Once Over

I watched the first season of Once Upon A Time, though I found it ridiculous.  The premise was actually sort of interesting.  The Evil Queen casts a spell on fairy tale land so that everyone is transported to Storybrooke, a modern-day New England town where she's the mayor, time never moves forward and no one remembers who they were.  But Emma, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who was spirited away to the real world where she grew up, returns and has the capacity to break the spell.

The show, created by two Lost writers, was set mainly in Storybrooke, but featured flashbacks to the characters' previous fairy tale lives.  The question was how long would it take Emma to figure out her place and undo the curse. (And what an odd curse.  No one even knows it's a curse, so how much fun can the Evil Queen get presiding over what amounts to a town of zombies?) It seemed possible the end of the curse would be the end of the show, but the producers surprised fans by making it the climax of the first season.

So what would happen next?  Having watched a few recent episodes of the third season, I have some idea.  The show has gone full-on fairy tale.  Right now the characters seem to be stuck in Neverland (and Peter Pan is one mean bastard--that's the other thing, the show has its own take on famous fictional characters), but we still get flashbacks of the fairy tale land.  The plot has apparently gotten so complex I don't think even the writers can keep track of it.  But what intrigues me is the original premise--fairy tale characters in a modern world--has been abandoned.  It's as if we spent a season with all (not some) of the characters on Lost off the island.