Parallels

[kfchimera]

I do not think Neal planned to ditch Rumple until the moment he realized his father lied to cover up that he had wanted to kill his son because of a prophecy.  Pan is a master manipulator too, so that factors in.  Neal and Rumple both do believe in fate and destiny, though they both want to escape it.  I will agree Neal was not ready to take a leap of faith, but he didn’t think he needed to do that to protect Henry by risking him with his father.  He was overconfident to think he could find the others before Pan woke up, but Neal thought he had a way off the island.  So it wasn’t a matter of battling Pan but avoiding him just long enough to get to Emma and the others (and that included some serious firepower in that team too).

I do not hate Hook, Rumple or Emma, and while I like Neal, I can see his flaws too.    What’s more, the character recognizes his mistakes and apologizes for them.   He might have been hard on Rumple from the audience perspective that has seen how moved  Rumple was, but I do not forget what it took to move him.   Rumple was THIS close to killing Henry, and even after he got to NL, he was spending hours with imaginary Belle trying to strengthen his resolve to do the right thing.    It might hurt to hear your family doesn’t trust you, but if you have done awful things to them, you kind of need to expect they might not forgive you so easily.  Or you might turn yourself into Henry Sr.

Neal might be more on the unforgiving side, especially compared to Belle, but it is not like he has double-standards for himself.  He never expected Emma to forgive him.  He believed that so completely, that he lost hope, which is another character flaw, but it is not selfishness.  Even now, he is on his way to NL for BOTH her and Henry, and he does not know if they can get back together romantically.  He has a dialog line to that effect so it is not just fan speculation that he feels that way.    He is in NL to help those he loves, without knowing if they will love him back.   Now this is my fan interpretation, to think that extends to Henry, because I think Neal knows what Pan tries to do to the boys he takes.  I think Neal’s fear and sense of urgency to get to NL is based on his personal experience with the psychological torture that Pan uses to undermine your confidence that your family loves you.  Take that into account as well with how Neal reacts to Rumple, because Neal has been on the receiving end of that Pan manipulation too, and was again, when Pan brought up the prophecy.

I’ll defend Hook /Rumple/Regina at times, and their decisions, depends on what opinion is said and how far it seeks to scrub them from responsibility or to demonize them despite their efforts to change, but I do the same for Neal too.  People have their reasons to want to hate various characters.  Some are deeply personal.  Yes, if Neal could have been as trusting as Belle, maybe things would be better, or maybe it would have turned out like when Belle convinced Rumple to give Hook a second chance to just sail away.  Hook came back and shot Belle, to make her loose her memory, even though she basically had saved his life.  I understand he was so damaged and hurt he did not value his life other than to accomplish his revenge, and Belle did not try to spare his life out of concern for him, but his enemy.  The thing is Neal saw that Rumple had no genuine love for Henry, only for Neal.  That hurts too.  He saw his father thought of his son as an enemy.

It is easy to keep blaming the victims because they aren’t “nice’ enough to those who have hurt them.  One thing I will say about Neal, he (and those who defend him) generally do not apply that standard to him and his behavior, because the character himself is capable of recognizing his mistakes to the extent he is the one who wronged the other person.  Not trusting someone who tried to hurt you, is not wronging them.

Neal’s biggest flaws are that he hurt Emma, but he at least apologizes to Emma.  He lets her yell and doesn’t tell her she HAS to forgive him.  He never expected that, and he still does not expect, that she would just take him back in a romantic sense, yet he wants to fight to free her and Henry from Pan.      So that is how he in turn, relates to Rumple.  If Rumple truly wants to help Henry, to really earn back his son, he is going to have to realize he must believe in himself, stop believing himself a monster (why he pushed Belle-vision away).    He is going to have to keep being good even in the face of disbelief from those who he has hurt before, until they are ready to accept he truly has changed.

I remember Regina showing up at the diner, then getting annoyed that people didn’t warmly welcome her.  Change is not that easy, you cannot do one good thing and expect people to just forget and sweep under the rug all that went before.  Neal doesn’t treat Rumple that way, but he doesn’t expect to be treated that way himself (dialog backs that up).  I know he’ll give Rumple more chances, and he’s already given him som.  He dropped everything to take his father to SB, and was ready to fight to the death with nothing but a sword against Cora and Regina, two people so powerful, that some will argue their power is ample reason for other characters to do bad things, for fear of reprisal from them.  Yet Neal fought for Rumple then.   Just right now, in that moment, he doubted Rumple, but it played into the fact that Rumple had been doubting himself.  If you truly want someone to believe in you, you have to believe in yourself too.

[Phee]

*points up at KFC’s post* Yep, WORD to all of that! Well said.

[obisgirl]

I do not think Neal planned to ditch Rumple until the moment he realized his father lied to cover up that he had wanted to kill his son because of a prophecy.

I disagree because he knew what squid ink could do.  He knows it can paralyze magical creatures and his father can do magic.  It was probably in the back of his mind when he came up with it, kill two birds with one stone without re-sorting to killing.

Hearing that from Pan,  which by the way he believes the show’s villain over is own father — was the tipping point.

[Phee]

which by the way he believes the show’s villain over is own father

Given his history, both ancient and recent, with his father, I honest to God can’t blame him for having doubts. They showed us in flashbacks that when Rumple had the chance to do the right thing and just ask Bae a question and trust he’d get an honest answer he wanted to hear, instead he whipped them away in a puff of smoke. Do you honestly expect, having had those sorts of experiences before, that Neal was supposed to just take Rumple’s word for anything? The last time Neal saw his father, he was trying to stomp on Whale’s face, just like Neal saw him squash people when he was a child. Do you honestly expect Neal to have blind faith in his father, when all he’s seen of late suggests that he hasn’t changed and is as volatile and dangerous as ever?

He couldn’t keep his father frozen 24/7, they’d never be able to move. What’s he gonna do, freeze his father any time he needs to sleep, or go pee behind a bush, because it’s simply not safe to let down his guard for even a moment because there’s a very real threat on his son’s life. Would that have been healthier for their relationship, with Neal freezing his father at every opportunity, just to be on the safe side? No, that wouldn’t serve to advance their relationship in any positive way, it only would have bred more resentment. Besides, Rumple could have whisked himself and Henry away without a moment’s warning, and there’s nothing Neal would have been able to do to prevent that. There’s no time to magically freeze someone with ink when they could vanish before you even saw it coming.

It would have been completely irresponsible for Neal to have stayed with Rumple. He couldn’t trust him, and with good reason, AND HIS SON’S LIFE WAS AT STAKE. If you were tasked with protecting your child, would you seriously wander around a jungle with someone who has proven time and again to you directly that they can’t be trusted to not harm and kill, especially when you’ve just discovered there’s a prophecy that your child will be that person’s undoing and the person had actually previously had it in their head that they were gonna have to kill your child?

[storyteller]

To me its not a matter of seeing and treating the “villains” nicely, its about whether our “heroes” see them for their true selves or not and if we accept the baseline assumption that Rumple from when we first encounter him in “Desperate Souls” is indicative of his true self then, if Bae only wants his Papa back and Rumple utterly despises being a weak, cowardly sort, why would he want to go back to that? For Rumple I don’t think it’s so much as matter of going back as it is of finding his courage and overcoming the past. While for Regina, I believe her journey will culminate for her when her heart is healed.  The only characters who’ve shown the advanced insight into the plight of the “villains” that I would’ve hoped to see from Neal, David and Snow are Belle, who’s always seen good in Rumple and held true to that in spite of everything, Henry who has believed that he can have the love of his whole family and Emma on her good days because she aside from Henry is the only one I’ve seen Regina let her guard down for.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Neal has to recognize that he is his own father and all that running and hiding he’s done is coming back to bite him. I worry that Neal’s actions will have pushed Rumple over the edge and Rumple will conclude that his son is dead to him, Henry is dead to him and that all he has ever truly had is his power. Thus forcing him to embrace his identity as the Dark One and become the chief antagonist once again only this time with fewer scruples.

I frankly would love to have a scene where Neal is imprisoned and his father is the only one to let him out and Rumple willingly abandons him not in fear as he did before but in ire after reciting at length the deals he had to make, the lives ruined etc.

Custodian of Graham's darts, Rumple's spindle and Robin's quiver

[Slurpeez]

The argument that Neal ought to have trusted Rumplestiltskin, despite knowing the risk his father poses to Henry’s life, is riddled with holes. First, by Rumple’s own admission, the only deal he’s ever broken was the one he made with his son, Neal. Rumple let go of Bae’s hand, resulting in a lifetime of pain and abandonment issues for Neal. Neal’s own experience over a deal his father broke with him is enough to convince him not to take his dad’s word as full-proof. He knows his father’s nasty habit of self-perservation caused Rumple to choose power over his own son, aka himself. What reason does Neal have to believe his father’s word when it comes to Henry if Rumple couldn’t even stand by his word when it came to Neal? And the audience knows that Rumple came this close to killing his own grandson in 2×22 and would have succeeded had he not received the news that his son was dead. The only reason Rumple was willing to sacrifice his life to save Henry was to honor his son’s memory.

Yet, almost as soon as Rumple discovers that Neal is actually alive, what does he do? He starts internally wresting with the same condundrum: sacrifice himself so that Henry can live or kill Henry and survive, thereby giving himself a second chance with Neal. Yet, therein is Rumple’s own twisted logic, since by choosing self-preservation over Henry’s life, he’d forever alienate Neal for killing Henry. Rumple acknowledges he has something to live for again (i.e. his son), strongly implying that  he is once again tempted to try again to kill Henry. Rumple uprooted everyone in the EF just to get back his son, so why would sacrificing his own grandson be that much harder? He has nightmares about killing Henry and nearly did so once before.

Rumple even dismisses the vision of Belle, who represents his moral center, showing Rumple again is trying to drown out his own conscience! So, Neal was right on the money in reading his dad’s inner turmoil when PP told Neal about the prophesy. The last time Neal tried to help his dad by taking him to A Land Without Magic, he got royally burned. From Neal’s perspective, he can’t put his own son in jeapordy while his dad is struggling with whether to kill his own grandson. So as painful as it was for me to see Rumple get left behind and to watch his tears over Bae not choosing him, Rumple himself knows he’s a threat to Henry.

"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

[storyteller]

I’ll just refer back to the themes of this season that A&E touched on belief and true self.  What Neal’s actions reveal is how far he has to go with his father.  I would recommend for those who haven’t read it mythologist Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it one of the key steps on any heroic journey is atonement with the father, which can refer to the reconnection with one’s own father after a youthful rebellion against him or a reconnection with the broader human family.  Knowing the risk and taking a leap of faith is what is required of true heroes, failure to do so would’ve meant that for example that the trigger would’ve have destroyed Storybrooke and using that bean would leave David, Snow Emma and Henry with a life built on blood and selfishness.

Neal to my mind desperately wants a second chance with his Papa but abandoning him the way he was abandoned, and the way he abandoned Emma that is Neal’s nasty habit that he picked up from his Papa and has yet to shake. When he does he’ll be ready to get his Papa back but not before.

 

Custodian of Graham's darts, Rumple's spindle and Robin's quiver

[obisgirl]

I frankly would love to have a scene where Neal is imprisoned and his father is the only one to let him out and Rumple willingly abandons him not in fear as he did before but in ire after reciting at length the deals he had to make, the lives ruined etc.

That would be very poetic.

I would really love for Neal and Rumple to fix their damaged relationship because they were obviously very close once upon a time, but that’s a difficult thing to do when Neal is constantly putting down his own father and won’t even accept that he is willing to change.

[storyteller]

Difficult things are always the hardest things to fight for but the boon they bestow is inevitably worth it. Like A&E say it’s a story about hope in the face of hopelessness.

Custodian of Graham's darts, Rumple's spindle and Robin's quiver

[kfchimera]

Rumple’s ideas of how to show love to Neal have been a little warped.  Rumple offered to turn Neal into a boy seconds after seeing  Neal learn Henry was his son!  Then there was the time Rumple decided to respond to Neal complaining that Rumple had not bothered to meet his fiance (suggesting Neal had invited him to do so) that “why bother” because it would not last.

Do you know how hurtful it is to have your own parent imply that your relationship is doomed to failure because you are not over someone you think (for good reasons) would  not want you?  Whether it was true or not, Rumple’s flinging it in Neal’s face  that way came about because Rumple didn’t want to own up to crushing Whale’s neck.  He was trying to deny that he hadn’t changed instead of explaining about Lacey, and Regina’s trap.  He could have offered some encouragement to Neal, noticed that Neal already felt conflicted and upset about his love life (all the more, because it was Neal’s own fault to be in that situation).  That’s a parallel right there, because it was Rumple’s own fault for falling for Regina’s trap with Lacey.

They do have their similarities.  They aren’t exactly alike though.  I believe Neal is massively less devious and is more trusting in general, but he has a long history seeing (or hearing ) Rumpel make the wrong decision.  So he isn’t as trusting as maybe Belle might be, but then, she has had her limits also (rightfully so).

I want so badly for these two reunite, but I am not going to blame Neal or Rumple for every little thing they do  when I wouldn’t blame another character in the same spot for a similar decision.  But attempting to kill Henry?  That one is wrong.  That is not a little thing.

 

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

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