Once Upon a Time: Siege Perilous
October 12, 2015 11:47 AM - Season 5, Episode 3 - Subscribe
In Camelot, Charming and Arthur embark on a quest to try to help Merlin. In Storybrooke, they investigate some missing magical items, while Hook and Emma talk about their relationship.
So when Charming and Arthur went after the escaping squire in their truck, I thought to myself, man, those two should put together some kind of pickup-truck jousting tournament. And then I thought, okay, there's no way that I'm the first person to have ever had that particular dumb idea. And not only am I not the first person to think of it, but the Germans even have a word for it already: Autoringstrechen.
So yeah. There's that. I am struggling to care about this show at all anymore but I would totally watch the hell out of some truck-jousting tournaments.
posted by mstokes650 at 1:54 PM on October 12, 2015
So yeah. There's that. I am struggling to care about this show at all anymore but I would totally watch the hell out of some truck-jousting tournaments.
posted by mstokes650 at 1:54 PM on October 12, 2015
I am struggling to care about this show at all anymore
There are some characters I care about in deep and profound ways (Regina, Rumpelstiltskin, Regina, Gold, Regina, sometimes Emma especially in terms of her relationships with other characters, sometimes Snow/Charming's relationship, plus Hook when he's not being boring which will definitely be fixed when he falls in love with me, Regina, Regina, Regina, Regina, Regina) and then there are other characters about whom I just Do Not Care. Arthur? Don't care. Emma on her own, not in the context of her relationship with her family? Boring. Charming broing around with some boring dude? DOOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT CAAAAAAAAAAAARE. I mean, I appreciated learning that Arthur is evil (countdown to Guinevere/Regina eating chocolates and fucking shit up spinoff! I cannot wait! Captain Hook and I will watch it together and make out!) but nothing in this episode had anything to do with any relationships or characters about whom I actually cared and the plot/action wasn't interesting enough to make up for that.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:41 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
There are some characters I care about in deep and profound ways (Regina, Rumpelstiltskin, Regina, Gold, Regina, sometimes Emma especially in terms of her relationships with other characters, sometimes Snow/Charming's relationship, plus Hook when he's not being boring which will definitely be fixed when he falls in love with me, Regina, Regina, Regina, Regina, Regina) and then there are other characters about whom I just Do Not Care. Arthur? Don't care. Emma on her own, not in the context of her relationship with her family? Boring. Charming broing around with some boring dude? DOOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT CAAAAAAAAAAAARE. I mean, I appreciated learning that Arthur is evil (countdown to Guinevere/Regina eating chocolates and fucking shit up spinoff! I cannot wait! Captain Hook and I will watch it together and make out!) but nothing in this episode had anything to do with any relationships or characters about whom I actually cared and the plot/action wasn't interesting enough to make up for that.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:41 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
nothing in this episode had anything to do with any relationships or characters about whom I actually cared
Ehh, see, for me, the central conflict in Season 1 of this show, which had so much promise and was really pretty interesting, was fundamentally the conflict between the Fairy Tale Universe and the Real World Universe. And for my money the show's still at it's best when it's doing that. Robin Hood trying to adjust to life in New York, for example. In all seriousness (okay, maybe semi-seriousness), a truck-jousting tourney is that kind of a thing - a bunch of fairy-tale characters trying to live fairy tale lives and be themselves in a real world that is messy and does not operate by fairy-tale rules and has all this weird stuff in it.
But - and it started a long time ago (I heavily blame the season they spent in Neverland) the show stopped being about that and instead became, basically, slightly warped fairytales vs. other twisted fairytales, with a heaping side-helping of totally artificially manufactured relationship drama. I still like a lot of the characters, but the specific relationship drama is so often just painfully forced it's hard to care. (For just one example: when was the last time Snow and/or Charming keeping a secret wasn't idiotic? When was the last time it didn't cause DRRRAMA? When was the last time it wasn't a secret that just made you roll your eyes when they finally revealed what it was?) And the plot, very often (especially this season - I mean c'mon, another bout of amnesia? These folks are all gonna get brain cancer from excessive exposure to mind-magic) is just sort of handwavey nonsense that is strung together so that the writers can arrive at whatever specific scenes and emotional beats they want to get to, so that ain't keepin' me hooked.
So I dunno. I haven't canceled the DVR series recording yet but that's mainly because there's nothing competing for the timeslot. I do love reading the snarky recaps though.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:11 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ehh, see, for me, the central conflict in Season 1 of this show, which had so much promise and was really pretty interesting, was fundamentally the conflict between the Fairy Tale Universe and the Real World Universe. And for my money the show's still at it's best when it's doing that. Robin Hood trying to adjust to life in New York, for example. In all seriousness (okay, maybe semi-seriousness), a truck-jousting tourney is that kind of a thing - a bunch of fairy-tale characters trying to live fairy tale lives and be themselves in a real world that is messy and does not operate by fairy-tale rules and has all this weird stuff in it.
But - and it started a long time ago (I heavily blame the season they spent in Neverland) the show stopped being about that and instead became, basically, slightly warped fairytales vs. other twisted fairytales, with a heaping side-helping of totally artificially manufactured relationship drama. I still like a lot of the characters, but the specific relationship drama is so often just painfully forced it's hard to care. (For just one example: when was the last time Snow and/or Charming keeping a secret wasn't idiotic? When was the last time it didn't cause DRRRAMA? When was the last time it wasn't a secret that just made you roll your eyes when they finally revealed what it was?) And the plot, very often (especially this season - I mean c'mon, another bout of amnesia? These folks are all gonna get brain cancer from excessive exposure to mind-magic) is just sort of handwavey nonsense that is strung together so that the writers can arrive at whatever specific scenes and emotional beats they want to get to, so that ain't keepin' me hooked.
So I dunno. I haven't canceled the DVR series recording yet but that's mainly because there's nothing competing for the timeslot. I do love reading the snarky recaps though.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:11 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz this ep.
i guess we're being punished for 2? 3? seasons of charming doing almost nothing but nodding along with snow. i completely don't care about him anymore, it's been too long. but if forced to choose, i'd pick a season-long bit by bit rebuilding of his character over throwing me in the deep end (and coma) for a whole episode. too jarring.
the cuts between camelot and storybrooke are so blunt. we jump from SB to EF all the time but here it feels "here's the macguffin chest in camelot. now in SB. now the bro quest in camelot. now in SB. mushroom in camelot. SB." it feels especially literal. i dislike almost all fairytales-of-the-week, expected to dislike the camelot storyline, so this is all right on schedule.
i can't stand hook's elevated status this season, i bit my tongue for 2 threads. manpain manpain manpain. i like that lily sparks keeps calling out the subtext of "hey i don't like it so much when YOU want ME, it's better when i'm the stalker."
emma fucking with his head is fun though, i want her to make everyone cry, almost kill henry, followed up by some severe hugging it out. sorry i like the family stuff too! like zelena/regina. nobody has talked about zelena in these threads yet, y'all just don't like her? i find her much more entertaining as this defanged underdog, because instead of kicking regina's ass all over the screen all she has left is being snotty. the baby is dumb, i don't want another baby, but i like her around and i hope they try to rehabilitate her to some extent. her snark is different than regina snark because she's so chipper about it.
hero-rumple took me a little bit by surprise. i thought that henry being the excalibur hero was a reasonable guess, because emma is going to need to fuck with him somehow. and regina will be pissed and it will be ON. but ok, double rumple. i don't hate dark emma acting-wise, suddenly appearing to the dwarves and hook is fun for now. but i hope she kills someone and that the betrayal in camelot is convincing. her parents' secret last season was dumb, agreed.
i think we can all agree it's a terrible show, but like Mrs. P i watch for the relationships. they should have more fun with it and take more risks storytelling but i think that's unlikely, too bad.
posted by twist my arm at 6:36 PM on October 12, 2015
i guess we're being punished for 2? 3? seasons of charming doing almost nothing but nodding along with snow. i completely don't care about him anymore, it's been too long. but if forced to choose, i'd pick a season-long bit by bit rebuilding of his character over throwing me in the deep end (and coma) for a whole episode. too jarring.
the cuts between camelot and storybrooke are so blunt. we jump from SB to EF all the time but here it feels "here's the macguffin chest in camelot. now in SB. now the bro quest in camelot. now in SB. mushroom in camelot. SB." it feels especially literal. i dislike almost all fairytales-of-the-week, expected to dislike the camelot storyline, so this is all right on schedule.
i can't stand hook's elevated status this season, i bit my tongue for 2 threads. manpain manpain manpain. i like that lily sparks keeps calling out the subtext of "hey i don't like it so much when YOU want ME, it's better when i'm the stalker."
emma fucking with his head is fun though, i want her to make everyone cry, almost kill henry, followed up by some severe hugging it out. sorry i like the family stuff too! like zelena/regina. nobody has talked about zelena in these threads yet, y'all just don't like her? i find her much more entertaining as this defanged underdog, because instead of kicking regina's ass all over the screen all she has left is being snotty. the baby is dumb, i don't want another baby, but i like her around and i hope they try to rehabilitate her to some extent. her snark is different than regina snark because she's so chipper about it.
hero-rumple took me a little bit by surprise. i thought that henry being the excalibur hero was a reasonable guess, because emma is going to need to fuck with him somehow. and regina will be pissed and it will be ON. but ok, double rumple. i don't hate dark emma acting-wise, suddenly appearing to the dwarves and hook is fun for now. but i hope she kills someone and that the betrayal in camelot is convincing. her parents' secret last season was dumb, agreed.
i think we can all agree it's a terrible show, but like Mrs. P i watch for the relationships. they should have more fun with it and take more risks storytelling but i think that's unlikely, too bad.
posted by twist my arm at 6:36 PM on October 12, 2015
Hero!Rumple is a horrible shitty idea can we just be done with the good evil pendulum for him?
Also Dark!Emma is boring me because she is obviously going to get back to Good!Emma so she can't do anything particularly terrible or she would cross the moral event horizon, so I don't feel any actual tension from this plot.
I wouldn't mind if they made Snow interesting again, she could drag Charming back, but this one episode was too much Charming. It was intensely dull as an episode.
posted by jeather at 8:32 PM on October 12, 2015
Also Dark!Emma is boring me because she is obviously going to get back to Good!Emma so she can't do anything particularly terrible or she would cross the moral event horizon, so I don't feel any actual tension from this plot.
I wouldn't mind if they made Snow interesting again, she could drag Charming back, but this one episode was too much Charming. It was intensely dull as an episode.
posted by jeather at 8:32 PM on October 12, 2015
Also Dark!Emma is boring me because she is obviously going to get back to Good!Emma so she can't do anything particularly terrible or she would cross the moral event horizon, so I don't feel any actual tension from this plot.
See, I think the move is probably going to be that's she "went dark" in a way that's understandable and defensible, probably because Snow and Charming did something that they think is well meaning but is actually shitty, like they always do. I can find that at least a little interesting.
This episode though, was 30 seconds of truck jousting (genius) and a lot of boring nonsense, and I say that as someone who loves bro adventures enough that I was kind of liking Charming and Arthur together. The bit where they both realized they'd been born commoners was good, but the rest was ultimately pointless. I guess Arthur is evil, only no doubt he'll turn out to be just misunderstood. The whole thing just needed more Regina doing anything.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:46 AM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
See, I think the move is probably going to be that's she "went dark" in a way that's understandable and defensible, probably because Snow and Charming did something that they think is well meaning but is actually shitty, like they always do. I can find that at least a little interesting.
This episode though, was 30 seconds of truck jousting (genius) and a lot of boring nonsense, and I say that as someone who loves bro adventures enough that I was kind of liking Charming and Arthur together. The bit where they both realized they'd been born commoners was good, but the rest was ultimately pointless. I guess Arthur is evil, only no doubt he'll turn out to be just misunderstood. The whole thing just needed more Regina doing anything.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:46 AM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
When did King Arthur learn to drive? The Camelot-ites came back as their Camelot selves and not with Storybrooke counterparts.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:03 PM on October 13, 2015
posted by Karmakaze at 2:03 PM on October 13, 2015
Yeah, I am finding their adaptation to this world sort of...underwhelming.
posted by corb at 6:49 AM on December 7, 2015
posted by corb at 6:49 AM on December 7, 2015
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posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:50 PM on October 12, 2015