Thinky Thoughts on Shows with Monsters
I’ve been sick with the flu about two weeks back, and spent a couple of days in bed sniffling a lot and watching about half of my entire collection of Buffy, Supernatural and House episodes - for a while at least, before I switched to Friends because at that point that was about the highest level of complexity my feverish brain could handle.
Anyway, something occurred to me while watching the episodes of the later seasons of Buffy (I'm less fond of the earlier ones, because the whole high school-related stuff tends to get on my nerves), and I've asked myself if anyone else ever wondered what exactly happened in season 6? Did the writers have some sort of competition to see who could mess up the lives of the entire cast the most in the shortest possible time? (And if so, who won?) I mean, I get it that you have to make life difficult for your main characters - because where's the fun for the viewers otherwise? - but it seems that in season 6 they were determined to make everyone's life go down the drain more or less at once.
I mean, there's Xander leaving Anya at the altar, which kinda puts a damper on their relationship and makes her go back to her vengeance demon ways, Dawn becomes kleptomaniac, Spike gets into this whole completely messed up and destructive affair with Buffy, Willow gets addicted to magic and messes with her girlfriend's memories, causing her to break up the relationship (can't blame her, really), and just as they've made up, Tara gets shot and dies, and Willow goes evil and tries to destroy the world.
And Buffy spends half her screentime angsting about how life was so much better when she was dead.
I mean, huh? Personally, I can understand why Giles took off for England during the season - he probably figured that if he didn't get out now, who knew what TPTB might have come up for him? ;-)
And while I'm at it, spending I spent an hour on a train yesterday rewatching the latest Supernatural episode, and stumbled upon another question which I didn't think of when I posted my initial comments, concerning the matter of Ruby's motives and trustworthiness:
In one of the flashback scenes in I Know What You Did Last Summer, which takes place six months before the actual episode, Sam willingly agrees to let Ruby teach him how to use his powers in order to get revenge on Lilith. We then see another flashback of Sam trying - and failing - to exorcise a trapped demon with his powers.
In a flashback that says five months before the current episode, so about one month after the first scenes, Sam believes he has found Lilith, and wants to go after her. Ruby, however, declares him “not ready” and says that he hasn’t been “too successful”, and that his attempt would be suicide. And true enough, Sam exorcises even the common black-eyed demon he encounters only with difficulties, and so we can assume that he would have indeed failed against the presumably far more powerful Lilith - after more or less thirty days of Ruby’s training.
So… anyone still remember that when Ruby first told Sam that he could take out Lilith, she promised that she could teach him how in just thirty hours?
Here’s the crucial part of the scene from No Rest for the Wicked:
Ruby: I know how to save your brother, Sam.
Sam: No, you don’t! You told Dean you couldn’t, you’ve been lying to me all along! So just give me your damn knife!
Ruby: You’re not the one that I’ve been lying to.
Sam: Oh, so you can save him?
Ruby: No! But you can.
[…]
Ruby: If you want it, you can wipe her off the map without moving a muscle.
Sam: I don’t believe you.
Ruby: It’s the truth.
Sam. And you decided to tell me this just now.
Ruby: Erm… demon? Manipulative's kinda in the job description. Fact is that you never would have considered it. Not until you were…
Sam: …desperate enough.
[…]
Ruby: We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we gotta do it fast, but we can do it. Look, call me a bitch, hate me all you want, but I have never lied to you, Sam. Not ever. And I'm telling you, you can save your brother. And I can show you how.
So at this point, Ruby flat-out promises Sam that she can teach him enough to take out Lilith before the expiration of Dean’s deadline in about thirty hours, but in the flashbacks from the episodes we see that she hadn’t yet managed to do so in thirty days.
The way I see it, there are two possible explanations here, depending on whether you believe in good!Ruby or evil!Ruby:
a. Assuming that Ruby is indeed the one sincere and truly trustworthy friendly demon, as it’s been claimed repeatedly in the latest episode, and that she was equally honest about being willing to help Sam save Dean, this would mean that she had completely miscalculated the time that Sam would need to get a firm enough grasp on his powers to succeed against Lilith, and not just by a few hours of a few days, but by about one month. Which in turn would either mean that, as demonic mentors go, she’s not nearly as knowledgeable and reliable as she pretends to be - or that Sam's claim to be a "crappy student" is the understatement of the century, if it's taken him weeks to learn to exorcise even common low-level demons when Ruby expected him to learn how to defeat the new Big Bad Lilith in only little more than one day.
b. The other alternative, of course, is that Ruby knew right from the start that Sam could not learn to use his powers in such a short time. She wanted to get him to start using them (for as of yet undisclosed reasons), so she waited until he'd run out of other options and would therefore listen to her, but she never planned to actually save Dean. He’s been in her way right from the start - he mistrusts her, hates her guts and has been doing everything in his power to keep Sam away from her influence. Starting to teach Sam how to use his powers in a desperate last-minute attempt that was bound to fail would be doubly beneficial to her - it would rid her of Dean’s interference and leave Sam under her influence alone, and would probably reinforce his determination to learn full control over his powers so he could get revenge on Lilith - which is exactly what we’ve seen happen in the flashbacks in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
I guess we’ll have to wait until we learn what Ruby’s agenda really is before we get an answer. As I’ve said in my initial comments on the episode, I’m rather allergic to the idea of Saint!Ruby, so I’d personally prefer option b. here - though I must say, it'd make the scene in the I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which Dean actually thanks Ruby and apologises to her while Sam watches with a benevolent smile not just slightly nauseating to me, but disturbing on so many levels.
I have no thinky thoughts to offer on House, however. Except that I've been taking screenshots of the latest episodes to make icons, and for the record? Hugh Laurie = best facial expressions ever. Though that's hardly news, I guess.
Anyway, something occurred to me while watching the episodes of the later seasons of Buffy (I'm less fond of the earlier ones, because the whole high school-related stuff tends to get on my nerves), and I've asked myself if anyone else ever wondered what exactly happened in season 6? Did the writers have some sort of competition to see who could mess up the lives of the entire cast the most in the shortest possible time? (And if so, who won?) I mean, I get it that you have to make life difficult for your main characters - because where's the fun for the viewers otherwise? - but it seems that in season 6 they were determined to make everyone's life go down the drain more or less at once.
I mean, there's Xander leaving Anya at the altar, which kinda puts a damper on their relationship and makes her go back to her vengeance demon ways, Dawn becomes kleptomaniac, Spike gets into this whole completely messed up and destructive affair with Buffy, Willow gets addicted to magic and messes with her girlfriend's memories, causing her to break up the relationship (can't blame her, really), and just as they've made up, Tara gets shot and dies, and Willow goes evil and tries to destroy the world.
And Buffy spends half her screentime angsting about how life was so much better when she was dead.
I mean, huh? Personally, I can understand why Giles took off for England during the season - he probably figured that if he didn't get out now, who knew what TPTB might have come up for him? ;-)
And while I'm at it, spending I spent an hour on a train yesterday rewatching the latest Supernatural episode, and stumbled upon another question which I didn't think of when I posted my initial comments, concerning the matter of Ruby's motives and trustworthiness:
In one of the flashback scenes in I Know What You Did Last Summer, which takes place six months before the actual episode, Sam willingly agrees to let Ruby teach him how to use his powers in order to get revenge on Lilith. We then see another flashback of Sam trying - and failing - to exorcise a trapped demon with his powers.
In a flashback that says five months before the current episode, so about one month after the first scenes, Sam believes he has found Lilith, and wants to go after her. Ruby, however, declares him “not ready” and says that he hasn’t been “too successful”, and that his attempt would be suicide. And true enough, Sam exorcises even the common black-eyed demon he encounters only with difficulties, and so we can assume that he would have indeed failed against the presumably far more powerful Lilith - after more or less thirty days of Ruby’s training.
So… anyone still remember that when Ruby first told Sam that he could take out Lilith, she promised that she could teach him how in just thirty hours?
Here’s the crucial part of the scene from No Rest for the Wicked:
Ruby: I know how to save your brother, Sam.
Sam: No, you don’t! You told Dean you couldn’t, you’ve been lying to me all along! So just give me your damn knife!
Ruby: You’re not the one that I’ve been lying to.
Sam: Oh, so you can save him?
Ruby: No! But you can.
[…]
Ruby: If you want it, you can wipe her off the map without moving a muscle.
Sam: I don’t believe you.
Ruby: It’s the truth.
Sam. And you decided to tell me this just now.
Ruby: Erm… demon? Manipulative's kinda in the job description. Fact is that you never would have considered it. Not until you were…
Sam: …desperate enough.
[…]
Ruby: We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we gotta do it fast, but we can do it. Look, call me a bitch, hate me all you want, but I have never lied to you, Sam. Not ever. And I'm telling you, you can save your brother. And I can show you how.
So at this point, Ruby flat-out promises Sam that she can teach him enough to take out Lilith before the expiration of Dean’s deadline in about thirty hours, but in the flashbacks from the episodes we see that she hadn’t yet managed to do so in thirty days.
The way I see it, there are two possible explanations here, depending on whether you believe in good!Ruby or evil!Ruby:
a. Assuming that Ruby is indeed the one sincere and truly trustworthy friendly demon, as it’s been claimed repeatedly in the latest episode, and that she was equally honest about being willing to help Sam save Dean, this would mean that she had completely miscalculated the time that Sam would need to get a firm enough grasp on his powers to succeed against Lilith, and not just by a few hours of a few days, but by about one month. Which in turn would either mean that, as demonic mentors go, she’s not nearly as knowledgeable and reliable as she pretends to be - or that Sam's claim to be a "crappy student" is the understatement of the century, if it's taken him weeks to learn to exorcise even common low-level demons when Ruby expected him to learn how to defeat the new Big Bad Lilith in only little more than one day.
b. The other alternative, of course, is that Ruby knew right from the start that Sam could not learn to use his powers in such a short time. She wanted to get him to start using them (for as of yet undisclosed reasons), so she waited until he'd run out of other options and would therefore listen to her, but she never planned to actually save Dean. He’s been in her way right from the start - he mistrusts her, hates her guts and has been doing everything in his power to keep Sam away from her influence. Starting to teach Sam how to use his powers in a desperate last-minute attempt that was bound to fail would be doubly beneficial to her - it would rid her of Dean’s interference and leave Sam under her influence alone, and would probably reinforce his determination to learn full control over his powers so he could get revenge on Lilith - which is exactly what we’ve seen happen in the flashbacks in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
I guess we’ll have to wait until we learn what Ruby’s agenda really is before we get an answer. As I’ve said in my initial comments on the episode, I’m rather allergic to the idea of Saint!Ruby, so I’d personally prefer option b. here - though I must say, it'd make the scene in the I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which Dean actually thanks Ruby and apologises to her while Sam watches with a benevolent smile not just slightly nauseating to me, but disturbing on so many levels.
I have no thinky thoughts to offer on House, however. Except that I've been taking screenshots of the latest episodes to make icons, and for the record? Hugh Laurie = best facial expressions ever. Though that's hardly news, I guess.