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I used to absolutely hate Hook but this season, I actually kind of like him. He genuinely apologised to Belle for what he did to her and even offered to help her out, not because it benefitted him in any way, but because he genuinely wanted to help. THIS is the Hook we needed to see several seasons ago before Emma got together with him. I think the main issue with CS is the build up. There was no reason why Emma would’ve gotten with Hook when she did, other events which should’ve been important to Emma were ignored such as Neal’s death because that should’ve had an impact on Emma, in general the writers were lazy with developing Hook and rather than show him progress, they just told us he was redeemed. Considering the way he was introduced, more effort needed to be put in to make his “redemption” believable. Also, in the early days of CS, it did seem like Emma was spending all her time exclusively with Hook and other people such as Henry got forgotten. In fact this season, I’ve actually liked Hook more than Emma. When Belle came into the diner looking for a room to stay in, Emma disparaged Granny’s rooms (which was uncalled for IMO) yet did nothing to offer Belle an alternative place to stay. It was Hook who actually stepped up and offered Belle alternative accommodation. For the past couple of seasons, Hook has kind of been Emma’s lapdog but this season he does seem to be moving beyond Emma’s vicinity so good for him! Robin was a wasted opportunity because he never moved past being Regina’s lapdog. For me OQ was more badly written than CS. At least with CS in the episode “Tallahassee” you can see the chemistry. With OQ, Robin had just literally met Regina, we find out later that EQ was responsible for Marian’s death, and yet Robin is completely unbothered by the fact that Regina was the EQ. Even though the audience knows Regina has changed, Robin shouldn’t know that so it would’ve been more natural for him to show some initial distrust of her, at least until she saved Roland from the flying monkey. The relationship could then be built from there. As it was, Robin immediately fancied Regina and what made it look even worse was that Ginny was visibly pregnant in the first episode of 3B so it looked like Robin helped Regina up but left a heavily pregnant woman lying on the floor.
I agree with everything you said here.