spn retrospective: s8!

[fannishliss]

A bit of an uneven season again.  Several good ones, several mediocre ones.  Overall, a bumpy arc as it transitions from recovery from Dean's year in Purgatory, to closing the gates of Hell.  And then they don't.  Hmm

Comments

[hugemind]

I really need to rewatch Everybody Hates Hitler. I've focused more on LARP and Time, but that's a good episode and it's gotten a lot of love on my flist. :)

[fannishliss]

I love Everybody Hates Hitler. But then again, not everybody is waiting, waiting for GOLEM SMASH NAZIS!!!!

So awesome. :D

[amberdreams]

There are a few here I really should rewatch...

[fannishliss]

me too. someday!

[tsuki_no_bara]

i liked kevin and his mom (poor kevin - being a prophet sucks), i liked benny, i liked some of the cases, and dean doing braveheart at the end of larp and the real girl cracked me right up, but i couldn't stick out the season. someone had to tell me how it ended.

[fannishliss]

My ranking seems to indicate that the second half was a lot better than the first. I try to stay positive when shows are airing because a lot of times I think we as a fandom can get bogged down in developing plot situations and too much speculation about spoilers... but looking back, I think it's fair to be a bit more critical... and Season 8 really does look like a much weaker season. I think you can blame it structurally on the heavy reliance on flashbacks in the first half. Especially the Amelia flashbacks tried to drain the momentum out of every ep! I like Amelia as a character who brought a certain amount of tension and conflict. She was a very imperfect person (not a paragon like Lisa) and it's not that I couldn't see Sam falling in love with her -- just the opposite. He has a huge capacity for love, and with her being damaged and needy, he had a safe place to invest love. But then Don came back. The whole Don thing was super fishy to me throughout -- not the strongest piece of writing ever

[tsuki_no_bara]

the flashbacks helped kill s8 for me. they were SO BORING (even the purgatory ones, altho i liked the way they were shot) and slowed the action down SO MUCH, and i didn't think sam and amelia had any chemistry. (and the actress reminded me so strongly of the actress who played myka in warehouse 13 that i kept expecting amelia to be her, and she kept not being her and it constantly threw me off. which was such a stupid thing and nothing to do with the show but it didn't make it any easier for me to get into her part of the plot.) i like your interpretation of sam&amelia and at the time it might have helped me appreciate her as a character more, but you're right that don was always fishy and the flashbacks weren't even well done, and they felt soapy-romantic in a way the show never was. it was like the ptb were trying to graft romance onto a paranormal type show, and not successfully, either

[milly_gal]

There are certain episodes from this year that will go down in history as favourites for me. But it's the same with every year, likes and do not wants ;) Thanks for taking the time to join in cos I certainly enjoyed the recaps and reviews :D

[fannishliss]

It's been really fun. It's also a chance to take a step back and let myself say, well, I don't remember that ep at all, so maybe it wasn't that great... :) Whereas sitting in front of the tv in the moment, I am completely glued. O_O Even meh episodes are riveting as they occur. It's only two or three years later that I'm like whuh??? So it's interesting to do a retrospective like this. In the last week I've touched back on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, and it is actually pretty interesting to watch as the show changes

[milly_gal]

I saw the shift when Kripke left, it lost it's way a little, but as shows go, for one that's gone on this long, they've done okay. Each season has it's merits and pitfalls but without either, we wouldn't have gotten here.