User blog:Renaboss/3.01 - "The Heart of the Truest Believer" Review

I told myself that I would do this, that I would start reviewing Once Upon a Time's third season episodes when the series returned this fall, and here I am, living up to the promise that I made to myself and nobody else to do something that no one really cares about. I'm just dorky that way. Anyway, OUaT, our favorite show as a community (cos I'm sure some of us have other favorites, like the shit-ass Game of Thrones, that I refuse to watch because I'm just stubborn and lazy), is back, and the third season started on an okay ground. Good, not great.

So, as everyone knows, the ole Jolly Roger is on its way to Neverland with most of the central characters of our show as passengers, six legendary personas: Emma the Messiah, Snow White, the Evil Queen, Captain Hook, Rumplestiltskin and Prince Barfing. All on the search for Henry, who is the link between every character on the show. While Neal recuperates back in the Enchanted Forest. And if you're wondering where Belle was this episode, she and Ruby were working their shift over at Granny's Brothel. Since this is ABC, we didn't get to see that. But before we get to the present-day action, we are treated to a flashback - the only one of the episode - of Emma giving birth to Henry. Now, season 1 had established that Emma had given birth behind bars. I guess that could have been metaphorically speaking, because she was clearly, as we saw in the flashback, still incarcerated - her foot was shackled to the hospital birthing thingy. But honestly, I was really fricking disappointed that we didn't get to see Emma squatting down behind actual bars and pooping out baby Henry.

Anyway, the gang made it through a vortex of water that actually looked really cool but that sounds really, really bad when you listen to them going through it with the use of my earphones. Stupid china shop cheap pieces of shit. Try saying that sentence three times really fast. They come out of the portal, and witness the Lost island in the far-off distance. The title card shows us two kids flying.

Anywho, Henry and Greg and Tamara make their way to the island as well, only they actually arrive in its sandy beaches, not in the middle of the ocean. Which is far more convenient, but that's what you get when you travel first class. Tamara says that they made it, mission accomplished, and Henry tells them that his mother's coming for him... BOTH of them. Which is kind of awesome. Henry always goes back-and-forth between whom he chooses to call "mom", it's really always about convenience for him, he doesn't really always seem to care with who his mommy is, it's possibly just always the person closest to him, so we'll take any moments where he refers to both his mothers as, well, his mothers. Since he still likes to call them by their first names sometimes. Which is rude, and children who do that are impolite, and parents who encourage that are not hip, they're stupid.

"Will you be my mommy?" "Fuck off, runt!"

Henry questions Greg and Tamara's operation/mission, and the couple that ruined the ending of season 2 realize that their walkie-talkie thing is a toy filled with sand or bird food or whatever. The interracial couple start to have questions of their own about their superiors and their task and their former blind faith in all of that, and it serves them right, for being so mean, and cunning, and manipulative, and deceitful. The show was fine. It had a nice ensemble of characters. But then those TWO had to pop up out of nowhere and throw everything down the water with a shitty storyline that made zero sense.

YOU RUINED SEASON 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait. Wrong pair. Anyway, a sequence of touching and poignant scenes occur at the Jolly Roger. Hook and Regina have a conversation about villains getting their happy endings, which is moving because we care about these two characters, and dumb because, um, they're villains. They've killed people and done stupid shit after stupid shit. They deserve to be locked away forever, not to live happily ever after in a giant shoe with fat grandchildren. But this is fairytale drama, so we suspend our disbelief and hope for the best for everyone. Except Greg and Tamara. Then, Mary Margaret tells Emma not to blame herself, which, yeah, why should she? Emma says she blames her parents, and that they are in no position to question her judgment because they're all the same age and have the same amounts of wisdom. David remains optimistic that they'll get Henry back, and Emma snaps the eff out, and we relate because, don't you just hate it when you're livid and frustrated and someone says, "It's gonna be okay?" or some dumb basic crap like that, and you just wanna go out and punch a cow? Then, Rumple changes costumes, nevermind why, and gets the heck out of dodge because he's anti-social. Only he's the kind of anti-social that sets out to rescue someone in a jungle, like a lone wolf, not the kind of anti-social that sits at home writing reviews of cheesy shows on a netbook. Like my friend. Yeah... a friend... Before he goes, though, Rumple gives Emma a speech about he thinks she'll fail because she doesn't believe. Now, I gotta say, is he for real? After two seasons of seeing Emma making it out okay of the most unbelievable scenarios, he still questions her. She's the fricking protagonist of the damn show, you would die before she did, Gold. Stop questioning Jesus Swan.

Greg and Tamara are met in the woods by the Lost Boys, who reveal to be the Home Office. Yay. I guess that settles that. They reveal that they have no interest in destroying magic, and Gregmara realize that they've been duped. They refuse to hand over Henry, and so Peter Pan's shadow comes down from the sky and rips Greg's shadow out, and it does look like it hurts. Tamara tells Henry to run, and she does so herself, but she gets an arrow through the boob or something and HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT SHOCKED ME! I always joked that Greg and Tamara would be killed in the premiere, but damn, that was so brutal for OUaT. The only people who'd gotten shot by anything so far were like peasants and black knights and we don't give a fuck about them. As horrible as Tamara was, she was an important character of sorts, and she got a fricking arrow to her fricking back! That was kind of intense for this washed down baby series. Also, Henry manages to escape, because obviously a kid with his hands tied (it affects balance) can outrun a bunch of teenagers who know the woods better than he does. Disbelief. Suspended. Check. Henry then meets a young man with big ears who helps him. I bet he has no ulterior motives. Then, Emma and Hook have a touching moment where they discuss Bae, and it's boring, so I won't go into detail. They drink to Neal. Aaaaaaaaaand...

Neal wakes up in fairytale land, lying on the bed where we first saw the sleeping beauty in the last premiere. The lady who works in my local china shop is standing by Neal's side, and asks who he is. Aurora, looking like Helen of Troy this season, gives him some water. Phillip is there, alive and well, but nevermind why, we won't know that for another 22 episodes. Neal, who was just shot by a .45 but that's like a moskito bite in the Enchanted Forest, tells him who he is, sort of, and Aurora promptly says that she can communicate with his family. It's all very rushed and clunky, but I guess the writers had to move shit along, which is better than carrying shit out. I gotta say, even with her hair looking funky like that, I am so glad that Aurora is back in the show. She is just so pretty... Her pretty red hair... her light eyes... her mild chin dimple... her rosy-red lips and that sexy, sexy Irish accent that she tries to mask... Seeing Sarah Bolger's face on my screen fills with me feelings that no words could ever possibly accurately describe.

I wanna rape dat.

Back in the Jolly Roger, the gang is attacked by a school of unAriel mermaids, who try to flip the ship. David comes at them with a blaster because his manners towards ladies are the same as Chris Brown's, Regina hurls fire balls at them so as to boil them for dinner, and MM and Emma reel one in inside a net. Meanwhile, in the woods, back in Neverland, Dumbo boy tells Henry they can go to the Echo caves, where the Lost Boys won't find them.

In EF, Aurora sleeps, because that's what she's best at. She can just turn it on and off whenever she damn well pleases, and ain't nobody better damn mess with the princess' beauty sleep. Feng Shui asks Neal what's it like in his land, and he tells her everyone thinks they're just fairytale characters - I never heard of a fairytale about Rumplestiltskin's son Baelfire before OUaT came along, so Neal might be tooting on a horn he doesn't actually own - and there's even a movie about Chop Suey that's pretty good. [Insert Asian Driver Joke] asks him what movies are, and it's really cute.

"It's called Mulan: An XXX Parody, and you are portrayed by a bright, up-and-coming actress named Tera Patrick."

Aurora wakes up from her sleep and reveals that she was as worthless as ever. Put it on the papers. But hey, she's still pretty! Bae then decides to go to his father's castle, where he prolly left something behind to use to contact people in other lands. I'm just gonna go ahead and believe that Neal knows about Rumple's castle from Henry's book, since when he left the EF they still lived in the Hate Shack.

Back in Isla Magica, Rumple finds Tamara, struggling to live, and removes her arrow with magic, and heals her wound. He asks about Henry, and whether he was killed, and Tamara explains that she told Henry to run, and he did. Tamara apologizes about what happened with Neal, but Gold, when asked if he can forgive her, rips out her heart and crushes it. I guess our hopes of at least getting some more info on Tamara that could sustain this shitty storyline relies solely on the possibility of there being a Pan-centric episode where we see how he came about contacting her and Greg. But I wouldn't put it past the writers if the Home Office thing never came back up again. Magic taser, anyone?

"I am so gonna be charged with a hate crime for this..."

Then, the Jolly Roger gang decide what to with the pesky mermaid they captured. And I gotta say, dayplayers on this show are SHIT! These pesky co-stars come in, they have a few lines to say and they can't even do that right. They're always so unconvincing and unnatural. Anyway, merbitch blows on a conch shell and says something cheesy. Then, Neal and Xiao-Mei make their way through the Enchanted Forest's version of the Sahara desert and chit-chat about love, and we get an idea that maybe Mulan still loves Phillip. They're on their way to Rumple's castle, even though none of them had ever been there, but obviously the bullet that Neal was shot with by Tamara, which is made from the toughest machinery and metals known to men, comes with its own GPS system. Back in the ship, a storm starts up, and they can't decide what to do with the mermaid, so Regina, ever the quick thinker, turns her into a wooden statue or something. The storm gets bigger, and Regina and Snow engage in a catfight. David tries to break them off, but Hook tells him to leave the slags alone, so David attacks him too, cos, that's just what you do in a deadly storm, you defend the honor of your wife when some sleazy bastard calls her a hoe. But between all that nonsense, Neal and Karate Kid enter Rumple's castle and run into Robin Hood, now portrayed by Sean Maguire, who didn't even bother with dying his fucking hair for the role to match Tom Ellis. That's some serious shit right there. Commit!! COMMIT!! Blah blah blah Neal shakes a stick blah blah blegh magic door. Whatever, Eddy and Adam. Henry and Dumbo fly over a gorge, which isn't a surprise, cos Dumbo. In the ship, people fight, and Emma throws herself into the ocean. Good for her. David goes after Emma, and saves her. And Rumple meets with Felix, the worst actor of the show, and we all saw this in the sneak peek so why bother?

Mulan watches as Cracker Boy (I can't just be racist towards her) tries to use a magic glob to locate Emma, and he is able to thanks to some good advice from her, and after one second of seeing Emma next to some plants he figures out she's in Storybrooke. She couldn't have been in "Game of Thorns", Belle's papa's store? Or Granny's Weed Farm? No, cos Neal recognizes every bush and every rock and every sexually confused teenager from Neverland. The Jolly Roger gang make it to the beaches of Neverland, and Emma takes a stance and gives them the same cheesy dialogue about them being who they are that we've been hammered with over the latter half of this summer in every promotional material that's come out. Emma tells Regina to help her get her son back or fuck off, and they all follow after the blonde. Meanwhile, in the skies, Henry and Dumbo fly. A whole half-season's worth of stories could have been wrapped if one of the gang had looked up and shouted at Henry, but that would have also been a waste, so let's keep going. Henry and Dumbo land, and Dumbo reveals that he is not really Dumbo, but rather some other fairytale character...

"What up, donkey?"

Nah, it's just Peter Pan. Boring. Pan reveals that he wants Henry because he owns the heart of the truest believer, and then takes out his knife, and the Lost Boys form a circle around Henry, and it's all actually very creepy and intriguing. I'm curious to see where this is going, so, Adam, Eddy, please don't fuck it up.

Bukkakeland

Writing this review was a pain. I wanted to do a weekly thing but I'll see what can actually be done. Given that this will be read by, like, two people, yeah, I'm not getting my hopes up of repeating this too much. But yay, OUaT!!