Once Upon a Time: Rocky Road Review

Last week I requested that Once Upon a Time do one thing for me. I am pleased to announce: They listened. Having failed to give Snow any real travails as the newly crowd-appointed (democracy in its most basic, mob-based form) Mayor, today they let her hold one of her patented “fireside chats.” Somewhere an American President is rolling in his grave, or conversely loving the hilarious image of a heavily pregnant Ginnifer Goodwin pretending that she is a political leader. 

While Snow’s initial foray into government was lackluster to say the least, she did (true to my heart’s greatest wish) manage to have at least one of Regina’s black and white artifacts replaced with a resplendently colorful and terrible painting of some birds – a fact that did not go unnoticed by Regina. Thankfully, the once-and-future mayor deigned only to give this decorative infraction an eye-roll: She was too busy trying to help Robin Hood unfreeze Marian. 

Yes, that’s right, today is the day we learned, that, having literally written themselves into a corner and desperate to give Regina the happy ending they, the writers, would like for her to have, the crew thought it best for Marian to be put on ice. I cannot even with the balls this show has at times. I believe, along with most, that Regina has earned her little piece of happiness. But when she shut out the son she’s forever battling for last week, and then this week naively thought it was sweet when Robin was all “I don’t love this dying woman, I love you,” she wasn’t exactly making a strong case for herself. We’ll see how it shakes out.

It’s a relief to see Jennifer Morrison accept that the romance with Hook is a go this season. It makes their exchanges not, you know, exceptionally uncomfortable to watch. That said, there’s something vaguely discomforting about Emma only being able to allow the men in her life (her father, Hook) access to any emotion she experiences other than TOTAL CONFIDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE when she feels discouraged or weakened. It would be nice to see her smile at Hook or confide in her dad when she wasn’t worried that because of her the entire town was going to fall down. Emma’s grown so much, let’s hope they keep that momentum going. I love seeing chinks in her armor open up almost more than I love her using magic to flick people around and prevent them from being crushed by Ice Queens. Almost. 

Speaking of those regal frozen bitches, I am in full support of the slow-wind up they are doing with our potential villainess this season. That everything about The Snow Queen’s true origins wasn’t spelled out for us made for a compelling tease. I could have done without Rumple’s involvement (for real, there are only so many thumbs a person can jam into so many pies, which sounded much dirtier than I meant it to). Additionally, it looks like memory wiping is the cause for much of the confusion. While the show handles that sort of thing well, I would’ve like to see what other tricks they had up their up sleeve. 

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