Once Upon a Time Review: Labor of Love (Season 5 Episode 13)

The search for Hook continues on Once Upon a Time‘s most recent episode, “Labor of Love.” We also (very briefly) meet two well-known Disney characters in a neat twist on their story. The Enchanted Forest flashbacks also demonstrate young Snow White’s turning point from Princess Snow to bad-ass archer Snow.

As expected, Hook is being tortured by Hades down in the Underworld. He and a young woman (later revealed to be Megara from Disney’s animated Hercules) are held prisoner in the crappiest little dungeon ever. Seriously, that set is just awful. It looks like they found a random basement, dimmed the lights in a hallway, and tried their best to make it look dingy. Not at all how I would envision prison cells in the Underworld. Especially after seeing Hades’ stylish lair last week!

Anyway, Megara makes her escape, thanks to Hook distracting Hades’ guard-dog Cerberus. Emma’s attempt to contact Hook in the midseason premiere did, in fact, make it through to him, and Hook sends Meg off to go find Emma so that Emma, in turn, can rescue Hook. Good thinking, pirate!

Unfortunately, Meg proceeds to be totally useless for almost the entirety of the episode. I mean, she does technically succeed in finding Emma and letting her know what’s going on, but other than that she’s basically a non-entity.

Is it just me? I adore Megara from the animated movie (she’s one of my favorite Disney characters), but this version of Megara is different from her in just about every single way. Not just that whole “being dead” part–movie Meg is feisty and sassy. This Meg is just a kind of whimpering damsel in distress.

Sure, she has her moment in the end, assisting Snow and Herc with defeating Cerberus, but aside from that she is honestly very meh. And it is definitely the writing that made her so ‘meh,’ not her portrayer, Kacey Rohl, who is awesome in everything I’ve ever seen her in (iZombie, Hannibal, The Magicians).

The show’s retelling of Hercules and Megara’s story is actually pretty innovative, though, and I mostly enjoy it. Going in, I would not have guessed that the two would be dead, killed by Cerberus soon after Herc and Snow had their little teenage romance.

Once doesn’t typically take such large risks with its retellings, and borrowing two Disney characters only to make them both dead is not at all what I was expecting. Kinda dark, actually.

But it pays off. The show does a great job of mirroring the flashbacks of still-alive Hercules training young Snow to fight against the Regina-hired bandits back in the Enchanted Forest against present-day Snow encouraging Herc to shed his defeatist attitude. Though, to be fair to Herc, he was quite literally defeated by the Cerberus–being killed and all–so his down-in-the-dumps defeatist attitude is understandable.

At least he successfully makes it to his final destination–Olympus–in the end! Though I can’t help but imagine that when he gets there and everyone sees Megara they’re all like, “Uh, Herc, who’s this chick?” These two just met and now she’s going off to be immortal with him on Mount Olympus? Really?

Related to all that, the best moment of the episode by far is the exchange between Regina and Snow.

Regina [to Snow]: You defeated me in a way no one thought was possible. You made me your friend by never giving up on me.

I love how far these two have come in the past five seasons.

I also love that it was Regina’s pep talk that encourages Snow to begin to shake off her Mary Margaret persona and start to return to the brave warrior that she was back in the Enchanted Forest. Next to the flashbacks showing a sort of “birth” of bad-ass little Snow, this “rebirth” of sorts works really well (and was a long time coming).

Meanwhile, yet another defeated major villain from the group’s past shows up: Cruella corners Henry while he and Robin are on a mission to retrieve maps of Underworld-Storybrooke from the Underworld-version of Regina’s office (Robin is the worst babysitter ever), and she tries to convince him to resurrect her from the dead.

Cruella was an unexpected surprise when she debuted last season, and she is one of the best villains the show has had so far–largely because Once has a tendency to humanize its villains to the point where they cease to be villains entirely. Cruella stood out in how unrepentantly evil she was, with her total lack of a redeeming backstory or any kind of “reason” for her badness

Cruella clues Henry in to the fact that he, as the Author, has the power to resurrect the dead using the quill given to him by the Apprentice (nifty!). And apparently, after Henry broke the quill, it “died” and currently exists in the Underworld. Cruella’s explanation is a bit long-winded and hokey, but this twist does open up interesting possibilities.

I’m wondering now if Henry will end up being the one to resurrect Hook. I really hope that Henry doesn’t fall for Cruella’s “Helping me will help your mom need be a murderer!” shtick (though a resurrected Cruella could be an interesting foe). Alas, I don’t have high hopes when it comes to Henry’s intelligence.

Other thoughts:

• For all my fellow The 100 fans: Hercules is played by Jonathan Whitesell, who also plays Miller’s boyfriend Bryan!
• I was never too keen on Bailee Madison as young Snow before (she certainly has Ginnifer Goodwin’s mannerisms down pat, but she always struck me as sort of precociously annoying). However, she seems to have improved as an actress with age. Definitely less irritating this time around.
• Why, exactly, is Hook being tortured by Hades? I understand that, now that Emma and Co. are freeing souls from Hades’ territory, he wants to get back at them by torturing Hook (and forcing him to choose who will remain in the Underworld in place of every soul they help free). But before that, why was he being tortured in the first place, while other souls are able to walk around freely (or work in diners or on docks)?
• “When you love someone, you know.” Oh, Captain Hook. Swoon. Gotta love those CaptainSwan feels. I hope they don’t wait too long to reunite these two.
• Charming’s half a second of jealousy about Snow and Herc’s friendship is adorable.
• Is anybody else weirded out by the fact that Robin and Regina left Roland and yet-unnamed newborn baby girl back in Storybrooke this long and have yet to mention either of them?
• Why do Snow and Charming have a ready-made apartment waiting for them in the Underworld? Is it just a given that they’re going to die with unfinished business?

What did you think of this episode of Once Upon a Time? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Reviewer Rating:

User Rating:

 

Once Upon a Time airs Sunday at 8/7c on ABC.

Follow us on Twitter @TellTV