Once Upon a Time: "Going Home"
Some of the story choices that this show makes often frustrate me, but I’ll give it credit for this: it certainly isn’t afraid to drastically change the setup when required. Back in season one, when all the residents of Storybrooke were labouring under their eternal curse, it would have been difficult to envision this mid-season finale, in which all the Enchanted Forest citizens go back to where they came from, Storybrooke is destroyed, and Emma and Henry are given false memories that make them believe they’ve been together since the latter’s birth. It certainly keeps the show fresh, but I think in this case it also happened quite abruptly.
The main problem was in the plot machinations that forced the story towards the endgame that the writers had planned. You could tell that they wanted the mid-season finale to end with this heart-rending goodbye (plus a near-literal hook for the second half of the season) but there was no real sense of building-up to this conclusion. Granted, they tried to lampshade the suddenness, what with Emma saying “I’m not finished here”, but there was little time to really reflect on the implications and consequences of the situation, much less feel a growing sense of dread at an inevitable parting.
And in order to make the Storybrooke/Enchanted Forest schism happen, all sorts of new plot devices were thrown at the screen. Out of nowhere, we learn about the Black Fairy’s wand, which gives Rumplestiltskin the power to perform a body-switch spell between Pan and Henry (which didn’t seem that complicated), so that he can snap a magic-depleting bracelet on Pan (which didn’t work), and use his dagger and shadow to kill his father once and for all (which was actually pretty clever), and for the curse to once more sweep across the land to take everyone back to the Enchanted Forest, except for Emma and Henry, who will lose all memory of the others, except that Regina suddenly has the ability to implant them with false memories of a life together.
You could practically see the writers pulling the strings and adding in new ingredients to the plot in order to get the characters where they wanted them to go. I think it’s safe to say that they came up with the ending of this episode, and then worked their way backwards in order to make it happen. In my opinion, there’s a certain component to writing that is often overlooked, one that isn’t necessarily the most important aspect of storytelling, though when it’s present, it always lifts the quality of the tale. That is: a level of elegance. It’s the way things are foreshadowed, the way the plot flows, the way Chekhov Guns are fired surprisingly and satisfactorily, the ways in which set-up and pay-off and character development and all those other things that make up a story work together to create a complete whole. A story with elegance makes you go: “ahhh.” A story with no elegance makes you squint and scratch your head.
This episode had no elegance, though ironically, it was the plot that was sacrificed in favour of the characters, when most of the time it’s the other way around.
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The SWAT team that went to the convent to fetch the Black Fairy’s wand was...fine, I guess. The shadow was an intriguing component to this story, as in many ways it is the reason behind Rumplestiltskin’s tragic life, and therefore everything else that follows, yet it’s disposed of here with little fanfare. I wonder if perhaps it would have made a more effective Big Bad for the second half of this season rather than (the inevitable) Black Fairy.
And Blue has come back to life? Er...okay. Sure. Why not?
Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten about the “heart of the one you love most” caveat when it came to casting the curse. I’m not sure how well it worked with Peter/Felix though. When Regina killed her own father, you could tell that it caused her personal grief; in this case, Peter was simply taking the heart of the one who was most loyal to him, with the amount of regret one might feel at losing a handy tool. Ah well, so long Felix.
Nice moment between Snow/Emma and the unicorn mobile that was meant to hang above her crib - but in the flashback why exactly was Snow so concerned about whether or not Emma would know what to do in her role as saviour? I thought at that stage the plan was for Snow to get into the wardrobe whilst she was still pregnant, thus taking them both to the other dimension. Maybe I’ve got it wrong - it’s getting increasingly more difficult to keep track of the chronology of these flashbacks.
I’m not sure whether or not I like the explanation behind the Once Upon a Time book. It remained pretty opaque, with the Blue Fairy simply telling Snow that “our story will reveal itself to her” and Mary Margaret finding the book unexpectedly in her bedroom closet. “It was just there, like magic.” Yet I kind of like that it’s not really explained. Perhaps every curse needs to have an escape clause. Maybe it was the forces of good working through the dark magic. Maybe a fuller explanation is still coming, or maybe its appearance was just meant to be considered a miracle. Whatever the reason, it was a nice sequence, and great to get a glimpse of Henry’s life in the cursed Storybrooke.
Though it’s strange that his existence hasn’t been explored in more detail, as you would think that watching other children remain the same age whilst you grew up would have some sort of psychological effect on a young boy (you have to wonder why he never brought this up to his mother, for in his conversation with Mary Margaret, it’s clear that he’s suffering from some sort of depression) but I suppose it’s all part-and-parcel of treating Henry more like a plot device and a MacGuffin than an actual character. Still, I loved that little moment when he looks up and sees Mrs Blanchard as Snow White.
Hook’s flashback seemed a bit pointless. I suspect it was only there to remind us that he’s a main character now.
Regina claims that she had a reaction to touching the scroll... though she doesn’t actually touch it - she was wearing gloves the whole time.
I highly doubt that Rumplstiltksin’s death will stick, though it was a nice accumulation of his character-arc: finally facing up to his fears and confronting his father, giving him a Taking You With Me speech and using the conditions surrounding the dagger and the Dark One clause to get rid of him once and for all. I’m not sure why they bothered to show him debating whether or not to cut his hand off if he wasn’t actually going to do it, but I liked that they brought back the old theme of “magic has a price” only for this time to have Rumplestiltksin be the one to finally pay it. He accepted his fate and didn’t (entirely) rely on magic in order to get results, instead using cunning and a perverse kind of father/son hug. With the words: “I’m ready” after so many years of running away, and being so defined by his father’s act of running away, you really can’t get more full-circle than this.
I’ve never been particularly impressed with Emile de Ravin’s take on Belle, but she did a great job with her overwhelming grief at Rumple’s demise. (But seriously girl, you may not know it, but the dissolution of that relationship is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Go find a cute boy your own age in the Enchanted Forest).
After Grumpy comes in screaming about how the curse is here, it sure took a long time to get as far as the town borders. And I was a little sad not to see the likes of Gepetto and Tiny and a few more familiar faces at the border. Couldn’t they have used a cardboard cut-out for Red? Still, they took the time to get all the most important farewells done, and it was a particularly fitting conclusion for Regina: that she not only has to give up Henry to save him, but goes the extra mile to grant Emma a lifetime of false memories for his sake. The sequence in which Emma and Henry get in the car and drive into the watery sunlight was a powerful moment, all the more so because the show didn’t beat us over the head with what was happening. Simply by having Emma and Henry smile at each other was enough indication that the memory of the residents of Storybrooke had fallen away from them, and that a new past was asserting itself in their minds. Heck, we didn’t even see the smile: just Emma’s eyes in the rear-vision mirror and the side of Henry’s face. It was enough.
As such, the final coda felt somewhat unnecessary. Thankfully the Time Skip means that Jared Gilmore is now playing a character his own age, but the whole thing with Hook was rather awkwardly constructed. Hook’s reappearance, the attempt at a kiss, Emma’s weird reaction to it (not kneeing him in the balls, but simply shutting the door and getting back to her life without calling security) - I’m not sure why it couldn’t have waited until after the hiatus.
Still, as setups go it’s certainly fresh ground. The show has completely inverted itself from where it first began: now it’s the fairytale characters that remember who they truly are whilst the saviour and her son have forgotten most of their lives. What trouble the Charming family is in and how Hook is going to convince Emma of her origins is no doubt going to be the focus of the upcoming episodes, and I’m still sufficiently invested to find out how that’s going to happen.