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Oops. Cross-posted. That doesn’t usually happen at this hour of the morning.
I bet if we stared at those swings from above it would look like a dreamcatcher :/
That scene was beautiful, and relevent, and right. It’s a reminder of everything the show used to be, and should have been. It was the best thing to come out of this finale, the best and the saddest all at the same time, that thing that makes it harder and easier and deeper and just… I don’t get this story. I really don’t. All of that setup, and for absolutely crappin’ nothing.
[adrotate group="5"]Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Couple hours sleep and the tears have stopped, at least.
So three years in, and this is the story we are supposed to believe:
For Emma, Neal provided her first home ever, inside that stolen car.
He provided her definition of home, which he gave her the night they met.
He was the first person who loved her, ever.
He taught her, apparently, MANY skills that while not glamorous were essential for her survival over the years.
He gave her her child, who (current episode notwithstanding) is the center of her universe and reason for existing.
He gave up his happiness in order to allow her to fulfil her destiny, and get her home to her parents.
He was willing to die, so she could stay with their child, after being back in their life mere weeks.
He was willing to go back to the place of his nightmares, where he had been trapped for hundreds of years, to save his family.
He laid his feelings on the line, but was willing to move out of the way to respect her wishes.
He was willing to sacrifice, again, going back to the homeland he feared and later dying in order to protect her and their child.Yet on Emma’s part, after experiencing what she thought was his death, she –
Wished him dead
Helped him die
Insisted he stay dead.Ok A&E. Is this the story you were trying to tell with these two, really?
Something tells me that’s not what they were going for. And yet that’s what they got.
I don’t know if I subscribe to “they gave Hook Neal’s story” with respect to the cursed lips, etc – but I sure am puzzled. Why on earth do you make a guy integral to EVERY piece of this girl’s character – and then nothing? Everything that makes Emma “Emma” seems to date back to that relationship. And they opted to just toss the guy aside like a chewed-up piece of gum. “K, thanks, you were formitive in her life, but now we’re done with you. Six feet under you go!”
I don’t know what happened BTS or in the writers room, but I do know it resulted in a show I just don’t want to watch anymore. I don’t quit things very well, and frankly, if there wasn’t a hiatus, I probably couldn’t. But come September, life will look very different and I will have already found something to do in my Sunday 8PM time slot. Hopefully that makes it easier to break the addiction. But this show is no longer what it once was. When we did our watch through just before the season started, I was struck by how much richer the show was on the second watch through. But what jumped out at me, I’m realizing now, were primarily the clues dropped about the Emma-Henry-Neal family. How do I ever watch that again? How does one sit there, during Price of Gold, and watch Emma be hurt that “some people only have the back of a car,” when I know how this story turns out? Or watch her do her damndest not to split up two young people who steal from convenience stores to survive in “True North,” knowing that when push came to shove, splitting them up was just not that big of a deal to her, and death was an okay solution.
We won’t even talk about the guilt I feel for roping Other Roomie into this. Per the shipping notice I found the other day, we started watching the show two weeks before 315 aired. I know we got her up to speed, watching the last couple of episodes, the Saturday after it aired; we did warn her at 311 that the show was about to take a hard left turn but I am not sure she really comprehended it. Her sad sad little sad face last night… yeah. I have guilt. If only I’d waited those two weeks, everyone in my house would be in a little less emotional turmoil at the moment.
Anyways. RG, I think the thing that struck me was not that the show is no longer about hope – it’s not, and that’s a recent turn (unless your name is Marian, to whom Emma’s speech played out pretty well – oh and while Snow gave her the hope, you know who gave her the way out? Yep, Neal again…) because in Neverland we had Snow still preaching hope to Emma. It’s the fact that the creators of the show no longer preach hope. Why is that, what happened? I really want to rail against them and scream and yell about how they ruined our story but at the end of the day, it’s obvious there has been a shift and my experience in the industry tells me it probably did not come from within. So maybe that’s why we see confusing mixed messages; the SF clues in 19, 20, 22 come from trying to still plant seeds of the original SF story in the story that they have now been required to tell. Who knows. It’s the only thing that makes sense *to me,* and if the CS was a network requirement, I can see them feeling the only way to tell that story in truth was to have Neal dead. Because we know now, pretty concretely, they could only happen if he is dead – he had to be dead for the kiss to happen in Neverland and dead for them to happen now. Because he is the only guy Emma ever loved – one of few people she’s ever said “I love you” to – and their bond is stronger than just about anything. So if they had to go CS, Neal had to be dead, because with him alive, Emma would have gravitated back there… again and again and again.
So yep, as Onyx says, they had SF woven through the fabric of the show from the beginning, but they have now retconned the whole show to weave CS through it. Forget dreamcatchers in the nursery when Hook is right there in the storybook with Emma watching them fall in love! Onyx, you don’t need to apologize for bothering us with your depressingness – or if you do, I do too – this is the best and only place to put it at the moment.
Just dawned on me that we never got to see Emma find out Walsh was the wizard. More craptastic storytelling. Par for the course anymore.
And we won’t even talk about “I’ll see both of you again.” What a load of crap. That child is emotionally damaged, permanently, forever. He had his dad for a hot minute – a father who was willing to do anything for him, go to the ends of the earth (and other realms) and sacrifice EVERYTHING so that he would have a family. And then never got a chance to say goodbye. But will we ever see the emotional ramifications of that? Or of Emma wishing him dead? Or how damn UNFAIR it is to have someone you love so much go before their time? No. Because here comes another big bad, apparently the snow queen this time, that we need to go defeat. God forbid our characters have five minutes to process anything that happens to them, or react organically to anything. This show has become emotionally exhausting to me, and I don’t have it to give anymore. Once I plow through this emotional crisis, I am done – done, done, done. There are such rich character points thrown out there and they are brushed aside and stepped over. Will we ever see Rumple deal with the fact that he COULD have saved Bae but he chose to take a forgetting potion instead? Doubtful. Just like in the last episode, we hardly focused on Snowing having ANOTHER babe taken long enough for it to have any emotional relevence. They focused on Snow for 2.5 seconds, juuust long enough for me to start to FEEL something for her, before it was cut to something else and off we go.
It’s not good storytelling. For a show that I fell for, deeply, because of how much richer the story was the second time through, that is bitterly disappointing to me. The storytelling on this show used to be BRILLIANT. It’s what made Manhattan amazing, they spent a season and a half getting us there and everything we’d learned about the characters was played out there in that episode. Now though, we have someone wish a character dead and several episodes later, when that that character dies *in their laps* we never mention it. Really? That wasn’t worth a scene with a few choked back sobs, “I wished him dead, and now he is?” No. It never happened. It was relevent and emotionally right in that moment – and listen, I am (or maybe was) the biggest defender of Echo Cave; she didn’t REALLY wish that he was dead, she was trying to explain that it was the less painful of the two options – but now I wonder – did she? Because his death just doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem for her. “You can save him, right?” “Nope.” “K.” “Meh, just leave him dead.” For frick’s sake, show, are you serious?! She loved this man for a dozen years, despite him causing her ENORMOUS pain, she never stopped loving him – but she is totally cool with him being dead?
You killed a man for your ship. Reasons, whatever they are, I get that. But at the end of the day, Neal Cassidy’s blood is on the hands of the CS story. *Baelfire’s* blood is on the CS story. I mean, I guess, what’s another death at the hands of the esteemed captain, but for Emma? That should be a Really. Big. Deal. But it’s not. Because “she loved him too,” past tense please note, but he died a hero so it’s all okay. It’s cool Emma. You get your home, with your parents, but your child doesn’t deserve the same. And you get to know your child, but his father doesn’t deserve the same.
It’s a load of bull honkey, is what it is, and I choose to take my viewership and go home.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Yep Slurp. Ditto on all you said. Never again will I invest like this – never again.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Oh da*n RG, you made me cry again :p The feeling is mutual.
Part of it for me is I wanted SO BADLY for this to be a source of hope for so many of you who need it. Because it should be. But no… it’s just another example of how life gives you the finger.
Interestingly enough, read an interview either yesterday or the day before whereby Eddy mentioned that when he & Adam created the show, they wanted the message to be one of hope (or something similar to that.) I found the past tense interesting and wondered – but it seems to me that even our show runners have given up on the message of hope and happy endings. In its own way, that’s devastating to me.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Yep, Phee. They had to make EVERYONE OOC to make this death happen, and then again to make it stick. Come ON!! That ridiculousness is one of the many reasons I just can’t tune in for S4. I can’t trust that any story put forth will be followed through to an in-character and logical solution.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
I saw those tweets 🙁
No Slurp. This is not how it’s supposed to end. It’s a load of bull honkey. Someone stole my fairy tale, and I want it back. (But that will never happen, now will it.)
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Phee, Emma won’t find out about anything. Not about Blackbeard, not about Mihla, not about Hook teaching Henry to cheat. Because why would she need to? Hook is there, he is hot, and he gave up his ship for her. That totally trumps the guy who gave up his happiness & his life for her… far better to make out with the pirate than to give the sacrificial lamb another chance.
Oh wait, I forgot. He got a baby named after him. That fixes everything.
(Yes, I have now moved on to bitter & pissed.)
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
It’s inexplicable, Slurp. Everything this show preached, every rule it had the first couple of seasons – thrown out the windows. Consequences are inconsistent at best… Charming’s heart was crushed but he survives. Emma tries to save an innocent, she now has the EvilQueen on the warpath. Rumple pulls off a big deception, he gets to marry his true love. Hook *in the last six episodes* has murdered, lied, taught a kid to cheat – the important thing is that you win – and continued to pursue a girl who clearly said no. His reward is to get the girl. Neal points his true love to her home, he gets to remain dead. Because the 47,593 ways to save him weren’t something anyone felt like doing this week.
I get redeeming villains, but when it comes at the expense of the rest of your show… it’s too much.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Yeah Slurp. I totally agree. OUATiW was, to me, a mish-mash of story ideas they couldn’t fit onto the mother show. Who knew our love story would be one of them?
Dam*, Emma just deserves so much better. So much better. And she had it. Where did this go wrong?
I am a grown up, with a real, actual life… I should not be crying shaky sobs into my pillow right now. This is utterly ridiculous. And an unfortunate testament to how well this show used to be written, they fleshed out these characters so well that I am crying for them… the home they were cheated out of a dozen years ago, the cycle of father-son abandonment that was supposed to be broken, the fact that Emma deserves someone who cares about her – first and always – and that sweet, selfless Bae deserved his happy ending. But no. He had to die, left on the ground in the woods, so that once again, a pirate could have his family. Same pirate, several hundred years apart. The wrong-ness just astounds me.
If you have to kill a character to move a relationship forward, then perhaps that relationship is the issue, hey?
I just. Henry will never have his father. Emma will never have her home, not truly. And Bae will never have his happy ending.
Some fairytale.
*Descends into more ridiculous tears, for utterly inexplicable reasons*
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Given that they say things like, “You killed a man for your ship,” I doubt it was accidental.
The tears have finally started. I had to get back up and say my final words, a genuine, sad thank you to A&E for this beautiful love story. Such as it was, what we saw of it, was one of the best love stories I’ve seen told in a long time. Just hate that we didn’t get to see it play it to its logical conclusion – where a lost boy and a lost girl find their home, together. It astonishes me a bit that they handed that to us tonight, and yet, they didn’t fulfil it.
Genuinely, I feel like this was a direction that was chosen FOR the showrunners, not by them, and wonder if it makes them as sad as as it makes us. Ten years they planned this story, and to change for reasons -outside of it? That has to hurt.
Crying myself to sleep tonight, for the frustration and that what should have beens, and then that is it. I refuse to shed another tear for this show, I just can’t justify the energy spent on it. Hate that I let myself get sucked into this trap again. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Love you all – but hate the emotional wreck that I am right now.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
