The origins of Grumpy are revealed as the episode explores his failed relationship with a woman he loved. His counterpart, Leroy, teams up with Mary Margaret to impress a nun. All the while, Emma looks into Kathryn’s disappearance. Here is a recap and review of “Dreamy”.
Recap:
After any dwarf emerges from his egg, he is given a pickax that reveals to him his name. Dreamy is a dwarf with a huge heart and high hopes, who falls in love with the clumsy fairy responsible for collecting the fairy dust that the mine produces. This fairy, Nova, desires to one day become a fairy godmother, but puts her dreams on pause in hopes of sailing off with Dreamy and exploring the world. On his way to meet her to embark on their journey, Dreamy is stopped by Nova’s teacher, who tells him that running away will strip Nova of her wings and prevent her dreams from ever coming true. A broken-hearted Dreamy leaves Nova and returns to his mineshaft, receiving a new ax, on which the name Grumpy is inscribed.
Mary Margaret tries to coerce the town into helping her sell candles, or at least buy them, in order to raise funds to pay the nuns’ rent. Leroy, only after an encounter with Sister Astrid, Nova’s real world counterpart, decides to help out. In an attempt to impress Astrid, Leroy lies and tells her that they sold all of the candles; however, he must now come up with $5,000. Leroy turns to selling his boat, but Mr. Gold will not give him enough money for it. So, Leroy causes a citywide blackout and the citizens buy all the candles to light up the town.
Sheriff Swan is called to duty to investigate the disappearance of Kathryn Nolan. Sidney Glass provides her with Kathryn’s phone records from his “source” at the phone company, who is actually Regina. In the end, Mary Margaret watches Emma take David down to the station to answer more questions because he denies having spoken to Kathryn during the time indicated on her call log.
Review:
After realizing this episode was written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, I had high hopes that it would be their usual brand of phenomenal; however, this proved to be only a mediocre episode, one that struggles in keeping my attention. That’s not to say that it was completely lacking, because it did have some interesting aspects.
I enjoy that the writers are explaining the fairy tale characters that we already know, instead of reinventing them. Many times the characters backgrounds have been new and shocking, and some times they are amusing while being predictable, as seen here. Did anyone not see it coming that Grumpy is grumpy because he had his heart broken in love? Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I’ve always seen Lost as a giant love story, and expected similar aspects with Once Upon a Time, since it was created by two of Lost’s writers. Though the surprise to me, it was nice to see it play out, especially when you consider the ending in the fairy tale world compared to the real world. Dreamy turns into Grumpy in an unhappy ending, while Leroy plans a sailing trip with Astrid in a more uplifting conclusion to their story. One would assume that it would be the other way around and that the curse would be preventing happy endings that were depicted in the fairy tale world. Could it be interpreted that the curse is continually being weakened and starting to fail altogether? Or had Astrid and Leroy’s story not been shown far enough along for us to reach the unhappy ending?
The thing I noticed with Belle’s second appearance is that it seemed kind of “off”. As much as I loved Belle in her first episode, her presence jolted me a little bit in this one because it was not something I would expect, and not in a pleasant shocking way. She popped up out of nowhere for one little scene that would have made much more since if it was handled by Snow White. In an episode focusing strongly on the seven (or eight) dwarves, Snow White was strangely missing. Snow White is the confidant and friend of the dwarves, and romantic advice coming from her would have been a more fitting source for Dreamy to have accepted the advice so easily. Considering aspects of the classic fairytale, we did have the pleasure of hearing a little portion of “Whistle While You Work”.
Speaking of Snow White, Mary Margaret seems to have a defeatist attitude lately. She has practically given up on love and does not seem to be making an effort to be happy in her life. She seems to be stuck in the balance between bliss and pure misery, so I hope that she fully falls one way or the other, instead of existing in this middle state. I would be interested in seeing her hit rock bottom before being able to pick herself up and appreciate the things she does have in life. That would make her character, and Snow White, more honorable if she was able to will herself out of a dark situation, understanding what she was doing wrong and having the heart and strength to fix it.
One praise I will give towards this episode is that it gave Amy Acker the chance to stick to genre work. I absolutely loved her on Angel, so to see her appear in another semi-sci-fi based television show was exciting. Although, I wish her character had more of a transformation, starting out as a ditzy fairy and turning into a stronger woman. Hopefully, this means that she will have a return appearance and we will see Nova finally become the fairy godmother she so strongly desires to be.
Overall, I feel like the show runners have been stalling lately. The regular cast has been put on the back burner in favor of new characters. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying watching their interpretation of other fairy tale characters, but not at the sacrifice of those who we have already fallen in love with. What has Henry been up to all this time? For a character who was so prevalent in early episodes, he has practically fallen off my radar and I almost forgot about him. Seeing the previews for next week has excited me far more than this episode did, and I look forward to their story behind Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf.
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