Cindy and I just started watching the first season of Once Upon a Time. Â I have no idea how the rest of the season delivers, but if the first five episodes are any indication, it should do said delivery pretty freaking well.
When it comes to audience, there are three purposes of story: to help us understand life, to provide escapism, or to give us some combination of the two.  Once Upon a Time tells the audience in the pilot that story can help people understand life, and then each episode examples that idea by mirroring the contemporary storyline (the A Plot) with fairy tale metaphor (the B Plot).  It’s a meta approach to storytelling that I totally dig, and I’m excited to see what sort of fun things they’re going to do with it.