{"id":7842,"date":"2015-11-30T14:19:01","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=7842"},"modified":"2015-11-30T14:19:01","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:19:01","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/11\/30\/review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e10\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Once Upon a Time’ S5 E10"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"onceupon\"
\n<\/a>Last night’s episode of Once Upon a Time<\/em> FINALLY filled in all the blanks, and to be honest I was a little underwhelmed. Not that Hook becoming the Dark One isn\u2019t cool, or interesting, or whatever \u2013 it does provide for an awesome couple\u2019s name: the Dark Swan and Captain Dark One. But, once again, the ascent to darkness was more than a little rushed, which ended up making what could have been two great episodes fall a bit flat.<\/p>\n

Now, I get it. Next week is Once Upon a Time<\/em>\u2019s midseason finale, so they needed to start moving things along. But after last week\u2019s non-episode and the previous week\u2019s disaster of an episode about Merida (yeah, yeah, I know, they needed to tie her in somehow), you\u2019d think they could have found somewhere to put an extra episode concerning Hook\u2019s transformation.<\/p>\n

We were supposed to be upset that Emma had selfishly turned Hook into the one thing he hated most, because we knew that he\u2019d have trouble not accepting that role. So couldn\u2019t the writers have drawn out this conflict inside of him: part of Hook wanting to hold on to Emma and the light, and the other part wanting to accept the darkness and finally get revenge? It would have been much more compelling, and honestly, way less annoying than I found the super angsty\u00a0scenes between Emma and Hook.<\/p>\n

We already knew that love could mute the darkness; Hook showed us that previously with Emma. But during last night\u2019s episode of Once Upon a Time<\/em> Hook only held onto that for about five seconds until he totally flipped a switch, and why? Because he thought Emma was trying to control him? There should have been more of a struggle within him, something more than just revenge and mistrust to drive him completely into the darkness when he had been so in love with Emma just minutes prior.<\/p>\n

And then there was the matter of ANOTHER dark curse. Yeah, that was really the only answer behind their being back in Storybrook, but having Hook cast the curse only to have Emma hijack it just seemed a little overplayed and uninspired. I had the same sentiment when Hook stole Emma\u2019s memories. Can\u2019t there be conflict and an enemy to face without having to resort to curses and memory loss in Once Upon a Time<\/em>?!<\/p>\n

Lastly, I was upset by the way that the writers of Once Upon a Time<\/em> sort of just threw Merlin away. I understand the logic behind Hook crushing his heart (mostly), but it seems like\u00a0it was just an easy way to get around the whole \u201csplitting your heart so you don\u2019t actually have to kill the person you love most\u201d thing. I had wanted a Hook and Merlin smolder showdown, but not like that. RIP Merlin. I\u2019ll mourn your beautiful face forever.<\/p>\n

It was good to finally have it confirmed, however, that Emma never went fully dark. She was just embracing her darkness in an attempt to save everyone she loved, which when you think about it is typical of her. Also typical, however, was her belief that she had to do it alone. Because we\u00a0all know she probably would have fared better if she had sought out the help of her family. Like Emma said, there was no one around to tell her she was being stupid. Which she was. She needed her family\u2019s love and support to stay grounded and figure out how to save Hook from himself. Her plan probably would have worked considerably better had she actually held onto the love like she told Hook he needed to do.<\/p>\n

Luckily, Emma has literally the best kid ever. Henry didn\u2019t have to forgive Emma for what she did (you know, ripping out his girlfriend\u2019s heart only to break his). But because Henry is perfect, he chose to forgive Emma, just like he did with Regina. It was great to see Regina and Emma\u2019s first season roles reversed for these past few episodes, but it was even greater to see Emma prove that he could trust her again.<\/p>\n

Change is such a big theme for Once Upon a Time<\/em>. So, even though Rumplestiltskin\u2019s was a bit rushed like I said previously, it was satisfying to see him continue that change this episode. He\u2019s grown so much that, not only did he beat Hook in a fair way, but he also decided that he was bigger than killing him \u2013\u00a0even though I have no idea if this was the right decision.<\/p>\n

Now if only Belle could stop being dumb and hurt so that she and Rumple can finally get back together. It seriously looked like that\u2019s where they were heading these past few episodes of Once Upon a Time<\/em>, and\u00a0I was almost as crushed as Rumple was when Belle\u00a0said she couldn\u2019t forget the pain he\u2019d caused her in the past. My heart literally broke when Rumple said, \u201cnot wanting me to die isn\u2019t the same as wanting to be with me.\u201d But I predict that sometime in the near future Belle will change her mind and all will be right in the world. Fingers crossed.<\/p>\n

Another person that appears to be changing is Zelena. As Regina and Emma have both proven, having a child can better you as a person. More than anything that\u2019s what Regina is hoping for.\u00a0They may never be able to become sisters, but I have hope for Zelena to finally accept the change that Regina wants from her. Even so, I find it hard to completely hate Zelena, because, just like her sister her spunk and sassiness has slowly begun to win me over. If she keeps having lines such as, \u201conce you go green, you\u2019ll never go queen,\u201d she may just become one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

Like I said, next week\u2019s episode of Once Upon a Time<\/em> is the mid season finale, and it\u2019ll be all about the hoard of Dark Ones that Hook brought from the underworld. Not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed with that reveal because I had read that the spring season would be all about Hell, which someone predicted would mean characters from Disney\u2019s Hercules<\/em>, one of my favorite movies. Though it\u2019s not quite as exciting as I\u2019d hoped it\u2019d be, the Storybrook gang battling it out with every Dark One to exist is extremely compelling, and quite possibly the biggest baddy that they\u2019ll ever have to face. I\u2019m excited to see how the writers tackle it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night’s episode of Once Upon a Time FINALLY filled in all the blanks, and to be honest I was a little underwhelmed. Not that Hook becoming the Dark One isn\u2019t cool, or interesting, or whatever \u2013 it does provide for an awesome couple\u2019s name: the Dark Swan and Captain Dark One. But, once again,<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":7848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,176],"tags":[2842,2579,790,2841,2453,1058,1023,1047],"class_list":{"0":"post-7842","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-captain-hook","11":"tag-disney","12":"tag-hercules","13":"tag-once-upon-a-time","14":"tag-review","15":"tag-television-2","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7842","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=7842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}