7:04: Defending Your Life

[oselle]

Man, the silence that greets each new ep of SPN here on LJ is really depressing. I just feel like people have totally given up. I'd go over to TWoP but those boards have always been boring as fuck with all their ban-happy bullshit rules about what you can and can't talk about.

But, like the rest of you, I don't seem to have anything to say. There just isn't anything to react to or discuss. I hadn't realized until Castiel was gone how much he'd held my interest for the past couple of seasons -- really, the last truly great episode (for me) was "The End" and that was a whopping two years ago. Got a lot of fic out of that one, anyway. But now it's just so blah. Dean continues to be pretty as ever but there's nothing to get worked up about. I want something to HAPPEN for God's sake, but the show really feels like it's run out of gas. Maybe seven years is just too long for a series like this.

The Vampire Diaries is kicking ass, but you know...that's only in it's third season. Four years from now, will there still be stories left to tell about Elena and Damon and Klaus etc.? Maybe genre shows like this simply don't have legs.

I wonder what SPN could have done to keep momentum. Letting Kripke basically end the show back in Season 5 was probably a shitty idea (ya think?). It might have helped to give good writers like Jeremy Carver a reaon to stick around, and they're not going to get much out of Ben Edlund now that they've more or less written out one of his favorite characters. And of course, the reins of the show should never have been handed over to Sera Gamble. I read that the show lost 25% of its audience by the end of Season 6. Those people have not come back. I think it's pretty safe to lay the blame for that at Gamble's feet.

Whatevs, I guess. It was a pretty good run there for a while. I became a fan in 2007 so that's...almost four years. Not bad.

I've got that displaced, "girl without a fandom" feeling, though. I hate that. I started a new job in August and I don't like it much and feel like I could use some distraction, but at the same time, I'm so tired that I don't think I could drum up the energy for fandom. Maybe that's part of the reason why I'm not into the show this year. Yesterday I didn't get home from work until almost 8:30. It was a shitty day and really, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. I practically dozed off during the episode. On the weekends now, I stay in bed until almost 10:00 am -- I haven't done that in years. Everything is so shitty. You make a move like this thinking things are gonna get better and they just get worse. That's been the whole pattern of my life. Every time I try to make things better they get worse.

Everything sucks.

Comments

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Star Trek and Doctor Who are franchises more than they're series -- they can go on for decades because they just rotate in a new cast and start over. Though I have to admit that, having no previous history with Doctor Who, my attachment to it was almost wholly related to David Tennant, and I've lost most of my interest in the show since he left, even though the stories themselves do not seem to have suffered.

The thing about genre shows is that they all reach a point where they almost have to end because the audience can no longer suspend its disbelief. A character can only die and get resurrected so many times before the idea becomes a joke. Someone can only be believably caught up in an intricate conspiracy for so long without getting assasinated. Even a looming apocalypse becomes a bore when you can set your watch by it. It takes some really creative thinking to sustain the momentum on these shows, and SPN doesn't have it.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

I think one of the problems with genre shows is that once they become popular the writers start believing the hype and try to turn them into serious drama. Unfortunately they either misinterpret what serious drama is or just don't have the talent, and what we end up with is unrelenting angst and massively unlikeable characters. Some writing teams manage to get their heads out of their arses and repair things - for example Joss Whedon was too late to save Buffy but he did it with Angel - but I can't see it happening with Sera Gamble et al because, for all that the show has hemorrhaged viewers, I don't think they're capable of admitting that they're doing something wrong.

I though Dr Who was really good this year, but then I grew up with the Regenerations and so don't make the mistake of hitching my fannish star to a particular actor.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

the writers start believing the hype and try to turn them into serious drama.

I have no problem with serious drama. As you know, I've always thought SPN suffered from not taking itself seriously enough. The Walking Dead is a stellar example of a genre show that also manages to be compelling, serious drama.

But agree that angst-for-angst's-sake is not a substitute for good writing. It reminds me of when so many people in LoTR fandom started trying to write "serious" stories and just wound up writing a lot of silly stuff about Frodo getting beaten by his uncle or molested by his cousins.