Once Upon a Time Season Premiere Recap: A Little Bit Un-Savior-y

[The following has been cross posted at my new home, Agony Booth.com!  There’s lots of other cool stuff there too!  Check it out!]

It’s that time again, Oncers! Time to reunite with our favorite red-leather jacket wearing heroine and her band of fairytale character pals. Time to head off on new adventures, battle evil villains, make questionable fashion and hair choices, and egregiously bastardize even more increasingly obscure bedtime stories from your youth.

On deck for fresh bastardization this season are: Aladdin, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Also this Season on Once, EMMA SWAN MIGHT DIE! (And if you believe that, I have a totally flyable magic carpet in my storage closet that I could sell you for twenty bucks. Contact me in the comment section if interested.)

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

I’m On a Horse!

Riding through an Anonymous Barren Wasteland there is a man on a horse. So, you are forgiven for temporarily thinking you’ve stumbled into one of those Old Spice Commercials. Not the ones where Terry Crews screams at you nonsensically for 2.5 minutes. The ones with this guy:

But wait! There’s a man on a magic carpet shooting at the Man on a Horse! I don’t remember that happening in the Old Spice Commercial. Maybe the man on the magic carpet is Terry Crews. Maybe I’ve just unwittingly come up with the theme for Old Spice’s next ad campaign. You’re welcome, Old Spice.

The Man on the Horse runs into a hut of some sort, and asks for help from The Savior. Obviously, this is a bit confusing because fans of Once know of only One Savior, and she always wears a red leather jacket, which would be very uncomfortable to don in a desert, not to mention a bit smelly.

A young girl tells the Man on the Horse that the Savior is very busy and can’t see him now, which anyone who has ever worked as an executive assistant will tell you is code for “He’s shopping online for golf clubs, and can’t be bothered to talk to your unimportant ass.”

Then, the man on a Magic Carpet appears. It’s Jafar from Aladdin. We know this because he’s wearing that funny hat Jafar always wears, and is carrying his trademark cane with the snake handle. Jafar uses his snake cane to turn Man on the Horse into a brown puff of smoke that may or may not be a fart. Then, he turns the cane on Savior’s Executive Assistant and makes her pass out. (Then again, maybe she just passed out because the fart that used to be Man on the Horse was so smelly.)

There’s a man huddled in the corner of the hut. Jafar refers to him as Aladdin, but also as the Savior. However, “Aladdin” doesn’t look very Savior-y. For one thing, he has no red leather jacket, though that might be for the climate and hygiene related reasons I mentioned earlier. For another, his hands are shaking uncontrollably, and he seems like kind of a wuss.

Jafar tells Aladdin it is the Savior’s curse to help people until he or she is all used up, and then die a thankless and horrible death.

Well, that’s cheerful! Remind me to give Jafar a job at the greeting card company I was planning to start next year . . .

Meanwhile, back in Storybrooke . . .

Coitus Inter-Blimp-tus

“Is that a Hook in my pants or are you just happy to see me?”

Hook and Emma are getting a wee-bit PG-13 on the couch in Emma’s house. Emma wonders whether maybe the pair should take off their jackets before things between them escalate to NC-17, but Hook demurs. Apparently sex in leather jackets is a common fetish amongst pirates. Who knew? I hope Storybrooke has a really good dry cleaner.

Unfortunately, because this an 8 p.m. show on ABC, this week’s installment of Fifty Shades of Leather Up My Crotch is interrupted by some strange vibrations being felt around the house, which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds despite current circumstances. Apparently, there’s a new blimp riding above Storybrooke, and its about to crash land into a tree, but miraculously kill nobody in the process, Lost the TV series style.

The whole town comes out to witness the crash, because blimp crashes are the Storybrooke equivalent of the rented bouncy castle at a neighborhood block party. Our Big Bad of this Portion of the Season, Hyde is on hand, to laugh maniacally, and tell the residents of Storybrooke that Rumpel has given him the keys to the town. Hyde’s first order of business as new Town Ruler, apparently, is to overpopulate it with homeless people.

Great plan! Move over Trump and Hillary! Hyde for President in 2016!

Emma and Regina don’t really like homeless people. So, they decide to shoot Hyde with the red dust that they can occasionally make come out of their fingers when they do jazz hands together. This red dust oddly seems to have no effect on Hyde. Then, again, he does seem to have a really bad case of pink eye the next time we see him up close. So, perhaps, Emma and Regina and can take some credit for that.

“Try to Visine this, asshole!”

While giving Hyde pink eye, Emma gets a weird “memory” flash of herself fighting a hooded being. When it’s over, her hand is shaking like Aladdin’s did in the earlier scene. Coincidence? I think not. Emma’s boyfriend and leather sex buddy, Hook, asks Emma if she is OK. And she lies and says that she is just fine for Plot Reasons.

Dream a Little Dream of Beast

Former Town Ruler Rumpel, apparently, gave his job away to Hyde in exchange for intel on how to wake Belle from the sleeping curse she put on herself, so she wouldn’t have to bone him anymore. (If you think pirates and saviors are kinky, you could imagine what kind of dirty things sparkly faced beasts are into.) Hyde instructs Rumpel to meet this Morpheus guy, who will give Rump some dirt to throw on Belle so he can intrude on her dreams, Freddy Krueger style. (As if sleeping in a dusty box for an entire season without showering didn’t make her dirty enough.)

Upon learning that Belle’s dream is basically the Disney version of the Beauty and the Beast movie, Rumpel decides to use the dream to make Belle fall in love with him again, so he can use True Love’s Kiss to wake her up from the dream. This shouldn’t be so hard, because Dream Belle conveniently doesn’t remember what a turd Rumpel has been to Belle for the latter half of five seasons. What follows is more or less a fast-forwarded highlight reel from the Disney movie, complete with that admittedly epic Ballroom Dance Scene, but minus the singing ceramic and brasswares.

“Darn it, I was really looking forward to a rousing rendition of Be Our Guest!”

About a minute and a half later, Belle genuinely seem to have re-fallen in love with Rumpel. Unfortunately for Rump, just as she’s about to suck face with him, Belle suddenly recalls the whole “he’s been a turd to you for the latter half of five seasons” thing. And that’s when things get Really Weird. (You know, because up to this point, everything I’ve mentioned in this recap has been totally normal . . .)

So, that Morpheus guy, who looks about 25, suddenly pops into the dream to applaud Belle for not sucking face with Rumpel . . . the Turd. Instead, he explains, HE’D like to suck face with Belle to wake her up from her sleeping curse.

“Don’t get me wrong, dude. You are cute and possibly more age appropriate for me than Rumpel. But I’m not in love with you yet. Give me a few margaritas though, and maybe I’ll change my mind . . . Except, I can’t have margaritas, because I’m pregnant. So we may just be shit out of luck.”

“No silly! You love me because I’m your unborn child!” Morpheus explains, which disturbs me greatly, because, for about half a second there I was seriously considering shipping Morpheus and Belle as a romantic couple.

Then, Morpheus kisses Belle as promised, and wakes her up.

Rumpel is overjoyed. “So, we can go back to boning now?” The Beast inquires hopefully.

“Go Rump yourself!” Belle retorts, before exiting stage left, so she can try to convince herself that she wasn’t temporarily attracted to her kid.

The Sister Act

A new, completely exorcised of evil, and, therefore, slightly less fun to hang out with, Regina has graciously allowed her still evil, and, therefore, still a blast, Zelena, to live with her in her mansion, while the latter is raising the spawn of Regina’s dead lover Robin. Now, THIS is a sitcom I would watch! Are you listening, TV Networks?

Things get a bit tense between the two sisters, when a scatterbrained Zelena admits to losing a feather from Robin’s bow that is basically the last memento Regina will ever have of her lost love. Regina tells Zelena she is not at all upset about this, which, anyone who has ever been a woman will tell you, is passive aggressive she-speak for, “I HATE YOU SO MUCH! DIE BITCH DIE!”

Outer appearance

Inner Monologue

However, after head-shrinking sessions with both Snow White (which makes sense) and her thirteen-year old son (which doesn’t make sense at all), Regina learns that she is using anger over The Feather Incident to sublimate her resentment of Zelena over the part she played in Robin’s demise. (Apparently, someone in the writers’ room at Once has been re-reading his Psychology 101 textbook from college . . .)

So, Regina maturely returns home to have it out with Zelena, for realsies, over their many issues with one another. Interestingly enough, Zelena has some beef with Regina too . . . the latter of whom’s literal disavowal of her evil self, having been viewed by her still Wicked sister as a direct betrayal of their shared genetic code for sociopathy.

Ultimately, this results in Zelena and her baby angrily moving out of Regina’s house, and back into her own, where she instantly encounters . . . wait for it . . . The Evil Queen herself! The latter immediately welcomes her fellow twisted sister with a pair of matching alcoholic beverages and plans for world domination.

Now, that’s what I call a party!

Follow That Bird!

In Plot Convenient fashion, Jekyll instantaneously comes up with the idea to fashion a giant vibrator type thing, and use it to disarm Hyde. The problem is that when the time comes to use the darn thing, Emma’s hands are shaking so badly she can barely get her target off. (See what I did there?) Hyde eventually is disarmed though.

“The woman on the box made this look so easy. False advertising, Adam and Eve.com!”

However, before Mr. Pink Eye is carted away to Storybrooke’s one-cell prison, he manages to make some choice comments to Emma about her recently acquired Savior-Syndrome, that make our heroine believe this mutton-chopped villain might be just the cure she is seeking.

When Emma visits Hyde in prison, he instructs her to follow a red bird into the forest, and that bird will lead her to the answers that may or may not cure her gnarly case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Emma does as instructed, and comes upon the Savior’s Executive Assistant from the beginning of the episode. The young girl calls herself an oracle, and shows Emma a longer version of the vision she’s been having throughout out the episode, the one of her engaged in a Matrix-like battle with a dark hooded villain. However, at the end of the vision this time, Emma is disarmed and mortally wounded by her enemy.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The young girl tells Emma that this is her fate, and she cannot change it. But is that true? Are we really destined to lose our series’ main protagonist by series end?

Probably not. Some have speculated that the young girl to which Emma spoke was not the Oracle from the beginning of the episode at all, but rather Jafar in disguise.

This theory is bolstered by the fact that (1) Jafar has been known to pal around with a certain red bird named Iago; (2) to display the vision to Emma the girl used a cane with eyes that looked suspiciously like Jafar’s snake staff; and (3) earlier in the episode, Henry just so happened to mention how villains often twist the truth in a way that will inflict the most harm against heroes.

That said, Emma is probably destined to have a Matrix-like battle with a dark-hooded figure at the end of this season, so Jennifer Morrison should really start working on her karate moves and swordplay . . .

Elsewhere in town, Snow White welcomes all the obscure fairytale characters / homeless people from the exploded blimp to Granny’s for food and shelter, figuring that maybe she can somehow wrangle this into a tax write off. After learning she has less than half a season to live, Emma meets the rest of the cast at Granny’s to perform her mandatory share of soup kitchen duties. Hook once again asks his girlfriend if she is OK, to which she responds, “Absofrigginlutely,” which, anyone who has ever been a woman knows is passive-aggressive she-speak for, “DO I LOOK LIKE I’M OK? MY HAND HAS BEEN SHAKING NONSTOP ALL EPISODE, AND I JUST SPENT THE LAST TWENTY MINUTES TALKING TO A HALLUCINATION IN THE WOODS. WHAT KIND OF IDIOT BOYFRIEND ARE YOU?”

“Lucky for you, my hand isn’t capable of forming a fist anymore.”

And so, the premiere episode of Once ends with Storybrooke’s populating having instantly doubled with increasingly obscure storybook characters just waiting to be bastardized. That means lots more people needing to be “saved.” But what will happen if there is no longer a Savior to save them? Tune in next week, to find out . . . maybe.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME: An Easter Bromance (S5: Ep 15 Recap)

Seriously? What’s up with the hats? Don’t they constantly fall off and into your face, when you are trying to steer? Do a family of parrots live in them?

Take a break from biting the heads off the chocolate bunnies in your Easter Basket to come on a high seas journey, where the water is always choppy, everyone smells like mildew, and no one knows how to steer. But hey, we’ve got brothers with dorky hats and Irish accents. Totally worth the seasickness / possible death by drowning, right?

Happy Easter, Oncers! This week’s installment of Once is all about that special bond that exists between siblings. Brothers . . . can’t live with them, can’t watch them fall feet first into the depths of Hell, while they are still wondering whether you are mad at them for committing mass murder.

So slap on some seriously waterproof guyliner, and pray that your sea legs are working, because this is the wettest episode of Once since that one about Ursula . . .

A Skeleton Crew

Before he had a Hook for a hand and love in his heart for a spunky blonde named Emma Swan, Captain Hook was just a young ship drudge with a funny looking pony tail, a penchant for drinking and gambling, and an older brother he idolized.

Hook’s big bro, Liam, at least initially, seems like an OK enough guy, if maybe a bit snoozy. He keeps trying to save up enough money to pave the way for he and Hook to get passage off the ship of the douchebag for whom they currently work. But Hook keeps pissing away the money on booze and gambling (probably prostitutes too, but the writers won’t tell us that, because this is a family show.)

Imagine the kind of things Christian Grey would do with a Hook for a hand . . .

Just when it seems like the brothers Jones are doomed to spend their lives scraping fish guts off the floor for a living, their douchebag boss goes and does this really stupid thing, where he steers their ship into a really bad hurricane, in the hopes that doing so, will help him find this funny looking blue rock that kind of reminds me of what I imagine hairballs coughed up by Grover from Sesame Street would look like.

 

Apparently, Grover’s Hairball is called The Eye of the Storm, and it’s like, super expensive, or something?

Now, before you say that it is unrealistic to think that people would pay a lot of money to wear Grover’s Hairball as a necklace with matching pair of earrings, remember that we live in a world where people pay hundreds of dollars to drink coffee made from cat poop.

The normally docile, Liam is positively appalled that Douchebag Boss is sending his crew into certain death for the regurgitated fur of a Sesame Street character. He is so, appalled, in fact, that he does something his boring ass would otherwise never do in a million years, otherwise. He stages a mutiny.

Then he proceeds to lead this same crew into the exact same hurricane and the exact same certain death Douchebag Boss did. The only difference is that Liam actually succeeds in killing all of them, (except for his brother), and all so that he can keep Grover’s Hairball all to himself . . .

Allow me to backtrack a bit . . . you see, right when Liam is about to save his new crew, Hades appears on the boat. And this, you have to admit, is kind of weird. I mean, how does Hades always know when someone is on the precipice of making a terrible life choice. Is he like one of those people from the State Farm Insurance Commercials?

 

Like a Good Neighbor, Hades is there! (In Hell . . . shoving a poker up your ass!)

Hades knows that Liam wants, more than anything in the world, to captain his own ship (and wear a funny-looking hat that is home to a family of parrots) with his sexy drunkard brother boozing it up by his side. So, Hades offers Liam a deal: sink this boat, murder everyone on this ship except for your brother, and I’ll give you Grover’s Hairball, so you can use it to captain your own ship.

Well, that sounds like a great deal . . . if you are a terrible human being!

Needless to say, Liam takes the deal. And the next thing you know, all his pesky former crew mates and his Douchebag Boss are dead, and he and Hook are on the way to wearing the funny-looking hats they love so much, thanks to Hades, and, of course, Grover’s Hairball.

You’re welcome!

Liam, of course, tells his little brother nothing of his dastardly deeds. And this means that when Liam dies, Hook is still under the glaring misconception that his big brother is the bee’s knees (when, in fact, he’s the bee’s butthole).

My Brother’s Keeper

Back in present day, Emma is trying to seduce Hook, by magicking away all those ugly zombie wounds he’s been sporting on his face this season. Unfortunately, he’s not that into it. (I guess being mauled by a three-headed dog is not so great for your sex drive.)

Whatever the female equivalent of this is, Emma has it right now . . .

Then, Hook’s brother, Liam, pops by to say hello, and proceeds to take a big giant dump on his and Emma’s relationship. (In Liam’s defense, the closest he’s ever come to a real romantic relationship, was that one time when he made out with Grover’s Hairball, following a long, lonely day at sea.)

“You aren’t good enough for my brother, Hook. Because you turned him into The Dark One, rather than letting him die a hero. And if he died a hero, he’d be in Heaven, right now,” Liam explains. “Also an entire hoard of teens would stop watching the show, because the sexy pirate would be gone.”

When Emma confronts Hook about this, the leather pant wearing stud tells Emma that he is not going back to Earth with Emma, after they defeat Hades. Instead, he’s going to stay in Almost-Hell with his brother. Wow, it looks like someone needs a little blue pill to stave off his Big Libido Problem. Where’s Grover’s Hairball when you need it, and does it come in chewable form?

Devastated, Emma heads to Grannys to see Regina, who is 100% the girlfriend to whom you want to turn if you need Tough Love and for someone to tell you that, yes, those pants do make you look fat, and, no you would never make it past the first round on American Idol. Regina scoffs at the notion that Hook would be too good for someone nicknamed “The Savior.” Nonetheless, she offers her once frenemy, now the potential object of her secret lust (maybe, if this show was on HBO or Showtime), some invaluable advice. “You want Hook to start porking you again, convince him to forgive himself for that half an episode where he acted super evil, and wore even more dark eyeliner than usual!”

In other brotherly news, Prince Charming is forced to masquerade as his eviler (translation: sexier) brother James, in order to hide the fact that he’s been snooping around the latter’s workplace. This results in the Prince having to suck some serious face with Cruella De’Vil (who apparently is dating James?, in order to avoid getting caught. (Hmmm . . . wonder if the two of them do it Doggy Style? Get it “doggy style,” because Cruella . . . nevermind.)

Alas, before things get to the M for Mature rated Fanfiction level of random television character sex matchups, Cruella reveals that she knew it was Charming all along. She also lets slip that James has always been jealous of Charming, because their mother chose to let Charming live with her, be poor, and sleep in sheep poo, while she sent James off to be a rich and famous prince / dragon slayer.

Kids can be so ungrateful sometimes . . .

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

While in the forest searching for the Magic Pen That Will Make Stuff Better, Henry comes across The Sorcerer’s Apprentice aka Dirty Homeless Mickey (Obviously, he’s in the forest because he’s homeless. He also probably eats bugs, and uses leaves for toilet paper.)

Dirty Homeless Mickey says his Unfinished Business is that he died before he got to boss around a teenager as much as he’d like, which is pretty much the most pathetic unfinished business since “Never got to touch Grover’s Hairball.” Dirty Homeless Mickey tells Henry that he can find the Magic Pen That Will Make Stuff Better in the Underworld Version of the Sorcerer’s House, but he totally shouldn’t use it, because if he does, Dirty Homeless Mickey will be doomed to Hell for all Eternity.

(That’s pretty much like telling someone “Don’t touch this red button, or you will get a million dollars every week for the rest of your life, and also the ability to eat all the chocolate you want without ever getting fat.”)

Henry, who totally plans to find and use the Magic Pen That Will Make Stuff Better to un-murder Cruella, and screw over Dirty Homeless Mickey, doesn’t initially tell his family about the Pen’s Existence. He does, however, tell them that that the Sorcerer’s House probably has a Storybook in it (with only pictures and no words, so all the characters can understand it), which will probably inform them of Hades’ origin story / weakness, so they can defeat him.

While the rest of the family is distracted searching for the Book with No Words, Henry uses a little reverse psychology on his moms to get some alone time to run around the house to find the Magic Pen That Will Make Stuff Better.

Meanwhile, after being threatened by Hades that if he doesn’t destroy the pictures of Hades’ Deep Dark Secrets in the Book without Words, he’ll tell Hook about that one time in Ship Camp, when Liam killed all those dudes for a hairball, Liam betrays the Oncers, by destroying all the pages containing pictures of Hades, as instructed.

But then, Emma catches Liam in the act, and confronts him about it, all because Liam didn’t wash his hands after ripping the pages out of the book, and now has ink all over them. Eventually, Hook finds out about Liam’s lie. Also now in the know about Liam’s dirty fingers? The entire crew of men Liam killed, Douchebag Boss included, who all just so happen to be in the Underworld too!

And the moral of this story? Always wash your hands thoroughly after the commission of petty crimes, also before making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Anywhoo, Liam’s crew pushes him to the edges of Hell and wants him to “walk the plank” into it. But then Hades saves him, and forces Douchebag Boss to go to hell instead, which, let’s face it, was probably where he belonged in the first place.

Then, Hades screws up, by threatening to, once again, send Hook to Hell. Obviously, Liam, wracked with guilt over his past misdeeds, is not going to let his little brother die due to his mistakes. And so, he sacrifices himself for his brother, earning his forgiveness just moments before he falls into oblivion . . . onto a really small boat . . . bound for Heaven, which is now where he belongs, because his unfinished business with his baby bro is now finished.

The bad news is that he’s got to ride there with all those people he killed, whose unfinished business was not knowing who was responsible for their deaths. Now they know . . .awkward. Also, the boat has no bathroom, so hopefully the water way trip to Heaven from the underworld is super short.

After making amends with his brother, Hook decides to forgive himself for the fifteen minutes of an episode where he was The Dark One, wore extra guyliner, and acted like a HUGE ASSHOLE. He then reunites with Emma, and tells her that he’s totally worth going to Hell for. (Real modest, that one!) He also agrees to return with Emma to Earth after they defeat Hades.

Then, the pair go upstairs and have amazing sex, because, apparently, seeing your big brother ride on a very small boat to Heaven with a bunch of guys who hate his guts is an excellent aphrodisiac.

Operation: Write Stuff Down

In other news, Henry found his Magic Pen that Makes Stuff Better!

Originally, he was going to use it to doom Homeless Mickey to Hell for All Eternity, but after having a nice little heart-to-heart with his grandpa, he decides to use it to just write stuff down about Hades, in order to defeat him . . . Stuff, which no one will read, because the entire cast is illiterate and only understands picture books.

I for one think the former option would have been the better one. Then again, maybe I just have a thing against dirty homeless Mickey’s. They were constantly stealing my mouse ears, back when I was a kid.

Elsewhere in the underworld, Hades retrieves the supposedly destroyed by Liam pages of the picture book with no words, containing all his Deep Dark Secrets, and stares moonily and a particular drawing of him just inches away from sucking face with the Wicked Witch of the West. Weird . . .

Then again, maybe he just really liked her hat . . .

Until next time, Oncers!

Cross-posted at Happy Nice Time People.com

ONCE UPON A TIME: Sparkly Assholes Unite! (S5 E7 Recap)

“Hey, I know we’re in a rush to save the world from Evil and all, but, you wouldn’t happen to know if there was a porta-potty around here somewhere? Being the Dark One gives you the worst gas ever.”

If there is one thing we’ve learned from watching five seasons of Once, it’s that Assholes aren’t born, they are made. Sure, there may be some people with higher assholey potential than others, who suck just a little bit more than your average human. But if you want to become a 100% Bonafide SUPER Asshole, you are going to have to make some really crappy choices in your lifetime . . . or you could just drink some bad tap water. Same difference.

It’s Origin Story Time, Once-ies. And this week it’s Sexy Merlin’s turn to have a Bad Romance (Trademark c/o Lady Gaga) that results in the Birth of All Things Evil, and also his spending 1,000 years as a tree. And you thought your last breakup was shitty . . .

Let’s review, shall we?

Love Means Never Having to Say Drinking Your 500-Year Old Tap Water Turned Me Into a Fart / Sparkly Asshole

You smell like poor life choices and an eternity of agony.

Once Upon a Time (See what I did there?) Sexy Merlin wasn’t a wizard. He was just some thirsty dude, chilling with a random friend of his, who had the audacity to be older and much less attractive than Merlin. While stomping through the desert, Merlin and his friend find what appears to be a cup filled with some piss warm tap water in it. Less Attractive, Older Friend is very excited about this, being stuck a desert and all, so he immediately drinks from the cup.

P.S. This “cup” just happens to be the Holy Grail. And because the Holy Grail is shallow and narcissistic, it isn’t about to let some not particularly attractive guy become the wizard, who just so happens to be super important to the plot of Season 5 of Once Upon a Time. So instead, the Holy Grail decides to turn Less Attractive, Older Friend into a fart . . . and not even a cool purple fart, like we’ve seen on this show in the past, or a sexy black fart, like the one Dark Emma occasionally turns into this season. This is a plain old grey fart fit for unattractive older folks.

https://www.whipclip.com/embed/k7y69/?pid=happynicetimepeople

Merlin is momentarily bummed about the whole “my best friend is now a fart” thing, but not bummed enough not to drink from the same cup that just killed his friend. (Oh the benefits of knowing that you are sexy, and, therefore, destined to lead a charmed life.)

Not only does Merlin not turn into a fart from drinking the tap water, it makes him immortal, so he never has to worry about becoming older, or fatter, or unattractive like his dearly departed pal. Also, he doesn’t have to hang out in the desert anymore, because it’s magically been converted into a forest.

Fast forward to a few hundred years later, when Merlin meets a hot chick named Nimue, and falls in love for the first time ever. (Yeah, because we are supposed to believe that a guy who looks like THAT kept it in his pants for half a millennium, saving himself for “the right one.”)

“Hello, Sexy Merlin, please take my flower . . . and yes, I absolutely intended that as an ABC-approved euphemism for sex.”

Though Nimue is excited about having a new hot boyfriend to whom she can give her flower (wink, wink), she’s kind of bummed that some bad guy (named Vortigan? Gorgonzola? Probably Vortigan, because Gorgonzola is a type of cheese . . .) torched her village, while looking for some cup. I smell foreshadowing . . . I also smell cheese, possibly Gorgonzola cheese.

Merlin eventually proposes to Nimue, but not before he tells her he’s a wizard, whose perpetually young and sexy. “But it’s gotten boring being so much better looking than everyone else all the time,” Merlin explains. “So I’m going to turn the Holy Grail into a sword, and use it to cut off my wizardly sexiness, so you and I can grow old, decrepit and ugly together. Sound like a plan?”

“Silly boy,” Nimue responds. “You think I like you for your personality? Why go through all the trouble of making a sword to unsexy and unmagic yourself on my account, when I can just drink the 500-year old tap water and become forever sexy and magical too.”

“What you are saying right now, kind of makes me think you have the potential to be not such a good person,” Merlin muses. “And seeing as how I’m a 500-year old virgin, being not such a good person is kind of a deal breaker for me. But I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you correctly, because it is absolutely essential to the plot that my having the audacity to actually want to get laid after 500-years of monk-like celibacy inevitably brings about all the evil on the planet.”

“Cool, let’s go find the Holy Grail so I can drink from it and be hot forever . . . er, I mean, so you can make that sword thingy,” Nimue says, as the two head to the ruins of Nimue’s old village, where the Holy Grail, and it’s clearly contaminated, never evaporating, has the ability to turn old ugly people into farts, water is hiding.

Nimue drinks the tap water, while Merlin is distracted by shiny objects, but doesn’t tell him about it, so he forges Excalibur using the Holy Grail, the gross tap water, and the “Flames of Prometheus.” to cut the sexy right off of himself.

Evil Gorgonzola (it just sounds better than Vortigan, so I’m sticking with it), however, wants Merlin to stay sexy just as much as Nimue and us fans do, so he appears to stop Merlin from self-mutilating and steal Excalibur. A fracas ensues, and Nimue gets caught in the crossfire, or should I say the cross-stabbing. It’s all very dramatic and tragic seeming . . .

https://www.whipclip.com/embed/k8113/?pid=happynicetimepeople

But then Nimue pops up and is all, “Just kidding! I’m too sexy for this stab wound, and for dying, because I’m immortal now, just like you”

She then crushes the heart of Evil Gorgonzola, thereby making him more like grated cheese.

Nimue’s punishment for making grated cheese out of Evil Gorgonzola is that she now has to be a sparkly asshole for all of eternity. She also loses most of her awesome hair. But her eyebrows are more normal looking than Evil Emma’s, so at least there is that . . .

Nimue doesn’t want to be the only one who has to spend an eternity being unsexy, so she breaks Excalibur, thereby creating the Dark One sword. She also turns Merlin into a tree . . .

And the rest, as they say is history. . .

You can check out the rest of this recap HERE. . .

ONCE UPON A TIME: Merlin = Sexiest Tree Ever (S5 E5 RECAP)

Merlin . . . making trees everywhere super jealous . . .

This week on Once, we learned that, if you betray your family members and wave your hands around erratically, you too can transform a tree into a hot person! Speaking of learning, young Henry discovered that there is no place in the world that is darker than the dreaded Friend Zone. Also this week, Rumpel found inspiration in his dishware. Plus, the dreamcatcher industry got a ton of free advertising, courtesy of ABC.

Let’s review, shall we?

You Got Tree-d!

Once upon a time, there was a sexy sorcerer named Merlin, who cried on his sword about a lost girlfriend vanquished by the Dark One. So, the Dark One used that sword and that tear to turn him into a tree, because turning him into a vegetable seemed too “on the nose.”

“Hey, we resemble that remark!”

Speaking of “on the nose,” Emma learns this piece of information about Merlin by staring into his dreamcatcher. Apparently, dreamcatchers not only catch your dreams, but also all that other crap rolling around your head at any given time. Pretty scary, right? Remind me to wrap my head in tinfoil next time I’m around one of these dreamcatchers, because that will totally protect my brain from their nosiness. Tinfoil keeps out everything!

Other things Emma learned from staring at her dreamcatcher: how King Arthur turned her parents into Stepford Doofuses!

Emma freezes her Stepford Doofus-ized parents right before they take the Dark One sword from Regina in order to relay these important pieces of information to the erstwhile Evil Queen.

Regina and Emma decide together that, since a tear over lost love was the ingredient that tree-d Merlin, a similar tear from someone else (mixed with some of Emma’s dark magic, naturally) will un-tree him!

“Hey, remember that time your mom murdered your boyfriend right in front of you? I bet that will make you cry!” Emma offers to Regina.

So, Emma and Regina relive the flashback from the episode during which Cora kills Regina’s first love Daniel, and, as it was designed to do, it makes Regina cry. But it also gives Emma some insight into Regina’s inner asshole. “Man, that sucked!” Emma exclaims sympathetically, as she puts the offending dreamcatcher back on the table. “No wonder you were such a raging bitch for the first two seasons of the show, before the writers decided to randomly make you into an overall nice person who’s just a little bit snarky sometimes.”

But alas, Regina’s tears aren’t enough to un-tree Hot Merlin. “I guess the brutal and traumatic death of a character that only appeared in two episodes isn’t sad enough,” Emma reasons. “Especially now that you have a new boyfriend. Because, on this show, only current love interests matter, and everyone else can go to hell . . . which, by the way, is probably where your boyfriend Daniel is, after he was turned into Frankenstein’s monster and killed all those people.”

“OK, so, whose love story is sad enough to untree Merlin?” Regina wonders.

“I’m thinking the rejection of a thirteen-year-old boy by a thirteen-year-old girl he met two days ago and thinks is kind of attractive,” Emma responds.

“Seriously? A tweenage crush gone sour? Did you forget that my mother MURDERED THE MAN I WAS GOING TO MARRY WHILE I WATCHED?” Regina asks incredulously.

“Yeah, but that was like a long time ago, and, like I said, you have a new boyfriend now, so suck it up and get over it, because this ridiculousness is needed for the plot,” Emma answers insistently.

Emma Gets Her Tear

When Henry’s new love interest’s father catches Henry pining over Violet in Camelot, he tells the poor kid, in no uncertain terms, that he disapproves of the courtship. “My daughter needs to marry a knight so he can die at a ridiculously young age on the battlefield and leave her to care for the twelve kids he and she dutifully popped out during the two years they managed to be married before his death. It’s the Medieval Dream! You, modern-day wimpy boy, who will probably live to a ripe old age and only impregnate my daughter 2 or 3 times tops, are simply not marriage material.”

“I want to learn to be a knight so I can die at a young age, after I marry Violet and turn her into a breeding mare,” Henry explains to his moms, Regina and Emma.

“You? A knight?” Emma and Regina snort simultaneously. “She won’t buy it. Better off putting out what works for you . . . like the fact that you live in a modern day world that actually has plumbing, so that your girlfriend will no longer be forced to poop in a chamber pot.”

Inspired, Henry, serves up a modern day date for Violet, complete with candlelight dinner, lasagna, soda, and that same damn song he plays every time he sees her. (Hey, Henry, it’s time to get yourself a Spotify account. They are free now!)

“You seem like a cool enough guy for me to use your bathroom every once in a while, but we are never gonna bone. Sorry!” Violet exclaims, before rushing away.

Henry is devastated by this rejection and rushes to his moms to cry about it. Apparently, these tweenage tears over an unceremonious friend-zoning are way sadder than Regina’s “my fiancé got his heart ripped out of his chest by my mother and died in a puddle at my feet” tears, because Emma uses them, along with some weird dance moves that remind me a bit of the Macarena, to successfully un-tree Merlin.

“Hello, my name is Merlin. And boy are my arms tired from holding them upward in tree pose for a million years. Also, I’m sexy. I’m too sexy for the tree I used to be. Any questions?” Merlin asks.

“Do you like my cool cape? It came with the tree!”

“Yeah, can you suck the asshole out of me?” Emma inquires hopefully.

“Do you really want the asshole sucked out of you?” Merlin responds.

And, although the answer would seem to be super obvious, it’s to be continued, because we have to check up on the present day portion of this story . . .

You can check out the rest of this recap HERE.

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.

Maid Marion Gets a Makeover – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Heart of Gold”

You are what you steal. If this episode of Once taught us anything, it’s probably that.

From the time that we’re little, all of us are told to be good. Be kind. Don’t break the Ten Commandments, and such.

But are there times when the end justifies the means . . . loopholes where you can accomplish deeds traditionally seen as “bad” or “wrong” and yet still be able to look at yourself in the mirror each day and say, “I’m a good person?”

Maybe . . .

There sure was a lot of stealing going on in this episode, some for “moral,” “honorable” purposes, others for ridiculous, psychotic evil purposes. There were the tangible things like bottles of magical juice, both real and fake, money, a wallet, rent-controlled apartments. And then there were the less tangible things: a heart, a happy ending, the life of another, the face of another?

Confused? Perhaps, I should backtrack a bit . . .

Worst Chase Scene Ever . . .

Let me pose a scenario for you. You have a middle-aged, not particularly athletic-looking, alcoholic writer type running through the woods . . . well, actually it’s more like a leisurely, albeit slightly asthmatic jog. This gentleman is being pursued by two opposing parties.

Party One consists of a former thief and expert marksman, a kickass bail bondsman (who also happens to be a former thief), a dragon-slaying prince, and a swashbuckling pirate, all in their late twenties and relatively physically fit.

Party Two consists of a kind of rough-looking late 50-something guy who walks with a cane and occasionally, when it is convenient for the plot, has a severe limp.

So, how do you think this is going to go? Here are the three options:

1. Middle-aged, out-of-shape writer bests them all and gets away
2. Party One tackles his ass
3. Party Two limps his way to victory

If you chose answer (b) like a logical person or answer (a) like a slightly less logical person with a flare for the creative, you clearly have not been watching this show for a long enough time.

Rumpel wins this round, as we all knew he would, easily overtaking the Author, while Snow and Charming continue to fail miserably at every aspect of life that doesn’t involve “Twue Wuv” and Emma once again proves herself to be the worst bail bondsman ever.

Rumpel finds the Author attempting to slice some wood off a tree and use it to literally write himself out of the mess he’s gotten himself into. There’s only one problem. Apparently authors of fairytales can only write with quills from the Enchanted Forest, and Storybrooke’s forest is just a boring old forest whose only enchantment is the occasional Gypsy Moth problem . . .

Fortunately, Rumpel has a magical pen for the Author to borrow . . .

Unfortunately, he wants him to use it to turn Emma into an Asshole and give all the other Assholes in this story the happy endings they don’t deserve . . .

Ruh roh . . .

Still feeling high from his victory, Rumpel visits Regina in her lair to taunt her with a napkin Robin Hood used to scribble his digits for Regina. People who don’t use modern technology are so precious . . . except when they’re the Unibomber . . . or cultists.

Regina looks longingly at her cell phone into which Robin’s number has been dutifully entered. Should she call it? Wait for him to call her? Send a text with vaguely sexual innuendo-laden emoticons?

As she ponders this age-old question, we flash back to the not-so-distant past . . .

You can check out the rest of this recap HERE.

Bad Girls Club – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town”

Who’s the evilest of them all? Three new contenders for the crown arrive in Storybrooke, but the true winner is someone you’d never expect…unless you saw the promos