Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B+ | 944 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Bibbidi Bobbidi Botch
By Cindy McLennan | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 2011.11.13
Occam's Emma: For now, it is best to accept that Emma's expressed backstory is as real and happened to her every bit as much as what we have seen happen on screen. We know what happened in Once Upon A Time's real world (i.e. the Enchanted Forest, where Snow gave birth to Emma and wrapped her in a blanket with an Emma monogram; Charming stashed her in the wardrobe; the wardrobe served as a portal to another world). We have been told that the wardrobe's magic transported Emma to another world, in which she grew up in the foster system, gave birth to a baby boy at 18, gave her son up for adoption to someone with connections to Mr. Gold in the baby broker business. It is safe to assume that, because of her Enchanted Forestian lineage, Emma is able to travel from the world in which she grew up, to the magical construct that is Storybrooke. Lost fans will understand my temptation to get really out there, and suggest that much of Emma's Boston/Phoenix/Tallahassee backstory is a magical construct too, created not by the curse, but rather by the magical wooden wardrobe, but that over-complicates things, even for me, at least for now.
The point of all this analysis is this: I don't think it is important how the Sheriff got the job as Sheriff, because I think he never wasn't Sheriff. He was whoever (my money is on the Huntsman) in the Enchanted Forest. The curse struck. He woke up as Sheriff in the construct that is Storybrooke. Jiminy Cricket was hopping around, because Pinocchio's conscience. The curse struck. He woke up as a shrink, Archibald Hopper, in the construct that is Storybrooke. Rumpelstiltskin was a seer and an imprisoned imp with a penchant for baby-napping, and a cache of curses. He struck a deal with Queenie, and woke up as a pawn broker (oh and I love that, especially this week, because his victims are his pawns in the Chess-sense) and antiquities dealer, with a baby broker business on the sly. Storybrookians don't remember details of the Storybrooke past because there is no past, because there was no time there. They were outside time until Emma booked a room at Granny's and that clock started up. Get it? Got it? Good. Now let's move on to the...