The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo: Episodes 21 & 22

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Episode 21: The Eye of the Eagle

Quasimodo with half of the Scroll The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo, Episode 21, The Eye of the Eagle
Quasimodo with half of the de Bernssac’s Scroll

After François didn’t feed Djali, she goes to the library for a snack. After assessing the damage, Dennis discovers a scroll of an old design for the facade of Notre Dame which depicts the likeliness of his awesome parents on the edifice. This leads to Quasimodo to find the stone depictions of his parents as well as hidden scroll behind them which is made of the highest quality paper ever because this takes forever to rip in half. This is because Frollo sends his Gargoyle, Dragon to steal the scroll tears in half. So Quasimodo has half and Frollo has the other half.

However the scroll pieces are blank which leads everyone to reach the same conclusion, invisible ink! Which leads both the gang of pals and Frollo to Esmeralda’s friend who is an expert on invisible ink, how very convenient for everyone. Anyway the message turns out to be a map. Quasimodo hopes it leads him to his parent’s location and Frollo hopes it will lead him to the Philosopher’s stone.

In the end it leads them to an old inn where his parents used to rent a secret room. Quasimodo finds a chest full of gold and because doesn’t need money, and he really doesn’t, he gives to the innkeeper who uses the money to renovate the inn.

The idea of this episode was fun; a competing scavenger hunt which highlights the characters’ wants as well as their differing approach to deductive reasoning.

The pay off though is a waste because we already know Quasimodo has awesome parents and he proven himself to be unselfish and we don’t really learn any new and there doesn’t seem to be a lesson or a moral. Also if I recall his parents might have gotten on a boat to England in an earlier episode, which was episode 12 “The Choice.” So the scroll which was left 15 years before would have had old information anyway about their location. It’s good that there is a narrative through-line in this show which is the quest for Quasimodo’s family, but the show seems to forget it or retread a lot or in this episode’s case pads it out. Then again other “more adult shows” do this too so it’s not really a big deal. Just pointing it out. Truthfully it’s less annoying than most shows with more ambitious, “grown-up,” and/or matures plots.

Frollo did have a humorous line “From Tiny Minds Come Tiny Answers” Inspiring. To be fair he was trying to read tiny text so he shrunk himself down to read it, which did work. Also Frollo falls down a lot in this episode because humor.

Other positives, Djali, always going to be Djali and François was less annoying because he wasn’t focused on too much. Plus Tortoise cameo and there was a cat. That’s something.

Also Also the whole map is the de Bernassac crest which is an eagle which is also a map of Paris so it’s a sort-of reference to the chapter “A Bird’s-Eye View of Paris,” a chapter that is very skippable. I still appreciate it though.

Frollo The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo, Episode 21, The Eye of the Eagle
Frollo spies on the Gang of Pals

Episode 22: The Oracle

Esmeralda, Quasimodo & François, The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo, Episode 22 The Oracle
A Frozen François with Quasimodo & Esmeralda

This episode starts with the Gang of Pals getting a message from Angelica who has been recovering from a cold in the Alps with Dennis’ cousin Maurice. However the message says that Maurice has been arrested and the village is in the gripes of some kind of danger. So the Gang of pals is off in their covered wagon to the rescue. On the way they stop by a spring that has some weird green substance it it, hmmm could this be part of the plot? You bet!

Arriving in the village they see that the villagers have spots on their faces and the leader is now The Oracle. Who predicts lightening will hit the village and it does! Hmmm, very curious …. he foretold it would happen and then it did!

The gang of pals soon learn that The Oracle put something in the water and that he is going to charge the villagers for the cure. Angelica tells Quasimodo that The Oracle is storing potions in a cave near the Spring. Oh Good just when I thought there wasn’t going to be a cave or spooky tunnels we get a cave for the Cave Quota.

In the cave Quasimodo learns the tricks of The Oracle like the lightening was made with tar and gun powder. Quasimodo uses similar tricks to undo The Oracle’s hold on the Villagers as well as giving everyone the universal cure-all that cures them. Thank goodness! And today’s lesson is education is the best cure for ignorance and superstition and to not believe everything you hear. How true, most of the time. Brainwashing and indocination is a thing but Children’s show, so it’s simplicifed.

The Oracle is a charlatan who poisoned a town as well as committed arson and he got off really light. I mean the villagers apologize for being duped which is what brings up moral about education being great which is a great moral but it was tacked on in the last second. Basically everyone finds out that The Oracle was a scammer and they escort him off in the background. Blink and you miss it, because I did and I had to rewatch that part to notice it. Also what are they going to do with him? Quasimodo collapsed the jail when they were busting out. So who knows what happen to him maybe he didn’t get off light.

Anyway doesn’t matter what does matter is this episode forced me to recall my time on the Oregon Trail, those poor oxen who drown, the Diphtheria, the failure of it all and I of course mean the computer game I was terrible at it, abysmal even. Also Quasimodo failed a little in this episode brought down by his own hubris. He failed to get the carrier pigeon with Angelica’s message and François is the one who gets it. Woo to Quasimodo. François later is paralyzed by some powder and complains about being thirsty, which is really Quasimodo’s thing. But in the end François is still the butt of many of a joke and Quasimodo is still the best, so again doesn’t matter.

So positives, Djali, always going to be Djali and there is a pigeon. But this episode is pretty good. I did like Quasimodo playing Sorcerer and that whole plan to discredit The Oracle. Though this show has already established magic as an actual practice independent and in conjunction with alchemy so it’s a little muddy that there is a scammer using potions to create skin spots, causing paralysis and growing hair and that science and knowledge is the fix to discrediting his wrong doing.

I’m overthinking this but what is The Oracle’s backstory because clearly he is smart and has great alchemist knowledge and this is best he can manage for himself? Poisoning the water supply to cause skin pigmentation with no other side effects and then charging for the cure? Which is a universal cure-all for all his potions. Who is this guy? But that is not the story and the lesson of the episode is knowledge is good and gullibility is bad. Still good lessons especially in today landscape.

Side Note – This episode was the second appearance of The Oracle. He first appears in the fourth episode “The Star Master” and is pal of Frollo’s. Didn’t remember him but good job show using an old character.

Sorcerer Quasimodo, The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo, Episode 22 The Oracle
Sorcerer Quasimodo

Once Upon a Time Season 7 Episode 21

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Homecoming

Colin O'Donoghue as Wish Hook, Andrew J. West as Henry Mills, Robert Carlyle as Rumble & Lana Parrilla as Regina Once Upon a Time Season 7 Episode 21 Homecoming picture image

Colin O’Donoghue as Wish Hook, Andrew J. West as Henry Mills, Robert Carlyle as Rumble & Lana Parrilla as Regina

This is the penultimate episode, after this episode there is one episode left before it’s done, done, done or until  there is another reboot maybe. This episode is the ultimate example of the main issue Once has; the creators have good story talent, they are good at coming up with ideas BUT they don’t have much in the way of literary talent, they can’t execute their ideas which result in sloppy narratives.

With the timelines and mythos who  can keep up and this is the case in point with the Wish realm. Oh, the wish-realm, I hated it from the first and I still have it now. Basically Wish-Rumble (Wumble?) or New Rumple (Numble?), going with Wish-Rumble, he doesn’t want OGRumble (got that off of reddit), to get rid of the dark one powers since that would mean Wish-Rumble would lose his powers, though that doesn’t make any sense since the wish-realm people are different entities. I mean Snow and Charming didn’t die when Regina killed their Wish-realm equivalents. After this a series of manipulations and cameos ensues. Oh the cameos we have Pan, Cruella and Ariel. Aside from Ariel, the cameos don’t make sense. Like what is Cruella doing there? She was sent to The Land without Magic prior to Regina casting the Dark Curse and that when the time-line shifted so how did she get back? Then again how was Wish-Henry born in the first place?  

Wish-Rumble’s plan involves kidnapping Lucy and Jacinda to get Henry to give him the OG Dark One Dagger.

But really  Wish-Rumble wants the author’s power and has Wish-Henry on his side to exact revenge on Regina for killing Snow and Charming and taking Emma away. So that is the last plot line of the show, more Rumple being evil and power hungry. But it’s at least a different Rumble so the character progression isn’t lost.

What would have been Wish-Rumble’s plan if Henry had given Wish-Rumble the dagger?

Also Alice and Robin use the food truck and get to Storybrooke using a magic bean, which are super rare except when they are not.  They are on a mission to save Regina. New-Hook, OGRumple, Henry, Jacinda and Lucy.

None of this make contextual-sense, the only thing that makes sense is that Wish-Henry would want revenge of Regina. Is that enough for a final plot line that brings out all the cameos and ties up the convoluted plot of whatever Wish-Rumble is actually planning? Maybe and no. The wish-realm was stupid from the onset and is still dumb but now it’s all mucked up since Wish-Rumble and OGRumble’s powers are tied up together even though they are different versions that otherwise have no affect on each other?  Though given the show’s love of twists who knows what Wish-Rumble really wants. Maybe he just needs a hug.

I did like the call back to the seer from back in season 2. I wish that had been more of thing but better late than never, especially with this show.

All in all this episode is a C-.    

 

Once Upon a Time Season 4 Episodes 21 – 23 Review

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Episode  21: Mother

Lana Parrilla as Regina Once Upon a Time Season 04 Episode 21 Mother review picture image

Lana Parrilla as Regina

So Rumple needed Emma to go all dark side to charge the author’s ink but turns out Lily could do that because she had Emma’s potential for darkness. And instead of writing  a fix to Rumple’s heart problems, Isaac is going to rewrite the rules so that villains win. But since the author can literally write whatever he could just literally fix Rumple’s problem without this fate changing thing they are doing.  Also if Rumple issue’s was his heart going black from bad deeds why can’t he do good deeds? Also Rumple was FINE prior to the flashback. Sure there was time gap and he took some medicine but there was no indication of his heart dying.  This plot has too many outs and variables to be compelling.

The real theme of the episode is mothers, as you can tell by the title. Emma FINALLY forgives her mother and stops acting like a pouty child. Lily meets Maleficent. At first it didn’t go great as Lily expected a “Dragon Bitch”  and not a normal snappy dresser who can turn into a dragon, but they reach an accord.  

The past section was about Cora trying to get Regina some love in her life along with a baby. Regina thinks this a power grab on Cora’s part and takes the infertility potion to thwart her mother. This backstory also leads Regina to not erase Zelena from the book because of the pain Cora inflicted on both of them.

I dunno why but I love Zelena, I think it might be  the actress more than anything. She was also an episode of 30 rock, in Season 7 Episode 8 My Whole Life is Thunder, where she was virgin widow nymphomaniac. Kermit the Frog was also in that episode but in a different scene.  

You know what else is stupid about the author and Rumple’s plan? Aside from Cruella, who was a bad egg from the start, all the villains got their happy endings. So this changing fate is EVEN MORE DUMB. Just going to say it again, the author can write a cure for Rumple on a slip of paper even. Like Rumple can have his Dark one powers without the limits of being the dark one if Isaac wrote it down.

This show depiction of Maid Marian pisses me off. I have seen MANY versions of Marian even that BBC version that was weird but this Marian’s only value to the plot has been sick/dying and a manic pixie dream girl to Robin (sort of). She didn’t have much personality and even Disney Marian did and she barely in the movie.

This episode was mostly fine. It worked mostly but the plot of this arc has been too all over the place and seems to be leading to a dumb conclusion.

Episode  22: Operation Mongoose Part 1

Lana Parrilla as Regina Once Upon Time Season 04 Episode 22 Operation Mongoose Part 1 review picture image

Lana Parrilla as Regina

Isaac has vanity issue which makes him the worse of the “villains.” We also get a bit of a backstory on Isaac, it’s nothing super amazing or interesting. Just a writer wannabe who can’t sell TVs in the 60s.

This episode bring us to an alternative reality where the former villains are heroes and the heroes are villains. So Rumple is a kindly knight who saves people and Snow and Regina are literally swapped. Henry enters the book with Isaac to try and save the day    

Henry however enters at the final chapter which means there is a ticking clock. He has to change the ending so the book loses its power, I guess. I don’t know literally theory or principles, but why would there be an inciting incident in the final chapter?  The  inciting incident  is the event or decision that begins a story’s problem. So no. Wrong term writer with a job.  

The trouble is Villains can have happy ending UNLESS Ursula and Maleficent were never really Villains? Gasp, Disney needs to rebrand them.

While the episode is handle well it seems like a concept was childish. Snow White as the evil Queen is painted as just cruel and evil whereas Regina was shaped into a heartless bitch because of her mother killing her boyfriend.  Snow lost her love because of Regina but she was already cruel before that, so the only point of this is to see Ginnifer Goodwin acting “evil” which we saw in season 1 when she forgot about loving David. Also I think the styling of Regina as “Snow White Bandit” and Evil Queen Snow should  have expressed their own characters more than just costume switch.

Also poor Graham, he for written out of the story too.

This of course is a two part episode so we can’t fully look it till… Right now!

 

Episode 23:  Operation Mongoose Part 2

Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan Once Upon a Time Season 4 Episode 23 Operation Mongoose Part 2 review picture image

Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan

Full Disclosure, I been watching Once on Netflix and the image between episodes is Dark Swan so the twist of Emma taking in the darkness and being the new dark one wasn’t too much of a twist for me BUT I can imagine this when it aired because it’s a neat twist. The show does do twists well. Should mention Emma took on the darkness to protect Regina’s happy ending and it finally gave Emma the push to tell Hook she more than liked-liked him but loved him.  It also tied into the Emma asking her parents to remove the darkness from her again. So the all plotpoint did converge fairly well even though the it seemed all over the place for most of the season.  

As for the second part of this episode, things got wrapped up neatly from the alternative reality. Regina self-sacrifice saved the day and Henry became the new author. I did hate that Rumple was called the “Light One.”  I get that it’s the direct opposite of the “Dark One but it doesn’t sound as good. Light One literally sounds like the first idea the writer came up with. “Lighter Bringer” would have been better, “Pure One,”  “Luminous One,” “Bright One”  I get the magic is called Light magic but “Light One,” Super Meh.

I  did love the Star Wars reference,  Kashsyk is the wookiee  homeworld and Henry is a wookie. So in a way George Lucas true hero of this arc.

We also learned a few new things about the Dark One. Apparently The Sorcerer, or Merlin, tethered darkness to a soul to contain it. Not sure what is special about this particular darkness. Or is it all darkness?

This was an enjoyable episode. Sure, it was more amnesia but it was handle moderately well.  Glad to know the show hasn’t forgotten Black Beard and he also got a happy ending, he got the Jolly Roger.