First of all, welcome back Once Upon a Time fans. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.
Secondly, I would like to point out how glad I am that Jane Epsenson is part of the writing staff over at OUT. She wrote the latest episode, entitled “That Still Small Voice”. I’ve been a big fan of hers since Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
And hey, look! There’s Harry Groener, who was The Mayor on the third season of Buffy, playing Jiminy’s con artist father (Raphael Sbarge). That guy is great! Love that dude.
Oh, wait. Sorry to get everyone’s hopes up. Looks like the combo of Epsenson and Groener can’t rekindle that awesome magic. As a matter of fact, it a bit of a disappointment. Well, the modern-day stuff anyway.
This week’s episode centers around the relationship Jiminy/Archie has with Henry, as his therapist and only strong adult male figure. Henry really, really insists that everyone in Storybrooke is really a fairy tale character. Though true (as far as we viewers know), it annoys Regina (Lana Parrilla) to no end. She pushes Archie to be as blunt as unhumanly possible to Henry, to get him to face the dark, cold reality. Archie does so, freaks Henry out. Henry then takes it upon himself to prove his theory correct by entering an mysterious, abandoned mineshaft. Regina freaks out, so does new deputy sheriff Emma (Jennifer Morrison), with them being Henry’s two mothers and all. Archie volunteers to grab Henry, since he blames himself, but we all know what happens when folks enter a mysterious, abandoned mineshaft: a mother-fracking cave in.
Of course, the whole town, including Regina and Emma, gathers together to save the two. It’s an okay plot and we know, as viewers, that of course, Henry and Archie will be found alive and okay. It’s paint-by-numbers and not very compelling.
In the meantime, Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin) and David (Josh Dallas) are developing feelings for one another. The feelings that they had back when they were Snow White and The Prince. It’s cute but some lip service is paid to the fact that she shouldn’t fall in love with a married man. That’s okay, if you’re into that type of plot devise, but that’s what it is: a devise. Another obstacle in the way in the inevitable. That is how the show is treating that storyline, or at least the way I think the show is treating that storyline. It’s not meaty enough for these two great actors.
What really works in “That Still Small Voice” is the fairy tale flashbacks with Jiminy and his folks. Espenson really finds her groove her with coming up with a couple of neat reveals here. It turns out that Jiminy is from a family of con artists who travel under the guise of puppeteers. And they are connected to the despicable Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle). Jiminy has some good in him but fears to leave his frail, old parents. It’s an unhealthy co-dependent relationship, one that continues to lead him down a path of crime and treachery.
One night, the family mark a young couple for their next scam. They coax their way in and sell them on “tonic” to ward off a “plague”. Unbeknownst to Jiminy, the “tonic” turns the couple into a couple of wooden puppets. Their young son enters the home and justifiably freaks out. But Jiminy’s parents find the whole situation funny. If bad things are suppose to happen, let them happen to rubes.
Jiminy wishes to be free from his awful parents. Fairy Godmother appears. They both come to the conclusion that he cannot be free unless he’s no longer a human. So he becomes a cricket. But he also has to agree to guide the young boy whose parents are now wooden puppets. That boy:
GEPETTO!!!!!!!!!!
So not only do we get Jiminy’s backstory, we also get to understand why Gepetto has an obsession with puppets, and in turning one into a son. Mind: blown.
It’s not like the modern-day story got shafted here (all pun intended). It did have its own neat reveal of Snow White’s glass casket still hidden away in the mine but the emotional pathos was in the fairy tale portion of the episode. That seems to be a problem the first five episodes of OUT are experiencing. The storybook world is far more interesting than Storybrooke. Maybe when the two start to bleed into one another, things will really pick up.
