Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A- | 7 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Freaks and Geeks
By Cindy McLennan | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.24.2013
So yeah. Present-day Snow is in the Storybrooke woods, for a little archery practice. She's listening to "Bad Reputation" on an iPod, which is what inspired the above digression into a world without Neal, or at least a world in which an unrepentant bitch (sorry, Mum) takes him on. When one of Snow's arrows misses its mark, she hears footsteps, so she takes off to investigate. Along the way, she finds the broken off tail end of her arrow. It's then that she spies an abandoned trailer. Inside, she finds a fully wooden August, and the business end of her errant arrow sticking out of his wooden thigh. Commercial.
Sidebar. Largely, the people in our forum hate GGI-wooden August. I think it's a pretty well done effect. How would you show a living, magical man made out of wood? You know how I always say I try to avoid show-related media. Sometimes, that only amounts to avoiding timely show-related media. Eventually, I cave and read/watch some things. I just recently watched the Once Upon A Time cast and crew session at PaleyFest. Imagine my chagrin, upon hearing that the creators loved the effects used to create the Chintz Monster. Okay, maybe there was less chagrin and more guilty giggling. To me, that was poorly done, whereas August looks magically wooden, which is what he is. Commercial's over. Time to get back to the story.
Hong Kong. October, 2011. August goes to a busy hospital, but he can't make the doctor see that his leg is wooden because the doctor isn't a believer. August thinks he can prove his assertion to the doctor by stabbing himself in the leg, but all that does is freak the doctor out, so he screams for security. August bolts and is running for the door when a guy grabs him and pulls him into a supply closet. The man says he works with someone who can fix the kind of problems that most people don't believe exist. "They call him The Dragaon." Of course they do, Show. I can't believe I'm saying this, but The Dragon had better tie into Mulan because I'm starting to feel like she, Aurora and Phillip were an even bigger waste of my time than I originally thought. We flash forward to...