Once Upon a Time Ep 4: The Price of Gold

Sorry this has taken so long to get up. I usually aim for Sunday nights, but with so many shows on Sunday, well… hm, I think this is the opening of just about every blog entry I have these days. ;)

This week on Once Upon a Time we move to Cinderella, and once again we see a twist on the traditional story. We all know the story of Cinderella (played by Jessy Schram, who I remember from Veronica Mars, the little girl whose daddy died and who had married a hideous woman with two ugly stepdaughters (similar to Snow White’s dad marrying a terrible woman before dying) and who wanted to go to the prince’s ball (the one he held so he could choose a wife) and who sewed her own dress but the stepsisters ripped it to shreds before boarding their carriage and riding away. In this version, Cinderella seems to have skipped the whole dress-making venture, as she’s still dressed in her rags when her fairy godmother shows up, but rather than get everything her heart desires, she has to negotiate with Rumpelstiltskin after he obliterates the fairy godmother and then decides to teach Cinderella a little lesson about how terrible magic is.

Switching to the well-trodden ground of the miller’s daughter in the “Rumpelstiltskin” story, who makes him a deal and then has to give him her first-born, or in “Rapunzel,” where the mother eats the lettuce and then has to give away her first-born, here Rumpel makes Cinderella sign a long contract stating she’ll have to give the baby to him. She marries the prince, becomes pregnant, and then with the help of the prince and magical creatures, she attempts to trick him by imprisoning him, but Rumpel isn’t the least bit fazed, and tells her the magic will backfire. Moments after the trick lands him in a barred vehicle destined for the prison, her husband goes missing.

Back in our world, Ashley Boyd is a young pregnant maid with two stepsisters who has signed away her child to Mr. Gold, the local pawnbroker and Rumpel in the other world. She has a conversation with Emma in the Laundromat and Emma tells her you can’t rely on some mythical fairy godmother to take away the pain, that if you want your life to change, you have to seize it and make a change yourself. (♪She’s talking to the man in the mirror!♪) So she breaks into Mr. Gold’s pawnshop, beaning him in the head and knocking him unconscious, to steal back their (admittedly illegal) contract and she tries to leave town. But, as Henry has theorized, the people in Storybrooke can’t leave, and her car crashes at the town sign (another wolf in the road, perhaps?) and Ella finds her in time to get her to the hospital, where she barters with Mr. Gold and tells him in exchange for owing him a favour in the future (ack!) he’ll let Ashley go.

Written by Fringe writer David H. Goodman, it’s not the best episode we’ve seen so far, but it was intriguing and had a lot of fun elements in it. And, I found some Lost elements in it!

Highlight:
• Robert Carlyle. He’s fantastic in both roles. “Every story needs a memorable detail!”

Lost moments (mostly unintentional by the writers, methinks):
• For everyone who missed the Geromino Jackson sticker in the first week, if you look at the rear of her car in the scene where Henry has been hiding in the back seat, you can clearly see it in the back window.
• When Regina is looking at Emma’s past, she says she’s jumped to different locations seven times in the past few years, and never stays long anywhere, except for Tallahassee, where she was for two years. “What did you enjoy so much in Tallahassee?” Hahahaha! All I could think of was either Ella was working with the Others and managed to push Anthony Cooper’s car off the highway when he was captured and brought to the island, or that time Sawyer said he met a girl in Tallahassee and that “something was burnin’ and it wasn’t the sunshine,” maybe that’s why Emma doesn’t want to say. ;)
• When Emma and Henry found Ashley’s car and she’s in labour by the side of the road, all I could think of was, “No, don’t give birth there, or he’ll turn into Ben Linus!”

Did You Notice:
• In the little voiceover that introduces the episode, the narrator says, “Only one knows the truth” and it shows Regina, not Mr. Gold, yet they’d been playing it until then that Regina actually didn’t remember, and that Gold did. So I guess this means she really does know exactly what she’s doing.
• The cars parked along the street when Emma and Henry are walking to the car all appear to be from the late 70s and early 80s.
• Mr. Gold’s job is as a pawnbroker, someone who usually makes a deal with you rather than selling you something outright.
• When Ashley’s walking through the pawnshop, she passes two dolls that actually look like two mummified people. Could they be from a fairytale? Someone who didn’t quite make it in the end of their story? (I immediately thought Hansel and Gretel if they hadn’t made it away from the witch, but their clothes look like they were adults, not children.)
• Prince Charming and Snow White were supposed to be meant for each other, yet all this time she’s been visiting him in the hospital and not finding a connection. And yet, Thomas and Cinderella managed to find each other, even if he dropped her because Daddy told him to.
• When Emma’s in the diner talking to Ruby, there’s a Black Forest cake on the counter. Many of Grimm’s fairytales were set in the Black Forest.
• The dwarfs work underground, but it’s not a diamond mine.
• Those who have read my Finding Lost books probably know my reaction to this already, but oh how I loved Emma’s comment to Ashley when she said she wanted to give birth in Boston: “We don’t have four hours. TRUST ME, I know.” They left out the rest of the dialogue. “I know because I’ve watched a LOT of movies and television over the years, and despite first births having an average of 18 hours of labour attached to them in the real world, these babies always come flying out after three contractions and one push on television. Besides, you’re a fairytale creature, so you’re going to give birth like they do in the movies anyway!”
• Rumpelstiltskin says to Ella, “A little birdie told me you wanted to see me” and in this case, he was being literal! Haha!
• I’m starting to notice a lot of star references. Perhaps we should be watching for those the same way we watched for Hurley’s numbers. There’s a big star emblazoned on the floor of the ballroom at Ella’s wedding to Thomas, and Emma’s keychain has a star on it. I’ve pointed them out in other episodes just as a lark because Emma wished upon a star in the first episode, but I’m thinking they’re a recurring trope.

Questions:
• When are we going to see Ruby’s backstory? They play her as such a skank, which is in keeping with the versions of the story where the big bad wolf wasn’t actually preying on an innocent little girl, but an older girl who wanted to get caught, so to speak.
• Why oh why is the sheriff sleeping with Regina? I find him a very intriguing character, and I hope we get some more hints of who his storybook counterpart is.
• Is it possible Emma is based on a storybook character? Gold made a comment to her that she wasn’t ready to know who she was, yet Henry’s been telling her over and over again that she’s Snow’s daughter. Was she destined to stay in the fairytale world and grow up to be in one of the stories? Perhaps the princess who kissed the frog? Or, given her name, the ugly duckling who grew into a swan?