Once Upon a Time- Broken

By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What happened: In Storybrooke, the Charming family is reunited and they have all the feels. The citizens want to kill Regina, but the Charmings protect her and put her in jail. Enter Rumpy, who mashes a medallion into Regina's hand, marking her for a wraith to come suck out her soul. Regina has a plan to send the wraith back where it came from, and the Charmings help her with it, for Henry's sake. This works, but the wraith drags Emma with it. Mary jumps in after her daughter. David tries, but he's too slow and crashes to the floor. He's left with Regina, charged with taking care of Henry and finding the rest of his family. In the fairytale world, Mulan and Prince Phillip have been fighting and travelling together in an effort to wake up Sleeping Beauty/Aurora.

They do so, but then a wraith attacks them wearing a medallion that falls off. Phillip picks it up, and it marks his hand. He knows the wraith is coming for him, so he sneaks away to fight it. Mulan and Aurora follow and arrive in time to see Phillip get his soul sucked out. Phillip looks comatose or whatever, and the women place him in Aurora's old sleeping place. Mulan explains that a curse was placed on the land while Aurora was asleep. She slept through the Evil Queen's curse. We realize then that this is a flash sideways. The women find Emma and Snow unconscious and realize that it was their fault the wraith was sent to their area.

What we thought: Man, we missed this show. "Broken" is hardly ever a word used happily, but here it is. The curse is broken! In the opening, we were like, “Is this the right show?” What was that all about? We didn't get to see a follow-up from that scene with newcomer Michael Raymond James (True Blood, Terriers, The Walking Dead), but we expect we will. Is he Bae? Prince Phillip is cute. We were thinking, "Where have we seen him before?" And then WHOA, it’s Wren from Pretty Little Liars. That took us a second. Maybe it was the facial hair. Too bad we knew it was Mulan the whole time due to promo shots.

Gross, Jennifer Morrison and her awful red jacket are back.The reunions were mostly sweet. Emma had to try to ruin it by being all damaged, but she couldn't. It was too nice. Mary Margaret's face when she saw Emma almost made us cry. Just that face. Good job, Ms. Goodwin. It was so funny when Mary waved off her one-night stand with Dr. Whale by saying, "We were cursed." Wait, why is killing the Evil Queen wrong? Because Henry says so? Henry, why are you still alive? We were hating on Belle and Rumpy last season because we thought their introduction episode could have been great and not just merely good. But we were digging them in this episode. Gold is not sexy. And yet he is sexy. Why is this? We like the darker shade of brown on Belle.

The show has now added Ringwraiths/Dementors, only it has given them zombie arms for originality. We don't know that Jamie Chung is the best actress, which is disappointing, because Mulan should be bad ass, not stiff. Plus, she has to carry a third of a love triangle, and she'll likely be an important part of Snow and Emma's lives now. Might there be too many characters on this show? Should the show focus on rounding out the characters it has instead of retelling every fairy tale in the world? But we like the retellings...we like new characters. We think our memories can handle it.

It was cool that Mary Margaret was the one to defeat the wraith the first time it attacked in the prison. We also loved when Charming joked that he was old fashioned. We like the love triangle with Mulan, Phillip, and Aurora. It's hard to decide which one we want to win him. On the one hand, Aurora is more traditionally feminine, which people hate, but she seems nice, loving, and smart. On the other, Mulan is Mulan (as long as they don't stray from the Disney version of the character). So yeah, Team Mulan.

We can't say we were on the edge of our seats wondering what would happen to Regina. She deserves what she gets and we know nothing will happen to her yet. We were more worried about Wren/Phillip. Sure enough, he got soul sucked. What shocked us was Emma getting sucked into the fairy tale world. We loved Mary Margaret/Snow jumping in after her. Poor, slow Charming David tried. that was a good faceplant. So that's the next big goal? Getting them back? We like it. We loved that it wasn't a flashback. These same writers have fooled us with the same trick (in LOST). Curses! Flash sideways! If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The premiere was confident, entertaining, funny, and touching. No sophomore slump so far.

Episode grade: A