Once Upon A Time Season 1

I never actually thought that I would get to this review. After I watched the pilot, I was sure that I was done with this show. After I couldn't really take it after 4 episodes later, I thought that I was done with this show... and yet here I am reviewing the entire first season of Once Upon A Time.

The truth is, right now I'm really excited for the new season of Doctor Who. But since I don't have BBC, I have to wait until the episode becomes available online. I'm in a bit of a fantasy mood and I was trying to find a show that would hold me over until Doctor Who started up again. This kind of filled that hole for now.

If you need a recap of what I thought of the pilot, here's that review.

Basically the premise of the show is that Emma Swan (played by Jennifer Morrison) enters a small town by the name of Storybrooke with the help of an annoying as hell small boy claiming to be her son.

The boy, Henry, claims that the town is populated by the characters of beloved Fairy Tales, like Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, Beauty and the Beast, Rumplestiltzkin and others. Except they don't know who they are due to the curse of the evil Queen Regina (played by Lana Parilla) This curse was enacted after Snow White and Prince Charming were married and Regina swore to end their happiness... and she did it by throwing them into the real world 2011... where Regina is mayor... and the adoptive mother of Snow White's grandson... yeah... quite the evil plan you got there.

And I'm just gonna get this out of the way...

If any of you thought I was going to grow to like this kid, you were wrong. I hated this kid from the very beginning to the very end of the season. Every time he was on screen, I was hoping that he was going to eat a poison Apple Turnover and bite it... and for a minute there he almost does. But of course he's important or something and had to live for the entirety of the season.

Furthermore he did nothing productive in entire season. The only reason he is in this show is because he provides a goal for the main character. For one reason or another, Emma really likes this kid and eventually wants to have custody over him.

I understand there's only so much kids can do in shows like these but c'mon even Hansel and Gretel did more than Henry did. In the end, the kid just made me angry

Now that I have that out of the way, I can talk about the remainder of the season because while he showed up in a lot of the first season, it started to focus more on the fairy tale characters and the mysteries behind them instead of Henry.

But that won't stop me from starting about the other pair of characters that were nothing but annoying for me during the entirety of the season.

And that was the storyline between Snow White and Prince Charming, or David and Mary Margret.

And its mostly the interactions these two have in the real world. While their fairy tale story is annoying in its own right because these two fall in love way too quickly and with no substance whatsoever, they at least have some somewhat interesting fight scenes and "interesting" backstories to build up to the fairy tale that we all know and love. While its not the same story because the writer's wanted to mix things up, you know how their story ends, Snow White ends up eating the apple, Charming finds her and they live happily ever after. The fairy tale story is more annoying because its predictable. I'll talk more about the structure of the fairy tales later but I want to stay on Snow and Charming

In the real world however, its just annoying.

Have you ever seen Sleepless in Seattle?

While I'm realizing it might not be the best comparison, the real world interactions between these two just remind me of that movie except Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman just did it so much better.

For the first few episodes, David is in a coma. But magically wakes up and falls in love with Snow White because, you know, that's what they do. But then he has this wife who he has the memory of loving but cannot bring himself to actually do it. And Snow White is just caught in the crossfire as David can't figure the fuck out what he wants to do, its just this back and forth of bullshit every single episode and eventually their little love triangle/will they or won't they motiff just gets freaking annoying. First they're going to be together, then they're not, then they're going to be together again but whatsherface is pregnant, then she's not pregnant and its just so stupid!

Furthermore these actors are just bland and not really great. Its probably how they're written but Ginnifer Goodwin is just this wide eyed innocent little heroine who they tried to make a badass but failed just miserably. The Prince is pretty bland as well. They're just both undeniably good and when they do the wrong thing it just seems out of character.

But maybe the show could be salvaged by the main character?

Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan... I didn't love her.

I suppose she provided a good protagonist who is able to fight the bad guy, have her struggles, and come out the victor in the end but she's not incredibly interesting.

Besides a few arbitrary traits like her desire to find her parents and how she's a grounded individual who doesn't believe in fairy tales, Emma is more of a vehicle for the viewer to view this adventure.

Cracked did a great video on the phenomena, it should give a great explanation as to what Emma Swan is in this show.

Heres' the Explanation

While it works for most mediums, it doesn't exactly create for an incredibly complex character. Emma Swan is the neutral mask and while she is the main character, there's really very few episodes that focus on her development. I know ever since ABC got away with 6 seasons of Lost having fifteen billion characters, they've been knocking out shows with huge casts. But if you don't take the time to really develop Emma, when it comes to the end of the season and she's suddenly suppose to be the Hero again, it kind of falls flat because they sat on it for so long. There's only a few episodes where she actually shows some development, actually shows some sort of moral dilemma, and actually becomes a characters rather than a neutral mask for the audience.

And then there's the villain.

Regina/ The Evil Queen is a complex character to review because she does actually have a backstory, there is actually a little bit of method to her madness and there's at least an effort to make her a sympathetic villain, one that, while you still see her as the villain and want her to lose, you can't help but feel sorry for her.

Lana Parilla's performance and the way the character is written has its ups and downs. On one hand she does have her moments where she is quite evil and gives off the feeling as if there's no way she can be beaten. This is actually very effective. On the other hand, Lana Parilla is not the greatest actor one note evil can get kind of dull. On another hand, her backstory does allow for her to be a sympathetic villain and gives her a little bit of a reason for why she's so evil besides just... being evil.

However... her reasoning for being evil, her reasoning for hating Snow White so much and wanting all of the good characters to lose their happy ending... is really... really weak.

The majority of the characters throughout the season have origin stories, Jimmny Cricket has his story of how he became a Cricket, Rumpelstilzkin has his story of how he became the way he was and Regina has her story of how she came to hate Snow White... and again, its weak.

Regina begins as a wide eyed undeniably good character believing in true love. So much that when she saves the King's daughter, Snow White and is proposed to by the King, she wants to run away with her true love. Well her controlling mother will have none of that. But Snow White figures out that she is in love with someone else. Regina tries to get her not to tell but Regina's mother coaxes it out of her and ends up killing Regina's true love.

Regina's mother commits the murder, controls her with magic, its later figured out that she coaxed it out of Snow White and who does Regina blame for the murder of her true love? If you guessed the mother, well you were wrong, she blames Snow White?!?! Even after she figures out that the events of the episode were all orchestrated by her mother she still blames Snow White.

Listen Lady, you're a grown ass adult. You want to murder a dumbass little girl because she was manipulated by your manipulative mother? Really?

Again... very weak.

However, one of the criticisms I had of Regina was that it didn't really make sense for her perfect world to be the modern real world where she's mayor and the adoptive mother of her worst enemy's grandson. But the show does actually work it out to show that she does care for Henry. Why she does I'm not sure, and that's not just because Henry annoys the hell out of me but why the grandson of Snow White?

Maybe she didn't know but then it begs the question, how did Henry grow up resenting Regina so much?

I think it would have made more sense for Henry to be a little bit of a product of Regina's upbringing, maybe don't make him an asshole but a prodigy of her teaching, an heir that if she loses him, like she is so worried about in the show, it actually has a consequence. She's not just losing a son, she's losing an heir, someone to carry on her name and goals. I don't know. Maybe that's better explained in the second season but in this season she just cared for Henry well... because. Maybe its her good side, maybe its just a poorly written script but for how evil Regina is, she legitimately cares about Henry and you see it in the end of the season.

So I'm torn on whether or not I like Regina as a villain. I think she has her moments but she's not phenomenal.

 What was phenomenal was Rumpelstiltskin/ Mr. Gold.

I wrote in my review of the pilot that Rumpelstiltskin was the best part of the pilot because he seemed like a fun, unpredictable character, making you unsure of what side he's on and what he's going to do next.

I started to rethink that stance when I watched the next few episodes because while he is Rumpelstiltskin in the Fairy tale world, he kind of overacts and has some dumb dialogue. A little bit more subtlety would have helped the character a lot.

But then as the show goes on, you learn his backstory, how he came to be the powerful being he is and especially the meddling and scheming he does in the real world, suddenly you start to realize that he is the real threat, not Regina, but by the time you realize that, its too late.

The other part of his character that was unexpectedly really good was switching him for the character of the Beast in the Beauty and the Beast themed episode. Suddenly Mr. Gold becomes incredibly complex, and a tormented character. He's much more of a sympathetic villain than Regina and he's just all around better. Now maybe its just because Regina is not that great of a villain that Mr. Gold (the real name is too hard to type out) is just flushed out better and seems like a better villain in comparison. I don't know.

The last character worth mentioning is not even a consistent character. He guest stars every once and a while. He's the Mad Hatter (played by Sebastian Stan)

Now maybe I'm just a little bias because he happens to also be Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier from Captain America, (sorry to spoil that if I did). Needless to say, he just comes off, to me, as a more competent actor in comparison to the rest of the cast.

While its not perfect, his story is actually a really compelling one of how he agrees to help the Evil Queen to give his daughter a better life and ends up getting screwed over by her. And his fate of knowing he's a fairy tale character in the real world but being apart from his daughter is incredibly tragic and again, just makes him more compelling.

Again, he's not perfect. They probably didn't have to make him the Mad Hatter. This version of him is more the Sad Desperate Hatter instead of a Mad Hatter. He doesn't seem crazy at all. Especially since the audience knows that he is actually a fairy tale character, while Emma may think he's "mad", we all know he just has a tragic story and he's trying to make things better for himself. At no point though did I think he was crazy and that's a little bit of a waste of a iconic character in my opinion. That however, is more on the writing of the character. For what he was written, Sebastian Stan is by far one of the best parts of the show, unfortunately he only shows up every once in a while.

And that's the unfortunate part about this entire season. The majority of the season is so inconsistent. There are some episodes that are very, very good and knock the whole two worlds storyline they try to do out of the park. The Mad Hatter episode, the Little Red Riding Hood episode, the Rumpelstiltskin episodes, they were all very good. But then you have the Snow White and Prince Charming episodes. Episodes centered on boring characters with boring performances and no matter how much they try and tell you that the forces of evil are working to make sure Snow White and Prince Charming don't get together, we've seen the ending, we know this works out in the end.

And that's another problem with the show, it adds in these little extensions to the fairy tale characters we know. For example, they go into Grumpy the Dwarf's (Played by Lee Arenberg) backstory. Well we know Grumpy ends up apart of the 7 dwarves, we know he goes on to help Snow White. So when you bring in the same love story you've done a couple times now where it ends up not working out, we're not surprised because we know the story, we know how it ends. Grumpy doesn't end up with a fairy played by Amy Acker (who is still gorgeous). Maybe its just enough to know how they came to be the way they are, but they use very similar stories for a lot of the characters. Either they're Snow White and Charming and its just a back and forth waiting till they finally get together. Or its a random character who gets screwed over by the Queen like the Mad Hatter. Or its a story of "true love" that gets thrown off by power or society not allowing them to be together. Overall, it gets to the point where its just predictable and annoying.

And I suddenly realize that I know exactly what this show is.

Its Lost: Fairy Tale edition.

Think about it. You've got a large cast of characters stranded in a mystical and mysterious land and they have to work together to find a way to escape. All the while, they're having flashbacks to their old lives, their past failures and successes, all hinting towards the end result of them all being sent to this mysterious and mystical land.

And I can't really blame ABC for going for a similar formula. While I ended up not finishing Lost, mainly because things got a little contrived for me and I just didn't have time, I will say that the show is pretty well written. The mystery is one of the most iconic tropes that TV shows have been trying to replicate since and the characters are complex and well written. Again, I can't blame ABC for getting Adam Horowitz and Edward Ktisis to go back to what they know. The problem with it, however, is that the characters are not nearly as well written.

I had times in Lost where my perception of a character was changed drastically after one episode explaining their backstory. Sun, Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, all of them had really compelling stories that changed the way you thought about these characters because you had more to base your judgement off of than how they interacted with others on the island.

My point is, I watch an episode on Jimney Cricket, I see a kind of boring explanation as to why Jimney Cricket is a Cricket. A couple times they have a cool moment revealing what character the towns person is, but those episodes are few and far between because a lot of the towns people's characters are really obvious.

You mean to tell me that the waitress at the dinner "Grannies", named Ruby and wears a lot of red is Little Red Riding Hood? WHAT?!?!?! That's crazy. That's not to say her backstory was not interesting. But there's just a lot of characters that you can point to them and say, you're this character.

Some are a little bit harder but when its finally revealed you kind of have to wonder, what was the point of all the secrecy?

But I digress.

I'm starting to watch the second season and they're starting to kind of blend the two worlds together. The Fairy tale Characters in the real world are starting to use magic and act like their old selves in the real world. To me that is a lot more interesting. I just hope that it actually amounts to something. To me the first season was a lot of boring soap opera drama that I could watch... in a soap opera. I don't need to see David and Mary Margret go through a weird affair and have a will they or won't they storyline. Its boring, I want to see some magic, I want to see these characters actually be fairy tale characters. Maybe it will get better. Maybe it won't.

Overall, the first season of Once Upon a Time is an inconsistent mess. Some episodes really nail it, a lot of them don't. If you're looking for cheesy, poorly written ABC characters, you really don't have to look much further. If you're looking for a cheap knock off of Lost, look no further. If you're looking for cheap CGI, look no further. You found it in Once Upon a Time.

However, if you're looking for some fun liberties taken with well known fairy tale characters, Once Upon a Time actually has that. I feel like I want this show to be more than it is. And a part of me feels like this show wants to be more but is held back by something. Perhaps its the introductory season, maybe its ABC and its family friendly programming, who knows. In short, I think Once Upon a time could be a lot more than it is. What it is right now... well its not great.

But those are my thoughts on Once Upon a Time: Season 1. I really want to hear from people who are consistent watchers of the show. I want to hear what about the show that keeps bringing them back and if any of the criticisms I brought forward are things you agree with or maybe I'm just being too hard on it. Comment and discuss below.

I'll leave you with this. I mainly watched Once Upon a Time because I was waiting for the new season of Doctor Who. I'm not sure if I'm going to do a review of the first episode, maybe of my initial thoughts on Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. Regardless, here is the trailer for the new season.