Pilot: Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time premiered on ABC in 2011 and is now on its 3rd season. That's a good sign right?

The premise of the show follows Emma Swan (played by Jennifer Morrison) who goes to a town in Massachusetts called Storybrooke... yup... Storybrooke. She goes there because her son who she gave up for adoption ten years prior comes to her doorstep and goes on a rant about how she's the savior to a bunch of story book characters.

This is basically the reaction that Emma has. As a normal sane person would do, she brings the kid back to his mother.

The kid is insistent that his mother is basically the devil and that everyone in the town is a trapped fairy tale character but they don't know that they are.

The kid turns out to be right because while this story is going, the story of Snow White (played by Ginnifer Goodwin) picks up right after she is kissed by Prince Charming and they are getting married.

The wicked witch (played by Lana Parrilla) storms in and says that she will put a curse on Snow White and the entire fairy tale realm that will destroy all happy endings. And that's the reality of Storybrooke. In the scenes in the fantasy land there are characters that correlate with the characters in Storybrooke. Now there are characters that you see in the fantasy land that you see in the real world and you know who they are right away. The fun part in the pilot, however limited it is at the beginning, is finding characters and correlating them with their fantasy character. For example: you see little red riding hood. They don't say its her but based on interactions she has with her Grandmother in Granny's Bed and Breakfast, you can assume its her. So that's fun and it might be fun to play that matching game... for a little bit.

Unfortunately the characters themselves are a little lacking.

I'll start with Emma Swan. I've seen Jennifer Morrison before. She was in How I Met Your Mother and I really liked her. I think she can act and she's a lot of fun. Not to mention she's very good looking.

Now this is only the pilot, but I didn't feel Morrison did enough in it. She is probably by far the most interesting character. Mostly because she isn't necessarily undeniably good. First 5 minutes of screen time she beats the shit out of a guy she's looking for. I think she could probably turn into a very well developed character and by the number of seasons and good reception of the show as a whole, I hope she does.

But this poses a problem. She is this grounded character and she gets pulled into this seemingly insane fantasy brought on by this ten year old kid that comes out of the blue. She spends the entire episode saying this whole fairy tale stuff is nonsense. And yet she agrees to stay in the town for a week because the kid said so. There's not really a reason. She just does.

And then there's Henry. Henry is the child she gave up for adoption. I freaking hate this kid. I don't

wanna hear how cute he is, or how wide eyed he is, this kid is annoying.

For some reason, he knows that every one in the town is a fairy tale character and somehow knows that Emma is the only one who can save them by reading a book that his teacher gave him. His teacher that happens to be Snow White, but doesn't know it.

There's a line when this kid sees that Emma came to look for him and he says, I know you like me, I can tell. And I don't see how. This kid is a little shit. She steals his teachers credit card, he basically calls his mom a bitch, and he runs away from a really good life. Granted I don't know what his family life is like and his adopted mom is actually the Wicked Witch but this kid is an arrogant, annoying as fuck, little shit who gets away with it because he's got these stupid little whimsical sayings and a freaking halo on his head. I wanted to punch this kid square in the face after every scene he was in.

... but moving on.

Lana Parilla plays the Evil Queen. She really didn't do a bad job. (No pun intended) She's just kind of bland. She's evil... that's really all we know. In the real world she's the mayor of Storybrooke and she's set up as the bad guy but there's not really any basis for it.

And the part that doesn't really make sense to me is her plot. She has this curse go over the fairy tale land and says, we're going to a place that is much worse. One that has no happy endings, except mine... so 21st century Massachusetts is her happy ending? Why? Sure being the mayor is cool but how is being the adoptive mother of the grand kid of the people you wanted to curse (Snow White) a happy ending for her? Its a creative idea and I'm sure that it will be explained later in the show but did the Queen know they'd go to modern day or did she just think she'd be in a world where she had a happy ending. And by that logic, did she know she was going to go to the real world? Does she know that she herself is int he real world? Again, I guess this is all explained later in the season but thinking about it now, it doesn't really make sense.

While we're on Snow White, we then have Ginnifer Goodwin playing Snow White. She's very similar

to the kid. Just an undeniably good character with these hopeful and grossly whimsical lines that don't sound like someone would actually say them and just sound stupid. Besides the fact she has a ginormous forehead, Snow White makes some kind of dumb decisions in the pilot.

There's a part where they want to figure out what the evil Queen is doing before she does it and they go to Rumpelstiltskin (played by Robert Carlyle) He says he'll give the information if he is promised the first born of Snow White (who happens to be Emma). While Prince Charming gives a resounding hell no, Snow White agrees without thought... not gonna bite her in the ass later. Maybe they're trying to portray her as the stereotypical Disney princess as kind of dumb but I'm going to guess no.

And that's the big problem I have with this TV show. There are characters that are so one dimensional that they're not interesting. I don't need every character to be as complex as Walter White but if I don't feel as though Snow White has thoughts beyond how good must always triumph and how wonderful life would be if we just sang koombyah I'm not going to find that character relateable and therefore a character I like.

That can be said for any character. Good or bad. I understand that these characters are based off of Fairy Tale characters and these Fairy Tales are not known for their depth, but I wish I would have seen more from the characters in the real world and I just didn't. Again, maybe its something that will show up later but Snow White's real world counterpart was just the same, bright eyed and optimistic. The Queen was evil in the fairy tale world and she's painted as this evil woman in the real world. The best villains are the ones that the audience can identify with. You may not agree at all with their motives or why they're doing it but there's a humanity to them.

And in the cases where there isn't humanity in them, then those guys need to be scary as shit. Those villains, like the Joker in The Dark Knight tap into our greatest fears, the fear of the unknown. We didn't truly know the Joker's backstory, we didn't know how far he was willing to go. Of course the evil Queen can't be the Joker but I'd like to see a little bit more ways in which this Queen is evil besides the fact that she wear black and just gives this pissed of bitchy face all the time.

The evil Queen just doesn't give off either a sense of being relatable, like we pity her a little bit because she doesn't have a happy ending. And at the same time she's not scary enough to be the Joker villain, that we're scared of her power and afraid of the world that would be if she actually won... because she did win... and the world was our world.

I've said a lot of shit around this show and yes I know, I'm basing all of this off the pilot. The truth was I wasn't too impressed by the pilot. Perhaps things will get better.

Little bit of a recap, I liked the interpretations of fairy tale characters and correlations between their

fairytale character and their real world character. I also liked Robert Carlyle. Rumpelstiltskin may have been the most interesting character but he was only on screen for 5 minutes max.

And the things I didn't like about the pilot were the main characters. Emma was alright, but the other main characters were either inexplicably good or inexplicably bad. No in between, no neutral (with the possible exception of Rumpelstiltskin, again too little screen time to tell.) And the characters who we're suppose to be rooting for (E.I. Snow White and especially Henry) I wanted to punch in the face because of their wide eyed hope filled sentences and looks. Maybe I've just become a cynic in the last few years. But people don't talk like that. It's annoying.

I think that's the whole satire in "Enchanted". If you haven't seen Enchanted, its a similar plot. The evil

witch sends this Princess (played by Amy Adams) into the real world. What the movie does well is the interactions this Princess has with the real world because she's from a Fairy Tale world. Now this doesn't exactly line up with the plot of "Once Upon a Time" but hear me out.

The movie basically makes fun of the optimism and Disney like attitudes found in their movies and its clashes with the real world because people don't talk like that.

Now Enchanted does it well because they're kind of making fun of it. Once Upon a Time, while the characters are not aware they're Fairy tale characters, they still have these wide eyed, unrealistic dialogue that just makes me want to punch them... especially that kid... cause he's annoying.

I feel I would have enjoyed this show more had it been on a different Network. ABC is not known for breaking rules and having really gritty shows and I think that's what this show needed. I think it needed to be a little bit darker and a little less Disney.

I feel like I tore this pilot to pieces but I want to hear your opinion. What'd you think of the pilot of Once Upon A Time? If you continued watching it, do you like it and why? Again, if you have any suggestions for my pilot series I am all ears.