if you think that I could be forgiven
As I was drifting off to sleep last night, I realized something about my dissatisfaction with s6 of SPN so far. It's a matter of genre and expectations.
Apparently, Sera Gamble said she wanted this season to be noir in tone and I think they've done a good job with that so far - looking at this season's episodes so far with that lens makes a lot of sense (more sense, perhaps, than they make otherwise) - but the thing about noir (and neo-noir, which is even more cynical) is that it's about one man (occasionally, it's a woman [see Veronica Mars], but most often it's a man) alone and in over his head fighting to bring some truth to light while working against corrupt systems that will grind him down to nothing in the end. Sometimes he's a righteous man, but sometimes he's only slightly less corrupt than the forces working against him. Er, that's not an official definition, but it pretty much gives you the gist. There are stylistic elements that go along with this, but I'm just going to concentrate on the thematic things, because SPN has always been pretty literally dark in terms of lighting and how it's shot etc.
Anyway. The thing is, it would be a whole different kettle of fish if this were the first season of a new show, and we had just met Dean Winchester, former hunter who saved the world with his now-dead brother (who died sacrificing himself to save it), and who now lived with his girlfriend and her son and was trying to leave the past behind him but of course, he can't, because the past is never dead. It's not even past. (Faulkner wrote the screenplay for The Big Sleep, you know.) So he can't do that. And Sam comes back and he's not himself and he's got these random shady relatives with him and Dean discovers everyone (except the gf, with whom he can no longer live because of the past becoming present, in more than one sense) has been lying to him.
And not only have the people he trusts most been lying to him, he learns that everything he knows about monsters and the supernatural is being turned on its head, even heaven and hell are in disarray, and there's nothing he can rely on or believe in except himself.
The show's done pretty well at conveying that sense of paranoia, of the ground shifting beneath Dean's feet as his understanding of the universe takes hit after hit.
But see, that's not the show I signed up to watch. It's not the first season of a show with that premise. It's the sixth season of a show that had at its core the relationship between two brothers, and how their love for each other saved the world.
And now it feels like there's been an abrupt shift, that this relationship, the strength of which even after all the damage it's taken, allowed Sam last season to overcome possession by Lucifer and return him to his cage, is suddenly completely changed, and that change is apparently one of the central mysteries the show is exploring.
And that doesn't work for me.
Aside from erasing all the character growth Sam underwent in seasons 4 and 5, it undercuts the whole premise of the show as I understood it.
It's a huge bait-and-switch. Instead of building on the steps made in the season finale, where Sam and Dean's relationship moves onto more healthy ground and they're in a place where they can start doing repairs to all the hurt they've caused each other over the past three seasons, we're back at Sam and Dean don't trust each other, and Dean is the lone righteous man in a corrupt world.
I've put up with a lot of poor writing and really sketchy gender and race bullshit because of how the show handled Sam and Dean's relationship, and how much it hooked me and how much I was invested in it emotionally, and I feel like that's gone now, the show's moved its focus somewhere else, and not in a way that allows me to retain that emotional investment; in fact, the way they've done it so far feels like they're kicking my emotional investment in the throat.
And the thing is, I LOVE noir stories. It's one of my favorite genres. I just am not able to make the shift emotionally that the show seems to need me to make. *sadhair*
Now that I've articulated it, I feel better. I mean, I'm still unhappy and am distancing myself emotionally from the show, but now at least I feel like I understand what they're trying to do and why it's not working for me. Obviously, mileage varies.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/236435.html.
people have commented there.
Apparently, Sera Gamble said she wanted this season to be noir in tone and I think they've done a good job with that so far - looking at this season's episodes so far with that lens makes a lot of sense (more sense, perhaps, than they make otherwise) - but the thing about noir (and neo-noir, which is even more cynical) is that it's about one man (occasionally, it's a woman [see Veronica Mars], but most often it's a man) alone and in over his head fighting to bring some truth to light while working against corrupt systems that will grind him down to nothing in the end. Sometimes he's a righteous man, but sometimes he's only slightly less corrupt than the forces working against him. Er, that's not an official definition, but it pretty much gives you the gist. There are stylistic elements that go along with this, but I'm just going to concentrate on the thematic things, because SPN has always been pretty literally dark in terms of lighting and how it's shot etc.
Anyway. The thing is, it would be a whole different kettle of fish if this were the first season of a new show, and we had just met Dean Winchester, former hunter who saved the world with his now-dead brother (who died sacrificing himself to save it), and who now lived with his girlfriend and her son and was trying to leave the past behind him but of course, he can't, because the past is never dead. It's not even past. (Faulkner wrote the screenplay for The Big Sleep, you know.) So he can't do that. And Sam comes back and he's not himself and he's got these random shady relatives with him and Dean discovers everyone (except the gf, with whom he can no longer live because of the past becoming present, in more than one sense) has been lying to him.
And not only have the people he trusts most been lying to him, he learns that everything he knows about monsters and the supernatural is being turned on its head, even heaven and hell are in disarray, and there's nothing he can rely on or believe in except himself.
The show's done pretty well at conveying that sense of paranoia, of the ground shifting beneath Dean's feet as his understanding of the universe takes hit after hit.
But see, that's not the show I signed up to watch. It's not the first season of a show with that premise. It's the sixth season of a show that had at its core the relationship between two brothers, and how their love for each other saved the world.
And now it feels like there's been an abrupt shift, that this relationship, the strength of which even after all the damage it's taken, allowed Sam last season to overcome possession by Lucifer and return him to his cage, is suddenly completely changed, and that change is apparently one of the central mysteries the show is exploring.
And that doesn't work for me.
Aside from erasing all the character growth Sam underwent in seasons 4 and 5, it undercuts the whole premise of the show as I understood it.
It's a huge bait-and-switch. Instead of building on the steps made in the season finale, where Sam and Dean's relationship moves onto more healthy ground and they're in a place where they can start doing repairs to all the hurt they've caused each other over the past three seasons, we're back at Sam and Dean don't trust each other, and Dean is the lone righteous man in a corrupt world.
I've put up with a lot of poor writing and really sketchy gender and race bullshit because of how the show handled Sam and Dean's relationship, and how much it hooked me and how much I was invested in it emotionally, and I feel like that's gone now, the show's moved its focus somewhere else, and not in a way that allows me to retain that emotional investment; in fact, the way they've done it so far feels like they're kicking my emotional investment in the throat.
And the thing is, I LOVE noir stories. It's one of my favorite genres. I just am not able to make the shift emotionally that the show seems to need me to make. *sadhair*
Now that I've articulated it, I feel better. I mean, I'm still unhappy and am distancing myself emotionally from the show, but now at least I feel like I understand what they're trying to do and why it's not working for me. Obviously, mileage varies.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/236435.html.
people have commented there.