During the week-end, my girlfriend and I sat down to watch the pilot episode of Once Upon a Time. I wasn’t really sure what to expect and now – three days later – I’m still not entirely sure what I think about it.

Jennifer Morrison

The series stars Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), perhaps best known for her stint as Dr. Allison Cameron on House M.D. and as Zoey Pierson on How I Met Your Mother. When we meet her first, she’s a bail bondsman capturing a man named Ryan (Warren Christie, who I hoped would be a regular in the series. I’ve liked him since I saw him on Happy Town, but I suppose his work over at Alphas is keeping him busy). Anyhow, she captures him, goes home, is met by a little boy named Henry Mills (Jared Gilmore) who claims to be her son that she gave up for adoption ten years ago. She doesn’t believe him, but drives him home anyway, being slowly convinced that he might be telling the truth. He wants her to ‘save the world’, but she’s not to keen on doing anything of the sort. The show ends with her deciding that there might be something to whatever it is he’s saying, so she stays in the town for a week.

Ginnifer Goodwin

While this is happening, we’re met with a completely parallel story of Snow White, Prince Charming, The Evil Queen and a dozen other fairy tale characters. Apparently, The Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) is dead-set on cursing all the fairy tale characters (but of course). At the very end of the episode, we learn what this curse is – transporting all the fairy tale characters into the ‘real’ world and wiping their memory clear of their old lives. It turns out that young Emma Swan is actually the daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin, who I thought was excellent for the role), who now goes by the name of Mary Margaret Blanchard and is a school teacher. Only through the scheming and cunning of the fairy tale people was she able to get her daughter to escape the curse, but still end up in the real world, not knowing her origins.

You know; before seeing this episode, I was dead-set on thinking that this was one of those series that would be around for a couple of episodes and then get canceled. It wouldn’t even get a full first season like so many other genre shows (Remember FlashForward, The Event, Persons Unknown and – of course – Happy Town). Now I’m not so sure. I mean; I wouldn’t call this a great show, but it has its merit and might actually turn out to be quite okay. Still, we’ll have to wait for another couple of episodes before we know if this is a concept worth betting on, but I’m definitely giving it a shot. It’s a hell of a lot better than I thought it’d be. Let’s see what I think by episode 5.

Another interesting thing that I saw was all the subtle Lost-references, which is understandable as this is a Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis production. There was a clock stuck on 8:15, a room number 108, and even a smoke-monster-looking curse. I might have missed something, but those three really stood out.

How did you like Once Upon a Time – Season 1, Episode 1?