407: Critical Analysis

I think Jen said somewhere that the Emma loses control of her powers has less to do with her insecurities with her mom and more about, this is what she missed out with Henry.

I don’t think Emma feels that she’s being replaced by baby Neal. I don’t know, I think that feeling of replacement makes more sense for children who are slightly older than the younger baby.

My mom’s goddaughter is only a year younger than her older sister. The older sister might not be able to vocalize it but I feel fairly sure that she resents not being the baby anymore. there’s things should be able to do on her own at this age and she still needs mummy’s attention.

I don’t get that vibe with Emma.

That’s not to say Emma can’t feel some resentment towards Snow but I think Emma’s worked past those issues. She even told DQ that she understands now why her parents gave her up.

I totally agree. I think her initial feelings, when she was with all those babies, we’re related more towards her own feelings of missing out on her time with baby Henry. They spoke of first time mommies, and she lost that opportunity with her own son. She felt out of place. The mommies were binding over a shared experience, one that Emma never got to experience.

Later, with Ingrid, she lost control over her feelings, emotions, and magic by allowing Ingrid to bring up past feelings that Emma had already worked through. Those fears, that her brother is “normal” and more loved, that her family fears her, that she’s being used, those are fears that Emma fully knows are unrealistic and false. Emma stated the truth, boldly. My family loves me! However, for that brief moment, Emma allowed Ingrid to present those fears as reality, and they are not Emma’s reality.

Rumple was right when he told the crowd to heed Emma’s words when she asked them to leave her alone. They didn’t, and they escalated the situation.

Emma will come to terms with her doubts about her family. She knows the truth, that they love her and trust her. It’s her magic that she’s doubting, in my opinion, not her family.

I log onto tumblr and that quote is on my dash:

“The Snow Queen does push her buttons about baby Neal, but it’s not in a way where she’s jealous or that she feels slighted by her parents in any way,” Morrison explains. “I felt it more came from a place of sadness and pain that she missed out on that with Henry, and that her parents missed out on that with her, and that was something they were never going to be able to reclaim. It feels tragic.” (x)

And of course the memories from last season were fake memories. But they were believable enough that’s what Emma remembered, that she and Henry were always together.

Exactly what I got from the scene at the play group. Thought it was as much about what she had no chance to experience with her mother as it was about what Emma didn’t have with her son. Has nothing to do with jealousy but everything with loss. Glad to see Jennifer Morrison agrees with my headcanon 😛 lol

Jealousy would look and sound different, and I mean look and sound. Microexpressions, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice. There was not a iota of jealousy in Jennifer Morrison’s acting, no disgust and anger, there was sadness and anger. And she was hurting, because of her own powers, powers she is not sure about herself, she has no full control of, that were useful so far if she could muster them up, but she can’t tell, if they couldn’t do harm as well. Emma fears her own powers herself, and she can understand others do, that even her family might, no matter that it feels painful, to realize they actually do.

It hurts now even more, because Emma has embraced Storybrooke and the people there as her family. She let her guard down, so she is more vulnerable than ever before. The Snow Queen, Ingrid, makes good use of that. Adding maybe a tiny bit of accelerant icy sparks and off she goes, the magical explosion, Emma losing control. Ingrid is playing with fears Emma has had anyway.

Guess I am one of the few though sure disliking how Snow reacted, Emma would need support, but I don’t see that as being OoC. It might make not all sense to me, and is sure not how I like her, but that is how they have developed Snow over the past season. She is struggling with building a mother-daughter relation with Emma, she has kept some distance (probably to avoid confronting her own feelings of guilt) before, she was judgemental, dismissive, not listening. If Snow would all of a sudden be now all caring and understanding and supportive to Emma, that I would call OoC. Since 3B they are rather consistent with Snow’s reactions to Emma. 3A was a bit of mix, sometimes they seemed to come closer, then again there was the Echo-Cave moment.

Sometimes a character makes not much sense to us, we might very much dislike how he or she is developing, but that doesn’t mean it is not how this character could be developed, that there is not a certain logic behind it, the one the writers favor. I might disagree, if that development drives the story in a good way, not see, how that should turn into a happy ending one day, nor see anything of hope in the story as it is, but OoC means doing something unexpected, out of the ordinary, not because of some hidden other character side though. Snow’s behavior was pretty much how I expected her to react at the moment.

I don’t see anyone talking about this, but the way Rumple spoke his line about “Of, course, if my darling wife asks,” absolutely chilled me.  Belle needed to stop and fix her marriage right then, but she ran off blithely and Hook stayed behind to address something else.  If I were Belle I’d be freaked out to go home with him.

I think we need a few more scenes of “Home Life with the Stiltskins.”

Am I reading the line wrong?  Was it really for the benefit of the others, not Belle, or is Rumple still tweaked about her controlling him?  Or did Mr. Carlysle’s delivery perhaps not express what the writers intended?