SPN catch-up
New SPN this week. And I realize I never got around to doing an episode summary for 3x08, so here's one for that too. I snagged it when it aired, but between going to Tokyo, being sick for most of the following few weeks, Christmas, and New Years, the rambling never happened.
Short and sweet, since it's an older episode. With a hilariously festive title screen.
Krampus! My Venture Brothers love is serving me well, because I recognised him as soon as I saw what Sam was researching.
Nice evil!Santa scene in the middle of the episode. The evil!costume was great, it was shot in a really effective way, and the little cookie-snatch at the end was a beautifully sadistic little touch. Also, nice fade-in to a pretty version of Silent Night from Dean's embarrassed half-assed one.
I absolutely LOVE how much gore this episode was able to get away with. One of the best things about this season has been that they've totally upped the ante on gore, and this episode didn't disappoint. From the chimney-carnage at the beginning to the basement o' torture to the fingernail-pulling, they're managing to make things genuinely creepy and disturbing in ways the first two seasons rarely did. I had to look away for a second at the fingernail thing. Bring it on, show!
Not much to say about the wee!chesters scenes, but good on Sammy for finding out monsters on his own when he knew everyone was hiding something from him. Awesome to finally see where Dean's amulet came from. And it's interesting to see John's still a deadbeat dad in spirit this season even if he's not around. (He did what he could, but he's not exactly winning dad of the year, even posthumously.) He's still a crucial part of the boy's lives and motivation, and it shows in how much he comes up from episode to episode.
Most of my last chunk of episode jot notes consist of "OH MY GOD I LOVE THESE VILLAINS!!!" The Carrigans, was it? However you say it, evil pagan gods with plastic couches, obnoxious blinking Christmas broaches, and a swear jar are freaking awesome. Their dialogue SLAYED me (no pun intended), and anything that makes that contrast between hilarity and horror work so well without being awkward is made of utter WIN. I'm almost sad to see them go, but alas, that's the lot of the Monster Of the Week baddies.
Aw, a Very Winchester Christmas. Love that final shot of them watching TV with the Impala outside the motel room window. The "family" is together for Christmas.
Also, this is also the episode that shows Sam apparently went dumpster diving outside Mohinder Suresh's apartment at some point, because he's WEARING TWO OF MOHINDER'S SHIRTS.
And as opposed to 3x08, 3x09 is all mytharc. After the awesome-tastic villains in 3x08, it feels like a bit of a let-down to see more demon skanks bitching at each other and pontificating. But whatever. The witch stuff I could take-or-leave. The teeth and burger parts get points for gross-out.
I always have to root for characters with my name, so I was disappointed that Amanda was so generically evil and got killed off so quickly. So far the only show where I remember an "Amanda" kicking ass was on Buffy, and even she died eventually. It's bad news to be an Amanda on TV.
Sam's comment about having to "stay in this craphole of a world" after Dean's gone? Interesting. Very Torchwood. Don't remember exactly what episode, but there was at least one Torchwood ep that followed up the "the job gets to you" moment with a comment about dealing with all the shit the universe has to offer without seeing any of the wonder and beauty. Sounds a lot like the Winchesters lot in life: dealing with the evil in all its forms, and never getting the privilege of of seeing the good things.
I'm still finding the same thing about Ruby: her character doesn't bother me -- I like her well enough at times -- it's her actress that irritates me. I wouldn't be sad if they had the Ruby-demon body-jump and get a new actress on board. Same character, new actress who can look approachably menacing rather than pouty.
Looks like the Colt is less of a deus ex machina now. I can only hope they'll take a few pointers from that over on Heroes, and do away with the MAGICKAL HEALING BLOOD.
As much as I was rolling my eyes at the Obligatory Lesbian Innuendo, the revelations towards the end of the episode were nifty. Don't care much that Ruby was a witch at one point, but demons being humans that have had the humanity hellfire-burned out of them? Awesome. I'd actually considered something similar at one point last season, just as a random cracky theory, and it's interesting to see it pan out that way. Makes a lot of sense, actually. I mean, what ELSE would you do with all the souls that go to Hell, let them pile up as demonic punching bags for the entirety of human history? I guess someone in Hell's middle management saw a viable resource and recruitment pool. (Oh, bureaucracy.)
Yeah, I have problems with "humanity" being a default yardstick for justifying one's existence, goodness, and morality. (There must be some NOT-evil non-humans in the SPN world that might take issue with that.) But a cool plot development is a cool plot development. It fleshes the demons out as villains, and makes them a little more than faceless malevolent entities doing evil just for the sake of being pricks.
Ruby got the best line of the episode: "That's what Hell is. Forgetting what you are." How weird is it that she managed to turn Dean around so completely without the space of an episode? Now she represents his best case scenario and only source of hope: he's going to die and go to Hell, and the best he'll be able to hope for is that he can hang on to some of his humanity like she did (or at least, like she's very convincingly pretending she did).
The plot thickens: Dean's going to be a demon, Ruby either their best friend or their worst enemy, and she and Dean are conspiring to finish de-pussifing Sam before the Apocalypse rolls around. Hopefully they'll get a fair chunk of the mytharc clued up in the remaining episodes of the season, and (God willing) a strong run next season to make up for the strike cutting this one short.
On a lighter note: Sam was wearing a pink shirt in this episode. After the wardrobe coincidences in 3x08, someone is going to HAVE to check and see if it's Mohinder's pink shirt. If it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see Mo's amazing technicolour dream scarf appear in Sam's wardrobe.
Short and sweet, since it's an older episode. With a hilariously festive title screen.
Krampus! My Venture Brothers love is serving me well, because I recognised him as soon as I saw what Sam was researching.
Nice evil!Santa scene in the middle of the episode. The evil!costume was great, it was shot in a really effective way, and the little cookie-snatch at the end was a beautifully sadistic little touch. Also, nice fade-in to a pretty version of Silent Night from Dean's embarrassed half-assed one.
I absolutely LOVE how much gore this episode was able to get away with. One of the best things about this season has been that they've totally upped the ante on gore, and this episode didn't disappoint. From the chimney-carnage at the beginning to the basement o' torture to the fingernail-pulling, they're managing to make things genuinely creepy and disturbing in ways the first two seasons rarely did. I had to look away for a second at the fingernail thing. Bring it on, show!
Not much to say about the wee!chesters scenes, but good on Sammy for finding out monsters on his own when he knew everyone was hiding something from him. Awesome to finally see where Dean's amulet came from. And it's interesting to see John's still a deadbeat dad in spirit this season even if he's not around. (He did what he could, but he's not exactly winning dad of the year, even posthumously.) He's still a crucial part of the boy's lives and motivation, and it shows in how much he comes up from episode to episode.
Most of my last chunk of episode jot notes consist of "OH MY GOD I LOVE THESE VILLAINS!!!" The Carrigans, was it? However you say it, evil pagan gods with plastic couches, obnoxious blinking Christmas broaches, and a swear jar are freaking awesome. Their dialogue SLAYED me (no pun intended), and anything that makes that contrast between hilarity and horror work so well without being awkward is made of utter WIN. I'm almost sad to see them go, but alas, that's the lot of the Monster Of the Week baddies.
Aw, a Very Winchester Christmas. Love that final shot of them watching TV with the Impala outside the motel room window. The "family" is together for Christmas.
Also, this is also the episode that shows Sam apparently went dumpster diving outside Mohinder Suresh's apartment at some point, because he's WEARING TWO OF MOHINDER'S SHIRTS.
And as opposed to 3x08, 3x09 is all mytharc. After the awesome-tastic villains in 3x08, it feels like a bit of a let-down to see more demon skanks bitching at each other and pontificating. But whatever. The witch stuff I could take-or-leave. The teeth and burger parts get points for gross-out.
I always have to root for characters with my name, so I was disappointed that Amanda was so generically evil and got killed off so quickly. So far the only show where I remember an "Amanda" kicking ass was on Buffy, and even she died eventually. It's bad news to be an Amanda on TV.
Sam's comment about having to "stay in this craphole of a world" after Dean's gone? Interesting. Very Torchwood. Don't remember exactly what episode, but there was at least one Torchwood ep that followed up the "the job gets to you" moment with a comment about dealing with all the shit the universe has to offer without seeing any of the wonder and beauty. Sounds a lot like the Winchesters lot in life: dealing with the evil in all its forms, and never getting the privilege of of seeing the good things.
I'm still finding the same thing about Ruby: her character doesn't bother me -- I like her well enough at times -- it's her actress that irritates me. I wouldn't be sad if they had the Ruby-demon body-jump and get a new actress on board. Same character, new actress who can look approachably menacing rather than pouty.
Looks like the Colt is less of a deus ex machina now. I can only hope they'll take a few pointers from that over on Heroes, and do away with the MAGICKAL HEALING BLOOD.
As much as I was rolling my eyes at the Obligatory Lesbian Innuendo, the revelations towards the end of the episode were nifty. Don't care much that Ruby was a witch at one point, but demons being humans that have had the humanity hellfire-burned out of them? Awesome. I'd actually considered something similar at one point last season, just as a random cracky theory, and it's interesting to see it pan out that way. Makes a lot of sense, actually. I mean, what ELSE would you do with all the souls that go to Hell, let them pile up as demonic punching bags for the entirety of human history? I guess someone in Hell's middle management saw a viable resource and recruitment pool. (Oh, bureaucracy.)
Yeah, I have problems with "humanity" being a default yardstick for justifying one's existence, goodness, and morality. (There must be some NOT-evil non-humans in the SPN world that might take issue with that.) But a cool plot development is a cool plot development. It fleshes the demons out as villains, and makes them a little more than faceless malevolent entities doing evil just for the sake of being pricks.
Ruby got the best line of the episode: "That's what Hell is. Forgetting what you are." How weird is it that she managed to turn Dean around so completely without the space of an episode? Now she represents his best case scenario and only source of hope: he's going to die and go to Hell, and the best he'll be able to hope for is that he can hang on to some of his humanity like she did (or at least, like she's very convincingly pretending she did).
The plot thickens: Dean's going to be a demon, Ruby either their best friend or their worst enemy, and she and Dean are conspiring to finish de-pussifing Sam before the Apocalypse rolls around. Hopefully they'll get a fair chunk of the mytharc clued up in the remaining episodes of the season, and (God willing) a strong run next season to make up for the strike cutting this one short.
On a lighter note: Sam was wearing a pink shirt in this episode. After the wardrobe coincidences in 3x08, someone is going to HAVE to check and see if it's Mohinder's pink shirt. If it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see Mo's amazing technicolour dream scarf appear in Sam's wardrobe.