Sunday "Mid-Season Finales"

[shipperx]

Err... I really think that Revenge has lost all of its mojo. The "who shot Emily" reveal was totally underwhelming.  Emily's plan was stupid (and why on earth did it take 3 years to reach i,t if this was the 'grand plan'?)

All in all, glad they cleaned up the plot a little, but honestly... eh.  Bored now.  The only thing that is interesting to me is that I cannot figure out whether Patrick is an as-yet-unrevealed loon (Is it weird that even thinking Patrick may be emotionally unstable...or a bad guy... or he's as nice and super-duper-understanding as he seems, I still rather like his being paired with Nolan?   Probably.  But what else in the plot am I going to be interested in?)

On the other hand Once Upon A Time's mid-season finale worked quite well, I thought.  Way to shake up the status quo and reboot the show.  Other than the cliffhanger, it could have played as a series finale. And...

I think they've finally sold me on Captain Hook.  Granted, the long, swishy leather coat and the guy-eyeliner has a way of hitting some well laid  pre-existing root-for-him tracks in my fannish head.  And the reveal of his having once been a stand-up good guy who fell into bad ways helped that out a little.  Then add his "the only things I'd give my life for are love and revenge" and... yeah, probably shouldn't be shocked that they've sold me on Captain Hook as someone I can enjoy watching.  So, even having been ship ambivalent, the mid-season finale worked for me.

Then there was Regina's story. I've long had a totally inexplicable soft spot for Regina, despite her being a really quite evil 'evil queen.'  She hasn't always deserved for there to be any soft spot, but somehow I've had one.  Guess I'm doomed to be a sucker for redemption plots.

So the mid-season finale:

Flashbacks for everyone!

Peter Pan was an asshole to the end (so long -- at least for now -- Peter.  You did a great job as bad guy.  I'll miss the actor)  with Rumple having to find the courage to kill his own father...

Er... yeah, patricide shouldn't be root-worthy, huh?  Still, metaphorically, for Rumple redemption, I can see where he would have to overcome the Peter Pan issues that started his family's history of paternal abandonment.  Doing so to save his son and grandson makes sense.  (And for the love of God, someone PLEASE take a moment to comfort Belle.  Can't these people see that she's sobbing on the pavement?  Her blind adoration of Rumple may annoy me, but she does genuinely adore the guy who just 'died' so give her a hug already!  Bae, come on, she's practically your step-mother {and the non-evil kind!})

Tink found her magic again, too.  (So I gather she got her wings back?)

And it fell to Regina to save everyone by reversing the curse that brought them all to Storybrooke to begin with.  Completely unmaking Storybrooke really does reboot the series. (With the cliffhanger, they can almost return to the original premise of "Hey Emma, did you KNOW that fairy tales are real and you're the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming...?" which may be a bit of a redux only with it being Captain Hook of all people coming to NYC to convince her that fairy tales are real...)

It is quite the redemptive moment for Regina.  She has to save all the people that she cursed, and she has to do so by giving up the one that she loves most... and she does so, because she wants her son to live and to be happy. I can see the retconning of Season 1 where Henry was convinced that Regina didn't love him, but they've grown the plot since then.  It is possible to see THIS Regina sacrifice for Henry, so retconning aside, I'm good with it. With Regina losing Henry and Snow losing Emma (again), I wonder whether they may begin to be some empathy between then when they're again in the Enchanged Forest.  They each had to let go.  There's a world of more unfair in Snow losing Emma a second time, but I think with Regina losing Henry, she'll have a better concept of what she did to the Charmings with the curse in the first place.  I'm interested in what happens going forward in the Enchanted Forest. (And the 1 year time jump should aid in their writing the actress who plays Snow White's pregnancy into the show.  There's plenty of chance for Prince Charming to have knocked up Snow a second time, and they can stop trying to hide the actress's pregnancy).  I also assume that means will be seeing more of Mulan, Robin Hood, and Sleeping Beauty/Aurora in the future.

And finally, of course, Captain Hook appearing on Emma's doorstep, telling her now-amnestic-pretend memory self that she's needed in the Enchanted Forest to save her family (Snow White and Prince Charming!) and kissing her (taking a shot at it breaking the curse because true love and all that.)  I find I'm heartily looking forward to the Captain Hook/Emma/Henry in NYC plot that must come in spring.

So all in all, it did what a mid-season finale should aim to do.  It wrapped up some plots, gave some very good character moments, and set up some new stories that I'm itching to see.

Mission accomplished, show.  I'll be tuning in this spring.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen Revenge yet - but it sounds lame. And the last few episodes have been beyond dull. I don't care about anyone except maybe Nolan at this point.

Re OUAT - yes, brilliant mid-season finale which could successfully double as a series finale. It's actually a better series finale than most series finales I've seen. Certainly better than LOST's.

They wrapped up that entire "curse" plot arc and rather neatly. I knew they had to sooner or later, but was expecting it to happen in May.
With a lot more back and forth on Henry as Pan, and attempting to foil Pan.

And they've killed off Rumplestilskin - which surprised me, but works because his story really had come to an end. (I can see why no one was comforting Belle - it is Rumplestilskin after all and they don't know her that well. Plus...other issues, like escaping the curse come to mind. But I also think - that the directors have difficulty figuring out what to do with 15 actors standing in a crowd in the middle of the street.)

Two redemption arcs concluded at the same time. I admittedly preferred Rumple's to Regina's but that had more to do with the acting and well, they wrote Regina really unevenly the last two years. This season, I've actually liked her quite a bit - they wrote her better and her actions made logical sense.

By sending everyone back to Enchanted Forest - they open up romantic possibilities for Regina and Robin Hood. It really opens up the story.
Storybrook had grown a bit old and they needed to reboot it.

OUAT's writers seem to understand the need of wrapping up stories quickly and starting new ones. Wish Revenge's writers could figure that out.

Will definitely be tuning in to OUAT, don't know about Revenge...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the five people on the planet who actually was happy with the ending of LOST. There were flaws (the stopper in the pool of water, for one. Still, the thing I wish -- counter to the 99% of viewers -- is that they had embraced the limbo/purgatory aspect all out. I kept feeling that they held off on that because they'd insisted so many times that it wasn't purgatory, but I think the ending would've been strengthened had they just straight up said that they'd all been dead since the plane crash and that everything else that had happened had been their own will playing out as they sought redemption, for however long it took.

A lot of people seemed to want answers. I never bought that answers were remotely possible, so the lack thereof never bothered me. I thought what they did was fine only it needed to be moreso. Doubt that would've made the ending more popular, but I think it would've made it more cohesive. So really, I was fine with the philosophy of it all, which places me in a small minority.)

Re: OUAT, I think they set it up nicely for an exciting back nine. I'm interested in what happens both with those sent back to the Enchanted Forest and how Emma and Henry re-entegrate with their fairytale lives. And, given that's the case, the "there's no place like home" aspect of Oz being brought in should work thematically much like "Neverland" being used to make people come to term with their pasts worked. Looking forward to it. ::Pets show:: Good show.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh, my problem with the LOST ending wasn't the philosophy of it..but the plotting. It was all over the place. It reminded me a lot of the BSG ending.
And it felt oddly preachy -- with a lot "telling" and not enough "showing".
At any rate, it wasn't the religious or philosophical bits that bugged me, I really had no issue with that, but the execution. It felt...off somehow, and a bit rambling.

I thought OUAT did a better job with execution from a plot perspective.
But I admittedly haven't seen LOST in a long long time.

And, given that's the case, the "there's no place like home" aspect of Oz being brought in should work thematically much like "Neverland" being used to make people come to term with their pasts worked.

Hmmm...hadn't thought of that. Both Neverland and OZ are about people who want to leave home, to seek adventure, to be someplace else - only to discover once they get there that they are horribly homesick and want to go back to their own world or home, and the grass really isn't that much greener elsewhere, just well different.

Although the villains are very different. If Pan was Rumplestilskin at his worst...than this new villian is Regina at her worst. Which is interesting because I thought we already had that with Cora.

I agree though - I'm curious to see what the second half will bring both with the group in our world and the group in Enchanted Forest. On the one hand you have Hook/Emma and Henry, or rather Hook attempting to convince Emma and Henry that fairy tales are real and they are related to Snow White and Prince Charming. I can't wait to see this scene:

Captain Hook: You are the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. And we need your help to save them from the Wicked Witch of the West.
Emma: And who are you again?
Captain: I'm Captain Hook.
Emma: Oookay....

LOL! These writers are clearly having a blast. You can tell.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I got off easy with the BSG finale because I absolutely LOATHED EVERYONE. I would've been happy if they had blown everyone to smithereens. Some of the stuff in that finale was batshit. That said, in discussion I've run across a lot of people with some pretty basically mis-assumptions about what is meant by 'mitochondrial Eve'.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

How did you make it to the end of BSG if you loathed everyone? I ask because I'm currently struggling with REVENGE for this same reason...and close to giving up. Of course there's a difference between loathing and being paralyzed with not caring all that much.

(With BSG, I actually found everyone more or less interesting - but not interesting enough to ever bother re-watching the series. I felt more or less the same way about BSG and LOST, except I preferred the female characters on BSG (and how they were developed and portrayed) and preferrred the male characters on LOST (and how they were developed and portrayed). LOL! That said, Elizabeth Mitchell's performance as Juliette on Lost has gotten me to try a lot of really bad tv shows. She was the only female character on LOST that I liked. I sort of remember the two shows as being really similar - with lots of anti-heroes and examining the dark nasty side of human nature.)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

How did you make it to the end of BSG if you loathed everyone?

I was going to say that I didn't. That's what it felt like, but thinking back I seem to have watched more of the plot that I thought.

I don't know... hate watching, I guess.

I was intrigued by the 5 Cylons plot. Hated the "Earth was destroyed before we got there" reveal. Hated Dualla's (sp?) suicide. And Angel-Savior-Starbuck was enough to make me gag.

Basically the whole thing took on a POV that I disliked, but I guess I watched enough to keep up. I wasn't overly bothered by the finale because of it. Yeah, parts were massively dumb, but all in all... to quote Spike, I was paralyzed by not caring very much.


And I definitely liked Juliet better than Kate on LOST (and both were underwritten compared to any of the males).

[kitmarlowescot2.livejournal.com]

I don't think Robert Carlyle is leaving OUAT, so I am sure Rumple will be back in some form. I am looking forward the Wicked Witch though.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think we've seen the last of him either which was why I put his death in quotation marks. Have no idea what he'll be like when he returns, but I'm betting on his returning.