Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6252544-20131015155830/@comment-5106672-20131114205017

I think Dark Hollow suffered a backleash from Ariel, which was a somewhat disappointing episode due to how superfically the Little Mermaid fairytale was handled, thus the lower views.

Generally speaking, so far I'm enjoying Season Three much more than the latter half of Season Two, so I think the show is getting back on track with some episodes being as thrilling as the old ones. I don't mind the "ships", either, as they're developing things already settled in Season Two rather than fanservicing the viewers out of the blue. Maybe they should be toned down, but all in all are consistent with the story.

Perhaps the real problem is, the present day narration is a bit too slow because they're putting too many "transition" episodes which promise some "big hits" in the near future while being quite useless by themselves (3x01, 04, 05 and 06), and the flashbacks are becoming too much of a "completion" to already established flashbacks rather than being interesting on their own. See the difference between Ariel and True North, Skin Deep or Red-Handed: in all of them some Snow White character plays a substantial part makind them part of the bigger storyline, but the old ones do actually tale their own fairytale with an original and interesting twist and do focus on their own characters, while Ariel just seemed an all in all superfluous piece of the Snow White puzzle with its own characters totally caught in-between – while, for instance, Tinkerbell had her moment in Quite A Common Fairy despite basically just completing Regina's back story. This is perhaps why many people are discontent.