Post by FQ on May 4, 2016 2:06:04 GMT -5
A less vague, more politically charged version of this review was posted on my blog. Since this forum has a fairly strict No Politics/Relgion rule, I'll only discuss the non-political aspects of show here.
Spoilers will be present in this review for all seasons including Season 5's most recent episodes. I will try not to completely ruin the experience but beware that in giving a review for this show it will require discussion of plot details which may spoil some of the magic of the show.
The ABC television drama Once Upon a Time provides some unabashed campy-ness in an era where television and film are often encouraged to push the envelope into darker, more edgy ground. I suspect it is reflection of society's cynicism and desire to see the once-hopeful characters of yore crushed by the realities of our modern world. Once Upon a Time offers viewers a bit of both. The premise of the show is that fairytale stories exist as real lived experiences in other realms, dimensions or worlds beyond notice to the average human. The main characters are Snow White and Prince Charming, Emma Swan, Henry Mills, and Regina Mills. The setting for all this is a timeless pocket in a town called Storybrooke.
The show brings elements of all the beloved stories from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Disney's more recent offerings of Frozen and Brave. Although most of the characters are based off of their Disney renditions, many elements of the characters and their development throughout the show are borrowed from the older tales including lore which gives the characters more tragic and sometimes rewarding aspects. As I said, the show is campy in that it gives us a lot of fairytale happy endings and indeed, Emma Swan takes on the role of Savior who is charged with bringing back happy endings to Storybrooke's residents. What makes Once Upon a Time endearing is that these fairytale characters are brought into the world of today and forced to reconcile their ideas about good, bad, family, happiness, sadness, right, and wrong with this world that is familiar to us and alien to them.
The characters show flaws that we wouldn't normally associate with fairytale characters: fear, resentment, jealousy, anger, vengeance, etc. They have weaknesses that we can recognize in ourselves even though as children we wouldn't have thought of these heroes as having such weaknesses. The villains are simultaneously as complex as their hero counterparts. Although they often start of with grandiose desires for typical fairytale villain things like revenge, domination, and power; their stories become more and more grounded in relateable struggles which we as human beings in the modern world can relate to. It becomes difficult for the viewer to see themselves in just the heroes because the villains have equally merited moments of triumph, loss, and redemption.
It's true that there are several redemption stories and in the spirit of May the Fourth, I'll point out that Star Wars is probably one of the most well known. Luke Skywalker believed in his father, believed that there was still good in Darth Vader and that he wasn't totally lost to the Dark Side. Indeed, Luke was proven correct when he was saved by Darth Vader and then able to forgive his father before the Death Star was destroyed. Once Upon a Time is not Star Wars. Redemption for some of the more troubled characters does not come with a simple, "I'm sorry - I forgive you" line at the end of a sentimentality-driven plot. Often times the characters we think will be redeemed make choices, wrong choices, or difficult choices with ambiguous moral and ethical standing that drive them away from redemption despite our best hopes. We see characters who are known to us as being indomitable spirits trampled on, broken, and compromised to the point where we are left wondering if they are heroes at all.
This show is easier to hate than it is to love. With all the tropes and campy fairytale elements, it can be easy to dismiss. Technically speaking the camera work isn't anything to write home about utilizing fairly standard techniques and the CGI reflects the budgetary restraints of television. Often times mansions and monsters are rendered through CGI, this sometimes helps the story along and other times it can be a real distraction from the story. I will never get over how awful the flying monkeys look in this show (honestly, the 1939 Wizard of Oz's flying monkey looked better). One thing that is true of many quality television shows and applies to Once Upon a Time is their use of practical effects. Many times the use of real props, sets, and costumes help keep the focus on what matters in the story while the CGI fills out the background to give us the illusion that we're in the Enchanted Forest, Oz, Arendelle, DunBroch, or Wonderland.
For me personally there are two major things that keep me coming back for more:
Spoilers will be present in this review for all seasons including Season 5's most recent episodes. I will try not to completely ruin the experience but beware that in giving a review for this show it will require discussion of plot details which may spoil some of the magic of the show.
The ABC television drama Once Upon a Time provides some unabashed campy-ness in an era where television and film are often encouraged to push the envelope into darker, more edgy ground. I suspect it is reflection of society's cynicism and desire to see the once-hopeful characters of yore crushed by the realities of our modern world. Once Upon a Time offers viewers a bit of both. The premise of the show is that fairytale stories exist as real lived experiences in other realms, dimensions or worlds beyond notice to the average human. The main characters are Snow White and Prince Charming, Emma Swan, Henry Mills, and Regina Mills. The setting for all this is a timeless pocket in a town called Storybrooke.
The show brings elements of all the beloved stories from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Disney's more recent offerings of Frozen and Brave. Although most of the characters are based off of their Disney renditions, many elements of the characters and their development throughout the show are borrowed from the older tales including lore which gives the characters more tragic and sometimes rewarding aspects. As I said, the show is campy in that it gives us a lot of fairytale happy endings and indeed, Emma Swan takes on the role of Savior who is charged with bringing back happy endings to Storybrooke's residents. What makes Once Upon a Time endearing is that these fairytale characters are brought into the world of today and forced to reconcile their ideas about good, bad, family, happiness, sadness, right, and wrong with this world that is familiar to us and alien to them.
The characters show flaws that we wouldn't normally associate with fairytale characters: fear, resentment, jealousy, anger, vengeance, etc. They have weaknesses that we can recognize in ourselves even though as children we wouldn't have thought of these heroes as having such weaknesses. The villains are simultaneously as complex as their hero counterparts. Although they often start of with grandiose desires for typical fairytale villain things like revenge, domination, and power; their stories become more and more grounded in relateable struggles which we as human beings in the modern world can relate to. It becomes difficult for the viewer to see themselves in just the heroes because the villains have equally merited moments of triumph, loss, and redemption.
It's true that there are several redemption stories and in the spirit of May the Fourth, I'll point out that Star Wars is probably one of the most well known. Luke Skywalker believed in his father, believed that there was still good in Darth Vader and that he wasn't totally lost to the Dark Side. Indeed, Luke was proven correct when he was saved by Darth Vader and then able to forgive his father before the Death Star was destroyed. Once Upon a Time is not Star Wars. Redemption for some of the more troubled characters does not come with a simple, "I'm sorry - I forgive you" line at the end of a sentimentality-driven plot. Often times the characters we think will be redeemed make choices, wrong choices, or difficult choices with ambiguous moral and ethical standing that drive them away from redemption despite our best hopes. We see characters who are known to us as being indomitable spirits trampled on, broken, and compromised to the point where we are left wondering if they are heroes at all.
This show is easier to hate than it is to love. With all the tropes and campy fairytale elements, it can be easy to dismiss. Technically speaking the camera work isn't anything to write home about utilizing fairly standard techniques and the CGI reflects the budgetary restraints of television. Often times mansions and monsters are rendered through CGI, this sometimes helps the story along and other times it can be a real distraction from the story. I will never get over how awful the flying monkeys look in this show (honestly, the 1939 Wizard of Oz's flying monkey looked better). One thing that is true of many quality television shows and applies to Once Upon a Time is their use of practical effects. Many times the use of real props, sets, and costumes help keep the focus on what matters in the story while the CGI fills out the background to give us the illusion that we're in the Enchanted Forest, Oz, Arendelle, DunBroch, or Wonderland.
For me personally there are two major things that keep me coming back for more:
- Strong women and their women friends. This show has a number of strong women characters who play important roles and decide their own destiny. They also bond with each other, encourage one another, and make each other stronger because of their friendship. This alone makes the show a rare gem found in very few shows most notably from the 90s like Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Charmed.
- Gay is normal. In a show all about fairytales, happy endings, and True Love; it's turning a new leaf to have gay characters who are not sensationalized (hyped up for the sex appeal or shock factor) or stigmatized (OMG a gay character). There are at least three known gay characters on the show and by the tail end of Season 5 we see two of them finally embrace their love for each other. The most rewarding aspect of this was that it was treated just as magical and beautiful as every other fairytale happy ending including Snow White standing in the audience with tears in her eyes, overjoyed that her friend Red Riding Hood found True Love. In some sense the fact that it was treated as normal is a fairytale in and of itself because our real world, for all its progress and understanding, still has large segments of the population who don't see LGBT people and their relationships as normal.
Here we see Red Riding Hood and Dorothy Gale (from the Wizard of Oz) exchanging a passionate kiss after Red Riding Hood wakens Dorothy from a Sleeping Curse, the very same that threatened Aurora in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Sleeping Curse can only be broken by 'True Love's Kiss' and it wasn't until Red Riding Hood accepted how she felt about Dorothy, risking the fact that it might not work if Dorothy didn't feel the same,
that she was able to wake Dorothy.
