Once Upon a Time - Shattered Sight & Heroes and Villains - Review: "Fun, but uneven"

Shattered Sight
It was nearly impossible that “Shattered Sight” could live up to the unexpected greatness of previous episode “Fall”. It is almost as if the writers knew that and instead of delivering the same heights they went just right for the funny bone, a decision I respect since this episode is probably one of the funniest the show has ever made, but it is not the most enjoyable it has done. It does a lot of things right, but there are very simplistic approaches to the narrative that bothered me to no end (I’ll get to that) and I found the resolution very anti-climatic.

But it’s hard to get too mad at an episode that has Snow asking for a poisoned apple to spare her out of her misery and that has Emma tricking Regina into thinking that she brought Marian intentionally to make her hate her or even the slapstick presented when Anna smashed her mother’s bottle message against Kristoff and then starts rambling.

As I said, “Shattered Sight” is all about how fun Once Upon a Time gets. “Fall” was all about the drama and the deep rush of emotions brought by an unavoidable crisis, but “Shattered Sight” brings little drama and just fun and fanservice to the mix. And unlike “The Apprentice” this episode’s fanservice is top notch.

One of my main troubles with the episode may be one of the reasons I think so high of last “Fall”; it featured almost no scene with Ingrid, whereas “Shattered Sight” spends a lot of time with her. I just find her such a dumb and weak character that I just roll my eyes whenever there’s a scene with her. You have heard me complain about her a lot, and while “Smash the Mirror” brought some more sense into the character it wasn’t nearly enough to make her compelling.

The flashbacks never tell us how the hell Ingrid managed to run a foster home in the first place. We see her arrive and we see her getting conned by a woman posing as a psychic, but then we jump on time and she just happens to run a foster house. And there she is completely lovely towards Emma, and cares very little about everyone else.



There’s something disturbing about the fact that she really didn’t connect with all the other orphans at the foster home; we know she only thinks magical humans being are worth for her perfect family, but her focus on Emma and the disregard about everyone else is just… disturbing.

Luckily, it becomes disturbing for Emma too, as when Ingrid tries to push Emma’s magic by rushing into street where a car is incoming, Emma just breaks free of her and calls her crazy as she goes away heartbroken. Ingrid should have known better at that point that saying all the things she said about magic would only make Emma believe she was crazy.

And then there’s the storybrooke flashback to season 1; it’s 2011 and Emma runs into Ingrid. While there’s no problem with the scene itself, OUAT’s logic is thrown by the window as the show establishes that Ingrid was on Storybrooke all along. Why is this a problem? Because Ingrid is not on the manifest of either time the dark curse was cast, so shouldn’t she have been on the second one at least? Or why the hell was she waiting all these years to make an appearance? Was she sure Emma would travel back in time and get the urn? Ok, maybe she was confident on the apprentice’s words that Emma would reunite her with Elsa, but I still find utterly weird that she didn’t make a move during all these years, or that she even let Emma fend for herself against powerful enemies such as Cora and Zelena while she was just patiently waiting for a prophecy to come true, free will be damned.

I found it really sloppy writing. But wait! The worst is how OUAT shy away from confrontation via the letter Anna found. While last week OUAT was not afraid of cast a curse that would turn everyone against each other, this week OUAT is too afraid of fighting Ingrid or making someone kill her, so it goes for the easy solution: a letter that proves how much her sister Gerda really loved her.

Though it did make Elizabeth Mitchel step up her acting for these scenes, it was a lame Deus Ex Machina kind of solution that just like that ends the Frozen arc; the very same letter we saw on episode 1 was the key to ending it all, and it comes very anti-climatic as it didn’t rely on character development or natural plot progression, but rather it used a piece of paper as a shortcut to a crisis that it seems that it got away from the writers hands. Lame, very, very lame way to end what has been a very solid story arc.

But that’s enough with the bad, let’s focus on the good! Because, there was so much to flavour with this episode!
I laughed through most of the episode; seeing Storybrooke people pissed brought not only the darkest on them, but also the funniest bit on the show so far.

There are so many great lines thrown during the episode (you’ll see some of my favorites on Stray Observations) that it really makes you wonder how this writers haven’t yet made a pilot for a comedy series -and believe me, I would watch it!-. They come on the right timing and makes every scene bring a chuckle. There’s so much energy and such great acting; Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin steal the episode as they finally get material different than their usual saccharine doses of hope and sweetness: instead we see very resentful and angered Snow White and Prince Charming! And it is way more enjoyable than anything their character has done this season (though I’m not making justice to the time Snow yelled “STOP SAYING LETTERS!” during episode 2 this season).

I just love how these people pick on each other; this is stuff they have way underneath them and that have buried, but these are actual issues they have. So it is very rewarding to see everyone dropping the act and just acting on what has been buried underneath.

I really enjoyed how the writers just let Regina go at it; Emma tricking her into believing she brought Marian to hurt her is a fantastic way to deal with the ribbons trouble, and the over the top shout of Regina -”SWAAAN!”- is just perfection.

By the way, I love the Snow and Regina fight. While I don’t fully buy that Regina would just let Snow defend herself if she wants to “watch her bleed” it did bring a lot of great moments while they fought, my favorite being the following line from Snow: “You think the spell made me angry? DO NOT WAKE MY BABY!” Cue to her to just rush against Regina and then throw her against every possible surface, table, wall, glass door, anything that can possibly hurt her. Just outstanding.

It was so entertaining that “Shattered Sight” may be remembered by me as the time Snow and Regina just went at it. They had fought before, but this was a whole other level. Other great lines:
Snow: “You said no magic!”
Regina: “You said you could keep a secret.”
Snow: “I… Was… TEN!!!!!”
That, right there, is blatant fanservice and I love it! It was so incredibly funny and enjoyable all together that I almost choked while laughing.

Meanwhile, following the Rumple story, Hook is used so that he can find Henry. And during this spell Hook has his share of funny moments too. Starting with Hook tripping over marbles to Will Scarlet’s failed attempt at hitting him, Hook scenes while the spell was active were pretty funny too.

Then, at the end, Ingrid has already sacrificed herself to save everyone in Storybrooke after realizing that she let her fear for her power transform her into the monster that she is today. That was a moment where I was supposed to feel sympathy for her, but honestly all I could feel was relief as she finally was going away; sorry guys, but for me Ingrid will always be remembered as OUAT’s lamest and most lazy written villain, and Elizabeth Mitchell deserved so much more.

But we’re through the episode and the Frozen arc is coming to a close, as everyone is happy and relieved now that the spell has been lifted. But while people celebrate, Hook is in mortal peril as Rumple intends to use his heart to free himself from the dagger and he marches near outside town to use the hat when the stars line up to do just that.

As a whole, I honestly loved this episode, really, really loved it. I appreciate every time OUAT just decides to be fun, because when it wants to make you laugh, you laugh hard! And those moments are very, very great. Most of what is in display during this episode is incredibly enjoyable and funny, but everything that was supposed to have emotional weight with Ingrid just fell flat. As I complained about her about 6743 times already, I think it is finally time to stop. I’ll just say that if it wasn’t for her, this episode would probably be an A- or a straight A for me.

The way the writers decided to quickly wrap up everything with the letter was lame, Ingrid bothered me to no end with her attitude and the realization she had after seeing the letter is one that she should have had years ago. But I guess that if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have “Fall”, right? So I’ll give her some credit for that.

Grade: B

Stray Observations:

-Not mentioned on the review, but Abby Ross (the actress who plays young Emma) once again does an amazing job. She is a very talented young actress and I foresee a great future for her.

Funny lines:
-Kristoff: "I'm beginning to think this hair cut wasn't my only bad idea."

Regina: "Should have incinarated her years ago. This is what I get for being subtle!"

Snow: "I know how to swaddle our child correctly."
David: "I swaddle him perfectly!"
Snow: "He is a baby, not a breakfats burrito."

Anna: "Those things sound terrible, but they also sound romantic!"

David: "Shut it ice man!"
Kristoff: "Ice man?! Who do you call ice man, stabble boy?!"
David: "I'm calling you ice man! And what the hell are you doing selling ice?! You are from Arendelle! The whole place is frozen!"
Kristoff: "Ice is a very important comodity!"

Snow: "I killed the evil queen's mommy. And I said I was sorry, and I didn't meaaan it."
Anna: "That's horrible."
Snow: "Still wanna hold hands? Sing sibbity-doda?
Surprisingly dark and funny, I'll give it an extra point for that!

Elsa: "Emma, you are bit prickly, but you are certainly not hateable."

Emma to Regina: "Wow, a little late for Halloween."

Henry: "There's no way I'm going anyway with a dirty pirate!"
Hook: "Dirty? I bathe quite frequently, thank you very much!"

Regina: "I get to kill the two idiots who started it all!"
David: "Hey, I wasn't the one to tell Cora about your secret boyfriend."
Snow: "Are you selling me out?"

Regina: "You both deserve to die. Not only for what you did, but for your whining."

David: "Careful! The phone has no warranty anymore."
Snow: "You said you bought it new!"
David: "It was gently used."

Regina: "What am I wearing?"
I must say, there is something really comforting about seeing Snow, David and Regina all laughing together as if they were all just good friends.

Now back into business

Heroes and Villains
Oh, “Heroes and Villains” is one of the most unbalanced episodes of the whole series; it starts off really slow, with sluggish pace and then, out of nowhere, it speeds up and becomes crazy energetic and full of life. What started out as a “C” episode just jumped into an “A” episode, so how do you review that? It’s tricky because while I’d like to focus only on the positive, I can’t just go on and ignore.

So, the bad: god, those first 28 minutes dragged on for what it felt like an eternity! It really felt slow paced. The worst of it all for me is the Marian plot of this week:

Starting off promisingly, after Regina puts Marian heart back, they meet at Granny’s and Marian says she won’t get in the way if her and Robin. For a minute there OUAT had me really happy that it would try out an unconventional family with the father, the mother and the stepmother. This is a family show after all, so I’d like to see family relationships that are complex, and Regina has done more than enough to warrant happiness with Robin Hood and this unconventional, but ultimately interesting family dynamic they were going to work out. And then Marian suffers from Ingrid’s magic leftovers.

Oh, Ingrid, even in death you annoy me. I think it was kind of a dick move from part of the writers, like they said “alright, nothing is standing in the way of Regina and Robin Hood, so let’s separate them by putting Marian in a life or death situation again! Even when we don’t have to.” It comes really forces, there is nothing organic about this development and it goes at snail speed. If Lana Parrilla’s acting didn’t save the scene when Robin Hood and family go away from Storybrooke it would have been just dreadful. I also didn’t appreciate how Rumple tried to tempt Regina to kill Marian, but ultimately it allow us to see, once again, that she has grown enough to avoid temptation.

The whole sendoff for our frozen characters is quite rushed and lame: after Elsa takes down the wall of ice, our heroes need to find a way back to Arandelle. So Rumple uses Hook to guide everyone to the Sorceress’ house so they can use a portal to go back to Arandelle. We’ve spent so much time this season with Elsa, Anna and Kristoff that it feels unappropriate that in their farewell episode they don’t get much to do. Anna gets to warn everyone about Rumple once they figure out he has been lying (and Emma connects the dots with Hook’s strange attitude), but aside from that, not much. We don’t get to see how they defeated Hans and his 12 brothers, they just skipped towards Anna’s weddings, and while I do appreciate that scene and it is in its own way a sweet goodbye, it feels as if the episode ran out of time.

And the initial flashback with Belle working for Rumple seemed like nothing new… at first. My first impression of the flashback was this: “here we go again, we spend minutes and minutes building up to some magic mumbo-jumbo that barely relates to the story”. Luckily, I was dead wrong. While the flashback is not compelling at first, once Belle finds by accident the glove that points out people’s weaknesses, things start becoming a little more appealing.

The flashback continues and while doing laundry, Belle chases a lost dalmatian and gets captured by the queens of darkness. Now, I don’t know how the hell they are going to explain Maleficent coming back to life (with her movie outfit) for season 4B, but I’d lie if I said I wasn’t excited, and even more excited when I saw Ursula and Cruella joining her. They are the closest thing OUAT has had to a legion of doom and it opens a lot of possibilities for intensely fun stories when the show comes back. The Rumple rescue of Belle was very by the book, but it would lead to something great.

Rumple has finally made all the preparations to free himself from the dagger. Emma and Snow come to stop him and as Emma tries to use her magic Rumple halts them. It seems as Hook is going to die and then it happens.

30 minutes, 44 seconds.
Rumple: “I don’t understand. Why can’t I crush your heart?”
Belle: “Because I commanded you not to.”

I have never liked Belle more than I have in this episode. The way she suddenly stops Rumple by commanding him with the dagger is utterly badass, and it is really great to see her using the dagger to force Rumple out of Storybrooke.

Through this season Rumple has walked a very dark path; he promised Neal to be a better man, but he hasn’t kept that promise. In the end, he chose power, as he always does. Belle already realized on episode 6 “Family Business” that Rumple was not the man she wanted him to be, she just didn’t want to see it, but when she found the magic glove and found out that what Rumple loves the most is the dagger, his power, then she couldn’t deny it anymore.

It is heartbreaking for her because she loves Rumple and to find out that he would choose power over her is a really terrible realization that makes her take a brave choice: command Rumple to leave. That scene is extremely powerful, and both Emily de Ravin and Robert Carlyle bring their A game to it, showcasing real pain and desperation.

This is the kind of drama that works best on OUAT; the ones that come from actual human relationship and not from imposed situations via magic. Power comes in many forms, magic is just one of them, and Rumple craves for power, so it feels much more natural than Robin Hood leaving for Marian’s all of the sudden ice curse, because this is something much more relatable in real life: there are moments in which people chose power over love ones, may it be money, jobs or whatever, in this case it is represented by magic and it shows how much it has corrupted Rumple as a character.

Continuing in the far more interesting storylines, the quest for the author is back!
Emma and Regina share a lovely moment together when Emma praises her for her good deed and Henry suddenly storms in to tell them he found something on the Sorceress’ house. There he show them all the possible Storybrooke stories stored in huge library. Emma is briefed on operation mangus, and she decides to help, because she promised Regina her happy ending. It is a truly endearing moment, which connects a storyline with lots of potential with a very heartwarming moment, in which Regina smiles, as she sees her son and Emma teaming up on her quest for happiness. It is truly a wonderful moment that got me to smile.

We skip six weeks into the future and we see a defeated Rumple meeting up with Ursula so that they can team up to finally get what they have wanted for a long time: a happy ending for villains.
I seriously can’t wait for OUAT returns: I like the show the best when there are endless possibilities. Sometimes OUAT can take the cliché route for many things, but it can also surprise, and the final minutes of this episode certainly did, enough to forget the bad taste of the first slow ones. There is so much promise for the next arc and the Frozen arc, as a whole was pretty great, so I’m optimistic about what’s coming next.

The best thing about the Frozen arc was how our hero characters became more compelling and complex: usually the villains such as Regina and Rumple were the most complex and more interesting ones in the show for a long time, but the Frozen arc leveled the field, or at least tried to. Regina remains the best crafted character in the show, but everyone else who was forgotten got their time to shine, especially Belle which was very sidelined last season, so that’s a very commendable feat. If anything, my complains come from Ingrid as a villain and some really sluggish paced episodes there and there, but as a whole season 4A was pretty great, and one of the most consistent on OUAT’s run. I prefer the OZ arc because I find it more fun and entertaining than this one, but the Frozen arc made sure to right the wrongs made to many key main characters and that’s already a great accomplishment. Let’s hope season 4B keeps it up!

Episode Grade: B-
Frozen Arc Grade: B+

Stray Observations:

-The Frozen arc is over and we say goodbye to their characters. I’m going to miss them, Georgina Haigg, Elizabeth Lail and Scott Michael Foster all played their Frozen personas greatly. If an spin off series “Once Upon a Time in Arendelle” is considered and gets worked on, I’ll watch it for sure.

-Talking about spin offs, while OUAT is on hiatus I’ll finally check out OUAT in Wonderland; watched the pilot and it never really grabbed me, but I think it’s necessary to give it another shot, especially since Will Scarlet is staying in OUAT.

-How the hell is Cruella going to fend for herself? Does she have magic? Is she a mastermind for great evil and genius plots? I hope it is the latter, we already have enough magicians in this show as it is.

-Hook is officially Emma’s most enduring love interest; let’s keep it that way, I like his character.

-Regina: “I’m not in the mood for a hope speech Emma.”
Emma: “You are mistaking me for my mother. Besides, you don’t need a speech, you need a drinking buddy. Shots?”
Regina: “Sure, why not?”
We need more of these moments on OUAT, they are glorious!

-Emma: “You know you did the right thing today.”
Regina: “There it is, a hope speech. I thought we were drinking.”
Emma: “It’s not a speech, it’s a compliment.”
Regina: “I don’t need your validation, I know I did the right thing. I know because I’m miserable. Again”
Emma: “Well, if it makes you feel any better, so is Gold.”
Regina: “It does.”
I can’t stretch out enough how great these moments are.

-How many episodes before Robin Hood finds his way back to Storybrooke? My bet is 5. And as for Rumple, maybe as soon as the midseason premiere, or an episode after.

-How are you enjoying Galavant as your OUAT filler? So far I’m loving it!

-I’m sorry that I got so delayed. This is “Going Home” all over again, but I have good reasons for the delay: an uncle died, there was an ugly break up and then the holidays. By the time I rally on new years eve it was already late and I decided to give myself a few days to just recover completely. Once the show comes back in March I should have the reviews by the following days, as long as stuff like these don’t happen… let’s hope they don’t.

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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