BabySpinach

I found it refreshing that, perhaps for the first time in the show, Chloe was allowed to actually be wrong and to face fallout for it. Her motives and reasoning didn't come out of nowhere, but her actions were still a serious blow to their relationship. After everything they'd been through together, after the multiple times Lucifer had risked/sacrificed his life and family for her (some of which she does know about), her pushing all that history aside to only focus on him being the Devil was deserving of consequences, especially following her multiple proclamations of love and forgiveness of all aspects of him. Words like that aren't cheap, and when they were actually put to the test, Chloe did fail to follow through. The whole "Lucifer is a spazzy, tunnel-visioned goober always trailing after eternally forgiving and patient Saint Chloe who deigns to tolerate him" had worn VERRRYYY thin by season 3. It'd both diminished Lucifer as a character and placed Chloe on an unwarranted pedestal. This was a welcome shake-up to their dynamic. She got to come back down to earth and Lucifer got to be rightfully angry with her for once and demonstrate some dignity and self-respect in the process.

And I'll take the opportunity to pimp the fuck out of this show. If you like genre shows with great character writing, strong themes, and coherent narratives, Lucifer is the answer! Seasons 1, 2, and 3 are fluffy and entertaining and have their moments of greatness (also with some admittedly rough spots in season 3), but season 4 fires on all cylinders and is absolutely fantastic. The network change did this show a world of good.

This season's story, especially one featuring yet another love triangle, could have easily gone so wrong, but it miraculously dodged pretty much every pitfall that season 3 fell into. The Lucifer/Chloe/Eve dynamic didn't serve to manufacture cheap, soapy drama this time, but to reveal the two competing sides of Lucifer: angel and devil. And what really surprised me was how, in the end, neither of them were 100% right. Both women were pulling him in directions that he didn't like, and this tension was ultimately resolved by Lucifer embracing both aspects of himself instead of fully denying one or the other. This got to be his own personal journey rather than a shallow competition over which woman suited him best. It would have been so easy and predictable to frame Eve as the obvious wrong and Chloe as the obvious right, but it was more nuanced than that. Chloe herself made some shallow attempts to change Lucifer (drink less, volunteer at a soup kitchen, be more philanthropic) that were clearly just as misguided as Eve's. And her initial inability to accept him was her problem, not his. Lucifer didn't have to domesticate himself in order to please or be worthy of Chloe, as previous seasons sometimes implied. I have a feeling that if this show had remained on Fox, Lucifer's character arc would have never ended up with him embracing both sides of himself and even using his devil side to save the day. Eve would have likely been fully vilified, and Chloe would have been the totally correct and responsible one all along, a fact that Lucifer would've been too dumb to realize until the end. There was also more focus on Lucifer's powers and status than maybe the entire previous three seasons put together. Too many earlier episodes only featured them as irrelevant incidentals. I loved seeing Lucifer acting like a king with his demons, a facet of him we'd never gotten until now. His character finally has his dignity and gravitas fully re-established, and is no longer the season 3 bumbling eccentric puppy. Overall, this felt like the kind of tone, theme, and character work that the writers would have always pursued if not for Fox's hamstringing.

A while ago I wrote a brief fic on how I would have liked this season to end. Now, it's more of a farewell to Michael!Dean and all his wasted potential. 😭 https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206369

This was definitely the most I've disliked Cas since season 6. He's burbling on about locking Jack up instead of killing him, even though he tore into Dean for doing just that last week. He doesn't give a single fuck about the multiple innocents Jack has tortured and killed, instead conveniently putting all the blame on Duma. His "profound bond" with Dean is practically nonexistent now, since he'll stand against him just to protect the soulless Antichrist. Out of the three, Cas has probably been ruined the most by Nougat Boy's presence. He's become one of those coddling, enabling parents that argues with his kid's teachers and has no defined personality beyond his dad role.

One more thing I actually liked: Dean's unshakable self-assurance and will on full display. It kind of feels like an inevitable escalation now, with his consistent telling of powerful beings to go screw themselves all building up to standing his ground in front of God himself. It was pretty interesting that Chuck was so focused on Dean and the role he "had" to play. He was the lynchpin of Chuck's intended narrative. And as the representation of free will, Dean's refusal to play along also broke the entire story apart. I guess I should be grateful that Dabb gives us even this much in subtext. Still doesn't come close to making up for Michael!Dean, though.

Anyone realize how drastically this retcons season 11? Chuck was waxing poetic about how important and meaningful his creations were, and he was even willing to sacrifice himself for them at one point. Amara eventually came around to his side once she experienced the best of it (ahem, DEAN) for herself. Chuck betrayed his own sister and locked her away for eternity just so he could birth the universe, but now he's just ending it all because a few toys (out of BILLIONS) finally put their foot down. Forget Michael. If Dabb gave a single fuck about Amara, she'd be tearing her brother a whole cosmos of assholes for pulling this shit.

Looks like our "villain" Michael was right all along about wanting to catch up with the old man and tear him a new asshole. Unintentional or not, that's hilarious.

Dabb would sooner villainize GOD than his precious Wonderchild OC. Lmao. Well, now I can say with certainty that this was the worst-plotted season this show has ever had. They actually had the audacity to bring up Billie again, then completely ignore the elephant she's attached to. The beginning with Michael building up his monster army had absolutely nothing to do with the end point we got. Its only throughline was Nougat Sue. Fucking insulting. Jack is dead, though I'm sure that won't be for long. And great, Billie has now redirected her attention from Dean to Wonderboy, as everything under Dabb's domain inevitably does. Small comforts: Dean wasn't villainized as much as he easily could have been. They were a united front against Chuck. Dean smashing Chuck's guitar was awesome and ballsy, and only something that Dean could/would do. And the cliffhanger does feel like a lead-in to a series finale. Though I wonder what Amara would say about Chuck's petty fuckery. Other than that, I got nothing. Michael!Dean is officially confirmed as the most mishandled story in the show's history.

http://marilynmay.tumblr.com/post/184298702251 I am in love with this expression. Such vivid hate and contempt. He almost doesn't look like Dean.

Let us also observe that after Jack had toasted Mary to a crisp, his #1 priority in 14.18 was to "fix it" so that Sam, Dean, and Cas would welcome him back into their circle again. That was his main goal, and also the reason that Hallucifer managed to dig his claws in so quickly and easily. It was all about Jack's place among his "dads" being put in peril. To him, she could have been anybody who was sufficiently innocent and helpless enough. His "apology" was so dire it was almost cringey. He called her murder an accident. He didn't talk about Mary as a person, just as an inconvenient obstacle to things returning to how they used to be. What he personally wanted was all that mattered. I LOVED Dean's cold, seething rage. He practically radiated it, and I don't blame him in the slightest. I would have cheered if he'd leapt at Jack and tried to rip him apart then and there. To those excusing Jack's abhorrent lack of tact by referencing his soullessness, that also negates any reason to feel sorry for him. Either Jack is a blank slate without a soul and therefore incapable of feeling emotions or getting them hurt, or he's a wounded baby bird who can indulge in self pity yet mysteriously cannot muster up a single drop of sincerity over the murder he committed. The writers just pick and choose whatever woobifies Jack the most. They only allow him to feel emotions when they're self-centered and angsty. When it's not about him, he turns into the Nougatron 9000.

And there it is. The world isn't obligated to accommodate Jack's "learning process" if that learning process involves innocent collateral damage. The world doesn't owe him an allotted amount of cannon fodder just so he can grow the fuck up. His power is not what really makes him dangerous, it's his prodigious gullibility and complete lack of critical thinking and common sense. He'll buy anyone's bullshit if they flatter and coddle him. Yeah, it's totally worth the risk of letting him be! He's just too sweet and cute to oppose in any way! His loneliness in the box is way too high a price for the world's wellbeing as a whole!🙄 Insufferable little twerp.

To Dabb and all the writers making camp up Jack's ass.

How dare these hacks frame the original leads (Dean, especially) as foolish, misguided antagonists who need to be taught a lesson by a Super Speshul 1D Toddler? HOW. DARE. THEY.

The Dean hate train is blasting full steam ahead! Berens laid it up and Bucklemming slam-dunked it! To all the Tumblrites salivating over sweet, precious Jack and calling Dean a terrible father: DEAN IS NOT JACK'S FATHER. HE NEVER OWED SHIT TO THE ANTICHRIST. HE NEVER ASKED TO BABYSIT AN OVER-POWERED TODDLER. JUST SHOOT HIM, DEAN. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY.

It's only nonsensical if you have a healthy sense of self, which Dean absolutely did not have (and probably still doesn't). He believed that Sam's life was worth more than even his own soul, and that his only purpose was to look after his little brother. His action was in-character, which is far more relevant to a story than objective sense or logic.

This just goes back to Dean's deficiency in Tell and Sam's deficiency in Show. The show clearly wanted to Tell us that Sam was badass and growing as a leader by leading the raid on the British MoLs. That's likely the impression that casual viewers got. However, it'd be easy to argue that the raid was unusually cold-blooded and brutal, which therefore fails this intended message through the Show. That's what this forum generally does, since we put a lot more thought into subtext and implications than casual viewers (and arguably more than the writers, lol). Dabb's way of "preferring" Sam is, IMO, worse than his treatment of Dean in the long run. The latter may not ever get verbal credit for his virtues and general awesomeness, but it's still there to find on the screen. Sam gets all the talking-up and none of the substance, and that has a much shorter shelf life in terms of memorability and a lasting legacy for his character. I define woobifying as artificially infantilizing and framing a character as a passive victim in order to elicit sympathy from the viewers. A woobie exists to be coddled and pitied and has little/no edges or roughness to their personality lest that status be threatened. I don't believe that Dean was woobified in season 9. He was constantly kicked while he was down, but his suffering was intrinsically tied to the MoC plot and didn't solely exist to make the audience feel sorry for him. More importantly, he was a driven and active agent of the story (as opposed to passive victim) and practically composed of edges and roughness at that point in the show.

JUST LET ME GRIEVE, DAMMIT! I just wanted my favorite show to be its best self, no need to rub it in... 😭😭😭 (Seriously, it's okay, but this definitely will be the last time I ever get optimistic about this show.)

You ever revisit an old thread and cry over how giddy and hopeful you once were?

I've noticed that too. I saw someone on Tumblr saying that they wanted Sam to smash Dean's face in every time the latter made him flinch (the irony of that seems to be lost on them). Sam is not a battered housewife. He used to be able to match his brother's anger (and then some) in the earlier seasons, but his woobification has long since killed that aspect of his personality, among several others. Now, anyone who expresses an authentic human emotion that isn't totally cutesy or pretty is labelled as abusive. And that's usually Dean, because he's the only non-woobiefied character left.

Marvelous. I can guarantee that the hate against Jack for actually KILLING MARY is less than the hate against Dean for expressing perfectly reasonable amounts of panic/grief over the aforementioned dead mom.

DIE JACK. DIE. GO AWAY. Welp, we're now down to two episodes left, with no indication that Nougatnatural is going to miraculously morph back into the show I used to love any time soon. It's unbelievably insulting how eagerly Michael!Dean was stomped out and presented on a silver platter to the God-Powered Manbaby. Saccharine flashbacks of a recently-deceased character are an incredibly cheesy, overwrought cliche. If Mary had actually been written to be likable and important to the story, we wouldn't have needed them. Ellen and Jo didn't need drippy flashbacks. Nor did Bobby, Crowley, Benny, or even John. Once again, Berens/Dabb think that being genuinely poignant and emotionally affecting means shoving grief porn straight down the viewers' throats. This show has been so dumbed down.

This pretty much sums up my current struggles with this dumb fucking show. On one hand, I can't possibly imagine a season that just completely ignores one of its own GIANT hanging plot threads (Dean's only two deaths) a mere four episodes after establishing it. That would be unprecedented, even for this show. The first apparent rug pull in 14.02 eventually got followed up on (though with as little attention as the writers could possibly afford) and managed to yield a fantastic episode that appeared to set up the rest of the season. How could they just dump it all into the garbage like that? On the other hand, it's all too easy to imagine the writers doing just this and simply never bringing up Billie again, or maybe retconning some stupid, contrived cop-out for why Dean's death books don't matter anymore. That brings up the glaring question of why that plot was set up in the first place, but who the hell knows? It's like the current TPTB are allergic to little words like "narrative payoff," "thematic development," or "character arcs." I'm maybe 90% bitter and pessimistic at this point in the season, with 10% being the unshakable hunch (or mad hope) that Michael, the Malak box, and Dean's involvement with it just HAS to come back around again. It still won't be ideal, given how much screentime has already been wasted on Nougat Sue, but it will certainly be better than a completely Jack-focused mytharc finale. How the season ends will truly dictate my opinion on it as a whole.

My mom, who is a more casual viewer than I am, still feels that watching Jensen act is like watching art, that he's just way too loyal and good for this show. While she loves Supernatural, she agrees that Jensen now being free to do other things can only be a good thing. We'll both eagerly anticipate his future projects. And we've also had our mutual fangirling moments over the miracle of the Ackles face, that's for sure!

Both Michael and Dean toss their opponents with literally the exact same move. It was distinctive enough to catch my attention on the first watch-through. Maybe the fight choreographer was just recycling. Still cool, though.