@NEVERMORE What are their similarities?
Superficially, there are many structural … maybe not similarities, but parallels that appear to be consciously used to contrast and compare Hook and Rumple (and their respective arcs/relationships) on OUAT. Both have strong father abandonment issues, with mom entierely out of the picture. Both are “villains” with a low sense of self-worth, both have been in love with the same woman (Milah). Both have a physical handicap which is at once a source of self-identification, and a justification for various (negative) actions. Both are part of structurally unequal romantic pairings, where the sheer temporal and hence experiential “advantage” that the guy has on the woman makes for a relationship that’s potentially severely off-balance. Arguably — an ironically — Belle has been better at “standing her ground” than Emma has, or at least has been more aware of Rumple’s problematic nature. Both are struggling with [presumably inherently] evil or negative (or weak) character traits.
With Neal out of the picture, Rumple and Hook become ever more fungible. This is because Rumple’s character without the relationship with his son is an older, less “glamorous” version of Hook, essentially. While Neal was still at the core of Rumple’s character, this wasn’t an issue. Hook is the resentful man-child archetype. If you want to get Freudian, he is, almost literally, Oedipus. Rumple wasn’t just that — he was also the flawed father archetype himself, which made him so compelling: he was both father and son, and this was an absolute stroke of genius in rethinking the mythologies with which OUAT was playing. 3B completed his story perfectly because it resolves both of those plot threads.
I think for many folks writing here, this aspect of Rumple is still important, and colors how we interpret the character — but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case across the board. And it looks like A&E would have us forget this as quickly as we can.
However, as Neal recedes ever further towards OUAT’s amnesiac horizon, Rumple is increasingly crammed into the “man-child” (egotistic sociopath) mold himself, without the adolescent charm. The problem is that Bobby still keeps infusing the character with other dimensions, which are probably not even there in the script, or in the show writers’ intent. To recycle what I think is Lily Sparks’ comment, he’s just too subtle an actor for what this show has become. But from the writing perspective, OUAT has now saddled itself with two extremely similar characters, so they’re either stuck in the position of having to go the simplistic route of “this one GOOD, this one BAD”, or to have redundant storylines.
Sadly, the writing team no longer seems to have the creativity to write themselves out of this otherwise idiotic impasse. But I think the reception from the fandom of these two different characters is quite telling. I am sometimes utterly floored with the leeway that Hook gets from the fandom (including, sometimes, from some of the main participants of the podcast here). I sincerely don’t understand how Hook can be “heroified” while Rumple is “vilified” to the degree that they are, by both the show and the fandom. My point is simply that, at this point in the show, they are largely redundant from a writer’s perspective. If OUAT were a novel, and someone approached me to beta-read it, I’d say something like “But you already have a woobiefied bad boy. Why d’you need another, more simplistic one?” Point is, abstract yourself from the physicalities of the actors, and you have the same “species” of character.
Also, everything @WickedRegal said. That. Right. There.