I’m pressing on with my binge watch of Once Upon a Time, moving on to the second season. You know the drill: spoilers incoming.

“Broken” (season premiere):

The season kicks off with a very eventful episode that does an admirable job of providing a satisfying conclusion to last season’s cliffhanger and beginning new arcs.

The curse has been broken in Storybrook, and the residents have regained their memories and their true selves. Tearful reunions abound, and it’s a great resolution to the events of the first season — very emotionally satisfying.

But then that begs a new question: Why are they still in Storybrook? Regina claims their old world has been destroyed outright, but who’s trusting Regina?

Meanwhile, Rumpelstiltskin is out for revenge, despite Belle’s objections. He’s determined to make Regina suffer for what she did to Belle, but Henry — and by extension the rest of his newly reunited family — won’t allow Regina to become the victim of vigilante justice, magical or otherwise.

In the fantasy realm, we’re introduced to several new characters: Sleeping Beauty (who is quite unpleasant), Mulan (who I already like), and Philip (Sleeping Beauty’s prince). They’re struggling to escape the wrath of a terrible wraith… but all is not as it seems.

The twist for the fantasy side of things was really great, I have to say. Excellent way to play on the expectations of the viewer.

I also like how the return of magic to Storybrook means we can now enjoy fantasy elements in all aspects of the story. That raises a lot of interesting possibilities, and it’s bound to change the show for the better. We’re already seeing it in this episode.

My one complaint is that everyone is being rather unnecessarily harsh on old Rumpel. I grant he’s not the most likable fellow, but really the only bad thing he’s done in recent memory is seek revenge on Regina, and while I can understand disagreeing with his methods, the fact is pretty much everyone can agree Regina needs some comeuppance. Is it really such a big deal if Rumpel is a little overzealous?

A few questions also linger now that the curse is broken. Will Red transform come the full moon? She doesn’t have her hood. And what happened to Pinocchio? Can he be saved by the return of magic, or is his fate sealed?

Overall rating: 8/10

“We Are Both”:

Trapped and desperate, the people of Storybrook are in chaos. They look to Prince Charming for leadership, but he’s too distracted by his quest to find Emma and Snow.

Meanwhile, Regina is on her own quest to reclaim the things most precious to her: magic, and Henry. And in true Regina fashion, she’ll stop at nothing to achieve these goals.

On the fantasy end of things, we’re back to flashbacks as we learn how Regina first embarked on the path to becoming a magician. Of course, it all comes back to Rumpelstiltskin.

Regina was really the star of this episode. It struck me how thorough a job the writers have done to make her utterly unlikable. I like how she just lies about everything all the time, even when she doesn’t have a particularly good reason to. It shows how deeply corrupt she is.

It was also interesting to see how she’s betrayed everything she ever believed in, how she’s become that which she once despised. And yet despite all that, there is still an echo of the person she once was.

Regina can be a very interesting character when the writers aren’t just playing her as cartoonishly evil without nuance.

Charming’s side of the story was less compelling — again, I see where Emma gets it from — but it was nice to see him acknowledge and overcome his shortcomings, and I am enjoying how his relationship with Henry is shaping up.

Overall rating: 7.7/10

“Lady of the Lake”:

This another episode I’ve seen before, though for whatever reason I had almost no recollection of it. I think by this point Once Upon a Time’s mythology has become so complex that you can’t just jump in.

Things are getting quite complicated — though I’m not complaining. We’re now following three different plotlines spread across time and worlds.

In Storybrook, Henry continues to do everything he can to set things right in the world — be it through finding a way to reach Emma and Snow or reuniting Jefferson with his daughter — even if it puts himself at risk.

In the Enchanted Forest’s present day, Emma and Snow undertake a dangerous journey, accompanied by Mulan and Sleeping Beauty*, to find a way back to Storybrook. This plot mostly serves to remind us that Emma is a lunkhead and Sleeping Beauty is really quite nasty.

*(Her proper name is Aurora, apparently.)

But by far the most compelling story takes place in the Enchanted Forest’s past. The war with King George takes a heavy toll on Snow White and Prince Charming, as Charming’s mother is mortally wounded in a skirmish and Snow is captured and poisoned to ensure she will never have children.

Unlikely aid comes from the disgraced Sir Lancelot, who was serving King George as a mercenary but has a change of heart upon learning the depths of the king’s cruelty. They set off to find the same enchanted lake that Charming used to cure poor Frederick of Midas’s touch.

But of course, it’s not that easy. Only one of the women in Charming’s life can be cured.

This is plot is a great example of Once Upon a Time at its very best, full of action, adventure, magic, great characters, and heartfelt emotion. It’s only a shame that the rest of the episode isn’t quite as strong.

Also a bit of a shame that Lancelot is dead. He seemed pretty cool. Then again, if Cora’s anything like her daughter, she’s probably lying.

Overall rating: 8/10

“The Crocodile”:

It’s time for another Rumpelstiltskin-heavy episode — always a good thing — and this time the focus is on his relationships, and how they’ve failed.

In the past, he loses his wife to her own wanderlust. I gotta say, as wretched and pathetic as Rumpel was back then — and in many ways still is — I still gotta think he could have done better. His wife was a truly awful and selfish person.

This plot is also noteworthy for introducing us to another classic fairytale character: Captain Hook. In this case, Rumpel is the “crocodile” who took his hand.

In Storybrook, he is at risk of losing Belle to his own emotional cowardice. To make matters worse, her father is out to “save” her from Rumpel’s clutches. With kidnapping and horrible magical abuse, because being a parent is hard.

Maybe it’s just because I’m writing this after a particularly bad day, but there were a lot of characters in this episode that I wanted to push down the stairs.

That’s not a complaint, though. A good story sometimes needs people to hate, and a lot of my disdain for them comes from the fact that they hurt characters I genuinely care about, which also speaks highly of Once Upon a Time.

And really, anything with Rumpel and Belle is just gold… No pun intended.

Overall rating: 7.9/10

“The Doctor”:

With how much Once Upon a Time is throwing together disparate parts of fiction, I almost expected this episode to be a Doctor Who crossover.

The truth is only marginally less bizarre.

It’s also worth noting that this is the last of the episodes I’d seen before, though for whatever reason I had almost no memory of it.

The meatiest plot this time around deals with the Enchanted Forest’s past. A young Regina is desperate to find a way to bring Daniel back from the dead. At first, she seeks magical tutorship from Rumpelstiltskin, but when she learns not even magic can resurrect the dead, she turns to an even odder figure for help: Doctor Victor Frankenstein, brought to the land of magic through one of Jefferson’s portals.

In Storybrook, we see Regina making a surprisingly earnest attempt at reforming herself, and Dr. Wale — Frankenstein in truth — decides to repeat his attempt to resurrect Daniel, successfully this time. But when has trying to bring back the dead ever ended well?

I’m not sure I like the idea of bringing Dr. Frankenstein into the Once Upon a Time mythos. They’re already thrown together many disparate elements of fiction, and their whole multiverse touching the imaginations of people in our world theory explains it all quite well, but Frankenstein isn’t even close to being fantasy or a fairytale. It feels out of place.

I also don’t like that they went with the pop culture version of Frankenstein rather than being at all true to the original story. The whole point was that his creation became a monster not simply because he was a reanimated corpse, but because of the hatred and rejection that was heaped upon him from the very moment of his birth. I’m not even a particular fan of Frankenstein, but if you’re going to do something, do it right.

On the plus side, “The Doctor” featured another very strong performance from Regina. I really like that they seem to be working harder to present her as a nuanced person rather than a caricature of evil. More interesting that way.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

“Tallahassee”:

Just as episodes focusing on Regina or Rumpel are always cause for celebration, an Emma-heavy episode is never a good thing. That said, this isn’t a terrible episode. Just an unremarkable one.

The timeline gets even more muddled as we flash back to Emma’s life shortly before Henry’s birth. As one would expect, it doesn’t put her in the best light. Pinocchio’s cameo was interesting, at least.

In the fantasy realm, Emma and Hook climb a beanstalk to recover a magical compass from the last of the giants in the hopes it may lead them to Storybrook. A plot focused entirely on two of the characters I least like… Yeah, not the most exciting episode in the world.

The one thing I will say is that I really liked the backstory and history about the giants, their ability to travel between worlds, and their war with Jack and his forces. That was interesting — I want to know more about that.

Overall rating: 6.8/10

I’ve now come to the last few episodes of Once Upon a Time’s first season. As with the rest of the series to date, they’re a mixed bag, but the good tends to outweigh the bad.

“The Stable Boy”:

As we near the end of the first season, we finally learn a key piece of the backstory to Once Upon a Time: the source of Regina’s enmity towards Snow White.

It all happened when Snow White was a little girl. Regina entrusted her with the secret of her affair with a stable boy, but Regina’s mother, a cruel dark sorceress, was able to pry the truth from Snow, with terrible consequences.

Meanwhile, in Storybrook, Emma continues to try to exonerate Mary Margaret and continues to fail miserably, and August continues to be all mysterious and vaguely creepy.

I found this episode slightly unsatisfying, though I’m not sure why. It hits a good balance of giving Regina a good reason to be angry without compromising Snow’s identity as a person of pure heart.

I guess after all the build-up around Regina and Snow’s rivalry, there was no way the truth would live up to the hype. That’s the danger in delaying these things too long.

The ending is a bit interesting, but it also threatens to resolve the Mary Margaret situation through a deus ex machina, which isn’t the best solution.

Overall rating: 6.7/10

“The Return”:

At last, we get some attention toward Storybrook’s mysterious newcomer, August. It’s overdue.

All indications are that he is in fact Rumpelstiltskin’s son, who came to our world long before the curse. However, the truth may be more complicated.

This is a hard episode to rate. On the one hand, lots of Robert Carlyle, and we finally understand why Rumpelstiltskin forged the curse in the first place. I also like the twist that August isn’t his son after all, because that was feeling a little too obvious.

However, I’m also disappointed that we still haven’t figure out who August actually is. It’s starting to feel a bit like being strung along. Clearly he’s from the fantasy world, or at least somehow gained knowledge of it. The fact he’s immune to the curse seems important.

Overall rating: 7.8/10

“The Stranger”:

Here’s another of one of those times when I have really conflicted feelings on Once Upon a Time.

I didn’t have to deal with my disappoint over the continued mystery of August’s identity for long. He was Pinocchio, and like Emma, he managed to escape the curse before it consumed the land. Now, the curse has disrupted his own magic (or something like that), and he’s turning back into wood.

His only hope is to convince Emma to embrace her destiny… but this is Emma we’re talking about.

Meanwhile, Regina once again tries to get to Snow/Mary Margaret, this time through David/Charming.

There’s a lot to like about this episode. It answers a lot of questions, and it’s one of the times where Once Upon a Time manages to be quite emotional without laying it on too thick. Pinocchio’s story is very touching, a tale of flawed people trying to do their best and not always succeeding.

They managed to erase about ten episodes worth of dislike for August/Pinocchio and actually make me like him, which is no mean feat. I also really enjoyed Tony Amendola’s performance as Geppetto; dude’s got some acting chops.

But there are two blemishes on this otherwise fine episode.

The first, as usual, is Emma. Her continued and utter denial of all evidence of her fantastical origins is getting downright torturous. Maybe it is realistic — I don’t even care at this point. The fact is we as viewers have known she’s wrong for a very long time, and we know she’s going to find out at some point. Stop stringing us along and get to the point already.

The other is David once again proving himself to be an utter and complete schmuck. I guess I know where Emma gets it from.

Overall rating: 7.9/10 The good outweighs the bad.

“An Apple Red as Blood”:

We’re now in the final two episodes of the first season, and these are both episodes that I’d seen before.

As one would expect, events are coming to a head. In the fantasy world, Snow White calls upon all her allies — the Seven Dwarfs, Red, Granny, and the Blue Fairy — to launch a daring strike to rescue Prince Charming… only to find Regina once again one step ahead. This allows Regina to carry out her ultimate revenge on Snow.

In Storybrook, Regina is growing increasingly desperate to find a solution to the Emma situation. She forms a plan with Jefferson the Mad Hatter to use her last scrap of magic to defeat Emma once and for all, taking her past plan to deal with Snow White as inspiration.

I think I actually liked this episode better when I didn’t have the context for everything, though it’s still pretty good.

The main problem is that — now that I know the full story — Regina’s desperate fear of Emma seems oddly baseless. She’s defeated Emma at every turn, to the point where Emma is pretty much giving up at this point, and it’s now painfully clear Emma wouldn’t believe in the curse or try to fight it if it clubbed her over the head.

That niggle aside, “An Apple Red as Blood” is pretty solid. The fantasy side of the story is swashbuckling fun, and the Storybrook side sets the stage for the finale quite well. Emma has finally been forced to confront the curse — she wouldn’t believe if it clubbed her over the head, but now that it’s clubbed Henry over the head, she has no choice.

Overall rating: 7.8/10

“A Land Without Magic” (season finale):

And so we come to the end of the first season of Once Upon a Time. It’s been a somewhat mixed ride, but it ends on a mostly strong note.

Henry has fallen into a deathly coma, forcing Emma and Regina to work together just as they hate each other more than ever.

Rumpelstiltskin, of course, has the answer. He secreted away a bottle of potent magic that can save Henry.

In a dragon.

So that’s fun.

But Rumpelstiltskin has an ulterior motive, as always, and it will change Storybrook irrevocably.

This is a very good ending to the first season. It resolves the issue of the curse, at least partially, while providing a cliffhanger that promises new challenges down the line. I did really enjoy seeing the characters reawaken to their true selves. And we got lots of Rumpelstiltskin, so that’s always good.

It is now clear that everything since before the casting of the curse has been part of some elaborate scheme of Rumpelstiltskin’s, but his purpose remains unclear. He wanted to create the curse so it could be broken? Seems a little convoluted. I’d say it was a scheme to get Belle back, but he seemed genuinely surprised to learn she was still alive — which was another good scene.

I guess it will all be explained at some point.

Something else I greatly appreciated was Regina’s performance in this episode. Her grief over what happened to Henry was quite moving, and it was great to once again see her human side. When I first saw this episode, that level of nuance to Regina’s character was one of the things that got me interested in Once Upon a Time.

My only major complaint, once again, comes from Emma, and I remember ranting about it back when I first saw the show — I think it may have been the origin for my low opinion of her.

If you are fighting a dragon, and your choices of weapons are a legendary sword from an enchanted kingdom and an ordinary pistol, why would you choose the pistol?

On the plus side, that foolishness aside, Emma actually puts on a rare good performance in this episode. Her rage toward Regina is quite a thing to see.

Overall rating: 8/10