ONCE UPON A TIME Not as Fresh as a "Lily"

Article originally written for Seat42F.

This week’s episode of ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME, entitled “Lily,” should be an exciting, awesome, come-together moment for the season. Instead, it is a mess, with plot holes galore and lots of things that don’t make sense. The problem with ONCE UPON A TIME, and this has been an issue for awhile, is that they come up great stories but fail to think them through. “Lily” is a prime example of that.

As the hour begins, Emma (Jennifer Morrison) embarks on a road trip to find her childhood friend, Lily (Agnes Bruckner, The Returned), who turns out to be Maleficent’s (Kristin Bauer van Straten) daughter (is this Disney Channel’s new Descendants series?). But Emma is really, really angry, the darkness that sprouted when she killed Cruella (Victoria Smurfit) taking root. So Regina (Lana Parrilla) offers to come along, helping Emma and picking up her in-danger love, Robin Hood (Sean Maguire), on the way home.

The thing is, Emma doesn’t have anything prompting the darkness within her to grow. The villains on the show go dark because they do something really bad, and keep making poor choices or pay a magical price. Emma kills Cruella through magic, sure, but to save Henry (Jared Gilmore), and then has no other tempting factors to drive her further onto the wrong side. If there were some sort of explanation offered, such as Emma doing bad breaks the spell that is supposed to keep her good and draws in all the bad she avoided earlier in life to make up for it, leeching it from Lily, who would turn good at the same time, that might be OK, but there isn’t.

Lily has a similar issue with darkness, always making bad choices. In flashback, young Lily (Nicole Munoz) finds young Emma (Abby Ross) again, but because she can’t stop lying and stealing, Emma sends her away. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Timothy Webber) tells Lily the truth behind why she can’t stop doing bad, darkness has been put within her magically, which makes more sense than what is happening to Emma. But then Lily never tracks Emma down again, despite living close to her in Massachusetts and the two being drawn together by fate? What? Really?

Emma finds grown-up Lily, who runs away and steals Emma’s car. But when Emma doesn’t shoot Lily, a very low bar of goodness, Lily goes along with Emma and Regina on the second leg of their journey quite cooperatively. No double-cross or trying to sneak ahead to kill Emma’s parents? No simmering anger at Emma for getting the good side of the magical deal? Why is Lily being so friendly?

Then, ONCE UPON A TIME gets to New York, where Robin at first doesn’t believe Regina, a woman he supposedly loves and trusts, then willingly expresses a desire to stay with Zelena (Rebecca Mader) just because she tricked him into impregnating her. Zelena is completely evil, and Robin’s just going to keep shacking up with her and expose his children, both the already-born one and the unborn, to her? Shouldn’t he be for capturing Zelena and then taking away the baby after its birth?

Worse than all of this, Belle (Emilie de Ravin) seems to have no clue that Regina has possession of her heart, something Belle agreed to, and then softens on Gold (Robert Carlyle) just because he gives it back. After Will (Michael Socha), not Gold, retrieves and brings the heart home, no less. We’re expected to believe that Gold saying he wants Belle to be happy is just going to turn her around, even after knowing all of the bad things he has been doing?

I love the friendship between Regina and Emma, and that part of “Lily” feels real to me. Emma has earned Regina sticking by her when she errs, even if Regina has shown reluctance to being buddies prior to “Lily.” But that is the only thing that feels right in the hour, everything else playing out with typical ONCE UPON A TIME disregard for established characters and arcs. It is extremely disappointing, especially as the program proved for awhile in the past that it could do much, much better.

ONCE UPON A TIME airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Is This the "Best" ONCE UPON A TIME Can Do?

Article originally written for Seat42F.

This week’s ONCE UPON A TIME is called “Best Laid Plans” because the characters in it don’t always get what they want, no matter how hard they try and how much thought goes into it beforehand. Whether it’s Regina (Lana Parrilla) trying to play the villains until she finds out their plan, or Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Charming (Josh Dallas) attempting to ensure their child ends up with a clean soul, things don’t go the way they think they will. It’s hard to control the outcome of anything in life.

In fairy tale land flashbacks, Snow and Charming ask The Apprentice (Timothy Webber) to help ensure their unborn daughter will be good. He tells them a vessel is needed to channel the darkness into, and they decide Maleficent’s egg is just the thing. By the time they realize there’s a baby within, not a monster, it’s too late, and baby, Cruella (Victoria Smurfit), and Ursula (Merrin Dungey) go tumbling into our world.

The whole magic spell in this episode makes no sense, a hole-ridden plot even more shaky than what ONCE UPON A TIME has been delivering on a regular basis lately. If Snow and Charming go to all of this trouble, then Emma (Jennifer Morrison) should be guaranteed to be a hero, right? The darkness has been removed from her. So why do Snow and Charming go to great lengths in the Storybrooke present to try to keep her that way? Why are they worried their fretting over what they did would ruin her as a child? It just doesn’t add up.

This backstory does explain how the female witches came to be on Earth, where Gold (Robert Carlyle) finds them earlier this season. However, when they meet back up with Maleficient a few episodes ago, there is no mention of their disappearance. Assuming they stay on Earth from this point until Gold finds them, why is that not a part of the story earlier in the season? Why doesn’t Maleficent ask what happened to them, or they volunteer what became of her baby, which Gold finally shows her in “Best Laid Plans?”

Lo and behold, Maleficent’s child is none other than Young Emma’s (Abby Ross) friend Lily. Is it just me, or does the coincidence seem too much? ONCE UPON A TIME already shows us how Emma and Lily meet, and it certainly seems like it’s purely by chance. Are we expected to believe there is fate involved, forcing them to come together? That’s not something the show has used before in a major way, especially knowing The Author (Patrick Fischler, Lost, Mad Men) is locked up by this point and can no longer manipulate the story.

Yep, we finally see The Author in “Best Laid Plans,” too. Or, more accurately, we see the last author. He’s the latest in a long line, but unlike his predecessors, he manipulates the story, rather than just observing and recording. Of course, somehow the book continues to be written after he is trapped in the page, as it records the events of the curse, which again, doesn’t make sense.

No amount of great little moments can make up for this gigantic plot holes. Regina and Henry (Jared Gilmore) have a terrific scene in which they communicate with a look, but that is overshadowed by what’s happening around them. Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) is deliciously jealous of Emma’s friendship with August (Eion Bailey), but it’s resolved too quickly. Gold talking to an unconscious Belle (Emilie de Ravin) would be moving, if his character hadn’t already been completely ruined, his redemptive qualities stripped away over the past year. Emma finding out her parents lied to her might be effective, if it weren’t couched in the nonsensical part of the story in which she could still somehow go bad. Ditto for Maleficent’s pain at losing her child to so-called “heroes.” I just don’t get why this show, which delivered half a season of greatness just over a year ago, could fall so far and not recover. It really bums me out.

ONCE UPON A TIME airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

ONCE UPON A TIME Improvements in "Sight"

Article originally written for Seat42F.

Last night’s installment, “Shattered Sight,” may be my favorite this fall for ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME. Ingrid The Snow Queen’s (Elizabeth Mitchell) spell falls over Storybrooke, making practically everyone turn against one another. Ribbons prevent Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Elsa (Georgina Haig) from fighting Ingrid directly, bound as they are to her by the love injected in the material, so they seek out Regina (Lana Parrilla) to break the enchantment with her pure hate. But the real key to everything may be missing memories, some of which are shown via flashback.

Ingrid’s arc has been a moving one. She loves her sisters dearly, and the tragedy that befalls her at a young-ish age is an understandable reason why she turns cold. Her sole mission is to regain the love she’s lost, casting Elsa and Emma in the role of her sisters. Ingrid does not act out of cruelty, and while she doesn’t care if others get hurt, being selfish and narrow-sighted, she only casts the “Shattered Sight” spell to get to her end goal.

Which is why her heroic self-sacrifice is tragic. It doesn’t make up for everything she has done, but had she lived longer, I’m sure she would have worked to do so. The scenes we see of her with a young Emma (Abby Ross) prove that she does care about some people. Sure, the found-letter from Ingrid’s long dead sister proclaiming that she still loved Ingrid and regretted what she did to her is a little convenient, but it makes sense for a fairy tale, which is what this is. That does not cheapen Ingrid’s end, though, a bittersweet conclusion for a mostly-excellent arc.

It’s also a little too easy for Elsa and Emma to get Regina to break the ribbon bond. That was the result of something Ingrid spent decades planning, and Regina can make it go away in a second, accidentally? Then Elsa and Emma run from Regina, who is fully reverted back into Evil Queen, and manage to get away from her? And they’re not even worried about what unleashing the Evil Queen into the town will do?

That being said, Elsa and Emma are busy, so maybe they decide that letting evil Regina out is a risk they have to take. Plus, Regina goes to the jail, which leads to an awesome fight scene between her and Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin), so it’s hard to complain too much. In fact, the whole sequence with Snow, Charming (Josh Dallas), and Regina, ending in an uncomfortable laugh as the three try to process the emotional toll of what they just went through, is terrific. It’s some of the best work Goodwin has done in the series, and as much as I adore redemption-path-Regina, it’s fun to see her as the Evil Queen once more. Regina is my favorite character on ONCE UPON A TIME, and “Shattered Sight” affords Parrilla another opportunity to play her brilliantly.

One character nearly absent from “Shattered Sight” is Rumple (Robert Carlyle), and that could very well be why the hour is so good. Rumple arguably has the best plot in the show from its inception up through the middle of last year. Since then, all his development has been tossed out and he’s been ruined worse than just about any character on television I can think of. His story line this fall has been abysmal, completely out of the established persona, and while Carlyle remains a fine actor, Rumple has been an anchor weighing ONCE UPON A TIME down lately.

Unfortunately, the conclusion of this episode means that Rumple’s “scheme” hasn’t come to fruition, so my guess is that he will be front and center next week. Assuming the writers stay consistent with what they’ve done with Rumple recently, ignoring the previous version of him, he’s bent on power and getting his family away from Storybrooke. I just can’t bring myself to look forward to that, still sad about what’s been lost here.

Because Rumple isn’t important in “Shattered Sight,” though, with the focus on Ingrid, who is mostly well developed, and the episode contains some emotional and fun scenes, with a great battle and an exciting climax, it works very well. I kind of wish it were the fall finale so ONCE UPON A TIME could go out on a high note, but even though it isn’t, that doesn’t take away from a heck of a memorable hour.

ONCE UPON A TIME concludes this run next Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.