Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B+ | 397 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Take Heart
By Cindy McLennan | Season 2 | Episode 16 | Aired on 2013.03.10
None of that matters, as they're interrupted by Emma, who announces she's drawn the line and then asks if Rumpy will cast a protection spell. He says, "No, no. You're going to do that for me." As Emma and Snow look at each other in surprise, Rumpy adds, "I'm relying on you." Snow looks positively stricken when she turns back to him. Commercial.
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.