History Recap / OnceUponATimeS1E4ThePriceOfGold

!!!Previous: [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E3SnowFalls Snow Falls]] | Next: [[Recap/OnceUponATimeThatStillSmallVoice That Still Small Voice]]

{{FLASHBACK}}! Cinderella is left at home while her stepmother and stepsisters go to the royal ball. To her delight, the Fairy Godmother appears and tells her that she will go to the ball and her life will be changed. But suddenly, she explodes and her wand is claimed by Rumplestiltskin, who tells her that [[ArcWords all magic comes with a price]] and he is doing her a favor by preventing the Fairy Godmother from using it to help her. Cinderella begs the sorcerer to do what the Fairy Godmother had intended, as she wanted desperately to leave her current life and didn't care what price he demanded. Rumplestiltskin magically whips out a contract which she readily signs, and with a wave of the dead fairy's wand he transforms her outfit and gives her glass slippers, before telling her to watch the time.

Emma walks Henry to school while he yaks about them needing codenames for his plan, "Operation Cobra". After sending him off, Emma is met by Sheriff Graham who thanks her for her help in finding David Nolan and offers her a position as his deputy. She takes it into consideration and goes to the diner, where Regina shows up to yet again intimidate her, this time talking about her past as a drifter, never having stayed anywhere for longer than two years and saying that she knows Emma will probably be on her way again soon, despite having moved in with Mary Margaret. After Regina leaves, Emma spills cocoa on herself and goes to the diner's laundry room where she meets Ashley Boyd[[labelnote:*]]Cinderella[[/labelnote]], who is pregnant and due any day. She tells Emma that people often demoralize her about being a parent due to her age and status, but Emma gives her a pep talk (see above). Ashley decides to change her life that very night and breaks into Mr. Gold's pawn shop, spraying him with mace when he catches her and stealing the contents of his hidden safe.

{{FLASHBACK}}! Charming and Thomas show Cinderella an underground cell the dwarves fashioned to hold Rumplestiltskin, and discuss their plan. Rumplestiltskin is coming to discuss the new deal, and Cinderella is to tell him that she's having twins and that if he wants both he must sign a new contract, with a quill enchanted by the Blue Fairy to freeze and temporarily {{Depower}} a magic user that holds it. Cinderella is hesitant to fight magic with magic due to the price, but Thomas vows to pay it.

* RaceLift: Most versions of Cinderella portray the Fairy Godmother as white; this might, perhaps, be a ShoutOut to the Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein remake from ''[[Series/WaltDisneyPresents The Wonderful World of Disney]]'' starring Music/WhitneyHouston as the Fairy Godmother.

Emma walks Henry to school while he yaks about them needing codenames for his plan, "Operation Cobra". After sending him off, Emma is met by Sheriff Graham who thanks her for her help in finding David Nolan and offers her a position as his deputy. She takes it into consideration and goes to the diner, where Regina shows up to yet again intimidate her, this time talking about her past as a drifter, never having stayed anywhere for longer than two years and saying that she knows Emma will probably be on her way again soon, despite having moved in with Mary Margaret. After Regina leaves, Emma spills cocoa on herself and goes to the diner's laundry room where she meets Ashley Boyd[[labelnote:*]]Cinderella[[/labelnote]], who is pregnant and due any day. She tells Emma that people often demoralize her about being a parent due to her age and status, but Emma gives her a pep talk(see above). Ashley decides to change her life that very night and breaks into Mr. Gold's pawn shop, spraying him with mace when he catches her and stealing the contents of his hidden safe.

{{FLASHBACK}}! Charming and Thomas show Cinderella an underground cell the dwarves' fashioned to hold Rumplestiltskin, and discuss their plan. Rumplestiltskin is coming to discuss the new deal, and Cinderella is to tell him that she's having twins and that if he wants both he must sign a new contract, with a quill enchanted by the Blue Fairy to freeze and temporarily {{Depower}} a magic user that holds it. Cinderella is hesitant to fight magic with magic due to the price, but Thomas vows to pay it.

Emma confronts Gold, who explains his reasoning behind not telling Emma that the baby is what he wanted and tells her that he could press charges for breaking and entering and assault and the baby would be put in the system, and Emma should take his side having been in the system herself. Emma makes a deal with him to nullify the contract with Ashley in exchange for owing Gold a favor. Emma goes to the the baby, who Ashley has named Alexandra.

!!!'''Centric Characters:''' Cinderella, Prince Thomas, Rumplestiltskin

Emma is hired by the mysterious Mr. Gold to find pregnant teenager Ashley Boyd – only to help the expectant mother after learning that Ashley's unborn child is in the center of a dangerous bargain – while a regrettable deal made between Cinderella and Rumplestiltskin is revealed along with her desperate attempt to break the contract.

* FairyGodmother: Cinderella is visited by hers, who promises to grant her her wildest wish to go to the prince's oh shit she exploded. Uh. I guess that Rumplestiltskin guy is the new fairy godmother. That'll end well..

* GenreSavvy: Rumpelstiltskin sees right through Cinderella's plan and realizes that she's plotting to trap him. He gets caught anyway, but later episodes reveal that this was part of his larger plan.[[labelnote:*]]He needed to be trapped by the squid ink on the quill so as to be imprisoned, magicless, in the cell where we see him in the pilot, as this is the only way the Dark Curse could take him to the Land Without Magic, and said curse is the only way for him to cross the realms to find his son.[[/labelnote]] This would in fact seem to be the whole reason he made the deal for Cinderella's baby in the first place, since he doesn't seem to get anything else out of it.

* MythologyGag: Aside from the glass slippers ("Every story needs a memorable detail"), when Sean comes to see Ashley and their baby in the hospital, he brings booties for Alexandra...and they're a perfect fit. Henry also loses a shoe on the stairway near the end of the episode.

* GenreSavvy: Rumpelstiltskin sees right through Cinderella's plan and realizes that she's plotting to trap him. He gets caught anyway, but later episodes reveal that this was part of his larger plan.[[note]]He needed to be trapped by the squid ink on the quill so as to be imprisoned, magicless, in the cell where we see him in the pilot, as this is the only way the Dark Curse could take him to the Land Without Magic, and said curse is the only way for him to cross the realms to find his son.[[/note]] This would in fact seem to be the whole reason he made the deal for Cinderella's baby in the first place, since he doesn't seem to get anything else out of it.

* MamaBear: Ashley/Cinderella went through ''a lot'' to make sure she protects her child from being taken away. Thanks to her past history (though we won't learn about it all for some time), Emma is also this even before she gets that close to Henry--here it's on Ashley's behalf, first by encouraging her to stand up for herself and change her life, then by defending her, and finally by making sure she is ready and willing to be a true mother before she will step in with Mr. Gold.

** As irony, at the end of Emma's impassioned speech where she tells Ashley to forget what everyone thinks of her, change her life, and prove who she truly is, she snorts that "there sure as hell aren't any fairy godmothers"...[[ShoutOut while wearing blue, just like Cinderella's fairy godmother did in the Disney film]].

** As irony, Ashley compares Emma to her fairy godmother for coming to her rescue, leading Emma to claim they don't exist...[[ShoutOut while wearing blue, just like Cinderella's fairy godmother did in the Disney film]].

* GenreSavvy: Rumpelstiltskin sees right through Cinderella's plan and realizes that she's plotting to trap him. He gets caught anyway, but later episodes reveal that this was part of his larger plan.

* InformedAttribute: Rumple flat out calls the Fairy Godmother and her power ''pure evil'', though [[UnreliableNarrator he's not exactly the best person to make a judgement call.]]

* MamaBear: Ashley/Cinderella went through ''a lot'' to make sure she protects her child from being taken away.

* RaceLift: Most versions of Cinderella portray the Fairy Godmother as white.

[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TitlePoG_8875.png]]

!Tropes
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* {{Foreshadowing}}: There's a pair of terrifying-looking puppets in Mr. Gold's shop. In [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E5ThatStillSmallVoice the next episode]], we learn how Rumpelstiltskin came to possess them.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: There's a pair of terrifying-looking puppets in Mr. Gold's shop. In [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E5ThatSmallStillVoice the next episode]], we learn how Rumpelstiltskin came to possess them.

* WeHardlyKnewYe: The Fairy Godmother got little to no characterization before being killed.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: To date, it has never been explained why Thomas disappeared the night Rumplestiltskin was captured. In fact, aside from a few small appearances in later episodes, even Cinderella herself hasn't really shown up again.
** He said he'd "pay the price"; the price was Cinderella's daughter being taken from her - he took the place of the child and was "taken from her" and "paid the price".

* MythologyGag: Aside from the glass slippers ("Every story needs a memorable detail"), when Sean comes to see Ashley and their baby in the hospital, he brings booties for Alexandra...and they're a perfect fit.

* KilledMidSentence: Cinderella's fairy godmother.