Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20170516005759/@comment-31564770-20170516022153

Right, so before I go in, imma just say that S2 is probably my favorite season, S1 being a very close second. In terms of where S6 falls on my rankings, S4<S6<S5<S3<S1<S2. So it isn't the worst season in my opinion, but it's far from the best. Note that there has never, ever been an episode where I was like, "my eyes are bleeding make it stop!" That is to say, there has never ever been an episode where I turned it off cause I was so done and thought it was that bad. Basically, while I acknowledge that Once has lost some quality over the years, I still adore it overall.

Here I go! You know me prepare for a wall of text lol idk why I love walls of text but I just do and it just kinda happens as I try to say everything I want.

Stuff I loved:

Best episode: The Final Battle (both parts)

The finale was such a rollercoaster of emotions, in the best way possible. My expectations kept changing as more was revealed, and even I couldn't see the ending. There was even a good 5 minutes where I was willing to bet my life savings on Emma dying and transferring her Savior powers to Regina. My emotions were also all over the place and I was more into it than I have been in a long time. Much of the first part was spent with me screaming "WTF HOW DERANGED IS SHE" at the screen as the BF goes on a murderous Henry-hospitalizing book-burning rampage with each blow more deadly than the last. I also was like "Get out of Regina's car, fairy. Stop stealing Regina's look, fairy. I bet Regina's going to end you personally when she comes back if someone else doesn't get you first, fairy." quite a bit throughout the ep. Of course, after Page 23, even though I liked the ep a ton, I was severely dissatisfied with how they sent Serum Queen to the WR and conveniently forgot everyone wants Regina dead there and Serum Queen looks exactly like Regina sooooo.... yeah. I was utterly thrilled with how they fixed Serum Queen, from her straight up calling Regina out on the whole WR murder thing, to her sacrifice and Regina calling her double Regina to solidify her acceptance and her place in the world, to her return and Robin's proposal. Also, even though it was sorta obvious and people called it numerous times, I somehow didn't see that ending coming. All in all, great ep!

Best moment: Hard to pick. It's either gonna be Zelena running the BF over or that one in A Bitter Draught when Regina find out the Queen isn't dead. I think that A Bitter Draught comes out on top because of how Lana so skillfully portrayed the emotions of both sides. Really, I think Lana killed it in pretty much every scene acting against herself. Though Zelena running the BF over is for sure gonna be a never forget type of moment.

Best line: Hands down it's a Zelena one-liner, but I'm not sure which one! There were so many good ones this season... it has to be either Grand Theft Sorcery or She's practically family. Imma go Grand Theft Sorcery here, I laughed so hard on that one.

Best Character Development: Regina accepting herself totally, including her bad side. She has come such a long way from the woman who was so full of hatred for herself as she walked the dark and lonely road of vengeance, who was so tortured that she felt she had to kill her own father to be happy. And she has made huge progress from who she was just last season, the woman whose past darkness was always trying to drag her down and who hated who she used to be above all else, who was so desperate to be free of the doubt and darkness within her that she tried to rip it all out. I am not gonna lie, even though that scene of Regina accepting Serum Queen in Page 23 was a bit cheesy, I cried. A lot.

And, because we all know Adam and Eddy are basically addicted to plot points, I have to throw this in.

Best Plot Point: Gotta go with the musical here. They found a way to give us fans the songs we've been asking for since season 1, in a way that fits with and even furthers the mythology, and in a way that fits with and even furthers the storyline. This is important for understanding how much I appreciated the musical episode: I am such a skeptic when it comes to anything like that. I actually had to read the announcement back in January like 5 times over before I could tell myself that it wasn't a joke and this was actually happening, and even then I still didn't want to believe it. The musical ep was so much better than I ever could've imagined.

Now, the reverse stuff!

Stuff I hated:

Worst episode: A Wonderous Place takes the cake here. The other two eps I felt were quite bad were Changelings and Ill Boding Patterns, but both of those had scenes I ended up enjoying in them. A Wonderous Place did not. The only thing remotely good about it was drunk Snow, but even that wasn't the best. It is also the first time I have ever had to rewatch an episode to understand what was happening. It was ridiculously random in my opinion.

Worst moment: Hook's botched proposal, where he goes to tell Emma he killed her grandfather but then she's found the ring and he ends up proposing. The moment where Emma gets engaged should have been happy and amazing and lovely, but instead it was unbearably flawed and launched us on a totally unnecessary angst Hook train of doom. Even though it did all work out, I still have no love for that.

Worst line: this has to be one of several totally unnecessary filler lines, like when Regina fights Serum Queen and Serum Queen says, "You can't stand looking at the darkness? Well, I can't stand looking at the light." and Regina responds, totally pointlessly, with "yeah well you don't have to worry about that." there are a couple others, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

Worst character development: Smow's whole "getting back to normal" thing, because one, does she really expect that after all they've been through and with Hyde and all in town? And two, it went actually nowhere.

Worst plot point: Speaking of things that went actually nowhere, Land of Untold Stories anyone? What even was the point there? So a bunch of random people show up on a dirigible, crash, and all the villains are saying "oooohhh dem untold stories tho y'all better be scared for when they play out it's gonna suck for you!" but then all we really got was like Jasmine, the Count, Cinderella's family, and like 3 others. I feel like the writers had an idea and tried to do something with it but turns out it wasn't as cool a toy as they thought so they scrapped it halfway through.

Overall, S6 is probably on the lower end of my season rankings because I felt like there was a lot of stuff swirling around that the writers thought would be cool but then it was all woefully underutilized due to the sheer volume of new stuff. They tried an experiment with the newish format of all these little stories playing off the big one, but in a 22 episode season there just isn't time for all that. Thus, the experiment concludes mostly in failure. That said, I did have the feeling that once they wrapped the Serum Queen stuff and moved on to the BF, they stopped reeling and got their heads in the game. They pulled it together for the most part and S6 therefore ended on a good exciting note.

Oh, almost forgot! Honorable mention to the brief return of S1 Regina in the Awake flashbacks, it was super refreshing if I'm honest- because of the time difference, we got to see two totally different Reginas in the same ep, with the past one being such a clean break from what we get nowadays. I love both Reginas equally, it just feels good to see a throwback to S1 Big Bad villain Regina in an entirely new scenario. I forgot that little thrill I always used to get when watching something I'd forgotten about or whatever with villain Regina, like "ooo boy what's she gonna do next..." of course, now I know the show too well to be surprised, one of the downsides to constant rewatch I guess lol. So the only way for that thrill to happen is with new stuff, and I was super pleased with Awake for that as well as it was just a good ep overall.