Once Upon a Time: A Tale of Two Sisters

September 29, 2014 9:32 AM - Season 4, Episode 1

Elsa arrives in Storybrooke. Regina tries to deal with the reappearance of Marian, previously thought dead by Robin Hood. Belle and Rumple find a vacant but well-appointed mansion in which to honeymoon, and Rumple finds a curious artifact within. Flashbacks pick up shortly after the end of Frozen, with Elsa and Anna preparing for Anna's marriage to Kristoff.
posted by DevilsAdvocate (4 comments total)

I don't mind the introduction of Frozen characters to OUaT, but I was disappointed that they didn't differentiate the characters more from the movie. One of the things I've always liked about OUaT is that the characters don't hew too closely to their Disney animated and/or public domain origins, but they don't seem to have made appreciable changes to the Frozen characters. Oddly, this bugged me more with the minor characters than with Anna and Elsa. Elsa's snow monster, the troll, and Sven's anthropomorphic reactions seemed too much like the movie characters to me. And Sven's reactions, while consistent with Frozen, don't seem to fit the OUaT-verse — I don't think we've seen non-magical (and non-Wonderland) animals appear to ever be anything more than animals. To borrow a phrase common to a very different genre of shows, they didn't transform the ingredients.

I'm actually much more intrigued by the appearance of the Sorcerer's Apprentice hat and curious to see where they're going with that. And I liked the musical and visual allusion to Beauty and the Beast with Belle and Rumple's dance. But the "hey, here's a new mansion and no one's here, I'm sure they won't mind if we stay here a few days" seems rather short-sighted on Belle and Rumple's part.

The fact that Regina had been holding her once and future mirror prisoner all this time raises questions about just how sincere and complete her apparent redemption were, even before Marian showed up. While part of me wants to believe she can be redeemed, the show's more fun with her as a villain.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:05 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is everything. Makes you wanna bleep a snowman.

Why don't they just cast this show by gigantic eyeball size, anyway? But to address the (odd) complaint, the Frozen characters haven't been living alternate lives we know of or come from an interesting story. The point seems to be just cashing in, so altering them at all would confuse that point and small children. The motto of this show should be "Let it go." Crappy, uninspired, beloved by drag queens. It's frozen slime trails all the way down. Bring on the bling!
posted by provoliminal at 5:27 PM on September 29, 2014

The kid had a growth spurt. He looks almost as tall as Emma now.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 7:44 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

She didn't have him in prison - he was in the psychiatric ward, but refusing treatment and locked into his own belief that she was still The Evil Queen and would come back to rescue him, be adored etc. She took advantage of a very damaged person.

The Frozen part has to be handled carefully because they built Anna and Elsa's story out of The Snow Queen which is a very different story (awesome narratively too - the Robber Girl, the quasi-incest, the puzzle pieces, the Narnia-esque vibes etc) and they are planning Frozen 2 (there's an Olaf short coming out soon) which will go into some of the shared background that they're creating for the Frozen world of Arendelle. So whereas with the other Disney stories, they have some kind of myth and fairy tale depth to play with, in Frozen, they have an original world that has only been very slightly developed and that needs to stay within broad guidelines for their little fans to grow up with. Unlike Rapunzel - they're not using Tangled's Rapunzel and Flynn for OAT, but making up their own variation from the older stories - Frozen has much much narrower narrative restrictions.

I loved what they showed with Anna and Kristoff in this - he was willing to delay their wedding and trust her intelligence and capability when it came to an adventure.
posted by viggorlijah at 10:14 PM on September 29, 2014