S02.E06: Tallahassee

[daxx]

I haven’t watched the flashback in this episode in a long time despite having watched this episode countless times. I still don’t like Neal, he is pretty condescending to Emma even in the past. I know he was supposed to be play acting with the police officer but it all fit him so well.  Starting an affair with a teenager doesn’t endear him to me either. Not to mention he reminds me of my ex, so I may be biased. lol

I love the entire beanstalk portion of the episode. It’s so obvious that they were trying to set up a romance here, Hook asking about her love life, Emma asking about his, the first aid scene, the working together side by side, being a good team and all this in contrast to Emma’s failed romance. Emma betraying Hook much in the way she was betrayed. The beanstalk storyline mirror images the flashback. I love how Hook can read Emma so well and her surprise at that since she’s rarely had anyone who cared enough to pay that much attention to her. She was obviously comfortable with him, too comfortable in fact which is why she decided to trap him up there. She couldn’t take the chance that this villain might worm his way into her heart. 

Spoiler

He eventually wins that battle but it was a long road.

[Souris]

4 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Finally, because I can't say it enough: I hate August. Ducking your responsibilities is one thing. Stealing 20 grand intended for an incarcerated teenager whose life has sucked in part because you failed her makes you an irredeemable shit. 

I'm not rewatching the eps, but I had to quote this, because if you can't say it enough about hating August, then I can't agree with it enough!

August and Neal are two of my three least favorite characters in the history of the show. God, I hate them and how they manipulated Emma's life and conspired to send her to prison for a stupid reason that made absolutely zero sense. Asshats. Hate hate haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

[PixiePaws1]

To this day I have to fast forward all the Emma/ArseWipeFire scenes as I see a much older sleezy statutory rapist emotionally eviscerating Emma and it turns my stomach. 

When Hook said 'Everything we need is right in front of us'  i thought it was a flashing neon sign from the writers saying 'future couple'...i just didn't know how long that road would be!

August and Neal should have ridden that motorcyle off a damn cliff!

[Shanna Marie]

The flashback part of the story is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, as others have noted, the reason for Neal to betray Emma doesn't make a lick of sense. Plan A was for her to be with her parents. Plan B was for her to be with her mother. Plan C was for Pinocchio to guide her. So why does her being with Neal get in the way of her being able to carry out her destiny/mission? I could maybe have seen it if August had set it up to get her away from Neal so that he could jump back into his original job of guiding, but I can't see how her going to jail was necessary.

Spoiler

The other thing that might have worked would be if August knew Neal was likely to keep her from carrying out her mission because he would want to stay away from his father, and so August intervened to get her away from Neal. Or if Neal had abandoned her because he wanted to avoid everything from his world. But I guess either of those plans would have meant they couldn't later have made August Emma's best friend and played the "I had no choice" card with Neal.

Then there's the fact that Neal was miscast and/or failed by the costume/hair/makeup department. While JMo doesn't exactly pass as a teen here, she's styled differently enough from present-day Emma to code as younger, and then there's the time-honored tradition of casting 30-somethings to play teens, so she works as a TV teen. But Neal looks like he's about 40, with no effort to make him look younger than his present self, other than the fact that he's wearing a hoodie rather than the suit we saw on him in the season premiere, but that just makes him look like an aging Gen-Xer who thinks that putting on a hoodie makes him look young and hip enough to troll for high school students. It's even worse when they get up close for the kissing scenes because you can see that his chin scruff is gray, he's got scattered gray in his hair, and he has deep crows' feet around his eyes, and there are no similar signs of age for Emma. There's no way that he's close enough to Emma's age for this not to be creepy. It comes across more as "middle-aged predator victimizing vulnerable teenager" than as "two outcast young people clinging to each other against an indifferent world." They at least should have shaved the chin scruff and spackled over the lines to make him look within 10 years of Emma's age.

And then there's the fact that Emma's treatment is way out of line with anything realistic. The odds of a minor getting 11 months for wearing one stolen watch that they have evidence someone else stole are slim, not to mention that she wouldn't have been sent to Phoenix. Neal's crime was in Phoenix. Emma was in possession of stolen property in Oregon.

But the present-day stuff is fun (and it's an interesting switch that the flashbacks take place in the "real" world while the present-day story is in the fairytale world). I was still resisting Hook at this point, seeing him as a villain. I'm generally immune to the leather-clad bad boy type. But in this episode Colin dialed the charm up to about 15. The deep eye contact, the intensity, that grin, the twinkle in his eye, his accurate reading of Emma, his boyish enthusiasm for how awesome she was, all added up to make me warm to him, against my usual inclinations.

I wonder how much of Hook's backstory they had planned at this point.

Spoiler

Had they already decided that he'd been abandoned as a child so that his background matched Emma's and that was the real reason he understood her so well, or did they decide later that this would fit his speech in this episode, but at the time they wrote this, it was meant that he really had figured her out based on his familiarity with the Lost Boys?

[Camera One]

When I first watched this, for some reason, I assumed that to break the Curse, Emma had to be heartbroken and alone, and I expected further explanation on why August felt Emma must not be in a relationship and must go to jail.  As described very well above, this was an important plot point which ultimately made no sense.  

I doubt the Writers had any of Hook's backstory planned.  I saw him as a straight-up villain who deserved what was coming to him, and had zero sympathy for him.  I cheered Emma leaving him there, and it was annoying that this was portrayed as doing something that was wrong.  Heck, I thought it was dumb of her to set a time at which Hook would be let go.  

The actor who plays Hook has definitely won me over in subsequent seasons, but frankly, I wouldn't have minded if he had died in this episode either.

Edited September 1, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

 

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The other thing that might have worked would be if August knew Neal was likely to keep her from carrying out her mission because he would want to stay away from his father, and so August intervened to get her away from Neal. Or if Neal had abandoned her because he wanted to avoid everything from his world. But I guess either of those plans would have meant they couldn't later have made August Emma's best friend and played the "I had no choice" card with Neal.

 

Spoiler

That would have made a lot more sense. I could see Neal doing just that. He ran in New York and even after they talked he still didn't want to see his father. Its easy to think if Neal knew Emma's destiny but does everything he could to prevent her from fulfilling. He didn't want to see his father. He wanted to stay far away from him. After Henry was born assuming they still did that. Its even easier to see why Neal would want to keep Rumple away from Henry. Emma might not be interested anymore in looking for her parents since she had her own family. Or it might be easy for Neal to convince her to let it go. They abandoned her as a baby and never came looking for her. It might be easier for her to believe that. Neal only showed up at the NYC apartment when he realized Rumple wouldn't buy any excuse Emma gave him for why she didn't bring Neal back. Had it not been for that reason he never would have shown up. 

[companionenvy]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

I doubt the Writers had any of Hook's backstory planned.  I saw him as a straight-up villain who deserved what was coming to him, and had zero sympathy for him.  I cheered Emma leaving him there, and it was annoying that this was portrayed as doing something that was wrong.  Heck, I thought it was dumb of her to set a time at which Hook would be let go.  

One of the few things I knew about the show when I started binge-watching was...some pertinent information on Hook's future role, so my initial impression on the character was filtered through that. I can't say how I would have seen him if I had gone in blind.

But...I agree that they (as they so often did) threw out character logic. I'll buy that Hook is attracted to Emma, and maybe that she sees a kind of roguish charm to him, but this is not meaningfully  parallel to her situation with Neal. There is no bond of loyalty between Emma and Hook, and she in fact has really good reasons not to trust him. I think the writers do want us to see Emma leaving Hook as her being too burned by Neal to trust, and perhaps a manifestation of her own fear of what she may already be starting to feel for him. But that's really pushing it, IMO: no one should have trusted Hook, given the circumstances, and getting rid of him is the smart move here. It would have been too cold-blooded to leave him to die, but if you have an option, it is definitely smarter to not bring the vengeful pirate with you back to Storybrooke. 

I guess the only thing that throws a wrinkle in it is Emma's "superpower," which tells her that Hook isn't lying. Still, there were plenty of reasons not to want to bring Hook along for the ride even if he wasn't planning on double crossing her.

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, companionenvy said:

no one should have trusted Hook, given the circumstances, and getting rid of him is the smart move here.

Based on the information Emma had about Hook at the time, that's definitely true. All she really knew was that he'd already flipped on one ally, and his split with Cora had been about saving his own skin and ingratiating himself with Team Princess when they had him in their power. It wasn't as though he'd had any kind of moral or ethical qualms about Cora and was distancing himself from allying with her. It was purely circumstantial, and was circumstances that might have repeated. I don't think he'd have done what Emma did and take the compass and leave her stranded or steal the compass from her and go running to Cora, but if they'd run into Cora and it looked like they were in danger, it's a pretty good bet that he'd have flipped again and handed over the compass, claiming to have been working for Cora all along.

10 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I'll buy that Hook is attracted to Emma, and maybe that she sees a kind of roguish charm to him, but this is not meaningfully  parallel to her situation with Neal. There is no bond of loyalty between Emma and Hook, and she in fact has really good reasons not to trust him. I think the writers do want us to see Emma leaving Hook as her being too burned by Neal to trust, and perhaps a manifestation of her own fear of what she may already be starting to feel for him.

Maybe it would be safer to say she was cutting it off at the head before anything like Neal happened -- like if she'd bailed on Neal after the car theft meet-cute instead of trusting him and getting involved. That's what was repeating, that she'd run into a charming rogue who'd gone quickly from enemy to ally when they had a common goal, and she was afraid of where that might lead. So, her betraying Hook was less a parallel to Neal betraying her after they'd been in a relationship serious enough to leave her pregnant and more a case of her having learned from her previous mistake and choosing a different path that would prevent her ever being in a situation where Hook might betray her the way Neal had.

Not that I'm entirely certain that's what the writers intended, but it works as a mental handwave for me.

[companionenvy]

15 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Maybe it would be safer to say she was cutting it off at the head before anything like Neal happened -- like if she'd bailed on Neal after the car theft meet-cute instead of trusting him and getting involved. That's what was repeating, that she'd run into a charming rogue who'd gone quickly from enemy to ally when they had a common goal, and she was afraid of where that might lead. So, her betraying Hook was less a parallel to Neal betraying her after they'd been in a relationship serious enough to leave her pregnant and more a case of her having learned from her previous mistake and choosing a different path that would prevent her ever being in a situation where Hook might betray her the way Neal had.

Not that I'm entirely certain that's what the writers intended, but it works as a mental handwave for me.

Oh, the handwave mostly works for me, too, in spite of my qualms, and I do think that's more or less what the writers intended, but when I think about it a little more, it still doesn't really work. Flashback-era Emma was herself a homeless teenage thief, so the fact that Neal was also stealing the car was, in context, a quasi-legitimate meet-cute. That's not at all the case with Hook. Emma isn't on her own, she has a specific goal in mind, she's pretty firmly on the side of righteousness, and she knows or can assume that Hook has done some heinous things that go well beyond anything Emma has ever done or considered acceptable. So, even framing this as "not starting down that path" again is iffy for me, as it seems self-evident from circumstances that, no matter how attractive Hook may be, at this point there is no path. This is a partnership of convenience, and Emma isn't a wide-eyed sixteen year old who can be turned by some flirtation. Really, for this to make sense, there would have to have been an intervening episode in which Hook did something to earn a little bit of good will.

Spoiler

Which is what happens before CaptainSwan really begins in earnest: Emma is obviously interested in Hook during the Neverland arc, but that is after he has come through for them in a big way by returning to Storybrooke and offering them passage, at considerable personal risk. 

Basically, this entire episode is a case study in how far you're willing to accept flawed premises. Despite the complaint I've just articulated, I do love the beanstalk plot, and even, mostly, the parallel with the flashback. 

Similarly, while the knowledge that Emma can't be older than 16 when she meets an obviously much-older Neal makes their relationship skeevy, because JMo, to me, really doesn't look even close to a teenager (oddly, she looks her youngest at the final scene in the prison), and the relationship isn't otherwise shown to be exploitative, I don't look at Neal as a perv taking advantage of her - though I understand why others would.

On the other hand, although I'm willing to kind of buy that Neal actually loves Emma and feels that leaving her is the right thing to do, as that's how the character is being depicted, the absurd illogic of the premise is a genuine problem that really undermines what the show is trying to do.

And then in the case of August stealing the money, there's not even a faulty premise, so it is simply a matter of the writers having a character do an undeniably terrible thing but not giving it sufficient moral weight - also a fairly common problem on this show.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Not that I'm entirely certain that's what the writers intended, but it works as a mental handwave for me.

Going through this rewatch, there's been several examples of parallels and symbolism that's been pointed out I didn't notice before. For half of them, you can understand the writers' intent but it doesn't actually work. (Like in this episode.) I've never connected the flashbacks and the present day before in some cases. In Tallahassee, I never thought about it beyond "Emma meets guy and assists in heist". But, more often than not on this show, viewers have to extrapolate what isn't there because the writers utilize incoherent storytelling. Handwaving is on a much more conscious level than with stories that are better structured and more engaging. The further along you go into the show, the more mental gymnastics you have to accomplish to get remotely close to anything that makes a lick of sense.

Edited September 2, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[daxx]

One tiny parallel I like is Emma sniffing an item she was stealing and Hook doing the same thing with the coin he pilfered. 

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, companionenvy said:

So, even framing this as "not starting down that path" again is iffy for me, as it seems self-evident from circumstances that, no matter how attractive Hook may be, at this point there is no path. This is a partnership of convenience, and Emma isn't a wide-eyed sixteen year old who can be turned by some flirtation.

Maybe that's the point of the contrast of the flashback to the present, to show that Emma isn't a wide-eyed sixteen year old who can be turned by some flirtation. We're in a different world, so it's hard to compare a car thief/jewel thief with a pirate who's working with their enemy, but we have the charming rogue who's helping Emma toward her goal. Neal helps her steal a car and avoid getting arrested. Hook is helping her get the device she needs to get back home. Teen Emma got into a relationship with Neal after he helped her, and she got her heart broken. Everything seems set up for Emma and Hook. We've had all the usual 'shippy things happening -- they're in forced proximity as they carry out their mission, he reads her like a book and seems to get her on a fundamental level, he takes the riskier task and puts himself on the line, he praises how awesome she is when she succeeds in the mission. We'd expect (because we've watched TV before) for them to come out of this experience with some bonding. Except Emma has learned something and doublecrosses him rather than trusting him.

The tricky part is figuring out if that's what they really meant to say.

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

But, more often than not on this show, viewers have to extrapolate what isn't there because the writers utilize incoherent storytelling. Handwaving is on a much more conscious level than with stories that are better structured and more engaging. The further along you go into the show, the more mental gymnastics you have to accomplish to get remotely close to anything that makes a lick of sense.

That's a big problem, when they leave it open for vastly different interpretations. I don't expect to be spoon-fed, but they're so incoherent that I really can't tell what they want me to think. In this case, it's hard to tell whether we're supposed to be glad that Emma extricated herself from the situation with Hook with the compass and with the pirate out of their hair but not left to die or if we're supposed to think she was wrong and made a bad choice. Are we supposed to think that she learned her lesson with Neal and didn't trust the charming rogue this time, or are we supposed to think that the experience with Neal damaged her so that she can't trust even though she should have? Are we supposed to be contrasting Neal and Hook, with Neal letting Emma take the risk and betraying her and Hook taking the risk and trusting her? When you can make a case for any of these contradictory messages, the writing is muddled.

Given how things turn out ...

Spoiler

Where it's possible that if Emma had trusted Hook they could have just gone home and Cora wouldn't have had a way to get there, maybe Emma was supposed to be wrong. And they did end up developing a romance between Emma and Hook, but were they laying the groundwork here or did that decision come later based on the response to this episode? The 'shippiest moment, the tying of the bandage with his teeth while he maintained direct eye contact, was something Colin did that wasn't scripted, so maybe the romance vibes weren't intended at this time in the script.

[tennisgurl]

Even watching this episode multiple times, I still have NO CLUE WHY EMMA NEEDED TO GO TO JAIL! They act like her spending almost a year in jail, now with a criminal record, is just like going to a summer camp where she will have to sing some annoying camp songs for a week. Do they seriously not get how much they're fucking her over, whole going on about how they are trying to protect her? This makes no sense, and it basically destroys both characters instantly, which is problematic considering Neal goes onto become such a major part of the shows mythology, and this is our first introduction to him. A creep going on a minor crime spree with a teenager, who he turns into the cops and skips out on, sending her to jail and breaking her heart, all because he...wants to help her get around to her destiny? Instead of just leaving, if he felt that he was holding her back? It all makes zero sense, and makes the two of them look like utterly moronic, patronizing scumbags. 

The bean stock stuff, on the other hand, was a good story, and they did a decent job tying it into Emma's issues. The giants bean stock and the giants house look great, even when the GCI doesn't look so awesome, and I like the tie in with the Jack and the bean stock story, and the way they are already hinting at the subversion of the usual tale, and the giant is an interesting character to meet here. And of course, Hook and Emma have their first adventure! Its weird, I remember watching this, and not being that super into the idea of them being a couple. Maybe I felt annoyed that they were clearly screen testing this character as an Emma love interest? Or I thought he was a cliche "bad boy with a possible heart of gold" type of character, and I didnt really have an interest in that. But watching it now, I can see the chemistry right away, and I find myself already interested in Hook, and what his deal really is, and him and Emma having to deal with each other at some point, despite him being, understandably pissed already at her. So begins the good ship Captain Swan! 

[KAOS Agent]

I never really got the impression that they were trying to imply that Emma was wrong for leaving Hook on the beanstalk. Hook wasn't of any use to them at that point and could only cause harm if he was to switch sides again, so ditching him while making sure he would be okay made total sense. The show never pretended that Emma tying him to a tree and threatening to leave him for the ogres (which everyone seemed okay with) was wrong in any way. This was like 12 hours later. He proved he wasn't a totally bad guy, but there was no real reason to trust him and take him along to cause trouble in Storybrooke. I get that they wanted to parallel her trusting Neal with not trusting Hook, but it was never entirely clear that Hook was trustworthy and that he would have stuck with Team Princess should Cora come along. 

He had a code of honor and I think he believed he'd stick with Emma, but he'd turn on a dime to complete his revenge quest on Rumpel. Basically, I felt for the guy when he was chained up, but I also cheered Emma's awesomeness in getting one over on him.

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I never really got the impression that they were trying to imply that Emma was wrong for leaving Hook on the beanstalk.

I think it's fairly ambiguous, but the reason I lean toward them implying it was wrong is that instead of framing it as being about her being smart and canny to arrange it all, they set it against Neal betraying her (then again, while we think that was wrong, they also made it sort of seem like Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and doing the right thing, so whatever), and that was shown as the beginning of her WALLS. When she handcuffs Hook, her reaction is "sorry, but I can't take the chance" and she sounds a bit sad and reluctant, so it comes across as being about her WALLS, and the show is pretty consistent in suggesting that anything she does out of WALLS is wrong. She looks sad and a little torn as she walks away, and as I recall, the music fits that. If the show wanted to indicate that she'd done the right thing, and good for her for being clever enough to get one over on the pirate who would probably have eventually betrayed her, I think it would have been played differently, with more of a triumphant "a ha!" tone.

But that's an overall problem with the show. On the one hand, the writing will seem to make something really clear. What they show us is one thing, but then what they tell us is something entirely different, and they stack the deck with all the emotional cues to steer us toward what they tell us. Like with the Neal betrayal, they don't show us anything that justifies Neal getting Emma sent to prison (never mind that a minor with a non-violent offense would not have been sent to anything called a prison, if she got any time at all rather than maybe being put into a highly supervised juvenile home). Nothing we've seen in the show up to this point backs that up. We know that the original plan was for her to be with her parents or with Pinocchio, so her being alone was not a requirement. But then the show tells us that Neal's doing the right thing, and even adds in him giving her the car and the money, and in that last scene with Neal all the emotional cues point toward him having made some kind of heroic sacrifice.

[Camera One]

I agree the music did not portray Emma's actions as triumphant, even though I personally felt she did the right thing.  To me, I was more concerned with how much time was 12 hours going to give them?  

Regardless of how it was intended by the writers, I remember that some people in the message boards did cite Emma's actions in this episode as making her morally equal to Hook.

[KAOS Agent]

15 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I lean toward them implying it was wrong is that instead of framing it as being about her being smart and canny to arrange it all, they set it against Neal betraying her (then again, while we think that was wrong, they also made it sort of seem like Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and doing the right thing, so whatever), and that was shown as the beginning of her WALLS.

But how can they imply that Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and at the same time show how this act caused Emma to erect such high WALLS that she is still negatively affected over a decade later? Unless the intent is to show that Emma's inability to trust is a plus for her with her interactions with Hook in this episode such that Neal is actually responsible for Emma's smart decisions regarding Hook both here and in "The Doctor" (which is definitely not what I think they are going for), then the whole thing makes zero sense. How is Neal a hero and not an awful human being for choosing the most hurtful and damaging way possible to ditch his teenage girlfriend? I get that they needed a backstory to fit the previously shown story, but there needed to be a reason for Neal to do it the way he did. Without that, both Neal and August are shown as horrible, horrible people who deserve to be repeatedly kicked in the balls for destroying a young girl's life while merrily going their own ways.

I'm also still confused about August in general. Why was he even there? He didn't care at all about breaking the curse until Emma showed up in Storybrooke and he started turning to wood or whatever. So basically he shows up to screw Emma over for no discernible reason. Neal was right in his initial reaction to August's claim that he was helping Emma. August was worthless. 

[Camera One]

Quote

But how can they imply that Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and at the same time show how this act caused Emma to erect such high WALLS that she is still negatively affected over a decade later? 

I agree it doesn't make any sense with the sparse information given, but I can see the sloppy mechanics that A&E were trying to go for.  From Emma's perspective, the event was a traumatic betrayal, so she put up WALLS to protect herself

Spoiler

(ignoring that we later find out she only put up her walls after meeting Cleo).

Neal was making a "sacrifice" because for unclear reasons, he was convinced by August that breaking the Curse required Emma to go to jail believing that he set her up and he could no longer communicate with her, even though he wanted to stay with Emma and was clearly pained by it.  

As for August, who the hell knows. 

Spoiler

Remember he did care at random points, like when he gave Emma hope and inspired her to name herself Emma Swan.  

Edited September 4, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

8 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

But how can they imply that Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and at the same time show how this act caused Emma to erect such high WALLS that she is still negatively affected over a decade later? Unless the intent is to show that Emma's inability to trust is a plus for her with her interactions with Hook in this episode such that Neal is actually responsible for Emma's smart decisions regarding Hook both here and in "The Doctor" (which is definitely not what I think they are going for), then the whole thing makes zero sense. How is Neal a hero and not an awful human being for choosing the most hurtful and damaging way possible to ditch his teenage girlfriend? I get that they needed a backstory to fit the previously shown story, but there needed to be a reason for Neal to do it the way he did. Without that, both Neal and August are shown as horrible, horrible people who deserve to be repeatedly kicked in the balls for destroying a young girl's life while merrily going their own ways.

As you know I totally agree with you on the substance of what Neal and August did - but I think the show's (nonsensical) rationale is that Emma's WALLS - like her prison term --are a sad but necessary byproduct of putting her in a position where she can break the curse.

So, Neal does the right thing, but since apparently all of this falls apart if someone, you know, talks to Emma, the psychological scarring is just part of the package, and doesn't invalidate Neal's sacrifice. 

Spoiler

I'd say that there are some later eps in which Neal's behavior is questioned, but not in a way that winds up substantially changing the show's take on what he did, which is that he did what he had to do even though it hurt him as well as Emma.

 

As for Emma and Hook, I don't think the show is terribly judge-y about her decision to leave him, but I do think they're clearly portraying it as something that is a manifestation of her damage, and not the sane and rational thing to do, under the circumstances. Like, they get that Hook being a villain means that this is not an intrinsically horrible thing to do, in the way that betraying, for instance, Aurora or Mulan would be - but it is still, in the writers' eyes, the wrong call; Emma knows (via her superpower) that Hook is actually telling the truth, and only doesn't accept that because she's too afraid of being burned again. 

[KAOS Agent]

17 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Neal was making a "sacrifice" because for unclear reasons, he was convinced by August that breaking the Curse required Emma to go to jail believing that he set her up and he could no longer communicate with her, even though he wanted to stay with Emma and was clearly pained by it. 

The unclear reasons were whatever was in the box. Neal went from rightly telling August off about how he's so "helpful" to Emma to psychologically scarring for life the young woman he loved. Obviously, once you know what's in the box, Neal is either completely validated for doing so or comes off as a cowardly asshole. I know which one I pick.

Edited September 4, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[andromeda331]

5 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

The unclear reasons were whatever was in the box. Neal went from rightly telling August off about how he's so "helpful" to Emma to psychologically scarring for life the young woman he loved. Obviously, once you know what's in the box, Neal is either completely validated for doing so or comes off as a cowardly asshole. I know which one I pick.

Me too!

[KingOfHearts]

I don't even hate the idea of Neal being an asshole. The fact he got Emma pregnant and jailed should've been enough to tell you he wasn't going to be introduced as a very good person. That's fine. 

The fact he's Baelfire is what screws everything up and gave him sainthood. It's one of the most infamous instances where the writers put plot over characters. I don't think you can reconcile the two identities without going into great detail how Bae made the transition over the years. With some characters, their stories are fairly self-explanatory. For others, like Bae, his character doesn't make sense without the holes filled in. But hey - we can't sacrifice Regina's birthday flashback or Scared!Rapunzel.

[companionenvy]

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I don't even hate the idea of Neal being an asshole. The fact he got Emma pregnant and jailed should've been enough to tell you he wasn't going to be introduced as a very good person. That's fine. 

It isn't that Neal's an asshole. It is that it isn't clear the writers see him as an asshole, and actually a lot of evidence that they don't. At worst, they think he made a bad choice for good reasons in an impossible situation. The problem, of course, being that that logic simply doesn't hold up.

I think even these writers, however, recognized that if Neal knew Emma was pregnant and still did this, that would genuinely be unforgiveable, which is why they don't have her find out until after.

Agreed on your spoiler. It wasn't necessarily impossible to sell that, but it would have taken a ton of work that the writers clearly weren't interested in doing (and maybe shouldn't have been interested in doing, but then you have to modify the character accordingly, not just say "let's not and pretend we did"). 

[rogvortex58]

This episode always makes me nostalgic. Back before any of us knew where things would end up going for Emma.

”I don’t mean to upset you, Emma. But I think we make quite the team.”

Nice little tease of things to come.

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

But how can they imply that Neal was making a heroic sacrifice and at the same time show how this act caused Emma to erect such high WALLS that she is still negatively affected over a decade later?

Have you met this show?

But I think the idea is that Emma was only hurt so much that she built the WALLS because she didn't understand why he did it, and if she did find out, it would fix everything. See also her relationship with her parents, where understanding why they sent her alone as an infant into another world supposedly changed and fixed everything.

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Never mind that the WALLS remained even after she learned. We're not allowed to mention why they're there in the first place.

 

 

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(ignoring that we later find out she only put up her walls after meeting Cleo).

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I thought she put on her armor after meeting Cleo, and armor is different from WALLS.

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

See also her relationship with her parents, where understanding why they sent her alone as an infant into another world supposedly changed and fixed everything.

To give the show some credit, the first episodes of 2A do make it clear that it hasn't changed and fixed everything. The scene where she sees her nursery is key in showing her how loved and wanted she was, but even there, I think some of the dialogue in Tallahassee, where Hook recognizes her as a lost girl, confirms that that wasn't a quick fix to years of emotional baggage. 

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Neverland also deals with Emma's sense of still being an orphan. So, the set up is decent. We just never, IMO, get sustained enough attention to Emma's relationship with her parents for there to really be a payoff, since whenever there could be, the show gets distracted by things like showing the Charmings bonding with Regina. Or, to be fair, Emma/Hook, which basically overrides development of other kinds of relationships - because the show wants to demonstrate how supportive Hook is being while Emma is the Dark One, her mother and father are inexplicably awful, and only get to partially atone when Hook can't be the one supporting Emma because he's dead. 

 

So, I'm not sure that finding out about Neal is supposed to be a 100% fix it either, but I think the comparison to Snowing is instructive, because the show seems to see the situations as comparable when they aren't. To the writers, both abandonments are basically the Dark Curse screwing everyone over. And while Emma is technically right that her parents could have made a different choice, they really (when it comes to the events leading up to Emma's birth and trip through the wardrobe) didn't have another reasonable option. Had they refused to part with her, presumably, Emma would have been caught up in the curse, and she would have spent eternity as the well-loved infant daughter of what I'm assuming would have been struggling single mom Mary Margaret Blanchard, as there's no way Regina would have left the family intact.

Whereas Neal...could have done literally anything else, and would have been just as likely to increase the chances of the curse breaking as he was to decrease it, unless we pretend the thing written in the box was a super-secret copy of the Dark Curse reading "And the Savior can break the curse after her 28th birthday, assuming she's first spent a year in jail and suffered an emotionally devastating personal betrayal, but if you feel really bad and want to leave her with a stolen car and 20 grand, that's cool."

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Especially once we find out he is Baelfire. Whether he told her right after meeting August or sometime later, Emma would have been a lot likelier to accept the existence of magic and her destiny from an adult she already loved and trusted - and who could speak to his personal experience in the EF - than she was to accept it from a ten-year old basing his theory on a storybook. Or, as neither August nor Neal knew about Henry, than she would have been to accept it from a random stranger (as I assume August thought it was going to be his role to tell 28-year-old Emma the truth). 

The moment in which Snowing do become comparable to Neal is in "Awake," with its similarly awful logic for their abandonment of Emma, an act that is even more inexplicably treated as a noble sacrifice. 

[KAOS Agent]

Too often on this show we're told that being treated like shit needs to be accepted because expecting justice or just having feelings like anger or hurt is somehow wrong or evil. The only people who are allowed to actually feel things are villains and then we are expected to sympathize with their misery and get angry on their behalf. Emma isn't allowed to be angry with her parents or Neal because they "had no choice" even when it's pretty demonstrable that they had numerous opportunities to make different choices. This is not a show about hope. It's about how heroes can only be good when they lower their self worth to zero and allow everyone to walk all over them by accepting their horrible treatment by others. 

Now that we know why Neal received the postcard in "Broken" and that he's Henry's father, isn't it interesting that he didn't bother to go to Storybrooke to find Emma and at least try to explain why he sucks as a human being? Had he really been interested in making sure that Emma was okay and that he'd done the right thing shouldn't he at least have tried to contact her? To me, this is just further confirmation that Neal made a decision that was best for Neal. He's moved on and is only worried about what this might now mean for him.