This past Friday, I went to The Sports Authority in a local mall by work to look at running shoes, and before I could walk past the checkout aisles, I saw a massive display for Breast Cancer Awareness month, sponsored by the NFL and the American Cancer Society.  Initially, I didn’t think much of it, because I’m used to seeing pink-colored NFL apparel.  For the last five or so years, the NFL has partnered with ACS in October to raise awareness for Breast Cancer.  The players usually have pink accents added onto their uniforms and parts of the field change color to pink as well.  Again I didn’t think much of the display intially, but the more I thought about it, I started wondering if the Breast Cancer Awareness month for the NFL is really just “Football for Women Awareness Month.”

Now I know that the NFL doing quite a bit to raise awareness for a cause anyone would agree is completely altruistic is great on paper, but I’ve seen enough movies with huge corporations as villains to know that good things usually exist because profit is involved.  For the last few years, the NFL has been trying to market itself to women.  They don’t care about men anymore.  Why? Because they’ve reached the saturation point.  All men like football.  Even if they don’t, they’ll like it once their office does a fantasy football pool.  That said, there’s no real way to get more men on board.  The NFL has set up the reverse-Romney campaign to get women.  Because they know they already have 47% of the population (men), they aren’t going to try anything else to keep them.  They’ll just start trying to get those other 53%.  Some might say, had Romney just tried to get the people not like him and focused less on his base, he would have won, but this is not the time or place for that.

So the NFL has set up a full-fledged marketing assault on women.  Have you seen the most recent NFL ad targeted at women?:

That ad is 30 seconds of Jim Harbaugh (49er’s coach) pandering to women.  He tells women, they are tough, they are just as good, they have hearts of lions, etc etc.  The images in that ad are basically the most beautiful women on tv telling us normies that “women are people too!  now go put on this ladies jersey with some man’s name on the back while you take care of your baby.”  This ad started airing in September, and has led us to where we are now: PINK MONTH!  All those girlfriends and wives who’ve been unwittingly forced to watch a game with their significant other have a whole month where the NFL showers marketing ploys at them, which is, at it’s core what I think Breast Cancer Awareness month is for the NFL.

I think the NFL thinks that the mere attempt to toss some pink stuff onto uniforms, fields and apparel will make women think, “OMG, I like love the NFL now. I want a pink jersey!”  They literally think that is it.  I can’t say for certain there aren’t some women out there who would be down for the cause for that reason alone, but I like to think that as a society we are smarter than that.  The NFL doesn’t do anything unless it adds to their coffers.  They have their players union by the balls, and wont even pay for better equipment that is safer because it is more expensive.  I find it impossible to think they would shell out millions of dollars in advertising between them and the ACS without making serious profits.  The NFL makes billions of dollars in apparel sales and a portion of their proceeds for their pink apparel will go to Breast Cancer Awareness.  I highly doubt the NFL cares very much about any of the real world benefits associated with donating money to a great health cause.

Last night I watched Monday Night Football with my girlfriend and I asked her her thoughts on the NFL going pink for October. I told her it was to raise awareness for breast cancer, but little else.  She loved it.  I am sure that’s what the NFL is going for.  They want people with little interest in football to care in someway, as a way to hook them.  It’s smart, it’s shrewd, but I don’t think it’s coming from any place that is remotely altruistic.  If the NFL wasn’t generating serious profits from the pink apparel, I’m certain it wouldn’t be happening.  I don’t know if that should really be the mindset for philanthropy.  The NFL has partnered with ACS for Breast Cancer Awareness Month because it is good for their brand.  If it was not good for their brand, they would have nothing to do with it, and that percentage of money being raised for awareness, would go elsewhere.

This all brings me back to the thoughts I had last week as I stood staring at the NFL Breast Cancer display.  Shouldn’t altruism exist without any intrinsic personal gain?  Or should we look to do good in ways that benefit us?  Or does it matter at all and I’m just a negative nancy?  I don’t really know where I fall completely when it comes to the NFL and Breast Cancer Awareness, but I do know I’m watching closely.

I’ve got my eye on you NFL…

The post The NFL and Breast Cancer: Good, Bad, or Both? appeared first on Rookerville.

No one likes admitting they were wrong.  I am no different.  Back in May, I predicted that Sleepy Hollow had a 50/50 shot of being the first of Fox’ new series offerings to get cancelled this season.  Not only is that not happening, but it’s also the first series on ANY network to get a second season pickup.  How is this possible?

After the initial ratings of Sleepy Hollow’s first episode, I was blown away.  How could it be Fox’ highest rated series premiere in like five years? From the trailer it looked like a complicated mess of time travel, National Treasure, Sleepy Hollow (the actual story), cheese, and bullshit.  So I took the bait and watched the first episode.  It was everything I thought it would be minus the bullshit part.  It’s just a fun, dumb show and it is fully cognizant of what it is.  It has a blockbuster pedigree coming from writers Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci (the Transformers movies, the Star Trek movies, Lost, Fringe), so they seem to really have a handle on what masses of people like.

The show plays like a mystery-adventure of the week in that the time displaced Ichabod Crane, and his partner, officer Abbie Mills investigate weird paranormal ghost,witch, and monster stories that have been prophecized by the Book of Revelations.  Best yet, is that George Washington was using Ichabod Crane as a spy to track and kill the Hessian soldier who would become the famous Headless Horseman.   Oh and by the way, the Headless Horseman is also one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.  Yup.  This show is crazy. You can tell the writers probably snicker once or twice a week as they are making this shit up.  Bonus points to them for showing the Headless Horseman, now in modern times, using an M-16 to blow away cops.  Hilarious. Just hilarious.

Besides a ridiculous premise that, oddly enough is working, the cast is pretty great.  The buddy cop pairing of an old-timey Englishman, and a black woman, is refreshing.  It shouldn’t feel weird to see a black woman as the lead on a major network show, but it is.  Scandal and Sleepy Hollow ftw.  Another plus of the show, is that it apparently knows when enough is enough.  Myth heavy shows struggle to air 22 episodes.  Many end up collapsing on themselves over time, so Sleepy Hollow is taking the 13 episodes per season route.  That will enable the writers to keep the story much tighter over the run.  Cable has shown that we’re getting to the point where less is more.  Next season of Sleepy Hollow will only have to worry about 13 episodes, bringing it’s total count to 26, instead of 44.  Think about all the throwaway episodes we wont have to worry about now.

Fox took a huge gamble in airing Sleepy Hollow and after three weeks, it’s their highest rated show, scripted or otherwise.  I don’t think it’s the smartest show on tv by any means, but now that Breaking Bad is over, it’s nice to have a show to watch that doesn’t require all of my brain or any of my emotions.  As far as network tv is concerned you can do so much worse than this.  I encourage you to give the show a shot.  If you liked Fringe, but wish it didn’t take itself so seriously, or if you want to watch an entertaining hour of tv that does not weight on your conscience, give it a go. It’s on Monday nights at 9:00 on Fox, so unless you’re into the Monday Night Football or Dancing With The Stars matchup, it’s your best bet.

The post Show With Promise Alert: Sleepy Hollow appeared first on Rookerville.

Redemption Island

The beginning of the episode is very explosive at Redemption Island. First, Galang got a glimpse of the person voted off from the Tadhana tribe last episode, Rachel. Tyson is not shocked at the vote as he figured Tadhana would try to get him to switch to weaken Galang. As expected, Tyson offers to switch places with Rachel if she wants. However, she realizes that Tyson is in a great position in his tribe and has the advantage of previous experience in the game. He has a great chance to get deep into the game. As the goal is for one of them to win, she wisely declines the offer. It is a decision I greatly respect. It is selfless as it is her first time playing and I would not blame her if she wanted to see how far she could get in the game. Nevertheless, Tyson is furious with Tadhana for voting out his girlfriend and warns them that they have no chance if they face him at Redemption Island. Specifically, he lashes out at Brad Culpepper. Moreover, Marissa curses at Brad for his role in getting her voted out. She correctly points out that the votes have been questionable as Tadhana has been voting out strong players. As a result, the tribe will continue to lose challenges because of that strategy. Rachel piles on and throws Brad under the bus for running the show on the tribe. This scene illustrates how Brad’s alliance is brilliant in allowing him to take the role of leader. He is not actually in charge. As I noted before, he is the figure head that is taking the bullets.

Next, there is no redemption for Colton on Redemption Island. He came into the show trying to show everyone that he has matured as a human being and not the bad person he appeared to be in Survivor: One World. He failed in every way possible. First, he did not adapt to the veteran players he is playing with in the current season. Colton was able to control and intimidate the players on his first season. However, the returning players in Blood vs. Water are too smart to allow Colton to get his way. Like a spoiled brat, Colton has temper tantrums and whines when things do not go his way. When his whining makes things worse for him, he outright quits rather than accepting responsibility for his shortcomings and get voted out. He does not even try to redeem himself by trying to convince his tribe mates that he is a better person and fighting to the end. It speaks very poorly of his character. Instead of showing that he is a better person than he is perceived, he hurts his image even further by also showing that he has no intestinal fortitude and toughness. With so many people waiting in line to play Survivor, it is disgraceful that he quits when he was given a second chance to play. Jeff Probst is infuriated with Colton quitting and calls him out. First, he mentions that Colton feigned appendicitis in Survivor: One World. As such, Jeff suggests that Colton quit in that season rather than being medically evacuated. Jeff completely piles on by calling Colton selfish. Next, Jeff suggests Colton is a quitter in life when things do not goes his way and a person who is better suited to stay on his couch to watch the show rather than get off it to play. As a final insult, Jeff says Colton can keep his buff instead of putting it in the urn to burn as that right is only reserved for players who compete. I agree with everything Jeff said about Colton.

In the duel, the players have to create a stack of blocks that will fall like dominoes to reach the end of the course to release a ball that will break the plate. Again, Candice has razor sharp focus and finishes quickly. As a returning player, she has a huge advantage in experience and staying calm. She is also very athletic, competitive, and intelligent. She will get more and more confidence each week and will be an extremely tough person to eliminate at Redemption Island. The new players, Marissa and Rachel, have a much more difficult time as it takes them awhile to finish the duel. Eventually, Marissa is able to complete it before Rachel. Tyson embraces Rachel before she leaves the game. He asks is she had fun in the game and she responds that she did.

Aftermath

Brad definitely has a huge target on his back as Galang holds him responsible for voting out its loved ones. It also hurts his wife’s position in her tribe and alliance. Monica worked her way into the majority alliance. However, Brad is being blamed for voting out the loved ones of two members of her alliance. As a result, her alliance could turn on her for retribution. Brad does make an excellent point when he notes that “In the past, you vote someone off and their dirty laundry goes with them. Now, you vote someone off and the dirty laundry comes back at you”. With loved ones in the game, voting out a player also results in her loved ones coming back at you and potentially making your loved on a target. The Blood vs Water twist also adds a lot of emotion to the game. Tyson has tears in his confessional when he speaks about Rachel being voted off. Tyson is a pretty care free guy and would never cry in the game if his girlfriend is not in the game. It makes Survivor more personal for every player and helps the viewer get emotionally attached to the game.

Caleb and Tyson are in better strategic positions with their loved ones leaving. When Colton leaves the game, Caleb is completely calm, understanding, and remains unnerved and ready to continue to compete. Both Caleb and Tyson are likeable people and in the majority alliance in their tribes. Without their loved ones in the game, their alliance has no reason to vote them out anytime soon. As Candice wins the duel again, she gets to give another clue to whoever she wants. Of course, she chooses her husband again. It is a gift and a curse.

Immunity Challenge

The immunity challenge is a one on one battle between players. The players are given pads and need to knock the other player off the platform. The first tribe with five individual match victories wins immunity. There are some interesting matchups. The first is between Gervase and Brad who have been trash talking to each other. Gervase puts up a good fight at the beginning. However, Brad is a former, NFL player and it is no surprise that he wins. Gervase did well to keep it competitive. John distinguishes himself for Tadhana as he quickly beats Aras. However, Aras redeems himself later when he faces his brother Vytas. Despite Vytas getting in a cheap shot in a move that Jeff calls “one of the biggest unsportsmanlike moves”, Aras still wins the matchup. Tadhana loses immunity because their two women, Ciera and Katie, go 0-4 in their matchups including losses to their mothers. The ineptitude of Ciera and Katie supports the opinion that Tadhana foolishly voted out their stronger women because of their loved ones on Galang.

Five Guys?

With a third consecutive loss in the immunity challenge and the women to blame, it appeared certain that the five guy alliance would stick together and vote out one of the women. However, Brad sees that Candice is doing very well and is concerned about her reentering the game as John’s allegiance would definitely be to his wife. Another factor in targeting John is that he has both clues to the hidden immunity idol and everyone knows it. As the idol is always a threat, John is a natural target. John completely mishandled the clues. Everyone knows he has it. As such, he should have just shared the clue with his alliance to keep their trust. Even when he tries to gain Brad’s trust by telling him the second clue, John messes up the situation by seeming suspicious by telling Brad he does not need him to help find the idol as he wants to find it himself. Brad gets the support from his tribe to vote out John. However, I do not agree with the decision. It is overplaying too early. It is way too early to be worried about Candice reentering the game. Voting out one of your strongest players in the challenges when the tribe has yet to win an immunity challenge makes no sense. Moreover, his alliance begins to distrust Brad as he showed he can turn on his allies quickly. Nevertheless, Brad’s alliance would be foolish to vote him out before the merge. Brad has taken the blame for all the decisions of Tadhana. As such, him and his wife would be targets for everyone near the merge and keep the attention off the other players in his alliance and their loved ones.

The post Survivor: Blood vs Water Episode 3 Notes appeared first on Rookerville.

Hopefully, what we have to look forward is stuff like ABC’s Trophy Wife, which in its tone and wit reminds me of the way-underrated Suburgatory. It’s not that Trophy Wife doesn’t do a lot of the things I’ve already claimed that contemporary (and, let’s face it, traditional) family sitcoms do: it affirms family values, its central family is so white you need sunglasses to watch them, they live in a comfortable upper-middle class neighborhood, etc. Product placement abounds, from the cars to the phones to the hilarious prop that is (of all things) a water bottle.

But Trophy Wife has wit. And maybe that’s what I was getting at in the beginning of all this: our 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s sitcoms had reliable formulas that made it clear which ones were shit and which ones were great, because they were so stripped down that the jokes themselves were front and center. Trophy Wife is not a mockumentary, so none of the jokes are in the editing. The jokes are actual jokes, right there in the dialogue and the premise, and they’re good ones, too. The premise is that Kate (Malin Akerman) meets Pete (Bradley Whitford) after a meet-cute at a karaoke bar. They end up in the hospital together and fall instantly in love, but then Kate finds out he had two former families. Mercifully, the show spends almost zero time dragging this set-up out (it’s all handled in a quick flashback w/ helpful narration), so instead we can just dive right into the chaos. Kate’s both overwhelmed by the fact that she’s had to give up her party-girl lifestyle so suddenly and also a little peeved that no one takes her seriously enough to let her parent any of the eight million kids running around. The series essentially follows Kate as she tries to adjust.

Maybe that’s one thing I like about Trophy Wife: it treats family like something you have to adjust to, rather than the steady rock that everyone turns to in relief from the Big Bad World outside the home. Akerman, sounding like Cameron Diaz but with a less self-consiously goofy vibe, is a kickass choice for someone to carry the show, but even if she weren’t, the rest of the cast is great, too. Bradley Whitford is welcome to come back to TV any time, and Marcia Gaye Harden (!) plays the stone-faced, humorless former wife who has little patience for what she calls a “child bride.” (There’s also an adopted Asian kid, I guess because the series premieres after Modern Family, and they needed some crossover reference or something; long story short is that it’s the one annoying aspect of the show, this need to create a rainbow world despite the fact that white people still dominate the cast).

Even the situations—the “sit” of sitcom—are funny, and smart too. Pete’s son writes a spin-off of the Odyssey (!) in Homeric prose that devolves into a sex fantasy about his new stepmom. And Pete’s daughter sneaks vodka into school by putting it in a water bottle. When her mom is about to catch her, Kate bails her out by chugging the whole thing, making for the best second half of an episode of any comedy I’ve seen in at least a year.

I like families. I do. I like them so much that I think it’s wrong to use them, to see them only as potential consumers to whom we have to consistently proclaim, “You’re doing great! Family rules!” Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s hard. Trophy Wife gets that, or at least tries to.

The post Family Values Tour: Trophy Wife appeared first on Rookerville.

No one wants to go down with the ship.  I just finished watching Dexter and my TV life is worse for it.  That being said I am extremely careful with the shows I sample now.  I watch them, I follow their ratings, and I even check to see how many/what hashtags a show can generate.  This is all in an effort to never go down with the ship again.  The following series of articles is designed to give you an idea of the new broadcast shows I’m sampling in hopes they stick around for a few years. 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Lets start right out by saying that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is funny.  It’s probably the best out of a weak network crop of comedies this fall.  The premise is not all that new (funny cops), but the cast is excellent.  Coming from the creators of Parks and Recreation, Dan Goor and Michael Schur, the show was already going to have a long leash for me.  If you look back on Parks’ first season, it was pretty terrible.  It had a great cast, but it wasn’t very funny.  It takes time to build that proper ensemble chemistry.  To that end, I think BKNN has already figured out a great deal of it’s issues.  I’d like to see it focus on the minutae of work as an officer and less so on the actual cases themselves.  Murders aren’t too funny, so hopefully it keeps that balance in check.

The chief concern of the writers of BKNN should be Andy Samberg’s character, Jake Peralta.  In the pilot, while everyone else at least SEEMED like they could work in a Brooklyn police precinct, Andy’s character, didn’t look like he had any business working anywhere.  He was drawn as far too silly to ever be a legitimate cop.  In subsequent episodes, it looks like they’ve taken some strides to dial his goofiness down, but that’s the big tonal issue.  Joe Lo Truglio, Chelsea Perretti, and Terry Crews, should really shine in a format like this.  The only complaint I would have to say is it’s lead-in, Dads.  We all know Dads is awful, but a bad lead-in can kill a quality show.  Community has been the worst lead-in possible for most of Parks and Rec’s life, so if they really want Brooklyn to succeed, they should drop it behind New Girl.

All that being said, if you want to watch a funny show, that has all the potential in the world to get even better, you should check out Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The post Show With Promise Alert: Brooklyn Nine-Nine appeared first on Rookerville.

Dads is bad. Dads is painfully, totally, in spots off-the-charts bad, made with the kind of primitive humor and style that makes you wonder whether anyone involved had ever seen a sitcom before. It’s the only multi-camera, laugh-track sitcom of the lot here, but that’s not what makes it regressive. It regresses to a time long before the advent of multi-camera sitcoms.

Dads’ premise is simple enough: two guys (Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi) work together designing videogames. They have a hot, young Asian secretary who does everything they want her to do, including dress up in Sailor Moon outfits. One day, their dads decide to move in to their apartments (because of the economy or something; I swear the telling is so clunky and awful that I can barely recall the set-up).

I teach a unit of my class on media ethics, wherein the students are required to determine what the demographic (age, race, gender, etc) and psychographic (attitudes, worldview, political leanings, etc) for a given television show is. Sometimes that’s tough. In the case of Dads, it’s easier to tell who the show’s written for than it is to remember any of the characters’ names. I mean, they design videogames for a living? They can’t work unless they’re stoned? Their secretary has no work to do—seriously, none—aside from walk in and throw in a few punch lines? How much pandering does a show have to do before it just turns into one giant circle jerk?

Unsurprisingly, the dads are un-PC and deliberately offensive. Very surprisingly, someone actually convinced Martin Mull and Peter Riegert to play the dads. It’s depressing to have to watch them deliver dusty old lines that would make Archie Bunker roll his eyes at the lameness of. “I was going to eat a piece of chocolate,” says Riegert, “but then I remembered it’s for women!” Ha ha? “The Chinese are an honorable and noble people,” says Mull, “but you can’t trust them!”

I mean come on. It’s not even like the show is actually offensive in any way—it came under fire recently for its handling of Asian stereotypes, but I just assume that’s because Seth McFarlane is involved, and everyone likes to wring hands about Seth McFarlane. Truly offensive humor might even make it fun for the shock. It’s simply lame, the kind of sitcom that we’re (hopefully) almost done with; at least it’s hard to imagine members of the current generation, reportedly the most tolerant generation the world has yet known, playing curmudgeonly racists in forty years, but who knows?

The post Family Values Tour: Dads appeared first on Rookerville.

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.

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Score: 6/10

Episode 2 is titled “0-8-4”. The episode begins with agents Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) and Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) voicing their concerns about the other members of the team to the leader of the squad, Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). Their concerns about Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) are that they have no combat experience and would be liabilities in the field. However, Fitz and Simmons are S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists whose expertise is valuable for the team. Ward’s and May’s biggest issue is the recruitment of Skye (Chloe Bennet). While Fitz and Simmons are certified S.H.I.E.L.D scientists, Skye has no training. The more concerning fact is that she is a member of the Rising Tide. While Ward views her hacking abilities as dangerous when amplified by the technology of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson believes he can assimilate Skye into the team and harness her abilities to be an asset for his team. Coulson’s vision is to have a diverse team with each individual bringing unique skills to the table. If it works, he will have a great team. However, very different people will clash at first similar to the way the Avengers initially fight among themselves in “the Avengers movie” until they unite against a common enemy. The second episode focuses on the natural rift and team building between the brawn, Ward and May, and the brains, Fitz, Simmons, and Skye.

The episode also features more of Coulson’s plane, the Bus. It is a high tech plane given to Coulson by Director Nick Fury after the Battle of New York. His team uses it to fly to Peru to go on a “0-8-4”. The code refers to a mission to find a priority, yet unknown item. The last time Coulson went on this type of mission, he found a hammer, Thor’s hammer. In Peru, the team discovers that the item is a tesseract fueled weapon. In real life, Nazis fled to Latin America after World War II to hide. Piggybacking off the same concept, the episode notes that the scientists of the fictitious Nazi deep science division Hydra, featured in “Captain America: The First Avenger”, fled to Peru and helped its government commission the weapon. While they try to extract the item, they find themselves in the middle of a fight between rebels and the Peruvian military. Coulson is a former acquaintance of the military’s leader, Camilla Reyes (Leonor Varela). As such, they help each other and Coulson gives her troops a lift on the Bus. However, Reyes mission is to take the weapon back and use it to crush the rebels. Accordingly, the climax of the episode is the struggle between Coulson’s newly formed team and Reyes and her troops. During the battle, we learn why Melinda May is known as “the Cavalry”.

Similar to “the Avengers”, Coulson’s team rallies against a common enemy like the way the Avengers rallied against Loki after Coulson’s staged death. The group is forced to come together as a team to stop Reyes’s troops. Overall, the episode flowed well and was definitely entertaining. It also highlights the differences in background and personalities within Coulson’s team that needs to be reconciled so they can move forward as a cohesive unit. The action scenes are also good. Next, Leonor Varela played the villain well. Varela is a Chilean actress and model so she is strikingly, beautiful on screen. At the end of the episode, Samuel L. Jackson makes a cameo as Director Nick Fury. The first two episodes have been excellent at linking back to the Marvel films without forcing the issue. In a comical scene, he tears Coulson apart for severely damaging the Bus within a week of receiving the plane. Nick Fury cameos are always entertaining and I like that it links the show back to the movies. In addition, Fury reiterates to Coulson that Skye is a threat. The concern is not unwarranted. Near the end of the episode, Skye receives a message from the Rising Tide and her response is “I’m in”. It will be interesting to see how this storyline is developed.

On the other hand, there are still aspects of the show to improve upon. First, the acting is good but not great. I would also like to see the character development progress and to learn more about each character’s past. For example, agent May seems to have a colorful past but it has only been alluded at so far in the show. The show also needs a unifying mission and theme. After the first two episodes, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have been doing one off missions. They ensured that a man with superpowers was a not a danger to society in the first episode. Then, they extract a weapon to keep it out of the hands of bad people in the second episode. I understand that the point of Coulson’s task force is to protect society from unusual threats. However, the first two episodes are completely standalone. I think the show needs to introduce a threat or bigger mission that each episode builds upon to keep the show compelling and viewers watching. I am curious to see if the Rising Tide is the aspect of the show that links the episodes together this season.

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