TV on Thursday: Once Upon a Time

This is a new non-book post that I'm thinking of doing weekly. Along with reading I was a lot of TV...probably an unhealthy amount of TV, actually. My goal here is to spotlight some of the shows (and occasionally movies) that I love, watched in the past, and share why I love them. For week one I'm going to write about a series that I've already professed my love for on this blog: Once Upon a Time

Why I love it: I'll be the first to admit that this show isn't perfect. Sometimes the minor plots don't completely grab me, and I don't think that I can hear the phrase "I'll always find you" one more time. Despite all of that, the show is exciting, fun, fresh, and is a total TV addiction for the fairy tale lover (read: me). During the commentary for an episode of the first season, we learn from the shows creators that the entire series revolves around what happens after "happily ever after", and acknowledging that it isn't the perfect scenarios that many of us imagined for our favorite characters. If that's not enough to draw you in, there's more...The premise of this show is that the evil queen places a curse on all the people in Fairytale Land (AKA The Enchanted Forest) to bring them to a place where everything that they love will be torn from them. They're sent to our world, Storybrooke, Maine, with no memories of who they truly are, and time stands still. There is someone who can break the curse, she just actually has to believe in it.

Who's who? Alright, I can't really spoil this one for you, half the fun is remembering or guessing which character in Storybrooke is which character. Emma, our heroine, is played by Jennifer Morrison. She does a great job playing the closed off skeptic. Interestingly, as Emma's arrival begins to change Storybrooke, it also changes her and helps her grow. We all know how much I love character growth. Other characters who pop up include Belle, Rumplstiltskin, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Cinderella, and Mulan...plus we've been getting snippets from Alice in Wonderland.

Where we're at: We're a little over halfway through season two, and the twists and turns haven't stopped yet. I don't want to spoil anyone, so if you're interested, it's available streaming via Netflix (go, now!).

My ultimate question: A little boy named Henry knows about the curse because of a book given to him by his school teacher. It depicts everything that happened pre-curse, and he uses it to help Emma accept who she is. My question is this: everyone else in the world probably has still heard all of the fairy tales. There's no reason to believe that a random person on the street wouldn't be able to tell you Cinderella's story. So, how is it that these stories came from The Enchanted Forest? Will they give us a backstory on the Grimm brothers? What about those characters who are from other authors?