Fairytale characters from the Enchanted Forest (which contains just about every story ever told it seems) have been cursed by the Evil Queen (Regina): banished to "real world" Storybrooke, trapped in an unchanging town and having forgotten who they truly are, ruled over by Regina as mayor who presumably gets to live out her ideal power trip. All because she wanted to ruin Snow White's happiness. However, magic always comes at a price and curses can always be broken: it is determined that Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter (who is saved from the curse at the last minute by being put in a magic wardrobe (yep, really)) is the only one who can break the curse, at the age of 28.
So Snow and Charming's daughter Emma grows up without any clue of her parentage or the existence of magic and leads an apparently troubled life. She's celebrating her 28th birthday alone when the son (Henry) she gave up for adoption ten years previously turns up and drags her back to Storybrooke with him. Turns out he's been adopted by Regina (dun dun duh!) and seems to be the only person who knows everything about the curse, thanks to the book he has. Obviously, the adults act as though the poor boy is deluded, but something makes Emma stay in Storybrooke and eventually become Sheriff - constantly butting heads with Regina over Henry, and everything else.
Really, if you want a better explanation, go read the darned Wikipedia article above.
So in each episode we have a bit of the story "something happens in Storybrooke" (usually Regina being Evil, Emma investigating something and/or Mary Margaret (Snow White) being mopy about David (Prince Charming)) and flashbacks to events in the Enchanted Forest fill us in on various characters' backstories. The overall arc is about Regina trying to keep Mary Margaret and David apart, while hanging on to Henry and getting rid of Emma so she can't break the curse, while Henry tries to get Emma to believe in the curse and do something about it. Despite the characters acting in mostly predictable ways (well, they are fairytale characters) and making decisions purely because the script demands it, and the parallels between current events in Storybrooke and past events in the Enchanted Forest are often stretched beyond breaking point, it works. Overall, it works.
I think my innate love of mash-ups of stories, genres and twists on traditional tales helps, although it possibly hinders in that so many of the plot twists are glaringly obvious to me from the start. It helps that I've never found children in genre series irritating, and I can overlook the melodramatic acting that would annoy the hell out of me in other shows because, well, it's panto. In a sense, most of the characters aren't real people so they shouldn't act like them. This explains the dumb decisions they make too: like trusting Mr Gold\Rumpelstiltskin, and er, well that's the main one really. Although Regina's treatment of the son she supposedly adores and is worried about is pretty lacklustre (he's run away from home at least once to fetch Emma and she still leaves him alone while she goes out, he repeatedly skip school but no-one seems to do anything about checking his whereabouts during the day, etc). Emma's disbelief is understandable at first, but after being confronted by two separate adults who shared the same "delusion" as her son surely she'd start to get a bit suspicious? And I'm still annoyed no-one in the finale seemed to work out that "True Love" doesn't need to be between lovers, but then possibly that's everyone acting to stereotype again. But despite the quibbles, I really did find it must-watch TV, and the set-up for next season (Gold\Rumpelstiltskin lets magic into Storybrooke) looks intriguing.
Oh, and now everyone remembers who they are, perhaps we'll see more of the kick-ass heroine Snow rather than the wet-drip Mary Margaret (kudos to Ginnifer Goodwin for pulling off both roles though).
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