[Slurpeez]

Hmmm…do you think they will shoot it in New York? Do they even have the budget? I kinda like that they did that in 2×01. (Since I’m a native New Yorker) But then again it may not be based in New York at all. Ok I’m just rambling now, since I’m just so excited.

The scenes for Neal in “Broken” were actually filmed on location in NYC. However, the scenes for “Manhattan” were actually filmed in Vancouver, BC.

[Slurpeez]

Yes I agree. I see as much of myself in Neal as I do Rumple and my whole fandom thesis is that we like who we like because it’s a move from sympathy to empathy. Once you’ve aligned yourself with a character as more than just “oh I feel sorry for them” but rather “I understand them because in a way I am them” then their struggles becomes your struggles and if they can’t get a happy ending then there is no hope for you. I *need* Neal to get his happily ever after with the woman he has loved for 11 years because it means that just maybe I get one too. Same with my Imp. I need him to realize that someone loves him and will never leave him because I have the exact same problem.

Thanks for sharing. I think that’s true that we as viewers relate most to characters with whom we most can identify. Even though I thankfully grew up with a loving family, I can still relate to Emma, who said in ‘The Price of Gold’:

People are gonna tell you who you are your whole life. You just gotta punch back and say, ‘No, this is who I am.’ You want people to look at you differently? Make them! You want to change things, you’re gonna have to go out there and change them yourself, because there are no fairy godmothers in this world.

I’ve always wanted to be an overcomer and both Emma and Neal represent that story that it is possible to do so. Both characters have had to overcome monumental challenges, and still do, but at least they’re both trying to hold onto hope that maybe they can get a second chance in life. And just maybe, if they persist long enough, they might get a second chance at love. I know people can work through trials and even even be the stronger for it, but first they have to be willing to put in the hard work. I want to see Emma and Neal do the hard thing of seeing if they can work it out, because if so, then they can reap the rewards that come after. Like Snow said, Emma owes it to herself, not just Henry, to see if Neal was alive, because happy endings start with hope.

"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

[Slurpeez]

The writers have created a long suffering character who keeps on trying despite getting kicked in teeth.  He is no fairytale prince, but a street smart survivor who just wants to have a home.  He is not out to be a hero but he has a core of goodness that colors how he treats others.  We are seeing new sides and in general while there is some debate about what it means, he is developing as a character.

This is one of the biggest reasons I’m rooting for Neal. He makes me want to believe that nice boys don’t always come in last. Neal’s the boy-next-door to Emma’s girl-next-door character, your atypical princess who is a survivor and who fell in love with a sheep farmer, same as Snow fell in love with a shepherd.

"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

[Slurpeez]

I know I may be reading way too much into this but… now we have another NYC title (again a possible reference to “Manhattan”)!

Here are the lyrics for the song “New York City Serenade” by Bruce Springsteen:

Billy, he’s down by the railroad tracks
Sittin’ low in the back seat of his Cadillac
Diamond Jackie, she’s so intact
She falls so softly beneath him
Jackie’s heels are stacked, Billy’s got cleats on his boots
Together they’re gonna boogaloo down Broadway and come back home with the loot
It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute
It’s a mad dog’s promenade
So walk tall, or baby, don’t walk at all

Fish lady, fish lady, fish lady, she baits them tenement walls
She won’t take corner boys, ain’t got no money and they’re so easy
I said, “Hey baby, won’t you take my hand, walk me down Broadway
I’m a young man and I talk real loud, yeah baby, walk real proud for you
So shake it away, so shake away your street life
And hook up to the train
Hook up to the night train
Hook it up, hook up to the, hook up to the train”
But I know that she won’t take the train
No, she won’t take the train
No, she won’t take the train
No, she won’t take the train
She’s afraid them tracks are gonna slow her down
And when she turns, this boy’ll be gone
So long, sometimes you just gotta walk on

Hey vibes man, hey jazz man, play me your serenade
Any deeper blue and you’re playin’ in your grave
Save your notes, don’t spend ‘em on the blues boy
Save your notes, don’t spend ‘em on the darlin’ yearlin’ sharp boy
Straight for the church note ringin’, vibes man sting a trash can
Listen to your junk man
Listen to your junk man
Listen to your junk man
Listen to your junk man
He’s singin’, singin’, singin’, singin’
All dressed up in satin, walkin’ past the alley
Watch out for your junk man
Watch out for your junk man
Watch out for your junk man

"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

[Slurpeez]

I’m on cloud nine! I know I may be reading way too much into this but….First we have the title “Going Home” as the title for episode 11 (a possible reference to Neal’s line “almost home” in the episode “Tallahassee”) and now we have another NYC title (again a possible reference to “Manhattan”)! 😀

"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

[Slurpeez]

Nealfire is my second favorite character, after Rumple. I find him completely compelling. He is a tragic soul who has had nothing but misery for pretty much his whole life. He was abandoned and forced to give up his happy ending for the sake of people he did not know and also knowing that his father would come looking for him. I love every second he is on screen. The three min convo with Rumple in Manhattan remains my favorite scene of S2, beating out Rumbelle phone call and Rumbelle reunion (and coming from me, that should say something)

Yes, Neal and Emma are ranked neck and neck as my favorite characters to date. They both have so much pathos and depth as two orphans both searching for a home and yet torn asunder by a dark curse. I just want to take both of them and hug them deeply and then mediate for them so they can work out their issues to rediscover that everything they’ve ever wanted could be theirs if they just did the hard thing and opened up. Home is within their reach, if only they’d choose it. The title “Going Home” is giving me hope that they’ll start on this road to reconciliation in the not-so-distant future.

Hook is, to me at least, I won’t speak for my ship: loud, brash, in your face, sexual. He’s the quaterback of the football team who knows that every girl wants to be with him and he relishes it. He uses his looks and his sexaulity to get he wants. Neal is quiet and contemplative. He can’t make waves or noise because every time he’s tried to make wave, something bad happens to him: he falls down a bean hole, he gets taken by a shadow. He has to lay low. He’s the kid in the back of the class who no one ever gets to know because he doesn’t open up.

That’s such an excellent analogy! No wonder I prefer Neal over Hook. I never went for the jocks but always for the quite, soulful, albeit slightly nerdy types. 😀

"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

[Slurpeez]

“Greatly exaggerated.” The heck?!

As usual, unverified spoilers are usually gradually exaggerated and/or wrong. I think the level of popularity of a character might’ve been exaggerated to create hype/internet traffic to a certain site which shall not be named.

Also…what does the shadow DO?!

Hmmm. Doesn’t the Shadow riiiiiiip people’s shadows?

I stand by the “Blue fakes her own death theory”

That’s as good a theory as any, especially with so little else to go on right now. Plus, Sneak Fairy lives!

"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

[Slurpeez]

And so then I was like, “Yay. Bae is back!!!” even though I had really liked the initial chemistry with Hook and Emma. But then it looked like they weren’t going to have Emma and Hook pursue a romantic relationship so it made sense to have Bae show up when he did.

Thanks for posting. In response to this first point, I don’t think it would’ve made sense for Emma and Neal to pick up right where they left off, romantically speaking. There are too many unresolved issues and misconceptions for them to work through first. Plus, in typical TV drama fashion, the writers decided to give Neal a fake fiancé, yet another hurdle for Emma and Neal to work through. Yet, as Jane Espenson said in an interview: “Fiancees are like walls. They can be moved,” which is surly what happened when Tamara shot Neal and he sacrificed himself by going through the portal so that Henry wouldn’t have to grow up alone. Sending Neal to another land and having Emma and Hook hook-up are yet more hurdles to work through.

Yet, what couples on this show don’t have a lot to work through? Rumple turned Belle out of his castle when her kiss would’ve freed him from his curse, and they were separated for over 30 years since Belle was Regina’s prisoner. Then Belle got amnesia when Hook shot her, and then Rumple left her behind for NL. Yet, their love endures. David and Snow had to face Prince George’s threat for Snow to tell David she didn’t love him so that he’d marry Abigail, resulting in David’s broken heart and Snow drinking a potion to forget Charming. Plus, they were cursed for 28 years, had to deal with fake memories and and a fake fiancé. They found each other again when Emma broke the curse only for Emma and Snow to get sucked through a portal again, resulting in them being trapped across worlds. Every couple has obstacles to overcome.

So here’s my question. I was assuming that I was going to love Neal as much as I loved Bae. But I didn’t. When I try to figure out why I can’t bond with him it’s because I find him kind of “flat” or something. And it honestly has nothing to do with being in comparison to Hook, because like I said, I was assuming I was going to like him. So I have been trying to figure out why I find him “flat.” We have talked about this over on our CS ship as well and many of us think that he has been purposely written flat because we don’t think it is MRJ who is causing him to be flat. But since you are all happily sailing the SF ship you must not find him flat.

Firstly, MRJ is a fantastic actor, and if you’ve ever watched season 1 of True Blood, you’ll know what I mean, since he nailed his role. He studied a Cajun dialect and accent just to perfect that role. So, it certainly isn’t MRJ’s acting chops, which are top notch.

Secondly, Neal is Baelfire, just a grown-up version of him. In 2×21, we saw Neal sacrifice himself by letting go of Emma’s hand so that Henry wouldn’t have to grow up alone, which was a clear parallel to how young Baelfire scarified himself for the Darling family. His same self-sacrifice instinct is still predominant in Neal just as it was in Baelfire. He’s a man who is long-suffering and a survivor, too. The last time we saw young Bae was when he’d only first arrived in NL; we’ve yet to see a flashback of young Bae’s long time in a NL. We’ve caught glimpses of it, seeing Bae’s cave full of tally marks indicating days spent there, which Emma recognized he’d stopped counting because he’d lost hope. Neal told Rumple in 3×4 that he’d used to dream of his father coming looking for him, but then he’d wake up and realize it wasn’t going to happen. Yet, somehow, despite all of that, Bae found the fortitude to get off the island. He’s the only lost boy ever to have escaped, and even though PP said it was with his permission, we know now that PP is a liar. Neal may have found a way to really escape PP and his shadow by his own initiative.

Now, back to my point. Neal is a man who has to relive nightmares of his father releasing his hand and sending him to another realm, forcing Bae to become a street urchent in Victorian London, and later Neal had to steal to get by in 20th-century America. It’s remarkable that Neal is as well-adjusted as he is, and despite all of his abandonment issues, he hasn’t turned into a villain or a hardened criminal. He’s kept he same, pure heart, despite all the crap that life continues to throw at him. By the time we met Neal in “Tallhassee” Emma was the one person who had loved him in over a century. Imagine how hard it was for Neal to walk away from  her, from the dream of “Tallahassee” when he discovered that Emma was destined to break his father’s cruse, a curse which had been created to locate him. So while Neal is mainly criticized for this decision, Adam and Eddy confirmed in the official podcast for “Manhattan” that this not was done out of any malice, but rather, it was done out of love. Neal made the same decision that Charming and Snow made to send Emma to our world: they wanted to give Emma her best shot. And Neal realized that he’d be standing in the way of Emma fulfilling her destiny and saving her family if he selfishly kept her for himself. As both Mulan and Charming have said, sometimes love means sacrifice. Again, I see the same self-sacrifice tendency in Neal as I saw in young Baelfire, a desire to let Emma get home to her family ahead of his own hopes and dreams for forming a home with her, a home he’d been denied since he’d left the Darlings to save them.

That is why we SF shippers put so much stock into Emma meeting Wendy, because Wendy sees Neal as the same boy who saved her family all those years ago. By sharing the story of how Baelfire tried to save her brothers, Wendy will help to inform Emma about Neal’s true motives and what kind of a family man he truly is. Neal would do anything for Henry and Emma, as he did in 2×21 by falling through the portal, just as surely as Baelfire would’ve done anything to spare Wendy and her family from any harm of magic.

So do you feel like Neal gets the same caliber of writing and attention that the rest of the cast gets? And I am not talking about in comparison to Hook because I know there are a lot of people who feel like he gets way too much attention. If I were to completely take Hook off the show I still feel like Neal is flat compared to the other characters. I think everyone agrees something is odd with how ABC publicity leaves him out of the show synopsis and can’t seem to spell his name correctly. So that makes me wonder if he isn’t supposed to be considered one of the “important” characters?? But that doesn’t make sense considering how important Bae is to the entire curse and the entire show and the fact that MRJ is at all the publicity events.

While I find it annoying that ABC doesn’t promote Neal enough, I think it’s mostly because the marketing likes to give fangirls what the want. Yet, I don’t think Adam and Eddy have written Neal in a “flat way” because he is so integral to many characters: Rumple, Emma, Henry, Hook, and probably will be with Belle. I think that we need to see more of Neal’s own backstory after he got out of NL, and also after he left Emma. We need to know more about Neal to help in the continuity of his character to see how Baelfire grew into Neal. Neal has anything but an easy time. In fact, we Neal fans think of him as fate’s punching bag. Yet, Neal got his degree in the school of hard knocks. Even when fate deals him a rough hand, he tries to overcome it. He’s going to have to work hard to forgive his dad, but when he does, the payoff will be that much greater. The same goes for Neal having a lot to do to make up for being absentee to Henry (which wasn’t his choosing), and also he has many miles to go to try and resolve things with Emma. Yet, that doesn’t mean he won’t or can’t. It just means that like Emma must forgive her parents, so Neal must forgive his father. And when they do, they will be able to start to dismantle their misconceptions about each other and to learn the truth of what took them apart from each other so that they can begin to form new, hopefully positive conceptions of one another. Neal’s greatest regret in life was leaving Emma, and he must learn to believe in second chances, just as Emma must learn to take the hard road of revisiting her past in order to move forward. Emma said it’s easier just to burry her own emotions in the past, but then, that just means she’s not dealing with her past and not really moving forward. She’d just be standing still, with a closet full of skeletons. Likewise, Neal must deal with the skeletons in his closet by dealing with his own abandonment issues. Yet, when they do, both Emma and Neal will find the payoff is somehow worth the pain of revisiting painful memories. Because then they’ll truly be able to move on and set healthy patterns for Henry going forward.

My difficulty bonding with Neal actually started in Tallahassee. I didn’t find Emma and Neal’s relationship at all romantic or appealing (and again – it had nothing to do with Hook). But when we found out he was Bae I thought I would somehow come to love him because, well . . . he is Bae!

It’s a matter of personal preference. When “Tallhassee” first came out, Neal and Emma were open to interpretation in my mind. From what we’d seen, Neal and Emma were two young people on the run, sealing to survive, but still living outside the law. Emma became pregnant with Neal’s child and ended up in jail for assisting in a crime Neal had committed. That seemed like a really negative light to cast Neal in, so it’s understandable why many people didn’t take to him. Personally, I started out actually preferring Hook, but then after 2×9 when he told Emma he’d jab her with her sword and nearly killed Belle,  I stopped because I found that demeaning to women. Anyway, I just decided after that to be open-minded about Neal, figuring he could be Baelfire and that we didn’t have the full story yet. When I saw “Manhattan” I fell in love with the idea of Neal and Emma. It clicked for me, because I realized that Neal never wanted to leave Emma and that he’d never stopped loving her. I suddenly understood his side of the story. His leaving her was not done out of any malicious intent, as Emma had believed for 11 years. It was done to give Emma her best chance of getting home, of saving her family, which is the same choice Snow and David had made when Emma was just a baby. I started to love Neal as a prospect for Emma too, as I realized how much they still love each other, despite everything. By 2×21, when Emma and Neal declared their undying love and need for one another, I recognized that at being true love-love which doesn’t keep record of wrong but rejoices in the truth, endures all things, hopes all things, and a love that never fails.

So I am just wondering, do you SF shippers see Neal being given just as much depth of character as the rest of the cast? Because I honestly feel like he doesn’t get much to work with and I don’t feel like he has been given much of an emotional connection to the other characters. And I have a very difficult time not separating Bae and Neal into two completely different people even though I don’t mean to. I didn’t have that problem with Rose playing young Cora and Barbara playing older Cora – I saw them as the same person regardless of which actress was on the screen. And even with Dr. Hopper, he’s still Jiminy Crickett. But I just can’t seem to keep continuity between MRJ and Dylan – they always feel like two completely different characters to me.

I know that Neal has a long way to go in fighting for Emma and proving that he’s still the same Baelfire who tries to sacrifice for others. Yet, I have faith that as Neal reconciles with his Papa, more people will see that Neal really is Baelfire who only ever wanted his father and family to be whole.

"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

[Slurpeez]

heatherc1275 wrote: I noticed something else that you guys haven’t talked about yet and it has to do with Emma. She’s sitting in such an odd position, not location wise but in how she’s sitting there. She’s almost in like a fetal position while Neal is talking to Wendy and I can’t help wondering what all she’s found out by this point because it sure looks to me like she may have found out what Neal did for the Darlings and isn’t sure how to process it. The worried look that Snow gave Emma at one point also made me wonder about her state at this point. JMo did say that Emma was going to be relearning her past and at this point in the show, I bet she’s found out what Neal did for the only family he ever knew after being abandoned and is going to be conflicted on how to process it. His time in Neverland came from him giving himself up to the Shadow instead of letting it take her brothers and Emma all ready knows that he was gone for a long time and lost hope while he was stuck there. That’s a lot to take in about a man you always thought the worst about and hopefully it cracks a down one of her walls for them to really talk about things soon. I’m hoping anyway.

Yes, good point. Emma seems to be taking a lot in. Not only does she realize Neal is a hero to Wendy, but she’s realizing now what PP truly wants to do with her and Neal’s son: trade Henry’s life for PP’s own immortality. Emma is being hit with a lot all at once. She’s going to need Neal’s strength and steadfastness to help save their son, together, which he’ll lend her.

I was just listening to “I Choose You” by Sara Bareilles, whose lyrics make me daydream about Neal and Emma one day resolving their misconception about each other and choosing to work past their past mistakes to choose one another anew.

"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

[Slurpeez]

Henry and Neal don’t need to believe that they are heroes. They already are.

True, THEY may not need convincing, but there are sadly a lot of haters out there who can’t stand either Neal or Henry. A lot of people hate Neal for what he did to Emma and how he reacted to Rumple in the present day and an equal number of Regina fans can’t stand Henry for not wanting to live with Regina. I think those heroic parallels are being strongly drawn for the sake of skeptics who stubbornly refuse to think of Neal and Henry in a positive light.

ETA: It’s interesting that Emma reminds Neal of Wendy. So I’m thinking Emma and Wendy probably share a lot in common. I’m thinking Wendy is going to play a large role in helping Emma to shed her a lot of her misconceptions about Neal and to start to see him in a new, positive light.

"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

[Author]

Posts