Episode Report Card 118 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT PANdemic
By Cindy McLennan | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.20.2013
We open back at Neal's cave. Hook tells the team how he showed Neal to navigate by the stars. The gang thinks this means Hook can read the map, but Hook also taught him that pirates encode their maps. When Emma realizes Neal is the only one who can read it, and since she thinks Neal is dead, she rushes out of the cave. Her parents go after her. Emma says, "Now is not the time," and I guess she means for talking to her parents. Snow doesn't care. She dives right in and says she can't imagine her daughter's sadness. Emma says, "I'm not sad. I'm pissed." Hooray! "Yes, Neal just died, but I lost him years ago. All that time, thinking he didn't love me, only to find out he did and it was too late. I can't even tell him how angry that makes me..." I'm going to stop quoting her here, because the rest of what she says leaves me far less enthusiastic. The bottom line is: she knew the second she saw him again that she never stopped loving him. Let's just focused on the pissed off part. That's going to come in handy for what comes next. Snow is understandably upset that she has no idea how to comfort her own child. "It is the first thing a mother learns, and I don't know how." Charming knows, but he doesn't get to say much before Snow interrupts and says, "How can we even blame her? If you died I would not be able to move on." Charming says, "You must. I'm just saying every day where here, something bad could happen. If it did -- to me, I'd want you to move on -- to continue to be happy." Snow strokes his cheek and then hugs him as she tells him that nothing is going to happen to him. "...Not while I'm here." There's your hope, Charming, you dope. Tell her! Tell her! He doesn't listen. We cut back to...
Operation Henry's Last Camp. Neal lays down a still sleeping Henry, then spies Emma's sticks and stones map. Crouching down to examine it, he smiles and says, "Emma." Pan and the Lost Boys surround him. Pan chides his former charge. "I thought I taught you better. Never break in somewhere, unless you know the way out." Neal says he'll remember it next time, but Pan tells him there won't be one. He rubs Neal's choices in his face, saying that Rumpy could have protected Neal Pan, while wondering who would have protected Henry from Rumpy. Felix slings Henry up over his shoulders. Neal swears he'll get his son back. Pan tells Neal he doesn't understand. Neal got Henry. Pan has gotten him back. "That's the game. No, my boy. The real problem for you is that there is no escaping Neverland... without my permission." When Neal claims he did so before, Pan says, "Did you? Look where you are now. It's like you never left." Neal asks if Pan let him go the first time. Pan says, "I'm saying everyone's where I want them. Something to chew on." When Henry stirs, Pan orders Felix to take him away. A couple of the Lost Boys restrain Neal. Neal yells out Henry's name. "I'M ALIVE. DON'T GIVE UP HOPE, HENRY. I WILL COME FOR YOU." Pan's blathering the whole time, of course, but I'm tired of him, right now. He says he's reset the board and that the game is about to change. We cut to...