No show. This is not how you do this.
Emma does something legitimately against the law, against the code of conduct she wanted to set for herself, for Henry (see: her speech to Mary Margaret in Desperate Souls), and the consequence of this was that she could not see him for an undefined period of time—hell, she didn’t even get slapped with a restraining order. BUT THIS IS NOT EVEN SUBTEXT, THIS WAS THE ACTUAL PLOT OF THAT EPISODE. “Do bad things and you get punished”, this is Sesame Street simple to process.
And instead of allowing her, by her own action, to rectify these mistakes and earn her way back to good, August gives her the book to one-up Regina’s efforts and be the hero of the day. This is not how you give Emma a real honest journey from point A to to point B, you are, quite literally, handing out rewards. THIS IS NOT HOW A HERO IS MADE.
And how this show creates villainy is equally as dubious.
Regina: “I love you, take this token because I care about your happiness and want to make it better.” (And remember, she had nothing to do with the book being stolen in the first place! For Regina, this is as close as she comes to sincerity and personal vulnerability. This is the only way she understands affection, by giving.)
Henry: Completely denies her by ever-continuing DEFAULT, and just to twist the knife, complains that he can’t see Emma yet again. No recognition of her efforts or feelings, not even a little, not even when her only motive is to see him smile. Not a terribly wicked feat, that.
Really, what is a Henry? Does he not possess any compassion? Did he siphon all of his family’s propensity for selfish desire-fulfillment into a single being (the Charming’s one dominant character flaw that is easily traced between them)? Shouldn’t it be a more complicated issue than “my mother is Evil Forever and no matter what she does I can completely disregard it, with a clean conscience no less, because I am the ten year old Purveyor of Truths”?
How is this child the moral compass of this story when he doesn’t understand the basic fundamentals of compassion and selflessness? Why is Regina punished inexplicably as a plot device (poke the mayor with sharp objects, she’ll go cray cray and start killing things!), and why can’t Emma have an honest, organic plotline?
This episode was the very definition of contrived.
Somebody gets it!
(Source: docbrucebanner)
