Once Upon a Time: The Brothers Jones (5x15)

Yeah. This was a good one. Very solid, very moving... perhaps somewhat redundant and even a little shallow? On a level of personal enjoyment, I'm all smiles over here. But on a more critical note, I wouldn't call this episode flawless.

Cons:

What do I mean exactly? Well, let's take a look at the main story of the night. In flashback, we learn that Killian and Liam were slaves aboard a ship for a long time, and they worked hard to earn enough money to buy their freedom. On the eve of getting commissions to join the navy, Killian gets drunk and gambles away his savings. Liam refuses to leave his brother behind, and the two continue in servitude. Eventually, Liam and Killian commit a mutiny to save the rest of the crew from the greed of the captain, who wanted to sail into a storm in search of a mythical gem. The plan is to turn around and run from the danger, but Hades shows up to make a deal with Liam: let the men aboard the ship die, so that he, Hades, can have fresh souls. In exchange, Hades will spare Liam and Killian's lives, and also give Liam the gem, thus ensuring he can get a commission in His Majesty's Navy. Liam takes the deal, and Killian never finds out, believing his brother to be a hero who tried his hardest to save all the men.

In the Underworld years later, the gang believes they can find out more about Hades and how to destroy him if they have the Underworld equivalent of the Story Book. They find it using information Henry found out about (I'll get there later). But Liam first gets a visit from Hades, who threatens to tell Killian the truth unless Liam tears out all the pages about Hades. Liam finds the book and destroys the pages, but Emma discovers him, and eventually Killian realizes his brother has been lying to him. The men who died aboard the ship all those years ago show up for their revenge, and Liam sacrifices himself for Killian and the others. His act of sacrifice completes his unfinished business, as he has finally made amends for his past wrongdoings. He and the other sailors all get to move on, while Killian stays behind. His unfinished business won't be finished until he and the others find a way to defeat Hades.

I loved a lot of things that were going on here, but there were also quite a few issues. First of all, Liam came across as a self-righteous asshole in the Underworld plot thread, and that was a shame, because he was making some good points with Emma. If he had been a bit more believably sympathetic and there wasn't such an obvious "he's hiding something" plot twist, we might have gotten more nuance out of his character. Killian's hero-worship thing might have been more interestingly explored, and we could have examined the mistakes both Emma and Killian made to end up here. Instead, Liam's totally justified critiques were brushed aside as soon as we learned he was lying about something.

Virtually every villain on this show has a solid justification for their actions - Rumple became power-hungry, but most of what he did was motivated by a desire to find Baelfire. Regina was motivated by grief and misplaced revenge. Emma as the Dark One was motivated by love for Killian. Even characters like Cora or Pan have a deep-seated psychological need for something that is sort of out of their control. I felt like Liam's own excuse for killing an entire ship full of men was a bit flimsy in comparison. He did it so he could have his dream of a career in the navy. Really? That justifies the deaths of all those men? I guess he also did it to save himself and Killian, but I thought they had a plan to turn the ship around and get to safety before Hades even turned up, so that doesn't quite make sense. I'm not saying that Liam wasn't sympathetic, because in many ways he was. It just could have been a bit stronger.

Pros:

All that being said, the main plot wasn't at all a failure when you get to its character-driven purpose: Killian has to decide, on his own, that he wants to fight for his life and come home to Emma. He's feeling guilty about how easily he succumbed to being the Dark One, and is wondering whether or not it might be best for him to just try and move on, instead of fighting to come back to life. He doesn't think he can measure up to Emma's standards of him, since she sets the bar so high. Later, after learning of Liam's betrayal, he says something similar to his brother: "all you did was raise the bar so high, all I could do was fail." After recognizing that the people he loves the very most (Emma and Liam) are flawed, he has to acknowledge that if they are worthy of being saved, so is he. I was a bit miffed at first by how quickly this turn-around came, but I eventually came to the conclusion that it's good to have this sort of character development over with quickly. Sure, we could have dragged it out... but we all know Killian is coming back with Emma when this Underworld storyline is over with, so what's the point of dragging out a falsely suspenseful arc?

The stuff with Killian and Emma, incidentally, was rather adorable. I loved the part at the beginning when Killian said that Hades had beat all the handsome out of him, and Emma said "no one's that powerful." That was just precious. And Emma's tearful face as she told Killian he needed to forgive himself and he needed to do it on his own... that was such a beautifully acted moment. Emma knows better than anyone that you've got to find your own internal strength and believe in your ability to do better. That's been the most compelling thing about her character all along. And that kiss at the end was a big relief for both of these characters. Emma has been so distressed and worried since Killian died, but she finally has him back, and he's standing at her side willing to fight for his future. Yay!

Killian and Liam's relationship, while perhaps a bit unsatisfactory in some respects, did still have some nice moments, and it was cute to see young Killian look at his big brother with such admiration and devotion. "One should never mess with the Brothers Jones." Seriously. You can say that again.

And hey, if Captain Swan isn't your thing, there was a lot of lovely Emma/Regina material in this episode as well. Emma confides in Regina that Liam doesn't think she's good enough for Hook. Regina's response? "You're too good for Hook." Well that was just too precious for words. Regina also gives Emma the advice that she needs to help Hook to forgive himself. After all, Regina and Hook are very similar in a lot of ways. Regina's journey to self-forgiveness had a lot to do with Emma's interference, as well. Henry greets the two of them as "Moms" when he sees them, which is precious, and later when Henry tries arguing with Emma about being left behind on the search for the Story Book, Regina chastises him: "don't argue with your mother." Henry tries to interject: "but -" and Regina cuts him off: "or your mother." I love the two moms thing. It never gets old.

Speaking of Henry - his plot thread this week was another welcome acceleration of what could have been a very tired and lazy storyline. He runs in to the Sorcerer's Apprentice, whose unfinished business is all tied up in Henry: he's willing to help Henry find the Author's Pen in the Underworld, but what Henry does with it will determine whether or not the Apprentice can move on. Henry's initial plan, as we know, was to use the Pen to save Cruella and thus assuage Emma's guilt over killing her. But by the end of the episode, and with a little help from David, he's decided to do what he believes to be right: he'll use the Pen to recreate Hades' story, and learn whatever it is that the lord of the Underworld is so desperate to hide from them. I expressed my annoyance last week that Henry was hiding things from the group, but that's been rectified now. I'm so happy that Henry gets to step forward and be the hero he deserves to be - he's been sitting on the sidelines for a while now, and it's nice to have that acknowledged at last. The idea of using Henry's powers to find Hades' weakness is very compelling, as is the fact that the Apprentice's fate is tied up in Henry's actions. It gives further gravitas to everything he's doing, and makes him a part of the story proper.

Earlier, Snow and David had to visit the sheriff's office (David's twin, James' office, in other words) to find the key that would lead them to the Sorcerer's palace, where the Underworld's Story Book was hidden. David is forced to pretend to be James when Cruella comes in unexpectedly for some sexy times. After torturing David for a bit with the whole routine, Cruella reveals that she knew all along that he was actually David, because he doesn't have any of James' "brokenness." Cruella reveals to David that James has resented David all this time for being the one who their mother chose to keep when she was forced to part with one of her sons. That, apparently, is James' unfinished business.

This plot thread could have tanked very easily - the whole "person has to pretend they're someone they're not and consequently do something distasteful" routine has been done to death, quite honestly. But here, it worked because they didn't draw it out too long, and Cruella was just screwing with David the whole time, which was quite refreshing. Also, there were a lot of comedic beats in this plot thread. My favorite was when Snow decides to come with David to James' office, since she still needs to punch him in the face as punishment for kissing her. David, in a rather high-pitched voice, exclaims: "he kissed you?!" Snow replies "I thought it was you," to which David replies "let's go," clearly keen to get in a little punching action of his own. It was played mostly for laughs, and worked very well. David/Snow marital banter works really well, maybe because of Ginnifer and Josh's real-life marriage.

At the end of the episode, David talks to Henry, who is struggling with his role in events. This is just before he tells everybody about the Pen, and David decides to distract Henry out of his moodiness by telling him about his own day, and about how he learned that his twin brother resented him. Henry says dryly: "please don't make this a lesson" to which David replies: "too late." That was pretty adorable. The cheesiness of this scene felt totally justified, in that it pushed Henry out of his rut and got him to tell the family what was going on. Plus it was a nice way of poking fun at the overblown fairytale tropes employed quite often in this show (for good reason, obviously). Henry was basically saying: "ugh don't give me another Very Special Episode moral lesson. I've had enough of those for a lifetime, thanks."

I think that's where I'll stop. While some of the stuff with Liam felt too simplistic, I still appreciated what this episode did to push the story forward. We got the necessary "Hook doubts himself" stuff out of the way so that our characters can move forward with united goals. We got past the "Henry lies to his family for no good reason" stuff with all due haste, so we have some forward motion on that plot thread as well. All in all, this episode probably only deserves a "good" and not a "great" rating, but good is good enough for me!

8/10