{"id":7029,"date":"2015-10-26T14:44:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T18:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=7029"},"modified":"2015-10-26T14:44:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T18:44:29","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/10\/26\/review-once-upon-a-time-s5-e5\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Once Upon a Time’ S5 E5"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Look<\/a>

Look how pretty.<\/p><\/div>\n

Emma\u2019s role as the Dark Swan in Once Upon a Time<\/em>\u00a0has been\u00a0interesting if a little formulaic up until now. Luckily during last night\u2019s episode we were able to see a different side to the Dark Swan that finally made this storyline as compelling as all the previews made it seem.<\/p>\n

This Once Upon a Time <\/em>episode focused largely on Emma and the reasons behind her actions. It was interesting to see the contrast of Emma in Camelot and Emma in Storybrook, which has been highlighted all season by her costumes. In Camelot, as Emma struggles with her new role as the Dark One, she wears all white. However, in Storybrook, after she embraces her darkness, Emma\u2019s only been seen in all black \u2013 except for that one time she tried to seduce Hook.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting, because up until now Once Upon a Time <\/em>has been trying to get us to see Emma as black and white, as two different ends of the spectrum. But as we all know from Rumpelstiltskin\u2019s time as the Dark One, things are often more complicated than they seem. In fact, Rumple astutely brought this to Emma\u2019s attention this Once Upon a Time <\/em>episode when he explained that he often justified his actions as the Dark One as well intentioned. Unfortunately for Emma, he also said, \u201cthe more you justify what you\u2019re doing the more you push them away.\u201d<\/p>\n

I, for one, am starting to get a little confused by Emma. Sure, last episode Emma was able to calm a horse despite her darkness and this episode she couldn\u2019t even get close to Violet\u2019s horse. But it seems to me that Emma might actually be well intentioned, at least more so than Rumpelstiltskin ever was.<\/p>\n

Up until now we thought that Emma wanted Excalibur to eradicate all light magic; Hook voices that exact thought this episode. But what if she actually wants\u00a0the eradication\u00a0of all dark magic? It\u2019s a stretch, but it would be\u00a0in line with Emma\u2019s assertion that everything she\u2019s doing is for the common good.<\/p>\n

After all, in Camelot the only time we Emma her use dark magic was for more selfless reasons, like to save Robin and free Merlin from the tree. And though Emma probably did set Violet\u2019s horse loose just to get back in Henry\u2019s good graces and make up for the whole breaking his heart in Camelot thing, she also seemed genuinely interested in proving that she\u2019s the same Once Upon a Time <\/em>mom she used to be.<\/p>\n

This also brings up the question whether Emma stole everyone\u2019s memories for a good reason. Speaking of which, this week\u2019s reveal that all of the memories are being kept in Emma\u2019s collection of dream catchers definitely redeemed the writer\u2019s use of the lost memories storyline for the zillionth time.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019d like to talk about how great a job Once Upon a Time<\/em> has been doing lately with casting a variety of diverse actors. Recently there\u2019s been a large movement behind including more people of color in film and television, and Once Upon a Time<\/em> has done an excellent job of that lately. This season alone we have Guinevere, Lancelot, and now Merlin, all of whom are all played by people of color.<\/p>\n

Side note, did anybody catch that Merlin was also the usher from the movie theater who warned baby Emma about Excalibur? Because I was too distracted by his hotness to notice. Yeah, you can say I\u2019m excited that now that he\u2019s out of the tree we can assume we\u2019ll be seeing more of his beautiful face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma\u2019s role as the Dark Swan in Once Upon a Time\u00a0has been\u00a0interesting if a little formulaic up until now. Luckily during last night\u2019s episode we were able to see a different side to the Dark Swan that finally made this storyline as compelling as all the previews made it seem. This Once Upon a Time<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":7030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,176],"tags":[2460,2456,2660,2580,2659,2453,1058,2572,1047],"class_list":{"0":"post-7029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-television","8":"category-television-reviews","9":"tag-camelot","10":"tag-dark-swan","11":"tag-excalibur","12":"tag-lancelot","13":"tag-merlin","14":"tag-once-upon-a-time","15":"tag-review","16":"tag-television-review","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}