Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26159109-20150722160646/@comment-25926288-20150722191408

I'll agree that they are poorly thought out since it seems they write retrospectively sometimes (like how Regina would remember what her mother said 30-35 years later, is really unbelievable.) But much of the purposeful foreshadowing on Once seems poorly planned and blatantly obvious tough.

I see Neverland (arc) as the end of something wonderful, but not the beginning of the bad. I don't think many could say that the 3a finale has ever been topped in terms of tying up some characters and emotional output from anything afterwards. It had flaws, but Neverland arc was a nice end to Once Upon A Time.

Now, we have Once upon a Ship. Yeah, ships were in season 1, 2, 3a. But they never started to outshine character development. 3a was going to be the start, but they changed some scenes and stuff. Emma choose Henry over the two romantic partners (Nice!). They had Snow have the emotional abandonment scene with Emma.. They were going to use Hook at first, and that would have been a huge mistake.

But 3b was pretty much start of Once, but with plot and ships. Zelena grew on me, but she was a really weak villain, no matter how much scene chewery and magic and items she had. Zelena did stuff, while the others sat around reacting to it and their romances. Rinse and repeat with Ingrid, who had a stronger feel, but she was really Elsa without an Anna.

But besides critquing the sow, season 4 was the JTS moment to me. Each season itself seems to degrade regardless.