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.
The connection between Neal and Emma is an integral thing woven into the moral of the whole show. I can’t believe they just tossed it aside like this.
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.
OMG THIS! Nevermind how impossible it will be to re-watch any ep the involves Bae in any way, knowing how his poor sad life ended up, but all that subtle stuff they did with Emma way back in the start of the show, you’re right, it will be impossible to re-watch without feeling that it’s now hollow.
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.
Yup, given that they’d established their bond as being so strong and enduring, there’s just no way they could have put their hot new couple together while Neal was still on the canvas.
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.
It’s really quite depressing to see the downturn in quality, considering what it used to be. They DID do a LOT of things right earlier on in the show, which just makes the state of things now even more sad.