Happily Ever After: Relationships Are Hard

[legaleagle53]

So apparently, not only was the part where Colin used his teeth to tie Emma's hand improvised, but Jen improvised the part where she tackles Killian onto her bed during the Season 4 finale. I swear, these writers better build shrines to their actors and thank their lucky stars they have talented people who can take their mediocre scripts and turn them into television gold on screen.

 

I am now 100% convinced Captain Swan would not work without both Jen and Colin at the reigns.

 

No kidding.  I can remember when people hated Jen in Season 1 because they felt that Emma was too wooden to be likeable.  Turns out that Jen knew what she was doing all along.  She can spin bad writing straw into gold with an ease that would make Rumpel himself jealous.

[orza]

Meh, I think she is an average actor at best and her character still uninteresting.

[Curio]

It is the job of the director and actors to work out the details during filming. These things don't make the actors geniuses. They just happen to be the ones talking about the process in public.

 

They might not be "geniuses" in the same way a MIT scholar is a genius, but I do think we have to give mad props to the actors on this show for some of their acting decisions and understanding their characters enough to bring an extra "something" to the scene to make it shine. For as much shit as we give the writers on these boards, their jobs are incredibly difficult, and so are the actors' and directors' jobs, so any time they get something right on screen it's kind of a creative "genius" moment. In my opinion, those two instances linked above are pretty "genius" decisions by the actors to elevate the script they were given. Chemistry between actors is like the Holy Grail all TV shows and movies hope to find, so I think we sometimes get a little spoiled on this show with how natural these actors are together.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Curio

[mjgchick]

If she improvised that scene, I bet the real scene would've been them hugging and then she takes his hand and they sit on the bed and she punks out on telling him she loves him. Yeah I like Jen's idea better. lol

[OnceUponAJen]

I was laughing at how easy it seemed for her to knock him over in the first place. I guess it was the element of surprise! I mean....he was standing right there, conveniently, by her bed.

[Shanna Marie]

We've written before about moments that made us go incandescent with rage and almost quit the show.  Emma's "I love you!" to Neal was almost that moment for me.

The more I think about that, the more wrong it is on multiple levels, and a shining example of the way they seem to write this show to get gif-able moments and "all the feels" tweets and tumblr posts, but without any development leading to or from it.

 

To start with, it's another case of this show's gross tendency to make the victim be the one to have to do all the work in restoring or building the relationship that was broken by the other person. There's Snow groveling to Regina, Emma chasing after Regina to beg for her friendship, and now Emma, betrayed and abandoned by Neal, being the one to tell him she loves him. It would have made so much more sense for him to have said that to her at the last second before he fell through the portal because he was the one who wronged her, and then that would have left her with a big emotional whammy to deal with, and they'd still have had their "all the feels" moment.

 

It also makes zero sense in that it's not something most human beings would have done. This guy betrayed and abandoned Emma more than eleven years ago in a horrible way that left her emotionally scarred, so it's hard to imagine that she's been pining for him all this time (and would be pretty pathetic if she was). I could see her wanting closure in the sense of wanting to punch him in the face, but still being in love with him? That's hard to believe. I think most people would have moved on to the point of having the "what did I see in this jerk?" response upon running into him again. It might have been very different and they might have rekindled things if he'd come running straight to Storybrooke to find her the moment he learned the curse was broken, but he still avoided her and was a total jerk to her since they were reunited, parading his fiancee in front of her and accusing her of being jealous when she raised concerns about what his fiancee was up to (and she turned out to be right). There's nothing in that scenario that lends itself to a confession of love, not even "I love you as a friend." It's specifically out of character for Emma, as we've seen since then. She couldn't bring herself to say the words to a guy she'd probably spent more time with than she had with Neal by the time she said it (I'm talking actual time together, not spanning years apart) when she'd already seen him nearly die a few times, when he'd made multiple sacrifices for her and when she'd actually watched him die, and when she was absolutely certain she loved him. Would she really just blurt it out like that to a guy she was uncertain of?

 

And it ended up meaning absolutely nothing, so I don't know what they were thinking. I'd love to know where they thought things were going at that time. "Tallahassee" looked like it was structured as "Mr. Right vs. Mr. Wrong" in the way they juxtaposed the flashbacks with the present, so it seemed like they were already on track toward Hook being Emma's love interest, and they went straight to that in the subsequent season. Unless maybe they didn't do that consciously, and it was only after the season ended and they reviewed it before starting to write season 3 that they noticed what they'd done, and that's why they wrote Emma's Echo Cave speech to put an asterisk on her "I love you" and backtrack on the fix they'd written themselves into. I can see why the SwanThief fans were outraged at the way things played out because that was pure shipper bait to have her say she loved one guy and then immediately write her getting into a relationship with someone else. I'm not even a raging shipper, and I know how upset I'd be if after Emma's "I love you" in this season finale the next season picked up with her getting into a relationship with someone else (though at least this time around there's that Dark One thing going on that could explain it).

[Curio]

This show definitely has a lot of "What? Really?" moments, but Emma saying "I love you" to Neal is one of the few where I actually said out loud to my screen, "What the hell?" It just felt completely out of character for Emma to say that, though I agree it would have been more in character for Neal to say it first and then have Emma contemplating saying it back on the spot. It was disappointing because I was so impressed that a TV show finally depicted a woman who was acting mature and rational about her ex, and I completely believed Emma was over him. And then...

[YaddaYadda]

It was disappointing because I was so impressed that a TV show finally depicted a woman who was acting mature and rational about her ex, and I completely believed Emma was over him.

 

That's not what I got (and I'm not calling Emma immature or anything like that).  I'm certain she had moved on, but then I thought there was some built-in resentment in that Neal moved on with his life and even had a fiancee and Emma was sort of stuck there with her massive trust issues and walls.  I think her resentment which was sort of presented as her being "jealous" was just very ugh!

 

I was shocked that Emma told Neal she loved him (my reaction was mainly what about Hook!  I know, shallow), but I guess they were building towards a triangle that never really happened.  I mean when you wish that your ex had stayed dead...pretty much puts a nail in that coffin (no pun).

[Camera One]

The whole 2B Neal/Tamara/Emma stuff was a juvenile attempt on the writers to give a reason for Emma to be struggling with her feelings about Neal.  I think they actually thought the jealousy aspect would be a good way to evoke that out-of-nowhere "I love you".  To the writers, Tamara supplanted any "need" to actually explore the impact of Neal's arrival in Storybrooke, of Emma reacting to Neal and Henry bonding, or to have Emma deal with any anger/betrayal she had about the flashbacks of "Tallahassee".  On Neal's side, until Tamara's arrival, he spent the latter half of 2B standing around in the background babysitting, while the writers skipped how he felt about being a father, how he felt about Emma, how he felt about Rumple.  

 

Tamara was entirely unnecessary from a character standpoint.  She was only there for plot twists... ooh, she knew August, ooh, she's sleeping with Greg on the side, ooh, she masterminded meeting Neal, ooh, she's working for Peter Pan.  Another distractor taking up screentime which could have been used exploring all the relationships "Manhattan" should have affected, which basically could have touched all the main characters.

[KingOfHearts]

 

The whole 2B Neal/Tamara/Emma stuff was a juvenile attempt on the writers to give a reason for Emma to be struggling with her feelings about Neal.

It was also setup for that dumb plot where Emma rightfully suspected her of foul play, only for Neal to pass it off as jealousy. It's that evil fiance troupe that Hallmark loves so much. Tamara was a character I thought didn't have to be horrible, but she was just an annoying plot device that just muahaha'ed everywhere. There was no rhyme or reason for any of her actions. The show didn't even bother to explain her fixation on killing magical creatures. She just irritated me for these reasons and for that she's on my list of least favorite characters on the show.

 

Who the heck was her grandmother anyway? She's probably been living in Storybrooke all this time. Oops, I just spoiled the Big Bad for Season 8.

Edited June 29, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

I'm certain she had moved on, but then I thought there was some built-in resentment in that Neal moved on with his life and even had a fiancee and Emma was sort of stuck there with her massive trust issues and walls.

I think there's a big difference between not being over what someone did to you because it's had a lasting effect on how you deal with emotions and relationships (like Emma leaving Hook at the top of the beanstalk because Neal's betrayal made it impossible for her to let herself trust again) and not being over a person in a way that would lead you to still be in love with them more than ten years after they screwed you over and then vanished entirely from your life. I could see still carrying a torch for someone you realize you screwed over and feel bad about, or someone you never got up the nerve to do anything about, or someone you believed was dead (well, unless you're Robin), or even someone you thought had something bad happen to him, like him going to prison for you. But there is no freaking way that just about anyone but the worst pathetic masochist (which Emma is not) would still be in love with a guy who'd treated her the way Neal did and then been out of her life for that long. As for the jealousy, even if you'd love to see your ex shot out of a cannon over a cliff into shark-infested, rocky waters and would never in a million years want to get back with them, it still stings to see them with someone new, especially if they're being a jerk about it and making sure you know just how much they've moved on, and especially if their treatment of you has screwed you up to the point that you still struggle with trust and intimacy in relationships. Plus there's that sense that karma is asleep at the wheel if that jackass has managed to find happiness, in spite of what he's done, and you haven't (though I suppose the people on this show would be used to that).

 

But I never really felt like the show was trying to tell us Emma really was jealous. She was stung, yeah, because of what I said above, but she really and truly did seem to believe that there was something fishy about Tamara, and since we were actually seeing Tamara doing evil things behind Neal's back, the show was telling us Emma was right. In fact, most of the bad things that ended up happening because of Tamara were probably worse than they had to be because Neal was sticking to his smug "oh, how cute, you're jealous" act instead of taking Emma seriously.

 

I was shocked that Emma told Neal she loved him (my reaction was mainly what about Hook!  I know, shallow), but I guess they were building towards a triangle that never really happened.  I mean when you wish that your ex had stayed dead...pretty much puts a nail in that coffin (no pun).

That's why I'm curious whether "Tallahassee" was meant to be as one-sided as it turned out to be and if they really were planning a more serious triangle, so that Emma's unresolved feelings for Neal would serve as a roadblock between her and Hook until Neal appeared on the scene again and the triangle kicked off in earnest, and then they rewatched the season before planning 3A and realized there was going to be no way to make a triangle work because by that point Hook was so obviously going to win, so they never bothered creating the triangle and they gave Emma that "I wish you'd stayed dead so I could move on" speech that kind of explained why she was kissing Hook senseless so soon after she told Neal she loved him, that the "I love you" didn't really mean she was still interested in being with him.

 

It actually could have been an interesting triangle because the two corners actually had a longer and deeper relationship with each other than either of them had with the point. They'd spent more than a century apparently as friends, while Neal had spent maybe a few months with Emma more than a decade earlier and Hook had only just met her. How would Emma have reacted to Hook suddenly backing off if that had stood for more than five minutes? Would she have been hurt and confused? Would she have pursued him? Would she really have tried dating Neal, and how would that have gone?

 

Long silence. "Um, Henry's a great kid." "Yeah, he's great. Really great." Long silence. "So, uh, what have you been doing with yourself?" "You mean between prison and curse breaking?"

 

This is one of those cases of devoting great amounts of screen time to something that ended up being utterly pointless. We barely saw drunk Hook hitting on Tink and hoping that was making Emma jealous, and that was all that came of Hook bowing out for Neal and Henry's sake. There were all those conversations with everyone about whether Emma should date Neal, and all those fairybacks to teach the Valuable Lesson that you should live for the moment (meaning that Emma should give Neal a chance), and then suddenly the two guys are in a different world and Neal's dead (sort of). That's probably about 20 minutes of screen time that came to "oh, never mind."

[hockeycat400]

Longtime reader (lurker!) here.   I always took Emma's "I love you" to Neal as an "I love you because of Henry."   I never, ever took it as a sign of romantic love.   I don't know why...maybe because I thought JMo and MRJ had zero chemistry...or just because I really, really disliked the Neal character....or because I am naive. *lol* 

[Dianthus]

Repeating myself to add that Emma & Neal's relationship strongly reminded me of Buffy & angel's over on BtVS. Angel is Buffy's 1st love, and she loses her innocence to him. He doesn't get her knocked-up (vampire), but he leaves her with some serious emotional scars (and a physical scar as a visual representation of the inner ones). Despite her issues, she still has feelings for him, and it takes a lot for her to finally get over them (mostly) and move on with someone else (who has his work cut out for him).

[KAOS Agent]

I felt like Emma's I love you was a reactionary thing to say to someone who was going to die. It didn't mean that she was still in love with him, but was more of a manifestation of her unresolved feelings for him that she expressed only because it was the end. This was pretty clearly laid out in "Nasty Habits" when Snow talks about how much sadness Emma must be feeling. Here's Emma's response:

 

"I'm not sad. I'm pissed. Yes, Neal just died, but I lost him years ago. All that time thinking that he didn't love me, only to find out that he did, and it was too late. I can't even tell him how angry that makes me, or how much it hurt when he left, or how terrified I was when he came back, because I knew the moment I saw him, I never stopped loving him."

 

Emma was in no way looking for a new relationship with Neal. She'd closed that off years earlier. It was too late by the time she found out the truth. However, it doesn't mean that her feelings for her first love were completely gone. She loved him, but she wasn't in love with him and she sure as hell wasn't interested in rekindling their romance. You'll note that even though it hurt that he'd moved on with Tamara, she gave him good relationship advice and told him to tell Tamara the truth. She called him out about lying to his fiancee about who he was and where he was from and told him not to repeat the mistakes he'd made with Emma. The jealousy idea was silly because they'd already shown Emma telling Neal to do the right thing with Tamara.  If there was jealousy it was only in the sense that she was upset that he'd found Tallahassee with someone and she hadn't. This was made more difficult for her because his actions had screwed her up so much that she hadn't been able to move on, while he'd clearly had no such trouble. By the time they got to her Echo Caves confession, she was very clear that while she still loved him, she had been good with the closure his death had given her and she wasn't interested in revisiting their relationship. It showed how well Hook can read Emma that he was the only one who understood where Emma stood on the whole thing and he didn't even hear Emma's confession.

Edited June 30, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[Souris]

My head canon was always that Emma THOUGHT she loved Neal, because she had no frame of reference and thought that the fact that she hadn't gotten over him in all those years meant she must love him instead of not getting over him because he totally screwed up her life & scarred her so terribly. 

[Rumsy4]

I felt like Emma's I love you was a reactionary thing to say to someone who was going to die. It didn't mean that she was still in love with him, but was more of a manifestation of her unresolved feelings for him that she expressed only because it was the end. This was pretty clearly laid out in "Nasty Habits" when Snow talks about how much sadness Emma must be feeling. Here's Emma's response:

 

"I'm not sad. I'm pissed. Yes, Neal just died, but I lost him years ago. All that time thinking that he didn't love me, only to find out that he did, and it was too late. I can't even tell him how angry that makes me, or how much it hurt when he left, or how terrified I was when he came back, because I knew the moment I saw him, I never stopped loving him."

 

I agree KAOS. Emma never got closure with Neal because of the way he left her. She was left feeling that Neal had perhaps never cared for her and set her up from the beginning. And Emma being Emma, she internalized her pain and suffering, and never dealt with it. Neal falling through the portal at the end of S2 was basically a replay of what had happened in the past, except this time, Neal really was letting go for "noble" reasons. He wanted Henry to have at least one parent who was not a delusional mass murderer. The scenario invoked a panic in Emma similar to that she had felt 11 year ago. But Emma was no longer the doey eyed 17 year old. Those rekindled feelings of "puppy" love dissipated along with the realization that Neal's abandonment had not been a simple betrayal. He hadn't meant to set her up right from the beginning, and his cowardice had more to do with his fear of meeting his father. 

 

However, I hate the way that in the end, Neal went back to claiming that he had to abandon Emma, and she agreed with him. They did it to give Neal too clean of a send off, but it's bad writing. Oh well...

[Amerilla]

Reading the discussion over the last couple of days, I just wanted to de-lurk briefly to add some thoughts.

 

I'm a Hookfire Minimalist: I don't think the relationship was ever meant to be anything more than a bridge between timelines and storylines, and I think what we were shown in the S2 finale was pretty much the bulk of  their relationship - a relatively brief (in the context of 100+ years) period that ended on a hostile note, with Hook letting Pan take Bae. They actually reinforce that ending in the very first Neal-Hook scene in "The Queen is Dead." Whatever this 'friendship' may have been in the distant past, Neal's allegiance immediately went to Rumpel - the guy who, just hours before, he had declared himself 10,000% done with. He had no compunctions about leaving Hook tied up in the basement to rot, or stealing Hook's precious ship to save the life of Hook's mortal enemy.

 

YYMV, of course, but I think it's a headcanon too far to read more into it than that. A couple largely expository lines in 3a indicating that Hook may have kept tabs on Bae post-2x22 does not - in my opinion - indicate love or friendship. (You could just as easily ascribe it to guilt or fidelity to Milah's memory.) The weird hug scene in Quiet Minds seems, more than anything, like heavy-handed foreshadowing of Neal's death later in the episode. (In fairness, the whole episode could have won an Emmy for Heavy-Handed Foreshadowing.)

 

In between, there's a whole lotta nothing. Despite the setup at the end of S2, with Hook offering up his ship and even making a truce with Rumpel

to find Henry out of (apparent) grief over Neal's (apparent) death, because in the interim Hook had fallen in love with Emma, he wasn't exactly overjoyed that Neal turned out to be not-so-dead a few episodes later. The two barely reacted to seeing each other alive and conscious for the first time in, what, a century or more? (Yes, I know, Colin broke his leg, so they may have had a scene or two in S2 where they were meant to have interacted...but they did not,  and the writers knew that, and yet didn't do anything to fill in that obvious gap.) They instantly switch into low-level romantic rival mode, and while Neal is later shown to have used Hook to get word to Emma in 3b, they didn't even speak to each other between their return to the EF and the return to Storybrooke right before Neal's death.

 

Even if the writers had wanted to make more of Hookfire, there were some serious pre-existing confines in place by late S2.

 

- Rumpel was always going to be central to Bae/Neal's emotional life. There was plenty of drama inherent in that relationship, and consequently no need to toss in a quasi-stepfather to divert from that. I know Hook fans are predisposed to want to see Daddy!Hook, but because it was clear that Bae would always choose Rumpel, in the end, it would only underscore (again) Hook's relative weakness to Rumpel.

  

- If you assume that Emma would always have chosen Hook, and if Neal and Emma were perfectly amicable in not being a couple, having Hook be a both a quasi-parental figure and lover of both Neal's mother and the mother of his own child would be...awkward. Can you imagine your former stepfather dating your ex? Awkward.

 

- Plus: Henry. (How many frigging co-parents does this kid need?) Again, it's hard to see how Neal would be totes cool with Hook as both his former sorta-stepfather and Henry's current sorta-stepfather, especially since Neal would want to be the active father.

 

So, even if Hook and Bae were shown to be close in Neverland in the past, there's no good way to carry it forward in any meaningful way in the the present, without turning one or both characters into dish-rags, happy to accept whatever emotional crumbs the other tosses them. I don't see how it would have benefitted them or the overall story. Or been particularly interesting to watch.

 

The relationship I would have liked to have seen more of in Neverland was Bae and Pan.

 

Between the S2 finale and Nasty Habits, they had a decent setup: at a moment when Bae is feeling increasingly captive to his father's paranoia, Pan arrives and offers him freedom and a new tribe. While Bae wouldn't have gone with the Lost Boys, his father's intervention is another shove down the road to the portal. This leaves him vulnerable, and he shortly ends up as Pan's captive in Neverland. From what little we see, it's clear that the two have an acrimonious relationship for much of Bae's time in captivity. But we don't know much beyond that, even the basic question of whether Bae "escaped" or was freed by Pan to father the Truest Believer.

 

Because we know so little, all the emotion of Nealfire learning that Pan was his grandfather is completely lost in the shuffle. He reacts only to the knowledge that Pan was Rumpel's father. That forming a basis for their reconciliation isn't a problem, but the story's failure to acknowledge that Bae/Neal suffered long-term abuse at the hands of his own blood relation, was arguably used as some sort of magical breeder, and almost had his newfound son stripped for parts was poor

writing at it's poorest, and how checked-out the writers were in terms of Neal's story by the end of 3a.

[Serena]

That's why I'm curious whether "Tallahassee" was meant to be as one-sided as it turned out to be and if they really were planning a more serious triangle, so that Emma's unresolved feelings for Neal would serve as a roadblock between her and Hook until Neal appeared on the scene again and the triangle kicked off in earnest, and then they rewatched the season before planning 3A and realized there was going to be no way to make a triangle work because by that point Hook was so obviously going to win, so they never bothered creating the triangle and they gave Emma that "I wish you'd stayed dead so I could move on" speech that kind of explained why she was kissing Hook senseless so soon after she told Neal she loved him, that the "I love you" didn't really mean she was still interested in being with him.

I really think the triangle was supposed to be longer. At some point while breaking 3B I guess they realized that MRJ and JMo just didn't have chemistry and that they had zero interest in writing "regular guy" Neal. I could have told them that (I mean, also, with the kind of background Bae had, who was the moron who decided to write Neal as such a regular Joe? Talk about a moronic decision).

 

But I actually don't think 2B showed Hook was obviously going to win (I mean, Tallahassee was a bit heavy handed, but not the rest of the season, especially because Colin got injured). The episode where I thought "okay, this triangle is dead" was actually in Dark Hollow when Hook gives her the "I've never seen you fail" speech. That was such a marked contrast to Neal's sneering "I never thought your lie detector worked!" that not even those writers could have been doing it NOT on purpose.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Serena

[orza]

- Rumpel was always going to be central to Bae/Neal's emotional life. There was plenty of drama inherent in that relationship, and consequently no need to toss in a quasi-stepfather to divert from that. I know Hook fans are predisposed to want to see Daddy!Hook, but because it was clear that Bae would always choose Rumpel, in the end, it would only underscore (again) Hook's relative weakness to Rumpel.

  

- If you assume that Emma would always have chosen Hook, and if Neal and Emma were perfectly amicable in not being a couple, having Hook be a both a quasi-parental figure and lover of both Neal's mother and the mother of his own child would be...awkward. Can you imagine your former stepfather dating your ex? Awkward.

 

- Plus: Henry. (How many frigging co-parents does this kid need?) Again, it's hard to see how Neal would be totes cool with Hook as both his former sorta-stepfather and Henry's current sorta-stepfather, especially since Neal would want to be the active father.

 

So, even if Hook and Bae were shown to be close in Neverland in the past, there's no good way to carry it forward in any meaningful way in the the present, without turning one or both characters into dish-rags, happy to accept whatever emotional crumbs the other tosses them. I don't see how it would have benefitted them or the overall story. Or been particularly interesting to watch.

Hook never had any kind of stepfather-like relationship with Bae. They barely knew each other, having spent only a brief period of time together on board Hook's ship. Hook, Milah and Bae never lived together as a family. He is also not any kind of stepfather figure to Henry. Hook is Emma's boyfriend, and that is a recent development. Henry, apparently, gets along with Hook, or at least tolerates him, but there is no evidence that they have bonded in any meaningful way.

 

Michael Raymond-James said in an interview that he had a 6-episode arc in season 2 with Hook that had to be scrapped because Colin was not up to the physical demands of it due to his injury. I think mostly they stopped writing for him because they realized he was miscast in the role. While MRJ may have gotten along famously with the other cast members off-screen, he was not able to create a believable character that jelled with the other characters on-screen. I saw him in Sons of Liberty and he was ok in it, if you are willing to believe that Paul Revere was actually from Detroit. In other words, he was again not able to inhabit a character from another time and place and sell it to the audience. Some actors really can only play contemporary characters that are similar to who they are in real life.

[Dani-Ellie]

Henry, apparently, gets along with Hook, or at least tolerates him, but there is no evidence that they have bonded in any meaningful way.

 

4x22: Henry: "I had a great teacher ... you."

[orza]

That doesn't indicate a meaningful bond or stepfather-like relationship. Henry is just acknowledging that Hook did a good job of teaching him something. A meaningful bond is something more than just getting along with one another.

Edited June 30, 2015 by orza

[Amerilla]

Hook never had any kind of stepfather-like relationship with Bae. They barely knew each other, having spent only a brief period of time together on board Hook's ship.

 

Yes. That was my point. Other forumers feel the relationship went deeper in OffScreenville and should have gone further on-screen, and I disagree.

 

 

 

While MRJ may have gotten along famously with the other cast members off-screen, he was not able to create a believable character that jelled with the other characters on-screen.

 

In a cast chockablock with middling-to-poor actors trying to slog through increasingly convoluted and compressed storylines, most have struggled to create "believable" characters. If that were the metric, the cast would be a lot less bloated.

 

Obviously we can speculate, but since we don't know what happened behind the scenes, it's just that: speculation.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Amerilla

[Dani-Ellie]

That doesn't indicate a meaningful bond or stepfather-like relationship. Henry is just acknowledging that Hook did a good job of teaching him something. A meaningful bond is something more than just getting along with one another.

 

I sensed fondness and pride in Henry's smile when he said that, which indicated to me that he liked, got along well with, and was proud to learn from the Hook he knew. YMMV.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Dani-Ellie

[Shanna Marie]

All that time thinking that he didn't love me, only to find out that he did, and it was too late. I can't even tell him how angry that makes me, or how much it hurt when he left, or how terrified I was when he came back, because I knew the moment I saw him, I never stopped loving him."

That's the part that Does Not Compute for me, even more so than the heat-of-the-moment desperate confession when she thought he was about to die. Maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings here and I'm more scorched earth in my relationships than Emma is, but I really don't get that she would have never stopped loving this guy. I had an intense first love that went bad (though not pregnancy and prison bad) when I was maybe a few years older than Emma, in which he went straight from us planning our future together and talking about where we'd live when we were married to wanting nothing to do with me and acting like I was utterly delusional for thinking that he might have been into me, with no explanation. I went through about four months of simultaneously wanting him to die a hideous death and wanting him back because I couldn't imagine life without him, and then the fog lifted and I realized that I could move on and be fine. I suspect that sudden reversal has a lot to do with my relationship failures since then, as I tend to start to unconsciously withdraw in fear whenever things seem to be going well, which makes the men think I'm not into them, so they dump me, which reinforces that "he's going to bail the moment I think we have a future" fear. But when I saw this guy again about ten years later, all I felt was "whew, dodged a bullet there." I can't imagine clinging to those feelings for more than ten years if a guy had let me go to prison and vanished from my life. The fact that he loved her but made no effort to follow up with her would have made it worse. This is one of those cases where I wonder if the writers are unable to really put themselves in the heads of their characters because this doesn't seem like a normal human reaction. She might have felt differently if she'd raised Henry and had that constant reminder of Neal, if she'd run into Neal again just a few years after she lost him, or if she'd been the one to let Neal go, but it's hard for me to imagine a 28-29 year-old woman still carrying a torch for a guy who screwed her over when she was a teenager.

 

My head canon was always that Emma THOUGHT she loved Neal, because she had no frame of reference and thought that the fact that she hadn't gotten over him in all those years meant she must love him instead of not getting over him because he totally screwed up her life & scarred her so terribly.

That works for me. Being with him might have been the first time (other than maybe Ingrid, who turned out to be a psycho) she ever felt loved, which would have blown the relationship out of proportion, and then she went a lot longer before she felt loved again when she finally met her parents and Henry. She stuck a convenient label on what she felt without having any basis for comparison, but she can't bring herself to ditch that label now, even though she has a better sense of what love really is, because he did turn out to be a meaningful part of her life.

 

Because we know so little, all the emotion of Nealfire learning that Pan was his grandfather is completely lost in the shuffle. He reacts only to the knowledge that Pan was Rumpel's father.

Good point! Really, poor Neal didn't get to react to anything other than the news that he was a father. Yet another case of the writers not taking thirty seconds to really think about what a character might be thinking or feeling in that circumstance. He was never allowed to really react to Rumple, either. There was some pissy teen resentment mixed with the fear of Rumple dying, but the fact that he'd learned that his father murdered his mother never came up, nor did the fact that Rumple had an entire kingdom cursed to reach him. He seemed to treat that as "Aw, you cared" rather than "What the hell is wrong with you?" They skipped all the reconciliation, going straight from wanting nothing to do with him to "I love you, Papa." And then there's the "Wait, the creepy kid in the green tights is my grandfather? Maybe you should have said something the first time he tried to recruit me," that never happened. Basically, this character who should in many respects have been the emotional centerpiece of a lot of the series because he had ties to or effects on most of the characters ended up being just a human MacGuffin. All that mattered was how other people felt about him -- Rumple desperate to find him and prove himself to him, Emma's emotional scars, Hook's fondness -- not how he felt about anything.

[Camera One]

Emma is Emma.   Unlike normal people, she didn't even have family or friends.  She has rarely let anyone in her life, and Neal was one of the rare exceptions, although it ended badly.  I can see why she might blurt out "I love you" as she saw Neal plummeting to his supposed death.

 

Now that we're in Season 4, as a comparison, we can also evaluate how Emma reacted to bumping into others who wronged her in the past, such as Ingrid and Lily.

[YaddaYadda]

Now that we're in Season 4, as a comparison, we can also evaluate how Emma reacted to bumping into others who wronged her in the past, such as Ingrid and Lily.

 

Even with Ingrid though, I thought they didn't allow her much of a reaction and that was where Emma was the happiest (or at least that's what I got from it), she was happy in the six months she spent with her and was nearly adopted by her if Ingrid hadn't pulled the whole "you're a wizard, Harry".  She wasn't allowed to have a reaction to Ingrid's death.

[KingOfHearts]

Even with Ingrid though, I thought they didn't allow her much of a reaction and that was where Emma was the happiest (or at least that's what I got from it), she was happy in the six months she spent with her and was nearly adopted by her if Ingrid hadn't pulled the whole "you're a wizard, Harry". She wasn't allowed to have a reaction to Ingrid's death.

Her lack of reaction to Ingrid's death defeated the whole purpose of her past with her. It changed absolutely nothing. Not even Elsa seemed to really care, and that was her only surviving biological aunt. Ingrid dies, happy Storybrooke feels, then it's just about the barrier wall in the next episode.

Ingrid should have been an important person in Emma's life like Neal. (Though not as much.) I'm still resentful that they never really showed that.

[Camera One]

Emma face did look pretty sad when Ingrid sacrificed herself.  Didn't she say something like, "What about your happy ending?"

 

On the flip side, considering how much Ingrid "loved" Emma, you'd think she would say something about Rumple wanting to kill her.

Edited July 1, 2015 by Camera One

[Dani-Ellie]

Also, Elsa and Anna were both openly crying.

[YaddaYadda]

Emma face did look pretty sad when Ingrid sacrificed herself.  Didn't she say something like, "What about your happy ending?"

 

She did, that's true.  For me though, I felt they dropped the ball on the emotional fall out of this.  Emma had good memories with this woman before the magic incident.  

 

I feel they drop the ball on a lot of the things that they build up that are supposed to have some kind of an emotional fall out.  Besides, I'm still not over how Anna was the one who ended up saving the day when it came to Ingrid.  It wasn't Elsa or Emma, it was bloody Anna.  Just can't...

[Mari]

I really think the triangle was supposed to be longer. At some point while breaking 3B I guess they realized that MRJ and JMo just didn't have chemistry and that they had zero interest in writing "regular guy" Neal. I could have told them that (I mean, also, with the kind of background Bae had, who was the moron who decided to write Neal as such a regular Joe? Talk about a moronic decision)..

But was it a lack of chemistry between the performers, or was it a lack of chemistry in their plotline?  I admit it wasn't the same type of chemistry as people see with Emma/Hook, but I can't say that I think the problem with Emma/Neal was due to the performers.

 

I was adamantly against Emma and Neal reuniting on a romantic level.  But a lot of that was the writing--there was the abandonment, not going to Tallahassee, not looking for her when he got the post card, and on top of that, the complete dismissal of what she went through as well as the way he didn't really seem to respect her much or take her very seriously in the present scenes. 

 

In the few scenes where they gave him a little self-depreciating material, or material where it didn't seem like he was sneering at Emma, they actually did quite well.  Unfortunately, it wasn't quite managed consistently in an episode until Quiet Minds, which was the first episode I understood what potential people really saw in them as a couple.  (And then he died.  Sob???)

 

If they had lead with the Neal that was in his final episode, I might have been willing to visit that ship;  the "I screwed up, and it caused tragedy, but I regret it and I love you." is a lot more viable ship than "What do you mean you don't think I'm awesome after I nearly  ruined your life, didn't regret it, and got engaged?  Wanna get back together?"

Edited July 1, 2015 by Mari

[Camera One]

I just hated Neal in the "Tallahassee" flashbacks, but he grew on me, and I could see potential in romantic chemistry there if the writing had been different, as Mari cited.  I thought Jennifer Morrison did a good job with him in those more intimate conversations they had, despite the words they were uttering.  I thought their eventual dynamic as sort-of friends and co-parents could have been enjoyable to watch.  Certainly more natural to me, than the weird Wooden-puppet-knows-all dynamic Emma had with August in 4B.  

[daxx]

All the writing for Neal in the scenes with Emma in 2B were so anti-Emma there was no way I was going to want Emma to go there. How in the world were the actors going to portray chemistry with lines like "you thought you had a thing with lies, I never bought it" ?

[Faemonic]

All the writing for Neal in the scenes with Emma in 2B were so anti-Emma there was no way I was going to want Emma to go there. How in the world were the actors going to portray chemistry with lines like "you thought you had a thing with lies, I never bought it" ?

He was lying, and Emma could sense it. Cute little in-joke perhaps? Still, the line itself is enough to make the Ugly Ducklings get real ugly around him and I cannot blame them.

[Shanna Marie]

Now that we're in Season 4, as a comparison, we can also evaluate how Emma reacted to bumping into others who wronged her in the past, such as Ingrid and Lily.

Well, in the flashback in which Emma still had her memories and ran into Ingrid in Storybrooke before she knew about magic and realized that Ingrid had been right, I recall her vibe being very hostile, not even mixed feelings or "you may have been psycho, but you were the closest thing to a mother I ever had and I've never forgotten that." That was why Ingrid zapped her memory. And we still don't have any evidence that Ingrid actually followed through on restoring Emma's memories, since it doesn't seem to have changed anything.

 

Emma's reunion with Lily was affected by her feelings from what she'd learned about who Lily was and what her parents did to her, but as I recall, she kind of acted like this had been a truly deep friendship she'd never gotten over, even if she'd never followed up on it, when she was looking at the video with Hook. And then the way she talked about August with Hook made it sound like that friendship was a lot deeper and more extensive than what we actually saw -- and we did see the whole thing.

 

So Emma does have a tendency to retroactively inflate the importance of brief relationships that were important to her, and it's almost like the shorter the relationship, the more important. Six months of being almost a mother -- no big deal; a few months running with a guy -- never stopped loving him; running into a guy around town a few times -- like a brother; two day-long encounters -- BFF. Maybe this suggests that the real relationships are the ones in her head and have little to do with the real person, and what she's clinging to is the idea of what they represent to her. As long as she held on to the idea of being in love with Neal, she didn't have to let herself love anyone else. As long as Lily was her fantasy best friend, she didn't have to make new friends.

 

If they had lead with the Neal that was in his final episode, I might have been willing to visit that ship;  the "I screwed up, and it caused tragedy, but I regret it and I love you." is a lot more viable ship than "What do you mean you don't think I'm awesome after I nearly  ruined your life, didn't regret it, and got engaged?  Wanna get back together?"

Yes, it was that weird way he had of acting like he was the wounded party who'd been abandoned by her, and so he was making sure she saw just how much he'd moved on that made the portal-side "I love you" grate so much. If he'd been acting more like he was right before he died, that whole "we were a part of each other's lives, no matter what's happening now" thing would have worked better.

 

Besides, I'm still not over how Anna was the one who ended up saving the day when it came to Ingrid.  It wasn't Elsa or Emma, it was bloody Anna.

That actually worked for me, thematically and structurally. If it had come to defeating Ingrid, then yeah, it needed to be Elsa or Emma, but since Ingrid's whole issue was that non-magical people couldn't love her, and that's why she was creating her perfect little sisterhood and wiping out everyone else, then it had to be a non-magical person, and preferably a family member, who could reach her by showing love. Elsa and Emma could (and should) have played some kind of role, like maybe being able to protect Anna long enough for her to get Ingrid to listen to her, or maybe it should have been their idea that Anna was the person who might be able to reach her. But the only way that makes sense for Ingrid to realize the error of her ways was if a non-magical person proved her wrong by showing love. She expected Emma and Elsa to love her. That's what her whole scheme was about.

 

And then maybe Elsa and Emma could have worked together to help take down Rumple in the aftermath.

[Serena]

He was lying, and Emma could sense it. Cute little in-joke perhaps? Still, the line itself is enough to make the Ugly Ducklings get real ugly around him and I cannot blame them.

It made no sense from a writing perspective (unless the goal was "get the audience to want to beat Neal with an hammer"). So either he actually did not think she had a thing with lies, or he did and his idea of a cute joke is to pretend he didn't believe she could do the, paraphrasing from the pilot, "only thing she's good at in life"?

[Curio]

Well, in Neal's defense, Emma's lie detector is kind of spotty at times...

[Faemonic]

It made no sense from a writing perspective (unless the goal was "get the audience to want to beat Neal with an hammer"). So either he actually did not think she had a thing with lies, or he did and his idea of a cute joke is to pretend he didn't believe she could do the, paraphrasing from the pilot, "only thing she's good at in life"?

Writing perspective, perhaps an attempt at banter (that failed so miserably, in my humble opinion.)

 

Character perspective, if it's the former then he doesn't believe in her and ouch. If it's the latter, though, I'd sort of get it. The writers seemed to underestimate how sympathetic Emma really is, though, which is why it isn't just that line but the general feel of the whole relationship. The way Nealfire kept refusing to acknowledge how what he did was wrong and idiotic and hurtful, the way he continued being wrong and idiotic and hurtful to Emma ("I get it, we're all messed up" no you don't get it; refusing to go to Storybrooke when the curse broke; hi, Tamara and bye Tamara; aargh he's telling Mulan that the worst thing he ever did to Emma was not tell her that he loved her), and the way the show let him continue that and glorified it...well, he's dead now.

 

I've got to hand it to him that he did super step up to being Henry's dad, but that made him a terrible partner to just announce that Emma doesn't get to make decisions about raising her son anymore when Emma had only just come to terms with that she even has a son. Because she put that son up for a closed adoption. Because guess who left her impregnated in prison ostensibly so that she'd meet her family! Nine months of so many possible kinds of discomfort followed by vaginal tearing and a tug-of-war with a fairy tale evil queen a decade later and Nealfire didn't say in a supportive way that Emma didn't have to do it alone anymore. If Henry wasn't so vocal about wanting to get to know Nealfire...it would come off that Nealfire was basically erasing Emma's journey of almost two seasons because he ejaculated ten years ago.

 

As bored as I was with Regina's flip-flopping redemption, I wanted the evil queen to challenge Nealfire directly on that point. Instead Regina and Nealfire were just opposite Team Cora versus Team Rumple and then Dark Heart Snow happened. Later we get Regina dismissing him as This Person, which was sort of funny but isn't she concerned about Nealfire's influence on Henry and the time with her son that he takes away? Isn't Nealfire concerned about Regina's influence on Henry?

 

Why do I still have so much vitriol isn't this character dead???

[Amerilla]

But was it a lack of chemistry between the performers, or was it a lack of chemistry in their plotline?  I admit it wasn't the same type of chemistry as people see with Emma/Hook, but I can't say that I think the problem with Emma/Neal was due to the performers.

 

That's the thing: "chemistry" is pretty subjective. I find Hook and Emma slightly less dynamic than watching white paint dry on a flat wall on a humid day - but it's honestly not Colin and Jen's fault I find their story unwatchably boring and cliched.

 

 

How in the world were the actors going to portray chemistry with lines like "you thought you had a thing with lies, I never bought it" ?

 

Context, though. The whole "never bought it" line comes in the middle of a pretty intense scene that sets up their story going into the home stretch of S2. It wasn't an attempt at joking or banter.

 

Within the scene, Emma (in yet another example of stellar police work from Storybrooke's sheriff) had just illegally broken into Neal and Tamara's room and, when confronted, blurted out that Tamara was "playing" him - no evidence, just a hunch. Frankly, it would be odd if he didn't challenge her.

 

Consider Neal's perspective: by saying Tamara is playing him, Emma (accidentally) hits on one of his fears. Bae's life is endlessly disrupted by people who seem to be friends or allies, but who turn out to have a bigger agenda - Zoso, Shady, Pan, Hook, August....every major turning point in his story is based in trusting the wrong person and the wrong plan.

 

For whatever reason(*cough* Contrivance Fairy *cough*), he's convinced himself Tamara is different, that she's the rock that he can cling to at this uncertain moment in his life, is and Emma is bursting that bubble.

 

"Remember I had that thing with lies?"

"You thought you had a thing with lies. I never bought it."

"Yeah, you did."   

 

Emma barely misses a beat. If it actually hurt her feelings, she gives absolutely no sign of it, she just goes on about how Tamara has this list of names that (*cough* Foreshadowing Fairy *cough*) could "blow this whole town right open." And Neal does give her the chance to make her case, it's just at this point, she doesn't have any evidence that can't be explained away.

 

There's also the context of the episode as a whole. Both Snow and Neal challenge Emma's superpower to make her doubt herself - but she quickly (within the next episode or two) finds she was right. As does Neal, who ends up falling through a portal to a pre-germ theory, post-apocalyptic EF with a bullet hole in his chest.

Edited July 1, 2015 by Amerilla

[Faemonic]

That's the thing: "chemistry" is pretty subjective. I find Hook and Emma slightly less dynamic than watching white paint dry on a flat wall on a humid day - but it's honestly not Colin and Jen's fault I find their story unwatchably boring and cliched.

I'd reserve that ranking for Greg and Tamara, even though Nealfire was supposed to be the man she was playing, Tamara had a squeeze more chemistry with Nealfire.

"Remember I had that thing with lies?"

"You thought you had a thing with lies. I never bought it."

"Yeah, you did."  

Emma barely misses a beat. If it actually hurt her feelings, she gives absolutely no sign of it

 

It's difficult to get on board with a character like Nealfire who's puppeteered by the Contrivance Fairy, but even though Emma doesn't give a sign of hurt feelings because Plot Show is a bigger OTP than Snowing, the audience feels for Emma.

 

It might be a funny scene and fit right in with the story structure, but I think someone tuning into the show for the feels will just see Emma getting kicked down again by This Person.

[KAOS Agent]

There's also the part where Emma tracked Neal down and he immediately started yelling at her for helping his father find him. Never mind the whole sorry I screwed you over, it was just straight to how could you do this to me? Neal was generally an asshole to Emma from the minute they ran into each other in Manhattan. I think it was supposed to be bluster to cover for his feelings surrounding what had happened, but new characters don't get any leeway when they act like that to a main character and particularly not to one we'd seen be screwed over by him.

 

Neal was never a roadblock to Captain Swan except with how the past affects Emma's current actions and ability to have a relationship at all. That's it. Neal was there to further Rumpel's story, but because they didn't actually have any interest in dealing with the real issues between those two, they just wrote multiple death scenes for each of them where everything was resolved because you can't argue and be angry when the other is dying or "dying" as is more often the case with those two. Eventually, one of those deaths needed to stick and since they were never going to kill off Rumpel (at least not until Robert Carlyle's contract expires), Neal had to go. Rumpel could not profit from the immense suffering he'd inflicted to get to Bae and the fall out from Neal's death could drive the story much more than regular guy Neal and his disapproval of his father.

[Camera One]

the fall out from Neal's death could drive the story

 

Look how well that turned out.  Neal who?

[Faemonic]

I wring my hands at all of Emma's relationships. Where is justice for Graham? Why don't we have more Daddy Charming? Why was Nealfire such an unrepentant jerk? Why couldn't Walsh have been the natural-born kid of the Swans that kicked Emma out after adopting her when she was 3 like the fan speculation went that would have been such a lot better? Hook is the best boyfriend ever now but I still think he could have worked well continuing as the town bike and causeless rebel/trickster instead, that would have been fun to watch.

 

But this was a cute photo of Emma and the men who most influenced her life.

[Rumsy4]

That's a depressing yet accurate summary of all the lost opportunities in dealing with Emma's relationships, Faemonic. The show tends to susbsist on surface-level exploration of relationship issues. At this point, we simply cannot expect any thing more.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Rumsy4

[tennisgurl]

That was always the biggest problem I had with Neal. He just seemed like such a plot device. He did stuff not as a character, but as a means to a plot, and to affect other characters. Plus, I never really bought the connection between Bae and Neal. I never saw Bae in Neal, and Bae was more of a character to connect with. We never knew what Neal went through to make him Neal. 

 

Walsh was pretty much forgotten about instantly. His betrayal ended up meaning pretty much nothing. And the death of Graham continues to be one of the biggest let downs of the show. Emma was able to give him True Loves Kiss! And he was murdered, and no one seems to care anymore! 

[Curio]

Sorry, going back a page or two to reply to this:

Hook never had any kind of stepfather-like relationship with Bae. They barely knew each other, having spent only a brief period of time together on board Hook's ship.

That's one interpretation, but I actually think the writers deliberately wanted us to believe Hook viewed Bae as a quasi son. During the Season 2 finale when Regina tells Henry she loves him, Hook utters the line, "The things we do for our children." The scene immediately cuts to a flashback of Bae and Hook aboard the Jolly Roger. That isn't a coincidence; that's the writers telling the audience there's a connection between Hook's set up line and the following scene.

 

Later, Hook says to Bae, "We can live the life that Milah wanted for us, as a family." Clearly, in Hook's mind, he was gearing up to raise Bae as a step-father figure. We're also to presume they grew closer on the Jolly Roger, enough for Bae to feel comfortable to tell Hook about how his father is the Dark One. There's also the way Hook playfully tugs Bae closer to him by using his hook and latching it onto Bae's shirt and Bae smiling. People who aren't close generally don't use physical interaction like that with each other. Even though the show never properly followed up on their relationship, I don't think it's fair to say Hook and Bae didn't have a relationship that resembled step-father/step-son.

[daxx]

I agree, "a time" which is how Hook explained Bae was with him I believe could be decades when you are talking a couple hundred years. Bae may have found the picture of Milah after he had been with Hook for twenty or thirty years in Neverland.

Hook was so hurt by Bae it wouldn't make sense if it hadn't been a period of time.

[orza]

It has nothing t do with fairness. Stating a differing opinion is not unfair to anyone, real or fictional. The relationship was not there in canon. Perhaps Hook's fantasy of such a relationship was alluded to but an actual stepparent relationship did not exist between them. That is something that is built over time, including living together as a family unit. Sharing space on a ship for a brief period of time is not the same as living together as a family. One party's wishful thinking does not make a relationship reality. The was no indication from Bae's side that he saw Hook as anything more than the guy who fished him out of the water, showed some friendly concern for him and taught him something about sailing. None of what you cited is evidence of a deeper relationship. Most kids have closer relationships with their sports coaches and teachers than we saw between Hook and Bae.

Hook and Bae were not together as a family unit in Neverland. That was made clear. Indeed, they were at odds with each other and Bae lived alone in the cave. Hook's continued interest in Bae had more to do with him still mooning over Milah and not being able to let go of the past and move on.

Edited July 2, 2015 by orza

[Shanna Marie]

I agree, "a time" which is how Hook explained Bae was with him I believe could be decades when you are talking a couple hundred years. Bae may have found the picture of Milah after he had been with Hook for twenty or thirty years in Neverland.

Oh wow, I'd never considered that this could have spanned a long stretch of time. I guess I assumed that because it was all shown in one episode that it spanned only a few days, but in Neverland there would be no way to know how much time had passed, and there's precedent for a lot of time happening between flashbacks in the same episode, like the entire Belle and Rumple relationship playing out in one episode, and that's supposed to have been enough for them to have a deep, eternal love. If Bae spent more than a few days on the ship before leaving, that would explain how Neal said he knew how to sail a pirate ship. He had to have learned more than port and starboard (the lesson we saw).

 

I do think that even if the relationship wasn't mutual, Hook thought of Bae as like a son and kept tabs on him after he left the ship, given that he knew how to find the cave where Bae lived.

 

As for Neal and Emma, I think a big part of the problem is that thing they tend to do on this show where they reverse the logical roles in relationships -- like having Emma be the one to chase after Regina and beg for friendship when Regina's the one with no friends who's wronged everyone while Emma has friends and family. It would make a lot more sense for Regina to be reaching out for friendship. So here we have the person who did the ditching acting like a ditched person usually would. Usually it's the person who was ditched who needs to save face in front of the person who ditched them and show that they've moved on and are doing just fine now, thank you very much. It doesn't really track for Neal, who abandoned Emma, to be all "here's my fiancee, did I mention I have a fiancee? Are you jealous of my fiancee? Aw, how cute, you don't trust my fiancee because you're jealous. I guess you still want me. And that little thing of yours about lying was cute when you were sixteen, but maybe you should move past it." It just makes him look like even more of a jerk that he not only ditched her, but he's making it clear that he's moved on and trying to act like he thinks she should still be hung up on him. More logically, it would have been Emma doing something like grabbing Hook and saying, "Oh, you're back. Ho, hum. Here's my hot pirate boyfriend. Did I mention my hot pirate boyfriend? Because I've moved on." And then things getting awkward when it turns out they know each other, though Hook would have cheerfully played along (I realize that it would have been hard for this to play out this way, given the whole killing Rumple and Hook being locked up thing, but he's the only unattached man who hadn't turned into wood who was around at the time -- maybe Whale?).

[pezgirl7]

It has nothing t do with fairness. Stating a differing opinion is not unfair to anyone, real or fictional. The relationship was not there in canon. Perhaps Hook's fantasy of such a relationship was alluded to but an actual stepparent relationship did not exist between them. That is something that is built over time, including living together as a family unit. Sharing space on a ship for a brief period of time is not the same as living together as a family.

But how do you know it was a brief time? It was never stated on the show how much time they spent together, so no one can say it's canon, one way or the other. Hook and Bae lived in Neverland for around 200 years I think. Hook knew where Bae's cave was, so they presumably had some interaction together again later, or Hook was watching after him. Hook says to Tink "After everything we've been through?", and yet we saw nothing on screen that alluded to their past, besides their first meeting. You could make the conclusion then that there was also a lot from Hook and Bae's past together that was not shown. Also, there's the hug in Quiet Minds, and this dialogue:

Hook: This is long overdue. Sometimes, when I look at you all I see is a man. I forget that beneath it all you’re still that boy, the one I looked after all those years ago.

Neal: Yeah, I haven’t forgotten.

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

Edited July 3, 2015 by pezgirl7