Decaf
I had a conversation with maggie33 about what is it about this season of Supernatural that I can’t grow to like and I realized I had trouble identifying the underlying reasons for my dissatisfaction. I know I don’t like the new, Decaf Dean, but why?
The easiest way to explain it, I guess, would be to remind everybody of Angel. You know, the show about tortured, dark, heartbroken, brooding, swooping, coat-swishing, did-I-mention-dark-and-tortured? vampire detective. Angel. If you watched, you probably remember the difference between the show’s mood and register in the first season and in the third season. Angel changed. Less brooding, more happy. Did that mean that the show was less interesting to watch? Did Angel really have to be unhappy and tormented by his past to be good entertainment?
Unfortunately, yes.
If you’re like me and you like your Friday evening show to be rich and simple, you won’t be happy when a previously angst-ridden and tormented character suddenly turns into soccer dad. Does that mean that Dean doesn’t deserve to be “normal”? Of course not. Unfortunately, it means he has no place on the show. It’s called Supernatural for a reason. Normalcy was a kind of a Holy Grail in the show for all the characters. If you have found the Holy Grail, game over. Mission accomplished. The end.
Obviously, the writers do realize that that and Dean’s normal family life was rather short-lived. Unfortunately, what the writers forgot was to put the old Dean back into the new show. Instead of fresh ground coffee with cream and loads of sugar, what I get is decaf with skimmed milk and Aspartame. Almost the same thing but not quite it.
Old Dean was, if you tried to describe him in one world, a paladin. A zealot. The soldier of good battling against evil because of absolute conviction that this is the way the world is: if it’s evil, you fight it. So, we have the archetypal figure of a paladin juxtaposed with today’s America, and it’s fascinating to watch him struggle against the God-ordained armor of “Daddy said so”, but always driven, always full of conviction, always with a sense of focused purpose. To find his father, to find the demon who killed his mother, to save his brother.
Then, in a greatly executed season, the paladin falls. The conviction is tainted, the focus wavers. Dean makes the deal. Dean dies, and falls. Suffers torture and becomes a torturer. When brought back, he’s expected to both be what he had been, unbroken and unfallen, and to use what he’s learned in hell to torture and interrogate. And this is also fascinating to watch, as is further disintegration of the zeal and conviction, culminating in Dean’s realization that he does not want to fight against the apocalypse.
What we had was a protagonist set apart from the “normal” world by his very upbringing, a modern day hero, struggling and angsty and suffering so beautifully.
What we have now is... decaf.
The new Dean is, simply put, absolutely bland. He’s no longer the protagonist, he’s the sidekick. Why? No explanation. He doesn’t fight very well anymore. Why? No explanation. He’s not very keen on winning Lisa back. He’s not very worried about his brother being a soulless monster. He’s not terribly worried about letting shapeshifters on the loose. He’s not ANYTHING. We had a hero, and now we have a character who spends more time being rescued than doing the rescuing. Why? No explanation.
So after all, my reasons for disliking the new Supernatural are simple - I want my cape-and-tights superhero back. Whole or broken or breaking or getting patched up, whatever works. What I don’t want is a support cast disillusioned good-for-nothing stepdad who got kicked to the curb by his ex. Not in this show. Please let it stay supernatural, and not mundane.
The easiest way to explain it, I guess, would be to remind everybody of Angel. You know, the show about tortured, dark, heartbroken, brooding, swooping, coat-swishing, did-I-mention-dark-and-tortured? vampire detective. Angel. If you watched, you probably remember the difference between the show’s mood and register in the first season and in the third season. Angel changed. Less brooding, more happy. Did that mean that the show was less interesting to watch? Did Angel really have to be unhappy and tormented by his past to be good entertainment?
Unfortunately, yes.
If you’re like me and you like your Friday evening show to be rich and simple, you won’t be happy when a previously angst-ridden and tormented character suddenly turns into soccer dad. Does that mean that Dean doesn’t deserve to be “normal”? Of course not. Unfortunately, it means he has no place on the show. It’s called Supernatural for a reason. Normalcy was a kind of a Holy Grail in the show for all the characters. If you have found the Holy Grail, game over. Mission accomplished. The end.
Obviously, the writers do realize that that and Dean’s normal family life was rather short-lived. Unfortunately, what the writers forgot was to put the old Dean back into the new show. Instead of fresh ground coffee with cream and loads of sugar, what I get is decaf with skimmed milk and Aspartame. Almost the same thing but not quite it.
Old Dean was, if you tried to describe him in one world, a paladin. A zealot. The soldier of good battling against evil because of absolute conviction that this is the way the world is: if it’s evil, you fight it. So, we have the archetypal figure of a paladin juxtaposed with today’s America, and it’s fascinating to watch him struggle against the God-ordained armor of “Daddy said so”, but always driven, always full of conviction, always with a sense of focused purpose. To find his father, to find the demon who killed his mother, to save his brother.
Then, in a greatly executed season, the paladin falls. The conviction is tainted, the focus wavers. Dean makes the deal. Dean dies, and falls. Suffers torture and becomes a torturer. When brought back, he’s expected to both be what he had been, unbroken and unfallen, and to use what he’s learned in hell to torture and interrogate. And this is also fascinating to watch, as is further disintegration of the zeal and conviction, culminating in Dean’s realization that he does not want to fight against the apocalypse.
What we had was a protagonist set apart from the “normal” world by his very upbringing, a modern day hero, struggling and angsty and suffering so beautifully.
What we have now is... decaf.
The new Dean is, simply put, absolutely bland. He’s no longer the protagonist, he’s the sidekick. Why? No explanation. He doesn’t fight very well anymore. Why? No explanation. He’s not very keen on winning Lisa back. He’s not very worried about his brother being a soulless monster. He’s not terribly worried about letting shapeshifters on the loose. He’s not ANYTHING. We had a hero, and now we have a character who spends more time being rescued than doing the rescuing. Why? No explanation.
So after all, my reasons for disliking the new Supernatural are simple - I want my cape-and-tights superhero back. Whole or broken or breaking or getting patched up, whatever works. What I don’t want is a support cast disillusioned good-for-nothing stepdad who got kicked to the curb by his ex. Not in this show. Please let it stay supernatural, and not mundane.