No, I won’t resort to clever plays on the name Grumpy … but that’s exactly how I felt after watching this installment of Once Upon a Time, distinctly grumpy (couldn’t resist), as though a precious hour of storytelling was wasted.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the fresh twists that this show offers on classic fairy tales, but I’m not a fan of having the peripheral characters suck all the oxygen out of an episode. We get a whole bunch of backstory in Fairy Tale Land about the character, then a quirky Storybrooke incarnation of that same individual who is grappling with issues related to his or her backstory. Meanwhile, the central on-going stories — Mary Margaret’s unrequited love for David, Emma’s power struggle with Regina, Regina’s hatred for Mary Margaret, Henry’s desire for everyone to wake the hell up (I miss that kid), Emma’s ignorance to the fact that she’s actually living with her mother — get a little bit of play and move incrementally forward.
That’s the pattern. The show initially spent all of this time getting me hooked and involved with its core characters, then it relegates those characters to the sidelines, to the B stories. And, only 14 episodes into its freshman season, that pattern is already getting tired. Do I care that Leroy is lusting after a nun named Astrid and that, because of Astrid’s error, the nuns need to raise money or Rumplestiltskin will evict Astrid and her colleagues? It’s interesting, but it doesn’t warrant consuming nearly the entire episode. Throwing Mary Margaret into the mix, having her try to redeem herself after being ostracized for being David’s mistress by helping the nuns sell their candles, didn’t make the Leroy/Astrid story any more relevant. There wasn’t even a mention or a nod toward the fact that Snow White later seeks refuge with Grumpy & Co.
And, please, dwarfs hatched from eggs? And having Dreamy’s egg (he was later renamed Grumpy) getting accidentally sprinkled with Nova’s fairy dust? This all struck me as odd, not intriguing. Didn’t pique my interest one iota. Watching Dreamy decide to ditch his life as a miner and run away with Astrid — these Once Upon a Time folks fall in love in less time than it takes Kim Kardashian to get married and divorced — only to leave Nova heartbroken so she’ll become a successful fairy godmother (a la Snow White lying to Prince Charming, saying she didn’t love him, in order to do a noble deed for her beloved), left me yawning like Sleepy.
Meanwhile, poor Kathryn is missing and the case got the short shrift as Emma oddly teamed up with Sidney to investigate the situation, with Sidney accepting Kathryn’s alleged “phone records” from Regina as evidence that David’s a liar, as if anything coming from Regina is trustworthy. Sidney is supposed to be a reporter, or a former reporter, and he accepts documents from Regina at face value?
Let’s hope that next week’s spin on Little Red Riding Hood’s story, where she’ll work alongside Snow White, will prove more compelling and related to the central stories than Leroy/Grumpy and Astrid/Nova’s dull yarn.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Mar 05, 2012 @ 11:10 EST5EDT
I kept looking at my clock and realized an hour is a long time when a show is not up to par!! Hope next week is better or they will lose a fan.
My thought was that Sidney knew very well that the phone records would be faked to point the finger at David. We know he is in cahoots with Regina.
The hour was slower than usual, but if we sped thru the main characters’s stories the show would be over in 3 weeks. I like the B stories and seeing the fairytale land backstories.
I thought the episode was fine. Most of the show is rather boring and I really loved fairy tale land. It wasn’t a bad episode to me, the whole series is slow and filler.
we learned in a previous episode that Sidney is still working for Regina.
This is a show with a strong, rich backstory – I find the fairytale stuff to be much more interesting. would you honestly rather watch Mary Margaret or the bandit queen Snow White?
and the show was being somewhat honest – a missing person’s case takes time to become official, so they had to fill that time with a different story.