Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25491743-20180210165656/@comment-25926288-20180210231144

I'm going ahead and cheating too.

Wonderland: All the episodes. That's why I mentioned a possible Jane and A & E run show would be an interesting idea. I think it could rival Once season 1 to 3. (Stay calm, I said rival, not best.)

As a complete story, they didn't suffer from too many callbacks to Once proper (like most season of Once did) and their DDI was well-placed. Give Aladdin Jafar's backstory from Wonderland and I guarantee that Street Rats wouldn't have been low ranked as such. Every character could have fallen to cliche (like strong woman who's emotionally vulnerable, love triangles, etc), but they didn't. A strong friendship, dark and fun moments balanced pretty well. The flashbacks didn't feel so formulaic "Moral of the story" style. Characters had large flaws and weren't singular focused (didn't really have segmented "romances" (like Belle being stuck with Rumple in majority of her scenes, etc)). I think every episode accomplished keeping the story thriving.

Some say "Well, it's a slow start", but if you start A Game of Thrones...well, you'll be like "What's this generic medieval stuff about" and then you'd see the great quality. Just because the intense moments are epic doesn't discount what led up to it. Given a few more episodes, I think it could have fixed some of the dents. If 7 (which is fine) was like Wonderland, I actually think most wouldn't have issues with the actual story. (Not saying that folk wouldn't be mad about the cast or that it wouldn't be cancelled.)

Sorry for the slight tangent, but I couldn't let it go by.