SPN 716. I has thoughts.
Wow, I haven’t done this in a horrendously long time.
Okay, where do I start? First of all, I can’t say that this episode inspired me to massive amounts of flail. The promo for next week, on the other hand-!!!! I want that episode NOW.
But this week. Okay. Well, the original case was your typical fairly solid MOTW stuff…and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Leviathans being there, right? I guess it was just coincidence.
Frank. Is dead? We didn’t see a body, so possibly not. I was just starting to like him as a character, so it’d be just like Show to kill him off. It’d fit with the whole Winchesters-against-the-world theme, but it wouldn’t actually be a smart writing move, I don’t think. Shows needs characters; why is this so hard to understand?!!! *shakes fists at the heavens* Maybe Dean has to try to save him next week? But why on earth would Leviathans keep him alive? Not that I demand LOGIC or anything. That would just be silly.
I must say, I kind of like the Leviathans. They already kind of did the corporate evil thing with the angels (Zachariah, mostly), but these guys are a lot more obvious about it. And the eating each other is hilarious. “You see a Winchester, you don’t eat him. You call me, and I eat him.” So yeah…they don’t show up often enough or have enough personality, but they’re not so bad. (Also, the writers have cleverly named one Dick, so they can make dick jokes all the time, and I'm sure that warms their little 12-year-old hearts. Far be it from me to begrudge them that).
Oh yeah, and they’re trying to cure cancer? There are two possible explanations there: a) they want everyone to trust them so they can later subjugate them (and eat them). b) they’re actually trying to help, but the guys can’t let them do it because they're taking away people's Free Will or something.
I liked that George the Leviathan helped them out of pure self-interest. That struck me as perfectly believable.
Dean: I’m sad that we didn’t get to see him dance. Or get influenced by any of the other curses. He didn’t really do much this ep that was interesting. He wasn’t drinking, either. Has he cut back? Is there any in-show reason for him to have cut back? Personally, I’m still convinced he’s an alcoholic and if he tried to quit there ought to be serious side effects, but maybe they don’t want to do an addiction storyline after the whole demon blood thing. Mainly he showed concern for Sam. But not a whole lot of concern, because as usual he seemed fairly unaware of the seriousness of what Sam was struggling with. But so does the show, so…sigh. Sam is good at looking okay.
Can we talk about Sam? Argh. Why do they do this with Sam? Last ep, Lucifer was everywhere and Sam was hallucinating people headdesking themselves to death and talking to thin air and it was BEAUTIFUL. (By which I mean it was horrible and I felt horrible for Sam, but it was good drama!) This week…why didn’t they follow through on that? Now he’s not sleeping because Lucifer is keeping him awake? So he’s yawning a lot and almost driving into a truck head-on. Okay, but why did they feel the need to create a new problem, instead of following through on the old ones? Just because Mark Pellegrino isn’t there-and this is a complaint about the ENTIRE SEASON so far-doesn’t mean they can’t have Sam looking upset or distracted by things that we don't see, maybe talking to himself. Why doesn’t he look more distressed? Why doesn’t he have more trouble functioning? I mean, okay, so he’s good at ignoring Lucifer, but visual and auditory hallucinations all the damn time is going to affect you, isn’t it? I would think, and they've failed so utterly to show it for most of the season. And yes, I get that it’s a fairly episodic show and they need to have a functional Sam most of the time, but there would have been so many opportunities to work it in subtly. I don’t get how their minds work. It’s a lot like the treatment of Dean’s PTSD in S4. The strength of the show is the character stuff, the emotional stuff, and there’s so much potential material, but then they just give us crumbs.
At least Sam is telling Dean what’s going on…and Dean’s like, “did you try the hand thing?” Because of course self-harm is such a healthy coping strategy; thank you for your help, Dean. But, like…that could’ve gone somewhere, and it didn’t. Sam could’ve turned to doing something more serious out of desperation. That would’ve made some kind of sense, at least. But now I guess that habit’s just gone? Unless it makes a comeback, but I doubt it, because I doubt the writers even realized what they were doing. Because inflicting pain on yourself to make your hallucinations go away is totally a good, healthy idea. (I think they were probably just in love with the idea that “the Winchesters’ lives are SO ANGSTY that they can tell reality from hallucinations because their reality is FULL OF PAIN.”)
More random things:
I wonder what the death/loss of Frank is going to do to them. Did they start to get attached to him as a Bobby substitute? On that note, is Bobby actually a ghost? I would be so happy if Bobby as a ghost never happened. Come on, he got a good sendoff, it was a really good ep, just let him go. (Note that this logic does not in any way apply to Cas, because he didn’t get such a good sendoff. Which isn't a criticism, necessarily; it just felt like they left it open and Cas was going to come back. He promised to redeem himself to Dean, for goodness sake.)
Dean’s little speech about guilt. I guess he’s learned a valuable lesson or something. Maybe he’s supposed to be okay now? Huh. Meh on the execution, if so. He never gets the kind of emotional arc I want him to have. Which would be actually hitting bottom and then getting a GOOD REASON to pick himself back up (not just people telling him to suck it up) and then actually being HAPPIER afterwards. Or starting to move towards happier in some visible way. I mean, okay, if he’s supposed to be depressed, it’s more realistic for it not to just magically go away, but as a dramatic arc…it’s so directionless. I mean, there is no arc. Just “hey guys, I still hate my life and have to drag myself out of bed every morning and if a monster eats me I probably wouldn’t care that much,” and in a story, it gets kinda redundant.
ETA: Whoa, that came out kind of negative. Actually I really liked this episode, I swear! I just have lots of built-up things to gripe about! But in a loving way!
ETA again: What the heck happened with that ballerina? Did her feet explode off? It happened so fast. And there was a huge pool of blood, and she bled to death, I guess? I was so confused.
Okay, where do I start? First of all, I can’t say that this episode inspired me to massive amounts of flail. The promo for next week, on the other hand-!!!! I want that episode NOW.
But this week. Okay. Well, the original case was your typical fairly solid MOTW stuff…and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Leviathans being there, right? I guess it was just coincidence.
Frank. Is dead? We didn’t see a body, so possibly not. I was just starting to like him as a character, so it’d be just like Show to kill him off. It’d fit with the whole Winchesters-against-the-world theme, but it wouldn’t actually be a smart writing move, I don’t think. Shows needs characters; why is this so hard to understand?!!! *shakes fists at the heavens* Maybe Dean has to try to save him next week? But why on earth would Leviathans keep him alive? Not that I demand LOGIC or anything. That would just be silly.
I must say, I kind of like the Leviathans. They already kind of did the corporate evil thing with the angels (Zachariah, mostly), but these guys are a lot more obvious about it. And the eating each other is hilarious. “You see a Winchester, you don’t eat him. You call me, and I eat him.” So yeah…they don’t show up often enough or have enough personality, but they’re not so bad. (Also, the writers have cleverly named one Dick, so they can make dick jokes all the time, and I'm sure that warms their little 12-year-old hearts. Far be it from me to begrudge them that).
Oh yeah, and they’re trying to cure cancer? There are two possible explanations there: a) they want everyone to trust them so they can later subjugate them (and eat them). b) they’re actually trying to help, but the guys can’t let them do it because they're taking away people's Free Will or something.
I liked that George the Leviathan helped them out of pure self-interest. That struck me as perfectly believable.
Dean: I’m sad that we didn’t get to see him dance. Or get influenced by any of the other curses. He didn’t really do much this ep that was interesting. He wasn’t drinking, either. Has he cut back? Is there any in-show reason for him to have cut back? Personally, I’m still convinced he’s an alcoholic and if he tried to quit there ought to be serious side effects, but maybe they don’t want to do an addiction storyline after the whole demon blood thing. Mainly he showed concern for Sam. But not a whole lot of concern, because as usual he seemed fairly unaware of the seriousness of what Sam was struggling with. But so does the show, so…sigh. Sam is good at looking okay.
Can we talk about Sam? Argh. Why do they do this with Sam? Last ep, Lucifer was everywhere and Sam was hallucinating people headdesking themselves to death and talking to thin air and it was BEAUTIFUL. (By which I mean it was horrible and I felt horrible for Sam, but it was good drama!) This week…why didn’t they follow through on that? Now he’s not sleeping because Lucifer is keeping him awake? So he’s yawning a lot and almost driving into a truck head-on. Okay, but why did they feel the need to create a new problem, instead of following through on the old ones? Just because Mark Pellegrino isn’t there-and this is a complaint about the ENTIRE SEASON so far-doesn’t mean they can’t have Sam looking upset or distracted by things that we don't see, maybe talking to himself. Why doesn’t he look more distressed? Why doesn’t he have more trouble functioning? I mean, okay, so he’s good at ignoring Lucifer, but visual and auditory hallucinations all the damn time is going to affect you, isn’t it? I would think, and they've failed so utterly to show it for most of the season. And yes, I get that it’s a fairly episodic show and they need to have a functional Sam most of the time, but there would have been so many opportunities to work it in subtly. I don’t get how their minds work. It’s a lot like the treatment of Dean’s PTSD in S4. The strength of the show is the character stuff, the emotional stuff, and there’s so much potential material, but then they just give us crumbs.
At least Sam is telling Dean what’s going on…and Dean’s like, “did you try the hand thing?” Because of course self-harm is such a healthy coping strategy; thank you for your help, Dean. But, like…that could’ve gone somewhere, and it didn’t. Sam could’ve turned to doing something more serious out of desperation. That would’ve made some kind of sense, at least. But now I guess that habit’s just gone? Unless it makes a comeback, but I doubt it, because I doubt the writers even realized what they were doing. Because inflicting pain on yourself to make your hallucinations go away is totally a good, healthy idea. (I think they were probably just in love with the idea that “the Winchesters’ lives are SO ANGSTY that they can tell reality from hallucinations because their reality is FULL OF PAIN.”)
More random things:
I wonder what the death/loss of Frank is going to do to them. Did they start to get attached to him as a Bobby substitute? On that note, is Bobby actually a ghost? I would be so happy if Bobby as a ghost never happened. Come on, he got a good sendoff, it was a really good ep, just let him go. (Note that this logic does not in any way apply to Cas, because he didn’t get such a good sendoff. Which isn't a criticism, necessarily; it just felt like they left it open and Cas was going to come back. He promised to redeem himself to Dean, for goodness sake.)
Dean’s little speech about guilt. I guess he’s learned a valuable lesson or something. Maybe he’s supposed to be okay now? Huh. Meh on the execution, if so. He never gets the kind of emotional arc I want him to have. Which would be actually hitting bottom and then getting a GOOD REASON to pick himself back up (not just people telling him to suck it up) and then actually being HAPPIER afterwards. Or starting to move towards happier in some visible way. I mean, okay, if he’s supposed to be depressed, it’s more realistic for it not to just magically go away, but as a dramatic arc…it’s so directionless. I mean, there is no arc. Just “hey guys, I still hate my life and have to drag myself out of bed every morning and if a monster eats me I probably wouldn’t care that much,” and in a story, it gets kinda redundant.
ETA: Whoa, that came out kind of negative. Actually I really liked this episode, I swear! I just have lots of built-up things to gripe about! But in a loving way!
ETA again: What the heck happened with that ballerina? Did her feet explode off? It happened so fast. And there was a huge pool of blood, and she bled to death, I guess? I was so confused.