Once Upon a Time: Birth; The Bear King
November 20, 2015 6:30 PM - Season 5, Episode 8 - Subscribe

Emma must make a gut-wrenching decision; Zelena's pregnancy accelerates, forcing Hook to seek answers; Zelena and Arthur cross paths with Merida, who is attempting to settle a debt.
posted by oh yeah! (4 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Ok. So Killian turns dark. Good. I want them to become a dark couple. Love cannot save them because they are in love with each other and they play off each other darkest tendencies.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 12:50 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Nice to see Ruby again, but the way OUaT continues to wink-wink-nudge-nudge when it comes to Mulan's sexuality is really annoying. Five seasons in and the show still doesn't have the guts to write an explicitly same-sex relationship. Just gender-neutral-pronoun subtext. Boo.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:13 AM on November 21, 2015


i wasn't sure if i should comment because there are 2 more episodes before the winter break so what if i'm wrong about what it all means and it's only a mediocre arc instead of what it looks like, that is a smoking crater where emma as a character used to be.

but first! ouat's ridiculous line of the episode (5x08) "Let's just say when the dark one offers you onion rings don't eat them!" when i have nothing positive to say this season, i just think of a zelena scene.

ok. so, unless the next 2 episodes or the rest of the season shows us otherwise, emma's entire motivation has been hook.
Why was she afraid to let go of the darkness? Because she was afraid of moving in with Hook.
Why did she eventually go dark? To save Hook.
What was the reason for everything she did in SB? She was covering up that she turned Hook into the Dark One (against his wishes) and what Hook has done.
instead of the more interesting arc where emma's family actually *did* fail her in some way, as she stated in 5x01, what we have is a woman with boyfriend problems. i was so irritated about all this i didn't pay attention to the second hour, which i guess is the introduction of a queer storyline and i have strong opinions about that as well.

if they are going to have mulan or whoever be in a queer relationship, then yes i prefer they do it respectfully and yadda yadda. but it's S5, it feels like table scraps of pandering to the queer audience that ships SQ and a half-assed attempt to deflect the general criticism about the lack of queer characters.

given they still haven't figured out how not to kill PoC even after all the criticism they've gotten about the lack of racial diversity and sensitivity (i'm assuming hook is going to kill merlin), i think my wariness here is deserved. first bad decision: they introduce this by shoving mulan into hour 2 with the B team of characters nobody cares about-- it's a perfect metaphor for whatever they end up doing with a queer storyline.
posted by twist my arm at 10:10 AM on November 30, 2015


Oh man, so I keep writing these storylines in my head and they are so much better than what they actually give me!

First - I too really, really, wanted the thing that turns Emma dark to be something the Home Team did - give her a plausible reason for vengeance, rather than just pretending to be out for vengeance so that no one suspects what she did to Hook or whatever. I was pissed when it turned out to be Something Emma Regrets and am more pissed when it's "Something You Did To Hook", and then even more pissed when it's "Saving Your Life Against Your Will," which if it were another show could have been done well, but this one prioritizes life so much and has the Robin save that it all seems like pretty fucking weak beer.

I am cautiously optimistic about Hook Is The Dark One for my own little ship joy, because maybe if he has been the dark one all along, then that's why the kisses they've been teasing me with haven't been working - maybe two cursed people can't do it with each other.

However, I am really annoyed by the "binding someone to Excalibur makes them the Dark One", because Merlin was bound to Excalibur and we saw precisely zero darkness in him, also with Hook, for the six weeks he was the dark one, we saw him only being selfless and good and loving, with zero darkness and all the faith.

I would turn cartwheels if it turns out that there is no actual Dark One - if it turns out that most of the dark created has been because people think they are cursed and so they fulfill it themselves, and the corruption is that of immortality rather than the dagger, though.
posted by corb at 6:59 AM on December 9, 2015


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