You'd be wrong - I did say it wasn't the only time I'd seen this done. And I love Shrek- one and two.
I don't mind the Mother Goose characters, as most are also ancient, and the setting is usually fairly non-specific, i. e., the forest, a cottage, a village, a castle. But Pinocchio (and some of the nursery rhymes) are set in a definitely later time period - there's no longer a feudal/peasant system in place, there are large towns and huge cities, and children attend school instead of working alongside their parents. Pinocchio is more problematic because it is specifically set in Italy. It is set in "the real world", and the Blue Fairy comes there to grant Pinocchio's wish to be "a real boy", so why would Pinocchio be living in fairy-tale land. His story has a fairy in it, and magic, but he is NOT a fairy-tale creature, he lives in Italy, with Gepetto.

And Peter Pan was born in London. As a baby, he fell out of his pram and was separated from his Mum, and lived with the birds and faeries in Kensington Gardens. It was when he grew a bit older he found his way to Never land. There are pixies there, but no castles or princesses, no giants or dragons. And it's taking a bit of liberty with J. M. Barrie's creation to suddenly decide Captain Hook should be the swashbuckling sex symbol every female character and viewer drools over. You know JKR would have major kitten fits if Harry Potter made an appearance without permission. But because these authors aren't around to give, or deny, permission (or sue), the writers just help themselves to these literary characters, when they could have been ore true to their theme and avoided any hint of poaching by sticking to true fairy-tale beings. And there's plenty to work with, and then you wouldn't have these odd juxtapositions.

 

They're not just picking random stories to incorporate into the show. Once Upon a Time is produced by ABC, a Disney subsidiary. Almost every one of the non-original characters, even those that originally stemmed from nursery rhymes and literature, has a DISNEY incarnation in some form or another, or is at least related to a tale adopted by Disney. If you haven't noticed, 50% of the fairy-tale world costumes are identical to the costumes portrayed in the Disney animated features. Even Belle's/Rumpel's chipped cup has the same chip as Chip the Cup. The Disney allusions are so frequent and blatant, that I find myself face-palming at least once an episode. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised should Mickey Mouse make an appearance.

The entire purpose of this show is to weave the Disney universe into one connected world. It's basically AU Disney fanfiction, written by Disney. You may or may not like it, but it's done rather seamlessly.

 

That would explain EXACTLY what bothers me about it - Disneyfication! Perhaps one episode in the near future the whole cast can gather together for a few rounds of "It's A Small World After All" - once Pocahontas, Mulan and the Aristocats show up.

 

Yeah.... Mulan has already appeared and is now a semi-major character.



The Disney plugs aren't going to stop anytime soon, because as I said, this is the point of the show. The story itself comes second.

 

This show does a shitty job of writing for the heroes, in my opinion. That whole Charming family just comes off as extremely smug.

"Good always wins!" - The good guys can repeat this as much as they want, it doesn't make it true. Being good didn't help Regina any when she was young, nor did it help Daniel or Peter (Red's true love).

What was especially annoying in the latest episode was Snow White saying that line right after using magic left for them by the fucking Dark One. Sorry Snow, but you don't get to use the Dark One's help to escape a cell and then attribute that escape to any innate goodness you think you have.

I think this show would be a lot better if they made Rumpelstiltskin, Regina, and Cora the leads instead of Emma, Snow White, and Prince Charming.

 

Will Cora even be able to use her powers at first? I know it took Regina a little while and help to figure out how to use hers in the real world.

 

...I'm hoping I'm not the only one watching this, and the three year necro is actually worth it...

Anyway. Fifth series just started, and happily is being broadcast on Netflix with only a day's delay. Not a bad start, but it's still got a lot of the issues earlier series had, namely occasionally piss-poor CGI, some laughably cheesy scripts and a tendency to forgive the villains anything, presumably because everyone knows they're far more interesting than the heroes. Still an entertaining watch though, and I'm interested in seeing what happens with Emma.

 

I watched this show for maybe 3 seasons before I stopped. Not for any particular reason either, I just closed the tab one day and forgot to open it up again to watch more.

It's okay. Robert Carlyle is an amazing actor, and he was 90% of the reason I watched the show. His performance is really impressive, and his character is deep, interesting and quite a bit twisted, just how I like 'em.

8 of the remaining 10% of why I watched it was wanting to get to the later season when Elsa appears, out of pure curiosity on how they handled that one.


My opinion of the show is that it's sort of good. It's fun to watch and at least attempts to make sense, but after a certain point the evil queen character was jerked around way too much and changed allegiances much too easily to maintain my suspension of disbelief. The protagonist was not bad, not amazing, but not bad. The supporting cast (with the exception of Carlyle) were between mediocre and good.

The plot was there, even if it was paper-thin quite often. If you just didn't look too much into it and just enjoyed the ride it was a pretty entertaining waste of time.

I do plan to watch the rest eventually, because Carlyle is awesome and I am still curious about Elsa, but eh... eventually.

Edit: As Shinysavage said, the ease with which crimes the likes of cold blooded murder are forgiven by characters is ridiculous in this show.

 

If it hadn't all been on Netflix, and thus available for me to binge watch four series of it in about two weeks, I probably wouldn't have bothered getting beyond the first series. I will say it's improved dramatically since then.

But yeah, main draw is definitely Carlyle, and to a certain extent Regina.

Spoiler

I approve of them having Rumplestiltskin as the manifestation of the Dark One in the current series; lets us have our cake and eat it to an extent. Hope they keep that going a bit longer.

 

I remember starting this show off and on for most of the early first season, much like I did Grimm, eventually found it passable enough to stick with only to start losing steam again during the whole Peter Pan clusterfuck a season later. Since then I'll watch a new episode if the previews catch my eye. Skimmed most of the Elsa plotline, found the Author plotline detestable.

 

The Author plotline was probably the most shameless bit of Disney wank the show has done, yeah. I kinda liked the Peter Pan plot-line though, largely because the guy they cast for him was brilliant at being a manipulative, smug little shit.

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Up until he body-swapped with Henry, anyway. Those few episodes really highlighted Jared Gilmore's lack of experience/talent, although credit to him, he seems to have raised his game by the start of series 5.

 

In a semi-related note, I knew the highschool kid on Heroes: Reborn looked familiar, and I finally pegged him as Peter Pan from OUAT. So now that little irk is there.

Spoiler

Agreed, my goodness that was awful.

 

I quit watching this show sometime near the middle of season 3. I just didn't like the plot or the majority of the characters. While I liked Rumplestiltskin and Regina, I didn't like anyone else. Emma became as insufferable as her parents, Henry was annoying as ever and the story was all about rescuing him all the time, I didn't like Hook and Robin Hood did nothing for me, the Belle character remained annoying and useless, etc.

I did tune in and see a bit of season 4 just to see Elsa. I thought they got great actresses to play Anna and Elsa, but I just couldn't get into the show again.

 

I've been on the edge of quitting this show since the first season, but I never do. I think it's the cliffhangers at the end of each season that keeps me coming back, and there is always at least one redeeming character in each episode. Usually that's Rumpelstiltskin. I still smile every time he laughs. I also really liked Peter Pan during that season.

Not quite sure why I haven't stopped watching it. It's very corny, but it's also kind of unpredictable at times.

 

My opinion on Once Upon a Time has always been that it's one of those shows that has a lot of potential, but, I don't really think that it lives up to that potential. It makes me sad because I think that if Once Upon a Time lived up to the potential I think it has, I think that it would be an absolutely brilliant show.

I think part of the problem is the stylistic choices that the show has made, more specifically the present day/flashback style storytelling and the two story line seasons. The present day/flashback style worked really well in season one, fleshing out the backstory of the characters by tying their stories into present day events. However, as the series has gone on I think the flashbacks are often being used to keep to the style established in season one even when the flashback story is more filler then actual relevant development. I think that the two story line seasons end up with the same problem, it severely cuts down the time the show has to do the set up for the actual story arcs it is trying to tell. Between those two things, Once Upon a Time ends up burning through plots that could be much more fleshed out and developed.

Despite all of that, I still look forward to the new episodes every week as they come out. The show has a lot of stuff that I really like. I think that Regina's whole redemption arc and how her relationships with the rest of the main cast have developed the most.

Bitching about 4A.

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Just as an aside, I'm still super bitter about season 4A. The majority of that probably comes from the fact that I really wanted the Snow Queen's motivation to be something like trying to find her lost daughter instead of the I'm going to kill the whole town so Emma and Elsa will love me and be my new sisters that we got. The scene where Ingrid sees Emma in episode three(?) and the emotion in how she says her name will always be one of my favorite scenes in that season. Despite the fact that I personally think that Ingrid living in town for fifteen years after Emma took the whole "You're a wizard Emma" thing badly and knowing that Emma was in town invalidates the shock and surprise that I'll always hear when she says Emma's name.

Despite enjoying Elsa and Anna's various scenes, I think it might have been a better decision to use some of that time to flesh out the backstory of Ingrid's relationships with Emma and Elsa a little more. From what I can remember we got like one scene of Elsa and Ingrid interacting positively in the past and like three with Emma. As it was I really had no idea why Ingrid thought her plan would work other then general memory loss induced insanity. Was it just the prophecy she heard? I know that she was planning on restoring Emma and Elsa's happy memories of her, but, was she planning on erasing everything else? Or did she just think that three months of happy memories totally cancels the fact (at least in Emma's case) that she just was responsible for the deaths of her son, parents, brother and other people of various importance.

I'm going to ignore how stupid the whole trying to get Elsa to murder Anna thing was after Anna found out that Ingrid was responsible for the death of Helga. I know Ingrid's memories of her relationships with her sisters got messed up by that mass memory wipe, but, did Ingrid and Elsa just never talk about the events of Frozen? I mean I think that Anna and Elsa would understand being afraid that people would find out about her powers/accidentally hurting someone with her powers. If they didn't she still had the option of erasing their memories.

Seriously though, really all I wanted from this season was to be able to care about the relationship between Ingrid and Emma Oh well, I suppose it has kind of driven me to make a few stabs at writing some fanfiction for the first time in years, so there is that...

Some quick thoughts/general speculation about season five.

Spoiler

I'm really excited to see what they're going to do with the rest of season five. From the glimpse we've seen so far I liked what they've done with Emma as the Dark One (especially with Gold as her inner Dark One). I would normally dislike memory loss yet again, but, in this case I like it. I think slowly revealing the backstory to Emma going full Dark One as we go through the season will be interesting. I'm really hoping that Emma as the Dark One will span the full 22 episodes so that they have the time to flesh it out properly and they don't pull a cop-out and cure Emma at the winter mid season finale.

I'm also pretty excited that Regina's going to be trying to step up and fill the role as Saviour.

Also, I 100% loved the scene with the one dwarf in Emma's outfit pretending to be sheriff.

I kind of doubt that Once Upon a Time is going to go past another season or two so I'll probably be watching it until the end. After all, despite all my complaints I'm still watching it every week.

 

Gold is still really the only reason to watch this show after 4 seasons. Which is a bit sad. The last several arcs have been particularly terrible. Frozen arc was pure fail, save for that one line 'And I sang with you!' which had me giggling for hours afterward.

 

While this is definitely true, it also means, imo, that they don't run into the problem of arc fatigue - can you imagine how painful the Neverland storyline would have been if it had been spread over a full twenty two episodes? And I'm saying that as someone who largely enjoyed that arc.

Anyway. New episode, while largely forgettable yet enjoyable, did remind me of one quality the show has in spades. Eye-candy.

Spoiler

Yes? No? Just me?

 

I'd agree with that being that it's Disney and they spare no expense to find the best looking actors around... but Emma? Really? Even pregnant/post-pregnant weight gain ginnifer goodwin is more attractive.

 

Personal preference for the slightly evil ones Although I'll concede that she's not the most attractive woman on the show. I disagree with you about Ginnifer Goodwin though, although that might be more to do with finding Mary Margaret almost teeth-grindingly insipid.

 

Emma over Mary Margaret any day for me too.

I think it's the blonde hair. Jennifer Morrison looks better as a brunette. They are definitely lower on the totem pole for attractiveness on the show as a whole, but Emma definitely beats Mary Margaret usually. Her new look is a little off putting though.