Can you feel the Finale Fever?! It's WINCHESTER DOOMSDAY! *hides eyes* *peeks through*
Anyone looking to get pumped up for the SPN Finale? Don't walk, RUN to bellanut's RECAP OF SPN SEASON THREE. It is quite literally the PICSPAM TO END ALL PICSPAMS. I'm not even joking, there's three parts to that baby!
Some songs to share that I've been listening to all morning in preparation for the INEVITABLE WINCHESTER DOOM:
- Back Door Slam - "Come Home" [This blues rock number is just my own personal theme song for Sam in Mystery Spot: "I went to hell today, said you're gone for good, I would get you back, if only I could"]
- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Lien on Your Dreams" [Basically I feel like all of Baby 81 was just WRITTEN for SPN S3, it's so perfectly S3 Sam to a 'T'. But this one especially: "But it hurts and what’s worse, There’s no way to reverse, When your mind wants to start, Pulling you apart]
- Alice in Chains - "Don't Follow" [This song is just SO friggin' GORGEOUS, I would LOVE to vid this as Dean POV to Sam, because oh man, it so is, but I refuse. Really. I do. Not happening. *shifty eyes* But just LOOK at this: "Hey, I aint never coming Home/Hey, Ill just wander my Own road/Hey, I cant meet you here tomorrow/Say goodbye dont follow"]
- Fuel - "Innocent" [THIS one too, oh man, this one too. KILLS ME: "Never did we know/What the future would hold/That we'd be bought and sold/We were innocent"]
- Back Door Slam - "Stay" [This blues acoustic is just GORGEOUS, and totally too sullen and complacent for Sam, but I love it anyway]
- Aerosmith - "Dream On" [Everyone knows this one I'm sure, but for some reason, it's like a last minute celebration through the tears kind of song for me, with the ratcheting ending just always bringing Last-Moment-Crazed-To-Save-Dean!Sam to my mind.]
OH GEEZE, and Black Rebel's 'Shuffle Your Feet' just came on. ["Time won't save our souls, Time won't save my soul, There are things a'going down, Nothing seems to feel the same, nothing seems to go my way, who knows if I'll see you again".] SHEESH, Itunes, way to join forces to kill me. Might as well go ahead and take that one too, if you don't already have it.
I know, I haven't had alot of time to share in the squee this season. Or be around...hardly at all. Especially this past fall.
And I've realized that the few times I HAVE been able to post about the season, I haven't been to kind about it. I guess I've had more of an inclination to post when I've gotta vent more than just the normal squee. Though I'll admit for a lot of the season, I just wasn't feeling it the same as in the past.
But mainly, there's kind of an explanation for that. The short version: It's called SCHOOL. Which I've detailed before. But it's complicated by this little thing called SIDES. Because I am a moron of multiply crazy ideas, among other things...
See, I anticipated the hellish semester I was going to have last fall, and in a brilliantly moronic sorta way I intentionally sabotaged my squee by reading SIDES all last summer. And...okay, also because I was insanely worried about a "VM" S3 and felt like I needed to be prepared in case badness ensued, but mostly it was because I knew I wouldn't have the time to get so absorbed in the story when the actual season came around from the aforementioned school stuff. So from 301-310, I read sides three months before the episodes aired. And it actually turned out they completely surprised me with how much they DIDN'T fuck up the entire season, I just was a little calmer about it because I was finding out about stuff three months before it actually aired. And I really just couldn’t *LET* myself get really into it, because I really needed my brain to be on school stuff 24/7 and Winchesters have a tendency to eat it. And OH YEA, and then that STRIKE HAPPENED that made me think we'd never get a completed season. THANK GOD THAT IS OVER.
So, yea, THAT'S THE SHORT VERSION.
BUT FAST FORWARD TO NOW. Because I've been spending most of my last pseudo-studying/procrastination week rewatching this season to ID and rip music scores (because nothing sets off my score!obsession more than some good ol' philosophy hatred, of course) and I've come to a couple ABSOLUTELY STARTLING conclusions about this season. Since I'm staking out the night now waiting to watch the finale, I thought I'd share. Since I'm sure you're all just DYING to know. ;)
TOP TEN (yea, right) TWELVE FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THIS SEASON
1) Oh, Magnificent Seven. I'll start of with you, since it only gets better from here. This ep feels bottom of the barrel. Which I get, it was a hard episode because it needed to jumpstart the series again after so much was wrapped up in AHBL. But the surprising thing to me now is, how in retrospect, IT ACTUALLY WORKS! As a jumpstarter that is. Because it set up in a way that gives us some place to go. Of course, the only moment that really matters in 'Magnificent Seven' is the 30 seconds of Holy Water Pouring Silence, and totally makes up for the whole rest of the episode for me. True Story? The little bit of score in that scene was single-handedly the reason for a S3 Score Hunt consuming a good part of the rest of my week. Even though S2 hasn't been finished yet. (Blame that on my external HD that died on me weeks ago where like half of the scores I had already ripped were lost. FOR WOE!)
2) If not for the horny-old-lady grabbing gag that took up a good third of the episode, 'Red Sky' might be one of my favorites of the season. I think it has something to do with the docks. It's like my Bugs episode of the year. I shouldn't love it, but I can't help but like it anyway. The two brothers fights that bookend the episode are just absolutely too delicious for words, I love how it exposes how Sam has grown into his own and jumps into his rebellious nature and totally lets Dean have it and just...really sets us up nicely for the next episode. Speaking of which...
3) Retrospect really makes me love how they paced the first couple episodes leading up to 'Fresh Blood'. The slow progression through it all that seemed so aggravating when I was watching it by each week seem to progress so nicely from one episode to another when watched back-to-back. It's kinda like how S1's pilot to 'Bugs' works, only so 'Home' can knock you flat on your ass. We go from Livin'-Up-Life!Dean and Begrudgingly-Letting-Dean-Live-Out-Dying-Wishes!Sam to Worried-About-Sam&Hell!Dean and Colt-Means-Shoot!Sam to You've-Gotta-Let-Me-Go!Dean and No-I'll-Kill-REDs-For-You!Sam to What-Are-You-Doing!Dean and I'm-Gonna-Try-To-Save-You-and-Hell-No-Am-I-Gonna-Apologize!Sam and...okay, that really doesn't capture it at all. But it's incremental and fabulous in all its tension-ratcheting and I love it. And in the meantime, we get all these small little moments with the boys that you know they had to have been doing all along, but that we never got to see. Like the one in 'Sin City' with Bobby and the melting bullets scene in my icon? I love getting to see all those little moments.
4) The 'Fresh Blood' confrontation scene WILL NEVER STOP KNOCKING ME FLAT ON MY ASS with its AMAZINGNESS. "I just wish you'd stop the show and start being my brother again"? I don't think I have to think much to decide it's my TOP SAMMY MOMENT OF ALL TIME. His "'Cause...just 'cause" just makes me want to scoop him up and make him hot chocolate or something. And the way Ackles just makes his whole facade face that he's had on Dean for the whole first six episodes just melt completely off...man, that boy never ceases to amaze me. And Lennertz gets a thousand cookies for the score he used on that scene. I've been trying my darnest to remove the dialogue from that rip, but thanks to the guys deep voices, it doesn't seem to be promising. We really need a fandom-wide campaign to get a soundtrack for this show, but at this point, I hesitate starting one until we're at season five. Dammit, Lennertz, can't you just RELEASE a couple? Just for us?
5) I am a MORON for forgetting how GUTWRETCHING the Christmas episode was. This is a product of learning about the amulet flashbacks through the sides in like SEPTEMBER and then watching the ep around crazy Christmas/Finals time where I couldn't properly appreciate the BRILLIANCE of having a Christmas episode in this season where it could be Dean's last. Sam not being able to celebrate it for the same reasons Dean wants to is KILLER. Until the end where he decides to grin and bare it JUST FOR DEAN, in which it turns into the NEW MOST KILLER THING EVER.
6) Speaking of the Christmas episode, I never got to properly squee about THE AMULET REVEAL? Just safe to say, telling you I was jumping up and down flapping my arms about for a good two hours after reading those sides probably doesn't do justice to how much I loved it. AND THEY GOT THE SAME LITTLE!DEAN! I adore that. Both of those two just NAILED Jared and Jensen's Sam and Dean perfectly. For little kids, I was totally impressed.
7) Oh! OH! And okay, STILL on the Christmas episode, but this one makes me jump up and down so I have to share. 'Cause you know that Dean Theme score Gruska used all last season that I covet with all my heart and soul? The one that accompanied Dean's "Things I'm Willing To Do" speech, and John dying AND Dean holding Dead!Sam at the end of ABHL II? HE USED IT IN THAT AMULET SCENE. Okay, so it's a really disguised version, not the purified version we would hear later for grown-up!Dean, it's fuzzy, not as sure of itself, and kind of hidden among a bunch of other filler notes around it, but the core melody is STILL THERE! And I actually like it that way, that it's so hidden, not only because after that spectacular last use, bringing it back now would kinda diminish it's significance, but it makes sense because THAT right there? THAT POINT? Dean giving Sam that Christmas and Sam giving Dean that amulet like that? THAT was just the beginning.
OKAY, MOVING ON FROM CHRISTMAS...
8)'Malleus Maleficarum' still just looks too much like SPN making fun of Charmed to me, and makes it way too hard for me to actually take it seriously. And I kinda hate that that conversation Dean and Sam were having never got finished. BUT. I do think that just like 'Hunted' last year was a foreshadowing of 'AHBL' last year, like 'Scarecrow' was to 'Salvation'/'Devil's Trap' the year before, so this episode will be a foreshadowing to the finale tonight. Between Ruby and Dean fighting with Sam in the middle, to the image of Dean SCREAMING in pain while Sam freaks out and then grabs the Colt in such focused crazy determination to kill a bitch to save his brother? I swear the amount of which that boy leaves me simultaneously bubbling like a bubbling idiot and scared shitless of him this season is ASTOUNDING. [For evidence, see the aforementioned PICSPAM]
9) OH! OH! More score repeats! [Can you tell yet how much I love them?] When Dean shoots his Dream!self in 'Dream A Little Dream'? TOTALLY the same score as in 'Skin' when he shoots the shapeshifter version of himself ['Mirror Murder']. Way to go, Gruska! Though I am noticing a huge bias Gruska has for Dean. He composes such beautiful stuff for Dean scenes, and Sam scenes kinda get...not the same kind of attention. I mean, WHERE'S SAM'S THEME FOR THIS SEASON?! HUH?! HUH?! It might actually be there, but it's not memorable enough for me to have recognized it yet.
10) Speaking of 'Dream A Little Dream', that moment of the freedom of the woods becoming walls to box Dean in? I think it's SINGLE-HANDEDLY the BEST IMAGERY this show has EVER done. The idea that Dean’s woods traps him in a box of a room, a house. While meanwhile Sam is still free to run in the woods. You could write a whole paper of the series around that imagery.
11) I've already said enough on 'Mystery Spot', but I *have* decided the Trickster was actually on Sam's side and totally trying to HELP Sam with his little exercise. By sparing him going through what's to come in this finale and beyond. And there's no way you can try and convince me otherwise. ;)
And I think I've basically worn out 'Jus In Bello' too completely to have any more to say about that one.
12) AND THE BIGGEST THING: Either its been way too long since I've rewatched S1/S2 or I think I've actually GOTTEN USED TO the whole S3 Color Saturation thing. SHOCKING, I KNOW. I thought it'd never happen. But all the pretty BLUES and GREENS have just completely won me over.
I've gotta wait until morning to see the finale, so in the meantime, help me stake out the night until finale time! I've hardly gotten to see everyone's thoughts this season, what did you guys think of it all said and done? Still mourning S2, frustrated by the writers? Any of your sentiments about the season change as the season went on? Or retrospectively?
ETA: OMG, AND THEN I SPENT THE LAST SEVEN MINUTES CRACKING THE FUCK UP WITH JON STEWART. In case you have the capacity to think of something OTHER than the Winchesters today, ENJOY:
Some songs to share that I've been listening to all morning in preparation for the INEVITABLE WINCHESTER DOOM:
- Back Door Slam - "Come Home" [This blues rock number is just my own personal theme song for Sam in Mystery Spot: "I went to hell today, said you're gone for good, I would get you back, if only I could"]
- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Lien on Your Dreams" [Basically I feel like all of Baby 81 was just WRITTEN for SPN S3, it's so perfectly S3 Sam to a 'T'. But this one especially: "But it hurts and what’s worse, There’s no way to reverse, When your mind wants to start, Pulling you apart]
- Alice in Chains - "Don't Follow" [This song is just SO friggin' GORGEOUS, I would LOVE to vid this as Dean POV to Sam, because oh man, it so is, but I refuse. Really. I do. Not happening. *shifty eyes* But just LOOK at this: "Hey, I aint never coming Home/Hey, Ill just wander my Own road/Hey, I cant meet you here tomorrow/Say goodbye dont follow"]
- Fuel - "Innocent" [THIS one too, oh man, this one too. KILLS ME: "Never did we know/What the future would hold/That we'd be bought and sold/We were innocent"]
- Back Door Slam - "Stay" [This blues acoustic is just GORGEOUS, and totally too sullen and complacent for Sam, but I love it anyway]
- Aerosmith - "Dream On" [Everyone knows this one I'm sure, but for some reason, it's like a last minute celebration through the tears kind of song for me, with the ratcheting ending just always bringing Last-Moment-Crazed-To-Save-Dean!Sam to my mind.]
OH GEEZE, and Black Rebel's 'Shuffle Your Feet' just came on. ["Time won't save our souls, Time won't save my soul, There are things a'going down, Nothing seems to feel the same, nothing seems to go my way, who knows if I'll see you again".] SHEESH, Itunes, way to join forces to kill me. Might as well go ahead and take that one too, if you don't already have it.
I know, I haven't had alot of time to share in the squee this season. Or be around...hardly at all. Especially this past fall.
And I've realized that the few times I HAVE been able to post about the season, I haven't been to kind about it. I guess I've had more of an inclination to post when I've gotta vent more than just the normal squee. Though I'll admit for a lot of the season, I just wasn't feeling it the same as in the past.
But mainly, there's kind of an explanation for that. The short version: It's called SCHOOL. Which I've detailed before. But it's complicated by this little thing called SIDES. Because I am a moron of multiply crazy ideas, among other things...
See, I anticipated the hellish semester I was going to have last fall, and in a brilliantly moronic sorta way I intentionally sabotaged my squee by reading SIDES all last summer. And...okay, also because I was insanely worried about a "VM" S3 and felt like I needed to be prepared in case badness ensued, but mostly it was because I knew I wouldn't have the time to get so absorbed in the story when the actual season came around from the aforementioned school stuff. So from 301-310, I read sides three months before the episodes aired. And it actually turned out they completely surprised me with how much they DIDN'T fuck up the entire season, I just was a little calmer about it because I was finding out about stuff three months before it actually aired. And I really just couldn’t *LET* myself get really into it, because I really needed my brain to be on school stuff 24/7 and Winchesters have a tendency to eat it. And OH YEA, and then that STRIKE HAPPENED that made me think we'd never get a completed season. THANK GOD THAT IS OVER.
So, yea, THAT'S THE SHORT VERSION.
BUT FAST FORWARD TO NOW. Because I've been spending most of my last pseudo-studying/procrastination week rewatching this season to ID and rip music scores (because nothing sets off my score!obsession more than some good ol' philosophy hatred, of course) and I've come to a couple ABSOLUTELY STARTLING conclusions about this season. Since I'm staking out the night now waiting to watch the finale, I thought I'd share. Since I'm sure you're all just DYING to know. ;)
TOP TEN (yea, right) TWELVE FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THIS SEASON
1) Oh, Magnificent Seven. I'll start of with you, since it only gets better from here. This ep feels bottom of the barrel. Which I get, it was a hard episode because it needed to jumpstart the series again after so much was wrapped up in AHBL. But the surprising thing to me now is, how in retrospect, IT ACTUALLY WORKS! As a jumpstarter that is. Because it set up in a way that gives us some place to go. Of course, the only moment that really matters in 'Magnificent Seven' is the 30 seconds of Holy Water Pouring Silence, and totally makes up for the whole rest of the episode for me. True Story? The little bit of score in that scene was single-handedly the reason for a S3 Score Hunt consuming a good part of the rest of my week. Even though S2 hasn't been finished yet. (Blame that on my external HD that died on me weeks ago where like half of the scores I had already ripped were lost. FOR WOE!)
2) If not for the horny-old-lady grabbing gag that took up a good third of the episode, 'Red Sky' might be one of my favorites of the season. I think it has something to do with the docks. It's like my Bugs episode of the year. I shouldn't love it, but I can't help but like it anyway. The two brothers fights that bookend the episode are just absolutely too delicious for words, I love how it exposes how Sam has grown into his own and jumps into his rebellious nature and totally lets Dean have it and just...really sets us up nicely for the next episode. Speaking of which...
3) Retrospect really makes me love how they paced the first couple episodes leading up to 'Fresh Blood'. The slow progression through it all that seemed so aggravating when I was watching it by each week seem to progress so nicely from one episode to another when watched back-to-back. It's kinda like how S1's pilot to 'Bugs' works, only so 'Home' can knock you flat on your ass. We go from Livin'-Up-Life!Dean and Begrudgingly-Letting-Dean-Live-Out-Dying-Wishes!Sam to Worried-About-Sam&Hell!Dean and Colt-Means-Shoot!Sam to You've-Gotta-Let-Me-Go!Dean and No-I'll-Kill-REDs-For-You!Sam to What-Are-You-Doing!Dean and I'm-Gonna-Try-To-Save-You-and-Hell-No-Am-I-Gonna-Apologize!Sam and...okay, that really doesn't capture it at all. But it's incremental and fabulous in all its tension-ratcheting and I love it. And in the meantime, we get all these small little moments with the boys that you know they had to have been doing all along, but that we never got to see. Like the one in 'Sin City' with Bobby and the melting bullets scene in my icon? I love getting to see all those little moments.
4) The 'Fresh Blood' confrontation scene WILL NEVER STOP KNOCKING ME FLAT ON MY ASS with its AMAZINGNESS. "I just wish you'd stop the show and start being my brother again"? I don't think I have to think much to decide it's my TOP SAMMY MOMENT OF ALL TIME. His "'Cause...just 'cause" just makes me want to scoop him up and make him hot chocolate or something. And the way Ackles just makes his whole facade face that he's had on Dean for the whole first six episodes just melt completely off...man, that boy never ceases to amaze me. And Lennertz gets a thousand cookies for the score he used on that scene. I've been trying my darnest to remove the dialogue from that rip, but thanks to the guys deep voices, it doesn't seem to be promising. We really need a fandom-wide campaign to get a soundtrack for this show, but at this point, I hesitate starting one until we're at season five. Dammit, Lennertz, can't you just RELEASE a couple? Just for us?
5) I am a MORON for forgetting how GUTWRETCHING the Christmas episode was. This is a product of learning about the amulet flashbacks through the sides in like SEPTEMBER and then watching the ep around crazy Christmas/Finals time where I couldn't properly appreciate the BRILLIANCE of having a Christmas episode in this season where it could be Dean's last. Sam not being able to celebrate it for the same reasons Dean wants to is KILLER. Until the end where he decides to grin and bare it JUST FOR DEAN, in which it turns into the NEW MOST KILLER THING EVER.
6) Speaking of the Christmas episode, I never got to properly squee about THE AMULET REVEAL? Just safe to say, telling you I was jumping up and down flapping my arms about for a good two hours after reading those sides probably doesn't do justice to how much I loved it. AND THEY GOT THE SAME LITTLE!DEAN! I adore that. Both of those two just NAILED Jared and Jensen's Sam and Dean perfectly. For little kids, I was totally impressed.
7) Oh! OH! And okay, STILL on the Christmas episode, but this one makes me jump up and down so I have to share. 'Cause you know that Dean Theme score Gruska used all last season that I covet with all my heart and soul? The one that accompanied Dean's "Things I'm Willing To Do" speech, and John dying AND Dean holding Dead!Sam at the end of ABHL II? HE USED IT IN THAT AMULET SCENE. Okay, so it's a really disguised version, not the purified version we would hear later for grown-up!Dean, it's fuzzy, not as sure of itself, and kind of hidden among a bunch of other filler notes around it, but the core melody is STILL THERE! And I actually like it that way, that it's so hidden, not only because after that spectacular last use, bringing it back now would kinda diminish it's significance, but it makes sense because THAT right there? THAT POINT? Dean giving Sam that Christmas and Sam giving Dean that amulet like that? THAT was just the beginning.
OKAY, MOVING ON FROM CHRISTMAS...
8)'Malleus Maleficarum' still just looks too much like SPN making fun of Charmed to me, and makes it way too hard for me to actually take it seriously. And I kinda hate that that conversation Dean and Sam were having never got finished. BUT. I do think that just like 'Hunted' last year was a foreshadowing of 'AHBL' last year, like 'Scarecrow' was to 'Salvation'/'Devil's Trap' the year before, so this episode will be a foreshadowing to the finale tonight. Between Ruby and Dean fighting with Sam in the middle, to the image of Dean SCREAMING in pain while Sam freaks out and then grabs the Colt in such focused crazy determination to kill a bitch to save his brother? I swear the amount of which that boy leaves me simultaneously bubbling like a bubbling idiot and scared shitless of him this season is ASTOUNDING. [For evidence, see the aforementioned PICSPAM]
9) OH! OH! More score repeats! [Can you tell yet how much I love them?] When Dean shoots his Dream!self in 'Dream A Little Dream'? TOTALLY the same score as in 'Skin' when he shoots the shapeshifter version of himself ['Mirror Murder']. Way to go, Gruska! Though I am noticing a huge bias Gruska has for Dean. He composes such beautiful stuff for Dean scenes, and Sam scenes kinda get...not the same kind of attention. I mean, WHERE'S SAM'S THEME FOR THIS SEASON?! HUH?! HUH?! It might actually be there, but it's not memorable enough for me to have recognized it yet.
10) Speaking of 'Dream A Little Dream', that moment of the freedom of the woods becoming walls to box Dean in? I think it's SINGLE-HANDEDLY the BEST IMAGERY this show has EVER done. The idea that Dean’s woods traps him in a box of a room, a house. While meanwhile Sam is still free to run in the woods. You could write a whole paper of the series around that imagery.
11) I've already said enough on 'Mystery Spot', but I *have* decided the Trickster was actually on Sam's side and totally trying to HELP Sam with his little exercise. By sparing him going through what's to come in this finale and beyond. And there's no way you can try and convince me otherwise. ;)
And I think I've basically worn out 'Jus In Bello' too completely to have any more to say about that one.
12) AND THE BIGGEST THING: Either its been way too long since I've rewatched S1/S2 or I think I've actually GOTTEN USED TO the whole S3 Color Saturation thing. SHOCKING, I KNOW. I thought it'd never happen. But all the pretty BLUES and GREENS have just completely won me over.
I've gotta wait until morning to see the finale, so in the meantime, help me stake out the night until finale time! I've hardly gotten to see everyone's thoughts this season, what did you guys think of it all said and done? Still mourning S2, frustrated by the writers? Any of your sentiments about the season change as the season went on? Or retrospectively?
ETA: OMG, AND THEN I SPENT THE LAST SEVEN MINUTES CRACKING THE FUCK UP WITH JON STEWART. In case you have the capacity to think of something OTHER than the Winchesters today, ENJOY: