I knew that after last weeks stellar episode, it would be hard for Once Upon a Time to screen another top hit. And while I was right, that doesn’t mean that “What Happened to Frederick” was a complete failure. In normal OUaT standards, it was a great episode by any means. Just after last week, which I enjoyed a lot, it was just good.

Mary Margaret and David in "What Happend to Frederick"

It was a Prince Charming-centric episode, which somewhat waned my interest, but I plowed on through. If I could stand 2 other episodes about him, I could stand this one too. I mean, Red was in it! In fairytale land, Abigail arrives at King George’s kingdom, and while the King tries to play it off that Charming isn’t missing, Abigail has “eyes on the inside.” Charming is roaming through the woods and gets captured, by whom we later find out are people hired by Abigail. She knows of Charming’s love for Snow White and is unbelievably fine about it. It turns out that she too is in love with someone else, and has no intentions or desire to marry Charming.

Abigail then leads Charming to a golden statue, which turns out to be a man trapped by Midas’s golden curse. This statues name is Frederick, and was once Abigail’s betrothed until he risked his life to save King Midas’. Although she’s tried to break the curse many times, it’s proven unsuccessful. Charming is moved by this and decides to go to Lake Nostros, a lake possessing magical qualities with water that can bring back something one lost. It’s very dangerous, but Charming somewhat arrogantly states “No one has the bravery of me,” or something like that. Alright. 

In Lake Nostros, the dangerous creature that protects it happens to be a Siren, which is basically just a woman that’s horny but then wants to kill you. I don’t really know. But she takes on the appearance of Snow White in order to seduce Charming, and while it works at first, she ultimately fails. He stabs her underwater and frees himself, gathering water for Frederick and leaving the Siren for dead. Abigail is at Frederick’s shrine when Charming arrives, and she pours the water over Frederick. It works and they’re reunited, which is cute.

Charming has decided that even though Snow seemingly doesn’t love him, she’s worth fighting for and goes off to look for her after a kind parting with Abigail and Frederick. He tries looking for Snow where he found her before, but can only find Red. YES! She informs him about how Snow really does love him and blah, blah, blah, until King George’s men find the pair and start to attack. RED GOES ON HIS HORSE AND THEY RIDE AWAY WHICH MEANS WE’LL BE SEEING MORE OF HER.

Meanwhile, in Storybrooke, David had finally decided to tell Kathryn about his affair with Mary Margaret. It’s bad timing though, because Kathryn has just gotten into a law school in Boston, and plans on moving there with David. When David finally does tell her, he leaves out the part about Mary Margaret, saying that something was keeping him from connecting with Kathryn. She goes over to Regina’s, crying about David, and Regina immediately starts bitch talking Mary Margaret. She was just waiting for this. Since Kathryn didn’t know though, she gets upset at Regina for keeping their affair a secret and storms out and over to Mary Margaret’s school. After a slapout in the hallway, in front of all the townspeople, Kathryn publicly proclaims that MM had no concern over Kathryn while having the affair. Mary Margs is more concerned at the fact that David completely lied to her when he said that he told Kathryn about the affair.

It's like a wrong side of the tracks love story.

Emma and the Stranger, whose name is August Booth, go out for a glass of water (?) at a well, which just happens to be a well connecting to Lake Nostros. August tells Emma all about it’s magical properties, unskeptically, and she just kind of stares at him with this look on her face that you know means she’s cackling on the inside. We later see August with Henry’s storybook in hand, soaking papers in some unknown liquid in his home, and hanging them up to dry.The pages that are already dry are bound into a book form. I really just want to know what that liquid was. Emma then later finds a metal box with the storybook inside, which she returns to Henry.

Mary Margaret and David meet up, and the fact that someone spray painted Tramp on their car window, that Granny scolded MM in the middle of the street, and that David didn’t tell Kathryn the whole truth is enough to convince Mary Margaret to end things with David. Claiming that they “aren’t in love. We’re destructive,” she breaks up with him. Kathryn visits Regina one last time before she goes to Boston, alone, claiming that David and MM really do care about each other, and that’s what she wants to have. She also tells Regina that she left a note for David explaining all of this, which Regina doesn’t seem to happy about. She later sneaks into the Nolan’s home to take this note and burn it. The last shot we see is Kathryn’s wrecked car by the Storybrooke exit sign, found by a gym teacher (who just happens to be Frederick from fairytale timeline) but with nobody in the front seat. Dun dun dun…