What Happened:
Fairytale Land (Past)
- Regina begins her Sith Lord training with Rumpelstiltskin in the same outfit Hayden Christensen wore in "Revenge of the Sith," only with a lighter color-scheme. I guess she was a fangirl.
Overlarge leather vests and billowy sleeves are what's hot this fall.
- Anyway, enough fashion talk. Rumpelstiltskin tells Regina to freeze a unicorn, which she does. He then insists she take its heart, which she is uncomfortable with, so Rumpel does it for her before telling her to kill it by squeezing the heart. Regina cannot bring herself to do it, leading Rumpel to ask her what is holding her back from killing.
- Later, Regina tells Rumpelstiltskin that she wants to learn magic so that she can bring back Daniel, her dead boyfriend that her mom killed via Heart-Grabbing. Suddenly Jefferson, aka The Mad Hatter, shows up, and the audience is like,
- This is Jefferson in his fabulous days before his band tanked, when he wore all the eye shadow he wanted and all his fangirls wore top hats to see him play the drums.
- FabJeff gives Rumpelstiltskin a glass ball, which is from another world or something. Rumpelstiltskin has this amazing moment where Jefferson is all, "You want the magic ball or not?" and Rumpy's all, "Mmmmmmokay" and snatches it. SOLID GOLD. (see what I did there? ;) )
- FabJeff reminds Regina that she is in fact married to a king which does in fact make her a queen and can therefore make queenly deals of queenly power. The deal essentially boils down to "You let me drive a carriage w/o a license and jailbreak my iPod, I get you a freaky witch-doctor thang to bring back your Stable-Man."
- Later FabJeff introduces Regina to Doctor Whale's Fairytale-Land Counterpart, Victor, who's rocking the buttons and he doesn't care because he's almost as fabulous as Jefferson and that's saying something, I mean really, the two of them could do commercials together.
- Dr. Vic tells Regina that he needs a heart to bring back Daniel, and just in the middle of the dramatic scene an ad for Wreckit Ralph comes on screen. I was not pleased.
"What the heck Pixar I mean normally I love you but Regina is making a character-shaping ethical decision here, come back when Henry's onscreen or something!"
- Regina takes Dr. Victor and FabJeff to her old house and shows them her mom Cora's secret vault of hearts. Dr. Vic picks one and they go on their merry way to do the experiment to bring back Daniel, whom Regina has kept in peak (albeit dead) condition via a spell. Unfortunately the experiment doesn't work
- Now that she has nothing to lose, Regina goes to Rumpelstiltskin, kills some poor chick he was teaching, and tells him she's ready to learn all magic, including the dark kinds. Little did she know that Rumpelstiltskin paid Dr. Victor off to make the experiment a dud, ensuring his apprentice was in the right mental state to be EEEEEEEEEVIL. Dr. Victor heads back to his own world where technicolor hasn't been invented yet, but resurrections have...that's right, folks, Dr. Victor/Dr. Whale is a modernized Dr. Frankenstein, and he manages to bring back his dead brother using the heart he took from Cora's vault (of course we all know how THAT turned out.)
Storybrooke
- Sheriff David clocks Dr. Whale because he and Snow White slept together that one time when they were all cursed and she was technically single so Whale really wasn't doing anything wrong...Our Hero, everybody.
- David informs Whale about his quest to find a portal to the Fairytale Land. Whale then bursts in on a psych session, in which a weepy Regina was telling Archie/Jiminy Cricket about how she's quitting magic cold-turkey in order to win back Henry. Whale demands that Regina send him back to be with his brother, to which Regina replies she only brought the living to Storybrooke.
- As soon as Whale shuts the door and leaves, Archie asks her if that's true- that all the dead Fairytale citizens stayed in their homeland. Regina then gets a priceless moment where she looks right at Archie and tells him she brought who SHE wanted (her dead dad and Daniel.) It was her curse, after all.
- David brings Henry to the stable to meet his horse, then makes up this half-baked story about how shoveling a horse's excrement around bonds horse and rider. The audience doesn't care, but the plot tells us, "This is important later, just stick around, okay???"
- Regina discovers Daniel's grave is empty, so she goes to her secret prison underneath the hospital, where she finds Dr. Whale, weak and short one arm. He informs her Daniel has indeed been resurrected, but is now a monster.
- Regina tells David what happened, and the two of them somehow figure out where Daniel's going: the stables.
- In the stables, Henry is being lazy, big surprise, and is working on his horse's hairstyle instead of cleaning up like David told him. Suddenly Daniel shows up, all zombie-esque, and advances towards Henry.
- Luckily Regina and David save Henry. Regina manages to awaken Daniel's humanity, but he is in so much pain that he begs her to kill him. Regina turns him to dust, finally deciding to let go of her lost love.
- While Regina goes to see Archie again, the injured Whale goes to see Rumpelstiltskin, who (after making Whale admit that science cannot do what magic can) heals his arm.
Fairytale Land (Present)
- The Disney Princess Brigade (Aurora, Mulan, Emma and Snow) arrive at The Sanctuary town, only to find out the town has been massacred by Cora, again with that gross Indiana Jones 2-Heart-Grabby-Thing. The only survivor is Kilian, who has apparently been disguising himself as the town blacksmith to spy for Cora (his ex-girlfriend that doesn't quite get they're through.)
- The next five minutes of the show are as follows:
Kilian:
"They'll NEVER suspect who I REALLY am!"
Emma:
- The DPB learn he is Captain Hook/Kilian Jones, a spy for Cora. They wanna leave him to get eaten by ogres, but he tells them he can help find The MacGuffin of Season 2, a magic compass to lead them back to Storybrooke. (What is a MacGuffin, you might ask? Think...the One Ring, The Sorcerer's Stone, etc. Something that is important to the characters simply because it will get them where the plot needs them to go.)
- The group comes across a beanstalk, the top of which is home to a giant who, according to Kilian, has the compass.
What I Thought:
Let's start with what I liked: the Regina backstory. It was really awesome to see Regina and Rumpelstiltskin back in their glory days, learning and teaching respectively. (Can I just say that Rumpel's actor, Robert Carlyle, knocked it out of the PARK tonight? Like, seriously, he was fantastic, even with his small role in this episode.) Regina had an intriguing storyline about doing something bad with good intentions; she knew her mother had taken those hearts from living people, and that she was using dark, evil magic, the likes of which her mother used to control and her teacher used to kill. Regina clearly believed this was all permissible if it meant she could resurrect someone who she loved. It's an interesting and debate-causing topic, and I liked seeing that play out on screen. Ultimately the show seemed to say that since Regina was corrupted in the end, it's not possible to use dark methods for something good, but it's by no means definitive, given that Regina might very well NOT have become morally comfortable with killing if the experiment had worked and restored Daniel to her.
Moral conundrums are tricky...
The other character I loved in this episode was Jefferson. The earliest in his life we had seen him was right around the time he lost his daughter, when his days making deals with Regina were long gone. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed seeing him in his hey-day, making one-liners, being a rambunctious and fun-loving wildchild. That makes sense, given this is probably before he had a daughter, and having children is supposed to make most people more mature, or so I hear.
Now I suppose we have to talk about what I didn't appreciate, and that was Regina in Storybrooke. I know I've said before on this blog that I really like her being on the side of the angels now, but I still wanted her to retain her bad attitude and tough streak. Regina didn't feel that way tonight. I know the episode was about her finally giving up her first love, but that really didn't serve as an excuse to me to see her constantly on the verge of tears, talking like she was her young self again, unable to do what she had to do until the last minute. Remember when Regina killed her father, someone she loved, to get something she cared about (revenge)? I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't instantly lash out at Daniel, despite her love for him, with magic when she saw him threatening the person she cares about more than anything else in the world: Henry. Just because she was dealing with the loss of someone she loved is no reason why Regina shouldn't be tough! She's a strong person; just like Emma fought a dragon when Henry was on death's door, and Mulan protected Aurora when Philip was about to receive the Dementor's kiss, I believe Regina could and should have functioned better despite her feelings for Daniel.
My Score:
6/10.
The Fairytale Land Regina shined, but Storybrooke Regina disappointed me.
My Questions:
- Okay, Daniel's well and truly gone, Graham's dead, and Philip is cursed...is it possible we might start to see characters break the tradition of "One True Love" and have new romances? People like Emma, Regina, and Mulan deserve to move on- after all, people don't just love the first person they kiss forever!
-Does Kilian have little utensils he can attach to his hand? ( I think the cartoon Hook might have...)
-When are Aurora and Mulan going to discuss Philip again???
Next Week:
Emma's criminal past is revealed, and present-Emma fights a giant!!!
(As always, I just use gifs and pictures I find on Tumblr and other websites. If anyone made/owns one of the gifs/knows who does and feels that I should not have used them, let me know and I will take it down. This blog is made for entertainment purposes only; I own nothing.)
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