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stahlop · 4 years ago

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Once Upon a Time 3x04 “Nasty Habits” Review

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So Neal still has major trust issues when it comes to his father. Emma still has ‘feelings’ for Neal that she never got resolve because of his death (more on that in Emma’s section), and Tink (yes, she told Emma to call her this so that is what I’ll be using from now on) pretty much has decided they’re on a suicide misson. And David’s still being a selfish ass.

Summary: Gold and Neal rescue Henry by making everyone, including Henry fall asleep, and Neal reveals his deep seated trust issues with his father are still alive and well. Hook takes everyone to Bae’s cave for clues on how he escaped, and in the Enchanted Forest, we discover that Peter Pan and the Pied Piper of Hamelin are the same person.

Opening: Lost Boy dancing

Character Observations:

Rumplestiltskin/Gold: Rumple is essentially holding Bae hostage by being the Dark One. No one wants to play with him because they’re afraid of Rumple. And this whole scene is obviously supposed to take place before Bae went through the portal in The Return, but that was filmed almost two years ago and the actor playing Bae went from 13 to 15 and looks it. Anyway, Rumple just wants Bae to be happy, but Bae won’t be happy trapped in their hovel. Rumple offers to build him a castle (maybe this is why he knew to look for a castle in The Heart of the Truest Believer?), but Bae just wants to have friends. Bae thinks Rumple doesn’t trust him, but Rumple is quick to tell him he does trust him, it’s his enemies he doesn’t trust. And this is the theme of Rumple and Gold’s arc. Trust. Bae thinks Rumple thinks he won’t come back, and you can see by the look on his face that the thought has occurred to him, but he insists it’s Bae’s safety that he’s worried about. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Bae. Rumple comes home later with a crown (because of the castle he’s going to have them live in), and Bae is gone. He looks shaken when he realizes Bae isn’t there. He traces Bae to the city of Hamelin, first accusing them of taking Bae, but then realizing that boys have gone missing. The man in town exposits how only some boys heard music and their parents didn’t believe them when they told them about it. Rumple is going to take this piper down! Rumple’s just hanging out on a rooftop when he hears the music and starts seeing teenaged boys climbing out their windows. Rumple follows them and sees a whole group of boys dancing around a fire wearing masks. He confronts the piper who turns out to be Peter Pan. And Rumple looks scared the second Pan takes off his hood and calls him ‘laddie’. Pan does nothing but berate Rumple. We get hints to their relationship as Pan makes reference to Rumple being all grown up. He also tells Rumple the reason he can hear the pipe is because only boys who are lonely and lost can hear it. Pan goes on about Rumple being abandoned and he’s really cruel about it and you can see how upset Rumple is getting and it’s really weird to see him so vulnerable. Pan wants to make a deal for Bae. If presented with the choice, Bae chooses if he’ll go home or go with Pan. Rumple refuses to make the deal. I know we’re supposed to think it’s because he doesn’t trust Bae (and Bae tells him this later on), but come on. What kind of parent would make that kind of a deal? You don’t bargain with your child’s kidnapper! Rumple doesn’t take the deal. He eventually does find Bae in the circle of dancing boys, and it almost looks like he’s going to give Bae the choice that he and Pan had talked about, but instead, he poofs them back to their hovel. Bae is pissed, and accuses Rumple of abusing him with his power. But no, turns out Rumple’s known Pan since he was a boy and they were incredibly close. He wasn’t immortal until he went to Neverland. But he ended up betraying Rumple so he can’t be trusted. So who is Pan to Rumple? Friend, brother, another relation? He insinuates that Pan is darker than he is. But Bae doesn’t think anyone could be worse than him. Rumple tells him he had no choice and he had to protect him, but Pan told Bae about the deal he’d offered him (of course he did), so Bae knows Rumple could have let Bae make his own choice. And this whole thing just goes to show that teenage boys are the same whether they’re in our realm or the Enchanted Forest. They don’t understand that sometimes what their parents do to protect them is not what they wanted them to do. Rumple took Bae out of a bad situation that he knew more about than Bae. But all Bae sees is his father not trusting him to make the right decision, so he leaves. Rumple looks devastated. I’m going to assume it’s not too long after this that Bae gets the bean to go to the Land Without Magic.

Gold is getting ready to go to war, complete with war paint. Imaginary Belle tells him he was always more comfortable behind a mask and she was the only one who saw past it. And then they go through this whole thing where he needs to be the monster to save Henry and Belle doesn’t want him to lose himself because of the prophecy. That he has a nasty habit of self-preservation (I wouldn’t call that a nasty habit. Who wants to die?), but since Neal died, Gold has nothing left to live for, not even Belle. He says she’ll eventually see the monster, despite that she always says she sees the man behind the monster. So is he saying there is no man behind the monster? Or that he’s just going back to being the monster without any chance of being the man again? Whatever it is, he’s convinced it’s the only way for him to save Henry. He goes to Pan’s camp and doses some of the Lost Boys with poppy powder? He’s certainly not using his magic here. Maybe it’s so Pan can’t detect him? He grabs one of their spears and that’s when a very much alive Neal comes crashing out from the woods. Since Gold believes Neal to be dead, he thinks Neal is a figment of his imagination to remind him of how he failed as a father. But he’ll sacrifice himself for Henry. He’s about to kill him when Neal calls him Papa, and Gold finally realizes that it is truly Neal. Gold tells him that no one in their group has the stomach for what needs to be done to rescue Henry (and I’d say Regina does, considering she’s almost sacrificed herself several times for Henry just to be saved at the last minute), and that Neal doesn’t have the stomach either. Neal thinks they can do this without hurting or killing anyone, but Gold doesn’t agree with him. Gold tells Neal that Pan is too powerful and the only way to beat him is if you’re willing to die. Neal tells him there’s another way. Gold ponders this as if he never considered there could be another way. Especially since this other way is apparently using squid ink, something Gold has experience in using and has had used against him. Gold uses some sort of sleeping spell to take down everyone in Pan’s camp, including Henry, although it doesn’t work on Pan. They confront each other and Pan reveals he knows Bae is with him. Neal shoots at Pan, who once again catches the arrow before it hits him, but Neal coated the shaft and not the tip. Gold and Neal grab Henry once Pan is frozen. Pan tells Neal about the prophecy and how Gold is there to kill Henry, but they need to get out of the camp and away from Pan, so they leave. Neal is understandably upset about this, but Gold reminds him that Pan lies. Neal eventually gets him to tell him about the prophecy. Neal is convinced that Gold is going to try and kill Henry to subvert the prophecy, despite the fact that Gold said he was willing to die for Henry when he thought Neal wasn’t real. Gold tries to get Neal to trust that he’s willing to die for Henry, but Neal doesn’t think he can believe him. Neal says the only way he can trust Gold is if he gives him the dagger. Unfortunately, Gold gave it to his shadow in Lost Girl and can’t give it to Neal to prove his trustworthiness. Neal understands that at this moment, Gold will do anything to save Henry, but he also knows that once he’s back in Storybrooke and happy with Belle, he may not have that same notion, and will want to live out his happy ending rather than be ‘undone’ by Henry. Gold insists that Neal is his happy ending and that saving Henry is his redemption. He just needs Neal to have faith in him. Neal basically tells him he can never believe him since he left him behind all those years ago (which brings Gold on the verge of tears), and then doses him with the squid ink so he can’t follow him. Gold is terrified for Neal. He knows Pan will find him without his protection, but Neal tells him he has no choice. I mean, Neal did live a lot of years on Neverland, it’s not like he doesn’t know his way around and how to hide from Pan. But Gold just sees his son leaving him again and knowing that he’s failed to protect him. The squid ink wears off and Gold is alone with his thoughts (Belle), who talks him through whether he’s willing to die for Henry now that Neal is alive. She tells him habits can be broken and he tells her to go away. He doesn’t want to hear what she has to say. And now he’s really all alone.

Bae/Neal: Bae is lonely. He has no friends and his father won’t let him leave the house because he’s afraid his enemies would use Bae against him. So what does he do? He gets lured out of the hovel by Pan when he plays a song for lonely and lost boys. And then he gets mad at his father when Rumple poofs them back home because he wanted to make the choice for himself. And, I’m sorry, I get that Bae is a teenager at this point (he’d be 14 since Rumple is the Dark One and he was still 14 when he went through the portal), and teenager’s think everything is about them, but this has nothing to do with Rumple trusting Bae to make the right decision. I get that Bae wants the freedom to live his life (as most teenagers do), but running away and then hoping your parent lets you make the right decision as to whether you stay with your potential kidnapper or go home with your parent is not about trust. It’s about good parenting. So suck it up Bae. Papa made the right decision to take you out of there.

Neal, on the other hand, still doesn’t trust his father. And this is more because of his father choosing his power over him. Neal is captured by Felix who calls him stupid for coming back, but Neal manages to until the knot that Felix had tied his hand up in and punches him out. He literally runs into his father attempting to rescue Henry, and Gold almost kills him because he doesn’t think Neal is real (which makes sense since he was told that Neal died). Neal is surprised to see his father since he only saw Emma in the crystal ball, or maybe because he doesn’t expect his father to care about his son. Either way, for someone who spent lots of time in Neverland, he seems to think it really weird that Gold doesn’t believe he’s real (isn’t the whole point of Neverland to use your imagination). It isn’t until he calls him Papa that Gold finally believes it’s him. Neal doesn’t even get into how he survived when Gold asks, just that Robin Hood’s debt is paid. Neal wants to know where Emma is, but Gold informs him that he left them all on Hook’s ship. Neal doesn’t seem too happy about Gold’s intentions of needing to kill Lost Boys and Pan to get Henry. Gold tells him he doesn’t have the stomach to do what needs to be done to save Henry, but Neal tells him he’ll do what he needs to do. To be honest, Neal really needs to think about killing Pan, because he knows what he’s capable of and he knows that Pan could get to Henry once they get him off Neverland. So the whole not killing Pan route doesn't seem like the smartest course of action on Neal’s part. Anyway, Gold tells Neal that the only way to beat Pan is to be willing to die, but Neal knows of another way. He calls on a giant squid so that Gold can extract the squid ink. So, Neal is smart enough to coat the shaft of the arrow in squid ink, knowing that Pan will catch it and it will immobilize him, but, unfortunately, squid ink does not immobilize the mouth. Instead of Neal and Gold taking Henry and just fleeing, they listen to Pan spout off about the prophecy that Pan insists means Gold is there to kill Henry. Gold takes them to the other side of the island where Neal is freaking out, but Gold placates him enough to make him think that Pan is playing games. I mean, that is a hard decision to make, believe Pan or the father you have a bad relationship with. Neal attempts to wake up Henry but can’t because of the spell, so he gets back into it with Gold. Eventually, Gold tells him about the prophecy, and how he was planning on killing the boy until he found out it was his own grandson. Neal does not take kindly to this information. Gold is begging Neal to believe him, to let him help, that he would give up his life for Henry, but Neal has a hard time believing this. Neal wants the dagger from Gold to prove that he trusts him, but Gold doesn’t have it. Neal finds this too convenient and feels his father has an excuse for everything. Neal finally tells him why he doesn’t trust him. Because today he’ll do the right thing, but once he’s settled into a happy life with Belle, he’ll decide that he wants to stay happy, and Henry will be in the way of that. Gold tries to convince Neal that he is his happy ending, but Neal tells him he left his own son for the dagger, how could he think it would be any different. The whole time he’s been holding Gold’s hands and he has actually dosed him with squid ink. He takes Henry and leaves a heartbroken Gold behind. Neal finds the remnants of a campsite and assumes it’s Emma, but Pan and the Lost Boys are lying in wait. They grab Henry, and Neal swears he’ll get Henry back, but Pan says if he’d only stayed with his father Henry would’ve probably been safe. Pan also mocks Neal for not having an exit plan, especially since no one leaves the island without his permission. Neal is pretty sure he can escape since he did it before. But Pan tells him he wouldn’t be too sure of that, since he’s back on the island like he never left (um, he’s an adult now, so that’s a lot different than the last time he was there). Neal starts to realize that Pan may have let him go and Pan says everyone is right where he wants them. Henry finally starts to come around, and Neal yells out for him as the Lost Boys take him somewhere on Pan’s bidding.

Emma: Tink basically tells them that without an exit plan she’s not helping them. Emma tells the group she’s right, Neal taught her to never break in somewhere without a way out (and as we learn later, he learned that from Pan). Hook lets them know that Neal is the only one who’s left the island without permission and takes them to the cave Neal lived in when he was on the island. Emma is in shock at all the whole thing. Hook wonders if she notices any clues, but she’s just impressed by the drawings. Hook tells her Bae got it from his mother and it gets a little awkward. Emma lights a coconut candle and starts looking for more clues. She realizes that Hook cared for Bae with the way he talks about him, and things get a little uncomfortable between them again. Emma deems them just a bunch of pictures. Emma figures out that her coconut candle actually has a top on it that makes a star map. They think that’s the way he got off the island. Emma gets upset when Hook can’t read the star map because he thinks it’s in code. She runs out of the cave and Mary Margaret and David try to talk to her, but she’s trying to keep her emotions in check. She tells them she’s not sad about him dying, she’s pissed off because she thought he didn’t love her when he left her, but he really did. And she can’t tell him how angry it makes her that she can’t do anything about all her feelings now, because he’s dead. She tells Mary Margaret and David that she knew she still loved him when he came back into their lives. And here’s where I have to say something about Emma’s reaction. I know a lot of fans who wanted her back with Neal use this as the reason why. Emma obviously loves him and he loves her and Neal’s apologized for what he did and they love each other and blah, blah, blah. But here’s the thing. Neal was just engaged to Tamara a few days ago. He’d moved on, content that Emma had broken the curse and was living her happily ever after while he was too much of a chicken shit to confront his father. Emma may still love Neal (lord knows why), but it’s the love that she had for him when she was 17. It’s that first love that stays with you and that you look back on with rose colored glasses no matter what really happened. Emma doesn’t know Neal now. She’s barely spent any time with him. And Neal doesn’t know Emma now. And all we’ve seen is his condescension towards her. Are we really going to believe that the strong woman Emma has become now, the one who doesn’t put up with Regina or Gold, the woman who slayed a dragon, the woman who confronted a giant, and who now has magic, would put up with the man who let her take the fall for his crimes and go to jail, forcing her to give up her child in the process? Emma may still love Neal, but she’s not in love with him. And yes, she’s upset, but she’s just seen that he was as lost as she was as a child (if not more), and I think she’s finally realized that he’s gone and not coming back (just wait a few days, the island is not that big), and that’s where the emotions are coming from.

Mary Margaret/David: I know, I’ve put them together all season, but they don’t really do anything away from each other. Emma has put a plan into motion but when Tink finds out there is no exit plan, she basically tells them it’s suicide to enact it. David pulls out the whole ‘we find each other’ line, but Tink is not going to help them until there’s something a little more concrete. She peaces out and David is about to go after her, but Emma tells them that Tink is right. They need an exit plan. David asks Hook how he got off, but he’s vague and just says Pan probably won’t repeat the deal they made. Hook brings them to a cave and David volunteers to help open the door with Hook. Hook tells him he doesn’t look so hot, meaning he can see the Dreamshade affecting him, but David just quips that it’s a million degrees in the jungle and he’s plenty hot. Hook wonders how much longer he’ll keep up the charade of hiding his sickness from his family. David wants to know why Hook cares so much, and Hook wants to know why David doesn’t seem to care. David feels that he doesn’t want to burden them while they’re looking for Henry, especially when there’s no hope for a cure. Hook tells him that heroes always believe in hope. David wonders if Hook is keeping something from him, but Hook insists that hope and reality are two different things. He repeats that David will never make it off the island alive. David is resigned to his fate once again. Inside the cave Emma realizes Neal lived there and Mary Margaret is hopeful that Neal left some sort of clue as to how he escaped. They find the star map and realize that the only person who can read it is Neal. Mary Margaret and David follow out an upset Emma. After Emma tells them about her sadness and anger, and then leaves, Mary Margaret gets upset because she doesn’t know how to comfort her daughter. That’s the first thing a mother learns and she missed it. David understands and feels the same way. Mary Margaret tells David she wouldn’t know how to move on if David were to die before her. David insists that she would move on and be happy without him. Mary Margaret is thankful that nothing will happen to him then. David looks extremely guilty.

Pan: In the past, he has become the Pied Piper to lure unloved and lost boys to him (and saying that to Rumple gives him the idea to name his band of boys the Lost Boys). He has a panpipe that only lost boys can hear. Rumple confronts him after Bae runs away. Pan is luring boys to Neverland while they’re awake so he will have friends there (sounds like he’s lonely too). They’ve only been able to come to Neverland in their dreams previously. Pan is a complete ass to Rumple. He makes fun of him for having been abandoned as a boy, mocks him for his wife running off, and now his biggest fear has happened, his son has left him. Rumple doesn’t think that’s true, so Pan wants him to test that out. Give Bae the choice to stay or leave and see what he chooses. Rumple refuses to take the deal. And man, who pissed in Pan’s Cheerios because he obviously has some pent up anger issues when it comes to Rumple. He’s just so angry and he seems to derive some sick pleasure out of tormenting Rumple and seeing him close to tears. He’s like an abuser of some sort, and I get the feeling that he was a bully or abuser to Rumple as a child and that’s why Rumple has reverted back to how he was before becoming the Dark One. Pan again mocks Rumple, telling him he doesn’t recognize Bae dancing around because he’s actually happy. Pan goads Rumple into making the deal with Bae, but he doesn’t, and Pan says he’s going to regret it.

Currently, in Neverland, Pan is trying to get Henry to believe he’s brought him there to save magic. The Lost Boys are dancing and celebrating because of it. Pan tries to get Henry to go out and dance by playing his panpipe, but Henry doesn’t hear it! This confuses Pan greatly. All Henry’s been saying is how his family is coming for him. He is there because he has the heart of the truest believer. Why would Pan think he feel unloved and lost? He’s about to explain to Henry why he should be hearing it, but Felix comes to tell him that Neal escaped. At first he’s angry, but once he realizes Neal and his father have been reunited, he feels this is perfect for his game. Rumple uses a sleeping spell to make all the Lost Boys and Henry fall asleep. He, again, mocks Rumple, now, for coming to save his family, and speaking of family, reveals Neal is with him. He can’t resist getting in another dig about Rumple abandoning Bae, and then Neal shoots an arrow at Pan. He catches it and basically calls Neal an idiot for not remembering how powerful Pan is, but Neal catches him off guard when he reveals he didn’t coat the tip in squid ink. Pan is impressed, but he makes sure to let Neal know about the prophecy and his father’s intention to kill Henry before they leave. Pan ruins Neal’s plans for finding Emma and the rest of the group, and also tells him sticking with his father would’ve been the smart thing to do. He reminds Neal that there is no escaping Neverland and a very smarmy Neal, tells him he did it once, but Pan tells Neal that he’s right back where he escaped from, and basically insinuates that he let him escape because everyone is right where he wants them to be (that sounds a lot like Rumple getting captured before the curse and being exactly where he was meant to be). They take Henry back and take Neal somewhere, not sure where yet,the Lost Boys they know where to take him. Back at camp, the Lost Boys are dancing around the fire again, and Henry finally wakes up. Henry remembers his father calling for him, but gets upset when he realizes it was just a dream since Neal is dead. Apparently, that’s enough for him to feel unloved and lost, because now he can hear the panpipes and dances with the other boys. Honestly, I’d like to believe that Henry joins in because he has no friends and this is the closest he’s going to get to having them.

Hook: He is very sensitive in this episode. He’s very upset that David is keeping the fact that he was scratched by the Dreamshade from his family. He looks very upset when David asks him if he’s been keeping a cure from him. Hook is very deliberate in his wording when he says David won’t make it off the island alive. You can see his jaw twitch when he says it. He brings the gang to Neal’s cave and you can see that he regrets the actions that led to Bae living on Neverland. It does seem that Bae and Hook had some sort of relationship after what we saw in And Straight on Til Morning. Otherwise, how would Hook know where Bae lived. Unless he was just watching him from afar. After they discover the star map, Hook toots his own horn by telling them how he taught Bae to navigate by the stars, but he also taught him the importance of secrecy, so he can’t read the map. And while this is upsetting to Emma, Hook seems to have some fatherly pride in Neal using what he taught him.

Questions:

What happened to Greg after the shadow was ripped from his body that there wasn’t much left of him? Did the Lost Boys tear him to pieces or are there wild animals we haven’t seen yet?

Did Bae live in the cave before becoming a Lost Boy? Was he a Lost Boy first and then ran away to live in his cave? Was he always at odds with Pan? If so, why was he ever considered a Lost Boy if he didn’t blindly follow Pan? Why does Hook know where Bae lived when Bae wanted nothing to do with him?

Was Neal always planning on using squid ink to immobilize Pan? How was this possible if he needed Gold to get the ink out for him?

Does anyone else think it’s weird that it’s only teenagers that Pan’s music seems to affect (with the exception of Henry at the end)? Isn’t the whole point of Neverland not to grow up? Isn’t a teenager pretty close to being a grown up?

How does Pan know about Milah?

Did Mary Margaret really suggest the coconut with holes in it was a colander? Come on! Mary Margaret lived in the forest and she couldn’t think of a better reason why he might have a cup-like object with tiny holes in it?

Did Bae recognize Pan from this adventure? Did he know about Pan wanting to take them to Neverland? Is that why he was so insistent about Wendy not going with the shadow?

How does Bae know that Belle is back in Gold’s life? Wasn’t Belle still Lacey the last time he saw her?

Why is Henry still asleep and all the Lost Boys are awake when he’s recaptured?

Observations:

It’s nice that Emma’s false eyelashes have stayed on throughout their Neverland adventures.

Regina’s expression when Tink tells her that nothing much was left of Greg was amazing.

Hey look, Neal actually took off his coat because it’s hot in the jungle!

Rumple calls Hamelin a rathole of a town, which is funny because the story of the Pied Piper is that he gets all the rats out of town with his music.

Blowing into a giant shell is how you call a giant squid from the bottom of a bottomless ocean (as Gold told Henry that’s where they live in Into the Deep).

Drawings that I noticed in Bae’s cave: P & S for Port and Starboard like Hook showed him on his ship, sea turtle, the Darling Family, possible hands in a portal (his and his father’s letting go of him?), the Darling house (and two stars above), Hook’s hook, a boot squashing a snail, a hand holding a writing utensil.

Pan is playing a Pan Pipe, which is named for Pan who is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, and rustic music. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. The literary character of Peter Pan is also named for Pan.

Pan calls Rumple laddie, which makes sense if he knew Pan as a child, but not as much if they were children together. Laddie is usually something a grown up calls a child, not what children call each other.

Still no mention of Rumplestiltskin’s mother.

Pan taught Neal about never breaking into a place without having an exit plan strategy.

So, I really hate Pan. He’s a bully, and an asshole. While Rumplestiltskin is evil and dark, he at least had a goal, to get his son back. Pan just seems to derive pleasure from torturing Rumple. Why that is hasn’t been revealed yet, but Rumple has decided that he doesn’t want Belle, his voice of reason, hanging around anymore because of Pan’s antics. Henry apparently feels lost since ‘dreaming’ about his father, despite the fact that he was pretty confident about his family coming to rescue him at just the beginning of the episode. David is getting worse, Mary Margaret would die without David, and Emma has finally realized Neal is really dead.

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