This leaves me with just one question: Understatement of the year, or understatement of the century? ;)
I was just talking about that with someone recently, well, sort of, in discussing why a certain Doctor Who two-parter affected me so much. Basically, it boiled down to the way that the episodes are the absolute antithesis to SPN (with a special emphasis on its finales). Which is not meant as a dig at SPN, just that it's nice sometimes to have a something where everything spontaneously gets better and happier rather than spontaneously more miserable and doomed.
Actually, it's sort of the antithesis to a lot of shows. It's one thing that, despite my issues with Who, I really like about the series--it's unabashed positivity. There's nothing tongue-in-cheek or remotely apologetic when it has happy endings. Happy things are going to HAPPEN, dammit! We can choose to partake or not, but at no point is there a sense of shame over the way events unfold.
I respect their willingness to pull no punches in this regard, and it really sets the show apart from the grim-n-grittiness of pretty much, y'know, everything else being produced in the last decade or so. It's refreshing.
Exactly. I think sometimes the scale has tipped too far the other way, you know, with shows that seem to think the point is to punish the viewers for getting invested in the story and characters? But for me at least, that kind of unrelenting grimness just wears me down, and I eventually burn out on shows.
The only other show that easily pops to mind that was cheery in a similar way was Pushing Daisies, I think. Though they achieved it sometimes by pushing the saccharine up past 9000 and then toning it back down with very morbid humor.
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I was just talking about that with someone recently, well, sort of, in discussing why a certain Doctor Who two-parter affected me so much. Basically, it boiled down to the way that the episodes are the absolute antithesis to SPN (with a special emphasis on its finales). Which is not meant as a dig at SPN, just that it's nice sometimes to have a something where everything spontaneously gets better and happier rather than spontaneously more miserable and doomed.
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I respect their willingness to pull no punches in this regard, and it really sets the show apart from the grim-n-grittiness of pretty much, y'know, everything else being produced in the last decade or so. It's refreshing.
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The only other show that easily pops to mind that was cheery in a similar way was Pushing Daisies, I think. Though they achieved it sometimes by pushing the saccharine up past 9000 and then toning it back down with very morbid humor.
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