"Once Upon a Time" in Camelot

I'm ten episodes into Season Five of Once Upon a Time, about fairy tale and legend characters interacting in real life, and it's a heavy slog. 

I was looking forward to the heroes (Snow White, Prince Charming, their grown-up daughter Emma, Emma's boyfriend Captain Hook, the reformed Evil Queen, and her boyfriend Robin Hood, plus miscellaneous hangers on) going to Camelot.  But it starts off with the heroes returning from Camelot with their memories wiped, and Emma, formerly the Savior, as the Dark One (the ultimate evil).

Granted, her tied-back white hair, black suit, and monotone voice are rather cool, but what happened in Camelot?

We end up with three tiers of flashbacks:
1. Now in Storybrooke, with wiped memories, struggling to find out things that the audience already knows from:
2. Six weeks ago in Camelot,where the characters are addressing problems that began in:
3.  Long-ago Camelot.

Costume changes aren't enough to figure out who knows what at this point, who is an ally of whom, who's now a Dark One (they multiply like flies), and what they're questing after this time. They need Excalibur, and then the Holy Grail, and then some dreamcatchers, some squid ink, the tears of a lost love,a spark from the Flame of Prometheus and um..,fortunately, all of those things are a short walk away from 6-weeks ago or long ago Camelot.

At least there's some beefcake on display.

1. Liam Garrigan as rather young, stupid, morally corrupt King Arthur.  But to be fair, his kingdom is tiny.  When it's zapped to Storybrooke, the entire population hunkers down in a few tents on the outskirts of town

2. Elliot Knight as a very young, hot Merlin (Second photo)

3. Andrew Jenkins (right) as Percival, who helps a long-ago Arthur track down Excalibur, but it turns out to be broken.  No broken swords in the Arthurian Mythos, but there's one in Lord of the Rings.

4. Sinqua Walls (left) as Lancelot, who sparked with Guinevere, Arthur's main squeeze.

5. Giacomo Baessato as Grif, Arthur's page, who he talks into committing suicide as part of his plan to take over Storybrooke.

6. Guy Fauchon as Vortigen, the world's first Big Bad.  This isn't him, but it's what came up when I searched for "Guy Fauchon" "shirtless," so I'm going with it.

Plus there's a subplot about Merida from Brave trying to get a magical talisman to prove that her father was brave, which will allow her to take control of the Scottish kingdom.

I shouldn't complain.  The Scots Highlanders walk around barechested most of the time.

1. Paul Telfer as Lord Macintosh

2. Marco D'Angelo as the beefy Lord Maguffin.  Maguffin, like the Alfred Hitchcock plot device?

3. Josh Hallam as the white-fright-wigged Lord Dingwall.  Dingwall, like dingbat?

3-5. Colton Barnert, Jordan Olson, and Matthew Olson as Merida's three redhead brothers, who she spends several episodes trying to save from the evil highlanders who later become her loyal subjects.  Go figure.

And as a bonus, Mulan and Ruby (Red Riding Hood) show up and spark at each other, although Mulan is still cagey about the gender of her "lost love," and Ruby (a werewolf) is completely heterosexist: "I wouldn't know about romance.  I sort of ate my only boyfriend."

I understand that they hook up later on in the season>

On to the Underworld, with Zeus, Hercules, and miscellaneous musclemen!