Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-33386384-20180525212302/@comment-25926288-20180714104949

I think it goes without say that we all know that Nook was just a stand-in for Hook as JMo didn’t re-up the contract.

I’ll go a tad more extreme and say that neither Regina nor Hook had room to grow this season. Hook was a retread, fast version. Regina sucked up screentime and what can we say was the result? Nothing at all. Could have still had them, but treated them more like torchbearers passing down, not the continual pillars of the show.

Like the police work on the show was always shoddy, but you can excuse small town politics, but for HH, they legit abandoned all resemblance of a police drama when they let a murder suspect go and never see any case or form of justice. I don’t even think we actually saw any real investigation.

Investigation 1: Into Belfrey’s corruption. Had the most police work and it was just attempted framing and a brief arrest before they just randomly “won” the investigation that was sort of forgotten about.

Investigation 2: A facade for the awaken to ponder, not the cursed.

It’s also along the lines of Roni and Weaver who lasted for a few episodes before being theirselves again.

If you boil down the season to its three standing pillars (Snow was exchanged for Hook mid-Once, Emma is gone):

1. Regina stagnates as every attempt to alter her position fall through.

2. Hook retreads a quick, intense version of a redemption story, helped to pass on much character capital to others, but was lessened due to nothing tangible being expressed onscreen.

3. Rumple leads a major storyline as he pops in an out of existence depending on the episode and it concludes by voiding all that preceded for a last minute redemptive twist.

So, in affect, the writers were smashing down the pillars in hope that other characters could pick up the pieces, but the only two newbies that got something out of the season was Henry and Alice.