SPOILER ALERT! If you have seen episode 6 season 2 of Once Upon a Time, then you might not want to read this!
I don’t know, for an episode that was supposed to be some big revelation, I found this episode to be kind of “blah”.
So, anyway…
Yeehaw! It’s 1870!
Michael Raymond-James’ character, who we met way back in episode 1 of season 2, is a guy named “Neal Cassidy”. He was Emma’s boyfriend and he is probably Henry’s dad. Then again, we never saw a paternity test, so whoever fathered Henry is still up for grabs. My bet is on Henry having been conceived by THE FORCE and something something midi-chlorians.
A more important question, I think, is why does August Booth have Marsellus Wallace’s soul?
WHAT’S IN THE BOX!?
There was also some jazz in this episode about stealing a magical golden compass from the last big friendly giant in the world. Hey, a golden compass? Who owns the movie rights to the His Dark Materials movie series, now that New Line Cinema has gone belly up? If I recall correctly, there was travel between universes in His Dark Materials, just like in Once Upon a Time. They could totally do a crossover! I doubt ABC would want to anger the Catholic church though…
And, apparently, Captain Hook is in love with Emma, or something. LOVE TRIANGLE! DRAMA BOMB!
Also, Neal gave August a bunch of money to give to Emma, but August spent it all on hookers.
I think they need to make Mulan a little less angry all the time.
SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen Broken, the first episode of the second season of Once Upon a Time, then you probably shouldn’t read this. I’m too lazy to provide the requisite expository text, for a person that hasn’t seen this episode, to understand this article, anyway.
I don’t really feel like running through the whole episode, so I’ll just go through my thoughts on a few things about it.
MYSTERIOUS MAN
At the start of the episode, we meet a new character and never learn who he is. Who he is ins’t really important, though, because he doesn’t actually do anything in the episode. Most people are going to say that he is Baelfire, but I think that would be too easy.
Here are some things around his apartment that may be clues to his identity.
MYSTERIOUS SHOP SIGN
He has a sign for a hatter’s shop. Was it from Jefferson, the mad hatter’s shop? Is our mystery man from Wonderland?
MYSTERIOUS SKATEBOARD DECK
He has a skateboard deck with the letters “NSNO” visible, or, since you can rotate these letters 180°, “ONSN”. So, it’s either a word ending with “NSNO”, or a word starting with “ONSN”. I couldn’t think of any. If you know anyway, please tell me in the comments.
MYSTERIOUS MONOCLE & POCKET WATCH
He has a pocket watch and a monocle hanging on his wall. The white rabbit carries a pocket watch, re-enforcing my Wonderland theory. Multiple Disney characters have monocles. I’m not sure which monocle-wearing character would be most likely.
MYSTERIOUS BALLET SLIPPERS
There are some ballet slippers on his wall. Maybe, he’s one of the dancing hippos or gators from Fantasia.
MYSTERIOUS DREAMCATCHER
He also has a dreamcatcher. I don’t really know if he looks Native American, or not. It is possible that he is John Smith, or one of the other colonists.
What is broken?
Lot’s of people are going to assume that the “Broken” on this postcard mean that the curse has been broken. Lots of things could be broken. Maybe, the word “broken” here doesn’t even mean “broken”. Maybe, it’s code. You don’t know.
Storybrooke is broken?
Was this postcard actually sent from Storybrooke, or, was it sent from a different location with the Storybooke picture as a clue for our mystery gentleman?
Current “True Love’s Kiss” Tally: 1
Here are our new royals: Princess Aurora II Electric Boogaloo and Prince Phillip Neckerchief Hipster. I say Aurora II because this Aurora mentions that her mother had to deal with Maleficent as well.
Mulan
We also have Mulan as a new character. She doesn’t really do much, except be a warrior and angry.
It’s a dementor! No… It’s a ringwraith!
So, we have wraiths attacking people, now. I’m willing to bet that the wraiths are connected to my “bigger bad” they, where Regina and Rumpelstiltskin will have to join forces against and even bigger evil. I’m guessing that these wraiths are the minions of the “bigger bad”.
Spooky Amulet
The wraiths wear these amulets. If you touch one of these amulets, the wraiths will come after you and suck your soul out of your face à la Shang Tsung.
I tried to look up what this character was, but the closest I got was that it could be a stylized version of the Chinese character “wáng, which means “king”.
Heh. Stylized wang.
The Other Side of the Spooky Amulet
The other side of the amulet has a different character on it. I couldn’t find any frames where it was clear, though.
Why isn’t his curse being broken?
This bugged me. Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold kissed Belle, but his curse wasn’t broken. Are they not truly in love anymore?
A Palace!
This is the beautiful palace that Aurora and Phillip were to live in, but that didn’t work out so well. We are never told where in the fairy tale world this palace is situated in.
Agrabah
The domes on the roof make it look a bit like the palace in Agrabah, though.
Why aren’t they dead?
So, Emma and Snow White fall through a magic portal to a fairy tale world and they bust a bunch of stuff up, but there’s not a scratch on them. It was a nice touch that they had Snow holding on to Emma’s jacket.
It’s been speculated that Once Upon a Time has access to pretty much Disney’s entire catalogue and they’re burning through the fairy tale character pretty fast. It won’t be long before they have to draw from other genres in the pool. Could this mean that characters from Disney movies like Treasure Planet or Song of the South could show up on Once Upon a Time? Will Emma Swan join forces with The Rescuers?
Yes. All of these things will happen. I have foreseen it.
Also, whatever happened in that one movie, Dinosaur, will have a profound effect on our heroes. Did anyone see Dinosaur? It had something to due with lemurs, right? Once Upon a Time needs more lemurs. Lemurs make everything better. Well, except for Dinosaur. Nothing could make Dinosaur better.
Here a some little things, you may or may not have noticed, that I hope they flesh-out in season two of Once Upon a Time.
Gay Dwarfs?
In episode 14, Dreamy, Sneezy’s counterpart, Mr. Clark, and Sleepy’s counterpart, Walter, really want to sit together at the diner. Grumpy’s counterpart, Leroy, tells them they should have dragged their sorry asses out of bed a little earlier, implying that they both get up at the same time and, possibly, that they sleep in the same bed.
There wasn’t any implication that Sneezy and Sleepy had a romantic relationship in the fairy tale world, so how will the react in season two? How would a person feel if in one life they wear gay and in the other one straight, and then, they had those lives slammed together?
Then again, all dwarfs are male, so, maybe, it’s weird for them not to be gay.
They love eachother. You can’t tell me differently.
What’s in Storybrooke’s Library?
The Library and Emma’s Butt
In the the season finale of season one, A Land Without Magic, we see that Storybrooke has a closed-up library.
A library in a town full of storybook characters seems like a very dangerous thing. We don’t know how far all of the characters have reached in their own stories. What if some of them haven’t reached the ends of their stories yet? What happens if they go to the library and read their own story and they don’t like the ending?
Is That Dude in the Basement of the Hospital Pocahontas’ Dad?
SWEEP THE LEG!
In episode 12, Skin Deep, Regina Mills, on her way to visit Belle in the basement psyche ward, passes a native american man sweeping in the hallway. This is an obvious play on Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But, maybe, it’s more than that. Pocahontas’ dad is a chief. Maybe Pocahontas’ tribe are enemies of Regina, so she locked their chief up, like she did Belle.
Of course, Pocahontas wasn’t actually a fairy tale character. She was a real person that we actually know a lot about. Disney continuing to treat her life like it was a fairy tale is, perhaps, unwise.
I enjoy the ABC show, Once Upon a Time, way more than I should.
Sure, the plot is a little convoluted and it’s a bit of a ripoff of Bill Willingham’s Fables.
The important thing is that it isn’t a cop show, a medical drama, a reality show or -Zod forbid- a teen vampire show.
Yes, it’s schlock, but at least it’s schlock that’s trying something new.
The concept of fairy tale characters in the real characters in the real world has a lot of potential, but they’re making, in my opinion, some mistakes that will come back to bite them later.
Here are some things that in my opinion, as a know-nothing, z-list, stupid-head internet personality, are wrong with Once Upon a Time:
Thirty Plotline Pileup
It seams like almost every character has a great big mystery in their backstory and I doubt, even if the show lasts for seven years, that everyone’s mystery will be solved by the end of the series. We are most likely going to left with a lot of unanswered questions.
They’re adding even more characters, all with their own stories, to the show. How are they going to give all these new plotlines their due airtime?
Also, because about half of each episode takes place in the past in the fairy tale world, the backstories keep growing and growing and growing.
What Internal Logic?
Nobody can go in or out of Storybrooke, except when they can. Foodstuffs, clothing and other products have to get into Storybrooke somehow, and Kathryn somehow applies to a university in Boston and receives a letter, so the mailman can get in and out of Storybrooke?
Emma is, apparently, the only person that works at the sheriff’s office and evidence keeps getting sent away to some crime lab, again, assumedly, outside of Storybrooke.
There’s no magic inside Storybrooke, except for when the plot needs there to be some. Regina brought some magical trinkets with her to Storybrooke, but she used almost all of them up before the 28 years for the saviour to return were up. Why would she use up all her magic before the prophecy end date? Hubris? This point is pretty much moot, though, because, as of the first season finale, there’s all kinds of magic up in Storybrooke. From now on, if anything that doesn’t make any sense happens, a wizard did it.
WHY?
So, Regina’s whole plan was to come to the real world and get revenge on everyone by being a jerk of a mayor? The rest of her life she’d just be a mayor in some backwater town! How is this preferable to having magic powers?
There was more I wanted to complain about, but I’m tired now. Good night.
