ouat rewatch party! #1: Pilot

[baltears]

Once Upon a Time
Season 1, Episode 1: "Pilot"

Episode MVP: Henry (way to kick off the plot, king!)
Favorite line of dialogue: BIG FAKE LAUGH

Biggest parenting L: Emma one-upping her own son when he tries to tell her about his parental trauma from Regina đŸ˜” empathize with your kid and then tell it to your shrink, bestie!
Wasted lore potential: In this episode we're introduced to the magical big gun of the series, namely True Love's Kiss, which is an Enchanted Forest-specific type of magic that can break any curse (except when there are exceptions, which of course there are). Most of the context we see this in has to do with romance because down the line it usually functions as a way for the show to reify the 'correctness' of a canon couple while moving the plot forward. But it's also shown to work within platonic or familial bonds, which makes me sort of wish loved ones in the EF ritually greeted each other with a cheek kiss or something like that, just to break any curses that might be lying around and ward off evil.

So first I feel like I need to get out of the way that this is a really good pilot. It's very much OUAT 1.0, since as with most pilots there are a number of discontinuities or changes between the pilot and series (such as Snow claiming Regina poisoned her with the apple out of envy rather than revenge), but the basic vision for the series is established clearly and effectively. This episode has a lot of irons in the fire, and by the end they've all been gracefully managed. We know who all the major players are, we know a lot more than most of them do about their relationships to one another, and the emotional momentum of the story is very strong. In general this story has a good understanding of how to handle the audience's relationship to the characters, although it sometimes puts them in tenuous positions relative to their roles in the story and its thematic world. (More on that to come in a future post.)

There's a level of polish to the narrative beats in the pilot and the overall structure of the episode that also sets it apart a little bit from the series. But then again, it's a pilot, so it's natural to assume this was workshopped for a lot longer than any episode of the series proper.

Something I want to briefly draw attention to first are the differing paradigms of meaning between the Enchanted Forest and the Land Without Magic, because I want this to inform my reading of the show on this watch. A lot is made in this episode of the "happy ending" and "good versus evil."

I would posit that most of the time, "good and evil" as the characters speak about them are more like the political parties of the Enchanted Forest than any real sort of moral framework. Accordingly, a "happy ending" can be read as "the opportunity to live out a fulfilling and undisturbed life" (optionally, "with my loved ones"), which is often achieved by or associated with the leveraging of political power to attain dominance over hostile forces.

Of course there is a moral-ethical angle to this whole framework – but it's more often expressed in terms of loyalty to a group or a relatively abstract cause (such as peace, "goodness," or "True Love"). Because the series favors the perspective of Good (as a political faction), the actions of Good characters are taken in good faith and typically forgiven or excused if they are harmful; meanwhile the actions of Evil characters are treated as inherently suspicious, even if the characters have no evidence of any wrongdoing. If an Evil character is granted leniency or forgiveness for their misdeeds, it tends to be loudly and tearfully withdrawn as soon as they step out of line.

This type of framework isn't that unusual, and it's not 100% consistent within the show either (because nothing is). But it is interesting to me that this sharp divide between "goodness" and "badness" in the Enchanted Forest is not only perceived, but literal. Switching sides, even unintentionally, has a very real magical effect on the characters. Some of the way the story uses elements like "dark magic" is obviously meant to be allegorical, such as with Regina and Cora's relationship, which on a literal level was completely shaped by Cora's use of magic but makes allegorical points about emotionally unavailable parents and cycles of abuse. But because the show marries the fairy tale world and the real world, the literal side of things can never really be fully ignored.

 

 

I was really struck by the family drama this time around. Snow and Charming are characters that we've just met, but the episode does such an adept job of illustrating 1) what their dynamic is like – they know each other well, act as an equal team, make decisions together, and have been waiting a long time for their dramatic fairy-tale lives to settle down so they can marry and start a family.

They start off very squeaky clean to the point that it's honestly a little annoying. Snow proclaiming that Regina is "nothing more than an evil witch" comes off as moral grandstanding when we have no evidence yet of the actual crimes she's committed. But once we start to see these characters suffer, they immediately come to life in how they respond.

In particular, Snow's goodbye to baby Emma followed by Charming taking her to the wardrobe is very wrenching. Like, that's their newborn baby! They wants to stay with her more than anything. But they let her go anyway because, like Emma points out in 2.01, that's just who they are.

Still sort of a questionable parenting choice, as Emma also points out, but it's very obvious how heartbreaking this was for them.

I was also very compelled by Henry this time around, which surprised me a little bit. When the show first aired I was not connecting with the character and his struggles, and I felt like he was more of a plot device to motivate Emma than a character in his own right, but that's really not the case. His emotions and actions are very grounded and make a lot of sense for his situation, and I think also quite poignantly he's very similar to what his father was like at his age. Traumatized, sad, lonely, even parentified (maybe more so in Baelfire's case because he is stuck bearing the weight of all his father's completely unfiltered emotions and neuroses, but it's hard to ignore that Henry feels responsible for saving the entire town from his own mother), but keeps attempting to do the right thing and to keep his family together. I actually kind of wish his perspective had been favored a little more in the series proper, because with such a strong and vibrant ensemble cast his feelings and motivations can sometimes fade into the background.

Also, I was much too harsh on Jared. A stilted line delivery here and there does not make a bad performance. The kid can definitely act.

 

Also thinking a lot about Henry's belief that Regina doesn't love him.

The position of the show does appear to be that he is at least somewhat mistaken on this point. Regina clearly does love Henry. Even in this more nascent version of the story where she doesn't have much to her character yet beyond being a flat villain, her concern and care for him are obvious. But to be honest, I think the show often errs too much on the side of glossing over parents' shortcomings or mistakes in order to emphasize how they do actually love their children (it's just "a wrong kind of love expression," to use Kendall Roy words).

Although the show is very concerned with the idea of "real love," it frequently shies away from depicting "unreal love" or "false love," the kind of thing that happens when you are "loved" by someone who doesn't really know you and doesn't necessarily have your best interests at heart (because of course if they don't know you, they can't possibly know what those are). They might feel love for you inside themselves, but they can't externalize it in a meaningful enough way (as in, a change in how they treat you). Their actions do not communicate true love, only attachment, enmeshment, or possessiveness. The story is attentive to this type of love existing, but when it actually appears, it's usually treated as a precursor to "true" or uninhibited love developing later. I understand why this is on a narrative level, but frankly I just have a problem with it because it doesn't feel true to life to me at all.

The only really substantive story we got about this topic was Regina's narrative with Cora. I think that depiction is quite well done, because the writing takes pains to point out that Cora's inability to truly love Regina is because of her own internal scarcity (having literally removed her heart and thus her own ability to love), rather than any fault of Regina's. This episode does seem like it originally wanted Regina to be more like Cora as a parent, because after Emma asks Regina if she loves Henry, Emma has a look on her face like her "superpower" was triggered by Regina's affirmative response, but that implication is never brought up again.
 

 

One of the reasons this show is so compelling and yet keeps falling short of its full potential as it goes forward (in my opinion) is that the curse is a circumstance loaded with so much baggage and heartache and dramatic irony, but never mines it all the way down to the bottom. Even season 1 really doesn't have that much of a status quo because the plot just moves too quickly for that, but I personally can imagine a more Westworld-esque version of this show where the curse doesn't get broken (or at least not at the end of season 1) and more focus is placed on how the characters suffer from being trapped and forcibly alienated from themselves. That's not really what the creators' vision was, but there's enough of those themes in there to edge the show into something more like a psychological drama. If Disney ever wanted to come back to this IP, I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of room for it to approach the story in a substantially different way.

I don't want to navel-gaze about that too much, though, lest I give the impression that I don't like the show the way it is. I do! Just wanted to kind of get that thought out of the way. I think one of the show's strongest points is its focus on establishing a timeline and a sense of continuity to the characters' dramatically changeable behavior, personalities, and worldviews. Information given later can be considered relevant and read into the text much earlier. For instance, the way Emma's artificially bubbly and flirty behavior on the date with that embezzler guy (Ryan? was his name Ryan?) echoes how she genuinely behaved around Neal as a kid in her first relationship in 2.06. There's a sort of self-contempt that can be read into this moment for the character that dovetails really well with what we're shown later about how she relates to that point in her life – she's very cynical about it and blames herself for naively trusting someone she thinks took advantage of her. My guess would be that no one in the writer's room or in production would have had that exact thought per se, but it's a good example of these sorts of serendipitous accidental or semi-accidental moments in the story that create additional layers of depth.

I think that's all I've got for this round, so here's some more caps. Onwards!