Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[kfchimera]

I wanted to stop by and give a great big hug to everyone in this forum.
I was prepared for some time now for the writers to kill Neal, but I’d held out hope they would write it with more grace and style.

Like August said, that’s my problem, hoping.  I’m not sure why I did hope for more, because this was far from the first huge plot contrivance and bit of shoddy writing on this show.
Watching the end of How I Met Your Mother, I know that my problem here isn’t about shipping.  It’s about the writing and the hope I had for something better.  I liked Robin and Barney and Ted and the Mother as couples, but the way the show told the story made me feel the ending made sense and fit the character’s progression  (aside from a little Barney whiplash for humor, but it is a comedy, not a drama.)  So this comedy show was more heartfelt and hit that bittersweet note, and I didn’t feel the way I do about OUAT.

I don’t think Rumple’s sacrifice set up Neal’s because of the way they wrote it.  I could have handled it if Neal finally realized that much as he loved Henry and Emma, he also dearly loved his Papa and that his Papa deserved a second chance to live as the good man he once was, not to die as a villain.  If he’d come to see that Belle and Rumple deserved that chance, and felt that he himself had in some ways, had his second chance and felt fulfilled just knowing he had a son and that he’d tried to do everything he could to be a good father to his son.

That isn’t the way it went down.  Out of nowhere, Neal suddenly forgets all his scruples about magic, dark magic in particular, and is in a hot rush to resurrect his father, not because he loves him but because he wants to use the Dark Magic to get to his family.  Then, he doesn’t care about the price, which does play as stupid even as Lumiere tries to say he’s just emotional and desperate.  It erodes sympathy for Neal, because instead of this being some sort of tragic thing (like Graham) it played more like a Darwin award moment.  Increasingly though, that’s the way they write good characters–they only survive so long as their plot armor holds up.  Neal’s runs out, not because he really made a purposeful sacrifice either.  Telling Emma to separate them because Rumple needs to help them figure out the witch?    As Zelena herself says, it doesn’t matter anyway if they know who she is, and guess what? Without Neal blocking the dagger, Zelena actually gained an advantage as she has full control of the Dark One, all sane rather than bonkers.

In any case, Neal’s love for Henry was not given full weight, then there was all the silliness of Neal saying he learned the value of sacrifice.  A&E themselves said Neal sacrificed, their words, and suddenly they’re saying it was fan interpretation? At this point, I think Adam “I didn’t say that.  I was misquoted” Horowitz and Eddy “Oops I said it” Kitsis seem to think they should say whatever the majority of their current audience want them to say, then if it isn’t well received, they twist their words the other way.    That line was awful, and doesn’t deserve to be defended.

I do think it gives Rumple a chance to show growth, from his “I don’t care anymore” attitude the first time Neal died, to his relatively calm and composed response this time, wanting to help fight the Witch, but it was a long way to go, at very great expense in terms of redundancy, plot contrivance and just character-whiplash for them to have this play out this way.   And these are all things that have nothing to do with wanting to see Neal get back together with Emma!

I shouldn’t have been surprised, after how they handled the whole “mystery box” and August “reboot” storyline.  Then there was the adoption story, potion of forgetting and all that.  At least with that, I thought, ok, they are still nodding to Regina’s darker side, so not entirely trying to whitewash her. Now the OQ stuff tells me they’re leaping into Operation White Wash.  The Evil Queen no longer, just the “bold and audacious” queen and we’ll just forget all the storytelling about how she ever hurt anyone just because you know,  it was only a reputation thing, she never actually did anything bad to anyone!  The OQ thing is a cute romance but that line just put me off it–I much preferred the trajectory in the EF where Robin is seeing her inner pain and yet still sees her coldness and excitement at having someone to destroy, rather than a sort of false impression that her bark was worse than her bite.  Her bite is plenty strong, always was–wanted him to see that, and still fall for her.  I’m not even going to touch the whole thing with Hook and Neal, because my eyes would hurt from the rolling necessary to even think about how poorly they executed that.

Of course, that’s what happens when a weaker writer is given the helm, and that in itself tells me, because what episodes that writer had before, what the real purpose here was, and it wasn’t character development or telling a bold story. It was “we write for the fans” which seems lately to be “we write like the fans”–and that’s not really a good thing for writers to be proud of in terms of surprising us with a story that manages to both respect its past and the complications of its characters while hitting unexpected new developments that somehow feel inevitable.   HIMYM did it, but OUAT didn’t.  HIMYM is done with its run, and I’m wistful about that, but I don’t feel that about OUAT even though I’m largely done with it as well.  It’s Heroes all over again for me –Nathan being my 9th favorite character on that show (I counted…Hiro, Ando, Suresh, Parkman, HRG, Peter, Angela “Mama” Petrelli, Claire, Sylar then Nathan).

Character deaths can be meaningful, they can be shocking but rarely do I feel they’re a deal-breaker for me.  BSG killed off a few characters I really liked and rooted for, some even in couples that I “shipped,  but I still watched until the end and loved the show and every minute of it, because I felt it fit in the story they were telling.   Even if the writing didn’t quite make sense, even on shows where it was TOTALLY actor driven, I kept going as usually there was still a narrative heart that stayed true to the original vision despite the attempt to reconfigure the story  for cast changes (like on Smallville or SG-1).

So that leads me to what I feel the most sad about –and that is, the loss of the community here on the forums, particularly in this nice sweet corner of it.  I know it will go on, but I don’t have any desire to watch this show on time.  My DVR is full of other promising series that I”ve yet to watch, and mainly I fast-tracked  OUAT in order to keep up with discussion here.  It became a hobby to speculate, to be silly or serious, to chat, but increasingly, it is a hobby that takes up too much free time.  My son progressed from infant in arms to active toddler, and writing these things (though I type, read and think pretty fast) is still too time consuming for a show that has failed me too many times in terms of realizing its plot potential.  (Remember the whole magic vs science thing & Whale? Red? Oh the dropped plotlines of Hatter and Mirror…it goes on and on.)

Maybe in a few months I will stop by again, my excitement in the show renewed but it is going to take a lot and I really don’t think A&E have it in them to lure me back into their spell.

All the same, I decided to keep my forum account,  probably more because of how much I enjoyed the conversation and camaraderie.    As the line in HIMYM went, to paraphrase, things change, and people move on and it doesn’t have to be a sad thing.   Life would be stagnant if everything stayed the same and while I’ll miss hanging out here, I also know it is better for me personally for many reasons as this gives me the opportunity to find other things to invest my time in that DO make me happy.