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Well, moving on then with our Neal discussion.
A lot of our characters move back and forth through villain–antihero–hero. For example: Rumple vacillates a lot from villain to antihero; Snow tries very hard to stay in hero territory but often finds herself in antihero land, becoming more gray.
Looking at Nealfire’s life and arc as a whole, where did he ultimately end up? And what sort of transitions did you see him going through?
Ultimately Neal was a hero. He was never ever a villain, but was an example of a good guy simply making a few wrong choices that cost him dearly in the end. Not looking for Emma after the postcard, getting together with Tamara, and trying to resurrect his father without caring about the cost. Unlike Rumple or Regina, Neal never killed anybody, nor committed villainous acts to intentionally hurt others. Yes he was a thief, but he did so out of survival much like Aladdin or Robin Hood. However, he still wanted to save his father, still gave himself up to Pan’s shadow to protect the Darlings, still played a part in getting Emma “home”, still got the message and potion to Hook, and still sacrificed his life. Despite the fact that trying to resurrect Rumple was the biggest mistake he ever made in his life, he did so because he wanted to be with his family so badly. He didn’t want Henry to be without his father like he experienced himself.
[adrotate group="5"]To expand on #1, I do believe a big part of the problem is with the way the entire storyline was written. It’s just too loose and there are way too many questions that I believe A&E didn’t really think through…perhaps because as mentioned, S1 was about mothers and sons, and there was far less ‘shipping involved. But you write characters that people love, and eventually people are going to ask questions. So that storyline regarding Neal/August/Emma/jail needed to be tight. Perhaps the tightest storyline to date. But instead it’s one of the weakest – it had to play out this particular way “or bad things would happen?” Sorry A&E, simply not enough. Even for a casual viewer, because at that time I was still definitely in casual viewer territory, and I definitely wasn’t buying it. I can’t quite remember when they decided to make Neal & Bae the same person, but it seems as if they came up with the ‘baby Daddy let’s Emma go to jail’ before they meshed him with Bae, who was a beloved character by almost all. Which is where the storyline falls apart for me, because that’s the first decision we see Neal make that seems very disjointed. Yes, by then teenage Bae & adult Neal had been through a lot but in order for the storyline to make sense, they had to show a lot more backstory for me to accept it. Especially when you then see that Neal is the guy who steps up and takes responsibility when he realizes he has a son, and shows he would do anything for his family. Maybe August’s involvement is my problem…there had to be far more conversation between Neal & August for Neal to think jail seemed like a good plan for me. Maybe because I usually wanted to slug that smirk off his face most of the time…
This! I actually think hiding Neal’s true identity til episodes after Tallahassee while also never showing the transition from little Bae to grown up Neal ultimately backfired. Yes they couldn’t spoil his identity for the sake of the mystery behind Rumple’s search for his son, but that meant not getting a chunk of that backstory when it could have shed some light at the time. Unless you’re a hardcore Nealfire fan who really studies the character and has a lot of headcanons for that gap in his backstory, a lot of viewers saw Neal and Bae as if they were two separate characters. There are plenty of fans who loved Young Bae, but didn’t care for Neal at all. The August fakeout in The Return didn’t help matters either. Believe it or not, I’ve heard from a few fans that August being Bae felt more believable than Neal being Bae. Again, I feel a lot of it comes down to the transition between character’s lifespan. A big thing for me is that Neal comes across as too modern compared to his kid self. You can come up with your headcanons to explain this, and I’ve heard several, but to a casual fan it’s still jarring. If we never actually SEE the transition ourselves, that’s not going to change.
Branching out into some more controversial areas involving Neal (feel free to pick and choose here) 1) Were there other options for Neal besides leaving Emma in “Tallahassee” (if we accept that the curse MUST be broke) 2) Do you think Neal ever tried to look for Emma? 3) Was little Bae right to ask his father to give up magic? 4) Does Neal owe Rumple unconditional love and acceptance (a la Belle?) 5) Most characters in lit and TV have a ἁμαρτία (harmatia) or fatal flaw (for example, Rumple’s might be his pride) What is Neal’s fatal flaw?
1) The biggest wrench is that he didn’t look for her after he got the postcard, and instead had already started dating Tamara. I feel like if he had actually done what he originally told August by looking for her when the curse broke, his previous actions would have been more so forgiven. I do think the whole jail thing could have been handled in a different way than what actually happened, too. About the Henry factor, Neal didn’t even know he was going to be born nor did he and August predict that Henry would coincidentally be adopted by Regina. If the jail thing happened, but Emma didn’t give up Henry or Henry was never born, would Emma have still made it to Storybrooke? So while August’s plan somewhat worked out, the Henry factor wasn’t accounted for. Of course, if we want to be completely honest, Adam and Eddy could have invented another way if they had wanted to.
2) Neal’s original intent was to reunite with Emma as soon as the curse broke, going by his scene at the end of Tallahassee with August. No, I don’t think he actually tried to look for her, and he even admitted in 301 that he took the easy way out by not doing anything at all. He thought about it, but never actually acted upon it. This is further cemented in 221, where he specifically tells Emma he “wanted” to look for her, not that he ever actually attempted to do so. In 218’s flashback, August invited Neal to go with him to Storybrooke, but he didn’t want to because of his father being able to find him. In 321 he also adds that he didn’t go look for her because he didn’t think Emma could ever forgive him. So it’s a combination of being too afraid of both Emma and his father.
3) Just letting Rumple continue to be an abusive magical bully wasn’t the way to go, so yes he did right by asking him to get rid of his powers.
4) No, but that was ultimately up for Neal to decide on his own. It took a long time for him and Rumple to come to an understanding. Knowing that Rumple was also abandoned by his father, but Pan unlike Rumple didn’t regret leaving him, gave Neal a new perspective on the situation. However, if Neal ended up never forgiving him, that was totally in his right.
5) I would say Neal’s biggest flaw is being too head strong. He was so desperate not to repeat his fathers mistakes, but in doing so repeated some of his mistakes. Rumple wanted to cheat fate and not lose Bae, but in doing so lost him anyway. Neal in turn didn’t want Henry to be fatherless like he was, but his rash actions in resurrecting Rumple resulted in Henry losing his father anyway. We also saw some of this head strong behavior in his attempt to save Henry via using a child as bait and letting himself get caught by Pan again after he used squid ink on Rumple.
Unless Adam and Eddy are taking it back to Season 2 Days. We may just get nine episodes this arc, and the Spring Premier gets thirteen episodes.
They already confirmed a few times that they’re repeating the 11 episode runs for each half format.
Anyone know of anyone who has gone up during filming? I’m gonna head to steveston in July. Any tips?
I would ask @katmtan on Twitter. She attends several filmings of the show each Season.
This headcanon randomly popped in my head, but for whatever reason I can totally see them doing this:
Will Scarlet AKA The Knave of Hearts is who Hook traded the Jolly Roger for in return for the magic bean. How and why Will was back in the Enchanted Forest post-curse is beyond me, unless Hook somehow ended up in Wonderland and met Will there. Hook traveling to another realm to meet whoever he got the bean from would make some sense, as the curse would have taken pretty much everybody else in FTL. There’s also the question of how Will had a magic bean, but they could make up any reason. Knowing that Will will have a regular role on the show this Season, they have to connect him to the storyline somehow.
Tonight’s re-watch of the pilot in the chat was a bust, partly because I actually forgot myself and the chat room was empty. For those still interested, I’d recommend watching the pilot on your own time and I’ll try the live chat rewatch for episode 2 tomorrow.
#OUAT season 4 filming sched is set! July 9 2014 – April 2, 2015 #OnceUponATime
— Katrina (@katmtan) June 9, 2014
