Ok, it’s way too late for me to be writing this but it’s been one of those days… Sorry if I’m incoherent.
For me, OUAT’s core value now is entertainment, but not in the elevated television-as-art sort of way, but rather in a cheap, tawdry, melodramatic, cheesy, please-tweet-about-me sort of way.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that generating viewership, and hence money is the bottom line for any show. But it’s the way A&E have decided to go about it, which seems to essentially select what they think is the lowest common denominator, and aiming a couple of notches below THAT that I find particularly infuriating. I mean, by all accounts, OUAT began with a fairly smart, creative audience for a mainstream TV show. Instead of raising the bar — or at least, keeping it where it was — they have systematically, and almost patronizingly, lowered it.
I think they dictated that certain things had to happen (CS) and that A and E were backed into a corner and instead of fighting their way out, or trying to find a solution that would appease their Mousey overlords but not totally destroy their show (CS is endgame, but Neal gets to live and be a son/father) they went for the kill (literally) and did a reset (3A finale) and then started afresh meaning that the vestiges of the show-that-was had to be wiped away
(Ok, just a quick note, what comes later ie your analysis of what is shown vs what is told — SQ vs CS — is totally brilliant, so I’m going to take on the first part of the argument instead). So on this point — that A&E were essentially backed into a corner by the corporate overlord. I think that’s probably largely right – the execs say jump, and you have to ask how high. But they didn’t HAVE to kill Neal, and hence change the entire story. They didn’t even have to retain MRJ, they could have written him a life off-screen. There’s a whole conversation on this thread dealing exactly with this point, so I think we’re all pointing out the same problem — whether it’s the way in which talking about Neal has become taboo (per @Slurpeez ‘ point), both for the show and for the fanbase, or whether it’s the constant ship baiting, it’s like A&E have given up on the very idea that OUAT could ever have any sort of metanarrative. And I’m sorry, but plot doesn’t count, especially when so much of it is recycled tropes. I just don’t get it — they were able to secure many amazing actors, regularly work with fairly prominent writers, and yet the show seems to be getting more simplistic with every season. My point is that I don’t understand what the payoff is. My only explanation is that A&E were told that they had to broaden OUAT’s audience, and to do so they decided to turn it into a soap.