KAOS Agent

You guys keep reminding me about all the things I disliked about the episode. I think that maybe home is meant to be missed even if gone for a short time. Say you go on a trip for a bit or study abroad or something short term. After a bit, even if you're enjoying where you are, you still miss home. You want to go back because it's where you belong. It was a poor way to put it, but I lean towards that reading of the meaning rather than you can only know home after you've left it permanently. It is truly sad that Emma never had that feeling in her entire life. It's very messed up that Regina is the one claiming victimhood in this episode when the baby whose life she destroyed and the young mother whose life she ended are the two she blames for her sad, sad life. And you're definitely right about the Neal thing. I get that it was supposed to be a tribute and sweet and all that, but there is way too much baggage associated with Neal to spring a permanent reminder of him on both Emma and Henry without at least asking first. Even if all the memories were wonderful and not the complex mess that they are, it's not cool to do that while people are still grieving and trying to sort through it all. If they wanted to honor Neal in some way maybe they could have asked about a middle name or something. Anything but giving your kid the name of the man who knocked up your teenage daughter, set her up to take the fall for his crimes, destroyed her emotionally and took off free as a bird for parts unknown.

Neal picked up Emma's glove. Michael Raymond James talked about that in an interview and how he played with the glove the same way Brando did in "On the Waterfront". It was quite deliberate and meant to reflect some of the same things of Neal/Emma's relationship that it did in the movie.

Too bad they didn't show Emma's shoes. I think it was Jen who tweeted out a picture of them. They were gold sandals with little crocodiles on them. Gold had a sense of humor. I always loved how Emma just went digging into Hook's bag for the book and he didn't even blink. No way he'd let anyone else do that. Those two worked really well together and I enjoyed their adventures before Emma acknowledged the romantic feelings between them. It's a much better dynamic than other pairings for Emma. Hook could call her on her shit without being mean about it and she could respond without moaning about how hard her life is. Emma/Charming was another pairing I liked and I wish we'd gotten a little of that in this episode. Prince Charming asking Princess Leia to dance or something would've been awesome. The Hook/Charming campfire chat was fun. I loved their reactions to Red stripping down and going all wolf. This episode made excellent use of their fairytale origins and the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

This episode(s) shows what Once could be when they stop trying for stupid twists and just let the fun adventure happen. Trying to be dramatic or "dark but not bleak" really took the fun out of this show.

I'm not even sure that it works in a vacuum. Regina is acting generously towards Zelena because she won. She spews the whole "heroes don't kill" line in the barn and then tells Zelena if she doesn't act the way Regina wants her to, Regina will kill her. "Evil isn't born. It's made. And so is good. If I were you... I'd consider creating a new destiny. Because if you don't, I'll be right there to take your heart and crush it." How does that fit in with her sudden light magic, redemption and proclaimed heroism? It makes no sense.

Emma goes to take on Zelena. Who should go with her? Let's have her take Hook, the guy who can remove her magic. Excellent plan. Everyone was made to be useless simply so Regina could use her "light" magic and save the day. There are ways to have everyone contribute and still give the big moment to you chosen character. This show never manages to do that and it's almost always Emma whose role is diminished the most in these moments. Removing the attributes that make characters unique and special is not great. Also, I'm a big fan of letting Rumpel kill Zelena. I was happy to see him continue with his dark ways. Although Belle needs to seriously rethink her life choices.

Shut up, Henry! I hate how this show continuously lets him act badly and then wants to make the adults in the wrong for telling him off. Too bad the monkeys didn't get him.

This episode was written by Jane Espenson and Daniel T. Thomsen. Espenson was the writer for Cora centric episodes and while she had some weird morality in her writing, I usually felt like she wrote Cora as a manipulative schemer. Yes, there is some level of victimhood simply by virtue of the poverty she grew up in, but I never felt like this was always portrayed to excuse Cora's choices, inform them, yes, but not excuse them. This was clear when she ditched her newborn in the woods. Cora said it herself, she gave up Zelena to give herself her best chance. Otherwise, she'd continue to be only a miller's daughter. Oddly, this is expressed as "I must give you away" like she was giving the baby to someone rather than leaving her to starve or get eaten by wolves. Still, it's clearly shown to be a selfish choice. Personally, I never bought that Cora wouldn't have tried all kinds of abortifacients rather than carrying the child. Given that she really had hooked a king, the much easier path would have been ending the pregnancy rather than being subject to blackmail and putting her in the situation that ultimately resulted in her being dumped. Thomsen also wrote "Into the Deep" and "The Queen is Dead" both of which featured a pretty nasty Cora, so it's not like he's unaware of Cora's previously presented personality and actions. The whole thing is weird. Maybe the skewed presentation of Eva and Leopold as villains was a poor attempt to make Zelena more sympathetic and show that she has motivation to go after their daughter and her family because revenge or whatever. It's a stretch.

The show does this sort of thing so often that I have to believe that they really think that's what they are showing. It's this weird thing where they have Cora act completely in character, scheming, manipulative and selfish (so they obviously know who she is), but then wave that all away to pretend like she's the victim when others react naturally to her schemes. When other seemingly rational characters then act like Cora is the victim after hearing the backstory we just saw, it makes me feel like I missed multiple scenes wherein Eva killed Cora's puppy, put her in the stocks and threw rotten fruit at her and then branded her a thief with an actual hot iron. Oh and then cursed her into becoming a selfish bitch who had to abandon her child in the woods.

What makes the whole comparison even less apt is that after Eva told Leopold about the deception, he gave Cora the chance to come clean and it's possible he would have gone through with the marriage if she'd just told the truth when confronted. He said, "Gossip means nothing to me. I've pledged to marry you, dear Cora, and I will keep that pledge as long as I know I can trust you." If nothing else, I believe that he would have helped her if she'd confessed. The whole thing is on Cora. Not that any of what Eva or Snow did deserves the attempts to annihilate an entire family including a totally innocent newborn. Or slaughtering villages. Or murdering random people because they are happy when you are not or because they reject living with you two days after you've met. These lame attempts at equivalency will never work because of the extreme actions of the villains. Having Snow think she deserved it because she was a brat or was manipulated by a master is sick. Does she think Emma deserved to suffer too?

The deeper we get into this rewatch the more disappointing the show becomes. I read people's thoughts from when the show was airing and see the interest in some of the developing storylines and it reminds me that I once felt that way. This episode wasn't bad and I think I liked it at the time, but once you put it in the context of the full story, I lose interest. For a show that I was really enjoying (and I was super invested at this point in the original airing), there is so little rewatch value for me. That said, I loved the David/Emma crib building. I also appreciated that Henry was acting age appropriately and normally. Hanging out with Hook would be much more interesting than an obsessive pregnant woman. It's clear the writers know how to write a preteen boy, so it shouldn't be that hard to keep it up. Ariel is always fun. And Emma's amused reaction to David's attempt to be cool and Regina's what the hell reaction to it were also entertaining. Things I hate: Making Emma into an utter moron just for a quick tapas quip. David deciding to teach Henry how to drive right down the middle of Main Street. Zelena's nonsensical Kiss Curse. What is her plan anyway? Why not just curse Emma directly? Why not threaten all of Emma's friends and family directly? What's the point? The angst is dumb and mopey Hook is annoying.

Worthless trash of an episode. If not the worst episode of the series, it's definitely top 5.

The show screwed up here because they implied that Neal left before Hook, but that doesn't work out timeline-wise unless Neal was in his 30s when he met Emma, which makes things seriously icky. However, if Neal is closer to 20 than 30 when he meets Emma, that means he left Neverland about ten years after Hook, which would give him a decade to get to know Tink better. In terms of feeling bad about Neal's death, they needed to have him show actual remorse for the way he treated Emma rather than handwaving it all as him having no choice. They tried to rehabilitate his image in the later parts of 2B, but it wasn't enough to overcome the real trauma he'd caused in the main protagonist and he didn't have enough development outside of silly romantic triangle nonsense to make me anything other than relieved that he was gone. The way he died certainly didn't do anything to aid in improving my perception of him.

I always thought most everybody at the funeral was there for Emma and Henry (mostly Emma since Henry didn't remember his father). Hook, Belle, Tink and the Lost Boys would be the only people who were there for Neal himself.

Actually, I think the rumors were started by a production assistant. I don't know if she had an ax to grind or what, but it didn't come from the usual suspects. Of course, the minute these claims seemed even remotely plausible (the death of a major character had been confirmed to gin up interest in the show), the shippers spread it with glee. One thing I'll give this show is that it inspired a very passionate fan base. Since Neal stood in the way of both Swan Queen and Captain Swan, you had crazies from all corners of the fandom participating. Neal's death stopped being a way for the show to be edgy or do the unexpected and was twisted into something that many fans believed they were responsible for. It was not a good thing. It fed into a lot of the nastiness that many of the actors experienced and it also fed into Adam Horowitz constantly placating people and affected the show's writing.

There were also nasty rumors about why the actor was let go, so maybe they felt like their defense of Neal was necessary to show support for the actor. Having him back for a quick cameo shows there's no bad feelings and painting Neal as a saint placates those upset fans and allows them to bring him back as a helpful spirit who would never upset Emma in any way.

This show is so weird with its portrayal of events. It's like the writers can't agree on what's heroic and what's not, so actions on this show end up like Schrödinger's cat, where they are both heroic and villainous. Mostly though, I think that there was some belief on the writer's part that Neal was acting poorly in the Enchanted Forest. It's only later when the show goes to placate upset viewers that they pretend events happen differently. In Neal's case, because he was never given much to fix his actions towards Emma in the past and they needed him to be sympathetic and highly motivated here, they had to pretend that Neal's parts of "Tallahassee" and "Selfless, Brave and True" and "Broken" and "Manhattan" all happened differently. He screwed Emma over in a manner that was not necessary. He was more frightened of his father finding him than interested in Emma when August dropped by to tell him he was going to Storybrooke. He got the postcard and did nothing. And then he told Emma to leave and pretend like she couldn't find him. None of this jives with a Neal that had no choice but to leave Emma and now loves her so much that he can't spend more than a day looking for other options trying to get back to her. The showrunners desperately want to be liked and they can't handle criticism at all. There are times to throw a bone to fans when they are upset about something, but there are also times when you need to tell the story you've been telling and not screw around with it because some small group of fans is unhappy. The writers on this show have a very hard time dealing with the dislike and can't stick to their story. Neal was a selfish, scared guy who screwed over his girlfriend because of his daddy issues. Rumpel was very important to his character's motives in leaving Emma. Pretending like he had no choice removes that part of the story entirely. Considering that his relationship with his father is the reason for basically the entire show, this is a terrible thing to try to erase from his history.

I just want to reiterate that doing exactly what the villain wants you to do is not at all a heroic action. If you have to sacrifice yourself and die because of your stupidity, you're still not a hero. All you are is an idiot. Also, Neal had a choice not to abandon Emma or at the very least, not do it in the manner in which he did. Simply having people say differently does not change the actual facts of the story as shown on the show.

The highlight of this episode is Zelena kicking Regina's ass. I'd take more scenes of Regina flying through the clock tower.

The theme of fighting your fears didn't carry over into the present Storybrooke. David was fighting himself like he did in the Enchanted Forest, but it wasn't fear related except in the most basic sense. This is where the whole thing fell down because there couldn't be a bookend conversation with Emma in the present. He didn't remember his dream or fear of failure. He was too busy being worried about the Wicked Witch and what it meant to be recursed and memory-less with people turning into flying monkeys to focus on his fear of impending fatherhood. This is why this show is so damn frustrating. Post-S1, they lost most of the deeper parallels between the past and the present stories and there's usually only a loose connection between the two. In this case, they had the perfect opportunity to have David in the past struggling with his failure at parenting, while forging a better parental bond with Emma in the present. Instead, Emma is off with Hook, which I enjoyed, but it could have been an Emma/David adventure that built on the same fears in Storybrooke. This could then have culminated in an Emma/David discussion at the end. It would also allow for David to continue to struggle with this throughout the season and maybe align him more with Emma and her plans to return to New York.

Her apologies never really work for me in terms of her being a better person. The Henrys are people she cares about, which puts those apologies in a different category for me. I believe that she was sincere with her father and I liked that, but that turned into him apologizing to her and taking all the blame on himself, which kind of ruined the moment. But did she ever apologize to someone she didn't care about when she didn't want something from them? Apologizing to Belle was not done as an actual expression of remorse, but because she wanted Belle to do something for her. Here is a snippet from that conversation in "Bleeding Through": Belle: What do I have here? Self-respect. Why on Earth or any realm would I help you? The woman who imprisoned me in a tower in her castle, then put me in an asylum for twenty-eight years, who's done nothing but mentally and physically torture me ever since we've known each other! Regina: Huh. Bookworm's got teeth. Belle: Get out. Regina: Yes. I did all those horrible things in the past. But right now, I need something to defeat the woman who's puppet-mastering your boyfriend. She has your Rumpel, and unless you help me, you may never see him again. I'm sorry, Belle. I really, really am. This isn't a Regina who thinks she needs to make amends for something, but is more like fine, you want an apology? I'm sorry. Now wipe the slate clean and give me what I need. It's not genuine to me. Maybe she means it, but it's clear that she's only saying it because it's expected and Belle will give in once she does. There wasn't a moment where Regina did something simply because it was the right thing to do and she genuinely wanted to atone.

They really did manage to make all of Regina's potential storylines as dull as dishwater. Why would you remove the interesting drama and make everything just happen with no struggle? There was a lot of interesting stuff to mine with the Robin relationship and they skipped over all of it with him being into her bold and audacious behavior and her seeing the tattoo and being instantly in love. Where was the fun of falling for each other? Where was the indecision or worry about getting involved with Robin? You don't have to like Captain Swan or Rumpbelle to at least see that there was development of something with both of those couples. It may have gone too far or gone on too long and become repetitive, but there were at least some internal struggles going on with each of the characters involved in those relationships. Outlaw Queen was only affected by external forces and even then they took away the interesting stuff. Did we ever see Regina take the initiative to fix something that she wasn't being forced to deal with? Why not have her work to return a few hearts and maybe deal with some past behavior and learn something? Why not see her try to make amends? How about see her reach out and not be forgiven? Too often we saw people apologizing to Regina, but we never saw the reverse. Even worse, there were times when Regina refused to forgive. Her attitude towards Zelena was awful and showed zero self-awareness about her own past behavior even when Zelena tried to point it out. And that was in S6! Regina is the weirdest character for me.

I don't disagree that Regina was much better when she was acting more Evil Queen-like but roughly on the side of the heroes. The problem is that they had her acting this way, but would label her actions as heroic and wonderful all while berating the heroes for any hint of grayness. Heroes can't react even in self defense, but Regina can go all crazy eyed and delight in destruction and she's proclaimed a hero. I think the problem is that they recognized that Regina would be as boring as Snow if she were held to the same standards and had to act the same as the heroes on this show, but desperately wanted her to be a hero (because she is the real hero in their minds) and couldn't deal with not calling her one. I liked Regina in 3A mostly because they were sticking with her using her evilness in some gray areas to help save Henry and they acknowledged it as such. Taking the Lost Boy's heart to deliver the mirror was a perfect example of this. When she later wanted to take it farther and torture information out of a bunch of little kids, she was stopped. That was the correct route to take with Regina. She was someone who was helping, but had no limits in what she was willing to do to get it done. That made sense for her character. She kept her edge and you couldn't fully trust her, but she wasn't being called a great hero. They abandoned that in late 3A and started to portray her evilness as actually heroic. I'd put the no regrets moment as the turning point, but there was a subtle creep before that.

David's dream at the beginning offered a lot of promise for development in terms of his relationship with Emma. It would have been nice to see this be continued beyond this episode. It's not something that should be "fixed" by learning a very special lesson in the tower. He and Snow did fail their daughter and their people. Dealing with that isn't done by admitting you're afraid of failing again. Of course, this whole thing was only done to get to a plot point of needing the courage totem, so it was meaningless in terms of character anyway. I hate that this is how the show is written. Create an interesting character story and then dump it in the same episode once the plot point has been met.

I liked Emma and Regina working together in this episode. Regina didn't throw a bunch of nasty comments at Emma and they had a nice conversation in the car. It turns out New York was great for Henry. He was a happy, normal boy with lots of friends, so it will make complete sense for him to want to move back to Storybrooke and leave his happy life behind rather than staying in New York and visiting Maine every once in a while. There's a bunch of Regina in this episode that I forgot about. I love her claim that she owns all of her bad deeds. Sure she does. And then there's the whole part where she wants to essentially commit suicide because she doesn't have Henry and the only thing that pulls her out of it is that having someone to destroy gives her new purpose. This is said complete with crazy eyes. Anyone who gets off on human destruction as much as she does is not safe. Regina becomes less and less redeemable every time they show her gleeful and enjoying the thought of bringing pain to others. It's not revenge that drives her; it's sadism. I like the conversation out at the town line with Emma, Hook and David. Hook is ribbing her about the monster she was going to marry and David's more upset that she was contemplating marriage and he missed it. Telling Grumpy about the Wicked Witch was great too. I appreciate the use of a side character in a highly amusing and appropriate way. Oh and Robin said he owed Regina a debt. I wonder how he finds the time to do anything other than pay off his perceived debts.