I think the whole phone conversation was what you said at first -- a contrivance. They put those words in Dean's mouth so that Bobby would have an excuse to go off on him and holler some of the things the writers have heard the audience holler about. It doesn't matter that it was out of character for Dean, they just needed someone to give Bobby an opening. What makes it so ridiculous is that we've never seen Dean call up Bobby just to vent or whine or whatever, so it literally made no sense for Bobby to suddenly start yelling about how he's sick of these guys' issues -- unless Bobby's been reading the TWoP messageboards too. Yeah but beyond just pandering to TWoP, I think the writers just thinks it's funny to take Dean down a peg or give every episode. I guess it's switch up from having someone call him stupid so that's something. The other thing that I have observed is that whenever they want to prop another character, the do it at Dean's expense. I guess it's because they don't think Dean can be damaged in the audience's estimation. What they don't get is that all they're doing is damaging the other character.
I do think there was a lot of goodwill towards Jensen, which I suppose is nice, but I think the feel of a television episode (unlike a film) is more dependent upon the writing than the direction. I don't see why anyone would be relieved that Jensen did a good job since I can't imagine how Jensen -- or any director -- could fuck up an episode. Absolutely the quality of an episode is dependent primarily on the writing (and acting) but director's have a lot of influence over acting choices and also pacing and the visual elements of story-telling so they too can really screw stuff up even where there is a reasonably good script. For eg. Croatoan, I thought had all the elements to make a block buster episode, but the I never got the feel of the massive threat from zombiefied town so it felt really flat to me. Another example would be in the manwitch episode where the final poker game for old Dean's life should have been tense and anxious but I didn't get any of that between the leisurely chatting that Sam was doing while he was drawing out the bluff juxtaposed with Dean having a heart attack and twitching on the floor. Mind you, that epi wasn't teribly well-written either but still, in terms of pacing and visual story-telling, that felt very much like a directorial fail to me. Anyway, I thought it was good that Jensen didn't fall into the trap of letting the show get too static while people were doing their blabbing and he kept things moving along nicely with lots of stuff happening in the background of shots while characters were interacting and things like that.
I think I'm in something of a minority because I've always felt SPN is at its best when it knuckles down and takes itself seriously -- and by that, I don't mean teary roadside confessions. "Lazarus Rising" and "The End" were great episodes because they were intense, not because they were melodramatic. It sometimes seems that this fandom thinks there are only two choices: the show can be lighthearted and fun or lugubrious and angsty. There's an awful lot of middle ground between those two poles and I wish the show would venture into it more often. Again I agree for the most part. But I think I've just come to realize that kind of brilliance is almost accidental on this show so I'm always happily surprised when they get the dramatic vs. comic vs. action elements balanced and I feel they managed to get that mostly right this episode even though ITA on how horrifying the demon torture scene was.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-10-16 11:49 pm (UTC)I do think there was a lot of goodwill towards Jensen, which I suppose is nice, but I think the feel of a television episode (unlike a film) is more dependent upon the writing than the direction. I don't see why anyone would be relieved that Jensen did a good job since I can't imagine how Jensen -- or any director -- could fuck up an episode. Absolutely the quality of an episode is dependent primarily on the writing (and acting) but director's have a lot of influence over acting choices and also pacing and the visual elements of story-telling so they too can really screw stuff up even where there is a reasonably good script. For eg. Croatoan, I thought had all the elements to make a block buster episode, but the I never got the feel of the massive threat from zombiefied town so it felt really flat to me. Another example would be in the manwitch episode where the final poker game for old Dean's life should have been tense and anxious but I didn't get any of that between the leisurely chatting that Sam was doing while he was drawing out the bluff juxtaposed with Dean having a heart attack and twitching on the floor. Mind you, that epi wasn't teribly well-written either but still, in terms of pacing and visual story-telling, that felt very much like a directorial fail to me. Anyway, I thought it was good that Jensen didn't fall into the trap of letting the show get too static while people were doing their blabbing and he kept things moving along nicely with lots of stuff happening in the background of shots while characters were interacting and things like that.
I think I'm in something of a minority because I've always felt SPN is at its best when it knuckles down and takes itself seriously -- and by that, I don't mean teary roadside confessions. "Lazarus Rising" and "The End" were great episodes because they were intense, not because they were melodramatic. It sometimes seems that this fandom thinks there are only two choices: the show can be lighthearted and fun or lugubrious and angsty. There's an awful lot of middle ground between those two poles and I wish the show would venture into it more often. Again I agree for the most part. But I think I've just come to realize that kind of brilliance is almost accidental on this show so I'm always happily surprised when they get the dramatic vs. comic vs. action elements balanced and I feel they managed to get that mostly right this episode even though ITA on how horrifying the demon torture scene was.