{"id":11411,"date":"2016-04-04T21:17:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T01:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=11411"},"modified":"2016-04-04T21:17:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T01:17:57","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-s5e16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2016\/04\/04\/review-once-upon-a-time-s5e16\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Once Upon a Time’ S5 E16"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ugh<\/a>

Ugh no. | ABC.<\/p><\/div>\n

I always knew (and kind of hoped) Zelena would be back on Once Upon a Time<\/em>, but I never expected it to happen so suddenly \u2013 or without any sort of real explanation. But as it happened this week was 90 percent\u00a0Zelena \u2013 and 80 percent\u00a0let down.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve said before that I actually sort of like Zelena. She\u2019s kind of hilarious and super sassy, even if she\u2019s proved a thousand times that she\u2019s not to be trusted (not that anyone has learned). However, they chose to tie Zelena and Hades\u2019 storylines together by way of a past relationship. If you can count the one day that they spent together a relationship. Which apparently Hades does, because he\u2019s still in looooove with her. Barf.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been hoping that Zelena (who with Regina holds the title of Queen of Sass) could bring out the wit that Hades has sorely been missing during his appearance on Once Upon a Time<\/em>. Instead she brought out a different thing: feelings. Ew. As a lover of really crap rom-coms I\u2019m not one to usually be opposed to romantic storylines. It\u2019s usually my boyfriend who says stuff like, \u201cget this kissing crap off my zombie show.\u201d But this time I was the one who found myself rolling my eyes throughout every one of Zelena\u2019s and Hades\u2019 interactions.<\/p>\n

Hades is the King of the Underworld. He\u2019s supposed to be a bad ass that says stuff like, \u201che\u2019s a GUY\u201d to a love-struck Megara, not mushy shit like, \u201cmy heart fluttered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, there is the question whether Hades is just being extra evil and faking it in order to steal Zelena\u2019s spell, like she suspects. Honestly, though, I don\u2019t see Hades going to all the trouble of stealing his story if that\u2019s what he\u2019s doing. I believe that he actually does love Zelena and didn\u2019t want the gang to find out that the King of the Underworld actually has feelings (it was hard to type that without puking everywhere).<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be interesting to see if Zelena finally allows herself to be loved, which is the thing she wants most in the world but has been hurt too many times to actually allow. You know, if I don\u2019t die from the sappiness first.<\/p>\n

Zelena\u2019s flashbacks also featured the return of Dorothy, who\u2019s grown up quite a bit since we last saw her. The whole point of the flashbacks was to establish Zelena\u2019s time-travel spell, as well as give the backstory to her and Hades\u2019 relationship. The addition of the scarecrow was an ok nod to her original story on Once Upon a Time<\/em>, if only for the cool Tim Burton-y aesthetic he had. But having Dorothy come back to Oz randomly was unnecessary to the story and thus felt extremely forced.<\/p>\n

So, I did say that this week\u2019s Once Upon a Time<\/em> episode wasn\u2019t entirely a let down. After Hades uses his blackmail power against Rumple to open a portal and (allegedly) save Zelena\u2019s baby, Zelena, the baby, and Belle join the rest of the gang in the Underworld. This whole scene made me wonder how you make a portal precise to one person or location; had Belle not jumped into the portal with the baby was Rumple\u2019s plan to just hope the baby was the only one close enough to the portal to fall in?<\/p>\n

Anyway, hypothetical and magical laws of physics on Once Upon a Time<\/em> aside, this meant that Rumple and Belle were finally reunited following the realization of her pregnancy and Rumple\u2019s baby deal. Rumple was finally honest, for probably the first time in their very tumultuous relationship. And while Belle was not pleased to learn about her child being sold long before its conception, Rumple made some good points.<\/p>\n

Belle chose to love him despite him being both \u201cbeast and man.\u201d Belle has always wanted Rumple to be a better man and to do right by her. But also, some part of her, however deep down, fell in love with the beast. I\u2019m sure she could do without him murdering people left and right and constantly being a deceptive douchebag, but there\u2019s some part of her that keeps going back to him despite his flaws.<\/p>\n

Clearly she\u2019s in love with the evil, power-hungry Rumple as much as she is the sweet, romantic one. It\u2019s about time she realizes this for herself and decides whether that\u2019s something she\u2019s ok with. Rumple being completely honest with both her and himself was refreshing, and I believe it pointed at him finally wanting to make this work between him and Belle. Ball\u2019s in her court now.<\/p>\n

Belle and Rumple were a good respite to the disappointing return of Zelena, but the real highlight of the episode was Henry. Angsty teen Henry has been nothing but hilarious, and the magic behind his writing the Storybook is awesome. His line, \u201cOh. So you’re all authors now? Everyone’s a writer. Everyone’s got an idea,\u201d is something I\u2019m sure every reviewer of Once Upon at Time<\/em> will have trouble leaving out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always knew (and kind of hoped) Zelena would be back on Once Upon a Time, but I never expected it to happen so suddenly \u2013 or without any sort of real explanation. But as it happened this week was 90 percent\u00a0Zelena \u2013 and 80 percent\u00a0let down. Now, I\u2019ve said before that I actually sort<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":11413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,176],"tags":[2842,3409,3373,3385,2453,3408,2907,3396,1058,2695,1023,1047,3372,2455,3403],"class_list":{"0":"post-11411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-television","8":"category-television-reviews","9":"tag-beauty-and-the-beast","10":"tag-dorothy-gale","11":"tag-hades","12":"tag-megara","13":"tag-once-upon-a-time","14":"tag-ouat","15":"tag-oz","16":"tag-regina-mills","17":"tag-review","18":"tag-rumplestiltskin","19":"tag-television-2","20":"tag-tv","21":"tag-underworld","22":"tag-wicked-witch","23":"tag-zelena"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}