This review contains spoilers.
2.7 Child Of The Moon
Aww, what cute puppies! Oh wait, those are bloodthirsty werewolves? My bad.
The CGI in OUaT has never exactly been good, but this one really stretched our imaginations with all that fluffy doe-eyed doggie action. Take away the teeth and tone down the creepy eyes and they’d fit right into a computer-animated Barbie movie: cuddly and low-budget.
Overall the episode was alright, which isn’t a high compliment but is better than I can say for the CGI. Red’s dual-identity struggle is reminiscent of the townsfolk’s struggle earlier this season in We Are Both, and it’s a good choice for a theme worth further examination. There is some development of Red’s friendships with both Snow and Belle, and same-sex friendships don’t get a lot of attention in many stories, particularly friendships between women, so that was nice to see. There is also a fascinating subplot about Henry’s dreams (I’d like to have seen more of that, but it looks like I’ll have to wait until next episode).
King George decides he’s done sitting in his car making bad-guy faces and finally comes to stir up some trouble in Storybrooke. George has been in and out of the show since early on in its run, and his reintroduction as a villain isn’t entirely welcome; he’s always been mostly one-sided and predictable. Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna do all sorts of evil, dastardly things to get revenge on Charming because you’re dastardly and evil. You have fun with that.
The wolf den, on the other hand, is a neat semi-villainous monster of the week. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning that they’re going to turn out bad in the end, but they’re fun to watch anyway, and they’re more relatable and have more of a sensible motive than George does. Plus a few nights a month they turn super cute and fluffy!
The Storybrooke arc is a lot of angst and drama. It would have been more interesting if Red really had committed the murder and had to learn to live with that. Oh, but she’s the type of person who solves her guilt issues by sacrificing herself to an angry mob. Never mind that it’s just as likely she’ll tear the mob to shreds in wolf form. And all of it is actually Evil King George’s fault anyway, so it’s all good.
The episode still ends in tragedy, however, with the senseless death of Jefferson’s hat. We will miss you, oh stylish world-hopping top hat!
Meanwhile, Henry wakes up from one of his fiery-room dreams with a real burn on his hand (freaky!). Mr. Gold explains that Henry is actually entering another world, one between life and death, and gives him a necklace that will help him control his actions in the “dream.” Dreams are so commonplace yet mysterious and alluring, and OUaT’s idea of world-jumping in a dream, while not entirely original, is still an intriguing development.
The dream saga continues on November 25th, after OUaT takes a Thanksgiving week hiatus. I for one cannot wait to learn more about this chilling phenomenon, so of course they have to take a hiatus now. Why couldn’t they have had a Halloween hiatus instead and spared us that dumb Frankenstein episode for another week? By the way, the next episode apparently features zombies. I’m not sure how to feel about that. Luckily it also promises lots of Henry, and he is almost as cute as a vicious werewolf.
Read Kylie's review of the previous episode, Tallahassee, here.
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