Rewatching "Once Upon a Time"

The first season of "Once Upon a Time" is on Netflix, and I'm indulging myself with a rewatch.

Guys, I'm having so much fun. 

I love how the writers had the guts to actually state their themes. Over and over again, you hear the characters say:


"You always have a choice"

OR

"I will find you. I will always find you."

OR

"Any curse can be broken."

OR (the biggest theme?):

"Magic always comes with a price."

I love, first, that the show has such strong themes, and I'm just in awe of the boldness of the writers in actually putting these themes into words and then actually putting the words into their characters' mouths and - most of all - totally getting away with it.

Because it works. I don't know how it works, but it works. And I really, really want to learn how they're doing what they're doing so that I can do it myself.


Actually, I take that back: I think I do know why it works.

It works because the characters' actions back up their words.

"Magic always comes with a price," intones Mr. Gold, over and over and over again. But you see that truth in the plot line every time he says it. Someone uses magic - takes the impossible solution - but they pay for their power. They pay for it by losing a child or losing a relationship or losing a valued object or - most strikingly of all - by losing their integrity. You hear the theme stated, but only after you see it play out.

Come to think of it, it's also a method that fits the genre. "Once Upon a Time" is a take on fairy tales, and fairy tales and fables have traditionally come attached to a moral-of-the-story.

The one exception
In the story the writers are telling, the only theme more important than "magic always comes with a price" seems to be: "True love conquers all". And as far as I can remember, no one ever actually says this. The closest anyone comes is Prince Charming, with his refrain of "I will find you; I will always find you."

But it does seem to be implicit: it's the whole theme behind Emma, the main character. She's saving the world, and she can do it because 1) she's the product of true love, and 2) she has true, unselfish, sacrificial love for her son. All the other lessons of fairyland seem to be warnings: be careful, you can choose that, you can take any path you want, but you'll pay for it later . . . except for the lesson of Emma. Which is: true love conquers all.


But maybe, being a Disney product, you're just supposed to get that. Maybe it's the one theme they don't have to state. Maybe it's the one that's so true, so good, so important, that it can just be shown.

Not a conclusion I'm completely satisfied with  - I'm interested to see where this goes, as I continue my rewatch.

But, boy, I'm enjoying myself.

-Jessica Snell

Links: mostly about fiction (Bujold, Scalzi, and Once Upon a Time!)

Loved this interview with Lois McMaster Bujold from Lightspeed Magazine about Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, especially this part:

I’ve actually done Ivan’s POV before . . . A lot of people who’ve been following him through the series as a secondary character who keeps popping up were convinced that he had hidden depths, but I keep saying, “No, no, Ivan has hidden shallows, and let me show them to you.” 

(To remind you: Bujold is very cool.)

For fellow fiction writers out there, you might want to be aware of the boilerplate contracts from Alibi and Hydra. John Scalzi writes:

THIS IS A HORRIBLE AWFUL TERRIBLE APPALLING DISGUSTING CONTRACT WHICH IS BAD AND NO WRITER SHOULD SIGN IT EVER. 

D'ya think he thinks it's a bad idea? Heh. Lots more (scarily enthralling) details at the above-linked posts.

-I've gotten geeky about Once Upon a Time before, but nowhere near as well as awesomely as Cindy McLennan does in this TWOP recap of the episode "Manhattan":

In the cosmology of Once Upon A Time, True Love serves as the deity -- a.k.a., the most powerful magic of all. Certain things are fated to happen, but that doesn't mean the characters are puppets. It is up to them whether they will work for Team Love or Team Evil. When people say hate is the opposite of love, they're often corrected by those who believe that hatred is passion gone wrong, and that indifference is love's true opposite. I hate to get in the middle of all that, so let's look at it a little differently: If True Love (emphasis on true is intentional and doesn't have to mean romantic love) is the ultimate good, then its opposite is Evil.

Basically, she starts by giving out that her bias is a Judeo-Christian worldview, and then argues that the show Once Upon a Time has its own theology. Which, I think, is right on, because a lot of the point of fantasy, as a genre, is to make little theologies. Fake ones, yes, but authors (screenwriters, etc.) use those little, pretend theologies, to try to figure out something about the real world.

Or to tell really good stories.

Or, well, both.

And I'm stopping there before this becomes a very, very long post about why fiction works the way it does and why it can do a million different things at once, and why it's awesome. No reason to fly all my geek flags at once. :)

Anyway, I'm not advocating McLennan's worldview wholesale, or anything like that, but I think her post is the smartest thing I've read so far about a show I enjoy very, very much indeed.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Getting Geeky About "Once Upon a Time": "The Return"

This episode really brought a bunch of plot and character threads together, didn't it?

Oh, one thing before serious analysis: Emma's hair has bugged me for forever: gorgeous, perfect, long, loose blonde curls on a cop? Really? But then I heard someone (on TWOP, I believe) point out: she's the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. She essentially is a fairy-tale princess. So she has fairy-tale-princess hair. So now I love it.

Right, "The Return". (SPOILERS from here on out.)

I love the confrontation in the beginning between Regina and Mr. Gold. Along with Emma, I think these two characters form the heart of the show. I'm not a gamer, but watching them still makes me want to assign them alignments, role-playing style. Mr. Gold would be either a true neutral, or a neutral evil - he's bound by his own code of "deals", but while he doesn't go out of his way to cause trouble, he has no compunction harming anyone who is in his way. And part of what makes Regina such a fantastic character is that she's the true lawful evil: she is the law: she's the queen. It's her country, her town. But there isn't a spark of beneficence in her.

And I think this is what leads her to underestimate Mr. Gold, again and again, because the most natural way to misunderstand someone else is to assume that he's like you, and then to be surprised when he acts like himself.

The Baelfire storyline in the fairy tale world was fun mostly in how it set us, the audience, up for a fall. It was easy for us to figure out that Booth was Bael before Mr. Gold realized it, which made us feel very clever. Which made the twist at the end so much more effective, because we were set up for it right along with Gold, and got all the fun of the reveal surprising us precisely because we thought the reveal had already happened. Way to go, show!

And Emma's vow at the end to reclaim her son was great. Emma's disbelief in the curse has been growing wearisome over the past few episodes, and I've been longing for her to start pro-actively trying to break it. But I'll take her pro-actively fighting Regina; it's a good enough substitute for now.

And the fact that we found out more about the nature of the curse (i.e., why Rumplestiltskin was willing to create it in the first place) means there might be more action on the curse-breaking front soon.

Now for Some Wild Speculation
Since Booth isn't Baelfire (right? I'm not the only one thinking he might still turn out to be Bael, am I? why wouldn't Bael lie to his father about who he was?), we're left with the question: where is Bael? And here's my wild speculation: I think Bael might turn out to be Henry's father. Because Mr. Gold being Henry's grandfather would just be too, too awesome for words. (Can you imagine Regina's rage if that turned out to be true? It could mean an end game that put Gold and Emma on the same side.)

Okay, that's my geeking out for the week. Fairy tales are so much fun. Let me know what you thought of this week's episode!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. And Sidney in this episode? Wow. Pretty sad. I have a feeling he's going to end up locked in the basement of the mental asylum along with Belle.

Getting Geeky about "Once Upon a Time"

First, the story line between Mary Margaret (Snow White) and her prince just sucks. Had to get that out of the way. Even if they're married in real (i.e., fairy-tale) life, their cursed selves should hold true to the vows they think he's bound by. Because - come on guys - you're supposed to be the heroes. Have some integrity.

K, that said, I loved this week's episode. Mr. Gold is hands-down my favorite character and "Beauty and the Beast" is my favorite Disney movie. When I learned they'd be revamping the story so that he's the Beast? I was scared they'd ruin a few of my favorite things. But they didn't. They pulled it off. It was great.

I love the implication that Mr. Gold is going to have a happy ending (because we all know the Beast repents and is redeemed, right?). I love that we're able to see that despite being doubly cursed (by the Queen and by the Dark One), there's still part of him that's human. (The Queen is literally heartless, but Mr. Gold isn't - literally or metaphorically.) I love the last scene in the prison, when he and the Queen flex their muscles at each other, pitting her knowledge against his, and her control of the curse against his control of the deal that gave her the curse in the first place ("please").

I've read speculation that the end game of the show is going to be all about Mr. Gold and the Queen, and I can see that happening. If "true love breaks any curse" and "you always have a choice", is it going to be all about him choosing true love over power? If he does, he'll have his happy ending. And if anyone has a happy ending, isn't the Queen's curse broken?

That is, he'll only be able to win by losing. If he wants his lost love back, he has to become truly human again, which means giving up all his impish power. It might kill him, but he'll die a man. It's the sort of eucatastrophe that characterizes all the best stories.

Golly, I hope the ending they're working towards is good!

-Jessica Snell