Couple hours sleep and the tears have stopped, at least.
So three years in, and this is the story we are supposed to believe:
For Emma, Neal provided her first home ever, inside that stolen car.
He provided her definition of home, which he gave her the night they met.
He was the first person who loved her, ever.
He taught her, apparently, MANY skills that while not glamorous were essential for her survival over the years.
He gave her her child, who (current episode notwithstanding) is the center of her universe and reason for existing.
He gave up his happiness in order to allow her to fulfil her destiny, and get her home to her parents.
He was willing to die, so she could stay with their child, after being back in their life mere weeks.
He was willing to go back to the place of his nightmares, where he had been trapped for hundreds of years, to save his family.
He laid his feelings on the line, but was willing to move out of the way to respect her wishes.
He was willing to sacrifice, again, going back to the homeland he feared and later dying in order to protect her and their child.
Yet on Emma’s part, after experiencing what she thought was his death, she –
Wished him dead
Helped him die
Insisted he stay dead.
Ok A&E. Is this the story you were trying to tell with these two, really?
Something tells me that’s not what they were going for. And yet that’s what they got.
I don’t know if I subscribe to “they gave Hook Neal’s story” with respect to the cursed lips, etc – but I sure am puzzled. Why on earth do you make a guy integral to EVERY piece of this girl’s character – and then nothing? Everything that makes Emma “Emma” seems to date back to that relationship. And they opted to just toss the guy aside like a chewed-up piece of gum. “K, thanks, you were formitive in her life, but now we’re done with you. Six feet under you go!”
I don’t know what happened BTS or in the writers room, but I do know it resulted in a show I just don’t want to watch anymore. I don’t quit things very well, and frankly, if there wasn’t a hiatus, I probably couldn’t. But come September, life will look very different and I will have already found something to do in my Sunday 8PM time slot. Hopefully that makes it easier to break the addiction. But this show is no longer what it once was. When we did our watch through just before the season started, I was struck by how much richer the show was on the second watch through. But what jumped out at me, I’m realizing now, were primarily the clues dropped about the Emma-Henry-Neal family. How do I ever watch that again? How does one sit there, during Price of Gold, and watch Emma be hurt that “some people only have the back of a car,” when I know how this story turns out? Or watch her do her damndest not to split up two young people who steal from convenience stores to survive in “True North,” knowing that when push came to shove, splitting them up was just not that big of a deal to her, and death was an okay solution.
We won’t even talk about the guilt I feel for roping Other Roomie into this. Per the shipping notice I found the other day, we started watching the show two weeks before 315 aired. I know we got her up to speed, watching the last couple of episodes, the Saturday after it aired; we did warn her at 311 that the show was about to take a hard left turn but I am not sure she really comprehended it. Her sad sad little sad face last night… yeah. I have guilt. If only I’d waited those two weeks, everyone in my house would be in a little less emotional turmoil at the moment.
Anyways. RG, I think the thing that struck me was not that the show is no longer about hope – it’s not, and that’s a recent turn (unless your name is Marian, to whom Emma’s speech played out pretty well – oh and while Snow gave her the hope, you know who gave her the way out? Yep, Neal again…) because in Neverland we had Snow still preaching hope to Emma. It’s the fact that the creators of the show no longer preach hope. Why is that, what happened? I really want to rail against them and scream and yell about how they ruined our story but at the end of the day, it’s obvious there has been a shift and my experience in the industry tells me it probably did not come from within. So maybe that’s why we see confusing mixed messages; the SF clues in 19, 20, 22 come from trying to still plant seeds of the original SF story in the story that they have now been required to tell. Who knows. It’s the only thing that makes sense *to me,* and if the CS was a network requirement, I can see them feeling the only way to tell that story in truth was to have Neal dead. Because we know now, pretty concretely, they could only happen if he is dead – he had to be dead for the kiss to happen in Neverland and dead for them to happen now. Because he is the only guy Emma ever loved – one of few people she’s ever said “I love you” to – and their bond is stronger than just about anything. So if they had to go CS, Neal had to be dead, because with him alive, Emma would have gravitated back there… again and again and again.
So yep, as Onyx says, they had SF woven through the fabric of the show from the beginning, but they have now retconned the whole show to weave CS through it. Forget dreamcatchers in the nursery when Hook is right there in the storybook with Emma watching them fall in love! Onyx, you don’t need to apologize for bothering us with your depressingness – or if you do, I do too – this is the best and only place to put it at the moment.
Just dawned on me that we never got to see Emma find out Walsh was the wizard. More craptastic storytelling. Par for the course anymore.
And we won’t even talk about “I’ll see both of you again.” What a load of crap. That child is emotionally damaged, permanently, forever. He had his dad for a hot minute – a father who was willing to do anything for him, go to the ends of the earth (and other realms) and sacrifice EVERYTHING so that he would have a family. And then never got a chance to say goodbye. But will we ever see the emotional ramifications of that? Or of Emma wishing him dead? Or how damn UNFAIR it is to have someone you love so much go before their time? No. Because here comes another big bad, apparently the snow queen this time, that we need to go defeat. God forbid our characters have five minutes to process anything that happens to them, or react organically to anything. This show has become emotionally exhausting to me, and I don’t have it to give anymore. Once I plow through this emotional crisis, I am done – done, done, done. There are such rich character points thrown out there and they are brushed aside and stepped over. Will we ever see Rumple deal with the fact that he COULD have saved Bae but he chose to take a forgetting potion instead? Doubtful. Just like in the last episode, we hardly focused on Snowing having ANOTHER babe taken long enough for it to have any emotional relevence. They focused on Snow for 2.5 seconds, juuust long enough for me to start to FEEL something for her, before it was cut to something else and off we go.
It’s not good storytelling. For a show that I fell for, deeply, because of how much richer the story was the second time through, that is bitterly disappointing to me. The storytelling on this show used to be BRILLIANT. It’s what made Manhattan amazing, they spent a season and a half getting us there and everything we’d learned about the characters was played out there in that episode. Now though, we have someone wish a character dead and several episodes later, when that that character dies *in their laps* we never mention it. Really? That wasn’t worth a scene with a few choked back sobs, “I wished him dead, and now he is?” No. It never happened. It was relevent and emotionally right in that moment – and listen, I am (or maybe was) the biggest defender of Echo Cave; she didn’t REALLY wish that he was dead, she was trying to explain that it was the less painful of the two options – but now I wonder – did she? Because his death just doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem for her. “You can save him, right?” “Nope.” “K.” “Meh, just leave him dead.” For frick’s sake, show, are you serious?! She loved this man for a dozen years, despite him causing her ENORMOUS pain, she never stopped loving him – but she is totally cool with him being dead?
You killed a man for your ship. Reasons, whatever they are, I get that. But at the end of the day, Neal Cassidy’s blood is on the hands of the CS story. *Baelfire’s* blood is on the CS story. I mean, I guess, what’s another death at the hands of the esteemed captain, but for Emma? That should be a Really. Big. Deal. But it’s not. Because “she loved him too,” past tense please note, but he died a hero so it’s all okay. It’s cool Emma. You get your home, with your parents, but your child doesn’t deserve the same. And you get to know your child, but his father doesn’t deserve the same.
It’s a load of bull honkey, is what it is, and I choose to take my viewership and go home.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...