Visually impressive, but ultimately useless, ‘Red-Handed’s message of finding your true purpose ended up making no real sense at all though the strangely appealing mystery captivated me a lot more than any of Ruby’s personal struggles. It boasted a significant change in tone after our trip to Happyville last week, but as a chapter of a bigger story, it’s a little disposable.
The story of Red Riding Hood and the wolf is revealed, along with some startling truths about her origins in ‘Red Handed’. Emma’s hires Ruby to work at the Sheriff’s station in order to motivate her. The investigation into Kathryn’s disappearance turns up something disturbing.
Episodes like last week’s ‘Dreamy’ gave their central characters some eventual growth or transformation, but ‘Red Handed’ didn’t really get Ruby anywhere at all, other than a slightly less sultry look and a realization that her dead end job isn’t quite as constricting as she thought. If she had eventually made the choice to face her fears and join Emma as a permanent Deputy, it would have made a hell of a lot more sense than this decision. As it stands, I’m genuinely baffled as to what this episode set out to achieve. Is facing your fears bad now? Should we all just head home and stick close to our mothers? Ugh.
The fairytale story was infinitely more enticing. Starting out as a creepy old fashioned murder-trail and culminating in a dense family mystery, the hunt for the wolf was one of the alternate-world’s greatest adventures, and the visuals and character insight made it even more captivating. Ruby’s eventual decision didn’t really make a lot of sense when partnered with this story, which was one of the darker interpretations the writers have tried so far, but taken out of the context of the Storybrooke events its easily one of my favourite plots. One can only hope that Red’s struggle with her dark secret will show some bit of fruition in stories to come, a la Belle last week.
It’s great seeing all of these flashbacks starting to form a greater picture, making Snow’s friendship with Red a lot more believable than simply throwing two characters together for the hell of it. Snow is obviously the glue holding all these stories together, since it’s her presence that makes all of these characters part of a bigger world, bringing individuals like Prince Charming and Red Riding Hood together in the one story. It sounds a little contrived on paper, but there’s a strange believability to them all finding each other like this on screen.
As weird as this week’s ending was, it’s definitely got me guessing as to where they could possibly take the story next. Emma hardly believes that Mary Margaret is capable of something as despicable as cutting out someone’s heart, but with Regina’s sudden desperation to progress Emma’s investigation significantly you’d know there’s something else behind this. Is it even Kathryn’s heart? Did Regina use magic to implicate Mary Margaret and David?
‘Red-Handed’ had some significant developments story wise, but since this is a character based show I’m not sure Ruby’s growth really got anywhere. Superficially, I’m happy with most of what this episode gave us but I just wish it all tied together a little better.
7/10
Just watched this recently, and I pretty much agree with everything you said. The fairytale portion was a lot more effective than the rest of the episode.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed both twists - Red as the wolf, and Mary Margaret's fingerprints on the heart (although, clearly, she didn't do it). And, erm, maybe this will be addressed in the next episode, but how could they even know the prints belonged to Mary-M? Would she have even done something in the past to have them be taken in the first place? Just thinking out loud, I clearly have no idea how those type of scenarios work, and I don't even know why I'm questioning something like that in a fairytale show...eh.
Really good point about Ruby's storyline, too. I enjoyed seeing her do some detective work, but why even bother with the storyline if she is in essentially the same place at the end of the episode? I mean, she'll have a little more responsibility at the inn/diner...eventually.
Hey tvfan, nice to see you getting into this. I'm not actually sure how they managed to match the fingerprints though. Maybe it was mentioned after this?
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