Title Quite a Common Fairy

Two-Sentence Summary In Neverland, the Charming Family (and Hook) try to form an alliance with Tinker Bell, who has a complicated history with Regina, which is shown in flashbacks to a time when Tinker Bell tried to help the lonely queen find a second chance at love. Second chances at love is the theme of the episode in the Enchanted Forest, too, as Neal uses Robin Hood’s son to get back to Neverland and Mulan decides to confess her own romantic feelings before discovering that the object of her affection is about to start a family with someone else.

Favorite Lines
Regina: Trust me, my staying out of her sight is probably best for Operation Henry.
Emma: Operation Henry?
Regina: That’s what I’ve been calling it in my head because…
Emma: …Because that’s what he’d call it.
Regina: He’d have a better name.

My Thoughts Another week, another excellent episode of Once Upon a Time. This season seems to have found a formula that works for moving the plot along (both in the flashbacks and in the present-day storylines) while still giving us a wealth of character-driven moments, especially between characters who have been long overdue for some meaningful interaction. Those moments allowed the show’s strongest actors to shine in this episode, and they brought out the best in actors who I felt hadn’t really been given shining moments until now. As soon as I saw that this was an episode penned by Jane Espenson, I knew it was going to be a great showcase for the actors, and I loved that I was proven right. It’s no secret that Espenson knows her craft like few others in the fantasy genre, and her gift for realistic dialogue, nuance, and layered characterizations and relationships was once again on full display in “Quite a Common Fairy.”

The big selling point of this episode was the introduction of Tinker Bell, and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed at all. Rose McIver played the innocence, spunk, and darkness in this fairy perfectly. I also liked the twist on the idea of believing in fairies to keep them alive. Changing it to believing in the specific fairy in order for them to have magic makes it feel more realistic and fits in really well with the running theme of this season: believing in the people we care about. Part of the reason Tinker Bell lost her magic because Regina didn’t want to believe in the happiness she was offering, but she really lost her magic because the Blue Fairy didn’t believe in her abilities. Losing her magic made Tinker Bell lose her sense of self; it made her feel isolated and alone, and we’ve seen time and again on this show what the absence of love and support (aka belief) does to a person. Tinker Bell’s story fit in perfectly with the thematic narrative of Once Upon a Time.

One of my favorite parts of Tinker Bell’s story was the way it forced Regina to confront her own destructive sense of self-pity. For so much of Season Two, the only thing I liked about Regina’s story was Lana Parrilla’s acting. I hated being told I was supposed to feel bad for this woman who did so many terrible things all because she felt her life was ruined by the honest mistake of a little girl. In this episode, Regina finally had to admit that she had no one to blame but herself for refusing to choose the happiness Tinker Bell was offering her. There was no deflecting blame or “I was a victim” in that scene between Regina and Tinker Bell in the cave. There was only a broken woman finally coming to terms with the fact that she was afraid to be happy because she didn’t know who she would be without her grief and anger.

That scene was the first time in a long time that I felt genuine sympathy towards Regina. I liked that the episode began with Rumplestiltskin once again pulling the strings and planting the idea in Regina’s head that she needs her anger to be powerful. The way he manipulated Regina for so much of her life all for the sake of his own plan continues to horrify me even as it adds depth to their interactions and the show as a whole.

Regina’s fear of happiness and desperation to cling to her self-pity are such relatable emotions. I love when Once Upon a Time takes fairytale characters and puts them in real, human situations, and that’s what Regina’s story was all about. She was afraid to be happy, afraid that loving someone again would make her weak—and I understood those motivations, even as I was internally screaming at her to go through that door and take that chance to be happy again.

But I think we all know she’s going to take that chance someday—because now we’ve seen her true love. I’m so happy it’s Robin Hood because he’s the perfect mixture of idealism and realism (he wants to give to the poor but he’ll steal in order to do it). Also, he’s a loving father who lost his first love. I think he’s going to be a great match for Regina, and I can’t wait for them to finally meet. I know I shouldn’t be rooting so hard for the happiness of a woman who’s done some really terrible things, but the thing that’s so great about Regina is that we know she is still capable of goodness; we’ve seen it. We saw it in this episode when she and Emma were talking about Henry. To see those two mothers bonding over their shared love for their son was a moment I’ve been waiting such a long time so see. Regina’s love for Henry is such a defining part of her character; it’s what makes her so complex and human. Like Emma, Regina found a chance to learn to love again through Henry, and I think it’s about time these broken, all-too-human women shared a moment to gently connect over the boy they both miss with their whole hearts.

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Title Lost Girl

Two-Sentence Summary After Peter Pan gives Emma a magical map to Henry, she must come to terms with her own past as a lost girl in order to read it. However, it seems Pan has more nefarious deeds in mind than just keeping Henry from her; his goal is to make Henry embrace his own past as a lost boy in order to keep him on the island—and to turn Emma from a woman who still feels like an orphan into a woman who is an orphan, which seems to be slowly happening as Charming is wounded by a poisoned arrow.

Favorite Lines
Hook: Just who are you, Swan?
Emma: Wouldn’t you like to know?
Hook: Perhaps I would.

My Thoughts Once Upon a Time began as Emma Swan’s story, and somewhere along the way it got lost in all the other cool stories springing up around her, which I think was a huge reason Season Two struggled as much as it did. I will never be upset with an occasional look into Regina’s psyche, a Rumplestiltskin-centric episode or two, or even a chunk of time devoted to developing a new character. I love how many deep and interesting characters inhabit this show’s various realms, but every show needs a focus—and Once Upon a Time is most successful when that focus is on Emma Swan and the relationships she’s forming with the characters around her.

The character of Emma Swan grounds this show in realism, and sometimes that result is funny but, even more often, that result is heartbreaking. In a show built around magical conflicts and fairytale love stories, Emma’s story is a very human—very real—story about a woman who was broken so many times by so many different abandonments that she can’t be magically fixed. She can only slowly grow and learn how to heal, and while that growth and healing might not make for action-packed storytelling, it creates something even better: real character development, not just for Emma but for everyone around her.

I thought “Lost Girl” was an even stronger episode than last week’s premiere. Everyone has their reasons for watching Once Upon a Time, and mine has always been the development of the characters within the “Charming Family.” Needless to say, I was blown away by the emotional power of this episode. It allowed each character to do what they do best, and, therefore, it allowed every member of the cast to shine.

Let’s begin from the outer edges of the episode and work our way to its emotional center. I think the decision to separate Rumplestiltskin from the rest of the Neverland group was very smart. If any actor can compel viewers with a solitary storyline, it’s Robert Carlyle. I was captivated just watching him walk through the jungle, unable to get away from the doll his father gave to him. (Thanks for answer that so quickly, writers!) I’m not sure we needed Belle in order to see his inner struggle to do the right thing, but it was a lovely reminder that he’s always believed her to be his conscience, his heart. Belle has always seen who Rumplestiltskin really is, and she believes in what he can be. And in this episode, that’s what true love is all about.

The theme of true love being belief in the one you love (even after they’ve lost faith in themselves) has always been a part of Snow White and Prince Charming’s story, and it was the focal point of their flashbacks in this episode. What I love about Snow and Charming’s relationship is that it might wear the very idealistic label of “true love,” but it’s so much more than just a one-dimensional, “fairytale” romance. It’s not an idealized love story; rather, it’s a love story about two people with flaws and faults and weak moments who can lean on each other for support when they don’t feel like heroes.

I enjoyed seeing the way Snow’s identity crisis paralleled Emma’s in this episode. I wish Emma knew all the things about Snow we learn from these flashbacks because it’s so important to remember that Snow was an orphan, too, but she learned to move on from letting that define her to become the leader she needed to be for her people.

Did the flashbacks reveal anything groundbreaking in terms of the overall plot of this show? No. They featured some great moments of Regina in all her Evil Queen glory (and gorgeous gowns), some overprotective “big brother” dwarves, and a nice twist on the classic story of the Sword in the Stone—none of which moved the plot along or revealed important information. But that’s not to say they were a waste of time. They served as a great reminder that Snow and Charming aren’t these far-off legends Emma seems to view them as. They’re as human as she is, with plenty of self-doubt and moments where they are anything but “infuriatingly optimistic.”

And more than anything else, these flashbacks were a wonderful reminder of the power of true love. Yes, it breaks curses and creates saviors. But the real power of true love is in its ability to help us be our best selves—and that’s what Charming did for Snow in this episode. His faith in his wife has always been such a beautiful thing to see, and so much of that comes from the earnest way Josh Dallas plays Charming. Somehow, Charming’s belief in Snow never comes across as sappy or unrealistic. It’s genuine and believable in a way that makes me not only want that it my own life; it makes me feel like it’s attainable. Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin have such a special chemistry, and I will never turn down a set of flashbacks where I get to watch them flirt and kiss and remind us all what true love really looks like.

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Title Second Star to the Right

Two-Sentence Summary After Regina is kidnapped by Tamara and Greg, Emma, Neal, Snow, and Charming begin searching for her—and discover the truth about Tamara in the process. In flashbacks to Bae’s life after falling through the portal, we see him living with the Darling family and allowing himself to be kidnapped and taken to Neverland in the place of one of the Darling boys—a sacrifice later paralleled by his descent into a portal Tamara created after shooting him in order to keep Henry from losing both his mother and father.

Favorite Line
“Henry needs you. He can’t lose both of us. Don’t make him grow up like we did.” (Neal)

My Thoughts When I first started watching Once Upon a Time, I fell in love with the creative twists on fairytales that I grew up with, the emotional moments that built characters and relationships better than any other show I was watching, and the gorgeously complicated dynamics between characters who were family even though they didn’t know that yet. Somewhere along the way, those things got lost this season with the introduction of more new characters than the show knew what to do with, a revolving door of villains, and a plot-heavy/emotionally-lacking style of storytelling. Thankfully, “Second Star to the Right” proved to be a return to many of those first-season elements that made the show so compelling and moving. This episode was an excellent setup for next week’s season finale because it proved that the stakes aren’t just high in terms of the plot; they’re high for almost every character on an emotional level.

Before I go any further into my review, I have to ask: Is this the darkest and scariest episode this show has ever aired? For being an 8 p.m. network drama often billed as a family show, this episode was quite disturbing—from the “death” of a major character to the decision to turn Peter Pan into a child-stealing shadow to Regina’s electroshock torture. I know that you have to sometimes go to a very bleak place in order to set up a season finale (like Henry eating the turnover last season), but this was almost oppressively bleak at times.

One of my favorite parts of this episode was the flashback storyline. I find young Bae incredibly compelling as a character because he’s so earnest and yet so broken at such a young age. The actor who plays him really does a fantastic job. I thought his rapport with Wendy was adorable, and his panic in the face of magic was heartbreakingly believable. I really enjoyed the darker take on the Peter Pan story that was told here because there really is something unsettling under the innocence of the original story. Not growing up may seem like a fun concept for a little while, but being stuck in a world without your family where you never mature or grow doesn’t exactly sound like a fate I’d want for myself. And that’s what made Bae’s sacrifice all the more noble. To willingly go back to a world ruled by (presumably) dark magic when you’ve lost everything trying to escape that fate just to save a family from being torn apart is a heroic act of the highest degree.

Seeing young Bae be so selfless, brave, and true (pun intended) made all of Neal’s big moments in this episode (and there were several) feel like they were coming from a genuine place. This is a man who has always wanted to do the right thing, but it keeps costing him. He’s been through so much and has been broken and emotionally damaged in ways not even Emma can comprehend. But in this episode we see him trying to right his wrongs, and I found myself rooting for him more than ever before (and I say that as someone who’s loved Neal since “Tallahassee”—before we even knew who he really was).

When Neal apologized to Emma, I truly believed that he spent every day regretting what he did to her—and so much of that comes from the raw and real chemistry between Jennifer Morrison and Michael Raymond-James. What I love about their scenes is that it always feels like two real adults interacting—theirs is a very messy, very damaged love story in a world where they’re surrounded by magical examples  of “true love.” But their love has never felt any less true than Snow and Charming’s or Rumplestiltskin and Belle’s—at least not to me. It’s true in a way that’s right for the world they grew up and fell in love in: a world without magic. It’s true in a way that hurts, but this episode showed that it’s also true in a way that heals.

Emma and Neal have always represented human drama in the midst of the supernatural—that’s why I loved “Manhattan” so deeply. They’re two people whose lives were destroyed by dark magic but somehow found in each other a very human and very tangible kind of magic. These are two characters who have suffered so much. All magic comes with a price, and too often that price has been their happiness. That’s what hurt so much about this episode. Once again, Neal is faced with sacrificing himself to the whims of dark magic, but this time it’s to save his own family. And once again, Emma has someone she loves—some hope for happiness and family—ripped away because of magic. Neal has spent so much of his life trying to keep himself from committing the sins of his father, so he chose to be brave and fall through the portal to keep his son from growing up an orphan. But that choice came with its own price, which was reflected so heartbreakingly on Emma’s face after the portal closed. Each one of her sobs hit me like a punch to the gut. These two characters have been through so much already: their profession of love as Neal prepared to fall to his (believed) demise was one of the most heartbreaking moments in a show full of heartbreaking moments.

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Title The Evil Queen

Two-Sentence Summary As Regina embraces her evil side in both Storybrooke and flashbacks to Fairytale Land, she reveals a “self-destruct button” of sorts for the curse, which would allow her (and Henry) to leave Storybrooke before destroying the town and all its inhabitants. However, she is ultimately captured by Greg and Tamara (with some help from Hook), who use science to take her magical abilities away from her.

Favorite Line “Oh hell no—I taught her that!” (Neal, seeing Henry alert Emma to his presence by bumping into his apartment door)

My Thoughts I’ve missed Emma Swan more than I realized. For so much of Season One, Emma was the grounding force that kept Once Upon a Time honest and kept it from taking itself too seriously. I think this season has suffered a lot from pulling the focus away from her and her family dynamics, and this episode only proved my point. There were a few  eye-roll-inducing moments in this episode, but Jennifer Morrison’s performance kept me engaged enough to ultimately find this episode the most enjoyable of Once Upon a Time’s recent less-than-stellar bunch.

Emma’s relationship with Henry was always one of the most beautiful and genuine things about Once Upon a Time, so I was thrilled to see it get a nice chunk of screen time in this episode. Morrison and Jared Gilmore have a very believable and sweet chemistry, and their stakeout brought me back to the good old days of Season One. Just hearing “Operation Cobra” again filled me with nostalgia for a time when this show was so much simpler and more focused. I loved Emma trying to teach Henry how to bump into Neal’s apartment door; Morrison was at her awkwardly adorable best in that scene.

The thing I love most about Emma is that she may be awkwardly adorable in some scenes, but she’s also one of the most determined and fiercest women on television when she really believes in something. And I was so happy to see her be the first one to believe that Tamara has something big and evil up her sleeve. While Emma’s “superpower” has been known to be unreliable, she isn’t as incompetent as Snow and Neal made her out to be—she seemed like a pretty darn good bail bondswoman from what we saw in the pilot. Snow’s disbelief seemed more like clunky exposition/explanation than anything else. (Ginnifer Goodwin had more than her fair share of clunkers this week in terms of dialogue.) I love that Emma clearly has no interest in getting back together with Neal anytime soon (hence her superpower actually working because she has no emotional investment in this situation). I just wish Snow, Henry, and Neal could see that. Emma came off looking like a crazy ex-girlfriend, and that made me sad because she’s anything but.

Speaking of crazy…Let’s get to the Regina situation in this episode, shall we? Remember when she was trying to find redemption through Henry earlier this season? I wonder if the writers remember that—and how much more interesting that storyline was than what we’re dealing with now. I hated Regina using magic to wipe Henry’s memory because it negates everything we watched her struggle with for the first half of the season. Those scenes now feel like such a waste of time if that story was going to be abandoned like it has been. Don’t get me wrong; I love the Evil Queen. But I love the dichotomy of her being pure evil in flashbacks and conflicted in Storybrooke. Now she just seems delusional and trapped in her own “victim complex” in the present-day plot, and that’s not fun to watch. Hearing her talk to Henry about heroes and villains was too heavy-handed, even for this show and even for an actress as talented as Lana Parrilla.

Parrilla did have some great moments in this episode, but they were mainly connected to the flashback scenes. Whenever she shares a scene with Robert Carlyle, I find myself on the edge of my seat, and their two scenes in this episode were no exception. Their gleeful levels of evil never fail to impress me. I especially loved Rumplestiltskin telling Regina to cut off ties with King George. It just added another layer to his schemes and made me wonder how far back he started pulling the strings not only to enact the curse but to bring about Emma’s conception and birth as well. It’s slightly unsettling—and I love it.

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Title Lacey

Two-Sentence Summary After Regina restores Belle’s cursed memories to her, she becomes Lacey, a hard-drinking, bad-boy-loving woman who is drawn to Rumplestiltskin’s dark side, which is the opposite of the Belle we see in flashbacks to Fairytale Land, whose desire to find the good in people saves Robin Hood. In other parts of Storybrooke, Emma has to deal with the possible choice of returning to Fairytale Land, Regina finds the magic bean crop, and Hook returns to town with Tamara’s help.

Favorite Lines
David: You want me to help you?
Rumplestiltskin: Well I’m certainly not here for the over-priced lasagna.

My Thoughts “Lacey” was a true return to form for Once Upon a Time after what I felt was a very disappointing episode before this latest hiatus. Was I disappointed in some of the characters this week? Yes. Were there some plot holes that had me scratching my head? Yes. But ultimately, this show’s strength has always been in its cast, and this hour allowed some of its most talented members to shine.

This episode belonged to Robert Carlyle and Emilie de Ravin, who both played the duality of their roles to absolute perfection. This was the first time we’ve seen de Ravin be anything but sweet and gentle as Belle, and she seemed to really thrive onscreen in her time as Lacey. I’ll admit to being disturbed beyond anything I was expecting from Once Upon a Time as I saw her attraction to Rumplestiltskin take over as he was beating the Sheriff of Nottingham outside of Granny’s, but that was exactly what I was supposed to feel. It was wrong and dark and tragic on so many levels, but it was brilliantly done. I used to think that Ginnifer Goodwin was the best at making both sides of her character feel real during the time of the curse, but de Ravin gave her a run for her money in this episode alone (and she looked absolutely stunning while doing so).

What made Belle’s transformation into Lacey so sad wasn’t that she drank a lot or kissed a man who wasn’t her date; it’s that Lacey was such a perversion of who Belle was as a woman and who she was for Rumplestiltskin in terms of what she believed about people. Belle is a hero because she fights for the good in everyone, including herself. She’s brave because she stands up for what’s right even when that means standing up to the Dark One himself. But Lacey is drawn to darkness; she finds goodness boring and instead wants to enable the darkest parts of people. And Rumplestiltskin at this point is all too easy a target.

I’ll admit, I’m not as passionate about the “Rumbelle” relationship as many people in the Once Upon a Time fandom are. They’re not my favorite couple (that would be Snow and Charming), but I was incredibly moved by their interactions in this episode. From the moment of quiet hope between in the hospital before all hell broke loose to that beautiful take on the library scene from Beauty and the Beast, there was something beautifully innocent and gentle in their chemistry this week, and I loved how that contrasted with the darkness that enveloped both of them at the end. The flashbacks to Rumplestiltskin’s growing humanity in the face of Belle’s inherent faith in goodness made the collapse of that human side all the more tragic.

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Title Selfless, Brave and True

Two-Sentence Summary While attempting to work through her guilt over Cora’s death and the newly-discovered “dark spot” on her heart, Snow finds a wooden August hiding outside Storybrooke. Flashbacks show us how August’s selfish, hedonistic lifestyle led to his turning back into wood, and they reveal a connection between August and Neal’s fiancée Tamara, who is far more evil (and far less interested in Neal) than she appears.

Favorite Line “And I know it better than anyone.” (Charming, talking about Snow’s heart)

My Thoughts This episode proved something that I hope the Once Upon a Time writers take to heart, if not for this season than hopefully for the seasons to come: This show works when it focuses on emotional beats between characters we have come to care about over the course of the show. It doesn’t work when it becomes too plot-heavy or asks us to care about the motivations of characters we barely know. The best moments of this episode focused on characters we as an audience have deep emotional ties to, but those moments were so few and far between that it’s hard to count this episode among the show’s better efforts.

Overall, I didn’t hate this episode with the passion that many in the fandom seem to be feeling today. However, my biggest issue with this episode is my issue with this season as a whole, and it’s getting harder and harder for me to ignore. There are simply too many characters already to justify introducing new ones into the cast. There are so many loose ends for existing characters that need to be tied up, so many unanswered questions that I have, such as: Did Kathryn and Frederick ever find each other? Will Red and Victor ever pursue a relationship? What are Mulan and Aurora doing right now? Where’s Cinderella, and how’s motherhood treating her? What is Jefferson up to?

I understand that some of these questions have to remain unanswered because of casting/scheduling conflicts, but it bothers me that moments of development for characters we already care about are being pushed aside in favor of introducing more and more characters who, frankly, I just don’t care about.

I was drawn to Once Upon a Time because of the Charming Family: Snow, David, Emma, and Henry. Last season, there were so many beautiful moments between these characters, but this season—when there should be even more reason for them to have meaningful, emotional conversations—their relationships are watered down for the sake of the increasingly complex plot. I know that this is a personal preference, but I don’t watch this show for the plot twists; I watch it for the relationships. And this episode left me feeling disappointed with some missed opportunities: When are Emma and Charming going to have a real father/daughter-type scene? Will Charming ever find out that either he or Snow could have gone through the wardrobe with Emma? Will Emma ever find out that her mother tried to commit suicide by begging Regina to rip out her heart?

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