I don’t have a blog post about church today because I did not go to
it, due to the snow. I was going to write a “free” post, if you will,
about a topic of my choice, but I’m not in much of a mood to do so. I’m
in a mellow, introverted mood. But stay tuned for next Sunday! Maybe
then I’ll get to church and write a blog post about it.
Well, come to think of it, I’ve suddenly developed the mood to write. Tonight is the Winter finale of Once Upon a Time. That is one of the few new shows that I watch: I watch that and The Middle. Once Upon a Time
has been all right this season. It was interesting that Peter Pan
turned out to be the father of Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin! The story
about the little mermaid was pretty good, too.
I have also been watching Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
on Thursday nights. That’s been hit or miss for me—-some episodes I
really like, and some I don’t. I have particularly enjoyed the
flashbacks about Jafar, the villain of the series. In general, the Once Upon a Time series does an excellent job with stories about how evil people became evil. I still remember last season of Once Upon a Time,
when we saw how Regina’s mother Cora became how she was. In one scene,
a princess tripped a young Cora (who was a peasant before she became
queen), and the princess was asked if she was all right! That made me angry, and sympathetic towards Cora.
In one of the episodes of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, we
learn about Jafar’s relationship with his father. Jafar’s father was a
sultan, and Jafar was his illegitimate son (I don’t like the word
“illegitimate” here, but I can’t think of an alternative word to use,
and I don’t want to use “bastard”). The sultan let Jafar stay around as
a servant, but he would not recognize Jafar as his son. When the show
cuts to the present, we see that Jafar has Alice’s father in prison, and
there is an old man there. Alice’s father later apologizes to Alice
(while Jafar suspends him in the air) for not being a good father. When
we cut back to Jafar’s past, Jafar is returning to the sultan. Jafar
as a child was drowned and thrown out of the palace by his father, and
Jafar then went on to receive training in magic so that he could become
powerful and exact revenge. Jafar is now an adult, and he is returning
to the sultan as a powerful wizard, and we see that the sultan is the old man who would
later be in Jafar’s prison. The show cuts to the present, and Jafar is
talking with his father, who is in a huge birdcage. Jafar wants the
genie so that he can make his sultan father acknowledge that Jafar is
his son. The father asks what good that would be, if he’s forced to say
what he doesn’t truly mean. But, for some reason, it’s good enough for
Jafar. That made me think: in some cases, I’m content with people pretending
that they like me even if they don’t, because at least things run
smoothly then. It’s not an uphill social battle for me in that sort of
situation. I know that’s slightly different from Jafar’s situation, but
that storyline still made me think about this issue.
In any case, that was a powerful episode. I’m sure that we’re
intended to compare Alice’s father with Jafar’s father, and that there
is deep meaning in all of that, but I don’t have the words for it.
Perhaps somebody else does!