#a better son/daughter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mlobsters · 3 months

Text

supernatural s15e4 atomic monsters (w. davy perez)

tumblr trashed my original post, it said it was processing the video but the post disappeared entirely so i'm having to re-write this from scratch. i was able to screenshot what i wrote while it was hung which is something, but this is something that's happened to me a number of times (usually on video focused posts though) and i'm FUCKING SICK OF IT. i always find all the fucking bugs. UGH.

oh, a becky episode. i really, really did not like her character. i understand the intent may have been all in good fun, but i only ever received it as making fun of fans. especially the way her actor played her. and i will never understand the choice to have her drugging and kidnapping sam to marry him.

is dean having an action hero nightmare about all his brothers-in-arms who died on his watch. it's pretty and a+ production values. bunker looks so much cooler in the red lighting. waiting for an explanation on the facial hair, scarf???, tactical vest, fingerless gloves look though. giving very military incursion.

(just noticed this is a jackles directed episode. hmm.)

reminded of that article with serge ladouceur and he mentioned why they didn't use slow motion in fights:

Clearly, your producers always had in their creative vision a show that was dynamic, dark, moody, and expressive. Tell us about the meeting you had early on with series creator Eric Kripke, and how you all found that you were on a similar creative wavelength. Eric wanted the show to be embedded in reality. He didn’t want to create a fantasy world. What he wanted to see were stories where the supernatural would manifest itself in real time and in real life. This is what he wanted to convey and I was in sync with this concept as I was talking about a naturalistic approach to the lighting. Moreover, and as an example, he was against slow-motion. He didn’t want to beautify the fights by camera techniques. Even to this day we sometimes ask ourselves, “What would Eric want?” And that’s one thing.

imagine this doesn't qualify since it's a nightmare/vision/whatever

excuse to get benny back (extremely briefly). and the screechy noise is back too. zero chance i'm getting through this episode in one sitting. (update: this is day 3 or 4, since i had to retranscribe it on top of it all)

am i seeing things or does that look like a keffiyeh. oh, right. the evil!sam vision thing, i forgot about that

lovely lighting and yes to sweaty highlights all day every day

SAM You know, I knew you’d come looking for me. After Sioux Falls… I suppose you had to. DEAN What you did to them… what you did to Bobby… to Jody… SAM They tried to stop me. But I will not be stopped. DEAN Sammy, listen to me. This is the demon blood. You have to fight it!

what year is this now? anyway so is sam gonna tell dean about this nightmare/vision/whatever fuckery orrr.

fingers crossed today is the day i can finally get this episode done. i get halfway into the conversation with dean calling out sam on not being okay and brain is jumping ahead three stations (dean's gonna make an assumption about what's bothering sam and so sam isn't gonna actually tell him what's going on)

SAM Yeah. But every time I ask for it, you say, and I’m quoting, "I don’t want any of that hippie, Sarah McLaughlin grass-eater crap in the Meat Man’s kitchen". Which, by the way, for what it’s worth, you got to stop calling yourself "The Meat Man." It… it doesn’t mean what you think it means. DEAN Yeah, it does.

i mean meat->dick thing i get but does anyone use that phrase

SAM I’m good. DEAN No, you’re not. The past few days, you’ve barely come outta your room. Look, man, I get it, okay? With Jack… and Rowena… Rowena knew what she was getting herself into. She knew what needed to be done. SAM Doesn’t make it any easier. DEAN No, it doesn’t.

so, no on the telling dean about the nightmare/vision whatever. at least in these late seasons, if it's a plot significant thing, i can have some confidence that they will talk about it sooner rather than later instead of dragging it out for half the season. but it also could have been a showy action piece that was fun to make but not really amount to anything :p

SAM That… that’s real bacon, Dean. DEAN You’re damn right it is. Meat Man!

jackles your eyeline is all wonky, what are you even looking at

DEAN Well, local police are freaked. Never seen anything like this. They got no idea how to deal. SAM Of course not. That’s our job. We keep them from dealing with the truth, with what’s out there, and we carry the weight. It’s great. Meanwhile, they get to go back to living in their white picket fence bubbles. DEAN You know, ever since you were a kid, you wanted to live in a town like this. Lame, normal… SAM Yeah, we don’t get normal. And these towns, everything’s the end of the world. You’re late for work, your kid doesn’t get into the right school… whatever. They don’t… They have no idea what’s out there.

that's a lot more bitter than sam usually goes. must be feeling really disillusioned

well, things are looking up on the becky front. first impression seems like she gets to be an actual human now instead of just a breathless obsessive creepy fan

BECKY You mean my work. Look, what you were writing, it was real… like, really real. You sort of channelled Sam and Dean’s lives because you’re a prophet. CHUCK I… Yeah. Yes, I am. BECKY And, sure, I got a little obsessed, and it took me to a dark place. What I did to Sam… [shudders] So, after some pretty intensive counselling, I realized I wasn’t in love with the real Sam Winchester. I loved his character. So instead of reading your stories, I kept writing my own.

well, i appreciate they acknowledge that plotline was gross and awful, if we're supposed to like her now

CHUCK Your own… “Supernatural”? BECKY Where the guys didn’t have to hunt monsters all the time. They just sit around and do laundry and talk, you know? I mean, that’s what people like the most, anyway.

show could take a smidge of its own advice here. like with the xfiles, you needed those goofy ass episodes to take the edge off the mytharc that you couldn't quite do with the monsters of the week alone. spn humor doesn't hit that spot (for me, at least) so how about just a little domesticity as a treat instead. like 11x04 baby

CHUCK Well, I mean, people like monsters. BECKY Meh. Anyway, I got an online following, and it wasn’t paying the bills, so I started making these handcrafted miniatures. They took off, started turning a profit, and here I am. CHUCK Right. Right, right, right, right, right. But people like monsters though. They do. I mean, Leviathans are cool. What? They’re all teeth!

first the bmol shade, now the leviathans. yes, thank you

CHUCK Things were said. Uh… Now I’ve found msyself low on, um… resources. I went to ask my sister for help, and she rejected me. ‘Cause she sucks. And now I’m just… stuck. So, I thought I’d come see you, my number-one fan. And, I don’t know, see if you can help make me feel big again. BECKY So, you want me to… fluff you?

uh huh.

CHUCK I mean, no. BECKY You do. You thought you could just come back to me, your pathetic ex, your number-one fan, and get what you’ve always gotten from me… a nice big crank on your ego. CHUCK Well, I mean… BECKY Well, sorry, that’s not me anymore, Chuck. I am married to an amazing man, I have two great kids, and I like myself, Chuck. For the first time in a long time, I like myself. So, I don’t need you.

tell him, becky. good for her. now this is a character flip flop i am 100% on board with and won't question

BECKY I’m a writer, too, Chuck. CHUCK Oh. I mean, fanfic… it’s not really the same thing… BECKY Writing’s writing.

100%. the rest of her speech is very boiler plate online writing advice but sure. the show does get kind of navel gaze-y meta about writers/writing

BECKY Okay. If I had to give one note… the jeopardy, Chuck. It’s feeling a little… thin? Low stakes? It’s fun to hear the boys’ voices, but a story is only as good as its villain, and these villains are just not feeling very… dangerous? Not to mention, there’s no classic rock. No one even mentions Cas. The climax is a little stale. Boys tied up again while we get the villain’s monologue, which, frankly, isn’t one of your best. A little originality wouldn’t… … hurt.

all-in on the meta shade

HENRY You don’t have children, do you? Because if you did, you would know, that to see your child in pain rips your heart out. And you’d know that you’d do anything. You’d die for them. JANET Or kill for them.

lol kids or (some) brothers

so the kid is offering himself up to be killed, like madison. ok. the music for the montage at the beginning i was groaning at generic rock instrumental but once the lyrics kicked in it was perfectly serviceable. and i see it's radio company/aka jensen's band's song. which the wiki talks about it was not at his behest. it's a little odd but his voice doesn't sound anything like dean, so it's not like it's noticeable. i had no clue until i read the trivia bits for it.

“To be honest our editor inquired about it. He said, ‘I know you did some music over the break, do you think we could take anything and plug it in?’ I wasn’t angling for that, I wasn’t pushing that, and in fact we didn’t even tell Bob or Andrew or anybody. We just floated it in there and waited to see if anybody said, ‘I don’t really care for that song, I don’t know who that is,'” Ackles says. “And nobody said that.” In addition to “Sounds of Someday” Ackles says he had a few other music cues in his director’s cut, including a big one at the end. “Two of the three got taken out; mine was the last one standing,” he says of his new single. “That was a small victory. That was a nice vote of confidence, especially from a show that prides itself on music so much.”

cringed a bit and felt guilty with that last line, being how consistently i've ragged on the music in this show. the licensed stuff usually is good to okay, occasionally i disagree with the tone. but it's the original score i take issue with for the most part. but still :p

and chuck zapped becky and family to i guess not dead-"away"

right, i stopped watching this (two nights ago now) because we're talking about being suicidal, again

SAM Yeah. What Henry did… we’d have done the same thing. For Jack. If we had the chance. DEAN Yeah. Yeah, we would. Look, man, I get it. I get it. We have lost way, way too much. And it’s hard not to feel like just… cashing out. I felt like that. After Chuck, back at the crypt. But you know what brought me back? You did. By sayin’ that what we do still matters.

before i rant about the music and shots, i went and rewatched that scene in the crypt which i thought was 15x01? i don't know what dean's referring to though, because they don't really talk about it? maybe like, 14x20 in the cemetary with the stupid gun? dean almost killing himself to kill soulless!jack? or maybe the lead up to sam shooting chuck

on to my rant about the clip. the filming is really weird in this scene. it's shakycam but at times, especially when on dean, it's tilting and floaty in a way that makes it seem like they're not in the car but it's a dream or something. and they have that driving at night film set down pat so it was a choice or something. and the music? buh.

it's a combo of reminding me of the original musical score to the magicians and i believe it's got the spn-interstellar-ish theme again that was in a sam and dean car conversation ([suicidal] deathbed apologies) in 14x12 (this ep is christopher lennertz and philip white, 14x12 was lennertz and tim wynn)

and the dialogue itself is very... speechy. combined with the weird fimilng angles and not getting right up in their business, it's kind of lost that intimacy of the car convo and moved it into inspirational speech

SAM I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry. I know. But… but what I’m saying is that I don’t feel free. What we’ve done, what we’ve lost, right now, that is what I’m feeling, and… and sometimes it’s… it’s like I-I-I can’t even breathe. But maybe tomorrow. You know, maybe I’ll… I’ll feel better in the morning. DEAN And what if you don’t? SAM I don’t know.

and sam describing to me what sounds like flavors of depression and anxiety that i'm personally all too familiar with, it's a lot. the bit about maybe i'll feel better in the morning, reminds me of a song that has struck a chord with me on the depression front for years now. you can't really do anything but try to just keep going even though everything is so hard and hurts

youtube

Sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can't move Awake, but cannot open my eyes And the weight is crushing down On my lungs, I know I can't breathe And hope someone will save me this time ... But the lows are so extreme That the good seems fucking cheap And it teases you for weeks in its absence But you'll fight and you'll make it through You'll fake it if you have to And you'll show up for work with a smile And you'll be better and you'll be smarter And more grown up and a better daughter Or son, and a real good friend And you'll be awake, you'll be alert You'll be positive though it hurts

and this edit after the s4 magicians finale to this song changed me at a fundamental level (it's a fix-it)

youtube

(also on tumblr)

i know jared's history with talking about his mental health, which i've very much appreciated, and feels like bleeding some of that into sam which is a little unexpected but i think it's good, just tilted me a bit because sometimes things that are too relatable are.. too relatable :p

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 15x04 #sam and dean mush #davy perez #spn clip #spn musical score #christopher lennertz #tim wynn #rilo kiley #a better son/daughter #Youtube #spn interstellarish music

2 notes · View notes