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Once Upon a Time S02E14: "Manhattan"

Oh Once Upon a Time, what are you doing to me? Like a fickle, chain-smoking French girlfriend in a black and white movie, you drive me mad with love and frustration. This was obviously an important milestone episode, and it set up a clear-cut and nicely conflicted trajectory for all the major characters, and yet why do I feel we should have landed here, on this excellent episode, in the middle of Season 1? Should it really have taken us all a full two seasons to reveal that Henry's dad was Mr. Gold's son—something you commenters and myself have been discussing as a given since about four episodes after the series premiere.

As many strides forward as we made last night (Henry met his dad! Mr. Gold found his wee Bae! Cora got a blowout and a pantsuit!), you just KNOW we're going to spend the next few weeks finding out, like, why Smee's hat means so much to him or why Tinkerbell has allergies or whatever. Again, like a fickle French movie girlfriend OUAT gives you one magical night you'll never forget interspaced with three weeks of sighing in a corner, writing slam poetry about her dad and ashing into a Mountain Dew bottle.

But I'm digressing. Let's celebrate OUAT at its best and most ridiculous, because it was both last night, starting with the line, "My weaving days are behind us!" when Rumplestiltskin came barging into his own house with an exquisitely calligraphy'd draft notice. LOL, he was like, a weaver for realz before he became magical. Mila, learning that her beloved husband had been called to the front, immediately started worrying that he'd act like a coward on the battlefield. Because Rumple's dad was a coward? Are cowards still a thing? Certainly in this day and time we'd interpret "coward" differently than someone who, say, didn't want to bare-knuckle fight a herd of ogres, and our cultural model for masculinity has more to do with avoiding adult responsibilities than embracing them yeah, even unto death, but whatever. To follow Young Rumple's thread (LOL he did not look a day younger in the flashbacks, they don't do shit for age makeup for guys because no one calls guys out on aging the way they do with women, haha I am going to have a face full of plastic in another 15 years and it's all society's fault), he excitedly got dressed up in a chainmail gown and went to the front and then got spooked by a Seer.

I know one thing this Seer saw for sure, and that is Pan's Labyrinth. Look at this blatantly ripped off character design! Good God, subtlety zero, you effing image plagiarists! ABC better hope and pray that Guillermo del Toro's lawyers don't watch OUAT because as far as I know Esperanto films isn't a Disney property.

Anyway, Rumple was so spooked at the idea of abandoning his wee baby that he pulverized his own leg with a sledgehammer and then rolled around screaming in pain as only Robert Carlyle can. Hey, Carlyle, we know you're a for-real actor but this is basically a children's show. Maybe tone it down a little? Yikes.

It got really long and awkward and raw, and then he limped home to find out that his child had been born, but Mila had heard about his cowardly ways and, much like Jane Fonda in Coming Home, it turned her way off. Instead of being glad her hubs was alive and well, she plopped the kiddo in his arms and headed out to find some new dick, which as we already knew would arrive aboard some tailored leather pants.

In Storybrooke, those same exact leather pants were making tracks around town as Hook refused to modernize his wardrobe. While Cora had picked up a copy of Glamour magazine and gotten herself on-trend, Hook was still rocking the guyliner, lacy cuffs, and slouchy boots of a true cosplay maniac. He, Regina, and Cora spent the episode basically twirling their mustaches and looking for Rumple's dagger so they could use the Dark One to kill all the Charmings. Sure, that's a fair-enough conflict, although by far the evil-est thing Regina did last night was go through Belle's purse.

The crime would have been the punishment if she had tried that with my purse, such a whirlwind of lint and small change and yes, a smattering of boxcutter blades. I absolutely loved the reveal that sneaky, morally ambiguous Ethan Embry had caught a video of this on his phone, though of course with the special effects and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns popular today he'll have a hell of a time convincing people it's not just a viral video tampon commercial.

Anyway, now that we're 700+ words in, it's time to get to the real meat of the story, namely that Emma found Mr. Gold's son and learned he was also the car-stealing shower thief she'd had unprotected fun times with all those years ago. The element of surprise was not present, because this was something we'd all predicted and yes, even started to take for granted in our predictions for the season. But the show still gave the moment a huge music sting like it'd BLOWN OUR MINDS. No, no we knew this was coming from way back, but the meeting of Emma and Bae and the reveal to the characters was handled in a completely gratifying way, if only because of Jennifer Morrison's performance.

Emma seemed legitimately shocked and horrified and happy to see her old flame, and the two actors across from each other in the bar made an implausible scene one of my favorite moments of this season to date. Seriously, all praise is due the actors in this case because some of the lines they had to say in a stricken tone of voice included "Your father Rumplestiltskin," and "You left me because Pinocchio told you to?!" and no lie, that is not easy. Try saying either of those lines, right now, with a straight face.

Still, they really pulled it off and I loved how Bae called Emma out on still wearing his keychain, and she had the perfect response, that it reminds her not to trust people BURRRN. Less successful was the reveal of what August had in his plot-spackle box that convinced Bae to abandon the love of his life to jail.

Like, what? Writers, why are you so hideously lazy? That August couldn't just have said this sentence aloud is the first thing wrong with this picture (anyone overhearing someone say "I know you're Baelfire" in an alley would immediately think, "These tranny hookers and their stage names!" and roll over and go back to sleep). Secondly, to see that sentence and then have absolutely no follow-up questions, as you will remember from the episode, is mind-boggling. Also, what does August knowing he's Baelfire have to do with August knowing what's best for Emma? None of that makes a whit of sense. Plot coupon NOT redeemed. Plot coupon EXPIRED. Take that plot coupon and get out of my store.

It was touching that Bae had kept Emma's dreamcatcher out of love for her all these years (cause he sure didn't keep it because it looks cool), and I loved when she reacted to it after a little B & E with Gold, and that Gold immediately confronted her on knowing more than she was saying about Bae. And then of course the climactic scene of Bae coming in and Mr. Gold being all warm but sad at the same time and big feelings looming between Emma and Bae and suddenly Henry came in and Bae was all, tears in his eyes, "How old are you, kid?" and suddenly Henry started shrieking "ELEVEN!!! ELEVEN Y'ALL MOTHERF-CKERS AAAHHHHH I HATE Y'ALL SO MUCH!!!" Like, take two kid, take two, maybe try that with a touch less rage. What was the direction there? "In this scene, Henry, you're just so confused and so riled up you just start screeching like a banshee. I want the people two sets down to hear you scream 'Eleven'. Then you calmly walk over to the window and hop out."

I'm going to skip over pointing out that Manhattan was green-screened behind them because it's apparently more expensive to recreate than a legit enchanted forest and talk about how gray and heartbroken Emma looked when Henry said she was just like Regina, who had always lied to him. Emma take heart, Henry is a master emotional manipulator who punches holes in Regina's ego as a hobby, so don't take him too seriously. Also, I can kind of see Emma's logic in concealing her past from Henry because OMG, is her backstory with Bae seedy. He framed her for stealing watches! Emma went to jail for stealing watches! Like, watches!? Something about that is just so embarrassingly smalltime. Couldn't the booty at least have been like a nice painting? Something a little classier? No wonder she wanted Henry to believe he was the product of a pity-sex sesh with a firefighter.

While Emma patiently endured a tongue-lashing from an 11-year-old, Bae and Gold had a tete-a-tete in which Bae got really touchy about that one time Rumple let him fall through a portal into the modern world (and presumably a life of embarrassingly smalltime crime). How could he ever, ever forgive his dad for abandoning him?! Except, isn't that exactly what he did to Emma? Totally abandoned her to jail and a broken heart for um, 11 years?

There was a lot of talk this episode about abandoning your child, which literally every character on this show has done (EXCEPT Cora and Regina, who are admirably ride-or-die for their kids), and of fate. I'd like (begin rant here) to point out that sometimes the feeling of "fate"—that you're fated to love someone, or succumb to some kind of morally questionable path—isn't so much the inexorable pull of destiny as being caught up in a destructive compulsive behavior cycle, of modeling the behaviors of your parents subconsciously, even if you consciously don't approve of them. Sure, it feels big and bigger than you and written in the stars, but it's actually just written in your brain chemistry. That Emma was abandoned as a baby and was drawn overwhelmingly to a man who would abandon her and her baby isn't fate, it's psychology. That Bae is angry at his own father for abandoning him but just found out he has a kid shows is really self-contradictory. Basically every good guy on this show needs to pull their nose out of their own ass and forget how hurt they are and worry about not passing their ill behavior to their own kids—which in everyone's case is ultimately Henry. Snow made this point herself on the phone to Emma before suggesting to Charming that everyone being related might "mellow everyone out." Optimistic! Didn't seem to work the last time you were all living in the same pointy house, tho. And who taught you the word mellow?

Suffice it to say, this was a waaay important—if not-at-all surprising—episode, and while there were plenty of ridiculous elements it was definitely one of the good ones. And if the show would just build off the momentum of this episode we could have a really stunning series to look forward to every week, but I feel like OUAT is fated to focus on filler.

QUESTIONS:

1. Have you ever found yourself in a relationship with someone and realized they were almost exactly like your mom or your dad?

2. How long ago did you figure out that Bae was Henry's dad?

3. Emma concealing the truth from Henry: unforgivable or the sensible thing to do?

4. Did August's typewriter reveal make you furious?

5. Will Gold try to kill Henry?

6. WTF how did Charming not realize people have more than one grandpa? What do you think he would score on the SATs?

7. What is Ethan Embry up to?

8. How long until Hook finds a men's H & M or something?

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Now that we know that How I Met Your Mother will officially return for a ninth and final season, many fans have been trying to figure out exactly how the show will handle its homestretch. Will we meet the mother this spring, in the Season 8 finale? Will the show make us wait until the end of Season 9? Will the writers just pad out a storyline it already had prepared for Season 8? Naturally, we don't have many answers.

But yesterday, TV Guide ran a story based on a recent interview with HIMYM co-creator Craig Thomas. The article declared that next season will "look and feel much different from past seasons," with Thomas revealing that there's "going to be a new way to tell the story" and that fans are "never going to mistake a Season 9 episode [as being] from one of the previous eight [seasons]."

"A new way to tell the story" could mean just about anything, but here's my theory:

Let me explain: During the third season of Lost, the show introduced the characters Nikki and Paolo and used flashbacks to insert them into key moments from the show's first two seasons. They were always on the outside of the main group, but somehow seemed to be around whenever cool things were happening. Fans hated Nikki and Paolo, and Lost eventually buried them alive.

However, if we're going to get a new season of HIMYM that looks and feels different from any other season, what better way to accomplish that than by spending large amounts of time with Ted's future wife? The series can show her side of many of the stories we've heard Ted tell over the years. Her experience at the bar on St. Patrick's Day when she forgot her yellow umbrella. The time Ted was in her apartment while she was in the shower. I'm sure HIMYM could even create "new" close calls, where the mother almost met Ted over the years. And as a bonus, allowing a few new actors to carry some of the final season's storylines would free up the principal cast to work on other projects—which would make sense, considering that the growing careers of stars like Jason Segel are what almost kept Season 9 from happening in the first place.

For this plan to happen, though, HIMYM will have to introduce the mother in the finale of the current season. The showrunners have already made it clear that they're not going to make a casting announcement when they've selected an actress to play the Mother, so don't expect any hints to arrive in that form. Would you be on board with this idea? After eight seasons of listening to Ted talk, are we ready for How I Met Your Father?

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Arrow S01E02: "Honor Thy Father"

Second episodes are tough. Pilots, while no cakewalk, have a clear goal: Convince a network to buy, and then convince an audience to come back for Episode 2. Second episodes have to keep the audience that returned, but they also tend to work at bringing in anyone who didn't see Episode 1, and that makes them sometimes function like a second pilot.

"Honor Thy Father" ended up very firmly in that "second pilot" camp. There was a lot of expository dialogue to explain things that were previously discussed or learned in the pilot, and lots of characters declared things as explicitly as possible. It made the episode seem clunky and more than a little overstuffed, especially in the first half, which was a whirl of "I was on an island!" "You told me to stay away from you!" "You were dead, I had no one, I turned to drugs and partying!" et cetera.

But with that said, it was the second episode, so we sort of need to move on and hope the show doesn't do this every week. Some shows can pull it off with a surprising amount of ease (The Vampire Diaries is really good about organically working in internal recapping), and hopefully Arrow will transition into that next week.

Luckily, in between all the expository stuff, there were some genuinely good moments to be had. I think the best bit, apart from Laurel and Oliver eating ice cream (and I'll get to that), was Diggle and Oliver in the car after Oliver shut down the notion of Diggle taking a position in Queen Consolidated. Speaking from apparent experience, Diggle said, "Back home, they're trying to 'get you'...," and there was this brief moment of bonding between the two, a degree of understanding that both have gone through unpleasant things (to say the least) and that the people who haven't gone through them just don't, and can't, comprehend the state those unpleasant things have left them in.

And that was sort of the crux of the episode, the notion that it's hard to understand other people's pain. Everyone's having problems with moving on and working through their grief. Oliver and Thea can't completely reconnect because Oliver's just trying to prevent her from making his mistakes (while still putting on the public persona of making those mistakes); Oliver and Laurel have gone from anger to walking on eggshells; and even Quentin and Laurel are on different pages, especially Quentin, who is petrified of losing another daughter.

That's why moments like Oliver with Diggle, or Oliver enjoying ice cream with Laurel, work for me. There's a thematic consistency to them as Oliver attempts to come to grips with his life and works to reconnect with others. Yes, this idea was served up quite obviously at the end of the episode as Oliver addressed his father's gravestone, but I was okay with them spelling it out since, unlike the voiceovers (which remain horrible), it felt motivated by the character and the episode's plot.

But by now you may be tired of hearing me talk about things like feelings and characters. What about all the costume stuff? Well, it was pretty good from an action standpoint. Both big fights, Diggle with China White and then Oliver with China White, were generally well-shot and exciting. I preferred Diggle versus China White, if only because it showed that Diggle isn't completely incompetent at the whole bodyguard thing.

I don't have much to say yet about Kelly Hu as China White. She had like eight lines, so there's no real sense of character at this point. To be fair, China White's not the most developed character in the comics. She's only appeared in Andy Diggle's Green Arrow: Year One series, and there she was the head of a major crime organization, she specialized in drugs, and she was on the island Oliver washed up on. There, she was running an opium farm and a heroin factory (as you would expect, given her name), and Oliver, as part of his assumption of the hero mantle, shut it down and freed the slaves who work for her.

On Arrow, China White seems to be an enforcer for the Chinese Triad, but so far we don't have a lot of information. Hu's slated for a few more episodes, so I suspect that we'll learn more about China White beyond the fact that she's a really good at hand-to-hand combat and likes little curved knives.

Flashback-wise, which is perhaps the most pressing issue for many folks based on the comments on last week's review, Arrow is still piecemealing out that narrative, so settle in. Oliver acquired the notebook from his father's corpse, but it was blank except for some sort of symbol. And then someone shot him through the chest with an arrow. Maybe that person put the names in the notebook. And taught Oliver Russian. And those mad computer skills.

The symbol, of course, was seen with whomever Moira was meeting with and assuring that Oliver is still totally clueless about whatever's going on in Starling City. I'm okay with Moira's conspiracy being at the tail end of each episode for now, since the show's still establishing itself (and it's a very comic book-y thing to do). I'm sure it'll become more prominent as we go forward.

All in all, "Honor Thy Father" was not a great second episode, but it had some good stuff sprinkled throughout. What did you all think?

– Oliver's "You failed this city" spiel isn't exactly working. I get the impulse behind the speech (it gives him an avenging tone, and it makes him an extension of the city, which is cool), but I don't think it's "there" yet.

– Arrow may have a tough time balancing Public Asshole Oliver and Working to Reconnect with His Sister and Ex-girlfriend Oliver. At some point it's just going to seem a touch odd, and it won't be Amell's fault, since I think he's hitting each version. There's a dissonance the writers will need to work through; there needs to be some sort of consistency to connect them.

– Laurel was representing a woman named Emily Nocenti. Currently writing the Green Arrow comic book is Ann Nocenti (she's also writing the Catwoman series). I suppose these little name references could get old, but I rather like them. I hope they save O'Neil (in honor of Dennis O'Neil) for someone really cool.

– Speaking of Laurel, the legal aid office is called CNRI? Like canary. Cute.

– This episode's moment in pointless pedantry: The painted-on mask seemed haphazardly applied. I don't care.

– What I do sort of care about is that I thought the show had taken care of Oliver rescinding the death certificate off-screen during the pilot, given all the easy access to resources he had, but nope. It wasn't a very well-organized chain of events, and apart from the desire to recap the pilot, doing the legalities could've been handled in a couple of lines during this week's episode as opposed to taking up the whole first chunk of it.

Arrow "Honor Thy Father" Photos

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