Once Upon A Time: Dreamy

Greetings Gasmii!  Apple Pie here, standing in for Potty Mouth this week.  I apologize for the tardy recap, and I apologize in advance for my bitterness and cynicism toward this show; I haven’t watched it on a regular basis since Emma was still Sheriff McHottiePants’s deputy.

Welcome to another episode of ABC’s new iteration of the After-School Special, where we learn:  loving someone means letting them go, say no to drugs and alcohol, and grow up to be an evil bitch so you too can rule a small piece of the world.

I think some of these characters have unforgivable secrets, too.

Let’s begin in Fairy Land, where we bust in on the Fairy Godmother Mentor program, during which The Blue Fairy tells rookie Nova that if you can’t handle a simple fairy dust run, you’ll never make it as a lackey fairy, much less a godmother.  This place is really starting to turn Walt Disney into a liar.

In the Pinocchio book, Jiminy Cricket was crushed on page 11.  Don’t you like my version better?

Apparently, the warnings are lost on Nova, as she accidentally drops some fairy dust through the clouds and it drifts down toward earth and then through a hole in the ground to settle, quite innocently enough, on a dwarf egg in a hatchery.  The egg begins to hatch, and we see the early-arriving dwarf is none other than OMG … IT’S DAVID CROSS!

The Never Nude Dwarf

Is this Grumpy’s origin story?  Because I prefer a guest appearance by Dr. Funke!

Bitch, please.  I’m a serious actor.

Back in Storybrooke, Leroy’s eating breakfast with what looks like the entire town populace at Granny’s.  Perhaps Granny laces the bacon with heroin “fairy dust”.  Mary Margaret comes in, asking for volunteers to help her sell candles for the nuns’ Miners Day Festival.  Storybrooke’s finest all ignore her plaintive pleas and simply stare at the invisible, giant red “A” stamped on her forehead.  Leroy even throws out the “town harlot” title as he leaves the diner, so Disney/ABC are still using words that little ones can’t understand in case they’re watching this show with the parental units.

Emma follows Mother Mary Margaret out of the diner, and they commiserate over exposition about Miners Day and their shared love of ill-fitting hipster hats.

Emma’s hat is squeezing her brain and MM’s is hiding her abundant shame … or dreadlocks.

Luckily, Emma’s phone rings before MM starts sobbing about how nobody loves her or likes her or wants to sell her candles.

Well, I have to go help people with real problems now … good luck with Pussy McWimp

Leroy walks through the town square, which is all abustle with people decorating for Miners Day, and gets showered from above with some silver glitter that Nova – I mean Sister Astrid, as her real-world doppelganger is called – accidentally knocked off her stepladder.  I was so hoping it would be Lady Gaga instead.  You know she just walks around throwing glitter on unhappy people … or is that Ke$ha?

Anyway, Sister Astrid comes down from the ladder and Leroy is smitten.  She apologizes profusely and anxiously brushes the glitter off his face and body with her black leather gloves

BOWCHICKAWOWWOW

and mentions she’s having trouble getting the lights strung up around the square to work.  Leroy, being a man, can OBVIOUSLY help any woman with a mechanical problem, so he fixes the lights and wins her undying gratitude (and a few more fondles with the leather gloves).  She asks gratefully if he’s an electrician and he demurs, saying he’s just a custodian with a clunker of a boat and a dream to sail it out of this hellhole one day.  She insists if you dream it, you can do it.  Sure …

Keep on dreamin’

Sheriff Emma and everyone’s favorite meth kingpin, I mean, ex-Daily Mirror photographer, have met up at Kathryn’s car, found abandoned just inside that pesky “Leaving Storybrooke” sign.  Sidney, now a freelance photographer, and Sheriff Emma find no sign of Kathryn, but her luggage is in the trunk so she probably didn’t hoof it to that Boston law school she was so looking forward to attending.

I can’t believe she abandoned a magic car that can balance precariously on three wheels … BTW, how does one get out of a car balanced like this?

David drives up just in time to cement his title of “person of interest” in Kathryn’s disappearance.  Way to go, Not-So-Charming.  Sidney promises Emma to use his contact at the phone company to get her Kathryn’s phone records faster than her official channels would allow.

Back to Grumpy’s neck of the woods, where he’s going through dwarf orientation and learning that dwarfs’ (?) (I thought it was dwarves, but spellcheck says no) sole purpose in life is to work in the mines, harvesting diamonds to be ground into fairy dust, which lights the world.  Dwarfs don’t fall in love, get married or have children (hence the eggs).  Grumpy insists he wants to see the woman again that he saw before he hatched (we can assume this was a vision of Nova as her dust danced down to his egg), but his dwarf teacher insists he was dreaming.  The teacher introduces him to his “dwarf brethren” who will keep him company down in the mines.  Every dwarf must take a pickaxe, which will magically reveal its owner dwarf’s name on its handle.  These are the Disney dwarfs, with a few different ones thrown in to deter copyright infringement claims:  we have Stealthy, Happy, Doc, Sneezy, Bashful, Dopey, and Leroy’s alter ego gets “Dreamy”, not Grumpy, as his dwarf name.

They better not use a Sorting Hat, or I’ll sue ABC, too.

Leroy walks into the school, where all the Miners Day Festival volunteers are gathered, to sign up to help sell candles with MM and hopefully impress Astrid in the process.  Astrid is across the room, admitting to her Mother Superior (The Blue Fairy’s alter ego) that she accidentally ordered 12 dozen helium tanks instead of 12 individual tanks.  Unfortunately, this helium seller is a real asshole and won’t give refunds.  Mother Superior orders Astrid to fix this because they need the money and Astrid “knows how he feels about us.”  Hmmm … we soon find out, as Leroy comes over to comfort Astrid and solve her problems, that “he” is the nuns’ landlord, Mr. Gold, who will throw them out on their holy asses if they miss a rent payment.  Luckily, if MM and Leroy sell all the candles, which Leroy gallantly swears to do, the nuns will have enough income to pay next week’s rent.  Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to sell candles he goes.

How many candles do I have to sell to get to third base with a nun?

Back to David and Sheriff Swan and the amazing trick balancing car that Kathryn abandoned.  David swears he hasn’t seen or spoken with her since the day before yesterday, and Emma takes him at his word.   She says she can tell when people are telling the truth and promises David that he’s not a suspect and that she’ll find Kathryn.

Regina’s printer is busily throwing out Kathryn Nolan’s phone records.  How does this woman have time to sleep?  It must be hard work, ruining lives.  Anyway, she calls Sidney and lets him know the phone records he wants are ready and very interesting.  Oh, Magic Mirror, you disappoint me …

Back in the Fairy Land mines, Grumpy is shoveling rough diamonds and dirt onto a conveyor belt that separates and grinds up the diamonds into fairy dust, which is then funneled into a frightfully cheap-looking bag that some P.A.on this show bought at K-Mart.  Nova sees the dust bag is full – wait, did I mention that she’s dressed as Paris Hilton’s piñata

See?  I told you!

and attempts to turn off the fairy dust faucet but can’t turn the darn handle by herself.  It must be those wussy little womanly biceps she has.  Luckily, Dreamy hears her cries for help and assists her.  He recognizes Nova from his vision and introduces himself, just in time to rescue the fairy dust again, since the dumb woman has accidentally placed it on the conveyor belt which is headed for, you guessed it, a fiery inferno.  Dreamy saves the dust, and probably Nova’s professional fairy future, natch.  Where would these worlds be without men to save the day?  Where’s Hillary when we need her?

You men can leave … I think I can handle a bag of fairy dust and some electrical transformers.

So Dreamy has sufficiently impressed Nova and she invites him out to Firefly Hill to watch the fireflies with her that evening, but he misses the net and says goodbye instead of taking her up on her subtle offer.

Leroy and MM aren’t selling any candles at their booth, so Leroy suggests they sell them door-to-door.  Presumably the horrified townsfolk would throw money at them simply to get the town scum off their doorsteps faster … it just might work.

Emma has arrived at the Miners Day celebration and berates Sidney for playing carnival games when he should be helping her find Kathryn.  She tells him that Kathryn’s law school reported her as a no-show, and that this case has become serious.  MM runs up to Emma and interrupts the convo to ask if she looks more pathetic with a scarf or no scarf

Are you kidding me right now, Mom?  We’re trying to find a missing person.

As Leroy and MM run off, Sidney calls Emma on the fact that she should have at least asked MM about Kathryn, since she has plenty of motive to harm Kathryn.  Emma again, like she did with David, insists MM would never hurt Kathryn, and snaps, “Just get me those phone records.”  Sidney looks really tired.

Every time I turn around, another bitch is yelling at me.

Leroy and MM get nowhere with their door-to-door candle selling campaign.

Back in Fairy Tale Land, Dreamy and dwarf brethren are supping at the local pub when Belle’s alter ego (It’s Claire from Lost!) eavesdrops on his conversation with his dwarf teacher about how weird he’s feeling ever since he met Nova.  Claire tells Dreamy he’s not sick, he’s in love.  She’s very morose and not a good love ambassador, in my opinion.

I know about love.  A dingo ate my baby, by the way.

She does fill him in on what Nova meant by casually mentioning Firefly Hill, so he waddles over there as fast as he can go.

Back in Storybrooke, Leroy can’t bring himself to tell Astrid that they failed miserably, and instead lies, telling Sister Dropsies that they sold all the candles.  MM motions him over to her side of the room and calls him on his bullshit but Leroy insists he has a plan.  MM figures out that Leroy is mooning over Astrid and notes that there is no one less available than a nun.  Leroy points out MM was just caught in an affair with a married man, so she should STFU.

Touché, little fat bald man.

Back to Dreamy and Nova, who have reunited on the decidedly romantic Firefly Hill, where they declare their mutual love and impetuously decide to rendezvous on the Hill tomorrow evening and run away together, sailing the world and exploring the kingdoms.  I’m sure this is going to work out perfectly.

Leroy is attempting to sell Mr. Gold his beat-up boat in exchange for $5,000, or at least give the nuns one month’s grace period to pay the rent, but he refuses.  We get a little foreshadowing when Mr. Gold explains to Leroy that he has his own reasons for hating the nuns, and that he has a long and complicated history with them.  There goes Plan B, Leroy.  Good thing you’re a man and can solve anything.  Inconveniently for Leroy, Sister Astrid shows up with a “thank you” pie (and she doesn’t drop it!) but unfortunately she spies all the candle inventory half-covered by a tarp, which was supposed to be sold to the local citizenry.  Whoops!  He admits he lied because he didn’t want to disappoint her.  Instead of rapping him on his knuckles with a ruler, like any self-respecting nun would do, she stalks off after Leroy tells Astrid she was wrong to believe in him.

Sidney comes in to Emma’s office with Kathryn’s phone records.  He tells her Kathryn spoke with David for 8 minutes within an hour of her accident, but Emma insists that this is impossible since David said he hadn’t talked to her yesterday.  Sidney points out that phone records don’t lie, people do, and that David has lied to a lot of people, not just Emma.  This is a convenient scene segue to …

MM, sitting at Granny’s bar, drinking what appears to be a finger of whiskey.  Leroy joins her and lets her know the plan to sell the boat didn’t work.  They agree that it was just a dream for the town harlot and the town drunk to sell those candles.

It was only just a dream …

Cut to Dreamy sneaking out of the dwarf barracks in the mine, but the aptly-named “Stealthy” dwarf catches him before he can leave.  The rest of the Brethren wake up and wish him the best in his new adventures once they find out he’s going to run away with Nova.   I think we all know what happens next …

A GIANT DIAMOND FALLS ON NOVA!  Before she is crushed to death, she whispers her undying love for Dreamy and his tears fall uselessly on her dead flesh.

Just kidding … but what really happens isn’t much better.

As Dreamy’s walking to Firefly Hill, his teacher catches up with him and pukes up all the stuff he’s said before:  dwarves don’t fall in love, they’re all destined to work in the mines, creating the fairy dust that makes their world function.  The second half of the one-two punch is The Blue Fairy guilt-tripping him:  “Nova will lose her wings” (I wonder if that hurts … does someone rip ‘em off her?) and “You will bring untold happiness to the world” if you just do your job and let Nova be the fairy she was meant to be.

They only give out the Christmas-bow necklaces to the wise fairy godmothers.

Back at Granny’s Formica Bar of Broken Dreams, Leroy waxes poetic about love.  He tells MM she should be happy about the good memories she still has of her relationship with David, especially since he never had a chance to build even one happy memory with Astrid before it all went to shit.  He has an idea of how to fix things, though, and determinedly swallows the last bit of whiskey in his glass.

Back at the town square, Storybrooke-ians are still celebrating Miners Day.  MM pops her head out on the rooftop, just in time to see Leroy standing on the ledge of Granny’s roof.  Her cries for him not to jump are met with the best lines of the ep:  “I’m not going to jump … Are you crazy?  I could hit someone.  You know how much damage I could do?  I’m solidly built.”

Solidly Built … perfect name for a big and tall men’s clothing store

She asks him what he’s going to do, and Leroy says he’s going to get his moment.  He proceeds to swing a pickaxe (of course) into the transformer near him, which knocks out all the power at Miners Day and in town.

Now some bitches be buyin’ some candles.

Back at Firefly Hill, Dreamy breaks the news to Nova that they can’t run off together, even though she tries to convince him of the power of love.

Where’s Celiné Dion when you need her, girl?

Dreamy tells her he can’t stand in the way of her becoming a fairy godmother, and she tells him she loves him, and asks if he loves her.  He tells her dwarfs can’t love.  Ooh, burn and heartbreak all in one line.

Dreamy reports back to the mines, and in his frustration and anger, breaks his trusty pickaxe on a large, tough rock.  Once he puts his hands on a new replacement, axe, the handle gives him a new moniker, “Grumpy”.  That was pretty cool, Once Upon A Time.

A tip of the three-cornered hat to you …

In Storybrooke, MM & Leroy sell out of candles at their booth, necessity being the mother of pirate marketing and all that.  Leroy proudly brings the cash over to Sister Astrid so he can have his moment.  He promises her she’ll be his first passenger on the boat, once he fixes it up.  The two blissfully take in the sight of all the beautifully lit candles on the square, looking for all the world like a bunch of fireflies on a hill … hey, wait a minute, they sucked me in there!

Regina tromps in to Sheriff Emma’s office, demanding an update on Kathryn’s disappearance and letting Emma know that if she’s hiding something or protecting someone in the investigation, Regina will find someone who will do a better job.  I love Storybrooke, Maine, where the town’s mayor is in charge of hiring and firing county officials …

I guess I can suspend my disbelief about local politics since the whole premise of this show is the intersection of alternate realities.

At the Miners Day Festival, MM blows out the last candle and carries it back to her car, which still bears the remnants of the “tramp” graffiti, and for some reason, instead of getting in her car, (Gasmii, why is she walking back into Miners Day?  Does she have to pee?) walks purposefully back into the square and gets stopped by someone who re-lights the candle she is still carrying.

Symbolism is not exactly subtle in this show.

David sees MM from afar, sighs, and turns his head as Sheriff Emma walks up to him and tells him she has to question him at the “Sheriff’s station”.  She doesn’t handcuff David but she still leads him to sit in the back of her patrol car.  It’s obvious how much Emma cares about David, since she arrests him in front of the whole town.

For shame, David Nolan

Poor David.  Bad things happen to people who lie.  Did you not watch any ABC After-School Specials when you were growing up?

Guess I got out of that relationship in the nick of time.

Next week, it looks like a kick-ass show … Red Riding Hood and Snow White team up to beat up the Big Bad Wolf.  I’m there!  Thanks for reading this recap; Potty Mouth should be back soon!