Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25703308-20150427001401/@comment-5106672-20150428184600

Well, it's true that, in regard of characters developement, the timeline in the show is extremely condensed. For us it takes a week (occasionally two) between an episode and the next, for them it's a few hours, on rare occasion a few days in-between. I remember people being very mad at Belle's amnesia lasting for so long back in S2, but it actually lasted only a few days at best in-universe. It felt very long because there were many pauses in-between the episodes.

Here it's pretty much the same: yesterday Rumple decided to get the ink and Regina took Belle's heart; today, he had to clean up that part before he could proceed; tomorrow he'll be after the ink again.