Supernatural

[flake_sake]

Thought I'd do a small Supernatural poll this sunday:

Poll Supernatual surveyAnd finally a question that doesn't really fit into the poll:

How does gender imbalance affect your enjoyment of a show?

Comments

[dipenates]

I'm currently marathon-ing Supernatural, having avoided it for years because I thought it would be ridiculous

[flake_sake]

The character who seems to have come in for a particular amount of flack is Jo Harvelle, who is a young, female hunter, whose mother is also a hunter. Kripke was saying that she was a mistake before she was even on-screen and the fan reaction (as a sweeping generalisation) seems to have been 'get your hands off my Dean, bitch'.I find that very interesting, since I thought Ellen and Jo were pretty much the deepest female characters on the show (it's a bit like being the tallest of the seven dwarves but still). Ok, Jo had the usual SN botox lips but otherwise she got to show a bit of competence with all her damselling

[dipenates]

CONTAINS SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON FOUR

I find that very interesting, since I thought Ellen and Jo were pretty much the deepest female characters on the show (it's a bit like being the tallest of the seven dwarves but still). Ok, Jo had the usual SN botox lips but otherwise she got to show a bit of competence with all her damselling.Absolutely! I liked the episode that Jo first got her hunt on, and thought they could have taken that somewhere interesting. I kind of get what Kripke meant when he decided that the Roadhouse gave the show a sense of fixed place when the Winchesters were meant to be in constant motion, but odd that the same apparently doesn't apply to Bobby's house

[flake_sake]

Yep, I was quite dissapointed in Bela, because I had the impression that in S3 they were really trying to insert more important and able women, but Bela ended up fairly incompetent, to the point of patheticness and when she cries for Dean's help in the end (after she never seemed to be very impressed by the brothers). I really thought it was a bit demeaning, they could have let her die with dignity.

Caprica is really good, especially where characterisation is concerned. They have extremely interesting female roles (males too of course) that feel very real and just ignore the usual stereotypes (which is extremely refreshing with the teenagers).
(And they have James Marsters written by Jane espeson :))

[woman_of_]

I do watch it and talk about it, I just found that the question regarding women didn't fit how I feel about them.

There are women who are awesome on the show, so I can't generalise to answer the question. Ellen was fantastic, Ruby #1 was really good, in the only appearing in one show, Sarah and Madison were excellent. I would've liked Sarah to come back.

So a bit like the non-regular men. Some good, some bad.

[flake_sake]

Yes, there are some I find quite ok, though I found them to be the exception and had too little screen time to make up for those that were horrible.

I wish they had gone through with creating a woman that could carry a regular role. As much as I like Bobby and Castiel, I think it wouldn't have been to big of a deal to make them female.

[sentine]

If you tried it but it didn't hook you, can you put on a finger why?

Mostly because I think it's rather poorly written. And weirdly enough, the episodes I enjoyed the most have nothing to do with the storyline -which, most of the time, makes me go "uh?" :)

[flake_sake]

I thought the writing was very erratic in the beginning. Sometimes they'd strike a total hit, especially with the personal relationships and sometimes it would completely fail (with the plot mostly)

It took me a very long time to get into it. I watched half of the first season and then nothing for a year, before picking it up again.

It was the other way round though for me. I liked the mytharc and wasn't too big a fan of the fillers, because they were always stolen from horror movies and X-files eps.

Most hardcore fans don't seem to like it, but for me the show deffinitely picked up with the heaven/hell storyline.

[eowyn_315]

I've never seen Supernatural - had no desire to watch another supernatural show (I liked BtVS in spite of the vampires, not because of them), but I'm even less interested now that I've heard so many awful things about the way they handle the female characters.

But it's interesting that you ask about gender imbalance, since I've just finished a rewatch of Red Dwarf, which has not a single female character for much of the series, and yet I love it. And it was something I was thinking about as I was watching.

I think, for me, it's not about the balance of genders, but more about how they treat the women who DO show up. The West Wing was brought up in the comments - definitely a male-heavy show, but the women in it are awesome, and I love it. But AtS, another male-heavy show, did a horrible injustice to its female characters, and that makes me really sad. I'd rather have no women at all than see the women treated horribly or painfully stereotyped.

[flake_sake]

Yes, this is it! That's exactly the way I feel too. I'm reluctant to admit it, but I quite liked it that they did not try to introduce female regulars on SN in S5, because they always fall so horribly flat that I'd rather not have them at all.

Because other than that, the show is really good and as the in dept view on masculinity goes even progressive.

I deffinitely agree that absence is preferrable to horrible treatment and constant stereotyping.

And I also agree about the WW, it's not necessary to make the women card board cut outs on male dominated shows and if they are not it makes them so much more interesting.

My heart still belongs to shows like Mad Men and Caprica who really manage to strike a balance and avoid simple answers.

[eowyn_315]

Oh, Mad Men is another great example. It's also a male-dominated show (it's right there in the title!) and it would be easy for them to dismiss the female characters as stereotypes - after all, this is the 1960s. But they manage to make the women well-rounded and fascinating characters, even though most of them are still trapped in their pre-feminist societal roles (wife, mother, secretary).

[flake_sake]

Yes, though in many ways I'd call Mad Men even a feminist shows because it manages to both portray the narrow stereotypes of the time and the real 3D women who lived in those boxes.

Weirdly enough there's a writer who writes for both Mad Men and Supernatural, though I certainly wouldn't have guessed it.

[snogged]

I've tried so hard to like Supernatural, but the first episode honestly creeped the crap out of me. My friend Meg tried to fix things by starting me on on episode 3 (I believe that was the one Amy Acker did a guest appearance for), but I still wasn't hooked.

[flake_sake]

I saw most of the first season and didn't get hooked either. It was too much of a horror movie remake for me. And the women thing wasn't exactly bonus.

But I watched more when I was ill at some point and S3 then actually really got me hooked.

[snogged]

That's what I keep hearing.

[flake_sake]

Interesting, since what little I know of the hardcore fans, there are quite some who say the series went down from there.

But for me it was deffinitely the other way round, I got the impression that they started to use there set up to it's full range and also they had a lot more episodes where they are making fun of themselves :).