It’s so funny. How is it that ranting like a mad woman about how many things about the show are just WRONG is exactly what gives me hope? I spent yesterday in the foulest mood, feeling like I was wrong to be optimistic, like it was idiotic to hope there was more going on than exactly what we are seeing – that I needed to accept the obvious, that this is the end of the road.
Yet spend some time ranting about the WRONGness of it all – the things that are missing, OOC, unfair, and the grevious imbalance in storytelling – and I woke up today filled with hope – calmly optimistic. If I didn’t look just like my Mom, I’d wonder if Snow White was a relation 😉 They have gone to SO much trouble to set this up, telling this story consistently beginning in Pilot and continuing through S1, through S2 with touchpoints like Tallahassee, Manhattan, and SSTTR. They wove it through S3, with Neal and Mulan, echo caves, and 310/311. We STILL saw pieces in 312, 13, 14… and yes, 315.
I pondered last night, why bring the pendant back into it? Yes, our tiny corner here was clammoring for it. But *clearly* they don’t care about our corner, if they are killing him off. And for the general audience, I am sure they don’t key in on the importance of it – an item we saw for a few moments in 2×06, briefly discussed in 2×14, and then never touched on again. GA does not key in on a necklace that she wore for the first three dozen episodes but is now gone. This is not Rumbelle’s cup, which is both a pre-existing icon AND frequently discussed on the show. This is an item that had not been mentioned in OVER a season – and at that time, was a cheap convenience store keychain-turned-necklace. Why drudge it back up, assign it worldhopping status, label it of true love? If Neal’s death was to further another ship, that is COMPLETELY counterintuitive. There was ZERO reason to mention the thing – just let it fade into the ether, never to be mentioned again after it was thrown back into the giver’s face. Seems like it would be an excellent parallel for the story they appear to be telling 😉
Guys, this story is Phoenix-based. It is a NECESSITY for the firebird to burn up, rest in ashes, and then be reborn. (Huh, if only they had included some fire imagery in his death… OH WAIT, they did.) Gold told Regina he got her a “child from Phoenix,” he wasn’t joking. It SUCKS to sit here in the ashes, but like always, I go back to… maybe something like this was always in the plan. I don’t agree with it, I don’t like it, I don’t feel like it was wise… but was it story-driven? Perhaps.
And what of Hook? I maintain that there has been TOO MUCH for it to swept under the rug. Things like the Tink incident, or Milah’s identity – yeah, they’re easily sweepable. But in the last several episodes, they have gone out of their way to have Hook do MULTIPLE sneaky underhanded things. Emma may have told him she doesn’t want to know about the missing year, that she’s tired of living in the past (an item I still maintain was far more about regrets with respect to her history with Neal than it was about Hook,) but WHEN she finds out, it won’t be pretty. And it’s a when, not an if. You don’t spend an episode on establishing a guy as “still a pirate” in the lost year, where he murders someone in cold blood, have him insinuate he’s changed, and then have him teach a preteen how to cheat at dice in the present, without a reason. They have set Hook up in bad bad shape, and I am FAR more confident we will see him take a fall than I am of Neal’s return. He is continually being written as a guy who is hiding stuff, which is a huge setup for the truth to come out and the repercussions to be felt.
The ironic thing is that my logical brain tells me that I am setting myself up for a fall. That what we are seeing on screen really is just as bad as it seems, that this show really did take that turn from a show about hope, true love and happy endings to a show where underhandedness wins… witches burn the center of the show out of existence and lying pirates get the girl. And I realize how much I have HATED every bit of the last half-dozen episodes (save some Regina scenes – ironic since I have no particular love for her!) But then I logic myself out of it. No, no, this show cannot possibly have flown that far off course, that quickly. And yet again this morning, that’s where I sit. Thanks to massive ranting about the WRONGness of it all. Oh, the irony.
I am sure I am setting myself up for a fall come 321/2. And I can absolutely guarantee you, the last few days before it airs, I will be huddled with RG in the tent of doom, utterly REFUSING to believe in even the possibility of a happy ending. Self-protective mechanism. Yet for the moment, try as I might to reject it, I cannot help but believe there is more to the plan than what it appears.
I think tonight will be interesting. I concur with whomever (Heather?) said that it should give us some clues as to where the rest of the season is headed. And it’s an A&E episode, so we know it is setting up the story precisely as they want it told. I am crossing everything I have that it is told in a manner consistent with the long-term history of once, rather than its short-term history. I NEED it to be that.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...