Once Upon a Time Season 4 Premiere Review: Not Cool, Bro

Once Upon a Time S04E01: "A Tale of Two Sisters"

Sweet Lord, Once Upon a Time is back for Season 4 and already busy doing what it does best: co-opting the goodwill of Disney movies it had nothing to do with and needlessly complicating an already incomprehensible timeline.

Also there was a ton of this:

There's no doubt that the new actors did a great job impersonating children's cartoons, but personally I found the Frozen™ fan fiction super tedious. Unlike other Disney classics that OUAT has approached in a unique, personal way, there was no original interpretation of how these characters fit into the OUAT-verse. Frozen™ is a hot property, so I'm guessing the writers' room was noted to death on how they could use the characters, and maybe that's what led to the writers plopping them on top of all the other storylines like a swirl of whipped cream plopped onto a messy stack of pancakes. "Here, enjoy this," the show seems to say, "and never mind the fact the pancakes underneath are badly formed, half-cooked, and also a ball of hair landed in the batter when we were mixing them up. Whose hair? Can't recall. Pretty sure it's human. Just pull the strands out as you chew. Bon appétit!"

The weirdly separate nature of the Frozen™ characters kind of exacerbates how commercially driven their presence is. OUAT might as well feature actors wearing fuzzy Mickey and Minnie suits Electric Parading down Main Street while flight prices to Celebration, Florida flash across the bottom of the screen.

Also, kind of a weird choice to take a Disney Princess story that's celebrated for NOT ending with a wedding and continue it with, uh, a wedding?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the top.

A lady with a bunch of wet braids AND a wet tiara ("Glamour 'til the Grave" —the motto of the Round Table) was scrawling on some wet paper with a wet pen while her ship sank because her daughters Elsa and Anna needed to KNOW something, and we're all well aware that a message in a bottle can survive a shipwreck. They are like the black boxes of shipwrecks. Sadly we didn't see the bottle make its way back to Big El & AnAn, but the mom's diary sure did: Elsa found her mom's journal, read about three lines, and convinced herself that her parents abandoned their daughters because she, Elsa, is a monster! And that's what parents do when they flee a monster: They leave their youngest child behind in the same house with the monster and go hop on a ship. Oh, Elsa. You and your determination to see yourself as a monster/wear a blue sequin evening gown all over the damn place.

Meanwhile, back in Storybrooke we picked up right where we left off: with Regina storming out of Granny's after realizing, thanks to Emma's time-traveling, lame-ass finale episode, that Regina had been demoted from True Love to Side Chick. Emma, who does nothing but monitor Regina's ever-shifting moods, chased after Regina, calling out her name and demanding to know how she could help, which is totally something that platonic girl buds do all the time. Sure, we could text "U ok?" but we prefer to run after each other dramatically, calling each other's names like it's our last dying wish. Typical straight lady communication.

Also, Jared Gilmore is like a full-grown man now?! Time, she flies. Anyway, Marian, having just been pulled through a time portal, was not caught up on how Regina is 99 percent angel these days and was flabbergasted that everyone was just a-chillin' with the Enchanted Forest's answer to Joseph Kony.

After a fraught exchange with Hood's wifey, Regina ran off and Emma tried to follow her wherever the night would take them, but Hook threw himself across 10 feet of cement to physically restrain her from doing so. He was on her like a flying squirrel. Dude has appointed himself Emma's human leash.

Meanwhile Elsa had FROZEN™ a Chevy in the middle of the road. Quelle surprise!

Then Rumple had a long talk with Neal's grave, which wisely did not include a date of birth or date of death.

Robert Carlyle is so great. I could have watched him make promises to that tombstone all night.

So then Robin popped by Regina's house and explained that while his Facebook status may say "Married to Maid Marian," in his heart it's more like "It's Complicated"/does she have a Kik? It was a weird, mixed-message conversation and it was totally inappropriate that he just popped by unannounced, but then again Robin is living out in the cold Maine woods 24-7. Maybe he just wanted to enjoy one last blast of central-air heating and slip in a last hot-water shave before settling down off the grid with Marian full time.

Regina decided there was no time like the present to go consult Gus Fring, and it was honestly good to see Giancarlo Esposito back. Yay! She wanted him to show her when exactly she arrested this Maid-what's-her-face in the first place, frankly she did not remember this chick at all, and she wanted to go back and kill her.

Luckily, when Regina saw Marian's arrest, Marian yelled out, "If you had a family that loved you, you wouldn't be such a jerk!" and that's when Regina remembered, "Oh, right... I have a family that loves me. I have my boy and my estranged wife, and if I go into 'ripper mode' again I may lose all that forever."

Meanwhile, Belle had found the perfect house for her and Rumple to creepy-crawl for their honeymoon. It just plopped down after the last curse so it was fair game, according to Belle! She was merrily vague: "I don't know who it belonged to, but it's here now and no one's claimed it! Well, someone peed in the corner of the living room and left a half-eaten can of Hormel chili in the sink, but I think they've moved on!"

Truly the romantic honeymoon hideaway of all our most girlish fantasies. They B&E'd their way through the place and Rumple opted to start things off right in their squatter's love nest by switching his Real Dagger with the Fake Dagger. So now Belle is in possession of the Real Dagger!

Except why, then, do you even NEED a fake dagger, Rumple? You want to be able to switch them again at will? Oh Rumple, when will you learn? Probably not ever. This show is not exactly teeming with new ideas for it's characters' internal conflict. Basically either A) your parents abandon you, or B) you're torn between living a normal life and crazysexycool magic, or C) you're a girl-warrior in love with Aurora who has literally vanished from the Earth's surface.

Anyway, it was definitely time for these two newlyweds to go on down to the abandoned mansion's ballroom and reenact a special moment from Beauty and the Beast.

Hahaha, Linda Woolverton, I certainly hope you see a check in the mail for this fun little scene lifted from your Beauty and the Beast screenplay! P.S. did you know that Linda Woolverton was the first female screenwriter to earn sole writing credit on a billion-dollar movie, namely Maleficent? Maybe OUAT will borrow a couple scenes from her work on that screenplay as well when Kristin Bauer returns to OUAT in the second half of Season 4! Command-C, Command-V!! Such fun.

Across town, Emma was blowing up Regina's phone, begging her for just a moment face-to-face. "Maybe it's you she doesn't want to hear from," Henry said, bitterly. Emma quietly started planning a search for a boom box so she could play "In Your Eyes" outside the Mayoral mansion, but Henry offered to act as an intermediary between his parents, as children of divorce often do.

Snow remarked that it must be hard for Henry now that both of his moms are involved with other men and OBVIOUSLY nothing about the situation is highly suggestive that Emma and Regina are estranged spouses with one partner trying desperately to win the other one back. Nope this is just another classic straight-lady dynamic: You're getting so obsessive about contacting your lady co-parent that your mutual kid has to tell you right to your face that she's miffed at you because you started dating a dude.

So Emma started frantically denying that she's even going out with Hook , but speak of the pleather-clad devil, Hook appeared out of nowhere.

Yes, he's been wearing the same outfit for two days in a row/three seasons now, and he was like, "Hey Emma let's hold hands in public. Why can't we hold hands in public? Did you get my texts? I sent you 42 texts last night explaining how I feel and they took me a really long time to type. You could at least have texted back 'hi.'"

But Before Snow could even demand that they get engaged right then and there, Grumpy was YELLING because everyone needed to RUN RUN RUN no time to ask WHY because SNOW GOLLUM AHHH!

What would OUAT be if it didn't have people running around without fully understanding why? It would be 20 minutes long, basically.

The episode's chaos was brought to you by Elsa, who had hidden herself in an ice house, because she believes strongly in sticking with a theme, and now she's trying to kill everyone around her with her mind + snow gollums because she is a very 'shoot first, ask questions later' type of ice-magick practitioner.

The Charmings decide to run to Robin Hood's house (a.k.a., the woods next to the freeway) and warn Mr. and Mrs. Hood about the Snow Gollum, but actually that just led the Snow Gollum right on over there, and these Charmings are kind of dangerously thoughtless, aren't they? They have been killing their friends and endangering their families for like, four seasons now.

Case in point: No one could do shit to stop this ice gollum, it knocked out everybody including Magical Emma (when did she get her magic back again?), and just as it was about to step on Maid Marian, guess who appeared out of nowhere?

That's right. Regina saved everyone's life, including Marian's, because let's face it, as of the beginning of Season 3 it became her full-time job, and Marian was like, "Well maybe you AREN'T a monster," all snotty like. And Regina was all, "Bitch I might be, welcome to Storybrooke, the land where I have to clean up after 'heroic' simpletons like yourself 24 hours a day. P.S. tell your husband he left his scarf and his dignity at my house when he left this morning. Laaaaaater." Emma went RUNNING after Regina, face aglow like Emma was in a desert and Regina was a frosty glass of water with a cucumber slice in it, but Regina just *poofed* out of sight because the last thing she needed this day was to smell pirate on Emma's breath.

So now we had ANOTHER beat of Hook asking Emma to spend some time with him and Emma saying, "Well actually I need to go find Regina. Regina is not happy. I can't be happy while Regina is unhappy," and Hook being like, "Holy Lord can we speak openly and directly about this situation?!?! What is your deal with Regina?!?! It can't possibly be just Regina that's the issue?!?!" Hahaha oh Hook go discover the magical land of Netflix and maybe stream Chasing Amy.

Having shaken Hook at last, Emma tracked down Regina at er house, where Regina was on the floor crying like her heart was broken, and Emma vowed that Regina will have a happy ending; as Savior, Emma will make SURE Regina gets her happy ending, and holy SHIT if Regina or Emma were a male character this would be all over mainstream entertainment news as like the most romantic scene in OUAT history if not ABC history. I mean, come on.

This split screen also echoed the first act of Frozen, where Anna tried to get Elsa to come build a snowman, so who knows, maybe OUAT isn't just creating diabolically .GIF-able romantic moments between its two lady leads, maybe it's trying to re-tell the Frozen™ story with Regina and Emma, but most likely it's doing both. It's not like OUAT can afford to lose viewers, and don't tell me a that show basing its A-story arc on motherf-cking Fro$en™ isn't cynical enough to double down on its known history of queer-baiting.

What makes this bittersweet subtextual moment way more bitter than sweet is how the show keeps proclaiming via All Media: "We're just simple Hollywood folk trying to write a modern fairy tale about two moms who share a son, who care about each other deeply, who worry about each other obsessively and who also make incredibly powerful magic every time they touch. And that somehow makes them gay? Y'all crazy for that one. Remember when we promised you a gay character last season? Oh well. Anyway, it's Frozen™ time now! Let it go. Luv y'all/keep watching/don't expect us to invalidate our apparently massive demographic of homophobic viewers in any way, shape, or form."

Kids, once upon a time, OUAT presented itself as an edgy update of all our beloved fairy tales. It was bravely, ambitiously weird and tried to "go there" with a knocked-up Cinderella, a jailbird Emma, and scandals involving corrupt smalltown politics. Now it's an hour-long commercial for Disneyland with the vanilla-est plot of them all, one that seems built on marketing algorithms. The ghost of an actually intriguing, relevant love story is conjured anytime LaParillz and JMo share a screen.

Speaking of super relevant storylines: Rumple has the damn hat from The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Fantasia, 1940)? I really don't need to watch a bunch of brooms stomping around cleaning stuff like crackheads at any point this season, thanks. Also we found out that Anna took off on a boat to the Enchanted Forest a Long Time Minus Five Years Ago, but Anna's necklace is now in Mr. Gold's shop? So Elsa is in Storybrooke? And 28+ years younger than Elsa? Or maybe Arendelle also was FROZEN™ in the curse? And there were freaking CGI rock trolls?! Look, I am a grown-ass woman. Please save the anthropomorphic rock trolls for Disney programming between 2 and 5 in the PM.

Regina ended the episode with a monologue about her bright idea to hunt down the author of the Story Book and demand that the villains ALSO get their happy endings. Is OUAT planning to straight-up rip off Red Shirts and send Regina through some portal into the Land of Disney Studios in Burbank, California, 2014 so that she can literally march into the OUAT writers' room and demand to know why in hell they keep giving her these sad-sack storylines? Nah, it won't be that cool. It would be like, a CGI animated Walt Disney like that CGI Audrey Hepburn who keeps trying to sell me Dove chocolate.

Whatever entity Regina ends up sitting across from with her requirement that villains get happy endings, I hope that entity points out that actually, all the villains in Storybrooke except for Regina have it pretty good: Rumplestiltskin got to marry his true love Belle. Robin Hood, a thief, has his Maid Marian back from the damn dead. Dr. Whale is the head of a thriving medical practice. Captain Hook ended up with the Savior, Emma. It's really only the Wicked Witch, Cora, Maleficent, and Regina who are being held 100 percent accountable for their misdoings in this world. I wonder why that is.

QUESTIONS:

... How did you like the Season 4 premiere?