‘Once Upon a Time’ season 2, episode 8 review: A pacing debate
Dear “Once Upon a Time,” we’re starting to have a little bit of a problem with you. Early on this season, we were starting to have hope that separating Snow White and Prince Charming into separate worlds would allow for some compelling storytelling, especially since we were getting to meet some interesting new characters in the process in between Captain Hook and Sleeping Beauty.
However, since that time the show has been a little bit sleepy. As a matter of fact, we feel as though Sunday night’s new episode “Into the Deep” can be summed up rather quickly. Henry’s attempts to communicate with Aurora in the dream world failed to pan out as planned, so with that in mind David agreed to put himself under a sleeping curse since he could handle the danger better. He thought that his curse would be cured the moment that he met up with Snow, but the problem was that this dream world was hardly real enough for the two to share any affection with each other at all.
To make matters worse, it turned out that when Snow White awakened from this dream, the woman who was guiding her and Emma in their escape plans in Aurora was now, following her temporary capture, actually under Cora’s control. This whole plan by the Storybrooke residents was designed to keep her out of the town, but now she appears closer than ever to crossing over. As for Captain Hook, he made his intentions clear this week that he did not like being betrayed by Emma, and he is out for revenge there almost as much as he is with Rumpelstiltskin.
As for the problems with this episode, they are twofold. For one, it just did not feel like there was that much that actually happened in the episode, and all of this talk of dream worlds is complicated and not entirely interesting. It was actually more entertaining last year to learn about Storybrooke and their residents, especially since there was more of a simple goal in mind: breaking the curse. When Snow White and Charming get back, where does this show go from there? We just don’t know, and Cora has yet to proved to be a villain as interesting as her daughter.
What did you think about this episode, and do you wish that the show had a little more going on during this week?