OI! If you haven’t seen episodes 10 and 11 of season 2 of Once Upon a Time, then you might not want to read this.
I don’t really have much to say about these episodes, other than that they seemed to be mostly about time-wasting and stalling the storyline.
The Cricket Game stalls the “Regina’s Redemption” storyline, by making it look like she murdered Archie/Jiminy, but she really didn’t and everyone finds out that she didn’t really commit murder in the very next episode thereby making this episode completely pointless. But, I guess we have to see Regina suffer a bit more because DRAMA.
The Outsider stalls the “Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire Reunion” storyline, by first taking Rumpel’s magical macguffin that lets him leave town and keep his memory and then having Captain Hook shoot Belle across the town border and having her lose her memory. So, now Rumpelstilskin has to stay in Storybrooke and look after Belle for a couple of episodes, instead of looking for Baelfire, I’m betting.
Some Problems:
Hook has never seen a modern gun before. How was he so sure that the bullet would only make Belle stumble over the townline and not, in fact, kill her?
How come nobody seems to care anymore that Sneezy the dwarf has lost his memory? They seemed really keen to fix that earlier and now nobody seems to remember it even happening.
Why do the characters on this show always leave their enemies alive? They mow through various underlings, henchmen and mooks without a care in the world, but when it comes to taking the big boss down, they always develop morals, all of a sudden. Hey, henchmen have families too, you know?
Anyway, next episode looks like it’s going to be a Victor Frankenstein episode. I hope that they bring back Sexy Igor!
SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen Once Upon a Time episodes 2 through 5, you might not want to read this article.
Due to an illness and server troubles, I haven’t been keeping up with posting as many Once Upon a Time articles as I’d like to. So, here are some little summaries of my thoughts on episodes 2 through 5.
S02E02: We Are Both
Magic smells good!
Ugh. They’re making magic analogousness to drugs. So, does that only mean that evil magic is like drugs and good magic is like prescription drugs? Because, no one has any problem with the magic that the fairies use. Seems like a broken aesop to me.
Going over the town line means that you lose your fairy tale memories and are only left with your Storybrooke memories. Rumpelstiltskin never had any Storybrooke persona. Would he lose his entire memory or would he gain a Storybrooke persona, if he went over the town line? Also, who went over the town line to get Henry?
S02E03: Lady of the Lake
Emma smells good!
Charming’s mother dies needlessly in this episode! It’s a world full of magic! They most definitely could have found something other than the magic lake water to cure Snow White elsewhere.
“Hey, Emma, ogres hunt by sound!” Emma: “I’mma fire my gun for no good reason!”
An awul lot of the Enchanted Forest seems to exist still. I though most of it was supposed to be a void?
S02E04: The Crocodile
Rumpelstiltskin and Captain Hook smell good!
So, Rumpelstiltskin is now the Fairygodmother from Cinderella, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, the Dark One and the crocodile from Peter Pan. They need to stop making Rumpelstiltskin every character from every book. I mean, I love watching Robert Carlyle chew the scenery, but, seriously, this is getting to be too much.
Sexy Captain Hook? EVERYTHING MUST BE SEXY!
How did Rumpelstiltskin get such a sexy wife in the first place?
S02E05: The Doctor
Sexy Igor smells good!
Regina had a whole vault full of hearts. Why couldn’t Victor Frankenstein just ask for an extra one? Why did he have to trick her out of a heart?
Sexy Igor? Well, at least it wasn’t angry teenage Igor.
Why isn’t Frankenstein black and white everywhere that he goes? (It’s definitely due to budgetary constraints, but still…)
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.
So, in Storybrooke, there are a bunch of nuns, who used to be fairies, in a fairy tale world that was polytheistic. In season 2 the nuns will have their memories of the fairy tale world and the memories of their old belief system back. Christianity, being a monotheistic “burn the witches” type of deal, doesn’t seem like it would gel very well with people from a magical world. The fairy-nuns, I assume, will promptly defrock themselves.
What about characters like the mad hatter? Technically, his god is Lewis Carroll and Lewis Carroll has been dead for quite a while. I imagine it would be devastating to find out that all the pain and suffering in your life was because a mere mortal thought it would make an interesting story, and, what’s more, this creator is dead so you can’t make them answer for it.
In the world of Once Upon a Time does every story written become a real world? Does this include internet fanfiction? What if a person wrote a story about themselves? Rumpelstiltskin could write 100 different versions of himself to create a clone army. Regina could write a story of a world where it was impossible to be defeated.
Oh, crud, this thing is going to turn out to be one of the ages of Myst, isn’t it?
