Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-24593235-20171118053131/@comment-25926288-20171119211854

TheRose123 wrote: Eskaver wrote: I've been pretty fair on things, but I wanted to say this separate from my more writing-analyzing report....

I was totally taken out of the moment in the Alice/Ella scene. No, I'm not going to bash the actress on superficial reasons. Ella came off as less worried about her mother than Alice. It was purposefully set up that way, but it didn't seem like Dania could make the 180 transition to the "Oh, my mother totally loved me" moment. Dania came off as totally flat.

I'll chalk it up to a bad day as she seems to be able to pull off "joyful" with Lucy, but didn't seem to give much about fictional dead mother.

The only real bash-worthy thing I've got is that the writers said

7x02: "Hey guys, look out for chess as that could be Hook's daughter.

7x04: "Hey guys, LOOK! Chess! Daughter?!

7x06: "Hey guys, did you see? CHESS! Daughter?!!!!

7x07: Hey, guys, Chess again. Maybe....SURPRISE! Betcha didn't see those clever little hints we were giving you. Alice is Hook's DAUGHTER! GOTCHA!!!!!!!

That's why I didn't want Alice to be Hook's daughter as they were literally hitting us over the head with a frying pan.

Maybe the intention was making it so obvious that everyone would just think it was a red herring? That’s giving them a bit too much credit. They did similar things before and I mentioned that the writers had a tendency to hit us over the head sometimes with things. I don’t have to mention how Fiona pretty much said Final battle in like every confrontation, or how Rumple discusses that “when the stars align, I’ll cleave, cleave, cleave myself from the dagger” in every episode post-figuring it out. (Looked like at times that Bobby had one scene in an episode, just to spell out his evil plan as if the viewers didn’t watch the past three episodes).