you say you want a resolution

My wife and I have been watching a show on ABC called Once Upon a Time. It's difficult to explain succinctly, but the general idea is this: There is a universe where all of the classic fairy tale characters live: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and so on. The Evil Queen casts a spell on the fairy tale world that transports everyone to a small town in "the real world," specifically in rural Maine. All of the fairy tale characters are now regular people who don't remember their pasts.

The central premise is this: In the real world, none of the characters can have their fairy tale happy endings.

The only problem with this premise is this: So far in the series, it feels like in the fairy tale world, none of the characters can have their fairy tale happy endings.

(This is going to be spoiler-tastic so if you have any desire to watch the series and haven't started I humbly suggest you stop reading!)

Here's some examples:

- Cinderella finds and marries her prince charming, but he then disappears when she uses some magic to defeat a foe. [Episode 4: "The Price of Gold"]

- Hansel and Gretel survive encounters with a cannibalistic witch and the evil queen, but by the episode's end they are separated from their father and lost in the woods. [Episode 9: "True North"]

- The Genie gains use of a wish of his own and, once he uses it, ends up trapped inside a mirror for eternity. [Episode 11: "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree"]

- Belle has her affections for "the beast" rejected, so she then runs off and (apparently) dies. [Episode 12: "Skin Deep"]

- Grumpy the dwarf, originally named Dreamy, he receives his new name when he is denied romance with a fairy and becomes bitter toward life. [Episode 14: "Dreamy"]

- Red Riding Hood, rather than encountering the Big Bad Wolf, is revealed to actually be a werewolf who then devours her true love (while in wolf form, of course). [Episode 15: "Red-Handed"]

Meanwhile, in most (not all) cases, a tale of tragedy in the fairy tale world is mirrored with a tale of overcoming adversity to a (relatively) happy end in the real world.

Thus, at least to this point in the young series, most of the real world characters are doing better than their fairy tale counterparts.

The show is still new and lots of unresolved questions have been brought up. So far it's been twist after twist after twist with little resolution, which is kind of scary considering the creators of this show also made some other show lots of people like that featured so many twists I stopped watching about five episodes in.

The concept of fairy tale characters not realizing their happy endings is an interesting one, however. One of my favorite book quotes comes from Jack Miles in his Pulitzer-winning God: A Biography, and I'll share it completely out of context because it still fits here: "Nothing that literature contrives, after all, is so artificial as its endings. Real lives never end with artistic finality. Either they are rudely interrupted, as Ecclesiastes says, or they end in a slow fade that has none of the rounded perfection of a well-wrought last page."

In other words, we don't get to script out our happy endings. Though we have moments of triumph and delight, there's a great deal left to chance and the decisions of others. Certainty almost doesn't really exist on an existential level.

My wife and I were also discussing the other day the desire for closure. It seems like often situations in our lives just get sort of left hanging and are forgotten or pushed aside. Dreams sometimes end with a shattering crash, but often they just sort of fizzle out.

We've been frustrated with Once Upon a Time because of its general lack of resolution so far, leaving so many story lines left in these awkward and stressful moments. I think that's a fair appraisal of reality, however. In an interview, Ginnifer Goodwin (the actress who portrays Snow White/Mary Margaret) made a comment along the lines of, "We hope people look to our show as 'the real story' behind the fairy tales." Real stories are uncertain and unresolved.

Fortunately, the show is also very concerned with what happens when hope collides with hopeless situations. So far we've mostly been getting the hopeless, confusing story lines, but hopefully some welcome resolution is coming soon.