Episode Poll 12.20: "Twigs & Twine & Tasha Barnes"

[caranfindel]

Comments

[cuddyclothes]

I laughed out when loud when one of the Banes said to one of the Winchesters,"parents are just people". Yeah, John was a psycho narcissistic tyrant and Mary was dead, now she's with the BMoL. Not so much. Is it wrong that I wanted the Winchester to laugh?*

*I watched the ep at 5 this morning so it's all a bit fuzzy.

[caranfindel]

Yeah, but that was kind of the point. Parents aren't perfect; they're just people, with flaws. Of course, some flaws are bigger than others (lookin' at you, John).

[amypond45]

Why did Sam have to wear that gawdawful shirt?!

Too much BMOL and I've decided I can't stand Mary.

[caranfindel]

Sometimes I have more than one reason for wanting Sam to take his shirt off...

[mdlaw]

That witch ring, I don't think Dean wanted to touch it. Plus there would have been a lot of confusion after Alicia's death; Dean might have momentarily forgotten it. I really think that he planned to clean up by burning the whole place down. I have no reason for this belief except that it seems very Dean . m :)

[caranfindel]

Fair enough!

[z_publicizes]

I'm guessing Max will be a teetering-on-the-edge witch when we get back to him. I expect zombiedoll!Alicia will start unraveling (maybe physically) and prove dangerous and blah blah parallels and tragedy

[caranfindel]

This is true - Ketch could have started out as an unknown quantity. In fact, I think I did briefly speculate that Toni only called him a psychopath because they broke up badly.

[xparrot]

The BMOL in general were played way too broadly, obviously evil from the start; I'm wondering if the writers changed the plan for them partway through, because showing them killing innocents who our heroes let live guaranteed we the audience wouldn't trust them, and so the heroes all feel kind of dumb for doing so (even knowing that they don't have the same info we do.) If they wanted to play with the BMOL being ambiguous good or bad, I don't get why the audience wasn't left speculating. (If this had been the first we'd learned that Ketch had killed Magda or the soldiers, OUCH! Much more dramatic. I really wish anything this season had been left as a reveal; putting all the cards on the table from the start does not an interesting story make

[z_publicizes]

If this had been the first we'd learned that Ketch had killed Magda or the soldiers, OUCH!--Yes, exactly.

To be fair, cluing the audience in to a danger the characters don't know about can be a successful recipe for suspense. There's a reason 'There's a killer inside the house! Will these unsuspecting innocents learn the truth before it's too late?' has become such a cliche. I just don't think it works to drag it out this long.

And in this case it's not just about suspense--this season hinges on the Winchester's dilemma over whether or not working with the BMoL is right, ethically or strategically. And if your story hinges on your protagonists' dilemma, you don't want to hand your audience the answer to that dilemma long before the protagonist gets to it. Because, y'know, it undercuts that whole 'empathetic identification' thing that good fiction is supposed to offer.

[flawedteacup]

One thing that bothered me (besides the Hideous Shirt of Hideousness, Even More Hideous Than That Orange Jacket) was the fact that Max just wandered down into the cellar like no big, when even the hunters who warm their hands over burning corpse fires thought it smelled gross. How could he have missed the smell?

[caranfindel]

Oh, that's s good point. And according to the show's timeline, Tasha had been dead for several days when they found her. She would have started to decompose.