Once Upon a Time season one
Having finished season one of "Once Upon a Time" - all my thoughts!
I LOOOOOVE almost all the characters, even the bad ones. (Everyone except David, who I still haven't forgiven for being a cheating wretch.) THE WOMEN! I really can't sing the praises of the show enough for having so many active, dynamic female characters, very different from each other, who grow and change and drive the plot forward and have unique relationships with each other. RED! SNOW! EMMA! GRANNY! EVERYBODY!
And Rumpelstiltskin ... every single one of his scenes is (sorry, can't help myself) pure gold. Belle/Rumpelstiltskin pushes all my happy buttons; I have always had a major weakness for the "beauty and the beast" romance trope, and "Skin Deep" is easily my favorite episode so far. (Except that I'm currently quite unhappy with where that plot thread went; see the not!squee section for more on that.)
I really enjoyed a lot of what they did with the fairy tales, legends and children's books that they're riffing on. Some of the subversions are absolutely stellar -- I think that Red's story is my very favorite subversion in the series, but I really adore a lot of it: Snow being a badass and surviving on her own in the woods; Grumpy's backstory; the deliciously dark Mad Hatter episode. I think it's interesting how they blend fairy tales, children's books, movie tropes and so forth; I did wonder how on earth they were getting away with not being sued by Disney for some of it, until noticing that Disney owns it. Ha! Okay, that answers that. Still, I like the way that merging the classic fairy tales with stories like Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio reflects the childhood mythology that American kids grow up with. (I doubt if they're doing it on purpose; I'm not sure if the writers even realize that, say, Grumpy et al are not part of the original Snow White story. But I think it really works that way, because characters like the seven dwarves and Alice have worked their way into pop culture to the point where they are completely deserving of being considered modern fairy tales, and deserve to take their place with the older ones.)
Anyway, it's a fun, colorful series with lots of eye candy, pretty costumes and set dressing. I have been having a ridiculous amount of fun watching it. And I also absolutely love that the show isn't afraid to shake up the status quo, and that it resolved most of the dangling plot threads in the finale, one way or another. I'd been starting to get the impression over the last few episodes of season one that we were going to be strung along with glacial progress on the major storylines for three or four seasons, and I was very pleasantly surprised that things moved so quickly and it looks like next season is going to be taking off in a new direction.
But then there are the things I don't like about it, which occasionally overshadow my enjoyment enough to make me go "Well, maybe I should take a break for a while."
THE CHEATING PLOT. OMIGOD. HAAAAATE. I hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. I hate it so much that it made me hate David and actively root for Regina to break him and Mary up.
In general, I'm not happy with the way the show deals with "true love". I've always hated the trope of "the one" -- the single person in the world that you wait your whole life for, the relationship that will be more meaningful than all other relationships and considerations in your life. Once Upon a Time takes this trope and hammers it TO DEATH, not just with Snow and Charming but with ALL of the couples. I'm not as frustrated with it as I might otherwise be due to the fact that the women are pretty kickass all by themselves, as opposed to being damsels in distress who need rescue all the time (and Emma doesn't even have a love story of her own, which I heartily support and hope to see continue, please show). And in the fairy-tale world, it's at least explainable that most of the women are fixated on finding a man to marry because they live in a society where women are expected to be married and don't really have many options open to support themselves. (Which I'm clearly overthinking, but it's better than being annoyed all the time.)
siria and I were talking in one of her episode reaction posts about the fact that the show seems to be trying to have it both ways with subverting some fairy tale conventions and playing other ones straight; the overall effect is that the show tries to insert shades of gray but keeps getting caught up in the black-and-white fairy-tale morality of things like Good vs. Evil and True Love Conquers All, to the expense of plot and character. A lot of the Big Reveal episodes have fallen flat for me, like the one in which we found out why Regina hates Snow, and I think that's at least partly why -- the show introduces these interesting shades-of-gray situations, and then flattens them out into shallow fairy-tale morality in order to tie them up into a neat little bow. And it's frustrating, because I know they are capable of going dark (the Red episode and the Mad Hatter episode went very dark, which is probably why those are two of my favorites), and they are capable of doing nuance, but they DON'T. They keep providing these really fascinating setups and then totally whiffing the ball.
Case in point: the way that the Belle & Rumpelstiltskin storyline played out in the finale (okay, his name is too hard to type, I'm just calling him Gold). Like I said earlier, "Skin Deep" was my favorite episode and the thing in the series I was looking forward to most was Belle and Gold's reunion. And while I'm glad we didn't have to wait too long for it, I'm hugely disappointed that all the delightful Macchiavellian scheming potential of Regina holding Belle hostage just FIZZLED. I adore watching Regina and Gold construct their Xanatos gambits around each other; I can't remember the last time I watched a show with two Xanatos-esque villains at odds with each other. It's really too much fun! And the whole Belle thing should have been a great setup for lots of string-pulling; instead, it resolved so quickly and easily that it made me go "... wait, that's IT?!"
On top of that, the emotion of their reunion was subsumed into my total DO NOT WANT at the rest of Gold's plan. I am SO SO SO disappointed in Gold for double-crossing Emma, stealing the cure and leaving Henry to die -- okay, yes, VILLAIN and all of that, but still. SOOOO DISAPPOINTED. And now I really don't think I'm going to like where this is all going, because one of the reasons why I was looking forward to Belle and Gold's reunion was because I was expecting it would be part of a heel face turn (at least a partial one), but, nope, pretty much all heel, and I just ... can't really see their relationship heading in a direction I'm going to enjoy. So, WAAAH.
But I'll still be watching this season (it looks like ABC.com has at least some of the new episodes, but apparently not all of them ...?) and I'm really looking forward to following along in realtime and seeing how things work out now that there is MAGIC.
ETA: Anyone have recs for good vids that don't involve season two spoilers?
This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/859770.html with
comments.
I LOOOOOVE almost all the characters, even the bad ones. (Everyone except David, who I still haven't forgiven for being a cheating wretch.) THE WOMEN! I really can't sing the praises of the show enough for having so many active, dynamic female characters, very different from each other, who grow and change and drive the plot forward and have unique relationships with each other. RED! SNOW! EMMA! GRANNY! EVERYBODY!
And Rumpelstiltskin ... every single one of his scenes is (sorry, can't help myself) pure gold. Belle/Rumpelstiltskin pushes all my happy buttons; I have always had a major weakness for the "beauty and the beast" romance trope, and "Skin Deep" is easily my favorite episode so far. (Except that I'm currently quite unhappy with where that plot thread went; see the not!squee section for more on that.)
I really enjoyed a lot of what they did with the fairy tales, legends and children's books that they're riffing on. Some of the subversions are absolutely stellar -- I think that Red's story is my very favorite subversion in the series, but I really adore a lot of it: Snow being a badass and surviving on her own in the woods; Grumpy's backstory; the deliciously dark Mad Hatter episode. I think it's interesting how they blend fairy tales, children's books, movie tropes and so forth; I did wonder how on earth they were getting away with not being sued by Disney for some of it, until noticing that Disney owns it. Ha! Okay, that answers that. Still, I like the way that merging the classic fairy tales with stories like Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio reflects the childhood mythology that American kids grow up with. (I doubt if they're doing it on purpose; I'm not sure if the writers even realize that, say, Grumpy et al are not part of the original Snow White story. But I think it really works that way, because characters like the seven dwarves and Alice have worked their way into pop culture to the point where they are completely deserving of being considered modern fairy tales, and deserve to take their place with the older ones.)
Anyway, it's a fun, colorful series with lots of eye candy, pretty costumes and set dressing. I have been having a ridiculous amount of fun watching it. And I also absolutely love that the show isn't afraid to shake up the status quo, and that it resolved most of the dangling plot threads in the finale, one way or another. I'd been starting to get the impression over the last few episodes of season one that we were going to be strung along with glacial progress on the major storylines for three or four seasons, and I was very pleasantly surprised that things moved so quickly and it looks like next season is going to be taking off in a new direction.
But then there are the things I don't like about it, which occasionally overshadow my enjoyment enough to make me go "Well, maybe I should take a break for a while."
THE CHEATING PLOT. OMIGOD. HAAAAATE. I hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. I hate it so much that it made me hate David and actively root for Regina to break him and Mary up.
In general, I'm not happy with the way the show deals with "true love". I've always hated the trope of "the one" -- the single person in the world that you wait your whole life for, the relationship that will be more meaningful than all other relationships and considerations in your life. Once Upon a Time takes this trope and hammers it TO DEATH, not just with Snow and Charming but with ALL of the couples. I'm not as frustrated with it as I might otherwise be due to the fact that the women are pretty kickass all by themselves, as opposed to being damsels in distress who need rescue all the time (and Emma doesn't even have a love story of her own, which I heartily support and hope to see continue, please show). And in the fairy-tale world, it's at least explainable that most of the women are fixated on finding a man to marry because they live in a society where women are expected to be married and don't really have many options open to support themselves. (Which I'm clearly overthinking, but it's better than being annoyed all the time.)
siria and I were talking in one of her episode reaction posts about the fact that the show seems to be trying to have it both ways with subverting some fairy tale conventions and playing other ones straight; the overall effect is that the show tries to insert shades of gray but keeps getting caught up in the black-and-white fairy-tale morality of things like Good vs. Evil and True Love Conquers All, to the expense of plot and character. A lot of the Big Reveal episodes have fallen flat for me, like the one in which we found out why Regina hates Snow, and I think that's at least partly why -- the show introduces these interesting shades-of-gray situations, and then flattens them out into shallow fairy-tale morality in order to tie them up into a neat little bow. And it's frustrating, because I know they are capable of going dark (the Red episode and the Mad Hatter episode went very dark, which is probably why those are two of my favorites), and they are capable of doing nuance, but they DON'T. They keep providing these really fascinating setups and then totally whiffing the ball.
Case in point: the way that the Belle & Rumpelstiltskin storyline played out in the finale (okay, his name is too hard to type, I'm just calling him Gold). Like I said earlier, "Skin Deep" was my favorite episode and the thing in the series I was looking forward to most was Belle and Gold's reunion. And while I'm glad we didn't have to wait too long for it, I'm hugely disappointed that all the delightful Macchiavellian scheming potential of Regina holding Belle hostage just FIZZLED. I adore watching Regina and Gold construct their Xanatos gambits around each other; I can't remember the last time I watched a show with two Xanatos-esque villains at odds with each other. It's really too much fun! And the whole Belle thing should have been a great setup for lots of string-pulling; instead, it resolved so quickly and easily that it made me go "... wait, that's IT?!"
On top of that, the emotion of their reunion was subsumed into my total DO NOT WANT at the rest of Gold's plan. I am SO SO SO disappointed in Gold for double-crossing Emma, stealing the cure and leaving Henry to die -- okay, yes, VILLAIN and all of that, but still. SOOOO DISAPPOINTED. And now I really don't think I'm going to like where this is all going, because one of the reasons why I was looking forward to Belle and Gold's reunion was because I was expecting it would be part of a heel face turn (at least a partial one), but, nope, pretty much all heel, and I just ... can't really see their relationship heading in a direction I'm going to enjoy. So, WAAAH.
But I'll still be watching this season (it looks like ABC.com has at least some of the new episodes, but apparently not all of them ...?) and I'm really looking forward to following along in realtime and seeing how things work out now that there is MAGIC.
ETA: Anyone have recs for good vids that don't involve season two spoilers?
This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/859770.html with
comments.