Once Upon a Time - Smash The Mirror - Review: "What the show should be"

I hate bringing reviews late: here on SpoilerTV reviewers are asked to try their best to bring their reviews within the 48 hours after the episode aired, but that’s not always possible. So far this season I have been able to bring them faster than I did last season (without the need of doing a double shot), but I still have had some troubles trying to bring them as fast as I could. Ashley already posted her review, so I could easily let mine slide and wait till the next episode, but I think it’s necessary that we both give you our approach to the show, since they are vastly different and thus allowing you readers to have more than one set of eyes to look through the episodes.
So, why did this review came in so late? Here’s the explanation:

First of all I must say I’m really sorry because I could have brought this up sooner, but there were two things that kept me from doing: A) I finished my semester on the university last week, B) I had some back troubles that have kept me on a rotten mood and not really feeling like reviewing any shows at all. It’s been almost 2 years since I suffered an injury on my back and I developed an hernia and for the most part I thought I finally got over with it, but the pain is coming back, and while nothing life threatening or impeding to get on with my daily life, it has been soul crushing for me, and I haven’t been feeling like writing anything at all.

Most of you surely come here just to see what are my thoughts on the last episode of OUAT, but I thought you deserved an explanation as to why I took so long to bring it, and I am sorry if I dragged this out, but sometimes you just can’t help it.
Now without further ado, let’s get into Once Upon a Time.

What I hoped for this episode was that it would be a palate cleanser from the previous lackluster “The Snow Queen”, with faster pace, more action and interesting twists and development, and for the most part “Smash The Mirror” is up to the task. The most heavily anticipated episode of the season managed to engage me and make sure I had a good time. I still think OUAT is miles away from the great show it could be, but “Smash The Mirror” is clearly a step forward.

There’s plenty of stuff that made the episode work. For one, I loved that there were so many references of past seasons events, it really makes it feel that the show had a continuity and not just storylines cramming over each other. “Smash The Mirror” make us feel the progression the show had with its characters, it takes us by reference to the time where Regina was evil or Snow killed Cora and shows us where they are standing now.

My personal highlight of the episode is when Snow and Regina get to talk about Regina’s quest to find the author and Regina shows some vulnerability as she says villains don’t get to have happy endings. Snow responds with that not everyone is pure evil or pure good, pointing out that Regina has looked at her heart and know that it was tainted. That’s a really important point for OUAT to make; this season has been all about grounding heroes, because for the most part of the show it has been the villains who carried the weight of complexity, but this season made a commitment on making heroes compelling as well, and Snow pointing that out is the show’s way of saying they are sticking with it.

One of the biggest flaws of season 3 was that many characters felt shallow, as bad things happened to them instead of them causing the bad things on their lives: as a result, the good guys felt like they were only victims on what was going on and as such it became boring. Everything that happened was only because a big bad villain was causing it.

Season 4 has a big villain at the center of it all, but the choices of our characters have a bigger impact on how her plans develop as opposed to the little impact there was on season 3: Emma’s choices, for instance, are fundamental for how Ingrid’s plans will come to be, whereas on season 3 her choices had little to do with Peter Pan or Zelena’s schemes.
By making the main characters a bigger variables on the villain’s schemes the show also gives our main heroes some degree of responsibility over what’s happening. Even if “The Snow Queen” handled it poorly, Snow’s reaction to Emma’s powers are in fact a trigger to the events of this episode’s troubles instead of just being because of Ingrid’s shenanigans.

This season has also been responsible for showing us a more open side of Emma: usually shut up and torn apart for her role as the savior, the show is finally stepping out of its routine with Emma and instead of putting her in place that she has to save everyone she is instead of a place in which she could be hurting everyone. This lead to something that has been clear for quite some time, but that the show hasn’t tackled until recently: Emma doesn’t like who she is.

And because it is always easy to take the exit route instead of confronting your issues head on, Emma goes to Rumple so that he can take away her magic, and there’s an interesting twist there as Rumple sees this as an opportunity to fill the sorceress hat with the power it is missing: though Emma should have been able to see that he was up to no good -her superpower is becoming very selective as the show goes on - and Rumple’s promise to Neal seems to be headed pretty much nowhere, the show commits to explore in depth Emma’s self rejection and Rumple’s crave for power.

There’s a very powerful scene shared by both Rumple and Emma. He tells her that he will always choose power, while Emma is noble enough to sacrifice it for the one’s she loves. But Rumple is only half right: Emma decision to give away her power doesn’t come really out of being noble, but as a quick exit route to her own self esteem issues, and even if Rumple didn’t plan on letting the hat suck her in and he actually had removed Emma’s powers those issues would have remained.

Cue to Elsa coming in and telling Emma that the key is that she has to accept who she is; I was glad that it was Elsa who came in to stop Emma, mostly because it gave me something I always felt Frozen missed: everything in Frozen seemed to come together because of the bonds of sisterhood, but where was Elsa confronting her fears? Where was Elsa’s self recognition? It almost seems like Frozen knew “Smash The Mirror” would come into play, as Elsa finally says that a big part of the puzzle was that she had to accept herself for who she is. In only a mere scene, the show managed to make a missed step on the movie become a full circle and it tied up to Emma’s current dilemma. It was a simple scene, but it was incredibly effective, and both Jennifer Morrison -whose sudden tears made it feel all the more real -and Georgina Haigg’s performance made it all the better.

Talking about Elsa, the flashback this week was pretty good, though at times I felt it stretched out for longer than it should have. I was glad to see that Ingrid could not turn Elsa and Anna against each other, even if it meant Elsa being trapped on the urn. Elsa and Anna’s strong relationship is the key to Frozen’s success and as such the show couldn’t just come up with something petty to turn them against each other. Enter the spell of shattered sight.

Something that was key here was realizing how Ingrid sees herself: she thinks she is a monster and she has come to accept herself for being just that, which would come to explain in a way the roundaround logic of which I have complained all season long. While that is a huge breakthrough for my understanding of the character I felt it came too late to relate to her, but I still appreciate that the show managed to send a powerful message through Ingrid.

The thing is, because Ingrid thinks she is a monster she can only be grouped with those like her. She sees Elsa and Emma as monsters too, but the kind that are repressing their true selves and as such she is obsessed with making them realise what they are by making them see how everyone else should be looking at them; Ingrid thinks everyone is, deep down, afraid of Elsa and Emma. And that’s where her plan backfires.

When she casts the spell of shattered sight on Anna the issues that come up have nothing to do with Elsa’s powers but rather with Elsa's abandonment of Anna during most of their childhood, something that she came to forgive, but that surely still stings. And Elsa understands that. she knows what she did to Anna and where she is coming from and she also realizes that Ingrid is up to it and as such she doesn’t let the spell stain the love she has for her sister, effectively becoming trapped in the urn, screwing over Ingrid’s plans -and then, filled with anger, Ingrid freezes over Arendelle, Anna and Kristoff included.

As for Emma, Ingrid didn’t stain the image of her family and loved ones but rather made all her issues with herself coming to surface, and as she decides to get rid of her powers, Ingrid sees herself just about to be screwed again.

I have yet to talk about Hook’s development this week, which is huge: starting with his confession over the phone -a beautiful scene delivered excellently by Colin O’Donoghue- Hook finally decided to stop being Rumple’s pawn and take action in order to save Emma from making a huge mistake. Colin plays a conflicted Hook perfectly, and I feel like I connected with him like never before.

His guilt and his desperation to save Emma carry a lot of emotional weight over the episode and makes it feel all the more tense as the minutes go by. When he gets to where Emma and Rumple are, he is trapped by Rumple before he can do anything about it. And as soon as Emma is rescued by Elsa, Rumple takes on his heart which turns out to be a key element to freeing himself from the dagger as well as a way to make him his pawn again for a bit longer.

Though it is an interesting turn of events, I’m becoming incredibly tired of magic being the only way to get by on the show: if you don’t have magic you are going to have a really hard time fending for yourself, and as such it becomes frustrating to see many characters powerless because they don’t have any magic. Hook wasn’t able to do a thing, and neither would have been David or Snow or anyone without magic in the situation, which makes them look useless when there is need for fighting.

Once Upon a Time is -to a lesser degree -also an action show, and as such it should offer its main characters more ways to defend themselves from magic than just… well, magic. The heroes are suppose to be powerful, so why do they feel so useless without magic? They don’t have to be incredibly powerful, but certainly powerful enough to fend for themselves against magical beings.

The show is used to solving everything with magic before real stakes could be built and it also makes magic the way to solve every single problem, which makes all the main character without magic feel incredibly powerless and just part of the equation on solving troubles with the key factor being magic. Luckily the solution to Emma’s trouble on this episode lies on self acceptance rather than magic, but the Rumple and Hook thing seems like the show sliding to a place where they will definitely rely on magic only.

That being said, as a whole I really enjoyed the episode: some other highlights include Robin Hood telling Regina that new happy endings are just around the corner as he finds a new page on the book, and the surprisingly touching and disturbing scene with Ingrid caressing her face with her ribbon. There’s a lot of issues that keep the episode from being “A” material, but it surely puts OUAT back on track for one of its strongest seasons so far. There’s some missteps on the way, but so far it looks like the writers have finally managed to put every character on the right place. And now that the pieces are all set, we can get into the interesting part: the chess match that comes.

Grade: B+

Stray Observations:

-So Regina and Robin Hood had sex on Regina’s crypt? Creepy.

-I agree with Robin, when Regina smiles while being truly happy she has a really wonderful smile.

-Elsa: “You’d think a big yellow driving machine would be easy to find.”

-Elsa preparing a chocolate feast for Anna is OUAT writers putting even more Frozen callbacks.

-Hook calls cell phones talking phones. David says “just call them phones” which would be for the best.

-I love that Rumple called Ingrid out for her twisted mind. It’s really quite messed up.

-Will really likes his tea with booze.

-Ingrid actually has skeletons in the closet if you count Hans frozen body; for one, I do.

-I love how much the Charmings and Regina teased out each other in the episode. From Regina asking if they knew what she regreted the most and David replying "killing countless of innocent people?" to Regina calling them out for hiring the wicked witch as their nany and Snow pointing out how she and David got together despite numerous obstacles including Regina herself. Seriously, this is the kind of humor that makes OUAT great, not to mention it is great to see these characters poking each other.

-So what did Ingrid do to get by on our world? Did she still had her powers and opened an ice cream store like in Storybrooke? Did she meet someone who helped? Did she resort to prostitution? Everything’s possible! Make your bets on how she made it on our world!

-Regina: “I owe someone a quarter.”

-Is Hook destined to be another Grahms/Neal on the list of Emma’s deceased lovers? I hope not, I really like his character.

-ABC jumped the gun and released a promo for 4x10 "Shattered Sight" and I must say, it is looking good! I'm really looking forward to that Snow/Regina confrontation!

-And that’s it! My review for “Fall” should come tomorrow or Tuesday tops. Once again, sorry it took this long.

About the Author - Pablo

I'm currently studying Psychology while also writing fantasy books (one already published in my home country, Chile, you can check it out on the facebook icon). I watch many different types of shows, including my favorites Revenge, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time and about 23 more. Currently writing reviews for Once Upon a Time, The 100, Community and Marry Me

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