Once Upon a Time S04E01: "White Out"





Two things:



1) As of “White Out,” I on my way to duplicating the story template that Once Upon a Time's writers use for each episode:









2) Hello and welcome back David’s wig!!! I didn’t realize how much I'd missed you!!!







Guys, "White Out" was definitely the second episode of the season. That much is clear. It also included Bo Peep as a war lord and the revelation that Anna is as bloodthirsty as hell. But let’s start at the top!



We picked up moments after last week’s season premiere, Elsa had left the pawn shop she’d broken into and was creeping around Storybrooke, looking extremely unconcerned about the giant steel beasts flying around. It was pretty chill of her, considering we know for a fact there are no cars in Arendelle. I’m also impressed that she magically put a giant ice wall around the entire town because really, how would she even know the perimeters of the place? But sure, okay, maybe Ice Magic has a link to Google Maps.











In flashback, we learned that Anna went to stay with a gentler, hippier, sheepier David when she arrived in the Enchanted Forest, because he was a friend of Kristoff’s. Now, Kristoff lives in Arendelle, which is an extremely perilous sea voyage away from the Enchanted Forest, in a time before email/kiks/radio/telephones. Kristoff’s job, if I remember correctly, is to dig up ice, so even if he was involved with transporting and selling it overseas, I'm very doubtful he would be selling it to landlocked shepherds. Also, David somehow received news Anna was engaged and headed his way well in advance of her landing? Really, shame on me for noticing such trifles. After four seasons, I am the crazy one to expect logical consistency from this show. The wig was onscreen, therefore this was automatically a good time.



























Meanwhile IRL, Charmings were waking up after a long night of the baby keeping them all up, since Mary Margaret lives in a studio apartment, at MOST a one bedroom. Like what, she was paying for four bedrooms when she was a single teacher? Nope. So now, crammed into her pre-curse apartment, are two new parents, their newborn baby, Emma, and Henry, and all of them are sleeping cheek to jowl and sharing one bathroom. No wonder Henry is desperate to get home to the mayoral manse. Henry was in Manic Pixie Dream Son mode, preparing a basket of ice cream and red wine for Regina in hopes that he could get back to his own bed and a premium cable subscription, until a raven came calling at the window.















I found this detail delightful. Regina sent Henry a raven message instead of just texting him, to very dramatic effect. Basically, she doesn’t want to see him, she doesn’t want to see anybody, she just wants to get drunk and yell things at her mirrors in peace. Henry was understandably bummed. He was like, “She doesn’t want to see me!” and Emma was like, “I read the message, that’s not what she said, she doesn’t want to see you right now.” LOL that Emma read Henry’s message from Regina, though. The thirst: too real.



Anyway what with the Ice Wall popping up out of nowhere, David and Emma went to investigate, Hook showed up to join them because why not, all like, "Oooh, our second date," and all I could think was, "How is this dude still in the same damn outfit?" People keep telling me that Hook's costume is going to change the season, production has promised he's getting a costume change, but to you I say: Show me the receipts, cause all I'm seeing is one steampunk frock coat with four seasons' worth of wear and tear. Anyway, even flanked by both her dad and her steampunk beau, Emma immediately managed to get herself separated and trapped with Elsa between sheets of shaved Styrofoam.



















Back in the Enchanted Forest, Anna hadn't even had a chance to remove her ear muffs before a Powerful Loathsome Woman showed up and bossed around David and his mom with that menacing phallic symbol of hers. Meet Bo Peep, the warlord! I will say that I loved a new non-Disney character popping up. She reminded a lot of Bo Peep from The 10th Kingdom, all bossy and conniving and flecked with flowers, but I appreciated her magical staff and Cockney accent and legions of damned slaves branded for eternity. When David couldn’t come up with her money fast enough, she immediately “branded” David and his mom.







She left in a huff, promising to return the next day, and Anna was immediately all, “Why don’t we get you a sword so you can kill this woman?” It’s all tulips and snowmen and harsh, skull-cleaving Viking justice in Arendelle, I guess because Anna was really insistent that David learn to slay this Powerful/Despicable Woman with his very own large phallic symbol, and when he explained to her that, “Yo she has literal armies, I can’t win against this woman, I will die and so will my mother, please respect my right as a human being to seek my own survival,” Anna was like, “That’s not SURVIVING, that’s LIVING! You need to fight the impossible fight!” Which, again, what!? It was genuinely terrible advice. What kind of crazy kamikaze war ethics are those?



Still, what she said must've gotten through to him, because he sat down in that wig and revealed that his dad had had a drinking problem. Because of that, David's dad had both abandoned him and then died... in a drunk-driving accident (cart).







Like... I just cannot with this show and parental abandonment motivating literally every single character. Is it laziness, or is someone behind the scenes working through some master thesis that literally every single problem the world has ever known was caused by parents abandoning their kids? It’s a mystery, but it’s for sure on the OUAT story wheel in bold font (as seen above).



Anyway, in the real world, Emma was dying quite politely in front of Elsa, and also bonding with her over how they both couldn’t control their magic.























BTW Jennifer Morrison was amazing in this scene, I genuinely believed she was freezing. Where would OUAT be without her as Emma? Canceled, obvs. Anyway, via walkie talkie, Elsa alerted Hook and Charming to the fact that Emma was minutes from death. You’d think they’d contact the ONE person in town they’d both seen demolish an ice gollum, the ONE person in town who had powerful-enough magic to melt through an ice wall, a.k.a. Regina, but they chose instead to head over to the pawn shop and see if Mr. Gold could trace the necklace to a person who may or may not even exist in this dimension, then they beat up a lady butcher to retrieve back a shepherd’s crook that might sort of page that person, and then they brought that to the wall to be like, “We tried.” Great thinking guys A++ problem-solving.























Meanwhile, in the Fairy-Tale Land side of things, Bo Peep had come to claim her protection money early and branded Anna as her slave via magical pulse, and so David was galvanized to pick up his big phallic symbol and go fight her army, which consisted of two fops hanging out in front of her cement gazebo?











So much for those “armies” David was concerned about. And yes, Bo Peep holds court in the same cement gazebo Aurora and Phillip lived in, which, what are the odds?! David bested the two guards so handily that Bo Peep was forced to pick up a sword and fight him herself, even though her all-powerful magical Shepherd's Crook, which she had previously used to send him flying to the ground in their last scene together, was right next to her the whole time.



Well, I guess she was in the mood for a little swordplay, though she certainly seemed angry about having to fight, uttering the line, “Guess mother’s got to get her hands dirty now!” Which, look... I just want to know. I want to know who hurt you, OUAT. Who hurt you so bad that every woman with authority who you come in contact with is a hell-beast bent on destruction?



After a quick skirmish, David sensually lashed Bo Peep to her own gazebo with a silky ribbon (??), then grabbed her big phallic symbol and ran off to find Anna.



















He found her and returned her necklace and Anna giggled with gleeful surprise that he was still alive after facing his impossible fight, which was sort of chilling. SO: Clearly Anna didn’t lose her necklace during this adventure, there will be more Anna one-offs to come. BRACE YOURSELVES! She's an adrenaline junkie with a taste for violence in earmuffs.



Once David realized who Anna was, he raced to Bo Peep’s current place of employment in Storybrooke, a butcher’s shop, and she recognized him as that rebellious shepherd and almost stabbed him with a cleaver but Hook saved him, and honestly did this lady not get the memo that David is the prince now? Like, he and Snow famously married and all the land rejoiced, but Bo Peep had no clue? Once again, consistency is my problem, not OUAT's, apparently. She also conveniently had her Shepherd's Crook leaning up against several frozen sides of beef, which is clearly against OSHA regulations. Anyway, basically we got to watch Prince Charming rough up the same lady twice.







I should mention that during all this, the C-story thread involved a delegation of the three most annoying people in town finding Snow and declaring her the new mayor (Regina was too busy sitting in the Mayoral Mansion listening to Morrissey and emptying out her library wet bar). They demanded that Snow figure out how to get the electricity running in Storybrooke again, because the Ice Wall had caused a blackout. They dragged poor Snow, who'd given birth something like 48 hours ago, out to the electric plant and yelled at her to fix things until she snapped on them pretty hard; I think she even said that Regina hadn’t been evil, they were.







I don’t know, it was actually a very cute thread until Snow figured out how to turn on the electricity by making a weird parallel between giving her baby milk and giving the plant fuel and just... I am extremely weirded out by the depiction of a woman solving a mechanical problem only by viewing it through the lens of childcare.















Anyway so Emma and David and Hook and Elsa all met up back at the house after David quoted Anna back to Elsa and that helped her use her magic to bust out of the Ice Wall and Hook scooped Emma up in his arms and carried her to warmth and safety like she weighed as much as a bag of Lay's Potato Chips. Henry realized there was going to be one more person sharing the bathroom and she’d probably freeze the toilet bowl water, so he set off for Regina’s house.

























Henry is back with his mom, I’m glad he reached out to her, I love that OUAT has really dedicated itself to portraying Regina as being as much Henry’s mother as Emma is.



Meanwhile the Ice Wall still had not frozen! And neither had the ice cream... because there’s another ice witch in town! If this last scene was too subtle, with her freezing a freaking wall during business hours for no reason, now you know: There’s some kind of Ice Witch afoot, and she doesn’t seem exactly malicious or anything, but she is Powerful and a Woman, so watch out!





QUESTIONS:

... Were you bored by the lack of Regina in the episode? Is her sass the seasoning this bland repast so badly needs?



... So apparently Anna craves the blood of the unrighteous?

... Is Elsa a sociopath? If no, why not?

... If you sent messages by raven, would you use text abbreviations like “ur” and “lol” just to be silly, or would you use the Queen’s English and write everything in calligraphy?

... Are you tired of Frozen yet?



