Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-28162607-20170818082458/@comment-25733960-20170905101204

Aine1989 wrote: I'll admit I got this idea after seeing the positive s6 thread.

In my humble opinion, season 6 was the worst. My thoughts:

-Split Queen. Having her refer to the Evil Queen as a separate entity instead of herself higlighted how unable she is to take responsibility for her actions. If the narrative didn't endorse it  I wouldn't have a problem but it did. We were meant to believe that Regina and the Evil Queen are not the same. And then instead of taking the EQ back, which would show some realistic character growth, she decided to give her a happy ending. As long as the EQ remains separate from Regina, she has not taken responsibility for her actions. The ultimate whitewash; Regina didn't do that, the Evil Queen did.

-Lana's acting. Ii'm sorry but Lana's performance as the Evil Queen was awful. She was far too giggly, too over the top, too hyper. It was not the cold, calculating, heart broken Evil Queen I fell in love with in season 1. To me it looked like she was trying to be Rumple and failing. Her performance as Regina was pretty good but her performance as the EQ dragged the quality way down in my opinion. Which is sad because her season 1 performance was brilliant.

-The lack of Emma. Emma had more screentime in 5A (which was 10 episodes long because Merida) than in the first 16 epiosdes of seaosn 6. She is meant to be the main character and she was completely sidelined. And they knew it could have been Emma's last season and yet sidelined her.

-The contrived "Emma's going to die" plot was dumb and only created meaningless angst. We know Emma wasn't dying. They could have actually explored the toll the role took on Emma wihtout a meaningless "Saviours always die" plot. And actually addressed issues in Emma's life related to her role.

-The Wish Realm. This could have been a moving arc highlighting the tragedy of Emma not getting to grow up loved and focussing on what the Charmings lost. Instead it ended up promoting the message "It is good that Emma was abused". Wish!Emma was a weak, ditzy, spineless damsel because (in the words of Jane Epenson) she didn't grow up with challenges (as if Snow and Charming would not teach their daughter how to fight).We fell in love with Emma because she is strong, resilient, brave and tough despite her tragic life, because that is who she is at her core. That is what makes a compelling character. Not this "she is only strong because she was abused". That's just bad writing. I would rather have a story about a woman who is inherently strong and fought back against the world rather than a woman who is only strong due to her pain. Emma should not be thankful for what she suffered. My friend called it "the epitome of victim blaming" and she's right; the whole message was 'Emma had to have a crappy life in order to make her strong'. They destroyed what made Emma special in order to whitewash Regina and told abuse victims they should be grateful for their trauma because it made them strong. And of course, Emma thanking Regina for abusing her and killing her parents. That was messed up. And not 5 minutes after killing two real people (as we saw the Wish Realm was indeed real) she was rewarded with a brand new Robin Hood.

-RumBelle in 6B. One of the highlights of 6A was Belle standing up to Rumple and yet they broke it all apart in 6B when she came crawling back to him again, despite all his douchebaggery before. She said "What have we done to each other" despite that she did not do anything. They got back together because of Gideon. Because a baby fixes everything. Tale as old as domestic abuse.

-The "Hook killed David's father" plot. Firstly it made no sense timeline wise. Then of course they had to mess up the CS proposal and butcher Killian's character for pointless drama. But what happened after was worse; Emma gave Killian a whole speech about how he should have trusted her but did not extend the same courtesy to him, saying that "as soon as things got tough he left". Despite the fact that he didn't take any of his treasured possessions-including his beloved brother's ring that he believed keeps him alive. Emma is very intelligent and perceptive and yet to set up a damn plot point they made her look like an idiot and a hypocrite. Meanwhile Hook was out fighting tooth and nail to get back to her while she simply assumed he'd left. Which made CS very unbalanced and unfair, and the reason I fell in love with it in the first place was because it was one of the most balanced ships I'd seen where they both figh for each other. Emma's my favourite chcaracter yet I wanted to slap her. And the factt that the whole thing was pointless because David forgave Hook anyway, with 0 pay off. Hell I am a Killian fan and yet I wanted David to remain angry.

-The Black Fairy. I liked her well enough and was in love with Murray's performance (and the wardobe). But the problem is they shoehorned in the Big Bad of the season 11 episodes before the finale. Meaning, in addition to having to having to juggle a pretty big cast, they had to set up the BF as a villain and explain why she is so terrible. Which they did not do. We had no indication of why she was a more formidable foe than Regina, Pan, Rumple or Ingrid. She just felt like any old villain. They just repeated the words 'final battle' over and over again. We had no idea of the stakes and no investment in her. And on a follow-up; Emma didn't even defeat her. Rumple did. The heroine didn't defeat the Big Bad, depsite the fact we had it drilled into us that she meant to.

So yeah, my humble contribution to this wiki. What are your negative thoughts on season 6. Agree with almost everything

Queenie being over the top I think it was done on purpose though. Like that she was only the sassy/crazy half of Regina, so she had to act different than what she did when she was the Evil Queen as a whole.

But I agree that Lana's acting as the Evil Queen is not as good as on season 1. Her scenes on the Swan Song (5x11) were almost overacted

But overall, I do agree that Season 6 felt like disjointed. Like they didn't know what to do with the characters and storylines they introduced. The Robert-Killian-David storyline came and went to nowhere (and it was way too predictable), and the Black Fairy arc (which was the main storyline this season) felt rushed and wasn't even fully explained. Sometimes I was like "Do they even write a script for this show or they just improvise?? Because it felt like incoherent as a whole.

The writing was so lame sometimes. It was like they weren't even trying. Like the scene when Hook saves Belle from being killed by Jekyll. Hyde and Rumple were on the docks right next the ship watching the whole thing. How come they didn't see Hook approaching  Jekyll from behind? Hyde only needed to use the Dagger and command Rumple to poof Hook away and that's it. But no.... things only happened because they needed them to happen. Like Hook using a dreamcatcher to see his memories without magic, which happened without any explanation only because they needed Emma to see them (and somehow recognize her grandfather)