Once Upon a Time Pilot: Reviewed

I’m going to start out saying the same exact thing I said when NBC originally debuted The Cape, the quickly-canceled superhero primetime drama:  Regardless of whether or not you liked this show – we still needed to show our support to networks/production companies that actually dare to step away from reality television, sitcoms, and legal dramas and decide to try something different.

Last night, ABCs Once Upon a Time premiered to almost 13 million viewers, making it the most watched new drama this year. *  And, honestly, I hope that trend continues all season, even though the realist in me knows that won’t happen.  Once was new, it was different, and it was refreshing.  It was a show that you would certainly expect from the CW or SyFy, certainly not the suits at a major network…  However – like many shows from the not-so-distant past can attest, the networks certainly don’t have much tolerance for being different, if being different means losing a few ratings points…  (see: Eastwick, The Cape, Kings, Firefly, Dollhouse, etc.)

Once Upon a Time tells the story of a fairy-tale land (Storybrook) that is under the spell of a witch.  (The evil-queen from Snow White.)  The spell that was cast causes all of the characters to forget their storybook past, and forces them to live in a “horrible” world (ours) where time never moves.  As the story goes – Snow White and her husband (Prince Charming, of course,) are cursed by the witch on the wedding day, along with the rest of the usual characters in fairy-tale land.  The curse is basically that you will forget all of your loved ones, and move to a land where there are no happy endings.  (again…ours.)  To try and find a way to avoid the curse – the royal couple goes down the dungeons to consult with Rumpelstiltskin, who is imprisoned there.  Rump tells them that in 28 years, their baby girl will come back to save them.  A protected tree is found that can ward off any magic, and this tree is made into a wardrobe; into it is placed the minute-old baby of Prince Charming and Snow White (-Charming?)

Move forward 28 years – and we meet Emma, played by Jennifer Morrison (How I Met Your Mother.)  A young boy gets on a bus from Maine to Boston to find and her and bring her back to Storybrook.  As it turns out, the boy is actually Emma’s son, whom she gave up for adoption when she was 10 years younger.  (Incidentally, she also believes she was abandoned by her parents, because apparently the “tree wardrobe” just transported her to the side of the road in our world…)  After several interactions where the boy tried to convince her of the whole fairy-tale, (he seems to have learned it from a book, we are yet to know why he thinks it is real,) Emma eventually decides to stay for one week.  (The boy promised she would believe him if she stayed for one week.)

That’s the condensed summary – and there were many other little nuances that you simply must see, and cannot easily be explained.  All in all, a really strong start to a very interesting concept.  It felt quite a bit like the old “Sweeps Week” miniseries that used to air on the networks back when TV was good…  Once made you feel that you weren’t just watching a television show, that maybe you were watching a movie; it was something that you just wanted to watch another hour of.  For the first time this year, an hour-long premier wasn’t long enough.

I can only hope that ABC continues to push this program, and does whatever it can to give it a chance.  We need more innovation on television – and this show is exactly the kind of innovation that will drive bigger and better television in the future.  I give Once Upon a Time a 4/5 – and, moreso than probably any other show on TV right now, simply cannot wait until episode 2.

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* http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/10/24/once-upon-a-time-ratings/

~ by dbruhn on October 24, 2011.