SPN: The Kids Are Alright
Oct. 11th, 2007 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superbadgirlThe negative qualities of tonight's episode far outweigh the positives.
The Bad:
1) Dean and Sam doing the brother thing - all of, what, 3 minutes?
2) The mini-Dean. Barf.
3) Psycho kids will be done much better in my fic.
4) Ruby just showing up all over the place. She's like a stain on your carpet - even ifyou clean it, chances are it'll pop back up again. Bleh.
5) Did I mention lack of brother moments?
6) Anti-climactic end to the monster of the week, but then there wasn't really a build up, was there?
7) Ruby. BLEH!
8) I didn't even like the music.
9) I still don't buy Dean as he is, and frankly Sam keeping secrets isn't really making me happy either. Especially big ones.
10) Why do you hate me as a viewer, PTB?
The Good:
Er. They looked good?
*sigh* I'm afraid I'm not woman enough to stick around and hope this shapes up. The previews for next week looked dreadful. I'll give it 6 episodes, and if it's still made of suckiness, I think for my own love of Sam and Dean I will have to stop watching.
Yes, I know I'm apparently in the very tiny minority on how I feel about this episode.
The Bad:
1) Dean and Sam doing the brother thing - all of, what, 3 minutes?
2) The mini-Dean. Barf.
3) Psycho kids will be done much better in my fic.
4) Ruby just showing up all over the place. She's like a stain on your carpet - even ifyou clean it, chances are it'll pop back up again. Bleh.
5) Did I mention lack of brother moments?
6) Anti-climactic end to the monster of the week, but then there wasn't really a build up, was there?
7) Ruby. BLEH!
8) I didn't even like the music.
9) I still don't buy Dean as he is, and frankly Sam keeping secrets isn't really making me happy either. Especially big ones.
10) Why do you hate me as a viewer, PTB?
The Good:
Er. They looked good?
*sigh* I'm afraid I'm not woman enough to stick around and hope this shapes up. The previews for next week looked dreadful. I'll give it 6 episodes, and if it's still made of suckiness, I think for my own love of Sam and Dean I will have to stop watching.
Yes, I know I'm apparently in the very tiny minority on how I feel about this episode.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 08:10 am (UTC)These episodes aren't cutting it for me.
I still don't buy Dean as he is
Really? I thought maybe it was mostly just me. *g* I mean...I know... I just... He's different. It's like he's not the same character, and my attempts to describe why don't make as much sense as I'd like them to. *g*
Yes, I know I'm apparently in the very tiny minority on how I feel about this episode.
You're not alone. On a five-star scale, I rated it -13,487 or something like that. *g*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 04:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, and it's too bad because psycho kids are usually pretty much a guarantee. But, like you, I could have overlooked it if we'd had even just adequate brother interaction. They really weren't anywhere near each other for 99% of the episode, and that's crap. That's not my show!
Really? I thought maybe it was mostly just me. *g* I mean...I know... I just... He's different. It's like he's not the same character, and my attempts to describe why don't make as much sense as I'd like them to. *g*
I think, for me, it's not how he's behaving that makes him not him. I could plausibly buy all of his reactions...but they're not selling it. Everything about it seems too off for me. Not saying JA isn't doing as good a job as ever...okay, maybe I am. I don't believe what he's saying. (And now I have that Bob Mould song in my head.
You're not alone. On a five-star scale, I rated it -13,487 or something like that.
I rate episodes based on whether I want to rewatch. I don't think it's worth looking for things I might have missed with this one. Actually, when I got the S1 DVDs, I watched the whole season right away. Twice. And then several more times. When I got the S2 DVDs, I watched the gag reels. And that's it.
That kind of tells me something. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 06:24 pm (UTC)I don't know if that's it for me or not, but you're right that I just don't believe that JA is selling it. It just seems like an abrupt character shift to me. It seems like a completely over-the-top exaggeration of some aspects of Dean that have always been there.
I rate episodes based on whether I want to rewatch. I don't think it's worth looking for things I might have missed with this one. Actually, when I got the S1 DVDs, I watched the whole season right away. Twice. And then several more times. When I got the S2 DVDs, I watched the gag reels. And that's it.
Me too! *g* Well, sort of. *g* I haven't even watched the extras on the season 2 DVDs, because I read transcripts of the commentaries already and I'd seen the gag reel on YouTube. *g* I took the plastic off, and that's it.
There *are* some great moments in season 2, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 09:30 pm (UTC)There are. I enjoyed most of the season, in fact, but I still don't have the desire to have my own SPN marathon with it. I haven't quite figured out why.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-13 07:41 pm (UTC)I also think that many of the episodes didn't hold up as well under the scrutiny of repeated viewing. *g* Good or not, there are several season 2 episodes I'd probably never want to watch again, but I think maybe only a couple from season 1.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 08:23 pm (UTC)For me it's totally, 100%, that JA isn't doing as good a job as usual. He excels at angst, but the kind of happy, carefree, comedic stuff they've got him doing right now just isn't his forte. At all. He usually outshines JP at every turn, but so far this season it's been the other way around. It's making the show seem... weird.
For me, this episode was maybe 10 minutes long. I wasn't interested in the Dean stuff AT ALL, but I loved the stuff with Sam finding out about his mom's friends and all that. And I like Ruby, but I'm guessing you don't want to hear that. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 09:13 pm (UTC)I don't know. I loved him on Dark Angel and that character was a bit more like this. I think JA does humor well most of the time, but this doesn't seem like humor to me. It's like they decided to wildly exaggerate some of Dean's characteristics and personality traits and forget about the rest.
I didn't buy that more serious conversation at the end of TMS either. It was like all the chemistry that had once been between them was completely gone, but mostly I just didn't buy that Dean. I felt like I was watching some other show, some other character.
I *did* buy Dean's angst about the kid, but it had no impact for me, because it wasn't shared with Sam. I think that was the main part of my problem with this episode. I didn't care about any of it, because none of it had any impact on the brothers--just on each of them individually, like they were on separate shows. Even Sam's slight involvement in the case felt forced. They were barely in any scenes together so there was little interaction even over the case. I also saw no chemistry in this episode either--just...a disconnectedness.
Oh, I take that back. In the little "ordering pizza scene"--that was cute, but it wasn't much. *g*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 09:37 pm (UTC)The show could be renamed "Two Dudes Spend As Little Time As Possible Together While They Drive Around The Country Fighting Evil, But Who Really Cares Because They Apparently Don't Know Each Other "?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-13 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 09:33 pm (UTC)I think he could do humor just fine if that's what they gave him. What they're giving him is crapppppp. It's hard to make crap not stink. ;)
For me, this episode was maybe 10 minutes long. I wasn't interested in the Dean stuff AT ALL, but I loved the stuff with Sam finding out about his mom's friends and all that. And I like Ruby, but I'm guessing you don't want to hear that. ;)
Talk about her all you want, just not here. I actually don't hate her, but I have yet to see the point of her other than T&A. Yeah, yeah, the whole arc hinges on her. Maybe that's why I don't like her. That, and all the scenes Sam could be having with Dean he's having with her and that's reason enough for resentment. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 05:36 am (UTC)The writing in these last two episodes has been atrocious in my opinion. Honestly I didn't think there was anything at all that good about JP's stuff either, he's just not being written over the top. There was still nose flairing, pinched brow acting on JP's part, just like there was in previous seasons, he's just not being written as an ass, like Dean is. I actually was listening to it again tonight and some of those lines JP was saying were just very...flat. Which I can't blame him for either, because they writing was completely uninspired and there's not much one can do to breath life into it.
I honestly don't blame JA because he's had absolute crap to work with, worse than usual(where let's face it, they've really never been the best writers, they just sometimes had moments of being really good:). When he has room to work, he's still doing alot of the same stuff just as well as he ever did, IMO. For example I loved the way he told the demon they had tied up he was going back to Hell and then told them to send him back as he walked away in Mag 7, his physical acting was also spot on throughout, he really LOOKED like a dangerous hunter who knew what the hell he was doing, when they weren't using him for a joke. And he actually had some really nice subtle scenes in TKAA I thought, you just had to try hard to spot them while dogding all the falling anvils. Jensen built a character for two years, and Kripke back in the first season pretty much admitted that alot of what Dean ended up being came out of JA's initial performances, and now the writers just up and decided to rip the rug out from under him by writing Dean like a caricature. I can imagine it would be kind of hard to find one's footing in a situation like that for an actor.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 04:00 pm (UTC)If that's the way he had been written and acted at the beginning, I doubt I would have stuck around. I just don't know why anyone would want to watch these two characters as they are being presented now. They don't even feel like brothers half the time.
Maybe it's all part of the Master Plan. I just don't know if it's worth it to stick around and find out if I'm miserable watching my poor boys (mostly Dean) getting hacked to death like this.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 02:18 pm (UTC)Ruby just had me rolling my eyes. She's a total Buffy clone attempt. Even her speech patterns seem to be trying to mimic the style. I even called her being a demon or having demon-derived powers right from the start. She even has a "magic blade" like Buffy did in later seasons.
It did seem odd to me that they killed the momma changeling and all the rest went poof. I guess they just didn't want to deal with repeated battles, especially with what looked like children.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 04:13 pm (UTC)And again not outside the realm of possibility - I just really hate that tendency to make a kid a carbon copy of a father he neve knew and therefore wouldn't get behavioral cues from. You know?
Ruby just had me rolling my eyes. She's a total Buffy clone attempt. Even her speech patterns seem to be trying to mimic the style. I even called her being a demon or having demon-derived powers right from the start. She even has a "magic blade" like Buffy did in later seasons.
I think many who were unspoiled figured her out. They weren't exactly subtle. It makes her slightly more tolerable, but not much. I admit some of my resentment/dislike of her comes from the same reason I didn't like Jo - Jo separated Dean from Sam. Now we get Sam with more interaction with Random Badass Mystery Demon Woman than with Dean. That's not all her fault...and yet it is, because if they hadn't written her in, then it wouldn't be happening. LOL, fear my illogic!
As for the momma changeling - total writer's convenience. They didn't know there was a mom. I don't know what they were going to do once they freed the real kids. Whup, let's not deal with that unpleasantness and move on to Dean/Bendy Woman and Sam/RBMDW.
Also, I hate that every time someone tells Sam it's about him he acts all stunned and confused. Was he or was he not the one in S1 who kept saying it was about him? They're making a supposed genius stupid and I always hate that.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 04:49 pm (UTC)Well, my mother has said I've freaked her out more than one because I do things like her paternal grandmother, who (a) died before I was born, and (b) was not even a blood relative (my grandfather's mother died when he was two). ;) But yeah, it does push it with the behavioral stuff being so over-the-top, especially an eight year old cruising for chicks.
I admit some of my resentment/dislike of her comes from the same reason I didn't like Jo - Jo separated Dean from Sam.
What doesn't really make much sense to me is they said they were bringing in the new characters to give the actors a rest. Seems to me they're in the episode almost as much, just not with each other. I guess maybe filming one guy with one of the girls gives the other some sort of downtime though.
As for the momma changeling - total writer's convenience. They didn't know there was a mom. I don't know what they were going to do once they freed the real kids. Whup, let's not deal with that unpleasantness and move on to Dean/Bendy Woman and Sam/RBMDW.
They could have made it work by saying something about the "children" actually being extensions of the Momma Changeling or something along those lines. They couldn't exist without her because they were essentially extensions of her.
But then I'm one who likes the Monster of the Week stuff, to see what twists they put on it. I don't think Whedon would have skipped over that bit, or if he did, there would have been a reason for it.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 05:22 pm (UTC)I can get some genetic predisposition, but the kid was playacting Dean almost exactly. Including the way he dressed. Come ON.
What doesn't really make much sense to me is they said they were bringing in the new characters to give the actors a rest. Seems to me they're in the episode almost as much, just not with each other. I guess maybe filming one guy with one of the girls gives the other some sort of downtime though.
Totally. And I am arghing about it. ;)
But then I'm one who likes the Monster of the Week stuff, to see what twists they put on it. I don't think Whedon would have skipped over that bit, or if he did, there would have been a reason for it.
It's just not very good storytelling. Some leaps are okay, because the audience isn't stupid, but some really just make me not know what the fuck.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 01:13 am (UTC)That's called "Our audience is too stupid to get subtle, so let's get out the sledgehammer." Wonder if it's on loan from Bridge Studios? ;)
It's just not very good storytelling. Some leaps are okay, because the audience isn't stupid, but some really just make me not know what the fuck.
The audience isn't stupid, but those making the shows tend to think we are.
I'm not heavy into Supernatural fandom, I just discuss it in LJ-land, but I have followed some links to "discussions" where anyone who complains about the new additions are quickly shouted down as not being "true fans" because they're not trusting TPTB.
Sorry, but I've been around the fandom block too many times to trust TPTB blindly, especially when it's been shown time and time again that it's not one person, but many, who make the final decision. I might trust the creative process of the writers, but I don't trust that it won't be interfered with by the studio.
Those who follow a leader without question tend to be the first ones in line for the Kool-Aid.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 04:30 pm (UTC)I'm just so naive, because this mentality ALWAYS confuses me, whether it be in fandom or in real life.
Sorry, but I've been around the fandom block too many times to trust TPTB blindly, especially when it's been shown time and time again that it's not one person, but many, who make the final decision. I might trust the creative process of the writers, but I don't trust that it won't be interfered with by the studio.
Exactly. For the writers, it might be creative expression, but it's equal parts business. They, ultimately, write to get paid and if the payer of the bills says they want X, then that's what the creative team does.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 06:24 pm (UTC)I thought so, too. It seemed a way to end the story quickly without any repercussions or tension.