Even though I saw the Once Upon A Time pilot at NYCC just last week, I tuned in to ABC on Sunday to give it a second watch, because I was so intrigued by the concept. I’ve recently started reading the Fables comic series, and have been on a bit of fairytale kick. Both ABC and NBC have new pilots based around fairytales this year – I’ll review NBC’s Grimm later this week. What caught my attention about Once Upon A Time is that it has a number of people behind the show Lost on the creative team. Lost was such an imaginative show, so having minds like that involved was sure to be a plus.
Photo Credit: Craig Sjodin/ABC
After seeing the pilot twice and hearing what some of the creative team had to say at the NYCC screening, I feel that they may be sticking too much to the Lost formula. All they seem to have done is take the concept of having a real world paired with flashbacks and applied it to the real world vs fantasy world. The real world moves along in a linear fashion, while the flashbacks move non-linearly – well it will move non-linearly according to the creative team. That concept worked very well for Lost as a mechanism to show the viewer more about the characters’ motivations and history. I’m hoping that it ends up working out for an expanded season of this show, because I found myself caring more about the real world plot in the pilot, and less so about the fantasy world.
The inherent problem with fairytale adaptions is giving dimension to traditionally one-dimensional characters: the damsel in distress, the wicked witch, the handsome prince. I think it’s incredibly important to establish these people as having depth right off the bat for a new show like this, but for me, Once Upon A Time failed to do that. The only person who seemed to have depth was Emma. Maybe that was intentional since she’s the only non-fantasy character, I’m not sure. If the writers expect me to get on board with this story, they really need to develop this wicked witch/mayor villain. I’m a sucker for a good villain, and she looked so promising from the previews, but in this pilot episode all she came across as was an unfocused, angry witch, which was painfully boring. I want to know why she’s angry, how she has this power, why she chose to include herself in the curse. I really hope these questions get addressed sooner rather than later, because in my opinion, it’s pivotal to the show’s success – having a flat villain would just drag it down.
Despite all these criticisms, I think the show has great potential. Obviously the pilot was going to leave more questions than answers to keep the viewer hooked for a second episode – which it was definitely successful in doing. I’m really curious to see how aspects of the Storybrooke townsfolk will mirror their fantasy counterparts and what kinds of clues Emma will start to uncover about her parentage. I’m also particularly curious about how no one seems to have aged because of time being “frozen”. It’s visually odd to see that the evil witch, snow white, and snow white’s daughter all appear to be no more than 10 years apart in age. Maybe now that the clock is moving that will be addressed. I’m eagerly anticipating the second episode to get a better sense of where things are headed.
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