family always finds each other” stance, it does have some good character stuff for Emma and her relationships with Henry and Mary Margaret, Regina is as over the top as she is on her worst day, it has some fairly noticeable plot holes, and it is responsible for introducing August who is basically worthless.
Hansel is worthless –
He really is. Neither of the kids is particularly well acted but he is noticeably worse, and the character is just noticeably an idiot. A little of it would have been helped if it had been expressed that the kids were really hungry since they hadn’t eaten in a day or so, so that Hansel taking about 10 seconds to give into eating stuff would seem less dumb on his part. Still a little dumb, and then raising the question why Regina didn’t feed the damn kids before sending them in there, as she’d be considerably more likely to get the apple out if the kids weren’t starving when they went in. And the fact that Hansel and Gretel are supposed to be twins really hurts, because Hansel looks and acts a fair bit younger than Gretel. Plus he almost goes for Regina’s offer in spite of the fact that she’s clearly evil, and not (seemingly) out of fear of what she would do if they refused.
Anyway, this plot makes me think I should try and watch Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters at some point since I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun. Or maybe I should just go read the first couple chapters of Red Hood’s Revenge where Team Princess runs into Hansel and Gretel as over-zealous witch hunters. And if I haven’t recommended it before, go read Jim Hines’ Princess series, they are great fun to read about kick ass princesses.
The Lie –
I actually have way more to say on this now than if I had reviewed this last year when it was initially requested. At the time is seemed just kind of bland; the fact that it was a lie was pretty obvious or at least not surprising when it was revealed to be a lie and it seemed a little designed to keep from having to settle down Emma’s past at this point in the story. And I still think that’s true, I suspect they had a few different ideas for what to do with Emma’s past and they hadn’t hammered it out yet; the problem is that it was kind of important to the story to know more about Emma since she’s basically the main character. We have already gotten a pretty good view of who Emma *is* but not much of anything on who she *was*. At least not in that phase, we do get some opening up regarding her childhood, but mostly just vague stories and why it’s important to her to keep it from happening any more.
The thing is, while I can’t support the lie, I do understand mostly it; and when they did reveal Emma’s past they did it in such a way that it’s still understandable. As far as Emma’s concerned, Henry has been let down by enough parents already, he doesn’t need to know how screwed up she and Neal were; and she doesn’t want him to know it either. Henry has demonstrated a need to believe in heroes and good triumphing over evil and to believe in love that he’s been largely denied; and from Emma’s POV, the fairy tales have been a way for him to find that and she can both keep that childlike faith alive while putting it in a more real world context that may get him out of the fairy tale version of reality, or at least not push him further into it the way the truth would. While I do think she partly lies because she just doesn’t want to admit the truth, I think a lot of it she does for him thinking...she has time to tell him the truth as it’s not like it’s going to just show up and reveal itself before she can get to it.
The stuff with Emma and MM is, as usual, pretty good. I’m not particularly drawn to the ‘oh the irony’ elements, but there’s plenty of good stuff in spite of that.
Plot holes –
-Regina knows the kids can’t leave Storybrooke, so what was her game here? She can’t *want* Emma to reunite them with their father (that would show the Curse weakening, especially on one of her pet unhappiness projects) so she’s not creating a ticking clock. Maybe...maybe she thinks there will be a car crash as Emma tries to take them out of town and then Emma will be hurt? That would work, but it’s a bit complex not to actually hint at in the story.
-What was Regina’s original reason for kidnapping the Woodsman? Was she pissed that he was chopping down trees and the kids’ involvement was an accident? Did she know about the kids and was just setting up a situation where she could use them? Doesn’t this mean she then backed up to, or at least turned around and kept coming back to intercept the kids? Did the writer give any thought to Regina’s actual motivation in this episode?
-Even barring feeding the kids before sending them into the candy witch’s house (which seems easy enough for the magical queen to do) why not tell them why they can’t eat anything in there? Hansel may not be over burdened with intelligence but even he might have been able to resist eating if he knew the consequences.
-Given that we know Jefferson’s daughter got absorbed into a new family by the Curse, why weren’t Hansel and Gretel? Surely there were other ways of keeping the family apart and unhappy without giving her town a problem with homeless children.
-The presence of the big lie makes Emma not even considering it when it comes to the kids kind of an issue for me. Maybe their mom told them pretty stories about who their father was and the compass was just a cool thing that she attacked a mythology to for their sakes. Wouldn’t it have sucked if she got their hopes up on a clue akin to “my dad liked pumpkin pie”? What if their dad had been a Neal like figure (the way Emma perceived Neal at this point) that their mom kept them away from for a good reason, or was even dead as in Emma’s tale of not-really-Neal? I really don’t think it would bother me so much if not for the Lie being in the same episode, but it is and it’s a problem.
And then the show introduces August. I did notice Emma was looking at clippings of her backstory before he rode up, which is kind of a fun bit of foreshadowing I suppose. And August gets a pretty cool intro to (I believe) round out the first chunk of episodes. But in retrospect...I just don’t really like August terribly much, so I’m not exactly getting excited over his arrival on the show.
Next time:
Probably back to one of the usuals, but not sure which.
See, the suggestions in the box might get answered
