Rewatching OUaT (s1 discs 1 and 2)
Once Upon a Time - Season 1 discs 1 and 2
I’m finally rewatching season 1 on DVD - I loved the show when it first came out, season 2 not so much, and then I didn’t have the opportunity to watch any more. Overall, it’s standing up to the rewatch, with the Pilot, setting everything up, and Snow Falls being stand-out episodes of the first two discs for me. Everything else is of about the same standard, with some things that don’t work as well. Snow White is my favourite fairy tale character, so I’m less invested in episodes focusing on others.
What I am enjoying is that it’s so female driven. In Storybrooke, Emma is the protagonist and Regina her antagonist, while Snow is the protagonist in the fairy tales versus the Evil Queen, and then there’s the touching, supportive relationship between Emma and Mary-Margaret, which we and Henry know is daughter-mother, even if they don’t. Even the other main male characters feel like supporting ones - Rumpelstiltskin/Mr Gold is only gradually getting revealed and the first story revolving around him is episode 8. Charming is a love interest, and the role reversal where he’s the sleeping, passive character in Storybrooke emphasised this. I’m still puzzling over the killing of Graeme/the Huntsman. I’d heard the showrunners (men) wanted to kill off Charming until the women on the team talked them out of it, so was this a hangover from that? Was it about emphasising how eeevil Regina is and to engender a feeling that nobody is safe? Did they desperately want to make Emma the sheriff or did people not understand Jamie Dornan’s accent?
It feels like there’s a shift after episode 7 - certainly, the clips and voice over about what’s going on have changed. I’m also curious about how far they planned ahead, and whether they always thought the show had many seasons in it.
The other big love story is the maternal one, with Emma developing a relationship with the son she gave up. Jared Gilmore isn’t in the same league as the adults (or, to be fairer, David Mazouz, say), but Emma-Henry is my kryptonite. There are a few things that the show never delves into, because Emma, not Henry, is the hero, but what must it have been like to grow up with a woman who can’t love him? To be the only child growing up, while everyone else is frozen in time, vague about their past and probably getting sent to Archie when he raises these things? At his age!? Getting the book and making the connection must have been life-changing, even before finding out about his birth mother and some of his background.
I have been challenged (before Belle comes into the story) by how I’ve tended to give Regina a harder time than Rumpelstiltskin, even though they’ve both murdered. Lana Parilla’s exquisitely made-up face stands up to all the close-ups she gets and Jennifer Morrison gets to pull all kinds of expressive faces as Emma stays in Storybrooke and starts to affect it. Both Ginnifer Godwin and Robert Carlyle do excellent jobs at differentiating between their characters at various points in their lives.
I adore Snow/Charming. He! is adept at weapons (which is miraculous when you consider ‘The Shepherd’ and WHAT is his birth name, anyway? He insists on being called ‘James’ when he’s pretending hard to be his twin brother, but they never resolved it, even though being John Doe/David Nolan in Storybrooke confused matters and as a former shepherd, ‘David’ is a fitting name.) She! is a feisty thief! He! is unhappily engaged. She! is on the run from Regina. He! is pretending to be royal. She! is the rightful heir to a kingdom. We! have already seen them share true love’s kiss, get married and get pregnant. Things! are entirely different in Storybrooke. The more time they spend together, the more the chemistry crackles between them, so I spend all Mary-Margaret and David’s scenes urging them to kiss already because it's not really adultery.
The melding of fairy tales sometimes works and creates a rich backstory, and sometimes feels like overkill (let’s lump in David the Biblical shepherd, twins separated at birth, the Knights of the Round Table and Midas all together!). I like how the show is continually seeding things, filling in gaps and the production design overall (some costumes and FX apart). I look forward to revisiting the rest of the first season, at least.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/326976.html.
I’m finally rewatching season 1 on DVD - I loved the show when it first came out, season 2 not so much, and then I didn’t have the opportunity to watch any more. Overall, it’s standing up to the rewatch, with the Pilot, setting everything up, and Snow Falls being stand-out episodes of the first two discs for me. Everything else is of about the same standard, with some things that don’t work as well. Snow White is my favourite fairy tale character, so I’m less invested in episodes focusing on others.
What I am enjoying is that it’s so female driven. In Storybrooke, Emma is the protagonist and Regina her antagonist, while Snow is the protagonist in the fairy tales versus the Evil Queen, and then there’s the touching, supportive relationship between Emma and Mary-Margaret, which we and Henry know is daughter-mother, even if they don’t. Even the other main male characters feel like supporting ones - Rumpelstiltskin/Mr Gold is only gradually getting revealed and the first story revolving around him is episode 8. Charming is a love interest, and the role reversal where he’s the sleeping, passive character in Storybrooke emphasised this. I’m still puzzling over the killing of Graeme/the Huntsman. I’d heard the showrunners (men) wanted to kill off Charming until the women on the team talked them out of it, so was this a hangover from that? Was it about emphasising how eeevil Regina is and to engender a feeling that nobody is safe? Did they desperately want to make Emma the sheriff or did people not understand Jamie Dornan’s accent?
It feels like there’s a shift after episode 7 - certainly, the clips and voice over about what’s going on have changed. I’m also curious about how far they planned ahead, and whether they always thought the show had many seasons in it.
The other big love story is the maternal one, with Emma developing a relationship with the son she gave up. Jared Gilmore isn’t in the same league as the adults (or, to be fairer, David Mazouz, say), but Emma-Henry is my kryptonite. There are a few things that the show never delves into, because Emma, not Henry, is the hero, but what must it have been like to grow up with a woman who can’t love him? To be the only child growing up, while everyone else is frozen in time, vague about their past and probably getting sent to Archie when he raises these things? At his age!? Getting the book and making the connection must have been life-changing, even before finding out about his birth mother and some of his background.
I have been challenged (before Belle comes into the story) by how I’ve tended to give Regina a harder time than Rumpelstiltskin, even though they’ve both murdered. Lana Parilla’s exquisitely made-up face stands up to all the close-ups she gets and Jennifer Morrison gets to pull all kinds of expressive faces as Emma stays in Storybrooke and starts to affect it. Both Ginnifer Godwin and Robert Carlyle do excellent jobs at differentiating between their characters at various points in their lives.
I adore Snow/Charming. He! is adept at weapons (which is miraculous when you consider ‘The Shepherd’ and WHAT is his birth name, anyway? He insists on being called ‘James’ when he’s pretending hard to be his twin brother, but they never resolved it, even though being John Doe/David Nolan in Storybrooke confused matters and as a former shepherd, ‘David’ is a fitting name.) She! is a feisty thief! He! is unhappily engaged. She! is on the run from Regina. He! is pretending to be royal. She! is the rightful heir to a kingdom. We! have already seen them share true love’s kiss, get married and get pregnant. Things! are entirely different in Storybrooke. The more time they spend together, the more the chemistry crackles between them, so I spend all Mary-Margaret and David’s scenes urging them to kiss already because it's not really adultery.
The melding of fairy tales sometimes works and creates a rich backstory, and sometimes feels like overkill (let’s lump in David the Biblical shepherd, twins separated at birth, the Knights of the Round Table and Midas all together!). I like how the show is continually seeding things, filling in gaps and the production design overall (some costumes and FX apart). I look forward to revisiting the rest of the first season, at least.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/326976.html.