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"To my surprise, Once Upon a Time&amp;#039;s latest instalment is a genuinely good episode. In previous episodes, I struggled to warm to Regina as she comes across to me as a boringly one-dimensional personality. But with a restraint on gimmicks and real character moments, &amp;#039;The Stable Boy&amp;#039; adds some proper depth to Regina and for the first time makes her feel real. In the fairytale world, a younger and pre-Evil Queen Regina has a love of horses, wears bright-coloured clothing and smiles often. Everything would be perfect if it weren&amp;#039;t for her controlling and downright nasty mother Cora (Black Swan&amp;#039;s Barbara Hershey). Cora is concerned about status and riches, believing that acquiring these things will bring true happiness for herself, and she constantly scolds her daughter when Regina doesn&amp;#039;t show the same interests. Regina is secretly in love with Daniel (the affable Noah Bean - familiar to Damages and Nikita fans), a lowly stable boy. He&amp;#039;s loyal, he&amp;#039;s a sweet guy and he cares about her. He&amp;#039;s basically the perfect boyfriend except for the fact that he&amp;#039;s rather poor.  A curveball is thrown when Regina is forced to save a young girl on a wildly out-of-control steed - Snow White. This is the story of why the Evil Queen has grown to hate Snow so much. It&amp;#039;s perhaps a little obvious where this is headed, but that doesn&amp;#039;t negatively affect the events that play out. Seeing a completely different side to Regina - one who&amp;#039;s happy with someone and not scheming, manipulating or cruel - is more than welcome, and the manner in which her mother mercilessly tears Daniel&amp;#039;s heart out and crushes it into dust would make anyone distraught. Regina, in this moment, is someone you can deeply sympathise for. Looking eerily similar while also being able to nail some of Ginnifer Goodwin&amp;#039;s inflections, Bailee Madison is spot-on for the role of the young Snow White. Snow&amp;#039;s reasons for spilling everything to Regina&amp;#039;s mother make sense with the loss of her own mother. I wished Regina would just tell Snow upfront about the consequences (and she seems a little too tolerant of her mother despite what Cora did), but this is the start of the Regina as we know her today. Her backstory works like a treat, giving her an extra layer or two in a believable way.  Regina is naturally revelling in Mary Margaret&amp;#039;s pain behind bars in Storybrooke. Her clutching of Daniel&amp;#039;s ring and muttering, &amp;quot;We got her,&amp;quot; successfully adds character while also maintaining her manipulative persona. I&amp;#039;ve only been critical about Regina in the past because she never really progressed beyond her (until now, arbitrarily) antagonistic nature. Now, there&amp;#039;s finally been some payoff. Most of the rest of the episode wasn&amp;#039;t that noteworthy. Emma&amp;#039;s smashing of the vase oh-so-conveniently resulting in her finding the listening device planted by Sidney (Giancarlo Esposito) was an eye-rolling moment, and I hope we learn more about August really soon as his mysterious shtick is wearing a little thin and Eion Bailey is hardly been given much to do. Any scene with Mr Gold, though, is still a treat. His unclear loyalties are still fun to watch thanks to Robert Carlyle&amp;#039;s over-the-top charismatic acting. It seems he&amp;#039;s working with Regina, but was he the one who helped Kathryn (Anastasia Griffith) show up in the alley? Mary looks like a free woman now - it&amp;#039;ll be interesting to see what the aftermath is like. (Side-note: It&amp;#039;s a pity there wasn&amp;#039;t a proper Damages sibling reunion between Noah Bean and Anastasia Griffith.) What did you think of the episode? Leave your comments below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/once-upon-a-time/review/a374392/once-upon-a-time-the-stable-boy-recap/>