Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was this brilliant fellow who decided to retell classic stories in the modern day. He created a graphic series called "Fables" and everyone loved it. One day, ABC bought the rights to it. "It's perfect!" they said. "It will be a fine TV series," they enthused. So it went into pre production.

It was never heard from again.

Oh well, ABC has so many incredible ideas. Who needs a series about a bunch of fairy tale characters in New York. Why ABC has just made "Once Upon A Time," and what's that about? Why it's about a bunch of fairy tale characters in MAINE. See, totally different and original. Kudos to you ABC, I hope you feed your lawyers raw meat.

So is there more to this? Well yes, the basic plot goes a little like this. In a fairy tale world Prince Charming awakens Snow White and they get married and live happily ever after. Well except that the witch queen comes back with a real mother of a curse. Basically, she's going to suck everyone into a place of damnation and punish them forever. Yeah, place of damnation being Maine. Well... that does explain a lot about Stephen King now doesn't it?

So what to do what to do? Well they consult Rumplestiltskin and he says that their daughter will free them in 28 years. So when the curse comes they basically throw the baby into a magic wardrobe and do a Seigfried. It's Maaaagic. Now it's today. Our baby is now a babe and she's a bail bonds person. That means she's really tough even when wearing high heels. On her 28th birthday her birth son whom she gave up ten years earlier shows up to drag her to Maine. Boy's a tad odd. I say he's a bit light in the head. He has this book and keeps claiming that folks in his town are actually fairy tale characters but don't know it. His adopted mom is the mayor and she's not happy.

So that's about the plot from the pilot. What do I think. Well they didn't skimp on the production values, that's always good. I can see why the writers preferred this approach in that it could lead to a different character being revealed their true self every week.  The two leads are ok, the kid is fine if odd.  I'm just going to have to see another episode or two before forming a real opinion though.  There was nothing that rocked my world here, but there was nothing that made my hit my forehead repeatedly.  I'm hoping for a happy ending.