The Episodes: I will give the Once creative team credit for changing the series so much one season in and keeping the curse broken. I never expected that, going into Season 2. The season premiere is fantastic and then unfortunately, there’s a lot of stuff in what remains of the fairy tale world, with a bland Mulan and Aurora, that kind of distracted for a bit, but the show gets its footing back quickly. And that’s also not to say the show doesn’t have good episodes in that bunch, either — “The Crocodile” and “Tallahassee” are two favorites, even though it perplexes me how a flashback Jennifer Morrison actually looks older than her present day counterpart.
The second half of the season is where it [mostly] gels for me. Barbara Hershey’s Cora is amazing, and you never know if you should root for Lana Parrilla’s complicated Regina or not. There are some fun “family reunions,” and connections you might not see coming.
That’s not to say the last half of Season 2 is perfect — while the notion of something that happens to Belle is interesting at first, episodes like “Lacey” take the story beyond anything I really cared about. And, when compared to the Season 1 finale, the Season 2 finale was a bit of a let down, with the best part of the finale broadcast (the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. promo) nowhere to be seen on this set. Also, I know Greg and Tamara got a lot of grief from viewers, but we were SUPPOSED to hate them so I was fine with their presence.
The Extras: This is an area where there is no doubt that this set shines. Whereas some DVD and Blu-ray TV sets are very bare-bones these days, the folks who put this Once Upon A Time set together didn’t skimp at all. It reminds me of the early TV-DVD sets that would come out back in the day, in this day. One of my favorite extras is a “Fractured Family Tree” narrated by Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland, making light of how everyone on the show seems somehow related to one another in multiple ways. The “Good Morning Storybrooke” extra, honestly, falls into the “trying too hard” category of humor, but maybe it works for someone. There are also some great commentaries, and I’m only beginning to get into those. Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin do the season premiere, “Broken,” as an example; Colin O’Donoghue is on for the season finale. One warning, though: There are spoilers in the commentaries so be careful!
Additionally, there are bloopers, which are also becoming a bit of a rarity in this DVD world, and there are deleted scenes. The deleted scenes are great because some of them even set up some character moments that would flesh certain things out some more. Unfortunately, some of the commentaries reference deleted scenes that are still not on the set. Grr, argh.
Graphics & Sound: I’ll admit, I am new to the whole Blu-ray thing, so I might be more impressed than I need to be on how good it looks… but, yeah, it does look really good; better than even the ABC broadcasts I saw last year. The first season Blu-ray impressed me in the same ways. Having the show looking so crisp and clear makes the show look even better… even if there are sometimes cases (like at the top of the beanstalk) where the visual effects look a little dodgy.
The sound quality of the set seems really good.
The Packaging: I love the box art, and how the lenticular cover really takes the art from the season premiere to the finale. The individual disc art is also nice. I do wish that somewhere in the packaging, they would explain what extras are on which disc, but perhaps that would just make things too easy for us.
Once Upon A Time: The Complete Second Season hits Blu-ray and DVD Tuesday, August 13! Order yours from Amazon.com and support this website!
