And we’re back! After a 3 week hiatus. Wow, that seemed like a really long time. Now I think I understand why the episodes between the holiday break and this one were less than stellar; it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to get things really going only to get interrupted by this break. Hopefully that was the explanation, and now we’ll start putting the pedal to the metal.

I think this week went well. I certainly liked it much better than the stand-alones they had pre-break. Maybe it was the lack of Cora, almost no Regina, Charmings fighting crime and Jorge Garcia being awesome? All a part of it. Plus we learned Charming’s real name!

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Guys, I apologize for last week. I don’t know what happened. Let’s just say I crossed the town line and forgot my identity and it was just bad news all around. But this is here! For a recap! Before another 3 week hiatus! Yeah!

Ok, I’ll be honest. For some reason last week’s episode and I didn’t get along. We met and I wanted to care and I really made an effort and then I just thought it was boring and started resenting it. You know, as you do with tv shows.

This week was much better though. First off, it was Jane Espenson written, which is always good. I think the dialogue in this episode was wittier than it’s been in a while. There was violence, and Ethan Embry and a Star Wars shout-out. There was a blow to one ship and a spark of another. And part of it was in black and white (ish)! Plus, if you’ve read Frankenstein you’ll feel super smart.

(Fair warning: this edition is more of a gif-cap, so make sure to let it have its time to load).

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We’re back! With a pretty depressing episode. Narrowly avoided executions, total lack of remorse for evilness, the (apparent) death of one of the nicest characters on the show and the total destruction of Regina’s hope. At least we got Emma being magic,  and Archie isn’t actually dead!

The Enchanted Land stuff fills in more of the lines of Charming and Snow taking back the kingdom from George and Regina, right up to the (Pilot) wedding, and the reason why Regina had to result to The Curse to take down Snow. Still waiting to find out what happened in the time between Snow and Charming’s real first wedding in 2×03 and their victory over George.

The Storybrooke storyline was mostly about tying the first half of the season to the second half; this was the bridge between the two. But bridges aren’t exactly the most exciting. Still, Cora and Hook are town, and they are here to fuck some shit up.

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(First of all, I’m sorry this is so late. I was doing battle with some wicked finals. I would rather face Cora and Hook any day of the week.)

But this episode! Winter finale! Queen of Hearts! True Love’s Kiss! Swordfights! Swordfight innuendo! Emma is straight-up MAGIC!

At first watching most of this seemed sort of predictable; the speculation of Cora being the Queen of Hearts was correct, Regina and Rumple were Regina and Rumple, we finally resolved the separate present-day plot-lines (hopefully), there was a nice happy-ish ending and a good cliffhanger.

However, after a few re-watches, I appreciate this one more, because it really took the mother-daughter (and son, in Henry’s case) theme that has been brewing all season thus far and made it front and center. We saw so many different facets of those relationships, how some grow, others decay, continuously shifting and changing and always, always complicated. I’m especially excited to see how they continue to explore these dynamics in the next part of the season.

But first, le recap!

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Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s back to real life we go. I guess it’s funny, because this episode was all about sleep? I hope everyone had a good weekend, whether it was a holiday for you are not, but now we’re back in it for the home stretch (I apoligize for the lateness of this; it’s hell week for me). Next week is the winter finale, and this penultimate episode was mostly about getting things in line to have a really epic finale next week.

One interesting thing about this episode: it’s the first time we haven’t had any flashbacks (I think). We just went back and forth between worlds in the present time period. Really it does show that now we’ve hit on a little bit of backstory for everyone, it’s not really a priority to go back and fill in the blanks in between points right now. I do hope (and suspect) that there won’t be too many times we eschew the flashbacks; I like learning more about the past (and there’s definitely a lot more to learn).

We still got some nice things here though: some more Hook, a great Team Princess fight scene, Fake!Aurora actually being awesome for once, a bittersweet Charming/Snow reunion and magic squid ink.

Also, zombies!

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