8.12 As Time Goes By: As Long As We're Alive, There's Always Hope

[bardicvoice]

8.12 As Time Goes By: As Long As We're Alive, There's Always Hope

What if your whole past
Isn't what you always thought?
What's your legacy?

Commentary and Meta Analysis

While this episode was beautifully shot and had some powerful emotional beats, I had real problems with it because it seemed to radically change things we thought we knew and add

Comments

[pinkphoenix1985]

Bardic-- what a very interesting and thoughtful review. I too find the new backstory for John very confusing especially with the information given to us in the past. There are another 11 episodes left in the season and I wonder how the MOL angle gets played out.

[bardicvoice]

Thanks for coming by! I can see a lot of ways this could play out, and I could love many of them; curious to see where it will go. :)

[pinkphoenix1985]

I'm curious too :) Hopefully it will turn out to be a good ride!

[etoile444]

I don't agree with everything you said but you do a fine job making your case. As to the men of letters getting killed, well they are like the Jedi order. How did they het wiped out? But they did.

[bardicvoice]

I'm certain we'll learn more. And I'm thinking what we learn may offset my initial negative reactions, which came, I think, mostly because this episode tried to establish too much all at once. :)

I'm looking forward to Ben Edlund's outing tonight!

[etoile444]

They most definately did too much in one episode. Since when did SPN become like a procedural cop show that had to be all tidied up in one episode? Most shows I watch will carry a guest character arc through a few shows (I'm thinking how well Vampire Diaries pulls that off). I'd have liked more with Henry, maybe a hunt or two with the boys, then an epic showdown before killing him off.

[bardicvoice]

I think the major issue with Henry was very simply that we knew he was doomed from the start. The moment Dean said he'd abandoned John, we knew he wasn't going to make it back to alter the past, especially not given the way the show stressed the inertia in preservation of the past in In The Beginning and The Song Remains The Same. And I'm guessing the writers have a lot they want to accomplish by the season's end, and Henry riding in the back seat just wasn't a part of that.

It would have been nice to have him around longer and see the brothers adjust to him, but since they'd cast him as an initiate who hadn't yet even been cued in to the existence of the bunker, his presence wouldn't have added anything to the brothers' discovery of the stronghold. If he'd already known about it, he could have been their guide, but lacking that knowledge, he had nothing more to add.

Alas.

[echo_grace_07]

Was John's mother ever mentioned? If Henry was a single father (for whatever reason), then John had lost everything but his name by his fifth birthday. I could see him keeping his surname but comming to hate his sire, if that's the case.

Or is that thinking too modern?

[bardicvoice]

John's mother wasn't mentioned at all. Good point, that if she'd already died, John would have already lost any other family ties.

Thanks!

[riveroceansea]

I agree with a lot of what you said here. If this season was going to be the last, and they didn't have Garth to replace Bobby, I could see this as a rush effort for a good ending. Sam taking Bobby's place as a researcher and maybe having a semi-normal life. Dean going out to lend a hand with the tougher jobs as Bobby also did.

The signs look good for a ninth season, so unless the showrunners know something we don't, I can't see a good reason to blatantly ignore canon to give the episode conflict in the form of Dean and Henry.

The writer's have surprised us before. I also keep thinking about fans saying how they thought Sam's relationship with Amelia wasn't what it seemed.

On the other hand, they ignored the year Sam was in hell and the year Dean was in purgatory, and made the Impala's plate registration 2013. Another oversight or forethought? Show gives me gray hair.

[bardicvoice]

Your last line made me chuckle! I think the writers and the art department gave up a while ago on figuring out what the show's effective timeline really is; they already ignored in episode dates during seasons six and seven the truth that Sam and Dean had been apart for a full year, not the few months of production hiatus. Speaking in purely practical terms, I think it would be really hard to maintain timeline continuity in a show where time travel exists, especially where the timeline would push the show into our future, rather than keeping it relatively contemporaneous with our present. :)

And while the signs look good for season 9, the writers and producers have almost always had to play a double game, balancing the chance of a new season against the chance of having to end things. So I'm betting the writers' room is cognizant of the chance they may have to wrap things up rather than using a standard cliffhanger to set up a new season. (I'd both love and hate to work in television ... *grin*)

Thanks for coming!

[kitap]

Maybe Henry did change the past. Maybe last time he just went home.

As for vehicle registration - I can see them being behind on it.

[bardicvoice]

Show seems to operate on the closed loop concept of time travel: that what happened always happened (i.e., Dean traveling back and influencing John to buy the Impala). I don't think there was a past when Henry got back home.

Poor Henry.

And I think the writers decided a while ago not to try matching world dates against our real-time, show-airing dates; otherwise, dates shown in the current episodes would all need to be in out future by as much as two years, given the jumps in both season six and season eight! I know I'd hate to try keeping track and predicting when something in the show should happen ... *wry grin*