"Once Upon a Time" Episode 2 - How Then Am I a Villain?

Regina (Lana Parilla) reminds Gus Fring paper editor Sydney
(Giancarlo Esposito) that she is the one who knocks.

"You have no soul! What made you this way?" - Emma Swan

As week two of our new fantasy serial rolls through, we fall into a familiar pattern. After a pilot spent painting an epic backstory in broad strokes, the following episode pulls in closer to give us a better look at a particular character. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Once Upon a Time's pedigree as the newest creation from two former writers of Lost.

What does come as a surprise, though, are several revelations, both in content and style. Click through for my full thoughts, along with shout-outs to Breaking Bad, True Blood, and, yes, Parks and Recreation...

Despite my very generous post on the first episode, I acknowledge that Once Upon a Time's pilot largely succeeded on potential for the future. In the following weeks the show has the unenviable task of living up to that promise, delivering an entertaining story, making us care about the town and characters, and keeping us enthralled week after week.

If this is what a typical episode of Once Upon a Time is going to look like, I am very reassured.

With as much momentum as the first episode closes, "The Thing You Love Most" opens, giving us a song-set montage of the immediate effects of Emma's decision to stay. Not only are the hands on the clock moving again, but time itself seems to be unfrozen, and the denizens of Storybrooke have a lucidity about them they may not have ever felt in the decades they've spent stuck in the town.

Needless to say, Regina is not thrilled by this. She immediately suspects Emma is up to something and sets plans in motion to get her out of town. It's Emma's response, though, that took me by surprise.

Throughout the episode, Emma fights back, hard. I'm glad to see the show isn't wasting time with her half-heartedly probing for truth in Henry's story while Regina plots subtly above her. This is war. She is aggressively fighting for Henry's well-being against a woman she strongly suspects doesn't love him. It's maternal instinct vs. Regina's suspected obsession with assuaging her guilt.

That the episode delved into the Queen's backstory didn't surprise me, but the level of nuance did, especially as the show established the Queen's existing relationships, just in time for her to destroy them in her question for vengeance. The stakes are nice and high, and between her screwing her only friend* and murdering the only person in the world that actually cares about her, we see that the Queen is continuously choosing her own unhappiness.

*- Malificent, played by True Blood's queen of the one-liner, Kristen Bauer von Straten. She also had a little horse, which I can only presume was the fairy tale world counterpart to Parks and Recreation's Lil' Sebastian. How did he escape Storybrooke and make it to Pawnee? I doubt the producers will spend much time on this mystery.

The present day storyline was essentially a complex, Machiavellian scheme designed by Regina to drive a wedge in Emma and Henry's budding relationship. Besides thinking this is a sold source of drama for the show, I was amazed that the show doesn't completely resolve this by episode's end, leaving Emma's commitment to Henry's cause ambiguous at best. Emma plays along, sure, but she may be doing it to win back Henry and keep things "in his language" after a potentially damaging encounter in Regina's office.

All in all, this week delivered much more depth than I expected at this point. For a show that has come this heavily hyped, exceeding expectations is a fairy tale all itself.

Other thoughts:

• Breaking Bad's Gus Fring, Giancarlo Esposito, shows up as the somewhat squirrel-y editor of the town paper, The Mirror, as well as the Queen's actual Magic Mirror. I would have figured his fairy tale self would be The Chicken Man.
• No sign of Prince Charming this week, but we did get Emma learning that Mary may in fact be her mother, and more strange chemistry between Jennifer Morrison and Ginnifer Goodwin. They're playing this thread well, I think.
• I can only assume that the show is positioning the Sheriff as a possible love interest for Emma, which immediately makes me wonder what his dark backstory is.

What did you think?