NerDemption

By Richard Hatem ** SPOILERS!**   If you haven't seen the episode please do so before continuing! Whee! An episode providing the back-story for my favorite character! We begin in the place I didn't think I would be seeing in this series: the Enchanted Forest! It's a bit like going home, really... seeing familiar faces (though I'm fairly certain Robin Hood was only a recent addition for the "in Neverland" portion... because why have Rumplestiltskin's son return with Mulan to the castle where his father played the Beast and imprisoned Belle to find a portal to rescue Princess Aurora and Snow White--without everyone's favorite outlaw?) and feeling as though we know what's going in other places not shown, because we're so familiar with the timeline. Sure enough, Robin and his men pull off a heist, stealing from a random rich man for the benefit of the poor, oppressed towns under the Evil Queen's rule. We find out ...

By Rina Mimoun ** SPOILERS!**   If you haven't seen the episode please do so before continuing! Now that the characters have all been introduced, it's time for the onslaught of flashbacks to explain why these characters, why this time, and all manner of confusing plot threads to unearth! The first thing to establish, of course, is Agrabah as a setting.... because it will feature more prominently as more of Jafar's back-story is divulged. One thing of note: it's rather less barren on this show than Disney led us to imagine. Which sort of makes sense, since why would anyone build a city among sand dunes... (what is this, Arrakis?) but whatever. It did bother me slightly, that the designers apparently had no sense when they decided to plop the castle like a crash-landed space shuttle right in the middle of the city... but anyway, moving on! Jafar's visit to a man in the village seems random at first--until Jafar starts pointing out how ...

By Edward Kistis, Adam Horowitz, Zack Estrin, and Jane Espenson ** SPOILERS AHEAD!**   If you haven't seen the episode please do so before continuing! I love fairy tales. I love well-done adaptations of fairy tales. I loved the premise and the intentions behind the parent show to this series, Once Upon A Time, which took fairy tale characters and re-invented them as "exiles" in a small town in Maine, called Storybrooke. However, there were certain creative liberties taken and casting choices made by the writers that I found rather disappointing. And so, when the announcement came of a spin-off series that would focus the action on Alice and her epical adventure in Wonderland, and without all that nonsense that is adding characters to make evil out to be more of a product of a cruel mother and a tortured childhood than actually evil—sort of like an antihero, but with more angst than a high school full of girls who give everyone the cold shoulder...