rant about commercials
At the end of the episode yesterday, eowyns said "That was such a good episode," and I replied that I thought they'd gone a little overboard on the ending, with the melodramatic music playing in the background.
But on reflection, I think the problem may have been more with me than with the episode. I think I have effectively lost my ability to hold onto a show through the commercial breaks. This is the first time in literally years that I've had to deal with commercials in the midst of dramatic television (so, not counting watching the Olympics with my family in a Maine hotel room while on vacation). I mostly watch shows on DVD these days, or on my computer. My roommates have a TiVo, so when I watch with stuff with them (current roster: Heroes, House, The Amazing Race, and when Project Runway starts up again we'll watch that, and if we catch up on How I Met Your Mother (we just watched the first season DVDs) that might get included) we skip the commercials. My roommates for the prior 3 years didn't have cable television, and with the ones before that I really only watched stuff like Iron Chef and Trading Spaces. And before that was college... So yeah, upwards of a decade without commercials.
But Supernatural, I get to watch with eowyns and marinarusalka, which is awesome. They make yummy food and I buy drinks or bread or something and we converge on marinarusalka's living room to watch the episode in real time on her giant TV. Having people to squee with is just the best. But wow, I am so not used to having commercials interrupt my show-watching experience anymore. And because this episode was so particularly dramatic and good, I think I felt the effects of the commercials even more.
The thing is, there were so many things about the episode that were so good. I remember practically clutching my heart and nearly biting through my lip the entire first half, when Dean is wandering around discovering things about his wish-world like a boy who's given the bike he always wanted, only it doesn't have training wheels and his dad's not around to teach him how to ride it, so nakedly amazed and delighted and confused. And the Pilot echoes, and watching him slowly piece everything together... so good. And I think that if I had been able to watch it all as an arc straight through, the ending scene would've worked much better for me. As it is, I still loved the very end of it, Dean not replying, just looking like... god, like so many indescribable things, but mostly damned broken. But I might not have gotten annoyed at the music if I had been able to stay emotionally within the episode, if I had been able to connect straight through to the beginning. Looking back, I think that every time commercials came up in the second half of the episode, I lost a little focus.
There's also the fact that I'm generally not a source of reasonable dialogue for awhile after something has emotionally affected me. I always need a good 20 minutes or more of recovery time after an intense movie to be able to do much more than utter the occasionally short, unfiltered, and probably unhelpful response. Right after I said it, I felt vaguely guilty, because really, it was a really good episode. What possessed me to be a critical bitch about it? The point of watching shows with people is to squee! And then I apparently didn't even have the mental capacity to fix it, to add "But yeah, it was really good," probably in part because I had unconsciously soaked up the effects of the episode enough to be sort of depressed and listless. So guys, I'm sorry about that.
I think that if I had watched the thing without commercials, I would've been fucking sobbing for a good portion of it. As it is, I did tear up, but it didn't build. I really am afraid of how I'm going to feel upon rewatching in commercial-free format. Knowing the details of the plot is probably only going to make it more poignant and achy. But maybe that's something I need...
But on reflection, I think the problem may have been more with me than with the episode. I think I have effectively lost my ability to hold onto a show through the commercial breaks. This is the first time in literally years that I've had to deal with commercials in the midst of dramatic television (so, not counting watching the Olympics with my family in a Maine hotel room while on vacation). I mostly watch shows on DVD these days, or on my computer. My roommates have a TiVo, so when I watch with stuff with them (current roster: Heroes, House, The Amazing Race, and when Project Runway starts up again we'll watch that, and if we catch up on How I Met Your Mother (we just watched the first season DVDs) that might get included) we skip the commercials. My roommates for the prior 3 years didn't have cable television, and with the ones before that I really only watched stuff like Iron Chef and Trading Spaces. And before that was college... So yeah, upwards of a decade without commercials.
But Supernatural, I get to watch with eowyns and marinarusalka, which is awesome. They make yummy food and I buy drinks or bread or something and we converge on marinarusalka's living room to watch the episode in real time on her giant TV. Having people to squee with is just the best. But wow, I am so not used to having commercials interrupt my show-watching experience anymore. And because this episode was so particularly dramatic and good, I think I felt the effects of the commercials even more.
The thing is, there were so many things about the episode that were so good. I remember practically clutching my heart and nearly biting through my lip the entire first half, when Dean is wandering around discovering things about his wish-world like a boy who's given the bike he always wanted, only it doesn't have training wheels and his dad's not around to teach him how to ride it, so nakedly amazed and delighted and confused. And the Pilot echoes, and watching him slowly piece everything together... so good. And I think that if I had been able to watch it all as an arc straight through, the ending scene would've worked much better for me. As it is, I still loved the very end of it, Dean not replying, just looking like... god, like so many indescribable things, but mostly damned broken. But I might not have gotten annoyed at the music if I had been able to stay emotionally within the episode, if I had been able to connect straight through to the beginning. Looking back, I think that every time commercials came up in the second half of the episode, I lost a little focus.
There's also the fact that I'm generally not a source of reasonable dialogue for awhile after something has emotionally affected me. I always need a good 20 minutes or more of recovery time after an intense movie to be able to do much more than utter the occasionally short, unfiltered, and probably unhelpful response. Right after I said it, I felt vaguely guilty, because really, it was a really good episode. What possessed me to be a critical bitch about it? The point of watching shows with people is to squee! And then I apparently didn't even have the mental capacity to fix it, to add "But yeah, it was really good," probably in part because I had unconsciously soaked up the effects of the episode enough to be sort of depressed and listless. So guys, I'm sorry about that.
I think that if I had watched the thing without commercials, I would've been fucking sobbing for a good portion of it. As it is, I did tear up, but it didn't build. I really am afraid of how I'm going to feel upon rewatching in commercial-free format. Knowing the details of the plot is probably only going to make it more poignant and achy. But maybe that's something I need...