Argument in our family: Season 3 spoilers

[paulliver.livejournal.com]

When Regina found and lost her true love, I was heart broken for her. I thought Regina's kissing Henry and breaking a curse meant that she was officially redeemed, so she deserved her happy ending, but then doesn't get it. My father thinks she did too much evil over the course of the show for redemption to be so soon. Comments?

Comments

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

I've never really understood the obsession with the actual words 'I'm sorry'. Various characters have said it multiple times and it's been meaningless almost every time.

[dani-ellie.livejournal.com]

An actual "I'm sorry" is supposed to be an acknowledgment that the person issuing the apology understands that he or she has hurt/done bad things to the person receiving the apology and that he or she regrets it. That he or she would not like to have those same things done to them and understands how awful it was to do it to someone else.

I've seen the argument that "I'm sorry" is not going to change anything, and it's not. But the point of the "I'm sorry" isn't to change anything in the past. It's an acknowledgment of the heartache someone caused. When someone hurts you, don't you like to hear an apology?

I don't buy into the "sorry is meaningless" argument at all. Maybe for some people it is, but for some people, it makes all the difference. For me, the decent thing for Regina to do is suck it up and offer her victims that bit of sympathy and acknowledgment.

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

When someone hurts me I'd rather they prove that they're not going to do it again. There's just a lot of hypocrisy involved in the 'you've done all this stuff and proven yourself but you didn't SAY YOU'RE SORRY'. With the depth of the acts involved in various seasons it's a very immature quibble that actually just diminishes a lot of characterization.

Like, Emma hasn't apologized for abducting Henry multiple times or planning to do it again, that doesn't mean the characters haven't moved past it.

[dani-ellie.livejournal.com]

But for me, the very first indication that someone recognizes that they were wrong is that acknowledgment. If I don't have that indication that the person understands that their actions had detrimental effects on others, I don't know that they're not going to do it again.

This season ended with Regina angry with Emma for bringing Marian back, telling her she was "just like her mother," with the implication being that Regina is now going to go on the warpath against Emma, the same way she did Snow. If she'd truly come far enough for the audience to believe she's not going to revert now that her new love is threatened, just like before, that threat in the cliffhanger wouldn't have worked.

Like I said downthread, the very fact that there's even a debate about whether or not Regina is redeemed proves there's something off about the narrative. People can point to things and say, "Here, this proves she is!" and just as many people can point to just as many things and say, "Here, this proves she's not!"

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

You're making two very different points in two different threads here.

Again, there's no such thing as 'redeemed'. Regina will always be a murderer and ave to atone for that forever. Just like Snow and Charming and Rumple and Hook will always be murderers.

Ultimately, Snow seems to think that protecting her life and her family's lives at the possible expense of Regina's own multiple times is quite possibly BETTER than a few words of apology.

[dani-ellie.livejournal.com]

I agree that Regina will always be a murderer and should have to atone forever. There's no magic point at which those past misdeeds become erased. I just don't agree that the show sees it that way.

Even still, I'd like to see some indication that Regina understands that her path was wrong. 3A was great in terms of giving her some self-awareness and then they completely obliterated it for me with Regina saying she didn't regret any of it because it got her Henry. To me, she was saying all her murdering and torturing and cursing was worth it because she got something out of it, unexpected though that something may be. So to her, the ends justified the means. It was okay that she'd destroyed countless other people's happily ever afters because she got her own. Which is a notion I completely disagree with.

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

I don't think you understand the difference between remorse and regret. They're two different things.

Almost ALL the characters are like you describe. Snow doesn't care how many people die, including her children, as long as she's with Charming, because the end is what she wants.

[dani-ellie.livejournal.com]

I understand remorse and regret just fine, thank you. If you look them up in the thesaurus, they're synonyms. Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/regret) defines "regret" as "to feel sorrow or remorse for."

Oh, and believe you me, I have my issues with Snow, too, so this isn't just Regina, either. I just wasn't bringing her into it because the debate was about Regina.

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

Well, then you just didn't understand the entire point of the scene. I guess it wasn't as clear as I thought.

Then why did you bring up how Regina needs to say she's sorry to Snow if you didn't want to bring up Snow?

[dani-ellie.livejournal.com]

I brought up Regina needing to apologize to Snow because I believe she does. For killing her father and for stealing the first three decades of her daughter's entire childhood. The point you brought up, with Snow being willing to sacrifice others, up to and including her children, to keep Charming, is a completely different point, and one for which Snow should apologize to those she hurt.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Neither one of us is going to change the other's mind.

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

Not really in favour of people needing to apologize for killing their rapists but sure, lots of stuff Regina should 'apologize' for in a really meaningless way when compared to the actual way it's played out. I mean, there's absolutely no proof that she HASN'T because they lived together for a year plus much more meaningful things that mean a lot more than a few words.

[mommanerd.livejournal.com]

I view Regina's redemption as forward and then back. It's continually happening and she has a way to go. But she is firmly on that path.

Her relationship with Henry has grown leaps and bounds and I think will serve to keep her trying.

[mommanerd.livejournal.com]

Yes! Total agreement! Watching the characters go around apologizing to each other does not appeal to me as a viewer. On the other hand, showing the growth and change of these characters, and the repentive acts that arise from that is something that appeals a lot to me. I think this is what the show is giving us.

The end of season 2 gave us these scenes:

Hook didn't come back with the magic bean he'd stolen and hand it over with an apology, but he offered his ship and went along for the ride to rescue Henry.

Regina was willing to die to save the town from the crystal that had been triggered.

Snow was far more accepting of Regina after her role in the death of Cora.

I love all of these developments, and look forward to more of the same.

[ahkna.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean. On a show where even the 'Good Guys' are murderers and do some really sketchy things half the script would be apologizing. They move on in genuine ways with actual character development beyond simple apologies.

Like, how many times has Rumple apologized to Belle but immediately done the same thing again?