Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A | 754 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Feed Your Head
By Cindy McLennan | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2012.03.25
Storybrooke. Jefferson brings Emma some floppy black velour and tells her to make a hat like the top hat sitting on the sewing table. And here's where I want to poke the writers a little. I know nothing about making hats. Since Emma was raised in the foster system, did a little time in juvie, worked as a bail bonds woman and is now a sheriff, I'm going to go out on a limb and decide she too knows nothing about making hats. That's all well and good. Jefferson is crazy but he's also right that Emma has brought magic to Storybrooke, so I get that she'll be able to make a hat. What doesn't work for me is that she never, not once, says she doesn't know anything about hat making. This is how real people talk. Person 1: "Make me a hat." Person 2: "I'm a sheriff, not a milliner. I don't know to make a hat." There's no reason to omit that line. It's unnatural that she doesn't say it. I wait for her to say it for the next however many minutes, but despite all her objections, she never makes the most obvious, natural one. "I don't know how to make a hat." Sorry. Rant over. Oh, wait, one more thing. Here's a little Pro Tip for my readers. Haberdashers don't make hats. The term is applied either to one who sells sewing notions, or one who deals in men's clothing. Hatters or milliners make hats. There. I feel better now.
So Jefferson tells Emma to make a hat. She cracks about how he already has enough. Jefferson says they don't work. He needs her to make a hat and make it work. He tells her she has magic. She can do it. When she catches sight of the tea service in the corner and looks around the room at all the hats, she realizes he thinks he's the Mad Hatter. She figures he's glommed onto Henry's fairy tale theory. She tells him they're just stories.