SPN 5x22 "Swan Song" and season 5 in general
I'm honestly not sure what I think of tonight's finale. I'm ...whelmed, I guess.
While I loved Chuck narrating the Impala's history (yay, the Metallicar, the most important object in history!), it resurrecting Sam's memories felt a little anticlimactic. The montage was well-edited and affecting on its own. The way it ground the fight to a halt, a little facile. (I'm also not sure how I feel about Def Leppard being the music for the final showdown. Really?)
While I'm glad Cas and Bobby aren't dead, that to felt too easy. Especially Cas being back on board the angel train without (apparently) any lingering qualms. I've heard Mischa's back next season, but I really have to wonder what they're going to do with him. The idea of him setting heaven to rights would be pretty funny, if he was still snarky near-human Cas. ("I'm supposed to lie, aren't I?")
The big struggle for me this season has been the whole Sam and Dean fumbling their way back together arc. Now, admittedly, I have always over-identified with Dean. And while Dean (and others) have apparently forgiven Sam for being a self-absorbed bone-headed moron in S4 and raising Lucifer, I, evidently, haven't.
I'm coming from a place where Sam has been gradually more annoying to me since S2 (when he was already starting to whinge about being fated to become evil, as if he had no control over his actions). As that habit increased in S3 and 4, coupled with his prying at Dean's emotional reserve, demanding to be told everything while he kept increasingly dangerous secrets, I became increasingly fed-up, to the point that one of the most satisfying moments was Ruby triumphantly crowing that Sam's choices all season were his own, and the demon blood no more of a bad influence than his own poor judgement.
This makes it rather difficult for me to believe in Sam's renewed faith in Dean as per the big brotherly conversation a few weeks ago. I remember when I believed it, back in S1, and I did feel for Sam when Dean confessed that he had no faith in him, but after last season's truth-spell moment where Sam's big reveal was "Dean is too weak to handle my powers of awesome," I couldn't help feeling like this was just Sam's opinion of the season. He fucked up, possibly dooming the world and himself to be the meat-suit of Evil, so now he was on board with the importance of family.
It wasn't until last week when Sam justified his end of the world idea because "it was the job that needed doing" that I felt he'd changed or grown this season. Instead of whining about being fated to do anything, he was actually on Team Free Will. That reasoning sounded like something John or Dean would've said.
I guess on the big-picture level, that's my disconnect from this & last season -- the drift of the characters from what attracted me to them in the first place.
Like the writers suddenly turning John Winchester into a deadbeat (and implied physically abusive) dad, the better to shoehorn the John=God, Michael/Lucifer=Dean/Sam parallels. I'm sorry, that's one piece of canon I simply won't accept. I have always given short shrift to fics that demonize John Winchester, this felt like the same sort of painting with a uni-dimensional brush. (Piling onto the Christmas ep from last year that was pretty firmly in the "John didn't give a shit about his kids" camp -- is it that much easier for writers to do this when they don't have to write nuance for an actor to act out?) The Heaven episode casting him as a bad husband even before Mary died, in addition to being an abusive to his sons? Did that really add anything to the story?
The other broad character alteration that's been driving me crazy has been the dismissal of all of Dean's motivations as coming from a negative psychological space -- all his love of hunting written off to Daddy issues, self-martyrdom, and self-loathing. What happened to the little boy who was gonna be a fireman when the floods rolled back? And so lost is anything positive for him to strive for (aside from bare survival for his family and not letting the whole world get destroyed).
I actually rather hoped that both times Sam was facing the pit, Dean would walk up behind him, and push/fall with him. That would've been the emotionally satisfying resolution to all their back-and-forth alternating sacrifice, losses of faith, and eventual reconciliation.
(and if that doesn't tell you something about my psyche....) celticlullaby will agree with me, I think, when she eventually watches this season.
I don't even know what to do with Chuck possibly being God. The "God as cosmic author" conceit is cute....but it's exactly that, cute, which doesn't fit with two seasons of increasingly dire doom, gloom, and existential destruction.
ETA: In my overwhelming "eh," I was forgetting some of the things that I did totally love -- Dean going after Sam even if he can't do anything, just so he doesn't die alone. The use of the hellmouth in Stull Cemetary. And yes, oh yes, the montage of the boys' life together in the Impala.
In life being weirdly synchronous, what other activity am I engaged in tonight? Baking pie. Lattice-top strawberry rhubarb. Somewhere, I like to think, Dean is approving.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth: http://casapazzo.dreamwidth.org/214113.html
While I loved Chuck narrating the Impala's history (yay, the Metallicar, the most important object in history!), it resurrecting Sam's memories felt a little anticlimactic. The montage was well-edited and affecting on its own. The way it ground the fight to a halt, a little facile. (I'm also not sure how I feel about Def Leppard being the music for the final showdown. Really?)
While I'm glad Cas and Bobby aren't dead, that to felt too easy. Especially Cas being back on board the angel train without (apparently) any lingering qualms. I've heard Mischa's back next season, but I really have to wonder what they're going to do with him. The idea of him setting heaven to rights would be pretty funny, if he was still snarky near-human Cas. ("I'm supposed to lie, aren't I?")
The big struggle for me this season has been the whole Sam and Dean fumbling their way back together arc. Now, admittedly, I have always over-identified with Dean. And while Dean (and others) have apparently forgiven Sam for being a self-absorbed bone-headed moron in S4 and raising Lucifer, I, evidently, haven't.
I'm coming from a place where Sam has been gradually more annoying to me since S2 (when he was already starting to whinge about being fated to become evil, as if he had no control over his actions). As that habit increased in S3 and 4, coupled with his prying at Dean's emotional reserve, demanding to be told everything while he kept increasingly dangerous secrets, I became increasingly fed-up, to the point that one of the most satisfying moments was Ruby triumphantly crowing that Sam's choices all season were his own, and the demon blood no more of a bad influence than his own poor judgement.
This makes it rather difficult for me to believe in Sam's renewed faith in Dean as per the big brotherly conversation a few weeks ago. I remember when I believed it, back in S1, and I did feel for Sam when Dean confessed that he had no faith in him, but after last season's truth-spell moment where Sam's big reveal was "Dean is too weak to handle my powers of awesome," I couldn't help feeling like this was just Sam's opinion of the season. He fucked up, possibly dooming the world and himself to be the meat-suit of Evil, so now he was on board with the importance of family.
It wasn't until last week when Sam justified his end of the world idea because "it was the job that needed doing" that I felt he'd changed or grown this season. Instead of whining about being fated to do anything, he was actually on Team Free Will. That reasoning sounded like something John or Dean would've said.
I guess on the big-picture level, that's my disconnect from this & last season -- the drift of the characters from what attracted me to them in the first place.
Like the writers suddenly turning John Winchester into a deadbeat (and implied physically abusive) dad, the better to shoehorn the John=God, Michael/Lucifer=Dean/Sam parallels. I'm sorry, that's one piece of canon I simply won't accept. I have always given short shrift to fics that demonize John Winchester, this felt like the same sort of painting with a uni-dimensional brush. (Piling onto the Christmas ep from last year that was pretty firmly in the "John didn't give a shit about his kids" camp -- is it that much easier for writers to do this when they don't have to write nuance for an actor to act out?) The Heaven episode casting him as a bad husband even before Mary died, in addition to being an abusive to his sons? Did that really add anything to the story?
The other broad character alteration that's been driving me crazy has been the dismissal of all of Dean's motivations as coming from a negative psychological space -- all his love of hunting written off to Daddy issues, self-martyrdom, and self-loathing. What happened to the little boy who was gonna be a fireman when the floods rolled back? And so lost is anything positive for him to strive for (aside from bare survival for his family and not letting the whole world get destroyed).
I actually rather hoped that both times Sam was facing the pit, Dean would walk up behind him, and push/fall with him. That would've been the emotionally satisfying resolution to all their back-and-forth alternating sacrifice, losses of faith, and eventual reconciliation.
(and if that doesn't tell you something about my psyche....) celticlullaby will agree with me, I think, when she eventually watches this season.
I don't even know what to do with Chuck possibly being God. The "God as cosmic author" conceit is cute....but it's exactly that, cute, which doesn't fit with two seasons of increasingly dire doom, gloom, and existential destruction.
ETA: In my overwhelming "eh," I was forgetting some of the things that I did totally love -- Dean going after Sam even if he can't do anything, just so he doesn't die alone. The use of the hellmouth in Stull Cemetary. And yes, oh yes, the montage of the boys' life together in the Impala.
In life being weirdly synchronous, what other activity am I engaged in tonight? Baking pie. Lattice-top strawberry rhubarb. Somewhere, I like to think, Dean is approving.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth: http://casapazzo.dreamwidth.org/214113.html