DISNEY POC »

Once Upon a Time is not a series that I am at all in love with, but it’s one I can’t hate either. It has potential to be something great, but it doesn't try. On average, I think it’s an interesting take on Fairy Tale characters that has a marginally entertaining first season. But, like most concept series, it suffers from egregious problems in regards to pace, narrative and character development.

I can say this is true of both seasons, but the one thing I cannot blame S1 for is a lack of a goal. It knew where it wanted to go and what it wanted to do with the characters, however clumsily it got to that place. I could tell you what season one was about in a single sentence: “The Evil Queen of Snow White creates a curse that strands famous Fairy Tale in our world to achieve her happy ending”. There’s more to it, but that alone would spark interest in someone and get them to watch it.

Season two, on the other hand? It’s probably the finest example sequelitis and too much creative freedom without someone to rein it in with a leash and bullwhip. You cannot sum this shit up in a single sentence because that sentence loses its train of thought and runs through a field like Spaz of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 on a sugar rush. It is the epitome of the George Lucas Syndrome: all quantity, no quality and squandered ideas.

• I don’t want to see what they do to emphasize being “native” because it will probably be offensive.


• I don’t want to see how they either (mis)handle or eliminate religion from her story, because as is, FTL’s polytheism exists solely to heighten the (implicitly Judeo-Christian) audience’s sense of ‘barbarity’. I’m not here for being called a heathen, a barbarian, rudimentary, unevolved, or primitive. Or any of the other words that seem inevitably to crop up when talking about polytheism, regardless of if it’s my heritage or not.*


• I really don’t want to watch her die.


• I don’t want to watch the fandom-at-large immediately hate on her for whatever reason they come up with.


• I don’t want her story—which matters—to be dealt with in a half-assed forty-three minutes which will really only be a fraction of that, because everybody knows Snowing will have to fucking find each other.


• I’m not about to tolerate another WOC’s story being hijacked to tell a white chick’s story of self-actualization. I was so unprepared for what they did to Mulan; I cannot tolerate it again.

“The Doctor” – While Regina continues to try and stop using her magic in an attempt to win back Henry’s affections, she begins seeing what she believes is a ghost from her past; and when Mary Margaret and Emma discover a lone survivor from an ogre massacre, Emma begins to question whether or not he’s telling the truth. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, Regina finds herself failing at learning the dark arts from a dark master because something from her past is preventing her from using her magic for evil, on “Once Upon a Time,” SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.