Happily Ever After: Relationships Are Hard

[Camera One]

It is impossible to tell, but from the context clues, it seems to be weeks.  Shortest, it could have been days; and longest, maybe months, but certainly not years.

 

We jumped from a flashback where Hook was clearly fishing for info about Rumple, and the next flashback was already Bae finding Milah's picture.

 

Smee had this conversation with Hook:
 

SMEE: Captain Why is Baelfire still aboard the "Jolly Roger"? The boy has given you a path to revenge, but you can't walk that path if you're dead.
HOOK: Careful, Smee.
SMEE: Captain, you know quite well that he is after the boy.  If you don't surrender Baelfire to him, then the lost ones will take him anyway and kill you.

 

The intense looks that Hook, Bae and Neal gave each other at various times makes it easy to imagine a deeper relationship, but as with much on this show, it's very much undefined.  I mean, look at the current parallel with Henry going from "dirty pirate" in 4A to proudly declaring that Hook taught him how to sail in the 4B finale.  

[Shanna Marie]

The intense looks that Hook, Bae and Neal gave each other at various times makes it easy to imagine a deeper relationship, but as with much on this show, it's very much undefined.  I mean, look at the current parallel with Henry going from "dirty pirate" in 4A to proudly declaring that Hook taught him how to sail in the 4B finale.

Well, the "dirty pirate" was under the Shattered Sight spell. Hook at least seemed to think that Henry would trust him when he went to get him, so there must have been some kind of relationship established, and Hook and Henry spent at least one entire episode entirely offscreen sailing together.

 

We may never know how deep Hook and Bae's relationship actually was, since Bae/Neal is dead now so there's not much point in revisiting it. It definitely seemed to go beyond the little we saw on the Jolly Roger in flashbacks, whether that period was days or months, since Hook did know where Bae lived in Neverland. What matters is that when he was desperate to get a message out about finding and warning Emma, Neal instantly thought of Hook, which implies some level of trust, and he seemed to expect that the weight of their relationship would persuade Hook to go against Emma's orders to keep Neal in the hospital. From Hook's perspective, his feelings for Bae were strong enough that his death really tore him up and continues to do so, so that every mention or reminder brings tears to his eyes and a lump to his throat, and whatever his relationship with Henry really is, he seems to care about Henry far beyond what would make sense for what we've seen, most likely because Henry is essentially the product of all the people he loves most -- he's Milah's grandson, Bae's son, and Emma's son. Henry could be a total brat who wants nothing to do with Hook, and Hook would still probably die for that kid.

[orza]

The way people lay it out sounds creepy and stalkerish, much the same as when people fixate on a casual acquaintance or even a stranger like a celebrity and convince themselves that they are deeply in love with that person or have a special bond with them. Hook also carried a torch for his dead girlfriend for hundreds of years and held a murderous grudge against Rumple for that long, too. He seems to fixate on people for what they represent rather than for who they are. That is all very disordered, maladaptive behavior.

[Dianthus]

orza, on 02 Jul 2015 - 8:11 PM, said:

The way people lay it out sounds creepy and stalkerish, much the same as when people fixate on a casual acquaintance or even a stranger like a celebrity and convince themselves that they are deeply in love with that person or have a special bond with them. Hook also carried a torch for his dead girlfriend for hundreds of years and held a murderous grudge against Rumple for that long, too. He seems to fixate on people for what they represent rather than for who they are. That is all very disordered, maladaptive behavior.

It is possible (tho' not explicitly stated) that the Neverland environment is not conducive to orderly, mature behavior. Its master is, after all, Peter Pan. It didn't happen overnight, but Hook has moved on and is now in a far healthier place. He's turned his back on revenge and he's found a new love.

[Faemonic]

It has nothing to do with fairness. Stating a differing opinion is not unfair to anyone, real or fictional. The relationship was not there in canon.

 

Canon is going to be made up of people's opinions, though. If Hook says that he looked after Nealfire in Neverland, and Nealfire says that he remembers...Well, one audience member's opinion can be that they're only saying that because Hook thought Neal was dead and Neal thought that Hook truly cared for a moment so, yeah, retroactive continuity. Another audience member's opinion can be that Hook was Nealfire's very best stepfather of all time and the show is only showing the bad parts but telling us what really happened.

 

And then there's the writer's opinions, which aren't figured out yet (see Snow White's purest heart that ever pured versus Egg Baby that didn't darken her heart before Cora); and the actor's opinions that never come into play (JMo spoke of the Captain Swan Thief triangle being complex because Emma was between two men who had more respect than animosity towards each other. Huhwhaa?? Do we watch the same show, girl???); and the audiences opinions that contradict each other.

 

Ruby and Hook's relationship was not there in canon. Nealfire and Hook's relationship was shoehorned in, to a shoe that would only fit Cthulu, but it's there.

 

The way people lay it out sounds creepy and stalkerish, much the same as when people fixate on a casual acquaintance or even a stranger like a celebrity and convince themselves that they are deeply in love with that person or have a special bond with them.

 

You mean the audience with Hook? Or Hook with other characters?

 

Hook also carried a torch for his dead girlfriend for hundreds of years and held a murderous grudge against Rumple for that long, too. He seems to fixate on people for what they represent rather than for who they are. That is all very disordered, maladaptive behavior.

 

It's difficult to discuss relationships or characters when the writers keep taking a viewer out of it, but I do have to say...that's such a TW;TS thing to do. They collectively don't understand how to count the moments in their world, and definitely not how to make the moments count.

 

That's probably why Regina is absolutely devastated when her boyfriend of two weeks left her, so much that she would rewrite reality instead of develop a relationship with her son and stepdaughter's family. Hook can't get over his girlfriend three centuries dead. August was the only person that Emma ever opened up to being friends with since Lily but that is not how I recall Season 1.

 

Plot is the pacemaker that moves everybody's hearts.

 

I wasn't a fan of Hook grooming Henry Jr. to be Baelfire v.2.0 either, especially because I knew that the era of good writing and realistic character development for this show has passed, so nobody is ever going to actually call Hook out on it and allow for a more authentic relationship to develop. That's not the characters (I imagine anybody in the main cast could have seen what was happening and had no reason not to call him out on it), that's the writing.

[KAOS Agent]

I don't think the show cares at all about the Bae/Hook relationship in Neverland. I would suspect that in order to gain the skills Neal did in sailing, he'd have been on the ship for a few months at the least (no one could ever really sail a ship like that alone, but we have to pretend that it's possible). There's also the fact that those two lived on a small island for centuries, so they were bound to run into each other occasionally. Neal didn't seem to harbor any real negative emotions towards Hook, which would imply that they'd come to some sort of understanding. Not saying they were great friends or father/son or anything like that, but that the relationship hadn't ended with Bae ending up in Pan's camp. I'd also note that Hook told everyone that Bae was alive and shared his secret in the cave even knowing that that could end his chances with Emma. That's not something you generally do for some kid you spent a few days with a few centuries ago.

 

As for Hook's relationship with Henry, I think that he does like the kid and not because he's related to Milah, Bae & Emma. Henry is genuinely interested in the fairy tale stuff and Hook likes to teach. Plus, what 12 year old wouldn't want to hang out with a pirate and learn how to sail? It's even better now that the Jolly Roger has been returned. Still, I agree that Hook would protect Henry with his life no matter what Henry was like because he knows it would absolutely devastate Emma if anything happened to her son.

Edited July 3, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[kitticup]

I always thought the writers kept it deliberately ambiguous as to how long Bae was with Hook on the Jolly Roger so that they would have flexibility in the future to write the storyline and not be locked in. For me, I definitely see Hook and Bae being together for a significant period of time. Long enough for Hook to come to genuinely care for Bae, for Bae to learn how to sail and use a sword/cutlass and get his own pirate outfit. But I see that others might feel Hook was manipulating Bae the entire time and that he and Bae had little relationship together.

I disagree that Hook sees people as objects or representations rather than for who they are. Hook saw Bae as more than a way to get revenge on Rumple. he seemed to care for him on the Jolly Roger. He was angered by Smee wanting to turn Bae over to Pan. Hook already got the information he needed from Bae so there wasn't a need to keep Bae around. hook tried to get Bae to stay, even though Bae refused to stay, which at that point put everyone in danger. Hook only gave Bae up when Bae Threw Hook's pleas for family in his face and said Hook was just like his father and only driven by revenge. at that point Hook lashed out in anger. Bad on Hook as the adult. If Hook was able to leave Neverland, he probably would have taken Bae back to the Darlings.

Hook sees Milah and Emma as people, not as another man's wife or the savior, respectively. He sees them as having their own wants and needs. Rumple is the one that sees people as possessions/objects.

[YaddaYadda]

I've always wondered how time passed in Neverland in the sense that we say that Hook and Neal were centuries old when in reality they aren't...I don't know if it makes sense.  Centuries passed in the Enchanted Forest and in the LwM, but not in Neverland.

 

I'm looking at Neverland the way I look at Storybrooke before the curse was broken.  Everyone who was cursed should be 28 years older, so that puts everyone either in their late 40s or early 50s with the few exceptions (like George who should/would have died somewhere during those 28 years).  Neverland is like living without living, so Hook hanging on to a grudge over the murder of his girlfriend for 300 years isn't exactly true because time barely passes in Neverland.  It's like what's a day in Neverland equal to in the Enchanted Forest?  A month?  A year?  I'm guessing his line about the jungle having grown so much during the Neverland arc was because magic was dying on the island, so time started to actually move at a more normal pace.

 

It's sort of the same way that I've been trying to understand how Robin's grief over losing Marian was when he was in stasis for 28 years.  

 

Reading through this debate, I realize how very little I cared for Neal who could have been awesome but really wasn't.

[Faemonic]

I'm looking at Neverland the way I look at Storybrooke before the curse was broken.

 Not to plug, but I recently wrote a fanfic that was somewhat shipping Paige Boy (Jefferson's daughter and Henry Jr...For some reason Gretel/Ava and Henry aren't shipped as much.)

 

The canon ball that sunk my ship fired when I wrote that Henry had attended Paige's tenth birthday, and then realized that he might have attended Paige's twenty-eighth tenth birthday. Or maybe Paige had 18 years of the same very un-merry unbirthday like everybody else, but people only started living in cycles of time in Storybrooke when Henry was introduced because he needed innoculation schedules, and weekends, and summer vacations, and birthdays of his own. In which case, Henry had attended Paige's tenth tenth birthday. Or first-and-only tenth birthday.

 

But Paige could be older than Emma.

 

Weird thing is, David mentioned having memories of reading Alice in Wonderland. This would put Storybrooke in the camp of that the perception of time passing can at least been accessed, and all the horrors of Ashley being pregnant for 28 years, and Belle being locked up in an asylum for 28 years.

 

But (keeping this about relationships) before docking at Neverland, Emma told her parents that they were the same age and had equal experience. Neither of them contested that. They could have said that the 28 years in Storybrooke stacked upon their experience in the Enchanted Forest rather than run in parallel or whatever.

 

In any case, I don't believe that time alone is supposed to change relationships. It's whatever happens in that time that the person could use to process. That's why Regina's relationship to other people based on time just boggles me. Time was moving in the Enchanted Forest and Regina still couldn't come to terms with how Snow wasn't culpable. Time was moving in Storybrooke and Outlaw Queen wasn't particularly torrid.

 

In only enough time to change his hair and wardrobe, Hook got over Liam. He couldn't get over Milah between the flashbacks in The Crocodile and the Echo Caves, however that would be measured. Captain Thief is weird, Hook has so much difficulty getting over Nealfire the both times he "died", but when he's actually alive: "Sometimes when I look at you all I see is a man."

 

So, back to thesis statement: In OUaT, emotional development goes at the speed of plot.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Faemonic

[YaddaYadda]

The canon ball that sunk my ship fired when I wrote that Henry had attended Paige's tenth birthday, and then realized that he might have attended Paige's twenty-eighth tenth birthday.

 

Paige should technically be 38, I guess.  But seriously, Henry has other problems on his hands, like finding someone he isn't related to to date.  Even outside of Storybrooke, his chances are iffy.  We don't know what Neal has been up to all these years.

[Amerilla]

Why even have that scene if there was no meaningful relationship between them?

 

a. Because they spent some time in early 4b giving Hook the squirrely look of knowing more about what was going on that he was letting on - that he was holding something back. (Turned out it was really just about trading the JR.) I felt like Colin was telegraphing a little too hard in the scene that Hook knew or sensed what was about to happen and he was explicitly saying goodbye. That may have been the direction he was given, or it may have been to try to find some genuine emotion in an action and dialog that came from far left field.

 

and/or

 

b. Because Hook and Neal hadn't had a single pleasant interaction in all of 3a and none at all in 3b to this point. Since Neal's death included a not-too-subtle benediction for Emma move on to Hook, it wouldn't have made much sense for Hook and Neal to leave things on a sour note. (A related example is the way they implied Belle consented to being de-hearted Regina in 4b, because Regina can't plausibly be giving Emma pep-talks on not turning Eeeeeeevil right after forcibly using Belle as a sock-puppet.)

 

There's also the fact that those two lived on a small island for centuries, so they were bound to run into each other occasionally.

Not necessarily. They reinforced several times that Pan controlled who saw whom on the island. For instance, Bae never saw the Darlings, never even knew they were there. So, whether Pan allowed them to run into each other, and for what reasons, is Unanswered Neverland Question #76479.

 

I'd also note that Hook told everyone that Bae was alive and shared his secret in the cave even knowing that that could end his chances with Emma. That's not something you generally do for some kid you spent a few days with a few centuries ago.

 

No, it's what you do when you're a human being with an even moderate moral compass. To establish Hook as a Savior-Worthy Not-Villain, he can't make the selfish choices. But that seemed to have little or nothing to do with any feelings about Bae - it had to do with his feelings about Emma and how she perceived him.

[kitticup]

Neal is such a hard topic for me. I like MRJ. He seems like a happy fun person. The rest of the cast love him. I loved Bae, and their was so much potential in both Bae and Neal's story, but Neal fell flat for me.

Rumple and Neal hardly interacted in Season 2. Here was Rumple's reason for doing everything and yet nothing happened. We didn't really see meaningful interaction. My impression is that had Henry not been on the picture Neal won't have stayed in StoryBrook. It drives me crazy that Rumple's 2b story was about Lacy and not Neal. It was a wasted opportunity especially given Carlyle's acting chops. Neal was more of a mac griffin. I would have loved a scene between rumple and Neal where Neal tells him he is only in StoryBrook for his son, that he didn't want to be anything like his father and abandon his son. I could see Regina ease dropping on that and smirking.

Neal's best interaction was with Henry, but he was awful to Emma. He didn't seem to have any respect for her. He acted like he was the aggrieved party. The way he flipped from Tamara who he was engaged to and who he said he needed to Emma made him seem shallow and fickle. I know that Tamara was hated character, but we needed more reaction from Neal. He is as Bad as Robin although a little more understandable.

Hook's 200 year grief and vendetta may have been excessive, but at least he actually seems to care about who he is with and not quick to swap one warm body with another. It would have been great the writers had chosen to explore Neal's inner feelings about his love and betrayal by those he loves, and the realization that he had done the same to Emma, the only person that was always true to him. Instead, Emma looks kinda pathetic like a rebound booty call or Neal's security blanket because he left her and not the other way around. As part of the process he could have confronted both Rumple and Hook about how their acts had impacted him as an adult. It would have tied Neal in with the other characters. One of Neal's other problems is that he didn't really meaningfully interact with main characters. As Regian said he was just This person.

Edited July 3, 2015 by kitticup

[Free]

 

It would have been great the writers had chosen to explore Neal's inner feelings about his love and betrayal by those he loves, and the realization that he had done the same to Emma, the only person that was always true to him.

 

This, this was lacking during the messiness between S2-3a.  It would've been far better than throwing us the Tamara/Greg/Home Front nonsense.

[Shanna Marie]

All the relationship stuff in 2B was an unholy mess. For starters, the Lacey plot was entirely unnecessary. It had no lasting impact, since Belle had no reaction to what she'd done as Lacey or what she saw Rumple do, which sabotaged her character. They just hit a reset button there. The only effect was giving Belle the "We are Both" treatment so that she later knew how to use the Internet to correspond with dodgy "Oxford professors." They could have taken care of that with Curse 2, by saying that the curse gave her a Storybrooke identity, but because she didn't lose her real memories, it didn't take, but she still got the cultural download. If she'd reacted like a reasonable person to the news that Rumple murdered his last wife and to the sight of Rumple nearly beating Hook to death and told Rumple she needed some time away from him to think, then that would have freed Rumple up to interact with Neal instead of with Lacey. Watching Rumple with his son might have made Belle start to soften toward him again, so by the time he's heading off to rescue Henry she could have been right back where she was, and nothing has changed in the long term, plot wise.

 

Then from Neal's perspective, did Tamara really need to be his fiancee? Greg already knew all about the town, who the people were, and how to find it. Did Tamara get anything from posing as Neal's fiancee that she wouldn't have had by being Greg's girlfriend/fiancee/wife who had good reason to rush to town when he was injured? That just kept Neal from dealing with his father and with Emma.

 

But the way they did things, Rumple acted like his centuries-long quest to be reunited with his son was just an item to be checked off the to-do list, and once he'd done it, he could move on to more important things, like his girlfriend. And Neal ended up looking like none of his relationships really mattered because all of them were shallow and superficial -- his long hatred of his father and the fact that his father murdered his mother was just brushed aside, the girl he ditched out of fear was just a blip on his past that didn't even make him think about what it had done to her, and it wasn't as though his relationship with Tamara was all that interesting.

[Free]

 

Then from Neal's perspective, did Tamara really need to be his fiancee? Greg already knew all about the town, who the people were, and how to find it. Did Tamara get anything from posing as Neal's fiancee that she wouldn't have had by being Greg's girlfriend/fiancee/wife who had good reason to rush to town when he was injured? That just kept Neal from dealing with his father and with Emma.

 

It was a complete waste of time, should've just had the Darlings plot to kidnap Henry instead as that would've been a smoother transition between sandwiching Greg and Tamara in between Cora and Peter Pan/Neverland.

 

 

All the relationship stuff in 2B was an unholy mess. For starters, the Lacey plot was entirely unnecessary. It had no lasting impact, since Belle had no reaction to what she'd done as Lacey or what she saw Rumple do, which sabotaged her character. They just hit a reset button there. The only effect was giving Belle the "We are Both" treatment so that she later knew how to use the Internet to correspond with dodgy "Oxford professors." They could have taken care of that with Curse 2, by saying that the curse gave her a Storybrooke identity, but because she didn't lose her real memories, it didn't take, but she still got the cultural download. If she'd reacted like a reasonable person to the news that Rumple murdered his last wife and to the sight of Rumple nearly beating Hook to death and told Rumple she needed some time away from him to think, then that would have freed Rumple up to interact with Neal instead of with Lacey. Watching Rumple with his son might have made Belle start to soften toward him again, so by the time he's heading off to rescue Henry she could have been right back where she was, and nothing has changed in the long term, plot wise.

 

The problem was a two-fold.  They didn't know what to do with Belle after she reunited with Rumple until they finally made her the designated researcher for the group later on and they didn't know what to do with Neal after his reunion as well.

[Shanna Marie]

They didn't know what to do with Belle after she reunited with Rumple until they finally made her the designated researcher for the group later on and they didn't know what to do with Neal after his reunion as well.

That's where their unique blend of brilliance and incompetence gets so frustrating. It's all right there. They set it up and gave themselves the material.

 

The relationship between Bae/Neal and Rumple is the pivotal thing in the entire series. There's very little that would have happened the same way if anything had changed in their relationship, going all the way back to the point where it was hearing the prophecy that his son would grow up without a father that made Rumple turn coward and desert, which ruined his marriage, which led to Hook and Milah. He might have craved the Dark One's power, but would Rumple have had the nerve to go after the dagger if he hadn't been motivated by saving Bae? If Rumple hadn't needed the magic bean to reach Bae, he probably would have just killed Hook and Milah in that alley, so no revenge quest, no Captain Swan. Without Rumple, Cora doesn't get power. Without Rumple whispering in her ear, Regina might have moved on like a normal person instead of going psycho Evil Queen. It all comes down to the very complicated relationship between this father and son.

 

I saw Inside Out yesterday, and through much of it, I found myself laughing (when I wasn't crying) about just how real and accurate all the emotions were. You could tell from the audience response that everyone was going "Yeah, that's exactly what it's like." This show is the exact opposite because they never seem to sit down and think through what a character might be going through and how that would translate into action and reaction. So here's Neal, whose entire life keeps getting screwed up by his father, and just when he thinks he can't be surprised at anything, he learns something else new. His wimpy, but still loving, Papa saves him from the army by becoming the Dark One, but then he goes nuts and starts killing and hurting everyone around, so Bae comes up with a plan to save him, only his dad bails. Then after a lot of other hardship and trauma, Bae finds himself on a pirate ship, and that's cool because the pirate is helpful and fond of him and seems to get what he's going through -- except it turns out that Bae's dad screwed him over and what he really wants is revenge, and worse, it turns out that Bae's mother didn't get killed by pirates all those years ago. She left her unhappy marriage for a pirate, and then Daddy Dearest murdered her. Then he finally gets back to the world without magic and is making a kind of life, has someone he loves and is making plans, but guess what? His girlfriend is his dad's pawn in an elaborate curse. Stop screwing up my life, Papa!

 

So how would someone who's been through all that react to seeing his father again? "Gee, Dad, I'm touched that you went through all this to find me, but kind of missing the point there! You're worse than when I wanted to leave back then!" You'd think Neal would have challenged Rumple to show he'd changed by going to live in the outside world with him. Or what about the fact that he was right there, in Neverland, all those years and Rumple couldn't find him -- but somehow Rumple's enemy found him in like five minutes? Neal's reaction the way it was written wasn't anything I could relate to by putting myself in his shoes. Most of us probably don't have someone who's that toxic in our lives, but we can relate to that bad penny who keeps showing up just when we think things are okay, that name that makes us cringe when we see it in the e-mail in-box. This is that times about a thousand.

 

They set up almost as much potential stuff with Belle. She believed that he was good at heart, then she learned that he had the entire town cursed and learned that he murdered his wife. She could have had her own arc of asserting her independence instead of going straight back to him. She was having her eyes opened about the kind of person he really was. What they wrote was not an honest emotional reaction that most people could recognize or relate to.

[Serena]

That's where their unique blend of brilliance and incompetence gets so frustrating. It's all right there. They set it up and gave themselves the material.

LMAO. This should be the title of the Writers' Thread. "An unique blend of brilliance and incompetence".

[Free]

 

What they wrote was not an honest emotional reaction that most people could recognize or relate to.

 

Exactly and it's this way with other characters as well.

[BoPeeps]

They rarely follow through with in depth relationship anything because they are too busy cramming new "lightbulb" ideas into five minute plot scenes. The potential is intellectually magnetic, then they leave the viewers with scrap metal shards.

 

Unflattering Neal rant follows:

From the start there was very little of Bae in Neal.  Physically, and no matter how appealing MRJ may have been to many, he had no resemblance to the dark, brooding man-child. Attitude-wise, he was Bae-lite watered down to clown form. He was flighty and way too shallow cutesy and carefree. My personal take was that Tallahasse was a comparison of Emma's immature past choice of Neal compared to the startingly passionate potential of Hook. It had little to do with introducing the core of a lasting family triangle between Emma, Neal and Henry. I saw it as a stark contrast of the two men.

Neal was McDonald's hamburger to a medium rare filet mignon Hook.

 

All of them were on the wrong side of good behavior. All of them struggled with past baggage. All of them had obvious flaws, but only two of them showed depth of passion and character. That would NOT include Neal in any way. He was a mediocre dip. He was easily swayed away from the courageous thing to do. He rationalized everything to fit his narcissist little world. He had no gene for sacrificing himself during that entire sordid little robber's spree/ let's shack up with the easily- manipulated pretty teenager plot. I was more angry that they had betrayed the established character of young Bae than I was concerned about any future *triangle* with Emma and Hook. He proved himself a total *relationship* jerk in that whole scenario.

 

Neal struck a chord with a lot of fans in search of the *perfect family* fantasy except everything about his relationship with Emma  shown in dialogue and on screen action was as deep as a thimble, dense as cement and as interesting as drying paint.

 

Even later, when they introduced that whole distasteful and poorly written Tamara crap, Neal was still a rampant, shallow jerk. A slug. He treated Emma and Tamara like an old shoe and continued his narcissist existence. The real story of Neal/Bae was his relationship to Rumple, and in dragging an ill advised triangle into the mix they screwed that potentially intense storyline into the ground. Emma's grown up connection to Neal was vapid. (in fact, while Emma's *first love pain* of his total -and continuing betrayal- was genuine, her distain and lack of emotional feeling for him in the present was very clear)

 

The only think interesting about Neal was his death. His characterizations SHOWN up to that point were lightweight, self serving, flippant and a disservice to the character of Bae.

Edited July 6, 2015 by BoPeeps

[october]

Thought I'd post this here. A video (not by me) casting a very critical eye over Regina's parenting of Henry (cw: child abuse and gaslighting):

 

Edited July 9, 2015 by october

[KingOfHearts]

A good laugh to start the day with, october. The idea that Regina could repent after doing all this stuff doesn't bother me, but whitewashing it (as the show has CLEARLY done) does. That line about Henry having a lot of friends in New York makes me wonder what happened to them and why Henry never mentions them. 

[tennisgurl]

Damn, that video maker was not fooling around! I tend to focus more on "the writers want us to forget that Regina is a mass murdering rapist", but maybe I should focus on "Regina is a horrible abusive parent, and the writers want to re-write her as this wonderful mother" more often. 

 

Cant wait to see more of their videos. 

[orza]

That video is idiotic. Some people really have too much time on their hands and too little perspective about a silly tv show..

[Curio]

That video is idiotic. Some people really have too much time on their hands and too little perspective about a silly tv show.

 

Are you saying it's idiotic because of the editing and musical choices, or because you disagree with their opinion? (And I think all of us on these boards have a little too much time on our hands if we're commenting about a TV show during the summer hiatus...)

 

That line about Henry having a lot of friends in New York makes me wonder what happened to them and why Henry never mentions them. 

 

If these writers cared about things like continuity, friendships, and character development, they would have given us brief moments of Henry still texting his NYC friends in Storybrooke (he name-dropped Avery in Season 3?) or even ask Emma if he could use Ingrid's scroll for a weekend vacation to see his friends. Or maybe his screwed up Storybrooke childhood—where he had no friends—changed his perspective about having friends his age and he's now totally okay being friendless again once he got his memories back at the end of 3B. Which is really sad.

[YaddaYadda]

Clearly, Greg and Tamara kidnapping Henry and the Neverland arc fixed Henry and Regina's relationship.  Oh, well!

[Souris]

That video is awesome! I love it.

[KingOfHearts]

If these writers cared about things like continuity, friendships, and character development, they would have given us brief moments of Henry still texting his NYC friends in Storybrooke (he name-dropped Avery in Season 3?) or even ask Emma if he could use Ingrid's scroll for a weekend vacation to see his friends. Or maybe his screwed up Storybrooke childhood—where he had no friends—changed his perspective about having friends his age and he's now totally okay being friendless again once he got his memories back at the end of 3B. Which is really sad.

Like who was Mrs. Cuse? It would have been funny if she was a nanny al a 101 Dalmations. Emma and Walsh go on a date, then Hook overpowers her and kidnaps Henry.

[Camera One]

 If these writers cared about things like continuity, friendships, and character development, they would have given us brief moments of Henry still texting his NYC friends in Storybrooke (he name-dropped Avery in Season 3?) or even ask Emma if he could use Ingrid's scroll for a weekend vacation to see his friends. Or maybe his screwed up Storybrooke childhood—where he had no friends—changed his perspective about having friends his age and he's now totally okay being friendless again once he got his memories back at the end of 3B. Which is really sad.

 

Or if these writers cared about people like Henry.

[october]

Damn, that video maker was not fooling around! I tend to focus more on "the writers want us to forget that Regina is a mass murdering rapist", but maybe I should focus on "Regina is a horrible abusive parent, and the writers want to re-write her as this wonderful mother" more often.

This is what gets to me most when it comes to Regina. It'd be one thing if they suddenly and out of nowhere started writing her as a good and healthy parent for Henry and completely ignored the damage she'd done during the first ten years of his life. But instead they're still writing the relationship as unhealthy and being all about Regina's needs, while simultaneously expecting the audience to root for her and respect her as a parent.

[Shanna Marie]

Henry's relationship with Regina looks a lot like a child with an alcoholic parent. The relationship is more about her needs than about his. He has to tiptoe around her emotions. He bends over backward and twists himself into knots to come up with ways that she can be happy, even though she's the only person who can make herself happy. She kicks him out when she can't deal with thinking about another person, and he's the one who has to be the grown-up and demand that he be allowed to live in his own house. He acts more like he's the one who's the parent, while she's the child who has to be coddled and looked after. She comes to him to talk about her feelings, but we've never seen him go to her to talk about things he's going through (have we?).

 

And it's weird the way that he totally lost his need for friends once he got his memory back and remembered Regina as his mom. Even if he's not having a "we are both" thing where he still has the fake memories of growing up with Emma on top of his real memories of growing up with Regina, shouldn't he remember the things that actually happened during that year in New York? He was ready to run away to find his friends again, then when he got his memories back, it seems like it was "what friends?" The closest he seems to have to a social life that's in any way about something that's fun for him rather than what will make Regina happy is his sailing trips with Hook, and even there we haven't seen enough to know if Henry actually likes sailing and is doing this because he wants to or if he's being dumped on Hook as a convenient babysitter and sailing is the only thing Hook can think of to do with him.

 

It all makes you wonder what Regina's plans for him were if the curse hadn't been broken (and I have to say, an eternity of never-changing Storybrooke sounds like the worst revenge ever). Henry would have kept growing up in a town where no one changed, which was going to make it impossible for him to have friends. Was he going to get to go away to college? How would he have had a girlfriend when he got old enough? What about marriage and a family of his own? What about when he became older than Regina? She may have desperately wanted a baby, but she really didn't think things through about what it would be like for him.

[Faemonic]

 Some people really have too much time on their hands and too little perspective about a silly tv show..

That's all of us, Orza...you included!

[pezgirl7]

I liked what Jen said in a Comic Con interview about Emma not being able to say I love you to Hook. She said it was because Emma loved him so much that she had a hard time saying it. That she hadn't opened herself up to anyone since Neal, and that she was scared that saying ILU out loud could make it go away.

[MaiLuna]

That makes even more sense when we remember that she got arrested because of Neal on the same day she told him she loved him.

[Dianthus]

I can certainly relate to the idea of Emma not wanting to "jinx" what she has with Hook. I didn't so much mind Emma's ILU coming when it did. At least he wasn't the one about to make the (sorta) ultimate sacrifice during the last few moments of the series finale (Damn you, Joss Whedon! Damn you to Hell).

[YaddaYadda]

I liked what Jen said in a Comic Con interview about Emma not being able to say I love you to Hook. She said it was because Emma loved him so much that she had a hard time saying it. That she hadn't opened herself up to anyone since Neal, and that she was scared that saying ILU out loud could make it go away.

 

I thought her statement was a bit ironic in that she was scared of saying she loved him because she loves him so much and she was scared that this, what they have would be taken from her and in the end, she tells him she loves him and she gets taken from him.  I'm sure she had no clue she would vanish, but it makes that scene even more messed up.

[RadioGirl27]

I don't know. I still don't like it. I mean, Jennifer explanation makes sense, and I understand Emma. My complaint with that scene is a writting one.

I think Emma chickening out of the ILY should have happened before the "I've seen the man I love die" speech and not after it. It would have given the speech more depth because we would have actually seen the "I was too scared to tell him" part. Because, no matter what was said in that scene, prior to the finale that never happened (on screen).

And even if they wanted to keep the ILY for the last scene, they could have kept the loft scene as it was, with Charming or Snow interrupting them when she is going to tell him and breaking the mood of the moment.

[Camera One]

And even if they wanted to keep the ILY for the last scene, they could have kept the loft scene as it was, with Charming or Snow interrupting them when she is going to tell him and breaking the mood of the moment.

 

I think they wanted to have Emma make the active choice to not say ILY in the loft, and then be moved to say it in another "we/you might be obliterated" moment.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Camera One

[Faemonic]

I think they wanted to have Emma make the active choice to not say ILY in the loft, and then be moved to say it in another "we/you might be obliterated" moment.

 

I think they wanted the "we/you might be obliterated" whether it was an active choice or not. 

[october]

I think they wanted to have Emma make the active choice to not say ILY in the loft, and then be moved to say it in another "we/you might be obliterated" moment.

 

I really wish they hadn't. I personally wouldn't have found the final scene any less emotional if Emma had already told Hook she loved him in the loft. She could've said it a second time during the final scene or said something else to reaffirm her feelings for him and give shippers something to enjoy. But I think the first ILY should've been in the loft.

 

Overcoming fears is a difficult thing to do in real life and it's normal to backtrack or chicken out when it comes to the tough stuff. But this is TV and as a viewer I found Emma's hesitation dramatically unsatisfying, especially after everything they went through in the AU and because we've already seen her step back from her feelings before on multiple occasions. The whole 'Oh no, the world is ending, better say ILY' is such a tired and manipulative trope. I didn't hate the scene, but it felt very rushed and anti-climactic to me.

 

I'm not trying to downplay Emma's character development or how far she's come. I'm also not saying it's unrealistic for her to have backed off, just the scenario didn't feel organic to me and I could see the writer's hand in how it played out. It felt contrived, a way to jam as many character moments and as much shipper bait as possible into the final two minutes of the episode.

[mjgchick]

Would've loved Emma to say "ILY" at the loft and then tells him "I'm sorry." to him while she's getting sucked up by the black smoke from Lost. Her sorry would be about the fact he told her she was his happy ending.

Yuck that sounds cheesy and I would've ate it up.

Edited July 13, 2015 by mjgchick

[YaddaYadda]

The show needs to move away from the whole reveals during a time of crisis.  While I completely understand Emma's motivation the way JMo explained it, at times, I feel they don't want to allow Emma more emotional growth.  

 

she tells Regina the man she loves died and she never told him she loved him because of how scared she was.  The thing is, in the AU, she lost him anyway.  He was taken from her even though she never told him she loved him and he would never have been brought back if she hadn't succeeded in her mission.  When I was watching the episode the first time, and because we already knew about the scenes that had been filmed in Stevetson with Emma and the dagger, I was expecting ILY at the very end of the episode, but damn if that scene in the bedroom after what Emma told Regina did not call for it then and there.

[Shanna Marie]

Sometimes I wonder if these writers are actually robots who do not understand human emotions and are merely attempting to imitate what they've seen on other shows without actually understanding what the other shows are doing.

 

The Emma and Hook I Love You situation falls into that category. So apparently, seeing Hook die in the AU made Emma realize that she'd never told him she loved him. But she's seen him nearly die and has been told of his death numerous times before without it changing anything. There was the time he drowned and stopped breathing until she did CPR. There was the time Ingrid nearly skewered him with icicles. There was the time Emma saw Rumple on the verge of crushing his heart. There was the time Ursula reported his death. None of those times led her to feel like she should have said something. We never got any sense from the aftermath of those events that there was something she felt like she should say but couldn't (I'm sure Jen could have acted it without dialogue, but she would have had no way of knowing at the time that this might have been what was going on). Did she not realize that she loved him until she was separated from him in the AU? Did she realize she loved him during any of those times? Did anything change during any of those times? It seemed kind of like she realized that he meant something to her when he drowned, but it didn't really change their relationship. The Ingrid skewering made her fear getting involved with him because she couldn't bear to lose him. The nearly crushed heart didn't seem to mean anything to her at all. Nearly getting killed by Ursula led him to say she was his happy ending. She cried at that, but was that her realizing that she loved him and couldn't bring herself to say it? It seems like in order for the "I never told him I loved him" thing in the AU to work, we needed to have seen some realization at some point that she did love him, and we needed to see her letting the opportunity to say something pass by. You can kind of squint and make the "you're my happy ending" scene play that way, but I still kind of feel like the bit in the AU was thrown in for drama and not because it was the logical progression of things.

 

I do think that waiting until the brink of death was the wrong decision, in part because Emma's done that already with Neal when it turns out she didn't really mean it that way and was only saying it because she thought she was losing him, and in part because it means she didn't actually learn anything from watching Hook die in the AU. It may not have been quite the Big, Dramatic Moment they were trying for, but I think it would have been more emotional if she'd said it in the loft and then they'd had about five minutes to be happy before she had to sacrifice it all. It's more of a sacrifice that way if she'd giving up happiness and knowing that she's also giving up his happiness rather than throwing out the last-ditch "I love you" while she's making the sacrifice.

[OnceUponAJen]

Would've loved Emma to say "ILY" at the loft and then tells him "I'm sorry." to him while she's getting sucked up by the black smoke from Lost. Her sorry would be about the fact he told her she was his happy ending.

Yuck that sounds cheesy and I would've ate it up.

I think "I'm sorry" would've sounded too much like "goodbye" to me. The "I love you" gives me more hope. I still would have liked her to say it in the loft, though, and again before she makes her sacrifice FOR THE TOWN. Edited July 13, 2015 by OnceUponAJen

[Camera One]

If they want to go full-soap opera, they could have done ILY in the loft, and "Promise me you will find someone new and fall in love with them!" at the end.

[Curio]

The "I love you" gives me more hope. I still would have liked her to say it in the loft, though, and again before she makes her sacrifice FOR THE TOWN.

 

I could've bought Emma attempting to say "I love you" in the loft, only to be interrupted by a crying baby in the background and hearing Snow and Charming downstairs within earshot. She decides to save it for later, but unfortunately later means right before she sacrifices herself.

[Dani-Ellie]

I think "I'm sorry" would've sounded too much like "goodbye" to me. The "I love you" gives me more hope.

 

This.

 

I admit I was disappointed when Emma didn't say it in the loft but I ultimately liked the way it played out as aired, especially in light of Jen's comments. Because look, here's Emma, chickening out again. Afraid to say it because saying it might make it go away, like breaking a spell. So she hesitates, ultimately holds back, and really, they're both disappointed in that moment.

 

And then later in the street, she knows. She knows saying it this time is going to make it disappear because of what she has to do but she gets over that fear and says it anyway. And in the end, it gives both of them hope. She gives Hook a reason fight for her (not that he wouldn't have anyway, but still), which in turn gives her hope because she knows that he will.

[kingshearte]

I really wish they hadn't. I personally wouldn't have found the final scene any less emotional if Emma had already told Hook she loved him in the loft. She could've said it a second time during the final scene or said something else to reaffirm her feelings for him and give shippers something to enjoy. But I think the first ILY should've been in the loft.

 

Overcoming fears is a difficult thing to do in real life and it's normal to backtrack or chicken out when it comes to the tough stuff. But this is TV and as a viewer I found Emma's hesitation dramatically unsatisfying, especially after everything they went through in the AU and because we've already seen her step back from her feelings before on multiple occasions. The whole 'Oh no, the world is ending, better say ILY' is such a tired and manipulative trope. I didn't hate the scene, but it felt very rushed and anti-climactic to me.

 

I'm not trying to downplay Emma's character development or how far she's come. I'm also not saying it's unrealistic for her to have backed off, just the scenario didn't feel organic to me and I could see the writer's hand in how it played out. It felt contrived, a way to jam as many character moments and as much shipper bait as possible into the final two minutes of the episode.

Agreed. It felt earned in the loft, and therefore disappointing when it didn't happen, and then later, when it becomes obvious that the loft moment was sacrificed for the end moment, it just felt terribly ham-fisted and un-organic. Agree with those who have suggested that if she'd been interrupted instead of stopping herself, it would have at least felt a little less ham-fisted in its execution.

 

Did she not realize that she loved him until she was separated from him in the AU? Did she realize she loved him during any of those times? Did anything change during any of those times? It seemed kind of like she realized that he meant something to her when he drowned, but it didn't really change their relationship. The Ingrid skewering made her fear getting involved with him because she couldn't bear to lose him. The nearly crushed heart didn't seem to mean anything to her at all. Nearly getting killed by Ursula led him to say she was his happy ending. She cried at that, but was that her realizing that she loved him and couldn't bring herself to say it? It seems like in order for the "I never told him I loved him" thing in the AU to work, we needed to have seen some realization at some point that she did love him, and we needed to see her letting the opportunity to say something pass by. You can kind of squint and make the "you're my happy ending" scene play that way, but I still kind of feel like the bit in the AU was thrown in for drama and not because it was the logical progression of things.

 

I do think that waiting until the brink of death was the wrong decision, in part because Emma's done that already with Neal when it turns out she didn't really mean it that way and was only saying it because she thought she was losing him, and in part because it means she didn't actually learn anything from watching Hook die in the AU. It may not have been quite the Big, Dramatic Moment they were trying for, but I think it would have been more emotional if she'd said it in the loft and then they'd had about five minutes to be happy before she had to sacrifice it all. It's more of a sacrifice that way if she'd giving up happiness and knowing that she's also giving up his happiness rather than throwing out the last-ditch "I love you" while she's making the sacrifice.

Actually, all that lead-up that you mentioned kinda does work for me, at least. The drowning was pretty early, before an ILY was necessarily warranted, but as you say, it made her think a little differently about the relationship, even if it didn't outwardly change much. The Ingrid skewering made her fully realize — and admit to him — that he was important to her and she didn't want to lose him. Maybe some people would be ready for ILY at that point, but it's not out of character for Emma not to be. The crushed heart is the real problem, where the writers really failed us. Writers don't always have to write things the way I think they ought to, but I really do think it's inexcusable that we got no emotional fallout from that at all. Even if no words were spoken about it, Morrison and O'Donoghue are perfectly capable of laying it out without words, if they'd been given the opportunity. Again, I don't even mind if she didn't say it there, because it's Emma, and she wasn't ready. But she should have be allowed to look it. And the "you're my happy ending" thing was definitely Hook fishing. I think he didn't want to spook her by saying it first, so was waiting for her to say it, but by that point, definitely knew he loved her, and was confident enough that she loved him the he could reasonably hope that a nudge like that might get her to say it. Unfortunately for him, it didn't quite work (But can I just aside here and say that I love that he never got all whiny and insecure over the fact that she hadn't said it explicitly yet? So many people can't take actions as their yes, and get all antsy without the actual words, which just does not work when you're dealing with people who have a hard time with the words. He wanted to hear it, obviously, because don't we all, but was willing to take hearing it in the way she looked at him and in her actions until she was ready to say it out loud. Love that. Anyway.).

 

But yeah, then we get this AU situation, and the realization that "Yes, I definitely love him and — oh crap! I've never told him!" which to me flows just fine out of the stuff before (except the crushed heart part. Grrr.), and the set-up, and it just deflates in service of the Big! Dramatic! Moment! later. See above for my thoughts on that, but I also agree with you that it further makes it seem like she's had no personal growth and like, despite her big post-AU revelation, she didn't actually learn anything from that either.

 

TLDR: Happy she finally said it, but hate how it went down.

[HoodlumSheep]

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked how Emma didn't say ILY in the loft. That scene was like a punch in the gut, and in my opinion it was the 'good' sort of punch. I know I yelled when she didn't say it but I was fine with it. It's hard to explain.

What I didn't like was them trying to squeeze the big ILY and her saving the town into--almost literally--the last two minutes of the episode. It felt rushed;while I was happy she finally said it, it just wasn't as satisfying as it could have been.

Edited July 13, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[FormerMod-a1]

I didn't mind she didn't say it either because I kept wondering how she could be laying on top that man for so long w/o at least kissing him over and over...  </shallow>

[Curio]

I didn't mind she didn't say it either because I kept wondering how she could be laying on top that man for so long w/o at least kissing him over and over...  </shallow>

 

Because like every other good scene on this show, it probably happened off screen. ;)