Once Upon a Time
Tags: good versus evil, alternate reality, magical realism, fantasy, flashback

Plot synopsis:
The Snow Queen's Spell of Shattered Sight, which will turn the townspeople against each other, has been cast and will hit at sundown. Mr. Gold wants to make a deal, though. He says he'll still be there once it's done, and he'll spend every moment trying to rip The Snow Queen's heart out, he tells her. He wants to leave, and he wants to bring Belle and Henry with him. She tells him to enjoy the trip.The gang in Storybrooke sees the spell coming and Regina warns that it will hit by sundown and everyone in town "will start tearing each other apart." Emma suggests they not be in town. They all get to the town line, where The Snow Queen's ice wall sits. David takes a swing at it with an ice pick and it's tossed backward. But Elsa finds Anna's necklace in a crack David created. She takes it as a sign they're "going to win." Regina takes Henry with her as the group splits up.At the pawn shop, Belle can't find an antidote to the spell, but thinks she can create a "vaccine" by using a strand of hair from someone who's been hit by the spell. Elsa hands Belle the necklace that Anna wore and Belle confirms it has mirror dust in it -- which confirms for Elsa that Anna was under the spell when she put Elsa into the urn. Elsa says they need to find Anna.Back in Arendelle, Anna and Kristoff are unfrozen and realize the urn is missing. Anna finds a piece of gold straw and figures Rumplestiltskin has the urn. But Hans gets in the way before Anna can leave and says he's going to charge her with treason for attacking the queen. Anna and Kristoff bust out some impressive moves on Hans' men in order to escape and lock them in the room.At the dock, Mr. Gold asks Hook to get rid of the fairies that are making their home in the diner, working to stop the spell. Hook somehow can't believe that Mr. Gold is putting himself above everyone in town.Regina gets to Robin Hood's camp to warn him about the spell and laments the fact that he and Henry are the only two people in town who believe in her, and the spell will change even that.Emma and Elsa use the locator spell to get the necklace to lead them to Anna. It takes them to the library.In Arendelle, Anna tells Kristoff about "The Wishing Star" that her parents were looking for, which they'd tracked to a pirate named Blackbeard. Anna wants to pay off Blackbeard.The locator leads Elsa and Emma to an apparently recently created rock barrier, but before Elsa can blast it away with a spell Emma stops her and says they should find another way.Anna and Kristoff almost too easily find Blackbeard, who offers them The Wishing Star for "the right price" -- his weight in gold. But it's a setup, and Hans and his men soon appear.In Storybrooke, Grumpy says he and "the guys" can get through the rock barrier. Regina takes the moment to chide Mary Margaret's mayoral skills because the plans aren't up to date. David shows up with some more news to create some dramatic tension: Belle says the counter spell can be made even if they don't find Anna, but it will destroy the necklace -- making the choice to save the whole town or save Anna.Hook and Mr. Gold show up to the diner so that Hook can pulls the fairies into the sorcerer's hat. Mr. Gold tries to pull Belle out, but she refuses to leave. He decides to stay, which doesn't seem to please the lead fairy.The group falls on the side of letting the fairies destroy the necklace, and Emma goes to break the news to Elsa, who hands over the pouch. She leaves -- and still has the necklace in her hand.Emma brings the pouch to the fairies and they find it's full of pebbles. Regina is upset with herself for not having realized by now that she shouldn't trust blondes. Belle says it's too late to make the counter spell with anything but Anna's presence. Emma decides to go help Elsa find her.Emma finds Elsa in the mines and Elsa blasts through the barrier, which leads to a beach.Anna and Kristoff, meanwhile, figure out they've been set up and Blackbeard tells Anna that he sold her parents The Wishing Star, but suggests they perhaps didn't know it only works for someone with a pure heart. Hans tells Anna and Kristoff they're going to die. The two of them are dropped into a trunk that will be dropped into the ocean, but not before Anna learns it's been 30 years since The Snow Queen froze everyone.At the same time, the necklace stops glowing and Elsa worries it's a bad sign. Anna and Kristoff try to escape. Elsa holds the necklace to her chest and wishes Anna were with her. The necklace sends out a surge, the water in the trunk starts to glow and swirl, and -- with a blast -- the trunk emerges from the water in front of Elsa and Emma. Anna and Kristoff pop out of it and there are hugs and smiles all around as the sisters reconnect. The bottle that their parents tossed into the ocean before they died also pops up.Mr. Gold finally gets Belle out of the diner, leaving Hook with the sorcerer's hat to trap the fairies inside. With a jolt through the diner, the fairies begin to be pulled into the hat. One remains, having hidden from Hook for a moment, but he finds her and, after apologizing, pulls her into the hat. Emma gets to the diner with Anna and Elsa in tow, but it's too late. She assumes The Snow Queen has struck, but Hook sits silently behind the counter, hiding from the group as they try to figure out what to do next.Mr. Gold takes Belle to the pawn shop and seals it with what he tells her is a protection spell. He says he'll be back for her and they're be safe.Emma brings Elsa, Anna and Kristoff to the sheriff's station, and Mary Margaret and David tell her the plan: to lock them up in jail cells. Emma doesn't feel good about it, but they insist -- and hands the baby over to her to care for him until the spell passes. Mary Margaret tells Emma that they don't fear her magic and they believe it's what will save them. Hook shows up and Emma gives in to a tearful goodbye kiss.Regina brings Henry to city hall and seals him inside. He says he has faith that Emma and Elsa will save everyone. She goes to seal herself in her vault, worried that she's a danger to others, including Robin Hood.The spell finally hits and we see the first result: Mary Margaret and David pull their hands apart from each other and their faces turn to apparent hatred.

Review: It does this in just the right way so that the viewer won't get confused or bored from just hearing the talk of fairy-tales from the side of a little boy.It's simply about Emma Swan and the destiny she's unaware of.
Morrison (Emma), Goodwin (Snow White), and Parrilla (Evil Queen) have already hit all of the right notes in just the first episode, Parrilla I loved mainly because she makes a very worthy villain in the show.Even though it has only begun there is great room for success and progress.
This series brilliant mixture of classic fairy tales that adults have grown so familiar with and blended it with creative story lines.
However to my ever happy surprise this show is amazing, beautiful acting, terrific plot lines, and they weave it together so perfectly that you really just have to applaud the way its done.This show is about 3 key elements, henry(the boy) he's basically like the guide he tells his biological mother(Emma swan) that the entire town is filled with fairytale creatures and that his adopted mother(Regina mills) is the evil witch that cast a curse upon the town and made everyone forget about their fairytale endings, and now its up to Emma to bring them back.
I have to say when I started watching I thought it was a bit different and pretty fun, and for 4 seasons it was.
I feel absolutely no progress in terms of the characters' evolution and every time I think something will actually happen - it is postponed at the end of the episode.To be honest, 3-4 episodes ago I started ironing during them, as they just do not capture my attention any more ..
I mean the original idea was very good and the mix-and-match of fairy tale characters was cool.
I mean how can the writers possibly think some of the plots even make any kind of sense.The first half of season two is all about living a normal live with someone who constantly says (and act) that she will kill you.
But I think there are a lot of dark and gory shows out there, so this one looks fresh and deserves a try by anyone who likes fairy tales and fantasy.The cast is great.
At least Birdemic is entertaining to watch.When my sister told me the plot (fairytale characters in the real world) I was intrigued to at least give at a try.
So please next season - improve acting, improve story line, be a bit more original, and get some good actors, seriously !.
I fell in love with the original story plot, it was creative , had depth and I loved the acting , characters and flash backs.
These new characters are really difficult to watch, the new plot line difficult to follow and nothing is exciting me about future episodes.
I must say that the first 4 seasons captivated me, but I know that everyone has felt like the series was losing quality consistently, if the fifth season was bad, zero creativity and banal clichés, the sixth was worse, forced and repetitive without taking advantage of the characters or history, a shame, but this seventh season is a mockery, a story mediocre, absurd and absurd, the casting is incomprehensible, and what but what they have done with the old characters have destroyed their performance.
Other characters include Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle), Belle (Emilie de Ravin), and Captain Hook (Colin O'Donoghue).The first season is great television.
And there are literally no bad guys, all characters are driven by true love or some other noble crap, no matter how despicable their actions are and how much they deserve their punishment they are always forgiven, doesn't anyone in this show heard the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" the evil queen deserved her punishment but she is forgiven the instant the annoying boy say "She is my mother" it doesn't matter that she killed the sheriff and tried to emotionally crush said boy in more than one occasion.
Snow white, the main character, is a joke, we spend majority of the episode making fun of her and her cheesy lines.
I am on the season 3, with the Neverland and Peter Pan - ( Interesting how they have made a fairy tale boy who just wanted to be loved, into a Ego maniacal sociopath, with delusions of grandeur, with obsessive compulsive control freak tendencies ).
The Evil Queen ( Lana Parrilla ) - - She is perfectly cast, and hot she carries the series, yet somewhere down the line, the script writers, and directors ruined her character.
The show is absolutely confuses with countless sub plots, and fairy tale characters thrown in, with the attempt to make the show more interesting and "deep".
The evil queen wants her own happy ending, but "magic always comes with a price." It's a very clever idea, the whole series is made after that concept which makes it very unique.All the characters are very likable except the little kid who can get a little too much sometimes.
I don't want this to become another television series that have a good first season but a bad second one.Then finally, just to name Mr. Gold, he is easily my favorite character..
OUaT sounds like such a good idea in theory, and Season 1 started to get on the right track (plus they have a wonderful costume department), but Season 2 has been terrible!
Bad girl doesn't listen because her new relationship with her son makes the storyline plod around.Every character in Storybrook had a past life as a fairy tale character and every episode will retell the story of at least one of these folks in a new way, mostly they seem to be prequels to where most stories start off.
Another interesting character was one that the queen killed off early on in the most original plot of the entire first season as far as I am concerned, so now it is up to Mr. Gold to carry the shoddy and predictable plots/acting of everyone else.
Yes, I am aware that there is a second season so my review is way behind the times,I seriously hope that they pulled a Harry Potter and chose a new director for the new season.As far as a fairy tale mixer that I think is worthwhile, check out The 10th Kingdom.
The writers seem to be doing exactly what happened with Lost: writing as they go along, they don't consider how the addition of all these extra characters and plot lines will affect the show long term, they write themselves into a corner, and finally they attempt to resolve all the subplots at once and end up with a hastily thrown together final season that doesn't offer much closure to speak of.
Robert Carlyle and Lana Parrilla as Rumplestilskin and The Evil Queen are certainly believable, but their performances seem to be offset by the emotionless acting of Jennifer Morrison, who is completely unbelievable as a sympathetic character, and also Josh Dallas, whose character has the personality of a pile of rocks.
Let's go point by point: 1- The actors couldn't be worse (particularly the people portraying Snow White -Ginnifer Goodwin -, her prince -Josh Dallas- and the son -Jared Gilmore- of the main character female hero.
3- The whole show is even more cheesy than the original fairy tales these people base their script on.Now, to be fair, the show got better after those first episodes.
This new season apparently goes back to focusing on corny clichés, bad acting (the story somehow goes away from the "evil" and more complex characters) and spreading an underlying blanket of Christian morality all over the show.
Also, the writers have no idea how "evil" to make the villains, since they don't know which age group they should be dealing with, which means characters (especially antagonists) tend to lose and gain personality traits whenever the plot demands it- until they are all very much OOC.
Nevertheless, prime time shows that don't rely on female nudity, blood & guts closeups, the glorification of violence or all of the above to get attention aren't exactly common so even without the "fairy tale characters exiled in the real world" premise (which is nice), at first glance Once Upon A Time could still vaguely feel somehow different, possibly original.
As a fan of fantasy, myths, legends, I really really wanted to like it, but the cheesiness was unbearable.CONS: Dialogues, directing: a good compilation of clichés, if you're into that.Story: soap opera meets fairy tales.Characters: either flat or irritating, or both.Acting: extreme sadness, despair, fear, inner conflict are indicated by raised eyebrows and watery eyes.
Once Upon a Time started out a good light series for all in the first three seasons.
Once Upon a Time is not cheap soap opera or homosexual stuff, it's about fairy tales, the classic good vs.
Don't ruin the show like they did with Buffy and Heroes for example.If the directors and writers would have been loyal to their series and developed their ideas more instead of rushing them down the throats of the fans, I would have given this series an 8 out of 10, but because the series is going downward and it is obvious that they have ran out of ideas and are just filling blank pages with pretty much anything without thinking, I'm giving it a 6 instead and that's just for the three first seasons.Sorry guys, you should stop your series with season 5, because right now, you are not respecting your own series and you only show how much you lack ideas for your own stories.
So many new shows came out this year, and this is one of the good ones (along with Homeland and Person of Interest) Its a fantasy show bringing two time-lines together, an ancient one with magic, witch-craft and all, and the present one.
I was in the room while the wife watched 3 seasons of this show and by the end, all I wanted to do is castrate every man in the show, and drive a 12in spike into the skull of every princess/queen (good or bad) in the show.
A lesbian emo nigh club would have more testosterone than the entire cast of this show combined (including men) and I am not even going to touch the plain stupidity of the characters from Rumple and the evil (lol) queen to Sniveling White and Peter Pan. This show is an embarrassment.Even my wife, a huge Disney fan, made up apologetic excuses to keep watching the show.
Since I'm a a Lost fan, I'm going to hope the writers start to make these characters more watchable.
I can appreciate that people want a wholesome show that has a continual story arc, constant influx of new characters to learn and engage with, and some sizzle in the form of special effects and plot twists.
This is the core and modern day setting of the story.The second half of the story runs in flashbacks this the part which you can assume to the be the authentic setting of show white.So, basically there are two settings which are in different parts of time.The storyline is good, Jared Gilmore shows some really good acting for his age, other actors have also done a nice job.
One of the problem with TV series is that most of the time as the season advance, the story get more and more confusing.
The entire Peter Pan saga could have been done over two, maybe even three episodes, but this is ridiculous.A better move would have been to let the story line progress and come to a natural end then continue with spin-offs..
i was forced to see this so I saw series the 1st episode but then I was told the 1st episode was not the best so i saw the 2nd episodewell watching this series it has allot of potential to be special all the right ingredients, but this series lacks a decent story line it almost seems like it has the writing style from the 90'si kept watching this because i saw robert carlyle and this he is a good actor , there is too much cgi and cleanness rather then roughness and it is so predictable when something happens, the acting is not good and it is boring, it is one of them that you know will end happily ever after , unless they drag it outthis is something that should be made for children but its trying to be for adults , only the brain dead will see this , its always best to read the original book to be honest there is much more to the never ending story and billy and mandy.
When they changed it up for season 7, it took me a few episodes to get into it again but now I think it was a good move and opened it up to more stories.
Ever since I started watching Once Upon a Time it has given me this amazing sense of happiness with each and every episode.
It seems like the creators are running out of ideas, always bringing in new and new characters, adding more than one main story line to each season, just shows how the show has become very strained.
There are some real good actors mention though, LANA PARILLA (Evil Queen-Regina) and ROBERT CARLYLE (Rumplestilskin-Mr.Gold) are pretty much the only good actors on the show, GREG GERMANN (Hades) was the best guest star in season 5, too bad the storyline and the character didn't make much sense at all and were all very rished.
GINNIFER GOODWIN and JOSH DALLAS (Snow White and Prince Charming) are huh okay, so is JENNIFER MORRISON (Emma Swan), but they all have ups and downs, and there are the ones like JARED GILMORE (Henry) and EMILIE De RAVIN (Belle), who are to me the two worst actors on the show, I would think that after like five years, they should have improved a bit, but nah-nah, nope, they are getting worse and worse.....
I thought the concept sounded interesting (if slightly reminiscent of the "Fables" comic books, though the show takes things in an entirely different direction) and finally gave it a go on Netflix.For anyone who has watched Lost it should come as no surprise that it's a well-written drama with many, many characters all with their own back- story and a lot of questions.
When this show started I thought it would be a mini-series, in that aspect the show was great but then it kept dragging on letting the Queen/Mayor keep getting away with her evil plots and the good suffers.
That season you really don't need to watch because it's a waste of time.
However, somewhere around the third season it seemed to have lost its way, and now in the fifth season it has become extremely difficult to watch.I guess for me, it started out good with Snow White and the characters from the Enchanted Forest, then it morphed into adding characters from other fables, and now for me it's lost it's continuity by adding characters from Greek Mythology..It's time for the Fairy Godmother to wave her magic wand and wrap this up....
His acting was awful in the first two series,but I excused it as he was only a child.The two actors that seem to continue to be good (in spite of bad material) are, as I said, Robert Carlyle and Lana who plays Regina/Wicked Queen.
In fairy stories we should warm to the "good" characters rather than just finding them very irritating :) Such a shame and perhaps this is one of those series that should have ended earlier and maintained more integrity/quality.
Growing up with mainly Disney i was sort of happy that a new show that has all the fairy tales and Disney characters come to life was going to be on ABC.
Part of me really likes what it has become and all the characters really fill their roles in a mysterious yet fantastic way.I see this show going on for a while as any one who has read these stories or seen these movies will know that good always wins and evil never stands a chance.Only thing im not sure about is how well the producers have managed to make the central protagonist (Emma) she seems a little rough around the edges but hopefully she will come around in future episodes.
I accept that i still watch it but only because i just want to end the second season.FOR THE PRODUCERS:Please give a good ending (Kill snow-white and give the kingdom to Ramble and Regina!!!!!!!) Just end the series!!!!.
The memories of the past fairy tale lives from the likes of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), and the rest of the fairy tale characters have been robbed by the evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) using a curse from Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle).
I also think that Jennifer Morrison does a fairly good job with her work as Emma as do a handful of other actors in this series (the actress playing Belle first comes to mind).
By taking many different fairy tales and putting them together all in one world, it not only makes the narrative too crowded for its own good, but it doesn't give much time to develop each of these characters well enough to warrant their necessity in the central conflict of the narrative.
For real though, out of all the fairy tale characters they could have chosen as regulars for the series, why Snow White and Prince Charming?
I heard it was good so I gave it a shot and watched the first season.
I enjoyed season one, the concept was really good and the evil queen seemed like a gritty character.
I was so excited to see the new season on Netflix I can't even make it through the first episode without thinking this show should have ended if this is where we are headed.