OUAT OUATCH: "Labor of Love"
This was ... a doozy.
We get Meg right out of the gate! I'm so thrilled to see Kacey Rohl again. Good sense of ... danger here, I guess--the "not Hades" line intrigued me for a second, but I guess she was just talking about Cerberus. She's still plenty afraid of Hades' other "traps," and basically we have a more classic villain-captor/heroine-captive dynamic going on between them than the married banter I need, but that was probably bound to happen with casting young. My skepticles are on about any iteration of Meg only being spurred into action by a dashing hero, but whatever. Poor girl seems so shook up.
And look at my pretty puppies.
I am constantly confused over the timeline of the fairybacks, but that's all my fault for not watching the show. I love this perfectly round Team Rocket hole Snow White falls into.
"You can call me Herc." GROAN.
"It's not every day your wife tells you that she was friends with a guy--" "A demigod." Damn, Snow.
Kacey is so good at playing traumatized characters, she's so good at it!
Hercules is cute, though, I like his little gap-tooth. I also love that he's apparently commissioned medallions for every single cool thing he's ever done. Nerd.
Snow/Hercules is the way to go here, but we can't have good things.
Arguments on OUAT sound so ridiculous. "Well, you stole my apple!" Throw down, I guess?
Consider: Hercules = young Bill Malloy. In his gruff, Maine-y fishing sweaters.
LMAO, I love Hades, I love his laugh.
They just left Meg behind? Alllllright.
WHY IS EVERYONE SO SCARED OF SPOT THE HOUNDHELL.
Look, I know technically Hercules and Hades are nephew and uncle, but only OUAT could make it such a big deal. I've watched Hercules dozens of times and never once thought about them being related because it's really meaningless at this point. Which is OUAT's whole problem. They're working with Greek god family trees, and it just makes every connection irrelevant because everyone is related.
.I'm completely checked out of these Cruella-Henry scenes.
"You made me your friend," Regina says with dull horror. I LOVE THIS VILLAIN/HERO DYNAMIC, I LOVE IT, I NEED IT EVERYWHERE.
I cannot take this Cerberus-fear seriously!!!!!!!!!! "Three heads!" That is nothing
HA HA, HER FACE AFTER BRUTALLY DAGGERING A DOG
THAT'S MY GIRL
NOOOOO NO NO NO AT THIS ENDING
Listen, the whole time I was thinking, "Well, the good news is that she'll probably be back because there's not been nearly enough development for her to stand as a one-off character. She probably knows more about the Underworld than most (Like, whyyy would Hades be keeping her prisoner unless she'd run afoul of a deal, like Cora had? Or, I assume, Hook?) and has a reason to want to take Hades down along with all of them. She needed to get over her fear and become someone sly enough to overcome her inability to face her fears in a head-on fight. She needed to interact with Hades because why bother with Meg at all if she's not going to be a little wily? A little bit of a double agent? I kept waiting for her to reveal secrets that she knew or to even drop the facade of her paralyzing fear, all a ploy to earn their trust and split them apart from the inside. What a great twist it would have been to realize that she's working for Hades because she's scared of him and this is the only way she can survive, and that Hades isn't the only one here who can set up an elaborate con.
But nooo, Hades just seems to have no control over the Underworld portals, even though he can magically appear anywhere he wants. He doesn't even bother to stop his prisoners from escaping except when ... uh ... he feels like it? THEY DIDN'T EVEN INTERACT ONCE. :'(
I'm still holding onto my theory that the portals don't actually go anywhere--that they just grant you some elysian dream you've been hoping for, and we'll find out eventually that they're just entering a tighter circle of hell, that that's one of Hades' ultimate tricks. But he seemed properly pissed at the end, so I don't know if they're really getting away from him or he just wants people to think that. Because he's so powerless if all he can do is trap one soul there. If all he has are people with unfinished business or whatever. WHY DOES HE BOTHER KEEPING THEM IN PRISON IF THEY DON'T NORMALLY DO ANYTHING TO RECTIFY THEIR SITUATION? Why bother?
You've betrayed me once again, OUAT. I ask for so, so little.