Freebird

 

This is a fairly decisive episode in the series. I personally like it, but I can’t act like I don’t understand when others say they have problems with it. Because it is very flawed. 

Summary:  When their caravan breaks down, Rapunzel and Cassandra wander off, where they eventually meet a couple only known as the Mother and Father, who trick them into drinking a tea that turns them into birds. Though assured that they could use magical eggs to return to normal before they lose their intelligence within an hour, the group finds out that the Mother and Father have been tricking and imprisoning innocent people as birds.

Why Don’t You Have Time Cass?

So the conflict of this episode is that Cass wants to get their quest over and done with while Raps wants to treat this journey as a fun vacation. While Rapunzel has been lollygagging up till this point, and with a good reason as we’ll find out this episode, there’s no given reason why Cass is in such a hurry herself. 

There’s no overarching threat in season two, no motivating reason why Rapunzel needs to go on this quest, nor even a basic ‘ticking clock’ that the heroes have to beat. The lack of an external conflict undermines the internal conflicts that the writers want to push. 

These Villains are Such Outliers in the Show That They Make the Episode Feel Misplaced 

I don’t mind the central conceit of Mother’s and Father’s presence here. They are a standard fairytale trope and this is meant to be a fairytale after all. However, up till now the more the fairy tale aspects of the series was kept to a minimal. There’s zero explanation why the wider world would be full of magic and mythical creatures if someone as well traveled as Eugene was oblivious to their presence before now. 

My guess is that since Rapunzel herself is magic she naturally attracts other magical things to her that normal people don’t usually experience. But that’s just a guess, it’s never explained in the show and it needed to be since beforehand magic wasn’t considered common. 

Mother and Father are also out of place here because they’re played fairly straight. Other mythical and magical beings are played with a twist or are tongue in cheek about their existence. Plus, as pure villains with simple goals, they contrast too starkly with the more complex villains the show was pushing both before and after this. 

There Needed to be More of This in the Show

I couldn’t find a single image that broke down my thoughts about this scene so here, have the whole song. In my opinion it’s the best one out of season two and you could spend a lot of time breaking down an analysis of Cass and Raps characters and their relationship dynamic from it. 

Or at least what their relationship dynamic should have been. 

For you see, this is the only point in the series where Cass and Raps actually feel like friends. You get an understanding of why they would hang out together despite their differences. Yet this one episode isn’t enough to sell their ‘unbreakable bond’ by itself. We needed more scenes like this, more episodes that focused on them actually being friends and enjoying each other’s company, and more conflicts that that didn’t just boil down to petty jealousy in order to make their later breakup work. 

Behold the One and Only Time Rapunzel Actually Admits Fault and Means ItThis is why I like the episode. It’s the only one where the premise of the series works. 

Cass and Raps have a genuine and understandable conflict, they feel like real friends here, and more importantly we get to the heart of Rapunzel’s issues and have her acknowledge what she’s doing wrong. It’s scenes like this why I had hope she would learn and grow and eventually come to realize how her treatment of Varian and others were wrong.   

Even after this point, while she still is selfish, Rapunzel at least stops purposefully dillidalying. Oh there’s still plenty of filler to come, but from here on out it’s typically either something external holding them up or they’re on the go throughout the episode. So it does feel like she has learned something here. 

Sadly this is damning with faint praise as that’s the only thing she seems to have learned. 

There’s Still Holes in the Girls’ Motivations Though, Because of the Lack of Set Up What did you drop Cass? What on earth did you actually give up for Rapunzel? You achieved your goal of being a guard and now are the personal bodyguard to the crown princess. That’s a high honor and what you’ve been wanting.

Also it’s not like there’s anything back in Corona waiting for you except for your dad, which, given that you’re now 23, it’s kind of expected to move away from him at some point regardless. I mean, if you have a close relationship with your parents into adulthood, great, but you’re typically not reliant upon them for your whole life and there’s nothing wrong with going off on your own to purse your interests and goals. 

Even then, Cass winds up throwing her relationship with her dad away the same as she throws her relationship with Rapunzel away, so it’s not like he was that important to her either. There’s also no other friends nor romantic partners in Cass’s life according to season three, so, once again, what was she giving up here in season two? 

This goes back to what I was talking about throughout season one, how Cass’s goals and motivations are just shifted around to suit the plot rather than having any follow through or internal consistency.  

We Still Don’t Know What ‘Destiny’ Means‘Destiny’ isn’t a reason in of itself to do something. Rapunzel being scared because she doesn’t know where her future will lead is understandable, but that then begs the question of why is she even bothering with this quest. There still needs to be an external threat to motivate her into doing what she’s doing. Either keep the rocks active, have another villain racing her to the end, or a ‘ticking-clock’ prophecy that she either can’t avoid no matter what she does or that has a consequence if she doesn’t succeed.  

So Hookfoot, Why are You Just Standing There Doing Nothing?

There’s no reason why Rapunzel had to be the one breaking the eggs to free everybody. Especially since she doesn’t have hands right now and all the guys do. Even if Raps just wanted to make sure everyone else was freed before her, there’s still no reason why the other characters had to stand around doing nothing. 

Also, hi Faith. What are you doing here? 

So Are We Just Going to Ignore the Fact that Eugene Is Literally Right There? 

Like I’m sure the idea is that, in the confusion and with helping everyone else, Eugene just wasn’t made aware of what was happening with Rapunzel, until after the conflict had been resolved anyways, but that’s not made clear and it highlights one of the core fundamental problems with the show. 

Characters’ previous relationships and dynamics are ignored into order to push the focus back on Rapunzel and Cassandra and that’s poor writing. If you can’t get the audience to care about the relationship you’re writing without undermining other relationships that the characters have, than you haven’t a compelling relationship. Just an annoying one that’s going to piss off most of the audience save for the most hard core of shippers. 

And keep in mind, a romantic ship isn’t even what the creators were shooting for here. They fully intended for Rapunzel and Cassandra to be viewed as sisters. If you ship Caspunzel, that’s fine, but just know and recognize that there was a lot of gay baiting in the series. Some done on accident by the storyboard artists because Chris didn’t inform them of the sister plot twist, and some put in there by Chris himself to string along Caspunzel shippers into sticking around since they were the only part of the fan base left who weren’t pissed off after the events of seasons two. 

Yeah, This is a Lie Look, I don’t mind the 'Cass is a villain' twist in theory, there were indeed things to work off of to justify it, but it’s wasn’t built up to well enough and there wasn’t enough motivation for it on Cass’s end. I’ll get more into it as we go along, but the lack of a clear underlying goal during the conflict here undermines that other conflict later in the series. 

Conclusion

I still like this episode, but I get it when others say they don’t. It doesn’t work in the context of the wider story because it’s ironically the only episode that does present the Raps and Cass conflict right. It can be frustrating to come back to this episode and see all of the wasted potential. Just like how it’s frustrating to go back to Varian’s arc in season one and realize how much was wasted there as well. The show had a lot of interesting ideas and setups that were let down by later creative decisions.