TV Review: Once Upon A Time, S4, Ep02
For all intents and purposes, tonight's episode really was the second half of the season premiere, with the main action and flashback both picking up where last week's main action and flashbacks left off. I can understand why ABC didn't want to run a two-hour premiere last week (which would have delayed the season premiere of either Resurrection or Revenge, neither of which I watch but I'm sure fans of those shows would have been upset), especially after a two-hour season finale that was not roundly applauded (although I quite liked it).
Okay, I'll come right out and say what most of us who still watch the show are thinking: Thank God the Arendelle sisters are not related (directly or indirectly) to the Charmings. I've been fine all along with the growth of the convoluted family tree, but it was time for a break from that being the main plot motivation for the season's Big Bad. I'm sure there are still many branches of the tree to be explored (David and James' dead alcoholic father, for example), but at least none of those branches are the motivating factor for this half of the season.
As I mentioned last week: I still haven't seen the movie Frozen, but I don't feel at all like I'm missing vital character information about the new cast additions. I feel like the writers are continuing to dole out enough information about Elsa and Anna that I don't need to have seen the movie to understand their bond, their insecurities, their relationships. This week proved it. Perhaps some will feel that Elsa's talking about how her sister is the person who enables her to control her powers was a bit of "infodump" exposition; it worked for me. I liked Elsa's character development this week, the way she was counterpointed with Emma and how much they have in common. I do feel for Elsa, feeling confused and out-of-place in the modern-day Storybrooke. I'm also concerned about the thing she's not talking about: her captivity in the vase in Rumple's vault. I understand that she's been focused on finding Anna, but the fact that she hasn't mentioned it at all has me wondering if perhaps she doesn't realize she was a captive. It's beginning to seem as if she doesn't: she didn't show any recognition of Gold/Rumple when she saw his picture in the paper, even though he was in the picture with Anna's locket and the article clearly mentioned his shop; she hasn't once stopped to say "wait, I was on my way to finding my sister, then someone locked me away..." Is it possible that she thinks she somehow was transported from her quest for Anna to this strange land of Storybrooke instantaneously?
Elsewhere in modern Storybrooke, we had a bit of advancement on the "Regina pushing everyone away" sub-plot, which included an excellent reminder that, as Sondheim put it, "children will listen." Henry pushing away Emma and his grandparents after getting the "I don't want to see you right now" message from Regina was really well-written, even if David's explanation to Emma in the truck was a bit heavy-handed (aimed, I suppose, at audience members who might not otherwise have recognized that Henry was exhibiting behavoir modeled for years by both of his mothers). I thought Jared Gilmore played the scenes very well, and really enjoyed his delivery of the "I'm down to one mother, I don't intend to go any lower" line. His reunion with Regina at the end of the episode was also nicely staged, although it pointed out very clearly just how much the boy has grown since season one.
We also got a rather odd c-plot with some of our favorite Storybrooke supporting residents (Grumpy, Happy and Granny) forcing Mary Margaret to take baby Neal out to the town's heretofore-unseen power plant to bring the electric back.
The part of these scenes that I loved was, of course, Grumpy and Granny being their usual selves (snarky and a bit bitter) and Happy being so not his usual self (complaining about missing out on all the great Initialized Things technology gives us). The scene actually made sense: the Storybrooke folk have lived with evolving "our world" technology for over two decades, and they have all forgotten the one year they spent back in the Enchanted Forest (thanks to Snow's second curse, as Grumpy pointed out tonight, and I'm glad it's not been forgotten that there IS a whole missing year in the lives of the characters who went back to the Enchanted Forest; this was also mentioned last week in Robin's conversation with Regina). So of course they'd feel uneasy when the power goes out, even though they spent the first half/more of their lives in a world that had no electricity.
So why did I think it was "rather odd?" Well, I'm no expert on how electricity works or how it gets relayed from the generation point to the user, but I do know this: any time in my life the power has gone out due to someone knocking down a powerline/pole/transformer ... the only fix seems to be FIXING (or replacing) the damaged/downed powerline/pole/transformer. And we clearly saw earlier in the episode that the power went out because Elsa's ice wall knocked down an outlying pole at the town line (which implied to me that the power comes in from somewhere else in the grid, not from within Storybrooke itself). So Snow's fix, as great a moment as it was for her, should not have worked. (EDIT TO ADD: unless that whole generation station is just one massive emergency generator to supply power to the whole town if it's cut off from "our world," then I'll accept Snow's fix. Especially since the ice-wall ain't going anywhere soon.)
In The Enchanted-Forest-That-Was, we got a David-centric episode. Now, I'll admit, I'm one of those people who tends to find David-centric episodes a bit boring (except for the one where we found out he was really twins). I enjoyed this story though. I felt it was fast-paced, that it both advanced Anna's quest story and provided more backstory for David, and that it gave us an interesting new supporting villain. I liked the reveal that the Bo Peep of the Enchanted Forest isn't the innocent in our own nursery rhymes, and not every bad-guy introduced into this series has to be a Big Bad. (Also, since we seem to have completely lost the story thread in which King George wants revenge on David and Snow for destroying his empire, it's nice that David has a new foil/arch-enemy of his own to face off against). I am very curious, however, as to whether this aspect of David's back-story (how he learned to sword-fight, being raised as a shepherd by his single mother) was planned all along or if the producers just needed a way to link the Arendelle folks to the Enchanted Forest and felt this was less intrusive than any other option.
At the very end of the episode, we got our first look at this half-season's actual Big Bad: Elizabeth Mitchell as The Snow Queen. Nicely-played reveal, in my opinion, with the ice-cream shop. Mitchell is one of my favorite LOST cast members, and I'm excited to see what her character's plans are for the Storybrooke crew (and why she hasn't attempted a take-over already: was she not in town during the first curse? If not, how did she get sucked up in the second curse?)
Even though I know it's not realistic, I'm still hoping for a scene where Belle, King George, Anton the Giant, and the Snow Queen encounter each other, even if just for a moment. (Am I missing any other LOST alumni who have appeared on ONCE?)
Okay, I'll come right out and say what most of us who still watch the show are thinking: Thank God the Arendelle sisters are not related (directly or indirectly) to the Charmings. I've been fine all along with the growth of the convoluted family tree, but it was time for a break from that being the main plot motivation for the season's Big Bad. I'm sure there are still many branches of the tree to be explored (David and James' dead alcoholic father, for example), but at least none of those branches are the motivating factor for this half of the season.
As I mentioned last week: I still haven't seen the movie Frozen, but I don't feel at all like I'm missing vital character information about the new cast additions. I feel like the writers are continuing to dole out enough information about Elsa and Anna that I don't need to have seen the movie to understand their bond, their insecurities, their relationships. This week proved it. Perhaps some will feel that Elsa's talking about how her sister is the person who enables her to control her powers was a bit of "infodump" exposition; it worked for me. I liked Elsa's character development this week, the way she was counterpointed with Emma and how much they have in common. I do feel for Elsa, feeling confused and out-of-place in the modern-day Storybrooke. I'm also concerned about the thing she's not talking about: her captivity in the vase in Rumple's vault. I understand that she's been focused on finding Anna, but the fact that she hasn't mentioned it at all has me wondering if perhaps she doesn't realize she was a captive. It's beginning to seem as if she doesn't: she didn't show any recognition of Gold/Rumple when she saw his picture in the paper, even though he was in the picture with Anna's locket and the article clearly mentioned his shop; she hasn't once stopped to say "wait, I was on my way to finding my sister, then someone locked me away..." Is it possible that she thinks she somehow was transported from her quest for Anna to this strange land of Storybrooke instantaneously?
Elsewhere in modern Storybrooke, we had a bit of advancement on the "Regina pushing everyone away" sub-plot, which included an excellent reminder that, as Sondheim put it, "children will listen." Henry pushing away Emma and his grandparents after getting the "I don't want to see you right now" message from Regina was really well-written, even if David's explanation to Emma in the truck was a bit heavy-handed (aimed, I suppose, at audience members who might not otherwise have recognized that Henry was exhibiting behavoir modeled for years by both of his mothers). I thought Jared Gilmore played the scenes very well, and really enjoyed his delivery of the "I'm down to one mother, I don't intend to go any lower" line. His reunion with Regina at the end of the episode was also nicely staged, although it pointed out very clearly just how much the boy has grown since season one.
We also got a rather odd c-plot with some of our favorite Storybrooke supporting residents (Grumpy, Happy and Granny) forcing Mary Margaret to take baby Neal out to the town's heretofore-unseen power plant to bring the electric back.
The part of these scenes that I loved was, of course, Grumpy and Granny being their usual selves (snarky and a bit bitter) and Happy being so not his usual self (complaining about missing out on all the great Initialized Things technology gives us). The scene actually made sense: the Storybrooke folk have lived with evolving "our world" technology for over two decades, and they have all forgotten the one year they spent back in the Enchanted Forest (thanks to Snow's second curse, as Grumpy pointed out tonight, and I'm glad it's not been forgotten that there IS a whole missing year in the lives of the characters who went back to the Enchanted Forest; this was also mentioned last week in Robin's conversation with Regina). So of course they'd feel uneasy when the power goes out, even though they spent the first half/more of their lives in a world that had no electricity.
So why did I think it was "rather odd?" Well, I'm no expert on how electricity works or how it gets relayed from the generation point to the user, but I do know this: any time in my life the power has gone out due to someone knocking down a powerline/pole/transformer ... the only fix seems to be FIXING (or replacing) the damaged/downed powerline/pole/transformer. And we clearly saw earlier in the episode that the power went out because Elsa's ice wall knocked down an outlying pole at the town line (which implied to me that the power comes in from somewhere else in the grid, not from within Storybrooke itself). So Snow's fix, as great a moment as it was for her, should not have worked. (EDIT TO ADD: unless that whole generation station is just one massive emergency generator to supply power to the whole town if it's cut off from "our world," then I'll accept Snow's fix. Especially since the ice-wall ain't going anywhere soon.)
In The Enchanted-Forest-That-Was, we got a David-centric episode. Now, I'll admit, I'm one of those people who tends to find David-centric episodes a bit boring (except for the one where we found out he was really twins). I enjoyed this story though. I felt it was fast-paced, that it both advanced Anna's quest story and provided more backstory for David, and that it gave us an interesting new supporting villain. I liked the reveal that the Bo Peep of the Enchanted Forest isn't the innocent in our own nursery rhymes, and not every bad-guy introduced into this series has to be a Big Bad. (Also, since we seem to have completely lost the story thread in which King George wants revenge on David and Snow for destroying his empire, it's nice that David has a new foil/arch-enemy of his own to face off against). I am very curious, however, as to whether this aspect of David's back-story (how he learned to sword-fight, being raised as a shepherd by his single mother) was planned all along or if the producers just needed a way to link the Arendelle folks to the Enchanted Forest and felt this was less intrusive than any other option.
At the very end of the episode, we got our first look at this half-season's actual Big Bad: Elizabeth Mitchell as The Snow Queen. Nicely-played reveal, in my opinion, with the ice-cream shop. Mitchell is one of my favorite LOST cast members, and I'm excited to see what her character's plans are for the Storybrooke crew (and why she hasn't attempted a take-over already: was she not in town during the first curse? If not, how did she get sucked up in the second curse?)
Even though I know it's not realistic, I'm still hoping for a scene where Belle, King George, Anton the Giant, and the Snow Queen encounter each other, even if just for a moment. (Am I missing any other LOST alumni who have appeared on ONCE?)