You're listening to Once, episode 126, the unofficial podcast for ABC's TV show Once Upon a Time.

I'm Daniel J. Lewis.

I'm Jeremy Loughlin.

We are so happy to have you

listening to us and discussing with us. And big thanks to the live chat room right now who's

listening to us live Sunday nights at 9.15 p.m. Eastern Time. For our initial reactions,

we're going to be a bit all over the place in this episode. All over. Because that's what the initial reactions are about.

So let's get into this, though.

I felt like at first I was thinking, I went like through multiple phases with this episode.

Yes.

My first thought was, man, they really aren't doing too well on this episode.

It's slow.

Oh, see, I knew people would feel that way,

because I knew it had to be peaceful for a while. Yeah, but then that's where about halfway through the episode, I realized, no, wait a minute, we need this because we've had so much action, action,

action, action, action. We need a breath breath the characters need a breath so it's nice

to slow down and see them trying to kind of get back into the pace the fact that anything

truly big happened in this episode is thanks to the fact that they planned the story in advance

if they were trying to...

And this could have happened.

They could have tried to tell this whole story they've told so far,

and plus next week's winter finale, over 22 episodes.

Do you know what that would have been like?

...