REVIEW: Once Upon a Time, S6 Ep3 – The Other Shoe

We revisit the story of Cinderella in the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, which also sees the return of other characters from the previous seasons of the show. It turns out Cinderella’s evil stepmother and stepsister were in the Land of Untold Stories, and Cinderella needs to make amends for something she did a long time ago.

Meanwhile, the Evil Queen continues to cause merry mayhem, sowing chaos wherever she goes and endlessly frustrating Regina. The latter finds it challenging to think ahead of her enemy if her enemy has the same kind of mind she does. But she is trying her best to deal with all the destruction the Evil Queen is unleashing, even as the family tries to stay stronger together.

There was a brief moment where Snow says the best line in the episode, also because it pretty much sums up Once Upon a Time:

“Is this our life now? Defeat and repeat?”

Charming makes a deal with Rumple to find out the truth about his father’s death, and the price for this knowledge is Charming delivering a cassette tape to Belle. Honestly, for all the magic in Storybrooke, its technology is way behind. Anyway, there was a recording of a Scottish lullaby that Rumple recited for his baby and it was a pretty sweet moment to watch Belle play the recording to the child.

Emma continues to keep her visions and her tremors a secret from her loved ones, although she at least manages to confide in Archie. She seems to have regressed to her old, distant, closed personality but by the end of the episode, she is willing to take a chance by asking Hook to move in with her, despite her fears about the future.

It was interesting to see more of Cinderella again, since she played a fairly recurring role in the first season of the show. The plot thread that linked her to the Land of Untold Stories and the doomed love story of her not-so-evil stepsister was contrived at best and had only a tenuous link to the main plot, but this is Once Upon a Time so you learn to take what you can get. All’s well that ends well anyway, at least for the minor characters.

The image of the Evil Stepmother being ordered around by Leroy was pretty amusing, and it was just really great to see Leroy again. Once Upon a Time tends to focus too much on its main cast and the rotating guest cast for the half-season arcs, so that it tends to neglect its more established minor characters. I’m glad to see that this season, the show is not making the same mistake.

Continuing the trend of (finally) giving older characters some screen time, we get a glimpse of Dr. Frankenstein in his lab, in full mad scientist garb. Regina introduces Jekyll to him and it looks like a formidable friendship is about to begin between the two brilliant minds. (A friendship between Frankenstein and Jekyll was previously tackled in the last season of Penny Dreadful, so it will be intriguing to see how the Once Upon a Time version of this plays out.)