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Old, dead thread here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3444913 (archives required), if you don't want to be spoiled on things that happened in Seasons 1 and 2 go read that one I guess? ABC's Sunday Night attempt to capture the non-NFL-watching demographic is back (and better? than ever?!) for Season Three! Clearly, it's not working all that well since the guy with the Atlanta Falcons avatar is making this thread the day after they got their heart ripped out by the Patriots like a victim of the Evil Queen, but the old Once Upon a Time thread is the only reason I came into TVIV, and it died, so here we are. What The Hell Is Going On? Imagine you were a child with a toybox full of Disney fairy tale figurines, and you spent your days playing with them, creating gritty and inventive backstories for them, setting up flimsy pretexts for why they're interacting with each other, ignoring what continuity doesn't suit you, and having most of them chase around an 11-year-old MacGuffin who is just as insufferable as a real-life 11-year-old but whom they all inexplicably love/need/have a twisted desire to manipulate. Now imagine that you were an adult, you were fresh off doing whatever the hell you did for Lost, and that Disney gave you a borderline hilarious CGI budget and said, "Hey, go film what you had your figurines doing, except with live people." That's what this show is. No seriously what the hell is this, some kind of freak show? Jeez you weren't kidding. The plot and character relationships of this show are pretty complicated for a first-time watcher, but if you're just starting with Season 3, here is some synopsis for you: Season 1, we were introduced to Snow White marrying Prince Charming and about to live Happily Ever After in the Enchanted Forest. Instead, the Evil Queen cast a curse on them that took over the Enchanted Forest, sending everyone to a world without magic and no memory of who they were. That world? Why, ours of course, in a quaint fictional town called Storybrooke, Maine, where time stands still. Snow and Charming, before the curse hits, lock their infant daughter in a magic wardrobe so that she can break the curse when she gets old enough. That little girl grows up to be Emma Swan, a tough, no-nonsense bounty hunter with a checkered past, a keen eye for liars, and a son she gave up for adoption 10 years ago. In a convenient twist, her son, Henry, was adopted by the Evil Queen in Storybrooke and starts to realize that his entire town are fairy tale characters. So he tracks his birth mother down, brings her back, and she goes to work breaking the curse. In Season 2, the curse has been broken and the townsfolk have their memories back, but no way to return to the Enchanted Forest. Alliances between erstwhile enemies are brokered and broken as competing agendas keep families apart, villains are redeemed and redamned (occasionally in the same episode), and one-off portals between worlds start to form to further the plot and keep things from ending Happily Ever After for anyone. At the conclusion of Season 2, Henry has been taken to Neverland by two plot devices who hate magic and want it destroyed, and the main characters follow in hot pursuit in Captain Hook's ship. Except for Emma's deadbeat-ish boyfriend and Henry's dad, who gets shot and tossed in a portal to the Enchanted Forest. That sounds confusing. It is, and I've left out a lot of the melodrama and minor characters. But I'm not here to hold your hand and explain EVERYTHING to you, because that would take a while and it might confuse you more. Suffice it to say it involves dwarves, the Mad Hatter, fairy dust, Lost-style backstory expositions, deaths in most of the families, magic beans, lots of heart out-ripping, and Hurley makes a cameo as a friendly giant. Fine, so who are the people I should care about? Great question. Here's a convenient list of characters introduced in Seasons 1 and 2 who have appeared so far in Season 3 and major things about them that I can remember off the top of my head and/or lifted from Wikipedia.
So what's happening this season? I don't know really. I just caught the first episode of Season 3 during my lunchbreak on Hulu. What I do know is that in that episode, we didn't go to Storybrooke at all, so all of the characters still there are presumably thumb-twiddling while they wait for the triumphant return of Our Heroes. Right now, all the characters from Emma to Hook are in Neverland trying to rescue Henry from Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, who have kidnapped him with the help of two magic-haters because he has the Heart of the Truest Believer, which is a Big Deal for Reasons. Baelfire and the rest are in the Enchanted Forest, and they've just met Robin Hood, who's squatting in Rumplestiltskin's old castle. Baelfire presumably wants to reunite with Emma. Alright, so why should I watch this show? The Case Against: Schlocky dialogue-writing, hamfisted moral lessons, constant bad decisions by characters, telegraphed plot twists, hilarious (yet becoming less hilarious) CG effects, questionable acting, Henry being one of the most annoying young characters on TV since Scrappy Doo, disregard for continuity/realism/fidelity to source material, Cris Collinsworth's soothing baritone on NBC at the same time The Case For: A revolving door of ridiculously attractive (or so I'm told) male characters, feeling like a kid again, finding out just how much scenery Robert Carlyle can chew, writing off most of the aforementioned flaws of the show by remembering that pretty much that's exactly how fairy tales are written anyways, the inevitable moment when Disney brings its newly acquired license to the Star Wars universe into the show, avoiding the anguish of watching your favorite team be unable to put together four quarters of winning football YET AGAIN, on national television no less, for gently caress's sake  Seriously though this show is crack, everyone who watches it knows how bad it is but simply cannot stop watching. It puts both the "guilty" and the "pleasure" in "guilty pleasure you can't tell your friends about because you know they'll make fun of you for being a dude and watching the show". To that end, I am declaring this thread to be a Hater-Free ZoneTM, because we all know what's wrong with it - and us - and we don't care. The Power of Good Will Prevail.
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Sep 30, 2013 20:38
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Irish Joe posted:"Pixie dust is stronger, like nuclear fairy dust." The first time, I heard "nucular". I'm not sure if I want to go back and see if I was right. So much fun though. I was psyched for them to do the Mulan/Aurora/Philip triangle and forget about Robin Hood but no, the princess had to go get knocked up and Hood had to have the lion tattoo. Oh well, now it's another way Snow can earn the undying hatred of Regina again 
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Oct 14, 2013 18:29
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Kraps posted:Is part of the truest believer's job description to assassinate Pan because Pan doesn't seem to mind. Yeah also I saw on mythbusters that no one can catch an arrow shot at them even from like 20 feet away so the show is bullshit and I'm done with it see ya nerds later  e: because I'm the OP and have something like responsibility or something I'm declaring this thread to be a Good Vibes Zone, we can seriouspost and all that in here but let's try to remember that the whole premise of this show is kids playing with a chest of Disney toys in a sandbox, so arguments of "nuh uh you're not playing it right!" are just as annoying as they were when you were 6. Barehanded Brother fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Oct 15, 2013 |
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Oct 15, 2013 14:55
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Finally caught up, this past episode (as most episodes focusing on Rumple are) was awesome. Neal really does seem to be on his home turf now though; it's the first time he really felt like a dynamic character rather than a pawn character. The actor really stood up well to Robert Carlyle too, which was I think what Pan's actor tries a bit too hard to do. Though making a truly menacing villain out of that boyish face is a pretty uphill battle, especially when going up against the 3-season-long establishment of the Dark One. Not enough Catty Regina quips though. They're so cheesy but I just love Lana Parrilla's delivery.
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Oct 22, 2013 18:53
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Yeah I definitely just fell a little bit more in love with Lana Parrilla after this last episode. Out-acting Robert Carlyle and seeing her character back to her old ways is definitely satisfying to watch. I thought the actress playing Ariel did a really good job of conveying her wide-eyed naivete and curiosity that I dimly remember from the movie. But using the word "mythology" the way they did felt kind of jarring and anachronistic in the Enchanted Forest, where magic and evil queens and giants exist, but the sea-god is just "mythology" seems weird.Captain von Trapp posted:Snow considering the whole heart mind control thing beyond the pale is pretty weird anyway. It's effective, nonlethal, reversible, and apparently not even particularly unpleasant. Well she's had it done to herself so I can imagine her feeling it's unpleasant. Also the nonlethal and reversible things aren't necessary, and certainly not to be expected when Regina's doing it.
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Nov 5, 2013 22:41
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Ariel is absolutely pitch-perfect in her impersonation of the animated one. It's so adorable  I'm glad they finally got back to Storybrooke this season too - I felt like Neverland was getting a bit too heavy so having the dwarves add some levity and some bright, normal colors added back to the palette was a refreshing change.
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Nov 13, 2013 15:52
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got dang this show just keeps ruling I was all ready for Henry to just give in to his family, etc., relinquish the heart, then NOPE "I'VE GOT SO SAVE MAGIC  "Easily a  -worthy episode. Robert Carlyle better be coming back though or else I'm gonna have to boycott  Merlinicus posted:Pretty sure this might fulfill the prophecy, now that Rumple is stuck in a box and all. That seems like an undoing of sorts. See I was ready for the tragic ending where Rumple uses magic to save everyone when it looks hopeless, then Bae just "on-principles" his dad and puts him in the box but it turns out Rumple's magic saved Henry. Instead Rumple got played by literally the oldest practitioner of the three-card monte, and undid him like it was nothing. Still doesn't mean he can't come back though, due to shenanigans. Maybe they all feel bad for him or Charming needs him and so they open Pandora's Box to get him out, giving us a whole slew of new Big Bads to deal with when Pan is gone. Kind of rooting for that to happen now actually Barehanded Brother fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 22:48
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The best part of the episode by far is when Regina goes full Schwarzenegger at the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNr0WXQ3Ho4
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Dec 2, 2013 21:47
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what the actual gently caressfoxatee posted:EVERYBODY RIOT! I am 100% down with this. Kitsis and Horowitz better have some drat ANSWERS come March. edit: Although I think what is meant by "it will never have existed" only applies towards our world, not the Enchanted Forest. Those years have to have gone somewhere, right?
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Dec 16, 2013 21:00
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Wait what the gently caress you have to be a Hulu Plus member to watch this now? welp time to set the DVR for "reruns" and find something else to do with my Monday lunchbreak
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Mar 10, 2014 17:38
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KasioDiscoRock posted:Yeah, the scarecrow comment seemed like a throwaway insult, not an actual fact about anything. I was all like, "heh, a 'stuffed shirt' joke". I don't think either the actual Scarecrow or Rumple is the father, and I don't think Rumple can be the scarecrow since she already mentioned getting courage from David and having Rumple's brain. Now all she needs is a heart and they don't seem to be in short supply on this show.
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Apr 10, 2014 15:12
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parque bynch posted:Am I the only one who screamed at Hook to kiss Zelina after she cursed him? She was seriously 2 inches from his face while she mocked him. I was right there with you. Course though I'd be tempted to kiss Zelina even without knowing it'd sap all her powers so 
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Apr 15, 2014 18:17
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