Failing Upwards

[oselle]

baylorsr informed me that Sera Gamble has been promoted to showrunner for Supernatural's sixth season.

I know that some of you fangirl her and I suppose it's always good to see women get ahead, especially in a field where women are so dramatically under-represented. Wish I could be happier, but I'm not. I'm not going to cheer just because we share the same gender. I don't think this will be good for the show and I don't think she deserves this.

I say that knowing I'm not qualified to say it because I have no idea what her day-to-day responsibilities have been on the show and how much she's contributed to it. I don't doubt that she's worked hard. However, in my observation, she did a good job as writer when whe was paired up with Raelle Tucker and ever since Tucker left, Gamble's episodes have usually not been that great and frankly, the overall tone of the show has changed a lot during the past three seasons, while she's been climbing the ranks to Executive Producer. She certainly hasn't done anything to add more interesting female characters to the show -- not that I think she has some sort of responsibility to do so "as a woman." But she helped to give us Bela and Ruby 2.0 so I'd say her contribution in that area has been less than impressive. The show's gotten more juvenile and less focused and the one thing that really made it work -- the relationship between Sam and Dean -- has been all but broken down with little hope of a satisfying reconciliation on the horizon, especially now that Gamble's in charge. Slapdash "fixes" seem to be her specialty, not thoughtful and well-written resolutions.

I hate her take on Dean. I especially hate her episode "It's a Terrible Life" which was such a load of shit as far as Dean's concerned that I've never forgiven her for it. I think she'd be right at home with the TWoP "suck it up!" brigade. Raelle Tucker knew how to write Dean -- Gamble's never warmed up to it. I hate her obsession with getting Sam into bed so that she can see Jared with his shirt off. I hate some of the stupid things I've heard her say in interviews. Her "Song Remains the Same" episode two weeks ago was the first good thing I've seen from her in ages -- and she wrote that with a partner. So maybe if she has lots of help, S6 won't be a total disaster but right now...I'm seeing a lot of weepy Dean and shirtless Sam and dumb jokes.

Within the past couple of weeks, two people that I know in my own professional life have gotten promotions that they didn't deserve. I doubt that Sera Gamble is as incompetent and unworthy as either one of these two obnoxious imbeciles but I just feel like this is part of a pattern. They call it "failing upwards." The less you do the more you get. Caring about your job and working hard at it and trying to be better at it gets you nowhere, while making a lot of noise about how great you are seems to fool everyone. I'm probably taking some of my personal frustrations out on Gamble but even so, I still have to say that this is very disappointing news.

I plan to spend the rest of my day chain smoking.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This is why the reaction of most of the public to our magazine is: My grandmother used to read that. You mean it still exists?

One of the top people running the workshop I went to last week said she liked this stuff so much she went to get a master's in executive training or whatever it's called.

The most complicated part seemed to be making a big binder for the Myers Briggs tests. And here I'd already gotten the same result taking a "which Harry Potter character/MBTI test."

Still Remus Lupin.

In a month I'm supposed to call someone and see if they've accomplished the goals they wrote on their paper airplane.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD. You just brought back such bad memories. When I was at Tom's of Maine they forced us all to take the MB test and it was the most endless and time consuming and pointless undertaking. Worst of all they told us we'd only have to share the results with our "team" (i.e., our department) and instead we had to share them at a day-long workshop where THEY MADE US WEAR OUR LETTERS PINNED TO OUR CHESTS. As in, "Oh hi, I'm an IMTP, I see you're an INTJ." On top of that the results were supposed to gauge our strengths and instead they were used to "challenge" us to "step out of our comfort zones" -- in other words, to do work that we were unsuited for. I got railroaded into a promotions/sales position that made me absolutely miserable and that, along with other factors, made me quit the job before I found another one and led to my eventual ruin and very unwilling move back to NYC. I remember reading something about the two broads who devised those tests and they were both a couple of crackpots and why the fuck anyone's still relying on a "personality test" that was developed by two daffy dames in an era when lobotomies and electroshocks were considered good psychotherapy is beyond me.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard. They figured out your strengths and then...chose your job according to your weaknesses. And this was supposed to be good for you, no doubt. Yeah. You may have hit on why there's a small population in Maine.

We just had to group in lines on either side of the room for each letter while they explained how our behavior was different, except of course that half the time they weren't.

I think the two dames were mother and daughter too. Somehow that makes them even daffier. Even the stuff that's helpful in the test is helpful because you learn it by living in the world and dealing with people who aren't you.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were mother and daughter. All I could think of was some middle-aged woman and her elderly mother coming up with this crazy shit while sitting in some horrific, mothball-smelling chintz-filled room. I also tend to picture them as having Nazi-ish leanings like the point of the test was weeding out the undesirables. I know that at some point the test had to be updated to take out some of the archaic shit from the original version. LOL, racial profiling no doubt.

And also...how many people need a test to tell them whether they're an introvert or an extrovert? I think by the time you're twelve or so you've got that sorted out. That test didn't tell me anything I hadn't already learned about myself in 30 years.