Review: ABC's Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time premieres Sunday at 8/7c.

When I was in my pre-teen and early teenage years, my family and I would gather around the television set in the early hours of Sunday evening to watch The Wonderful World of Disney, the latest incarnation of the long-running anthology program and the third version of such to air on ABC. Though it was mostly a way for Disney to deliver cheap made-for-TV movies, repackage those that films failed to make theatrical release, and (very rarely) air actual theatrical hits (the last leg of the show coincided with Disney’s purchase of ABC) it was a way for my family to watch television together when they still had a person living in the house who was not mature enough for most primetime programming (that is, me). And given that WWOD has been off the air for three years now, it’s impossible for not to look at ABC’s new series Once Upon a Time as a way to recapture that audience. Unfortunately, playing towards that audience perhaps isn’t the best thing for the show, as a good idea gets diluted down into something more palatable for the “family” senses, and suffers because of it. 

If there’s one word that I would use to describe OUAT, it would be “perfunctory”. Part of this comes from the basic “fairly tales in the real world” premise that the show uses. Perhaps because of their universal appeal, but more likely because of the public domain status, OUAT borrows not just from “Snow White”, which forms the main backbone of the pilot, but also “Rumplestiltskin”, “Pinniochio”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, and others. Since everybody knows these stories, and since the show seems loathe to doing any post-modern twists on them, it’s not like anything comes as a surprise from these setups. Once these characters are introduced, it’s quite predictable how they’re going to act, even when the show veers from their original plots.

But the perfunctory sense of storytelling is also there in the plot. The main character of the series is Emma Swam (yes, really), played by Jennifer Morrison, who is beguiled by the 10 year-old son she gave up for adoption, Henry (Jared Gilmore, aka Bobby #3 from Mad Men) to go to Storybrooke, Maine (YES, REALLY) based on his claims that the town is home to storybook characters who suffer a kind of amnesia as to their true identities. As you can no doubt conclude, there’s obviously a connection between the storylines of the storybook world and the real world, and that connection established about 15 minutes into the pilot’s 43 running minute-time, which leaves the rest of the episode very little to do, as it goes about filling in the smaller questions that perhaps don’t need to be immediately answered.

Which brings me back to that “family oriented” problem that I used to start this review. Perhaps out of fear that kids won’t get it, or maybe just to hook the largest audience possible, nothing is left to surprise because everything is made obvious. Even if they don’t outright explain who each character’s real life persona is (as they do with Jiminy Cricket), it’s quite obvious who say, Red Riding hood is, or how the setup to the town closely resembles how things worked in the fantasy world, but without out giving much reason why we need to know these things right away. No doubt the show wants to gives us the thrill of realizing “Oh, that’s….”, but without it being a challenge to do so, the thrill is mostly gone.

Of course, that lack of thrill also comes from the lack of direction with which the pilot ends. OUAT is advertised as “from the writers of Lost”, but perhaps a more apt phrase would be “from two of the writers of Lost”. The show’s creators – Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz – are indeed from the Lost writer’s room, and while they wrote some of the strongest episodes of that show, especially a good number of Hurley-centric episodes among other, but also wrote some of the worst. Regardless, the strong episodes were only so because they were based on the arc drawn out by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Here, Kitsis and Horowitz are working off of their own story, and there’s nothing to suggest that they have a plan going forward. The pilot ends with Emma deciding to stay in Storybrooke for one week – how long that’s supposed to take in the show’s time frame, we’re given no clue – but beyond that, there’s no indication how she’s going to set about solving the problems set up in the pilot, and I’m not sure that Kitsis and Horowitz have an idea either.  Much like there is really only one thread in the pilot, there seems to be only one real mystery/arc to the show as a whole, and it’s the kind of thing that the series will either finish up quickly and be left with nowhere else to go, or (more likely) drag out far past the audience’s patience for such matters. In the case of the latter, the show could conceivably turn into a “case of the week” type formula, where Emma helps each individual citizen of Storybrooke remember who they are in turn, but I’m not sure if the show has enough sense of itself to make that work, and it frankly just sounds like a boring way to burn through episodes.

Then there’s the problem of the fantasy world. As mentioned above, the show doesn’t really seems to put much twist on the stories apart from having them all exist in the same universe and looking at what happens after “happily ever after”, but that’s not really the problem. Much like it’s not clear how the show’s main plot is going to work in the future, there’s no real hint as to if the show is going to use or need the fantasy world side of things, which, in the pilot at least, is only used to help setup the plot. The obviously large budget of the pilot helps to sell the environment of the fantasy world – and if there’s one positive thing about it, it’s that everything here looks fantastic, as superficial of a band-aid as that might be – but that money’s not going to be around for the upcoming episodes.

Regardless, given that all of the characters now reside in the real world, I’m not entirely sure why we would need to go back to the fantasy realm. And while it would behoove the story to keep focus on the real world, I’m not sure that’s what the show as a ratings entity wants on needs, given that it’s mostly selling people on the idea of a fantasy series, so it better damn well deliver some fantasy every week. (Think of it as the same problem Terra Nova has, only replace “dinosaurs” with “magic”.)

I don’t want to sound down about the pilot, which was fine for what it was attempting to do, but pilots also have to have us believe that they hold potential, and in that regards, OUAT’s pilot fails. I won’t hold a grudge against those that are taken over by the show’s charms (and indeed, it has a few), or parents who are just happy to have something they can watch with their kids. But I do hold against the showrunners and the network for thinking that the average American family is so easily won over, or that kids would be lost if the show tried for more nuance. There’s a good idea at the center of the show, and I just wished it have been developed into a better final product.

Other Thoughts:

I also respect that the show, which is dealing in a genre that generally depicts women as helpless objects in need of rescue, would have such a strong, confident, funny and yet believably vulnerable lead in Emma. Part of this is no doubt do to Morrison’s solid performance (and man, am I glad she’s finally gotten a decent gig after all these years), but I want to believe that Kitsis and Horowitz want this to be a theme to the show, a twist on the old formula. Which is problematic, given that the rest of the female leads are either stuck with the misogynistic mannerisms of their iconic characters, or either too underdeveloped to be sure. Lana Parrilla‘s Evil Queen/Regina, for instance, could make for a delicious anti-heroine, but it’s just a possible that it ends up being a standard “bitch” role.

Emma approaches Storybrooke and its residents with a healthy amount of skepticism, but since she is the lead character, it sometimes seems as if the show wants to approach the whole show with some ironic detachment. They should drop that attitude and revel, unironically, in the magic, because as of now the show’s a bit confused tonally.

Many people of the internet have gone about complaining that Once Upon a Time is just a rip-off of the comic book/failed television project Fables. Don't listen to them; they’re just so, so wrong about that.

Yes, Damon Lidnelof is listed as a producer of this series, but frankly, since his position is lower than Kitsis and Horowitz’s, I think it’s mostly ceremonial as another way to the sell the show to both the network and the TV audience.

There’s a good deal of logical leaps in the pilot, most of which fall under the “it’s magic, I ain’t gotta explain shit” line of reasoning, and that looks to be the show’s MO going forward. You’ve been warned.

For example: Emmma’s only supposed to stay in Storybrooke a week, a place where time seems frozen, which also allows all the fantasy characters not to age. Don’t ask me how that works; my heads still hurting trying to figure out the logistics to that.

Yes, there’s a hunky sheriff with a foreign accent. Yes, it means exactly what you think.