You're listening to Once, episode 22 Once, the unofficial podcast for ABC's TV show Once Upon a Time.

I'm Daniel J. Lewis.

I'm Jeremy Loughlin. And we have rewatched this episode, The Bear King, and we've decided to give it a full discussion because it is, after all, another episode of Once Upon a Time. So why wouldn't we discuss it? I don't know what I was thinking when we did the initial reactions. I was sick. That's it. You were cursed. I was cursed. You were sick, cursed, and it was an anticlimactic second hour

following birth. However, by itself, pretty fun episode. Yeah. I know. I was thinking the same thing

because when we watched it on Sunday, there was so much that was not only confusing about this

episode, like trying to figure out the timeline because we had just seen the episode birth,

but also this was, let's be honest, this was a letdown after an episode like birth. Now,

I know some people didn't like birth, and some people actually liked the Bear King more than birth. But I think putting these two completely different episodes right

next to each other on the same night did make it harder to enjoy them both fully.

The Bear King was, and not to diminish its quality, direct to TV Brave 2. It wasn't a continuation of

almost anything for all intents and purposes that we saw in birth. So if someone doesn't like

the way the story is going, it's easy to like the Bear King more because it was just a fun story.

It does have a little bit of the continuation with the couple weeks ago in Camelot

storyline, but not all that much because Arthur is going on this quest that doesn't actually

end up succeeding. So he's back pretty much where he started. What I've heard is that ABC actually

ordered an extra episode for this season in order to play around this time.

And the writers didn't plan on it.

So they essentially did squeeze this episode in.

And that's why it doesn't really move the plot along.

That makes some sense.

And since they bothered to have Merida

in the story this year, I'm glad they did this episode. I'm especially glad that I watched

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