Last year I got hooked on this show called Once Upon A Time. This is an American TV series that takes the fairytales that we all know and love and puts a crazy spin on all of them. The show was first aired in October of 2011. They are now up to season 6 with a strong fan base. These fans commonly refer to the show as OUAT and they call themselves the oncers. I am a oncer. It was my summer before I started my first year at my university. There was nothing on TV so I decided to browse Netflix to see if they had anything worth watching. I stumbled across OUAT and decided to give it a shot because I had heard so many great things about it.
The first fairytale story that you see in this series is the story of Snow White and Prince Charming. Now I do not want to tell you all the details of this show because you should really go check it out for yourselves. Anyway, the series begins at Snow and Charming's wedding where the Evil Queen appears and makes a threat to curse the whole land. Soon after the Queen disappears into the night you find out that Snow and Charming are pregnant with a baby. Towards the end of Snow's pregnancy, the Evil Queen lives up to her threat and enacts this curse to take all of the fairytale characters in the vicinity of the curse to a place with no magic. This place is called Storybrooke and it is located in Main. Now the Enchanted Forest, where all the fairytale characters lived, are considered to be one realm while Main, or our world, is another realm. There are many different realms throughout the whole series.
Within this first episode you are introduced to a woman named Emma Swan and her son Henry. Henry finds Emma in Boston and informs her that he is her son and that she needs to come save this town called Storybrooke. Like I stated before, I will let you watch the series to get the full story of Emma's and Henry's relationship. Long story short, she ends up going with Henry and starts her quest to save all of the fairytale characters and to help them get back their happy endings.
A very interesting aspect of this TV show is the flip-flopping between the past and the present. For instance, the viewer is watching the present day confrontations with Emma, Henry, and the rest of the characters in once scene and then the next scene it is giving the background of one or more of the fairytale characters. This flip-flopping gives the viewer one of two things: it will either give them foreshadowing of an event that is about to happen or it is putting all the pieces together as to why the present day situation is the way it is.
I know this article may seem kind of sporadic, but I do not want to give away too much information and spoil anything. This series is possible the best series that I have ever watched. I love all of the cliff hangers and the surprised that the ABC network put into the show. All of the actors and actresses are perfect for their roles and they portray them all beautifully. I have talked to some people who say that they lost interest in the series but I promise you if you like fairytales, suspense stories, and are not afraid to experiment with a darker turn every once in awhile, you will absolutely LOVE Once Upon A Time.
