The town of Storybrooke, Maine is like any town. People have real jobs, do everyday things, and have pretty boring lives. But a little boy named Henry (Jared Gilmore), who is the adopted son of Regina (Lana Parrilla), the town mayor, gets ahold of a book of fairy tales and figures out the truth: His birth mother, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), is actually the daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas).
Emma and all of the townsfolk are actually fairy tale characters that have been exiled from the Enchanted Forest by Regina, the Evil Queen. See, the Evil Queen was pissed off and cursed everyone in the Enchanted Forest so that they will never know love and never have a happy ending. Now they all live in Storybrooke, a town seemingly trapped in time, having no idea who they really are.
Based on that clever premise, Once Upon a Time goes back and forth between Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest. No one in Storybrooke is able to leave the town unless, like Emma and Henry, they come from “outside” the Enchanted Forest. Henry is on a quest to reveal the truth to the townspeople about their true selves and enlist their help to lift the Evil Queen’s curse.
There is a fabulous chemistry between the deliciously evil Lana Parrilla (who was also hottie-hot-hot on the kind of terrible show Swingtown) and surreptitiously badass Jennifer Morrison. But the best part of the show is Jared Gilmore as Henry. He’s convinced that everyone in the town is a character from his book of fairy tales, and he so earnestly wants his real mom to help save them all. He’s just so stinking cute!
BLU-RAY NOTES
Among the extra treats on the Blu-Ray release of Once Upon a Time: The Complete First Season are featurettes “Fairy Tales in the Modern World” (about creating the story), “Building Character” (profiling the start to finish creation of the character Belle, played by Emilie de Ravin), “Welcome to Storybrooke” (behind the scenes of the fictional town and its real inspiration near Vancouver), “The Story I remember… Snow White” (the actors reminisce about the classic story), “Once Upon A Time: Origins” (an interactive tour of fairy tales from around the world), episode commentaries, bloopers, and deleted scenes.
