So, as people may or may not know, I'm a huge fan of Once Upon a Time. Huge. It just hits all the right buttons for me: it's a fantasy TV show, it leans heavily on its characters to be what's good about the show and it evokes my Disney-laden childhood (not unintentionally, of course, and not unsurprisingly given that it's a fairy tale show aired on Disney-owned ABC). Also, the villains are awesome. Rumpelstiltskin is a delightfully magnificent bastard with a wonderful sense of dramatic flair. Regina Mills (the Evil Queen)---well, she's just so evil (and she revels in it!). And yet still sympathetic. And kind of great looking (I have serious girl-crush on the Evil Queen. And a normal one too).
In any event, the point of all this is that I was really looking forward to the premiere of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It was based on a series I love (but which, admittedly, did wander a bit in its second series while it looked for a major plot arc to fill the hole left by the amazing first season finale) and the ads for it looked epic and amazing and seemed to suggest a theme of awesome-girl-doggedly-tries-to-find-tragically-lost-love that I found very appealing (mind you, when you use Two Steps from Hell as the soundtrack for your commercials, it's hard for them not to look epic and awesome).
Did the premiere of the new show disappoint? Well, actually, yes, but that's not going to stop me from watching the new show. Basically, it just wasn't completely awesome. It was passable with some elements that suggest it could mature into a really enjoyable show, and I'm willing to give it that chance. I still think this show could be really good, it showed some spark, but it's just not the immediately engaging, suck-you-in-immediately series premiere that the original Once Upon a Time had.
The best parts of the show were Jafar and Alice. Jafar was a complete badass with an awesome wardrobe and I definitely think it will be fun watching whatever the hell his evil plan is come to fruition. He seems clever and calculating and expect good things from him. Basically, he definitely seems like the sort of villain I've come to expect from Once Upon a Time, which is a show I watch mostly for the villains.
Alice, on the other hand, was something of a nice surprise. I liked her and thought she was kind of a fun protagonist. This is in stark contrast to Emma from Once Upon a Time, who was never really a dislikable character (unlike another character portrayed by Jennifer Morrison, Allison Cameron) but was just never that interesting. She just sort of sat there being disbelieving. Alice, on the other hand, is the person who is disbelieved and she's pretty much just an action hero, coming off as quite the badass. Despite the fact that Emma does seem to have some decent fighting chops, she just never came off as a badass---which is really kind of too bad.
The worst part of the show, though, was the other villain, the Red Queen, who much like Alice evokes comparisons to her Once Upon a Time counterpart, Regina. Unfortunately, where Alice fared well via the comparison, the Red Queen suffered. Badly.
Part of the problem is just that the acting for the Red Queen kind of suck. Seriously, she just sort of struts around going "I have cheekbones!" and is incredibly, incredibly wooden. The real kicker, though, really is just that the obvious comparison for the Red Queen is against Regina and where Regina is a raging badass of badassness, the Red Queen is really just kind of weak tea. For instance, when Jafar is threatening her and she replies by giving a "But this is my town! We play by my rules!" speech, it just comes off as stupid, because she doesn't back it up or even seem at all affronted that Jafar just tried to strangle her to death. Really? Really? Regina would have responded to that by plucking his heart out of his chest and making him dance around like a marionette on a string. Regina gets played sometimes (pretty much every character on Once Upon a Time does, because it is something of a show of gamesmanship) but she sure as hell doesn't take threats lying down. Like I said, the Red Queen is just kind of weak tea. At this point, I'm kind of hoping that Jafar kills her like a bitch.
Other than that, though, the pilot suffered from a bit of mediocrity. The Knave of Hearts, for instance, was a bit predictable and doesn't really come off so much as a character at this point as much as a cardboard cutout. He'll probably get developed later into an interesting character---even in the pilot, there are plenty of hints of his potential to be a really interesting character--but in the pilot, he's really just not there yet.
Unfortunately, though, the romance also suffers from mediocrity at this point, probably because they presented us with the major highlights of the relationship without any of the build-up that would really make those moments meaningful to us and they also just filmed them too early in the production of the series. The actors haven't really had the time to get their chemistry totally worked out and the scenes suffer from a bit of weak scripting too---it seems like the writers hadn't really figured out the relationship in any way more than "it's tragic love" and they just started writing the scenes from that point without really having worked out who these characters were and how they related to each other on a deeper level than just "love." Again, this isn't something that can't be saved but I have to admit that having this romantic relationship come off as being so without depth really did hurt the show in its premiere. Much of the premise revolves around Alice trying to get Cyrus back, so they really need to sell us on that relationship in order to give the plot some umph. They probably should have waited to film those scenes until the show was less new and, if I may be so bold, they probably could have dealt with keeping the Two Steps from Hell soundtrack for some of those scenes too. Nothing says love like Heart of Courage.
So, yes, I was disappointed by Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It didn't blow me away the way I had hoped it would. But, I'll keep watching and I have a great hope that it can get better. It definitely seems like a show that at least has a shot at being really good once it finds its groove.
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