ONCE Enchants with Ella

 

 

 

 

 

Season 1, episode 4: “The Price of Gold”

This week’s episode opens in Fairy Tale Land, where Cinderella is watching everyone else go to the ball, and moping sadly because she’s been forbidden to even think about attending. So when the fairy godmother shows up to give her all the fancy stuff, and Rumpelstiltskin kills her…

Oh, wait. That’s not how you heard the story? Then I guess there must be SPOILERS AHEAD!

Rumpelstiltskin is the one who gave Cinderella the all-access pass to the ball, making the deal in exchange for a price to be named later. Cinderella, of course, makes the deal – anything to get out of a life of drudge work. Rump gives her the fancy blue ball gown and the glass slippers, leading to the Very Meta Moment of the Night:

Cinderella: “Glass?”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Every story needs a memorable detail.”

This whole episode centers around the art of the deal, and the transient nature of Emma’s past life. And I have to give the writers props for the world-building. They’re going about it in a much more solid way than the writers of “Grimm”. Granted, they’re different shows, but they’re working off the same source material, and “Once” seems to have a deeper core that will keep it going longer than one season.

In Storybrooke, just after Henry decides they need code names, Emma gets an offer from the Sheriff to be the new deputy. My first thought is that this is a setup. I still haven’t quite figured out his Fairy Tale Land analogue, unless it was the Huntsman, and at this point I’m suspecting that he’s playing an angle.

At Granny’s Café, Regina and Emma have their weekly verbal sparring, only Regina is being gracious this week. Seems she’s convinced Emma’s transient life means she’s going to be leaving soon. Well, we’ll just see about that, right? And Emma spills her cocoa. Ruby sends her to the laundry room in the back, where Emma meets the very pregnant Ashley (come on… ashes. Cinderella. Oh, those clever writers…)

At this point, we’re back to the theme of the week: making deals. See, Ashley is just about the same age Emma was when she gave up Henry. So Miss Swan has this reminder that her deal didn’t quite go the way it should have, and she gives a little tough love to Ashley, who’s been told by everyone in town that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a mother. Emma basically tells Ashley to grow up and decide for herself who she’s going to be.

Naturally this leads to Ashley breaking into Gold’s place to steal something. Only Gold catches her, she bolts, knocks him out, takes something from his waist, leading us to thing that this is the valuable item Gold wants Emma to retrieve. Gold finds Emma at Mary Margaret’s, where the rest of her stuff has arrived. Very little stuff, drawing a comment from Mother Mary Margaret about how it must make things easy when it’s time to leave. And there’s the second of tonight’s theme: Emma putting down roots.

Henry decides he’s going to be Emma’s sidekick because he wants to spend time with her. She’s caving to this kid quite a bit, almost unrealistically so. But we’re caught up in the momentum of the show, so…

FTL: Cinderella’s on the balcony in her other ball gown – the white one from the end of the Disney flick, with fireworks. She tells her prince (Thomas, we learn) how happy she is, how she always envied anyone at the castle when the fireworks were going. It always meant something special was going on, and now they’re firing off for her wedding. Le Sigh, as Pepe Le Pew would say…

At the wedding ball, Snow White and Prince James Charming are there, and Snow tells “Ella” (that’s what they call her. Ella.) that she’s such an inspiration to others. Her story of rising up out of poverty and making something of herself… truly an inspiration. But we know better. And so does Rumpelstiltskin, who is also at the party. Bum-bummmm. And he finally tells Cinderella his price: her firstborn.  Dun-dun-dunnnn.

When Ella reveals the deal to Thomas, his brilliant idea is to “make another deal” and finagle a way to capture Rumpelstiltskin and thus make sure he’ll never bedevil anyone again. Right? We know how this works. Right?

In Storybrooke, Ruby reveals that Ashley has a step-mother and two step-sisters that she doesn’t talk with anymore (and Henry tries to make hay with this, but Emma finally puts the boy in his place among the grown-ups). Ruby suggests trying the ex-boyfriend. (It’s a nice touch that Red has a glass wolf hanging from the rear-view mirror of her red Camaro. It’s these little things that make this show fun to watch, sometimes…) Only when she confronts the boyfriend Shawn (Prince Thomas), Dad reveals Ashley’s deal with Gold involves giving up the child. Baby is Mr. Gold’s “precious”. (This is just screaming for a Lord of the Rings gag, but alas…)

Emma figures out Ruby offered up a wild goose to chase a bit, while Ashley takes fiery red Camaro out of town on the way to Boston. Henry, of course, knows that this is a Very Bad Thing. Because no one can leave the town – except Emma, who’s the Chosen One.

Meanwhile, Ashley’s counterpart in Fairy Tale Land is in the mines with the two Princes Charming and Grumpy, who plan to capture Rumpelstiltskin and throw him into the mine-turned-prison. They’ll scam the guy, see, by telling him Ella’s having twins. “Let’s Make a Deal” indeed. Ella wonders about the consequences of using more magic, because – well, you know, magic is what got them into this mess in the first place.

Now, at this point, I want to make note of Jessy Schram’s performance. She’s got such a range of emotions and situations to deal with in this story, playing what essentially is three characters: Cinderella the skullery maid, Ella the Princess, and Ashley the runaway mother-to-be. And she pulls it off quite nicely. She didn’t get this much to do over on “Falling Skies” (and yes, I know it’s completely different, but still…). She cleans up nice, too. We know she can play the tough chick who can ride a motorcycle. In this performance, we get a range from joyous to desperate to conniving and everything in between.

From here on, everything sort of accelerates quite a bit. Emma and Henry find Ashely at the city limits, Ruby’s car wrecked, Ashley having the baby. Emma does some more tough love on the way back to the hospital, telling Ashley that she has to start making grown-up decisions.

Ella’s grown-up decision, meanwhile, gets Rumpelstiltiskin in prison, but the imp says he’ll have the child at some point, because no one breaks a deal.

Now, here’s a little question for the writers: If the Evil Queen enacted the curse 28 years ago, and Ella was pregnant before that, how is it that Ashley is just now having the baby? The only way this makes sense is for Ella to have been pregnant at the time the curse went into effect. Which means Ashley has been pregnant for twenty-eight years.

Think about that for a bit. Yikes.

So, after the longest gestation period ever in the history of mankind, Ashley gives birth to a baby girl, which is very good news for Mr. Gold. Only Emma, see, she’s not having any of Gold’s charm. No, sir. She makes a deal with him so Ashley can keep the baby. She’s going to owe Gold a favor one day. (See, on the old show “Stingray”, this had a tendency to get people in trouble, and I think that might happen here…)

Ella is worried that they’ve made another bad deal, and it turns out they have, at the cost of Prince Thomas, who’s now gone missing.

Henry has to be home by five, so the clock is now ticking (and my 9-year-old son pointed out “Just like in Cinderella” – he’s so smart). Regina has been at someone’s place for an assignation; who is it?

What follows is straight out of Adventures in Babysitting – you know, where there’s a mad scramble into the house to set things straight so the parents don’t know the kids have been out. (By the way, Emma has thought about her code name and has come up with “Pumpkin”.) Regina gets home just as Henry gets settled in his room, so all is well there. And at the hospital, too, where Shawn shows up, never should have left, yadda yadda, little booties for the new princess. It’s a callback to the whole glass slipper thing, ya know.

So, episode theme: deals is done for the night, which just leaves the whole “taking roots” theme. Emma takes the deputy job. And as she hangs up one end of the phone…

The Sheriff hangs up on the other end, and oho! He’s the one Regina was with. Zounds! (I still think he’s going to be revealed as the Hunstman who let Snow White go in the first place.)

Next week is the American Music Awards, so “Once” is dark. But it’s back on the 27th… with ‘Splosions!

[Official Show Site on ABC]   [Previous Episode Recap: “Snow Falls”]