Once Upon A Time: Fall (4x09)

Hook: “You do this you condemn the entire town and even your own grandson to whatever happens.”

Gold: “No, I’m not leaving Henry. I will take him, and I will take Belle, and I will leave this town to its fate.”

Hook: “But Emma and everyone else…”

Gold: “I don’t have time for everyone else. And if I have to choose between everyone else and me, me wins every time.”

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For a horrible curse that will affect all the town and drive them to murder and madness, you’d think that people would show just a little more urgency. Instead there is a lot of standing and watching and bickering and trickery over how best to fix it. (Seriously Emma, did you not learn to actually check the contents of a pouch after Hook tricked you with the magic bean in season 2?) Gold is still a selfish jerk and making Hook do some horrible things to a bunch of nuns no less, and we throw a confusing wrench in the timeline with Anna as both Blackbeard and the Jolly Roger (and a whole bunch of bad jokes) make an appearance.

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Once Upon A Time: Smash the Mirror (4x08)

Gold: “Because Emma, I’m not like you. I’m a man who makes wrong decisions - selfish decisions.”

Emma: “But you spent all that time looking for Neal, sacrificed yourself to save the town, you married Belle.”

Gold: “And each time I meticulously undid all the good. Neal is still gone, the town is still in danger, and Belle for better or worse, she knows who I am - and that’s a man who always chooses power.”

Emma: “She believes you can change.”

Gold: “And I love her for that, but I fear she’s quite likely wrong. But you, Emma, you don’t need to change, because you do the right thing. Always.”

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Everyone take a deep breath. Everything is going to be okay. Just have hope. And yes I will be paying Snow a quarter for that. It just turns out that Gold is still a selfish jerk (to put it mildly). I have no idea how he is going to come off sympathetic by the end of this season, or what everyone will do when (or if) they find out what his intentions are. Unless he’s being possessed by something, he has crossed into irredeemable villain territory for me. I swear if Emma doesn’t have some sort of showdown with him regarding all his lies and poor treatment of Hook by the end of the season, I will be very disappointed. But, we’ll get to Captain Swan theories in a bit. We actually uncovered a lot of plot points this episodes. We found out how Elsa got trapped in the urn and how she wound up in Rumplestiltskin’s vault, how the hat wound up back with the apprentice, how Ingrid made her way to our world and knew about Emma, all while Emma’s debating making a huge sacrifice to protect her family. And I have to agree with Regina, Snow and Charming’s lazy parenting this episode was dumb, and so it’s Elsa and Hook to the rescue.

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Once Upon A Time: The Snow Queen (4x07)

Ingrid: “How many times have you saved them? How often have you felt more like a savior than their daughter? And all it takes is one tiny mistake - one accident - and you and your powers go from being their salvation to their worst nightmare.”

Emma: “You don’t know them or me.”

Ingrid: “I don’t have to know you, Emma. I’ve been you: different, misunderstood, alone. And now, they’ve chosen to have a new child. And don’t you think they thank their lucky stars every day that he was born normal?”

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In classic Once Upon A Time form, good and evil is always more gray than black and white, and villains always start out good until something changes them forever. Tonight we explore the Snow Queen’s backstory and how things changed so drastically from her almost too idyllic life with her sisters to being trapped alone in an urn. And I gotta say, she might just be the most sympathetic villain on the show yet, even when she’s goading Emma in a brutally manipulative (and slightly honest) conversation about how her family really thinks about the “savior.” I’m glad we finally get to see how Emma feels about her parents raising a new child and giving him the things she never had. These feelings cause Emma’s magic to go haywire and her parents to fear her, just like what Ingrid wants. On the romance side, after weeks of lamenting two beautiful women who are in love with him moping, Robin finally goes for Regina rather than his frozen wife. As for Captain Swan, it’s in very poor supply tonight, but Captain Charming is alive and well.

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Once Upon A Time:Family Business (4x06)

Hook: “Wounds that are made when we’re a child tend to linger.”

Emma: “How would you know?”

Hook: “Believe it or not I was once a child.”

Emma: “Yeah, like a million years ago.”

Hook: “It was more like 200.”

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Everyone lies, everyone forgets. That seems to be the takeaway this season so far, with even sweet, naive Belle sharing a secret of her own: she had her own run-in with Anna many years ago and is partially responsible for Anna’s fate. So not only is almost everyone in Storybrooke related, but if they aren’t, they’ve all crossed paths at one point. Meanwhile Gold and the Snow Queen secretly engage in a chess match, and I’ll give you three guesses who wins that game. And finally, the Snow Queen’s ultimate plan is revealed, and it seems a lot more complicated than it needs to be. As for Captain Swan, I’m afraid all we get are continued looks between them that Regina continues to find annoying. Yay for continuity.

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Once Upon A Time: Breaking Glass (4x05)

“Living in Storybrooke, I’ve got my son and my parents, and I love them, but they can’t always understand me. They don’t know what it feels like to be rejected and misunderstood - not the way I do and not the way you do. Somehow that makes us… unique, or maybe even special. I wasn’t looking for you to assuage my guilt; I was just looking for you to be my friend.” - Emma

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We take a break from the Captain Swan tension from last week (but we get a few significant and adorable moments to bookend this episode) to focus on Emma and Regina’s relationship. Now that I think about it I’m not sure what their relationship prior to Marion exactly was. Reluctant allies? Frenemies? Co-parents?  Whatever it was, Regina’s not in the mood, which is understandable, but if we were to weigh faults, I’m pretty sure the scales would still tip heavily in Regina’s direction. And in another one of the show’s “we’re creepily good at casting child actors that look exactly like our adult regulars,” we see young Emma and (young doppelganger for Regina) fellow runaway Lily bond over feeling invisible and unloved. I kept waiting for a payoff, which we got (although it wasn’t that surprising), but I feel like the episode was stretched a little too thin plot-wise. But we do finally find out what the Snow Queen’s ultimate motive is and why she’s so interested in Emma.

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Once Upon A Time: The Apprentice (4x04)

“You were right. Dark One lies, Dark One tricks. This hand is nothing but a lump of flesh. The only thing it did was give you permission - permission to be the man you really are. Not some puppy dog chasing after the object of its affection, but a ruthless pirate that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. I did you a favor. I helped you remember the darkness that lies beneath.” - Gold

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Two steps forward, three steps back. Just when you thought now that Emma’s admitted her feelings towards Hook and they can be a happy monster-slaying couple, Hook’s gone and flown too close to the sun with Rumplestiltskin, and will pay the price dearly down the line. If this was season 2 Hook I’d be completely intrigued, as watching Gold and Hook outwit each other is immensely entertaining, but I am frustrated that they are going to keep throwing wrenches at Captain Swan to prevent them from being a couple. But at least we have Snow and Charming being the most adorable 30-year-old parents to a 30-year-old daughter that I’ve ever seen. Emma and Hook’s first “date” is sweet (and way too short), but since we are getting a ton of plot-advancing storylines this episode, I suppose I’ll forgive them for that. We get Rumple’s first encounter with Anna as his main mission this season is revealed (so he was very obviously lying last episode) and a few cute and Disney-cameo stuffed moments, but the crux of the episode is Rumple and Hook’s heartbreaking chess match of blackmail.

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Once Upon A Time: Rocky Road (4x03)

Elsa: “What is that thing?”

Hook: “It’s a device for talking… I don’t bloody know. I press the ‘Emma’ button and she picks up usually.”

Emma: “Hi, this is Emma. Leave a message.”

Hook: “Why should I carry around this ridiculous thing if you’re never there when I use it?!”

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Two weeks in a row I’ve found myself with a huge grin on my face as the episode ends. All throughout the interviews before season 4 I kept hearing that the Frozen characters fit in very organically with the show as if they’d always been there, and I thought it was the usual publicity speak. But I agree 100%. The multiple parallels between the characters have given our beloved original crew so much character development. We finally get to explore how Snow feels about missing out on raising Emma, we get much appreciated father-daughter bonding time between David and Emma, and we get our Captain Swan slow-building romance, which feels very real and not drawn out just for longevity’s sake. All of this happens while we’re discovering new mysterious villains and secret pasts; we’re seeing Regina try very hard to drop her “Evil Queen” reputation while seeing Gold slip a little and get the tables turned on him by Hook. I am loving this season. One small request: can you please stop cutting to a wide shot immediately after every time Hook and Emma share a long kiss?

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Once Upon A Time: White Out (4x02)

David: “I guess it’s time you and I had a little talk about your intentions towards my daughter.”

Hook: “That’s a little old-fashioned even by my standards, and I still pay with doubloons.”

David: “Remember, I know your reputation. Emma’s not some conquest.”

Hook: “I wouldn’t risk my life for someone I see as loot. Whatever we become, it’s up to her as much as me.”

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That strong gust of wind you felt on Sunday night was probably the collecting swooning of every Captain Swan shipper out there (myself included). Elsa traps Storybrooke behind a wall of ice in order to find Anna (not knowing that people can’t leave Storybrooke anyway), and unintentionally takes Emma along for the hypothermia-induced ride. While Charming and Hook race to save her, we find that Anna crossed paths with past David (sporting a magnificent mane of hair), inspiring him to gather up his courage for the first time against his landlord - Little Bo Peep - a cruel warlord who brands and enslaves people with her magic shepherd’s crook when they can’t pay the bills. It is deliciously insane enough to work, and the always excellent dialogue penned by Jane Espenson just makes this one funny, sweet, relationship-building, character-progressing episode.

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Once Upon A Time: A Tale of Two Sisters (4x01)

“Henry brought me to Storybrooke to bring back the happy endings. My job’s not done until I do that for everyone - including you.” - Emma Swan

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There are three things that redeemed this episode for me:

  1. An homage to a Frozen scene between Emma and Regina
  2. Fanservice to Disney properties other than Frozen
  3. Brief but significant Captain Swan moments
  4. Honorable mention: frantic Leroy

Otherwise the residents of Storybrooke take a backseat to Anna and Elsa in this season premiere, and I felt that was the episode’s weakness. I’d been wondering all summer over how Emma and Hook’s relationship was going to progress, how Regina was going to deal with Marion’s return, what kind of second-chance parents Snow and Charming would be but instead we get mostly backstory on our two aforementioned sisters. Obviously that was the point, hence the episode title, but it felt a little too much fanservice to Frozen. It would have been nice to spread out the cameos over two episodes rather than cram it in the premiere, but hopefully we’re done with all the set-up and can get right back to it next week.

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Gotham: Pilot (1x01)

Bruce: “I’m learning to conquer fear.”

Gordon: “Fear doesn’t need conquering. Fear tells you where the edge is. Fear is a good thing.”

Gotham is a unique take on the Batman story, not just because it shifts the focus away from Bruce Wayne to Jim Gordon, but because everyone already knows how the series will eventually end. Gordon, for all his efforts, will ultimately fail. Gotham will succumb to its corruption, paving way for the rise of Batman. It is refreshing to get Gordon’s point of view, and although we get a little too many comic-book cameos (this is a pilot, after all), it feels like a solid entry for a television show.

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The city of Gotham itself is a 90s-tinted version of NYC, set in that idealistic tv time when smart phones didn’t exist and people still dressed in fancy suits and frequented diners. Ben McKenzie, of stern eye and clenched jaw, plays Detective James Gordon, whom most of us know as future Commissioner Jim Gordon. He’s got the typical “good guy” background; he’s a war hero, his father was the DA of Gotham. Naturally he gets paired with gruff Harvey Bullock, who knows how to navigate the inner corrupt workings of the city. The idealist vs the pessimist. Their first case together is none other than the deaths of Martha and Thomas Wayne, possibly the most recreated comic-book scene of all time.

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