I kind of seem to have started watching Supernatural
So, um, I kind of seem to have started watching Supernatural.
I’m afraid that jaydk is going to disown me as a friend.
We went to Ford Lauderdale for the weekend, which was fun. We got a cheap vacation deal-flew direct, stayed in a hotel on the beach with a decent pool and a pool bar, and basically just relaxed for three days. The weather was lovely. We got around via the water taxi, which stopped right near our hotel and took us downtown for only $7 after 7pm (where I managed to survive via that old desperate vegan standby, veggie sushi). The water taxi itself was quite fun, as it involved a narrated tour past the absurd, ostentatious, and often quite lovely mansions of the rich and famous which perch over the waterways. Aside from that, the public transportation was so terrible-every time I leave New York it hits me how absurdly car centric the city planning of most of the USA is. It didn’t have to be this way, and it’s sad, and thank god I live in NYC.
But anyway, the point is that we flew JetBlue, and JetBlue has DirectTV. Broadcast TV is something of a novelty now that my cable's been canceled for a year, so I entertained myself by channel surfing. And Supernatural was on. I have never once been tempted to watch Supernatural--I saw the premiere at ComicCon 2005 and came out of it saying "This show is so stupid and sexist and the leads are so ugly. There's no way it'll catch on!" and, um, it turns out I was wrong. My flist was consumed by the show slightly afterward, though I managed to ignore everything except for 1) incest porn? really?? and 2) lots of wank about sexism and racism which, duh.
So I caught about five minutes of SPN while channel surfing on the plane, and, yeah, it did nothing to disprove my assumption that it's a terrible show with bad acting, but whatever I saw was such fantastic physical/emotional hurt/comfort-with-emphasis-on-hurt (centered on the slightly-less-ugly brother), which is such a blatant narrative kink for me... it kind of stuck in my head all weekend. And, you know, I have this big new TV and not much to watch on it (having seen every episode of White Collar at least fourteen times) and if I did watch SPN I'd have more to talk to my fandom friends about and more fic to read, even if I didn't actually like the show myself...
Anyway, I came home from vacation and watched the first eight episodes. My thoughts:
* Wow, it is so totally ripping off The X-Files. Like, it may as well be The X-Files, except with these inferior brothers in place of the great Mulder and Scully. I see from the credits that many people making this show actually did make X-Files, which I suppose gives it slightly more of an excuse, but still. I've read good arguments that originality is overrated as a virtue in art, but the fact remains that early X-Files did it way better.
* I get that it makes the heroes look more heroic if they help people in need, but why are the needy people usually women? Why is it more heroic to help a woman than a man? Do the writers not realize that the side effect of making their leads look heroic by helping women is that they consistently portray women as victims? The female victim trope is so ubiquitous in popular media that it becomes almost invisible, just "normal," but I'm sure if someone did a study you'd find the proportion of "victims who need to be saved in order to make our heroes look heroic" is vastly skewed female.
(The same thing annoys me in White Collar, of course, though at least they have women in other roles, too, even as villains. Although Peter's "Could a woman be a killer?!?!" issue makes me want to smash things--Peter, you're a trained FBI agent, OF COURSE YOU KNOW THAT WOMEN CAN BE KILLERS.)
* And why do the women just happen to get attacked when they're scantily clad and/or naked? (I know why, lots of men get off on sexualized violence against women, I just mean, honestly, the sexism of it is so obvious and it's clear that the people making the show don't care.)
* Fun with guest stars! I love Jim Byrnes and am annoyed that they wasted him. If I ever cast Jim Byrnes in something I'd make him the center of the episode because HE IS AWESOME. Also, that guy that played Ray K! Man, he did not age well, and Due South was such a fluffy show that it's traumatizing to see bad things happen to him. Also, I like Amy Acker but I really could've done without the naked bath drowning thing (see above about how women just so happen to get attacked while naked--funny how that so rarely occurs with men...). Also, wow, she is skinny. I have nothing against thin women, but how about some diversity in female body types--emaciation should not be a prerequisite to casting.... Oh, wait, this is Supernatural. Never mind!
* Um, I kind of like Dean. Oh, god, someone shoot me. He's just so completely fucked up. He had this absurd traumatic childhood and has failed to grow up into a functional adult at all. I can actually see why people write the incest fic, not just because "hey, two hot actors, why not?" but because the only people Dean seems capable of connecting with emotionally are members of his family.
* That said, Sam just needs to go away now. Ugh. The actor is so bad, and so ugly, and the character is so boring, and just basically everything about him screams BLAND. "I just want to be normal"? Please NO I CAN'T SIT THROUGH THIS STUPID PLOT AGAIN.
Anyway, don't spoil me for what's coming up. I've managed to avoid knowing much of anything about this show so far (except for the fact that there's going to be someone named Castiel who soundingsea wants to murder violently).
Other stuff:
* I began a re-read of Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate (the last book in the Lymond series) during vacation, since it's the one that takes place mostly in Paris and I'm headed to Paris in October for the Lymond fan gathering, LeSpit. (Talk about high and low art--going from Checkmate to Supernatural I literally felt my brain melting out of my ears.) Checkmate's never been my favorite--I think I've usually got Dunnett fatigue every time I've gotten to it before. Jumping into it with fresh eyes was a revelation--it really works much better if you treat it as a standalone, with the previous novels as background but with its own locations and characters and plot points. Instead of being frustrated with having to get to know new characters AGAIN when I really just want to know what's going to happen to the characters I already care about, I found myself enjoying this one in its own right for the first time.
* My cats were so happy to have me back. Angel sat on my lap for all eight Supernatural episodes, and Lucifer's been sleeping on my pillow with his arms wrapped around my head.
* I saw Hole at Terminal 5 last night. It was terrible--they played for less than an hour and seemed to put in very little effort. It was nice to hear a snippet of "Pretty on the Inside," but aside from that, they only played three songs from Live Through This (all singles) and nothing else from the olden days. Man, I'd kill to hear "Drown Soda." None of their new stuff was particularly impressive, and Courtney mostly seemed bored. (On a shallow level, her plastic surgery just bothers me. Her old nose was fine! I thought she was so hot when I was a kid. *sad sigh*)
It was also exhausting--to be in the front I'd had to stand for 2.5 hours through two opening bands (the first terrible, the second decent) and then put up with a batshit mosh pit (people kicking and hair pulling to get to the front, big guys trying to bodysurf over small women--to the dude who tried to use my head and neck as a springboard during "Doll Parts" [seriously, during "Doll Parts"?!], I hope you die in a fire, and also OWWWWW).
Oddly enough I was at the same venue, standing in the same position, for Alice in Chains a few months ago, and their moshpit was nowhere near as life-threatening. Since when are Hole crowds nastier than Alice in Chains crowds?
* Just bought tickets to the midnight opening night showing of Iron Man 2 in IMAX. OMG CAN'T WAIT.
* This fantastic Doctor Who vid has been all over my flist: Tenth Doctor: The Musical by di_br. Awww, I miss Ten. (Thus far I haven't read anything about Moffat's Who that's made me want to watch.)
* This post about protagonist privilege by
londonkds is fascinating. I can see in it an explanation for a lot of my frustrations with BtVS (as someone who loved Anya and Spike and was incessantly frustrated by them being distorted and deprioritized in order to "teach lessons" to the "real heroes") and I can also sooo see this as one of the major flaws of the Lymond Chronicles, even though I love it to pieces anyway. (It's much more pleasant when your favorite character is the hero, which is a big part of why I don't allow myself to get fannish anymore about anything in which my favorite character is not the lead--it's just maddening to realize that your favorite can be ruined at whim in service of the lead character's "growth.")
* My favorite clip of Jon and Stephen on The Daily Show (the one with Prince Charles and the banana). I dug this up the other day for a friend who hadn't seen it and am posting the link in case anyone missed it--it's awesome.
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