Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A+ | 11 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT In A New York Minute
By Cindy McLennan | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.17.2013
Back in the bar, Emma's voice is choked with tears. "You left me and let me go to prison because Pinocchio told you to?" When Neal tries to explain himself, Emma interrupts: "I loved you." Neal stammers out that he was trying to help her. Yeah, right. There's a mug of beer right there, Emma, throw it in his face, march out, grab your kid, tell Gold where he is and be done with this scum bum. Emma wonders how it could be helpful to let her go to jail. Neal corrects her: "By getting you home." Emma: "Are you telling me that us meeting was coincidence? Because how the hell did that happen if it wasn't in your plan, or your father's?" Neal says, "Think about it. He wanted you to break the curse. Us meeting could have stopped it. Maybe it was fate." Okay, what? Why wouldn't fate want the curse broken? I'd rather think that maybe the curse didn't want the curse broken and it caused them to meet. Still, I say Emma was fated to break the curse, and whether or not Neal stayed with her, I think that would have happened. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, until I'm shown (rather than told) something that contradicts it.
Emma says (to Neal, not to me), "You believe in [fate]?" Neal says, "You know there's not a ton I remember about my father that doesn't suck, but he used to tell me there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design, and there's nothing we can do about it. Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny -- whatever you want to call it. The point is, maybe we met for a reason. Maybe something good came from us being together." Emma's expression softens. Clearly, she is thinking of their son. These thoughts only deepen her resolve. She whispers, "No. Not that I can think of. I just went to jail. That's it." Neal shifts in his seat and averts his gaze. Emma stands. "It doesn't matter, now. I'm over it. And you." Neal looks down. As a smile plays around his lips, he looks back at Emma. "Why do you wear the uh... key chain I got you?" It's hanging from a long chain around Emma's neck. She grabs the swan, pulls it off, and sets it down in front of Neal. "To remind myself never to trust someone again." She waits a moment then tells Neal it's time to go. "I made a deal with your father I'd bring you to him." Neal is alarmed. "You made a deal with him?" He tells Emma she doesn't have to uphold her end of the bargain and pleads with her to tell Rumpy she couldn't find him. "You do that -- you never have to see me again." The Who and I are tempted to call that a bargain, the best you've ever had, Emma, but then I think about this episode and its point. We can't control everything, but only we control our choices. Emma's going to think it over during the commercial and get back to us.