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.

Writing Wrongs – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Best Laid Plans”

Fiction writers wield a great power over the characters in the stories they create. These characters’ happiness, their futures, their entire ability to continue existing, rests at their writers’ fingertips. Consequently, the relationship between an author and his or her characters is one built on trust.

The best writers learn to listen to their characters . . . allowing these fictional, but very real-seeming, individuals to dictate their own stories in ways that feel most true to them. And when an author fails to heed the true intentions of one of its characters, that character won’t be shy about letting the author know exactly how she feels about the decisions made on her behalf.

Show me the fiction writer who claims never to have been slapped around a few times by one of her characters, and I’ll show you a liar . . .

Once Upon a Time has always spent a lot of hot air debating the nature of good and evil. The characters who make the “right” choices are considered “good” and are rewarded. The characters who make the “wrong” choices are considered evil and are pooped upon . . .

But what happens when a character wants to make the right choice and her author takes that choice away from her in order to tell a “better” story?

This week, Once was all about the battles characters engage in daily with their unseen authors. It featured good characters being bad, and bad characters trying to be good . . . also unicorns . . .

. . . dragon eggs, and some guy named Walt . . .

Let’s review, shall we?

You can check out the rest of this recap HERE!

The Kids Are Not All Right – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Unforgiven”

“So, Snow White gets to keep two kids and a hot husband, and I get nothing but a funny-looking hat and little blue balls.”

When people say, “Love makes you do crazy things,” they tend to be talking about romantic love . . . the kind of love that gives you butterflies in your tummy, a warm gooey feeling in your heart, and that awkward tingly sensation in your pants.

But what about the love a parent feels for his or her child? The kind of love that only develops when a little tiny human enters your world and, at least for the first two or three years of its life, is totally and completely vulnerable, relying on you for even the simplest of life’s necessities, including pooping.

If romantic love can make you do crazy things, well then that kind of love should have the power to render you damn near psychotic.

This week’s installment of Once was all about the great lengths parents will go to shield their little ones from darkness . . . even if that darkness happens to be coming directly from the parents themselves.

Also this week on Once . . .

. . . everybody gets away with lying to Emma, whose bullsh*t-detecting magical power seems to have been on the fritz ever since she started dating the flying monkey back in Season 2.

Alcoholism… making ugly flying monkeys look like Captain Hook since the beginning of time…

. . . Belle gets a little tongue action from someone whose name most certainly does not rhyme with Bumplebiltskin.

. . . Snow and Charming act shady and start (or continue, depending on how you look at it) sucking at life.

. . . and a plot is hatched for Regina to infiltrate Regina George’s Army of Skanks Maleficent’s Queens of Darkness, thereby indicating that I’ve been genuinely onto something with all my shameless Mean Girls references this season. (Never pegged the Evil Queen as a Cady Heron though . . .)

“You’re like really pretty.”

Let’s review, shall we?

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

Happily Ever Asshole – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Shattered Sight”

Last week on Once, in the final seconds of the episode, the moment we’d been waiting for all season finally arrived.

The Snow Queen’s wacky plan worked! She broke that mirror. (Seven years bad luck for her!) Then, glass got into the eyes of everyone in Storybrooke and promptly turned them all into a bunch of raving assholes. (Granted, a lot of them were already assholes, but this spell kind of made it like official?)

Now, Emma and Elsa are in race against time (and assholes) to defeat the Evil Snow Queen and put an end to the Shattered Sight Spell before everybody DIIIIIEEEEEES!

No pressure, right?

So put on your safety goggles and get nice and comfortable, because it is ASSHOLE TIME!

You can check out the rest of this recap here.

The Wishy Washy Wishing Star – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Fall”

Still suffering from a tryptophan-induced post-Thanksgiving food coma? This kind of fillery pre-cursor to the important episode action-packed installment of everybody’s favorite show guest-starring those wacky kids from Frozen has just what you need to wake you right out of your Turkey Hangover.

It has snappy one liners . . .

Hot people tearfully kissing . . .

Magical hats that vacuum up the show’s most obnoxious characters . . .

And certain-death situations from which people get rescued at the last possible second for no other reason than that they are just so gosh darn cute and because Disney has contractually required that they survive at least until Frozen 2: Electric Boogaloo. . .

Also, we learned valuable lessons about the temperamental nature of magical jewelry and the importance of wearing safety goggles.

Yes, I’m talking about safety goggles. You know, those hideous clear plastic boxes you wore in your high school chemistry class? The ones that made even your most attractive classmates look positively ridiculous and left tell-tale pink raccoon circles around your eyes for hours after you took them off?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure those things would have been much more effective in protecting the sweet residents of Storybrooke from the spell of “Falling Glass That Gets in Your Eyes and Makes You an Asshole” than basically anything the cast did during this episode to try to protect themselves.

But hey, let’s be honest. We didn’t really want our heroes to win this time, did we? After all, nothing says good TV like an asshole Snow White and a douchey Prince Charming ripping one another to shreds.

I’m getting ahead of myself again, aren’t I? Let’s review.

You can check out the rest of this recap here.

To Thine Own Self Be True – A Recap of Once Upon a Time’s “Smash the Mirror”

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius said these iconic words to his son Laertes on the eve of the latter’s trip to Paris to warn him not to go slutting it up with the local Parisian lassies while on holiday. He could be a bit uptight sometimes, that Polonius.

Nowadays, these words are commonly evoked to mean something a bit less . . . celibate. They are about self-acceptance, self-love, self-understanding, and all that other mushy gushy “self” stuff. They are about embracing your flaws and weaknesses with as much passion as you do your strengths and gifts. These words are Dr. Phil: Twitter Edition, basically.

Coincidentally, this famous phrase also just so happens to be the theme of this week’s Super-Sized Edition of Once Upon a Time. Love yourself . . .

. . . even if you have a habit of shooting firebolts out of you fingertips, which occasionally turn your son into a human rocket launcher . . .

. . . or you have a really bad snow dandruff problem, and only own one smelly dress . . .

. . .or if you have the worst haircut in the history of bad haircuts . . .

. . . or you are an Evil Queen with a penchant for boning married dudes in mausoleums . . .

. . . or you’re a popsicle . . .

“Hey, anyone got a tissue? Or an ice scraper?”

. . . or you have a delusion that two women who look and are young enough to be your daughters are actually your “sisters” . . .

Love yourself, in spite of all these things, or better yet, because of them.

Because, if you don’t, you can be sure as hell that nobody else will . . .

Let’s review, shall we?

To check out the rest of this jumbo-sized, snarktastic recap, click here.