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I've been meaning to type this up for a while. Fair warning, this may very well shift into OTT teritory and I would imagine that the hyperbole will be strong with this one. Becase Supernatural broke my heart and I'm still not over it.
On that note here is why I'm breaking up with Supernatural.
Background: I've discovered that it's absolutely impossible for me to not analyze television. I will nitpick shows I don't like that much (ex. Bones) even though I went into it knowing that certain things wouldn't make sense. I am simply incapable of watching a show solely for the pretty. If I don't connect with the characters on some emotional level then I can't handwave all of the other bullshit the show might throw at me.
I started season 6 in a fairly optimistic mood. And things were pretty okay for about, oh, five or six episodes. I absolutely hated 6x10 but I really enjoyed 6x11, though not enough to be really hyped up for the rest of the season. And then the show came back from hiatus and the slide downhill picked up momentum.
There were problematic issues right from the start. By season six the show had done the whole "Is Sam evil or isn't he?" dance too many times to count. Souless!Sam, though occasionally entertaining, did nothing to further Sam's character arc. Once again I feel like the showrunners failed Sam Winchester, there was no meat to his story because there wasn't any real tension. Oh wow, Sam is evil again. Yippee. < /sarcasm> Sam had neither growth nor resolution and the whole season felt like a waste.
And why was I supposed to care about Lisa again? Because Dean cared about her? Would it have been so hard to make Lisa her own character, to show who she was and why she did the things she did? Why in the world would she take in a guy as messed up like Dean? What did she see in him? What was her job? Who were her friends? All we knew about Lisa was that she had a kid named Ben and that she and Dean had some kind of emotional/sexual connection. Lisa was a cypher, a blank canvas. Yes, Lisa Sampson gave her personality and interest and she and Jensen had good chemistry, but even she couldn't give the character what the writers weren't willing to provide. We weren't given a reason to care about Lisa or Ben outside of their connection to Dean which, frankly, wasn't good enough.
Which leads me straight to Dean himself. Are we supposed to believe that he believes that he's only a killer and that's all he'll ever be or are we supposed to believe for ourselves that he's a killer and that's all he'll ever be? Because I can totally buy that Dean has a poor opinion of himself but if the showrunners are trying to sell me on the supposition that violence is the extent of Dean's character then, frankly, they don't know their character at all. By the end of the season they were working hard to turn Dean into that asshole we met in The End, you know, the guy Dean thought was a douchebag. And, frankly, while I enjoyed the hell out of The End I don't want to watch a show every week with that guy as a main character. If I wanted to watch a show about a self-involved dick I'd go watch Doctor Who series four which, at least, also had Donna Noble being awesome.
It's kind of funny that the only character who had any kind of character growth over the course of the season was Castiel since they clearly had no clue what to do with him. The vast majority of his growth happened offscreen so even though we know he changed we didn't really get to see it happening. It's fairly obvious that they pulled the last few episodes of the season out of the wreckage of their original plan. It's to their credit that they put all of the pieces together in such a way that a season long arc can be extrapolated in retrospect, but I would be willing to bet my law school degree that they had a completely different plan for the end of the season when they started it.
Speaking of, wow, that whole thing with the Campbells turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, didn't it? They really wasted Mitch Pileggi there, didn't they?
But, yes, Castiel, the character that they seem to not even like, was the only one who actually grew over the season. And then he betrayed everyone and now he thinks he's God. Yeah, whatever assholes.
What it really all comes down to is that I want the characters to have hope for something better. Yeah, life's a beach and then you drown but I'm not looking for that from the with which I spend quality time. Instead season six gave us a bunch of worn through, damaged characters fighting because that's all they knew how to do anymore. They weren't fighting for something better, they were only going through the motions because they didn't know how to do anything else. I'd say they should all just kill themselves but, thanks to season five, we know that heaven is even more bullshit than earth.
So, whatever. There's nothing left for me from that show. The characters are hardly recognizable and the stories are depressing and pointless. Yeah, Dean and Cas are still awfully pretty but that's not nearly enough to keep me fixed in front of my TV set every Friday at 9PM. There are a lot of people who still enjoy the show and that's wonderful, if something makes you happy I say go for it, enjoy it to your utmost. I still love the characters SPN created and the stories it told. I still want to write fic about those characters, they're a part of me now, embedded deep in my brain and in the stories I tell. But it does make me melancholy that I, apparently, was never watching the show that the showrunners thought they were making and now it's best for all of us if we part ways.
I'll miss you Supernatural and I'll always love you. Thank you for all of the really great times we've had. I'll always think of you fondly.
In sum:
comments at http://liptonrm.dreamwidth.org/31758.html.
On that note here is why I'm breaking up with Supernatural.
Background: I've discovered that it's absolutely impossible for me to not analyze television. I will nitpick shows I don't like that much (ex. Bones) even though I went into it knowing that certain things wouldn't make sense. I am simply incapable of watching a show solely for the pretty. If I don't connect with the characters on some emotional level then I can't handwave all of the other bullshit the show might throw at me.
I started season 6 in a fairly optimistic mood. And things were pretty okay for about, oh, five or six episodes. I absolutely hated 6x10 but I really enjoyed 6x11, though not enough to be really hyped up for the rest of the season. And then the show came back from hiatus and the slide downhill picked up momentum.
There were problematic issues right from the start. By season six the show had done the whole "Is Sam evil or isn't he?" dance too many times to count. Souless!Sam, though occasionally entertaining, did nothing to further Sam's character arc. Once again I feel like the showrunners failed Sam Winchester, there was no meat to his story because there wasn't any real tension. Oh wow, Sam is evil again. Yippee. < /sarcasm> Sam had neither growth nor resolution and the whole season felt like a waste.
And why was I supposed to care about Lisa again? Because Dean cared about her? Would it have been so hard to make Lisa her own character, to show who she was and why she did the things she did? Why in the world would she take in a guy as messed up like Dean? What did she see in him? What was her job? Who were her friends? All we knew about Lisa was that she had a kid named Ben and that she and Dean had some kind of emotional/sexual connection. Lisa was a cypher, a blank canvas. Yes, Lisa Sampson gave her personality and interest and she and Jensen had good chemistry, but even she couldn't give the character what the writers weren't willing to provide. We weren't given a reason to care about Lisa or Ben outside of their connection to Dean which, frankly, wasn't good enough.
Which leads me straight to Dean himself. Are we supposed to believe that he believes that he's only a killer and that's all he'll ever be or are we supposed to believe for ourselves that he's a killer and that's all he'll ever be? Because I can totally buy that Dean has a poor opinion of himself but if the showrunners are trying to sell me on the supposition that violence is the extent of Dean's character then, frankly, they don't know their character at all. By the end of the season they were working hard to turn Dean into that asshole we met in The End, you know, the guy Dean thought was a douchebag. And, frankly, while I enjoyed the hell out of The End I don't want to watch a show every week with that guy as a main character. If I wanted to watch a show about a self-involved dick I'd go watch Doctor Who series four which, at least, also had Donna Noble being awesome.
It's kind of funny that the only character who had any kind of character growth over the course of the season was Castiel since they clearly had no clue what to do with him. The vast majority of his growth happened offscreen so even though we know he changed we didn't really get to see it happening. It's fairly obvious that they pulled the last few episodes of the season out of the wreckage of their original plan. It's to their credit that they put all of the pieces together in such a way that a season long arc can be extrapolated in retrospect, but I would be willing to bet my law school degree that they had a completely different plan for the end of the season when they started it.
Speaking of, wow, that whole thing with the Campbells turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, didn't it? They really wasted Mitch Pileggi there, didn't they?
But, yes, Castiel, the character that they seem to not even like, was the only one who actually grew over the season. And then he betrayed everyone and now he thinks he's God. Yeah, whatever assholes.
What it really all comes down to is that I want the characters to have hope for something better. Yeah, life's a beach and then you drown but I'm not looking for that from the with which I spend quality time. Instead season six gave us a bunch of worn through, damaged characters fighting because that's all they knew how to do anymore. They weren't fighting for something better, they were only going through the motions because they didn't know how to do anything else. I'd say they should all just kill themselves but, thanks to season five, we know that heaven is even more bullshit than earth.
So, whatever. There's nothing left for me from that show. The characters are hardly recognizable and the stories are depressing and pointless. Yeah, Dean and Cas are still awfully pretty but that's not nearly enough to keep me fixed in front of my TV set every Friday at 9PM. There are a lot of people who still enjoy the show and that's wonderful, if something makes you happy I say go for it, enjoy it to your utmost. I still love the characters SPN created and the stories it told. I still want to write fic about those characters, they're a part of me now, embedded deep in my brain and in the stories I tell. But it does make me melancholy that I, apparently, was never watching the show that the showrunners thought they were making and now it's best for all of us if we part ways.
I'll miss you Supernatural and I'll always love you. Thank you for all of the really great times we've had. I'll always think of you fondly.
In sum:
Click to viewcomments at http://liptonrm.dreamwidth.org/31758.html.