Once Upon a Time: Selfless, Brave and True (2x18)

Wow. What a bad episode. I know that's a negative way to start off a review, but seriously! This episode was terrible! Because of how much I love this show, I'm usually inclined to go pretty easy on it. As I've mentioned in the past, sometimes the dialogue and the acting can be a bit spotty, but what always saves the day is the over-all plot, which is consistently well-crafted, with lots of well foreshadowed twists and turns. This week? No. Just... no.

Let's take a look:

Okay, so apparently August has been hiding in a trailer this whole time. Lame! I missed him so much while he was gone, and now you're telling me that he's been in Storybrook and all anybody had to do was go take a walk and they could have found him? Ugh.

So... he's been made into wood. Actually, pretty good effects for this show. I was never too distracted by puppet-August. The other actors did a good enough job interacting with him, etc. etc.

So, we get some flashbacks, where we see August confronting this guy called he Dragon who can cure his turning-into-wood problem. But, a girl who supposedly has cancer is also after help from the Dragon, and the two meet. Now... who is this girl? Tamara. Wow. Seriously? Wow. Here's the problem - most of the villains on this show (Rumple, Regina...) aren't actually villains anymore, since they all have such complex and understandable motives. Even Hook isn't just the evil of all evils. That was Cora's job, and now that she's dead what do we get? Tamara and Greg/Owen. They aren't compelling. Tamara doesn't even have a back-story yet, for goodness sake! 

Another problem - why do Greg and Tamara have to be in cahoots? It was sloppy storytelling. I already dislike this whole Greg angle, because I don't think it was seeded very well into earlier episodes. And now Tamara is involved too?

Because of how much I love August, I really wish this episode could have explored him a bit deeper. He steals a bag full of money from a woman whom he believes to be dying of cancer. That is seriously dark. But instead of looking at the psychological ramifications of such an act, it turns out that since Tamara is evil, it all gets brushed over. She wasn't really dying. She's a bad guy! So... even though August didn't know this, he still gets a free pass? Also, during his first conversation with Mary Margaret, there was a really heavy-handed comparison between the two of him about how he deserved a second chance, blah blah blah. We get it. They've both made mistakes but they can both try to do better. (To be fair - August's mistake was leaving a little girl in a safe warm home when he was like... seven, and Mary Margaret's was manipulating a woman to kill her own mother).

Then there was the Dragon. A vaguely cool idea, but Tamara killed him with a taser. A taser. Way too easily, mind you. He was all - "I'm super powerful, watch me levitate!" And then Tamara just jabbed him. Why was he pulling fancy levitation tricks, then? And who was he? If we never get answers about this, then it's a seriously wasted opportunity.

And then we have the Mary Margaret stuff. I will admit that there was actually a scene that I liked in here, when she finally comes clean to David about asking Regina to kill her. David's reaction was pretty priceless. He was all lovey-dovey with his wife as usual, but he was also pissed that she would do something like that. This moment, while nice, was not nearly enough to outweigh the stupidity of another moment in the episode, when Mary Margaret actually punches  Marco/Geppetto in the face when she learns about how he sent Pinocchio through the wardrobe with Emma. Immediately ashamed, Mary Margaret apologizes and basically says that she punched him involuntarily. No. The blackness in her soul is not literally manifesting itself in involuntary physical violence. That makes no sense and it is a ridiculously cheap way to avoid a deeper look into her character. If she wanted to punch the guy, sure. I mean... Geppetto is adorable and all, but Snow used to be something of a bad-ass in the other world, right, and it would make sense for her to be pissed about being lied to, especially since it could have meant that she could have been with her daughter all this time. I guess what I'm saying is - if she's going to punch him, stick with it instead of making excuses.

I will say that I liked the tie-back to the earlier plot points about the magic wardrobe. This show is always good about bringing up details much later to help advance the story. However, this should have been a moment of real revelation on the show, and it was entirely brushed over in favor of discussing Mary Margaret's "blackened soul." - By the way, earlier, there was a truly horrendous pun made by Regina when she pointed out that the diner was serving "blackened sole" and that it should be right up Mary Margaret's alley. It made me cringe.

And of course I have to talk about the ending. It was bad. August is adorable, and he died. Sort of... okay, listen, I don't really get what the hell happened at the end of this episode. When August acted in such a way that was deemed "selfless, brave and true" he was able to be turned into a real person again. So the Blue Fairy does her thing... and... he's a little kid again? What the hell? Why? That makes no sense! I was really annoyed. 

In general, I was annoyed. It was like this episode decided to take all the things about the show that I've been less-than-crazy about lately (Tamara, Greg, Mary Margaret angsting away) and turn them into the focus. I could put up with these plot threads when they were secondary, but shining a spotlight on them really does show these storylines to be weak and... well... cheesy.

I hope that the next episode can recover from this dud!

2/10