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 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.