Once Upon a Time "Lacey"
I find I have very little to say about this episode. Unfortunately, my interest in Once Upon a Time is on the wane.
Rumplestiltskin/Belle holds no appeal for me whatsoever. I applauded when Rumple said: “we have nothing in common.” Yes Rumple, stick with that.
And I’m sorry, but I don’t think Emilie de Ravin makes for a good Belle. I know it’s incredibly difficult to embody a sweet, lovely, guileless maiden - in fact, it’s probably the hardest role any actress can take. But it’s not impossible. Angel Coulby managed to give Guinevere a sense of warmth and realism, even in the midst of spouting corny lines, and Mia Sara completely embodied wide-eyed innocence and childlike self-absorption as Princess Lili in Legend.
But Belle just comes across as terminally insipid. That she considers Rumple a good man for not killing someone doesn’t make any sense, especially since she spent at least a few days beforehand listening to him torture a man and cleaning the blood off his aprons afterwards. Yet Rumplestiltskin decides to spare a man who stole a wand to save his pregnant wife and suddenly there’s good in him?
Gah. I hate this type of mentality. It doesn’t make him good, it makes him not a loathsome, despicable, terrible, evil person. And last time I checked, MOST people in the world avoid being loathsome, despicable, terrible and evil - so why exactly should Rumple get a cookie for it? Especially since Snow is being punished for stopping two women from killing everyone in sight. Yeesh. The moral compass of Once Upon a Time is worse than Merlin’s. And Merlin’s was pretty horrific.
As an old Robin Hood fan, it was fun to see a new take on the old character, though he didn’t really get much to do. The Sheriff clocked in more screen-time than he did. I recognised Tom Ellis (aka, Cenred from Merlin) but if I squinted, I could pretend they were the Jonas Armstrong/Lucy Griffiths versions of Robin and Marian. Sigh.
And although the magic bow tied in nicely with the one Snow was toting in her dark phase, isn’t it kind of insulting that the most famous archer of all time was using a magic bow? And if the Sheriff is running around, does this mean that Robin and Marian are in Storybrooke somewhere?
I rolled my eyes when Tamara and Greg started discussing “the package”, knowing that whatever it was, it could have just been spoken about normally without any need to shroud it from the audience by referring to it in a more mysterious context. For a while I considered that the package might be a giant taser, but it turned out to be Hook, the lamest pirate of all time. Seriously, if I was about to storm a fairytale town, I’d have gone with the taser.
Rumplestiltskin/Belle holds no appeal for me whatsoever. I applauded when Rumple said: “we have nothing in common.” Yes Rumple, stick with that.
And I’m sorry, but I don’t think Emilie de Ravin makes for a good Belle. I know it’s incredibly difficult to embody a sweet, lovely, guileless maiden - in fact, it’s probably the hardest role any actress can take. But it’s not impossible. Angel Coulby managed to give Guinevere a sense of warmth and realism, even in the midst of spouting corny lines, and Mia Sara completely embodied wide-eyed innocence and childlike self-absorption as Princess Lili in Legend.
But Belle just comes across as terminally insipid. That she considers Rumple a good man for not killing someone doesn’t make any sense, especially since she spent at least a few days beforehand listening to him torture a man and cleaning the blood off his aprons afterwards. Yet Rumplestiltskin decides to spare a man who stole a wand to save his pregnant wife and suddenly there’s good in him?
Gah. I hate this type of mentality. It doesn’t make him good, it makes him not a loathsome, despicable, terrible, evil person. And last time I checked, MOST people in the world avoid being loathsome, despicable, terrible and evil - so why exactly should Rumple get a cookie for it? Especially since Snow is being punished for stopping two women from killing everyone in sight. Yeesh. The moral compass of Once Upon a Time is worse than Merlin’s. And Merlin’s was pretty horrific.
As an old Robin Hood fan, it was fun to see a new take on the old character, though he didn’t really get much to do. The Sheriff clocked in more screen-time than he did. I recognised Tom Ellis (aka, Cenred from Merlin) but if I squinted, I could pretend they were the Jonas Armstrong/Lucy Griffiths versions of Robin and Marian. Sigh.
And although the magic bow tied in nicely with the one Snow was toting in her dark phase, isn’t it kind of insulting that the most famous archer of all time was using a magic bow? And if the Sheriff is running around, does this mean that Robin and Marian are in Storybrooke somewhere?
I rolled my eyes when Tamara and Greg started discussing “the package”, knowing that whatever it was, it could have just been spoken about normally without any need to shroud it from the audience by referring to it in a more mysterious context. For a while I considered that the package might be a giant taser, but it turned out to be Hook, the lamest pirate of all time. Seriously, if I was about to storm a fairytale town, I’d have gone with the taser.