Round Two: Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 2 “The Thing You Love Most” (C)

In its second week, this show continues in the trend of its first installment by presenting an intriguing but altogether repetitive and uneven real-life version of a fairy tale. It seems that we’re going to get a glimpse of the fairy tale world in each episode, filling in a bit of a gap, with the important lesson learned here that the Evil Queen was forced to cut out the heart of the one she loved most, which turned out to be her father, whose named happened to be Henry. Rumpelstiltskin gets plenty of makeup, and the effects are fairly impressive. Two notable cable actors were present in her back story, Kristin Bauer (Pam from “True Blood”) as Maleficent and Giancarlo Esposito (Gus from “Breaking Bad”) as the Mirror. Bauer was good in her part, but I do wish that Esposito had something better to do than concoct hatchet jobs for the newspaper for Regina. The newspaper headline about Emma’s destruction of a historic sign and her three arrests were a bit ridiculous, as was Emma cutting down Regina’s apple tree, something which seemed far too obvious. Regina’s orchestration of Henry being around to hear Emma call him crazy was almost impossibly evil, and it seems that Mr. Gold is well aware, at least to a degree, of what’s going on with Emma, which won’t bode well for him, I’m sure. There’s something sweet about the three familial generations – Mary, Emma, and Henry – all loving cinnamon, but, like most everything else on this show, it’s a bit too deliberately and prominently featured.