Our mysterious stranger has a name! August W. Booth. He definitely seems to be interested in Emma – whether romantically or because he has greater designs on the Storybrooke it is not yet entirely clear (although they have some very cute flirtation going on).
August and Emma are a minor part of the story of this episode, though, and honestly the fairy tale land storyline seems to be more or less just filler as well. The real heart of this episode lies in the love triangle between Mary Margaret, David, and Kathryn. Mary Margaret is sick of sneaking around keeping their relationship a secret, and requests that David tell Kathryn the truth. At the same time, Kathryn has applied to law school in Boston and thinks a new start will help save her marriage. David tells her that he can’t come with her, but not about Mary Margaret – although she finds out about the affair from Regina and confronts Mary Margaret at school. David certainly has fallen a long way from his brave and honorable life as Charming, he really needs to be redeemed soon, or it will become very, very difficult to root for their relationship, particularly now that his bad decisions have made Mary Margaret into perhaps the most despised woman in town.
The Charming and Snow storyline in fairy tale land is wonderfully charming (sorry), when we are able to see it, but their relationship is Storybrooke is just becoming obnoxious and soap opera-y. What we really need, I think, is more Henry. Because of Regina’s restrictions he has been largely left out of many of the recent story lines, but he is the impetus for the changes happening in Storybrooke, even down to bringing Emma into town. In these episodes where is a bit player at best the cause of awakening the fairy tale characters from their curse is all but lost, which takes some of the power away from the show. It may be that our mysterious writer, sorry, August, will take over much of this role, which could be good because Henry’s character was getting annoying at times, but the Storybrook story really needs to regain its path so that Once Upon a Time doesn’t jump the shark.
[...] the end of the previous episode, Kathryn disappeared under fairly mysterious circumstances. As sheriff, it is up to Emma to [...]