Shows cannot keep couples apart forever and they also can’t wait until the last episode of the entire series to put their main couple together. You cheat the fans hardcore when you do that and most shows don’t tend to do that anymore because they know it’s annoys the fans
It’s like this insane balancing act when it comes to “when do we put the couple together.” Look at Booth and Bones from Bones or Mer and Derek from Grey’s (good lord Mer and Der…took them 5 seasons until they finally made it official that they were going to be together forever and with with Booth and Bones it took..what…8?) But ONCE doesn’t have the kind of numbers that allow for being that dragged out. My prediction is that we get 4.5 seasons (13 episodes of a 5th season to get to 100 episodes), which means that Emma’s love life has to be solved AT LEAST by the end of S3. They can’t drag it out past then if they want to develop Emma and X as forever and a legit couple. So season 3 is the choice (Hook or Neal); season 4 is “watch us struggle as a couple” with the end of S4 being “we are now a legit couple and are rock solid, nothing is coming between us.” And the abbreviated S5 is Tallahassee. 🙂 (see what I did there)