... in which it's a bit funny
Okay, so, this week's Supernatural maybe kind of made me want to take back almost every bad thing I have ever said about that show. And I have said quite a few, and meant them. I really, truly think this week's episode stands up - as drama, as horror, as discussion of the human condition - with some of the very best humans have managed.
Which isn't to say it's perfect, or that a decent percentage of the episodes before haven't been schlock. I'm saying... I can handle the schlock, if it lets us have this.
I am ever so slightly worried they've spent too much of the potential awesomeness all in one episode - Gordon was a great character, and really, did they only have the one big thing to do with him? Couldn't we have had at least another episode or two on him and his fundamentalism and what that says re: Winchesters and faith and all those things? No? Too much to ask? Well, okay then - but oh god, what we got was amazing. See, show, this is what happens when you actually have a bad guy with motivations and depth and, well, characterisation.
I loved that they showed Gordon's fundamentalism as his own undoing - and not in the more obvious 'I pissed someone off and they came back and killed me' way, but in the 'it was his own inability to change his thinking and accept he was wrong that caused him to become precisely what he most hated' way. Which... wow. I never thought the show would manage that kind of depth - even Sam and Dean, as multi-dimensional and complicated as I think they are, don't have quite that level of... subtlety, a lot of the time. And they get even more credit for not writing 'He Causes His Own Destruction!!!11' on an anvil and then launching it - it revealed itself in character-appropriate ways. Without saying that extreme views are always, by virtue of being considered extreme, wrong: I love that Gordon was a fundamentalist, and that did him in, but he was still right. If Sam's the Antichrist, then fucking right you have to kill him, and it's to the show's credit that I sincerely believe that is deliberate. It was even well-paced and executed and honest to god, all the central performances here made me want to cheer.
Oh, Sam and Dean! I know I'm biased, but right now I kind of don't know how people aren't entirely in love with Winchesters. In a mostly-kind-of-really-cheesetastic show they might be, but I still think they are one of the most compelling examinations of sibling relationships we've got on television. (And I have been watching Shameless, which is AMAZING on this score.) I love that the nature of the show lets them rip with the intensity that sibling relationships can bring, both good and bad, and that the actors have the chops to (mostly) pull that off. Dean's face when Sam said he'd looked up to Dean since he was four! And the kind of matter of fact way Sam said it, too - it's so true that with stuff like that, you take it for granted that of course your sibling knows you feel that way... except they don't, necessarily. And Dean didn't. He really didn't, and okay the show maybe kind of pulled my heart out through my ribcage and so I am becoming incoherant but only because I love them THIS MUCH and the show delivered on that, it really did. All that not-all-that-great buildup just paid off, in a huge way, and Dean was showing him how to mend the Impala and I love that they are actually kind of doing this huge, huge subject - how to deal with a sibling's impending demise - so much better than most shows manage. Particularly shows that are obstensibly about something else entirely... this is a whole emotional arc here, and okay, not every bit of it has been great, but it makes sense and the brother-ness is kind of going to end up giving me a heart attack if I let it.
I mean really: Winchesters! If this is the level we've got to look forward to now the season's hit its stride, I am a lucky girl.
(I just kind of hope they haven't used up all their emotional weaponry at once. I don't think they have - I see lots of potential here - but, well, I'm not prepared to trust all that quickly. And I am undecided on whether I want Sam to actually be the Antichrist or not. I think I am hoping it's something like... he has the potential to be the Antichrist, but he has to make that decision. Except I think they'd end up making him Jesus, and I am unsure about that too. Especially since it seemed this week like they were trying to mock their own tendency to kill off pretty blonde girls, but it... didn't really work all that well. Hmm.)
Also, I have now finally finished the Psmith books. I have been going as slow as possible cause I didn't want them to end, but it is unavoidable. I would thoroughly recommend them to everybody ever: people wanting cute slashiness should definitely read them (in any other context than Wodehouse, they'd be a romance series), but really, anybody who likes things that are funny and heartwarming is in for a treat. Psmith is a thing of beauty and a joy forever - I kind of want to be him, or at least to canonise him as a personal saint. He is genius. And a Socialist! *does a little boogie dance*
And I also kind of maybe want someone to write the story about how Psmith and Mike are totally in love and have a happy, functional relationship for many years but then gradually realise the world they live in prevents them from just moving in together. Only it's not a sad story, or at least not that sad: I want to know about how they work out that the best way of keeping their love for each other in their lives, the best way for them to continue to be happy and functional, is for them to marry other people. And that then they do, and even like the people they're marrying, and continue to care about each other as well. Cause really, that's basically canon.
Which isn't to say it's perfect, or that a decent percentage of the episodes before haven't been schlock. I'm saying... I can handle the schlock, if it lets us have this.
I am ever so slightly worried they've spent too much of the potential awesomeness all in one episode - Gordon was a great character, and really, did they only have the one big thing to do with him? Couldn't we have had at least another episode or two on him and his fundamentalism and what that says re: Winchesters and faith and all those things? No? Too much to ask? Well, okay then - but oh god, what we got was amazing. See, show, this is what happens when you actually have a bad guy with motivations and depth and, well, characterisation.
I loved that they showed Gordon's fundamentalism as his own undoing - and not in the more obvious 'I pissed someone off and they came back and killed me' way, but in the 'it was his own inability to change his thinking and accept he was wrong that caused him to become precisely what he most hated' way. Which... wow. I never thought the show would manage that kind of depth - even Sam and Dean, as multi-dimensional and complicated as I think they are, don't have quite that level of... subtlety, a lot of the time. And they get even more credit for not writing 'He Causes His Own Destruction!!!11' on an anvil and then launching it - it revealed itself in character-appropriate ways. Without saying that extreme views are always, by virtue of being considered extreme, wrong: I love that Gordon was a fundamentalist, and that did him in, but he was still right. If Sam's the Antichrist, then fucking right you have to kill him, and it's to the show's credit that I sincerely believe that is deliberate. It was even well-paced and executed and honest to god, all the central performances here made me want to cheer.
Oh, Sam and Dean! I know I'm biased, but right now I kind of don't know how people aren't entirely in love with Winchesters. In a mostly-kind-of-really-cheesetastic show they might be, but I still think they are one of the most compelling examinations of sibling relationships we've got on television. (And I have been watching Shameless, which is AMAZING on this score.) I love that the nature of the show lets them rip with the intensity that sibling relationships can bring, both good and bad, and that the actors have the chops to (mostly) pull that off. Dean's face when Sam said he'd looked up to Dean since he was four! And the kind of matter of fact way Sam said it, too - it's so true that with stuff like that, you take it for granted that of course your sibling knows you feel that way... except they don't, necessarily. And Dean didn't. He really didn't, and okay the show maybe kind of pulled my heart out through my ribcage and so I am becoming incoherant but only because I love them THIS MUCH and the show delivered on that, it really did. All that not-all-that-great buildup just paid off, in a huge way, and Dean was showing him how to mend the Impala and I love that they are actually kind of doing this huge, huge subject - how to deal with a sibling's impending demise - so much better than most shows manage. Particularly shows that are obstensibly about something else entirely... this is a whole emotional arc here, and okay, not every bit of it has been great, but it makes sense and the brother-ness is kind of going to end up giving me a heart attack if I let it.
I mean really: Winchesters! If this is the level we've got to look forward to now the season's hit its stride, I am a lucky girl.
(I just kind of hope they haven't used up all their emotional weaponry at once. I don't think they have - I see lots of potential here - but, well, I'm not prepared to trust all that quickly. And I am undecided on whether I want Sam to actually be the Antichrist or not. I think I am hoping it's something like... he has the potential to be the Antichrist, but he has to make that decision. Except I think they'd end up making him Jesus, and I am unsure about that too. Especially since it seemed this week like they were trying to mock their own tendency to kill off pretty blonde girls, but it... didn't really work all that well. Hmm.)
Also, I have now finally finished the Psmith books. I have been going as slow as possible cause I didn't want them to end, but it is unavoidable. I would thoroughly recommend them to everybody ever: people wanting cute slashiness should definitely read them (in any other context than Wodehouse, they'd be a romance series), but really, anybody who likes things that are funny and heartwarming is in for a treat. Psmith is a thing of beauty and a joy forever - I kind of want to be him, or at least to canonise him as a personal saint. He is genius. And a Socialist! *does a little boogie dance*
And I also kind of maybe want someone to write the story about how Psmith and Mike are totally in love and have a happy, functional relationship for many years but then gradually realise the world they live in prevents them from just moving in together. Only it's not a sad story, or at least not that sad: I want to know about how they work out that the best way of keeping their love for each other in their lives, the best way for them to continue to be happy and functional, is for them to marry other people. And that then they do, and even like the people they're marrying, and continue to care about each other as well. Cause really, that's basically canon.