Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B+ | 4 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Take Heart
By Cindy McLennan | Season 2 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.10.2013
After the break, we get a little more delightful Espenson dialogue, when Emma tells Rumpy, "I can't cast a spell. I can spell spell." He insists she has it in her though and asks her to try. Emma closes her eyes and puts on her constipation face, so Gold tells her to stop thinking. Magic isn't head work, it's gut. She has to tap into her emotions and ask why she's doing this -- who she is protecting -- and then feel it. Emma turns around, closes her eyes and tries again. The magic flows up over the front door. When we cut back to Emma, it washes over her. Her expression is one of bliss. We flash back to...
Random Kingdom. Tower. Just as Rumpy knows to get Emma to tap into her good desire to protect her loved ones, he knows that Cora will need to tap into her anger at being humiliated. He confesses that he still summons up the memory of the time a soldier made him kiss his boot, as Bae looked on. "I go back and I rip out his throat, and I crunch his veins with my teeth." Strictly speaking, veins are more chewy than crunchy. Um. I hear.
At any rate, after he tells Cora that is how magic is made, he sits behind her. As many have pointed out, when he sits behind her to help her spin, it's evocative of the pottery wheel scene in Ghost, but I can't talk about that because I hate living in a non-magical world where someone as beautiful as Patrick Swayze was taken by the horrific wasting monster that is Pancreatic Cancer. It's mortal and stupid, and makes me think ugly thoughts about who I'd use the Life-for-a-Life candle against to save the Swayze. I don't want to be like that.
Anyhow, it's all sexy fun shoulder-kissing time in the tower, as Cora recounts how the royals made her kneel and apologize to Eva, and how she realized that no matter how good she was or hard she worked, she'd never amount to anything more. Rumpy continues kissing her shoulder and encouraging her to tap into the dark side, by asking what she wants to do to them. Cora: "I want to make them bow. I want their kneecaps to crack and freeze on the stones. I want their necks to break from bending." At that, Rumpy whispers, "Look." When Cora realizes she's succeeded in spinning straw into gold, she says, "I'm going to live." Rumpy whispers all seductively, "You're gonna do much more than that, dearie. Don't stop...until they are on their knees." As he kisses her ear, she coos, "Let's keep going." There's a time cut and then...