How the mighty have fallen?? |
Why do spin-offs exist? What is a spin-off, anyway?
A spin-off requires two things: A parent show and a character or two that have been introduced but deviate from the central plot in a solid enough in its own right to warrant pursuit in it's own direction, while the "parent" can continue on its merry way. There are a few different ways a spin-off can happen:
1) The Backdoor Pilot: This method is used when a character with his/her own back-story and baggage crosses paths within an established show's timeline, and when that segment of the story is done, the character leaves and the show continues. Later, when the network decides to run a spin-off featuring that character, they might insert another episode into the original show that not only features a return of the character, but it uses the events of the parent show as the "introduction" of the new show, as opposed to building the new show from the ground up. That way, followers of the original show then become the "test audience" for the new show. If they want to see more of this character or proposed storyline, they can see more in the ensuing spin-off, if not, the attempted spin-off can just die a graceful death while the original show continues as if that didn't just happen.
2) Expanded Universe: Sometimes a spin-off won't have a back-door pilot, but, if the character is solid enough, they'll get an "expanded universe" spin-off. This type of spin-off serves as an explanation for a character's departure from the show, and still facilitates the occasional "guest appearance" as the spin-off and the parent show are happening in tandem and can cross over as circumstances allow. Examples of this kind of thing include shows like Angel (from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Stargate: Atlantis (which borrowed a couple of the main stars from the parent show, Stargate SG-1, and added to the lore to expand the shows horizons and open the floodgates of new ideas and additional storylines).
3) The Continuation: This kind of spin-off happens when a show comes to a close by the demise/departure of key lead characters (and thus their actors are detached and usually move on to other roles)... but the viewers want more, and the writers are still coming up with ideas. A Continuation spin-off typically participates in the setting and the lore of the parent show, but a lot of times it involves a whole new cast and a re-vamped direction. A great example of this kind of spin-off would be the Stargate: Universe series, which dealt with a lot of the tech and the principles set by the parent show, with very little of the original cast involved.
What exactly is my issue with Once Upon A Time? I'm getting to that!
I still remember what it felt like when it started. A secret little town where all the famous fairy tale characters have real-world personas? Sign me up! I loved getting to know the characters in a whole new way and was always excited to discover the next character introduction and find out what unexpected role they were going to play in the overall arc. Season 2 then commenced with rather a bit of an "expanded universe" spin-off: magic comes to Storybrooke, but in the process, we are notified of an area that somehow escaped the Curse that struck everywhere else, so these characters were not transported and received no alternate identities. The main push of the story arc then becomes to return to the real world, while a minor guest character from season 1 becomes the main villain, and the arc completes just in time for the season 3 arc to begin, what became known as Once Upon A Time in Neverland—another "expanded universe" spin-off (billed sort of like a back-door pilot... But it never fully detached from the parent show, even though it had little to do with the original arc of the parent show. After Neverland resolved, we got the Wicked story arc, which was basically a half-witted attempt at turning a "continuation" spin-off into an overcomplicated "further reveal" of parts of the original story arc. I mean, SERIOUSLY! Do they expect us to accept, two years later, that Snow White and Prince Charming were running away from not one but TWO wicked witches?? Why was there no mention of this before?
Reason #1 Why adding yet another spin-off to the litany of burned-out tales OUAT has already scorched is a bad idea: It's too complex already. The best shows started simple, with a broad scope of potential already infused into the first season. They introduce several threads, and pursue one for a while, the the other. Countless shows have successfully accomplished this with far less: five or six protagonists, one or two main villains, and plenty of lore that has yet to be explored, but directly correlates to the original story arc.
Once Upon A Time, on the other hand, raised an army of protagonists, made its villain(s) all-powerful, and used up pretty much all of its lore—all in the first season. Still, hints were dropped that perhaps avid fantasy fans (like me) would notice, and there were still a few stories that the show could have gone back and revisited, enriching both the back-story and the current state of the characters...
But instead, the writers plowed on through the next one, further complicating the story on all fronts as they attempted to justify the presence and involvement of the new characters rather than including the familiar story as sufficient introduction, like the start of the series. It seems like every time the story changed, it over-complicated the lives of the more popular characters, adding motivations that were never even an issue before, plugging in flashbacks with not enough regard for overall continuity. Speaking of, does a continuity timeline exist for this show? I think it would be comical... Not only is Regina everyone's enemy, but she's been romantically involved and spited by nearly every prominent male except Prince Charming! Either Elsa is going to be another long-lost spawn/relative-of-Cora (one would think she would be a better villain herself, with the number of warped young women she's produced) or what exactly is the point of adding Frozen to the muddle?
Reason #2 Why doing yet another spin-off for Frozen in particular is a bad idea: neither story is strong enough to mesh well. A premise is what makes or breaks a show. A great show will have a premise that produces challenging goals each season for the protagonists... Within the parameters of the premise. On the show Grimm, for example, the premise is that the Brothers Grimm wrote the fairy tales with talking animals based on actual creatures who could pass for humans—some of these creature-people playing key roles in history. With a handful of creatures and plenty of fascinating lore that has not even been scratched in three seasons, Grimm keeps the momentum by pursuing one arc while hinting at the others at the same time, just to whet the viewers' interest. Three seasons with basically the same villain, and she hasn't changed much, and she's still up to her old tricks, but in new ways so it's not contrived or forced. And everything is still under that same premise.
What is the premise for Once Upon A Time? As of Season 1 I would have said, "A town where fairy tale characters are actual people from an Enchanted Forest where they all live." Is this the same premise for Season 2? What about Season 3? OUAT lost momentum and credibility when they changed their premise along with their story arc.
In many ways I feel like Frozen made the same mistake. Don't get me wrong, I waltzed out of the movie theater absolutely raving about that movie—but I know what these writers do with popular characters, and with confirmation that Elsa is going to actually be the Evil Snow Queen she was originally intended to be (once again, we have a halfway character whose goodness is diffused by the allure of evil choices and whose villany is tempered by a haphazard "redemption") I shudder to think what they will do with the rest. I mean, Elsa wasn't even the villain in the movie, where do they get off making her the bad guy just because she's in a slinky, form-fitting dress?
Which brings us to:
Reason #3 why bringing in Frozen is a bad idea: The last thing this show needs is another haphazard villain. A show is only as strong as its weakest link... And the weakest link always has been and continues to be the villains. Let's review:
-Evil Queen: originally the Big Bad Villain of the first story arc, she was duly defeated at the conclusion of the arc; being such a favorite, though, the writers couldn't bear to let her go and so an aspect of redemption was involved, and yet the actress was so skilled at filling the role of villain that a fair amount of the redemption was rescinded, and she even ends up dragging the heroine into her own special brand of diluted "evil."
-Rumplestiltskin: the King of riding the fence, he was the motivated villain and the volatile ally; his original motivation was power to himself. In the same way that the Evil Queen filled the role of every Evil Queen and Wicked Witch in all of the stories, Rumplestiltskin was the Beast, the Crocodile, the Impish Trickster. He achieved this, but it came with the love interest complication that made him willing to give up a lot of the power that made him such a formidable villain, and plus the existence of his son still living and the hope of reunion reduced him to a psychotic wreck.
-Cora: Oh gosh, the fact that she was introduced in the episode where OUAT officially left all pretense of continuity behind in a mad dash to establish continuity and give poor misplaced Frankenstein (and I thought this was a kids show! What's next? Dracula? Have we seen the Headless Horseman yet?) something to do, and to give Regina an uncalled-for excuse for her evilness... Yeah, I guess a part of me hoped that a character this static, this useless, this cliché, would not be needed outside this little frame of the timeline. BUT, this show being desperate for villains (is it just me, or does it seem like the story arcs in this show are practically driven by the villain? That's never a good plan to let the villain take the wheel in a story!) Cora and her endless supply of unlimited magic to get anyone to do anything received a ill-planned upgrade and she became the villain. While it is true that her character is a rarity in that she is still the same crafty old witch in every appearance... Her scripting is trite, predictable, and flat as a pancake. She's just plain not interesting enough!
-Peter Pan: the whole "Home Office" thing was certainly promising... If only it had turned out to be an actual non-fantasy entity instead of a sick and twisted version of everybody's most cherished childhood tradition—who turned out not even to be the character himself, but the "de-aged" persona of Rumplestiltskin's father... Because if you're going to screw up a beloved character AND his lore, you're better off just making out like you never intended to use the actual character after all.
-All the Kings in the Enchanted Forest: Pawns with crowns, the lot of them! Pawns of either the Queen or Rumplestiltskin as a result of deals they struck in pursuit of the illusion of power, and pernicious, self-righteous ones at that! Seriously, of what use are the kings, really? Once Upon A Time seems to have this secret agenda, letting us know it's the queens with all the power. The kings are merely means to an end, and they get murdered by their ambitious wives or they are manipulated into working for evil enchantresses and making the heroes' lives miserable just because it makes them feel powerful.
-Jafar: this spin-off villain was just bad from the start of his back-story to the final less-than-epic "battle." He was so weak that he could not do anything except get other people to do stuff for him, and he was such an idiot that all his grabs for power ended up favoring the heroes in the end. I have seen that series twice (once when it first aired, and then again to review it) and I still don't get what all the hype was about.
-Zelena: okay, I confess, all I know about this character is from reading the episode synopses every week. I have no idea how well or how terribly Rebecca Mader did with her... All I know is, what I read of her story arc was just poor writing all the way through. I kept hoping to come across an episode that gave me the thrills, because I wanted to return to watching it again, but it never happened. Zelena was obviously intended to be less milk-toasty than Regina, but with a similar back-story, combined with the incessant use of manipulation to get what one wants, a la Cora—still did not end up with a villain that could last more than a single fizzling story arc.
Reason #4 Why turning Frozen into "Once Upon A Time In Arendell" is a bad idea: That's not what spin-offs are for. Spin-offs are not easy ways for networks to bilk more viewers for the "dying mother-ship" (see gif at the top of this page) by playing on current trending sensations--frankly, I liked Once Upon A Time when it actually dealt with stories that began "Once upon a time...." not "Today in the latest release from Disney Animation Studios!" Spin-offs are shows featuring popular characters already established in the show and well-received by the audience who are able to create their own story simultaneously with the parent show without destroying continuity, and people watch it because they're already familiar with the character's story as it relates to the original show, so there is basically no introduction needed.
To add Elsa and "the gang" as a spin-off makes no sense because we have no idea who these characters are (obviously they're going to be nothing like the characters we only just got acquainted with, so what's the point?) and thus the spin-off will have to be a glorified effort to insert an entirely new story that no one has ever heard before (not even those who have actually read "The Snow Queen") into the "shredded canon" that is Once Upon A Time... or they'll make like Once Upon A Time In Wonderland and just start from scratch and build a new story that barely hints at familiar things and doesn't really belong and tanks after thirteen episodes of a botched existence. (About the only thing good that came out of that--and the only reason I will ever watch another episode of Once Upon A Time--would be Michael Socha!)
Adding to that the fact that OUAT is "hauling characters out of the basement" (like Sidney Glass, who nobody cared for... so why dig him up again?) to try and bulk out the cast of screwed-up, insecure adults who can't make up their minds and carry a laundry list of past regrets that gets longer with each season... and yeah, another spin-off is not going to make everything better, because that's not what spin-offs do. A spin-off will be good because it is building off a solid launch point in the parent show to pursue a good idea. When a show attempts to build a spin-off on a faulty idea, from a show that's falling apart on all fronts (magic is failing, love is failing, trust is failing... what else is there??) that's not "spinning off." That's "abandoning ship."
Reason #5 Why creating a spin-off out of a sensational film that will be even further away from said film than the film itself was from the original fairy tale is just a bad idea: Location, Location, Location! Most shows have a "canon," which is a set amount of scenarios within which the characters can function, based on their official presentation. You won't see Ariel as a poor girl living with dwarves on land, and Belle was never courted by any princes (Gaston doesn't count... he was a mere hunter in the original tale, and his cameo as a prince was far too brief for more than a few lines)--because those situations are not canon, they do not fit within the realm of possibilities for the characters. A good show has enough lore in the canon to function well and flourish within the boundaries of its canon. Typically, off-canon is reserved for fan-fiction amateurs who are not satisfied with the original characters and story arcs and want to mess around with the timing and the relationships and whatnot.
In the case of Once Upon A Time, that "canon" was supposed to be the community of Storybrooke. It connected all the plot threads for the multiple flashbacks and world-hopping that happened between the Enchanted Forest and Neverland. That's why the "spin-off of Wonderland never really touched Storybrooke except very briefly and conveniently in times where their presence would be outside the notice of the characters who should have been there, and merely for the sake of furthering its own storyline--because the continuity in Storybrooke is hanging by a thread, and the slightest breath of wind could upset the continuity of the entire show.
Enter Elsa in the Season 3 finale... and she's in Storybrooke. Congratulations, Horowitz and Kitsis! You broke your own canon! They can't make a spin-off that's set in the same location as the parent show, especially when it's a small town, not a big city where it would be easy to just localize everything. So Season 4 would have to be dealing with a wintery villain in Storybrooke... at the same time as we're trying to delve into the Seven Loves of Regina Mills with a new... an old... HANG ON! I THOUGHT MARION WAS DEAD! DEAD PEOPLE AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE AN ISSUE!! Plus, Emma and Hook are still playing "Love Roulette".... and you want to add another tenuous relationship to the mix?? Wait, I thought TNT was supposed to be the network that "knew drama." One might as well move Once Upon A Time to a daytime slot, if you catch my meaning.
So there you have it, five reasons why the whole "Frozen comes to Storybrooke" idea is just... bad! You know what I would rather see? Let's revisit all the tales that were only "cherry-picked" from in the first two seasons! Let's let the insecure, flip-flopping characters figure out what side they're on! Let's let the relationships find more solid footing! Let's allow the characters to knock around and have some fun for a bit rather than a constant downhill slide from apocalypse to apocalypse! Let's get back to those characters (like the Tillman family, or Ashley and Sean... they had a baby, didn't they? And what about Pinocchio? I want to see more of the newly-reunited Geppetto and his son!) who only got one episode and took a backseat to the endless Scandal Train of the Original Seven (Regina, Mary Margaret, David, Emma, Henry, Hook, Gold) once both sides got what they needed out of them! Any of these would be a better idea and might redeem the show and make it more secure--but unfortunately, it's too late for any of it...
Angst is coming.... |
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