Tis the tale as old as time. Lost’s Emilie de Ravin plays Belle in this Once Upon a Time rendition of Beauty and the Beast except our beast isn’t the saving type. He’s the damaged Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle, Mr. Gold's counterpart) and he's not going to make this easy on Beauty. So read on and find out if beauty really is ‘Skin Deep’.
Sir Maurice (Eric Keenlyside) has a dilemma on his hands. He is playing general to a battle that he is losing and now he needs to call in the reinforcements except that he has none. What to do? Well, this is Fairytaleland and in Fairytaleland, he’s going to call on the one person who can solve any problem for a price. That’s right. He called in Rumplestiltskin except I don’t think he did his research.
Typically it’s not a good bargain to offer to pay someone in gold that can make his own by spinning straw. Besides, it’s never that easy when you bargain with Rumple. (Side note: Don’t these characters talk to each other? I mean Rumple is the town bookie for the most part and his deals never turn out well but somehow everybody calls on him in their hour of need. Seriously, business should not be this good for him. They should change the name of Fairytaleland to Desperate Dummies.)
In keeping with Rumple’s diabolical nature he asks for something that can’t be replaced, namely Belle (doesn’t she look great with dark hair!). Sir Maurice and Gaston (Sage Brocklebank) get all up in arms but Belle agrees to go and thus another deal is struck that the bargainer wishes that he hadn’t made.
Back in Storybrooke, Mr. Gold is in another transaction with Sir Maurice or at least his counterpart, Moe French. You see Moe owns a flower company called Game of Thornes (cute!) and it seems that he is past due on a debt that he owes Mr. Gold. So the richest man in town/bookie hijacks his van the day before Valentine’s Day as payment. (In my best Rick James voice) Cold blooded!
Regina (Lana Parrilla) catches this hold scene and seems quite pleased. She requests an audience with Mr. Gold but he rebuffs crypticly saying, “Is there something eating you dear? Something you need to get out in the open?” It works because it gets Regina to do something she never does which is shut up. You gotta love that does he or doesn’t he know the truth banter between Regina and Mr. Gold.
Meanwhile, it seems that there is a girl power reunion at Granny’s, the town diner. Emma (Jennifer Morrison), Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin, Snow White’s counterpart), Ashley (Jessy Schram, Cinderella’s counterpart) and Ruby (Meghan Ory, Little Red Riding Hood’s counterpart) are all discussing the turmoil’s of their life when Ruby makes a suggestion. Girl’s Night Out! Mary Margaret & Ashley approve but Emma balks at the offer and then she is suddenly called away on a town disturbance.
It seems that Mr. Gold’s house has been broken into and Mr. Gold is none too happy about it. He’s already cleverly deduced that Moe is the culprit and he’s eager for some vigilante justice. Oh yeah!
Little miss play-it-by-the-book, Emma, promises to check it out hoping to keep Mr. Gold at bay. She recovers everything except for one thing and it’s the one thing that matters most to Mr. Gold.
Meanwhile in Fairytaleland, love is in the air at casa de Rumple. He’s keeping Belle in a dungeon and making her cook, clean and attend to all of his needs and she somehow finds this attractive. He won’t admit it but she’s starting to get under his skin too.
She chipped a cup after he made a cute little quip about making her skin the children that he kills. He apparently found reaction of dropping the cup and chipping it adorable. I was personally waiting for the cup to start talking to him. It's the Disney kid in me.
Next, they started getting into the personal details. It seems that Rumple lost his son but he doesn’t specify how and that Belle agreed to come with Rumple less out of duty and more out of wanting to sow her royal oats. This admission touches Rumple so that he decides to do something he never does which is trust another human being. He tells her to go to town to fetch him some more straw, knowing full well that this is her opportunity to escape and never come back but she does anyway.
She wasn’t going to but she was met on the road by the Evil Queen who told her that true love’s kiss can break any spell. So Belle rushes back to Rumple’s castle hoping to turn him into a man again.
She gives him the kiss and his skin begins to change. That’s when she had to open her big mouth. She’s so excited that it’s working that she tells him about true love’s kiss breaking the spell. That’s when Rumple knows he’s been had. This has the markings of Regina all over it except that his mistrustful nature thinks that Belle was in on it too. He then proceeds to throw her in the dungeon and break every glass in the house except for the chipped cup.
Meanwhile back in Storybrooke, girl’s night out isn’t panning out so well. Ruby is hot to trot, Mary Margaret can’t get David (Josh Dallas) and their tawdry affair off the brain and Ashley is complaining that her boyfriend works too much. Sounds like loads of fun.
Just when Ashley is about to call it quits, Sean walks in with a bouquet of roses and a marriage proposal. Who says fairytales don’t come true in Storybrooke?
Mary Margaret, who is easily moved, runs into David only to get a Valentine’s card meant for David’s wife. Classic cheating married man mistake. It was just the wakeup call that Mary Margaret needed. She ends the affair out of principle.
Mr. Gold, on the otherhand had some very different principles of his own, namely finding Moe and beating the crap out of him but he wasn’t beating him for the theft. It went far deeper than that. As he was bludgeoning Moe with his cane, he screamed about how Moe was her father and he shut her out. If it wasn’t for Emma finding Mr. Gold and stopping him, Moe would be dead.
Back in Fairytaleland, Rumple is done with his fit of rage and he sets Belle free but she doesn’t go quietly. She calls him on his cowardice. She basically says that the reason why he doesn’t have love is because he believes that he never will and he’s too much of a ‘fraidy cat to try. When the girl’s right, she’s right.
She leaves the castle leaving Rumple alone. In enters the Queen sometime later and she has some news for Rumple. It seems that Belle returned to her father’s castle only to have him turn her away and lock her in the tower. In an act of desperation, she throws herself out of the window. I guess now we know why Moe got such a beating.
In Storybrooke, things are about the same. Mr. Gold is in jail for beating Moe. Regina walks in with Henry (Jared Gilmore) and tells Emma that she can have 30 minutes with him if she leaves right now. Nothing says mother like using your child as diversion for your evil scheme.
So Mr. Gold and Regina have a little chat and she asks him what his real name is. Mr. Gold tries to be coy but he eventually reveals that it’s Rumplestiltskin. So now all of the cards are on the table and the only two characters who know what’s really going on are both the most sadistic individuals that you will ever find. It looks like the next couple episodes are going to be a wicked game of chess with two evil characters holding all of the pieces.
Did I forget to mention one thing? It turns out that Belle is alive. Regina is holding her captive in Storybrooke at the mental institution locked away from everyone with no visitors. Touché.
The funny thing is that Rumple believed Regina even though he knows that she is a liar. Normally, he would check this out for himself but he believed that he was so unlovable that it wasn’t a stretch for him to believe that he inadvertently he caused his true love’s death.
Now, there is a lot that you can draw from this episode. Namely, that Regina is to a Sith Lord as Rumplestiltskin is to Darth Vader. Rumple may be bad but I felt sorry for him this episode. He truly loved Belle but he was too afraid to take the chance. The thing is that I think calling him a coward is only half right.
He’s not a bad guy (at least not in this episode), he’s just got some bad thinking going on. He’s judging his current circumstance based on his past experiences and it’s causing him to wrong someone who is trying to help him. He didn’t mean to hurt Belle. If he did, he wouldn’t have let her go. He truly thought she was duping him much like Regina was duping Belle. So for that, you got to give the guy a pass.
By the way, scene where he supposedly talking to Regina by yelling at the mirror is a great analogy. He was accusing himself of being his worst enemy, which at that moment he was.
Come back next week for another recap of an episode that we hope isn’t quite so dark.
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