Once upon a Time Rewatch 2.6, "Tallahassee"

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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2.6, "Tallahassee"

Written by Christine Boylan and Jane Espenson
Directed by David Barrett

Synopsis

After a recapitulation of events, the episode begins with Emma, Snow White, Mulan, Aurora, and Hook approaching the beanstalk that rises into the clouds. Emma questions the beans, Hook noting their history of misuse and a genocidal war against the giants who had cultivated and misused them. Hook also notes that one giant, the worst of them, remains and who must be addressed if the compass they need to get to Storybrooke is to be attained. Doubts are rightly raised about Hook's allegiances, and arrangements for the climb--which will only be done by Hook and one other--begin to be made.

Now that's a familiar face...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

In the "real" world eleven years previously, Emma breaks into a yellow Volkswagon Beetle, stealing it. She is not alone, a man sitting up in the back seat behind her with the keys. As she drives, they confer, the man naming himself Neal Cassidy and propositioning her. They are pulled over by police, and Neal successfully bluffs his way out of trouble. As they recompose themselves from the near-arrest, Emma realizes Neal has also stolen the car.

At the beanstalk, the decision is made that Emma will ascend with Hook. Mulan offers Emma a powerful soporific and agrees to cut down the beanstalk if she is not back within ten hours of beginning her climb. Hook's hook is restored to him, and the ascent begins. It proceeds apace, Hook chatting amiably along the way, noting his history in Neverland and identifying her as having been abandoned and provoking Emma's reflection on her past.

In that past, she and Neal continue their criminal life together, conducting petty larcenies and fleeing shamefully. Neal suggests that they settle down and establish a more normal life together in Tallahassee. Emma voices some doubts but agrees.

Been there, done that.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

At the beanstalk, Mulan marks out time, and the three--she, Snow White, and Aurora--set up for watches. Snow White and Aurora take the first watch, conferring about their shared experience of sleeping curses. Nightmares are noted as a side-effect of such suffering, and Snow White offers to watch over Aurora against their return.

Emma and Hook reach the top of the beanstalk, entering into a ruined palatial landscape. Hook tends a wound on Emma's hand and notes the plan for retrieving the compass--which is simple enough, and amended by Emma, who stumbles into Hook's revenge plot.

In the past, Emma and Neal confer again, Neal noting that he is wanted on federal charges. He explains the theft, noting the location of the stolen merchandise to Emma and saying that he has to leave the country--alone. Emma rejects being separated from him, arguing him into her plan to stay with him amid their mutual admission of love for each other.

Atop the beanstalk, Emma and Hook bait the remaining giant into attacking them. They succeed, and Emma is able to deploy the powder she received from Mulan to put the giant to sleep. That done, they proceed towards the giant's treasures. Meanwhile, Mulan checks the time, and Snow White wakes Aurora from her nightmare, the setting of which is described--along with the presence of another within it. Snow White offers such comfort as she can, while Mulan considers what she may have to do.

There's another familiar face...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

In the past, Emma makes to retrieve the stolen merchandise about which Neal had told her, successfully gathering it back in. She delivers it and herself back to Neal, who makes off to fence the goods--save for one watch, which he clasps on Emma's wrist as he gives her directions for how to proceed. Neal is followed and apprehended--by August, who begins to enlist him in his plans for Emma. Neal is convinced to go along with the plan after seeing what August carries, and he abandons Emma to capture by the police. Months later, Neal meets with August again, conferring with him about Emma. Neal tasks August with delivering some small support to Emma and with summoning him if Emma succeeds in her task.

Atop the beanstalk, the search for the compass continues, hastened by the giant having reawakened. Emma and Hook attempt to take cover against the giant's angry entrance. The giant makes to crush Emma, and she flees again, successfully restraining him and retrieving the compass. She lets him live, the last of his kind, and he lets her escape--but not Hook, whom she restrains against the risk that she has misjudged him. Meanwhile, Mulan begins to fulfill Emma's charge to her, beginning to cut down the beanstalk and provoking an attack that is stopped only by Emma's return with the compass. The four head out.

In the past, Emma receives the keys to the Volkswagon and the news of her pregnancy. In Storybrooke, Henry wakes screaming from a nightmare, and David attends to him as he had been described as doing for Snow White before. The nightmare Henry describes echoes that Aurora had described to Snow White...

Discussion

Feels like Otranto...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

I find myself once again struck by the architecture on display, the present episode making substantial use of Gothic tropes in its presentation of the giants' domain. I'd very nearly lay money that the writers or illustrators had recently read Walpole, honestly--but that would itself be an example of a somewhat distributed neomedievalism, with Walpole's novel and the genre it inspires both making much of the crumbling walls and towers of centuries past. That the present episode deploys such tropes--though it does not fully engage with them, using them more as window-dressing than in any structural way--reinforces the prevailing neomedievalism at work in the series. It also suggests. that mainstream presentations of the same (and how much more mainstream can a thing be than a Disney-produced primetime broadcast serial?) are necessarily shallow--which is not much of a surprise, really.

It is tempting, given the persistent misuse of neo/medieval/ist tropes and figurations, to decry popular audiences as "not getting it." It's easy enough to do, certainly, even from so far "inside" academe as I remain, and I find that I have to work to avoid doing it. But that's work that needs doing no less than the work of getting things right or the work of creating a more just and equitable world. With shallow presentations being the norm, and people constrained by material conditions, it is not to be wondered at that prevailing understandings are cursory even when they do align with fact--though, given rampant compression of ideas, that's not so often as can be hoped.