Once upon a Time Rewatch 2.14, "Manhattan"

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

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2.14, "Manhattan"

Written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz
Directed by Dean White

Synopsis

In another time and place, this would be kindling...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

After a recapitulation of series events, the episode begins with Rumpelstiltskin returning to his wife, Milah, with his conscription order. She voices her reservations, and he notes the chance to redeem his familial cowardice; she encourages him onward.

Emma, Henry, and Gold arrive in New York City, stepping out of a taxi onto a rainy street in front of a nondescript building. They press ahead, thinking to surprise Gold's son.

In Storybrooke, Regina and Cora confer about events. Hook intrudes, asking about Rumpelstiltskin's whereabouts, and is informed of the difficulty of pursuit. Cora notes that Gold's absence allows a search for his dagger, which can kill him.

...you got some 'splainin' to do...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

The group in New York tries to confront Gold's son, who flees. Gold compels Emma to retrieve his son and get him to talk to his father, and Emma gives chase through the crowded streets near the Flatiron building. She catches up to him, only to find her quarry is her former lover, Neal. Disbelieving, Emma confronts Neal about his father's identity and about his knowledge of her history; he offers to confess all over beer. Meanwhile, Henry and Gold confer about the likelihood of Emma's success and about their own connections and family histories.

Emma and Neal confer about their history together and its entanglement with Rumpelstiltskin's plans. Neal waxes prolix on fate, and Emma denies Henry to him, rebuking him. She notes, too, that she acts under the terms of a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, staggering Neal.

But it's Disney!
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

In the Enchanted Forest, Rumpelstiltskin finds himself under orders to guard a prisoner. He looks at the prisoner after being addressed by her, a blinded child. She pleads for water and notes herself as an oracle before demonstrating the truth of her claim. What she reveals upsets him, and he rebukes her.

In the "real" world, Emma calls her parents, noting that Neal, Gold's son, is Henry's father. She seeks counsel, and Mary Margaret recommends telling Henry the truth about his father, a recommendation she finds difficult. Henry and Gold confer further about Gold's reunion with his son, which Gold anticipates nervously. He discusses his own prognostication with the boy, noting the difficulties involved with it. Emma arrives where they wait and reports that Neal eluded her.

In Storybrooke, Belle continues to convalesce, and Regina calls on her, finding her amnesiac as reported. She magics her asleep and ransacks her belongings to find a lead on Gold. The lead takes Regina--along with Cora and Hook--to the town library, where they search the stacks for the dagger. They find, instead, a map that indicates the location of their object. David and Mary Margaret confer about the implications of Henry's heritage. The complexity of the relationships involved is noted. And in New York, Gold breaks into his son's apartment. Emma attempts to dissuade him, to no avail.

Back in the Enchanted Forest, Rumpelstiltskin apprehensively awaits the combat of the next day as the injured and slain are brought back in. Another soldier comments that being thus injured is the only way to be discharged from service, and orders follow that remind Rumpelstiltskin of the oracle's words. Fear begins to overtake him, and he seeks to confer with the oracle again, finding her absent. Believing himself to be soon to die, Rumpelstiltskin instead maims himself to effect his discharge from service. 

Gold, limping from the permanence of the injury, enters Neal's apartment, Emma and Henry following. They search the apartment, Emma noting a familiar dreamcatcher. Gold presses her for information, the situation growing tense until Neal returns to his apartment, confronting both.

In the Enchanted Forest, Rumpelstiltskin hobbles home to his wife and their son. He asks his son's name, finding it is Baelfire, and Milah rebukes him for his cowardice. He attempts to justify himself, and the explanation is rejected, harshly, and Milah stalks off, leaving father and son together. And in New York, the two are reunited, Gold far happier to see Neal than Neal to see Gold. Gold intuits that the two have a relationship, and Henry stumbles in, confirming the relationships among all concerned--and Emma's deceit. Henry departs, leaving the adults to untangle complicated affairs.

In Storybrooke, Greg calls to note that he will remain in Storybrooke, having recorded Regina exercising magic. She confers with Cora and Hook about the location of the dagger, and she and Cora excuse him from their plans. Meanwhile, Henry confronts Emma about her deceit, and she divulges some of her history with Neal to him; he compares Emma to Regina, bitterly, and asks to meet Neal. Gold and Neal confer, Gold apologizing for his perfidy and asking Neal to return to Storybrooke and magic with him, citing his changes. Neal rebukes him for his presumption and reminds him of his failure; he takes his revenge by sending Gold away and stalking out.

In the Enchanted Forest, the empowered Rumpelstiltskin confronts the oracle again. He recounts events and how her prophecy came to pass, rebuking her for her vagueness. A tense confrontation follows, and the oracle searches out how he can retrieve Baelfire. She outlines the means by which he will do so, and Rumpelstiltskin makes to take the oracle's power for himself to divine more details.

In New York, Neal confers with Henry. The boy is forgiving of his father, as his father is not of Gold. And Gold recalls the difficulty of interpreting the oracular vision, breaking off contact with the oracle before her power can go over fully to him--along with its burdens. The oracle offers insight that leads Rumpelstiltskin to plot the death of a child--who turns out to be Henry, his own grandson...

Discussion

The point might well be made about the remarkable convenience of the coincidence of bloodlines and family histories on display in the present episode, and it does come off as contrived. (The point might also be made that it is contrived, being a created fiction, of which all examples are, necessarily, contrived.) Certainly, there is a soap-opera quality about it, something with which ABC, on which the series aired, is hardly unfamiliar; my late grandmother watched quite a few soap operas on that network, and for a time, I was conversant in the tangled bush of Buchanan family interrelations on One Life to Live. But that is hardly out of line with the medieval/ist works from which Once Upon a Time works. Consider, for one, how many princesses are married to a Prince Charming in Disney animated movies. Consider, for another, how many of their works borrow, at more and less remove, from such medieval works as Le Morte d'Arthur, which is in some ways a generational family drama--complete with sudden revelations of kinship heretofore undisclosed. (And, truly, even the earlier Sophocles uses it; just ask Oedipus.) If it is a convenient plot device, it is at least one that rings true for the medieval "flavoring" that the series sprinkles, sometimes with an unsteady hand and synthesized ingredients, on the sometimes half-baked bread of its plot.

The present episode puts some focus on Rumpelstiltskin's cowardice, noted previously in the series. Although popular conception views cowardice as a binary--a person is a coward or is not one--the episode presents it with some nuance. And it is not nearly so plain in medieval contexts, either. At times, as Tracy and DeVries note in their introduction to Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, self-inflicted wounds take on something of the sacred; it is not the case here, of course, but the fact of it indicates that medieval attitudes toward self-harm were not quite so unified as might be thought. Similarly, Morillo in "Expecting Cowardice: Medieval Battle Tactics Reconsidered," Bliese in "Courage and Honor, Cowardice and Shame: A Motive Appeal in Battle Orations in The Song of Roland and in Chronicles of the Central Middle Ages," and Taylor in "Military Courage and Fear in the Late Medieval French Chivalric Imagination" all speak to the misconception of popular understanding of how medieval thought, insofar as it can be described as unitary, regarded cowardice. It is, as the episode demonstrates, not a single thing.

It is of some interest, too, that the present episode returns to earlier discourses about fate, which ever goes as it must. As noted with previous episodes in the series, predestination is something of a theme in the show--and in the medieval from which it borrows, not only in the Old English works referenced previously, but also in the dominant Christian ideology of the time and in conceptions of Fortuna, among many, many others. And here, more than in many other places, the idea of fate rewarding those who face it bravely emerges--if backhandedly, since those who seek to flee their fate fare ill, and not only in the attempt...