Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce Woof? – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Sympathy for the De Vil”

This week on Once Upon a Time, come to the dark side — we have murder. And puppies. And murderous puppies. But we should warn you that sometimes, if you’re a little too murdery, sometimes your mother will ground you for life. Just ask Young Cruella De Vil.

“You see, I’m a really terrible person.”

Cruella makes the above remark early in this week’s episode, upon being interrogated by Maleficent about the whole “I forgot to tell you that your kid is still alive and I left her to rot in a ditch, after falling through a time portal” thing.

Maleficent responds to this by turning into a dragon and trying to eat Cruella. But then Cruella breathes on dragon Maleficent, and her breath is so odious that it makes the Scaly One promptly pass out from the noxious fumes . . .

This week’s installment of Once teaches us all a very important lesson about the nature of villainy and raging asshole-ism.

You see, sometimes assholes become assholes because they have very bad childhoods, or are vastly misunderstood by their peers, or suffer from some sort of hideous deformity that makes others instinctively shrink from their presence. (Have you ever really looked at an asshole up close? It’s not a pretty sight.)

And other times, assholes come out of their mother’s wombs as little baby assholes and just continue to grow into larger and larger assholes, until they are full-sized jumbo assholes.

Cruella De Vil, apparently, falls into this last category. She comes with no sob story, no sympathetic tale of woe or grief or soul-shattering misfortune. She’s just The Worst, plain and simple . . . a psychopathic wench asshole with no redeeming qualities whatsoever . . . well, unless you count a kickass car and a spectacular talent for one-liners.

In other Once news, apparently Emma Swan has started down her journey on the Road to Assholism. We know this because she’s sporting some serious Asshole Eyes . . .

. . . either that or she’s just really hungover/has a bad case of the sniffles. When it comes to Early Stage Assholism, sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Let’s review, shall we?

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Once upon a time, a little blonde girl finds herself being chased through the forest by a pair of really pissed off Dalmatians. It’s very possible that the Dalmatians have rabies.

Just kidding! The Dalmations don’t have rabies. They are simply acting out because a rich lady with a horrible case of halitosis breathed on them, and it really pissed them off, so they both decided to turn into Cujo.

Anybody who has ever been around someone with really bad breath knows that this is a totally reasonable reaction to have. I, for one, would act the exact same way that those dogs did. Dental hygiene is important!

Halitosis Lady turns out to be Cruella’s mother. And the little girl is Cruella. “Things are going to change around here, now that your father is dead,” says Halitosis Lady.

She then locks Little Cruella in her room for such a long time that her face turns into another actress. Halitosis Lady is clearly very mad at Cruella, but at this point, we don’t know why. Did the little blonde girl possibly steal her mother’s toothbrush?

Cruella stays in her room for years, and, at least from what we see, isn’t allowed to leave, not even to go to school or to go to the bathroom. (This is probably because Halitosis Lady wants vengeance against Cruella for stealing her toothbrush. And a lack of indoor plumbing will make the Little Asshole-in-Training’s asshole smell almost as bad as her mother’s breath.)

Cruella has a lot of books in her room, which I guess she uses to educate herself, because she can’t go to school. But it’s equally possible that she uses them as toilet paper, because of the whole “no bathroom thing.”

She also has a radio in her bedroom, which only seems to play the Cruella De Vil Theme Song on repeat, because that’s its own form of torture for toothbrush stealers. Though, of course, there are worse songs one could be forced to listed to on repeat while locked in a bedroom for years and forced to clean your bum with The Great Gatsby . . .

One day, The Author stops by, claiming he wants to write a story about the lady whose breath is so bad that she can turn cute cuddly Dalmatians into Cujo just by breathing on them. Halitosis Lady says The Author should leave her house immediately and get his own life instead of just writing about everyone else’s. “But, before you go, do you happen to have a toothbrush? My little asshole of a daughter stole mine.”

“You have a daughter,” The Author exclaims excitedly. “Is she hot?”

“I’m not sure,” admits Halitosis Lady. “Every time I see her, her face turns into another actress. Who the heck knows what she looks like now? All I know is that she hasn’t used a real bathroom in at least a decade.”

“She sounds lovely,” coos the Author.

“Seriously?” Halitosis Lady inquires. “You heard the part about the lack of bathroom use, right?”

“Like you said, I am an author. I have no life of my own. The last woman I had a real conversation with before you was a doodle I made of Minnie Mouse. She didn’t reply. Clearly, my standards are exceptionally low.”

As The Author is leaving Halitosis Lady’s house, he hears a voice from above. It’s Cruella. “Yoo hoo, Author! Come rescue me from my bedroom and take me out for a night on the town, preferably to a place with real toilet paper that won’t give me a paper cut when I use it.”

“Um, OK,” replies The Author. “Let down your hair, Cruella. And I will come rescue you.”

“Wrong story, jackass,” answers Cruella. “What kind of author are you, anyway?”

“Not a very good one, apparently,” admits The Author.

The Author and Cruella go out for a hot night on the town. They drink, flirt, dance, and tell one another secrets. Cruella tells The Author that her mother is a bad-breathed murderess who killed all her previous husbands and locked Cruella away for stealing her toothbrush.

The Author tells Cruella that her life is fake, that she and everyone she knows are nothing more than characters in The Author’s book, and he can make whatever he wants happen to her, simply by writing it down. It’s like The Matrix basically, except Keanu Reeves isn’t there and no one is wearing sunglasses.

Cruella doesn’t seem at all bothered by the knowledge that she is not actually a real person. Then again, when you haven’t used a bathroom in ten years, there is probably very little left in this world that will surprise or upset you. “Write me a way to escape from my mom, and we can live happily ever after,” offers Cruella.

“OK,” says the Author, as he gets to work writing a nice escape plan for his newly clean-bummed lady love.

The next day, The Author runs into Halitosis Lady. “Don’t trust my daughter,” she says. “She’s actually an Asshole disguised as a blonde person. She killed all my past husbands and then lied and said I did it. I locked her in the bedroom to keep her from killing all my future husbands. It’s hard enough getting one husband when you have really bad halitosis, let alone multiple husbands.”

“The good news is you won’t have to worry about landing more husbands with your hideous breath,” chimes in Cruella, when she sees her mother later in the day. “You see, before you told him I was an Asshole, the Author gave me halitosis, too.”

Cruella then breathes on the Dalmatians. And this makes them so mad that they turn into Cujo and kill her mother.

Then, she kills the dogs too, and turns them into her trademark fur coat.

“Wow, you are such a Huge Asshole,” exclaims The Author, when he runs into her later.

“Don’t I know it,” replies Cruella.

Cruella and The Author get into a tussle, during which The Author dumps ink on her head. This turns her hair old lady white and her eyebrows grossly bushy, thereby making it harder for her to hide her true Assholeyness from the rest of the world. Then he writes something down so that Cruella can’t kill anyone anymore. She can only make them pass out from her rancid breath . . .