While Robin didn't do much at all for me in "Secret Garden", she and in her Margot guise too improved immensely from this episode onwards and became one of the season's best and more rootable characters. Alice/Tilly and Drizella/Ivy being the others. In a season where the show's best characters beforehand became underused or dumbed down (i.e. Regina) in favour of those that were not interesting or likeable (i.e. Jacinda).
"The Girl in the Tower" is not much of an improvement over the previous three episodes (the point where the season returned to the rocky standard of the beginning of it and never fully recovered). Instead of a major improvement, something that on paper it had potential to be, it was only just scraping marginal. Alice and Robin are handled very well, but mostly all of the season's general problems are here and almost everybody else are written poorly.
Certainly "The Girl in the Tower" has good things. Really loved the subplot for Alice and Robin, very charming, sharply done and heartfelt. Of the character relationships theirs is by far the most convincing and the only one to work properly, their subplot is the only one to be reminiscent of prime-'Once Upon a Time' in my view. Rogers has his moments, his want in clearing Tilly worth investing in, and Colin O'Donoghue's charisma and enthusiasm helps.
Roe Reynolds nails it as Alice, the best performance of the episode. Tiera Skovbye is also a great match and their bond is affectionately done. It is a typically good-looking and well shot episode and with some nice use of music.
However, "The Girl in the Tower" feels very rushed and has too much going on, twists and turns coming at a dizzying rate, some not surprising or necessary and others lacking clarity. While Alice and Robin's subplot is prime-'Once Upon a Time' level and the Rogers/Tilly one has its moments, the rest is confused and betrays the feeling of the show running out of ideas. With so much not connecting with each other, "The Girl in the Tower" felt really disjointed and would have benefitted from doing less and focusing more on the two subplots that worked.
Regina and Samdi's subplot feels thrown in and like it would belong better in a separate episode, as it doesn't connect with everything else and felt like an excuse for set up, also having the worst of the episode's cheesy dialogue. It was a waste of one of the main reasons as to why 'Once Upon a Time' was still stuck with when it declined (talking about Regina here). Regina's entire role in that subplot and everything with Lucy, a bland archetypal character that doesn't make much impact, does her no favours at all
Also every bit as cliched and as dull as the mostly painful material in the waste of time that's Henry and Jacinda's relationship that dominates a lot of Season 7. Samdi's character is neither interesting, menacing or mysterious, quite pantomimic and his motivations were vague throughout the season. If you are going to have a great character like Zelena, at least give her something more to do other than seeming to remind the viewer that Regina can't be happy, a shameful waste.
To conclude, moments of 'Once Upon a Time' in its prime but there is more of what made the show decline so badly. 5/10
