Once Upon a Time – A fairy tale love triangle

You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you?

Uniting David (formerly John Doe the Coma Man) and Mary Margaret, the woman with whom we all know he’s meant to be, couldn’t possibly occur this early in the series. But knowing that they likely wouldn’t get together in this episode didn’t take the sting out of seeing Mary Margaret’s crumpled Bambi-like face, completely crestfallen, after learning that David, who’d begged her to meet him by the bridge, decided to go a different way and not hook up with her.

While Mary Margaret tried in vain to blink back tears as David confessed that he now remembered his history with his wife Kathryn (How much did Kathryn’s new buddy Regina have anything to do with that windmill that she misdirected David to?) and he said he owed it to Kathryn to try to save their marriage, I kept hoping that Mary Margaret’s inner, thieving Snow White side would emerge. But aside from David dumping her at their meaningful rendezvous point, it was more intriguing to learn that back in Fairy Tale Land, Prince Charming wasn’t really from royal stock after all.

That snake-like Rumplestiltskin, he has his slimy hands in everything doesn’t he, particularly when it comes to procuring children for the royals. To learn that King George (incidentally, the same actor who played Charles Widmore on Lost) acquired his son via Rumplestiltskin — who got the child from a poor woman who’d just had identical twins and was willing to surrender one of her babies in order to save her farm — was entirely unexpected.

This meant that the Prince Charming we saw in the first few Once Upon a Time episodes wasn’t actually a famed, brave fighter, but was his romantic, poor shepherd twin brother who’d only recently agreed to pretend to be the prince in order to again save his mother’s farm (and her life from the nasty King George) after the original “prince” was killed … wow. This show is getting more Lost-like and intertwined with each episode. That’s a good thing, just as long as the writers don’t pull the rug out from under the viewers like they did in that controversial Lost series finale.

At the same time as these stories have been becoming way more complex than the garden variety fairy tales we read as children, Once Upon a Time has been willing to cough up some answers in every episode, not just bombard viewers with questions. In this installment, we finally learned how Prince Charming got mixed up with the blond who was sharing the coach with him when Snow White robbed it: He was coerced into agreeing to marry King Midas’ daughter, lest King George kill the shepherd’s family. The “prince” who aspired to marry for love and not financial gain, had agreed to marry this stranger in order to protect his poor mother whom he is never supposed to see again. This backstory provided insight as to why in Storybrooke, David was married to Kathryn but there was absolutely no romantic heat between them.

One other little Easter egg in the recent episode came from the lead story in the Storybrooke Daily Mirror (love that it’s called the Mirror) that Mary Margaret was reading in the diner. The headline read: “Remnants of Seventeenth Century Colonial Settlement Uncovered at Harestock Bridge.” Hmm …

Also, I liked that Emma caught the Sheriff sneaking out of Regina’s bedroom window. He lost Emma’s respect when she learned that he’d been gettin’ busy with the mayor while Henry was asleep in a nearby bedroom.

What surprised you the most about this episode?

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Dec 05, 2011 @ 14:56 EST5EDT