Once Upon a Time: Welcome to Storybrooke (2x17)

In some ways, this is the episode I had no idea I was waiting for. I didn't think about the beginning of Storybrooke much. It didn't seem important. Turns out? It is! And it's awesome. I didn't like this episode as much as last week's, because I did see a few annoyances with it here and there. But I had a great time watching it, all the same. Let's take a look at some of the specifics:

So... the kid who plays Henry, Jared S. Gilmore, is really cute. Truly, he is. But his acting chops do leave something to be desired... I was a bit more distracted by it this week than I normally would have been, because Henry had such a significant role to play. That being said, he was a well-written character this week.  I liked that Henry was still angry with Emma. That felt true to all we know about him, and about kids in general. I also like that he still, to this day, calls Regina "my mom" but calls Emma, Mary Margaret, and David his "family." It's sorta psychologically twisty but I really love it. I also thought that it was really powerful when he said to everyone "you used to be heroes. What happened to you?" It was a great point and it added a lot of tension to the episode.

The real meat of this episode was Regina's character. I absolutely loved Lana Parrilla in this. Seeing her at the beginning of the curse was fantastic. It was of course really neat to see Jamie Dornan reprise his role as Graham/Huntsman, but I felt that his presence was rather underused.

My favorite part of the episode was the unexpected humor that came from the time-loop scenario. The absolute best scene was when Mary Margaret and Regina bump into each other on the street. M.M, of course, apologizes, and then Regina says "I ran into you, why are you apologizing?"M.M was confused by this, and it was absolutely hilarious. It was also nice to see Regina go a little crazy trying to keep the visitors there.

A problem I had: I thought it was stupid that Greg Mendell was Owen Flynn. I mean... what? Earlier, when this guy crashed into Storybrooke, we were not given even a small hint that this might be the case. It felt strange to me. Along the same line, I was annoyed by Owen and his father in this episode. I'm really sick of the brave child/selfless parent trope. The whole thing with the key chain was too cheesy for me, and I obviously have a pretty high tolerance to be watching this show in the first place.

Another problem - I don't like how upset Snow is. It was a bit too intense for me to see one of the story's heroines literally begging for death because of what she had done. She was willing to just abandon her husband and daughter like that? Seriously? I just feel like putting Snow into this position is taking the easy way out. I would rather see her try and soldier on, but slowly become more and more stoic as she comes to terms with what she's done. Instead, it was like killing Cora literally made her ill. I didn't like it. That being said, I thought that Parrilla and Goodwin did an excellent job with their confrontation. I almost wish Emma and/or David had been there to see Regina pull out Snow's heart. It was an intense moment and it would have been intense to see their reactions to it.

One last quick thing that I liked about this episode: Neal/Bae. I know he wasn't in it much, but I gotta say, I really love this guy. It was really nice to see him and Emma interact. One of the funniest and most real moments this week came when Henry left the table and Emma came over to it. Henry, apparently, went to the bathroom with his backpack. Neal didn't seem too worried, but Emma's response was: "Did you really fall for that? He's your son!" It was an awesome moment. I also liked seeing Neal get all fired up when Regina was threatening Henry with the curse.

So, in summary: I liked Regina's flashback arc, though I wanted more from Graham. I liked Neal and I liked Snow and Regina's confrontation, but I was a little disappointed in Snow's characterization, and I didn't really appreciate the twist that car-crash guy was actually a now-grown Owen Flynn. Not my favorite episode of this show, but even a substandard episode of Once Upon a Time is above-average television in my mind.

Now, for next week's episode, we get to see what happened to August! Yay!

7.5/10