It was cheesy, but cute, at least in its first season. Personally, I started watching it because I saw the ending of one of the episodes on TV and noticed Robert Carlisle playing Rumplestilskin and thought that looked interesting. Sure, the whole premise was kinda silly and though I know they have limited budgets, the CGI looked really shit, but the fairy tale characters vs their everyday personalities was interesting and throwing them all into one show was fun.
However, I'll also agree the show has overstayed its welcome. The first season was the best, and I enjoyed two and three as well, but after that it became a chore. I started watching this show for Rumplestilskin and Belle, but realised in the early fourth season especially that the showmakers and possibly fandom as well were more interested in:
- more Regina angst;
- Emma gaining more and more Mary-Sue points;
- the 10000th time seeing Snow and Regina interacting in the flashbacks;
- MORE DISNEY CHARACTERS, ADD ALL OF THEM, which lead to
- one-off characters who were there for no reason at all and took time away from the characters who had been there since the beginning
and so on.
I stopped half-way through season four and have no interest going back. One anon on /tv/ once described to me what happened since then and it sounded terrible, so I'm not too sad about that.