Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20150420004954/@comment-5106672-20150420031332

I have very mixed feelings about this episode. I'll start from the good.


 * Gosh, do I love the Twenties! I bloody enjoyed every single frame since Madeleine's cloche hat appeared on screen!


 * I absolutely love villains with a motive and a tragic backstory that explains how they turned evil, but it was refreshing to see someone who was just born a sociopath. The whole scene of her killing Madelaine and then skinning her dogs creeped me out but I was wickedly stuck to the screen. Thumbs up crazy bitch Cruella!


 * With countless abusive parent stories on OUAT, the final twist on Cruella's family was also very refreshing.


 * Maleficent put to sleep was one of the best things ever on OUAT. Oh the irony!


 * The whole Emma-Regina-Killian talk was great. Including Emma snapping back at Regina for the Daniel ordeal.


 * "Will is a better kisser than you are". I will always love Regina for that! Again, not a fan of her reverting as much to a villain as to hurt Belle for the umpteenth time, but I'll give her the desperate masures benefit. Rumple is keeping Robin as leverage and no one crosses Regina unharmed. Not when so much of hers is at stake.

Now the bad, which I exceptionally left for later because there is much more to elaborate on:


 * I've already expressed my bitch please feelings at Emma turning dark for just one self-defence kill in a series where even Jiminy Cricket is a double murderer in the thread about how screwed up the Charmings' morals seems to be, so I'm taking a pass on here.


 * The other side of the coin of 1920's England is it doesn't make much sense. What's the deal with it being "out of time"? Too much meta for my taste, with Isaac referring to the lands as narrative realms, or the hell it was he said. And also, why wouldn't anyone have perception of time flowing when it hasn't seemed to be a issue in any other place, except for cursed Storybrooke? I'm getting lost.


 * I would have liked at least a hint at how Cruella ended up in Fairy Tale Land, thank you very much. And how Isaac's car ended up in the Land Without Magic, for that matter – unless Cruella had one customised the same way.


 * I'm very alarmed at the level of tampering the Author can do to the people in narrative realms, like giving Cruella magic out of nowhere and preventing her from ever killing again even though it goes against her very personality. I wouldn't want an Once Upon A Time in which the mostly full-rounded characters we have known, loved and hated for four years thanks to their free will and consequent good and bad choices turn out to have been mentally manipualted by a force from above. I hope Adam and Eddy have put strict limits to that point, because they're putting at stake the very essence of the show in my opinion.