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I agree that the writers burned the bridge, exploded a bomb and set off a nuclear no-go zone around adult Neal, but I would not mind for them to find a little inspiration from a different Abrahams creation, Fringe.
We have had alternate realities, time travel and even the suggestion that there are many worlds in Hat Trick, which sounded like library books with that long line wording Hatter had. Why not just acknowledge fan fiction is a thing, as they did with page 23 experimental writing, which never officially occurred but someone or something dropped in Robin’s way? It is one of those mysteries the show did not really explain, and while it is ok to leave some things mysterious, others really beg for explanation as it gets in the way of suspension of disbelief. Or rather it feels like the writers just do this story-go round style and writer A makes a thing important and then writer B takes a different tack, ignores the thing altogether and invents new plot device, then C writes new context for the thing that changes the meaning of it, until D comes along and implies it was all an elaborate scheme of some character pretending for some nefarious purpose we do not yet know, but just wait, only we never do find out, and it does not matter as no one cares anymore because you know, new problems and bigger fish to fry. Sort of like the whole thing with Chernabog, and the Dark Curse.
So I think they should take a beat from LOST and FRinge, and find out the whole there is only one author, who must only record and not create is actually stifling the universe because it all stems from Evil original Dark One Arthur/Sorceror who wants to control fate according to his rules, erasing the realities that used to exist in more infinite variety, possibility and lands of imagination. Henry can then do some magical believer thing, all the blank books can be restored in the mansion, and we can find in one of them that a version of Neal is still alive because of some magic mumbo jumbo about the whole magic used to resurrect Rumple being superseded by the destruction of the Dark One curse, along with the vault and all that, then we cut to Henry holding some magical thing, quill, book or hat, going to NY, knocking on a door but we never actually see MRJ, just hear Charlie’s Girl, and the door opens to a new happier beginning, with Henry smiling and saying something like what he said to Emma in the pilot, but it implies it is being said to Neal. No ruffling shipper feathers since it is a quasi-alternate world, and people can believe what they want about the “true” ending and what it all really means.
I simply do not see MRJ wanting to return even for a cameo, but maybe Dylan could play a different, older young Baelfire.
The loudest fans like to claim how hated and unpopular Neal was, but there is plenty of evidence that the character did strike a chord with many, and some of the ones who claim Neal was universally despised happen to be pretty openly disparaging about pretty much every character other than their fave, whether that is Regina or Killian, but usually one of those two. Robin gets a lot of flack too, judging by the reaction in comments to Sean being made a regular, and I think what MRJ faced was similar. Few characters are universally loved, some people love to hate, but just like they kind-of-sort of fixed the hatchet job done to August, maybe they can do the same for Neal? Note, they did not change the bad writing and lack of importance to the story or the sense of wholesale retcons, with much unsaid onscreen, but where August is now at least suggests he is plausibly happy offscreen within current continuity. That is really all I would want for Neal, because it is obvious the writing team does not care about creating an ongoing story for the character, or even filling in the blanks of the one they had started to tell.
[adrotate group="5"]“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
I had a huge long response to KFC and the forum ate it. *sigh* I’m too tired to retype. So I’ll just apologize for being touchy and move on. Fighting with a friend isn’t worth it. Nothing about this show is worth it.
Fighting, see….that is just far too strong a word, and while I am curious what you would have said in that eaten post I know you said it was not a good day and I am sorry for contributing to that somehow.
I agree this show is not worth the angst it generates. It’s too bad because it all started off so well…but I feel like shows I like either get cancelled or jump down a hole of weirdness these days, or both!
“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
Goodness, people are touchy, since I expressly said I get why we need this as a safe space and was not asking for a new thread, and I went one better on saying we need this not just to critique Hook, but also to say good things about or defend characters that have conflicts with Hook….because if we try to do those things out of this space, it upsets certain people, but…all the same, Neal though …everything Watcher linked in those gifsets. Just more of that please to break up the venting.
I liked that complicated story of Neal and maybe I would like the complicated stories of Emma and her new awesome friends and boyfriend more if the writers would spend time acknowledging the various elephants in the room rather than writing around it. They addressed it with Neal, and for me it was never just a matter of biology but their continued feeling s for each other despite the separation that made me root for them.
I made the mistake of looking at an interview about Grimm, and maybe all show runners are just tone deaf, but there was a quote about how Nick and Adalind have to at least try to be attracted to each other. If you watch it , you know because it is basically a Zelena and Robin story…Adalind is having Nick’s baby after pretending to be the woman he loved. I throw my hands up with Grimm, but at least Neal did not get gutted like Juliette did, or say Katrina Crane On Sleepy Hollow.
Far be it from me to put out sunshine and roses vibes about this writing team, but compared to all that, I am ok with Neal going out a hero, someone who helped inspire Emma in many ways and loved Henry and was loved enough by Henry that Henry was tempted to use magic to save him. It seriously could be worse, because just look at Snow and Charming or what is left of them.
Then as Wicked Regal noted, fans of this show have some creepy moments, and I know it has impacted the actors and if MRJ never wants to return, would not blame him. It does make me wonder a bit though if the writers are a touch scared to alter the status quo, and the unevenness in the writing is sort of their attempt to try to keep the most rabid sectors at bay? Maybe their hands are too tied to really do more than sketch the interactions, so they focus on plot and leave it to fans to fill in the rest since they do any way. If you are not inclined to read novels into a particular actors expression, it just comes off like an inconsistency or another thing that does not add up. I cannot ignore though that it is increasing the shallow feel of this show and while I can say that is a trend on TV, I am glad of a spot where a few others also liked the potential of a story that required character flaws to drive the drama between the characters, prompting conversation rather than write around it with endless magical plot contrivances and convenient throw-it- under the evil bus and kill them off solutions.
“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
We’ve wandered well away from the topic again. It makes me think that what we need is a thread where it is ok to actually be critical of Hook because it feels like there’s a bit of a gag order (imposed and policed by certain people who flip out if you dare suggest anything bad about him, but also get up in arms if you suggest that maybe those he’s in conflict with aren’t the worst of the worst and totally deserving of every bad thing happening to them, but most of all that he did to them. I do get tired of seeing this thread turn into a place that’s dominated by discussion about Jones, even if it feels like half of a conversation that I know cannot happen elsewhere and truly, I get the need to have that conversation….but I just wish it didn’t have to happen so much.
I know a large part of it is also that there’s nothing new, and nothing good really, to discuss about Neal or Emma let alone interactions between the two because Quiet Minds ended their story in a way that left many of us with anything but quiet minds. It was bad writing, and while I’m glad the writing staff is changing and Kalinda Vasquez is leaving, its not like she alone could possibly be blamed for the overall “straight out of CS” fan fic moments, and its not like those moments were the only bad bits of writing. We had things that seemed very much like a writing staff that is trying to bend their world around the three most popular characters, in terms of online and convention fan voices. So basically, that’s Dearies, Evil Regals and Hookers–if you’re not a huge fan of those characters, as I was not as I was here more for the heroic types, this story quickly became a study in a twisted morality fairy-tale of “Why its ok to be Selfish, because no one is perfect, and we all just want to be happy!”
The show works hard to avoid giving a voice in the narrative to the victims of villainous acts, unless they in turn are villains themselves. The writers have a few tricks up their sleeves for this, first, they avoid confrontation between a victim and a villain until the act is “water under the bridge”–that is, enough other stuff happens, particularly where the Villain helps the victim or the victim hurts the Villain so that on balance, the audience is tempted to feel they’re “even”.
We see this type of pattern with Ariel and Hook (so he refused to help her and went so far as to (try) to kill a man but totally accidentally saves her from imprisonment in a bottle, so bygones are bygones!), Greg/Owen and Regina (yeah she orphaned him and murdered his father, but he grew up evil and tried to kill everyone and tortured her!), Neal and Hook (Hook traded him to Pan for favorable treatment, but he did help him fight Pan to get his son back), Snow and Regina (oh so many things….).
So Slurpeez’s list of things Jones has done that Emma seems to have a rosier picture of than we in the audience might, is far from a writing flaw that’s specific to those two characters. It’s actually just part of a pattern of writing that results in certain moments that seem like they ought to be emotional and significant–except that it never comes up again.
So to earn this post’s place on this thread…here are a long list of moments that got lost between Emma and Neal. Emma never found out Neal gave up his memories for her to get hers back, at least that we saw on screen. Did she realize he sacrificed himself for the Darlings and that’s why Wendy was so willing to risk her life for him? Did she understand he considered them like family and they him (at least, at one point, now they’re apparently off in modern London and too busy to worry about their once-almost-adopted-brother dying or the son he left behind). Does Emma know Neal stayed with Snow and Charming in that missing year to help them retake the castle from the Wicked Witch and only left after they were sort of settled? Does she know he didn’t just land in that cage in NL, but had actually woken up from the near-fatal gunshot wound determined to get back to her and earn her trust and forgiveness? Does she know he met Robin, Mulan, Aurora and Phillip and that more or less, they all had positive impressions of him? Did she know he crossed worlds to get to her? We can throw the *how* he got there bit in the category of unsavory details Emma might not know, because using a little kid as bait, even if you think he’ll be safe, is still questionable behavior, just like stealing a kid’s heart for a magic mirror skype session is. Neal never found out Emma stayed two years in Tallahassee. He did see the bug, but we didn’t get to see these two talk about that at all.
Characters do not talk about certain things on screen and so there is so much more that we know as the audience that apparently doesn’t have any bearing on the way the characters will act because they aren’t aware of it. In one sense, those things may as well not have happened except they did, but it will never be important down the line unless there’s another plot-driven reason for it to be important.
I’m still confused why Emma explained her bug to Regina as something she stole just because she likes yellow, rather than saying its where she met Neal. If anything a statement like that would have been the right sort of emotional bomb statement to allow the two to switch topics back to the demon beast chasing them. It would have felt like Emma shared something with Regina that she normally wouldn’t share so easily, and would have set up their deepening friendship rather than retconning Emma’s relationship with Neal as having nothing to do with the car. Of course, a bigger oddity in terms of things not revealed between these two is the fact that Regina killed Graham and Emma still has no idea.
Let’s look at August now. No one except Rumple knows August actually tried to use the Dark One’s dagger before magic came to town–something that would work now but didn’t then. No one knows he stole from a woman he thought was dying of cancer. Emma does know he stole the money Neal intended to give her, or at least, she knows that’s what Neal said, but she’s not had a conversation with August about it. She won’t either, because all of that is now “Water under the Bridge”. There’s no way for Emma to see August turned into a kid then tortured and turn back and have the first thing she says to him be “so…ten years ago, you stole from me” and not come off like the worst, most entitled jerk ever. Yet the writers cut straight to Emma declaring August her Best. Real. Friend (Totally Platonic! Don’t Panic CS/SQ Fans!). They didn’t earn Emma declaring anything of the sort about August–would have been better to have Emma say she’s glad he’s an adult again, and its kind of complicated and leave it at that. Her feelings ought to be complicated. He did try to help her, but she was freaking out in the woods and his method of helping her wound up getting a little rushed since he was desperate not to turn into a wooden statue. It wasn’t just about her basically, and does Emma know that? He’d have used the dagger if he could because ultimately, he didn’t really care about Emma–just breaking his own curse. That bit of selfishness? Maybe he made up for it when he tried to expose Tamara and came back for everyone, but again, file some of those details in things Emma does not know. Like Jones, August sort of knew Neal was in danger from Tamara because she was not what she said, and despite maybe claiming to be Neal’s friend, he did not take action soon enough to help Neal avoid being shot. That’s another thing Emma won’t discuss with August (or Jones), ever. August also will never have a conversation with Henry about how August knew his dad too, both the positive and negative aspects of that.
These are things that are not relevant to the main thrust of the plot of Dark Swan–unless some of them come up in a spell of shattered sight way, where Emma rants and the audience is supposed to dismiss what she’s saying as unfounded and excessively hurtful exaggerations against these people who really care about her (despite these things they’ve hid from her). Speaking of the Spell of Shattered sight–Anna never had a chance to encounter Belle again, nor did anyone call Belle out for lying about not knowing Anna or Elsa–but again, Water under the bridge and when the poor woman’s kicked her husband that she thought was her TRUE LOVE out of town, saving the day to boot, who is going to come down hard on her for a lie?
I didn’t of course even go into Belle and Rumple, which is chock-full of instances of “water under the bridge” and with Rumple’s heart all scrubbed clean, its unlikely we’re ever going to get more from Belle than that deus-ex-machina-gauntlet-driven speech where she said there were signs but she didn’t want to see them. They aren’t going to talk specifically about her views about the choices he’s made–and if he does wake up, well ultimately is she a person who believes the end justifies the means like he was? Or does she think that some means are never justified, no matter the end? I’m not positive I can answer that question about any of these characters given how the writers feel like they can introduce new “old” events that apparently were never talked about (like the Eggnapping plot). It’s the flip side of how things we think ought to be talked about are not, there are apparently things that happened that are now being talked about at length (but were not before).I honestly do not expect the writing to suddenly improve just because they have one new, inexperienced voice on the team for next season–but I can’t help but feel Vasquez leaving is still a good sign, because between her writing the Hook backstory graphic novel and the episodes she’s done and things she’s said in interviews, I’m feeling a bit hopeful that the writers might be gearing up for another change, some kind of “reset” to where the story went in the last season.
If the writers don’t refine their process though, it won’t get rid of the story-go-round feeling that certain things are written by Writer A who has not talked to Writer B, and therefore it won’t show up when relevant in the next story, and by then so much will happen it will feel irrelevant to ever bring up.
Sorry, I’m out of time to try to edit this to a bit more coherence –but basically…the biggest villain in this show is the writing.
“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
Well, I have much to catch up on. thank you Ranisha for the Mother Day wishes, and Happy Belated a Birthday to Wicked Regal!
I am working my way through the finale but got stuck on the notion the author just rewrote the reality of the so-called Real World without magic. More like the realm without much belief in magic, because when the plot requires it, magic works there unless they require it not to work. Anyway, he somehow had his book printed, published distributed, &read by legions of fans, in what appeared to be a few hours at most. So any nonsense about Neal’s death being irreversible because it happened outside of a magical realm is just that, nonsense. It happened inside an active magical pocket town inside a realm where some magical things and beings can go, when the plot says so. It happened for magical reasons too, a price for the resurrection of a supposedly immortal creature. It was not say, Neal getting caught in NY in a gun fight or something like that. That said, I liked the notion that Henry was resisting the temptation to abuse power to get his happy ending not that he technically could not do it. That is the kind of hard choice a hero makes, to sacrifice short term happiness for the bigger picture.
This is what was missing when Emma and Rumple passed on changing history to save Neal. Emma sounded like it was a moral choice not to mess with fate but then she turned around and messed with the history of the stranger in the cell next door. Rumple put the problem all on Emma, selfishly retreating to that space of it is not my immediate concern, so long as the timeline works that I get forgiven by my son, who cares if the details change slightly. It was not for either of them presented as this hard call, that they were both really tempted but in the end knew honoring what Neal would want, what his values were, that he would not want them to bring him back if it meant hurting others to do it, but there was no clear line with time travel that others had to be hurt per se. It was not like Neal died as a catalyst to some magical protection spell. It was just about information.
Anyway, the writers wanted the character out of the story and that is really all there was to it, but they butchered how they got there. So their efforts now to actually hang some meaning on it for Henry feels a little shallow given how little time they spent showing Henry grieving and remembering Neal, versus playing cheerleader for Regina no matter what it took. Henry was more than happy to look for the author in the hope that it could put Regina on a road to happiness, never a suggestion that he was not totally content and hopeful that the search might get Neal back. The writers just claim these things are explored off screen, and jump to emotional moments they do not earn.
Speaking of that, it could be that breaking the Dark One curse will be a big CS moment but I would not rule out it being a big Saviour Queen (SQ galore Subtext ) moment either. Regina is the reason Emma took action the way she did, when she did, and the writers love to write Regina saving the day. They can always follow it up with a long CS kiss and wedding to soothe the shippers, and then say look, friendship and family saved the day!
My big hope really is the writers remember this show works best when it is not Once Upon a Woobie Villain, or Once upon a Ship. Stop stuffing things under the rug of unrealistic character reactions just to keep the protagonists on the same side. That robs the story of natural conflict. The writers then introduce silly contrived conflict starters, like magical curses or whatever and the result is characters that seem cartoonishly ok with some pretty weird fallout, like everyone giving up on the EF for SB or choosing Regina over Snow for Mayor, or what was said during shattered sight or other things. Let some consequences linger, create tension that arises not from yet another disposable guest star villain but from the conflicting moral views of some of these characters and the choices they make. Then again what would we mock if this show stopped doing its plot, plot TWISt thing?
Anyway, happy hiatus …
“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
What’s funny is how much the writers either consciously or unconsciously recycled elements from Season 2, and Neal’s storyline.
We have a lost “child of darkness” the offspring of an iconic villain (Neal was Rumple’s son, Lily is Mal’s Daughter) wandering around the land without magic who forms a significant bond with Emma the child of “light”, the daughter of iconic heroes, Snow and Charming. They two meet without knowledge of their heritage, and that story is told in a flashback that illuminates Emma’s present-day decisions to take the opposite path with an iconic fairy tale villain (she leaves Hook behind because she had trusted Neal and got burned emotionally, she practically begs Regina to be her BFF because she’d rejected Lily after being hurt by her lies). It seems like the lost child is just a real world person in the episode we first meet them, aside from a small hint otherwise (the typewriter that convinced Neal, the star birthmark for Lily). The lost child grows up, and comes back into Emma’s life in a big way, after Emma goes on a quest to find them for the Iconic Villain parent. This tale gets told half a season later after their introduction. The timing of the field trip happens just as there’s a looming threat from a big iconic villain (despite Cora and Regina being “out there”, Gold uses leverage of his deal to force Emma to go with him, this time, despite Gold being out there, Mal and Regina persuade Emma that it is really the best way to thwart Gold). Both times, there’s a chase (one on foot, one in a car) before Emma “apprehends” the lost child. There’s conflict and an argument about something that happened in the past (Lily ‘s upset about the fairytale evil transfusion and banishing, Emma’s upset that Lily wants to kill her parents. Emma’s upset that Neal left her the way he did, and he’s upset she’s brought his father there). They call a truce, and return to Neal’s apartment where BAM some huge baby mama drama unfolds (for Lily, its nothing to do with her, but is all about Regina/Zelena, but for Emma and Neal it was about Henry).
Goes without saying really that there are also huge differences, which is why I’m not saying “parallels” and implying some sort of intentional foreshadowing or anything like that but just calling it recycled plot points and mechanics. I have no idea what they intend to do next, which is what the writers seem to care most about these days, making sure the audience is continually blindsided and shocked, but they forget that if the characters don’t much care about half the stuff that happens to them, then increasingly, neither will we. It’s no joke that the show had a huge lift in ratings from Frozen yet managed to shed most of that bonus audience–without even the excuse of erratic scheduling that affected Season 2 B.
“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
Happy Birthday RG! I can’t top that yarn cake or shamy gif(t)s but have some cake!
I’ve meant to stop by and comment a little on various things, but hard to snatch some time to type. I can skim the thread on my phone, when stuck in a line or something like that, but not enough time to reply at least with my phone typing skills.
So, I hope Keb’s back is better and the recovery is going well. Not as serious, but still I know it mattered to those who watched Grey’s–I’m sorry. I didn’t watch that show, and it sounds like quite the huge change to what it was all about.
That’s really what I think Neal’s death sort of came to mean in a way–his death sort of ended one sort of show and started this change to a show that could best be described this way: Once Upon a Time there was a not-so-epic struggle between the Plot Device Fairy and the Off-screen trolls, in a world where all magic comes with a plot hole and a retcon.
The show used to have heart, characters who talk to one another and subtle emotions and scenarios that had us eager to speculate and discuss, even debate what is good and what is evil. Some still try, but it becomes harder and harder to take any of it seriously when PLOT continues to trump all world-building or character building, and when the writer’s morality from their commentary about what they think they’ve written seems so twisted and odd (and contradictory).
I made it most of the way through the last episode, and its slow-going for me, because I felt Cruella was a fun character and Smurfitt made the most of it and I’m sorry to see her go. My curiosity about what they’d do with her lured me into watching this season but that’s sort of done now.
On the balance, they did try to close some loopholes with her (how she got to the land without magic, how she didn’t age)–but there are still more odd and unexplained things. When the curse reversed, how come Cruella and Ursula didn’t just pop back with everyone else? If its because they were on the wrong side of the town line–well, why didn’t Neal (or Hook for that matter) just go with Emma? I guess there are things the characters think will happen but don’t actually happen, like how the curse didn’t hurt Pinnochio after all.
That of course feeds into how we judge characters –we shouldn’t judge them by what happens, but by what they believed would happen and the choice they made based on that. People continually complain Neal could have helped Emma, stayed with her and judge him as horrible for leaving her–but we don’t know and were not shown many scenes about why August believed Neal had to steer clear. He, like Gepetto and the Blue Fairy, like everyone at the town line, might have just been thinking one thing is true when another was and acted accordingly.
So now we have Emma who thought one thing was true, that Cruella could harm Henry, and acting on that belief. The writers tell us we should condemn her for that, say she crossed a line because of that, perhaps write Snow and Charming as feeling that about Emma–but its so disingenuous on the writer’s parts. Snow didn’t find anything “line crossing” about Red killing Red’s mother to save Snow’s life–if anything the two grew closer. Despite the fans (mostly Evil Regals) who like to reimagine Snow as this prissy, goody-two-shoes who hypocritically judges Regina because she can only see the world in black and white, that’s not how the character was originally presented and written in S1. Snow used to understand the world was complicated–and she even forgave Regina, multiple times. We’ve had seasons of Snow being unwilling to write Regina off completely and hoping she could change, but fearing (with plenty of good reasons) that she might not. So I suppose I’ll wait and see how estranged Snow and Emma get–but I’m rolling my eyes at this whole plot pretty hard.
What makes it worse is, the writers could have more organically created a crisis for Emma based on a storyline they were pushing for her character fairly hard–her mastery of her magic. “I’ve really been practicing” says Emma, at one point this season, and we saw her learn to love her magic in 4A. In 3b we saw her practicing teleporting things–and didn’t she save Henry from his last kidnapper (Zelena) with a teleport spell? If they wanted us to focus on growing Darkness in Emma, it should have been about her inability to find a peaceful solution to the Cruella threat despite having more magical options, not “oh but Cruella wasn’t really a threat after all, oh Emma, how horrible you aren’t omniscient and therefore killed a defenseless person!”Question there though, given all the ways we’ve seen to make someone suffer that don’t involve death, couldn’t Cruella still have been a huge threat, was she really written as defenseless or harmless? Wraiths, sleeping curses, turning people to stone, shrinking them, ok, that all might be out of Cruella’s tool box, but why not call 4 and 20 blackbirds to peck off Henry’s nose? Cover him in mosquito bites to torture him? In real life, a cop can use deadly force to stop serious bodily injury, not just death–so again, the knowledge that Cruella couldn’t kill just doesn’t seem the zinger the writers are saying it was. The more interesting and previously developed question would have been– what else could Emma have done?
If we were talking about Superman, the answer is a lot, and Superman (at least movie/tv versions, with which I’m more familiar) doesn’t really kill. That’s what we expect for a “superhero”, the whole great powers /great responsibility (ok, that was Spiderman but still). If you create a hero with more limited options, absolutely, that hero cannot live up to the standards set by someone with the abilities to know and do things others cannot. The writers could have explored (and who knows maybe they will) what does it mean to Emma to be a hero–did she say to herself, yeah, I could solve this peacefully, but I’ll be judge, jury and executioner, because I don’t believe all life is sacred, and I don’t care about other people, doing the right thing–just protecting what’s mine? Regina usually operates a bit that way–she had a moment of heroic mercy and all that with Zelena in 3b, but here we see her controlling Belle, and threatening her life. I don’t care about “offscreen” anymore, and what “could” have happened to make things less wrong or more right. We can imagine whatever we want, and too often the writers ask us to do that but then change their minds and tell us oh no, THIS happened. That only contributes to the feeling of “retcons”. So without dialog to get to Emma’s internal state and why she did what she did, and what she believed were her options, its hard to judge this situation on the basis of what the writers think was enough for us to know….but that’s par for the course.
“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
So I’m extremely confused why Robin in Wonderland didn’t recognize Will, nor Will him when Will was with Anna and stealing Mal’s mirror. It sounded like this meeting with Will was pre-Anna, since Will felt broken due to the loss of his sister, like he couldn’t be with someone romantically until he felt whole or something.
Will was one of the Merry Men in when he stole Mal’s looking glass.
Yes, but those scenes implied Will joined them temporarily and they had no idea who he was prior to that. So we had two “oh, hi nice to meet you” moments with these characters, & you can’t have two first time meetings. Unless you bring out the plot contrivance fairy, which I’m sure they will. Time change, memory potion or failing that “your interpretation” on twitter.
Sort of like Regina having Neal’s keys in the first place. There was a time I”d insist that offscreen Henry got the keys, and there were some heartfelt scenes that Regina and Henry had about Neal dying, and then when Robin was leaving with Henry saying “Hey take these..Neal would want Robin to be with his son, like he helped him get back to me.” but–no. They didn’t show it, so it didn’t happen.
Regina has everyone’s keys. We already knew that.
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“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
I don’t have time to really catch up and read what’s been said, but wow, that episode wasn’t just jump-the-shark bad, it was a full-on Sharknado of sharks jumping over us to change what has been written before. This wasn’t just “retroactive continuity”–this was pretty much discontinuous with what the writers previously told us happened.
Let’s start with how confusing it was to see three time periods. In the present, all action ground to a halt about the Author (a plot that still doesn’t make sense). Then we jump to Robin’s adventures in NY. Then we jump to his adventures in the past meeting Rumple and Oz.
So I’m extremely confused why Robin in Wonderland didn’t recognize Will, nor Will him when Will was with Anna and stealing Mal’s mirror. It sounded like this meeting with Will was pre-Anna, since Will felt broken due to the loss of his sister, like he couldn’t be with someone romantically until he felt whole or something.
I’m also confused how Belle recognized Robin if he used the clover when attempting to steal from Rumple back when Robin was played by that other actor.
I’m confused by the shift in Robin’s “I owe a debt of honor to Rumple” attitude that he displayed in Season 3 back when he was talking to Neal in Rumple’s castle. Let’s face it, that debt should have been to Belle anyway, but I digress. This version’s suspicion towards Rumple really felt over the top because Robin left before Rumple’s big “I’m still a bad guy” reveal, so Robin still should be thinking of him as reformed like everyone else was.
I skimmed the quoted parts of Lily’s review–and I have to agree. I can’t buy the “it was Zelena all the time” excuse, because for me, I can’t reconcile that moment when Marian was all alone, facing down a SNOW MONSTER looming over her, and she grabbed a BOW. She could not have known Regina would even appear, and then once she did, that Regina would save her. I’m not going to cut the writers slack and write in the fifty scenes in between that help make sense of what we got versus what they’re now implying they wrote.
Sort of like Regina having Neal’s keys in the first place. There was a time I”d insist that offscreen Henry got the keys, and there were some heartfelt scenes that Regina and Henry had about Neal dying, and then when Robin was leaving with Henry saying “Hey take these..Neal would want Robin to be with his son, like he helped him get back to me.” but–no. They didn’t show it, so it didn’t happen.
Because you know, even when they DO show something, I’ll tune in next week and find out, it didn’t happen either.
“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
The story they are telling us, isn’t the story they told us. And what they tell us now, won’t be what they will say a few episodes from now that they told us. It’s how this show goes.
In S1, I recalled a slight flirtatious vibe to August and Emma. Come S2 thing change though, and off-screen the writers claim they were going for a brother/sisterly relationship. They barely feature August at all, leaving him on quite the cliffhanger, until they bring him back for some surprise twist moments where we find out he had a big hand in not just a big heartbreak for Emma, but also the then recently introduced Neal. August is wracked with guilt about having been cowardly, deceitful and selfish–and before he can do much more than confront Tamara, a new problem he just learns about, nothing to do with his own previous bad actions, he winds up getting “rebooted” into a kid. So I was sort of expecting if we ever saw him as an adult again that there would be some heavy tension both from his side and Emma’s–but watching their sweet, happy, tension free reunion, I think its another case of the writers simply recasting what they have written previously.
Sure, there could be more scenes where August and Emma work through things, but I doubt it, and predict its not even going to happen off-screen. Far as these writers are concerned any of that past stuff was “dealt” with, because its all ancient history now, right? Even the recent story of Snow’s mayor gig was smushed into a montage where we find out she gives it up and Regina winds up back in power. That’s more than we got for the explanation for how all folks caught in Curse 2 are totally ok living in town, and totes ok with not returning–even the ones who weren’t in Curse 1 like Aurora or the Merry Men. Seriously, our town leaders discovered a portal to a neighboring kingdom that is a boat ride away from their own lands, and its not even a thought that maybe someone besides Elsa and Anna might urgently need to get back home?!
Its fun to mock it and point out all the nonsensical bits, and I’m sorry for those of you who do feel angry and annoyed–but I hope you can kind of get to this same point of finding humor in the show’s total awfulness.
It’s like they don’t even realize how they undermine the story they want to tell anymore with the changes they make to try to sell whatever is the current focus. So now we have Emma telling Regina she kept the bug just because she stole it and likes yellow. Yes, that erases Neal, but it also erases part of the Emma Swan we used to know, the troubled, emotional Emma Swan and replaces her with Emma Swan, jerk and who likes taking stuff that isn’t hers. So this Emma had a pretty swanky place in NY during the last year, and could have replaced her stolen yellow car, but didn’t, because she didn’t feel like it. The previous version of Emma kept that car because it was heavily implied it had meaning to her. It was part of a mystery of why would a man who abandoned her go to the effort of getting a clean VIN number and sending her the car, but nothing else? It’s probably what led to her going to Tallahassee for two years and waiting–but now we won’t have any on-screen confirmation about why she did that, if the writers even remember they wrote that in to the story, it will likely be recast as something about some new character. If not Lily, then one introduced in another season, that will be why she went there.
Meanwhile, the writers are unintentionally eroding the story they created for Emma and the Charmings, making it seem like there wasn’t really a good reason they gave her up. We’ve now learned curses can be outrun. That there are places outside the reach, like hangman’s island or the top of the Giant’s beanstalk. There were more beans too! Memory curses can be added–and well who even knows what else is true. I’m sure there will be more things revealed that if applied back to the Charming’s situation will undercut their desperation originally presented in S1. The same has happened with Rumple’s elaborate plan to cast the curse to cross world to get to his son–seems the Land Without Magic is practically a world hopping station these days.
With all that background, what’s happening with Neal is just systematic of a story that went from one thing to another, which is pretty obviously, the story of how Killian Jones and Regina Mills get their respective Happy Endings–Rumple’s no longer on the list. All other character development stories are pretty much written like notes in the sand, washed away by the next wave of inspiration. Henry’s adjustment after a year in New York with real friends back to small town life? Barely a cut scene on the floor, as was his grief over his father or his attempts to “bond” or pretend to bond with his grandfather, the whole apprentice story a total pointless detour. I already mentioned the Mayor thing, and for Snow, her fear of letting go of her baby has apparently been 100% cured because he’s now spending most of his time with off-screen babysitters it would seem. We could have used a story of say, Emma holding her baby brother and if they had to, they could put her boyfriend in there confessing he has history with Ursula and feels bad about it. Instead, they write Hook as only trying to do something about his past wrong when it can serve to thwart Rumple, a goal he would achieve by shooting Ursula if he could, until Ariel shows up (that other person he wronged) and not only gives him a pass for inadvertently saving her from a trap (illogical ship shrinking from a ice wielding magic person)–but its all offscreen from Emma once again. I don’t think that’s evidence of Hook continuing to be a bad guy so much as it is bad writers who don’t even realize having Hook not disclose certain things to Emma makes both characters look bad. Not letting her have a chance to help guide his moral transition, making it seem like she’s getting a rosier picture of his reform or worse, that she actually doesn’t care if he’s still occasionally a bad guy to others–depending on whether you think they talk about these things offscreen or not. When Greg got run over, she was the one to say it would be murder to let him die, and to sound totally aghast at the idea–this new Emma? She would probably be the first one to suggest letting a stranger die to protect their secret town. Or that she understands doing it, or something because they’re now trying to build up Dark Emma. Without seeing Emma taking moral stands in the show, except you know, off screen, it just sort of erodes that heroic aspect she once had, particularly when she has too many moments of understanding things like kidnapping (Regina with Sidney), or evasions (like whatever Hook told her about the hatting, blackmail and all that).
So the worst thing about Neal erasure is that the show can’t do more of it to the point the fans who feel the need to rant about what a jerk he was in some kind of spell of shattered sight way, totally ignoring all the scenes where he acknowledged he’d hurt Emma, apologized and was trying to earn back her trust, can’t just forget about him. I suppose those who do it on a too regular basis likely have their own issues with an ex-boyfriend, an impression furthered by reading things like “if my ex said this”–well, Neal did a lot of positive things most people’s ex’s wouldn’t do FOR them, like when he gave up his memories, or his life for Emma. He was flawed, but what character on this show is not? So if erasure can work to get those types of fans to stop with the rants and leave those of us who saw potential in the character to just miss the character in peace? I’d say they should do even more of it.
With Game of Silence, those of us who are not just fans of Neal, but MRJ as an actor will be able to enjoy MRJ in a new role, more than likely a better written one (hardly impossible for it to be otherwise). I don’t want Neal to return to this show, because he’s a character who fits in a different show, a different era and purpose to the story. This new story just doesn’t have a place for him, or the Emma Swan he used to know, or even the Henry they both discovered and learned to love. Those characters are ALL gone. In their place, is a gravestone for Neal, a Jared Gilmore shaped block for plot exposition and delivering clunky dialog like “Chocolate Frosted Donuts”, and whatever it is we can call Emma Swan these days–Jones’ Girlfriend and Mill’s BFF I guess. She’s just not as interesting a character as she used to be.
“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
