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Slovenly Muse

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Everything posted by Slovenly Muse

  1. I'm so glad this show is back! It just never fails to make me happy! And getting Hardison is always a bonus! I do get a kick out of the opening credits EVERY TIME with the silhouettes showing everyone's skills, and Harry's is, apparently... turning around. I legit chortle every single time. I will say, as much as I love Breanna and was glad to see her hold her own here with Hardison around trying to be the big brother, I do think she played a valuable role in the first season as the newbie. These sorts of con/heist shows ALWAYS eventually encounter the same problem (looking at you, Hustle!), which is that after years of watching these characters get out of extremely tight situations using almost superhuman levels of skill, it becomes really hard to build tension in an episode. What could possibly be happening that this highly-skilled team can't gain control of? And if everything seems to be going wrong, OF COURSE it's a fake-out and they planned it this way all along, because they're just too good to leave themselves open like that. Establishing stakes and creating tension and uncertainty, from a writing perspective, is just too hard, and eventually the show becomes predictable or stale. This is why I was glad to see Breanna and Harry come in last season as genuine newbies. They had some skill, but they were actual real wildcards, and maybe they COULDN'T handle the situations they were in, and maybe they WOULD need rescuing, or make a dumb mistake and endanger the plan... I thought it was a really brilliant way to reintroduce some of that tension into the storytelling! So, this episode, establishing Breanna as being a worthy successor, who can even outdo Hardison at times, felt like a bit of a misstep. It was lovely for the character, but I'm not sure it's the best for the overall dynamics. It was so fun to watch her learning the ropes last season! Let her keep learning! And yes, Harry still feels like a newbie, but he's so inconsequential that it doesn't really matter what he does. Breanna typically has a lot more resting on her shoulders. Man, I'm so happy that this show is still going, and that it is still delightful. The last season of the original run was starting to wear on me, but the reboot has managed to recapture the magic, and I am in!
  2. Ok! This series is starting to click for me! I had heard a reviewer say that it was balls-to-the-wall bonkers, and you'd either love it or hate it. I quite enjoyed Flanagan's "Oculus" because it was balls-to-the-wall bonkers enough to distract from the weaker story elements, and since the Haunting series' were more story-forward and put those storytelling flaws on display (which detracted from my enjoyment), I figured there would be a good chance I would enjoy something of his that was more of a return to his "Oculus" style. And I'm starting to see what that reviewer meant! The first three episodes didn't wow me (especially having so much revealed in episode 3), and it still has a lot of the same issues as the Haunting series', but this is not going in the direction I expected, and I'm really appreciating what it seems to be trying to do! I was bracing for the low-key horror of people embracing miracles not knowing there was an evil force behind them, but seeing people actually disposing of bodies for the homicidal, blood-drinking Monsignor because he is a man of God and must therefore be simply acting out God's will is A CHOICE that I RESPECT! Looking forward to seeing what the rest of the show has in store!
  3. Oof. Oh, Mike Flanagan. His stuff is just interesting enough to keep me coming back (and let's be honest, there is a dearth of good horror on TV these days), but it absolutely perplexes me how a successful horror writer/director can have SUCH a poor grasp of how horror works. My partner saw me starting the pilot earlier with the cat in the room (our cat is a panicky weirdo) and joked that it's not nice to watch horror with our poor cat who is easily scared. I joked to him not to worry because, "It's a Mike Flanagan show, so I'm sure by episode 3 all the horror will be explained, so we won't have to be scared of anything for the rest of the series and can just focus on criticizing the writing." I was INTENDING to exaggerate for humorous effect. I was not expecting a full-on SOLILOQUY in episode three OF SEVEN explaining exactly what the supernatural terror is, why it is there, and what it is doing. I just can't believe he did this, even though it's the same every damn time. Good horror trades on the audience's fear of the unknown, the ambiguity of possible explanations for what is happening and the maddening lack of certainty. It maximizes on the fear of "the uncanny:" the disconnect between what your senses are perceiving and what your brain understands to be possible. Every damn time, Flanagan kneecaps himself by not only explaining but OVER-explaining his horror elements WAY too early in the show, and draining the tension out of everything that comes after! I'm hopeful that he is planning to capitalize on this early reveal by mining it for dramatic irony (when the audience knows something the characters don't), watching the townspeople become increasingly enamored by the church and its "miracles," not knowing they are putting themselves in danger... but I just don't trust that he's going to be able to build that tension successfully. Still, I'm in it now and I'm going to find out! OK, one more before bed!
  4. Yeah, this was one of my biggest complaints about the film. Once Taskmaster was revealed to be Dreykov's daughter (what's her character's name, by the way? Was she given one, or did I just not catch it?), it was really disappointing that there was no real payoff for that. The death of Dreykov's daugher (calling her DD since I don't know her proper name) was a huge millstone around Natasha's neck. Deliberately killing that girl to get the father affected her greatly, and she clearly never managed to leave it behind her (with good reason). So it was disappointing that she didn't get to really confront DD (only physically fight Taskmaster) and own up and come to some sort of closure about what her actions cost DD. Furthermore, DD's story was simply not told at all. She absolutely had legitimate reasons to want Natasha dead. It wasn't until the very end when she was freed from the mind control that I realized she actually WAS mind controlled. Her story is even more traumatic and horrible than Natasha and Yelena's: She was caught in an explosion when she was just a child because the supposed "good guys" wanted her father dead and didn't care that she was in the way. Then, she grew up (enduring what I'm sure was a long and painful recovery) only to find herself enslaved to her own father through mind control, forced to try to kill the very person she blamed for her condition in the first place, but with no agency or personhood to exact vengeance, because her father wanted to use her as nothing more than a tool and didn't love her as his daughter anymore. She could have been a central plot of the movie! But this story was not told or explored AT ALL. Not only was it a waste of a villain, it was a waste of a truly interesting character. Ignoring her story seemed like a lazy way to let Natasha off the hook by confirming that Dreykov was the one who REALLY used and exploited girls for his missions, including his own daughter, so really Natasha wasn't the problem and we shouldn't think any more about it. But the thing that actually bothered me the most about the movie is actually a fairly minor point: the accents. It was so weird to establish that these characters learned flawless English to blend in seamlessly to an American community, and then have them speaking in heavily-accented (even broken) English later on. Learning a language involves practicing pronunciation just as much as vocabulary and grammar, and they obviously mastered it. Having three of the four former-spies talking like... well, like comic book Russian villains, instead of capable international agents who could speak English as comfortably as Russian was distracting. I get that the production didn't want to have them actually speak Russian and subtitle it (hard on the actors and the younger audience members), and wanted to emphasize that they were of Russian nationality, but it really distracted and annoyed me, especially David Harbour's broken English. Of course, I am a language teacher myself, so I will admit to being especially biased. As for the controversy around ScarJo's lawsuit, I really hope she's successful and opens some doors for other actors with fewer resources to fight back against Disney and the other major production companies too. As a culture, we often talk about the insane salaries that actors receive for movies (same as athletes), but we don't often talk about the amount of money that a film (or game) will generate over time, as it is released on screens around the world, and on streaming, and eventually licensed for TV, etc., and who actually sees that income. When you consider the amount of money the movie will make, you realize that the actors, who have done the hardest work and provided the largest draw, are only getting peanuts compared to what the execs will rake in. Those people saying "she's rich enough already, does she really need to do this?" are totally missing the point that if SHE'S not getting that money, it's going to someone else who I guarantee is even richer and has done less work for it. Plus, if they're trying to short the headliner, you just know they're doing it to everyone else too. Good on her for fighting for the cut she deserves, and setting precedent for others to do the same.
  5. Do these people not have agents to figure this stuff out for them? Doing this in public was super gross. This was the professional process running its course; there was no need to have a tantrum about it in a public forum. Actually, having SOME involvement from Sam/Jared (even extremely limited) would probably be considered a DRAW for the show, which his agent could have leveraged to get him involved, but he may well have shot himself in the foot here by personally lashing out at the very people he is hoping will HIRE him. I mean, if Jared's not finished with Sam Winchester, or is just mad to see Jensen continuing to ride the SPN gravy train without him, he's welcome to pitch his own spin-off and involve whomever he wants. That's how the business works. No one is stopping him. Riling up the fans to turn this into a personality conflict, rather than a business decision, is pretty low, and disingenuous to the actual process of launching a project like this.
  6. Excellent episode, with great points all around. I only wish John had taken the extra step of drawing the clear line between Stand Your Ground laws, and the knee-jerk defense of "Israel has a right to defend itself." Because this mentality, that "I have a right to shoot at and indiscriminately kill anyone I feel threatened by, regardless of their actual ability to do me harm" is baked into the American understanding of violence, and what is and isn't considered "morally acceptable," which is just as much present in foreign policy as it is domestically. We don't often stop to examine the issues of violence as it is enacted on American streets, and violence as it is enacted through American involvement in international warfare, and acknowledge how this violence is fundamentally the same. An America that sells weapons to Israel to "defend itself" against its relatively-powerless Muslim "adversary" is operating on the same moral principles as an America that passes Stand Your Ground laws and selectively enforces them along racial lines. The folks in power who support these narratives WANT us to see them as two different, unrelated issues, that we will have to fight as two separate and costly battles, so that we will be forced to prioritize and divide our efforts unnecessarily, when in reality they are the same issue, with the same root cause, which can be addressed through the same shift in thinking and policy. I do wish John had been able to make that explicit, that both of his main stories were essentially the same story. I think it's an important thing to acknowledge!
  7. Sure... but then, if the two offshoot-worlds weren't deterministic, shouldn't the origin world (or "real" world) be even MORE strict about allowing paradoxes to exist, since it's the "correct" one that shouldn't be changed? Jonas and Martha weren't just erasing their worlds, they were preventing their worlds from being created in the first place, and they DID cease to exist as a result of their actions which could therefore have never taken place, so I would have liked a bit more exploration of that paradox, rather than just handwaving it away as "oh, it works now," especially from a show that has put so much thought and care into the other paradoxes it created. (I would have even been happier if Jonas and Martha had continued to exist as like, shipwrecked sailors in someone else's timeline, surviving and living in a world that is not facing imminent apocalypse, but where all their family and friends will never exist. I feel like that would have made more sense than, they prevented themselves from ever existing and didn't create a paradox somehow.) Yes, you're exactly right. I'm just annoyed that the show presented it in EXACTLY the same way they presented the other 3-part situations, mirroring the reveal in season 1 that the portal ALSO goes to the future, because there are always three: Past, present, and future. They used this imagery and theme throughout the show, and then tried to use it on the last reveal as well as a sort of re-reveal ("you should have known there are always three"), only, as you say, it is NOT the same situation, so it doesn't actually work. In the case of the three worlds, three is an arbitrary number chosen to fit with the other, more meaningful, occurrences of the 3-pattern. Any number of parallel timelines could have been created from people's diverging decisions, so that point felt weaker than it could have. Anyway, I've been surfing around and having a hard time finding reviews of the season that aren't glowing, so I'm glad people are enjoying the show. I did enjoy it, I think? Or not? It hurts my head, but, in a good way? I still don't know!
  8. Netflix's Dark! The show that dares to ask the important questions, like, "If banging my aunt is wrong, could I travel to a parallel timeline where her sibling never had me, and bang THAT version of my aunt? Is that cool?" I am super late to the party on this one, but I finally watched the show and had some thoughts! First of all, any fellow Parks and Rec fans remember that throwaway joke, when Ben invented the "Cones of Dunshire" board game and was ridiculously pleased that a games magazine had reviewed it as "punishingly intricate?" That was the exact phrase that kept going through my mind the whole way through this thing. This is the most punishingly intricate time travel narrative I've ever seen, and I really appreciated that! I give it kudos! It taught me a lot about the things I do and don't like in time travel stories. I'm really in awe of it's plotting, and the way it managed to open and close these twisting, tangled loops so that it all made sense in the end. I do wish it had gone a little further! Partway through season 1, I started envisioning a more chaotic version of events, where Jonas DID rescue Mikkel from 1986 and bring him home. I started wondering if this show was going to break out of the standard time travel story, where you have to avoid paradoxes and take care to preserve one chronological sequence of events that is for some reason more "correct" than other possible sequences of events.... and just fucking go for it! What if time isn't a line, but rather an infinite web of possibilities, where paradoxes aren't possible because the past, present, and future are all influencing each other in non-linear ways that have never been explored on television before? So, the show I GOT was a bit of a let down. I appreciate that the loops all connected, and while I glazed over some of the details toward the end, I didn't have a problem tracking everybody's progression through the series. But other than it's intricate time loops, I was pretty disappointed with the story. For one thing, there was just way too much of characters being confronted by older versions of themselves, and guided towards certain actions, only to find that their older selves had lied to them... and that even OLDER selves had lied to those older selves, and manipulated THEM into manipulating their younger selves, until it became impossible to figure out what anyone's motivation for doing anything really was. It got tiresome, and not that interesting. Because everyone's goals were so muddied it was impossible to know what anyone was really fighting FOR (and if you did, it turned out they'd be fighting for the opposite thing later on), it made the emotional stakes hard to connect with. For another thing, I did not AT ALL buy Jonas and Martha as star-crossed lovers. Their incestuous love was weird in ALL timelines, and I had no emotional investment in their connection. For another thing, the show thought it was pretty clever making Charlotte and Elizabeth each other's mothers... but didn't want to acknowledge at all the fact that to make that happen, Charlotte and Elizabeth both had to sleep with their own grandfathers (and those men both had to sleep with their own granddaughters). I understand not wanting to dwell on it, but that's a bit fucked up to completely ignore and hope no one notices. I really LIKED its use of the bootstrap paradox, and things that only exist because they had already existed... but that made it even more frustrating when it got hung up on other types of paradoxes. Like, you can't kill yourself because an older version of yourself "already exists," so "time won't let you" do it. Saying that paradoxes like that simply can't exist is a bit of a cheat, but it's fine, I can buy that... the problem is that the resolution of the series is EXACTLY that paradox! If Jonas and Martha changed the timeline to prevent their worlds from ever existing, then how did they exist in order to be there to change the timeline? Did "time" change its mind about allowing that, or what? Also, the running theme of the three-part situation. Past, present, and future. Child, adult, elder. Three dimensions. The trifecta. Suddenly making Jonas and Martha's worlds part of a 3-world system doesn't track with the other examples, because in what other three-part situation in the show can you remove TWO of the parts and see the remaining one continue to exist normally? It would have made more sense to have the origin world need the other two to exist as well, creating a three-part loop with some sort of mutually-beneficial or mutually-destructive property; making the three worlds interdependent, creating each others' problems and solutions. Suddenly making two of the worlds disappear through a paradox we've already been told "time simply won't allow" just doesn't fit with the rest of the story, and feels lazy in comparison to the otherwise very intricate plotting. I have so many mixed feelings about this show. I finished A LOT of episodes by shouting at my TV, "I wish I knew if I hated this!" Because I honestly still don't know if I loved or hated this show. I've told my partner HE should watch it (he has strong feelings about time travel stories) so that he can tell me whether or not I hated it! Nevertheless, I admire what it did, even though I can't commit to actually liking it. I'm glad it exists, and I'm glad I watched it, and my other feelings... well, they're probably going to remain stuck in an infinite knot, trying to come to some sort of conclusion!
  9. Yes. Her "experiment" is completely stupid and proves nothing. What happens if the Twilight of Adam island actually does do better? Is she prepared to make her grand speech in front of her imaginary audience about how her experiment definitively proves that women are not suited to leadership and should take a back seat to let men rule forever? No? Then how can she possibly argue the opposite if the Dawn of Eve island pulls ahead? Clearly her fingers are on the scales in every way, and she'll never let the "experiment" play out fairly if it looks like it might contradict her agenda, and that will be obvious to anyone who looks at her results. Nothing about her methodology or even premise has the slightest whiff of legitimacy to it. Co-operation and leadership in our infinitely-complex, diverse society has nothing to do with what specific individuals are suited to survival on a deserted island. I find it ludicrous that so many characters are on board with this idiotic, cruel, and deeply immoral plan that serves no purpose. It takes me completely out of a show I was otherwise quite enjoying!
  10. I just caught up with this show after a few recommendations, and I have some pretty mixed feelings! I really liked the island stuff - more than I expected to. I think the story of the girls trying to make it work in a desperate situation on an island was compelling, enhanced even more by the flashbacks to their lives before the island, so we see how their individual struggles inform their behaviour, the way they treat each other, the way they approach survival... I thought it was fascinating and really well-drawn from a psychological and sociological point of view (and great storytelling). And then, as others have mentioned, there was the experiment plot. WTF was that? It seems like they had a GREAT premise for a show, and then bumped it up to a comedically absurd level with this experiment nonsense. It makes no sense at all and is insulting. Gretchen and a couple of young women have been victimized by the patriarchy so much that they decide to do something about it... by victimizing other young women to an even greater degree? No one, no matter how feminist, could think that is feminist! And it just doesn't track. From her conversation with Leah's parents, it sounds like the families don't know what the girls are going through. So how can she possibly ever discuss this experiment in academic circles without getting into a shitload of legal trouble? She doesn't have informed consent from the participants or their families. Her experiment has resulted in at least one death and one mutilation (of minors!), as well as severe psychological trauma. How is she going to reunite these girls with their families without anyone figuring out that they were lied to and exploited? Making the girls feel guilty so they "won't sue" just doesn't cut it. What about when the parents get their kids back from their "therapeutic summer retreat" and find out what was happening all those weeks while the nice therapist lady was videoconferencing them about how great their daughter was doing? And then there is the control group. The names "Twilight of Adam" and "Dawn of Eve" perfectly convey the immense bias baked into the very premise of the experiment. It's just stupid! Even calling them "Camp Adam" and "Camp Eve" would have been at least a NOD to impartiality. If the NAMING process is biased so heavily towards the girls, how much faith can we really have in the selection process, intervention decisions, or the interpretation of the results? Everything about this experiment seems like they're just shooting themselves in the foot if they attempt to share their findings with ANYONE in possession of half a brain. Which brings me to Nora. I appreciate that they wanted to keep the "confederate" a bit mysterious, but Nora makes no sense. This was clearly a decision based on "shock value" rather than story logic. DOT makes sense - she's lost a parent and is vulnerable and potentially seeking a new parental figure, this could keep her off CPS's radar, and she's enough of a survival nut to willingly sign up for this nightmare. But Nora? No way. I'm sorry... her not-boyfriend was killed by toxic masculinity (i.e., Gretchen's son), and her response is to torture other girls, including her sister? I just don't buy it. Not only that, but I don't buy that someone as naive as Nora wouldn't be completely shattered to learn that Jeanette, the one who was supposed to look after them and be the adult, has actually DIED and Gretchen is not going to intervene! If the death of the person who is arguably most crucial to the experiment's safety and success is not enough to warrant an intervention, whose death would be? Any of them could die at any time, and Gretchen would likely still let the experiment take its course. There's no way Nora wouldn't realize that once they lost Jeanette! Why is she still calmly playing along and reassuring Leah that she's "safe?" This makes no sense to me. And unlike Dot, whose participation in this could be seen as empowering, Nora comes across as an idiot being exploited by Gretchen, which is just not narratively satisfying. So they took a great idea for a psychological drama, and ruined it by adding this meta layer of stupid, poorly-thought-out conspiracy stuff. I do not want to watch this dumb non-scientific experiment conducted by apathetic morons who embody the worst stereotypes about "radical feminists" wanting to take over the world from men. I want to watch the gripping, heartfelt TV dramatization of the RESULTS of the experiment. Could I just have that, please?
  11. I've been surprised, looking over reviews of the movie, that almost none (even the negative ones) mention the racist stereotyping of Egyptians/Muslims that bothered me throughout the film. Finally, Slate tackled the topic, and it turns out those portrayals are not only lazy and Islamophobic, but also REALLY inaccurate! Worth a read, for sure.
  12. Thanks, @slowpoked! Yeah, "Kill them all" is a rather unexpected interpretation of my comments, but in the interests of clarity, in case anyone else was misled, here we go: It is a well-worn trope in movies and TV shows that the hero wants to "teach a lesson" to the rapist/sexual harasser/domestic abuser by beating the shit out of them, so they know "how it feels" to be a victim. It's a very trite, reductive, oversimplified solution to think that you can just beat someone up to "scare them straight" or whatever (or because "they deserve it" and that somehow stands in for actually solving the problem). The truth is, abusers typically feel powerless, emasculated, or self-loathing, and they take those feelings out on their victims. They feel powerful in relation to the women they're abusing, which is why they do it. So beating them up, making them feel even MORE powerless or emasculated, is only going to make them take it out on their victims even harder! It might feel satisfying to watch a rapist get his teeth kicked out, but ultimately it's only making the problem worse and is doing nothing to protect or prevent future victims. At a minimum, movies like this would typically leave the guy for the cops to deal with, so he'd be incarcerated and not an immediate threat to others, but WW didn't even do that. A film that was actually interested in justice would have used WW's Lasso of Truth to make the guy see the dark cycle of misery that he was perpetuating within himself, and make him understand that he would never be a happy and fulfilled human being as long as he treated other people this way, and would show him a path out of his unhappiness through changing his life and trying to make restitution to his victims. But I get it, no one wants to see that on the big screen, when you've got a hero who can knock bad guys around like bowling pins and a budget for explosions. Like I said, I don't really expect movies like this to actually dive into the philosophical question of what it means to "do good." But if they were going to make "how do you deal with a rapist" an important question to assess someone's morality, I would have liked a more complex answer than just "apply as much violence as WW, but not as much as Cheetah."
  13. Yes, this. Plus, Diana, a character bursting with humanity, ALSO dealt with him by beating him up, just to a lesser extent. And clearly this had zero impact on his willingness or ability to continue harassing women in the future. So there was no correct solution explored for dealing with men like him, just "use brute force to knock them around, but not too much, or it's inhumane." Not that I'm surprised - these sorts of movies really bank on vigilantes fighting crime by stopping specific criminal acts from taking place, but have no interest in what a "safer" or "more just" world actually looks like, or what it might mean to stop somebody from being a criminal, rather than stopping the criminals from making off with the loot. Still, I wish if they were going to make "how to deal with creeps" a significant moral story point, they had at least had a contrasting good and bad idea in mind. I pretty much came to say what others have said. I wish Chris Pine hadn't been in the movie. He didn't add anything romantically (not being in his own body, which was icky), or plot-wise, having nothing to really do. If they were committed to bringing him back this way, I wish they'd acknowledged the impact that him taking over another dude had on that other dude. A line about whether or not he could sense the other dude dormant in his consciousness somewhere, or whether he had died/disappeared completely so that Steve could replace him, or some acknowledgement that they were risking this other dude's life by involving him in multilple armed conflicts. Or some indication that he had a life and family/friends, and that if Steve stayed he'd be robbing this guy of his life. You know, that kind of thing! The lack of any examination of the morality of the situation was weird and jarring. I also wish, instead of Steve, we'd had more time to develop the relationship between Barbara and Diana. They never really felt like friends, and they never really felt like enemies. I guess it leaves Cheetah in a morally-grey space moving forward, which has potential, but I really wish her character had been developed a little better. The closest comparison I got from her story was Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin. She starts off as this frumpy, nerdy scientist, and then gets superpowers and becomes sexy, and immediately turns evil for some reason. I like that they made her transformation gradual enough to make sense - she wished for power, but lost her humanity, and it was from a place of having already lost her humanity that she wished for deadlier power. I just wish we had gotten a better sense of her. She just seemed miserable and lonely. I wish we had a better sense of what she was LOSING while her power was growing. Like if she'd had an obvious moral decline, and seemed in some clear way more pathetic as a superpowered badass than she had as a friendless scientist, so that we could really feel what this was costing her. One bookended moment with a homeless man didn't quite do the trick. I wasn't totally clear on what Maxwell Lord was up to. Sure, he wanted to be successful enough to impress his son and got carried away on his power trip, but what did he want by the end? What did he stand to gain, exactly, from making the world wish itself into nuclear Armageddon? More power? Over the smouldering cinder of planet Earth? Why? What was his endgame? And... was the moral of the movie that we should accept the world the way it is and not wish for anything better? The monkey's paw "wishes turn bad" story has been told so many times that I really wanted a stronger moral through-line that had something new to say, perhaps about wishing versus earning? They seemed to be setting that up, and then never followed through! I also could have lived without the Egypt stuff. It bothers me when Hollywood blockbusters want to incorporate Middle Eastern or other Muslim-majority countries into their stories, but obviously don't see that these places/people/cultures have anything to offer the world besides oil and conflict. It's reductive and Islamophobic. They're pretty much brought in to be a shorthand for villainy or terrorism, and while I don't think that was really the intention here, the Egyptian characters still had nothing to do besides shoot guns and explosives at the heroes while looking Muslim and sinister. It's odd that the film's biggest action sequence pitted Wonder Woman against a convoy of heavily-armed Muslims (who weren't even acting of their own free will, being under the control of Max Lord, and were therefore innocent casualties - not that the film was interested in exploring that fact), rather than the film's actual villains. Not to say that I disliked the movie. I had a lot of notes, but I mostly enjoyed the experience of watching it. The performances were good, and Gal Godot may not be the most dynamic actress, but she is magnetic onscreen. I could watch two and a half hours of her doing laundry. Despite its issues, I don't regret the time I spent. I just wish the script had received a bit more (or, as is more likely the case with a movie of this scale, LESS) revision beforehand.
  14. I've got to hand this to a show I stopped respecting a long time ago: I've grieved more for Dean Winchester today than I have for any other fictional character I've ever watched die. I get the complaints that Dean didn't get a "hero's" death, but I'm kinda ok with that. Dean has died many times, and they've all been "heroic" and self-sacrificial... he's thrown his life (and soul) away countless times to protect others, and because he believed his life was less valuable than theirs. He's already had his big hero's death, multiple times. But this time, it was different. He didn't die deliberately throwing himself between those kids and certain death, or because he gave up and refused help thinking he wasn't worth saving... this time, it was just the regular misfortune that happens on a hunt, and he knew he wasn't going to survive, but he fought for every minute he could get, to tell Sam what he needed to say and what Sam needed to hear, so that he could go on his own terms. This might be the only time he's died NOT believing he deserved it, or that he was expendable, or that the world would be better off without him. This time, he got to die at his brother's side, knowing for certain he did good (saving those kids), that he and Sam were free (and Sam was actually going to be ok without him, no longer in need of Dean's protection, no more demons, angels, or deities pulling his strings), and that he was loved (No, Sam didn't say it the way Cas did, but it was agonizingly clear, and they've never really needed words anyway). I honestly never thought I could find a Winchester death this affecting, since it happens so damn often, but it seems they got me despite myself, no matter how stupid the journey was to get here. Regardless of the exact manner of his death, I just keep thinking about the hole that Dean has left in the world: A young man named after him, who was surely raised on the the stories of Dean's feats, and is now the sole bearer of that enormous legacy. A bunker left dark and shuttered, just waiting for a new generation of hunters to stumble across it, wonder at the lives of the people who used to live there, try on Dean's robe and call it "the dead guy robe." The community of hunters who saw the Winchesters as legends, and will certainly be telling wilder and wilder stories about Dean after his death (it's my head canon that Jody, Donna, and all their other living hunter friends threw a massive wake for Dean, which Sam politely declined to attend). A black '67 Chevy Impala likely now owned and maintained by a new Dean Winchester, possibly still hunting the way she should be... Even though it was unsaid, or not shown, it's all undeniably there in the fabric of this universe, and the more I think about it, the more stuff emerges, the more I realize Dean has left behind. It comes over me in waves, breaking my heart all over again, when I think back on the complex history of this show. And even though they may not have had the budget, or the Covid safety measures, or the creative capacity to put it all on the screen, for me it is no less present or powerful. This episode sucked, but, it was really just a formality anyway. We know what Dean and Sam meant to us and to their world. We understand what it means for them to finally be at peace together, and what it means for those (of us) left behind to live in a world without them. It was so poorly executed, but fuck, I'll take it. The legacy of these characters was always going to be bigger than the show would be able to do justice to.
  15. Also so the actors could wear Covid masks underneath, I'm sure. Oh my god, you guys, I just realized! With heaven's walls all torn down, Sam's finally getting reunited with everyone he's ever slept with! I wonder if they formed a club up there. The "Sam Winchester's penis got me killed" weekly garden party!
  16. This exactly. He has said multiple times that he saw no way out of the life and was surprised he even survived as long as he had, and, no matter his age, I believe he would absolutely have kept hunting until it killed him. This was pretty much the only kind of death in the cards for him, so I can't be too mad.
  17. Wow. That was awful. I cried so much. I tell you, guys, I actually started fucking crying during Dean's death speech, and spent the whole second half of the episode choking out snarky comments through my tears about how much I hated it. It was a weird experience, for sure! Do you know how hard it is to weep uncontrollably in genuine sadness when Jared is wearing that wig?! (I imagine many of you do, and we will all need therapy.) I get they had to end it, and it's not like there was ANY creative juice left in the tank. The pre-Covid part of the season sure proved that. And it was really disappointing not to get a big cast reunion for the finale... however, I will say that paring down the cast to the bare minimum created a lot of space for the Dean and Sam relationship to inhabit. They really were each other's whole lives, and everyone else was (sadly, in many cases) transitory. I think the intimacy of that dynamic was really emphasized beautifully by the lack of other people, which is to say they made the best of a pandemic situation. But it felt kind of right to make the end of their journey just about them, no matter how much I wished that they would visibly UN-bury some of those gays! And, intentionally or not, they sure added legitimacy to Billie's plan to put everyone back where they belonged! Sam and Dean were originally on this very path: Die naturally or while hunting, and spend eternity together in heaven. Then they had to make demon deals and throw wrenches in all the works! While this was a very bad and underwhelming finale, the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the arc of the series and how this works as a culmination of this arc. Sam and Dean take a lot of shit in the show (and from viewers) about having broken the world about as much as they've saved it, but I'm not so sure. They seem to have spent their lives stumbling through an escalating series of minefields, but turning each misstep into more of a controlled detonation, if that makes any sense. Yes, they helped Azazel to open the gates of hell, but he was going to do that anyway, with another generation of kids if not this one, and they got the gates closed before the very worst could happen. And they started the breaking of the seals and released Lucifer. But he was going to come out eventually, and they managed to prevent him (and the other angels) from destroying the world when he did. They (well, Cas) released Leviathan, but they were a ticking time bomb in Purgatory, and the Winchesters prevented them from wiping out humanity. The Mark of Cain was always going to be the cause of a mass genocide, whether by Cain or whoever else bore the mark, but they released Amara and prevented that. Amara couldn't stay locked up forever... God wasn't as benevolent as many believed... Sam and Dean seemed to idiotically stumble into every apocalyptic booby trap hidden in the darkest corners of creation, and managed to shield the world at large from taking the brunt of the damage when they did. Ultimately, they left the world a safer place than they found it. God was the final mine to clear, and then they were free. They died so many times, but now that their work is done, they finally got to die the right way, the way they always imagined: On a hunt, saving people (Dean), or out of the life, with a family (Sam), and end up in heaven together where they had belonged from the first time one of them died. The execution was poor, but the concept is something I can get behind. It's about as happy an ending as they could ever get. I can't believe I'm going to miss this show.
  18. I guess we found out in this ep how Flora's dollhouse works. The doll-faced boy we've seen hiding and observing in the background has been quietly altering the positions of the dolls to mirror the reality of the house. That's why it's always accurate. Whether he does this deliberately to communicate with Flora, or simply to amuse himself, who can say? I suspect the latter, since he was doing it before Flora actually "befriended" him, but since she has such a strong connection with the ghosts of Bly, it could be a combination of both.
  19. Ok, maybe things are clarified later in the series, but I don't think I agree with you here based on what we've seen so far. In the flashbacks, we know that the muddy footprints were a constant, and they always took the same path - up the stairs and to the parents' wing. This was happening even before Peter took the necklace. The Lady from the Lake made regular night time visits, and Flora seems to be aware of them the way she's aware of the other ghosts in the house. She saw in her dollhouse that Peter was out of bed, about to enter the path of the LftL and summoned Miles to help distract Peter the way they later successfully distracted Dani, but it didn't work, and the LftL killed him when she encountered him. She didn't seem to look at him or target him specifically, and she didn't seem to deviate from her set route to get him (if she had, that would have been way more interesting!). It seemed to me like she's very focused on getting where she's going, and doesn't take notice of what's not right in front of her. Maybe she DID kill him because of the necklace, but if so, I would have loved to see this episode at least hint at some different circumstances to this visit, or see her actively engage in killing Peter on purpose, and not simply respond indifferently to something that was directly in her path. And if the kids didn't know she was dangerous before she killed Peter, why were they so panicked about keeping Peter away from her? I'm sure we'll get more information later about the LftL and what her deal is, but even if we DON'T know everything, or things aren't exactly what they seem, the way this episode presented the situation, mirroring Dani's near-miss with Peter's fatal encounter, felt like ANSWERS rather than an escalation of uncertainty. I'm not saying there's not more to learn, as I've now finished the next ep as well and am already feeling a bit better about what it's doing, but what THIS ep presented (and the way it was done) is not a satisfying way to build tension in a ghost story, IMO.
  20. Hmm. I have such mixed feelings about this season so far. I was overall not a fan of HHH, even though there was lots I enjoyed, because I didn't feel like the internal logic added up, and I hated that Flanagan took a story rife with horror and actually stripped all the horror OUT by over-explaining what was happening and fitting it into clearly-defined rules (that didn't always make sense). I'm definitely feeling the same way about this season. Flanagan seems to like taking books that are famous for their masterful ambiguity, and adapting them by stripping out all the ambiguity and explaining exactly what is happening and why and how, which I find endlessly frustrating because it runs counter to the very concept of horror (and what made the books great in the first place)! Supernatural horror typically depends upon Freud's concept of "The Uncanny," which refers to the disconnect between what your senses perceive and what your brain understands to be possible. Miles acting so much like Peter is disconcerting because you DON'T know if he is being possessed, or if Peter is influencing him somehow, or if he is just a boy struggling with trauma who needs help. Your brain understands what is possible (Miles is a normal boy behaving for psychological reasons), but the persistent indications that something supernatural is influencing him makes you feel deeply unsettled and uncertain. Knowing that Peter is dead, and is literally possessing him, feels like a huge de-escalation of the horror. Imagine if we had seen Miles kill Hannah AND WE DIDN'T KNOW WHY! That's where the horror lives! The Lady from the Lake was creepy AF because the kids were so scared of Dani crossing paths with her. It was freaky because we didn't know what she would do to Dani or why the kids were so scared... now we know: she would kill Dani, but only if Dani is directly in her path, otherwise she would just wander past on her usual route without noticing. Knowing this (what she does and how to avoid her) makes her LESS scary! Like a trap to avoid in a video game. The tension comes from not understanding! Flanagan should get this, because his movie Occulus, which put him on the map, was ENTIRELY an experience of not knowing what was real! Of course, answers have to come at some time, but they don't have to be so definitive, and they don't have to come with four hours of story still to cover. As for the story, so far, everyone's backstories seem very expected and cliched. Many people called Mrs. Grose being dead from the beginning since it was SO emphasized that she never ate, but I was really hoping it was going a different direction than the expected (evil violent man kills saintly helpless woman because he is a straight-up misogynist). My theory up until now was that Mrs. Grose had killed Peter Quint, and her "drifting off," hallucinating the crack (which would have been the from the impact of his head where he died), and lighting the extra candle, was because she was struggling with her guilt over having killed him or caused his death, and being the only one who knew he was actually dead while everyone else was fearful of his return. It wouldn't have been a better explanation than what actually happened, but at least it would have subverted the expected in some little way. (By the way, her manner of death really recontextualizes Owen's "battered woman" joke from the last ep! The writing here does, on occasion, delight.) While this episode was very artful in what it accomplished, I just found the story direction predictable and disappointing. The time-jumping seemed like a rehash of The Bent-Neck Lady (though it made more sense here and was more artfully done), and it had the effect of clarifying exactly what was going on and why, which undermines the sense of the uncanny and seems to wind DOWN the tension of the season, instead of continuing to ramp it UP towards the finale. I sound really frustrated, but I think I actually do like this season better than HHH. The performances are outstanding in any case. I just wish it would commit to what it is. It could be an intense psychological drama, OR an effective horror series, but putting literal ghosts (like Hannah, Peter, LftL, etc) and metaphorical ghosts (Dani's reflected fiancé) side by side in the same story without actually unifying them in a meaningful way only serves to muddy the storytelling and keep it from being great in either genre.
  21. Well, that was Season 11! This one was interesting. I liked a lot of the standalone episodes, and the general vibe of the season, but altogether I found the whole thing kind of disjointed and confusing. Mostly the Amara stuff. I know I complained in Season 5 that Lucifer's whole character and plan was kind of vague and made it hard to understand the stakes, like the writers were maybe coasting on him being LUCIFER and what that name already meant to us to generate tension, rather than clearly outline his goals. But this season, the whole Amara situation was 100x worse, because we didn't have any concept of "God's sister" going in, and all the writing that attempted to show who she was as a character, and what she wanted, and why, was endlessly contradictory. She unleashes a plague that turns people into mindless rage zombies. She sucks out people's souls and leaves them emotionless empty husks seeking her "bliss". So, which does she inspire: rage or blissful calm? She is connected to Dean in a way that seemed profound and deeply rooted in the MoC, but was actually just be because she saw him on her way out of prison and noticed he looked like Jensen Ackles? (Completely understandable on her part, but this "connection" they had ended up being totally arbitrary and ultimately meaningless, as was his resultant inability to harm her which was never even genuinely put to the test.) She wants God to come out and face her, but is warded against him so he can't find her? She's upset about being locked away alone for so long, but wants to destroy existence? She says she wants solitude, but wants Dean to be a part of her forever? But she doesn't suck his soul out when she has the chance, after explaining to him that all the souls she sucked out will be a part of her forever? She kills people in churches semi-apologetically, saying it's not them she wants to hurt, she's only doing it to get God's attention. But when Chuck wants to give himself up to her, he can't, because she wants to kill him and THEN destroy all creation because that IS one of her goals? And when she's finally cornered and Chuck explains to her why creation was important enough to be protected, she understands and agrees up to the point of offering up her LIFE to preserve the world, and Chuck still feels the need to betray her and try to lock her away again, even though she can clearly be reasoned with? And no one thinks about talking to her again until AFTER they construct a bomb made of souls, which are essentially light, which she is vulnerable to, despite having EATEN souls in order to grow up and become more powerful? (Also, wouldn't the exploding light of 100 000 suns, like, destroy our entire solar system?) I'm sorry, but none of it made any goddamned sense. Besides that, the season made some baffling decisions, like bringing back Lucifer only to downgrade him to a petulant child. And even with the deliberate reminder of Adam in Fan Fiction last season, the boys crack open the cage to get Lucifer out, barely mention Michael, and make NO effort to rescue (or even passingly discuss) their innocent half-brother who is still trapped down there? And why? Why not free Michael now that Lucifer is free? Why does Michael need to be there? Even if he is a gibbering idiot now, as Lucifer claims, why leave him imprisoned? And why would Michael, Heaven's MIGHTIEST archangel, and the only one with a chance of overpowering Lucifer in the apocalyptic battle, be mentally unable to endure a few centuries locked in a cage, when Lucifer seems almost entirely unaffected by the experience? And as much as I enjoyed Misha's performance as Lucifer, I found it a bit strange that he was doing a Mark Pellegrino impression. I get that MP is the sort of "face" of Lucifer on the show, but Misha-as-MP was such a far cry from Jared's portrayal of Lucifer way back when, and since that was Lucifer at home in his "true vessel" the way things were "meant" to be, I always sort of considered JP's version to be the "real" one. He certainly had more menace and gravitas than Misha-as-MP, but for some reason I guess they wanted to take one of the show's biggest and most sinister villains and kneecap him by giving him a "comedy" twist. But despite the weird logic holes and strange choices, there were a lot of things about the season I liked. Sam and Dean's relationship was great. For the most part, they were very in sync, honest, and worked seamlessly as a team, which is awesome to watch. Some great (and necessary) conversations too. Their relationship seems to have come out of the MoC situation stronger than ever, which is really satisfying. I liked a lot of the standalone episodes - some strong writing there, and the new characters, like Billie and Eileen, and Jesse/Cesar (The Chitters), though I would like to see more regulars, since the new characters this season were mostly one-offs. They've killed off most of their recurring characters, like Kevin, Charlie, Hannah, Death, etc... But haven't really replaced them with new recurring associates. The circle is starting to feel a little small. Even new-ish characters like Claire, who do recur, have a totally different dynamic with the boys than the characters we've lost. Paternalistic, rather than collaborative. It just doesn't quite fill the void! I didn't skip anything, because it was all new to me, but there weren't any episodes I really disliked and would skip on rewatch except Red Meat, which I came out against. It seemed tonally out of place in the series, and I don't think it really introduced or accomplished anything to justify its awkward/painful choices. I did like quite a few episodes, especially: Baby - This was a fun one! Very fanservicey, but damn if I didn't feel nicely serviced! Some surprisingly deep callbacks, too, like Dean's "I Shot the Sheriff" joke back in Jus in Belo... and BTW, Dean's teasing Sam about finally losing his virginity reminded me that I don't think we HAVE seen or heard of Sam hooking up since taking that virginity pledge back in S9. So he DID finally lose it! 😄 Thin Lizzie - Sam's understated glee at finally having an excuse to check out the Lizzie Borden B&B was infectious. This was a fun case! Good stuff for everyone to do! Just My Imagination - An original concept, that brought just enough comedy to be delightful and balance out the sentimentality. I think it struck exactly the right tone, and brought out interesting angles on both boys. Into The Mystic - You guys weren't kidding about this being a good one! The case was interesting, but more importantly, the characters were awesome. I loved Mildred (finally, the show manages "old lady hitting on the boys" without being super creepy and awkward!), but especially Eileen. I hope we see more of her! I loved her a lot. I REALLY appreciated how they dealt with the character being deaf. It would be so easy to make her either the Banshee, or the one who is "special" enough to be unaffected by the Banshee's scream and defeat it. Instead, they made her deafness totally incidental to the hunt, bringing all the same advantages and disadvantages it would against any other monster. And while it's easy to picture being deaf as a liability on a hunt, the show seemed to make a point of showing how it worked to her advantage too, helping her to eavesdrop visually on private conversations and sneak into situations as an easily-underestimated and nearly-invisible laborer, acting freely in the background, rather than coming in flashing badges like Sam and Dean. I'm also assuming this episode birthed a substantial Sam/Eileen ship, because they had great chemistry. In short: more Eileen, please! The Vessel - This one was kind of deceptive. Even though it didn't accomplish much, and Dean was primarily, as he said, a witness to events he didn't affect, it was damn entertaining, and I loved Delphine. I know it's unlikely we'd see her again, but man, it'd be great if we did. Safe House - RUFUS IS BACK! Also this episode was super touching and well-constructed, and was more of a thinker than cases usually are, but the headline is Rufus. As always. I kind of also want to give honorable mention to Don't Call Me Shurley. Even though I wasn't riveted, and I don't love the show's choices re: God, it was quite satisfying to FINALLY get some clarity and and dig into the meat of the Chuck/God situation. All-in-all, an ok season with lots of high points that I don't regret watching, despite the very muddled mythology. And so, it is with trepidation that I embark on Season 12!
  22. Hmm. Season 10. What can I say about this season? I... really liked it. Mostly. I loved the Demon!Dean stuff at the beginning (could have used more though!), and I liked that it had more-or-less one arc that played out over the whole span of episodes, even though it did tread water a bunch and rehash some stuff to a frustrating degree; it didn't need to stuff in more plot, and the MoC story needed space to play out, so I appreciated that structure. I really enjoyed the slow progression of Dean's descent and his loss of control, even though it could have been smoother in the way it was communicated and executed. I REALLY enjoyed the brotherly dynamics of the season, as it seemed like Sam and Dean were actually communicating, and back in their old rhythms, right up until the last few eps, where Sam started working behind Dean's back and UGH! Here we are back at secrets and lies, which ALWAYS makes a bad situation worse, and is not fun to watch. But right up to that point, I was pretty sold! I liked Cole (is that an unpopular opinion?), but I was sorry to see his story just dropped and discarded so quickly. It could have been interesting to see more of his journey after learning that monsters exist and his father was one... That's typically where character journeys START on this show. Surely he'll redirect his obsession with Dean (i.e., revenge for his father) to an obsession with finding out the truth about his father. Was he always monster, or was he replaced by a monster? Could Cole and his son ALSO become monsters? What REALLY killed his dad? How will he handle knowledge of the supernatural w/r/t his own family? Could he act as a sort of counterpoint to John Winchester? I feel like he could have been more interesting if his role in the story had been meatier, but since it wasn't, he kind of came across as a distraction. I had mixed feelings about Rowena too. I really disliked her scenes with Crowley (the political manipulations and family drama in Hell), but once she was an independent agent working with (or, uh, for) Sam, she got more interesting. It's funny, I stopped watching the show after the S10 finale, and I spent the majority of this rewatch wondering WHY this season had been the breaking point for me, since I actually enjoyed the majority of it more than the several previous seasons. But I was pretty sore from losing Charlie, and convinced Jody Mills was next, and then the finale was SUPER disappointing, so that was probably what did it. I'll push through this time and find out where things went from here! I was really into the flow of the season, so I didn't skip any episodes, but I WISH I had skipped Paper Moon and Paint It Black, as I couldn't quite care about the cases or characters and found them dull. I had also intended to skip Dark Dynasty, because Charlie's death enraged me, but I steeled myself for it and managed to enjoy the parts of the ep that WEREN'T bullshit. I couldn't skip, but was very disappointed in Brother's Keeper. After an entire season on the MoC, it felt like they all of a sudden realized they had no idea how to end it, so just focused on dumping in a bunch of setup for next season instead of actually resolving the arc properly, or giving Dean and Sam the real Cain and Abel moment they deserved. I had a lot of favourites though: Reichenbach - I loved this version of Demon!Dean, like that the mark made him a demon, but without the twisting and corruption that comes from the usual method of centuries of torture, so he played more like Soulless!Sam, living in this gray area between being truly evil and feeling anything more than apathy about being good. It was just tragic enough, and our Dean was just recognizable enough, to be really affecting. Soul Survivor - I wish the Demon!Dean storyline had played out a bit longer, and I didn't love everything about this one, but watching the boys stalk each other through the bunker was dynamite. Fan Fiction - I don't always love the way the show engages with its fanbase, but this was very sweet and I enjoyed it despite myself. Credit where credit's due. Hibbing 911 - Jody and Donna forever! So much fun! Please give them a spinoff! There's No Place Like Home - I didn't love the Oz stuff, especially the wizard (kind of a letdown), but a great episode for Charlie, and for Dean's struggle with the mark. About a Boy - I'm so glad they got that actor back to play Young!Dean, because he absolutely nailed it, and this whole episode was a blast. Book of the Damned - The A-plot and the B-plot were both engaging. Charlie gets to kick a little butt, and Sam gets some fabulous character moments. Loved it. The Prisoner - What can I say about this one besides.... Yowza. Like a shot of pure BAMF!Dean directly into the bloodstream. This episode felt like a special reward for me personally for sticking around 10 seasons. You're welcome, show! Alright, after this point, it's all new to me. I'll swing back around with a Season 11 update (though it will be first impressions, rather than a rewatch), but if the following seasons are as bad as I fear, I may just do one general wrap-up at the end, if I make it that far! Thanks for your suggestions and feedback on this surprisingly delightful journey through a show I did not remember nearly as fondly as I should have. I can always count on these forums for the best opinions!
  23. Ok! I burned through Season 9 at a pretty good clip! As many of you've said, it was a mixed bag. I didn't love the Gadreel stuff, mostly because I didn't understand WHY it was happening from a storytelling perspective. One one hand, it seemed like a way for the writers to have their cake and eat it too, with making Cas human, but still hanging on to the "Angelus Ex Machina" plot convenience of having an angel around to magically provide easy solutions, but then, on the OTHER hand, it also felt like a way of adding manufactured conflict to the brothers' relationship with all the unnecessary secrets and lies. Neither reason really played well for me, but especially the second one, because they milked the "Sam feels betrayed" angle on it way too much, having Sam hold an oversized grudge for too long while repeatedly bringing up how Dean lied to him and unfairly saved his life (after he agreed to undertake AND abandon the trials specifically because he wanted to survive and thought Dean was too willing to throw his own life away. Also I don't actually think Dean really tricked him into letting Gadreel in, but I'll stow my thoughts on that for now.), and how they can't be brothers anymore, and how he wouldn't have done the same to save Dean, etc. The conflict got pretty ugly, and never actually got resolved, apart from the end of the season when Sam admitted that he WOULD fight to save Dean from dying, which, duh. What was the point of all that? I know there's some more resolution on that front coming in S10, but just looking at S9 in isolation, it was a disappointing thread to have to endure, only to be almost totally dropped without getting tied up. I also didn't love Abaddon this season, even though I really enjoyed her in the past, mostly because she didn't seem to really DO anything here, apart from bully demons to her side against Crowley, and use harmful tactics to outplay him, like breaking contracts to get more souls on her side - we never saw WHY she was too dangerous to lead Hell, or what specific plans she had that needed stopping, or even saw her wipe the floor with the Winchesters in combat (which would justify the need to get the First Blade to stop her). It kind of felt like the Winchesters putting their lives on the line to get involved in a political campaign in Hell on Crowley's behalf, and I would have liked to see some higher stakes there. But then, we get to the MoC stuff, and that's where the season struck gold, even if it took awhile to see where it was going and why. Dean's slow descent, his gradual loss of control, until he was becoming the very thing he would want to hunt... It was painful to watch, but very effectively done, and just got progressively more and more chilling. I'm really looking forward to the resolution to that story in S10. I also kind of enjoyed the Metatron storyline, and while I didn't love all of it, I enjoyed watching him follow Cas's path of trying to become the new God and seize control of heaven, but for all the wrong reasons (contrasting to Cas' good intentions, which were ultimately just as harmful), and the ways he tricked and manipulated the others angels into following him. That said, the writers seem to be flailing a bit with coming up with stories for the angels. I was hoping to see some meatier stuff after the fall, with the angels having to live among humanity and maybe explore their relationship to humans in new ways, but instead it's just the same old political/power struggles as always, just on a different plane. As usual, I had some issues, but found it overall an enjoyable season. So the episodes I skipped: Obviously Bloodlines, let us never speak of it again. It's actually the only one I skipped! I nearly skipped Dog Dean Afternoon, because the premise sounded too dumb to be good, but after seeing it on a few lists of favourites I gave it a try and quite enjoyed it! It wasn't the strongest comedy episode, but I had no idea Jenson Ackles barking at the mailman could bring my heart so much joy! My favourites of the season would have to be: Heaven Can't Wait - Maybe a controversial pick. I didn't actually enjoy watching this episode, so much as I enjoy everything it accomplished. Dean feeling wracked with guilt about kicking Cas out of the bunker, slipping out from under Sam/Gadreel's watch to check on his friend and try to help him and be there for him in the small ways that he could. Cas adapting to human life with a quiet dignity that is absolutely earned, taking misfortune in stride and finding the good in people and situations where he can. Jenson and Misha are always dynamite together. I'm not in a hurry to rewatch it, but I found it surprisingly emotionally satisfying. Bad Boys - Such a great Dean episode, totally in line with what we've seen of John's A+ parenting, but what absolutely sold this episode for me was the smile on young Dean's face at the end when he saw little Sam in the back of the Impala. That one little moment put the whole story in context and made it clear that by going back to his family, he wasn't choosing duty over happiness. Sam WAS his happiness. D'awwww. First Born - This one wasn't perfect, not only because of the TWO female characters it introduced and immediately fridged, but I LOVE Timothy Omundson, and that fight scene in the kitchen was bonkers. Of course Dean could pass Cain's test. Yowza. Blade Runners - Creepy MoL guy was a fun villain, and Dean's reaction to holding (and using) the blade for the first time was fascinating and great setup. Love it. Alex Annie Alexis Ann - Another controversial pick, I'm sure, but I enjoyed this one a lot. Probably because I adore Jody Mills, and I found her refusal to give up on Annie a really effective counterpoint to where the boys are in their arc. Dean's been gradually slipping into darkness and brutality, and Sam's been uneasily rationalizing it, so Jody acts as a sort of stabilizing force who puts the morality of the situation into perspective. Her maternal energy is a strength here, not (as is usually the case) coded as some sign of weakness, and her empathy creates a baseline that lets us see more effectively just how far Dean has been slipping. I suspect it's better on rewatch, with the whole-season perspective, but I found it really engaging, and a great direction for Jody's character. Do You Believe in Miracles - Not a perfect finale, but what an ending! I was surprised that Crowley's attempts to be besties with Dean all season would end up being the storyline that actually paid off (as opposed to the conflict between Sam and Dean). The way it left some things hanging made it feel more like a midseason finale somehow, but it was damn entertaining, and Dean's black eyes will haunt my dreams tonight. So far so good! On to Season 10! I'm not entirely sure I made it all the way through the season when it first aired. I THINK I did, but this was around the time I stopped watching, so some of it might be new for me. I'm interested to see how I feel this time around, because this whole rewatch has left me enjoying the show a lot more than I remembered!
  24. Yeah, this is technically I guess some sort of all-seasons episode recommendation thread. There's stuff from all seasons all over this thread, so spoilery discussions of plot points, while possibly off-topic, are probably fine, but spoiler tags never really hurt if you're not sure.
  25. This is my favourite Shirley Jackson novel! It's a freaking masterpiece. I'm pretty sure I read the last third of it in one sitting, while weeping. Like all her work, there is so much woven in under the surface, and it's almost kaleidoscopic, the way you can look at it from different angles and see different meanings. Damn, now I wanna read it again too!
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