S01E02 - The Thing You Love Most

This episode starts out with the town of Storybrooke seeming to be in a generally good mood. The message seems to be that things are looking up now that Emma is here, but I don't think anyone besides Henry realizes that's the reason. A few people do seem to notice that the clock tower is working again. I'm wondering that tower has any other significance.

We catch Regina reading through the fairy tale book and she sees that there are ripped out pages at the end of the book. She confronts Henry about the missing pages and the fact that he thinks she's an evil queen (which she is, of course). She blames his behavior on the book and on Emma, but she thinks the Emma problem is over since she left town. Before Henry can respond, Regina hears the clock tower chime. Henry makes a break for it and Regina is left stunned that the clock is moving again. While outside staring at the clock tower, she sees Emma's car. Apparently, she hasn't left town after all.

Taking a page from the standard evil queen playbook, she shows up at Emma's door, all smiles, with a basket full of apples. (She claims they are Honeycrisp apples, but if you know apples, you know these aren't Honeycrisps - the color is all wrong. Prop department fail.) Apparently they're from an apple tree that she's had since she was a little girl (that figures).

Regina makes it pretty clear that she wants Emma out of town, and Emma is just snarky enough to really make her mad. The evil queen shines through as she says, "You have no idea what I'm capable of." Oooohhh... creepy.

We flash back to the castle and see the queen crash Snow White's wedding again. This time, when she dodges Prince Charming's sword by disappearing into a cloud of smoke, we see the continuation where she reappears in her castle. The only other people there is a servant and her mirror-mirror-on-the-wall. I like the mirror - it's pretty snarky too. We find out that she intends to use a dark curse which apparently she traded away to someone who is now living in the Forbidden Fortress.

The someone else turns out to be Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty". We get a little back story from Maleficent on the evil queen: turns out when she was about Snow White's age, she was supposed to marry someone  and Snow White somehow ruined it. The queen's fiance is now dead, presumably Snow's fault. Now we know why the queen hates Snow White so much. After a little evil queen showdown, our queen wrestles the dark curse back and she's off to put plans in motion.

The queen gathers a crew of down-trodden bad guys and tries to put the curse into action. She promises that in the new realm, they'll be the ones who win. For some reason, the curse fails to ignite.

Back to Storybrooke, Regina is picking apples from her tree when her assistant show up. He appears to have the same face as her magic mirror back in the enchanted forest and he refers to himself as "The Mirror". I guess he knows who he is and is aware of the curse. It's starting to look like the bad guys from the enchanted forest are "aware".

Meanwhile, Emma runs into Henry at the diner. While walking him to school, she almost eats the apple she got from Regina, until Henry stops her. I'm guessing this was a good call.

Henry gives Emma the missing pages from the book and is still working on convincing her that the curse is real and that she's the one to break it. At Henry's school, Emma runs into Mary Margaret and finds out that Henry thinks she's Snow White. Serious WTF moment for Emma who's meeting her supposed mother who appears to be the same age that she is. Next, Emma visits Archie, Henry's shrink, who violates all sorts of patient confidentiality and HIPPA regulations and hands over Henry's file. As soon as she leaves, Archive calls Regina who was apparently expecting this and told him to give her the file. I smell a trap.

Shockingly, the sheriff shows up at Emma room a bit later telling her that Archie called in that the file was stolen. Of course it's spread out all over Emma's room, so she's placed under arrest again. Regina then wastes no time telling Henry about Emma's troubles with the law in an effort to drive them apart. (Funny side note - she refers to Archie as "Dr. Hopper". He's actually Jiminy Cricket, get it?)

Henry doesn't buy Regina's story. While Emma's getting her mug shot, Henry shows up with Mary Margaret to bail her out. As soon as she's free, Emma heads to Regina's house and takes a chainsaw to part of the apple tree. This is possibly the best shot in the show so far.

In the enchanted forest, the queen make a visit to Rumpelstiltskin to find out why her curse didn't work. He let's her in on the secret that Snow White and Prince Charming's unborn child can break the curse. Once again, Rumpel's making a deal - this time the deal is to tell the queen how to make her curse work in exchange to an agreement that in the new realm she must give him whatever he wants and obey his every command as long as he says "please". According to the queen, Rumpel won't remember anything if the curse works so I guess he's out of the special-bad-guy-curse-immunity club. Once they make the deal, he tells her that she must sacrifice the heart of the thing she loves most.

Things then get more difficult for Emma - Regina has her evicted from her hotel room and a boot put on her car. Then, Regina invites Emma over to her office and really sets her up. She stages a conversation with Emma that leads her to accuse Henry of being crazy when she knew that Henry was in the next room. Henry runs off and Emma chases after.

Back in her castle the queen needs the heart of the thing she loves most. This turns out to be her servant who is actually her father (wow, really?). The queen has a crisis of conscience but in the end, she chooses revenge over love and rips her father's heart out of his chest with her bare hand. Yikes.

Emma pays a visit to Mary Margaret and they have a little heart to heart. Emma's thinking about leaving town to protect Henry, but she's convinced to stay. Emma find Henry at Archie's office and convinces him that she was just trying to throw Regina off the trail by saying what she did. They burn the missing pages from the book to keep them from Regina.

Back in the forest, the queen finally get's the curse fired up, then pays her respects at her father's grave. The tombstone says his name was Henry. Cue the creepy music.

Mr. Gold (aka Rumpel) stops by the Mayor's house. She thinks that Emma has finally left town, but he let's her know that she hasn't. We find out that Mr. Gold is the one who found Henry for her when she was trying to adopt. He makes a reference to Henry's name that makes us think he may know about the queen's father. Regina then asks about Emma and how he found Henry for her in the first place. She's starting to suspect that Emma is Snow White's daughter. She tries to get more information out of him, but he uses the magic word and she seems powerless to stop him.

My Questions:

• How does Rumpel/Gold seem to know about the curse and remember things from the enchanted forest? Clearly he's remembering, or has the whole time.
• Is Emma really starting to believe in all this curse business or is she just humoring Henry?

New Theories:

• Well, I don't know if it's a theory, but what we now know is that the queen and her minions are aware of what's going on. From what I can tell so far, her end game seems to be to keep everyone locked up and ignorant in Storybrooke where time is frozen and she gets whatever she wants. This isn't too compelling, so I'm hoping there is more to her motivations down the road.

Other Thoughts:

• I didn't find any Lost references in this episode! Did I miss any? Comment if you saw something I missed.