Once Upon A Time - Season 2 Episode 3 - Recap Video and Review - Lady of the Lake

Excuse me, I've got something in my eye. Totally not tearing up at a son having to say goodbye to his mother, or honorable Lancelot granting a dying woman's wish and marrying her son to his true love in the middle of scenic nowhere, or mother and daughter making amends in one world while a father finds his long-lost daughter in another. No, I've just got a bit of cinnamon in my eye that I should probably rinse thoroughly with warm water.

Credit: ABC

Seriously though, it was hard not to feel something after this week's Once Upon A Time, as "Lady of the Lake" hits the emotional beats that have been missing for some time. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this was the most nakedly emotional episode of the entire series so far, and one of its most successful, in that regard. The episode plays off a key dramatic subplot from last season, while also developing a wider sense of connection between these characters, as Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) come to a mother's understanding.

Emma and Snow are still trapped in the Enchanted Forest, and Snow has no intention of letting fellow prisoner Cora (Barbara Hershey) anywhere near her daughter. Thankfully, that won't be a problem, as Emma and Snow set out on a journey to their old castle in Fairy Tale Land alongside Mulan (Jamie Chung), the fallen Sir Lancelot (Sinqua Walls), and the still-bitter Princess Aurora (Sarah Bolger), who continues to blame Emma and Snow for Phillip's death. Among other concerns, Lancelot doesn't appear to know how or why they were all spared from the Curse, and the discovery of the Enchanted Forest as a safe haven came at the cost of countless lives. To make matters worse, ogres are back, and their bloodlust goes without saying.

Credit: ABC

First off, I have to really hand it to the visual effects team, as the ogres are pretty remarkable for network television. The increased budget is already paying off dividends, even if some elements of the Fairy Tale Land are still patchy. It's rare that a genre series handles this level of CG with this level of deftness, and the action scene is fairly good, to boot, with Snow displaying her latent badass tendencies, slaying the ogre with an arrow to the eye when Emma loses her gun (because her encounter with the dragon apparently taught her nothing about the efficacy of bullets against fairy tale creatures). Snow is attempting to make amends with Emma for the choice she made 28 years ago to send Emma to our world alone, and the issue between mother and daughter is a long time simmering, even if Emma's anger is predicated upon her being a moron who'd have rather been poked full of holes by Regina's men instead of being sent to the real world with a boy made of wood. But with a series like Once Upon A Time, you just have to take the contrivances in stride.

Emma seems incapable of understanding a mother's sacrifice, though Snow, as we learn, knows all too well. In a flashback, we see Snow and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) in flight from the pursuing forces of King George (Alan Dale). In the ensuing skirmish, Charming's birth mother, on whom's property they were intending to hide, takes an arrow to the heart. In desperation, they decide to make for the magical lake that cured Frederic from King Midas's touch last season, hoping that its magical properties will heal her wound (it'd be comically absurd if the show hadn't already laid the groundwork for how medicine basically works in this world, where True Love's Kiss is the Fairy Tale Land's closest Robotussin equivalent).

Credit: ABC/Jack Rowand

Of course, Charming's dear old mom is hardly the only one with need of some magic water, as Snow White has been cursed by the evil King with a potion that causes infertility, a detail she confesses to her future mother-in-law. It's clear to see where the story is going, even more so once they reach the magic lake and find it dried up, but for one small sip's worth. When Snow refuses the request from Charming's mother to drink the drop for herself, she comes up with a plan through Lancelot, and as she dies, watching Snow and Prince Charming's impromptu wedding ceremony, Snow finally comes to understand the sacrifice of a mother's love, which contrasts nicely with the unambiguous villainy of Cora, who wants to get back to our world and be reunited with her daughter, not out of motherly love, but murderous impulse.

As Emma and Snow root around the ruins of what once would have been Emma's nursery, Lancelot seems to be suspiciously interested in reactivating the enchanted wardrobe, and Snow quickly pieces together that it isn't Lancelot, but Cora in disguise. Cora reveals to have killed the real Lancelot several years earlier, and adopted his appearance as a disguise. In the ensuing fight, Cora threatens Henry, and, on impulse to protect her child, Emma sets the wardrobe on fire, destroying Cora's ticket out of FTL. The resulting resolution between Emma and Snow is poignant, as Emma tearfully admits that it was hard for her to understand because no one had ever put her first before. It's a fitting resolution to a long-simmering conflict of character when set against the context of 28 years' worth of doubt, loneliness, and abandonment. Snow looks back with one last pained glance at the life she and her family could have had together, and it's an affecting moment (though I might as well just take this moment to briefly add that Ginnifer Goodwin, God bless her, still isn't pulling off that short haircut, and the sooner we get extensions on that lovely little head of hers, the better off we'll all be).

The business between Emma and Snow is only one of a series of strong emotional arcs in the episode, as Jefferson/Mad Hatter (Sebastian Stan) is finally reunited with his daughter, Grace, and Henry (Jared S. Gilmore) develops a closer bond with his grandfather, Prince Charming, who teaches his grandson how to use a sword since he's "the grandson of a prince." These are all successful stories in an episode that had been running the risk of becoming treacly and overwrought, but succeeded by maintaining a careful, measured balance, advancing the story without being overwhelmed by overt sentimentality. The episode also features two strong cliffhangers, as we see King George (a lawyer in Storybrooke) watching Charming and Henry in Storybrooke, as the lifted curse means the erstwhile King remembers his "son," and he doesn't look all that intent on letting bygones be bygones. But that's hardly all, as Cora is still kicking around in FTL, and seems to have discovered the key to a potion of some sort. The mind reels at the damage she could do in Storybrooke, much less when paired alongside the potential chaos of an insurgent King George. Until then, "Lady of the Lake" utilizes rewardingly emotional storytelling to craft the best episode of the new season thus far.

Credit: ABC/Jack Rowand

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