Line #27 Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E4ThePriceofGold


1	'''Season 1, Episode 4''':
2	!The Price of Gold
3	!!!'''Centric Characters:''' Cinderella, Rumplestiltskin
4	!!!Previous: [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E3SnowFalls Snow Falls]] \| Next: [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E5ThatStillSmallVoice That Still Small Voice]]
5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/04_the_price_of_gold.jpg]]
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7	->'''Cinderella:''' Glass?\
8	'''Rumplestiltskin:''' Every story needs a memorable detail.
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10	->'''Emma Swan:''' People are going to tell you who you are your whole life. You just got to punch back and say, "no, this is who I am." You want people to look at you differently? Make them. You want to change things? You're going to have to go out there and change them yourself, because there are no fairy godmothers in this world.
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13	{{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.
14	----
15	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 [[Recap/OnceUponATimeS1E3SnowFalls 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.
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17	The next day, Regina instructs Henry to not leave the house while she is at the city council. Naturally he leaves moments after she does. Mr. Gold visits Mary Margaret's apartment to talk to Emma, asking her to track down Ashley, as he wants his stolen property back but doesn't want Ashley arrested, hence him not going to the police. Henry turns up to "hang out" with Emma, and refuses to not go with her to find Ashley.
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19	{{FLASHBACK}}! At Cinderella's wedding to Prince Thomas, Rumplestiltskin turns up to talk and tells her that for his end of their bargain, he wants not riches but Cinderella's firstborn child. Thomas catches Cinderella preparing to run away and she tells him of her deal with the sorcerer, and how she had expected him to want some kind of monetary payment rather than their baby. Thomas proposes that she gets out of the deal by making another.
20	----
21	Emma and Henry talk to Ruby about Ashley, where she talks about the hard work she's been putting into being a parent, and suggests that they talk to her ex-boyfriend, Sean Herman[[labelnote:*]]Thomas[[/labelnote]]. Sean's father Mitchell interrupts their chat, as he wants Sean to have nothing to do with Ashley since he forced them to break up after the pregnancy. He informs Emma that he got Ashley a deal with Mr. Gold in which she sold him her baby, and Emma realizes that the child is the stolen property Gold mentioned. Emma confronts Ruby, who had been trying to help Ashley get away, and Ruby confesses that Ashley was planning to go to Boston. Emma somehow convinces Henry to go home, but surprise! he just hid in her car to go with her to follow Ashley.
22	----
23	{{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.
24	----
25	Emma and Henry find Ashley just before the city line, having gone into labor. They rush her to the hospital.
26	----
27	{{FLASHBACK}}! Cinderella negotiates her new deal, and Rumplestiltskin, despite implying that he knows of the plot, signs the contract to provide the kingdom with fertile land in exchange for two children. Everything goes to plan, and as he is taken away Rumplestiltskin promises that one way or another, in whatever land, he will have her child.
28	----
29	At the hospital, Henry remarks on how Emma is the only one who can leave Storybrooke without disastrous happenings. Ashley has a successful birth, and Gold arrives to thank Emma.
30	----
31	{{FLASHBACK}}! Cinderella has a contraction, and Thomas goes to fetch water but disappears. Cinderella confronts Rumplestiltskin, but he assures her he did not do anything to Thomas, but that Thomas had simply paid the price of magic, until the original deal would be fulfilled.
32	----
33	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 see the baby, who Ashley has named Alexandra.
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35	Meanwhile, Regina gets out of her "council meeting" at someone's apartment. Emma gets Henry home without getting caught by Regina. Sean reunites with Ashley, and Emma calls Graham to accept his offer, the camera revealing that he is Regina's secret partner.
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37	!!Tropes
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39	* AdviceBackfire: Emma tells Ashley to go change her life and she decides to rob Mr. Gold as a result.
40	* AmbiguouslyEvil: Rumplestiltskin brands the Fairy Godmother's magic "pure evil" and later states that "nobody mourns her".
41	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Cinderella took Rumplestiltskin's deal because he killed her Fairy Godmother, expecting he would want his share of the riches from her new life as princess. But what he really wanted was her first born.
42	* ChekhovsGun: 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.
43	* CouchGag: The title card features the fairy godmother.
44	* DangerTakesABackSeat: Played with. Emma tells Henry to go home so she can track down Ashley before it's too late. Henry obediently goes. But he pops up a few minutes later in the back seat of Emma's Volkswagen and sensibly points out she'd waste too much time taking him home and let Ashley's head start get longer.
45	* DoubleMeaningTitle: The title refers to the price of gold in a literal sense (Cinderella having to give up her first born child in exchange for the wealth and happiness associated with being royalty) and in a figurative sense (Emma having to agree to do a favor for Mr. Gold in order to get him to give up his claim on Ashley's child.)
46	* 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..
47	** 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 Ashley needs to do this herself because "there sure as hell aren't any fairy godmothers"...[[ShoutOut while wearing blue, just like Cinderella's fairy godmother did in the Disney film]].
48	* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's subtle, but Rumpelstiltskin is clearly disturbed by the idea that anyone would so casually and dismissively trade their child away for comfort and riches. This hints at his own regrets over the loss of his son that are explored later in the season.
49	* GenreBlind: Cinderella. It appears that she doesn't know the outcome of Rumplestiltskin's story. But she becomes GenreSavvy when the princes reveal the trap for Rumplestiltskin, as she just ''knows'' it's going to backfire.
50	* 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.
51	* HappilyMarried: Cinderella and Prince Thomas, until Thomas disappears (seemingly abducted by unknown forces) anyway.
52	* 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 judgment call.]]
53	* IronicEcho: Mr. Gold calls Emma "charming"--aka [[PrinceCharming her father's]] [[InSeriesNickname nickname]].
54	* KilledMidSentence: Cinderella's fairy godmother is disintegrated in the middle of granting Cinderella's wish by Rumplestiltskin.
55	* LongestPregnancyEver: Cinderella's 28-year and 9-month pregnancy. Justified in the fact that time having stopped in Storybrooke is a major plot point. Cinderella was pregnant when the curse hit, so logically, she would have been stuck like that until Emma arrived. (And when Emma does arrive, she's finally able to give birth.)
56	* MamaBear:
57	** Ashley/Cinderella went through ''a lot'' to make sure she protects her child from being taken away.
58	** 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.
59	* MythologyGag:
60	** 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.
61	** Before learning that Rumpelstiltskin wants her first-born child, Cinderella assumes that he wants her jewels or her wedding ring. In the original Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin first demands that the miller's daughter trade him a necklace and a ring, only demanding her first-born child when she has nothing else to trade.
62	* RaceLift: Most versions of Cinderella portray the Fairy Godmother as white; this might, perhaps, be a ShoutOut to the Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein adaptation from ''[[Series/WaltDisneyPresents The Wonderful World of Disney]]'' starring Music/WhitneyHouston as the Fairy Godmother.
63	* RevealShot: The episode ends with Emma accepting the deputy sheriff job from Graham...only to pan down and show his socks under the bed, which courtesy of a previous scene identifies him as Regina's lover.
64	* SurprisinglySuddenDeath: The Fairy Godmother had ''maybe'' a minute of screen time, total, before falling into dust.

Context Recap / OnceUponATimeS1E4ThePriceofGold