So I love Once Upon a Time, it is a brilliant show. I love it, I love the characters, I love the stories and I love the feel of the whole thing.
I started writing this blog thinking I'd wrote a blog on here about it before now, looking quickly back I don't think I have, so this blog is incorporating a part review with a part rant!
***SPOILERS : For up to the latest episode which was shown on US TV last night (6th Jan 2013)***
So what is the show about?
The main star is Emma Swan, on her 28th birthday the son she gave up for adoption 10 years earlier (named Henry) shows up at her front door and brings her back to his home of Story Brooke.
Henry believes Story Brooke is under a curse, and that all the inhabitants are story book characters who have been made to forget their pasts and transported to our world by the evil queen.
We as an audience know this to be true because as well as following Emma the show splits off to stories of the characters past, in episode 1 its Snow White and Prince Charming.
The first season deals with Henry trying to make Emma believe him and break the curse, as you can guess by the last episode the curse has been lifted and the inhabitants of Story Brooke now remember who they are from Snow White and Charming all the way to the Evil Queen and Rumplestiltskin (who actually remember all along but hush!)
The second season part 1 see's Emma and Snow being thrown back into the Enchanted Forest and meeting the two new big bads, Cora (the Evil Queens mother and the Queen of Hearts) and Captain Hook. They team up with Sleeping Beauty and Mulan and by the end of season 2 part 1 they are jumping back into Story Brooke were the Evil Queen (Regina) has turned good for the sake of Henry.
Season 2 part 2 started last night and it has brought on the rant side of this post.
But first my view on the show.
I love it, it is wonderful and a breath of fresh air.
I love how they involve the back stories of the characters. Snow White and Prince Charming (Mary-Margaret and David) got on my wick at the end as a lot of the episodes obviously revolved around them in the Enchanted forest AND in Story Brooke, but there has also been some really brilliant stories involving Jiminey Cricket and Dr Frankenstien (though I am biased as Frankenstien/Dr Whale is played by David Anders and I've never disliked anything he's done before.)
The stories are twisted and not always how you'll remember them, most of the classic characters are there but the stories have a more adult twist on them.
And the one thing I loved about season 1 is that it showed that even evil has to be made evil.
I loved how Regina and Mr Gold (Rumple) were first shown as being evil. Black and white good and evil no hearts, no souls.
BUT THEN the show did a back story on them, a few actually, and you realise how normal people turned the way they did.
I will share a brief explanation on both of them.
Regina, the Evil Queen, started off as just a normal upper class girl (I'm not sure if she was a noble or anything but by our standards she was upper class.) One day whilst talking to her one true love, she saw a little girl in trouble on a horse and saved her. This little girl was Snow White. After saving her Snow's dad (the King) asked to marry Regina, and her over baring mother agreed to the marrage, much to Regina's horror as she was in love with the stable boy Daniel. Snow finds out that Regina is going to run off and marry Daniel but gets tricked into telling Regina's mum about it so Regina's mum abushes the young couple and rips Daniels heart out.
So now she's evil?
WRONG!
We THEN find out that actually she dealt with the pain like we all do. She blamed someone. She blamed Snow White. Now Snow thought she was doing a good thing because she didn't want Regina to lose her mother like she did, but it actually turned out horribly wrong, but Regina doesn't do anything. Until Rumplestiltskin shows up that is. Regina's mother was his pupil, so as a wedding gift Rumple gives Regina the power to rid herself of her mother, and she does, by pushing her mother into the looking glass and into Wonderland.
Evil yet?
Nope!
After this Rumple takes Regina on to be his new apprentice, but she can't take a life. In fact she only wants to learn magic to maybe bring her partner Daniel back from the dead. So Rumple and Jefferson (The Mad Hatter) think up a plan to make her realize that Daniel isn't coming back and that will make the Queen focused on the tasks Rumple wants her to be focused on (ripping peoples hearts out like her mother did.) So they bring in Dr Frankenstien to try and bring him back, tricking her into believing the experiment went wrong.
THAT is when she becomes evil.
She took a lot to become the Evil Queen but when she was, man how she was evil! She enacted the curse that Rumple gave her to send everyone to Story Brooke.
Rumple himself isn't any easier to categorise.
He was a villages coward after not wanting to go to the ogre wars, his wife then left him to follow her dreams with Captain Hook (not Captain Hook at this point.) He has to go home to tell his son that his mother is dead.
Did that turn him evil?
Well you get the point.
His son is going to be enlisted to join the wars so he found a way to stop himself losing his son, he takes on the Dark Lord and then becomes the Dark Lord himself.
It might not have been as much of a transformation but the emotion behind it is seen and you can understand how he went from being the village coward to the Dark Lord.
The stories are fun as well as believable 90% of the time, everything about it is just new and fresh.
So the fail?
Henry finds his mum 10 years after she gave him up. 10 years! He's always been looked after by Regina, there is no proof that she wasn't a good mother other then possibly being a bit strict. He goes on now he has his mother about how he wants to learn how to be a proper Prince, yet everything David teaches him in the second series Regina would have let him learn. Especially the horse riding as she is a horse rider herself.
The fact that he takes everything Emma says even when he see's the good in Regina is a bit annoying, and Emma herself is the most annoying character now. Magically becoming a mother when it suits her.
It seems that everyone, ever, has been set up in Story Brooke, yet even though Emma spends most of the episode knowing that Regina has been set up she then lets a simple bit of magic make her mind up in seconds. Not to mention how we have to think that Snow is whiter then white in these moments when we know she isn't.
Sometimes, just sometimes the good things they do in the show are totally destroyed by forgetting the work they've already put in. In the latest episode the back story to show why Snow feels the way she feels makes no sense and actually just makes the whole thing seem like they've just randomly added it in so they can have her act that way. She went from being a sweet character to what they think is a strong character, but they made her in this episode just a little bit moany and whiny.
They have this great concept yet they let normal everyday television get to them and they brought the characteristics they'd worked hard to portray in the first series and start of the second series to nothing. Of course it is one episode and we have to see how Regina is cleared, but this story was just done at the end of the last series and it has only been another half of the series since.
Don't get me wrong this is one problem in what? 30 episodes or something? Hopefully it'll be resolved in no time and I'll be back to doing everything to love the series, the characters are still wonderful even though I am a little annoyed at Emma and Henry and their do gooding sometimes.
So in all everyone should watch the show as it is wonderful. And I apologize the ending is a bit terrible as I started writing this on Monday and ended it on Friday!
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