Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-34924658-20161031211322/@comment-31937823-20171231215250

Aine1989 wrote: TheRose123 wrote:

Aine1989 wrote: From what I can tell from this, seasons 1 and 3 seem to be the most popular.

I think season 3 was the last overall good season (although parts of 3B drove me up the wall) but 4a was the last solid arc. There are scattered good moments from 4b-season 6 but really 4A was the last good arc 4B was really where the series went downhill because there were many OOC moments, scattered plotlines, and it was very totally uneven (not to say other seasons didn’t have this problem before). It’s kind of interesting though, on the polls on this site the majority voted for Season 6 as the best season. Seasons 1-4A had their fair sahre of issues, some arcs more than others but they were mostly overshadowed by moments of good quality storytelling, character development, promoting healthy family dynamics and intriguing villains and plots.

From 4B onwards,  more and more issues were piled on that started to take away from the good parts of the show. And it did seem like they ran out of ideas; Underworld was a discount Neverland, CS in season 6 went through the same issues they went through in seasons 4 and 5, Regina in 5x23 and 6A was a rehash of her season 4 "villains don't get happy endings" schtick, they kept the "we are never ever getting back together, like ever" story for RumBelle going for two seasons. It got more than a little repetitive.

I agree, they began rehashing old storylines. The curse in 3B was effective, but in 5A it was completely unnecessary. There are more ways to keep certain plot twists away from the audience without using amnesia. I used to ship Rumbelle before 4B-6. “Beauty” was redeeming, if their relationship is taken out of context for that one episode. Rumple taking back the Darkness in “Swan Song” made 5A an especially useless arc. The entire segment in the Underworld was also unnecessary - they didn’t even end up saving Hook. The only change was more character drama for Regina. What I also wasn’t a fan of in 5B was how much they blamed Emma for everything. 6B recaptured some of the magic from 1, but it culminated into a less than stellar finale.

What made seasons 1-3 amazing was it was more focused on character, and the pacing wasn’t erratic. It was more structured, and one plotline flowed into another naturally (except for the transition from Neverland to Oz). Take episodes in 3A for example, the plot was developing through the characters, and it was very driven in that respect. The character dynamics were interesting and the villains were diverse in personality. They didn’t resort to cheap plot devices or retconned previous events. Also, I think largely what 1-3 benefitted from was that it was planned. The plot was laid out and was followed through accordingly.