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shadowvalkyrieAddendum to the review on 9x06
I liked the episode a lot better upon rewatch. It actually is quite shippy, because the central character development that happens is the Dean/Cas reconciliation. It’s just not immediately obvious, because the writers do that smokescreen thing again, where the gayer the subtext of the episode, the more strongly it has to be counter-balanced by textual heterosexuality. And that’s really fucking disappointing, because by the end of last season I was quite optimistic about their intentions to maybe go canonical, after all. But so far this season’s not looking especially promising in this regard. And seriously, when even the producer’s notes to the actors tell them to portray their characters a little more like ‘jilted lovers’ (and sure, one must take everything Misha Collins says with a grain of salt, but they’ve been playing the subtext consciously since at least S5, judging from the outtakes (and oh man, the S8 outtakes, watch them if you haven’t yet, because, wow, crypt scene – purely fan interpretation, my ass), so it makes plenty of sense) they should consider making the whole thing canon, because everything else is a cheap cop-out by this point.
I also like the focus on how hurt Cas is, not just by Dean’s seeming rejection (which I still think is a forced idiot plot, purely for drama and to explain the Misha-less episodes), but even more by his helplessness as a human to fix everything he messed up, and how much he’s flagellating himself. But at the same time we get to see once more how much steel there still is under that broken, scared exterior, and I think Cas himself finally realised it, too. So hopefully next time we’ll see him go actively after his enemies, instead of waiting till they come for him again. Cas may be limited in powers but certainly not in resourcefulness, that much we’ve seen all season. Time to stop running!
9x07 Bad Boys
It wasn't completely horrible, but I didn't like it much. And I’m baffled by how much everyone else seemed to enjoy it.
John was always an asshole, but the kind of assholery they gave him here seemed deeply OOC. (He's far too controlling to hand one of his kids over to other authorities, imo. Plus, he's invested in seeing himself as a good father, despite never acting like it, so words like "let him rot in jail" would never come out of his mouth. Especially not for stealing food, which he probably thinks was an a-ok thing to do, because it's not like their family usually gives a crap about any laws.)
Same with Dean: first kiss with a girl when he was 16? Pretty ridiculous idea! Plus, at the time he'd still have been in 'good soldier' mode to the utmost and have defended his dad tooth and nail. He could only admit to maybe sometimes wanting other things in life much later. Plus, he actually enjoyed hunting, most of the time, before things went south over years of ever-worsening disasters. He'd have been out of Sonny's and running back to his family in a heartbeat and taken half the pantry (and possibly someone else's car) with him.
The plot with the kid and his mom was awfully trite and predictable. And why did her ghost look burnt, anyway? Previous ghosts (Mary, for example) always looked like their live selves, regardless of their manner of death, iirc? It's such a cheap, obvious way to symbolise her going from bad back to good, I was literally rolling my eyes.
And like the homeless!Cas episode with its plentiful showers, happily dinner-sharing hobos, zero drugs, and complete absence of non-supernatural violence, this one was clearly written by someone with a bafflingly rose-tinted view of reality. If you think the worst part of staying in a boy’s home is having to leave again, you’ve clearly never been in one. (There’s a reason most runaways prefer park benches to orphanages… just saying.) And what policeman lets someone who physically attacked him go without punishment? Why would Dean freely give his real name to the authorities? In what universe do teenage delinquents dress and behave like fresh-faced suburban mama's boys? (Sure, it works for Timmy, because of his backstory, but why are the other kids like that? Have the writers actually met any teenagers in the last ten years? Bullying today doesn't actually work like bullying in the 50s.) SPN used to be MUCH better with the social criticism.
Also, there was nothing new there, just a rehashing of themes that were last interesting five seasons ago. John Winchester was an awful dad, Dean always loved his brother, Dean is good with kids, yadda yadda. The rest was superfluous retcons of much more interesting stuff. (Young!Dean’s brainwashed good-soldier mentality, propensity for sex-as-escapism already at an early age, often-hinted-at drug habit, and disdain for a civilian life.)
The only thing I liked was the ending. For one thing, some acknowledgement from Sam's side is always nice, and for another, I adore the irony of this happening right before (I assume) shit is going to hit the fan about Zeke. :D
9x08 Rock and a Hard Place
So-so episode. :/
The good: JODY!!! <3 Come back and stay forever, babe!
The bad: everything else. The plot may not have been offensively bad, but it was pretty stupid. (Why would Dean randomly sleep with a suspect when breaking the chastity vow is clearly what’s been making people disappear? Seriously, this was obvious to everybody before the ‘big reveal’, right? I can easily see him do it as deliberate bait, but certainly not out of dick-for-brains idiocy. It’s simply awful characterisation.)
And the chastity group thing wastes a depressing amount of potential. Because does this bizarre, typically American outgrowth of unreflected, superstitious religiosity deserve to mercilessly have the piss taken out of it? Absolutely! But not in such a superficial, meaningless way. Teehee, prudish virgins and a reformed porn star – hilarious! Not. It writes the whole phenomenon off completely (hurr, crazy women doing crazy things, amirite?) without looking at the social and psychological roots at all. Instead of blaming Christianity, it even blames Paganism. And even worse, despite making fun of the group and its members, the episode actually enforces its central tenet that chastity = morally superior. Suzie sleeps with Dean and likes it, but her conclusion isn’t, “Hey, I was wrong about this chastity crap being a good thing! I should maybe not go from extreme to the other, but actually try having normal, healthy amounts of sex with people I like/am attracted to!”, but instead “I’m not strong enough to be chaste! Poor, corrupt me!” And we even hear Jody spout similar tripe: she explains that she doesn’t refrain from joining the group because she thinks their ideals are ridiculous and/or misguided, but because she simply wouldn’t be able to go without sex for long. So sex = weakness, but charity groups = stupid? That is one hell of a mixed (not to mention seriously fucked-up) overall message to send!
Speculation for 9x09
As mid-season finale, it stands to reason that there’ll be an evil cliff-hanger here. Spoilers have it, Jensen had a scene he found difficult and painful to act, which means there’ll be something that devastates Dean emotionally, so either something happens to Sam, or to Cas. (Because we’ve all given up on expecting anything interesting to happen to Dean himself, haven’t we. *sigh) I’m expecting it’ll actually be a bit of both: Sam finds out about Zeke and a) is pissed at Dean, and b) fights off the possession, as a result of which his health takes a near-fatal nosedive. (Alternatively, Zeke could win and abscond with his vessel, but I doubt they'd go that far.) At the same time it’s an episode involving angels, so we’ll probably see Cas go back to fighting, and either get grievously wounded, or captured in the process. (I hope. Not that I doubt the writers’ shamelessness/lack of imagination when it comes to having him die yet again, but surely they do see that some variety would be nice?)
I liked the episode a lot better upon rewatch. It actually is quite shippy, because the central character development that happens is the Dean/Cas reconciliation. It’s just not immediately obvious, because the writers do that smokescreen thing again, where the gayer the subtext of the episode, the more strongly it has to be counter-balanced by textual heterosexuality. And that’s really fucking disappointing, because by the end of last season I was quite optimistic about their intentions to maybe go canonical, after all. But so far this season’s not looking especially promising in this regard. And seriously, when even the producer’s notes to the actors tell them to portray their characters a little more like ‘jilted lovers’ (and sure, one must take everything Misha Collins says with a grain of salt, but they’ve been playing the subtext consciously since at least S5, judging from the outtakes (and oh man, the S8 outtakes, watch them if you haven’t yet, because, wow, crypt scene – purely fan interpretation, my ass), so it makes plenty of sense) they should consider making the whole thing canon, because everything else is a cheap cop-out by this point.
I also like the focus on how hurt Cas is, not just by Dean’s seeming rejection (which I still think is a forced idiot plot, purely for drama and to explain the Misha-less episodes), but even more by his helplessness as a human to fix everything he messed up, and how much he’s flagellating himself. But at the same time we get to see once more how much steel there still is under that broken, scared exterior, and I think Cas himself finally realised it, too. So hopefully next time we’ll see him go actively after his enemies, instead of waiting till they come for him again. Cas may be limited in powers but certainly not in resourcefulness, that much we’ve seen all season. Time to stop running!
9x07 Bad Boys
It wasn't completely horrible, but I didn't like it much. And I’m baffled by how much everyone else seemed to enjoy it.
John was always an asshole, but the kind of assholery they gave him here seemed deeply OOC. (He's far too controlling to hand one of his kids over to other authorities, imo. Plus, he's invested in seeing himself as a good father, despite never acting like it, so words like "let him rot in jail" would never come out of his mouth. Especially not for stealing food, which he probably thinks was an a-ok thing to do, because it's not like their family usually gives a crap about any laws.)
Same with Dean: first kiss with a girl when he was 16? Pretty ridiculous idea! Plus, at the time he'd still have been in 'good soldier' mode to the utmost and have defended his dad tooth and nail. He could only admit to maybe sometimes wanting other things in life much later. Plus, he actually enjoyed hunting, most of the time, before things went south over years of ever-worsening disasters. He'd have been out of Sonny's and running back to his family in a heartbeat and taken half the pantry (and possibly someone else's car) with him.
The plot with the kid and his mom was awfully trite and predictable. And why did her ghost look burnt, anyway? Previous ghosts (Mary, for example) always looked like their live selves, regardless of their manner of death, iirc? It's such a cheap, obvious way to symbolise her going from bad back to good, I was literally rolling my eyes.
And like the homeless!Cas episode with its plentiful showers, happily dinner-sharing hobos, zero drugs, and complete absence of non-supernatural violence, this one was clearly written by someone with a bafflingly rose-tinted view of reality. If you think the worst part of staying in a boy’s home is having to leave again, you’ve clearly never been in one. (There’s a reason most runaways prefer park benches to orphanages… just saying.) And what policeman lets someone who physically attacked him go without punishment? Why would Dean freely give his real name to the authorities? In what universe do teenage delinquents dress and behave like fresh-faced suburban mama's boys? (Sure, it works for Timmy, because of his backstory, but why are the other kids like that? Have the writers actually met any teenagers in the last ten years? Bullying today doesn't actually work like bullying in the 50s.) SPN used to be MUCH better with the social criticism.
Also, there was nothing new there, just a rehashing of themes that were last interesting five seasons ago. John Winchester was an awful dad, Dean always loved his brother, Dean is good with kids, yadda yadda. The rest was superfluous retcons of much more interesting stuff. (Young!Dean’s brainwashed good-soldier mentality, propensity for sex-as-escapism already at an early age, often-hinted-at drug habit, and disdain for a civilian life.)
The only thing I liked was the ending. For one thing, some acknowledgement from Sam's side is always nice, and for another, I adore the irony of this happening right before (I assume) shit is going to hit the fan about Zeke. :D
9x08 Rock and a Hard Place
So-so episode. :/
The good: JODY!!! <3 Come back and stay forever, babe!
The bad: everything else. The plot may not have been offensively bad, but it was pretty stupid. (Why would Dean randomly sleep with a suspect when breaking the chastity vow is clearly what’s been making people disappear? Seriously, this was obvious to everybody before the ‘big reveal’, right? I can easily see him do it as deliberate bait, but certainly not out of dick-for-brains idiocy. It’s simply awful characterisation.)
And the chastity group thing wastes a depressing amount of potential. Because does this bizarre, typically American outgrowth of unreflected, superstitious religiosity deserve to mercilessly have the piss taken out of it? Absolutely! But not in such a superficial, meaningless way. Teehee, prudish virgins and a reformed porn star – hilarious! Not. It writes the whole phenomenon off completely (hurr, crazy women doing crazy things, amirite?) without looking at the social and psychological roots at all. Instead of blaming Christianity, it even blames Paganism. And even worse, despite making fun of the group and its members, the episode actually enforces its central tenet that chastity = morally superior. Suzie sleeps with Dean and likes it, but her conclusion isn’t, “Hey, I was wrong about this chastity crap being a good thing! I should maybe not go from extreme to the other, but actually try having normal, healthy amounts of sex with people I like/am attracted to!”, but instead “I’m not strong enough to be chaste! Poor, corrupt me!” And we even hear Jody spout similar tripe: she explains that she doesn’t refrain from joining the group because she thinks their ideals are ridiculous and/or misguided, but because she simply wouldn’t be able to go without sex for long. So sex = weakness, but charity groups = stupid? That is one hell of a mixed (not to mention seriously fucked-up) overall message to send!
Speculation for 9x09
As mid-season finale, it stands to reason that there’ll be an evil cliff-hanger here. Spoilers have it, Jensen had a scene he found difficult and painful to act, which means there’ll be something that devastates Dean emotionally, so either something happens to Sam, or to Cas. (Because we’ve all given up on expecting anything interesting to happen to Dean himself, haven’t we. *sigh) I’m expecting it’ll actually be a bit of both: Sam finds out about Zeke and a) is pissed at Dean, and b) fights off the possession, as a result of which his health takes a near-fatal nosedive. (Alternatively, Zeke could win and abscond with his vessel, but I doubt they'd go that far.) At the same time it’s an episode involving angels, so we’ll probably see Cas go back to fighting, and either get grievously wounded, or captured in the process. (I hope. Not that I doubt the writers’ shamelessness/lack of imagination when it comes to having him die yet again, but surely they do see that some variety would be nice?)
