Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6175354-20130930170041/@comment-22525977-20131001030432

I just finished watching it and I have ALL the thoughts!

Awesome things:

1. LOVED everything about Emma with one, very small, exception. I adored Emma in the first six or so episodes of season one because she was an awesome protagonist and stuff, and then she underwent some serious decay for the remainder of the show to the point that I could not stand her for the latter half of season two—but SUDDENLY pilot Emma is back!

I loved that she FINALLY called out Snow and Charming for being crappy parents whose rosy-eyed fairytale ideals do not work in our world, loved that she threw their perfect-happy-ending delusions back in their faces and basically said "No, I'm my own person and I get to make the decisions about what happens to me." Which is SO MUCH BETTER than her characterless passivity in season two. And also completely, utterly correct.

I loved that we see her doing her best to prepare herself for potential fighting and I really liked the moment she had with Hook—I don't ship them, but I think they could be great buddies.

I loved that she figured out what was going on with the storm. I mean, it was obvious (called it as soon as the mermaid started going on about how "I'm not going to destroy you, you'll destroy yourself."), but the path from Emma thinking it was the mermaid to thinking Regina made it worse by wood'ing the mermaid to realizing that, no, it's happening because we're fighting was reasonable and followed discernible logic trails, was based on empirical evidence (more on that later), and she immediately followed up on it in a manner that was, while dangerous, the best things she could do under the circumstances. THAT is what I want from my heroes, thank you.

I loved 99% of her rallying speech at the end—it was the perfect follow-up on her first two moments of pure, unadulterated awesome—calling out EVERYONE on how they're jeopardizing the incredibly important mission by refusing to even try to work through their messy pasts and taking charge and saying what I've been screaming through my computer screen about since the pilot, basically, which is that people do not fit neatly into "villain" boxes or "hero" boxes, and that even though they may not get along and they may not be friends, they can act like adults and WORK TOGETHER.

The only thing I didn't like was her conclusion—no, Emma, you do not get to order people around because you're the leader, you took charge because you were the only one capable of doing so, and no, Emma, you do not get to claim that you're Henry's mother while implying that Regina isn't. (Was totally expecting her to finish with something like "I'm a mother. And you are too," because that would get Regina behind her 100% instead of "I'm his mother, and I'm the leader because I say so!" which... doesn't.)

And finally, I loved so much that Emma didn't repeat her season one "the curse totes does not exist even though it obviously exists" mistake. She listens when Rumpel tells her that Neverland is all about imagination and then instead of blindly accepting it, she takes it into account and then as soon as she has EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that it's fact (i.e. the storm stopping), she accepts it and plans accordingly. So gooood.

2. REGINA. LITERALLY EVERYTHING Regina did. That moment of vulnerability with Hook at the beginning, fireballing the mermaids and then ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to try to stop the storm instead of just shouting, and then finally, finally, finally getting to duke it out with Snow (I hate Snow so much, okay, I'll get to that in a bit, but everything was worth it to see Snow get punched in the face because I've been wanting to do that since about "Snow Falls"), and then immediately joining everyone else to fish Emma out of the water even though she had the least reason to do so out of all of them, and expressing justifiable skepticism when Emma was all "I'm in charge now!" but then accepting it because Emma's right, and and and just. Regina.

And also "rainbow kisses and unicorn stickers"

rainbow kisses and unicorn stickers!!

I just

everything I despise about the goodie-goodie half of Snow's character summed up in a nutshell

One thing I did wonder: When they were trying to interrogate the mermaid and Snow started screaming "We're not killers!" why on earth didn't Regina pull the "um, no, you killed my mother" card? Would have been the perfect time to call Snow out on her warped view of herself and of reality.

Oh, yeah, and I jumped back on the Swan Queen ship. Assuming Emma doesn't backslide into her season two characterization of blah, that is. (Yeah, I know it's been confirmed as not canon. I don't care, that's what I fanfic for)

3. Loved that Rumpel immediately showed his true colors, first with the whole "screw you guys" thing and then with heartripping Tamara. Guy's an evil psychopath. I mean, I adore him as a character, but that "oh he's REDEEMED himself because LOVE" stuff was infuriating.

4. Pan running circles around Henry. Perfect. Also obvious—I mean, come on, of course the British kid with the pixie dust is Peter Pan—but still great. My first thought when he showed up was Peter was good and his detached shadow was evil (which would have been awesome—I adore Jekyll/Hyde type characters), but the Shadow just being a facade Peter uses because it's easier to inspire fear than belief? Hello, pop culture Machiavelli!

5. Henry finally, finally, finally applied his fairytale knowledge to something useful. About time.

Terrible things:

1. Fucking Snow. I could write an essay about how much I hate her and why, but the gist is that she's an amoral, smug, egotistic little troll who likes to put herself on a pedestal of righteousness. And the thing is, if she were upfront about the amoral/smug/egotistic parts? I'd love her the same way I love Rumpel (watching villains be unrepentantly psychopathic is one of my favorite pastimes). It's the sheer hypocrisy that drives me into a frothing rage.

She still does not understand how to family. At all. Zero comprehension of what Emma was trying to say at the beginning of the episode, and zero signs of empathy for the daughter she claims to adore (seriously, telling her she just needs to listen to the Wisdom of Snow? Bitch, Emma's your age. Shut up.)

Compare this to Davidjames, who at least understands what Emma is trying to say and responds with "I know, you're right, and we're here because we want to make things right." He gets that Emma is right about how much real life can suck, but he's trying to remind her that they can fight back. Snow, on the other hand, is ignoring Emma's very legitimate reasons for being upset in favor of trying to impose her strategy of blind faith with no thought about anyone but herself.

Then with the mermaid: I get it, okay? Snow's schtick is pacifism. Of course she's not going to advocate killing the mermaid. But did the reason for her wanting to not kill the mermaid have to be "if we kill her, her family will come and kill us?" you cannot claim to be morally pure when the only reason you don't want to kill someone is that their family will take revenge on you. A morally upright person says, "we can't kill her; killing is wrong."

Aaaand then the fight with Regina: I actually love that Snow threw the first punch. It's so in-character for Snow to resort to hitting to express her feelings (Gepetto, anyone?), and then I love that Regina's initial response is "is that the best you can do?" (<3) and she only gets violent when Snow starts going on about Regina having ruined her life. So perfect. Which does not change the fact that I raged through the entirety of everything Snow said.

2. What the hell was up with the foley in this episode?! It's never been this bad before—was the foley artist so drunk they had to resort to all those horrible, horrible stock sounds? Just, ick. At least the score was its usual amazingness.

3. Everything about the way Greg and Tamara were handled. Season two was really unclear about whether they were supposed to be scientists or part of a weird anti-magic cult—they started off science-y and then quickly degenerated to cult, and then this whole "take everything on blind faith" made it even murkier. And then they were unceremoniously slaughtered. Twice, in Tamara's case. As if it wasn't already obvious enough that they were just a plot device.

4. Wait, didn't Philip get his soul eaten...? And if plot happened off screen, I'm going to be mad and make angryfaces at my computer screen, because that's threatening, right? (On the other hand, maybe this means I'll get my Philip/Aurora/Mulan mènage á trois? #wishfulthinking)

On the whole:

Barring the foley strangeness and the anticlimax with Greg and Tamara, phenomenal episode (Snow does not count toward the detriment of my opinion on the episode's good-ness because at this point just seeing her face fills me with rage).