Waste of Time

farquarg

Once Upon a Time is an entertaining and compelling show because of quality writing and good acting. This spin-off, fails on both accounts. Instead of building up the story and allowing the viewer to care about the characters, it simply jumps into a story mid-stream and expects the audience to follow.

The story is seems to be very generic. A modern day Alice, cast not as a naive girl but a kick-ass 20-something heroine searching for her love and battling against whoever stands in her way. It may have been original and entertaining a few years ago, but today this seems to be standard boiler plate.

The villains in the show are terrible. There's no depth to either the queen or Jafar. The Red Queen seems to be a fairly tale embodiment of a 'Real House Wife,' someone self obsessed and cant' be bothered with caring for her subjects. Jafar is the evil wizard obsessed with power, willing to do anything to get his hands on the genie and with it unlimited power. We're supposed to dislike them without the viewer given a reason to dislike them. In the first few episodes of Once Upon a Time, the viewer could dislike Regina because she wasn't a good mother to Henry ( Henry had already been established as a likable character). They try to replicate that with the imprisoned Genie, but we've never been given a chance to become attached to the genie.

Contrast this with the Evil Queen and Mr. Gold in Once Upon A Time. Both are complex characters, neither are purely evil. They're both people that through events of their lives and decisions they've made, have become the Evil Queen and Rumplestiltskin. Even from episode 1, there was depth and complexity that made the villains interesting.

Wonderland feels forced. The characters ( outside of Alice) lack complexity. The writers seem to simply be telling the viewer what to feel and who to like instead of allowing the viewer to develop those feelings naturally. That seems to be a fatal flaw that I'm not sure the show can recover from.

score /10

farquarg 20 October 2013

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2890704/