Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11464223-20160522134756/@comment-27976931-20160528014505

Jernigan wrote: 1, 2, 4A, 4B, 5B, 3A, 3B, 5A.

Season 1 was of course amazing, terrific storytelling and acting. If it wasn't for Baelfire's mystery, I could pretty much isolate it as the only relevant season in the show's history. Season 2 was a bit scatterbrained, but otherwise continued the story well and really expanded the mythology.

I HATE the unnatural split-season arcs with a passion. Most of them are exactly the same: shove a bunch of characters from a totally different story into Once and watch them sink or swim. Since the show doesn't progress naturally, most of the episodes are just dull waste until the season finale spices things up a bit for the next villain to appear. Rinse and repeat.

Of those, season 4 was my favourite since it kept the story contained in Storybrooke and maybe since I've never seen Frozen before, I felt like the Arendelle characters worked well with the main cast and didn't dominate the storyline. Rumple was still the main baddie and HookxEmma got some actual development in this one. I also loved all the Rumple and Hook scenes. It's basically a campy, fun season.

5B had a great concept - the Underworld - but mostly wasted half of it on Cruella and the infernal Hades/Zelena romance(whoever cooked that up should end up in the River Of Souls) that ruined both characters. I also hated that they so easily redeemed Cora. Still, at least it was memorable and had some good episodes(Devil's Due was fantastic):

I barely remember anything about season 3. 3A was mostly spent on walking around the same jungle sets over and over again whilst 3B was the Zelena show. Pure filler.

And then there's 5A, which was the most random, half-arsed crap the show has ever produced. It's like they just couldn't decide what to do with it so they did everything: Camelot, Merlin, Evil Arthur, Dark One mythology, Dark Emma, Dark Hook, Hero Rumple, Merida etc. and it doesn't fit together at all. None of the episodes seem to follow any logical storyline, with the worst offender being Hook stealing Emma's thunder. Like, imagine how cool it would've been if EMMA had died in 5x11(it would even tie into Rumple's betrayal, since the Savior was his concept), with Hook going into the Underworld to save her?

Yeah, personally I think having everyone go to the Underworld to save Emma would be a lot more believable than everyone saving Hook. She's the Charmings' daughter, Hook's girlfriend, Henry's mother, Regina's best friend, and Robin's... well, nothing, but eh. Meanwhile Hook's only strong tie was to Emma, so devoting an arc to everyone working to resurrect him feels more forced and just feeding in to Captain Swan/Hook fans. Don't get me wrong, I still love 5B and thought it turned out to be one of their greatest arcs, but I still have my reservations regarding that one aspect.