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ABC's Once Upon a Time

How would you rate 'Once Upon a Time'?

  • Excellent

    Votes: 10 37.0%

  • Very Good

    Votes: 8 29.6%

  • Good

    Votes: 5 18.5%

  • Average

    Votes: 2 7.4%

  • Poor

    Votes: 2 7.4%
  • Total voters
    27
  • Poll closed .
Gryffindorian

Gryffindorian

Vice Admiral
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I searched for a thread on this topic but didn't find any ...

So does anyone watch this show? I think this is one of the better new series that hasn't gone stale or has survived cancellation this season (as compared to ABC's The River or FOX's Alcatraz). I watch this show weekly and even DVR it if I don't have time. Although there's nothing extraordinary about the whole premise, there's a certain appeal to it, and maybe that's the fantastical fairy-tale element. I've always been a fan of folktales and legends, and I like how the weekly episodes flash back and forth between modern-day Storybrooke and the magical world ruled by the Evil Queen.

The major characters are well developed, like the Evil Queen herself/bitchy mayor of Storybrooke (played by Lana Parrilla), Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), and Snow White/Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin). Those actresses, especially Parrilla, give compelling performances. And Josh Dallas is a total hottie. Oh, my. Isn't he charming? ;)

What say you? How would you rate this show?
 
The thread gets bumped to the top each Sunday but tends to sink fast. I'll say Very Good, but I like Grimm's take on the fairy tale thing better - seems more "organic," like the story is growing naturally out of the premise, while OUAT strikes me as stilted and artificial somehow, as the writers maneuver all the characters into position.

And I'm getting really sick of the whole story being about Emma not believing. When the audience is this far ahead of the main character, it's a bore. We already know the truth, so we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for the character to catch up. There's no dramatic tension, since it's a foregone conclusion that she will catch up.

If the story gave equal weight to the possibility that Emma is right while August is nuts and Henry is making up stories to avoid having to deal with his unhappy life, then that might provide some dramatic tension. But that would screw up the whole fairy-tale part of the story.

I find Josh Dallas a bit bland, but he's good looking enough for the role I guess. I like Eion Bailey (August) and Sebastaina Stan (Jefferson) better.
 
Temis the Vorta said:
And I'm getting really sick of the whole story being about Emma not believing. When the audience is this far ahead of the main character, it's a bore. We already know the truth, so we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for the character to catch up. There's no dramatic tension, since it's a foregone conclusion that she will catch up.
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This. That's the big reason I left. I know the main character is wrong. What's the point of watching her not believe for... how long? Especially since we know the truth. Bo-ring.

It's silly to keep that plot point hanging in the air. She should've discovered the truth at the end of the pilot. OR we don't know the truth, either way. (Which of course means cutting out the fairy tale world)
 
It's probably just a matter of taste, but I find the writing in Once to be a lot sharper and more inventive than that of Grimm (even if it does get a bit too sweet and syrupy at times), and I think they do a great job mixing up the different characters and fairy tale stories.

Grimm just feels like another generic monster-of-the-week show to me.
 
Grimm is doing a good job expanding beyond MOTW lately through some cool world-building. But OUAT might get better next season when Emma has seen the light (which I'm counting on to happen in the season finale, otherwise it's going to just be ridiculous.)
 
Professor Zoom said:
This. That's the big reason I left. I know the main character is wrong. What's the point of watching her not believe for... how long? Especially since we know the truth. Bo-ring.
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To me that's like saying the only reason to watch Lost was to learn the secrets of the island. The point of a show like this is to watch the characters in it go on a journey.

It's not much of a journey if they get to their destination in the first season (let alone the first couple of episodes).
 
davejames said:
Professor Zoom said:
This. That's the big reason I left. I know the main character is wrong. What's the point of watching her not believe for... how long? Especially since we know the truth. Bo-ring.
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To me that's like saying the only reason to watch Lost was to learn the secrets of the island. The point of a show like this is to watch the characters in it go on a journey.
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No, I want to go on a journey WITH the characters. If I knew the secret of the Island but the characters didn't I would be bored too.

It's not about INFORMATION, it's about being AHEAD of the characters and the story.

At some point she's going to find out something we already know, that's not interesting, that's catching up. Show me a character working on something WITH me.

It's not much of a journey if they get to their destination in the first season (let alone the first couple of episodes).
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Do you really think finding out that the Fairy Tale world is actually the destination of the character? Do you really think that's a particularly interesting destination? You're there NOW. Wouldn't it be great if your expectations of what happens next could be over turned, but, sadly, first the main character needs to catch up to YOU.
 
Lost had dramatic tension. The audience was never ahead of the characters. We were as clueless as the characters (and as it turned out, the writers too :rommie:).

Some of the characters are on the same page as the audience - August, Jefferson, Rumples, Regina (I guess?) - and their scenes are the most fun, because they are doing things that make sense to us, and have a point. Everyone else is just spinning in circles. The fact that the main character is one of them, that's the biggest problem here.
 
There are lots of stories where we are required to view things from multiple perspectives. Just because we happen to know more than Emma does right now, doesn't mean we still can't imagine ourselves in her shoes, and get a vicarious thrill from watching her discover the truth on her own.

And the better a job the writers do of grounding her in the real world (and having her react to things the way a real, skeptical person would), the more incredible that revelation will finally seem. That's all I see the writers doing here.

Besides, the series NEEDED her gruff, no-nonsense attitude to balance out all the cutesy fairy tale stuff. I don't think the show would have worked as well without it.
 
davejames said:
There are lots of stories where we are required to view things from multiple perspectives. Just because we happen to know more than Emma does right now, doesn't mean we still can't imagine ourselves in her shoes, and get a vicarious thrill from watching her discover the truth on her own.
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Fair enough. For me... It was boring, it meant waiting around for the character to catch up to the interesting aspects of the show.

Besides, the series NEEDED her gruff, no-nonsense attitude to balance out all the cutesy fairy tale stuff. I don't think the show would have worked as well without it.
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Why would her gruff no-nonsense attitude go away if she knows the truth?
 
I think the show has been fantastic. It's in the same mould as Lost (flashbacks galore) but easier to follow. The gradual reintroduction and reinvention of well known Disney characters has been a blast (Grumpy rocks and I want more Belle, dammit). They've also recaptured the Prisoner "The Village" vibe with Storybrooke.

I don't expect this show to run 10 years or anything, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they do in Year 2. This can go one of two ways: Fringe direction (becoming odder and odder and more interesting) or they can head in the Heroes direction and alienate everyone.

Alex
 
Well I don't see any reason for the writing to go into the toilet a la Heroes. If they can clue Emma in, and start using the Mad Hatter's multiple-universe machine (aka magic hats) to go ever more fascinating places, that's good enough to keep me interesting.
 
I enjoyed the pilot and the Cinderella episode--thought the premise was an intriguing one but like a lot of show(I'm looking at you Voyager)--the execution is lacking. Starting with the really weak Jiminy cricket/mine episode and continuing from there I thought the show has become more and more unfocused and lacking a narrative drive.

It also doesn't help that I've grown tired of the LOST-storytelling style and cheap gimmicks of flashbacks parallelling the main story, the non-linear structure at times, the games writers play with the audience to tease us with intriguing mysteries only to have them drawn out or answered in lame(why Regina hates Snow=dumb) and unsatisfying ways(Frankly there should be a moratorium by networks on Lost copycat type of shows--limited premises are better suited for a 13 run mini-series than struggling to stretch out things--look at how many fail or outright suck--V, FlashForward, Camelot, Harpers Island, Surface, Invasion, The 4400, Alcatraz, The Event, Happy Town, Vanished, Reunion, Heroes 2-4, Caprica, The Killing, Rubicon, Persons Unknown, Daybreak, The Nine, Kidnapped, Missing--and then in the end you hear the writers complaining about how it really wasn't about all the mysteries--well then ditch them and not introduce a bloated complex mythology). The romantic stuff on the show like it tends to be on a lot of sff programs is dull and the "whole will they or won't they" is boring(LOST Jack/Kate/Sawyer, Heroes' Simone/Peter/Isaac, BSG's love quadrangle, DS9's Worf/Dax etc, ENT's Trip/T'Pol, Fringe's Peter/Olivia). And I really find the magical answers dumb.

I really wanted to like it but I just don't find it that entertaining--it isn't awful but it isn't appointment viewing for me. Once in a while I'll watch when I can't find anything better but I frankly could take it leave it.
 
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I voted Excellent. This is one of my favorite shows right now. The writing, the characters, the cast are all good. I have the occasional quibble-- there's almost no TV show, movie or book that I wouldn't do differently if I were in charge-- but I have no real complaints.

The fact that Emma doesn't know the score yet doesn't bother me a bit. The tension between her and Henry in that regard mirrors the fracture between the Fairy Tale World and Reality. I'm more concerned with what will replace it when the day of revelation comes. Very often it's an unresolved situation that makes a story or character appealing and when you achieve resolution then you lose the appeal. We think we want Ben Grimm to be able to change back and forth at will, but then when it happens we lose the tragic nature of the character that made him sympathetic. And then there's all those "sexual tension" shows that lose their audience post-consummation (my sister doesn't like Bones anymore :(). This is one of the things that you have to beware of with arc-based storytelling.

But OUAT is a show that is a perfect vehicle for arc-based storytelling; it's not just shoehorned in to be trendy. It has the potential to be what Babylon 5 was or what Lost could have been: A real novel for television.
 
OUAT is a guilty pleasure at best for me so far. It is very clearly a chick show, so I am not the target audience. But more importantly I hate the wheelspinning and repeated, "You have no idea what I'm capable of!"-catfights that never amount to anything.

I like Rumple, I like Henry, I like Regina and some of the writing is pretty sly at times and riddled with easter-eggs. But I have a feeling that my interest is going to wane soon and the small amount of goodwill I have is going to evaporate. Most likely season one will end with an intriguing cliffhanger which will bring me back for season two, but within a few episodes everything will go back to normal and I'll check out of the show for good if the story shows no signs of moving forward.

I slogged through ten years of Smallville's teasing, and vague promises of the narrative moving forward, and I was burned badly by that show. I am not going to give OUAT nearly that amount of time.
 
However can you tell with a heavily serialized story. You don't know what the story's like till you know the ending. What subsidiary tales we know the ending to have been fairly good.

Maybe the best way to rate the show would be to look at the Mad Hatter episode. If you thought that was a satisfying story about Jefferson, then the series is well written. If you thought it was just an introduction, then not.
 
I rated it an Excellent. I enjoy the show very much and I am glad they are moving the story along and to some story completion/revelation as we wind down Season One.

I have to agree with Temis the Vorta on the issue of Emma not believing. Its time she came out of the dark on this. I think we are getting close to that happening though.
 
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