Confirmed: MRJ/Neal Cassidy In 512 (EW and TVLine)

[thedarkonedearie]

Maybe I’m getting grumpy with age, but I find myself less and less impressed by a portrayal of masculinity where the guy must kick butt, swing a sword, or “cast magic missiles.

I’m not so sure this has anything to do with masculinity.  The women are very strong on the show.  Rumple we know is strong with magic, Charming has his sword fighting abilities, heck even Robin has his bow and arrow.  And we’ve seen Belle kick some butt too.  But Neal has no fighting skills.  And that’s fine.  Not all men need to be tough, but I just feel in a world with magic, it would be hard for him to survive because literally everyone other than maybe Henry have some sort of strength they can use.  If you were ok with Neal sitting back in the background like an Archie character or a dwarf then fine.  But the main players are all very strong.  Neal is a strong person in his own way.  But the ability to defend and fight I feel he was lacking.  For me, he felt out of place in a land with magic in storybrooke.

[Slurpeez]

This isn’t Game of Thrones, though. We were told and promised that this was a story about hope and family, and for a lot of us, Neal was the lynchpin that helped make this show about family.

This is the real crux of the matter. The show had an MO for the first 2.5 seasons of family reconciliation and hope. Neal’s season 3 promotional poster had the message “believe in second chances.” Well, where was Neal’s second chance? Neal told Mulan and Robin Hood that his son and Emma were his second chance. On a show that was originally about hope of second chances and family finding each other (e.g. Henry finding Emma, Charming finding Snow, Emma finding her parents, Rumple and Emma finding Baelfire) finding Neal again and his integrating back into the town of SB with his family was where things were clearly headed before the reset button was hit.

What @Keb said. Isn’t the argument that a character no longer does something for the plot and hence must be eliminated a bit spurious? I think it has more to do with worldbuilding and fresh ideas than it does with any given character.

Yes, exactly. While the writers claimed they had told everything there was to tell about Neal, I think it’s more that they were forced to wrap up his arc in a rushed way and to compromise their original plan to hit the reset button. (All one needs to do is look at the dynamic between Will and Anastasia on OUAT in WL  to see what the writers probably intended for Emma and Neal).

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[Rainbow]

Charming has his sword fighting abilities, heck even Robin has his bow and arrow.  And we’ve seen Belle kick some butt too.  But Neal has no fighting skills.

See, Neal has actually the skills that charming and Robin have, learn in NVL, bc from the small things we got from NVL was obvious that at some part Bae knew how to fight, especially if we see his acts on s3A, his ninja moves with Rumple staff on his castle and then there is the street smartness. This goes back to bad writing and how the writers didnt explored those things.

"I offended you with my opinion? Ha, you should hear the ones I keep to myself".

[Slurpeez]

I’m not so sure this has anything to do with masculinity. The women are very strong on the show. Rumple we know is strong with magic, Charming has his sword fighting abilities, heck even Robin has his bow and arrow. And we’ve seen Belle kick some butt too. But Neal has no fighting skills. And that’s fine. Not all men need to be tough, but I just feel in a world with magic, it would be hard for him to survive because literally everyone other than maybe Henry have some sort of strength they can use. If you were ok with Neal sitting back in the background like an Archie character or a dwarf then fine. But the main players are all very strong. Neal is a strong person in his own way. But the ability to defend and fight I feel he was lacking. For me, he felt out of place in a land with magic in storybrooke.

While having fighting ability might be what popular culture superficially portrays as being strong, the two are not synonymous. Take, for instance, the stereotype of a beefy jock, who though very athletic, doesn’t have very much going on upstairs; his only primary motivation tends to showing how big and powerful he is. By contrast, when I write about strong characters, I mean characters who have complex motivations, rich histories with other characters, and a strong sense of agency. Therefore, a character might be physically weak but end up developing a cunning intellect (e.g. think Tyrion on GoT whose mind is his weapon). Thus, when people like @nevermore bemoan the fact that most of OUAT’s characters (both male and female) are cardboard, what they mean is that the characters have become very flat. Instead of their wishes shaping their environment in ways that are unique to them, the plot controls them. This goes back to @Keb’s earlier point that the characters often seem to act OOC now as they react in ways which previously seemed unfathomable and unrealistic, given previously establish facets of their earlier personalities (which in seasons one through three were much more in tact and intricate). This essay really addresses the issue in a good way, and I think it applies not just to female characters, but also to male ones.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[thedarkonedearie]

I only compared it to Game of Thrones because it came to my head.  GoT is able to kill off characters, even after setting up a theme for them going forward with potential interactions and plot points.  But instead, it fools us, gets our hopes up, and takes the character away from us, and then we never get some of those interactions we were hoping for.  But after the death, Got handles it well.  It moves the plot in an interesting fashion, albeit usually a sharp right turn.  OUAT did not handle Neal’s death properly and the subsequent writing was not done well.  And his death really didn’t set up much future conflict for the plot.  I understand that the show is about family, and one of the themes surrounding season 3 was second chances, but that doesn’t mean they can’t set us up for that, and then surprise us and take that away.  Again, for me, I was surprised and I was intrigued to see what they would do with the story (call it a fallout).  But it’s what they did after Neal’s death that made it feel like the death was pointless.  They could have killed him and still kept the show going strong.  But that’s not what happened.  Now, maybe this Neal scene will provide some more closure at least, but as someone who isn’t a fan of any particular ship, and just likes seeing old faces pop up again, I’m excited to see Neal and will not deem it cruel if he shows up so we can get the Henry-father interaction, and to get his blessing, and then we don’t see him again.  It will be nice just to see an old face again that I enjoyed.

[nevermore]

If you were ok with Neal sitting back in the background like an Archie character or a dwarf then fine.  But the main players are all very strong.  Neal is a strong person in his own way.  But the ability to defend and fight I feel he was lacking.  For me, he felt out of place in a land with magic in storybrooke.

I take your point, but I think you and I are talking at cross-purposes. Within the existing storyline and portrayal, you feel that Neal had run his course. And I was saying, there was no inherent reason for why the storyline and portrayal went the way they did. These are all writing choices after all. I suppose I just resist the sense of retroactive determinism. Most of my critiques of OUAT don’t speak to characters “internal” existence within the show, but to representations and writing choices. For example, nothing precluded the writers from exploring Neal’s street smarts, and using that as his main source of strength. Instead, we were told he was street smart, but it wasn’t incorporated into the plot in any significant way. Honestly, I think this has more to do with the fact that the writers weren’t sure what to do with Neal.

[thedarkonedearie]

While having fighting ability might be what popular culture superficially portrays as being strong, the two are not synonymous. Being physically strong does not make a character strong (e.g. the stereotype of a beefy jock, who though very athletic, doesn’t have very much going on upstairs; his only primary motivation tends to showing how big and powerful he is). By contrast, when I write about strong characters, I mean characters who have complex motivations, rich histories with other characters, and a strong sense of agency. Therefore, a character might be physically weak but end up develop a cunning intellect (e.g. think Tyrion on GoT whose mind is his weapon). Thus, when people like @nevermore bemoan the fact that most of OUAT’s characters (both male and female) are cardboard, what they mean is that the characters have become very flat. Instead of their wishes shaping their environment in ways that are unique to them, the plot controls them. This goes back to @Keb‘s earlier point that the characters often seem to act OOC now as they react in ways which previously seemed unfathomable and unrealistic, given previously establish facets of their earlier personalities (which in seasons one through three were much more in tact and intricate). This essay really addresses the issue in a good way, and I think it applies not just to female characters, but also to male ones.

All of this is very true.  But I don’t believe that Neal was ever on the same intellect level as Tyrion.  Every character in that show is very strong, for the most part, because they have to be otherwise they wouldn’t survive.  And yes, strong can mean a lot of things.  But I don’t know if we saw enough of Neal’s street smart skills to deem him worthy of being intellectually strong.  And we know he didn’t have magic.  And there wasn’t any increased physical strength I remember him showing.  He’s eotionally strong, sure.  But that’s not going to help you in a fight.  It’s not the best comparison, but similarly in GoT, you are in a setting where people are bad.  We get villains on OUAT every half season who are extremely powerful.  And we have heroes who are extremely powerful.  Other than being connected emotionally and physically to many of the characters, Neal did not represent any sort of strength to me and therefore appeared out of his league when dealing with people with magic.  Yes, he has done things, but usually with the help of others (the shadow, trapping Pan in squid ink, etc.)  I basically was saying that realistically it would be hard for him to survive in a world with magic and evil villains, even with Rumple and Emma protecting him  And as a result, he felt like a boring character when magic fights were happening (like when Cora and Regina attack Gold’s shop).  He wasn’t very helpful.  That’s all I was really getting at.  But yes, the writing is part of it.  I’m sure they could have incorporated Neal as a stronger character to help him adapt in a land with magic.

[thedarkonedearie]

Honestly, I think this has more to do with the fact that the writers weren’t sure what to do with Neal.

Yup, so they killed him off.  And honestly I know the CS ship had something to do with it.  But also, the way they were writing the character, it just felt they didn’t know what else to do with him.

[Slurpeez]

All of this is very true.  But I don’t believe that Neal was ever on the same intellect level as Tyrion.  Every character in that show is very strong, for the most part, because they have to be otherwise they wouldn’t survive.

I’m not saying Neal is to OUAT what Tyrion is to GoT. I simply used Tyrion as an example of what a non-stereoyptical “strong” character can be. Yet, the writers of OUAT are no where nearly as gifted as GRR Martin is (who is especially gifted at creating complex, layered characters and subverting what it means for a character to be “strong”). By contrast, the writers of OUAT ceased writing really strong characters after about season one. But that is the entire problem. Neal and the other characters (even Snow and Charming)  lack real development, because the writers of OUAT don’t know what they’re doing anymore. They had season one planned out and part of season two, but when they got the rights to other things, they went a bit crazy (like kids in a candy shop). I think that is really why most of the narrative really is plot-driven versus character driven. The answer to most questions now is just “because of PLOT” rather than any well thought-out reason.

Yup, so they killed him off.  And honestly I know the CS ship had something to do with it.  But also, the way they were writing the character, it just felt they didn’t know what else to do with him.

And that is a prime example of writer’s block. If a writer’s solution is simply to kill off a character because she or he doesn’t know what else to do, that means the writer isn’t very creative.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[thedarkonedearie]

All of this being said, other than Rumple’s Girl, who has made her opinions very clear on Neal returning, now that we know it’s likely only for the cold opening, are you mad?  Glad to see him even if only for a brief moment?  Disappointed they couldn’t bring him back for more?  Do you think it’s cruel for fans of Neal to get a glimpse of him, only to have them take him away again, and possibly even endorsing CS?

Figured I’d bring it back, since that’s what the thread was about.  Since I don’t feel as strongly about Neal’s death as everyone else, I for one will be very happy to see a familiar face again, even if for only a short amount of time.  He’s in this 100th episode because the writers know he was important to the show.

[Author]

Posts