Chapter 3: In Which The Lady of the Lake Never Actually Shows Up. Awkward.

While last week's episode centered on Charming and Henry in Storybrooke, Episode 2x03: "Lady of the Lake" largely took place in the Fairytale Land, showing us what Emma and Snow were up to. Read on for my recap and review of this week's episode of ABC's "Once Upon a Time!"

What Happened:

Fairytale Land (The Past)

• This takes place after Charming kissed Snow to wake her up, a flashback that we saw at the end of the last season. In case you don't remember, that episode ended with Snow and Charming vowing to "take back the kingdom" from Charming's jerk-of-a-kinda-sorta-adopted-father, King George (I love that there are people in this world named Rumpeltstiltskin and Baelfire, and then people named John and George.) 
• Red Riding Hood is sprinting through the forest. We learn she is not simply jogging in impractical clothing when she arrives in a war-tent of Snow and Charming, who are discussing their plans. Everybody is forced to flee when King George's men arrive. 
• Unfortunately, Snow is kidnapped by a knight named Lancelot and brought to King George. He's seemingly polite and offers her refreshments. While she's sipping some water, he's all, "So once upon a time my wife got offered refreshments, too. Then she couldn't have children because said refreshments were cursed." Snow's all, 

• ...because she clearly has just been cursed in a similar manner. 
• George lets Snow go, because what does he have to lose, am I right? In the woods, she encounters Lancelot, who explains he didn't know what the Queen had intended. They team up and run to Charming's secret cabin, where he has just fended off an attack of George's men. Unfortunately, his mom has been shot. 
• The group heads off to the lake from "What Happened to Frederick", seeking the water's magical healing properties. Unfortunately, the lake has dried up since Charming killed its resident she-demon last season.
• They find a single drop of water. Charming's mom, who has learned via her magic mom inquisitive powers about Snow's recent medical tragedy, works with Lancelot and tricks Snow into drinking the water instead. She dies after seeing Snow and Charming get married by Lancelot. I guess Knights are allowed to perform marriages in Fairytale Land. 

Fairytale Land (Present)

• Cora, Snow and Emma chat in The Pit (the surviving Fairytale residents' prison in the sanctuary.) Snow doesn't trust Cora, but Emma naturally doesn't know everything crazy about Regina's mother like Snow does. 
• As it turns out, Lancelot is the leader of the Fairytale survivors. He, Snow and Emma feast on chimaera. Emma has this fantastic look on her face as she sizes up her dinner, humungous hunks of God-knows-what-a-chimaera-is. Her face is something like:

• Meanwhile, Aurora sees that the people she views as responsible for Philip's "death" (he only lost his soul, I'm sure they'll get it back in the season finale) being chummy with Lance and is angry and angsty. Mulan has a bestie moment with her and convinced her not to do anything stupid. Apparently they've bonded by their tragic mutual crushes.
• Mulan, Emma and Snow then leave, deciding to look for the magic wardrobe that Emma was transported through as a baby; their theory is that they can use the wardrobe to get Emma and Snow back to our world.
• Aurora is extremely angry and attacks Snow (they chalk it up to grief over Philip, but the obviously real reason is that she was upset over not being included in the Disney Princess Brigade's newest mission). Snow easily judo flips her, but then Emma and Sleeping Beauty bond and it's all better, yay!!!
• After a scuffle with an ogre, the group arrives at Snow and Charming's old place. Emma feels awkward looking at what is essentially her mom's old apartment. 
• Lance shows up, but as it turns out...he's not Lance!!

• That's right, folks...turned out the real Lance was killed by Cora years ago, and she's been impersonating him ever since. 
• Cora wants to use the wardrobe to go and see Regina. But Emma knows that will endanger Henry, so she sets the furniture on fire. The Disney Princess Brigade teams up and fights off Cora, who flees in a cloud of smoke vowing vengeance. (She would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling princesses.)
• Emma and Snow have a very sweet mother/daughter moment, in which Emma tells Snow she is overwhelmed by Snow's love for her because "no one has ever put [her] first before."

Storybrooke

• Henry is forced to go to school by David. (Which begs the question, what the heck is school like now that all the children know they are fairytale characters? Is Ariel some snarky straight-A student who can now protest any unlikeable grade with the line "Ever heard of my dad? He's a king. With a trident"? Do they have coping counselors on hand to help everyone deal with dual identities? How can a teacher possibly justify teaching Driver's Ed to a bunch of kids from a place where horse-riding is the local brand of transportation? I NEED ANSWERS, PEOPLE!)
• We then learn that Henry's chronic truancy has yet to be cured as he goes to visit Jefferson, whom he acts really fanboy-ish around ("I've read your story!"). While Jefferson looks at Henry wishing he would just go away, Henry tries to convince him to go find his daughter, whose Storybrooke counterpart lived/lives with an adopted family.
• Since Jefferson is reluctant, Henry decides it's time to take drastic measures. It's here that he does something that I, and I'm sure other Regina fans (at least one of you who reads this blog is), hate: he calls Regina and asks her to meet him for lunch. She looks so tearfully ecstatic at the idea of her estranged son wanting to spend time with her,it broke my heart when as soon as she left, Henry the Horrible sped into her office to steal her secret keys. You'll all be hearing about this in the review section.

Me:

• Using his ill-gotten keys, Henry the Horrible goes grave-robbing (by that I mean he sneaks into Regina's secret lair underneath her father's grave). He is looking for Jefferson's heart, which is apparently under Regina's control, but before he can find it he opens up a box of snakes which almost attack him...
• ...until David shows up and saves him. Henry successfully reunites Jefferson and his daughter, and then is rewarded for skipping school with new toys/wooden swords from David. Nice parenting, there, David.

What I Thought

 

   This episode had three main plotlines this week: Past-Snow fearing a future without children, Present-Snow learning to live with and for a child, and Henry attempting to reunite a parent with his child while neglecting his own mother. Clearly, parenting (and the relationship between parent and child) was something of a theme- and a much-needed one: at the end of the season premiere, Snow jumped through a portal into the unknown to be with Emma. It's time we saw some pay-off, and this episode delivered it. Emma got her first real taste of what parently-love should be: the utter giving of one person to another, unconditionally, with no regards to their own safety and well-being, all because they want the best life possible for the other person, whom they feel responsible.

   The past-storyline featuring Charming's mother felt a bit redundant and boring, considering we knew all along that Snow would somehow have Emma, given the latter's present existence on the show. Since that's the case, the story must be about something else, and therefore it must be to show us how even before Snow met Emma, she loved the idea of her- having a child was a dream, both of Snow and Charming. Showing us all that Snow went through helps put her sudden love and (as Emma sees it) overt affection for Emma into context.

    Let's talk about Henry's mini-adventure. It's no secret to some of you that I don't like him, due to his behavior towards Regina. His careless deception must've caused her pain (did you see her face when she got a call from him? Did you??? ) but David explained that instead of flying into a rage, she rationally called David and asked him to go and find Henry, knowing her son wouldn't come with her. She could have forced him, but she chose not to, doing what was best for her child and sending someone he cared about instead. Regina recognizes she's done terrible things to Henry, and she's trying to make amends. Regina put Henry's emotional well-being above her own pain, and that's what a mother does.

   I'm not going to discuss Jefferson, because his story didn't really get all that much focus. Jefferson and his daughter were basically plot-devices meant to provide Henry with an adventure. This week was a story of three mothers who love their children and showed it.

  On a side-note, I very much enjoyed having Cora disappear into the nether and get established as a recurring villain, and the Disney Princess Brigade working together. "Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, Snow White, and Snow White's daughter fighting evil" is kind of an epic pitch.



My Questions:
 
• What will Regina do now that she's not the mayor anymore?
• Will Henry ever realize that Regina is an actual person capable of mistakes, but also redemption?
• Are Emma and Snow going to be trapped in Fairytale Land all season? I think it'd be great to have our characters spread out like that.
• Where was Henry's cellphone?

 

Next Week:

 

Captain Hook gets the biggest makeover in all of fiction!

 

Before...

 

After!

 



My score for this week's episode:

7/10.

The main storyline in present-day Fairytale Land was good, but dragged down by Henry's adventure and the fate of Charming's mother.

 

 

(Note: I used a lot of gifs and images this week. If any of them are yours, belong to someone you know, etc., let me know and I'll take them down. I honestly just searched for stuff to fit my reactions and writing; this blog is for entertainment purposes only and is not for profit. I own none of the characters, storylines, or images that I use, nor the TV show I am discussing or other pop culture/entertainment entities/shows/movies/etc. I make references to.)