A Thread for All Seasons: This Story Is Over, But Still Goes On.

[Camera One]

Just now, Rumsy4 said:

Yeah. I felt that too. He definitely made a big impact with the audience, even though Jamie Dornan himself was less than stellar in his acting, to be honest. 

I think his style of acting actually fit Graham to a tee.  He was awkward (makes sense given he grew up with animals), timid/scared (which again makes sense given his heart was being controlled by Regina) and he seemed really unhappy and out of sorts with himself.  He was nowhere the level of Jacinda or Victoria.

[Camera One]

I was reading some interviews about the end of "Once", and there was an interview with the actress who played Blue.  I just find it interesting how different actors describe the show.

Quote

“When you’re on something for seven years, no matter what it is, it becomes a part of you,” says Tracy. “For whatever reason, Once Upon A Time hit a nerve with a particular audience. It’s been sad times, but watching that show, you weren’t thinking about your mortgage, you weren’t thinking about your divorce, you weren’t thinking about the news; you were thinking about magic and love. It touched a nerve for people, and I got to be a part of that, and I feel really fortunate.”

This comment described how the show was special to her, but didn't actually compliment it.  I thought that was mildly amusing.  At least she didn't use the word hope.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

 He was nowhere the level of Jacinda or Victoria.

Oh goodness, no! lol. 

[superloislane]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

This comment described how the show was special to her, but didn't actually compliment it.  I thought that was mildly amusing.  At least she didn't use the word hope.

Ha that's true! I love that she even said 'For whatever reason it hit a nerve'. I actually think what she said was the best way to describe the show without saying whether you liked it or not. She's not wrong about it. When people watch this show and talk about it either with love or hate, they're not thinking about the real world problems they have, they're thinking about how annoying a certain character is or squeeing about a couple. And that is a nice thing at the end of it all.

[KingOfHearts]

20 hours ago, companionenvy said:

I think someone suggested that he wanted Emma to owe him a favor, but presumably he made the deal with Ashley before Emma came to SB, and couldn't have anticipated using it as a bargaining chip with someone he didn't yet know existed

Rumple had powers of foresight. 

[companionenvy]

30 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rumple had powers of foresight. 

Did he retain those powers as Gold, though? I don't think he did - he didn't have his other powers. And even as Rumple, his power of foresight seemed pretty limited to "whenever the writers want to suggest he knows stuff he shouldn't." Any number of his problems could have been avoided if he had anything like reliable knowledge of the future.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rumple had powers of foresight. 

Regina didn't even have the power of hindsight.

[Camera One]

I was thinking about David's father when I was trying to sleep, and I thought of a twist they could have done in Season 6... Hook turns out to be David's father.  They could have a flashback where a young Ruth meets Hook.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I was thinking about David's father when I was trying to sleep, and I thought of a twist they could have done in Season 6... Hook turns out to be David's father.  They could have a flashback where a young Ruth meets Hook.

What?  So did you work out in your head that this means Emma was sleeping with her grandfather?

Edited June 19, 2018 by ParadoxLost

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, companionenvy said:

And even as Rumple, his power of foresight seemed pretty limited to "whenever the writers want to suggest he knows stuff he shouldn't."

I think that's exactly it. The script reason for Gold getting the contract on Ashley's baby was so Emma would have to make a deal. I'm not sure they thought about an in-world reason beyond the writers using Rumple's power to handwave everything he knew or did. But it's not necessarily Gold who made that deal. Since time didn't move and poor Ashley was pregnant for 28 years (ouch), it may just be that the curse translated the deal Rumple made with her into a form that fit Storybrooke. Ashley had memories of having made a deal with Gold to give her baby up for adoption, but we don't know if those were real memories or a curse-warped version of the deal Cinderella made with Rumple.

On 6/17/2018 at 6:14 PM, companionenvy said:

I'll go even further and say that I don't even mind some retcons if there's sufficient reason for it. The problem I think we had in OuaT is that, along with their wonky morality meter, the writers also didn't have a good sense of what should and shouldn't be fair game for a retcon.

I'm okay with adding unplanned things to a character's backstory as long as those things don't contradict what's already been established and if they fit the characters. A good retcon should make you go "Ohhhhh, I never would have imagined that, but it works" rather than "Huh? Really?" The shows that do it well seem to be inspired by what they see on the screen -- something about the actor's portrayal or interpretation of a line, or something about the way two actors interact. This show seems to be mostly motivated by what they need to happen to make the plot work or to stretch to fit some theme. So, for instance, a lot of TV writers might have seen the way Colin played Hook's grief over Neal's (supposed) death at the beginning of 3A and been inspired to explore that relationship, maybe do some Neverland flashbacks of Hook and Bae and indicate that there was more to their relationship than the brief time Bae spent on Hook's ship, that they had something like a father/son, or maybe uncle/nephew or brotherly relationship. There's nothing that contradicts that in the show. It's just vague as to how close they really were, and Colin plays it like deep grief every time Neal or Bae is mentioned, both with that death and the eventual real one. A good retcon answers questions or satisfies curiosity about elements in a character's past (whether that backstory is shown in flashbacks or just alluded to). This show tended to answer questions probably no one asked. Like, no one really wondered if there was a backstory between Maleficent and Snow (Mal didn't seem to be all that worked up about Snow or enjoying the idea of her getting a comeuppance in season one). We did wonder what really happened to mess Mal up and what her history with Aurora's family, but we didn't get to see that.

23 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think his style of acting actually fit Graham to a tee.  He was awkward (makes sense given he grew up with animals), timid/scared (which again makes sense given his heart was being controlled by Regina) and he seemed really unhappy and out of sorts with himself.  He was nowhere the level of Jacinda or Victoria.

I don't know about Jacinda because I've never seen that actress in anything else, but the actress who played Victoria (whose name is escaping me at the moment) has been quite good in other things, so I mostly blame the writing for her character. My problem with Graham is that I'm painfully aware that he's reciting lines. I can see the acting. Bless his heart, he's trying so hard, but it seems like he really doesn't have the ability. The writing for him isn't bad at all, and I think that role could have been played well. I don't think there's an actress alive who could have salvaged Jacinda.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think that's exactly it. The script reason for Gold getting the contract on Ashley's baby was so Emma would have to make a deal. I'm not sure they thought about an in-world reason beyond the writers using Rumple's power to handwave everything he knew or did. But it's not necessarily Gold who made that deal. Since time didn't move and poor Ashley was pregnant for 28 years (ouch), it may just be that the curse translated the deal Rumple made with her into a form that fit Storybrooke. Ashley had memories of having made a deal with Gold to give her baby up for adoption, but we don't know if those were real memories or a curse-warped version of the deal Cinderella made with Rumple.

Rumple's deal with Ashley is one of those things that falls apart with hindsight and later inconsistency.  There were a lot of indicators at that point that the Storybrooke characters had retained their fairytale origins.  Mary Margaret especially had a lot of Snow White's characteristics like the birds that came to her hand, etc.  So it made sense that elements of their fairy tale backstories, 

Now Rumple having a deal with Cinderella wouldn't have made sense.  But Rumple hijacked that flashback by killing the FG.  And for all intents and purposes once he killed the FG, most of that flashback had as much in common with Rumpelstiltskin as it did with Cinderella.

But making it even simpler, if you buy the premise at this point in the show that the fairy tale traits survive the curse, Rumpelstiltskin's primary fairy tale agenda is to obtain the first born child.  So he just kept doing that.

 

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm okay with adding unplanned things to a character's backstory as long as those things don't contradict what's already been established and if they fit the characters. A good retcon should make you go "Ohhhhh, I never would have imagined that, but it works" rather than "Huh? Really?"

My problem with them doing this is that it was usually more egregious than "Huh?Really?"  More often than not the biggest problem was that they were so dumbfounding that it pulled you out of the narrative into wondering WTH they were thinking BTS and even subverting their own agenda a lot of the time.

Putting aside all the times they moved Snowing and Hook to the lowest common denominator to make Rumple and Regina look not so bad by comparison, the real head scratchers for me were the times they would almost get helpless capitulation to Regina's redemption and then throw out a random gleeful slaughter of a village for no reason other than to make their agenda harder to swallow..

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't know about Jacinda because I've never seen that actress in anything else, but the actress who played Victoria (whose name is escaping me at the moment) has been quite good in other things, so I mostly blame the writing for her character. My problem with Graham is that I'm painfully aware that he's reciting lines. I can see the acting. Bless his heart, he's trying so hard, but it seems like he really doesn't have the ability. The writing for him isn't bad at all, and I think that role could have been played well. I don't think there's an actress alive who could have salvaged Jacinda.

Graham is the most eye opening thing about re-watch so far.   I remember him having some amount of charisma and he really just does not.  At all.  I wonder if part of it was that they were trying to be coy in season 1 about what his fairy tale identity was.  I seem to remember a bunch of speculation and promotion about the episode that revealed who he was (could be imagining it) in flashback even though it seemed logical he would be the Huntsman.

[KingOfHearts]

6 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Did he retain those powers as Gold, though? I don't think he did - he didn't have his other powers. And even as Rumple, his power of foresight seemed pretty limited to "whenever the writers want to suggest he knows stuff he shouldn't." Any number of his problems could have been avoided if he had anything like reliable knowledge of the future.

He didn't need to. Rumple could've had to the power of foresight to know Ashley's baby would be what it would take to get Emma to owe him a favor. Gold simply remembered what Rumple had already set in motion. It's also possible Rumple just makes these deals to have tools in his toolbox. That's not exactly just blind psychopathy. He keeps favors and possible deals around in case he needs them to service his future goals.

[Shanna Marie]

19 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

My problem with them doing this is that it was usually more egregious than "Huh?Really?"  More often than not the biggest problem was that they were so dumbfounding that it pulled you out of the narrative into wondering WTH they were thinking BTS and even subverting their own agenda a lot of the time.

I think the backstory revelations (since not all of them are necessarily retcons) fall on a spectrum.

On one end, we've got the "Ohhhhhh!" ones that are unexpected but still work really well and that make you look at previous episodes a different way because you have new insight into the character. That would include Snow as a bandit, Charming not really being a prince, and Hook having been an uptight naval officer.

Then there are the "oh, okay" revelations that fit and make sense but that aren't very surprising and that don't really give us additional insight into the character. For instance, Regina making herself barren to spite her mother. That explains her creepy attempts to "adopt" every kid, but it's pretty obvious and a very Regina thing to do. Or Hook's cake runs for Pan -- it explains how he got a reputation as "Captain Hook" in that world in spite of him having left for Neverland right after he put on the hook and without him having been back in that world for so long that he'd have to be about 45, but it was purely in service of the plot to give him flashbacks with certain characters and doesn't really tell us anything about him.

Then there are the "Huh? Really?" revelations that don't explicitly contradict something shown onscreen, but that don't quite fit. I might put the James and George stuff there -- they never say that they had a good relationship, but in "The Shepherd" it certainly doesn't come across like James is a drunken wastrel who's squandering the kingdom's fortunes while his father is utterly disgusted with him. Or the stuff about Liam -- maybe Killian was wrong about idolizing his brother, but selling out the crew to Hades seems rather extreme.

Then there are the "Seriously? You've got to be kidding" revelations that may not explicitly contradict anything but that fly in the face of everything we know about the characters. Like the eggnapping -- you'd think Maleficent would have been a lot more keen about cursing Snow if that was really in her past in the second episode, and you'd think the Charmings might have mentioned it when they were dealing with a second pregnancy. Or Hook killing David's dad so there wouldn't be witnesses, when usually he's far more concerned with maintaining a terrible reputation and he's going to be heading back to Neverland soon anyway. Or Leopold marrying the daughter of a woman who was stealing from him and attempting to con him into marrying her while she was pregnant with someone else's baby without him and Cora having any kind of conversation about their past.

And then there are the outright contradictions that don't fit with what was previously established. Like Emma having a bounty hunter after her because she skipped out on bond just a couple of years before the series started when it was previously established that she didn't have an adult criminal record. Or there being a magical flower that appears in the presence of evil that appears when Regina is being mildly bitchy in Storybrooke and that allows David and Snow to wake up and see Emma, but they don't go to her -- and somehow there's no record of any of this in spite of David being monitored and the hospital having security cameras.

Hook killing his father hits several of these. There's the outright contradiction in fitting that whole event somehow into the time after Regina caught him in her palace and before she sent him to Wonderland, a time that seemed to be continuous and without any time for him to have left and returned. There's the "seriously?" about Brennan's story of a true love kiss from someone he hadn't actually met waking him from a sleeping curse (though I guess they were consistent going forward with not needing much of a relationship to have a TLK, but it's a contradiction from it being a huge shock in the pilot because it was so rare). It's a bit of a "huh?" for Hook to abandon his younger brother, since we know that abandoning children is kind of a hot-button issue for him. And it's kind of an "Oh, okay" that he would have killed his father in a fit of temper -- we know he's got a big temper and violent tendencies, but I think that was his first onscreen killing.

[daxx]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think that was his first onscreen killing.

Claude in Regina’s castle would be his first onscreen killing, I believe.

[Shanna Marie]

43 minutes ago, daxx said:

Claude in Regina’s castle would be his first onscreen killing, I believe.

Doh, I forgot about Claude. Poor Claude, always forgotten (but didn't he turn out to be bad?). I guess I was thinking in terms of what we saw after Hook turned around (even though he was fairly evil throughout most of his flashbacks). Once Hook started changing, his flashbacks were a lot tamer and mostly about him doing stuff he regretted, until suddenly he's getting really violent with his own father midway through season 5, and all so that Regina, of all people, can remind him of something she wasn't present for.

It's weird that Hook didn't have any interaction with his father in the Underworld. I would think that screwing things up that badly with one of his sons so that he ended up dying on his other son while he was still a kid would have stuck Brennan in the Underworld, and if Regina got to reconcile with her father in the Underworld, Hook really should have, too, maybe with Liam there, as well. Hook seemed to have felt bad about his father the moment after he killed him, so he needed some closure there, and Brennan should have had to face both of the sons he sold. The Underworld arc came right after the flashback showing his father, and remembering that had a lot to do with his eventual sacrifice, so it seems strange that they didn't follow up on it when they took the story to the Underworld. But I guess they needed the screentime for Regina to reconcile with the horse she murdered. And Dorothy. We needed an episode about Dorothy.

[profdanglais]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Hook killing his father hits several of these. There's the outright contradiction in fitting that whole event somehow into the time after Regina caught him in her palace and before she sent him to Wonderland, a time that seemed to be continuous and without any time for him to have left and returned. There's the "seriously?" about Brennan's story of a true love kiss from someone he hadn't actually met waking him from a sleeping curse (though I guess they were consistent going forward with not needing much of a relationship to have a TLK, but it's a contradiction from it being a huge shock in the pilot because it was so rare). It's a bit of a "huh?" for Hook to abandon his younger brother, since we know that abandoning children is kind of a hot-button issue for him. And it's kind of an "Oh, okay" that he would have killed his father in a fit of temper -- we know he's got a big temper and violent tendencies, but I think that was his first onscreen killing.

Looking back at the series as a whole (minus S7 because I didn't watch it) this is the retcon that infuriates me the most, with eggnapping and the stupid evil flower thing a very close second and third respectively. Hook killing his father I actually don't have a problem with. It fits in with his pre-redemption character, his quick, violent temper, his wanting vengeance. But the absurd gymnastics that were necessary to shoehorn the whole thing into the timeline in a way that would allow Regina to be part of it (and how the hell does Regina even know about Hook's father? What connects random bartender Brennan Jones to Captain Hook, whose real name had been lost for centuries at that point?) is just a bridge too far. If they wanted a patricide for Hook, it should have taken place in at a reasonable point in the timeline, either before he became Hook or on one of his early cake runs. It could have shown how far he'd fallen from the upright lieutenant, or something. Anything but the infuriatingly lazy way they actually did it.

[KingOfHearts]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Poor Claude, always forgotten (but didn't he turn out to be bad?)

He threw Belle's book and gave Regina her location. I think it's funny the writers actually reused a redshirt.

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's weird that Hook didn't have any interaction with his father in the Underworld.

I will never understand why the writers introduced Brennan in the episode leading up to the Underworld, only to use Liam instead. Thematically, that just makes no sense to me.

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

And Dorothy. We needed an episode about Dorothy.

My crack theory is that Dorothy, Merida, and Jacinda are all the same person. They all have the same exact abrasive personality, making them interchangeable. 

Edited June 20, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[superloislane]

8 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

He threw Belle's book and gave Regina her location. I think it's funny the writers actually reused a redshirt.

I think he threw her off the wagon and then tried to kill her because she gave him wrong information. From what I remember anyway.

12 hours ago, profdanglais said:

But the absurd gymnastics that were necessary to shoehorn the whole thing into the timeline in a way that would allow Regina to be part of it (and how the hell does Regina even know about Hook's father? What connects random bartender Brennan Jones to Captain Hook, whose real name had been lost for centuries at that point?) is just a bridge too far.

Yes, this made absolutely no sense. There was no reason AT ALL for them to shoehorn Regina into that flashback especially when it didn't even fit or make sense in any way! Not a lot made sense in that flashback in fairness, but that was beyond the pale. It didn't really fit into the timeline so had to be shoved into the day or two between when Hook first met her and him coming back with Cora because he teams up with Cora and the curse hits rights after this so it couldn't be any other time, Regina had to miraculously know the connection between a random bartender and Captain Hook and find this out a few hours after she meets Hook for the first time, for some reason she has to think that Hook being willing to kill his own father is a good test for him being willing to kill a woman he has never met before (how was that a good test?), AND apparently Regina swore all this to secrecy for Hook for literally no reason at all!

Was this just their Regina obsession where they desperately wanted her involved in everything they could shove her into? Or were they trying really hard to give Regina something to do here since she was on the sidelines of the story and they couldn't have that (even though her 'I know about your father' thing didn't persuade Hook to stop at all so there was actually no point)? Or was it their 'there needs to be a connection!' obsession and they couldn't do this with Rumple so it had to be the other character they shove into every flashback with every character ever?

[profdanglais]

1 hour ago, superloislane said:

Was this just their Regina obsession where they desperately wanted her involved in everything they could shove her into? Or were they trying really hard to give Regina something to do here since she was on the sidelines of the story and they couldn't have that (even though her 'I know about your father' thing didn't persuade Hook to stop at all so there was actually no point)? Or was it their 'there needs to be a connection!' obsession and they couldn't do this with Rumple so it had to be the other character they shove into every flashback with every character ever?

The answers are yes, yes, yes, and your questions are pointless. 

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, superloislane said:

Was this just their Regina obsession where they desperately wanted her involved in everything they could shove her into?

Yep. We now have actual proof that Regina was the true protagonist of the Show. And really, 5B was the turning point for the show in completely sidelining Emma in favor of Regina.

Regina started making inspiring and hypocritical speeches to everyone from Season 5 onwards, and this scene was just one of the ways they were setting up for that to happen. 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

Regina started making inspiring and hypocritical speeches to everyone from Season 5 onwards, and this scene was just one of the ways they were setting up for that to happen. 

Regina was one of my greatest disappointments within the show. Her hypocritical speech to Zelena totally ruined any chance of redemption, at least for me.

Quote

Zelena: "I'm lucky you happened by."
Regina: "Yeah, about that..."
Zelena: "Let me go first. I should've been the one to reach out and find you to apologize."
Regina: "I didn't come here to apologize. Truth is, I thought I'd find some magic here in order to reduce an aging spell Gold used."
Zelena: "You mean you came here to steal from me?"
Regina: "Oh, was I supposed to think you'd share after everything you did to me and my friends?"
Zelena: "If that's what you assumed, why even bother saving me, then?"
Regina: "Because that's what heroes do, Zelena. They save people. Even the people who have hurt them in unimaginable ways."
Zelena: "So this is about Robin Hood? You still blame me for his death?"
Regina: "Yes, that's exactly right."
Zelena: "What about forgiveness? What about redemption? You were forgiven. You've grown. You've changed."
Regina: "You're not me. I can never forgive you. I can pity you. I can hate you. I can spare your life. But I can never forgive you."

This is why I've joined the most of y'all in the Regina hate camp. I don't think there was ever a moment in the show where I felt more betrayed. These writers have no idea how to portray siblings. Regina isn't a hero. She's just an asshole.

Edited June 20, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, superloislane said:

Not a lot made sense in that flashback in fairness, but that was beyond the pale. It didn't really fit into the timeline so had to be shoved into the day or two between when Hook first met her and him coming back with Cora because he teams up with Cora and the curse hits rights after this so it couldn't be any other time, Regina had to miraculously know the connection between a random bartender and Captain Hook and find this out a few hours after she meets Hook for the first time, for some reason she has to think that Hook being willing to kill his own father is a good test for him being willing to kill a woman he has never met before (how was that a good test?), AND apparently Regina swore all this to secrecy for Hook for literally no reason at all!

Were there even hours? I thought the way it played out in the initial episode was that Regina caught Hook breaking into her palace and killing one of her guards, then she menaced and creeped on him until she sent him to Wonderland to kill her mother. It was continuous action. There was no room for him to have left, then for her to track him down and give him the test assignment. So, she apparently knew that Captain Hook was going to break into her palace, researched his background, knew his real name to do so, bothered to look for his family even though he'd been away for more than a hundred years, found his father tending bar in a nearby tavern and knew it was his father in spite of Jones being a common name and in spite of that century or so gap. I'm not sure if she knew the full history of what his father did to him and whether he'd hate him or not. If he didn't hate him, then killing him would have been harder, but she clearly expected him to not be aware of who he'd find when she sent him to Ye Olde Tavern, so clearly she knew they weren't close. After all her background work, she's already ready when he happens to break into her palace, so she tests whether he'll be able to kill a woman he's never met who is an expert at emotional manipulation and who has magical powers by sending him to kill his estranged father, who has no magic and whose actual relationship with his son has to be a complete unknown. And somehow she knows not only exactly what he did, in spite of not being present, but knows exactly what was said, what that meant to him, and that it's something that would still be meaningful to him, and knows how he feels about it all. Even if Regina knew about the outcome of her "test," how could she possibly have known about the "what kind of man do you want to be?" thing? Even if she'd been eavesdropping and heard his father saying that to 2.0, how could she have known that this was a trigger for Hook because it was practically the last thing his father said to him before selling him into slavery when he was a child?

Then to top it off, it's an utterly useless test, since he doesn't kill Cora. He caves instantly and changes sides.

3 hours ago, superloislane said:

Was this just their Regina obsession where they desperately wanted her involved in everything they could shove her into?

That's basically it. In spite of Hook and Regina barely having any relationship, they had to bend themselves into a pretzel to find a way for her to be the one to make the emotional connection with Dark Hook that plants the seed that leads to him turning around. God forbid that Emma, the woman he's in love with, be the one to make an emotional connection with him. Heck, even Henry would have been a better choice, since he's Milah's grandson.

[superloislane]

26 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

they had to bend themselves into a pretzel to find a way for her to be the one to make the emotional connection with Dark Hook that plants the seed that leads to him turning around

But it didn't seem like that or the entire flashback in general had anything to do with why he stopped at all. It was when he saw Nimue choking Emma that he stopped - so there was literally no point to any of the nonsense!

[profdanglais]

28 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Then to top it off, it's an utterly useless test, since he doesn't kill Cora. He caves instantly and changes sides

Which if she had actually done any research into Captain Hook, she would have absolutely been able to predict. Just about the only thing that S2 Hook could be relied upon to do was what was in his own best interest at the moment. There's no way Regina, had she known anything significant about him, would have trusted him in any way. He only helped her because she offered him a way to kill Rumplestiltskin, so why would he agree to some idiotic "test" before she even told him what he would get out of a partnership with her? Plus, he only killed his father because he had a fit of temper after agreeing to help him, so how does that prove he's tough enough to kill Cora?

I know, I know, my questions are pointless too. But the whole thing is just so mindbogglingly dumb. 

[Kktjones]

I 100% agree that the entire flashback and storyline were, to quote @profdanglais, "mindbogglingly dumb". However, I still contend that the "Hook killed David's father" was the worst, most pointless retcon on the show. Aside from the facts people here have brought up about how stupid he would be to kill the only witness if he was trying to maintain his ruthless reputation, it was clear that this was done for one reason and one reason only - SHOCK VALUE. In the end it was never dealt with or discussed among Hook & David or Hook & Emma. They didn't show him growing or learning or changing because of it. It meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme. Except to crap on Hook & Emma's relationship to the point where if I don't ignore it happened, I can't even enjoy them being together. 

It, along with the nonsense of the Charmings seeing baby Emma through the door and not going to her, will always and forever be ignored by me. 

Edited June 20, 2018 by Kktjones

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, Kktjones said:

They didn't show him growing or learning or changing because of it. It meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme. Except to crap on Hook & Emma's relationship to the point where if I don't ignore it happened, I can't even enjoy them being together. 

Part of the reason it was so pointless is because Hook had already grown and changed at this point. So finding out about another terrible thing he had done was just piling on without real potential for character growth. 

It doesn't get to the point of interfering with my enjoyment of the relationship, given everything else that has gone on between them, but in a better show, this might have led to some serious conversation about what it meant for Emma to love and marry someone who had been an honest-to-goodness killer for longer than she'd been alive. Not because he had killed her grandfather, per se, but because he had killed human beings for trivial reasons. Bad as he obviously felt about it, and as much as he'd changed, I think it is a conversation they should have had at some point, beyond Hook just confessing to his evil deeds. 

[profdanglais]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

Not because he had killed her grandfather, per se, but because he had killed human beings for trivial reasons.

Very much this. Pre-S4 Emma wouldn't have needed to be related to someone to care about them being murdered by her boyfriend, and her attitude in the later seasons was basically "oh well, la di da, you're not that man anymore so let's stop talking about it" when actually Hook would have had a lot of guilt to work through and as a supportive partner she should have let him talk about it as much as he needed to, and actually listened to his feelings if that's what he needed to move past it. 

Hook is my favourite so I am undoubtedly biased, but it's so frustrating that in him they had a genuinely unique, complex, grey character and they really had no interest in exploring him. All of the post-S4 retcons on his character were so awful it's almost like they were deliberately tearing him down and trying to make people hate him. 

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, profdanglais said:

Hook is my favourite so I am undoubtedly biased, but it's so frustrating that in him they had a genuinely unique, complex, grey character and they really had no interest in exploring him.

That's why I think I ended up watching and enjoying Season 7, at least the parts that related to WHook and Alice. Regina was all matronly in the season, and Rumple's arc wasn't his usual world-domination or spouse-abuse stuff. So, there was no need to tear WHook down to prop up their two favs. 

Season 6 was really god-awful in the writing. Even with all the weak writing for Season 7, it was nowhere close to being as bad as its preceding one. I don't think we can ever truly figure out why there was such a steep drop in quality that season, but it was a mess from start to finish. 

Edited June 21, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Part of the reason it was so pointless is because Hook had already grown and changed at this point. So finding out about another terrible thing he had done was just piling on without real potential for character growth. 

This plot might have worked in late season 2 or early season 3 when he was starting to question his life choices. Then putting a name and a face on his victim and seeing the harm his actions had caused might have been a wake-up call, and it would have given him a reason to feel guilty, especially if he then started wondering what the story was behind all the other people he killed. Coming in season 6 when he'd already felt guilty and realized he'd lived his life the wrong way, and especially after he'd died and been granted a second chance at life by the king of the gods, it was pointless. When the gods have given their stamp of approval, there's no real point in dredging up past sins from what's literally a previous life.

Plus, the revelation of what really happened to David's father and George's role in it all coming that late also meant that apparently David was okay with George ordering his mother's death, since we didn't see him go ape on him about that, but he only lost it when he learned that George ordered his father's death. So the retcon didn't just hurt Hook. It made David look bad, too.

And then there's the usual Regina issue: if they're all okay with everything Regina did to them, it makes it hard for them to criticize anyone else for crimes against them. They know Regina caused Snow's father's death and that she did it out of hatred for Snow, and they know Regina tried to execute Snow. If they're okay with that, they don't have a lot of room to complain about Hook killing David's father without knowing who he was killing. That's what keeps them from dealing honestly with anyone's past behavior. It's already iffy that George is being locked up while Regina is their best friend, when George was essentially Regina's henchman.

[Kktjones]

2 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Season 6 was really god-awful in the writing. Even with all the weak writing for Season 7, it was nowhere close to being as bad as its preceding one. I don't think we can ever truly figure out why there was such a steep drop in quality that season, but it was a mess from start to finish. 

Yeah, I have to completely agree. The dumpster fire that was Season 6 did no favors for any character or pairing. You had Rumple terrorizing Belle, the Charming fiasco with seeing Emma through the door and the deciding to just close it, the previously mentioned grievances against Hook and Captain Swan, and who can forget that beautiful pairing of Golden Queen. Perhaps the worst, however, was what they did to Regina. Instead of having her re-absorb her evil half and learn to accept that part of herself, they kept her split in half and had her other half just leave Henry behind and start a new life with a dark version of Robin Hood?? I mean I don't like the character, but if I did I'd be crying bloody murder. 

I didn't watch much of Season 7, but it almost seems like they completely removed any potentially controversial aspects of Regina, Hook & Rumple's personalities. So while they weren't especially exciting, they weren't offending or annoying anyone either. Interestingly, it seems that people who previously hated Hook (or even Rumple or Regina) liked him this season. I do wonder if the absence of ships and ship wars played into that. But I also think it's because they turned all three of them into kind of generically "nice" characters (and none of them had an antagonistic relationship with the others either).

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Kktjones said:

I didn't watch much of Season 7, but it almost seems like they completely removed any potentially controversial aspects of Regina, Hook & Rumple's personalities. So while they weren't especially exciting, they weren't offending or annoying anyone either. Interestingly, it seems that people who previously hated Hook (or even Rumple or Regina) liked him this season. I do wonder if the absence of ships and ship wars played into that. But I also think it's because they turned all three of them into kind of generically "nice" characters (and none of them had an antagonistic relationship with the others either).

It might be because it wasn't actually Hook.  It was the Wish version who looked like Hook, with a different dimension to the character since this Hook was a father.

Regina and Rumple barely had character arcs.  Regina spent half the time doing stuff Granny would be doing.  

[KAOS Agent]

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's already iffy that George is being locked up while Regina is their best friend, when George was essentially Regina's henchman.

To be fair, George was locked up because of what he did to Billy/Gus Gus. This action occurred in Storybrooke, was particularly heinous (he mutilated the poor guy) and was provable in court. I don't know whether an actual trial occurred, but the entirety of the citizenry were aware of the crime and may have actually cared about not having this guy running loose in town. Since he wasn't magical, they actually could arrest and imprison him like normal people. The only other character who cold bloodedly murdered someone in Storybrooke (who isn't dead) is Regina. Since Graham's death is categorized as a heart attack, no one knows about what happened to Kurt & Owen Flynn and she has some level of plausible defense for the murder of Johanna and Kathryn's kidnapping, Regina could be considered to have the same clean slate everyone else seems to have gotten when the original curse broke.

[companionenvy]

28 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

To be fair, George was locked up because of what he did to Billy/Gus Gus. This action occurred in Storybrooke, was particularly heinous (he mutilated the poor guy) and was provable in court. I don't know whether an actual trial occurred, but the entirety of the citizenry were aware of the crime and may have actually cared about not having this guy running loose in town. Since he wasn't magical, they actually could arrest and imprison him like normal people. The only other character who cold bloodedly murdered someone in Storybrooke (who isn't dead) is Regina. Since Graham's death is categorized as a heart attack, no one knows about what happened to Kurt & Owen Flynn and she has some level of plausible defense for the murder of Johanna and Kathryn's kidnapping, Regina could be considered to have the same clean slate everyone else seems to have gotten when the original curse broke.

I still think it is iffy. I actually accept that Storybrook justice has to be somewhat different from RL justice, for a few reasons:

1. While the degree to which the main cast knows about everyone's past varies, the writers have created a world in which practically everyone, including the most unambiguously "good" characters, are guilty of crimes that should at least earn them hefty prison sentences. This includes Snow and Charming, for the eggnapping and Archie, for years of helping his con-artist parents and accidentally turning Gepetto's parents into dolls (I can't believe I just had to type that sentence). So at minimum, it seems like EF crimes have to be more or less taken off the table.

2. As you said, the fact that some of the worst criminals in SB have magic makes it impossible to contain them, which would, I think, naturally lead to a somewhat more lenient approach to the criminals they can punish. 

3. They live in such constant state of crisis and extremity that throwing out the ordinary rules can be justifiable as a sort of SB version of prosecutorial discretion. Like, Hook actually committed a number of crimes in SB during season 2, and he is briefly arrested for it, but by the time anyone is in a position in which he could theoretically be held accountable for it, he has switched sides, and made voluntary sacrifices up to and including coming back when he could have gotten clean away and risking his life multiple times for Emma and her family members. Forget justice; given the scale of intensity on which these events are playing out, it would simply be weird to do something as mundane as sentence Hook to a few years in prison for assaulting Belle.

In that context, possibly George's misfortune is that he gets caught and punished before he can be given any opportunity to reform, not that I think he would take it.

But even with all that, it doesn't make sense that there's never even an attempt to hold Regina accountable. Even if you exclude things that happened in the EF, the entire 28 years of the curse was a massive crime. And it is a fault of the show that no one ever finds out about several of Regina's SB killings, especially Graham. But in any case, Charming rejecting vigilante justice re: Regina should not have meant completely abandoning the idea that she should be punished, let alone more or less letting her keep her status and privileges. This does become especially glaring when we have George getting what appears to be a de facto life sentence; if SB justice is going to be so different, it might be better not to have a throwaway plot which follows a more normal system of punishment. Best stick to the job of "sheriff," post-curse, being about responding to active threats and dealing with petty criminals, and not focus on punishment at all. 

[superloislane]

11 hours ago, companionenvy said:

It doesn't get to the point of interfering with my enjoyment of the relationship, given everything else that has gone on between them, but in a better show, this might have led to some serious conversation about what it meant for Emma to love and marry someone who had been an honest-to-goodness killer for longer than she'd been alive.

Yeah I foolishly believed they would use this to explore something like this or have some sort of actual drama dealing with it and (gasp!) consequences. But, that's why I'm dumb enough to have watched this show for 6 years. I started believing that maybe they would have put Emma in the middle of Hook and David - she's engaged to Hook and has dealt with the fact that he's killed (and this story could go into that) and wouldn't leave him but David is obviously angry about it and can't stand to be around Hook and Snow takes his side. That would give some good drama and it would also give a much better reason for Hook to think about leaving, if they still wanted that, if he felt he was causing trouble for Emma and her parents' relationship rather than because his feelings were hurt and wanted to be 'a better man' or whatever it was.

6 hours ago, Kktjones said:

Interestingly, it seems that people who previously hated Hook (or even Rumple or Regina) liked him this season.

From what I've seen on Twitter, it seems to be people saying that trying to piss off CS fans. Why they think that would piss them off I have no idea. It's weird. But I have seen too many of 'I love WHook - he's so much better without Emma' and then you go onto their account and they're laughing at 'CS tears' replying to that tweet...again weird. Although I haven't seen anyone who used to hate R&R suddenly like them in s7 but then again I didn't keep up with that at all.

[KAOS Agent]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

But in any case, Charming rejecting vigilante justice re: Regina should not have meant completely abandoning the idea that she should be punished, let alone more or less letting her keep her status and privileges. This does become especially glaring when we have George getting what appears to be a de facto life sentence; if SB justice is going to be so different, it might be better not to have a throwaway plot which follows a more normal system of punishment. Best stick to the job of "sheriff," post-curse, being about responding to active threats and dealing with petty criminals, and not focus on punishment at all. 

I don't disagree that Regina shouldn't be given a pass on her crimes.  I was simply noting that George was locked up not because he was Regina's evil henchman in the Enchanted Forest, but because he had horrifically murdered a man in Storybrooke. If we were to try to apply real world justice to anyone in Storybrooke for events that occurred in Storybrooke, he had the most slam dunk case against him. One could argue that magical crimes don't fit the real world justice system so trying them would be difficult. What's the charge and the punishment for turning people into flying monkeys? Or a rat? Or summoning a wraith? George and OG Cinderella's mother committed "normal" crimes that already have established penal codes associated with them such that appropriate charges/punishments were provided for and the audience could easily understand what/how they were being applied. It's not something they really even thought about. They just needed to have some one off villains who could reasonably be written off by actually punishing them for their crimes. The hypocrisy doesn't register with these writers. It's just one more strike on poor worldbuilding for this show.

One thing that I think is funny is that the writers showed us OG Lady Tremaine picking up trash in an orange jumpsuit so that the audience would get the satisfaction of seeing a villain get her comeuppance. There had to be some level of understanding that the good guys need to win and bad guys need to be punished, but they spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy wanting us to cheer for much worse villains never facing justice and getting their happy endings. It's like they were throwing us a tiny bone, but it only ends up making the heroes look bad for giving some really terrible people their freedom and not letting others have a hundred chances to finally stop trying to kill/curse/take over the world/whatever and find their happy ending too.

[companionenvy]

2 hours ago, superloislane said:

I started believing that maybe they would have put Emma in the middle of Hook and David - she's engaged to Hook and has dealt with the fact that he's killed (and this story could go into that) and wouldn't leave him but David is obviously angry about it and can't stand to be around Hook and Snow takes his side. That would give some good drama and it would also give a much better reason for Hook to think about leaving, if they still wanted that, if he felt he was causing trouble for Emma and her parents' relationship rather than because his feelings were hurt and wanted to be 'a better man' or whatever it was.

I think that's an arc that would have worked a lot better before the UW arc than before it, because as I said somewhere earlier in this thread, at the point at which you've gone to the literal underworld and back to save the reformed killer you've accepted as your daughter's boyfriend, you don't have a ton of moral high ground in turning on him because you find out that one of his anonymous victims happened to be someone you cared about. That doesn't mean David couldn't have been angry and decided that he couldn't be around Hook on an emotional level, but it wouldn't have been a morally coherent position, and I think the show would have had to acknowledge that - which again, would have given the characters a chance to grapple with the question of what it means to forgive someone who has done truly terrible things in the past.

But again, in narrative terms, it just wasn't that interesting to go into that post UW, IMO. Hook had willingly given his life as the DO, been tortured in purgatory, and been rewarded by Zeus with a second chance at life. When a god figure has literally judged a character worthy, I'd say the question of whether or not he is redeemed or deserves forgiveness is no longer one of deep interest. That doesn't mean Hook couldn't still confront some of the practical and emotional consequences of his past life, like meeting a vengeful Liam the younger, but trying to drum up tension over the fact that one of his long ago killings happened to include David's father was just manufactured angst. Especially in a world in which Snow and Emma are close friends with Regina, who killed Snow's father.

[profdanglais]

4 hours ago, superloislane said:

From what I've seen on Twitter, it seems to be people saying that trying to piss off CS fans. Why they think that would piss them off I have no idea. It's weird. But I have seen too many of 'I love WHook - he's so much better without Emma' and then you go onto their account and they're laughing at 'CS tears' replying to that tweet...again weird. Although I haven't seen anyone who used to hate R&R suddenly like them in s7 but then again I didn't keep up with that at all.

As a CS shipper, I could not care less that Whook, a completely different man from the OG Hook that the show made a point of demonstrating was happy with Emma and expecting a baby, has no Emma of his own. Shipping wars in this fandom are so weird. 

[Shanna Marie]

Adding to the weirdness of the "Hook killed David's father" plot and the way it made everyone look bad ...

It was the Evil Queen who kicked it all off by dropping the clue to David that his father's death wasn't what he thought. Since the Evil Queen was split off of Regina, that means Regina knew all along. She was supposedly David's friend, so why did she withhold this information? Did she know the full story about Hook's involvement or did she just know that it wasn't what David thought? Did she know George ordered it, and did that mean she knew it wasn't just a drunken carting accident? To have the clue she had, she must have known at least that it wasn't an accident, which makes it strange that she never told David. Or was this something Rumple knew all along and only clued in the Evil Queen after the split?

Then again, how did Regina know (if she did)? She would have been a kid when it happened. Did George boast?

Then there's August. Why did he bother giving that page to Hook? What did he hope to accomplish? Was he trying to split up Hook and Emma? It seems like he was stirring things up just as badly as (or worse than, depending on how much she knew) the Evil Queen, and yet he's supposed to be a good guy. This was one of those cases where it's probably for the best for everyone to just throw that page in the fire and keep the secret. Hook's already changed and been punished, died and brought back by a god. They know he did bad things in his past. David knows that there was more to his father's story than he realized, and George was the one who intended to kill his father. The only change from seeing that page was knowing that someone else stepped in to give the fatal blow.

[superloislane]

2 hours ago, companionenvy said:

back to save the reformed killer you've accepted as your daughter's boyfriend, you don't have a ton of moral high ground in turning on him because you find out that one of his anonymous victims happened to be someone you cared about. That doesn't mean David couldn't have been angry and decided that he couldn't be around Hook on an emotional level, but it wouldn't have been a morally coherent position

I don't know about that. We can all forgive and forget when it's someone else's family member but when it comes to someone we love, it's a different story. It doesn't matter at all if it's morally coherent - it's emotions and I'm pretty sure most of the audience would have absolutely had David's back if he couldn't forgive him regardless of moral coherency and it definitely wouldn't make him look bad. Personally I'm against the death penalty, but if someone killed a member of my family, I would probably want to murder them with my bare hands. I'm pretty sure most people aren't morally coherent and that's what I want from characters too if they're supposed to be at all human.

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Then there's August. Why did he bother giving that page to Hook? What did he hope to accomplish? Was he trying to split up Hook and Emma? It seems like he was stirring things up just as badly as (or worse than, depending on how much she knew) the Evil Queen, and yet he's supposed to be a good guy.

Didn't they ask August for the page? I'm pretty sure he didn't know that Hook killed him

[Shanna Marie]

16 minutes ago, superloislane said:

Didn't they ask August for the page? I'm pretty sure he didn't know that Hook killed him

I haven't rewatched the episode (for obvious reasons), but my recollection was that at the end of the episode, August came up to Hook and handed him the page showing Hook killing David's father. Then we got the flashback of the incident. I don't think there was a reason given why August would have shown up with that page. It's possible that August didn't know who the person Hook was killing was (then again, he'd met David's father in his Pinocchio days, so he surely knew what it was a picture of.). Hook recognized it because he was there, and he put two and two together, knowing what he'd learned from George and what he remembered, to realize that the man he'd killed was David's father. But why would August feel the need to give Hook a picture of him killing anyone? We're back to that thing of them knowing Hook killed people already, so this isn't new info.

The other question is how Emma could have seen a snippet of a memory in the dreamcatcher from across the room and immediately knew what memory Hook was destroying when she would have had no way of knowing what her grandfather looked like. Why would she be instantly upset about Hook wanting to destroy a painful memory or two?

[superloislane]

6 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I haven't rewatched the episode (for obvious reasons), but my recollection was that at the end of the episode, August came up to Hook and handed him the page showing Hook killing David's father.

It didn't show Hook at all. It just showed David's father sitting by Pinocchio and that's how Hook remembered his face. August gave it to him because David and Hook had come to see him since they knew the dad had visited the same island Pinocchio did and they wanted the pages August had taken out of the book.

6 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

when she would have had no way of knowing what her grandfather looked like.

Now that's a very good point!

Edited June 21, 2018 by superloislane

[companionenvy]

16 minutes ago, superloislane said:

don't know about that. We can all forgive and forget when it's someone else's family member but when it comes to someone we love, it's a different story. It doesn't matter at all if it's morally coherent - it's emotions and I'm pretty sure most of the audience would have absolutely had David's back if he couldn't forgive him regardless of moral coherency and it definitely wouldn't make him look bad. Personally I'm against the death penalty, but if someone killed a member of my family, I would probably want to murder them with my bare hands. I'm pretty sure most people aren't morally coherent and that's what I want from characters too if they're supposed to be at all human.

I agree that we're not consistent, and driven by emotion - rightfully so. But the circumstances here are so idiosyncratic that I'm not sure the most human response would be inability to forgive, especially as we're already conceding that David has forgiven Hook for being a pirate who has presumably been responsible for killing some number of more-or-less innocent people in the past.  

I don't think I could ever forgive someone who killed someone I loved - but I also wouldn't, except under very extreme circumstances that I can't even imagine, be buddy-buddy with a serial killer, reformed or not. We also have to factor in the following:

1. David had established a positive prior history with Hook before learning what he had done, which is different from forgiving someone who you first met as the killer of a loved one.

2. Hook had saved David's life in Neverland, and helped to save Emma's, Henry's, and various other people on other occasions.

3. Hook has experienced some version of divine punishment and divine judgment. Sometimes, people say to let God judge -- in this case, He has. 

So, yeah, I just think it is really hard to say that human nature demands any particular response, and I actually do think that David's pretty easy acceptance was, for once, the realistic response here.

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, profdanglais said:

6 hours ago, superloislane said:

Why they think that would piss them off I have no idea. It's weird. But I have seen too many of 'I love WHook - he's so much better without Emma' and then you go onto their account and they're laughing at 'CS tears' replying to that tweet...again weird. 

As a CS shipper, I could not care less that Whook, a completely different man from the OG Hook that the show made a point of demonstrating was happy with Emma and expecting a baby, has no Emma of his own. Shipping wars in this fandom are so weird. 

To be fair, there were a bunch of CSers who disliked WHook a lot because his redemption did not involve Emma. 

The anit-Hookers and anti-CSers who ended up liking WHook had the  same emotional distance from the character that Rumple had in S7. So they could view him with a different lens. Whether the writers intended that it nor, it sort of makes sense psychologically. 

[superloislane]

3 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

WHook a lot because his redemption did not involve Emma. 

I didn't watch season 7 so forgive me but did he actually have a redemption arc? 

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, superloislane said:

It didn't show Hook at all. It just showed David's father sitting by Pinocchio and that's how Hook remembered his face. August gave it to him because David and Hook had come to see him since they knew the dad had visited the same island Pinocchio did and they wanted the pages August had taken out of the book.

Oh, okay. I think I must have conflated the flashback and the picture, putting the image from the flashback into the picture (as I said, I haven't rewatched that part because it's bad for my blood pressure). So we'll let August off the hook. He didn't know he was stirring things up.

But we don't know what was up with Regina, how much she knew, and why she never said anything.

25 minutes ago, superloislane said:

I didn't watch season 7 so forgive me but did he actually have a redemption arc? 

Not so much an arc, since his redemption was in the past and we didn't get a lot of flashbacks, but he gave up redemption after Gothel posed as Rapunzel to sleep with him, then revealed that she'd only done it to get pregnant and instantly have a baby so she could leave someone with her blood in the tower and she could escape. WHook gave up revenge and his ship to raise his daughter because he couldn't leave an infant alone in a tower. He apparently slipped again after he was cursed so he couldn't be near her and she got out of the tower, so he didn't know where she was, and that's how we got Old, Drunk WHook in season 6 (but we don't know if he was really evil or just dissipated). In early season 7, when Old, Drunk WHook got Lady Tremaine to de-age him to look like Hook Prime and switched places with him, we learned that he was inspired by meeting Emma to stop drinking and get his act together, and when he learned that Hook Prime was going to be a father he tried to unswitch.

So, he gave up revenge and stopped drinking (something Hook Prime didn't even do), but we don't know if he had any kind of guilt complex the way Hook Prime did or if he tried to atone at all for his past crimes. He mostly focused on being a dad. But since there was no curse and he spent most of the time after the curse would have been cast being a dad, he also had fewer crimes than Hook Prime. We don't know when the split point was, exactly, so we don't know if WHook killed his father, but he never came close to killing Rumple and never worked for Cora.

[KingOfHearts]

Regardless of the counter-argument, I still believe Emma was stronger in some ways in S1-3A than she was 3B onward. I really don't like the angsty Emma that came later. She reminded me too much of Buffy, who remained in a constant state of an existential crisis. The brooding really bogged her down. It's not that Emma wasn't rightful in questioning her destiny or having trust issues, but the writers didn't have to keep using her as a punching bag. She could've spent an arc or two helping someone else voluntarily, enjoying some time with Hook or her family on the sidelines. It didn't have to always be about her "darkness", her DO curse, her magic, her Savior destiny, or her dying lovers. I get it - drama and all that - but what did it really lead up to? What did Emma really learn? She was going to marry Hook and have a baby whether she accepted her vague Savior role or not. She had WALLS in S1, yes, but she also took action to pave her own path. She didn't lie down and let Regina, Rumple, or Henry save her.

I know Jennifer Morrison commented that Emma became "stronger" because her walls came down and she became vulnerable. I respect that viewpoint and understand that she did go through quite a bit of character development over the first few seasons. However, she also devolved into a groveling whelp who didn't accomplish that much. She just sort of flopped where the plot needed her to go. I don't see how "pushing back" against life and acting fierce in the headlights of opposition is considered insecurity. You can feel confident about yourself without bending over for some arbitrary "prophecy" or vague title that no one knows the meaning of. The Emma I knew would've let Regina pout in 4A and defended her decision to rescue Zarian. She might've shown some good will if Regina showed up in public as a co-parent of Henry, but she wouldn't beg to be friends with her. People like Regina do not respect submission. They simply take advantage of it. I've been in situations similar to Emma's in 4x05 and doing what she did never remedies anything.

Edited June 21, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

I think basically Emma's character was fully developed in the writers minds at the end of S3 so they basically just threw angst at her all the time. Occasionally, that angst would involve things that they'd skipped over in their rush to get to whatever plot point they needed (Emma's relationship with her parents, developing her magic, emotional walls with a romantic partner), but that was always neatly resolved by the end of the episode with a quick hug or something equally frustrating. There was no development to be had by those types of stories. By 4B, Emma was somehow inherently the evilest evil before she was born and the way that was handled just showed her falling further into a depressing life that it seemed like she didn't even want. 

One of the biggest reasons I enjoyed the Captain Swan relationship was because it was pretty much the only thing that ever brought a smile to Emma's face. Her life sucked. Her friends and family were so quick to give up on her or believe the worst (evil fetus, anyone?) and I just wanted her to sail away on the Jolly Roger with Hook and never return. She'd have been a lot happier that way. As it was, watching the heroic protagonist slowly descend into an endless depression and be handed a death sentence all while being castigated for having feelings about things was not a fun process. I am forever thankful that Jen Morrison opted out after S6 because I shudder to think of the shell should would have been after a seventh season.

[Camera One]

You can see for each character where they reached the endpoint of their story in A&E's minds.  The problem is even past that point, the Writers couldn't figure out what new directions to take the characters, so they got stuck in the same rut with the same stories, which had to become more egregious.  That explains Hook having yet another flashback where he did something he regrets in Season 6 but now to make it "big" enough, it was to kill David's father.  Emma had already reached her epiphany in Season 3 or maybe 4A so past that, it was just depressing angst.  CS itself as a couple had reached their happy place by 5B, so that necessitated the wedge in Season 6 with the breakup.  At its root, the reason was the lack of creativity.  At least they fared better than Snow, who had already reached her shelf life by 2A in the Writers' minds.  They fast-tracked and jumped ahead in the development of everyone, except maybe Hook (who probably got the most gradual and sustained arc), and then they had to tread water. 

Edited June 22, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

The show started to get bleak, dark, and hopeless starting from Season 4--everything A&E kept claiming it was not. Season 6 really was the worst, though. The angst was relentless and there was zero humor to lighten the situation. The amateurish writing and the character-destroying storylines made everything worse. It was depressing to watch writers ruin their own characters for the sake of "drama". 

[Shanna Marie]

The idea of strength through vulnerability works in theory, and I'm sure it was JMo's headcanon. She seems to be trying to inject some of that into her portrayal. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the actual plots. To some extent, it shows up in Emma's relationship with Hook, where opening up to him and talking about her past gives her the strength to face it, like dealing with the Ingrid stuff and her time in foster care or when she talked to him about her parents and the eggnapping thing. There is a difference between the way she is with him dealing with all that in season 4 and the way she interacted with Mary Margaret in dealing with the season one stuff. Maybe the Camelot parts of 5A also fit, where he was able to keep her grounded while coping with the Dark One. I'm not sure season one Emma would have handled the Dark One thing well at all.

But all the rest of the plots didn't really carry any of that out. There was no real difference in her strength or in the outcome whether she was doing WALLS! or telling others about things. Learning that she was doomed had nothing to do with how strong or how vulnerable she was, and her being so fatalistic about it all wasn't character growth. Lowering the walls to be vulnerable to people she cared about didn't mean she had to be a doormat, had to drop her own life to deal with everyone else's messes, or had to chase after people and beg to be their friend. I guess maybe if you squint really hard, you could say that the season 6 mess with Hook had something to do with her being disappointed and hurt because she thought she could be vulnerable with him and express her feelings, but then he seemingly abandoned her for doing so, but the writing doesn't really hold that up because there's a big difference between her expressing her feelings about his actions and giving him the ring back and telling him to go away until he figured things out. If you feel secure enough with someone to tell them you're disappointed in them, you have good reason to be hurt when they leave. When you tell someone to leave, it's a different story. The whole plot was stupid, but if they'd just cut out the part where she gave the ring back and told him to go until he figured it out, her response would have made more sense.

Basically, the writers talked a big show about what they were conveying, but they didn't actually put it into the series. I would love to ask them for specific examples of how they were showing hope.

On another note, thinking more about WHook's redemption arc, I realized that he's actually closer to Regina's redemption arc than Hook Prime's. Rather than changing because he realized how badly he screwed up, he changed because there was something that mattered more to him. Hook Prime realized that actually getting his revenge (or thinking he did) didn't change anything, so he realized that he'd wasted his life on revenge, and because of his actions no one (including Emma) liked him. He'd lost his way and had lost so many opportunities for something better. WHook changed because his daughter mattered more to him than revenge, which is similar to Regina changing because otherwise she'd lose Henry (well, season 2 Henry. 3 and on Henry would probably have been okay with whatever she did). Though at least WHook not only gave up revenge, he also gave up his ship and truly made his daughter a priority, and he struck a truce of sorts with both versions of Rumple, saying he wasn't after revenge on them anymore, which is more than Regina ever did with Snow. I don't think WHook ever explicitly said he was wrong the way Hook Prime did, but Hook Prime's redemption happened in the present, so we saw a lot more of it, while WHook's change was in the past, and we only saw a couple of flashbacks about that phase in his life, so we don't know what else he might have said or done. He was Rogers the whole time in the present, so he couldn't be dealing with his past.