Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20161010010027/@comment-5106672-20161010025337

Ugh. Those wigs this season. Really, the hell. Lady Tremaine's one of the worst so far, they could have really done without disneyfying her that much. Although the child in me enjoyed how ruthlessly evil and petty she was – as a kid I could handle the Evil Queen and Maleficent and Cruella, but she scared the hell out of me each time I watched Cinderella.

That said, I find my initial skepticism for this season quickly melting away. I'm glad we went back to tell Cinderella, since The Price Of Gold was functionally The Miller's Daughter featuring Ella and we never actually indulged with the Cinderella fairy tale itself. And it was quite an emotional episode, which I liked.

Also, back in the day, I didn't realise each episode's flashback was centered around one of the main cast characters until, like, halfway through S3A, when Ariel was totally overshadowed by the Snow vs Regina feud in what was supposed to be her own flashback. Looking back, it's now clear that such episodes as The Price Of Gold, True North or Red-Handed were primarly about Rumple, Regina and Snow respectively, but they let the characters of the week enough room to shine so it was very subtle. This was totally lost since S3 except for a few episodes, which, in my opinion, greatly affected the show's overall "spirit", it contributed to have it drift away from itself. It was not a collection of several stories entertwining in a general frame, it was more like those stories were just accessories. The old formula kind of kept popping back in S5B, but this episode marked its total return, which delighted me to no end. Finally all the characters can have their moment.