Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-26159109-20170515020842/@comment-28162607-20170522164649

DarKingdomHearts wrote: I think the main problem with the show was that they didn't have a clear path for a giant story and just kept adding a story after a story. Suddenly this villain is here, and now suddenly this one is here! It would have been better if they just has build to a final battle from the start of the show and not suddenly in the last three episodes: this is what the whole show has been leading up to, because it didn't.

Also disappointed that we never got closure in many storylines of characters. I feel like they should have used more of the recurring characters in the overall story, and maybe switch around a bit more with the main cast instead of trying to create a new plot for them. The main example would be Snowing, as they should've be downgraded after S4 when they had Neal.

It would have been more interesting to keep Red around, do more with Lily and Maleficent. Give more backstory to Blue and one to Mulan. Explain more about how Tink got to Neverland (altho I know that Rose is busy with iZombie which I also love). But a lot of unfinished plotholes, in which finding Lily's father is one of the plots I am very annoyed it was left unfinished. I think that they did have some sort of story planned, but a few factors got in the way (currently working on a bigger meta about this actually) and hindered it, like:

-Disney cashgrabs. Frozen is a great example (and it just happened to work well) as is the Queens of Darkness arc (you really expect me to believe that 4B just happened to be a year after the release of Maleficent? And it was probably in the works around the time the film was released? In addition to two other iconic Disney villains?). The dropping of Lily's storyline makes sense if you think about that; Mal was likely a disney cash grab.

-Pregnancies; this really only applies to Lily (though it can apply to Ginny/Snow  and Emilie/Belle as sthey may have had an arcs planned that they had to scrap). Agnes couldn't do s5 because she was pregnant and then they couldn't find room for her in season 6, which leads me on to.....

-Too many regulars. By season 5 they had 10 regulars/ main characters, which was way more than their orignal story had intended. When you look at interviews/behind the scenes stuff, its likely the main cast they envision was Emma, Hook, Snow, Charming, Henry, Regina and Rumple. But they then had to accomodate Zelena, Belle and Robin, all of whom were not originally intended to be in the show. Between all these mains, plus new characters, they had to drop some old ones and modify their story, eg. having to attempt to give Zelena a purpose in s5, creating an OQ storyline in s4, making sure Belle gets at least one episode per half season, trying to make Rumple be the villain they wanted/needed while simultaneously having to make him fit RumBelle.

-Other actors' schedules. Meghan Ory had a new TV show to work on, as did (if I remember correctly) Jamie Chung.

While I do think A&E are simply mediocre at best (and more often than nto just plain bad) writers, they did face a few factors beyond their control which meant they had to make changes to the show, so I'm not completely unsympathetic and think they did have a plan but the final product ended up being very different.

However, I think they could have ended after s3. Its where the 'story' ends. The characters all seemed to come to a nice natural resolution; the Charmings were together, Emma opened up her heart, Regina appeared to have started a redemption arc. And s4-6 have been kind of "rinse and repeat" arcs for the characters and very few have actually developed in any way since then.