Regarding this week's Castle's ( Read more... )
So on to Supernatural! This story about teens breaking into celebrity homes, including that of Paris Hilton, made me think that it was a pity that the SPN episode involving her was such a badly written one. ( Read more... )
It surprised me the other day to notice that I hadn't gone back and discussed what I felt were the strongest episodes of S4, the way I had with S1-S3. I'm not sure why that was but I think that, in part, I was often dissatisfied with episodes as a whole even while I was quite interested with them in part. It didn't take me but 30 seconds to figure out which three were the best though. ( Read more... )
Looks like the show is back on track this week. ( Read more... )
I've been thinking about the environment that SPN is set in. We know thanks to interviews and commentary done by Eric Kripke that the Midwest and the music of his youth, namely hard rock from the 1970s and early 80s, were central to his vision of the show. What's left out really is why. To some degree I think everything that creative people do is informed by their experiences in adolescence and we all, I think, tend to increasingly rely on those cultural touchstones the older we get. But I also wonder if it's because the Midwest and some of this music is overshadowed in the media by other representations of the U.S. ( Read more... )
Supernatural S5 seems to be following the Trek movie franchise in its even vs. odd number installments. With episode 4 already being a season standout, and episode 2 a less ambitious but still solid episode, episode 5 disappoints. ( Read more... )
I have to say I quite preferred this week's edition of the Dean and Cas show, and the Dean and Dean show wasn't bad either. ( Read more... )
For the first two episodes of this season I was writing down notes immediately after viewing the episode. Not so for this one( Read more... )
Snaps for Sera Gamble – there are some things in this episode I think she just nailed, and the rest was certainly passable. In some ways I think this episode was deceptively simple. As I started rewatching I realized she had actually packed a good bit of character development onto the screen, which is likely what made it so satisfying.( Read more... )
As part of the the Mini Meta Fest, some thoughts on the second of two prompts:
1. The slash vs het wars. aka: won't someone please think of the multishippers?
I definitely feel sympathy for this POV. As a reader of gen, het, and slash, I really don't understand why there should be conflict there. Perhaps because of my reading preferences, many of the writers I read repeatedly also write in more than one of these veins, so I have to wonder who it is who is having such problems with it?( Read more... )
As part of the the Mini Meta Fest, some thoughts on the first of two prompts:
4. Drug use, alcohol, smoking in fanfic
I had to laugh about getting this prompt, because the middle issue relates to something I've mentioned in a few conversations.( Read more... )
I'd like to begin with what may appear to be a slight digression. I've been wondering if what might make a certain genetic line of humans able to host angels was the result of some angel/human merger way back when. In fact, wouldn't it be interesting if Lucifer was the one who started that host/(maybe hunter) line to begin with? I know Lucifer's supposed to have hated humans but I don't think that would really matter either way. I was just thinking of how in Buffy S7 we discover that Dracula and Spike's hints in S5 and S6 were correct, and that the slayer power came from a demon/human merger. In fact, "empowering a slayer" looked not unlike what we see as demon possessions in SPN, with Buffy stuck in a devil's trap mystical circle while on the other side of the dimensional rift Willow sits in a salt circle mystical circle and tries to bring back.
Which leads me to some interesting developments in SPN S4 which seem to map out a philosophy for the show. ( Read more... )
![[mood icon]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/mood/weather/happy.gif){kind=small}
cheerfulBefore I go on to discuss what I think might take placein SPN S5, I wanted to throw out a quick observation about toothbrush use in SPN. If I remember right, the first time we ever saw them used was in S3, in Mystery Spot. The day started out normally – normal for Winchesters anyway. Then we see Sam thinking something strange was going on the next day as they brush teeth again, something abnormal in their normality. ( Read more... )
( Which leads us to S5, and looking back at what S4 was all about )
I've been mentioning recently in my reviews how much I've been missing the music of SPN in the episodes. As we all know, they were meant to be an integral part of the series, both as part of its retro feel, and also in telling us who these characters are. Out of curiosity I went and did a count, to see if we really are losing more music each season and this is what I came up with:
One thing that struck me about the hospital scene between Dean and Castiel in SPN 4.16, which I think many have mentioned, is how Dean was likening Castiel's role to John's when he tells him not to disappear leaving just cryptic remarks behind. Dean felt betrayed by that act of John's, and I think he felt betrayed by Castiel in this episode. Castiel didn't literally send Dean back to hell, but he did put him back there mentally. And both he and John have asked Dean to perform tasks that are unknowable and likely to result in failure. Dean had no idea how to protect Sam from himself, and still doesn't. He also has no idea how to set things right with the seals.
In either case, his failure results in a kind of apocalypse.
I found it interesting to realize that we haven't yet seen Sam hospitalized, whereas it's happened with Dean twice (three times if we count his sick ward scene in Folsom), John once, and Bobby once, and we have had stories take place, in part, in hospital settings such as Something Wicked and Bedtime Stories, both, interestingly enough, which involved children. There was also the psychiatric hospital in Asylum, and scenes in similar (unhaunted) institutions in HotH, I Know What You Did, ASS, plus the hospital interview scene in Fresh Blood. The only possible exception I could think of was the medical clinic setting of Croatoan, where Sam is attacked and is given some medical treatment.
So even though realistically speaking Sam and Dean should both be ending up in a hospital on a regular basis, why is it Dean that's always lying there near death? I'd speculate that there's two reasons.
Posted in support of The IJ Asylum Meme (January 2009 Edition)
It’s never struck me from interviews that Eric Kripke is really all that interested in the characters of Sam and Dean. I don’t mean to say he is disinterested but simply that it’s never been a focus of his. I gathered this from the DVD extras on S1 and it was pretty much confirmed from watching the Paley Festival session. For him SPN began as a case files type of story and the characters were literally an afterthought after his original idea was scrapped. I also gathered that it’s really Bob Singer, other writers and even Kim Manners who are more interested in the character exploration that most fic writers also latch onto, and who are largely responsible for fleshing out Sam and Dean. By comparison, for Joss Whedon the characters were everything and the story simply serviced our need to see the characters grow and and interact with one another.
I say this to explain why I think it’s impossible to determine from the outside what the intention actually was for Sam and Dean’s relationship because it seems to have been developed largely on the fly and with various hands at work on it. Certainly they were supposed to be both drawn together and yet antagonistic and I think that’s established pretty well in S1. But in watching “Asylum” (and “Skin”) in particular it seems to me that the relationship between the two was intended to be far more antagonistic than it was ever portrayed. While we can’t be too sure of the truth in what the shapeshifter tells Sam about how Dean resents him, as far as we can tell, Sam is being himself (if an enraged self) in Asylum when he tells Dean how much he hates him right back and is, in fact, willing to kill him. That’s a jump beyond annoyed, or resentful, the way anyone might feel about someone they’re in constantly close quarters with. At the end Sam tells Dean he didn’t mean it and it’s shrugged off, never to be spoken of again. My own sense was that Sam felt more guilty and alarmed at what he was capable of doing. This, after all, was a character who had never killed another person and who was as yet quite empathetic even with the spirits they hunted. You’d think that nearly killing anyone would have to truly shake him. ( Read more... )
Not long ago there was a blog post about how Supernatural compared to Buffy, and whether the poster should try out the show. Personally I thought these were two separate issues. While I found Buffy to be a high quality show in many ways, I've enjoyed those that aren't so good and I've enjoyed ones that may be better. To me that's like suggesting that one should only read one book series ever because others just aren't as good.
However the short answer is no, but I was intrigued by some of the arguments people made for why it was. The most interesting to me was where someone pointed out that the first of Buffy's landmark episodes, "Hush" didn't come along until S4, and we've only just reached that milestone with SPN. Aside from saying emphatically that "Heaven and Hell" was no "Hush," I thought that this wasn't true. I think the first landmark episode for Buffy was actually "Innocence."
My various meta posts on SPN S4 episodes can be found here. Spoilers for each of the episodes discussed but no future spoilers.
Writing about Henriksen in JiB and Bela in BDaBR in my last post made me want to take a look at the issue of recurring characters in SPN.
Some months ago I wrote about what I thought were the best written episodes of S1 and S2, and I thought I'd do the same with S3 now that it's ended. Also includes spoilers for SPN Rising Son Issues 1 and 2
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