Emma Swan: 1000% done with your infuriating optimism

[Serena]

The cast for Jen's directorial debut seems to be very exciting. I think getting Allison Janney is an amazing coup! I love her.

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

Well, with the way the ILY is being trated by ABC or the writers, if you don't watch the show, you would believe it's their first one. Hell, even some fans that watch the show are treating it as if it was the first time she says it to him. 

When it comes to Emma, if she says something in a dire situation, it doesn't seem to count. She called Snow and Charming "mom and dad" in S2 finale when they were all about to die, but that wasn't affirmed until the 3B finale. Then with the ILY, she said it to Hook when she was about to be turned into the Dark One. But, like with the former, she had to affirm it later in the 5B finale. It's all just spinning wheels.

[OnceUponAJen]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

When it comes to Emma, if she says something in a dire situation, it doesn't seem to count. She called Snow and Charming "mom and dad" in S2 finale when they were all about to die, but that wasn't affirmed until the 3B finale. Then with the ILY, she said it to Hook when she was about to be turned into the Dark One. But, like with the former, she had to affirm it later in the 5B finale. It's all just spinning wheels.

I think they're having to draw out these milestone "firsts" for the couple because they just aren't going to get their definitive happy ending until the series end.  So you get all these emotional separation (Emma and her walls) and actual physical separation between the characters. However, I would like to see another CS adventure together because they are just so much fun.

[Camera One]

It seemed logical that the next step would be Emma and Hook moving in together, instead of another retread ILY.  Unless they didn't want to commit to the Emma-house set for next year?  It makes no sense.

[profdanglais]

18 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

And the first Young Emma flashback was for Breaking Glass. The only good Emma flashback episode is Tallahassee. I dislike how 90% of Emma flashbacks are used to shoehorn in a character that makes her childhood even nuttier. All these fairy tail people surrounded her and no one but Ingrid tried to take care of her. Pathetic.

Not only that, but we're expected to believe that a pretty, blonde girl wouldn't have been adopted at any point in her life, not even as an infant? They kinda-sorta tried to show her "messing up" a chance with a nice family in the Lily flashbacks (was that Breaking Glass?) but how bad could tiny baby Emma have been, especially with no darkness in her, that no family could be found for her, even though there are countless couples who aren't able to have children who would jump at the chance to adopt. I've always found that so implausible. It would have been better if Emma had been adopted several times and bad things kept happening to her adoptive families, putting her walls up. Or if she was adopted, but then the adoptive parents were killed and she had to go live with their relatives who resented the burden of a child not biologically related to them. I just don't buy the "lost in the foster system" narrative for her. 

[Curio]

2 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

It would have been better if Emma had been adopted several times and bad things kept happening to her adoptive families, putting her walls up. Or if she was adopted, but then the adoptive parents were killed and she had to go live with their relatives who resented the burden of a child not biologically related to them. I just don't buy the "lost in the foster system" narrative for her. 

Well, "luckily" for us, they've barely tapped into Emma's past, so this technically could still be true.

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

It seemed logical that the next step would be Emma and Hook moving in together, instead of another retread ILY.  Unless they didn't want to commit to the Emma-house set for next year?  It makes no sense.

And miss all the potential drama for S6 where Hook continues to sleep on park benches or wherever he spends nights, while Emma stews in her guilt over Hook being alive when Robin is dead? 

[YaddaYadda]

7 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I didn't care for this episode. I'm actually surprised to see Emma fans displeased with it since it is one of those elusive Emma-centrics, includes a character that doesn't screw her over, and confirms Captain Swan as TL. But even with all those things at play, it comes up short in the execution. To me, the flashbacks were a repeat of elements we've already seen since day one. The tackle was cheap and didn't do the couple justice at all. I also hate the retcon and how it portrays Emma as emotionally unstable and reckless.

Emma's flashback made no sense with what was going on in the present day at all. 

Not to mention that at the age of 26, going to prison, having to hand over her kid, being betrayed by someone she thought loved her left zero impression on her. Emma didn't grow while she was cooling her jets in a jail cell, she came out, and she still stole from convenience stores, she was arrested, and jumped bail, and yet, this thing that is I'm assuming public records gets completely overlooked by Sydney while he's looking for dirt on Emma in season 1, instead what he finds are her sealed juvenile records.

Also, Neal and August were completely wrong, but what else is new there.

But here comes along Cleo, someone Emma has known for a whole 24 hour, and granted, she tried to help her out, who ends up making such an impact on Emma's life (hmm how? By slapping her across the face?) that she turns her life around, and decides to raise her walls to protect herself from the people she loves, because why? How many people in that time in her life does Emma have that she loves? Neal? He's long gone, and she's not even looking for him. Henry? She's not even looking for him. Her parents? Sure she's been looking for them with zero success while stealing, and getting arrested.

This flashback made no sense with the things we already knew about Emma. It felt like a flashback for the sake of having a flashback, and some fancy dialogue at the end that made zero sense. Hasn't Emma been doing everything she could to protect her family since she found them? Hasn't her isolating herself from everyone in 5A been about doing what she could to protect Hook? 

I personally don't need a flashback that amounts to nothing in the end, and this one amounted to nothing imo. I don't care for the red jacket's origins. We already knew it was Emma's armor. 

The thing is, Emma had something big in common with Cleo, they both had to leave their children behind. Why not have Emma be looking for Henry instead? But then, that wouldn't really have fit with the episode, because Emma was trying to do everything she could to bring Hook home with her. So doing a Tallahassee type episode might have been better. Emma doesn't find Neal, or sees him somewhere, realizing he moved on, or whatever, she raises her walls, and decides she will never be hurt again.

I was expecting a lot more out of the Emma and Hook flashbacks, and while Hook's flashbacks sort of sucked (at least Liam should have been in 5x11 and Brennan in 5x15), at least some of the things they put in there made a lot of sense for the character. With Emma though, I'm just unsure.

[Rumsy4]

Plus we learned that the badass Emma we met in the Pilot was basically a clone of Cleo. No thanks.

[Shanna Marie]

10 minutes ago, YaddaYadda said:

So doing a Tallahassee type episode might have been better. Emma doesn't find Neal, or sees him somewhere, realizing he moved on, or whatever, she raises her walls, and decides she will never be hurt again.

Or, since we know that Emma went to Tallahassee after getting out of prison, why not show that part of her life, going to the place she's hoping to find Neal, and maybe finding the bounty hunter who's also looking for Neal but who doesn't tell her that's who she is or what she's doing. When Emma learns, it's a double betrayal -- not only did Neal not show up, but this person she thought was a friend was just using her in hopes of finding Neal. The emotional walls go up, but Emma does learn that the skills she's learned to try to find Neal might make her a good bounty hunter, so she discovers a career path.

But as much as they talk about her walls, I have to say that I don't really see her as being all that shut off. They mostly tell us that in regards to her relationship with Hook, but their progress seems pretty reasonable to me, even maybe a bit accelerated. In 3B, she'd only been around him for maybe a week since he stopped being her enemy, and then she hadn't seen him for a year and had just come out of a serious relationship that ended horribly (with the guy turning into a flying monkey). It would have been weird if she'd jumped into something new right away. When you think about it, starting a relationship with Hook when she did was pretty quick. She spent most of season 4 snuggled against Hook while she talked about her feelings and her past. That doesn't say "walls" to me. Unless there's a lot that happened offscreen, she's opened up far more about herself to him than he has to her. As for the "I love you," it made sense that she'd regret not having said it after watching him die, but up to that point I hadn't noticed any kind of egregious lack of her saying it. There hadn't been a scene or situation where I felt like she should have said it, and it wasn't as though he'd said it and she left him hanging because she was afraid to say it in response. While the resolution to 4A and her running off to do shots with Regina was infuriating, I don't think she should have been at the "I love you" stage, considering they'd been dating for maybe two weeks. It's interesting that Emma, who's constantly criticized (even by Hook) for her walls, said it first. It's not like Captain Wears His Heart on his Sleeve was pouring out his feelings to her.

As for her relationship with her parents, we'd have to see more of them interacting to see whether she's shutting them out emotionally. There was just the part where she was mad at them about the eggbaby, and she kept to herself while she was the Dark One, but under normal circumstances I never get the sense that she's holding back emotionally from anyone in her family. Meanwhile, she's the one chasing after Regina and wanting to be her friend. That's a pretty extreme level of emotional vulnerability, putting herself at the mercy of someone who's furious with her.

[mjgchick]

I wonder what would happen to Emma and Hooks mini men's since they are true l9ve would their child be even more powerful than Emma's? 

 

Also, if Emma is more powerful than most wizards and witches if I'd like it for her to actually be shown as that instead of flopping harder than Art Pop.

[YaddaYadda]

10 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Plus we learned that the badass Emma we met in the Pilot was basically a clone of Cleo. No thanks.

I don't mind that so much because Emma never had role models in her life. I mean when we're kids we look up to our parents, and maybe we wanna be just like them, and then we go to school, and we start looking up to other people, and we have an idea of who, and what we wanna be. Emma's life has been a revolving door. 

I would have preferred if she had known Cleo for months though, not a day. And you know, maybe if we had been given an actual explanation as to why Cleo was the way she was, maybe it would have gone a long way to understand Emma better? 

Everytime I think of Emma and Hook's flashbacks, something inside me snaps because of the way they were really just shoehorned in, and how little they made sense. At least with Hook, the pieces of the puzzle fit better together. With Emma? Not so much! 

10 hours ago, mjgchick said:

I wonder what would happen to Emma and Hooks mini men's since they are true l9ve would their child be even more powerful than Emma's? 

 

Also, if Emma is more powerful than most wizards and witches if I'd like it for her to actually be shown as that instead of flopping harder than Art Pop.

I've been wondering about that myself. I know Rumple told Henry he was born out of true love, but I have a really difficult time with that tbh. 

And I don't know that Emma is more powerful than most wizards. She's definitely not more powerful than Rumple, although I think that she could be. But then, Emma never used her powers to try and hurt someone, so maybe that's the difference between her, and every other magician we've ever seen on the show.

[Rumsy4]

Quote

I've been wondering about that myself. I know Rumple told Henry he was born out of true love, but I have a really difficult time with that tbh. 

When did Rumple say that??

[YaddaYadda]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

When did Rumple say that??

I wanna say that he said that back in season 4 in a deleted scene perhaps? Maybe when Henry goes to Rumple and asks him to erase his memories, or something like that.

[Rumsy4]

I remember something vaguely. IIRC, it was that Henry was a product of both Light and Darkness, and that's what made him unique. I would have gone for Light and Doucheness, but then Rumple is Bagel's dad. So... ;-)

[Camera One]

Everytime I think of Emma and Hook's flashbacks, something inside me snaps because of the way they were really just shoehorned in, and how little they made sense.

Charming's flashbacks are even worse and Belle's are also a mess.  Most characters' flashbacks are shoehorned in.

I wanna say that he said that back in season 4 in a deleted scene perhaps? Maybe when Henry goes to Rumple and asks him to erase his memories, or something like that.

It's the deleted scene between Henry and Rumple in "White Out" (Season 4 Episode 2).  "You have the lineage of the Dark One plus the blood of the Savior coursing through your veins".  

[mjgchick]

That doesn't sound like he said he was the product of true love.

It does make sense on why Henrys so insecure about being so basic compared to his moms and grand parents. 

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

"You have the lineage of the Dark One plus the blood of the Savior coursing through your veins".  

Which makes no sense considering Rumple had Neal before becoming the Dark One.

[KAOS Agent]

Pan said the same thing though. He claimed that Emma was the Saviour not because she "broke some curse", but because she had Henry. I think it was supposed to be all a ploy to get Henry in this heroic frame of mind about how he can save magic, but Pan said, "You both descend from the greatest of light and of dark. Believing that’s a coincidence that the sprout of the Dark One met your mother? You were created for a reason and I can help you find it."

I didn't like at the time that it essentially made all of Emma's childhood suffering and sacrifices as the Saviour out to mean nothing more than it happened because she was meant to be an incubator for Henry, but the show has on multiple occasions had some characters imply that. It doesn't really make sense since Rumpel wasn't the Dark One when Bae was conceived. Does Henry now have double Darkness lineage since Emma was a Dark One too? 

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

 It doesn't really make sense since Rumpel wasn't the Dark One when Bae was conceived. Does Henry now have double Darkness lineage since Emma was a Dark One too? 

This show is very on-again off-again when it comes to lineage. Originally, Emma was the Savior because she was the product of True Love. But since then, there's been other TL couples having babies and their offspring do not hold the same title. So my headcanon has been that either Snow or Charming (more likely Snow) is from a line of light-magic practitioners. But there's also the fetus lobotomy to think about, which could have had an effect on things as well. It would be interesting to know if Snowflake had any special abilities.

Other examples of possible genetics include Cora/Zelena/Regina, and Ingrid/Elsa. As for Henry, he's the son of the Savior. That basically explains all. I'm going to assume the Truest Believer stuff is light magic based. Maybe that all plays into why he was selected to be the Author.

Edited May 30, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[justmythoughts]

I was rewatching Kansas, 3x20, and Zelena said she needed Charmings baby because he was pure and inocent, product of truest love. 

So... Emma is special because there are twu luv and trueeee loveees. Apparently we should take rankings as Snowing being on top... Probably Zades would be on bottom. 

At least on that episode. I guess the writers dont remember those things, most times.

[Camera One]

I'm going to say Emma's lie detector ability (faulty as it's come to be) was just an excuse to invite herself back into Henry's life because she was lonely. From Emma's perspective, all she had to go on was that Henry was unhappy (not unusual for a child) and Regina was rude to her when she tried to insert herself into the situation (not unreasonable).

Emma believed in her "lie detector" ability strongly.  She was clearly all ready to leave, and given all we know about her walls, clearly, her mind was telling her to leave Storybrooke and never come back. 

A child who was so unhappy they travel by alone by bus to another city was not normal.  And even if unhappiness in children was not unusual, as the birth mother who had regrets about giving Henry up, it's not unreasonable to think seeing her biological child so unhappy would have disturbed her.  She had such an unhappy childhood herself and was thinking that she had given her kid a life where he could be happy.  

[KAOS Agent]

Basically, the way the story was written, Emma would never have been able to get away because fate/destiny/whatever was always driving her to that point. It was determined long before her birth. It's hard to judge a character for something that the story so clearly set up as being inevitable which is why judging Emma for inserting herself into the fabric of Storybrooke is rather pointless. I think no matter what she did, she was always going to be stuck there. That's why the wolf appeared when she tried to leave the first time.

Even her arrival was not her doing. Henry the brat needs to be brought in the equation. He stole a credit card, ran away, blackmailed Emma into taking him to Storybrooke herself when she wanted to call the cops to take him home and then ran away again later. He would have tried increasingly dangerous and stupid things in the future had Emma left. Given her history as a runaway, she would most definitely try to stop the madness before it got him hurt or killed. Emma humoring Henry by staying for the week he asked was probably the easiest way to get him to see that she's a real person and give up on his crazy fantasies about Saviours and Evil Queens. As a bonus, she could piss off Regina. It's win win. Both Regina & Emma were attempting the same thing with Henry. Regina's way wasn't working, so Emma tried a different tack. Unfortunately, Henry wasn't fantasizing, so it didn't work.

 If Storybrooke was normal and Regina and Henry did have a typical mother/son relationship that was going through a rocky patch, Emma would have stayed the week Henry asked for and left. Of course, Henry would never have existed at all if this was a normal situation, so there's that. And he was right about everything so the argument is moot since Regina was the Evil Queen and had tried to kill baby Emma and was gaslighting Henry and did murder Graham and did arrange for Kathryn's abduction and did frame Snow White. Emma did need to stay to help everyone. That doesn't change the fact that Henry's still a manipulative little brat. 

As a further wrinkle, we have Gold. He was manipulating the hell out of everyone from the very start. He even made sure that Emma was conceived, which is creepy as hell and poor Emma is stuck with the idea that her very existence is due to Rumpel.  If Emma had actually left town after that initial week, you can bet your ass that he would have arranged for something to happen that would get her back there. He needed her to break the curse. Henry comes by his manipulative tendencies naturally. However, if you watch his conversations with Regina in "An Apple Red as Blood" and "A Land without Magic"  you can see he isn't even slightly concerned that Emma won't break the curse, he knows it will happen just as he stated in the Pilot. Emma's entire existence was planned to lead to that point. Her choices/actions were always going to be directed by whatever fate dictated. 

[TheGreenKnight]

18 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Basically, the way the story was written, Emma would never have been able to get away because fate/destiny/whatever was always driving her to that point. It was determined long before her birth. It's hard to judge a character for something that the story so clearly set up as being inevitable which is why judging Emma for inserting herself into the fabric of Storybrooke is rather pointless. I think no matter what she did, she was always going to be stuck there. That's why the wolf appeared when she tried to leave the first time.

That's irrelevant if we also concede that all the other characters are responsible for their bad choices regardless of manipulation beyond their control. Regina being long-term manipulated by Rumpel and Cora, Rumpel being swayed by the darkness, Snow and Charming by the Author, etc. Emma can be judged for her behavior like all the other characters.

[KAOS Agent]

The issue is that Emma's very existence was based on her breaking the curse. That's it. It's something that has always bothered me and in fact bothered her because as she says, everything she's ever done was because of Rumpel. You can say Emma makes a choice and judge that all on a "normal" situation. In a normal situation, Henry's mother would not have been the Evil Queen and Emma would have dropped him off and left town, which is exactly what she tried to do. That was Emma's choice. She did what you think she should have. Dropped the kid off and left to return to her life. But fate had clearly arranged things differently. A wolf caused the accident to keep her there. Something allowed Emma & Neal to meet and create a baby. August stepped in and ended that relationship based on her fate. Rumpel did some shady maneuvering such that Regina ended up with the baby. The book appeared in Snow's closet, was handed to Henry and set him on his mission to bring back the Saviour. None of that had anything to do with Emma's decision making. 

I don't judge characters based on what if scenarios that are false. If Regina was normal, then things would play out as the will. Regina & Storybrooke were not normal and neither were any of the events that led up to that point. 

Edited July 20, 2016 by KAOS Agent

[TheGreenKnight]

7 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I don't judge characters based on what if scenarios that are false. If Regina was normal, then things would play out as the will. Regina & Storybrooke were not normal and neither were any of the events that led up to that point. 

I guess that's where we'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm not offering a what-if scenario at all. This is what the situation was from Emma's viewpoint. Nothing about Regina or Storybrooke was out of the ordinary the first few weeks she was there. The most wrong she could see was that Regina had a vice-grip on the town and used it to try to bully her out of town, but, again, that's not unusual considering she was both Henry's adoptive mother and a politician.

Edited July 20, 2016 by TheGreenKnight

[Camera One]

In the second episode, Regina was uttering threats to Emma (with creepy statements like "You don't know what I'm capable of"), framing Emma for stealing files, and emotionally manipulating Henry by making sure he would hear what Emma would say about him.  Mothers usually don't ensure their child hears hurtful things and then coldly gloats about it as the child runs tearfully away.  If anything, that told Emma the entire situation was not normal, and further convinced her to stay to make sure her son was in a safe situation, especially after finding out that Henry seemed delusional and in a fantasy world, an indicator to someone like Emma that he was trying to escape from a difficult reality.  

Edited July 20, 2016 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

Authorial intent is a thing to consider in these cases, isn't it? Nothing in the writing shows that Emma was just using the excuse to allay her loneliness by staying in Storybrooke. The impression being conveyed was Emma sensing something really off about Regina, and wanting to make sure Henry's unhappiness wasn't habitual. I don't agree that most kids that age are unhappy, and Henry's staunch belief in the reality of fairytales was another matter that felt "off" to her.

Emma's relationship with Henry developed throughout the season, and that's one of the things that made the TLK at the end earned (unlike so many of the Show's later TLKs). 

[Curio]

I know the show has basically dropped this trait over the years, but Emma is supposed to be really good at her bail bonds job. Part of that job skill set is being able to read people extremely well in a way a normal person can't. (Her "lie detector.") Like someone who can easily spot a fake Renaissance painting in one look, Emma is (more like was, because she kind of sucks at it now) supposed to be able to call out someone's bullshit based on microscopic clues, kind of like the detectives from Psych or The Mentalist. I thought the show would have explored that more as the seasons progressed and shown small details like Emma pointing out someone's upper lip was perspiring which is a sign of lying, but alas, we really needed a thousand Evil Queen flashbacks and only like three Emma flashbacks.

[orza]

It's not canon that Emma can cold read people like Patrick Jane or Sherlock Holmes. Being able to size up people and decide if they are lying or not is a pretty common skill among people in law enforcement and related jobs. It is also something that a good bartender or doorman can do. Emma's "lie detector" is not anything out of the ordinary for the line of work she is in. She got good at recognizing the bullshit because she heard the same lame excuses and lies on a daily basis from the people she dealt with, kinda like teachers have heard all the variations on "the dog eat my homework" and landlords have heard all "the check is in the mail" excuses.

We saw last season that Emma has only been a skip tracer for about a year or so and was still busy robbing convenience stores when she met red jacket lady and we only have her word for it that she is really good at her job. Lots of people exaggerate or overestimate their proficiency at their job. We haven't seen actual evidence of excellence. It is more likely that her skills come from her criminal days. A former criminal can recognize the same traits in other criminals and knows how they think.

[Curio]

I actually think the show wants us to believe Emma is competent at her job. "Emma Swan always gets her man." The way she was able to tell right away Hook was lying about being a blacksmith. Her handy USB gadgets. The way the Pilot episode introduced her as someone who confidently did her job, and did it in 5-inch heels. In Season 1, it seemed like the show was introducing her as someone who would utilize more of those skills, like reading body language or analyzing voice inflection when someone is hiding something (which we see in the Pilot episode when she reads Regina correctly), but I was lamenting that the show hasn't gone in that direction.

20 minutes ago, orza said:

Being able to size up people and decide if they are lying or not is a pretty common skill among people in law enforcement and related jobs. [...] A former criminal can recognize the same traits in other criminals and knows how they think.

Exactly. This was kind of my point—someone in Emma's field should inevitably and instinctually be better at reading people than most others who aren't in that line of work. If Emma wasn't good at it, she shouldn't have gotten the job. And the fact that she was also a criminal gives her even more of an advantage over others at reading that type. But like I said, the show isn't really interested in showing that side of Emma much, so we have a small sample size to analyze.

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

Mothers usually don't ensure their child hears hurtful things and then coldly gloats about it as the child runs tearfully away.

That, to me, was the big, huge red flag. That was the incident that took it from "okay, maybe they have a difficult relationship, but he could just be going through a phase and blowing it all out of proportion" to "something is seriously wrong here" from Emma's perspective. That incident showed that Regina was willing to hurt her child in order to "win." She was more concerned with beating Emma and making Emma look bad than she was with the fact that her child was hurt. That is emotional abuse, and no different from fighting divorced parents hurting their child to score points against the other partner.

[orza]

And my point is that this is not a super-duper amazing skill. It is something that lots of people can do if their job requires it and is a skill that can be easily learned. Other women on the show also do their jobs in heels as do many women in real life. That is not in any way special. I'm sure Emma can do her job, I just do not see any evidence that she is excellent at it. Fact is, the vast majority of people are just average at their job. Average is fine, it gets the job done. Lots of average people are confident at their jobs. It's a trait that employers look for in candidates and employees.

Edited July 20, 2016 by orza

[Writing Wrongs]

Re-watching Season 4A, it makes no sense to me why Emma was so desperate for Regina's friendship. I mean, every time Regina turned around Emma was there apologizing about Marian. It seemed like such a complete turn around. Even trying to show a mirror to her brief relationship with Lily made no sense. Just because her and Regina weren't enemies and hostile to each other like in Season 1 didn't mean they needed to be BFFs. Emma's characterization baffles and annoys me.

[Camera One]

In some ways, whether Emma was actually good at reading people is less important than Emma believing that she had a knack for that.  Though you don't even need special people-reading skills to realize that Regina was borderline sociopathic, and at the very least, had a huge temper and was emotionally unstable, and thus a valid reason for concern.  And despite that, Emma was never planning to take Henry away.  She just wanted to make sure he was okay, despite these signs which would have been obvious to anyone.

[orza]

I don't see how Emma's belief that she was good at reading people is important. Overestimating one's skills can get one in trouble.

Emma was planning to take Henry away. She even said "I'm taking my kid back." She tried to kidnap Henry. She had him in the car and was heading out of town. Henry had to yell at her to force her to stop the car.

[Camera One]

That was in the second half of the season, though, when it was clear Regina was wacko.  The recent discussion was more about why she initially decided to stay.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Camera One

[TheGreenKnight]

On ‎7‎/‎20‎/‎2016 at 8:55 AM, Shanna Marie said:

That, to me, was the big, huge red flag. That was the incident that took it from "okay, maybe they have a difficult relationship, but he could just be going through a phase and blowing it all out of proportion" to "something is seriously wrong here" from Emma's perspective. That incident showed that Regina was willing to hurt her child in order to "win." She was more concerned with beating Emma and making Emma look bad than she was with the fact that her child was hurt. That is emotional abuse, and no different from fighting divorced parents hurting their child to score points against the other partner.

Except Emma was not another partner, she was a complete stranger. I think attempting to cut your child's emotional ties to a stranger would not be considered odd and definitely not abusive. Even considering Regina as the Evil Queen, I don't really see anything wrong with what she did here, considering she had no idea Emma was the Savior and reacted this way only because the birth mother was attempting to re-connect to a child she gave away. There was no way Regina or anyone else could've known for certain she wasn't trash out of the gutter ("well, who knows what you've been doing") or that she was trustworthy for Henry to be around.

As for authorial intent, there is the fact that Emma is wishing on a cupcake before Henry appears, and then tells Regina later about her wish not to be alone. And that's when Regina's hostility began. Which from Emma's perspective could not have been considered abnormal.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/25/2016 at 1:26 AM, TheGreenKnight said:

Except Emma was not another partner, she was a complete stranger.

Emma's role in Henry's life has nothing to do with whether or not this was emotional abuse. Regina set up a situation designed to deliberately hurt Henry and then gloated about it when he was hurt. If she was just cutting his ties to an untrustworthy stranger, there were other ways she could have gone about it that weren't designed to hurt Henry. She wanted to make Emma make Henry cry, and this was also part of the gaslighting, where she knew Henry's beliefs were actually true and accurate, but she was trying to make everyone around him say that they didn't believe him. Emma wasn't in on the secret at that time, so she was doing the best she could with her existing worldview and the facts that were available, but Regina did know that Henry was right. Regina tricked Emma into saying something that Regina knew was not true so that Henry would hear it and know that there was one more person who thought he was delusional. She was isolating Henry from all other potential emotional support sources.

How is this not emotional abuse?

[TheGreenKnight]

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that being abuse, because I don't. As for the last part about her isolating Henry, I might consider that true if this had happened to Archie or Snow, who were regular fixtures in Henry's life, but Emma was a stranger at the time and should not have been a source of any kind of support for him.

[orza]

14 minutes ago, TheGreenKnight said:

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that being abuse, because I don't. As for the last part about her isolating Henry, I might consider that true if this had happened to Archie or Snow, who were regular fixtures in Henry's life, but Emma was a stranger at the time and should not have been a source of any kind of support for him.

I agree. Not every unkind remark or mean action is abuse. Getting your feelings hurt is not the same as being emotionally abused. What Regina did was harsh and mean but obviously necessary to get this meddling stranger with a shady past out of their lives. Emma was nobody in Henry's life. She had her chance with Henry and abandoned him up. She was a personal and legal stranger who had no business interfering and no right to have a say in anything regarding Henry. Emma was every adoptive parent's worst nightmare.

[Curio]

19 minutes ago, orza said:

What Regina did was harsh and mean but obviously necessary to get this meddling stranger with a shady past out of their lives.

Is poisoning a stranger "necessary"?

[YaddaYadda]

A shady past that was a direct consequence of what Regina did?

[TheGreenKnight]

While that has nothing to do with what I was talking about, I will say that whatever Regina did to Emma, there's no use arbitrarily deciding that Emma had no control over the choices she made. I would probably give a pass for what she did as a teenager, but at the point she and Baelfire teamed up, I had no sympathy. Her jail time was deserved, just like Regina's was/would be.

[Rumsy4]

Emma's deserved jail time rankles with me because neither Neal not Regina went to jail nor paid for what they did. 

[Stuffy]

1 hour ago, orza said:

She had her chance with Henry and abandoned him up. 

What Emma did wasn't abandonment. She gave him up for adoption because she had nothing she could offer him. She couldn't take care of herself much less a baby. She had no money, job, or family to help her and was in prison at the time. She made the hard choice to give him up for his own good. It definitely wasn't easy for her in that scene the show gave us. 

What happened to Henry was not abandonment. It was a birth parent loving their child enough to give him to a family that could provide for him.

As a teacher, I often wish more parents made the adoption decision. I teach in a district with way too many grandparents raising kids because due to drugs. 

[Rumsy4]

Agree. It's ludicrous to call someone putting up their child for adoption as abandoning their child. 

Edited July 28, 2016 by Rumsy4

[TheGreenKnight]

I wonder though, hasn't Emma often said in regards to her childhood that she felt like she was abandoned throughout the series?

[superloislane]

Hi there! I’m a long time lurker and first time poster but this just annoyed me so I wanted to write something.

Emma’s perspective was this: Henry runs away from home after tracking her down and travels a few hours to find her and manipulates her into bringing him back to Storybrooke. Emma drops him off and drives away but crashes after the wolf stops her and she ends up in the jail (and not the hospital what the hell Graham?) where Regina comes in the next morning and tells her that Henry ran away AGAIN, for the second time in two days. Emma finds him where Henry begs her to stay there with him because he’s unhappy and Regina doesn’t love him. Emma actually defends Regina by saying she’s probably trying her best and at least she wants him. Emma takes him home where Regina threatens her and Emma asks Regina if she loves Henry to which Emma gets a response that makes her think she doesn’t love him. Emma plans to stay for a week to make sure Henry is ok.

The next day Regina shows up to threaten her again and tells Emma Henry is in therapy. Emma goes to Archie who pretty much tells her that Henry is in therapy because of his relationship with Regina. He gives her files to take away but this was a set up by Regina to make it look like Emma stole the files and she ends up in jail. Emma then destroys the tree. Emma then goes to have a private conversation with Regina where she informs her that she’s not a threat, has no intention of taking Henry away and is not trying to be a mother and is only concerned about Henry’s well-being because she gave him up to have a happy life and she doesn’t think he’s getting that, but what she thought was a civil conversation was actually set up by Regina for Henry to overhear Emma say she thinks he’s delusional about the fairytales and Regina says ‘Your move’ with a smile on her face. That’s a big flashing neon sign that says Regina doesn’t care at all about hurting Henry and thinks of it like a game. Regina then commits a crime by finding Emma’s juvenile records and puts them on the front page of the paper.

Emma has not just seen Regina be rude to her. To Emma, the ten year old Henry has already run away from home two times, begged her many times to 'save him and the town’, told her how sad, miserable and lonely he is and that Regina is an 'evil’ person, she has been threatened several times, she has been told that Henry is in therapy due to Regina, she has seen that Henry is most likely having delusional fantasies she has been framed by Regina, she has seen people be afraid of Regina and has seen Henry crying out for help to the point where he does risky and dangerous things like climbing into mines just to get people to listen to him. All of this is only in the first 3 or 4 episodes or so. If Emma saw all of this and didn’t think she’d need to stick around and keep an eye on things and make sure Henry was alright (in a town where social services doesn’t exist) I’d think she was a pretty crappy person.

2 hours ago, TheGreenKnight said:

but Emma was a stranger at the time and should not have been a source of any kind of support for him.

 

You mean besides the fact that Henry begged her many times to stay with him and he clearly wanted her in his life?

 

15 minutes ago, TheGreenKnight said:

 

I wonder though, hasn't Emma often said in regards to her childhood that she felt like she was abandoned throughout the series?

 

Emma's story is that she was left on the side of the road like a piece of trash where her parents couldn't even be bothered to bring her to a hospital and didn't care if she lived or died. Do you honestly not know the difference between adoption and abandonment?

2 hours ago, orza said:

She had her chance with Henry and abandoned him up.

What a lovely anti-adoption stance you have!

Edited July 28, 2016 by superloislane

[Curio]

8 minutes ago, TheGreenKnight said:

I wonder though, hasn't Emma often said in regards to her childhood that she felt like she was abandoned throughout the series?

Emma might have personally felt that way for a time because she didn't know the full truth (and honestly, I'm still not sure how much she registers the fact that Regina was out to kill her as an infant), but the actual action of Snow and David saving their daughter from being murdered isn't abandonment. I've always disliked the way the show has framed Snow and David as being "in the wrong" for giving Emma up. But since the show refuses to address the Regina elephant in the room, they play it off as Snow and David "giving Emma up" and "abandoning" her.