Score: 9.5/10
“Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.” – Mary Margaret Blanchard/ Snow White
I believe that a good story is a good story regardless of genre (e.g. action, love story, etc.). Once Upon A Time is one of my favorite shows on television. When my cousin’s wife recommended the series to me during its first season, I wrongly judged a book by its cover and was hesitant to watch it as I believed I had outgrown fairy tales. Once Upon A Time is not just a good story. It is a great story. The pilot episode does an excellent job at laying out the premise of the show. The Evil Queen (Lana Parilla) has a grudge against Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin). Accordingly, she crashes the wedding of Snow White and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) and threatens to enact a curse that will send everyone to a place that will take away their happy endings. Where is this place? Of course, it is the real world, our world. After the Evil Queen’s threat, Snow White and Prince Charming consult with their kingdom on how to prevent the evil plot. Eventually, they seek the guidance of the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle). He notes that the curse will happen but that their unborn daughter, Emma, will return when she is 28 years old and break the curse. As such, they commission a magical wardrobe to be constructed that will protect the baby from the curse. When the curse consumes the kingdom, the cabinet safely sends Emma into our world where she is found on a highway. Everyone else in the Enchanted Forest is separately sent to Storybrooke, Maine with no recollection of who they were in their previous life.
When Emma (Jennifer Morrison) turns 28, a young boy Henry (Jared S. Gilmore) shows up at her apartment in Boston. Henry tells Emma that he is her biological son that she gave up for adoption at birth. While she still does not want anything to do with Henry, he is crafty and persuasive in convincing Emma to drive him back to Storybrooke. Moreover, he shows Emma the book he has that contains all the fairy tale stories. He tells his mother all the stories are real and that she is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming and destined to end the curse in Storybrooke as foretold in the book. He also knows that his adoptive mother, Regina Mills who is the mayor of Storybrooke, is the Evil Queen. Naturally, Emma does not believe him and disregards it off as a kid with a wild imagination. Although she decides to return to Boston after dropping Henry off, she swerves off the road and hits a sign to avoid hitting a wolf before she can leave the town. As such, the accident keeps her in Storybrooke. She begins to build a relationship with Henry and becomes a willing mother instead of a reluctant one. Moreover, time begins to move again in Storybrooke as the hands on the clock tower begin to move for the first time in 28 years. She also meets the different people in the town as she becomes a part of the community. The show is brilliant in developing the stories of each individual character. Each episode features a reimagining of the fairy tale stories along with the story of the real life counterpart in Storybrooke. While it does still feature the surreal aspects of magic and true love, the strength of the show is that it does it in a realistic and believable way.
Another great aspect of the show are great characters that you fall in love with and build an emotional connection to as you watch them develop during the series. The main protagonist of the series is Emma Swan. Jennifer Morrison does a solid job portraying the character. Although she is the prophesized savior who will break the curse, she has strayed far from that destiny and is far from being a hero. She has a history of being a thief and has been to prison. Moreover, she abandoned her baby because she knew she could not handle the responsibility and wanted a better life for her child. As such, she is a reluctant mother and a reluctant hero at the beginning of the series. Nevertheless, the love and belief from Henry transforms her into a loving mother and responsible, brave hero. Jared S. Gilmore does a very good job playing Henry Mills. He is an innocent child who is a true believer in fairy tales and happy endings. However, his belief is mistaken for a lonely child with an unhealthy imagination who needs to see a psychiatrist. Consequently, he has a difficult time convincing adults about the curse in the first season. In particular, Emma is completely skeptical and only plays along at the beginning to not hurt Henry’s feelings. She does not fully believe until the end of the first season when she is forced to break the curse to save Henry’s life.
The best performance in the series is Ginnifer Goodwin’s portrayal of Mary Margaret Blanchard/ Snow White. Ginnifer is brilliant in playing the pure hearted, adorable Snow White. She has a knack for making a viewer fall in love with her characters. As a young girl, Snow White inadvertently divulges information that causes the death of Regina’s true love. Consequently, it is the push that begins Regina’s path to becoming the Evil Queen. Of course, she also holds Snow responsible for the death of her true love. As the Evil Queen, she attempts to have Snow killed similar to the fairy tale. When she is unable to kill Snow, she enacts the curse to take away Snow’s happy ending. In Storybrooke, Snow is Mary Margaret Blanchard, Henry’s teacher. She also visits a John Doe who is in a coma in the hospital. She unknowingly gravitates to him because he is actually Prince Charming and her true love. Regina delights in the fact that Snow is so close to her true love but does not know it. From Regina’s perspective, it is the ultimate payback for Snow’s role in killing her happiness. When Joe Doe wakes up, it is revealed that he is David Nolan. Josh Dallas does an excellent job playing David and Prince Charming. He is confident, brave, and the quintessential knight in shining armor. As David in Storybrooke, he has a wife. In the Enchanted Forest, she was his fiancée in a forced, arranged marriage that he never went through with when he fell in love with Snow. As a result, the first season features a complicated love triangle where Mary Margaret and David are unable to stay away from each other due to true love. On the other hand, they have to deal with the moral dilemma that David is married and their being together is adultery. It is a fact that Regina tries to use to keep them apart and torment them. However, their relationship is the show’s signature love story. In the words of Prince Charming, “You [Snow White] will always find me and I will always find you”. The flashbacks to their love story in the Enchanted Forest are superbly done. While true love is a cliché concept, the series delivers it well without being too sappy or cheesy.
No story is complete without great villains. Lana Parilla is excellent as the Evil Queen and Regina Mills. At the beginning of the series, she is completely cold and merciless as both personas. Regina wants Henry all to herself and wants Emma out of town as soon as possible. Emma and Regina is the main conflict in the first season as they fight for Henry’s love and the support of the town. Without magic in Storybrooke in the first season, Regina resorts to abusing her power as mayor to try to intimidate Emma into staying away from Henry and leaving Storybrooke. However, Emma is defiant and stubborn. Regina’s actions only make Emma more determined to fight her and beat her. Although Regina is depicted as nothing but scheming and evil at the beginning of the series, her character is complex. She was not always evil. She was a good person until she lost the man she loved. At that point, she replaced love with her lust for power and revenge. As she is developed in the series, I come to appreciate Regina as a sympathetic, tragic character who was an inherently good person that was a victim and forced to be evil. Although she still had a decision to resist being the Evil Queen, you can empathize with the traumatic events that led to her fall from grace. Her redeeming factor is that she yearns to love, which is the reason she adopts and raises Henry. As the show progresses, the viewer can understand the reason she does not want to share Henry as she has only known loss in her life so she fears losing her adoptive son. Her love for Henry starts to bring her back to being a good person. In the second season, she performs some very heroic and selfless acts. However, she struggles with wanting to be a just person again and being the villain she has been for so long. It is a struggle that she continues to try to deal with in the series.
The other major villain in the series is Rumplestiltskin or the Dark One. Robert Carlyle is fantastic as the psychopathic, purely evil Rumplestiltskin. He is more powerful than Regina. He was also her mentor that seduced her to evil and magic. He is known for making deals with people and asking for a high price for favors. In his words, “magic comes at a price”. In Storybrooke, he is Mr. Gold and a pawn shop owner. Similar to his alter ego in the Enchanted Forest, he makes deals with the people of Storybrooke that always come at a price. However, he has a complete memory of who he was in the Enchanted Forest. In fact, it was his idea for Regina to use the curse. His reasons are revealed over the first two seasons. Similar to Regina, Rumplestiltskin is much more complex than he originally appears. Before he became the Dark One, he was a modest man. When he is called to war, he intentionally cripples himself to avoid fighting and dying in order to return to his family. As expected, he is deemed a coward and despised by his peers. Although his wife abandons him out of shame for his actions, his son Baelfire loves him unconditionally. He is desperate when soldiers come to conscript Baelfire into the army. As such, he kills the Dark One to take his powers. While he originally uses the magic to protect his son, the absolute power corrupts him. As Baelfire is distraught with the evil person Rumplestiltskin becomes, he begs his father to leave with him to a world without magic, our world, so that Rumplestiltskin can be a good man again. However, Rumplestiltskin is unable to let go of his power and magic. He allows Baelfire to come to our world without him and he regrets it immediately. Another person that Rumplestiltskin comes to love is Belle (Emilie de Ravin). Their relationship is an example of how the series is great at reimagining a classic fairy tale as the two is the series’ version of Beauty and the Beast. He falls in love with her and she falls in love with him as she begins to see the person he used to be. Despite the corruption of his soul caused by magic and power, Belle inspires him to be a better person. Rumplestiltskin’s love for his son and Belle are factors that push him into trying to be a good person. However, he struggles with overcoming his lust for power. Similar to Regina, he still struggles with balancing good and evil within himself.
While those individuals are the main characters, Once Upon a Time does an excellent job reimagining other classic stories. Some of my other favorites during the series are Red Riding Hood, Pinocchio, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and Captain Hook. The first season is about Emma breaking the curse. The second season has multiple great storylines. First, Emma and Snow White fall through a portal that transports them into the Enchanted Forest. We discover that the Enchanted Forest was not destroyed by the curse. In addition, and there are some characters who were shielded from the curse and stayed in the forest. Emma and Snow befriend Mulan (Jamie Chung) and Prince Aurora/ Sleeping Beauty (Sarah Bolger) who help them find their way back to Storybrooke. Along the way, they meet up with Captain Hook. Colin O’Donoghue is fantastic as the Captain. He is a scoundrel and a true pirate. However, he does have redeeming qualities. I am still struggling on deciding whether he is a good guy or bad guy. At this point, he seems like an anti-hero. In the second season, he is motivated by revenge against Rumplestiltskin. Hook is trying to find a way to Storybrooke so he can kill Rumplestiltskin. On the other hand, Hook wronged Rumplestiltskin first to begin the cycle of revenge. In the pursuit of vengeance, Hook makes a deal with the devil as he teams up with the person in Regina’s past who turned her to evil. That same person looks for a way to return to Regina and is the main antagonist in the second season. Another threat in the second season is people from the real world that discover Storybrooke. They hate magic and want to destroy Storybrooke. As such, rivals have to band together to foil the plot.
The third season picks up at the end of the second season. The people from the real world that want to destroy magic also kidnap Henry and use a magic bean to escape to another world. The show has taken us to Storybrooke, the Enchanted Forest, and Wonderland already. It will now bring us to Neverland. As developed in the second season, Henry binds six people together for different reasons. The six people are Emma, Snow White, Prince Charming, Regina, Rumplestiltskin, and Hook. Although it is an alliance that seemed unlikely earlier in the series, Henry is a unifying factor that sets the uneasy alliance on a quest to save him in Neverland. After the first episode, the season already looks promising. The creators of the show have reinvented Peter Pan as a villain in Neverland and I cannot wait to see where they go with the storylines.
About Pat Wong
Patrick is a contributor for Rookerville. He is an avid sports fan. Before joining Rookerville, he was part of a defunct New York Yankees message board, NYYankeefans, where he was its top poster and was inducted in its Hall of Fame for his contributions. Patrick is also a passionate fan of movies. He has enjoyed reading movie reviews over the years and is excited about the opportunity to review movies.
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