{"id":7145,"date":"2015-11-02T22:44:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T03:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=7145"},"modified":"2015-11-02T22:44:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T03:44:39","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/11\/02\/review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e6\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Once Upon a Time’ S5 E6"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"recaps-ouat\"<\/a>Once Upon a Time<\/em>‘s latest episode\u00a0did what it does best: introduce perfectly cast characters that will likely never be seen again, and mirror two nearly identical storylines in the past and present.<\/p>\n

Back in Camelot, Merida knocks Belle out and kidnaps her to use her knowledge of magic to help rescue her brothers that she\u2019s now been trying to save for six episodes. When Belle wakes up and finds out what\u2019s happened she\u2019s all, \u201coh well I guess it\u2019s ok that you knocked me out if it\u2019s for a good cause.\u201d Belle always was one for a sob story.<\/p>\n

When the new Once Upon a Time <\/em>besties finally get to DunBroch (Merida\u2019s kingdom, for those of you who only watched Brave<\/em> once) Merida tries to convince Belle to make the same bear potion from Brave<\/em> so that she can take on her former suitors and save her brothers. Speaking of her suitors, they look identical to their cartoon versions, something that Once Upon a Time<\/em> always takes seriously.<\/p>\n

Belle, however, doesn\u2019t think that Merida needs Once Upon a Time <\/em>magic to change her fate, and instead tries to get her to take her fate into her own hands. Belle, luckily, is smarter than Merida, because Merida clearly didn\u2019t learn her lesson that time she accidentally turned her mom into a bear. Belle trades the real potion for a placebo and forces Merida to fight her own battles, which she subsequently wins in the second quickest conflict resolution this episode.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in present day Storybrook, Rumpelstiltskin goes through a similar dilemma, as he continues to believe he\u2019ll never be anything but a coward. After shattering his and Belle\u2019s symbol of their love and using the shards to cut himself free he flees the forest where Merida has been keeping him and goes right to the first place anyone would think to look for him \u2013 Belle.<\/p>\n

When Merida is sent after them with Once Upon a Time<\/em>\u00a0instructions to kill Belle, Rumple\u2019s first instinct is to flee. Belle, who yet again proves that she\u2019s braver than him and smarter than everyone else, tries to get Rumple to see the bravery he has hidden way deep inside. It doesn\u2019t work at first, like with Merida back in DunBroch, but eventually Rumple goes back for her and manages to save both Belle\u2019s and his own life from a very large Scottish bear.<\/p>\n

This is where things get iffy in Once Upon a Time<\/em>. Rumple goes to Emma and makes a deal: Merida\u2019s heart back where it belongs for his attempt at pulling Excalibur from the stone. Luckily, Rumple is able to pull the sword from the stone, despite only really having done one, maybe two, heroic things.<\/p>\n

Like Belle, I always thought that Rumple had goodness inside him, but that he just didn\u2019t want to see it. Even so, the Once Upon a Time <\/em>writers should have given Rumple at least one more episode full of heroic acts to pass as the only person who could pull Excalibur from the stone. In a past episode it was said that the only the purest of heart could pull it from the stone, but maybe Excalibur isn\u2019t as picky as we thought?<\/p>\n

Not that it matters anyway, since Emma has both halves of Excalibur, something that was reiterated this Once Upon a Time <\/em>episode is something that SHE SHOULD NOT DO. Now the only person that can save everything is Nimue, as per Merlin\u2019s voicemail.<\/p>\n

This is bad news because, according to legend, Nimue was Merlin\u2019s lover, and a lot of people have been speculating that Merlin\u2019s lost love we learned about in last week\u2019s Once Upon a Time <\/em>flashback also happened to be the Dark One that put Merlin in the tree. If that\u2019s the case then it looks like Storybrook is screwed. But then again, when is it not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once Upon a Time‘s latest episode\u00a0did what it does best: introduce perfectly cast characters that will likely never be seen again, and mirror two nearly identical storylines in the past and present. Back in Camelot, Merida knocks Belle out and kidnaps her to use her knowledge of magic to help rescue her brothers that she\u2019s<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":7146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,176],"tags":[2694,2697,2460,2459,2659,2453,2695,2696,1023,2424,1047],"class_list":{"0":"post-7145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-television","8":"category-television-reviews","9":"tag-belle","10":"tag-brave","11":"tag-camelot","12":"tag-merida","13":"tag-merlin","14":"tag-once-upon-a-time","15":"tag-rumplestiltskin","16":"tag-storybrook","17":"tag-television-2","18":"tag-television-reviews","19":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145","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=7145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}