Whoa. That’s two underwhelming episodes in a row, show.
Sure, there were some great moments, especially near the end with Regina and
Gold’s talk, but the rest of this episode was awkward.
Fairytale world: Rumpelstiltskin was apparently the beast
in Beauty and the Beast. When Belle’s town is threatened by Ogres, Rumpy makes
a deal with Belle’s father, Maurice. If Rumpy can have Belle, he will save the
town. Maurice says no, but Belle says yes. Belle becomes Rumpy’s housekeeper
who has to sleep in his dungeon. Yeah, his house has a dungeon. We really
shouldn’t be surprised. Belle drops a teacup and it chips. It’s Chip. Chip does
not come to life and start singing, sadly enough.
The two develop feelings for each other, and Belle just
must be the most compassionate person on Earth, because we don’t see how she
fell in love with Rumpy. Since it wasn’t well-developed, it just came across as
weird and a little messed-up that Belle would fall in love with a guy who is
such a jerk to her. Rihanna? Is that you? Well, Rumpy didn’t hit her at least. He
did catch her when she fell off a
ladder. Still. Stockholm Syndrome is not
true love. Rumpy decides to let her go. He sends her to town to get straw, not
expecting her to return. If she returns, he promises to tell her the story we
saw a few weeks ago of how he lost his son and got all evil.
Belle walks away from his house and meets the Evil Queen
on the road. Offff course she does. The Evil Queen tells Belle that evil curses
(like the one Rumpy is under) can be broken by true love’s kiss. This sounds
nice, but we knew it would go wrong, because the idea came from the Evil Queen.
Belle returns to Rumpy with straw, determined to break the curse. She kisses
him and it starts to work, but Rumpy freaks out. He thinks she is in league
with the queen to take his power and can’t really love him. Rumpy is mean to
Belle, trashes his place, and then throws Belle out of his castle. Belle calls
him a coward for not being able to believe that someone could love him. These lines almost worked and sucked us into the tragic love story the show was trying to write. However, context ruined the lines.
Later, the Evil Queen visits Rumpy and tells him Belle
killed herself after being rejected by her father and locked in a tower. Where
there were clergy with whips. Huh? Like a moron, Rumpy believes her. We are almost
100% sure that Belle is still alive, because she is alive in Storybrooke.
Regina has her locked in a padded room, hidden in the local hospital. She looks
all crazy and sad. Belle was played by Emelie De Ravin, who was better on LOST.
Also, her accent didn’t match everyone else’s on this show.
In our world, Maurice is a florist named Moe French. He
owes a debt to Mr. Gold, so Gold takes his flower delivery van on Valentine’s Day. That’s gonna hurt business, and Mr. Gold's chances of getting his money back. In revenge, Moe robs Mr. Gold’s place. Emma
finds the stuff, but Rumpy says she didn’t find everything. He goes all
vigilante, despite Emma’s warnings to leave it to her. Rumpy finds Moe, kidnaps
him, beats him with his cane, and questions him, dropping weird hints about why
he’s really mad. Emma shows up in time and arrests Gold. Moe is taken to the
hospital.
Regina brings Henry to Emma’s office and offers Emma 30
minutes to have ice cream with her son. Regina wants a word alone with Gold.
Regina admits that she put Moe up to steal from Gold. She has the missing
item and will return it to him in return for his real name. Gold pretends not
to know what she is talking about, but finally coughs up “Rumpelstiltskin.”
Hmmm, so he knows that he used to live in another world. Not a surprise. Regina
gives Gold the cup. In B plot, Sean proposes to Ashley (Cinderella, who we barely remember) at her
girls’ night out with Mary Margaret and Ruby (Red Riding Hood). Mary Margaret
grows dissatisfied with her wrong, secret relationship with David.
We liked the darker, creepier moments of this show, and
Gold’s twistedness. The Gaston thing was funny. This show needs to skew dark,
but its characters need to act in ways that actual humans would act. Last time,
we got a king with mixed motives and weird, slightly despicable decisions. Here,
we have a love story we didn’t buy, even though we love the Beauty and the
Beast story. LAZY. This was a missed opportunity, overall, but it was a little better than last week.
Episode grade: C+
I'd have to say I've got the opposite opinion, this has been my favourite episode of the last while. There's likely a few reasons, it's probably partly because I was actually paying attention for once, rather than half watching, half surfing the internet, but mainly it's because I love the character of Rumpelstiltskin and the tragic love story of his past worked for me. I agree that there wasn't enough between the two to call it 'true love', but there was enough little details that I could see a possible relationship forming. Perhaps it could also do with the fact that I didn't realise that it was the story of Beauty and the Beast until I read your post.
ReplyDeleteIt IS possible the post writer was too harsh with the grade. Like we said, there were some great moments. One thing we do like is the possibility of Gold finding his love later. We just wish her falling in love with him hadn't been so out-of-the-blue.
DeleteWe hold this show to a high standard because of the writers. The main ones are from LOST, one was loaned from The Vampire Diaries, and a few others have been from well-written shows as well. We just know they can do better even with short amounts of time per episode, and it ticks us off when it's not perfect, haha.
Hooray for paying attention! We've been getting better at it too.
Your grades are your own, no need to mess with them. We have different tastes half the time, I usually only pay attention to the score if it's a show I don't usually watch.
DeleteHa. Good. If everyone always agreed, it would be boring
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't agree either, lol. I loved this episode too, and I don't think I will ever hate a Once Upon a Time episode. It's a really good show, and I do pay attention to all my shows :)
DeleteMr. Gold is one of my favourite characters, so I like seeing anything from his backstory, and I liked the possibility of him having a love interest.
Gold might be the show's BEST character.
DeleteI looooove Gold. He's my kind of man. I agree that the show did not work that plot at all, because I'm TOTALLY in love with Gold (not Rumpy though) and they could've shown Belle some things we've seen.
ReplyDeleteI can't figure out why Regina WANTS him to know who he was. She owes him. Majorly. And she banked on him not remembering.... I don't get it.
I don't think she WANTS him to know who he was. She just wants to know all of the the information. Now, she knows that he knows, so she's better able to compete.
DeleteI'm surprised the reviewer was surprised because this never was a perfectly written show to begin with. With that being said, this episode certainly doesn't deserve worse grading than the rest.
ReplyDeleteThe Belle/Rumpy storyline is no less believable or romantic than the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. One could even argue that the Stockholm syndrome trumps over the "deliberately trying to seduce her to save your own skin" plotline in the Disney version.
Let's look at other true-love couples of OUAT: Snow White and Charming's relationship filled with every single melodramatic cliche in the book and Cinderella's offscreen seduction (?) of Prince Thomas after one ball. I'd say Regina and her stableboy would hands down win the contest and we don't even know for sure if that was true love.
What does sell this episode is the chemistry between Robert Carlyle in makeup and Emelie De Ravin. It's one of the very few episodes of OUAT I feel like rewatching, so I'd even say it's one of the best.
Hahaha, obviously I'm the unpopular opinion with this episode. You make some good points about the Stockholm stuff and the Charming/Snow White relationship. I think I remember giving this a low grade because it could have been so much better, not because it was worse. I hate things that were almost great more than I hate things that are bad. Fair or not, sometimes I grade that way. I'm trying to get more perspective.
DeleteI get what you mean, things that have the potential to be great but don't use it frustrate me immensely because they make me watch it but don't quite satisfy me. Once Upon a Time and Glee are those things for me - but while I stopped watching Glee very early on, I keep watching OUAT because of Robert Carlyle.
DeleteHe is definitely a bright spot. We're fans.
DeleteIf Once Upon a Time could be darker and less family friendly, it could be great. But it won't want to lose that audience because the family factor is one of the reasons for its success.
That's the main reason so many things with great potential don't live up to it in America. The constant fear that someone from the mainstream would get offended. (And they actually would. Sigh.)
DeleteIn America, people are more offended by sex and in Europe, people are more offended by violence. Either way, for kids, we understand. You have to protect their innocence until they are, like, 12. It's hard to find stuff that normal people can watch with them
Delete