That Still Small Voice
Encyclopedia
"That Still Small Voice" is the fifth episode of the American Fairy Tale
/Drama
television series
Once Upon a Time
, which aired in the United States on ABC
on November 27, 2011.
The episode has Emma being deputized by Storybrooke's Sheriff Graham, while an explosion causes a giant sinkhole to mysteriously appear, prompting a curious Henry to investigate to see if the sinkhole can link Storybrooke's citizens to the Enchanted Forest, and the backstory of Pinocchio's conscience Jiminy Cricket is revealed along with his yearning to leave the family business and transform into the person he wants to be.
, Harry Groener
) posing as puppeteers. After he finishes collecting the stolen goods, he returns the items to his parents and tells them that he desires to leave the family business. Unfortunately, as years go by, the now adult Jiminy (Raphael Sbarge
) is still aiding his family, who now comes up with excuses to keep him from leaving. He also runs into a young boy who tells him to follow his conscience. One night, Jiminy pays a visit to see Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle
) and delivers the goods to him. After Rumplestiltskin asks Jiminy what he wants, he gives him a tonic that will set him free from his parents, but it will cost him.
Later that evening, Jiminy and his parents pay a visit to a couple and uses a ruse by claiming that they escaped a plague and they need a place to stay. However, they use the story to convince them to give up their items, so they plunder the couple of their belongings by exchanging the tonic for their livelihood, and Jiminy hands over the tonic to them. As they take off with the goods, Jiminy feels like he has betrayed the couple, and then discovers that his father switched the bottles. As Jiminy raced back to the couples' home, he is shocked to discovered that the couple has been turned into dolls after drinking the tonic, and as his parents prepare to take the dolls, the same young boy whom Jiminy met earlier showed up and looks at Jiminy as to what happened to his parents.
Having realized what he has done, Jiminy looks at the stars and begins to make a wish. He would receive an answer from the Blue Fairy, who shows up to give him his one true wish, which would come from hearing the sound of crickets chirping, resulting in Jiminy becoming a cricket. He was also told by the Blue Fairy that he has a chance to help someone in the future, starting with the young boy, who would grow up to be Gepetto. As for the cursed dolls, they ended up as a collection at Mr. Gold's pawn shop.
In the present day, Archie continues to evaluate Henry, who is still trying to convince him that he is Jiminy, but Archie isn't convinced. Meanwhile, Sheriff Graham officially makes Emma his new deputy, who agrees to wear the badge if she didn't wear the uniform. As she takes the badge, an explosion causes the town to shake. Moments later, a sinkhole emerges at an abandoned mine shaft and as Emma, Henry, Archie and the sheriff show up to see the damaged area, Regina arrives to try to keep everyone from going any further, then comes across a certain object which looks like an ornate piece of glass and puts it in her pocket. She is also not pleased with the sheriff hiring Emma, but he says that he can because Regina does pays his salary and funds the sheriffs' department, so he can afford to hire Emma. Emma was also reminded by Henry that the explosion meant that things are starting to change in Storybrooke and it may have something to do with what Emma just did, prompting Emma to look at that badge. Regina is also not pleased with the performance of Archie's therapy sessions with Henry and reminded him that it was she who hired Archie and she can have him fired and out on the streets if he doesn't put to rest the fairy tale stories.
The next day, Archie follows through on Regina's warning by convincing Henry that the fairy tale stories are just not real and he is just imagining things. This was one of the things that Henry did not want to hear and he runs out of the office. Moments later Henry shows up at Mary Margaret's crying, prompting Emma to pay a visit to Dr. Hopper as she figured out that Regina was responsible for threatening him. As Emma picks up a phone call from Regina, Emma starts accusing Regina of threatening Archie, but Regina says that Henry is missing again, even after Emma dropped him off at the mayor's office. This gives Archie the idea of where he would go, which is back to the mine shaft.
At the mine shaft, Henry begins to investigate the area and comes across a glass item similar to the one Regina found earlier that he puts into his backpack. As Emma, Regina, and Archie show up at the site, they are concerned about safety. However, it's Archie who goes in to search for Henry and finds the boy, but as they try to escape, an aftershock blocks off the main entrance, leaving an injured Archie and Henry trapped. They then find an elevator shaft, not knowing that above ground Emma and Regina have taken the suggestion of blasting the main entrance from Marco, which results in the elevator carrying Henry and Archie being lowered even further after the blast takes place.
Inside the elevator, Henry asked Archie about why he doesn't believe that he is Jiminy Cricket when he does have a conscience that would convince him otherwise. Archie claimed that even though he does not think that he is Jiminy, he did acknowledge that he might share Jiminy's personality and in a similar fashion to his alternative past, yearned to be free from being told what to do. Meanwhile, above ground, Emma noticed Archie's pet Dalmatian, Pongo, barking at a certain location, and as expected leads to the opening of the elevator shaft. After a heated argument with Regina over who should go down for the sake of Henry, Emma volunteers to go down the shaft (with Regina's reluctant blessing), where she succeeds in rescuing Henry and Archie before the elevator falls endlessly down the shaft. As they are brought back up to safety Regina wastes no time in whisking Henry away from Emma, but it's Archie who shows up to tell Regina that he will continue to see Henry and that if she attempts to interfere he will take action against Regina and have her declared an unfit mother. Archie then embraces Marco as Emma and Henry watches and, out of nowhere, the sounds of crickets start chirping again. As Regina backs down after Archie's threat, she looks at the object she had in her pocket and threw it down the shaft, where it lands on top of the rest of Snow White's glass coffin.
While everyone else is concerned about the mine shaft, Mary Margaret continues to visit David at the hospital, where it appears that he is starting to like having the teacher around, even as he starts to wonder how he ended up in the hospital in the first place. At the same time, Kathryn continues to visit David to show him pictures to jog his memory but later admits to Mary Margaret that he doesn't remember anything that he saw in the pictures. As Mary Margaret notices David becoming more attracted to her, she still feels threatened by Kathryn's appearance. This prompts Mary Margaret to submit her letter of resignation as a volunteer at the hospital
and was directed by Paul Edwards.
In a interview with The Hollywood Reporter
, actor Raphael Sbarge
noted that they wanted to reveal the back story behind Jiminy Cricket's past and why he plays an important part in the series: “I guess this is similar to Lost in that they have a large ensemble and what they do is that they take a few characters and they kind of take them, effectively on a deep dive,” and added that “That deep dive is able to really open up that whole world.”
Another pair of allusions were referenced in this episode. The scenes in which Henry was carrying a couple of Apollo Chocolate Candy Bars in his back pack was also the same brand of candy bars made by the Dharma Institute on Lost, while Archie's pet Pongo is also the name of one of the dogs in the Disney film 101 Dalmatians
. It is also noted that Jiminy's parents, as evidenced by their wardrobe to their background as puppeteer/thieves and how they control Jiminy's life are loosely based on another pair of characters from Pinocchio, Gideon and the Fox.
back in the eastern and the central time zones and the American Music Awards
that aired the previous week, as it slipped 11% to place a 3.4/8 among 18-49s and score a 5.9/8 overall, with 10.7 million tuning in.
Entertainment Weekly
also gave the episode a exciting review in their recap of the episode.
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
/Drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
television series
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
Once Upon a Time
Once Upon a Time (TV series)
Once Upon a Time is an American fairy tale drama television series that premiered on Sunday October 23, 2011, on ABC. New episodes air Sunday nights at 8:00 pm ET/7:00 pm CT....
, which aired in the United States on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
on November 27, 2011.
The episode has Emma being deputized by Storybrooke's Sheriff Graham, while an explosion causes a giant sinkhole to mysteriously appear, prompting a curious Henry to investigate to see if the sinkhole can link Storybrooke's citizens to the Enchanted Forest, and the backstory of Pinocchio's conscience Jiminy Cricket is revealed along with his yearning to leave the family business and transform into the person he wants to be.
Plot
The story begins in the Enchanted Forest, we discover a young pickpocket fellow named Jiminy (Adam Young), a boy who desires the chance to be a person who wants to do good, but is reduced to being part of a family of scam artists (Carolyn HennesyCarolyn Hennesy
Carolyn Hennesy is an American actress and writer, who stars in the soap opera General Hospital and the sitcom Cougar Town....
, Harry Groener
Harry Groener
Harry Groener is a German-born American actor and dancer, perhaps best known for playing Mayor Wilkins in Buffy the Vampire Slayer .-Early life:...
) posing as puppeteers. After he finishes collecting the stolen goods, he returns the items to his parents and tells them that he desires to leave the family business. Unfortunately, as years go by, the now adult Jiminy (Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge is an American actor and voice actor.-Early life:Sbarge was born into a theatre-oriented family in New York City. His mother, Jeanne Button, was a costume designer, and his father, Stephen A. Sbarge, was an artist, writer and stage director who named his son after the Renaissance...
) is still aiding his family, who now comes up with excuses to keep him from leaving. He also runs into a young boy who tells him to follow his conscience. One night, Jiminy pays a visit to see Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle
Robert Carlyle
Robert Carlyle, OBE is a Scottish film and television actor. He is known for a variety of roles including those in Trainspotting, Hamish Macbeth, The Full Monty, The World Is Not Enough, Angela's Ashes, The 51st State, and 28 Weeks Later...
) and delivers the goods to him. After Rumplestiltskin asks Jiminy what he wants, he gives him a tonic that will set him free from his parents, but it will cost him.
Later that evening, Jiminy and his parents pay a visit to a couple and uses a ruse by claiming that they escaped a plague and they need a place to stay. However, they use the story to convince them to give up their items, so they plunder the couple of their belongings by exchanging the tonic for their livelihood, and Jiminy hands over the tonic to them. As they take off with the goods, Jiminy feels like he has betrayed the couple, and then discovers that his father switched the bottles. As Jiminy raced back to the couples' home, he is shocked to discovered that the couple has been turned into dolls after drinking the tonic, and as his parents prepare to take the dolls, the same young boy whom Jiminy met earlier showed up and looks at Jiminy as to what happened to his parents.
Having realized what he has done, Jiminy looks at the stars and begins to make a wish. He would receive an answer from the Blue Fairy, who shows up to give him his one true wish, which would come from hearing the sound of crickets chirping, resulting in Jiminy becoming a cricket. He was also told by the Blue Fairy that he has a chance to help someone in the future, starting with the young boy, who would grow up to be Gepetto. As for the cursed dolls, they ended up as a collection at Mr. Gold's pawn shop.
In the present day, Archie continues to evaluate Henry, who is still trying to convince him that he is Jiminy, but Archie isn't convinced. Meanwhile, Sheriff Graham officially makes Emma his new deputy, who agrees to wear the badge if she didn't wear the uniform. As she takes the badge, an explosion causes the town to shake. Moments later, a sinkhole emerges at an abandoned mine shaft and as Emma, Henry, Archie and the sheriff show up to see the damaged area, Regina arrives to try to keep everyone from going any further, then comes across a certain object which looks like an ornate piece of glass and puts it in her pocket. She is also not pleased with the sheriff hiring Emma, but he says that he can because Regina does pays his salary and funds the sheriffs' department, so he can afford to hire Emma. Emma was also reminded by Henry that the explosion meant that things are starting to change in Storybrooke and it may have something to do with what Emma just did, prompting Emma to look at that badge. Regina is also not pleased with the performance of Archie's therapy sessions with Henry and reminded him that it was she who hired Archie and she can have him fired and out on the streets if he doesn't put to rest the fairy tale stories.
The next day, Archie follows through on Regina's warning by convincing Henry that the fairy tale stories are just not real and he is just imagining things. This was one of the things that Henry did not want to hear and he runs out of the office. Moments later Henry shows up at Mary Margaret's crying, prompting Emma to pay a visit to Dr. Hopper as she figured out that Regina was responsible for threatening him. As Emma picks up a phone call from Regina, Emma starts accusing Regina of threatening Archie, but Regina says that Henry is missing again, even after Emma dropped him off at the mayor's office. This gives Archie the idea of where he would go, which is back to the mine shaft.
At the mine shaft, Henry begins to investigate the area and comes across a glass item similar to the one Regina found earlier that he puts into his backpack. As Emma, Regina, and Archie show up at the site, they are concerned about safety. However, it's Archie who goes in to search for Henry and finds the boy, but as they try to escape, an aftershock blocks off the main entrance, leaving an injured Archie and Henry trapped. They then find an elevator shaft, not knowing that above ground Emma and Regina have taken the suggestion of blasting the main entrance from Marco, which results in the elevator carrying Henry and Archie being lowered even further after the blast takes place.
Inside the elevator, Henry asked Archie about why he doesn't believe that he is Jiminy Cricket when he does have a conscience that would convince him otherwise. Archie claimed that even though he does not think that he is Jiminy, he did acknowledge that he might share Jiminy's personality and in a similar fashion to his alternative past, yearned to be free from being told what to do. Meanwhile, above ground, Emma noticed Archie's pet Dalmatian, Pongo, barking at a certain location, and as expected leads to the opening of the elevator shaft. After a heated argument with Regina over who should go down for the sake of Henry, Emma volunteers to go down the shaft (with Regina's reluctant blessing), where she succeeds in rescuing Henry and Archie before the elevator falls endlessly down the shaft. As they are brought back up to safety Regina wastes no time in whisking Henry away from Emma, but it's Archie who shows up to tell Regina that he will continue to see Henry and that if she attempts to interfere he will take action against Regina and have her declared an unfit mother. Archie then embraces Marco as Emma and Henry watches and, out of nowhere, the sounds of crickets start chirping again. As Regina backs down after Archie's threat, she looks at the object she had in her pocket and threw it down the shaft, where it lands on top of the rest of Snow White's glass coffin.
While everyone else is concerned about the mine shaft, Mary Margaret continues to visit David at the hospital, where it appears that he is starting to like having the teacher around, even as he starts to wonder how he ended up in the hospital in the first place. At the same time, Kathryn continues to visit David to show him pictures to jog his memory but later admits to Mary Margaret that he doesn't remember anything that he saw in the pictures. As Mary Margaret notices David becoming more attracted to her, she still feels threatened by Kathryn's appearance. This prompts Mary Margaret to submit her letter of resignation as a volunteer at the hospital
Production
The episode was written by co-executive producer Jane EspensonJane Espenson
Jane Espenson is an American script writer and television producer who has worked on both situation comedies and serial dramas. She had a five-year stint as a writer and producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and shared a Hugo Award for her writing on the episode "Conversations with Dead People"...
and was directed by Paul Edwards.
In a interview with The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, actor Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge is an American actor and voice actor.-Early life:Sbarge was born into a theatre-oriented family in New York City. His mother, Jeanne Button, was a costume designer, and his father, Stephen A. Sbarge, was an artist, writer and stage director who named his son after the Renaissance...
noted that they wanted to reveal the back story behind Jiminy Cricket's past and why he plays an important part in the series: “I guess this is similar to Lost in that they have a large ensemble and what they do is that they take a few characters and they kind of take them, effectively on a deep dive,” and added that “That deep dive is able to really open up that whole world.”
Another pair of allusions were referenced in this episode. The scenes in which Henry was carrying a couple of Apollo Chocolate Candy Bars in his back pack was also the same brand of candy bars made by the Dharma Institute on Lost, while Archie's pet Pongo is also the name of one of the dogs in the Disney film 101 Dalmatians
101 Dalmatians
101 Dalmatians is a 1996 American family comedy film produced by Walt Disney Pictures, and a remake of the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians , which in turn was based on Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. It stars Glenn Close as the villainous Cruella de Vil,...
. It is also noted that Jiminy's parents, as evidenced by their wardrobe to their background as puppeteer/thieves and how they control Jiminy's life are loosely based on another pair of characters from Pinocchio, Gideon and the Fox.
Ratings
This would be the lowest episode so far in the series, possibly due to the Thanksgiving weekend, including an NFL Football game overrun that resulted in CBS pushing 60 Minutes60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
back in the eastern and the central time zones and the American Music Awards
American Music Awards
-Conception:The AMAs were created by Dick Clark in 1973 to compete with the Grammys after the move of that year's show to Nashville, Tennessee led to CBS picking up the Grammy telecasts after its first two in 1971 and 1972 were broadcast on ABC...
that aired the previous week, as it slipped 11% to place a 3.4/8 among 18-49s and score a 5.9/8 overall, with 10.7 million tuning in.
Reviews
In a piece written by AOL TV's Laura Prudom, she notes that "'That Still Small Voice' proved to be an undeniably satisfying hour of television, deepening our understanding of Archie/Jiminy's character and giving us some welcome development in Mary Margaret and David's tragic romance. I don't know about you, but I really could watch a whole hour of those two playing hangman and innocently flirting and need nothing else from the show.Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
also gave the episode a exciting review in their recap of the episode.