Writerly POV meta on SPN Season 6
I posted this on the THaB board already, but thought I'd share with LJ folks as well.
Last weekend at SPN coffee, I discussed how Season 6 could have been made better. Er, well, at least, how it could have been made more SENSE and flowed better--I can't fix every piece of that hot mess, LOL. Anyway. They encouraged me to share it, since I spoke from a writerly point of view, and I asked muffaletta if she thought people might like to read, and she said go for it, so here we are :)
So. Being a writer myself, I can't help but look at each season in terms of plot flow and character development. One of the things that annoys me the most with Show is that since season3, they've devloped this trend of starting the season out strong, only to get lost along the way, and then trying to squish a whole bunch of stuff in right at the end and call it complete. Now Season 3 didn't leave them with much choice, because of the writer's strike, but STILL, they managed to shortchange their main storyline--Dean's deal--in favor of one offs and other characters, like Bela and Ruby. And yes, I also know that the network interfered a great deal that season, which is why Bela went from a one-time and, IMO, fun character to a needless and annoying recurring one, but the SPN writers still could have worked around it--found a way to incorporate Bela into Dean's deal, somehow, instead of shoving it all together in the forgetable "Time Is On My Side." Le sigh.
Anyway, my point, at long last: since that season, Show has fumbled storylines over and over again, and nothing displays that better than the season that just ended. I'm going to mainly talk about Season 6, but I'll refer back to other seasons as it pertains. Ahem.
The main problem with Season 6 is that they tried to do too much in one season. It started out with a number intriguing mysteries. How did Sam get out, and why was he acting...off? How did Samuel Campbell get back, and why? Why were the djinn and other monsters acting so strangely? As it went on, we soon got additional mysteries--where was Sam's soul? What were the things Castiel did that he admitted he wasn't proud of? Why was Purgatory so important? Why was Samuel collecting all those alphas? And as we got to the midpoint of the season, we got even MORE mysteries, like Death warning Dean to look into souls' worth, Sam's missing memories, Eve and her quest to breed a perfect monster, Castiel and Crowley working together...it was nuts! And naturally, when the finale came, we only got answers to a handful of those questions. The rest were either killed off (Samuel, Eve) so quickly that we wonder why they bothered being there in the first place, and others were only partially answered (Sam's soul is back, but what exactly was it like being in the cage--we still don't know), and still others were answered but only by twisting a character--Cas, in this case. It left most of us feeling one simple thing as 6x22's credits rolled: that's IT? Seriously? Finales are supposed to fill us up yet leave us wanting more! THis one...didn't. And the main reason for that is because, as I said, they tried to do WAY too many things at once.
Now had they focused on smaller things, they could have fixed it up. I'm not saying it would have been the Best Season EVAH, but it would've been a huge improvement to what we ended up with. First and foremost, the souless!Sam thing was dragged out WAY too long. What took the Show 11 episodes to do easily could have been done in six, with just a little rearranging of the schedule. For example: was it absolutely necessary for Sam to have been soulless in the fairy episode? Or in the skinwalker ep, for that matter? No. The point of the eps was to introduce new monsters to the Show, and both could have been done AFTER Sam got his soul back. So take those two eps out for now and put them to the side. The wonderful "Weekend at Bobby's" also could have taken place without soulless!Sam, so it goes to the side, too. You could also argue that "Two and a Half Men" could have taken place later as well, since there are really no clues that sam is soulless in that one--at least, none that come to mind, so there's another ep that could have waited. So that leaves us with a much tighter storyline through the remaining eps: "Exile on Main Street," where we first find out that Sam is a little off. Next, "The Third Man," which introduces not only the heavenly civil war, but also gives Dean his first major clue that something ain't right in Sam Land, when Sam has no problem whatsoever with Cas reaching in to that boy's soul and causing him all that pain. Then the BIG tip off comes with "Live Free or Twihard" and Dean remembering Sam's creepy smile when Dean was attacked by a vamp. That's followed up by the "Truth" ep, where Dean finds out for sure that Sam was lying to him. "Family Matters" could then have been tightened up if they just skipped over all the stuff about Sam pretending he wanted his soul back--then we would have had Cas informing Dean that Sam was missing his soul, followed by the truth about the alphas and why Samuel was taking them for Crowley. Done and done. NOW, take out "All Dogs...", "Clap your Hands...", "Caged Heat," and proceed directly to "Appointment at Samarra." IMO, as soon as Dean found out Sam lied to him, he wouldn't have taken his brother's word about anything, including the idea that he wanted his soul back. With no other option, he would've gone for broke, found Death, and do what he had to to get rid of Sham and get his Sam back. That's what Dean DOES--action, not waiting around with his thumb up his ass! It would be nice if Show would remember that more often.
So to sum up, here is how I would have rearranged the start of the season in order to make the soulless!Sam storyline much more dramatic, but done in half the time the season really played out:
1. "Exile on Main Street"
2. "The Third Man"
3. "Live Free or Twihard"
4. "You Can't Handle the Truth"
5. "Family Matters"
6. "Appointment in Samarra"
You could throw "Weekend at Bobby's" in there and still have it work, but I wanted to illustrate my point just by using the necessary Sam eps. If they had gone with that order, we would have had juuuust enough of soulless!Sam to keep him interesting, but not annoying/boring, as is what happened in reality. Plus, we'd have a nice and tidy end to the storyline instead of the muddled one we're still stuck with. Sure, Sam would be struggling with the wall the rest of the season, but at least it would have been Sam on TV and not Sham! And I'll take dear Sam over Sham ANY day!
Unfortunately, they didn't go that route, and Sham was on the screen long past his welcome. And because they were focusing so much attention on that storyline, the other two main storylines--monsters behaving strangely and the civil war in heaven--got pushed to the back. And honestly, Show never, EVER should have tried telling two huge storylines like that at the same time in the first place. They should have gone with one, hinted at the other, and then let season 7 be about the latter, as introduced in the finale. The question is, which one should they have stuck with, and which one should've gone on the back burner? To be honest, I'm not sure. So let's take a look at both options.
If they had gone with the Team Cas vs Team Raphael storyline as the backdrop for Season 6, we would've had a much more engaging drama and a LOT more Cas. Castiel was established through seasons 4 and 5 as being a true ally, an important member of Team Free Will, and a true friend to the Winchesters, Dean especially. He's a truly cool character, both fierce and funny (like when he doesn't understand slang, much less how to work a cell phone). So really, where the hell was he in Season 6? He was in more episodes than you might think (TTM, YCHTT, FM, CH, "Like a Virgin," "The French Mistake," "My Heart Will Go On," "Frontierland," "Mommy Dearest," "The Man Who Would Be King," "Let It Bleed," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much"), but for most of his appearances, especially in the first half of the season, he really didn't do much to move the story along. Yet he kept hinting that he wasn't doing well--he admitted there were things he'd done that he wasn't proud of, and that he'd rather be fighting alongside Team Free Will on Earth instead of battling through the civil war up in Heaven. And with all the stuff with the monsters, we never got anything BUT hints and throwaway lines from Cas until "Mommy Dearest," when suddenly, things got REALLY interesting. Cas working with Crowley--to the point that he even helped fake the demon's death? Now THERE would have been a cool season-long storyline! Imagine if that revelation had come sooner. If the writers had only hinted at the monsters and Eve rising and all that, focusing instead on Cas, Crowley, and just WHY they were so intent on finding Purgatory, we would have had a MUCH more compelling season! Obviously we would have had to find out all this stuff from someone other than Eve, because in my beautiful mind world, she would have gotten out of Purgatory in the season finale, thereby making her the big bad for season 7. But ohhh, the opportunities for character development! Gives me the good goosebumps just thinking about it :) Dean could have had more time to try and get through to Cas, Cas would have had more than one episode (even though it was a very GOOD episode) to truly question what he was doing...it would've been magnificent. Instead, the Cas stuff was barely there for most of the season, only to pop up at the very end in a hasty attempt to bring both storylines to a close. IMO, god!Cas is going to wear out his welcome next season just as swiftly as Sham did this past one. ::sighs:: Coulda shoulda woulda, right writers?
Now take the other scenario: If they had put the monster storyline front and center and held off with the Cas/Civil War thing, we would have had MORE cool monsters, and Eve wouldn't have been a flash in the pan. I've always loved the MotW eps on Show, and this season we got some really good ones! But after all the fuss of setting up the Alphas, and then the threat that Eve posed, we really didn't get anything out of it. Sure the boys got to hunt some cool new creatures (Jefferson Starships, anyone?), and Dean took down Eve in a really cool way, but honestly, why did the writers bother if they weren't going to do anything with any of them? Seeing monsters acting differently was cool! Meeting the alphas was also cool! Aaaand then we stopped seeing them once they killed off Crowley. making the point of meeting said alphas moot. Then we have Eve, who, despite being portrayed by CW's typical kind of jailbait actress, was supposed to be this big, über-bad Big Bad...and they killed her off in a matter of episodes, too! So why did they bother introducing her at all? If they had instead kept their emphasis on the monsters taking over, and making Eve into a truly Big Bad on par with Lucifer and his great threat, they could have had a unique season on par with Season 1, with the boys alone against the evils of the world. But they didn't. Instead, they tried to combine it with the Cas/Civil War storyline and ended up with neither storyline really working out. Now we're stuck with an angel with a god complex and a unique monster dead before we ever really got to know her. Such a disappointment.
But wait, there's more! The truly sad result of the mangled storylines is what happened to Dean in Season 6. With all of these overly complicated plots mixing and demanding some kind of attention, and allllll the characters they each had to employ (Sham, Samuel, Gwen, Christian, Crowley, Castiel, Balthazar, Eve!) in order to GIVE said attention, poor Dean got lost in the shuffle. Sure he had Lisa and Ben, but it was clear the writers didn't know what to do with them. In one ep, they don't want Dean to leave! In the next, they don't want him to ever come back! Then Lisa tells him not to call, only to later ask why he never picked up the phone! It was stupid and confusing, and Dean could have done SO much more. So the final thing that Show could have done would have been to Nix the Ben and Lisa stuff and give Dean the job of intrepid detective, using his skills to uncover the mystery of souls and Purgatory and, depending on which storyline they went with, either helping Cas fight the war somehow or discovering how to kill the new monsters. Either would have given him a much more worthwhile role in the storyarc, while still giving him room to take care of Sam (something I still love him for) and be his awesome self. They even could have had Dean remain a vamp or something longer, just for him to explore what a true monster really is, and to fight his own new, natural instincts! But no. They gave him two supporters in Lisa and Ben who started off awesome and then became annoying...aaaand that's really about it. Dean deserves better.
So that's my long-ass post about how the writers could have made Season 6 into less of a mess and more of a compelling and strong story. I have more I could talk about, but that goes into the other thing that bothers me with SPN--when they Tell instead of Show. I'll save that for some other afternoon when I'm procrastinating on a writing project ;)
Now if anyone could get me motivated to actually DO something on my final day off, that would be great. Till then, I'm gonna take a nap, just because I can ;)
Last weekend at SPN coffee, I discussed how Season 6 could have been made better. Er, well, at least, how it could have been made more SENSE and flowed better--I can't fix every piece of that hot mess, LOL. Anyway. They encouraged me to share it, since I spoke from a writerly point of view, and I asked muffaletta if she thought people might like to read, and she said go for it, so here we are :)
So. Being a writer myself, I can't help but look at each season in terms of plot flow and character development. One of the things that annoys me the most with Show is that since season3, they've devloped this trend of starting the season out strong, only to get lost along the way, and then trying to squish a whole bunch of stuff in right at the end and call it complete. Now Season 3 didn't leave them with much choice, because of the writer's strike, but STILL, they managed to shortchange their main storyline--Dean's deal--in favor of one offs and other characters, like Bela and Ruby. And yes, I also know that the network interfered a great deal that season, which is why Bela went from a one-time and, IMO, fun character to a needless and annoying recurring one, but the SPN writers still could have worked around it--found a way to incorporate Bela into Dean's deal, somehow, instead of shoving it all together in the forgetable "Time Is On My Side." Le sigh.
Anyway, my point, at long last: since that season, Show has fumbled storylines over and over again, and nothing displays that better than the season that just ended. I'm going to mainly talk about Season 6, but I'll refer back to other seasons as it pertains. Ahem.
The main problem with Season 6 is that they tried to do too much in one season. It started out with a number intriguing mysteries. How did Sam get out, and why was he acting...off? How did Samuel Campbell get back, and why? Why were the djinn and other monsters acting so strangely? As it went on, we soon got additional mysteries--where was Sam's soul? What were the things Castiel did that he admitted he wasn't proud of? Why was Purgatory so important? Why was Samuel collecting all those alphas? And as we got to the midpoint of the season, we got even MORE mysteries, like Death warning Dean to look into souls' worth, Sam's missing memories, Eve and her quest to breed a perfect monster, Castiel and Crowley working together...it was nuts! And naturally, when the finale came, we only got answers to a handful of those questions. The rest were either killed off (Samuel, Eve) so quickly that we wonder why they bothered being there in the first place, and others were only partially answered (Sam's soul is back, but what exactly was it like being in the cage--we still don't know), and still others were answered but only by twisting a character--Cas, in this case. It left most of us feeling one simple thing as 6x22's credits rolled: that's IT? Seriously? Finales are supposed to fill us up yet leave us wanting more! THis one...didn't. And the main reason for that is because, as I said, they tried to do WAY too many things at once.
Now had they focused on smaller things, they could have fixed it up. I'm not saying it would have been the Best Season EVAH, but it would've been a huge improvement to what we ended up with. First and foremost, the souless!Sam thing was dragged out WAY too long. What took the Show 11 episodes to do easily could have been done in six, with just a little rearranging of the schedule. For example: was it absolutely necessary for Sam to have been soulless in the fairy episode? Or in the skinwalker ep, for that matter? No. The point of the eps was to introduce new monsters to the Show, and both could have been done AFTER Sam got his soul back. So take those two eps out for now and put them to the side. The wonderful "Weekend at Bobby's" also could have taken place without soulless!Sam, so it goes to the side, too. You could also argue that "Two and a Half Men" could have taken place later as well, since there are really no clues that sam is soulless in that one--at least, none that come to mind, so there's another ep that could have waited. So that leaves us with a much tighter storyline through the remaining eps: "Exile on Main Street," where we first find out that Sam is a little off. Next, "The Third Man," which introduces not only the heavenly civil war, but also gives Dean his first major clue that something ain't right in Sam Land, when Sam has no problem whatsoever with Cas reaching in to that boy's soul and causing him all that pain. Then the BIG tip off comes with "Live Free or Twihard" and Dean remembering Sam's creepy smile when Dean was attacked by a vamp. That's followed up by the "Truth" ep, where Dean finds out for sure that Sam was lying to him. "Family Matters" could then have been tightened up if they just skipped over all the stuff about Sam pretending he wanted his soul back--then we would have had Cas informing Dean that Sam was missing his soul, followed by the truth about the alphas and why Samuel was taking them for Crowley. Done and done. NOW, take out "All Dogs...", "Clap your Hands...", "Caged Heat," and proceed directly to "Appointment at Samarra." IMO, as soon as Dean found out Sam lied to him, he wouldn't have taken his brother's word about anything, including the idea that he wanted his soul back. With no other option, he would've gone for broke, found Death, and do what he had to to get rid of Sham and get his Sam back. That's what Dean DOES--action, not waiting around with his thumb up his ass! It would be nice if Show would remember that more often.
So to sum up, here is how I would have rearranged the start of the season in order to make the soulless!Sam storyline much more dramatic, but done in half the time the season really played out:
1. "Exile on Main Street"
2. "The Third Man"
3. "Live Free or Twihard"
4. "You Can't Handle the Truth"
5. "Family Matters"
6. "Appointment in Samarra"
You could throw "Weekend at Bobby's" in there and still have it work, but I wanted to illustrate my point just by using the necessary Sam eps. If they had gone with that order, we would have had juuuust enough of soulless!Sam to keep him interesting, but not annoying/boring, as is what happened in reality. Plus, we'd have a nice and tidy end to the storyline instead of the muddled one we're still stuck with. Sure, Sam would be struggling with the wall the rest of the season, but at least it would have been Sam on TV and not Sham! And I'll take dear Sam over Sham ANY day!
Unfortunately, they didn't go that route, and Sham was on the screen long past his welcome. And because they were focusing so much attention on that storyline, the other two main storylines--monsters behaving strangely and the civil war in heaven--got pushed to the back. And honestly, Show never, EVER should have tried telling two huge storylines like that at the same time in the first place. They should have gone with one, hinted at the other, and then let season 7 be about the latter, as introduced in the finale. The question is, which one should they have stuck with, and which one should've gone on the back burner? To be honest, I'm not sure. So let's take a look at both options.
If they had gone with the Team Cas vs Team Raphael storyline as the backdrop for Season 6, we would've had a much more engaging drama and a LOT more Cas. Castiel was established through seasons 4 and 5 as being a true ally, an important member of Team Free Will, and a true friend to the Winchesters, Dean especially. He's a truly cool character, both fierce and funny (like when he doesn't understand slang, much less how to work a cell phone). So really, where the hell was he in Season 6? He was in more episodes than you might think (TTM, YCHTT, FM, CH, "Like a Virgin," "The French Mistake," "My Heart Will Go On," "Frontierland," "Mommy Dearest," "The Man Who Would Be King," "Let It Bleed," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much"), but for most of his appearances, especially in the first half of the season, he really didn't do much to move the story along. Yet he kept hinting that he wasn't doing well--he admitted there were things he'd done that he wasn't proud of, and that he'd rather be fighting alongside Team Free Will on Earth instead of battling through the civil war up in Heaven. And with all the stuff with the monsters, we never got anything BUT hints and throwaway lines from Cas until "Mommy Dearest," when suddenly, things got REALLY interesting. Cas working with Crowley--to the point that he even helped fake the demon's death? Now THERE would have been a cool season-long storyline! Imagine if that revelation had come sooner. If the writers had only hinted at the monsters and Eve rising and all that, focusing instead on Cas, Crowley, and just WHY they were so intent on finding Purgatory, we would have had a MUCH more compelling season! Obviously we would have had to find out all this stuff from someone other than Eve, because in my beautiful mind world, she would have gotten out of Purgatory in the season finale, thereby making her the big bad for season 7. But ohhh, the opportunities for character development! Gives me the good goosebumps just thinking about it :) Dean could have had more time to try and get through to Cas, Cas would have had more than one episode (even though it was a very GOOD episode) to truly question what he was doing...it would've been magnificent. Instead, the Cas stuff was barely there for most of the season, only to pop up at the very end in a hasty attempt to bring both storylines to a close. IMO, god!Cas is going to wear out his welcome next season just as swiftly as Sham did this past one. ::sighs:: Coulda shoulda woulda, right writers?
Now take the other scenario: If they had put the monster storyline front and center and held off with the Cas/Civil War thing, we would have had MORE cool monsters, and Eve wouldn't have been a flash in the pan. I've always loved the MotW eps on Show, and this season we got some really good ones! But after all the fuss of setting up the Alphas, and then the threat that Eve posed, we really didn't get anything out of it. Sure the boys got to hunt some cool new creatures (Jefferson Starships, anyone?), and Dean took down Eve in a really cool way, but honestly, why did the writers bother if they weren't going to do anything with any of them? Seeing monsters acting differently was cool! Meeting the alphas was also cool! Aaaand then we stopped seeing them once they killed off Crowley. making the point of meeting said alphas moot. Then we have Eve, who, despite being portrayed by CW's typical kind of jailbait actress, was supposed to be this big, über-bad Big Bad...and they killed her off in a matter of episodes, too! So why did they bother introducing her at all? If they had instead kept their emphasis on the monsters taking over, and making Eve into a truly Big Bad on par with Lucifer and his great threat, they could have had a unique season on par with Season 1, with the boys alone against the evils of the world. But they didn't. Instead, they tried to combine it with the Cas/Civil War storyline and ended up with neither storyline really working out. Now we're stuck with an angel with a god complex and a unique monster dead before we ever really got to know her. Such a disappointment.
But wait, there's more! The truly sad result of the mangled storylines is what happened to Dean in Season 6. With all of these overly complicated plots mixing and demanding some kind of attention, and allllll the characters they each had to employ (Sham, Samuel, Gwen, Christian, Crowley, Castiel, Balthazar, Eve!) in order to GIVE said attention, poor Dean got lost in the shuffle. Sure he had Lisa and Ben, but it was clear the writers didn't know what to do with them. In one ep, they don't want Dean to leave! In the next, they don't want him to ever come back! Then Lisa tells him not to call, only to later ask why he never picked up the phone! It was stupid and confusing, and Dean could have done SO much more. So the final thing that Show could have done would have been to Nix the Ben and Lisa stuff and give Dean the job of intrepid detective, using his skills to uncover the mystery of souls and Purgatory and, depending on which storyline they went with, either helping Cas fight the war somehow or discovering how to kill the new monsters. Either would have given him a much more worthwhile role in the storyarc, while still giving him room to take care of Sam (something I still love him for) and be his awesome self. They even could have had Dean remain a vamp or something longer, just for him to explore what a true monster really is, and to fight his own new, natural instincts! But no. They gave him two supporters in Lisa and Ben who started off awesome and then became annoying...aaaand that's really about it. Dean deserves better.
So that's my long-ass post about how the writers could have made Season 6 into less of a mess and more of a compelling and strong story. I have more I could talk about, but that goes into the other thing that bothers me with SPN--when they Tell instead of Show. I'll save that for some other afternoon when I'm procrastinating on a writing project ;)
Now if anyone could get me motivated to actually DO something on my final day off, that would be great. Till then, I'm gonna take a nap, just because I can ;)