My things have changed since last season! Emma’s pregnant
and giving birth – and screaming so intensely she can apparently knock out the
electrics. Might want to get an electrician to look at that. The baby is born –
it’s a boy – and the doctor realises that Emma doesn’t want to know the details
because she’s giving him up for adoption. Ahh, flashback – they could have at
least tried to make Emma look younger. She tearfully says she can’t be a mother
And we move to the present day Emma, Hook’s pirate ship and
a terrible ocean storm as they navigate through
the portal in their quest to rescue Henry (I’m going to restrain my
desperate urge to ask why they want to. Really). Everyone gets through in one piece (including
the Charmings, alas). To Neverland.
Y’know, no matter how dramatically Hook says it, there’s
no way “Neverland” can ever sound menacing.
Henry is being held captive by Tamara and Greg and he
threatens them with the wrath of both of his mothers. Apparently Tamara and
Greg want to destroy Neverland because it has super-duper magic- and they don’t
ask their bosses any questions like how they leave a land they’re destroying
before they get destroyed with it – because they believe in their cause (and
they are not the brightest sparks out there).
This becomes more clear when Tamara tries to call their mysterious
bosses and can’t. There could be a fancy magical reason – or it could be that
their little walkie-talkie is full of sand, not batteries. As Henry points out,
their whole not asking questions thing isn’t really working out for them.
Regina and Hook have a moment reflecting on being the
villains, how villains don’t get happy endings and how that means their lives
have been pretty wasted. Don’t worry guys, your character development is so
completely and utterly random you could be freaking saints by the end of the
series. Or randomly declare that you are, in fact, pretty pretty teapots, it
would make as much sense.
And the charming family has a little chit-chat – Mary Margaret
of the Wet Lettuce insists Emma shouldn’t blame herself about Neal and Henry to
which Emma counters “I don’t – I blame you”. She blames listening to Mary Margaret
and David who grew up in fairy tale where good always wins; furthermore, the
whole trying to be parents thing is nice but David and Mary Margaret are the
same age as Emma so pulling the older, wiser, advisor is silly. If Emma hadn’t
broken the curse, she could have just been with Henry (well, not quite – since you
had no legal right to be near him and it was only by breaking into fairytale
land that completely suspended actual legal systems and made David de-facto
leader for REASONS that suddenly made you magically Henry’s legitimate guardian.
But, hey, you’re ranting at Mary Margaret of the Wet Lettuce, so far be it from
me to nitpick).
The Charmings continue to be fluffy bunnies with their endless boundless optimism while Emma rants that their optimism is completely and utterly unfounded! And Gold throws in his opinion – he’s going to get Henry back because Emma will fail – because she doesn’t believe in magic until forced (and why should she have?), because she doesn’t believe in her parents (the Charmings of the Wet Lettuce?) or herself so she is doomed to fail. He mocks and derides her for constantly looking for evidence and never just believing stuff.
Is everyone seriously dogpiling Emma because she insists
on logic and reasoning rather than believing shit and hoping it comes true?
Gold adds that Neverland is a place of wild imagination –
and Emma doesn’t have that, before he magically disappears.
Back on land, Greg is still on message wanting to contact their employers while Tamara is having doubts. Greg warns her against Henry’s manipulation – please, Greg, your communicator had no batteries, her doubts are not unreasonable here. Made all the more apparent when a group of teenagers with clubs appear and introduce themselves as the Home Office.
See, this is why you really should research your
employers first.
Henry correctly identifies them as the Lost Boys – and no,
they don’t want to destroy magic, Greg and Tamara just seemed to believe
absolutely anything they’re told. They want Henry and there’s no plan to send
Tamara and Greg home – Greg smugly declares they won’t hand Henry over
(ignoring the fact they’re out numbered 4 to one by people with big sticks and
sharp things) and Peter Pan, the shadow monster, steals Greg’s shadow – this is
apparently not healthy and Greg collapses to the floor, possibly dead. Tamara
gets shot with an arrow which looks equally unhealthy and possibly dead – and Henry
makes a run for it. Henry escapes when an ex-Lost Boy grabs him and helps hide
him.
The boy is all despair and Henry proves he is Mary
Margaret of the Wet Lettuce’s grandson with lots of “I promise everything will
be ok”, uh-huh. However he is right when he says his family is different and
them coming for him is considerably more likely than most of the boys kidnapped
to Neverland. The fugitive Lost Boy is on Pan’s hitlist for stealing pixie dust
(which doesn’t work – probably lack of happy thoughts there, grumpy), this
exposition concludes when they decide to hide in the Echo Caves, the only place
the Lost Boys can’t track them – I kind of think they should have been making a
bee-line there.
Back on the ship, Emma exercises and Hook appears to give
her Neal’s old sword (since Neal/Baelfire spent some time with Hook in
Neverland after random portalling) and for Hook and Emma to build a little more
of that sexual tension between them.
It also reminds who Neal is in time for him to wake up in
the Enchanted Forest, ready for Mulan, Aurora and Phillip to question. Lots of
random splutterings where they kind of learn Neal is Henry’s father (and from
the Enchanted forest) and Aurora offers
her Dream Walking abilities (hereby snarkily referred to as the power to
Take To One’s Bed) to try and contact Mary Margaret or others in whichever
world they’re in.
Aurora Takes to Her Bed while Mulan questions Neal – he was
portaled to the Enchanted Forest because he was thinking about where he grew up
when he thought he was dying. He starts to explain the Mulan movie to, well,
Mulan when Aurora wakes up – her Taking To Her Bed was a failure. That leaves
Neal with on choice – go check his father’s castle because there’s no way
Rumplestiltskin hasn’t planned for this eventuality (he plans for everything). Of
course that means telling Mulan & co that his dad is Rumplestiltskin.
Ion the way to the castle, Mulan is curious as to why
Emma never mentioned Neal and he sums up what happened – ending with the clumsy
Aesop of how you never find love if you fear rejection – which is slightly relevant
to Mulan and her unrequited love for Phillip (if, y’know, Phillip weren’t married
or betrothed or whatever).
Speaking of, Gold has reached the land of Neverland and
finds the injured Tamara. With a bit of magic he heals her wound and makes the
arrow disappear. She tells Gold that Henry ran and that Pan wants Henry and
explains her huge, epic ignorance and how sorry she is for shooting
Neal and sending him to a random world. Gold, not being the forgiving sort,
rips out and crushes her heart. What, you didn’t really think she was going to
live, did you? Have we been watching the same show?
Back to the boat and they’re under attack by mermaids
(Hook: Prepare for attack! Regina: be more specific! I do like those two).
Charming grabs a harpoon. Mary Margaret and Emma grab a fishing net and they
battle for a little while until Regina loses her patience and drives the whole
pack (school? Shoal?) off with fireballs and teleports the one Mary Margaret
and Emma have captured onto the deck with a contemptuous flick of her wrist.
Hook and David aren’t happy having a completely helpless
mermaid on the and Regina is more practical – they were attacked, she wants to
know why. The mermaid blows a conchshell and calls it a warning – let her go or
die. The group decide the best way to find out what that means is to bicker
(and ye gods could Mary Margaret be any more of a Wet Lettuce?) . They bicker
more and more and more as a storm rages up out of nowhere, Regina continually
asking if she can kill the mermaid (everyone votes no – I vote on Regina’s
side). Regina turns the mermaid to wood – and a huge wave appears.
Time for some more bickering which ends up with Regina and
Mary Margaret coming to blows. Which in turn leads to David and Hook coming to
blows. Emma makes a leap of logic that the storm is not caused by the mermaid –
it’s caused by their own conflict. The more the group bickers and rages and
fights, the worse the storm gets (I don’t know what you were worried about,
Gold – Emma can make vast leaps of logic and imagination easily!) She tries to call to the others but they
ignore her – so she jumps over the side, shocking them into breaking up their
fights in their worry over her
To save Emma, the bickering group is forced to work
together in a classic after-school-specialish moral message about co-operation
that couldn’t be shovelled on more thickly if the writers tried. David dives in
and saves Emma and they all pull her to safety- and the Sun comes out in
response to all the twee feelings
Back in the Enchanted forest, Mulan and Neal arrive at
Rumplestiltskin’s castle and run into Robin Hood who has claimed the Dark One’s
Castle (until Rumple returns anyway then he will run away like a sensible
person. Well, assuming squatting in Rumple’s home is sensible). Robin is happy
for them to look around but is sure that there’s nothing valuable there but
Neal spots his dad’s walking stick. Rumplestiltskin bound many of his magical
items to himself – or his bloodline – so they’d be useless to anyone else; Neal
makes the point that while Rumplestiltskin may have been evil in many ways,
family did matter to him (and look at the height marks on his stick for little
growing up Neal, awwww). The stick reveals a hidden door.
In Neverland, Henry and fugitive Lost Boy are cornered at
a cliff edge with nowhere to run. The ex-Lost Boy wants to give up, Henry,
naturally doesn’t. Like Emma, he also decides to solve his problems by leaping
off a high, lethal place, using the ex-Lost Boy’s pixie dust. And it’ll work
for Henry because Henry believes! Um… sure – but couldn’t you sprinkle some on
yourselves and test this belief BEFORE hurtling off a cliff? Of course, Henry
doesn’t go splat – it works and they fly off in a cloud of green gas and really
bad CGI.
Back to Gold – please kill something Gold, the level of
twee is getting quite quite excessive. He sits on a rock and is greeted by the
head of the Lost Boys – who recognises him (little nugget of joy – Gold has all
of Rumplestiltskin’s affectations but he almost found them tiresome in this
scene – his little finger twirl was impatient; I love that interweaving of Gold
and Rumplestiltskin and how Gold may find the character wearing to maintain –or
he’s just impatient and it’s “yes I know who I am, get on with it). Pan
welcomes Rumplestiltskin – but they’re enemies if he’s there for Henry – Gold and
Pan have apparently met before and Gold is quite content to be Pan’s enemy. Apparently Gold doesn’t expect to survive –
but he does question how many he’ll kill before dying. Before leaving the Lost
Boy leader throws Gold a crude doll – Gold recognises it and it brings him to
tears. I’m assuming it’s an old toy of Neal’s?
Especially since we then switch to Neal going through
Gold’s cupboard o’ tricks, using a crystal ball to track Emma to Neverland.
Which leads us to Emma and the gang finally making landfall and Emma declaring that Gold is right they do have to believe – but not in magic, but in each other! At this point, a unicorn would actually vomit at the saccharine messages of this episode. Thankfully she pulls it back by saying no, they don’t need to be friends, there’s too much hate between them. But they need to co-operate and bring all their skills together – hero, villain or pirate (guess that makes you the villain Regina). And Emma’s skill? She’s a mother (she says this to Regina!) and she’s their leader (she says so) and they either help her get her son back (again said to Regina) or get out of the way.
Regina did not slap Emma for that line. I totally would have
in her shoes.
Henry and Lost Boy land and Henry is happy that belief
can make anything possible – time for some betrayal – ex-Lost Boy isn’t an ex –
he’s Peter Pan himself! Oh, the shock! People actually lie! See, this is the
problem of following Mary Margaret of the Wet Lettuce’s example. Peter begins
an exposition speech about how it was easier to convince Tamara and Greg to
hate than believe (did you catch that moral message? It was dropped with all
the delicate subtlety of an anvil from a great height). He wants the Heart of
the Truest Believer – which Henry proved when he jumped off the cliff. And now
he belongs to Peter Pan
Isn’t “Truest Believer” a nice way of saying “Most
Gullible?”
Once Upon a Time is a fairy tale – and yes it challenges
some aspects of the fairy tales but some elements of the Disney versions remain
(including the appalling treatment or erasure of anyone not straight and white)
– that includes annoying fluffy axioms like believing in things with no
indication it’s true, being excessively optimistic even when it means shutting
your eyes to reality and just wishing on your stars and thinking happy thoughts
and - BLARGLE!
And could all this be better epitomised than Emma being confronted by the Charmings of the Wet Lettuce and Gold scolding her for being a silly silly thing who demands EVIDENCE and REASON. Oh silly you. And this whole episode is then dedicated to reinforcing that lesson! No thinking! Thinking is bad – just BELIEVE and you will make it so – logic and reason are silly!
There’s this edge of over-simplicity that is always there
in Once Upon a Time that doesn’t quite work – because though it is based in
fairy tales, it’s fairy tales brought to the modern, real world and real
sensibilities. And when fluffy twee, simple thinking, complete erasure of grey
meets reality, common sense and nuance the twee really shouldn’t win. (And can we run this whole "you've just got to believe" with what happened to Tamara and Greg - and even Henry and Peter Pan - contrast these more closely please!)
Tamara died. Who didn’t see that coming? I can’t say I’ll
miss the character because Once Upon a Time doesn’t have nearly enough POC to
support an undeveloped Black villain (and Greg and Tamara - especially Tamara - were terribly developed making them a clumsy plot device rather than actual villains) – but it’s that old choice “erasure or
awful portrayal” which really shouldn’t be a choice. Especially since Lancelot
and Billy makes for disproportionately large number of POC deaths (coupled with
Sidney’s unexplained disappearance because Giancarlo Esposito got the hell out
while the getting was good).
On the whole this episode was… not awful, but it was
really heavy in the not-even-slightly subtle after-school special moral
messages and I’ve already expressed my irritation with fairytale logic. Tamara’s
death (and Mulan edging her way to become Neal’s sidekick) don’t fill me with
great hope for the future of POC representation either – and any progress we
had in the last episode towards acknowledging Regina’s motherhood is, again,
undermined.
It’s the first episode of a new series, which means I am reserving judgement on a lot – I think that the plot will be more coherent this season than the mixed up mess of season 2 which is a major plus. But a lot of the old problems don’t seem to be being addressed and that’s already really clear in the first episode.
