Once Upon a Time
"And they lived happily ever after."
This is what we learn from our fairy tales, and we learn it at our peril. As we grow, we see its folly: We do not seem to live happily ever after. We pay bills and go to the dentist. We worry about our kids and labor at our jobs. We struggle. We suffer. We die. This is no fairy tale, this life of ours, no Eden.
Life in Storybrooke, Maine, is much like life anywhere else. It's pocked with pain and ambiguity, scarred by fallen natures and failed fairy tales. Its residents push through, day by day, making their lives what they can. Wealthy Mr. Gold collects his rent from his put-upon tenants. Psychiatrist Archie Hopper tends to his patients. Mary Margaret Blanchard teaches. And Henry …
Well, Henry, the 10-year-old adopted son of Storybrooke's less-than-sympathetic mayor, Regina, sees something different. He's been reading a special book—titled One Upon a Time—and in its pages he's learned that the citizens of Storybrooke aren't quite what they seem. Turns out, they're fairy tale characters trapped in a curse and stricken with amnesia: Archie's secretly Jiminy Cricket. Mr. Gold's Rumpelstiltskin. And Mary Margaret's Snow White.
What about Regina? She's the wicked witch.
But Henry, armed with the book, knows how to break the curse: He must track down his birth mother, Emma Swan, and bring her back. You see, she's a fairy tale character too—daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, sent away before the curse hit. And according to Henry's book, she has the power to break the spell and set the stage for a climactic battle between good and evil. So the fact that she's now Storybrooke's sheriff makes Regina very, very uneasy.
Once Upon a Time, a widely watched, well-reviewed program for ABC, might feel trite at first glance. The characters at times can feel about as fleshed out as those from, well, an old-fashioned bedtime story. But the citizens of Storybrooke gain depth with each passing week, and as Mary Margaret tells us in the pilot, bedtime stories become "a way for us to deal with our world." As such, the show itself has the potential to allude to greater truths and become a springboard to deeper themes.
Consider how Emma escaped the curse: As a baby, she was placed in what's characterized as a "wardrobe" (a nod to The Chronicles of Narnia?) where she's transported to our world, apparently biding her time until she's ready to return and save her people. It's a scene rich in archetype, both pagan (Perseus, sent away from his rightful kingdom in a chest) and Christian (Moses, placed in a basket and set on the Nile). Accidental? Perhaps. But given the themes co-creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz explored on their last show—ABC's mind-bending Lost—I suspect that this new program has ambition to tell us more than just … fairy tales.
It has its faults. Characters here fight, bleed and die. Some of them swear. Costumes can be immodest. Casual intimacy is shared. Mary Margaret's brewing relationship with a married David Nolan—a nod to fairy tale "true love" but a slap in the face of marital fidelity—is troubling. For parents who've adopted children of their own, the triangular relationship between Regina, Emma and Henry can feel uncomfortable. And for folks who're troubled with the depiction of magic—well, needless to say, this show is soaked in it.
But it also sets up strong distinctions between good and evil. It gives us characters who seem to care about one other. It even provides for us the occasional bedtime moral. And, most importantly, through its fairy tale proxies (if we look really, really closely), the series communicates a very important truth: We're all more than we seem. We can be better than we are. In the midst of our pain and suffering and workaday lives, there's an actual fairy tale to be found—not a fictional construct, but the understanding that our lives are wondrous, miraculous and highly improbable gifts.
It tells us that there are happy endings. And, as Christians, we know that to be true.
Episode Reviews
"7:15 a.m."
When Mary Margaret learns that David and his wife may be expecting, she vows to shake her feelings for him once and for all. But her resolve is broken when she discovers that he has feelings for her too. They eventually (and passionately) smooch.
In fairy tale flashback, Snow White's caught up in another lovers' game. She tries to upend the arranged marriage between Prince James and Princess Abigail, but when the prince's father threatens to kill James if Snow interferes, Snow lies, telling James she never loved him. In the process, she gets sage advice from a dwarf on the importance of pain: "I don't want my pain erased," he says. "It makes me who I am. It makes me Grumpy." But Snow doesn't heed it. Instead she drinks a potion concocted by Rumpelstiltskin (a man described as someone who can "achieve the most unholy of requests") that makes her forget all about the prince.
Another dwarf (Stealthy) is shot with an arrow and killed. There's one interjection of "h‑‑‑."
"Pilot"
The pilot gives us two parallel stories: One of how these fairy tale characters came to be cursed, and the other of how Emma Swan returns to her people—thanks to her son whom she gave up for adoption.
"I know why you gave me away," Henry tells Emma. "You wanted to give me my best chance." It's a beautiful line. But it falls just a bit flat when you start the weigh what it means (to us in the real world) for a TV series to show him rebelling against his adoptive mother and trying to bond instead with his birth mother. (Henry runs away from his adoptive mother twice.)
We hear heartwarming platitudes about the power of hope, and are warned about both lying and fighting. But we also see sword battles (people die and we see blood spilt) and loads of magic (including casting curses and foretelling the future). Emma, a bail bondsperson, slams a suspect's head against a steering wheel, knocking him out. And she veers off a highway, crashing her car into a sign.
Henry lies and exercises a fair bit of manipulation while trying to set the story straight. We see a few revealing outfits. Folks drink wine and say words like "a‑‑," "h‑‑‑" and "b‑‑tard."