Source: http://www.zimbio.com

Title Ruby Slippers

Two-Sentence Summary After Ruby lands in the Underworld, she begins searching for a way to return to Oz and wake Dorothy from a sleeping curse, which ultimately leads Snow and Charming to discover a way for one of them to return to Storybrooke to be with their son. As Ruby worries about who will give Dorothy True Love’s Kiss, Snow helps her see that the answer is clear: It’s Ruby herself, who we see fall in love with Dorothy during flashbacks to her time in Oz with Mulan.

Favorite Line “What you get back when you love someone far outweighs the risk.” (Snow)

My Thoughts Love, hope, and courage are deeply connected on Once Upon a Time. It takes courage to open your heart to the hope that someone could see all of you and still choose to love you. And it takes courage to allow yourself to hope that your love for someone—and theirs for you—is strong enough to create magic.

In the words of Snow White, “Love is freaking scary.” (How perfect was Ginnifer Goodwin’s delivery of that line, by the way?) But as Snow also said last week, “Love is worth it.” Love of all kinds is worth fighting for. Love may be scary, but love also makes us brave.

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Source: avclub.com

Title Her Handsome Hero

Two-Sentence Summary With Belle and Rumplestiltskin working together to try to save their unborn baby from Hades, the Lord of the Underworld enlists a familiar face from Belle’s past to throw a wrench into their plans: Gaston. Meanwhile, Emma’s nightmare of a beast attacking her mother forces her to confront her guilt about her family’s participation in her quest to save Killian.

Favorite Line “We knew it would be hard—these things always are—but some things are worth it. Love is worth it.” (Snow)

My Thoughts Hope is the strongest force of good there is on Once Upon a Time, and the opposite is also true: Hopelessness is the strongest agent of darkness. So much of this Underworld arc has focused on the way hope can take root in the darkest places, but that can only happen when hope is shared. When someone feels like they’re alone in hoping for the best, it’s easy for them to lose that hope when things get hard. And when that happens, it also becomes easy for them to open themselves up to darkness.

I really loved the visual symbolism in this episode of hope being a flower growing amid the decay of the Underworld. Like a flower, hope can’t grow in darkness, but light makes it grow strong. And Emma and her loved ones have brought light to the Underworld. These characters have a deep sense of hope, and they don’t just keep it to themselves. They’re heroes because they work to share that hope with others, and they’ve done that not just by giving hope to those who have since moved on, but also by continuing to give hope to each other when the darkness around them starts to feel overwhelming.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are Rumplestiltskin and Belle. Hope has never been something Rumplestiltskin has understood. He’s a coward, and fear and hopelessness are often deeply connected. But what made “Her Handsome Hero” so sad was the fact that Belle is also feeling hopeless now—not just concerning the fate of her child but concerning her entire belief system and her sense of self.

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Source: http://www.threeifbyspace.net

Title Our Decay

Two-Sentence Summary When Hades gets Rumplestiltskin to open a portal between Storybrooke and the Underworld, Zelena, her daughter, and Belle are all brought to the realm of the dead, leading to revelations for both Rumplestiltskin and Belle and Hades and Zelena. The latter pair of characters is the focus of the flashbacks, which reveal Hades own plan for vengeance against a sibling and the love that made him reconsider his plans.

Favorite Lines
Zelena: Who the hell are you?
Hades: Who the hell am I? That question is more appropriate than you think.

My Thoughts Well that episode was just full of surprises, wasn’t it?

At a time when spoilers are readily available and episodes seem to be discussed and analyzed in intricate detail long before they actually air, it’s nice to still be surprised sometimes. And it’s nice to know that after five seasons, Once Upon a Time can still surprise me—not just by the twists and turns of its plot but by the unexpected emotional reactions I end up having.

“Our Decay” was a surprising episode on all fronts. But it wasn’t an out-of-character episode for this show. In fact, its surprises came from the way it took many of the show’s most important themes—self-definition, choice, love vs. power, family (specifically motherhood), and hope—and reflected them through new lenses.

Each storyline in this episode was connected through the theme of selfless love. True Love isn’t selfish. It’s the recognition that sometimes you have to sacrifice what you want for what the person you love needs; it’s the belief that the person you love always deserves their best chance, even if that’s not with you and even if you have to go to great lengths to secure that best chance. And that’s never more evident on this show than it is in the relationships between parents and children.

One of the biggest surprises of this episode was the way it made us truly care about Zelena as a mother. Before “Our Decay,” I never really believed that she actually cared about her baby beyond her daughter’s potential to love her (which was a selfish way of looking at parenthood rather than a selfless way of viewing it, though it made sense considering her history of abandonment and her deep-rooted mommy issues). And even at times in this episode, I found myself rooting against her and hoping Regina and Robin would get the baby away from her. However, through an amazing performance by Rebecca Mader and smart writing that paralleled some of this show’s most poignant scenes, it became clear to me that Zelena does truly love her daughter.

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Source: ABC/Eike Schroter

Title The Brothers Jones

Two-Sentence Summary When Killian reunites with his brother Liam in the Underworld, he discovers the truth about how they came to survive a shipwreck and join the navy in the past. Meanwhile, Henry’s quest to find the Author’s pen proves to be a potential key to defeating Hades.

Favorite Line “You can come home. You just have to forgive yourself. The thing is, no matter how many times I tell you—or anybody else does—you have to do it yourself.” (Emma, to Killian)

My Thoughts Heroes inspire others. Stories of their brave, selfless deeds are meant to fill us with a desire to follow in their footsteps. However, sometimes those stories hurt more than they help. When all we know about a person is their best—their highlights—then it can sometimes feel depressing rather than inspiring to hear their stories, because we know both our best and our worst—our errors as well as our highlights. If we never see someone struggle, then we sometimes come to believe that our normal, human struggles shouldn’t happen and that we should beat ourselves up over not being perfect—when, in truth, no one is.

That’s why the most inspiring stories are those of people who overcame struggles, who fought to be the best version of themselves. The stories we most often need are not stories of heroes who are never shown to do anything wrong but of people who make mistakes, have flaws, and are honest about every stumble and failure they have along the way as they grow.

Once Upon a Time is telling stories of those kinds of heroes. Even its characters who’ve seemed like paragons of good choices have made mistakes. None of them are perfect, and that’s what makes them interesting and inspiring. And that’s a lesson multiple characters learned in “The Brothers Jones”: Being a hero isn’t about being perfect; it’s about doing the best you can and being honest about those times when you struggle with doing the best you can. That’s how you inspire hope in others—by helping them see that everyone has flaws and makes mistakes, so they’re not beyond hope if they’re imperfect.

“The Brothers Jones” was a thematically rich episode of Once Upon a Time. Its most obvious theme was that of forgiving yourself, but there was another theme that came up in nearly every storyline this week that tied directly into the idea of forgiving yourself—and that was the danger of comparison. The only way to forgive yourself for being imperfect and for making mistakes is to stop comparing yourself to others, because we don’t often know anyone’s true story but our own.

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Source: http://www.ign.com

Title Devil’s Due

Two-Sentence Summary In order to save Killian, Emma and Rumplestiltskin—who’s eager to get home to Belle for mysterious reasons—seek Milah’s help. Flashbacks to Rumplestiltskin and Milah’s past reveal more about their broken marriage and the deal he once made that threatens his future in the present.

Favorite Lines
Killian: You’re impossible.
Emma: And you love me for it.

My Thoughts
“I still see hope in your eyes.”

When Hades finally explained that this—the hope Killian still has—was the reason for his torture, it made perfect sense. If there’s one thing Once Upon a Time has always preached, it’s that heroes hold on to hope even when things seem hopeless and work to spread hope to those who need it, while villains often feel hopeless themselves and want others to feel that way, too. Hope is the heroes’ greatest weapon and the villains’ greatest enemy, so the villains will do whatever it takes to destroy hope. And that central conflict between those who spread hope and those who try to snuff it out played a major part in “Devil’s Due,” which was ultimately one of the most tragic episodes of Once Upon a Time in recent memory. (Yes, I would argue it was even more tragic than “Swan Song.”)

The tragedy of “Devil’s Due” came from the fact that sometimes hope isn’t enough. Sometimes you can’t escape your past. And sometimes you can’t get closure after you lose a loved one.

Lost souls were an important concept in this episode, and I don’t think there’s a better example of a lost soul than Milah. I’ve always been fascinated by her as a character because she’s seemed so complex, and all this episode did was add even more layers to her character. (Of course it added more layers to a fascinating female character; it was written by Jane Espenson, who literally never lets me down.)

Have I always agreed with Milah’s decisions? No. Have I always liked how she spoke to her husband after he came back from the Ogre Wars? No. Would I have done some things differently than she did? I’d like to think so. But that’s what makes her such a well-written character. I may not believe I would have done things the way she did them, but I completely understand her actions and the thoughts and feelings behind them. And who knows? If I was in her situation, maybe I would have handled things the same way. That’s the beauty of fiction; it asks us to be empathetic toward people who seem different from us. It asks us to walk in their shoes. And now, knowing what we know about Rumplestiltskin’s deal and Milah’s first meeting with Killian, I understand better than ever how she could leave her family to be with a man who gave her a choice when she felt all her choices had been taken from her.

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Source: ABC/Eike Schroter

Title Labor of Love

Two-Sentence Summary As flashbacks reveal Snow’s connection to the young demigod Hercules, she works in the present to remind him of what he’s capable of, while also rediscovering what she’s capable of. The two heroes team up with Meg to bring down Cerberus, while Henry runs into an old foe with a new plan and Hades continues to find new ways to torture Killian.

Favorite Line “I’m saying I don’t want to be Mary Margaret anymore. I want to be Snow White again.” (Snow)

My Thoughts Once Upon a Time has many recurring themes: redemption and forgiveness, hope, love, family…But my favorite theme tackled on this show has always been self-definition. I’ve loved watching the way Emma’s line from Season One about punching back and saying, “No, this is who I am,” has been reflected in the journeys of so many of this show’s characters—from Emma herself to Regina and Killian.

“Labor of Love” put that theme in the spotlight once again, and it did so using a common motif for this show: the reclamation of a name. Names matter on Once Upon a Time. And in an episode that started with Killian using his given name first and his more common—but more villainous—name second, names mattered perhaps more than ever.

For so long, I’ve been decrying the use of “Mary Margaret” instead of “Snow White,” and it seems those who sit on the Once Upon a Time version of Mt. Olympus finally heard my pleas to bring back the name—and the identity—of my favorite character, the one who made me fall in love with this show and the one I relate to the most. I might be biased because of how much that name change meant to me, but I thought this was one of the strongest episodes in recent memory. It took one of the show’s most important themes and carried it through stories in the past and present that shed new light on a character who’d been stuck in the shadows for far too long.

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