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oselleThis was the first time I ever had someone over to watch the season premiere with me, so we were gabbing more than we were watching. I recorded it on my "VCR" (you kids won't know what that is -- let's just say it's a sort of primitive ancestor of the DVR, in which television shows were recorded on big plastic cartridges known as "cassette tapes"), so I'll have to rewatch this weekend. These are just my initial impressions:
1) Nothing could have annoyed me more than having a Sera Gamble "behind-the-scenes" featurette foisted on me. You folks who download the episode will at least be spared listening to Gamble babble on about "urban legends" as if that premise hadn't been played out years ago, and having to look at her acting all important in her office made me want to peel off my skin. I hate this woman.
2) Although I know (I think?) it's just a hallucination, the suggestion that Sam is still in hell and that everything he's experienced since supposedly leaving hell has just been conjured up to torture him is (hallucination or not) one that was floated by viewers all the way back in Season 4...when it actually would have been interesting. I actually held out a hope through most of Season 4 that we would find out that the radically altered Sam and the awful Ruby were nothing more than the supporting cast of Dean's custom-tailored hell, and that part of Season 5 would revolve around the REAL Sam springing his brother from the Pit. Alas, Gamble chose to take what was a good idea three years ago and finally use it...for Sam.
3) Speaking of things that were good ideas, I had Meg in hiding in a broken-down white trash trailer years ago in one of my stories, so Crowley hiding out in a broken-down white trash trailer sort of felt like something I came up with. A long time ago.
4) I amend my statement in (1). Nothing could have annoyed me more than seeing that the not-so-dynamic duo of Andrew Dabb & Daniel Loflin have now been elevated to producers, thereby continuing and expanding their Reign of Suck. I hate these guys.
5) The one bright spot was that Castiel looked so vicious at the end of the episode that it sure seemed like he was finally going to do to Dean what he's clearly wanted to do to Dean for a long time, whether Dean was on board with it or not, but of course that's not going to happen on television. It should at the least inspire some really filthy fanfic, though.
6) If they want us to feel for Sam, they should endeavor to make his hell look a little less like a kids' Halloween party. Where did they get the props for that scene, Party City?
7) To be honest, I DON'T feel for Sam. I know this is a dead horse, but Dean appeared to get over his time in hell pretty quickly (even without a "wall") so I don't know why we're expected to believe that Sam's trauma is so much worse. I know, I know, "worst part of hell" and all that but please, that is SO Season Six, and it didn't make any sense back then, either.
8) Castiel loves Dean so very, very much that all he could do in his brief return to himself was apologize to Dean while gazing at him with heartbroken regret. Man, that cat is smitten.
9) The Tao Te Ching says "to compare one thing to another is a disease of the mind." Well I say, the hell with that. I started watching The Vampire Diaries over the summer and caught both the season premiere and this week's episode and cannot believe how good it is. Not just great storytelling and characters, but also genuinely scary. That scene in the woods with all the zombie-like werewolf/vampire hybrids was so creepy it gave me goosebumps -- I don't think I've ever seen anything on SPN that was remotely as frightening. I don't know why TVD can maintain a consistent, compelling, forward-moving storyline and SPN just seems to flounder all over the place, hardly knowing what kind of show it's supposed to be (Procedural or serial? Drama or comedy? Ghost story or grossout?) As an added benefit, Steven R. McQueen is giving Jensen Ackles a serious run for his money in the pretty department, and I'm hoping the increasingly lovely Jeremy has a more central involvement in the episodes this season so that I can get all fluttery over a character who's actually in a good show. From what I've observed on the few occasions when he's gotten beaten up/bitten/murdered, he also suffers quite beautifully, and the writers and producers should take note of this and have him suffer more. Yesss, a great deal more. Right now he's being tormented by the ghosts of not one but two dead girlfriends, and that's a great start.
10) I found out today that Lauren Cohan, who once occupied the thankless role of Bela on SPN, will be part of the second season of The Walking Dead. I always feel happy for her when I see her in something good (like her brief turn on TVD last year) because she was so ill-used on SPN that it was downright painful to watch.
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Date: 2011-09-24 08:23 am (UTC)I remembered thinking it is pretty pathetic they had to run a “please keep watching this show” commercial minutes into the season opener. At least that’s how the Gamble spot struck me.
Brother, I remember sitting there thinking “A hallucination? Finally, an interesting idea!” I’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t surprise me at all that the audience was miles (or years, I should say) ahead of the writers. My, how my standards have sunk for this show. Actually, the more I’m thinking about this new Sam Problem, the less I care. Maybe I’d be more invested if Dean’s sentence had wrecked him, but apparently Hell isn’t much worse than getting mugged.
They can’t do anything but make Hell look like a Halloween kids’ party, because it has to stay on the same level as the rest of the show’s writing. This is one reason, IMO, this show was a lot better back when Heaven and Hell were abstracts left to the viewers’ imaginations. It felt like the show knew its limitations, understood when something was “above their pay grade,” as they love to say on this show.
The way they made fresh-from-Hell Dean bounce back like he’d just had a bad day always felt like the writers’ glaring lack of imagination. I suppose now, three years later, they finally get that someone tortured in Hell should at least be as traumatized as your average war veteran. Let’s see if they at least get that right, and we know they’ll give it every effort because, you know, it is SAM this time.
As pissed as you are that about how they’re wasting Dean, I’m as disgruntled about Sam’s lost potential, which is even sorrier when you consider his character has always had the writers’ full attention. Give me some fanfic where Sam is still sympathetic, honorable, driven and heroic, yet also secretive, moody as hell and dangerous, and still psychic, goddammit! You know, back when he was three-dimensional.
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Date: 2011-09-24 02:48 pm (UTC)The "vampires in high school" premise kept me away from TVD's first season, but there's precious little high school here, even though most of the central human characters are teenagers. Seriously, it IS good. As for True Blood, nothing could be further from Twilight than that. True Blood is spectacularly raunchy (nearly pornographic at times), violent, scary and complex, while Twilight is the dullest romance novel ever written, about the least interesting characters ever to appear in fiction. Stephenie Meyer becoming rich off of four books in which almost nothing ever, ever happens is one of the greatest sleights of hand I've ever seen.
I remembered thinking it is pretty pathetic they had to run a “please keep watching this show” commercial minutes into the season opener. At least that’s how the Gamble spot struck me.
Actually, I think the CW has been doing these little spots for all, or most of their shows. Up until now I've only seen them for the new ones -- Kevin Williamson's The Secret Circle and Sarah Michelle Gellar's Ringer. But the fact that they had Gamble do it (not Eric Kripke or one of the Js) seems to me like a public show of confidence in her, in spite of the hash she made of last season. She strikes me as so full of herself that I'm sure she was thrilled to finally get her mug in front of the camera and talking about the show as if she owned it, even though, as usual, she had nothing remotely new or interesting to say.
The way they made fresh-from-Hell Dean bounce back like he’d just had a bad day always felt like the writers’ glaring lack of imagination.
At the time, I seem to remember Kripke saying they didn't want slow things down by wallowing in Dean's trauma. Season 4 got off to such a great start that I thought Kripke had made a smart decision to have Dean get right back on the horse instead of dwelling on his PTSD. Of course, the rest of Season 4 -- and pretty much the entire show since then -- has been more or less about what happened to Sam after Dean died, and now here we are, full circle and officially wallowing in Sam's post-hell trauma, while Dean seems to have forgotten he was ever there (and so has everyone else).
I’m as disgruntled about Sam’s lost potential, which is even sorrier when you consider his character has always had the writers’ full attention.
I think the problem is which writers are giving Sam their full attention.