ONCE UPON A TIME: Prepare to Be Enchanted

When I first heard that Once Upon a Time was being developed by former Lost producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, I may have clapped my hands with glee.  Over the course of pilot season, as more details were revealed and casting was announced, my excitement grew. I tell you this in the interest of full disclosure, so you know that I was inclined to like the series from the beginning. What I didn’t expect was to love it.

Once Upon a Time, premiering tonight at 8/7c on ABC, is the ultimate fairy tale transplanted into the real world. The show exists in dual universes, as do many of the characters, with frequent shifts back to fairy tale land to reveal the connections in the real world. The gist of the story is that on the day Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) wed, the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) crashes the party and curses the entire fairy tale world. For reasons to be explained later, she expels all of the fairy tale characters into the real world, trapping them in time in Storybrooke, Maine, where they’re destined to live unhappily, not remembering their other lives or happiness.

At the heart of the story is a time-bending family. Desperate for hope, Snow goes to see the jailed Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) and asks him if the curse can be broken. He informs her that the daughter she is carrying will be their savior if she can be kept from the Evil Queen’s grasp, extracting the name of the child as his payment. Through magical means, baby Emma is sent to the real world before the Queen can get to her, but the curse comes, bringing banishment and misery. Back in the real world, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) is now a 28-year-old bailbondsperson, an orphan with few friends. Celebrating her birthday alone, she’s surprised when the son she gave up for adoption 10 years ago shows up on her doorstep. Henry (Jared Gilmore) tries to convince her that she is the daughter of Snow White, the savior mentioned in his book of fairy tales, but she naturally doesn’t believe a word. At first. Returning him to Storybrooke, Emma meets his adoptive mother – Regina, the mayor of Storybrooke and the Evil Queen’s real world self. Agreeing to stay for a bit for Henry’s sake, Emma unknowingly meets her own mother, teacher Mary Margaret Blanchard who is roughly the same age as Emma in this timeline. This is a show from people who worked on Lost, after all.

The pilot episode of Once Upon a Time is heavy on the exposition, explaining the ambitious scope of the series and presenting the dual characters we’ll be encountering in both timelines. The fantasy aspect of the fairy tale world is everything I had hoped it would be, with stunning sets and costumes and characters from multiple stories interacting with each other. The stories co-exist, from Pinocchio to Tinkerbell to Red Riding Hood, and their real-life counterparts are creatively inserted into the modern world. Enough of the familiar tales remains to help us identify everyone, but Once Upon a Time has a new spin that gives fresh insight and clever connections between the stories.

From the episodes I’ve seen, it looks like once the initial premise is explained in the pilot, we’ll begin to explore each character in more depth with flashbacks to their fairy tale selves juxtaposed with what’s happening to them now that Emma and Henry are investigating the curse. The second episode gives us some insight into the Evil Queen, while episode three is a delightful take on how Snow and Charming met. Combining mystery, romance, action, drama, and clever twists on familiar tales, Once Upon a Time is my favorite new show.

Once Upon a Time premieres Sunday, October 23 at 8/7c on ABC.