Mary Margaret Blanchard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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farfar_aways2012-04-22 08:11 pm
the_fairest) wrote in farfar_aways2012-04-22 08:11 pm
Entry tags:
New Episode Discussions Post
April 22, 2012
Once Upon a Time Episode 2.19
"The Return"
Once Upon a Time Episode 2.19
"The Return"
OhMyGods. Who out there is not HAVING ALL THE FEELS?
[Remember to change the subject title if you comment with spoilers, in case people don't want to know.]
Emma vs Regina over Henry
For a lot of this season, I've been mentally going "please don't take Regina's child away, please don't take her son away from her". Partly it's because she's lost so much(which...drove her evil in the first place), and partly because we've seen what she did when she lost her boyfriend (hi, Daniel-in-the-fridge) - what exactly is she going to do over the loss of her child?
And I really didn't like how Emma said it, either. It seemed to come from a distinctly 'tit for tat' place, rather than a genuine concern over Henry's safety and well-being. And after she did that whole big thing about not stooping down to Regina's level, she's gone and lost her temper and is...stooping down to Regina's level. And I am left distinctly -_- Particularly as I'm not sure I trust the writers to handle the whole thing well.
And Regina does love Henry, as much as she can, and just. Augh. Bah. I am nooooooooooot happy with this line of plotting, and would badly love to be proved wrong.
Re: Emma vs Regina over Henry
Playing devil's advocate here, because I LOVE REGINA SO MUCH too. But the way I see it: the more crap Regina pulls on Storybrooke and Emma, the more Emma feels like she really needs to step in and take Henry out of the possibly harmful picture.
And this whole thing with MM and Sidney and the lying makes it pretty clear to Emma that, like she said (in harsher terms, a'course), Regina is not the best person to raise Henry - even if she has been doing a decent job all this time. (Because no one can deny that Henry hasn't been well taken care of.)
Emma is someone who's got no one either, and she's starting to make all these connections in Storybrooke - so now that she's got people to call family (people she loves) she's totally the sort to fight for them till the end. She has nothing else to lose.
And Sidney lying for Regina because he loves her, and Regina using that to her advantage, and Emma seeing that makes her angry. Seeing it from her POV, it's probably a little like, 'Okay, you've got someone who loves you; I've never had that until now. You're taking advantage of that to a terrible end and that just isn't right.'
I do agree that the way Emma said it to Regina wasn't selfless; it was certainly fueled by anger and a need to almost ... 'teach Regina a lesson', which shows that Emma could be tested to the dark or light side in the end of this, and that nothing - even fighting for what you love - is laid out in black and white. There are always shades of grey.
I would like to trust that the writers know what they're doing, and that all this will develop into more awesome complications.
Re: Emma vs Regina over Henry
Oh, yes. I get that, absolutely, and I do get that Emma's analysis - that Regina is ill - isn't wrong, either. And given how Regina is behaving, and continues to behave, it probably is in Henry's best interests to be taken out of the situation before he's used, too.
I just....the way Emma said it really rubbed me wrong, given the promise she made Henry that she wasn't going to be Regina, and then she keeps on getting frustrated, and stooping to her levels, and she doesn't seem to see anything wrong with that? And honestly, if the writers acknowledge that Emma isn't being selfless, isn't a paragon of virtue here and is actually full of grey and edges and desperation and petty anger herself, I'd be a lot happier.
But I guess it was the twist on the end, so we won't find out until next week. It's just going to stress me out a bit in the meantime.
Re: Emma vs Regina over Henry
Re: Emma vs Regina over Henry
Regina has pushed and pushed and manipulated the hell out of every situation. She's clearly not a safe person for Henry to be around, and though Emma, Archie, and Graham have all pointed out that the only person likely to get hurt in a fight between the two of them is Henry, she's been playing dirty pool the whole time, and Emma is nooooooot a patient person.
Aside from all that, I think it is super important to keep in mind the speech Regina gave Emma when she first came to Storybrooke (complete with "no, you don't get to talk") where Henry is clearly referred to as a possession and which so closely parallels this one, with a few pertinent points ("All I care about is what happens to my kid."). I don't think it's an odd or unsurprising tack for Emma to take, and I also think she knows that Regina will not take her seriously unless she lays it on the line the way she did.
I figure Emma thinks of it like this: Regina keeps hurting people she loves, and they can't fight back for themselves, so she'll do the fighting for them. It seems far too complicated to boil it down to her just trying to punish Regina by taking away a toy: she's genuinely concerned for Henry's wellbeing because Regina is clearly an unbalanced, dangerous, vengeful person.
As for losing her temper...well, it's Emma. She does that kind of a lot. There's a reason why she tells Henry from the beginning that she's no saviour, and she spends the whole show struggling to make the right choices and trying to make them because of him. I don't think she's being held up as a paragon of virtue, except to Henry, who's a ten year old who sees the world in terms of good and evil, black and white. I think she's a damaged, difficult woman who's trying to be good because it's what's expected by someone so important to her.