Once Upon a Time: Hat Trick / The Stable Boy / The Return

Episodes 1.17, 1.19 and 1.19

Episode 1.17: Hat Trick

Could he get any broodier?

This was my third episode of Once Upon a Time before I started watching from the beginning and good thing that I had seen it before because our TV went weird and didn’t record this episode. What I will say will be very brief indeed because I can’t really remember much of it.

In Storybrooke, MM has escaped from jail and Emma has gone out to look for her. She meets an elusive man called Jefferson and gives him a lift back to his mansion. He invites her in and offers a drink; Emma, Emma, Emma. Surely as Sheriff and more importantly as a single, attractive young woman, you should have learnt by now not to accept drinks from strangers? Clearly not. She’s knocked out and when she wakes up, tries to escape. Who does she find behind a door when she’s looking for a way out? Only escaped fugitive Mary Margaret. Jefferson finds them, makes Emma tie MM back up and drags Emma away for a special task that he has in store for her …

Jefferson needs Emma to make his hat work so that he can return to his own land. Somehow, he knows that she is the saviour who can restore magic to Storybrooke and he is desperate enough to trap her in his home with his hat until it works again. Emma is still a non-believer and isn’t giving up that easily …

Once Upon a Time: Heart of Darkness

Episode 1.16

We’re back to focus on Snow and James’ relationship and this is a big episode for them. The last we saw of them, Snow had just swallowed the potion to make her forget her broken heart, and James has escaped his arranged marriage to search for Snow. He’s ridden off with Red to escape King George’s pursuing men and Red has promised to hold them at bay while he gets as far away as possible. Ominously, we see her shed her luxurious red cloak just as she casts her eyes to the full moon and see her eyes flash red …

Meanwhile, the potion has had some negative after-effects on Snow. She has no idea of James’ existence or her love for him and rather than being a good thing, the dwarves are all fed up with her behaviour. She’s turned nasty and vindictive and a terror to live with. When they confront her, she leaves to go and kill the Queen. Grumpy is convinced that this isn’t the right answer and so drags her to Rumpelstiltskin so that he can reverse the potion’s effects.

Once Upon a Time: Red-Handed

Episode 1.15

After all the episodes that we’ve seen Red/Ruby helping out Snow or in Granny’s, she finally gets her chance in the spotlight. This episode has an interesting take on Red Riding Hood and Peter and the Wolf.

In fairytaleland, it’s the time of the month when the wolf comes out to play. Hunting trips only ever end with good men slaughtered and Red is sick of being cooped up in the house under her grandmother’s watchful eye. One morning, she finds Snow hiding out in their chicken coop and takes her in. She confesses that she’s in love with a boy from the village, but Granny isn’t keen on their relationship. Snow urges Red to do what she thinks is best for love, and Red gets it into her head that if she kills the wolf, there’ll no longer be any danger and so Granny can’t object to her relationship with Peter.

On hunting down the wolf during daytime wearing their gorgeous cloaks, Red and Snow discover that the wolf is actually human! And they think it’s Peter! They form a plan for Red to sneak out and tell Peter, but it all ends in blood and tears as it turns out that Peter isn’t the wolf, but Red. Her cloak is the only thing that stops her from turning during the full moon and she’s gone without it so that Granny doesn’t know that she’s not in the house. It turns out that the condition is hereditary; just as Granny and Snow find Red, the hunters begin to descend. We end with Snow and Red running away from the scene of the crime.

Once Upon a Time: Dreamy

Episode 1.14

Yay for Grumpy! Only his name isn’t Grumpy: it’s Dreamy. We’ve seen him a few times in Storybrooke and he was in jail with Snow a few episodes ago. I said then that there’s an interesting take on the seven dwarves and this episode shows how Dreamy/Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, Doc, Sleepy and Sneezy got together – oh, and Stealthy too. That’s right, there’s eight dwarves. In this set, at least.

Dwarves are brought into the world in a huge barn-like facility where hundreds of eggs are waiting to be hatched. One egg is visited by the fairy Nova and this seems to have some sort of incubating effect as it hatches early to reveal a very smile-y Grumpy. All these dwarves are destined for the mines and Grumpy is to live and work with his seven brethren. Their task is to mine diamonds and rocks that will be used to make fairydust using special axes that name their owners when they first touch them. That’s how Dreamy became Dreamy.

Once Upon a Time: Fruit of the Poisoned Tree / Skin Deep/ What Happened to Frederick?

Episodes 11, 12 and 13

This is my last 'batch' of Once Upon a Time reviews so I'm now all caught up and don't have any unfinished television reviews hanging over my head. Well, except Dollhouse. And as for book reviews - don't even get me started.

Episode 1.11: Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

It’s now the turn of the genie in the lamp and we begin with the genie being released from his lamp. His newest master is the King (who isn’t a King in fairytaleland?) who also happens to be Snow White’s father and the Evil Queen’s husband. He does a true act of kindness and sets the genie free, useing his second wish to bestow the last wish onto the genie. Back at his castle, it is clear that the King dotes on Snow and still hasn’t got over the death of his first wife; the Evil Queen leads a very morose life and the genie is smitten.

Once Upon a Time: Desperate Souls / True North / 7.15am

I seemed to have missed Desperate Souls in my review document and so had to re-jiggle all the numbers and such when I saw in my notes that the episode names didn't all match up to the former document. It's an important episode too, and so it was lucky that I saw it!

Episode 1.08: Desperate Souls

We’ve seen that Rumpelstiltskin is as pivotal a character in Once Upon a Time as Snow, James and the Evil Queen, but we don’t know much about him. It’s clear that he’s a bad guy, yet he remains the go-to man when people want something done – for a price, of course. Anyway, Desperate Souls shows us how Rumpelstiltskin got hold of his immense powers.

Once Upon a Time: A Still Small Voice / The Shepherd / The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Once Upon a Time episodes 5, 6 and 7

And now for your next Once Upon a Time digest in three manageable bites. Another four? five? episodes are being aired today as I type, so I figured that I should probably finish these round-ups before watching them. Here we go.

Episode 5: A Still Small Voice

We finally get to see Archie’s greater role in the fairytale world. We’ve already seen that he is Henry’s shrink and obeys Regina’s every demand, but we haven’t seen a glimpse of him in the other world. Henry has already told us matter-of-factly that his alter-ego is Jiminy Cricket and this episode explores his life before he becomes a cricket.

Once Upon a Time: The Thing You Love The Most / Snow Falls / The Price of Gold

Or Episodes 2, 3 and 4

We're currently going through something of a Once Upon a Time marathon in my household: so what started as a round-up of one episode has become an amalgamation of something like ten. We're watching them too fast for me to write a single review for each, so this is going to be a really quick round-up. It’s got to the point where I can’t even round-up in a single post anymore because there are too many episodes to do it for.

Beware of some MAJOR spoilers. Had I done individual reviews, I would have probably tried to hold off for as long as possible, but considering all that I've now seen (and how all the episodes are blurring together in my head) it's not really possibly anymore. So here we go.

Episode 2: The Thing You Love the Most

Evil v. Good

Emma is more determined than ever to remain in Storybrooke, Maine (for reasons that I didn't mention in my first post and will still not do so here - much too spoilerific!) despite the Mayor (Evil Queen's) attempts to push her out. The Mayor/Evil Queen is Henry's adopted mum and it's clear that he is very unhappy with his home life and is deeply caught up in the book that everyone else thinks is just a crazy fantasy. His mum has been sending Henry to a shrink for years.

Once Upon a Time: Pilot

This is my newest favourite show. Heroes and Heartbreakers do an episode-by-episode breakdown as the series runs in America and so while I've refrained from reading them, the show has been sitting on my to-be-watched list for a while. About a month ago, I was scrolling through the channel listings on the television and saw it on. There aren't words for how excited I got. Granted, it was two episodes in the middle of the first season (Red-Handed and Heart of Darkness) and while it's not the easiest show to get to grips with if you don't watch from the start, I had enough of the basic gist of the show to mostly understand everything.

I think it's something that I've said before, but I have a thing about re-tellings of fairytales. Beauty by Robin McKinley features somewhere in my top twenty books and Beauty and the Beast is definitely my favourite fairytale to read. I've recently read books two and three in Eloisa James' Happily Ever After series (reviews to come) and they were brilliant. So far, Ms James has covered Cinderella (A Kiss at Midnight), Beauty and the Beast (When Beauty Tamed the Beast), The Princess and the Pea (The Duke is Mine) and The Ugly Duckling (The Ugly Duchess). The last will be released in October and after reading books two and three, the fourth in the series has become one of my most highly anticipated books of 2012. Fairytales are just one of my things.