It is just that so far both of the Rumpel episodes could be pulled from the show, at least the fairytale world parts, and the show would still make perfect sense, so i would actually consider them both filler at least the fairytale land parts. So far his character is mostly used to help the other characters on their quests and such, so if they do a Rumpel episode for the first episode of Season 2 then it needs to be grounded in the present day conflict in fairytale land.
The episode with Belle was not at all relevant to the main plot of the show. The episode where we saw Rumpel become the dark one is a good back story episode, but not relevant to the main present day conflict because most of the characters on the show were not even alive at the time of the events of Rumpel becoming the dark one.
And honestly i think they need for the first episode to be an Emma episode. Just like the pilot was and the finale was of Season 1 just because the premise of the show is that Emma is the new fairytale character and the show is her story.
And i do not think it is fair to say that i don’t like the character and that is it. I just do not see Rumpel as enough of a main character and honestly i find his agenda boring. He wants to find Bae so do that already. I hope he can’t see the future, because if he can that makes his character even less interesting, in my opinion. I think what is interesting about the character is his manipulation of the events to get to this point and if it was not manipulation and just he saw it. I find that boring and contrived.