Once Upon A Time Chalks Up It's First Victim (yeah right)

The Sheriff is dead, long live the sheriff.

If you believe that, I got some land to sell you in Atlantis. Now despite the naked grab for attention of killing a major player, it was a very decent episode. For one thing, the plot finally gets into forward motion. Emma gets kissed by the sheriff and suddenly he remembers bits and pieces of who he was. It's not really pleasant. Turns out (surprise) he was the woodsman who was to kill Snow White and place her heart in a box.

As per the story, he wusses on the job and lets her live. The evil Queen Boss has been taking it out his hide ever since. It was sort of sad to see the character running around crazily trying to put back together a life he wouldn't want to lead. But there it is. It is proof that Emma can kill the queen's curse.

As always with the show the best bits are tiny little things on the side. At one point the sheriff is running through the wood and he encounters Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin in his business suit with an apron and a shovel. Mr. Gold says he was just doing some gardening. In the middle of the woods. The sheriff is too freaked to do anything other than accept Mr. Gold's story, but I'm sure we'll see more woodland "gardening" in the future.

The other thing of interest is what the evil queen does with hearts. Turns out she can take the heart out of a living creature and basically do that ol' voodoo stomp with it if the owner is being bad. This leads to some fascinating questions. First, since she still has the hearts she collected in Fairy world does that mean that magic works equally well here? Why not collect Emma's heart, or Snow White for that matter. We still don't have a good idea of what her limits are, but her nasty index definitely went up a tab or two this episode.