OUaTiW 1x13: And They Lived...
Aug. 21st, 2020 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsOUaTiW 1x13: And They Lived...
Well it looks like my read of things last episode was wrong; in which case there's still a lot that doesn't make sense, like how Amara stopped being a staff.
I honestly can't tell if this show is going for moral ambiguity or if it doesn't much care for moral accountability. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the Sultan? Because it doesn't take much to refocus and see Jafar's revenge as completely justified. Amara and Ana have a lot of blood on their hands that the show doesn't seem interested in dealing with since it wants us to care about them in this story. We don't see any consequences for the stepmother even. And I'm all for moral ambiguity, but it's completely at odds the family friendly cartoony vibe of the show that has (including in this episode) smoothed over some other elements of the story with fairy tale logic.
The plot resolution is a weird case of a literal dues ex machina that had actually been set up in the story before. None of the main characters had to figure out how to defeat Jafar, they just tripped over the Well of Wonders and let that magic lady sort it out. It happens within the rules that have been set up, but it still isn't our characters who beat him. In fact, if Cyrus hadn't held Amara up for that last moment, the whole bit would have gone down differently.
The end is kind of amusing in that it does use the Aladdin ending, with Jafar ending up a genie, captured by his own insatiable drive for power. I do like that, it was something I enjoyed about OUaT back in the day, that their versions of the fairy tales weren't exactly the Disney versions (up until they started acting like they were), but a lot of the pieces are there for each of them. Cyrus has been in the Genie's role, but he's also kind of Aladdin, tricking Jafar into doing the thing that will be the villain's end.
I really wish we had had more scenes of Alice and Jafar throughout the season, they have pretty intense chemistry, and are the main hero and villain of the show but rarely interact. That does have its good side as it kept their encounters from getting stale and not quite able to explain how the less powerful Alice kept getting away.
I still do not care about anything to do with Ana. But I'm sort of wondering if my problem is actually with Will; though I'm not sure if it's the writing or acting I blame. His lines here are not very good to put it mildly, and the writers did write the scenes that utterly failed to sell me on this relationship. And the show insisted on framing so much of her development through Will and that relationship, rather than Ana as her own entity. But even though I disliked Ana so much in the beginning, I have no trouble seeing that the actress was giving the performance she meant to give, and by and large did better once she dropped the evil queen persona, that was meant to be am assumed personality in character after all. But Will...I kind of think the actor isn't very good; he lucked out by playing the most 'normal' character on the show, effectively a modern person who could remark on the silliness of a lot of what they're doing, but he was not very good when asked to do anything else. His flashback scenes struggled; he just played younger-Will as an idiot, and his drama scenes were at best passable. Or he just couldn't sell the dialog, which again I have a hard time blaming him for. So I'm very conflicted.
The plot resolution was flawed but okay, and the rest of the ending was rushed, still I'm going to spend a lot of time talking about it. I barely remembered the plot resolution for the show, but I did remember some of the ending scenes; in that I remembered Alice and Cyrus left Wonderland and got married in England; and that Ana and Will were left ruling Wonderland. I also kind of remember that I always felt it seemed kind of...off. I don't remember that clearly enough, but I my feeling snow are similar I'd guess at my previous gut reaction was it felt like the B-ending. It was the ending they 'planned' if it looked like they weren't going to get a second season. They could say and “and they lived happily ever after” and close the book on this experiment; but I would not be surprised if there was an A-ending that didn't wrap things up so neatly.
This time I'm very aware that it must have been filmed after they knew they weren't coming back, because the goodbye scenes feel very final in a way they shouldn't for the happily ever after send off. There's a melancholy that doesn't actually work with what the scene should be. It wouldn't be impossible to have written it with the intent of saying a definite goodbye; if the doors between Alice's England and Wonderland were closing so they didn't know how long it would be before they lost each other forever, and even though everyone is where they should be it's still tinged with sadness. And when Alice is telling the story later it's as a distant past that she can't touch anymore outside of stories; not as it is here where the Rabbit can still pop in at any point.
The melancholy also works against the scene in that, because they don't seem quite as happy as you'd think, I start thinking, how are they going to get by in the real world? The family didn't even have a spare room for Alice when she was home before, so where are they living? What kind of job is Cyrus suited for (because it's Victorian England, Alice is probably not working, and she doesn't seem to start writing until much later)? Where do they say he's from, or where Alice has been all these years? I'll even ignore the racism question, because this might not be actual Victorian England, but if it is then this was not a great time to be in an inter-racial marriage. If they are living in the family house, what's the relationship like between Alice and her stepmother? You know, a woman who was perfectly happy to have Alice committed.
I'm not even sure how this show could have dealt with a lot of these issues, showing how these two adapt to day-to-day life is an entirely different sort of show. There's drama in that, but not a lot of adventure, and even I'm not sure I'd be interested in watching it. What we have is rushed, but showing that long term story would need to be integrated with a larger story, which is at odds with it likely happening outside of Wonderland.
We still don't know anything about Cyrus' brothers (though their scene of saying that all of this was for nothing was a good section, because they didn't even get more time to say goodbye). Shouldn't there be more reaction throughout Wonderland to Good Queen Ana since they've all lived under her tyranny for so long? Not showing us the reunion between Alice and her father seems cheap, and that it would take them however long it was from her return to the wedding talk about it stands out as badly structured. Yeah, I know it's how stuff like this is handled in a lot of stories, but sometimes it stands out as a bad choice to structure it that way.
So if I had to guess, I would suppose the A-ending would have shown the coronation of the White Queen (maybe with King) and Alice and Cyrus returning to England to be confronted with some problem started by Edwin's brief stint in Wonderland. Leaving the doors open to conflict both in the normal world and in Wonderland depending on what they came up with; and paying off the ominous setup that they couldn't know the side effects of Alice wishing her dad home.
Still no mention of Liz; no one brought *her* back to life, and no one seems to feel much for her so she didn't even get her wish.
I can't quite decide if I have enough thoughts for a season/series wrap up, if I do it should pop up soon; if not we'll soon move on to the next series. But as a final word on this episode...it's fine but not great, but I'm not sure quite how it could have been better given the build up, and probably limited time they had to get it to the end. Make of that evaluation what you will.
Well it looks like my read of things last episode was wrong; in which case there's still a lot that doesn't make sense, like how Amara stopped being a staff.
I honestly can't tell if this show is going for moral ambiguity or if it doesn't much care for moral accountability. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the Sultan? Because it doesn't take much to refocus and see Jafar's revenge as completely justified. Amara and Ana have a lot of blood on their hands that the show doesn't seem interested in dealing with since it wants us to care about them in this story. We don't see any consequences for the stepmother even. And I'm all for moral ambiguity, but it's completely at odds the family friendly cartoony vibe of the show that has (including in this episode) smoothed over some other elements of the story with fairy tale logic.
The plot resolution is a weird case of a literal dues ex machina that had actually been set up in the story before. None of the main characters had to figure out how to defeat Jafar, they just tripped over the Well of Wonders and let that magic lady sort it out. It happens within the rules that have been set up, but it still isn't our characters who beat him. In fact, if Cyrus hadn't held Amara up for that last moment, the whole bit would have gone down differently.
The end is kind of amusing in that it does use the Aladdin ending, with Jafar ending up a genie, captured by his own insatiable drive for power. I do like that, it was something I enjoyed about OUaT back in the day, that their versions of the fairy tales weren't exactly the Disney versions (up until they started acting like they were), but a lot of the pieces are there for each of them. Cyrus has been in the Genie's role, but he's also kind of Aladdin, tricking Jafar into doing the thing that will be the villain's end.
I really wish we had had more scenes of Alice and Jafar throughout the season, they have pretty intense chemistry, and are the main hero and villain of the show but rarely interact. That does have its good side as it kept their encounters from getting stale and not quite able to explain how the less powerful Alice kept getting away.
I still do not care about anything to do with Ana. But I'm sort of wondering if my problem is actually with Will; though I'm not sure if it's the writing or acting I blame. His lines here are not very good to put it mildly, and the writers did write the scenes that utterly failed to sell me on this relationship. And the show insisted on framing so much of her development through Will and that relationship, rather than Ana as her own entity. But even though I disliked Ana so much in the beginning, I have no trouble seeing that the actress was giving the performance she meant to give, and by and large did better once she dropped the evil queen persona, that was meant to be am assumed personality in character after all. But Will...I kind of think the actor isn't very good; he lucked out by playing the most 'normal' character on the show, effectively a modern person who could remark on the silliness of a lot of what they're doing, but he was not very good when asked to do anything else. His flashback scenes struggled; he just played younger-Will as an idiot, and his drama scenes were at best passable. Or he just couldn't sell the dialog, which again I have a hard time blaming him for. So I'm very conflicted.
The plot resolution was flawed but okay, and the rest of the ending was rushed, still I'm going to spend a lot of time talking about it. I barely remembered the plot resolution for the show, but I did remember some of the ending scenes; in that I remembered Alice and Cyrus left Wonderland and got married in England; and that Ana and Will were left ruling Wonderland. I also kind of remember that I always felt it seemed kind of...off. I don't remember that clearly enough, but I my feeling snow are similar I'd guess at my previous gut reaction was it felt like the B-ending. It was the ending they 'planned' if it looked like they weren't going to get a second season. They could say and “and they lived happily ever after” and close the book on this experiment; but I would not be surprised if there was an A-ending that didn't wrap things up so neatly.
This time I'm very aware that it must have been filmed after they knew they weren't coming back, because the goodbye scenes feel very final in a way they shouldn't for the happily ever after send off. There's a melancholy that doesn't actually work with what the scene should be. It wouldn't be impossible to have written it with the intent of saying a definite goodbye; if the doors between Alice's England and Wonderland were closing so they didn't know how long it would be before they lost each other forever, and even though everyone is where they should be it's still tinged with sadness. And when Alice is telling the story later it's as a distant past that she can't touch anymore outside of stories; not as it is here where the Rabbit can still pop in at any point.
The melancholy also works against the scene in that, because they don't seem quite as happy as you'd think, I start thinking, how are they going to get by in the real world? The family didn't even have a spare room for Alice when she was home before, so where are they living? What kind of job is Cyrus suited for (because it's Victorian England, Alice is probably not working, and she doesn't seem to start writing until much later)? Where do they say he's from, or where Alice has been all these years? I'll even ignore the racism question, because this might not be actual Victorian England, but if it is then this was not a great time to be in an inter-racial marriage. If they are living in the family house, what's the relationship like between Alice and her stepmother? You know, a woman who was perfectly happy to have Alice committed.
I'm not even sure how this show could have dealt with a lot of these issues, showing how these two adapt to day-to-day life is an entirely different sort of show. There's drama in that, but not a lot of adventure, and even I'm not sure I'd be interested in watching it. What we have is rushed, but showing that long term story would need to be integrated with a larger story, which is at odds with it likely happening outside of Wonderland.
We still don't know anything about Cyrus' brothers (though their scene of saying that all of this was for nothing was a good section, because they didn't even get more time to say goodbye). Shouldn't there be more reaction throughout Wonderland to Good Queen Ana since they've all lived under her tyranny for so long? Not showing us the reunion between Alice and her father seems cheap, and that it would take them however long it was from her return to the wedding talk about it stands out as badly structured. Yeah, I know it's how stuff like this is handled in a lot of stories, but sometimes it stands out as a bad choice to structure it that way.
So if I had to guess, I would suppose the A-ending would have shown the coronation of the White Queen (maybe with King) and Alice and Cyrus returning to England to be confronted with some problem started by Edwin's brief stint in Wonderland. Leaving the doors open to conflict both in the normal world and in Wonderland depending on what they came up with; and paying off the ominous setup that they couldn't know the side effects of Alice wishing her dad home.
Still no mention of Liz; no one brought *her* back to life, and no one seems to feel much for her so she didn't even get her wish.
I can't quite decide if I have enough thoughts for a season/series wrap up, if I do it should pop up soon; if not we'll soon move on to the next series. But as a final word on this episode...it's fine but not great, but I'm not sure quite how it could have been better given the build up, and probably limited time they had to get it to the end. Make of that evaluation what you will.
