The first season of Once Upon a Time surprised everyone who saw it in a positive way. The characters of our favorite fairy tales are all living in a small town in our world but without any memories of their past. However, when Emma Swan arrives in Storybrooke, the foretold lifting of the curse finaly takes place.
The pros of those first 22 episodes are innumerable – from a tense plotline, filled with exciting and unexpected twists on almost every step of the way, to the metaphors and messages, delicately directed at the viewer.
As expected, it received an order for a second season. That's when the trouble starts. The story starts losing steam and it becomes apparent that there wasn't much of a plan after the successful beginning.
The third season's attempts, on the side of the scriptwriters, to make every character a good one came out as absurd and it was as if the scriptwriters themselves felt like it's time to end it – the ending of the third season is quite strong and perfect for a final goodbye.
Yes, but Disney's television company, ABC, was interested in keeping the show running – it was still watched and it helped quite a bit for promoting the movies of the mother enterprise, keeping interests toward fairy tales sharpened. This led to the point where the character's actions gradually lost all meaning, plots led to nowhere, events started happening mechanically and predictably. Even the most absurd ones.
The last part which was somewhat good came about in the first half of the fifth season which slightly turned the concept around but from there on out it's simply pointless to watch.
Currently, the sixth season is airing but the scriptwriters have announced that this year they'll finish the story of these characters and if the television company still wants to order new seasons, they can start over with new characters.
It isn't likely that there'll be an order for a new season, as at this point the viewers are about 1/3 of what they were in the beginning and they numbers are still falling. But who knows… Let's hope the ending is strong.
Despite the whole criticism aimed at these shows, we have to admit their strong starting points. Most of them (only Heroes makes an exception) are either finished or will get an ending to their stories. This makes them somewhat better to watch than the shows that were good but were cancelled without one.
Who knows, maybe one day television companies and scriptwriters will learn that it's better to finish a project while it's still fresh and liked by everyone than to milk them dry. All things considered, isn't it a better approach to have a good product from start to finish, which will remain in history and will be seen years after it has ended, rather than a show which is abandoned by its most faithful viewers? What do you think? Do you find this ranking agreeable – do these shows deserve to be here and have we missed any?
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