by Jerome Schwartz
**SPOILERS!**
If you have not watched this episode, please do so before continuing!
Yay! Cyrus has escaped the cage! Alice has found the castle where he is! Now all that's left for them to do is run toward each other at equal speeds and then romantically collide at some significant midpoint while Will and Anastasia achieve some semblance of reconciliation for a nice "happily-ever-after," right?
Come on, these are the guys who made a show about a group of people who crash-landed on a deserted island last eight seasons. No way they're going to make this easy. Because what good is having a couple who believe in true love without a character who wants to "kill it with fire" as it were? After all, he's a man who's willing to do anything to get what he wants.
Even going to London to find the second person whose opinion matters very much to Alice: her father Edwin. Because, let's face it... Naveen Andrews is far too respectable a man to concede to walking around in floor-length robes for an entire show. Give the man some slack(s)!
Meanwhile, the Queen finds out that Cyrus is gone and Jafar is away, and so she sees an opportunity to acquire Cyrus before Jafar even realizes his pet prisoner is missing.
While all this is going on, Alice is making a beeline to where she believes she will find Cyrus. Trouble is, her path lies directly through the impenetrable Black Forest--a place of deep and tangible darkness. She ignores the numerous signs warning of impending doom and inconceivable evil ("It seems like an awful waste of wood when only one sign will do!") and she heads inside.
While Alice is making her way into the Black Forest, the episode flashes back to Alice's return after being separated from Cyrus back in the pilot episode. She pops out of the rabbit hole, disoriented and heartbroken, and comes across a little girl who offers to help her find her way home.
The little girl's parents arrive, and Alice realizes that she is home... but she had been gone for so long that her father remarried (something she never thought him capable of doing, so great was his grief over her mother) and had a second daughter. Interestingly enough, the cowardly man had never told his new family anything about his old one. But now that she's back, she can just rejoin the family and they'll be happier for it, right? Of course not... Stepmothers in stories like this one tend to frequently be the type to want to control the situation, to view the original children as interlopers, and to resent the intrusion of the widower's previous marriage, which invariably must be happier than their current situation. Perhaps it has something to do with the issue of inheritance... but I digress...
Back in the present, we get to celebrate the return of the Knave to the cast of living, breathing, moving characters! He's following Alice's trail, and he meets a man who gives him a drink of water, which he was badly in need of after being a statue for so long. (It also gives time for a moment of humor after the emotionally-charged family reunion previous; Will asks the man "Have you ever been stoned? It really messes with your head." to which the man replies, "I think you've been dealing with the wrong stuff!" and WE SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED THERE.)
Yay! Cyrus has escaped the cage! Alice has found the castle where he is! Now all that's left for them to do is run toward each other at equal speeds and then romantically collide at some significant midpoint while Will and Anastasia achieve some semblance of reconciliation for a nice "happily-ever-after," right?
Come on, these are the guys who made a show about a group of people who crash-landed on a deserted island last eight seasons. No way they're going to make this easy. Because what good is having a couple who believe in true love without a character who wants to "kill it with fire" as it were? After all, he's a man who's willing to do anything to get what he wants.
Even going to London to find the second person whose opinion matters very much to Alice: her father Edwin. Because, let's face it... Naveen Andrews is far too respectable a man to concede to walking around in floor-length robes for an entire show. Give the man some slack(s)!
Meanwhile, the Queen finds out that Cyrus is gone and Jafar is away, and so she sees an opportunity to acquire Cyrus before Jafar even realizes his pet prisoner is missing.
While all this is going on, Alice is making a beeline to where she believes she will find Cyrus. Trouble is, her path lies directly through the impenetrable Black Forest--a place of deep and tangible darkness. She ignores the numerous signs warning of impending doom and inconceivable evil ("It seems like an awful waste of wood when only one sign will do!") and she heads inside.While Alice is making her way into the Black Forest, the episode flashes back to Alice's return after being separated from Cyrus back in the pilot episode. She pops out of the rabbit hole, disoriented and heartbroken, and comes across a little girl who offers to help her find her way home.
The little girl's parents arrive, and Alice realizes that she is home... but she had been gone for so long that her father remarried (something she never thought him capable of doing, so great was his grief over her mother) and had a second daughter. Interestingly enough, the cowardly man had never told his new family anything about his old one. But now that she's back, she can just rejoin the family and they'll be happier for it, right? Of course not... Stepmothers in stories like this one tend to frequently be the type to want to control the situation, to view the original children as interlopers, and to resent the intrusion of the widower's previous marriage, which invariably must be happier than their current situation. Perhaps it has something to do with the issue of inheritance... but I digress...Back in the present, we get to celebrate the return of the Knave to the cast of living, breathing, moving characters! He's following Alice's trail, and he meets a man who gives him a drink of water, which he was badly in need of after being a statue for so long. (It also gives time for a moment of humor after the emotionally-charged family reunion previous; Will asks the man "Have you ever been stoned? It really messes with your head." to which the man replies, "I think you've been dealing with the wrong stuff!" and WE SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED THERE.)
MEANWHILE... Alice has made it through the Black Forest and broken out into a pleasant place full of bright, beautiful flowers that spray out a kind of purple fume that smells pretty. She meets a very creepy man who is just standing there holding a saw and wearing a smile, and he tells her that this is the Boro Grove, where everything is nice and lovely and happiness is all that matters. The more Alice inhales the fumes from the flowers, the happier she feels... and she recalls a time when someone wanted her to be happy when she did not think it possible...The scene flashes back to the "One Big Happy Family." Stepmother Sarah verily seems to rule the roost, letting Erstwhile Edwin know that his grown daughter Alice has "social obligations" that are all pressing and terribly important (and have the added benefit of getting her out of the house as soon as can be arranged) and that nothing of Alice's nature or personality should in any way interfere with her grand plans for her own daughter, Millie. At his wife's behest, Edwin holds his daughter at arm's length unless she agrees to "house rules", much like a hired governess or paying boarder: Alice must be "happy," and must "fit in" to what Sarah says is proper, and under no circumstances should she mention Wonderland or anything remotely adventuresome to her impressionable half-sister. The man is so gormless that anything like true affection or genuine happiness is reduced to a duty. Alice has nowhere else to go, so she cannot but agree to his (Sarah's) terms.
MEANWHILE... Will has reached the Boro Grove, but he seems more repulsed by the purple fumes than affected by them. He finds Alice skipping about making daisy chains. She's bubbly, she's "happy"... And she's completely forgotten about Cyrus and love and everything—even herself. Will can't get through to her, and the Carpenter explains the effect of the Boro Grove: "It makes you want to stay." Will discovers that the trees in the Grove were once people who fell under its spell and decided they wanted to stay in a place that made them forget any memory of pain, all the difficult things of their life. The Carpenter is already literally rooted to the spot. Will runs back to Alice, and she, too, is becoming part of the grove. She tells Will, "Finally, I have found a home." She is, of course, trying to forget the day she lost the only home she ever knew...
Back in England, Alice is trying desperately to fit in, even though she has not even a room for herself, but must sleep on the sofa while young Millie gets her old room (no doubt).
Nightmares of seeing Cyrus fall off
that cliff plague Alice, and she wakes up calling his name. Millie
comes in and asks her who he was, and Alice—mindful of the "rules"—only
says that he was "someone special." Millie keeps pressing, but Alice
maintains that he was just someone she loved, without once mentioning
Wonderland or genies. Edwin and Sarah catch them, and freak out as if Alice is
"filling Millie's head with your crazed notions." This is the
opportunity Sarah has been waiting for, and she says either Alice accept
the courtship of "Mrs. Darcy's son" (At which point poor Miss Austen writhes in her grave...) that she has arranged, or Edwin is
free to deny her shelter in her own home. Of course Alice can't stand
it, and so Edwin arranges for her to be sent to a "modern" psychiatric
facility, "not like in the books" (which we know from the scene in the
pilot is a bold-faced lie) and Edwin displays his loyalties, as he would
rather believe Sarah's assurances that a farce of propriety is more
important than keeping his family together.Outside Jafar's castle, Cyrus is outsmarting the guards, but he is apparently "not clever enough" to evade the Red Queen's magic.
In the Boro Grove, Alice is convinced that the high she feels is the happiness she has craved. Will stands up to her and delivers the BEST SPEECH EVER, stating that she, who still has her heart, is
accepting a
fate worse than having no heart at all, because she can feel happy in
her head, but the Boro Grove will never make her happy in her heart. The
only thing that will is being with Cyrus. He puts the necklace in her
hand, and she remembers, and the spell is broken. Will takes her out of
the Grove, and they continue their mission. As they're walking, he
thanks her for turning him back from stone—but she informs him that it
was Anastasia who did it. Will isn't too comfortable with that.
To complete the flashback, Alice is leaving to Bethlem Asylum, and her
father watches from inside the house while Stepmother Sarah whispers
that he did the right thing. The last thing Alice sees as the carriage
pulls away is her parents doting on "Millie the Rebound Daughter." How blatantly cruel can you be, really?Back on the floating island where Jafar's castle stands, the Red Queen thinks she has Cyrus cornered on the edge. Lucky for him, below him is the lake that's deep enough for an island-size turtle, so he just jumps off and leaves her looking foolish.
In one last scene, Jafar convinces Edwin that "he can take [him] to Alice." The Sultan of Doublespeak has spoken... And we can all assume what that means...
FINAL SCORE: Heroes definitely win this one. Sophie Lowe (Alice) did a fabulous job as someone who is that "crazy-high happy" that is so beyond the behavior she'd been displaying thus far. And Will...
*sigh* Can I say enough about him? For a guy with no heart (revealed in
this episode: Alice may have regained his heart for him, but he never
put it back... Which is why he wasn't affected by the Boro Grove) he
still goes after Alice and rescues her from all sorts of situations the
lovesick, hot-headed girl can get herself into. (It might just be that
wish she promised him... But that's still to come) His speech in the
Grove is seriously awesome. (It really seems like he gets a chance for
some really good speeching every few episodes... Which is more than can
be said for any other character, so that's gotta count for something!)
The Grove wants to shut him up and stop him from turning Alice, but he
doesn't give up. He tells her that between the mistakes the two of them
make, he's been learning from his, but she refuses to acknowledge hers.
Right on!The villains were quite lackluster: Edwin, for obvious reasons—and why is it that innocent young romantic girls must be mothered by domineering witchy types?? Sarah was a weak fail on all fronts. Very cardboard as a character, and contributing nothing except "whump" to the plot at all.
The whole "Clever, but not clever enough" line coming from the Red Queen concerning Cyrus was a bit of a let-down, since of COURSE one cannot outwit magic if one does not know to assume magic will be used! The effects—particularly Alice and Will in the Boro Grove—were not spectacularly animated, but the actors' reactions made it that much more convincing. And the show-down between those two was fantastic enough to carry the Conflict/Resolution category. All in all, this is a 9/10 episode!
Heroes: 5/5
Villains: 3/5
Banter: 5/5
Graphics/VFX: 4/5
Conflict/Resolution: 4/5
GRAND TOTAL: 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment