Spoilers Ahead! This week's exciting episode of "Once Upon a Time" was filled with political espionage and enlightening back stories.
In Storybrooke, the battle of wills between Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) and Mayor Regina Mills (Lana Parilla) continues as Regina orders Emma and Henry's wooden castle hideaway to be demolished and Henry's fairytale book is stolen. In retaliation, Emma allies herself with ex-reporter Sidney Glass (Giancarlo Esposito), who's been fired from the newspaper by Regina after failing to beat Emma in the sheriff election. Sidney seems pretty sincere with his commitment to help Emma take down Regina by exposing that she's been abusing her power as town mayor, but as always in Storybrooke, nothing is what it seems.
Also in this episode, we get a look at Sidney's fairytale back story and a chance to see The Evil Queen, Snow White and Snow's father King Leopold as one big (questionably) happy family. In earlier episodes, we learned that Sidney's fairytale counterpart was The Evil Queen's magic mirror, but we find out how he got to be in that mirror and who he was beforehand.
The show's writers cleverly combine the stories of Snow White and Aladdin and make Sidney the Genie of Agrabah, who is found by Snow White's father, freed from his lamp and given the one remaining wish in the lamp for his own. The Genie returns with the king to his castle, and as soon as he sets eyes on Queen Regina, it is love at first sight. There is no way this could possibly end well for the poor Genie.
I did feel a little bad for The Evil Queen through most of the episode. Her new husband makes a speech implying there is no way she could possibly live up to his deceased wife and that his daughter is the only thing that makes him truly happy, which is cold. Later on, she is placed under house arrest after the king does the one thing a man should never do: read a woman's diary. Therein lies the road to misery. However, Genie is there to be her knight in shining armor and save her from killing herself via poisonous snakes. His solution for gaining their freedom so they can be together? Use the snakes to kill the king.
Unfortunately for Genie, the queen still proves to be a sociopathic witch. It turns out she doesn't really love him and was only using him to set him up to murder the king so she wouldn't be under suspicion. But Genie still loves her, and uses the final wish to remain by her side forever, becoming trapped in her mirror.
Meanwhile in Storybrooke, Emma stoops to Regina's level and plants a bug in her office and breaks in with Sidney to obtain proof that Regina is embezzling town funds to build (what they think) is a private mansion. Emma and Sidney present their evidence against her in front of the entire town council, but unfortunately Regina was using the money to build Henry and the other children a new (and frankly, creepy) playground. The town citizens don't seem to care that she is still embezzling over $50,000 in town funds, so it's score one for Regina.
The episode ends with Emma promising to continue working with Sidney to bring Regina down, and the viewers finding out that Sidney is doubling crossing Emma and still working for Regina. This spells bad news for Emma, whose list of powerful allies amounts to zero. We also find out that the Mysterious Stranger in town is the one who has stolen Henry's fairytale book.
Since the Mysterious Stranger claims to be a writer and has supposedly been to Storybrooke before, I'm interested to see what sort of all-knowing powers he might possess in regards to both the fairytale world and Storybrooke. Tune in Sunday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. for the next episode.
