profdanglais

If this season had in fact focused on Emma and her parents, then the inclusion of Neal and Snow's attempts to get him and Emma back together would have made a lot more sense and worked a lot better. Snow is from a fairytale world and naturally wants her daughter to have a true love and live happily ever after. In fairytale land, no one has a child with someone who isn't their true love (at least, we can pretend that's the case though the actual Enchanted Forest is pretty grim, but for the sake of the argument...). So it makes sense for Snow to assume that Emma and Neal were only split up by the curse, because Henry needed to be in Storybrooke to bring Emma there, etc etc etc, which would make it entirely reasonable for her to want them together to find their happy ending as a family. It would have been so interesting to focus on Snow's reaction to the real situation with Neal and Emma, would give a contrast between the fairytale world and the "real" one, would provide a real impetus for them to want to return to the Enchanted Forest where they think happy endings are easier to come by. And then woven through all of that could be Emma's dawning sense of kinship with Hook and the gradual realisation that he is a better match for her than the father of her child. This last bit would have to extend into S3, obviously, but if the seeds were planted in S2, then the Captain Swan developments in S3 would have seemed less abrupt.

These things are worse. I can understand Regina's motives in naming her son after her dad, even though she killed her dad, but naming your son after the guy who knocked up your teenage daughter then left her to give birth in jail is just so egregiously horrible. Especially after repeated efforts to get her back together with him. The whole Neal storyline just makes me angry now. I wasn't so affected by it when the show was on, but I was a pretty casual viewer then. If you actually give the situation some thought it is just all kinds of messed up.

To be fair, religions and philosophers have been grappling with these and similar questions for millennia, and no one has ever really come up with a truly satisfactory answer. the OUAT writers are evidently not scholars, so it's likely they just bit off more than they could chew by even trying to deal with this sort of thing. But I agree that the problems are mostly plot-driven. They wanted Hook to have a big, dramatic death scene, but they didn't want him to be actually dead. What I wish is that they'd gone with the heart-sharing idea, but made it clear that only True Love (TM) could actually share a heart and restore a life with it. That way, Neal could have been in the Underworld and we could have had some actual freaking resolution with him and Henry and Milah, and everyone acknowledging that Emma loves Hook and would choose him over Neal. I know this might be a quite specific Captain Swan fan thing, but I really wanted to see it.

This is why, even though I hate triangles, I wish they hadn't

Yeah, me too. Captain Swan engagement after the return from the underworld, wedding in the finale. Boom.

No, or at least if it is we can be terrible together. I'm pretty sure I've said this before but it bears repeating: Hook had no non-violent or legal way to achieve justice for Milah's death, so his choices were either to let it go or to try to avenge her himself. Despite the fact that his plan here is somewhat muddled, he actually does a decent job, considering that he's up against the all-powerful personification of evil. He manages to a) stay alive for several hundred years b) follow Rumple into another realm, and c) find a means of killing him that really should have worked. He is pretty awful to Belle, though the point about her sneaking onto the Jolly Roger with a gun is a valid one. In some states he could have shot her as a trespasser and not even been prosecuted for it. I don't think his intention was ever to really hurt her, but he had no compunction about using her as a tool to hurt Rumpel. I also agree that Hook never intended to survive after killing Rumpel. It's one of the things that make his scene on the JR with Belle so compelling. He comes off as almost insane, which is a scary contrast to the charming rogue persona from the beanstalk. I'm sure he expected Rumpel to kill him at the town line, and TBH that probably would have happened were it not for the car.

2B really is a grim challenge, but I'm prepared to slog on.

I agree completely with this. What was initially shown about Hook and then what was eventually told is so jarring, it has to be deliberate, because if they had been concerned about keeping the character consistent a lot of S5 and S6 would have been impossible. We see that he's capable of giving and receiving deep love, with Milah and with Liam, we see that he's courageous and can be selfless, we see that his crew is loyal and follow him even into piracy, so we know he's a strong leader. He speaks multiple languages, knows how to dance, and has copperplate handwriting, all of which shows he's educated. He can sail a ship all on his own, outrun a curse, navigate himself from Maine to New York with who even knows what kind of map even though he's literally just arrived in the land, so we're shown he's intelligent and skilled. But then we're told that he's a useless fuckup who disappointed his brother and who was raised in slavery and is borderline alcoholic (even though we're shown him drinking a fair amount he's never out of control) and it just doesn't mesh. It's like someone said "Why does everyone love this villain who's not either of the villains we told them to love, someone's gotta put this SOB in his place!" and then they made up a bunch of egregious crap to tear him down. As for how bad he was as a pirate, there's been so much discussion about that and I just think we'll never know. I personally think that a lot would have been different for a young Killian Jones in a world with some species of justice system. He could have led a grassroots campaign to overthrow the leader who wanted him to collect Dreamshade, he could have testified against Rumpelstiltskin for Milah's murder, he could have been taken into care when his father left instead of growing up amongst rough, violent men in a rough, violent environment. A lot of the decisions he makes are made in response to circumstances over which he has little or no control, that sort of thing would magnify anyone's bad qualities. Hook is impulsive and quick to anger, but honestly so am I. So are a lot of people. If he'd grown up in a less violent world where it wasn't kill or be killed, you can easily see how he could have turned out differently. This, for me, is where he's different from Regina and Rumpel who had more agency in their decisions and their descent into darkness.

I love his snarky expression when he calls Cora "Mum of the year" -- it's one of my favourite small moments. I think Hook here is a) definitely at his most evil, feeling so close to killing Rumpelstiltskin and also b) playing up his evil for Cora's sake. I think he was sincere in Tallahassee when he said that Team Princess were safer company, now that they're not an option (probably also playing into the extent of his evil is Emma leaving him on the beanstalk) and he needs to be sure that Cora believes he's genuinely dedicated to being bad and on her side. So even though he is unquestionably at his nadir before his epiphany and the beginning of his redemption, we still get the small things that make it clear the redemption is possible, like the fish and like Aurora's heart. I also agree with whoever said on the other thread that we see from the beginning that Hook is not 100% evil, if for no other reason than that he's shown as being capable of selfless love. In The Crocodile he's pretty much just a jerk and a bully, we don't see him go full evil until these mid-S2 episodes.

There needed to be more focus on how Emma, the goodest good to ever good who'd had all her darkness removed via eggnapping, dealt with suddenly having dark impulses. Really, she should have been able to handle the darkness in a more balanced way than most Dark Ones since she didn't have any darkness to begin with. She could have struggled with making good decisions despite the new influence of the darkness, which would raise interesting questions about morality in challenging circumstances, etc etc. It could have been interesting. Also, her magic was supposed to be pure light, so becoming the DO wouldn't necessarily mean that she was using dark magic, just that her natural light magic would have a bit of dark in it, which could also have been interesting. Instead, the whole thing was a muddle with no clear underlying rules or sense. Clippy!Rumple was another mistake, I think, another example of them wanting to use their shiny toy Robert Carlyle when the narrative would have worked better without him.

Same. The part where he's going through the dark woods and the reeds thump on the hollow log used to terrify me.

I remember this show! It was great. I think we watched it in school, for some reason. Where did you find it?

Huh, interesting. I have to say I often find Tumblr confusing, with people replying to form long threads that then get reblogged in various stages so sometimes you see more responses and sometimes fewer, plus everyone reblogs each other so you see the same thing fifteen times in a row. It reminds me that I am now an Old and it's time to start telling all those youngsters to get off my lawn.

What is pillowfort?

Hook does say that his mission was to find out what he could about Storybrooke so Cora would know what she was getting into by going there. It's a bit thin as a motivation, but I could buy that Hook would have done just that if Emma hadn't rumbled him and forced him to offer up something to make himself valuable to them. I also believe that he would then switch sides with no qualms and that he was being honest when he said they were safer company. He just wanted to get to Storybrooke and would have done whatever he needed to accomplish that. Team Princess and the opportunity to flirt with Emma were just side benefits that gave him a good excuse to turn on Cora.

Hook has poor impulse control, which is sometimes associated with ADHD. Not that he couldn't also have depression, but I'd argue that he's not manic so much as just unable to handle his impulses, especially when he's angry. My brother is the same. And Charming is an enabler, codependent with Snow. Everyone is effed up here!

That's interesting, because I never suspected Captain Swan until Tallahassee, and even then I didn't want to believe it. I loved the idea of the hot pirate avenging his love and I couldn't believe they were trying to match him with Emma. I don't think I was really on board with CS until S3, which is odd to think about because that became pretty much the only reason I kept watching in later seasons. This is one of my favourite episodes, both because it is a good introduction for Hook and also because it's the last time that the big twist really surprised me and I honestly loved the idea of Rumpel being Hook's crocodile. It was a genuinely clever reimagining of the characters, and that last scene on the Jolly Roger when they head off to Neverland is really fantastic. Only downside--Rumbelle. Ugh.

That would be interesting to know, but even with the broken leg, they should have brought Hook along. They could just have mentioned he was locked up somewhere on the ship and then they put him back in jail or something other than leaving him in a closet in NYC.

Maybe not all the details, but by the time they get to NYC Hook had already shot Belle and got hit by the car, and he mentioned more than once in those exchanges with Emma and at the hospital that Rumpel killed Milah. Plus she'd figured it out on the beanstalk. Hook told Belle too but of course she didn't believe him. You make a good point about Hook being a clear antagonist and Rumpel seeming more grey at that point, but for someone who'd already stood up against people wanting to kill the freaking Evil Queen, Emma was pretty OOC okay with just leaving Hook to who even knows what fate. I feel like she'd have wanted to keep an eye on him.

Yep, this is another thing that I really hate. Not that Milah would ever win any Wife and Mother awards, but she is overly vilified both in the show and in the fandom, and I think a lot of that does stem from misogyny. Rumpel made loads of bad parenting decisions, including letting his adolescent son go through a portal to who knows where all alone, but he's still treated as forgivable. I'm a Milah apologist, I think she had nothing but bad options and she took the one that was best for her, and the show excessively punished her and by extension Hook, for that decision.

I wish I could like this entire post a million times because every word is so, so true. But to this last bit I'd add that it's always annoyed me the attitude that Emma et al took to Hook and Rumpel in S2. Hook was cast as the worstest villain ever because he was after revenge, but dude had his girlfriend murdered in front of him and had literally no recourse available except to pursue the murderer himself. It's not like there was any legitimate justice system he could have turned to. Was he just supposed to shrug and say "Eh, whatevs, there's more where she came from" and go on his merry way? Why was everyone on Rumpel's side? The fact that they just left Hook in a closet then took his ship to save Rumpel's life annoys me more the more I think about it. The least they could have done is take him along.

It still annoys me that they could never decide how long Rumple was the Dark One/Hook was in Neverland. Initially, it seemed like they were pitching it at 300 years, then it became 200, then at some point less than 200, but then the Apprentice said "Rumplestiltskin has been the Dark One for centuries" in the S4 finale and that sticks in my mind because less than 200 years is not "centuries" it is a century plus change, and that kind of thing really grates on me. Maybe not crucial to the plot, but still.

I think in retrospect it's obvious that the original plan was to break the curse in the middle of the first season. That would explain the drag in the middle and Emma's personality transplant during those episodes, where she basically believes everything everyone tells her, even when they're obviously lying. It's a real shame because Emma at her best is so awesome and it would've been great to see her slowly starting to believe, instead of all at once. I still love the atmosphere in the early episodes, the complexity of Gold as a villain, all the characters that got sidelined in later seasons but who really enrich the show as a whole. I love Charming and Snow before they became entirely David and Mary Margaret, I love cute, earnest Henry. I think what I wish the most is that the subtlety and character development that they did manage to achieve in this season had carried on into later seasons. I wish they hadn't whisked Snow and Emma away to the EF almost immediately after the curse broke (despite that being the beginning of Captain Swan) and I wish that Regina had had a better redemption arc.

And there are also Kylo/Rey shippers, which is very SwanQueen-esque to me. Two people can have intense, emotional interactions without there being any underlying sexual attraction.

What @companionenvy said. Verbatim.