Hello suspense, my old friend...
Used my first "free" day to finally catch up on the last few eps of Fringe. I started watching in real time Season 4, then had to stop quickly because it made me hurt for the characters and I can only really take that when I know it gets better (and soon). So I waited out the Season and have been marathoning properly. Now, I can even take the
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*headdesk*
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I know, they've never been particularly good at it but I think this was the least inspired "storming of the gates" I have seen in my entire life. As a director, I would have called up the writer and told them I wouldn't be shooting that crap. Or, I would have changed it to make it feel and look more dynamic.
It's ironic, considering the last few years, I didn't expect much (or anything) out of this episode so I mostly sleep-watched through it and was so pleasantly surprised at the ending, it put me in a totally giddy and enthusiastic mood. Now that cloud has buzzed off, I can't believe how uninspired that main part was.
I didn't think how they went about trapping the Yellow Eyed Demon in that semetary in the Season 2 Finale was particularly well done but at least that scene had some energy in it. This was...mindboggling.
I remember so many times when I was sitting incredulously in front of the TV because it would have been so easy to improve the ep by 200%, and the ( ... )
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The quality of the plot was never the reason why I watched the show; at it's best, the show had some charm because of its unintentional cheesiness, but mostly because, by some good fortune, it happened on a very interesting character dynamic with the Winchester family (including Dad), and had one (and sometimes two) actors who were able to lift a mediocre script into excellent characterization moments. But whenever anyone attempted ambitious plot... major ouch and headdesk time.
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Oh, I agree the writing failures were always there but I do blame her for the extra level of suck in Seasons 6 and 7 (and to be frank, to some point for the ultra-stink of Suck Song because I believe it was retro-fitted for her "ideas" for Season 6.) I had my misgvings when she was announced and she managed to surpass even my worst expectations.
But totally, plot, pacing, suspense - never this show's strong point. It was, as you said, a certain goofy charme and the character dynamics giving it a lot of heart, grounding it.
And I don't hold Kripke in a particularly high esteem. I attribute the best influence to the late Kim Manners here.
Though actually character work is another aspect where I believe Season 6 and 7 fell down even more. The characters and relationships were a relentless, repetitive emo mess without rhyme, reason or joy to it. And the plot still sucked. So the glass was ( ... )
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The SPN Finale gets a lot of goodwill but only for the potential set up in the last thirty seconds. Otherwise, what a snoozefest. Then again, I expected nothing less from one of their worst writers. Good riddance, Samble.
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PoI and SPN basically did the same thing, just that one show was breaking in, the other was breaking out. Both group of heroes had a whole army against them, and still SPN was written like freaking Augsburger Puppenkiste, while PoI was written like a multimillion dollar movie.
The thing is, SPN was never good at those scenes, but they saved themselves through their character interaction, at least somewhat. But if that turns meaningless, too, there's nothing left.
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Take that back, that is an insult to the Augsburger Puppenkiste. :-p
But I know what you mean. And, like I said, I don't expect everything to be as well-written as the PoI scenario but even smaller, much cheaper shows with mediocre writing at best manage to bring energy and suspense to those scenes.
The thing is, SPN was never good at those scenes, but they saved themselves through their character interaction, at least somewhat. But if that turns meaningless, too, there's nothing left.That's very true. They have systematically written their one good area into the ground in the last few years. Which I believe was due to a mixture of incompetence and not taking any risks. Just because something worked well for character(s) in a Season 1 and 2 doesn't mean it will continue to do so, repeated ad nauseum and made ever more prominent five years later ( ... )
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On PoI, I didn't have much of an opinion on the main actors before, it was more that the subject matter didn't sound interesting at all but somehow they turned me around.
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