Season 1, Episode 5:
That Still Small Voice
Centric Characters: Jiminy Cricket
Previous: The Price of Gold | Next: The Shepherd
Myrna: Everything isn't about money, Jiminy. It's the principle.
Martin: A commitment to excellence.
Myrna: Excellence at stealing money.
Henry Mills: I don't know.
Archie Hopper: Give it a shot.
Henry Mills: 'Cause, this can't be all that there is.
FLASHBACK! In the Enchanted Forest, a crowd of people watch an entertaining puppet show, not noticing a small boy weaving through the crowd picking pockets. After the show, the boy delivers his haul to his parents Martin and Myrna, the puppeteers. The boy, a young Jiminy, tells his parents that he doesn't want to steal, but they shut him down.
Henry's in a session with Dr. Archie Hopper, trying to tell him of his past as Jiminy and how even today he helps people to know right from wrong. Henry also mentions how there are no crickets in Storybrooke and never have been as an effect at the Curse, but admits that this alone isn't enough to prove it before dodging Archie's next question of what makes the need for a Curse important to him.
At the Sheriff Department, Graham's attempts to get Emma to wear a uniform for her new position are met with Deadpan Snark. She relents to wearing the badge if not the uniform, and as she clips it to her belt a tremor shakes the town. Turns out, Storybrooke has Abandoned Mines and one has just caved in. The two of them go to supervise the scene as the public gather, and Regina makes no effort to hide her displeasure that Emma has put down more roots. She declares a plan to collapse the rest of the mine and pave over it for safety, which makes Henry think there's something to hide in the depths of the earth, noticing Regina picking a piece of glass off the ground. Regina tries to get Henry out of there, but he sneaks a quick meeting with Archie and Emma, insisting that the cave-in happened because Emma's sustained presence in Storybrooke is weakening the Curse. Regina breaks them up and threatens to ruin Archie's life if he doesn't get Henry to stop believing in the Curse by any means.
FLASHBACK! Jiminy, now an adult, is still stuck helping his parents with their shows and scams, as apparently a low-effort guilt trip is all it takes to keep him in place. Jiminy meets a kid who's excited by the puppets and crickets as well. He gives Jiminy his umbrella so he won't catch a cold in the rain before running home.
At Henry's next session, he tries to tell Archie that his good friend Marco is Geppetto, and reveals he's gearing up to head down into the abandoned mines. Archie tells him kindly but sternly that his beliefs surrounding the Curse are a delusion bordering on psychosis, and that if he doesn't stop he'll be locked away. Shocked and heartbroken, Henry decides to leave.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Mary Margaret and David are sharing a game of hangman, to which the answer is Mary Margaret's name. Kathryn shows up with some photos to help David regain memories, though he seems unhappy when Mary Margaret leaves. At her apartment, Mary Margaret confides in Emma that she's starting to feel romantically for David, before Henry shows up in tears. Cut to Emma raging up to Archie's office, asking why he told her not to destroy Henry's fantasy before doing it himself, and soon realizes that Regina put him up to it. Speaking of, Regina calls, and guess what? Henry's gone, and Archie knows where to.
FLASHBACK! Jiminy drops off some stolen wares to Rumplestiltskin at his castle in exchange for golden thread, but the sorcerer can tell there's something more than gold that Jiminy wants. Jiminy confesses that he wants to be free of his parents, and Rumplestiltskin presents him with a potion that he can use on his parents in any way he wants, and he will be set free. In exchange, Rumplestiltskin asks him to "leave them where they are, and I'll come collect them."
Archie and Emma arrive at the site of the cave-in, and find a dropped candy bar from Henry. As Henry finds a piece of glass, the shaft begins to crumble. Archie heads inside to get Henry, though Henry no longer trusts him and runs deeper into the mine.
FLASHBACK! Jiminy and his parents hit up a young couple for an "Elf Tonic" scam, telling them that there's a plague and "Elf Tonic" grants immunity, but they only have a little bit. The couple trade some of their belongings for the tonic. As they're leaving, Jiminy snaps and flings the potion at them, but turns out they found the potion first and swapped it for the "Elf Tonic". Jiminy runs back and sees the couple transformed into puppets. Then who should turn up but the kid from earlier.
Archie makes it to Henry, who can see something shiny in the darkness, while on the surface emergency personnel try to get in and Emma argues with Regina before deciding to work together on this one. Henry and Archie find an elevator shaft and start to manually move the elevator up as explosives are used up above.
Mood Whiplash over to the hospital, where David explains to Mary Margaret that he's supposed to walk for thirty minutes with an escort, but since everyone's over at the mines, he needs a volunteer to do it. Wink wink. Cut to a lake where he reveals he's been lying about things he remembers to make Kathryn happy since he likes her, but Mary Margaret feels far more familiar. Right on cue, Kathryn shows up with some muffins.
Back to the mine, Archie's dog Pongo leads the group to the top of the elevator shaft. In the elevator, Archie tells Henry that he didn't mean what he said, and that Regina has a clear-cut idea of where she wants Henry to be and gets scared when he moves away from it. Archie wishes he could be the best version of himself, and Henry explains his past and Jiminy again, emphasizing that he needed to find out the right thing to do before becoming a conscience. At the top, Marco says that someone needs to be lowered in, and after some more squabbling they decide that Emma should go. After Henry opens up more about why he believes the Curse is real, Emma arrives. Archie passes Henry up to her, but the elevator falls. However, Archie was able to hook onto Emma's harness with his umbrella, and the three of them get out safely. After reunions, Archie stands up to Regina and delivers a counter-threat, that if she ends up in a custody battle against Emma, he'll be consulted and he will most certainly be biased if she continues to interfere in his treatment plans.
FLASHBACK! Jiminy, devastated by the night's events, wishes on a star for them to be undone. The Blue Fairy appears to him and tells him that the deeds are done and cannot be changed, but if he wants to he can be free from his parents and help the child he orphaned. Knowing this is what he wants, the Fairy waves her wand and Jiminy becomes a cricket. She tells him that he will have longevity to help the child as long as he needs, and that the child's name is Geppetto.
Emma and Henry watch Archie and Marco reunite, before they hear that there are now crickets chirping in the night.
At Mr. Gold's shop, the puppets of the young couple sit on a desk.
At the hospital, Mary Margaret resigns as a volunteer.
And at the mine site, Regina takes out the glass she picked up earlier and drops it down the elevator shaft, where it comes to rest beside a glass coffin.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Jiminy's parents manipulate his good will to stop him from ever leaving them, no matter how many crimes they rope him into.
- Bait-and-Switch: It appears near the end of the episode, with the elevator cable breaking and Archie still inside it, that he's about to make the ultimate Heroic Sacrifice so that Emma can pull Henry out in time to save him...but when the dust clears, it's revealed that at the last second, he managed to snag the rope's D-ring on her belt with the handle of his umbrella.
- Canon Foreigners: Geppetto's parents are original characters to Once Upon a Time. They do not appear in either the original The Adventures of Pinocchio or Disney's 1940 animated film, Pinocchio.
- Correlation/Causation Gag: At the exact moment Emma first puts on her deputy sheriff badge, Storybrooke is rocked by what seems like an earthquake (actually a coal mine shaft collapse), seemingly underscoring the importance of her accepting a role in the community. However, considering the curse, her being the savior, and other moments of genuine causation (her accepting the key at Granny's bed-and-breakfast coincided with the town clock starting running again), this might not actually be a coincidence...
- Couch Gag: The title card features Rumplestiltskin's spinning wheel.
- Creepy Doll: Unfortunately, this is how Geppetto's parents are currently spending their time.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Well, he isn't actually crazy, but everyone thinks Henry's belief in the fairy tales is a delusion...yet not only does this episode prove the connection between Emma and the curse seen under Correlation/Causation Gag (Henry asks her, after the mine collapse, if she did anything different that day, and her hand goes to the deputy sheriff badge on her belt), but after Archie finds his courage we get to hear the crickets return to Storybrooke...and in the very last shot, we find out Henry was absolutely right about Regina trying to hide something in the mines since they contain Snow White's glass coffin.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For the first time, we see Regina display how she really does care about Henry. Not that it stops her from shoving Emma away from him once he's safe.
- Expy: Jiminy's parents are quite similar to the Thenardiers of the musical version of Les Misérables.
- Faux Affably Evil: Jiminy's parents. At first they just seem like lazy common thieves who enjoy their job a little too much, but we see later that they don't so much as bat an eye at what amounts to murder.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Jiminy's parents do it a lot, usually when they're making excuses for why their thieving lifestyle is a good thing.
- For the Evulz: Why do Jiminy's parents swindle people when they have plenty of money? "It's the principle of the thing!"
- Hate Sink: To put it mildly, Jiminy's parents are this. They abuse the fact they're his aging parents to make him stay, they make him do all the work, and they have no qualms about giving what their son planned to use on them (which ammounts to poison) on an innocent couple just because. Those two are so unrepentantly depraved, they make the Evil Queen (who at least cares about Henry as Regina) look cuddly by comparison.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Archie and Marco are revealed as such; a side effect of them being lifelong companions in the Fairy Tale world.
- Hope Spot: Just before the final Wham Shot, the episode ends with one, where after Archie shows his courage the crickets return to Storybrooke.
- Iconic Item: Emma's red coat is pretty much established as this in her first scene this episode.
- Irony: "I can cut you down to size until you're a tiny, shrunken little creature, and this [umbrella] will be the only roof over your damn head." This is Regina's threat to Archie to do as she says. The thing is, not only was he once a "tiny, shrunken little creature", but the last flashback reveals that he was happiest this way: a cricket with nothing but an umbrella to his name, but all the more free.
- Karma Houdini: Jiminy's parents escaped any real repercussions for all the thieving and such that they did/made Jiminy do (not to mention the bottle switch that ended up cursing Geppetto's parents instead of them).
- Laughably Evil: Jiminy's parents again. They're pretty much Expies of the Thénardiers.
- Mama Bear: Much like Snow White in Season 2, when she and Emma are trapped in the Enchanted Forest, when Henry comes, sobbing, to her door, the genes Emma inherited from Snow erupt and she goes from the fairest of them all to the scariest of them all. We are not kidding. You have been warned - this is the warning: It is absolutely glorious. Terrifying... but glorious!
- Manipulative Bastards: The parents of Jiminy Cricket force him to participate in their crimes from the time he was a young boy so that when he's old enough to leave them, he feels obligated to assist their schemes to be a good son.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Regina, in her desperation to get to Henry, insists on using Marco's idea to blast their way into the mine with dynamite. Not only does it end up collapsing the mine entrance entirely, it also causes the elevator Archie and Henry are trying to use to escape at the same moment to fall, putting them in even deadlier danger and upping the stakes in the Race Against the Clock.
- The Nose Knows: Pongo is able to sniff out his owner, thus leading Emma to the top of the elevator shaft where Archie and Henry are trapped.
- The Sociopath: Both of Jiminy's parents. They gleefully swindle and steal from everyone they come across, not because they need the money but because they live by the credo that if you aren't taking from others, you're the one getting taken from. They mock and laugh at the innocent couple who were turned into puppets in their place, and show no remorse for absolutely anything they do. However, there is a some level of surprise and possible horror on their faces, when they realize they had a son.
- This is made even clearer in a Deleted Scene: not only do they dismiss the trauma little Geppetto went through (by saying he'll be fine in a "nice orphanage"), they actually try a new tactic in forcing Jiminy to stay with them—blackmail, by pointing out Rumplestiltskin's potion can be traced back to him and then Jiminy will get in trouble both for what "he" did to Geppetto's parents and for what he tried to do to his own. But they forgive him...since he can never escape them, or being just like them. It's no wonder he appealed to the Blue Fairy right after this!
- Symbolism: The fact that Jiminy's parents run puppet shows feels poetic, as it reflects how they are their son's puppeteer and (at least during his adult life) manipulate him to work for them on the principle that he's too nice to abandon his aging mother and father.
- Took a Level in Badass: Archie Hopper, after listening to Henry tell of him being Jiminy Cricket, finally finds the courage to stand up to Regina, and take care of Henry without hurting his feelings. It's heavily implied that Regina may have been emotionally abusive—after all, she did many things to make Henry think he was crazy, so he would think he was wrong about the curse, including blackmailing his therapist. As a result, Archie chooses to stand up for both himself and Henry, telling her that he will not allow her to use him to hurt Henry, and that if she tries to cruelly manipulate him again, he will do his part to get Henry with Emma, whom he knows loves Henry and will take care of him. It's not a threat, but it is a promise to end what he rightfully sees as Regina's emotional abuse. At no point did Archie entertain Henry's belief; when Henry asked him about it, he directly said "No", only wanting to know why it was so important to Henry. The issue was Archie (under Regina's duress) telling Henry he was insane, and was going to be locked away. Archie apologized to Henry personally for it, and even put the blame on himself instead of Regina—he just wants the best for Henry, which shows a different kind of badassery. And in the end, Henry was right, about both him and Regina.
- Wham Line: "His name is Geppetto."
- Wham Shot: The final shot of the episode, when we find out what the "something shiny" Henry discovered was: Snow White's coffin from the Enchanted Forest at the bottom of the mine shaft.
- The Reveal of what happened to the nice couple. Nightmare Fuel at its finest.
