YMMV / The 10th Kingdom

• Accidental Aesop: The Jack Rabbit Jackpot subplot in Part 4 could be considered a parable about 'love bombing' - a tactic in which one partner either knowingly or unknowingly tries to control the other through excessive gifts or displays of affection. Wolf wins enough to buy the mirror outright, and would have been able to match the Huntsman's bid of 10,000 - but he fears Virginia will leave him if she has a way home, so he spends it all on an extravagant proposal. When she finds out, she is rightfully pissed and dumps him on the spot.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The Huntsman. A cold, ruthless sociopath who enjoys hunting people? Or a once-good man, driven insane with guilt for unintentionally causing the death of his son, which turned him into The Fatalist as a means of coping? Or both?
  • Tony. When Wendell is awarding the medals, he compliments Tony on no longer being a spineless coward. Except that was never his problem. He took too many risks, not too few.
• Awesome Music:
  • Miriam Stockley's cover of "Wishing on a Star".
  • Virginia's cover of a certain Queen song ("We will, we will, shear you...").
  • From the soundtrack, the track "These Are Dark Days" is pretty awesome overall, but the start of the track (which was never used in the miniseries itself) is particularly amazing: [1] (from about 2:21 to 3:40). It was used by SkyOne, the British channel which aired the miniseries in conjunction with NBC, in a rather cool 60 second promo seen here.
  • The rather epic ending to the track "The 4 Who Saved the 9 Kingdoms", also unused in the miniseries (and also used by SkyOne, in their "Making Of" featurette): [2] (1:51 to 2:34).
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The trolls are either hilarious or annoying.
  • Snow White. Either she's a One-Scene Wonder, with Camryn Manheim turning in a genuinely moving and absorbing performance and providing much-needed heart and focus to both the floundering Virginia and the uncertain plot at the end of Part 4, or she's a walking Deus ex Machina whose speech to Virginia is built on incredible idiocy and self-contradiction. (See the entry under Broken Aesop.)
• Broken Aesop: Snow White tells Virginia the original version of how she died, that the Evil Queen visited her three times, once with a poison comb, once with a corset to crush her ribs, and then finally with the iconic poison apple. When she gets to that part, she mentions the Dwarves warned her not to answer the door or talk to strangers. But she then says to Virginia, "Why did I let her in? Didn't I know she was bad? Of course I did. But you can't keep the door closed your whole life, just because it's dangerous, just because there's a chance of getting hurt." On the surface this would seem to be a good Aesop about not letting fear control your life...but if she hadn't opened the door to a suspicious old stranger woman, she wouldn't have ended up being poisoned and killed at a young age, dying choking in the woman's arms—meaning she was wrong to take the risk. There's a difference between "not being afraid" and just grabbing an Idiot Ball. Granted, Snow White was then resurrected by the Prince and lived out a long enough life for her grandson Wendell to remember her, but she had no way to know that when she opened the door to the old woman.
• Better on DVD: While the miniseries did garner a good fanbase on its initial showing, overall it turned out to be a ratings dud. NBC attempted to recoup these losses by showing it again in August of 2000, without much difference in ratings. (Whether this was due to poor advertising, competition with other shows, or some scenes having been cut is debatable.) It can be said, however, that being able to watch it on DVD or through streaming, in smaller pieces instead of one huge marathon, helps a great deal with watching it at all, let alone fully appreciating it.
• Cult Classic: It wasn't a ratings hit when it aired on TV (NBC deliberately aired the first parts at the tail end of February sweeps, speaking to a lack of faith after Magical Legend of the Leprechauns, also produced by Hallmark Entertainment, bombed), but there are plenty of fans on the internet - with lots of fan art and fan fiction. There has been strong demand for a sequel for years.
• Evil Is Cool: Both the Queen and the Huntsman are extraordinarily awesome. The Queen is a Lady of Black Magic who's cold, calculating and knows how to come out on top. The Huntsman meanwhile never misses shots from afar and is an expert hunter.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Sure it caused her a lot of inconvenience and she probably would have eventually choked to death because of it - but Virginia looked really good with literal Rapunzel hair.
• Ham and Cheese: Scott Cohen camps it up quite magnificently, and his performance is undoubtedly a highlight of the series.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Blink and you'll miss it, but in the title sequence there's a shot of the Twin Towers collapsing as part of Manhattan's transformation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Wendell's full name is Wendell Winston Walter White.
  • Lucy Punch would later play one of Cinderella's stepsisters four times^note In Ella Enchanted, Into the Woods, a BBC series called Fairy Tales and a TV movie Cinderella if you're curious. so it's a little amusing that in this, she does not play a character with any connection to Cinderella whatsoever.
  • A bleak example, but in her opening VO, Virginia says that she's a loser because she's a 21-year-old who still lives with her father and works as a waitress. The 2008 recession and the ever-rising cost of housing (and living in general) in the 2010s and 2020s mean that it is increasingly common for young people to still live with their parents well into their thirties. Plus, Virginia lives in New York City in a rather nice apartment overlooking Central Park in exchange for her father being the building's janitor, meaning her situation looks quite good from a more modern point of view.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Prince Wendell. Sure, he starts out a Royal Brat, but being turned into a dog and having your entire life stolen from you is pretty terrible. Not to mention getting turned into gold at one point, and losing his mind to become more and more dog-like...
  • Tony starts out as a useless jerk, but once you learn his and Virginia's past, you'll be more understanding. He went from running his own business, which was his dream job, to being a put-a-upon janitor, while at the same time having to deal with his wife's worsening mental condition. All this culminated in Christine losing it and trying to drown Virginia as a child then running away and, as far as he knew, simply disappearing. Is it any wonder he begins the miniseries as a drunken jerkass?
  • The Evil Queen, aka: Virginia's mother. Yes, she tried to drown her seven-year-old daughter, but Tony implies that she was mentally ill and she was so horrified by what happened that she became The Evil Queen to escape from what she did, which made her easy prey for the original Wicked Stepmother.
  • To an extent, Sally Peep. Yes, she was a total Spoiled Brat, but when you come from a family that wins everything, how did you expect her to turn out? Being murdered by her own grandfather was pretty shocking. The cry she gives when murdered is certainly horrifying, and the look on her face when she's first told about the well and Wilfred threatens to kill her if she tells anyone about it shows how upsetting the situation truly is. Also add in the fact that part of her enmity isn't based just on losing the shepherdess contest but also jealousy over not getting Wolf for herself—and Virginia outright lampshades this by using Slut-Shaming as part of Wolf's defense at the trial. As audacious as her actions were, they didn't merit the fate she got (and at the point she was flirting with Wolf, Virginia hadn't even accepted her feelings for him or officially begun dating him, from her POV, so really he was fair game as far as Sally was concerned).
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: It is revealed that the Brothers Grimm (or at least Wilhelm) visited the Kingdoms and learned the stories they would later write down as fiction.
• Narm Charm: "We Will Shear You" starts out as straight Narm thanks to Virginia's nervousness and inexperience, but by the second rendition (complete with Queen's original instrumentation as backing) it becomes pretty awesome.
• Older Than They Think: The Wicked Queen from Snow White being portrayed as a Tragic Monster who became the villain after her sanity deteriorated was previously done in Snow White: A Tale of Terror only a couple of years before.
• Once Original, Now Common: In The New '10s, fairy tale retellings became extremely popular. These ranged from Darker and Edgier fare like Snow White & the Huntsman, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and the TV series Grimm - to High Fantasy like Once Upon a Time. That's not to mention parodies like Shrek and Enchanted, as well as Disney pulling out Reconstructions like Tangled and Frozen. But when The 10th Kingdom was made, fairy tales in popular culture were still being played straight - and it was the tail end of the Disney Renaissance - so it might be hard for newer viewers to understand what the big deal was at first. Many of the tropes - heroine becomes an Action Girl, villain is a Tragic Monster, lots of Lampshade Hanging - have now become standard fare for fairy tale retellings.
• Padding: Almost all of Part Three, namely the Little Lamb Town misadventure, could have been removed with no real loss to the overall story.
• Squick: At one point, the Queen tells Fake!Wendell if he follows her instructions, he can "have any bitch in town". Punny, but her implication is that he can and will sleep with a female dog.
• Sweetness Aversion: Largely avoided, which is an exceptional feat for a 10-hour miniseries about fairy tales. But in certain places, the sappiness factor was cranked up to eleven. See also: hearts and butterflies swarming through the air in Kissing Town under a pink, heart-shaped moon. Insulin, STAT. Add in the literal Love Is in the Air, most exemplified by the massive pink heart which appears over Wolf and Virginia's head as they share their first kiss, and the little Cupid girl skipping through the streets dispensing fortunes, and... yeah. Then there's the singing ring... Sort of Played for Laughs, mind. Of course, this trope seems to be the entire point of Kissing Town.
• Tear Jerker:
  • How The Huntsman came to be? The Queen gave him a crossbow that would never miss a target. He fired it...and the arrow went into his own son. He's convinced himself it was his destiny.
  • Upon discovering that The Queen is actually her mother, Virginia recalls the day after her mother left and how she was sure she would come back for her clothes. When months passed and Tony said they had to get rid of them, Virginia confesses that she hoped she'd find a note explaining why she left or at least an "I love you".
  "I almost want to go up to everyone and say 'my mother left when I was seven'! As if that'll explain everything."
  • The death of the Queen is unspeakably tragic. When she's lying in state, Virginia talks about their happier memories from her childhood. While she obviously hates Christine for leaving her and becoming the evil villain she was, she can't fully let go of everything.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: One of the Romani is also a wolf, and Wolf recognises him as one instantly. Unusually for wolves in the rest of the kingdoms, his tribe seem accepting of him. Despite these interesting teases of backstory, he's killed with the rest of the tribe when he could have made a good addition to the party; especially as someone Wolf could interact with that he relates to.
• Unbuilt Trope: One of the earliest examples of Prince Charmless being applied to a fairy tale setting (Into the Woods and Revolting Rhymes got there earlier however). This prince however goes through Break the Haughty and develops into a more mature and reasonable prince by the end.
• Values Dissonance:
  • As has been mentioned before, the characterization of the Roma is a little unfortunate, even for a show made in 2000. The repeated use of "gypsies" instead of "Roma" or "Romani" grates on a modern audience. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a similar portrayal of Roma, but they were given a Villain Has a Point motivation.
  • Virginia's slut-shaming of the shepherdesses during the trial is a really bad look, especially considering one of them is dead and this is her murder trial.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The opening intro, when New York slowly transforms into a fantasy kingdom, is quite gorgeous. Sure the CGI is a bit conspicuous and outdated, but if you ignore that, you can see why the opening sequence won awards.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?:
  • It's hard to think of a single Wolf line that doesn't contain sexual innuendo, and his interaction with Virginia throughout the entire series is so charged with sexual tension it could light up a castle. (Example: Virginia discovers Wolf has a tail. His reply: "You have succulent breasts, but I don't go on about them all the time, do I?" He then asks her to touch it, saying, "Why don't you give it a stroke?") There's even an implied kinky sex scene in this "family" series.
  • The Troll King's children are also blatant drug users, seen in one scene preparing to roll and smoke "dwarf moss" (after one of them asking the others if they had any "magic mushrooms"); one of them comments that the last time she took it, she "saw fairies" for three days.
  • The miniseries as a whole has quite a bit of darkness, which a parent might not expect, unless they were familiar with the original Grimm's fairy tales.
• The Woobie:
  • Virginia. Sure, she comes off a little cold, but once you learn exactly why she turned out that way, it's nigh-impossible not to sympathize with her. Especially in the end when she's sobbing over her mother's body after having been forced to kill her and finally hearing her in her last moments express regret for what she became.
  • The dog stuck in Prince Wendell's body. He makes it clear that he doesn't like being a human and just wants to return to normal. Multiple times in the series, he tries reaching out to someone and being a dog again. At one point, he encountered the real Wendell, but they were too far away to touch and return to their original bodies. Another time, he told someone what was really going on, but the Queen killed the man to keep her dirty secret. The poor thing even considered suicide because he didn't want to be a part of her plot anymore.

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