<p>You can’t go home again – that is, not if you’re Mr. Gold. It&#8217;s been six weeks since Frozen left our lives and Belle booted out everyone’s favorite dealmaker from Storybrooke. <em>The Darkness on the Edge of Town </em>reset the board with new players and new secrets, but also made sure to show us just how together Rumple is compared to his peers.</p>
<p><strong>Some Spoilers Follow</strong></p>
<p>First things first – yes, we got more Mr.Gold/Rumplestiltskin this episode and dare I say, it&#8217;s about time. Sitting out a nauseating half-season of <em>Frozen</em> might&#8217;ve left him better off, but it&#8217;s hurt to see the show&#8217;s most valuable player out the limelight and albeit strangely. So be it that for the first time in the present day, Rumple&#8217;s finally accepted his fate because an evil Rumple&#8217;s long been the best Rumple. On the lam from Storybrooke&#8217;s crowd, it&#8217;s Ursula&#8217;s Manhattan apartment that we find him sulking in a bowl of ramen and along with her fish tank (Little Mermaid references and all that). It&#8217;s up to him to get off his butt and round up a gang of only the very best fairy tale femme fatales to take back the town – Ursula, Cruella de Ville, minus the present-day&#8217;s Maleficent.</p>
<p><a href="https://bagogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OUAT-S4-Darkness-at-the-Edge-of-Town-Mr.-Gold-BagoGames.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-78590 size-medium" src="https://bagogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OUAT-S4-Darkness-at-the-Edge-of-Town-Mr.-Gold-BagoGames-300x188.jpg" alt="OUAT S4 'Darkness at the Edge of Town' Mr. Gold BagoGames" width="300" height="188" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s nothing but a smart story arc putting Rumple on the edge and watching him build his way up to his golden pedestal than the ease with which he&#8217;s dominated this series thus far. Robert Carlyle&#8217;s best when he&#8217;s spinning language and his door-to-door super villainess pitches to each of his evil dearies made for quite an amusing montage. He&#8217;s certainly the best motivational speaker here and we can thank Disney for being the one studio that&#8217;d ever dare to show such a thing as a &#8220;Devil&#8221; license plate for a certain dog-hating villainess, much less include a sheepish-looking Rumple at a drive-thru on the way back home. Hil-ar-i-ous.</p>
<p>&#8220;Why can&#8217;t we be friends?&#8221; might very well have been the theme of our episode, than it weirds me out about just how <em>chummy</em> Emma and Regina have gotten in episodes past. Guess enduring <em>Frozen</em> with the person you hate does that to anyone. Even Lana Parrilla and Jennifer Morrison seem more comfortable with each other, whether they&#8217;re joking about food or battling demons. At the very least, it doesn&#8217;t hurt that Parrilla gets the best lines admits the show&#8217;s notoriously bad dialogue. You can always count on Regina to wonder just what&#8217;s destroying property values week after week in her usual deadpan delivery. There aren&#8217;t many shows where someone could get away with the &#8220;E-word&#8221; joke, and Parilla nails it every time.</p>
<p><a href="https://bagogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OUAT-S4-Darkness-at-the-Edge-of-Town-Emma-Regina-BagoGames.png"><img class="alignright wp-image-78534 size-medium" src="https://bagogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OUAT-S4-Darkness-at-the-Edge-of-Town-Emma-Regina-BagoGames-300x188.png" alt="OUAT S4 'Darkness at the Edge of Town' Emma &; Regina BagoGames" width="300" height="188" /></a></p>
<p>Fantasia hasn&#8217;t left <em>Once Upon a Time</em> yet and this episode finally brought us a Chernabog. Like last season&#8217;s dabbling with the Sorcerer&#8217;s Hat, the surprise appearance was worth its weight in fan-service and a decent excuse for an action sequence. And it paved a silky smooth distraction to let Cruella, Ursula, and Rumple a backdoor into Storybrooke. If it was darkness the thing was looking for, though, I for one can never believe that it&#8217;s in Emma&#8217;s baleful eyes. Let it go Disney, we all know it&#8217;s always been – and always will be – Regina.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s true that we haven&#8217;t really seen Emma tempted by her dark side much so far in the series (or at all, honestly and I&#8217;m wracking my brain to know what it could be to throw her over the edge and join Rumple&#8217;s &#8220;Queens of Darkness&#8221; or whatever half-baked name they took out of a hat. Could it be something to do with whatever secret Snow and Charming are super paranoid about keeping hush-hush? Or Snow or Charming dying this season? I know I&#8217;m a bad person for hoping it&#8217;s both, because Neil really needs some real, observant parental figures right about now.</p>
<p>Storybrooke&#8217;s gotten to be achingly familiar after four seasons and at the cost of sparing us any more Grumpy or Pinnochio stories for a change, I&#8217;ll admit that Rumple&#8217;s Not-So-Angels feel like fresh faces. <span style="line-height: 1.5;">Victoria Smurfit&#8217;s arguably given Glenn Close a run for her money as Cruella de Ville as the haughty, smoky-eyed devil in a (canine?) coat everyone&#8217;s loved to hate since<em> 101 Dalmatians</em>. It&#8217;s difficult picturing her in a past Enchanted Forest and even harder still to believe the show makers did manage to give her a superpower, odd as it is. </span>And Ursula&#8217;s just there for her Doc Ock arms.</p>
<p>It&#8217;ll be interesting to see them undo Storybrooke from within with Rumple as their ringleader and of course, which of them can inevitably be redeemed. Based on track record alone, my bet&#8217;s on Cruella – even Glenn Close&#8217;s Cruella got reformed for ten minutes by the time of <em>102 Dalmatians</em>. But nobody&#8217;s ever static for too long in <em>Once Upon a Time</em>, especially Hook, who I&#8217;ve never decided whether I think he&#8217;s just here to creep on Emma or legitimately graduated from a Goth-pirate rehab facility.</p>
<p><em>The Darkness at the Edge of Town </em>was nothing amazing and nothing terrible – at best it was something of a menial start to a promising back end to a rocky fourths season for <em>Once Upon a Time</em>. Whereas I found myself impressed with where<em> Frozen&#8217;s </em>arc was leading to and so very soon was disappointed with the places where it didn&#8217;t go, I see potential in the arc here, even if it&#8217;s as rough around the edges as it is. If there&#8217;s anything I like, it&#8217;s a Rumple led season, and knowing the actor behind him, that can&#8217;t be all bad.</p>
<p> ;</p>
<p><em>Once Upon a Time</em> airs Sunday nights on ABC at 8/7 Central. Catch all the latest episodes at <a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/once-upon-a-time">ABC.com</a> and all the latest reviews here at <a href="https://bagogames.com">BagoGames</a>.</p>

BagoGames > Articles > Geek Culture > TV Shows > Once Upon a Time: ‘The Darkness on the Edge of Town’ Review
Once Upon a Time: ‘The Darkness on the Edge of Town’ Review
-
By Tim Gruver
- Categories: Geek Culture, TV Shows
- Tags: ABCDisneyGinnifer GoodwinOnce Upon a TimeTop StoriesTV Episode Review
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