I thought this episode was OK but had some flaws. Even though it wasn’t great, there were several things I liked and one that balances on the cusp of like/dislike.
Like/Dislike – Like Keb and Angiebell, I sometimes like it when the show embraces its camp to have a little fun, provided they don’t over do it. I liked the humor of Bo Peep being the evil warlord but I thought it undercut the sense of drama that they tried to achieve in those scenes, particularly David’s description of his father.
Like – I love how they use visual cues to tie together recurring themes in different episodes. “White Out” was written by Jane Espenson, who also wrote the second season episode, “We Are Both”. A powerful scene near the end of “We Are Both” showed Regina standing alone in front of the door of her house as Henry walked away with David after she let him go. The scene near the end of “White Out” perfectly mirrored that earlier scene by showing Regina and Henry together in front of the door after she let him into the house. The scene from Season Two was shot from the outside, looking into the house at Regina in the doorway while the scene from “White Out” was shot from the inside, looking out toward Henry and Regina in the doorway.
Like – The scenes between Emma and Elsa were great. I thought Jennifer Morrison’s performance was excellent.
Like – It was fun to see that Storybrooke does indeed have power lines coming into town but I wonder how the curse prevents the local Maine power company from noticing the hundreds of megawatts being sucked off their grid! The scene with Snow at the generator was also fun. I don’t think it was as really out of charcter as some folks seem to think but was just a humorous reminder that even someone as good-natured as Snow White can get cranky when she’s so tired. In the fun-to-speculate-but-not-really-relevant-to-the-story category, I couldn’t help but notice that generator only
looked big enough to power a few buildings. I wonder if there were
other backup generators for the rest of the town?