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“When they killed Neal, they killed the core of the show.” Really that’s it.
Absolutely and that’s why killing off Neal was such a bad move for the show. It was never about CS vs SF, that was an unfortunate consequence, but Neal was the glue that tied all the characters together and ultimately gave Rumple a purpose.
Neal gave Rumple a reason to help the “heroes”. Throughout season 1-3A it was about finding and reuniting with Baelfire. Without Neal what reason does Rumple have to help the “heroes” because they sure as hell don’t give a crap about Rumple or Belle outside of what RumBelle can do for them. Even Henry just uses them because apparently his dad’s side of the family doesn’t matter as much as his mother’s side. The CharMills clan would be screwed without Rumple. They’d be screwed without Belle there to encourage Rumple to help.
[adrotate group="5"]All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of Felix“When they killed Neal, they killed the core of the show.” Really that’s it.
Kill the show’s catalysis and you kill the momentum, simple as that. Reuniting with Baelfire was always the behind-the-scene driving force and the end goal of the show. Without him, Rumple’s modus operandi is simply gone. By extension, characters like Emma and Henry also lost out on their really happy ending. Even the conflict between Snow and Regina was all engineered so that Regina would cast the curse to find Rumple’s lost son. Characters like Snow, Charming and Regina consequently suffer as their character portrayal is weakened with the passing of time as A&E try to come up with “twists” like the baby-snatching twist or the reveal that Regina had a long-lost sister that she conveniently forgot about but who then raped Regina’s boyfriend, which resulted in a child. Without reuniting with Baelfire as a driving force, what is the point of the show anymore? The show should have ended in season 3, with the resolution being a reunited family that included Baelfire as the final missing puzzle piece. That would have given the show a clear beginning (find Bae), middle (Bae is found) and end (Bae is integrated and welcomed into SB). In my opinion, a show that doesn’t have a clear start, climax and resolution is just bad. Basic story telling 101.
As I wrote in another thread, regarding season six, Eddy Kitsis said, “It’s time to tell new stories, broaden the show and move forward.” Seriously? This is precisely what the show doesn’t need to do and why I predict season 6 will continue to erode the quality of the show even further. It doesn’t need broadening; it needs condensing! All the loose threads need to be tied up and the show ended, ASAP. That right there is the reason why OUAT will never gain in quality or momentum again. The show runners don’t realize the narrative has gone on too long and doesn’t need expansion. If they want to create a spin off series like Neverland, then fine, but don’t drag out a show that already has gone on too long and has no narrative direction anymore.
Unlike GoT, which strongly improved in quality in season 6 (might be the best since season 1), OUAT will probably decline further in its sixth season. The show runners of GoT have a clear destination in mind and know how to get there. Also, they aren’t trying to stretch GoT out beyond season 8, which will be the last. They aren’t trying to expand the story anymore but are actually killing off characters right and left in an attempt to narrow the focus to just the main characters as the story reaches its climax and eventual resolution. GoT writers are actively condensing their story just as OUAT writers are actively expanding, and the difference in quality is very staggering. Introducing new characters (i.e. “shiny toy syndrome”) is not going to fix what is already broken. A&E haven’t learnt that lesson and probably won’t, which is why OUAT won’t improve.
"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
“When they killed Neal, they killed the core of the show.” Really that’s it.
THIS!
Before Season 4, this was a show about a dysfunctional family finding it’s way back together….from all points, the Charmings, The Mills, & The Stilskins, all trying to manage and find a way to be a settled family with differences cast aside! That was ruined when they killed off the link holding these three families together, it wasn’t just Henry, it was also Neal! And so much potential was killed because of it!
“When they killed Neal, they killed the core of the show.” Really that’s it.
Absolutely and that’s why killing off Neal was such a bad move for the show. It was never about CS vs SF, that was an unfortunate consequence, but Neal was the glue that tied all the characters together and ultimately gave Rumple a purpose. Neal gave Rumple a reason to help the “heroes”.
Exactly, reality wise speaking….Rumple shouldn’t give a crap about any of the “heroes”! The only ones he’d remotely even associate himself with is Regina, because she was his favorite student and they have a long history together, and Henry, because he’s his grandson. Anyone else…I don’t think Rumple would lift a finger to help save from drowning.
Neal was the cause of the curse, so that Rumple could one day reunite with his son! He worked for more than two hundred years, and raised hell to get his son back….only to lose him permanently?! I’m sorry, I just refuse to believe that’s how the story was intended to be written! It was too much potential, and even if Adam and Eddy wanted CS to become canon (which I do not believe for one second was their original plan) that still shouldn’t have been the reason to kill off a good man who wanted to give his son what he was denied, a great father!
Throughout season 1-3A it was about finding and reuniting with Baelfire. Without Neal what reason does Rumple have to help the “heroes” because they sure as hell don’t give a crap about Rumple or Belle outside of what RumBelle can do for them. Even Henry just uses them because apparently his dad’s side of the family doesn’t matter as much as his mother’s side. The CharMills clan would be screwed without Rumple. They’d be screwed without Belle there to encourage Rumple to help.
All The Wasted Potential:
Henry could have been the Mickey Mouse to Rumplestilskin’s Yen Sid! The Daniel-san to his Mr. Miyagi! The Charlie to his Grandpa Joe! We couldn’t get one episode dedicated to their relationship!
Henry and Neal… (Cries) Does this even need any words? I mean, he was the kid’s father for Christ sake! It was so many things Neal could have taught his son that he’ll never get the chance to do now!
Neal and Hook….in spite of our feelings towards guyliner, him and Neal could have had a decent BrOTP!
Neal, Robin, David, and Hook down at the Rabbit Hole…sharing a drink and discussing the town’s latest crisis and coming up with a solution instead of always relying on their women to solve it for them.
FireQueen BrOTP….given the fact Regina and Neal were almost siblings, I think a BrOTP would have worked really well with them! A brother-sister feeling relationship! Imagine all of the sass offs that could occurred between these two!! They could’ve been the Meredith and Alex of OUAT!
SwanFire….at this point in the game, I would have accepted it as a BrOTP over them just killing him off. Deep down, I wish this shipping was still canon, and in my heart…it always will be! It was just too much unfinished business between the two of them for Adam and Eddy to just end their story the way that they did!
SwanFireQueen: Seeing Regina, Neal, and Emma co-parent Henry would have been the biggest highlight! Three totally different people raising a teenager! The strict mom, the funny dad, and the chilled mom! That would have made for some pretty great scenes….scenes we will now never get the chance to see.
The Stilskin Family….Rumple, Belle, and Neal as a family should have been shown! Belle trying to be a good step mom to a man whose technically older than her, Rumple and Neal repairing their relationship and doing stuff together, like going to Granny’s for a Father & Son Special! Rumple and Neal taking Henry out for an adventure, for a Stilskin Men Day.
So much potential…and all of it lost because of the writer’s careless and utterly stupid mistake.
"If you go as far as you can see...you will then see enough to go even further." - Finn Balor
What i fear and considering the press for the SDCC, i fear that next season will retcon the past of some of the characters, bc that the characters will try to give happy endings to the untold stories and find out they have untold stories as well, together with some tweets about Emma story from the new writer, makes me think more retcon regarding emma`s past and maybe other characters.
So it’s been really interesting watching another A and E run show this summer.
I’ve been watching Dead of Summer because 1) there’s nothing else on and I need something to watch/review 2) I really wanted to test a hypothesis that has been lurking in the fandom for a few years.
The hypothesis goes that S1 of OUAT (and to little bit of a lesser extent S2) was so successful because (and only because) A and E had sat on the idea and perfected it for something like 7-10 years, while working on other shows (Felicity, LOST most notably); this is why S3-present day is so choppy, inconsistent, ect…because A and E had in no way thought past S1 and some of S2.
Because their original work was so self contained with a clear beginning (Bae–Rumple’s search–Dark Curse), a middle (Emma comes to SB), and an end (Emma breaks the Curse) it was darn near perfect/genius. Their ideas for season 2 were lightly sketched out (Bae is really Neal; Emma and Bae reunite) but once they got past their original concept of Savior/Lost Boy they had no where to go so they began to “make it up as they go” like we often say and this is largely where they began to seriously falter. While I did like S3A at the time (and still do, tbh) it does have a host of problems with the narrative.
So what I wanted to test with Dead of Summer was if their writing is actually good but been hammered to death by fan demand/ABC demand OR if they are really just poor writers with only a vague sense of mythology, world building, character development, gender politics, and everything else we talk about in this thread. We’re only two episodes into Dead of Summer so I’m not quite ready to make a fully fledged conclusion yet but let’s say that so far….I’m leaning toward the latter more than the former.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I keep hoping that they will do something interesting next season. They said that they are going to try and use the other untold story characters to reveal more about the main characters. That is what they should do. They can do that and go into the deep family issues that have never been discussed on the show. I just don’t kn0w if the writers really get what issues have been dropped. All the abandonment stuff with Emma. Regina and Snow’s relationship as step mother and daughter. Henry’s issues with losing his father as well as growing up without Emma. There are so many things. I just think the writers seem to think oh we have had one conversation about these issues, the characters hugged, so it’s over. That is just not real. Henry losing his father. Emma growing up in the system. Regina’s mass murdering tendencies, the abuse her mother did her. There are issues that will never go away. They will always be part of the characters and part of their interactions and the writers just don’t get it.
Whilst I think you shouldn’t plan too far ahead in time (eg the ending to How I met your Mother does not fit by the end of season 9 because of everything that had happened in the seasons between when that ending was filmed and when it actually aired) but there does need to be a plan in order for there to be a consistent story.
A&E had a plan for season 1-2 but then Neverland came in and that screwed up the plan then ABC did half seasons which screwed up the show even more because it became throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, hopefully now that season 6 is going to be a season long plot, it gives chance for the characters to breathe. I am oddly hopeful for season 6.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixSo what I wanted to test with Dead of Summer was if their writing is actually good but been hammered to death by fan demand/ABC demand OR if they are really just poor writers with only a vague sense of mythology, world building, character development, gender politics, and everything else we talk about in this thread. We’re only two episodes into Dead of Summer so I’m not quite ready to make a fully fledged conclusion yet but let’s say that so far….I’m leaning toward the latter more than the former.
I think it might be very difficult to ascertain which case it is after only one season. Yes, OUAT in WL was pretty good, as it had compelling characters and a contained start, middle and end, but it was only one season in length. Had it been renewed for another season, it might have become dreadful, as its parent show did. I think A&E might suffer from both lack of long-term planning and fan pandering. Unless Dead of Summer intends to be more than one season in length, it might become near impossible to gauge which it is. Having written that, I would be curious to know your opinion after the summer ends, as I don’t intend on watching it. I’ve learned my lesson with OUAT and don’t ever plan to watch another show produced by A&E.
"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
The split season thing, though, isn’t really part of the problem. There are a ton of other shows that do that as well (many on ABC) and do not have nearly the amount of inconsistent narrative that OUAT has. You could argue that OUAT is a myth-based show, not a episodic program like, say, Grey’s or even Scandal but there are other myth shows that do split seasons (TWD, your standard DC comic book shows) and they do just fine with narrative, plot, character, ect. It’s not a matter of split seasons; its a matter of 1) A and E thinking they need to tell two totally different stories EACH split and 2) them, honestly, not being good writers. They do have good moments–but when you consider the best A and E episodes (the Pilot, A Land Without Magic, Manhattan) they are all episodes that were thought up long ago when they were sketching out the entire central story of OUAT–The Dark Curse (which includes Snowing and Regina), Emma, and Bae.
I kinda think blaming ABC’s split session deal doesn’t really hold a lot of water. ABC might to blame for some other things (the big Hook push) but in this case, it’s a writing problem.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Yes, OUAT in WL was pretty good, as it had compelling characters and a contained start, middle and end, but it was only one season in length.
Yes. This is a great point so I went back and did some digging. OUATinWL was 13 episodes; A and E penned zero of those by themselves. Every episode that has A and E’s name on it also has at least one other writer–Zack Estrin or Jane.
To compare this to Dead of Summer…its roughly the same so far. No episodes with just their name on it; Ian Goldberg gets credit for writing the pilot with them. Now that’s going to change next week when A and E pen episode 3 (and then 4) by themselves, without Goldberg. So I’ll have a more solid ground to analyze after that. But, so far, episode 2 (no A and E) was better than episode 1 (A and E, plus Ian Goldberg)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
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