Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 4- The Price of Gold

 "All magic comes at a price!"

Once again we get a very nice little deconstruction, this time of Cinderella. Once more we start in the fairytale world and events play out as we expect... except that Cindy's Fairy Godmother is killed and replaced by Rumpeltilskin, who extracts a price. And that price is Cindy's firstborn. Oh dear.

In Storybrooke, meanwhile, our Cinderella is a single pregnant teenager who, as we’re told with not a lot of subtlety, very much echoes Emma at her age- but decides to keep the baby. Interestingly, the baby’s father steps up at the end but is heavily encouraged to dodge his fatherly duties by his own dishonourable prick of an arrogant father.

Modern day, teenage pregnancy, boyfriend father a dishonourable dick. Henry connecting with Emma.  Seeming negotiated victory- but Emma owes Gold a favour. We know this will haunt her.

The structure of this episode is awfully clever, in both realities and how they echo one another. Cinderella’s attempt to magically trick Rumpel out of her firstborn by imprisoning him leads to the disappearance of her himbo husband and the end of her happiness. This makes us fear for Emma. There will, I know, be more to this.

All this, and Emma continues to bond with Henry. And the plot thickens- Emma is offered a police job by the sheriff, and eventually takes it... only for the final revelation that Regina is having Saturday sexy shenanigans with said lawman. Well then.

Again- nice plot, nice metatextual subtext, nice acting, nice realisation although inevitably with a bit of dodgy CGI... but the dialogue continues to be a bit lacking.

Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 3- Snow Falls

 "There's no such thing as love at first sight..."

This episode gives us, in the fairytale flashback scenes, a fascinating deconstruction of the Snow White story. After offending the Evil Queen, Snow White has been framed and outlawed, which is ho he ends up meting ad connectng with Prince Charming (James!) in an exciting adventure involving a bridge ad some trolls. They ens up parting but clearly like each other; there's more of this story to tell. And I like how Snow White is revealed to be a kick-as hero with loads of agency, not a simpering, passive princess who just stands around looking pretty and incubating babies. That matters.

The present day scenes riff nicely on this, as the Prince Charming figure (David?) is in a coma, thus parted from Mary Margaret. And, despite Henry's plan to bring the lover together, Regina rather cleverly improvises and finds an apparent wife, who may well be the girl he was about to marry in the fairytale scenes. All this is done with the collusion of the local doctor, played by Blaine off of iZombie.

This is clever, both at the level of Storybrooke presumable being intended by the Evil Queen as a hell, and as a nicely meta litte deconstruction both of the Snow White myth and of love and first sight. If only the dialogue was as clever as the plotting. But I'm still very much enjoying this.

Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 2- The Thing You Love Most

 "Since when were apples a threat?"

This second episode makes it increasingly fascinating where all this is going, as our protagonist Emma digs her investigative claws further into Storybrooke, not so much discouraged but encouraged by Regina's constant harassment, while the fairytale scenes add a little depth and detail to the backstory. Is this going to be the format?

Regina seems perturbed to see the Storybrooke clock move, and time start to move forward. Does this make her suspect who Emma may be? Certainly the constant framings and harassment, which begin to stretch even the patience of sheriff Christian Grey (using Jamie Dornan's native Norn Iron tones) indicate she's beginning to be somewhat concerned, and that's before we get to the fascinating final scene with the enigmatic and charismatic Mr Gold- who seems to enjoy exactly the power and prestige that Rumpelstiltskin was promised in the fascinating fairytale scenes.

There's a constant dance between Emma, Regina and Henry, but is Emma starting to believe? It's ambiguous at this point, but I suspect her investigative nature can't help but add to her suspicions. Not only this, but does she have some sort of power to detect lies?

The flashback scenes are more the focus for this episode, though, as we see the steps the Evil Queen had to take in order to acquire the curse in the first place. So we meet Maleficent, and Rumpelstiltskin tells the Queen the true cost of the curse, which will in any case leave her forever "empty"- she must kill the person she loves most. And that's her doddery old man, who gets a scene to establish he's an awfully nice old chap before the Evil Queen stabs him brutally with her knife. Lovely. Now we know just how ruthless she can be- presumably in both realities.

This is clever, and the characters are likeable. There's perhaps a lack of sparkle in the dialogue, but I'm enjoying this.

Once Upon a Time: Season 1, Episode 1- Pilot

 "What do you think stories are for?"

Yes, I know, I have all sorts of stuff on the go, but this is something Mrs Llamastrangler has been obsessed with over the last few months, and marathoning it again with me is something we can do together while she's ill and bedridden. I see there's rather a large number of episodes. Gulp.

Obviously I've seen a fair few Disney films (Little Miss Llamastrangler is five) but I'm very far from being a hardcore fan and no doubt will fail to get all the references that no doubt lurk within each episode. First impressions, with the introductory bit of text, are nicely metatextual as we join Snow White and Prince Charming (was he some kind of bigamist or something, with Cinderella too?) at the end of their tale as they are married... and then cursed by the delightfully evil, and sexy, Evil Queen. I love the way sh's simply referred to as that. Lana Parilla is superb here, managing to convey the right level of cartoonishly evil without overdoing things.

And then we switch to the real world, in contemporary (well, 2011, before all that unpleasantness with Brexit and Trump) Boston, as we meet private investigator Emma in a particularly cool introduction, as the bloke she's on a date with turns out to be a fugitive, and her quarry. And then up pops Henry, the son she gave up for adoption ten years ago.

Henry is an interesting and resourceful kid, played by a good child actor... and his adoptive mother Regina- the major of Storybrooke, Maine- is somehow the same person as the Evil Queen, which gives some credence to Henry's insistence that the whole town is stuck in time, and populated by fairytale characters who know not who they are.

Back to the fairytale world- it's clever how the cinematography and lighting subtly distinguishes the two realities- Snow White and the Prince are off to get a prophecy from the imprisoned Rumpelstiltskin, played with show-stealing aplomb by the ever-magnificent Robert Carlyle in a part very different from his usual fare. Begbie this is not, but a cunning, eccentric faerie creature that dominates the screen and is compulsively watchable, whether as Rumpelstiltskin or Mr Gold.

The royal couple learn that their future is bleak but that there is hope in the form of their soon-to-be-born daughter... Emma. And we instantly know, by the iron law that TV dramas never feature multiple characters with the same name, whom that is.

The moment of the birth sets off the terrible CGI curse, but baby Emma gets away, following a swordfight by the Prince where he holds his newborn daughter with his other hands, sends her away- and is promptly killed. Snow White now has nothing- and is about to be sent "somewhere horrible" by the Evil Queen. And in Emma and Henry we have two generations given up by their parents.

This may not be top tier telly, perhaps, but so far it's certainly grabbed me.

Fifty Shades Freed (2018)

"So why do you defy me?"

"Because I can!"

 This is only the second film I've seen that was made in 2018. Right now it seems very possible that it may ultimately end up being the worst. It's that bad. In fact, Mrs Llamastrangler has just described it to me as being akin to "a disappointing fart. I concur.

So what is so deeply disappointing about this, the third in a series of films that, it's now clear, are all pants? Well, many of the same things. Let’s face the horrors, shall we?

Christian and Ana get married in a posh ceremony and then they do that bizarre and rather rude thing where they leave the ceremony that everyone had made such an effort to attend to drive off, cold sober, to a honeymoon by montage in Paris and the French Riviera. We get a few scenes reminding us what a control freak Christian is, presumably meant at least partly to humanise him, but in fact just making him look like a controlling twat. Some arson at home by nasty old Jack draws them both home early where married life begins properly.

Christian has an extraordinarily childish reaction to the inevitable conversation about kids but, well, why on Earth did they not have this conversation before trying the knot like all sensible people do? And, frankly, I don’t care about Christian’s poorly defined mother issues- he’s a billionaire. Why is parenthood an issue where money isn’t? Then there’s that ridiculous throwing of his toys out of the pram because Ana prefers to use her maiden name professionally, as that’s how she’s already known, which seems rather sensible. He seems to think he’s entitled to expect his wife to take his surname, which is frankly a load of misogynist bollocks. Yes, Mrs Llamastrangler ended up taking my surname, but it was entirely her decision and I made it very clear that I didn’t feel entitled to any such thing and, frankly, in her position wouldn’t have done the same. For a bloke to simply expect it to happen is a bit of a warning sign.

But then he does the other thing that emotionally abusive partners do, and buys her stuff, namely a new home to her tastes. It’s good to see Ana asserting herself against the flirtatious architect, but she’s very much living a life circumscribed by Christian, with him even controlling what she hears about the danger to her from Jack. There are disturbing hints of gaslighting here, and when she deviates from his plan to guarantee her safety by- heaven forbid- having a few drinks with her best friend. This leads to a bit of a kerfuffle with Jack and, more disturbingly, with Christian having another massive sulk because Ana has the temerity to show a little bit of independence. And so what could have been a rather erotic little kinky scene of him teasing and denying her just turns outvtonbevhom throwing a strop like a complete and utter child. But then none of the sexy scenes are sexy, and none of the kink is allowed to be just kink.

Incidentally, one of the many things that ruins this awful film is the constant use of unlistenable, badly produced, horrible chart pop which, with all its autotuned awfulness,  actively subtracts atmosphere and sexiness from every scene. The only decent bit of music in the whole film is Grey playing Macca’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”, which isn’t saying much.

Anyway, Christian’s reaction when Ana tells him she’s pregnant is utterly pathetic, and the perfect reason to leave him. He reacts like a proper child, sulks and confides in Mrs Robinson; no wonder Ana is disgusted. Yes, it’s wrong to spring a pregnancy on a man without his consent, but accidents are accidents, and any woman has an absolute choice on whether to keep her baby; making her get rid if it is just as immoral as being one of those anti-abortion zealots. And none of this matters much, anyway, if money isn’t an issue- why not just have the child? Bringing up kids is fun.

So we end up with a bit of climatic action between Ana and nasty old Hack, and she ends up still trapped in what she sees as a healthy relationship with Christian, and thinking the fact he’s into BDSM (she isn’t, not really, so it’s disturbing that he’s foisting it on her, and controlling how she perceives it) means he can get away with controlling her without her informed consent. She ends the trilogy still trapped in a relationship with this controlling man-child, and that is truly tragic. Poor Ana. But far more tragic is the thought that this film may give many people the idea that BDSM makes this kind of behaviour ok.

Fifty Shades Darker (2017)

"I hope you're not a sore loser."

"That depends on how hard you spank me..."

I've already gone into detail about my misgivings about the abusive relationship at the heart of this trilogy- and again, it isn't the BDSM part that's dodgy- and nothing has changed on that front. But this film, admittedly, is less dull to watch and somewhat more entertaining, not that it's particularly good.

On the positive side it doesn't feel so much like a sequel as the middle portion of the story, and one which doesn't have to introduce any of  the characters and can just get on with it, avoiding the common fate of sequels. The directorial style, too, is different; James Foley hasn't quite given us the stylishness of Sam Taylor-Wood but the colours are not so washed out, which is definitely a good thing.

It's still a bit problematic to have a rich man as a wish-fulfilment figure, though, even if the BDSM takes a bit of a back seat in favour of a mild kinkiness- but it's disturbing to hear Grey state that he's not so much a dominant as a "sadist" who had a dodgy childhood and gets off on hurting women who remind him of his mother. In fact I'm not sure that this kind of background is at all conducive to being a suitable dominant. In real life I'd have a hard time seeing a relationship with any such figure as anything other than decidedly dodgy, however much money was sloshing around.

The film is well-acted. especially by the extra star wattage of Kim Basinger as Elena, however shocking her plastic surgery may look. This is not exactly a film with a great deal of intrinsic merit, but at least it's made well and is a marked improvement on its predecessor.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

"Are you gay?"

Before I say anything else, I should praise the way this film is shot by Sam Taylor-Wood. I'm not sure about the washed-out colours ("grey", yes, very clever), but she has shot the film with a lot of style and used some rather neat narrative tricks, particularly the montage illustrating the contract between Ana and Grey; large pieces of text are difficult to get across well onscreen, but Taylor-Wood delivers here. She does as good a job with the source material as can be done. The script also adapts the novel well.

However, it's still based on the novel by E.L. James and it's intrinsic virtues and flaws. The novel does not pretend to be literary fiction, but it is rather well-written, with good prose, engaging characters and a fast and dramatic plot. It may not be very deep, but there's nothing wrong with that. It would have been better if James had employed a proper proofreader instead of letting her husband do it, but it isn't a bad novel. Except in its message. And the film cannot help but follow suit.

The main problem I have with both book and film is Christian Grey. I dislike him as a character, I would intensely dislike him as a person if he was real, and I find him a somewhat disturbing subject for female desire. He's a bully, a control freak, a stalker, and he and Ana have an abusive relationship. There. I've said it.

And none of this, I hasten to add, is in any way to do with BDSM. I have issues with how the media (and this is a prime suspect) treats BDSM as being about dominant males and submissive females whereas, in reality, it's just as likely to be the other way round. Indeed, BDSM has its origins in gay culture and remains something of a gay-heavy subculture. But BDSM itself is a perfectly healthy thing, done safely and consensually. 

The problem with Christian isn't that he's a dominant, and there isn't a single sex scene in the film which wouldn't be perfectly ok in a different context, but that he's a weird, damaged control freak who does what he does out of a desire to hurt women as revenge for his mother's failings- pretty basic misogyny. There are lots of alarm bells. For a start, he wants to dominate a woman who isn't into the lifestyle when he meets her, which is in itself deeply dodgy. He's trying to psychologically manipulate her into submitting to him when she has no prior desire to do so. That's deeply creepy and I'm of the opinion that Ana is rushed and pressured into "consenting". That's more than a bit rapey.

The book, and the film by extension, could do a great deal of harm, firstly in propagating misleading ideas about BDSM and, most worryingly, encouraging naive women in the audience to enter into abusive relationships masquerading as such.

BDSM aside, it's not exactly feminist to present a rich man as a wish fulfilment figure, as though the place of a woman is to marry a man who can look after her and just be an ornament.

All that said, Jamie Dornan does an excellently nuanced job of playing the character. He does the best with an impossible job, and impresses. And that's something that can be said of the film as a whole: it does a good job of adapting material which is deeply dodgy in what it is saying.

New Worlds: Episode 4

"I dream of a vast continent, a republic where millions of men live in liberty."

So, New Worlds is over with a whimper, and I notice that, unlike The Devil's Whore, it caused nary a stir at the time and, mere months later, is pretty much forgotten. So what went wrong? Well, it's dull, for a start, with forgettable characters entirely lacking in charisma. And then there's the didacticism. While there's nothing wrong with looking at the past through the eyes of the present- it only exists in those terms, after all- New Worlds goes too far in putting modern sentiments into Restoration mouths.

The Devil's Whore managed to square this circle, looking at the "Good Old Cause" through the eyes of the contemporary Left examining its own heritage. Yet the characters were all of their time. Here we have Whigs expressing modern values, unhistorical attitudes to the Native American genocide, and crude use of dramatic irony in the many hints that the USA is set to exist in ninety years time. Most notably, the concluding bit of text doesn't even mention the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an elephant in the room that demonstrates a crude attempt to avoid a Whig interpretation of history which values the post-1689 constitutional settlement and trying to put a modern Leftist slant on, well, Whigs.

Charles II continues to be an I characteristically miserable bastard, and then dies right on schedule. Abe Gough is tortured, but escapes execution and buggers off to Boston to embark on a career as the authorial voice. Chris Finch from The Office is still around. There is much examination of the fact that Massachusetts is founded on the genocide of local tribes, and conflict with the King's representative that crudely foreshadows the 1770s ("I am here to remind Massachusetts that it is a colony and not a republic"). Hope is a bit racist. Sidney is horribly executed. Beth's mixed race baby is shunned, and reclaimed by it's fatger's moribund tribe. The Monmouth Rebellion happens. Etc. Etc.

This is actually the best of the four episodes, and moderately involving to watch. But by now it's far too late. 

New Worlds: Episode 3

"Our lives will never change until the kings are torn from their thrones."

This episode, we get Native Americans being all noble savages and that in ways that, while trying hard not to be racist in their depiction, may cross the line into patronising as all depictions of tribal societies inevitably do. We also get interesting political discussion which shows us how the die-hard republicans of the Good Old Cause morph slowly into Whigs, keeping an outward show of monarchy but sidelining it to the extent that one Ancien Regime French ambassador once famously refused to accept that England was a monarchy at all after 1688. This is not a Whig script, of course; it is still interested in the history of the Left and not that of Liberals such as myself who are, while way to the left of Clegg and those dangerous Orange Book entryists, are not from that tradition.

Anyway...

Beth survives transportation and meets a sort of proto-Squanto, proceeding to go predictably native and to act as the hand-wringing, post-colonial mouthpiece of our authorial voice. The King proceeds to be a right bastard, and Angelica's house goes to one of a Judge Jeffries' mates who isn't very nice to the staff, allowing us to see a bit of proto-Chartist class conflict. There's a lot of proto-this and proto-that in this somewhat Marxist script. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but I wish the script had put equal attention to giving the characters a little depth. None of them come across as anything more than ideological mouthpieces.

Beth and her new Native American mates soon run up against John Hawkins, Henry Cresswell and their equally genocidal Puritan mates in Massachusetts which, once again, it is instructive to see depicted as the frontier. Abe, meanwhile, gets involved with the Rye House Plot. Ted, now back in Massachusetts, finds his beloved Beth now married to the dastardly Henry Cresswell. And the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts gets a bit of a bollocking on behalf of the King, who is on the Indians' side, sort of. One of the Massachusetts Bastards, incidentally, is Chris Finch from The Office.

Beth's presence in the tribe is discovered, and our RP accented Yankees Hope and Beth resume sleeping together, now a much naughtier thing than it was before. Ned soon becomes outraged at the fact that not only his love rival but also his father are, as William Goffe had put it, "land pirates". Soon enough the tribe is wiped out in a nasty bit of germ warfare. Such is the original sin of America, and it is a very English sin.

The political subtext is entertaining, I suppose, but in the absence of characters in whom one can take an interest it's all there is to grab hold of, and it's not exactly subtle. New Worlds continues to disappoint.

New Worlds: Episode 2

"I cannot marry a man I do not love."

Sigh. Things aren't really picking up. Ned is leaving Boston for England, and Beth is seeing Abe again. Plots are laid to expose Angelica as a traitor and expose her rather dull and understandably circumspect Catholic husband, who cannot deny the "Popish Plot" for fear of accusations, just so the King can seize her land. This is a pity, as Angelica's home is a haven of Whiggery and religious tolerance. Meanwhile, Beth and Abe hope to go to the New World to carry on the Good Old Cause. None of this is presented so as to be at all interesting.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Hope Russell is to be married to a man- Henry Cresswell- whom she neither loves nor likes. And yes, it's still weird to hear all of these Massachusetts Puritans speaking in RP accents. She is, of course, presented with all sorts if arguments to make her feel guilty and submit to this patriarchal and misigynistic pressure. The point here is that it's not only the Tories back in England who are somewhat lacking in progressivism.

Angelica's house is invaded by thugs who light bonfires and chant about the "Popish Plot and praise the Duke of Monmouth. Angelica's hubby, sure enough, is trapped into denying Titus Oates' outrageous claims and arrested. He is now at the mercy of the infamous Judge Jeffries, and both Angelica and Beth are in trouble by proxy. It's all very dramatic, yet somehow still fails to engage.

Poor hubby is tortured, while Abe learns of his fatger's death; he is, it seems, Wiiliam Goff's son. He tries to kill Charles II, whom Jeremy Northam is portraying as a not-at-all merry monarch. He is harboured by Beth and Angelica, and both are subsequently arrested and, on Angelica's case, finally have her luck run out as she is sentenced to be burned at the stake while Beth is transported to America.

Angelica finally dies, watched by her daughter, and gives a magnificent speech; being executed is, after all, a per formative act and, in this case, a political one as she calls Charles a tyrant. Abe, mercifully, shoots her dead before she can suffer, and then seemingly plunges to his own death.

All this is juxtaposed with Charles, looking thoroughly miserable, putting on his crown and dissolving Parliament. He seems triumphant.

New Worlds: Episode 1

"Young Americans like you must seize true liberty."

The Devil's Whore was superlative television. This... isn't, and it's obvious from the start. The cast doesn't sparkle anywhere near as much, there's a lack of unity between the scenes in England and Massachusetts, and the continuing political themes are handled a little more clunky; yes, pre-Glorious Revolution England was no beacon of liberty, but Charles II was not his father, and certainly not the miserable bastard we see here. There a reason why he's known as the Merry Monarch.

We begin in Massachusetts in 1680, a place of Puritan dogma, ethnic cleansing and republican sympathies which extend to harbouring Colonel William Goff, one of the few surviving regicides. Most jarring of all, though, to modern eyes, is the sight of Native American tribes in that long-settled part of New England; the Eastern Seaboard is the frontier. Here we meet Hope and Ned, two strangely RP-accented Americans about whom we are supposed to care, but don't. Indeed, even watching, as I did, with subtitles, it was well into the second episode before I got a clear idea of who the characters were. Characterisation is not this series' strong point.

Our first sight of England is bodies hanging from the Tower of London; lovely. Here we meet an older and much less charismatic Angelica Fanshawe, her grown-up daughter Beth, and her Roman Catholic husband who has been having rather a rough time of it since the so-called Popish Plot two years ago. Beth becomes curious about her father, Edward Sexby, now a conveniently dead legend for republicans and Whigs. Angelica is under pressure to sell her land to the King. This is all set-up and plot but mainly exposition,  with very little spectacle, character or thematic cleverness. The historical characters- James, Duke of York, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the "Protestant Duke"- are made to seem very dull.

William Goff, meanwhile, is on the run from the King's men. He symbolises the transfer of republican ideas from England to America, something dripping with dramatic irony as we know, as he does not, that the English Civil War will have an  American sequel a century hence in which a new republic will be born. Goff is not an unproblematic proto-American, though; shortly before his death he bemoans the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans, the original sin of the United States. Anyway, he is killed, but not before rather predictably inspiring Ned.

Back in  England, Beth is kidnapped on her birthday by Abe, about whom we are also supposed to care. He awakens both her sexuality and her political conscience somewhat, but nothing really happens. The episode ends with nothing but set-up having happened and no real sense of where the series is going.