Sara and I began watching Once Upon A Time for the fairy tail twists (and Robert Carlyle), but we’re in season 4 of 7 and it gets sillier and sillier — and not on purpose. These days, we’re watching it for one character above all else — Mayor Regina Mills, AKA The Evil Queen. We call it The Regina Show.
For reasons too long, convoluted, and silly to detail, Regina was on a sailing ship with elementary school teacher Mary Margaret, AKA Snow White, when the ship was attacked by some silly sea thing. Mary Margaret, who should have been named Little Goody Two-Shoes, vetoed using deadly force, to which Regina snarled,
You’re going to win her over with your rainbow kisses and unicorn stickers?
This post is part of Linda G. Hills weekly blog hop, One-Liner Wednesday. If you have a one-liner or just like them, follow the link.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Two diametrically opposed approaches to a problem.
MA
Dan Antion
March 30, 2022 at 8:07amYou have to work with the tools at hand.
Michael Hodges
March 30, 2022 at 8:41amLike you, I started out watching that show for the fairy tale twists. And like you, there came a point when it was just too silly to maintain its erstwhile charm or suspension-of-disbelief credibility. I’m all for The Fantastical Happened. What I’m NOT all for is “Okay, this isn’t even about you being in or out of your right mind; this is about you being unduly fortunate that breathing is an autonomic reflex.”
I’m kind of the same way with Big Sky. At first it was about giving the show a try, and finding it okay, even a bit intriguing. By the second season my whole purpose for the show is because Janina Gavankar looks so stunning in floral dresses. I am a total sucker for floral dresses. But the storyline . . . more than once I’ve muttered “You’re fired,” or “You’re off the island.” It’s a sad thing when one realizes “OMG, I actually just rooted for the bad guy because this other character is too stupid to live.” It’s an ugly peek into one’s sense of literary Eugenics, a peek that raises some late-night questions punctuated by shadows on the ceiling.
Marian Allen
March 30, 2022 at 10:07amTotally. Totally. I’m a sucker for what I call Pretty Lady Dresses, and Once gave me regular shots of that addiction, but it’s just not worth it anymore.
Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt
March 30, 2022 at 1:01pmAll that money being spent on a show for less and less of a return – boggles the mind.
All I can suggest is: find a better writer(s). Getting a production started is the hard part. Often the original writers are eased out or made so uncomfortable they leave. Then everything goes downhill, just as they had it all set up.
It may be too late.
Marian Allen
March 31, 2022 at 9:29amWe’re watching it on Disney+, so its ship has sailed. Not sure when it wrapped up production, but yeah, it’s too late. We would totally watch a Once Upon A Time fashion show, but the plot stopped being worth it.
Michael Hodges
March 31, 2022 at 11:04amOne of the most troubling aspects of continued production on ANY series is the problem of deflating or strained storylines. Sometimes they’re brought on by internal strife (writer/producer conflict) such as with Gilmore Girls, which went from charming although sometimes troubled, to a Series of Unfortunate Events, but without the planning or satisfying ending. When characters suddenly change not via arc, but abruptly and with a diametrically opposite sort of bent, credibility is shot.
Marian Allen
March 31, 2022 at 1:51pmI remember watching Dark Shadows back in the day; we could always tell who wrote the episode depending on how good or bad the writing was.
RAAckerman@Cerebrations.biz
March 31, 2022 at 3:37amI thought that show had died a deserved death a while ago. Such promise, squandered.
Marian Allen
March 31, 2022 at 9:30amYes, it’s gone and unlamented. We were watching it on a streaming service. We stopped.