Snow White and Prince Charming Meet

After the first episode of Once Upon a Time ended, Dad remarked that we would probably wind up hating Snow White before it was all over. I disagreed, and I still do, but it’s obvious that there are more layers to her character here than we are used to seeing. The version of Snow White that we got in the flashbacks of Snow Falls was more like Robin Hood than the innocent damsel in distress we’re used to seeing. This Snow White is fighting for her life and trying to bring down the queen herself. We still didn’t get the story here; Snow confirmed that she’d ruined the queen’s life but didn’t explain how. I’m anxious find out. In any case, though, Snow in this episode largely reminded me of Danielle in Ever After, a strong, confident tomboy who forges a connection with a prince despite the fact that they initially seem to hate each other. I liked her.

And, of course, I still like her in the current storyline too. There, she spends her time tromping through the forest with Emma trying to find the man she knows as John Doe, the one with whom she felt a strong connection after he grabbed her hand while she was reading to him. It all felt very season six of LOST to me, with Henry realizing that they are in this strange sort of limbo and trying to shake people out of their stupor by bringing them together with people they love but don’t yet remember. He’s trying to trigger a domino effect; the more people realize what situation they are in, the better. Except he doesn’t want the queen to know, but if love is the key, is there any real danger of her coming to her senses?

I never really thought about how fairy tale-ish it was for so many of LOST’s sideways “awakenings” to revolve around kisses. In this, we’d already seen Prince “Charming” – we now know his name is James – awakening Snow with a kiss, and in this episode, she does the same for him, in a sense. It’s CPR, but the effect is that it looks as though she kissed him back into life, making a nice bookend to the story in the fairy tale realm. Do we believe that the woman in the room with him is actually his wife, or did the queen just pay her off to pretend to be? I’m not sure. Could go either way. But obviously things are not over between these two.

I really enjoy Snow / Mary and Emma together. They seem like such natural friends. I also love their rapport with Henry, though you would think it would be getting pretty hard for them to keep spending time with him. I would think the queen would just want to pull him out of school next, though I would guess that there is only one school in Storybrooke. Maybe she could get a private tutor. I love that in this episode, Henry yelled, “We have to go back!” That was the big LOST moment for me, though the cutting of the net looked very much like a LOST shot.

Mary and Emma will make good roomies. I like that combo. This episode didn’t feel as sprawling as others; there weren’t as many characters to keep track of. It was very focused. I’m intrigued to see how they begin to pull in other princesses; Cinderella is next week, and I’m anxious to see Emilie de Ravin as Belle. I don’t picture her as a Belle, and I wonder if she will be a brunette for this. I also wonder if she will have her natural accent. An Australian Belle would be very weird to me. But I’m excited, and I hope that more LOST actors trickle in as they have been doing on Person of Interest, which I really should be recapping too. I love the interplay between Finch and Reese and it is glorious to see Michael Emerson again for an hour a week, but the plot hasn’t grabbed me that much. I’m giving it time. But Once Upon a Time has me hooked, and I can’t wait for the next episode.