SPN - Hunteru Heroici
Last night SPN trailed in the wake of Farscape, and like the Farscape ep it copied, it was more crash and burn than awesome. I loved Ben Endlund's The Tick, but I'm very hot or miss on him as an SPN writer. I mean, Ghostfacers was hilarious, but the wishing well one (despite the talking teddy bear, which was great) made me rage about how basically date rape was just ignored as anything important. And everything else is kind of in between. I guess ultimately I don't like how he handles women and so the more female characters in an Elund ep, the more ragy I'm likely to be afterward. I'm not ragey after this one particularly, mostly because the female characters that were in it were at least a mixed bag of cool (the cop) and sexy fantasy (suburban house wife shenanigans). Mostly, honestly, I was bored.
I kind of knew this wasn't going to work for me when the guy's heart exploded out of his chest. I didn't mind the woman being splattered with bits of him or any of the cartoon carnage in the ep, I just thought the SFX for the heart were poor and at that point I didn't have enough info to know why his heart was heart-shaped rather than normal shaped. So mostly I was like, this is stupid, before I realized what was up - but that shaped my viewpoint I think.
So you know, whatever whatever, hand wavy - psychics with dementia create new cartoon rule worlds that people around them take advantage of. This could have been an interesting meditation on age and power and loss of control. It wasn't. Mostly I yelled "BJ Hunnicut, you got old!" a lot - I always liked him on MASH (my father's favorite show).
In between the falling anvils, there were some serious moments between Dean Cas about Cas's guilt issues, and between Sam and dreamworld Sam regarding... Honestly, I'm not sure - the fact that both he and Amelia were broken broken people?
Cas has giant guilt issues about laying waste to much of Heaven, as he should really, and although he says that's why he can't go back to Heaven to Dean, it turns out he's actually not allowed back until Naomi rings her little Pavlovian bell summoning him. In other words, I'm not sure how much of what Cas says I can believe because he's being influenced by what happens with Naomi, which he himself doesn't remember. Awesome. I did like Dean's concern, and how he had a look on his face like he understood why Cas would feel so guilty. Heck, Dean feels guilty if someone stubs their toe in China, so of course he can empathize.
The thing about Cas that they haven't dealt with yet, is he has enormous power, so why couldn't he just read everyone's mind at the nursing home or something. It just feels inconsistent somehow. Maybe he's not supposed to be at full power - but then he healed the orderly who was shot and took himself and Sam into the psychic's head so he does have a lot of mojo. This has always been my main issue with Cas honestly - love Misha, love Cas as a character, think that because of his power he's highly problematic and the show has to come up with ways to minimize his strength/power in order to allow Sam&Dean to do anything at all. This ep didn't even really bother with that, Cas just sometimes did his thing and sometimes not.
Meanwhile, Sam and Amelia continue to be emotional twins, even to the point where her Don comes back alive apparently just like Dean does/will. At this point, I'm questioning her reality. I think her "father" is a psychiatrist in a hospital somewhere where Sam is catatonic/hallucinating Amelia, and that Don coming back is Sam coming back to reality when somehow Dean contacts him (don't ask me how, I'm hand waving right now). Her name is Amelia (like Sam's friend Amy who Dean killed last year) and her last name is Richardson - son of Dick basically, as in Dick Roman. So, purely for her name, I question her reality, and then her matching traumas with Dean. Eh, who knows, maybe the dog is really a Djinn and he created this life for Sam using Sam's psyche. Or a Leviathan has him and is torturing him. I don't know. I'm just saying right now that there is no way Amelia is real. I'm making that call. Especially considering the moment Dean started talking about dreamworld, that's where's Sam's memories went.
Overall, um, I'm ok with Edlund not writing any more SPN eps unless they specifically relate to Ghostfacers.
I kind of knew this wasn't going to work for me when the guy's heart exploded out of his chest. I didn't mind the woman being splattered with bits of him or any of the cartoon carnage in the ep, I just thought the SFX for the heart were poor and at that point I didn't have enough info to know why his heart was heart-shaped rather than normal shaped. So mostly I was like, this is stupid, before I realized what was up - but that shaped my viewpoint I think.
So you know, whatever whatever, hand wavy - psychics with dementia create new cartoon rule worlds that people around them take advantage of. This could have been an interesting meditation on age and power and loss of control. It wasn't. Mostly I yelled "BJ Hunnicut, you got old!" a lot - I always liked him on MASH (my father's favorite show).
In between the falling anvils, there were some serious moments between Dean Cas about Cas's guilt issues, and between Sam and dreamworld Sam regarding... Honestly, I'm not sure - the fact that both he and Amelia were broken broken people?
Cas has giant guilt issues about laying waste to much of Heaven, as he should really, and although he says that's why he can't go back to Heaven to Dean, it turns out he's actually not allowed back until Naomi rings her little Pavlovian bell summoning him. In other words, I'm not sure how much of what Cas says I can believe because he's being influenced by what happens with Naomi, which he himself doesn't remember. Awesome. I did like Dean's concern, and how he had a look on his face like he understood why Cas would feel so guilty. Heck, Dean feels guilty if someone stubs their toe in China, so of course he can empathize.
The thing about Cas that they haven't dealt with yet, is he has enormous power, so why couldn't he just read everyone's mind at the nursing home or something. It just feels inconsistent somehow. Maybe he's not supposed to be at full power - but then he healed the orderly who was shot and took himself and Sam into the psychic's head so he does have a lot of mojo. This has always been my main issue with Cas honestly - love Misha, love Cas as a character, think that because of his power he's highly problematic and the show has to come up with ways to minimize his strength/power in order to allow Sam&Dean to do anything at all. This ep didn't even really bother with that, Cas just sometimes did his thing and sometimes not.
Meanwhile, Sam and Amelia continue to be emotional twins, even to the point where her Don comes back alive apparently just like Dean does/will. At this point, I'm questioning her reality. I think her "father" is a psychiatrist in a hospital somewhere where Sam is catatonic/hallucinating Amelia, and that Don coming back is Sam coming back to reality when somehow Dean contacts him (don't ask me how, I'm hand waving right now). Her name is Amelia (like Sam's friend Amy who Dean killed last year) and her last name is Richardson - son of Dick basically, as in Dick Roman. So, purely for her name, I question her reality, and then her matching traumas with Dean. Eh, who knows, maybe the dog is really a Djinn and he created this life for Sam using Sam's psyche. Or a Leviathan has him and is torturing him. I don't know. I'm just saying right now that there is no way Amelia is real. I'm making that call. Especially considering the moment Dean started talking about dreamworld, that's where's Sam's memories went.
Overall, um, I'm ok with Edlund not writing any more SPN eps unless they specifically relate to Ghostfacers.