Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-25926288-20170618042330/@comment-25926288-20170910121639

In all those cases, I think the middle ground is the more accurate approach.

They could prop up the perp. They could down play the perp's actions. They could handle it poorly.

I think more often than not we see the latter, though it could be interpret any of the three ways.

Example: Killain's suicide/self-harm attempt to get attention from Emma.

A certain sect of fans thinks that the show is propping him up as the moral high ground in that situation. However, they aren't. On the contrary, they are actually downplaying his actions.

Example: Regina's treatment of Graham.

A certain sect of fans think that they are propping up her, when she was being presented in a negative light. But of course, they weren't propping her up. Through the interviews and stuff, they actually instead...downplay her actions.

Example: Rumple starts threatening Belle and creating a hostile environment for her.

A certain sect of fans think they were propping up Belle (which is weird when they act as though she was abusing Rumple....which she wasn't). But nope, they were downplaying Rumple's actions (in interviews) which led to it being presented and executed poorly.

Basically, all these are actual real-life situations. They aren't propping up the bad guys (to be viewed positively) because they'd be pull off air/replaced. They rather downplay or poorly execute things which happens far too often in our society.