Once Upon a Time: Finding or Losing True Love

In the idyllic New England town of Storybrooke, a young boy named Henry (Jared S. Gilmore), adopted son of Mayor Regina (Lana Parilla), suddenly realizes that everyone around him is a story book character, mostly from Disney adaptions of fairy tales.

His teacher is actually Snow White (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937)
Regina is actually the Evil Queen who gave Snow White the poisoned apple.

The seven dwarfs are wandering around doing various civilian jobs, as are the Magic Mirror, the Huntsman, Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), and characters from other Disney movies and fairy tales: Jiminy Cricket (from Pinocchio), Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel.

Henry has told only a few people of these amazing revelations, and they all think he's crazy.  They have no memories of their other lives, or really any memories of the past at all.  Oddly, no one questions this collective amnesia.

Or the fact that time is standing still: for the last thirty years, no one in Storybrooke has aged.  No one is born (Henry was born outside), no one dies.  No one moves to town (except Henry), no one leaves.

Then Henry's birth mother, Emma, arrives, and time starts again.

Another startling revelation: Emma is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming (real name David).  So Henry's  teacher is his grandmother.

We gradually discover what happened:  Regina is angry with Snow for destroying "her  happiness": apparently she told the evil Queen Cora that her daughter was dating a stable boy named Daniel (Noah Bean), and the queen had him killed. 

So Regina arranged for a "Dark Curse" to bring everyone to a world without magic and zap their memories.  She will then be able to keep Snow from being happy (that is, from dating Prince Charming).

This is the premise of Once Upon a Time (2011-), currently streaming on Netflix. I've only seen the first season, but I understand that it gets very, very complicated.  Regina has a long, harsh back story and eventually is redeemed and becomes The Good Queen, while Snow can be petty, vain, and...well, malicious.  The back stories of many other characters are revealed (evil people are invariably evil because their "true love" was killed).  And the palette expands from Storybrooke to Neverland, the Looking-Glass World,  and who knows where else?

Robin Hood (Tom Ellis) and Captain Hook {Colin O'Donoghue) fight Hades (Greg Germann) from Greek mythology, who is in love with the Wicked Witch of the West (from The Wizard of Oz)

Cruella Deville (from 1001 Dalmatians), Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty). and Ursula (from The Little Mermaid).kidnap Belle (from Beauty and the Beast)  in order to force her boyfriend Rupelstiltskin (who happens to be the son of Peter Pan) to give her the magic Gauntlet of Camelot, which he got from Victor Frankenstein.

Hokey smokes!

The mishmash of fairy tales, legends, mythology, popular novels, and Disney movies sounds very annoying.

Even in the first season, I am annoyed by the trope of "finding happiness" which is always equated with finding or reuniting with your "true love," the person you are destined to spend your life with.  When you have found your true love, you are by definition happy.  When you have not, you are by definition unhappy.

You can always tell when you find your true love: you stop whatever you're doing -- fighting goblins, running for your life, hugging your girlfriend -- and stare at them with a dumb expression.

There are only three motives for every act:
1. To find/win your true love/happiness
2. To fight those who are trying to destroy your true love/happiness.
3. To get revenge on those who have successfully destroyed your true love/happiness.

The concept of "true love" was invented during the 17th century to promote companionate marriages over the arranged marriages of the past.  It is amazingly simplistic and patently untrue: our emotional bonds with friends and lovers come in an infinite variety, and none were predestined at the beginning of time.  It's daytime soap opera nonsense.

Once doesn't offer much beefcake.  This is a show about the power struggles of princesses and queens, with men as mostly interchangeable "true loves," all around 30 years old (regardless of their true age), tall, fair-skinned, and dark-haired. Their only distinguishing characteristics appear to be hair length and degree of androgyny.   Although I have over 50 years of experience in evaluating masculine beauty, I have a hard time telling them apart.

I don't even know who this one plays.  Like, Emma's grandson, or Rupelstiltskin's grandfather, or both?

No identified gay characters in the first season -- I understand that there are some lesbian "true loves" around Season 6.

But I do find something gender-transgressive about Henry's obsession with the adults being adequately paired off: "You have to be together!  It's true love!"  It doesn't sound like the sort of thing a straight 10-year old would be harping about.