Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-24593235-20180208195814

I noticed on the "Season Ranking" thread people were starting to go into discussion about 4B and whether or not it's good or bad, so I figured I'd start a thread about it here. I didn't want to send that thread further off topic, and I have a lot to criticize about it. I'm gonna copy and paste the message I wrote there and chose not to publish.

First of all, I hate how most of the characters are written.


 * Snow and Charming kidnapping a baby is among the dumbest storylines the show has ever concocted, and it really taints their characters for the rest of the show. *Emma's turn to darkness was just written so poorly. She killed Cruella (to save her son) and it's seen as this big bad act despite the fact that Snow killed Cora, Rumple killed Pan, later Zelena killed Hades, and Rumple killed Fiona. These are all seen as heroic acts or, at the very least, the right thing to do, and yet Emma gets penalized for it? Then we go into 4x19 and suddenly Emma's this borderline villain, willing to shoot Lily dead on the side of a busy road. I'm sorry, but what?!
 * Then there's Regina and while I'm a Regina fan I cannot stand her in S4, but especially 4B. She acts so entitled her happy ending, blames everything on the book, while doing some pretty horrible things in the meantime. She screams at little Pinocchio, steals Belle's heart, and cuts open Lily's hand to steal her blood. Two out of three of those things never get addressed. The writers never seem to know where to draw the line with Regina in S4. They want us to view her as redeemed, but then they make her do crap like that. The same goes for S5-6, but it's no where near as bad as S4.
 * Lastly, there's Rumple, who they clearly had no idea what to do with anymore. This is the point where he's been reduced to the role of your average cartoon villain, having a new scheme every episode, doing evil just for the hell of it. At least in the past his plans were actually thought out, but in 4B everything just sort of happened and he was there to take the credit.

Besides the characters though, the plot of 4B was just all over the place. Ultimately, what they were headed towards was making Emma dark, but all of the buildup towards that was for nothing because all that happened was Emma becoming the Dark One. Hell, the darkness was initially going after Regina, so you can't even argue that her killing Cruella somehow made the path clearer for it or whatever. To this day I still don't understand the stuff with Snow, Charming, and Lily. They put all of Emma's dark potential into Lily, but... Emma still had the potential for darkness? Rumple's heart was only NOW starting to kill him despite the fact that he's been doing evil things for 300 years. Forget about that when 5x11 comes along though, despite the fact that he consumes 10x the amount of darkness he had before. And then there was the Author which was a complete let-down, and any set-up for the Sorcerer was just thrown out. 4B, to me, feels like one big set-up for 5A, but 5A just discarded literally everything.

Individually, 4B has good episodes. I love 4x15, 4x17, and 4x18, and I like 4x12, 4x14, and 4x20. Individually, I like all three of the Queens of Darkness. I think they were well-acted and well-written characters. And, of course, I love Zelena's return and everything that's come from it. That said, the arc was still riddled with plot holes, horrible characterization for its regulars, and filled with a lot of bad writing. A lot of people like to use Maleficent, Ursula, and Cruella to defend the arc, but it's not their show. Yeah, they were good, but the characters we've been following for four seasons (at that point) sure as hell were not. Definitely not a period of the show I look back fondly on.

Anyways, what are y'all's thoughts? 