• Television

by Marron Marvel on 10.31.11

Once Upon a Time is both difficult and easy to explain. Yes, it’s about fairytale characters, but it’s just a little bit more than that.

The story begins (as most fairytales do) with the wedding of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Joshua Dallas). The Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) crashes the party and announces that she will release a powerful curse upon the land. Moving slightly ahead in the future, a worried – and very pregnant – Snow White consults Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) about the curse in exchange for her daughter’s name (which is Emma), and reveals that the curse will take them all to a horrible place, and Emma will return on her 28th birthday to save them.

The horrible place? Storybrooke, Maine.

I asked my boyfriend Dan why that was a horrible place as we were watching the series premiere, and we decided that 1) well, it is Maine; and 2) the only other person to write about Maine is Stephen King, and he likes to write about weird things and people dying in Maine. But I digress.

Flash forward to present day, where Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) is a lonely bail bondsman and bounty hunter in Boston. It’s her birthday – her 28th birthday – and as she blows out a sad candle on a sad birthday cupcake in her sad, lonely apartment, there’s a knock on the door. Enter Henry, a ten-year-old boy that identifies himself as the son that she gave up for adoption at his birth. Emma winds up taking Henry back to Storybrooke, but after some weirdness decides to stay put for a week and check things out.

Now, while all of this is going on, there are flash-sideways (thanks JJ Abrams) between the “real” world and the "fairytale" word, showing us the panic of the peoples as they try to save their kingdom, and trying to show us a little of Emma’s character – as well as what the fairytale characters are doing in Storybrooke, their memories of their real lives completely gone. I have sort of mixed feelings about this show. I mean, it’s the very first episode so I’m sure there’s a lot more to be developed – but at the same time, shouldn’t the first episode be what reels me in?

I feel that somewhere inside of this concept, there is a compelling story to tell; unfortunately, the show is on ABC, which means that (like with many short-lived ABC shows) it will probably go for about 7 episodes before it starts to gain momentum and start feeling interesting – but by that time, it’ll probably be too late and the show will be canned. Of course, maybe I’m just being a pessimist. Will I watch this show again? Probably. It wasn’t bad for a series opener, but it wasn’t quite spectacular, either.

Whether or not Once Upon a Time will have a happily ever after remains to be seen.