Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Pilot
So I watched this last night and was a little surprised on perusing the message boards this morning that the reception to Once Upon a Time’s spin-off was rather lukewarm. The pilot episode wasn’t wonderful (excuse the pun) by any means, but I found it relatively charming and reasonably well put-together - some caveats notwithstanding.
First of all, I have yet to watch any episodes of the third season of Once Upon a Time. If I’ve missed something obvious because of that, please don’t spoil it for me.
The general premise is that Alice visited Wonderland as a child, only to return home and find that no one (especially her father) believed her outlandish stories about her adventures there. She returns as a young woman in order to find proof, falling in love with a genie called Cyrus and having a series of adventures with him before he’s seemingly killed by the Red Queen. Most of this is recounted to us - and Alice - some unspecified amount of time later, as she’s held in an asylum awaiting treatment for her delusions. Obviously there are plenty of gaps in this story, presumably to be filled as the show goes on, but left enticingly unanswered at this early stage.
A pilot episode always has the challenge of introducing its characters and explaining the setup, whilst still providing enough of a “quick fix” in regards to action, creativity and gags for the audience to not get bogged down with too much exposition. So although I’ve seen some complaints about things being too hurried, gaps in the plot being left, and not enough emotional weight to get properly invested in the relationships, I feel hooked by the unanswered questions and the promise of flashbacks to fill in some of the gaps. Alice’s interview with the doctors at the insane asylum was a an elegant way of getting across the necessarily exposition concerning Alice’s state of mind and the key aspects of her adventures (her quest for proof, her love for Cyrus, her animosity with the Red Queen) without going too overboard in the breakage of the “show, don’t tell” rule.
Which isn’t to say that they didn’t bend the rules a little. Clearly there’s a lot left to be explored, including the actual falling in love process between Alice and Cyrus, why the Red Queen has it in for her, how she returned to her own world after Cyrus’s death, and what exactly the master-plan between the Queen and Jafar is.
From what I could make out, they’re after the power of the wishes. Alice found Cyrus’s bottle, which means that they’re hers, which means that they needed her back in Wonderland in order for her to use them, using the White Rabbit to lure her in with news of Cyrus’s survival. But then…why fake his death in the first place? Why not simply take the wishes? I would have said that at that stage the Red Queen didn’t know about them and just wanted to make Alice suffer, but then one of the final scenes demonstrates that Jafar was there the whole time to “save” Cyrus as part of a preconceived trap between them.
Perhaps he’s to be used as leverage? But again - why go to all the trouble of faking his death instead of just kidnapping him and sending a couple of his fingers to Alice?
Okay, let’s put that on the backburner for now. So the White Rabbit goes to the Knave to get him to give Alice a second-hand account that Cyrus may still be alive - why he doesn’t just do this himself is another mystery. Does Alice not trust him? Did he think she might need the extra muscle in escaping the asylum? Did he think she’d take the message better coming from the Knave? (I suspect it was the only thing they could come up with to get the Knave involved in the plot). Having led her all the way to the Mad Hatter’s old house - with them thankfully not dying in the marsh or getting killed by the Cheshire Cat (which seems to be utterly counterintuitive to the Queen’s plans, so why was she telling the Cat that Alice tasted good?) he then drops Cyrus’s necklace outside the house in order to led her on further.
One episode in and it’s already preposterously convoluted.
Still, there’s promise to be had amongst the characters. Out of all the cast, it’s Michael Socha who emerges as the most compelling figure, particularly with the fact that he’s a wanted criminal in Wonderland who is not above trying to swipe Alice’s wishes before changing his mind and bringing them back - and expecting praise for doing so. In fact, it’s their dynamic that’s the most intriguing element of the show, starting right from Alice’s gobsmacked (and slightly accusing) “you?” when he opens the door to her cell. Clearly there’s a history between the two of them, as with Alice’s claim that she “once long ago got you back your heart” (best line of the episode, as written and delivered) being used to rope him into her quest to save Cyrus. And despite all his bluster and reluctance, despite the fact that Alice has to bribe and cajole him, he clearly has a genuine fondness for her and is perceptive enough to tell the Rabbit that “you’ve made her loose Cyrus twice.”
And perhaps I’m just a hopelessly sappy romantic, or perhaps I don’t ask that much when it comes to love stories, but I was pretty charmed by Alice/Cyrus. Their meetcute was…well, cute and they generated enough chemistry in their short scene together to make me believe in their love. It’s all in the eyes, and they both had that “soft gaze meets shy smile” combination down pat. If Snow White and Charming in the mother-show are meant to be the greatest destined love story of all time, then these two are its awkward and sweet teenaged sibling.
(And as an aside, Peter Gadiot is gorgeous. I roll my eyes at the All Girls Like Bad Boys trope, since Cyrus and Lancelot - my last great fictional crush - appeal to me mostly due to the kindness inherent in their faces).
But naturally it’s Sophie Lowe as Alice that needs to carry the show, and I thought she did a great job. She’s unconventionally pretty, and talented enough to deliver several rather dodgy lines with conviction. I felt she pulled off that delicate mix of self-sufficiency and vulnerability, and though I thought Lowe was better at conveying sadness and fear than hope and joyfulness, she felt like a real and relatable character throughout (which is important considering this spin-off doesn’t have the real-world quality of the mother-show to ground it).
To quote the Doctor: “Which is the real performance? The little girl with tales of tea parties and barbaric queens, or the young lady who says it was just her imagination?” and it’s interesting that there are already so many facets to Alice. The ass-kicking scene in the asylum was predictable but fun (especially with Will crossing his arms with a smile and letting her take care of it all) and there was added elements of her physicality in climbing a tree and fighting off the Cheshire Cat, and intelligence in her escape from the mellow-marsh and secret compartment in the heel of her shoe. She’s driven by her desire to get back her fiancé, but this isn’t the be-all, end-all to her character.
And as ridiculous as her outfit is (why on earth is she wearing a corset as outerwear?), it actually encapsulates her character pretty well, making her look small and nymph-like, but also giving her the freedom she needs for agility and speed.
But as villains go, I’m afraid I wasn’t quite sold on Emma Rigby as the Red Queen or even Naveen Andrews as Jafar. As I said earlier, their plan seems overly complicated (whatever it involves, they apparently need the genie’s bottle and for Alice to make her three wishes, both of which seem utterly unrelated faking Cyrus’s death and calling Alice back to Wonderland) and the dynamic between them isn’t particularly gripping either. And don’t tell me that it’s just the first episode and it needs time to evolve - Rumplestiltskin and Regina were fascinating right from their very first scene together. In this case there’s no sense of history between them, and no sense of trust or respect (however grudging) either.
And Naveen! Why give such a charismatic actor such drivel? I mean, honestly: a clichéd variant of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, an attempt at the Sith death grip, and a swirling cape does not a good villain make. And what kind of leverage is “you don’t know where Alice is” for keeping the Red Queen alive? And why try to kill her anyway when she wasn’t posing any threat and was competently doing what she was told? And now he’s tipped her off as to the fact that he’s prepared to kill her when he’s done with their deal. Not the smartest villain, really.
Miscellaneous
The bane of any television show is weak bit actors. You could fill your screen with an award-winning cast and it won’t mean a damn thing if they have to bounce off ironing boards, even if it’s just for a few moments. In this case, I point the finger at Alice’s father. What do you do if your missing child unexpectedly turns up at the front door? Fall into a hysterical weepy mess and hug your daughter as though you’ll never let her go again? Or just stand there stupidly and let your eyebrows and fake moustache do the talking?
Was that Leroy and Ashley of all people coming out of Granny’s Diner at the start? I only ask because I’ve been dying to know what happened to Ashley (and other recurring guest stars) on the parent show. Furthermore, it seems a bit odd that the Knave would be introduced in Storybrooke. Are we meant to infer that he was part of the curse? Or that he had travelled there specifically post-curse? (It would appear that this segment took place on the night the wraith came to Storybrooke, thus explaining the weather). And how exactly does the White Rabbit’s tunnels work? Did he take the Knave back in time to Victorian England in order to save Alice? Or was that another dimension entirely? Honestly, the rules of this universe are utterly nonsensical. Or at least beyond clarification.
Though it was pure exposition, I had to laugh a bit at the Doctor’s assessment of Alice’s state of mind, recounting all her amazing adventures and describing her as a sort of self-insert Mary Sue in her own story, and generally making it sound like she was better off in her delusions than the waking world. I wonder if he’ll be back in some capacity, as I could easily see him being some sort of agent of the Queen. There was a strain of vindictiveness in his assessment of her.
It’s interesting that Alice is initially faced with the same choice as Snow White was: the chance to forget her pain along with her love, though I seriously question the doctors giving her a consent form to sign so that they might perform some sort of lobotomy on her. I can get the narrative point of it (that she’s making a choice) but that they would seriously seek the permission of a mental patient in the Victoria Era is absurd.
Cyrus tells Alice to “run!” Run where? They’re on a cliff!
The CGI was touch and go - I thought the Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat were reasonably well done (helped along by voice actors John Lithgow and Keith David), but some of the landscape panning shots were the most hideous things I’ve ever seen. The green-screen isn’t particularly good on Once Upon a Time either, and this was several rungs below even that. Cyrus’s fall off the cliff was especially bad, as was the portals and the establishing shot of the Queen’s palace.
Why do they call the Rabbit opening portals as “digging”? I mean, it would be one thing if it actually involved the motions of digging, but it’s clearly him just drawing an outline on a flat surface.
A marsh made out of marshmellow was a neat idea, but what they did with it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. First of all, when heated, marshmellows don’t harden, they melt. Secondly, Alice tells Will that moving will only make them sink faster, even though if they had just kept doing that in the first place, they would have never gotten stuck.
So what does the Red Queen have on the White Rabbit? He’s obviously not a willing participant. But why take him all the way back to her palace just to remind him of the task he was already doing and send him straight back to Alice and Will?
The wishes are a nightmare of a plot device. NEVER give your protagonist phenomenal cosmic powers, as you’re only going to be struggling to come up with reasons as to why they’re not used. They gave a terribly weak reason as to why Alice simply doesn’t wish Cyrus back into her life and “wishes come with strings attached” seems like a slightly lamer version of “magic comes at a price.” As Will points out, you just have to word the wishes carefully and there’s no problem at all. So why not simply ask for Cyrus to come back safe and sound? As McGuffins go, these are going to be an utter headache.
Her naivety at the Hatter’s old house was a bit much. What, was she expecting him to be hiding under one of the hats? And yet she’s not even going to bother to check the back room?
But all things considered - I enjoyed it. I’m officially looking forward to the next episode.