Once Upon a Time - "Lost Girl" - Review

Intro

I just wanted to say that I'm getting sick. Please excuse any errors in this blog post because my brain's a bit frazzled. Thank you.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen Once Upon a Time, Season 3, Episode 2: "Lost Girl," Please leave the blog, watch it, and return to read my review. I'm always horrible at leaving out spoilers because I believe you can't actually discuss an episode properly unless you discuss all of it, including the spoiler-y parts.

You can view "Lost Girl" and the previous episode at watchabc.go.com

Once Upon a Time - "Lost Girl" - Review

Characters:

• Emma Swan - Played by Jennifer Morrison. Daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White. Birth Mother of Henry Mills. Product of True Love. "The Savior."
• Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold - Played by Robert Carlyle. Father of Baelfire. Mentor of Regina Mills. The Dark One.
• Regina Mills - Played by Lana Parrilla. Mother of Henry Mills. Step-Mother of Snow White. The Evil Queen.
• Prince Charming/David Nolan - Played by Josh Dallas. Father of Emma Swan. Husband of Snow White.
• Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard - Played by Ginnifer Goodwin. Mother of Emma Swan. Wife of Prince Charming. Step-Daughter of Regina Mills.
• Henry Mills - Played by Jared Gilmore. Son of Emma Swan, Baelfire, and Regina Mills. The Truest Believer.
• Captain Killian "Hook" Jones - Played by Colin O'Donoghue. Pirate.
• Peter Pan - Played by Robbie Kay. Big Bad of Wonderland.
• Belle/Lacey - Played by Emilie de Ravin. Rumplestiltskin's True Love. Currently in Storybrooke.

Review:

"Lost Girl" was essentially an episode about the characters, mainly Emma, Rumple, and Snow, finding and accepting all of themselves. Emma had to admit and accept that she was and still feels like an orphan. Snow White, in flashback, had to figure out that she had the strength to lead within her. Rumple had to accept his own cowardice as part of him and let go of the fear that he would choose to save himself instead of Henry. Apparently that didn't work so well for Rumple, as evidenced by the doll his father gave him not going away. He hasn't truly accepted himself, I don't think.

Now that we've gone over the over-arcing theme of the episode, we're going to delve into some detail. We're going to start with Regina. I really used to love Regina. She was such a delightfully evil villain with a softer side that was apparent mostly through flashback. However, last Season I lost some of my Regina love. It seemed to me like Regina had been put under a mind-controlling spell by her mother. However, that turned out not to be the case. I found it jarring and ridiculous. This Season, Regina seems to be mostly made of snide, complaining remarks. She doesn't even try to cooperate with the group, though granted, they did try to kill her a few times and she them. However, in "Lost Girl," Regina's stubbornness to just use magic and get things over with almost cost everyone their lives. I really hope she gets something redeeming to do because this complaining is getting on my nerves.

Peter Pan's riddle-thing with Emma worked pretty much like I thought it would. I wasn't expecting her admission to have anything to do with her orphaned status, but it wasn't out of character. I had thought that her rather gung-ho attitude toward her parents last Season was handled roughly so I'm glad we got this instead of something else. The scene between Emma and Snow actually made me cry.

The Rumple scenes were interesting, but mostly served as filler, I thought. It was kind of cool that he conjured Belle to act as a sounding board for himself. It was also cool that he cut off his shadow and sent it away with the dagger. And then there was the doll and his repeated attempts to get rid of it. I believe Rumple missed the point of what he talked about with Belle. He can admit all he wants that he's a coward and he's afraid of what that means in terms of Henry, but he still hasn't accepted that as part of who he is.

The flashback storyline left me with a bad taste in my mouth, to tell the truth. Regina was stunning in her first two outfits and largely on form for Enchanted Forest Evil Queen. It was a nice surprise to see the Magic Mirror again. And then there was the manipulation of Snow White. I did not like David at all during the flashback. I was agreeing with the dwarves, for the most part, except that what David wanted wasn't gold or the kingdom, it was the adventure and the battles that came with taking back the kingdom. We saw that sort of thing show up last Season when he wanted to return to The Enchanted Forest and battle ogres and whatnot. I did not like that he manipulated Snow and though he was sort of right, I also didn't like that she just forgave him right away. It did not sit well with me, regardless of what we know to be the ultimate outcome.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Regina's referring to Henry as her son again, so that was nice.
• Hook amuses me, though I don't like that he's making passes at Emma.
• Dreamshade is an interesting concept, I'm sort of looking forward to seeing how it works exactly.
• It was cool to see the Dwarves looking out for Snow like big brothers, as David put it.
• Not sure Pan's threats are going to end up coming to fruition, though in David's case, they probably will.
• David is still a moron.

Favorite Line:

"I'm winning you over, I can feel it." - Hook

Extras:

Not your traditional link-type extra today, I'm afraid. I want to talk about something that's actually been bugging me: The Line of Succession in The Enchanted Forest.

Let's forget about Regina's vindictive thing with Snow for the moment, that's important.

Lines of Succession, at least in our world, usually go from father to eldest son and then to the son's offspring. Sometimes, it goes from king to king's brother. Of course, that's working with the most simplistic model, but it'll do for what I've got going on in my head.

King Leopold and Queen Eva have Snow White. Queen Eva dies, no one inherits because King Leopold is still alive. King Leopold marries Regina, who is technically in line for the throne anyway due to Cora marrying Prince Henry, who was fifth in line for the throne at the time of their marriage. With me so far?

King Leopold is murdered by Regina's machinations and Regina, as Queen, ascends the throne. Snow would then have to either wait for Regina to die or overthrow her in order to ascend the throne.

So... I guess what bugs me is that Regina had every right to the throne before Snow and Charming overthrew her but Snow and Charming are pretty much saying she has no right to the throne. They're technically wrong, but since Regina is a horrible ruler due to her clear psychosis, no one seems to care about that. This bugs me, but really has no bearing on the show so... yeah... just wanted to get that out there.

Housekeeping

This was a long post, so I'll keep this short. This week we've got 3 shows premiering in addition to the other shows, like Once Upon a Time, that I'm watching and reviewing. If you're interested in what those are and when you can expect reviews, check out my "Fall Schedule" page up in the navigation bar.

Let me know what you thought of this week's Once Upon a Time in the comments below and have a great day.

Love ya, Jessie

Lost Girl

Okay so... I've managed to watch all of the first two seasons of Lost Girl in less than a month. Yes, I know, I have no life. However, this means that I'm fully qualified to give you a review of these first two seasons. As per usual, there will be SPOILERS, especially since I'm talking about two seasons here. If that's not okay with you... just go watch it and then come back.

Lost Girl - Seasons 1 and 2 - Review

For those who don't know, Lost Girl is a supernatural-based series about a succubus and her super-strange life. The succubus is Bo, damaged by her unexplained powers and life as a runaway. She meets up and comes to live with human Kenzi. The girls start a PI thing together in order to make money. Which is... almost predictable. Isn't it always the main character coming into a convenient new job or starting their own PI thing? Of course, with the PI thing comes a contact with the police. In this case, we actually got two: Dyson and Hale. Werewolf and Siren respectively. And of course everyone needs a place to meet up and so we get The Dal Riata and its barkeeper, Trick. Other side characters include the Ash, leader of the Light Fae; Lauren, human doctor owned by the Ash; Ciara, Dyson's love interest in the second season; Nadia, Lauren's girlfriend; Lachlan, the second Ash; Evony/The Morrigan, leader of the Dark Fae; Ryan, a Dark Fae Loki; and finally Vex, super-powerful Dark Fae mesmer.

I'm really big into character, hence the listing, so if a show can't make me relate to the characters, I'm out. As you might have guessed, though, I really love Lost Girl and therefore must have been hooked by the characters. I think my favorite character of the bunch is Kenzi. She's the point of view character for the audience and really kind of insane. Episodes without Kenzi in them are few and far between, which is good because she's also the comic relief. And believe me, this show needs the comic relief.

A good chunk of first season was "Monster of the Week" with the main point of the season being learning about the characters and the Fae community. Bo and Kenzi come into that world cold, having no idea what's what and how stuff works. They're constantly just as amazed by the "creatures" they meet as we, the viewer, should be. That said, the "Monster of the Week" schtick had me aching for an overall story... which we got toward the end of the season. There was also a lot of "Who's Bo gonna be with this week?" going on... which I found annoying. The girl needed to pick Dyson or Lauren or at least be consistent with who she's attracted to. Gah!

The second season had an actual "Big Bad" in the Garuda... who I thought looked more dragon-like than eagle-like despite the constant references to chicken. Bo had less sleeping around to do, which was good, and more ass kicking to get it, also good. She and Ryan teamed up and were awesome for the amount of time they had together. Then, we got Bo and Lauren stuff, which I'm incredibly happy about. I just really hope she doesn't go back to flipping between Dyson and Lauren again. I'd go more into the plot except... well... it mostly focused on Lachlan being a giant douche for most of the season and then it turning out he was "testing" Bo... which was crappy. But he turned out... interesting if not completely white-hat at the end.

Lost Girl has more going for it than what I've just outlined here... which admittedly isn't much to go on. The CGI is pretty good and fairly consistent. The action is the usual "we're supernatural creatures so we have to fight hand-to-hand or with blade" kind of awesome. The world is well-fleshed out and makes sense for how the Fae are.

I really love Lost Girl and hope you'll give it a chance. As of right now, the third season is airing in the States on SyFy and the first two seasons are available on Netflix. I'm assuming they're also out on DVD by now so... yeah. Go watch it, it's cool.

Housekeeping

Before anyone asks, I have no idea whether or not I'm going to catch up with Lost Girl for this season. I haven't decided yet. I also just started watching Red Dwarf again so... yeah... my time's being pretty well-filled with what I've got already.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully be able to watch Arrow and Supernatural and will hopefully have up some Initial Reactions for those. Again, not making any promises. What happened last time had definitely made me promise-shy.

Love ya, Jessie