Once Upon a Time – Like mother, like daughter

Talk about nursing a grudge and using your righteously indignant rage to fuel your evil fire.

The whole beef The Evil Queen/Regina has with Snow White/Mary Margaret can be traced back to an innocent, whole hearted confession Snow made as a child, one that she truly thought would help Regina. Snow wasn’t conniving or manipulating or self-interested, in line with what we expect of her character. However I was hoping that the feud between these two women would show a darker side of Snow — because everybody’s got some darkness within them — but alas, ’twas not to be.

While Regina was clearly and understandably heartbroken by the loss of her true love Daniel, Snow is not the one who should be held responsible for his death, yet the girl seemed to become a convenient scapegoat, easy prey upon whom it was easy for Regina to work out her major mommy issues. So to have Snow tell Regina’s mother that Regina was in love with Daniel lie at the root of Regina’s animus — something Snow did as a little girl, without ill will, in an attempt to spare Regina from losing her mother as Snow had — makes Regina seem shallow, irrationally vengeful and unreasonably malevolent.

This was a big disappointment as I expected Regina’s betrayal by Snow to add up to more than this. I expected something juicier, something more sophisticated. I wanted their problems to be rooted in something Snow knowingly did as an adult, perhaps some conflict she had with her stepmother. I would’ve had more respect and sympathy for Regina and it would have fleshed out her character. Instead, Regina just looks outright evil because to blame a child for doing something that prompted someone else do something truly sinister, is bogus. And to nurture that grudge for years, to allow it to alter your character from that of a normal, happy person into that of a sadistic psycho who smiles as Mary Margaret sobs, was thoroughly dissatisfying.

The real culprit, the real evil was, of course, Regina’s cold, manipulative, power-hungry, social climbing mother. But it was much easier to target Snow for revenge than one’s own mother.

Speaking of Regina’s mother, she taught her daughter well, because, for as devastated as Regina was to watch her mother rip out the heart of her beloved and crush it to dust, she went on to emulate her dear old mum, to crush others’ hearts, both literally and figuratively, or to keep them tucked away in boxes in drawers, like she had a little heart fetish. (I’m still convinced that Snow is somehow related to/is the Queen of Hearts and that this will loop back to this heart-snatching thing, but I digress.) It was fascinating to learn that Regina wasn’t always a disturbingly wicked soul, that she was transformed as a result of losing her stable boy. But the rest of it left me cold.

Another big reveal was that Kathryn turned up alive (because she was never killed or because of something Rumplestiltskin did remains unclear) in Storybrooke, drawing a parallel to Snow White who turned up alive after The Evil Queen issued a death sentence only to learn that the Huntsman hadn’t actually turned over Snow’s heart in a box. The heart in a box found buried in Storybrooke was clearly alluding to that part of the Snow White lore.

Other things we learned or can reasonably suspect:

• Sidney, who’s always seemed spineless,  is not on the up-and-up. Big shocker, I know.
• Rumplestiltskin can’t be trusted. Ever. His slimy motivations are his own and are always murky. He’s playing both Regina and Emma.
• Based on how jittery he got by the bridge, it’s obvious that the Once Upon a Time writers want us to think that the mysterious author/motorcycle dude is a troll. His motivations for “helping” Emma are still an open question.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Apr 02, 2012 @ 10:55 EST5EDT