Once Upon a Time – Season 1, Episode 8: “True North.”
Do you remember the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel?
In fairytale land their father a woodchopper, cut a tree down. Timber! In the woods not too far from their father waited Hansel (meek) and Gretel (scrappy).
Father sends children out in woods to fill wheel barrel with dry wood. (Never send kids out in the woods alone with the Evil Queen lurking about.) When the children returned, their father was gone. Hansel and Gretel ran to the open road to find him.
‘What do we have here?’
Evil Queen captured them, but (huge but here) she would let them go if they did a favor for her. (Oh, don’t do it, don’t do it.) They agreed to do it. (Sigh.) Evil Queen needed or I should say wanted a black satchel from the blind witch. She couldn’t go into the blind witch’s house because it was protected by magic.
Nice to know the Evil Queen did not possess all encompassing magic.
Gretel asked if they did this favor, she would reunite them with their father. (Gretel, does the Evil Queen ever keep her promises?) Agreement set, now off to the blind witch’s home. Evil Queen pulled the bushes back to reveal the blind witch’s home.
A GINGER BREAD HOUSE!!!
(Oh, my goodness, I want to live there, I could live there). Evil Queen warned them not to eat an-y-thi-ng. (You and I both know what will happen next.) Hansel and Gretel made it inside the house without waking the blind witch from her sleep.
Cupcakes, cookies and candy, oh my!
(I could definitely live there.) Gretel quietly went for the satchel. Guess what Hansel did? Yep, he bit into a cupcake. Blind witch awoke and put them in a holding cell. Eerie moment was when the witch stood up from her chair. There in front of the fireplace stacked a pile of children’s bones.
Gave me the creeps.
Blind witch would cook them for dinner. Gretel had a plan. Hansel snatch key from witch’s pocket and toss it to Gretel so she could get out of cell. Hansel frozen with fear, he wouldn’t do it. So, Gretel puffed her cheeks, pretended to be her brother. Witch was blind, how would she know the difference.
‘Butter or gravy?’
I suppose that was the witch’s way of giving them a choice of a basted death. Kids took neither. Gretel tossed the key to Hansel who got out of the cell. Kids managed to toss blind witch into the oven, close the door on her and escaped the ginger bread house.
Evil Queen watched from her magic mirror. She tossed a ball of fire into the oven. That cooked the blind witch.
“I would have chosen gravy.”
Evil Queen can be funny at times (rarely, but it happens). A magical apple (there’s always a poisonous apple in fairy tales) was inside the satchel. Evil Queen did not keep her word (big surprise) separated the kids from their father.
Yes, they found their father through the help of Emma in Storybrooke, but not in fairy tale land. Families always find their way back to each other, if they really look hard enough.
Will Emma come to realize Mary Margaret really is her mother?
Watch Once Upon a Time Sundays 8/7c on ABC.
