sholio | Once Upon a Time 2x13

I have a nit to pick with this week's episode.

While overall I enjoyed the episode, WHY WHY WHY are they lying to Belle about the magic????

I am absolutely, completely, 100% baffled by this. I cannot see a single reason to do it. (Well, except to add a plot complication, but for heaven's sake, hang some kind of lantern on it, at least.) The only circumstances in which it would make sense would be if they didn't want to cause her distress by trying to convince her that magic is real when she's in a weakened, vulnerable condition. But those are very clearly NOT the present circumstances: she's already seen magic, she believes in it, and they're causing her quite a lot of distress by, basically, telling her she's crazy for seeing THINGS WHICH THEY ALL KNOW REALLY HAPPENED.

... I just don't get it! There is no way that Belle can be mainstreamed back into Storybrooke if they aren't planning to tell her the truth about magic, which means they're planning to do what with her? Fix her up and dump her outside the town? Lock her up again? Nice, guys. Way to treat a friend.

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*nods*

That whole plotline made me wonder what's going on with Sneezy | Tom Clark. We haven't seen him since the episode where he lost his memories (when, you know, they said all they needed to fix him was fairy dust - which they found ages ago), but presumably he's still somewhere in Storybrooke. And, you know, they haven't really been that subtle about the magic and such since the curse was broken.

I've wondered about that, too. I think the final sequence in the field, in this episode, was supposed to be the dwarves replacing Sneezy with Tiny as their 7th member. Which is more than a little creepy if you think too hard about it. I don't know if the writers forgot about the possible fairy-dust cure or if that is going to come back at some point, but I wish we'd gotten more follow-up on Sneezy's life, which must be incredibly bizarre now that he has a completely different set of memories from everyone around him. (And I never felt like they were trying to hide it from him the way they are from Belle. I'm just boggling at how anyone thinks this is a good idea!)

I propose a prior question. Why hasn't anyone yet told Belle what her name is? She asked Ruby "why" everyone keeps calling her "Belle"!

If I didn't know better, I'd think they were airing episodes out of order.

However, given that this is the intended order, my theory (giving TPTB more credit than they're due?) is that the other characters have indeed told Belle, off-screen -- we'll get flashbacks in due time -- many times and she's become immune to remembering anything about her real life and perhaps reacts violently to being told the truth. (Possibly, although even less likely, she now has the mental illness for which she was institutionalized until Gold freed her.) The curse is a nasty thing.

Why hasn't anyone yet told Belle what her name is? She asked Ruby "why" everyone keeps calling her "Belle"!

Well, I assume she thinks her name is something different, whatever it was before they all got their memories back (though I find it very strange that they've never told us, the viewers, what she thinks her name is).

Your theory definitely does work, that she doesn't believe them and reacts badly -- it would fit, I think, with what we saw earlier with Sneezy, that all attempts to tell her the truth just slide off. It is incredibly frustrating that they never showed us anything of the sort, though. I wish we'd had just one more scene to offer a small amount of canon to explain it! I'm entirely willing to read between the lines, but being forced to make up explanations whole-cloth to explain huge inconsistencies is frustrating ...

I developed this theory early in this season -- no later than the August flashbacks; I like to think before, but I didn't document it until then -- but now that we're both on the same episode, I'm taking this opportunity to share it. :-)

My theory: Gold's son is Henry's father.

Oh *WOW*. This had not occurred to me, but it fits so perfectly! Especially since they're going to New York, and New York is where we last saw him (in the first episode of this season). And that would create so many delightful character complications!

... oh yes. That's wonderful. I really hope that's where this is going!

Yeah, I was totally confused about why Red lied to her. Makes no sense at all.

I know! I truly cannot figure it out. I wish the show had given us some explanation; even a half-assed explanation would be better than none.

Yeah, I don't get that myself. And I'm ashamed to have forgotten about Sneezy.

Then again, these people drive from Maine to Boston just to fly "nonstop" from Boston to New York. As if there'd be stops on that flight; the only faster way to get from Boston to New York would be to ... well, drive ... *cough*

Edit: Hrm, my friend disagrees totally about Belle. She thinks that since alt!Belle did in fact have a Storybrooke personality of some kind, not based in magic, she would react just as badly as the other residents first did to Henry's theories, and since it's hard for anyone not Cora, Regina, or Gold to demonstrate magic, they'd likely just freak her out enough that she'd flee ... and then they'd lose any chance to change her back.

Don't know that I buy it, but my friend is pretty convinced it makes sense.

Edited 2013-02-15 04:19 (UTC)

I think it would be easier for me to buy that explanation if she weren't the one actively asking questions about magic. The scenario that your friend laid out ... I do get the impression that that's more or less how things went with Sneezy (who has apparently been forgotten by the narrative, too, so it's not just you -- I don't think I would've thought about him myself except for the final scene with the dwarves in the field, which I'm pretty sure was the remaining dwarves replacing Sneezy with Tiny as their seventh). But it's different with Belle; she really wants to know this stuff, and people are keeping it from her ... why? I'm SO confused! All it would have needed is one scene in which she does react badly to being told the truth, or something with Red and Snow and Charming discussing it and deciding that she shouldn't be told yet -- or ANYTHING. Aargh.

(Also, as someone pointed out in another comment, why didn't anyone tell her that Gold is her boyfriend? Heck, they could even lie and say she's lost her memory of him because of her injury, if they don't want to bring magic into it. But it seems a lot kinder than just letting her freak out because this guy she's never seen before keeps trying to kiss her.)

Apparently they took a cue from the Fringe writers when it comes to geography. :D It also cracks me up that Maine looks exactly like the Pacific Northwest. Funny, that. (As opposed to Haven, which really is filmed somewhere on the north Atlantic coast -- I think it's in Nova Scotia -- and therefore has the right kind of beaches and everything ...)

Once Upon a Time 2x13

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