Hello Once Upon A Time fans,
Below please find my second “Once Upon A Time” review The Shepherd, the sixth episode this fall.
The episode started with Kathryn Nolan talking about the moment they bought the house they live in and leads David Nolan inside, where everyone is waiting for him, and his expression doesn’t change, we could all see it in his face: I don’t belong here. And he was introduced to everyone in the house. It’s when Dr. Whale told him that he was supposed to have fun and that small things could trigger his memories.
Meanwhile, we saw that Emma and Henry got together in the house to talk about David’s condition, about the fact that as he was in a coma, the curse wasn’t working on him yet, that his amnesia was temporally blocking the curse from putting a new set of memories inside David’s head, replacing the real ones with fake memories, so operation cobra goal of the day was to get Mary Margaret Blanchard and David Nolan together again, because last time they were together in the same room, alone, he woke up from his coma, so maybe this time, he would remember he was Prince Charming.
Regina Mills talked to Kathryn Nolan in the kitchen about David, she wants them to be together, but Kathryn was so afraid of losing him again, she was crying as she said that that she had lost him once, and now that David was back, it was like if he had never come back to her, things were still strange, and of course, he had no memories by that time. And that was when Regina started trying to motivate her to fight for him, by saying that she had lost a loved one, but Kathryn still had a chance, she just had to go to him and get what was hers. Before Ms Nolan left the kitchen, she said that she was thankful to Regina, liking or not, she had a friend now, as both of them were not used to having one. While they talked in the kitchen, guess who was wondering Ms. Blanchard’s whereabouts to Emma? David Nolan!
As Kathryn did not find David inside the house, we saw that actually, he had gotten out of there to visit Marry, and they talked about why she had left the hospital, obviously because of him, the things he told her there about how he felt about her and when she told him that he is married, aha, he just told her that it should not matter, because he had not chosen her, she was choosing Mary. As he had no memory about her, it was normal that he would have no feelings for his wife he didn’t even know he had, and David and Mary were Snow and Charming in the other life, so no matter how strong the curse is, they will have this feeling, this love for each other, but that’s all, an “unexplainable” strong feeling/connection between them, which she said was just because she had saved his life some episodes before.
In this episode we could also see the strong and courageous Prince Charming fighting with a brute. He had killed the unkillable, however King Midas told him that he was to kill a dragon, which had been plaguing his kingdom and in this exact scene we could see how the Prince’s sword became golden, by the touch of King Midas.
It was when King George and King Midas left the battlefield that things got insanely crazy, the brute had not died and he raised his weapon and had it passed through the Prince’s heart, killing him as he was on his speech, with his back to the brute right when he was finishing his sentence which said “Just because I was easily able to kill this brute, it doesn’t…”. He could not finish his sentence and when I saw his dead body on the floor, I thought of the sentence he said to the brute while he “killed” him before, “Next time, make sure I’m really dead!”, which in my opinion, should be written in his gravestone, he was such a fool! What about next time, you cut the brute’s head off?
The question which probably got us all freaked out was this: what the heck was that, the Prince cannot be dead, can he? We soon learned that King George had made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, and you might have wondered, well, who doesn’t have a deal with the imp, right? So Rumpelstiltskin said that as the Queen was dead, it would be hard to conceive another heir to the kingdom, the king insisted he would give anything to have his son back, then Rumpelstiltskin said he desired a wand that belonged to a fairy godmother who is the patron of his family and he wanted to know her whereabouts. Hello The Price Of Gold, remember Cinderella story? The deal was made and the king wanted to know how he would bring his son back to slay the dragon, but as he said, magic can do much, but not that, which got the king hopeless again, just to listen to him say that he could have his son slay the dragon and that he WAS a man of word. Sigh.
You must have gotten as confused as I did, and really curious to know what Rumpelstiltskin was trying to do there, Prince Charming was dead, he could not be brought back to life and still he made the deal, he must have had hold of information didn’t have, there were two babies, twin brothers and that was the answer to the questions we had since that fight with the brute; the man we saw die in the battlefield was not Prince Charming, that was one of the twins! Anybody feeling relieved there? The scene with Rumpelstiltskin and King George ends with the dealer saying that: “Did I not mention there was another?” and then we saw “The Shepherd”, the real Prince Charming, who obviously had no idea about his real royal identity.
Back in real life, Emma arrived at Mary’s home to find her doing the dishes like a boss; she was lost in her thoughts about him, David. And Emma gave her some advice on the situation while they drank a glass of MacCutcheon, a 60 year-old scotch whisky. I don’t know about you, but having this whisky and Alan Dale in the same episode was really super cool, two sighs for that! She knows David was a married man, and they certainly had feelings for each other, so what should she do? Emma explained that when we think that something is wrong, it really is and there’s nothing we can do, she had to wait for him to figure out his life.
At the same time Emma and Mary talked, we saw David looking at pictures of his life together with Kathryn, and we could actually see that he still didn’t believe any of that, and when she asked him to go to bed, he refused, instead he said he wanted to talk and that was when she kissed him, at first, I thought they would go to bed, after all, but no, he step her out to say a sentence I loved, he said it wasn’t right. Sure it wasn’t, the right thing is David plus Mary (period).
We finally got the chance to catch up on Prince Charming, before the glory. He lived a poor life in a farm with his mother. When she told him about her plan to have her son married for riches, he answered his mother he wanted to marry for love instead, but unfortunately, he could not have everything and that was when Rumpelstiltskin showed up to say that maybe, he could and to, of course, offer him a deal. He offered a newfound kingship to be his salvation, he would have to deliver the dragon’s head to Midas, he was no dragon slayer though. In exchange, the king would supply all his mother’s needs, she would never need anything in her life. It was quite a deal, the farm would be saved forever and he would be the conquering hero and he took the deal.
In the café, after shortly speaking to Dr. Whale, Regina arrived to talk to Ms. Blanchard about her friend, Kathryn, more specifically, as she said, her husband David. She went straight to the point when she said they didn’t belong together, he was not hers, he was taken and so on… We knew why she was so worried about this situation between them was because of the curse, which meant no happiness for them all and also because she may have wondered what would happen if they get together so frequently, or even, I dare say she may know exactly what would happen, they would eventually remember something about their other lives.
Regina did all that because she thought Ms. Blanchard had something to do with David leaving Kathryn, but Mary didn’t know it had happened. So before Regina left, she told Mary to stay away and let him remember who he was, which in my point of view, meant leave him alone, do not interfere while the curse works in his mind by creating fake memories.
As Rumpelstiltskin had gotten the King a new Prince, the “Charming” we know, they soon got him ready for the fight, and by ready I mean, fake ready, since the plan is to pretend he slew the dragon, while one of King George’s soldiers would try to do the job, he would only have the title of a hero. When the time to slay the dragon came, things got screwed, the one supposed to do the job almost got killed; other soldiers did get killed while Prince Charming ran, but to save them all, what a courageous man! And he did so, remember he is a shepherd, right? Shepherds deal with animals, and a dragon is an animal too, so he was the only one able to slay that dragon and he did, he played with it until he got it stuck between the rocks when he said “You didn’t see that coming, did you?” and cut the dragon’s head off!
More lovely talking between Ms. Blanchard and David happened. This time he convinced her to meet him at the bridge where she found him, even after her strong no-no-no. She said she was trying hard to stay away from him, because he had a wife, a life with her, but as he said he did not chose this life, that he wanted other things, so she went soft and stopped saying no. All these meetings and talking in this episode got me so excited, things seemed to be working out for them.
When Sheriff Graham gave some donuts to Emma, Ms. Blanchard arrived to tell her the news about David. She is so excited that it is really happening and when she thought about how Regina (Kathryn’s close friend) would react to it loudly, Emma said it was one more reason to do it, let’s drive that b*tch crazy!
King Midas was so happy with the Prince’s achievement, that he place the dragon’s head outside the palace so it would remember him the bravest, most noble prince he had ever met, the warrior who slew the dragon, for whom he had the utmost respect and then, he continued saying that this whole thing was not only about slaying the dragon, the King Midas was looking for the honorable hero he would be glad to call family, a husband for his daughter. And this one was the Prince, he had to take her as his wife and unite the kingdoms, against his will, because he didn’t know the woman, he didn’t love her. If he hadn’t taken her to marry, as his new known father said, he would kill him, and his mother and would turn his farm to ashes, as his mother said, you can’t have everything!
It was night already when David went out to look for the place he was supposed to meet Ms. Blanchard when he met Regina, who sent him straight to Mr. Gold’s store where he found an interesting object, a windmill which triggered his memory (the windmill that Kathryn mentioned before, which used to be in front of their house). Initially, I thought he had remembered his whole life, his fairy tale story, I mean, because of the mill, but that was not what happened, that mill he saw in Mr. Gold’s store, which used to be in front of his “real life’s” house, activated his fake memories that he would have to choose Kathryn, he had no choice. What could I have thought about Regina at that point? She knew he would “remember” things in Mr. Gold’s store, which would prevent him from being with Ms. Blanchard and I don’t have to say why, do I?
The moment the Prince broke the news about the arranged marriage between him and Abigail to his mother was very touching, As Midas could never find out that the brother who “killed” the brute was dead, and the one who killed the dragon was another, he could never see his mother again, who encouraged him to run away, however, as the king had promised him, deaths would happen if he ran away as she said he should do. As he couldn’t let them hurt his mother, he accepted the offer, and went to visit his mother to say good bye, touching, and she gave him her ring, gosh, it was touching.
After that really sad moment, we had more heart-breaking scenes to watch. David met Ms. Blanchard, finally, even though it was exactly the opposite of what I expected. He told her that he remembers Kathryn, how he felt for her and unfortunately, he had to honor that, but come on, it not a 100% loss case here, he did confess he has strong and INTENSE feelings for her, which he still can’t understand, meanwhile in my house, while I watched this episode, I could only scream at the TV, forget your honor and kiss her for god’s sake!
It didn’t happen; it was some sort of break up without even being engaged. He told her that the right thing to do was to go back to Kathryn, and I totally understood her reaction by saying that the right thing to do was NOT to lead her on in a very irritated and frustrated tone of voice.
In the mean time, Deputy Emma Swan was on her night patrol right on Regina’s street to find somebody sneaking out of her window and when she hit the man, guess who that was? Sheriff Graham! And she asked him if he was volunteering in Regina’s bed, but he said he was going out through the window because Regina didn’t want Henry to know about it. Then she handed him the keys, so he would do the night patrol in her place so disgusted she got.
As David went back to his house, he told his wife he remembered the windmill which used to be in front of their house and he told her other things he remembered about the time he had left her, but actually he just needed some time and then he had the accident, and got much more time than he had expected.
Then, we were back to King Midas’ palace where himself and King George cheered each other about the success that the marriage would bring the kingdom and it was also when the couple said good bye to then, go to their palace. Abigail told her father she believed he knew what the best was for her, but I thought there was more happening there. She didn’t sound very happy. And when she said “come, I’m tired of waiting” I almost had certainty she didn’t have a good relationship with Midas.
In one of the last scenes of the episode, we were in that road we saw in Snow Falls, where Prince Charming (Prince James) and Abigail were intercepted by Snow White’s plan to steal the caravan believing it belonged to the Evil Queen. In the very end, we saw a heartbroken Ms. Blanchard at café talking to Dr. Whale about her bad romance and they had a drink together, I think they had more and I also think that was the beginning of something, a romance, maybe. Well, we will know better on the next episode of Once Upon A Time.
