With season two of Once Upon A Time continuing tonight, I thought this would be a good point to write an article about this show. Several things have me worried about the writer's capabilities for this show. But first of all, let me say that I do really enjoy this show! But there are moments when I wish I could just turn off my writer's sense with the flick of a switch and "just go with it". Ignore that a story in a game, or a movie, or a book, or a TV show is flawed in my opinion, just to enjoy the views, get an adrenaline rush from all the flashing colours and have fun. And truth be told - it usually works that way... Just not for the universes I tend to care about. If you got me invested in your franchise, I will expect you to deliver the goods.
Which brings me to the problem with Once Upon A Time, you get me invested in your show and then betray me. When Emma and Snow got transported over to fairytale land the show kept telling us there was only one way for them to return to Storybrooke and kept hammering on that fact for the first half of season 2. So when the inevitable Cora/Hook Emma/Snow showdown came, I was at the edge of my seat. And then it happened all the logic of this show went out the window, the witch Cora who has been shown to be immensely powerful was tossing around silly fireballs. Then to make matters worse, the pirate captain Hook lost a sword fight to someone who has barely ever held a sword. At this point it just became cringe worthy, suddenly Emma was special! We have seen several 'true love' couples on this show, according to the show it happens more often than we think. So wouldn't either Cora or Regina, who have stolen so many many hearts, ever encountered such a person? Seems pretty likely, so why is Emma suddenly so special? Probably so Cora conveniently couldn't grab her heart. Of course now that the writers had effectively neutered Cora and Hook, Emma and Snow made it to Storybrooke and the portal closed behind them. But the writers had painted themselves in a corner when the Cora/Hook combination really took off. So five minutes later Cora and Hook magically appear on his ship at the edge of Storybrooke.
That makes no sense and goes against what the show was telling us for the first half of season 2. If they rewrite the logic on such an event why then should I believe it the next time the show told us something? For that matter we now even have the giant showing up in Storybrooke according to spoiler photos. Hey, why not? Apparently people can come and go from fairytale land really easy! It's not that they established in the first season that it is actually very hard, oh wait they did, with Rumpelstiltskin and the blue fairy. Rumpelstiltskin had the manipulate and destroy a lot of people to eventually cross over.
Season two so far has been riddled with these logic issues, the writers want certain things to happen and so they force the plot and the characters to make it happen instead of getting there organically. Which is really a shame because seasons one was pretty good. What doesn't help is the fact that they killed off the sheriff Graham to show this is a real life and death struggle, but no main or recurring character had died since. If you're so adamant about the 'real' stakes then show it, some pretty major fights and events have happened since that episode in season one but everyone makes it out alive. I'm not feeling the stakes anymore and Henry yelling "Good will always beat Evil!" isn't helping. Why should I worry if there is nothing at stake? The spoilers for tonight's episode hinted at a death, I'm curious to see if it sticks.
I really don't want to be this negative about a show I care about, but it just hurts to see these things happening and I can't understand why they make these choices. To every show there is a certain amount of logic, they established this in the first season and now the writing just seems to have gone off the rails. Please Once Upon A Time, get your act together.
Or maybe it's just what Rumpelstiltskin was saying:
"Magic is coming."
But he might have told us logic was going out the window.
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