When I read that title now I’m really tempted to say: No. Stop. Don’t do it. Henry’s getting as annoying as his grandmother. Thank God there are a few other characters around.
Yeah. Surprise, I’m unhappy, still unhappy, with OUAT. I mean, I still like watching it, surely that hasn’t changed, but after a few changes in my personal life also my big love sort of froze (won’t say died, not yet), and I started to see a few things that are not so great about that show. That’s no news when one looks at my reviews for this seasons, but… well. Let’s just say it’s getting a bit more interesting when you actually wait and see what happens, and take upon criticizing what you don’t like, instead of just praising most of it, even if it was only slightly to your satisfaction, and hoping ever for the rest.
* The beginning of this episode has us back in FTL. When the Curse starts. Huh? Yeah, well, Rumple wants to know how Regina now feels – since she’s just killed her dad. And interestingly, we learn that when what you love most is killed (or you kill yourself?), there’ll be a hole in your heart. Literally or figuratively I’m not sure, but you’ll feel that emptiness. How…true. Where real life writes the story. Anyways.
* Sure enough, Regina soon feels lonely and therefore wants a child. No news here, we know that she adopted Henry, and there’s been some story before that, so most of what we see in that episode is not exactly surprising or new. Still we have a few nice moments – starting of course with Regina going to Rumple – or Gold, in this case – and asking him for help. Which he just has to answer to with a quip, since her question indeed could have been misunderstood as her asking him to father her child. Actually, it’s a tad creepy if I think about it now… Regina and Rumple? Ugh. Nope.
What I liked though was the conversation they had. And the advice Gold gave Regina.
You must put your child first.
For now it seems that Rumple can’t remember who he is/was (come to that later), and yet he has his parental instincts. That was a nice touch I thought, seeing another side of him, for a moment there, when he retreated into his thoughts, as if he himself also felt something is missing in his life, and that he associated it with a child. Rumple never was a bad father; he just made wrong decisions. But he loved his son, and, as we see now, still loves him.
Henry has to be picked up in Boston. But wait – Regina can leave SB? I thought no one could? Or was that before the Curse was broken and then another one enacted and… huh? I’m confused. I was always under the impression that no one can leave SB, not even before the Curse was broken. Or was it just that they didn’t want to, didn’t feel the need to? No, wait – right – they couldn’t. Everyone who tried to leave had an accident just at the town line. So how can Regina leave? Because she’s not cursed? She’s not one of the sheep that can get lost? We know that she doesn’t have any magic; she had to get that little book first to use it again in S1. So she can’t use magic to leave the town. That doesn’t quite make sense to me, to be honest. I don’t know why Regina should be excluded – especially seeing that not even Emma was able to leave again once she had entered SB.
Since we don’t get an answer to that now, one we go. Regina gets Henry at the adoption agency in Boston, after Gold’s invention that made another adoption of the baby fell through. How convenient. Getting back home, Regina soon faces the good old problems of many parents – she’s got a crybaby. Henry cries and cries and won’t stop, and while she fears the boy might be sick, I guess he’s only sick of Regina’s bad aura. Sorry for that, or not, but it’s pretty obvious that the reason for Henry’s discomfort is that he must feel that Regina has a dark heart. Or maybe is still not really happy.
This is actually interesting, but unfortunately not really further addressed, as Regina gets Henry to calm down after all later on. My first thoughts were that he’s either crying because he feels that Regina is “evil”, or that he feels the connection to his real mother, and the whole story behind that – that essentially Regina is the one who brought the separation of Henry from Emma on because of Emma’s history. I don’t think that’s done consequently here; of course they couldn’t have had the baby crying all the time, that would have been really annoying, but logic tells me it should have.
So after Mary Margaret held the baby and Regina realizes that he isn’t sick because suddenly he calmed down (just… no comment), she pleads with him to stop crying and he does. Le sigh.
What is most important about the whole cry odyssey however is that Regina, in her desperation and fear Henry might be sick, makes Sidney (oh, hey there) find out information about the birth mother, although it’s a closed adoption. Indeed he finds information (incidentally, the moment he does, Henry stops crying…?) and sends it to Regina – who then sees the history of the mother. Found in the woods, just outside SB, 18 years ago.
And here it comes now. Since Gold was the one to choose the child for Regina, she of course thinks he did it on purpose – choose the child of the one woman who can only be one certain person. Funny how she never says what she’s talking about, never uses the word Savior, or that it is the child of Snow and Charming. She’s still beating around the bush, as if she’s not sure whether Gold really knows something and won’t tip him off, even though on the other hand she seems convinced he remembers.
Basically we’re back to square one. We still don’t know at which point Gold remembered (unless I have forgotten something), though there is this theory that it happened the moment Emma came to SB. There’s no confirmation though, and we can’t be sure whether he doesn’t remember from the very beginning, or shortly thereafter – so also when Regina approaches him. If anything, Gold’s a fantastic actor, so he could pretend not to know what Regina is talking about when she accuses him of having all that planned.
Now the thing is, there are two possibilities and both work and at the same time don’t.
One, Gold doesn’t remember and this truly is one big coincidence. Maybe something in the Curse, or his own magic, led him to choose the right child, but he still didn’t know when he made the arrangements for the specific baby. It just so happened to be the right one, and he really is oblivious, and stays the same since Regina never properly says what she sees behind all that.
Two, Gold does remember and has all that planned. But then he had to be very sure that Regina wouldn’t give the baby back, even when she said she would. Because Henry not in SB anymore would have come between his plans, if he knew, and if it was all his plan to begin with. However, if we take into consideration that Gold/Rumple said before there is a hole in Regina’s heart she’ll have to fill, he might just have known that in the end she wouldn’t be able to part ways with Henry again, even more so since she already named him after her father, and thus created a very intense connection on her own.
After all, Regina still tries to give the baby back (what, 14 days of guarantee or something?!), believing that it would trigger the failure of the Curse, that it was (part of) Rumple’s built-in safety failure. Ultimately she decides against it, thus supporting no. two and Regina’s desperate need to have someone in her life.
What she does though is drink a potion that makes her forget all her worries, fears and troubles.
* And doesn’t that come in handy. Because during the confrontation with Pan, when Emma, Regina and Snow get trapped because of Snow’s stupidity and egotism, they get bound to a tree of regrets or something like that – a tree that winds its branches around everyone who has any regrets. Well, good thing Regina once drank that potion, because now she doesn’t have any regrets and thus can free herself and the other two. Why it was able to capture her in the first place, or why she can now free the other two as well we don’t ask. We just take it as a given. No, it doesn’t make sense, but since it allows them to get Henry’s heart out of Pan and PB with Rumple and finally leave that wretched island (not a fan of NL, me, sorry), I won’t wonder any longer about it.
Though it would have been too good to be true if that had been the last we have seen of Pan – who is, after all, Rumple’s father. And so he appears again on the Jolly Roger, can’t get Henry’s heart because Regina, luckily, has put a protection spell on him, so he takes the shadow instead, or tries to. Which would kill Henry, if I remember right, so what sense does it make? If Henry’s dead, there’ll also be no heart for Pan.
In any way is Rumple, free again, faster, and manages to trap Pan in PB. Not realizing that Pan managed to swap souls/personalities/identities/whatever with Henry before he is gone. Which means Pan is now in Henry’s body. Which also means that Henry actor Jared Gilmore will have to play Pan. Well. If it goes on like it starts at the end of the episode… ouch. Sorry, but Gilmore just doesn’t have the acting talent of Robbie Kay (who I think is a very good actor, even though I’m not a fan of Pan).
Anyways reveals Pan himself to Felix in the end, and we can expect a lot more mischief from those two…
* On the Rumple front I get an answer to the question I asked last week – how Pandora’s Box works. Well, apparently with blood magic. Only those connected by blood are able to use them on others of their blood. Bit inconvenient, unless you are on OUAT, where everyone is somehow related to the others.
* There is something else, only shortly addressed, but still: The Darling brothers trying to adopt Henry. So they had to have known it was Henry in the first place, which can only have happened with Pan’s help. And apparently they already were serving Pan, according to what they said. So they claimed to be a gay couple (obviously) and tried to adopt the baby and — woah, wait. They claimed to be a gay couple? So I researched and apparently it was possible for gay couples to adopt children in the early 2000’s, but it doesn’t say whether they needed to be married. Okay, so it usually isn’t; after all, Regina doesn’t even have a partner. Still, they had to assume new identities and then introduce themselves as a couple. Woah there. Really. That’s… I don’t know, I just think all the LGBT stuff Adam and Eddy bring in is a bit wrong. Not that I mind such elements in general, but somehow they never get it quite right, it’s always messy (like with Mulan). Gotta continue to work on that, boys.
* The Charmings and especially Snow. Gnah. So Henry is in grave danger, Rumple (their most valuable magical asset) is trapped in Pandora’s Box and in Pan’s possession, but hey, who cares – because now Rumple isn’t there to cure David. Oh you stupid, self-centered………… I really wanted to bang my head on the table when I heard that. I mean, what is all that about? She’s such a dumb, useless character by now. What purpose does she have apart from being whiney and in the way? Really? I should just stop bothering.
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