Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Once Upon A Time 6x05 Review: “Street Rats” (Accepting Fate) [Contributor: Julia Siegel]


“Street Rats” 
Original Airdate: October 23, 2016

Another disappointing episode leaves me wondering if this season Once Upon A Time is going anywhere good this season. With a mediocre retelling of Aladdin and Jasmine’s story, “Street Rats” is boring and uneventful. Without the Genie, the story is not worth watching. Jafar is somehow even less interesting, so nothing good came out of the new episode.


NOT A NEW WORLD


Well, a story can’t be good if it’s not interesting. That’s exactly what happened with the slightly different tale of Agrabah. This time around, Aladdin has similar magic to Emma, since they are both saviors. There’s no Abu, Genie, or talking Iago, so the fun of the story is lost. I think Iago actually showed up in the form of the creepy red oracle bird perched on Jafar’s shoulder.

The characters aren’t interesting, nor are their stories, making the Agrabah segments drag on and on. The worst part was Aladdin’s accent, which was so far off from realistic Middle Eastern descent. He sounded Scottish at times, and it didn’t gel with me. I was also disappointed in the lack of Aladdin-related puns. The writers usually love to throw in little teases from the original movie a character is from, so I was surprised this episode wasn’t riddled with them. There were some good opportunities to throw some old quotes in there, but they blew it.


FATE WILL BE FATE? 


Besides the boring past, the present isn’t much more exciting. The Evil Queen morphs into Archie to find out Emma’s secret prophecy. This could have been super entertaining, but it loses tension fast. Emma is then forced to tell her family the truth about her visions, which crushes them. This was the most realistic part of the episode. It appeared that Hook took the news the hardest, but he didn’t really say anything about it. I’m curious to see how the news will affect him over the next few weeks.

Emma and her family then help Jasmine search for Aladdin, thinking that he may be able to help Emma cheat fate. Well, the search is a long, arduous process that doesn’t grab anyone’s attention. The only thing semi-intriguing about the eventual meet-up is the mystical pair of scissors that Aladdin gives Emma. They were originally a gift from Jafar, so no one should trust them. Jafar told Aladdin that the scissors belonged to the Fates, the creepy women from Hercules that controlled everyone’s destiny. Apparently, if Aladdin chose to forego his savior duties, he could cut his own string and be a normal human again. If anyone has watched Hercules, you know that those scissors end the life of the person whose string is cut.

So the question is: did the writers change the purpose of these scissors, or is Jafar straight-up lying? This should come up again soon, but probably not during the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-themed episode next week. Best guess would be Jafar is a liar, considering he didn’t tell the truth once during this episode. It would be a pity to see the purpose of the mythical scissors changed because the writers would be skating on thin ice between fantasy stories and Greek mythology.

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