Honestly, I’ve never really thought of Neal as being OOC in any of his decisions. He knee jerks; it’s just what he does. It’s his primary flaw. It’s this trait that makes me only somewhat be able to reconcile the first really terrible decision we see Neal make – letting August talk him into abandoning Emma and allowing her to go to jail.
One thing I find interestingly similar is how both Neal and Hook’s actions are the extreme ends of the spectrum, and rarely ever land in the middle, or safe, zone. Honest, righteous Killian loses his brother thanks to his king, and so he becomes the total antithesis – a pirate. He acts somewhat ambivalent to Emma in S2, but it’s obvious he’s covering his deep attraction to this woman who he both understands completely and is totally baffled by. Hence when he does fall in love, he FALLS IN LOVE.
So…why can people forgive one character’s sins and not the other? No idea. I don’t see Neal as the angel to Hook’s devil – far from it. Just because one dresses like a pirate and the other like…well, a hobo…what makes one, in my opinion, ‘right’ for Emma, and the other ‘wrong’ for her, is their actions toward her. Neal ‘let’ her go to jail ‘for her own good’ so she could be come the savior….huh? On the other hand, Killian gives up literally everything but the clothes on his back to get to her. And he does this knowing at best she’s not going to remember him. And he does this because he knows she needs her family and to help them as much as he’s needed her the year they were in the EF. Not because he had any real belief that by getting back to Emma meant he would get in her pants.