So, a lot has happened on “Once Upon a Time” since the last review article was written — which was some time way back in November. Before the mid-season finale in December, Emma and Snow managed to finally return to Storybrooke after a major showdown with Cora and Hook — who has certainly started to embrace his dark side more, seeing as he, himself, ripped Princess Aurora’s heart out and delivered it to Cora.
Since the return of the show from its mid- season break, there have only been two episodes, not enough to really get a clear feel for how the second half of the season is going to progress. The first half of the season set the bar pretty high. Our lovable band of heroes were scattered across dimensions after just regaining their memories and being reunited, and they all had to adjust to their roles in the new worlds. Regina resolved to stop using magic in order to win Henry back and was doing a pretty good job at making nice with everyone else in town, while Rumpelstiltskin and Belle were finally united with Rumplestiltskin making an effort to let go of his thirst for power.
Already, the second half of the season has blown most of these positive developments out of the water. With the appearance of Cora and Hook in Storybrooke, Regina is once again alienated from Henry and the town when she is framed by Cora for the murder of Archie/Jiminy Cricket, and Hook succeeds in pushing Belle over the town line and losing her memory before he is struck down by a car coming from outside Storybrooke.
In the show’s latest episode, “In the Name of the Brother,” our heroes deal with the issue of the outside world starting to creep into Storybrooke while we got a closer look at Dr. Whale’s past as Dr. Viktor Frankenstein.
It wasn’t the greatest episode the show’s had. It was a little overdramatic and some of the acting was pretty bad. As is the norm for the show, whenever the residents of Storybrooke have been faced with some new, worrying situation, they go to full on panic mode and completely overreact, and it was no exception in this episode. While the arrival of a reckless-driving outsider into Storybrooke is an understandable decent concern, everyone automatically jumps to just letting the outsider die so he doesn’t tell anyone about the town. Can no one just take a deep breath and
think things through? Pretty much all the scenes with our heroes were punctuated by Snow talking so fast that you couldn’t understand a word she said, Ruby and Charming worrying intensely and Leroy yelling.
The flashback scenes looking at Dr. Whale’s origins as Dr. Frankenstein were so bland that they didn’t really add much to the episode. They were interesting in that they were shot in black and white and added the mystery of how if a character from a completely different story world was affected by the curse, who else might be in Storybrooke? Other than that, the acting was so wooden and the lines so poorly delivered by most of the actors that you just tended to tune it out until the action flipped back to Storybrooke.
Luckily, the scenes between Regina and Cora, and Rumplestiltskin and Belle made up for the pitfalls in the episode. Over the course of the show, Lana Parilla’s Regina has proven to be a powerful, passionate and manipulative character who is very complex and damaged under the surface but is still capable of good. On the other hand, her mother Cora (played by Barbara Hershey) is the ultimate heartless ice queen, who puts even Regina’s cold calculations and master manipulating to shame. As a viewer, you know that everything coming
out of Cora’s mouth is probably utter crap, but you can recognize the fact that she is darn good at playing the repentant mom card that you can see how Regina might be swayed by her words. It’s scary.
The scenes between Rumpelstiltskin and amnesiac Belle are particularly heartbreaking. Despite all the evil stuff he’s done and all the strings he’s been pulling behind the scenes, given all the horrible things that he and Belle have been through, you just want them to be able to be together. The most painful scene to watch in the episode had to be when Rumplestiltskin tearfully begs Belle to take her chipped teacup and try and remember, while a disheveled and confused Belle frightfully tries to hand the cup back and begs him to leave. The scene culminates with Belle hurling the precious cup against the wall and it breaking into a thousand pieces and you can just see Rumplestiltskin’s whole body and face crumble from the inside out when the cup hits the wall.
All in all, I’d give this episode a 3/5. It wasn’t the best episode, but it served to move the overall plot forward a bit.
