Henry tells her the stories in his book are true, and that even she is in the book. She agrees to drive Henry home to Storybrooke, Maine. Emma has a special ability - she can tell if a person is lying. The boy, Henry, shows up at her door claiming to be the son she gave up for adoption 10 years before. When Emma returns alone to her apartment, she celebrates her birthday with a single cupcake and candle. As we leave the tale of Snow White and enter reality, a boy is reading the story in a book.Ĭut to Emma Swan, an attractive young bail bonds person, doing what she does best - finding people who don’t want to be found. But an uninvited guest, the Evil Queen, shows up and presents the happy couple with a curse. Prince Charming finds Snow White, wakes her with a kiss, and they get married. The basic story is the tale of Snow White, but in an interesting twist, this story begins at the end. None of them remember who they really are and only one young woman can undo the spell. The premise of Once Upon A Time is that fairy tale characters have been banished to the modern world by an evil curse. The fantasy world is believable and the characters mesh well with their modern counterparts and the modern world isn’t somewhere too horrible. Creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis have done a terrific job keeping the tone steady, giving a Gothic feel to the story without drifting into the realm of shock and horror. The two worlds blend well, moving smoothly from the enchanted forest of the fairy tale to the modern-day small Maine town. The production quality is high with eye-catching cinematography, impressive visual effects, and well-woven storytelling with a bounty of interesting hooks and twists.

So I was happily surprised by the content of the pilot.

Network television isn’t exactly known for its success rate or production quality with the sci-fi and fantasy genre. But, I must admit, I didn’t have high hopes for the show’s overall quality. I already planned to check out Once Upon A Time, whether it’s a success or failure, as soon as they announced the two magic words, “Robert Carlyle”, and the two that followed, “as Rumplestiltskin”. So one question I had before seeing the pilot episode was: could the show live up to the hype? Or were all the good parts being shown in the previews?Īfter all, Disney is ABC’s parent company, and fairy tales are one of their specialties, but can the “Disney Magic” translate to a fantasy-based television production? In the recent past, most broadcast networks have not found a pot of gold at the end of that programming rainbow. Every show I’ve watched on ABC in the past couple of weeks, including every day’s General Hospital, has featured at least one promo for the show’s premiere. If awards were presented for the amount of hype a show receives, ABC’s new fantasy show Once Upon A Time would definitely be one of the nominees.

Once upon a time pilot