Once Upon A Time -- Robin Hood Gets Robbed
And doesn't really get his story told
Original Airing: April 21, 2013
It’s terrible. When Once has a new episode, I almost wish the show hadn’t been on. Since Rump has been connected to The Charmings, even his episodes aren’t very good anymore. This show has just totally lost its mojo.
One of the big problems is that fairytale or fictional characters stories are done in a slip-shod way this season, when last season entire episodes were devoted to telling their stories. Now if the story involves characters that aren’t regulars, they’re told like an afterthought.
This episode featured a sort of telling of Robin Hood, but not really. It was kind of the way they told the tale of Jack And The Beanstalk, but not really. Robin Hood stole a magic wand from Rump to heal a pregnant Maid Marian who was apparently involved with the Sheriff Of Nottingham, first, and that was the sum total of it. Sort of like Jack was a girl who was screwing a suddenly evil Prince James and she got killed by the giant when she tried to steal from him. The stories were told, but they weren’t really told with any kind of depth the way they were last season.
Last season we had: Cinderella, The Mad Hatter, Hansel and Gretel, etc. given a whole episode to tell them properly. This season we’ve only had a full episode telling of Dr. Whale and Cora’s back stories, but those two were semi-regular characters. That’s why the show has lost a lot of its charm, pun intended. It was fun watching how the show would re-imagine all these classic fairytales. Now if you’re not somehow connected to The Charmings this show is just not interested in telling your story. The Giant got his boring tale told because he was trying to kill Uncharming and by the end of the show he’d become a Charming butt monkey like the rest of the town is.
The major part of the back story was telling how Belle was miserable after she first came to live with Rump. It kind of reminded me of the second season flashbacks on Lost that were repeats of previous flashbacks and that didn’t really reveal any new information.
The present story had three arcs: Rump wanting Belle to make him be good so he won’t give into his impulses to kill Henry, Snow Blight and Uncharming wanting Emma to go back with the to Fairy Tale Land and Greg and Tamara and their nefarious plans.
Rump had a nightmare of giving into his dark impulses to whack annoying little Henry. He turned to Belle to bring out the best in him by offering to try and help her remember. Only Storybrooke’s resident Black Magic Woman, Regina, wasn’t happy to learn that Rump was Henry’s grandpappy so decided to sabotage Rump’s efforts to be good. She visited Belle, used her black magic and Belle suddenly realized this life she led as Lacey. Only thing is since she was locked in a padded cell for the duration of her time in Storybrooke, just how did she supposedly live this life as Lacey? It just seemed like another 180 degree personality change similar to Prince James who was now evil and bad so Uncharming would look good in comparison.
Lacey ditched Rump to rub up against the Sheriff of Nottingham in the alley when Rump got her to go out on a date. However, when she saw Rump beating the crap out of him, it turned her on. Unlike Belle, Lacey liked evil Rump. The rub is while Regina is smirking smugly over what she’s done, she may just have insured Rump kills her beloved Henry. With magic there’s a price, and honey, that will be your price. Not that I think the brat will actually be killed since he’s one of the sacred Charmings.
Uncharming and Snow Blight [who is over her Cora guilt and back to her Stepford Wife self.] show Emma the bean field. They want her to go back to Fairy Tale Land with them so she can live happily ever after. However, Emma isn’t thrilled by the idea. She tries to make them understand that this world is the world she’s lived her entire life in and her home. They don’t seem to get that Emma’s home is the real world and she doesn’t feel comfortable in FairyTaleLand. Mama Snow chirps about how it’s the world she really belongs in and she can have her happily ever after there. So basically they dumped Emma in the real world to accommodate themselves and now they want to dump her back in Fairy Tale Land to accommodate themselves.
Uncharming can’t wait to go back because he’s a big nothing in Storybrooke but back in Fairy Tale Land he can be Prince John: The Phony King Of England, once more. He’s also convinced his Stepford Wife the once she’s back in Fairy Tale Land she can pretend that whole nasty business with Cora never happened. They’ll just sweep it all under the rug and forget about it.
Emma questions Neal if he’d like to go back, and the idea doesn’t seem to hold any appeal for him. Emma, also, unknowingly tips off Regina to what’s in the wind, and she finds the secret bean field.
Meanwhile, Tamara and Greg bring Hook back to Storybrooke. They’re hoping to get him to help them in their nefarious plans. Hook is another problem the show has had. He’s probably the worst addition to this show. His whining and mewing about wanting revenge against Rump is ridiculous. He started the whole thing by stealing his wife from him and then lying that she was dead. He’s lucky all he got was his hand cut off. In olden days for cuckolding a man and stealing his wife he would have gotten him family jewels cut off instead. But I doubt he’d even know they were missing, since he’s not much of a man with them.
Probably the worse moment of this episode was when Rump went to Uncharming for love advice. Rump/Uncharming scenes are the worst scenes on the entire show and that’s due to the pompousness Josh Dallas plays the scenes with. If I could enact my own evil curse, it would be to wipe every Charming out of existence. They have destroyed a wonderfully unique show with their foul presence.
