My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S03E06 “Ariel”

SPOILER ALERT! THIS EPISODE CONTAINS COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF CGI!

This week on Once Upon a Time, Snow White goes to the prom with a freaky fish lady.

a screencap of snow white (played by ginnifer goodwin) and the mermaid ariel (played by joanna garcia swisher) hanging out on some rocks
Surf & Turf

So, Snow White jumps into the sea to escape Regina’s men and then Ariel the mermaid saves her from drowning. They become fast friends.

It turns out that Ariel fell in love at first sight with the human Prince Eric, but she’s afraid that they can never be together on account of the whole being a mermaid that must live in water thing.

Why is it that every female character on this has to have a backstory that’s all about true love and trying to have a “happily ever after”? Are they not allowed to deviate from the Disney movie formula?

a screencap of ariel (played by joanna garcia swisher) and snow white (played by ginnifer goodwin)
Legs prominently featured

In this universe Ursula is a goddess, instead of a witch, and once a year at the highest possible tide, she grants mermaids the ability to transform their fins into legs. It just so happens that the highest tide coincides with Prince Eric’s Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, so Ariel takes this opportunity to go to the dance and meet with Eric.

a screecap of ariel (played by joanna garcia swisher) and prince eric (played by gill mckinney)
Is that Princess Jasmine on the right?

It turns out that Eric is madly in love with Ariel as well. Eric is leaving the next day to explore the world and he invites Ariel to join him, but, OH NO! Ariel’s legs with have reverted to fins by then.

It’s interesting to not that Eric says that one of the places he is going to visit is Agrabah and at that exact moment there is a woman in blue with her midriff showing, just like Princess Jasmine. I also wonder if they are just namedropping Agrabah, or is this is going to connect to Jafar and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland eventually?

a screencap of rumpelstiltskin (played by robert carlyle) talking to an imposter belled (played by emilie de ravin)
Stop talking to your hallucinations!

Back in the present-day Neverland, Rumpelstiltskin is still just kind of hanging around and being a nutbar by himself, that is, until Peter Pan shows up again to try and demoralize him. Peter Pan tells Rumpelstiltskin that he should give up on trying to save Henry, because Rumpelstiltskin will die in the process and that he should go home to Belle and start a new family with her, because she “looks fertile”. Ick. Ick. Ick. No, Lost Boys should never comment on a woman’s fetility. It grosses me out. How does Peter Pan know anything about Belle or Rumpelstiltskin’s life in Storybrooke, anyway?

And then the hallucination Belle shows up and is all like, “Yeah, Rumple, you should listen to Pan. I’m hella fertile. Your current family sucks anyway.”

a screencap of peter pan's shadow (played by CGI)
I hate this thing.

Regina interrupts and reveals that the hallucination Belle was really Peter Pan’s shadow the whole time. That’s a bit gross. Didn’t Rumpelstiltskin and hallucination Belle kiss at some point? This means that Pan’s shadows has probably been relaying everything that Rumpelstilskin has been saying, you know, via charades or something, and that ain’t good.

I also wonder what Rumpelstiltskin’s shadow has been up to. We haven’t seen it since he cut it off. Can Rumpelstiltskin’s shadow shapeshift like Peter Pans? What happened to the shadow that we saw Pan tear out of Greg Mendell?

Anyway, Regina convinces Rumpelstiltskin that they should join forces, because wandering around in circles in the jungle with the Charmings has gotten really, really annoying. They need to rescue Henry and go do something more interesting.

a screencap of regina (played by lana parrilla) transformed into ursula the sea goddess
Girl, you are looking fabulous!

Back to the fishy mermaid story of lovey dovey. Regina has been spying on Snow White and Ariel and she devises yet another plan to kill Snow White that will of course not work. We already know that Snow White survives to the present, so there is never any tension in these stories about her and Regina’s past.

Anyway, Regina disguises herself as Ursula so that she can trick Ariel into joining her in her evil plan, also because it’s just too fun to look that fabulous and ham it up.

a screencap of ariel (played by joanna garcia swisher), regina (played by lana parrilla) and snow white (played by ginnifer goodwin) transformed into a mermaid
A Poor Unfortunate Soul

Regina gives Ariel a magical bracelet to put on Snow White that gives Ariel legs and changes Snow White’s legs into fins, unfortunately, since Snow White has no idea how use fins, this leaves her helpless. Snow White is completely at Regina’s mercy now, but instead of killing Snow White right away, which would be the smart thing to do, Regina drags it out and gives Ariel enough time to grab a fork to stab her with.

Ariel takes the bracelet off Snow White, which means that she loses her legs and won’t be able to go on the journey with Eric. Snow White convinces Ariel to tell Eric about her fishiness, because, who knows? Maybe Eric is into that kind of thing. Regina steals Ariel’s voice at the last second though, so she will never be able to tell Eric the truth.

Fast forward to present day, Regina returns Ariel’s voice to her and says that will give Ariel legs and reunite her with Eric, if she does a favour for her. You see mermaids can travel between realms (the Hell?) and they need a magical doohickey from Mr. Gold’s store in Storybrooke. Yay! We’re going back to Storybrooke!

So, mermaids can just spontaneously open portals between worlds or something? That’s really dang useful. You’d figure that Regina or Rumpelstiltskin would have captured one and be keeping it in a tank in their basement for emergencies.

a screencap of neal (played by  michael raymond-james) hugging emma (played by jennifer morrison)
And then the “Captain Swan” fans grabbed their torches and pitchforks.

So, what have the Charmings and Captain Hook been doing this whole time?

Well, it turns out that Captain Hook really is a good guy and he tells them right away that Neal is alive and in Neverland, even though this means that he’ll have to stop macking on Emma. Emma says that the only reason she kissed Hook was because she was bored or something and she likes messing with people’s emotions.

Neal is in the middle of a magical pit that can only be crossed if everyone reveals a dark secret they’ve been hiding. That evil, evil Peter Pan, making everyone tell the truth. Who does he think he is?

So, everyone’s deep dark secret:

  • Hook kissed Emma and he’s was afraid to admit that this means he’s moved on from his dead love, Milah.
  • Mary Margaret is upset because she isn’t really getting that mother-daughter experience that she wanted with Emma and when they get home to Storybrooke, she want’s to start over again with a new baby.
  • We already know David’s secret. He can’t leave Neverland because he had his dreamshade poisoning cured by the magic spring, so he can’t have a baby with Margaret in Storybrooke.
  • And Emma’s secret is that she was hoping that Neal really was dead, because she was afraid of facing all the hurt that Neal caused her. Emma is just in general really bad at dealing with emotions

So, after Neal and Emma are back together, he tells her that he’ll never stop fighting for her, except he totally did already. Doesn’t he remember how he fell in love with Tamara and got engaged to her?

Hey, we never found out who was in that other cage from last week. Bleh. I hate waiting.

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S03E01 “The Heart of the Truest Believer”

SPOILER ALERT! AREN’T THESE SPOILERS ALERTS GETTING ANNOYING!? SPOILER ALERT!

Well, kiddies, here we go again for a third season…

I’d say this episode was mostly exposition, if the word “exposition” meant explaining things in the vaguest way possible, presumably, so that they can stretch out the revelation of important plot points over as many episodes as possible. The ole soap opera style long con, is what we’ve got on our hands here.

a screencap of a doctor holding newborn henry mills
Now, be a good Spartan and leave him to die of exposure in the wilderness.

A the beginning of the show, we get a flashback to Emma giving birth to Henry and then giving him up. During the birth, her magic cause an electrical disturbance and makes the lights flash, and nobody notices or cares. Don’t ever send me to that hospital. They don’t care if a power surge knock the life-sustaining equipment out.

Emma finally calls attention to the fact that her mother, Mary Margaret,  is the same age as her and doesn’t really have that much wisdom to impart. Also, that her whole “Happily Ever After” shtick is useless and annoying.

a screencap of rumpelstiltskin (played by robert carlyle) wearing his old enchanted forest clothes
The clothes make the man.

Rumpelstiltskin changes into his old Enchanted Forest clothes. Where did Rumpelstiltskin get his old clothes from? Were they on the boat? Why did Captain Hook have Rumpelstiltskin’s clothing on his boat? I bet Captain Hook kept the Rumpelstiltskin’s clothes in his bunk and sniffed them during his alone time. Or… Rumpelstiltskin just magiced the clothing to the boat… Whatever.

Anyway, everybody on the boat is bickering and not working well together already and it’s a bit annoying how quickly the alliance of good and evil has started breaking down.

Soooo… Captain Hook was Baelfire surrogate father for awhile and now he’s crushing on Emma, Baelfire’s girlfriend. This is going to get awkward fast.

a screencap of greg mendell (played by ethan embry) starting a fire while tamara (played by sonequa martin-green) and henry (played by jared s. gilmore) look on
Marshmallows anyone?

Greg and Tamara take Henry on a sweet camping trip, the kind his mom and dad never had the time for.

It turns out that Greg and Tamara don’t know who they’re working for and they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing what they’re doing. They just know that they needed to kidnap Henry and bring him to Neverland and then, like, magic, which they HATE, will… er… stop or something. They know this because of FAITH. WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY ELSE HAVE FAITH LIKE THEY DO?

Greg and Tamara are big fat dummies.

a screen cap of lost boy felix (played by paker croft)
This is Felix. I hate Felix.

Hey, it’s Felix and the Lost Boys, here to ruin everybody’s good time. They want Henry.

a screencap of greg mendell (played by ethan emby) having his shadow removed by the evil shadow peter pan
YOUR SOUL IS MINE!

Felix calls the scary Neverland shadow creature to pull Greg’s soul out of his body. Greg looks like he’s dead. I hope he is. He was annoying.

I’m not sure anymore whether or not the scary flying shadow is Peter Pan. It may be a completely separate character. Remember, in the original Peter Pan, Peter’s shadow kept running off, until Wendy sewed the shadow to Peter Pan. I think something like that may be happening here. Peter not being in control of his malevolent, soul-stealing shadow is a little scary.

a screencap of tamara (played by sonequa martin-green) getting hit in the back by an arrow
YAY!

And, Tamara get’s shot in the back with and arrow and there is much rejoicing. She doesn’t die though. Rumpelstiltskin comes by later and crushes her heart into dust, so that was good.

Free of Greg and Tamara, Henry runs into the woods to escape The Lost Boys.

a screencap of henry mills (played by jared s. gilmore) meeting a blond boy (played by robbie kay)
Just what we needed, another KID!

So, Jojen Reed finally meets Bran Stark in the forest and explains how their fathers were great allies during Robert’s Rebellion. Er… I mean… Some blond kid saves Henry from the mean upperclassmen that were chasing him.

a screencap of mulan (played by jamie chung), aurora (played by sarah bolger) and prince philip (played by julia morris) rushing to the side of baelfire (played by michael raymond-james)
Remember these guys?

Mulan, Aura and Prince Philip treat Neal’s wounds and, for some strange reason, put him on Aurora’s sleeping curse bed. Why would they do that? It’s just weird. Put the poor guy on a proper bed, jeez.

Hey, Prince Philip’s soul is back in his body! They never showed us how Prince Philip’s soul was returned to his body. I SMELL A FLASHBACK EPISODE COMING UP!

They keep asking Neal about Earth and technology and stuff, and being all like “Your world frightens and confuses me”. Weird that they didn’t really do that when they were hanging out with Emma.

Anyhoo, I predict many, many episodes of wandering around the forest and not really doing much for these brave adventurers.

a screencap of some evil mermaids
SPARKLY!

So, back to the boat, which is taking forever to reach the shores of Neverland, and evil mermaids start hitting the boat with their tails. Apparently, they’re really strong, because they actually start causing damage.

David straight-up starts firing a canon at the mermaids and it is ridiculous. He’s trying to murder sentient creatures without talking to them first. Maybe attacking the boat was all a big misunderstanding! We’ll never know, because attempting to explode them was his first choice of action.

a screencap of an evil mermaid (played by natasha wilson)
Grrrrrrrr…

They capture one of the mermaids for some reason and she is pissed. She uses a magic conch shell to conjure a  typhoon. I think Link from The Legend of Zelda had one of those.

Regina tells David to “Flay the bitch!”

FLAY THE BITCH? Holy Hell! I thought this was a family program!

Anyway, it turns out that the typhoon is fuelled by interpersonal discord and it just gets worse and worse as the people on the boat keep bickering and punching eachother in the face. Emma figures out that they need to start working together to stop the typhoon. She trows herself of the boat, so that they have to work together to save her. Emma is an idiot.

I think that the mermaid was really a magical angel, sent to our heroes to teach them the value of friendship and teamwork.

*SPOILERS* I already know from previews that Ariel is going to show up this season and this isn’t here. I wonder if this is actually Ursula? She can use a bit of magic like Ursula at least.

a screencap of robin hood (played by sean maguire)
THIS ROBIN HOOD IS AN IMPOSTER

Back to the Enchanted Forest. Remember all the junk last season about nothing being left of the Enchanted Forest after the curse but a void? Complete bunk! Even Rumpelstiltskin’s castle is still there! So, Neal goes to his father’s castle to try and find a magic trinket or dealy that would open up a portal to return to Emma.

Robin Hood, played by a new actor, is there, because he likes touching other people’s stuff. Maid Marion is nowhere to be found.

I hope we have a situation where it’s The Merry Men VS The Lost Boys. I hope there isn’t anything, like, through weird time travel shenanigans, that The Lost Boys become The Merry Men. That would be silly.

a screencap of henry (played by jared s. gilmore) and peter pan (played by robbie kay) flying through the air trailing pixie dust
THUNDERPANTS!

So, blondy has some magic fairy dust, but it only works if you truly believe it will work. Henry will believe anything that you tell hi, so of course Henry can use the dust to fly.

It turns out that the blond kid is Peter Pan and he was being all tricksy and stuff with Henry to test his belief. It turn out that Henry has “The Heart of the Truest Believer”. What does The Heart of the Truest Believer do? I bet that we’ll have to wait many, many episodes to find out. Also, how did Peter Pan find out about Henry and the he may have The Heart of the Truest Believer? There better not be a prophecy involved here. (There probably is.)

Also, it turns out that Peter Pan was the one giving Greg and Tamara their orders this whole time, in order to trick them into bringing Henry to him. But how? Neither he or his lost boys could contact them directly because they hate magic. Also, Peter Pan would have had to have a way to contact people on other worlds. If he could do that, why didn’t he just contact Henry directly, trick him into coming to Neverland and cut out the middleman? Greg and Tamara are so fanatical about their hate for magic, what if they just decided to deviate from Pan’s plan and kill all the magical creatures, Henry included? How did Peter Pan know that the citizen of Storybrooke were growing magic beans and that Greg and Tamara would be able to obtain one of the beans to get to Neverland? We see that he can send his shadow to Earth to steal child. Why didn’t he just have the shadow steal Henry? None of it makes any sense.

Bah. Whatever. See you next week.

Once Upon a Time Season 2 Catch Up

SPOILER ALERT! Well, you really should know all of this by now, but I’m warning you anyway.

Well, it’s almost time for season 3 of Once Upon a Time. Now would be a really good time for you to catch up on any episodes you missed from season 2. Luckily I have made you with handy list with be plot points!

All episode titles link to posts that I wrote about that episode and character names link to the tag archive for that character.

Table of Contents:

  1. Broken
  2. We Are Both
  3. Lady of the Lake
  4. The Crocodile
  5. The Doctor
  6. Tallahassee
  7. Child of the Moon
  8. Into the Deep
  9. Queen of Hearts
  10. The Cricket Game
  11. The Outsider
  12. In the Name of the Brother
  13. Tiny
  14. Manhattan
  15. The Queen is Dead
  16. The Miller’s Daughter
  17. Welcome to Storybrooke
  18. Selfless, Brave and True
  19. Lacey
  20. The Evil Queen
  21. Second Star to the Right
  22. And Straight On ‘Til Morning

S02E01 Broken

S02E02 We Are Both

  • The people of Storybrooke, having newly regained the memories of their past lives, must come to grips with essentially being two people at once.
  • Grumpy pushes Sneezy across the townline which makes Sneezy lose his fairy tale memories, leaving him with just his memories of being Mr. Clark.
  • David searches for a way to open a portal to the Enchanted Forest to retrieve Emma and Snow White.
  • In the past, Regina uses a magic looking glass that Rumpelstiltskin gave her to trap her mother, Cora, in Wonderland.
  • It is revealed that Rumpelstiltskin is the one that originally taught Regina how to use magic, specifically, dark magic.
  • Regina rediscovers how to use magic in Storybrooke, but changes her mind on using it to make Henry love her, because it would not be a real love.
  • Meanwhile, in the present-day Enchanted Forest, Mulan and Aurora have taken Emma and Snow White prisoner.

S02E03 Lady of the Lake

  • Sir Lancelot is introduced.
  • In the past Enchanted Forest, Snow White is kidnapped by King George who poisons her so that she cannot have a child.
  • King George’s men also shoot Prince Charming’s mother with a poison arrow.
  • Snow White, Lancelot, Prince Charming and his mother all travel Lake Nostos for a cure, but there is only enough water left there to heal one person.
  • Prince Charming’s mother pretends to drink the healing water and Lancelot secretly puts the healing water in Snow White’s goblet.
  • Prince Charming’s mother sacrifices her life to cure Snow White and lives just long enough to see Snow White and Prince Charming get married, which was her dearest wish.
  • In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Snow White and Emma are trapped in a prison with Cora.
  • Lancelot, having recognized Snow White from their past dealing frees them from the prison and they go off in search of the wardrobe that brought Emma to our world.
  • They find the wardrobe, but it turns out that Lancelot was really Cora in disguise and they have to destroy the wardrobe to keep her from getting her hands on it.
  • In Storybrooke, Jefferson is reunited with his daughter and David has trouble dealing with his new job of taking care of Henry.

S02E04 The Crocodile

  • This is the first appearance of Captain Hook, Smee and Rumpelstiltskin’s wife, Milah.
  • In the past Enchanted Forest, Milah ran off with the pirate, Killian Jones, and Rumpelstiltskin crushed Milah’s heart and cut off Killian’s hand in retaliation, making Killian into Captain Hook and Rumpelstiltskin into the crocodile (metaphorically?).
  • In Storybrooke, Moe attempts to get his daughter, Belle, over the townline to erase her memories of her love for Rumpelstiltskin, but Rumpelstiltskin saves her at the last second.
  • In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Cora shows a bottle of the ashes from the wardrobe to Captain Hook and they start hatching a plan to get to Storybrooke.

S02E05 The Doctor

S02E06 Tallahassee

  • This is the first appearance of Anton the giant.
  • In the past, Emma is a thief and she falls in love with a fellow thief named “Neal Cassidy“.
  • August Booth meets alone with Neal and convinces him that Emma, in order to fulfill her special destiny, must be rehabilitated from her life of crime and he convinces Neal to rat Emma out for a crime that she didn’t commit so that she will be thrown in jail, because jail will straighten her out or something.
  • Emma finds out that she is pregnant in jail.
  • In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Emma climbs the the beanstalk, retrieves the magic compass, decides to spare the giant’s life and leaves Captain Hook chained up in the giant’s castle.
  • Aurora has been having nightmares ever since she was woken from the sleeping curse.
  • Henry is also having nightmares after coming out of his sleeping curse

S02E07 Child of the Moon

  • In the past Enchanted Forest, while on the run from the Evil Queen, Red gets split up from Snow White and runs into her mother who Granny said was dead.
  • Red’s mother and her wolf pack teach Red how to control her wolf form.
  • Snow White finds Red, but accidentally leads some of the Evil Queen’s men to the wolves’ lair and they kill one of the pack.
  • Red’s mother believes the death is Snow White’s fault and wants Red to kill her. Red and her mother fight instead and the mother is accidentally killed in the process.
  • In Storybrooke, the dwarves have found fairy dust and they think that it can be used to fix Jefferson’s hat.
  • Albert Spencer frames Ruby for the murder of Billy and uses the the resultant distraction to steal Jefferson’s hat and destroy it.
  • Aurora and Henry meet in their nightmares.

S02E08 Into the Deep

  • In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Cora raises an undead army of the people that she stole hearts from.
  • Henry meets with Aurora in the nightmare zone.
  • David ends up trapped in the sleeping curse.

S02E09 Queen of Hearts

S02E10 The Cricket Game

S02E11 The Outsider

S02E12 In the Name of the Brother

S02E13 Tiny

S02E14 Manhattan

S02E15 The Queen is Dead

S02E16 The Miller’s Daughter

S02E17 Welcome to Storybrooke

S02E18 Selfless, Brave and True

S02E19 Lacey

S02E20 The Evil Queen

  • In the past Enchanted Forest, Regina disguises herself as a peasant so that she can find out what people really think about her.
  • In the present Storybrooke, Regina ventures into the catacombs with Hook to retrieve a trigger that will annihilate Storybrooke. Regina plans to escape the annihilation with Henry by using a magic bean she stole.
  • Hook betrays Regina and gives her to Greg and Tamara.
  • Greg and Tamara kidnap Regina, because Greg wants to know what Regina did with his father, Kurt Flynn.

S02E21 Second Star to the Right

  • After falling through the portal that his father, Rumpelstilskin, refused to travel through, Baelfire is transported to 19th century England, where he is taken in by Wendy Darling and her family.
  • The Darling children are visited every night by a malevolent shadow creature. Baelfire allows himself to be taken by this creature to Neverland so that the Darling children would be spared by it.
  • Neal finds out that Tamara is evil and plotting Storybrooke’s destruction.
  • Tamara shoots Neal  and he falls into a portal she created with magic bean.
  • Regina had killed Greg’s Father, Kurt.

S02E22 And Straight On ‘Til Morning

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S02E22 “And Straight On ‘Til Morning”

SPOILER ALERT! TODAY’S RECAP WILL BE PRESENTED IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY! SPOILER ALERT!

THIS WEEK’S EPISODE WAS THE SEASON FINALE AND I’M GLAD, BECAUSE I’M NOT SURE HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS I WOULD BE ABLE TO TAKE.

AND, NOW, HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT I YELLED AT THE TV WHILE THE EPISODE WAS AIRING:

A SCREENCAP OF GRUMPY (PLAYED BY LEE ARENBERG) HOLDING A MAGIC MEMORY-RETURNING POTION
IT’S BLUE LIKE ROMULAN ALE

THE BLUE FAIRY MADE A LAST-MINUTE POTION THAT CAN RETURN PEOPLE’S MEMORIES TO THEM? THAT’S GODDAMN CONVENIENT.

GRUMPY IS GOING TO RETURN SLEEPY’S MEMORIES TO HIM AGAINST HIS WILL? MAGIC ASSAULT!

WELL, I WAS WRONG. THE WRITERS DID FIND A WAY TO RETURN SLEEPY’S MEMORY TO HIM BY THE LAST EPISODE. THEY FOUND A VERY HALF-ASSED, HAND-WAVEY WAY TO RETURN SLEEPY’S MEMORY TO HIM. GOOD FOR THEM.

A SCREENCAP OF CAPTAIN HOOK (PLAYED BY COLIN O'DONOGHUE) TEACHING YOUNG BAELFIRE (PLAYED BY DYLAN SCHMID) HOW TO STEER A SHIP
STEER THE BOOT THROUGH CGI INFESTED WATERS

BAELFIRE HAS THREE DADS NOW! RUMPELSTILTSKIN, MR. DARLING AND CAPTAIN HOOK! WHAT A LUCKY BOY!

HOW IS CAPTAIN HOOK EVEN A PIRATE? WE NEVER SEE HIM PILLAGING EVER. DOES THE EYELINER MAKE HIM A PIRATE?

THEY MENTION CURSED MERMAIDS A WHOLE BUNCH AND WE NEVER SEE THEM. I FEEL CHEATED.

A SCREENCAP OF EMMA SWAN (PLAYED BY JENNIFER MORRISON) AND REGINA MILLS (PLAYED BY LANA PARRILLA) COMBING THEIR MAGIC TO STOP THE DOOMSDAY DEVICE
MORTAL ENEMIES WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE COMMON GOOD!

THE SELF-DESTRUCT BUTTON FOR STORYBROOKE IS UNSTOPPABLE… NOT! IT ONLY NEEDS TWO MAGIC USERS TO STOP IT. EMMA HAS BARELY HAD ANY PRACTICE AT USING MAGIC AND THEY STILL STOPPED IT. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE DIED AND THE DESTRUCTION WAS MINIMAL. WEREN’T THEY ADVERTISING THAT THE SEASON FINALE WAS GOING TO BE DEVASTATING?

A SCREENCAP OF GREG MENDELL (PLAYED BY ETHAN EMBRY) AND TAMARA (PLAYED BY SONEQUA MARTIN-GREEN) KIDNAPPING HENRY MILLS (PLAYED BY JARED S. GILMORE)
DON’T WORRY, HE’LL ANNOY THEM SO MUCH THEY’LL PAY TO GET RID OF HIM

SOMEHOW GREG AND TAMARA MANAGE TO BE COMPLETELY SILENT AND INVISIBLE TO KIDNAP HENRY WHEN HE WAS RIGHT BESIDE HIS MOMS AND HIS GRANDPARENTS. THEY ALSO GAIN A LARGE LEAD ON THEM DESPITE ONLY JOG-WALKING AWAY.

GREG AND TAMARA ARE, YET AGAIN, EXTREMELY VAGUE ABOUT WHO THEY ARE WORKING FOR AND WHAT EXACTLY THEIR CAUSE IS. I SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT THE WRITERS THEMSELVES DON’T KNOW AND THEY’RE USING VAGUENESS TO BUY THEMSELVES SOME TIME. THEY KEEP USING WORDS LIKE “HOLY” AND “SACRED”, SO I’M JUST GOING TO PRETEND THAT THEY’RE WORKING FOR THE POPE, UNTIL I’M TOLD OTHERWISE.

A SCREENCAP OF EMMA SWAN (PLAYED BY JENNIFER MORRISON), REGINA MILLS (PLAYED BY LANA PARRILLA), MR. GOLD (PLAYED BY REOBERT CARLYLE), CAPTAIN HOOK (PLAYED BY COLIN O'DONOGHUE), MARY MARGARET (PLAYED BY GINNIFER GOODWIN) AND DAVID NOLAN (PLAYED BY JOSH DALLAS) BRACING THEMSELVES ON A BOAT
THEY’RE ON A BOAT!

EVERYBODY IS FRIENDS NOW! EMMA, REGINA, CAPTAIN HOOK, MARY MARGARET AND DAVID PUT ASIDE THEIR DIFFERENCES IN ORDER TO FORM AN ELITE TEAM AND GET HENRY BACK. THEY HATED EACHOTHER JUST FIVE MINUTES AGO, BUT WHO CARES? SHUT YOUR BUTT!

AAAAAANNNNDDDDDDD…IT LOOKS LIKE THE BIG BAD FOR NEXT SEASON IS GOING TO BE PETER PAN. THEY BETTER GET A MICHAEL JACKSON LOOKALIKE TO PLAY PETER PAN.

GRAGH! *SMASH* *STOMP* NARG! *SMASH* SNARGH! *STOMP*

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S02E21 “Second Star to the Right”

SPOILER ALERT!

I am angry at this show. This show makes me angry.

Young Baelfire emerges from the portal created by the magic bean a half-foot taller and with a deeper voice. He is in 19th century London, England. He promptly decides to become a moppet, or a ragamuffin, or a 19th century cockney bootblack… or something. Anyway, it’s a job that doesn’t pay the bills. He takes to breaking into people’s houses and stealing food to survive.

Anyhoo… One of the houses he decides to rob happens to be the home of Wendy Moira Angela Darling (of Peter Pan fame) and she decides to take pity on Baelfire, the poor street urchin, and keep him in her crawlspace and feed him table scraps. This is the first instance of a person being kept in a crawlspace while not also being tortured and/or murdered that I have ever seen. Wendy’s parents discover this strange arrangement and, instead of being angry, decide that the best course of action is for this peripubescent boy to move out of the crawlspace and stay in their peripubescent daughter’s bedroom instead. Incidentally, in the olden days, when you found a parentless child, instead of having to report them to the authorities, you could just decide to keep them.

Alright, so Tamara’s grandmother isn’t Wendy. I am usually wrong most of the time, so you shouldn’t have believed me anyway. I don’t think this is the last we’re going to see of Wendy though.

a screencap of young baelfire (played by dylan schmid), wendy darling (played by freya tingley) and the shadow played by cgi
Hey! Dark Link wants to take me on an adventure and I’m going!

It turns out that Bae’s would-be girlfriend, Wendy, has been being visited in the middle of the night by a magic shadow. The shadow looks evil and acts ominous but Wendy thinks it’s wonderful. That is, until the shadow takes her to Neverland, which turns out to be a horrible place where children miss their parents for eternity and the shadow wants to take one of her brothers there. Bae ends up sacrificing himself and going to Neverland instead and that’s the reason why Baelfire isn’t 130 years old in present day on the show.

One thing I noticed is that although they say “Neverland” a lot in this episode, they never actually mention Peter Pan. I wonder if they are trying to weasel their way out of having to pay royalties to the Great Ormand Street Hospital who own the rights to Peter Pan?

Some other stuff that happened:

  • Lacey and Mr. Gold beat up Dr. Whale, because it is fun and also to remind the audience that Dr. Whale exists. I assume Dr. Whale will play some sort of important part in this season’s finale because of this.
  • Lacey is still an alcoholic.
  • Greg and Tamara are trying to murder magic because it’s unholy or something.
  • Greg and Tamara keep alluding to some worldwide anti-magic organization that they belong to without ever naming it. I bet the writers haven’t actually come up with what the organization is yet.
  • David gives his gun to Emma, but then in the next scene he points his gun at Greg. CONTINUITY ERROR!
  • Tamara shoots Neal and throws a magic bean at him. He falls through a portal AGAIN.
a screencap of emma swan (played by jennifer morrison) about to lose her grip on neal cassidy (played by michael raymond-james) over a portal to another world
WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME!?

Things that I think aren’t going to happen in the finale:

  • Sneezy getting his memory back
  • The big reveal of the secret organization that Tamara and Greg belong to
  • Dr. Frankentstein finding his brother
  • Finding out where Neal went when he fell through the portal this time around
  • Rumpelstiltskin’s undoing

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S02E20 “The Evil Queen”

SPOILER ALERT! EPISODE TWENTY OF THE SECOND SEASON OF ONCE UPON A TIME, IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY!

This episode was all about how Regina is an insane, crazy idiot. I mean, I hardly even have the words to describe how stupid Regina is in this episode.

a screencap of regina shapshifted into a peasant (played by bri neal)
Regina Shapshifted into a Peasant

Regina goes to Rumpelstiltskin and asks him to shapeshift her into someone else so that she can hide in plain sight in order to get the jump on Snow White and kill her. He tells her that no one will recognize her and that she won’t be able to use magic while she is another form. He even shows her that she looks completely different in a mirror to drive the point home.

The next time we see Regina, she tries to use magic and have people obey her as their queen. Gah! Memory like a goldfish this one has.

Regina also doesn’t seem to get why killing thousands of people would make her evil, because something, something, SNOW WHITE. And we learn for the, like, millionth time that Regina can never be reformed, because we just didn’t understand it when they tried to drive that point home in all the previous episodes.

I don’t even know anymore. Please stop, Once Upon a Time, you’re hurting me.

…yadda yadda yadda…

Regina meets up with Captian Hook and they go to retrieve some magical MacGuffin out of the caverns beneath the library, because that cavern set was expensive, goddamit, and they have to justify the expenditure by using it at least once a season.

a screencap of a cgi maleficent lych
Maleficent, girl, that is not a good look for you.

But, oh no! Maleficent is still alive, because magic, and Regina tosses Hook to her as a distraction. Also, Maleficent is now a lych or something of the like. I assume the actress that plays Maleficent, Kristine Bauer van Straten, is busy working on True Blood. Still, hope that Maleficent returns to human form this season, because I love Kristin Bauer van Straten. One day she will be my best friend.

a screencap of captain hook (played by colin o'donaghue), tamara (played by sonequa martin-green) and greg mendell (played by ethan embry) gloating
A-HA!

When Regina returns to the surface with the MacGuffin, she learns that Captain Hook is in cahoots with Tamara and Greg Mendell. Tamara and Greg have powerful scientific powers and they gave Hook a special cuff filled with the “toughest metals and machinery known to man” to give to Regina. The cuff counteracts Regina’s magic powers and she is now helpless.

I really don’t like the whole “magic vs. science” thing. Magic is a completely fake, made-up thing, so, to counteract it, you need completely fake, made-up science. It usually just devolves into annoying techobabble vs. annoying magicbabble.

Well, kids, there’s only two more episodes left in this season. Let’s see if they can fix things in that small amount of time.