By RJ Bardsley
I believe in magic – I’m not too old, macho or mature to admit it. I don’t believe in heaps of the stuff – I don’t expect that a unicorn is going to appear out of the clouds; but I do believe in little sparks of it, like two people meeting at exactly the right time or a lucky penny turning up just when you need a little boost.
It’s in that spirit that I tuned into this season’s first episode of Once Upon a Time on Sunday night (watch it on ABC’s website here). For those of you who haven’t seen the show it’s basically a story about how the evil queen from Snow White cast a spell over all the fairy tale characters and sent them to live in Storybrook, a small town in Maine. There is a twist – right before that spell took effect Snow White and Prince Charming had a baby girl, Emma, and they managed to hide her away from the evil queen. Emma, the baby girl, makes it to the real world, just like all the other characters, but she grows up in Boston as an orphan. The gist of the spell is that only Emma can rescue all the characters of Storybrook and return them to their rightful realm.
The last season was full of adventures and fun back stories that transported the audience to a fantasy world. The show could very easily have been over the top and unbelievable save for some great character actors and interesting dialog. This season starts off the same. Emma broke part of the spell in the last episode of the previous season, so the characters now have full knowledge of who they are, but they’re still stuck in Maine (there’s a joke here somewhere for all my New England readers). There was a bit of a departure from the traditional fairy tale stories and things started to go in a slightly sci-fi direction with a soul sucking banshee that chased down a few of the characters until the evil queen sent it away to Wonderland. You really have to watch the show to get it.
My recommendation: give it a shot. If nothing else you will appreciate the great sets and cute references to story book characters that most of us grew up reading about. It’s not for everyone but I’m a fan so far.
RJ!!!! Not that the world revolves around me and my TV watching and my desire to curb my intake, but now I have to try this possibly tasty little morsel. Now this is really it!!!!!
Totally my favorite show on TV – but you have to go back and watch it all from the beginning….I love the way it goes back and for from their Storybook land (costumes/sets…AMAZING) and back to Storybrook, ME. So cool!