Twice Upon A Time

I caught the pilot of Once Upon A Time.  I had to watch it if for no other reason it was created by Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. The show was intriguing, but maybe more because I have no idea where it's going than anything else.

There are two interrelated stories.  First, in the magical fantasy world, we've got all the denizens of fairy tales.  At the center are Snow White and Prince Charming, but we also see Rumplestiltskin, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio and others.  All are happy at the White-Charming wedding until the Evil Queen breaks it up and puts a curse on the land.  They'll be transported to a horrible place where time has stopped and they won't know who they are. (If they don't know, how can they know they're being tormented?)

Snow and Prince are able to get their newborn child away (didn't they just get married?) and sent to another place.  Which brings us to the relatively realistic, or at least modern, part of the story.  Hot bounty hunter Emma Swan--the baby who escaped the curse, now grown up--is all alone on her 28th birthday when she's met by Henry, the boy who claims to be the son she gave away ten years ago.   She brings him back to the place he ran away from, Storybrooke. This is where the Evil Queen banished all the fairy tale characters, who live as townfolk, unaware of their situation.  The Queen herself is the one who raised Henry.

Henry is the only one "good" character who knows the truth about Storybrooke.  He's brought back Emma because she's fated to save the town and undo the curse.  Emma, who has the ability to tell if people are lying or not, notes something is strange.  She decides to stay a week.  And that's where we end the first hour.

Kind of interesting, but I don't get it.  First, what is Emma going to do?  Will she believe Henry's claims?  And if she does, what is there to do?  Will it be everyday problems in the town she solves?  Will she have to figure out what's really going on, and will that be the whole series?  How can she undo the curse even if she understands what's happening?

Also, even though it seems to me we should be done with fairy tale land, it looks like we might have regular flashbacks to stories there.  I realize the producers worked on Lost, but that show was special.  We were dying to find out where those mysterious characters on the Island came from, so regular flashbacks with intriguing stories were a great idea, and even then that concept ran out of steam after the second or third go around.  Seeing what life used to be in the old days seems guaranteed to stop the story momentum.

It's interesting to see House mainstay Jennifer Morrison as (blonde) Emma.  Jared Gilmore as Henry was okay, but a little precociousness goes a long way.  I was less impressed with Ginnifer Goodwin's Snow White, both the fairy tale and modern edition.  And Joshua Dallas as Prince Charming was bland (but aren't they always?).

The evil characters--Lane Parrilla as the Evil Queen and Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin--look like they could be fun, though, once again, aside from keeping everyone in the dark and making the town an unpleasant place to be, just what are they doing there?

To be continued.  But for how long?