She’s “Prickly†for a Reason, People!

For a change of pace, we begin in Boston in 1982 where Ingrid/ Snow Queen (SQ) gallivants around town in her glorious SQ outfit. I can’t tell if she’s barefoot but I hope not because eeeew. She makes her way to a psychic. This oughta be good! And it is. Coming from a world with magic, SQ has different expectations from a psychic than, say, someone from the neighborhood. SQ is outraged when the psychic proves to be a phony. But the psychic seems just as outraged. SQ attempts to zap the psychic with her magic, but that’s not the way things are done in these parts. Since she’s got no powers, and the psychic has a baseball bat, the SQ gets out while the gettin’s good. 

In present-day Storybrooke, SQ enjoys the fruits of her labors as she watches the townspeople turn on each other. In the Storybrooke jail, the Charmings bicker and Kristoff snipes at Ana.

Emma, Elsa, and Ana, who are immune to the spell, talk about Emma being the savior. Best line so far, from Ana: “Is that, like, a real job here?†You’d be surprised what passes for a real job in this crazy-ass town, honey.

I think we have our answer about what happens to babies under this spell. Nothing, apparently. All baby Prince Neal is doing is sleeping.

They decide, based on a legend, that to break the spell, Ingrid/SQ has to die. Ana seems less upset about killing her aunt than she does when she’s asked to babysit. Elsa tries to mollify her by telling her she’s the smartest person she knows. I started to laugh at that, but considering everyone this cast of characters, Elsa makes a solid point.

In the Mills mausoleum, Regina is furious about being sealed in, and disgusted about her wardrobe. She perks up when she magics herself into a fabulous Enchanted Forest ensemble and goes full-on Evil Queen. She whispers “I’ve missed you†to her reflection. We’ve all missed you, Evil Regina.

Over at Gold’s shop, we find out that Hook is immune to the curse because his heart wasn’t in his chest. Why didn’t Regina know this about the curse? Was it a lapse in Rumple’s evil magic education? Because we could have avoided this whole thing if she’d just lined up the townsfolk and ripped everyone’s heart out before the curse hit. I think she would have really enjoyed that.

Too late for that now, though. Gold orders Hook to get Henry so he can skip town with his wife and grandson. Hook says villains never win. Gold says he’s going to rebrand himself as a hero.

At the ice cream shop, SQ has hidden two purple globs (which we later find out are Elsa’s and Emma’s memories) in the carrot sherbet. (I’m guessing that’s because carrot sherbet is not a popular product, so it’s a failsafe hiding space.) Outside the shop, Elsa and Emma confront SQ and realize their magic doesn’t work against her, thanks to the yellow ribbons of sisterly love around their wrists. SQ insists that soon, Elsa and Emma will love her. (Ingrid, sweetheart, you can’t make them love you if they don’t. You can’t make their hearts feel something they won’t.)

Next, we’re in Minnesota in 1999 where Ingrid is, indeed, making Emma love her by being a firm, supportive foster mom. When Emma tries to run off in the middle of the night, Ingrid stops her with some words of wisdom and a tip about how horrid Kevin, another foster child, is afraid of spiders. I don’t know much about the foster-parent code of ethics, but I do know Kevin deserves to be spooked by a spider, so I’m going to let that go.

In Storybrooke, Emma and Elsa look for Belle at Gold’s shop in the hopes she’ll help them remove the ribbons, but she’s not there. Outside, Hook walks down the street looking for Henry. Will Scarlett, in the middle of a pocket picking, watches Hook walk by.

At the jail, the Charmings continue to quarrel. Ana tries to make them see reason. Snow tries to prove how tough she is by bragging to Ana about how she killed Cora. Ana seems disturbed by this revelation.

Back at Gold’s, Elsa and Emma try everything short of cutting off their hands to get the yellow ribbons off their wrists, to no avail. They decide the best way to counteract the love flowing through the ribbons is a large dose of hate. (And Emma gets bent out of shape when Elsa calls her prickly. Oh, Emma, some self-awareness would be a good super power.) Our blonde heroines come up with the brilliant idea of letting Regina loose to hate on them. What could go wrong?

In the fortress of solitude, the SQ removes the memories from the purple globs. They include a stint at a claw machine at an arcade in Minnesota past where Emma wins a prize. And I totally believe that she needed her magic to do it. Those machines are impossible. SQ is so proud when Emma harnesses her magic and I love how Elizabeth Mitchell alternates her performance from encouraging Mrs. Brady to crazy-eyed sociopath from moment to moment. Ingrid decides that this is a good moment to tell Emma that she wants to adopt her. Both prospective mom and prospective daughter are elated.

In the Storybrooke cemetery, present-day, Emma and Elsa use their magic to unseal the Mills mausoleum. They go inside where Regina greets them gleefully. Emma taunts her with a story about bringing Marion back on purpose to destroy Regina’s happiness. (Which seemed like overkill to me. I would imagine one doesn’t need to go right for the jugular to enrage an evil queen.) But it works. Regina flings some rage-fueled magic at Emma and Elsa and their ribbons disintegrate. They use their magic to toss Regina against a wall so they can get a head start at escape. Still, my money’s on Regina.

At the mayor’s office, Hook has come to fetch Henry. Under the spell, Henry tells Hook how he really feels about a pirate dating one of his moms. Hook uses the potion Gold gave him to open the door and then LITERALLY falls for the oldest trick in the book when he slides on the marbles Henry has left on the floor to trip him up. As Hook hits the floor for what must be the millionth time since he got involved with these people, Henry runs off.

But Hook redeems himself when Will Scarlett comes along looking for a fight. Wasting no time, Hook slams Will against a wall. And my daughter and I both cheered to see our pirate finally get the better of someone! Good for you, Captain Guyliner!

Having freed themselves from the ribbons of sisterly love, Elsa and Emma look for the SQ at the fortress of solitude.

Back in Minnesota past, Emma tells Ingrid how much easier her life would be if she had magic “like Harry Potter.†Ingrid thinks the best way to explain to Emma that she does have magic is to drag her into traffic to force her to power her way to safety. Ingrid is mistaken. This only serves to freak Emma out. Emma is traumatized at almost dying and hurt at having let her guard down enough to love someone who turned out to be, as she puts it “a nut job.†Nice work, Ingrid.

In the present-day Storybrooke jail, Regina arrives in her Evil Queen regalia and with a voice a few octaves lower than usual. She terrorizes Ana, Kristoff, and the Charmings. When Kristoff and Ana annoy her, she magics them away.

Once again, I have to believe that, even at her evil peak, Regina doesn’t really want to kill Snow or Charming, because she certainly takes her sweet time about it. She monologues for awhile about taking away the baby, like Snow took away her love. And then she decides not to kill her archenemies with magic, but to engage in a sword fight. Really, if she wanted them dead, they’d have been dead a few decades (and a few realms) ago.

In the next scene, we learn that Ingrid came to Storybrooke in 2001, fleeing the child endangerment charges, I assume.

Back at the fortress of solitude, it’s a showdown! SQ notices that Elsa and Emma have removed their ribbons and decides to deal with their rebellion much the way one deals with a toddler, by telling them that their behavior makes her “sad.†She takes out the purple memory globs and tells them she’s going to give them back all their good memories of her and then they will love her. Then she tells them that the only way they can stop her plan is to kill her, which is totally NOT the way to deal with a toddler.

We cut to Storybrooke 2011 where it turns out that Emma did meet Ingrid at the ice cream shop and remembered her from their foster-care days. I know that the writers don’t write that far in advance, and I know there are actor availability issues, but wouldn’t it have been cool if Elizabeth Mitchell’s character was always a minor player in Storybrooke? Not to be, though, because in 2011, Ingrid wipes Emma’s memory of the meeting.

In the Storybrooke jail present-day, Regina and Mary Margaret’s sword fight continues. In the most realistic bit of action in this whole series, we also see just how infuriated and overwrought a new mother can become if someone threatens to wake her baby.

On Storybrooke beach, Kristoff tells Ana how annoying she and her family are (a sentiment I know a lot of viewers share). Ana notices a bottle on the beach and hits Kristoff over the head with it in order to stop him from leaving (and also to stop him from yelling at her).

But wait! What was in the bottle? It’s the final message Ana’s mother wrote when her ship was going down. What a twist of fate! What a coincidence!

In the fortress of solitude, Ana rushes in to save the day and reads the letter from her mother. The note expresses regret for what happened to Ingrid and support of both Ingrid’s and Elsa’s powers. SQ thinks Ana is lying and tries to magically strangle her, but when she reads the letter herself and presses a finger to the purple memory glob affixed to it, she sees that her sisters really did love her.

And so she decides to end the curse by killing herself. I don’t know, that was a quick change of heart. And it seems too easy. After all that the town has been through, it’s anticlimactic. Emma says Ingrid deserves her happy ending. (Well, she hasn’t killed hordes of people, just her sister and that was accidentally. So I guess she deserves happiness more than, say, Regina or Rumple.) The SQ says her happiness will be when she meets her sisters in the afterlife, so I think that we are supposed to be happy at this resolution.

Out and about in Storybrooke, the curse is broken and everyone is nice again. Regina is confused about her evil ensemble and she and MM both start laughing. I am not laughing because, as always, I think Regina looks magnificent when she’s all gussied up.

At the Golds’ house, Gold watches Belle sleep which is just as creepy as always. Hook enters to tell Gold that Henry got away. Gold promises that Hook is going to die soon. Hook replies, that’s okay as long as you leave Emma and the rest of the town alone. Gold says the town is safe, but the rest of our world isn’t. For a coward, Gold is mighty ambitious.

Well, I’m disappointed that the SQ went out with a whimper rather than a bang, but I’m looking forward to next week’s mid-season finale when we meet Cruella de Ville, Maleficent, and Ursula. To discuss this episode, come over to the forum at: http://www.freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=13046&sid=f3b206bc0b72896a703bfa6ae72533f5&start=60