Monday, October 24, 2016

Once Upon a Time 6.05: "Street Rats"

“Neither of us are hero material. I may be a selfish street rat but you are a selfish princess.”
- Aladdin

We have finally been given the story of Aladdin and Jasmine but it is not at all the story we remember here in the Land Without Magic. Sure, the Sultan is being controlled by Jafar and Jasmine is a princess and Aladdin is a street rat but there’s no genie or cute monkey and Aladdin is not too keen on being a savior. When he and jasmine first meet, Jafar is torturing the locals by turning some of the poor people into actual street rats. I have to admit, maybe it’s because I’ve watched an insane amount of Leverage but honestly watching Aladdin pick pockets made me cringe. There was no subtlety to it. He just took stuff off people. How they didn’t feel the lift is beyond me. But he gets away without anyone noticing but the princess. She wants to hire him to help her steal a magical artifact that can free her father from Jafar’s control and save her kingdom. The fact that she has to blackmail him into helping her probably shouldn’t bode well for a strong relationship. The pair of them bickers the whole way to the Cave of Wonders.

Meanwhile in Storybrooke, Emma is leading Archie on a wild bird chase to the oracle so the girl can convince Archie about what’s going on. Unfortunately, they find the girl has been murdered and shortly thereafter Emma nabs Jasmine. Jasmine spills the beans that she’s looking for Aladdin but she didn’t kill the oracle. So who did? Archie finds out the answer that as soon as he gets back to his office. The Evil Queen killed her because she wanted to know the content of Emma’s visions. So she kidnaps our sweet therapist (dumping him on Zelena) and impersonates her. Emma thinks that now that Aladdin is alive she has a shot of not having to tell her family about the whole visions thing after all. Fake Archie follows her back to the Charmings and forces her to tell the truth, which sends the whole family into something of a spiral. Hook is pissed Emma didn’t tell him, Henry’s feeling guilty for bringing Emma into this world in the first place and Regina is just miffed that it looks like she might be the one under the hood about to kill Emma.

While the family tries to sort things out, the Evil Queen decides it is a primo time to take Zelena for a spa day, leaving kidnapped Archie in charge of babysitting. Oh I would have liked to see more of that rather than the spa day with the dastardly sisters. But the Evil Queen kind of has a point. The reason Henry rejected her when she became the Evil Queen again was because she hid who she was from him all his life. So if Zelena doesn’t hide her wicked ways, then maybe baby Robin will grow up accepting her mother for who she is.

As Emma struggles to figure out a way to find Aladdin and sort out her future mess in Storybrooke, Aladdin and Jasmine make their way to the Cave of Wonders and with some hokey password guessing, they get in. They find the alleged magical object but it turns to sand as soon as Aladdin picks it up. Of course, this then triggers a failsafe and the place starts coming down around them, prompting Aladdin to bust out his Savior powers. Jasmine admits that she knew he was Savior material and he’s the one (the weapon) that is going to defeat Jafar. Aladdin insists on taking a minute alone so Jasmine heads back to the palace. Unfortunately, Aladdin’s alone time is interrupted by Jafar who brings visions of Aladdin’s death and fate as the Savior. He also offers a solution: the shears of Fate. They’ll sever his connection to his fate and be allowed to live his life. But it means he won’t have his power or be the Savior anymore. Things are looking bad for the people of Jasmine’s kingdom when Jafar locks her in a magic hour glass to kill her so he can take over ruling the place. But Aladdin busts in on a magic carpet and destroys Jafar’s staff, freeing the Sultan and Jasmine. With the foe temporarily defeated, Aladdin thinks he’ll just head off to wherever and he asks jasmine to go with him but she turns him down.

Thanks to Regina, Emma is able to find Aladdin through a magic to magic tracking spell. It leads them to a crypt and Jasmine finds the scarab she gave Aladdin as a gift, convinced he/s dead. But as Henry tries to apologize to Emma for bringing her into all this (she promises if she could go back, she’d do it all again), Aladdin appears. He used the shears, the kingdom fell and he fled to the Enchanted Forest. He’d been hiding out in Storybrooke the whole time. With a little prompting from Emma, he goes to Jasmine to try and reconcile. I don’t think it will be all happiness and rainbows given she still wants him to save her people and he literally isn’t able to anymore. Emma seems to be having more luck with her family. She says she doesn’t want to keep secrets from them anymore (funny that at least 2 people in the room are keeping secrets at the moment) so she hands over the shears to Hook, telling him to get rid of them. She doesn’t want to shy away from her fate and she doesn’t want them in the wrong hands. So as a storm rolls in, Hook goes out into the middle of the lake to toss the shears away. But as Emma heads home (he’ll meet her in a minute he just needs to check on his ship), we see that he kept the shears. I suspect if she’s not willing to use them to save her own life, he’ll use it so he won’t lose her.

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