Recap:
Emma continues to look into Kathryn’s disappearance, assuring Mary Margaret that she believes she is innocent, but must appear to be an impartial investigator. In interrogation, Mary Margaret reveals that the box containing the heart, which was in fact Kathryn’s, belonged to her, but claims someone broke into her apartment and stole it. Henry, worried about Ms. Blanchard, steals a set of keys from his mother’s office; one of which fits Mary Margaret’s door. While inside with Henry, Emma finds a knife hidden in the floor vent. Mary Margaret decides to hire Mr. Gold as her lawyer, but shortly thereafter uses a key in her jail cell to set herself free.
August reveals to Henry that he knows the storybook tales are real, and that he is in Storybrooke to convince Emma of this. Meanwhile, David, concerned about his recent blackouts, becomes a patient of Archie, who gets him to uncover memories about being in the forest with Mary Margaret talking about killing a woman. David inaccurately interprets these memories, because they are actually from the fairy tale world when Snow White swears to kill the Evil Queen.
The seven dwarves confront Snow White about her personality changing, to which she responds angrily and sets out to kill the Evil Queen. She stops by Rumpelstiltskin’s mansion to enlist his help, and he gives her a magical bow with which to complete her mission. Prince Charming stops by shortly after and trades Rumpel his cloak for information on how to break Snow’s memory loss; Rumpel tells him true love’s kiss will do the trick, but Charming’s attempt is a failure. It’s not until Charming dives in front of Snow’s arrow meant for the Queen and proclaims his undying love for her that she takes him seriously, kissing him on her own accord and thus remembering. Charming is promptly captured by the Queen’s men, and the seven dwarves promise to help Snow rescue him.
Review:
This episode gave us some satisfaction regarding Snow White and Prince Charming, as Snow remembers her love for him. However, it was strange to see their happiness so short lived, as Charming was captured immediately after their reunion. I understand that happy relationships can become repetitive and boring for the audience (sometimes), but Snow and Charming eternally searching for one another will get old as well. Although, I enjoy the repetition of their line, “I will always find you”, and I did like how their ending here was paralleled with Mary Margaret and David parting ways.
Probably one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the series to date (ranked right under Sheriff Graham’s death) is when Mary Margaret breaks down in tears while telling David that she never doubted his innocence and breaks up with him for not believe in her. This scene was so perfectly executed by Ginnifer Goodwin, who has proven time and time again that she was the right choice to play Snow White. Not as diverse of a character in the Disney movie, Goodwin has brought life and realism to the Snow White that we all grew up loving; seeing her hum to the blue bird and interact with the dwarves, be filled with rage and aggressiveness and sorrow shows great talent, and the episodes focusing on Snow White have been among the series’ best.
Though Prince Charming is a wonderful character, I have been getting frustrated with David the past few episodes because he is too indecisive and cowardly, the complete opposite of Charming. He is a misfit among all the other characters, because everyone else so closely resembles their fairy tale counterparts while he doesn’t. We may attribute this to his blackout problem, which still has not been explored, but it seems to me that there is something else off about him.
I have been wondering why Henry, who knows the storybook inside and out, has not noticed that it was altered. While this episode did not provide any clues to that answer, it did reveal more about the man responsible. We received information about August’s intentions, but there is still the looming question of why he was secretly adding pages to Henry’s storybook. Was he including stories that were simply left out of? Was he predicting events that would have happened had the curse not been enacted? Was he altering stories already in the book? Personally, I think it would make sense if he added some more information about Emma, since it is his goal to convince her of the truth. Because Henry’s pleas to Emma to believe in the curse have been met with deaf ears, having an outsider, who could reasonably claim ignorance of the book, explain it to her may be what is needed to push Emma in the right direction.
At Once Upon a Time’s Paley Fest panel this month, Ginnifer Goodwin stated that what breaks the curse “makes perfect sense,” so this naturally got me speculating on what I think breaks it. The nature of the curse is to prevent happy endings because the Evil Queen was upset that she would not be able to have her own perfect life. So, it would seem to follow that if Regina were to fall in love, then that would discount her reason for enacting the curse, thus breaking it. However, there is the whole dilemma of Emma being “the savior”, the one with the power to end the curse. But, maybe this just means that Emma has to show Regina an example of unexpected true love for someone (for Henry), and Regina would understand and follow suit, finding true parental love instead of romantic.
