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hamliet · 3 years

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The Crows Summon the Sun

Or, Hamliet’s review of Shadow & Bone, which gets a 4.5/5 for enjoyment and a 3.5/5 in terms of writing.

The true heroes of this story and the saviors of the show are the Crows. However, the problem is that the show then has an uneven feel, because the strength of the Crows plotline highlights the weaknesses of the trilogy storyline. But imo, overall, the strengths overshadow (#punintended) the weaknesses.

I’ll divide the review into the narrative and the technical (show stuff, social commentary), starting with narrative.

Narrative: The Good

It’s What The Crows Deserve

I went into the show watching it for the Crows; however, knowing that their storyline was intended to be a prequel, I wasn’t terribly optimistic. And while it is a prequel, the characters have complete and full arcs that perfectly set them up for the further development they will have in the books (which I think should be the next season?). Instead of retreading the arcs they’d have in the books, which is how prequels usually go, they had perfect set up for these arcs. It’s really excellent.

Jesper, Inej, and Kaz are all allowed to be flawed, to have serious conflicts with one another, and yet to love each other. They feel like a found family in the best of ways. Kaz is the perfect selfish rogue; he’s a much more successfully executed Byronic hero than the Darkling, actually. Inej is heroic and her faith is not mocked, yet she too is flawed and her choices are not always entirely justified, but instead left to the audience to ponder (like killing the girl), which is a more mature writing choice that I appreciated.

Jesper is charming, has a heart of gold despite being a murderer and on the surface fairly greedy, and MILO THE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GOAT WAS THE BEST THING EVER. I also liked Jesper’s fling with Dima but I felt it could be better used rather than merely establishing his sexuality, like if Jesper and Dima had seen each other one more time or something had come of their tryst for the plot/themes/development of Jesper.

Nina and Matthias’s backstory being in the first season, instead of in flashbacks, really works because it automatically erases any discomfort of the implications of Nina having falsely accused Matthias that the books start with. We know Nina, we know Matthias, we know their motivations, backgrounds, and why they feel the way we do. It’ll be easy for the audience to root for them without a lot of unnecessary hate springing from misunderstanding Nina (since she’s my favorite). Matthias’s arc was also really strongly executed and satisfyingly tragic. Their plotline was a bit unfortunately disconnected from the rest of the story, but Danielle Gallagan and Callahan Skogman have absolutely sizzling chemistry so I found myself looking forward to their scenes instead of feeling distracted. Also? It’s nice seeing a woman with Nina’s body type as a romantic and powerful character.

Hamliet Likes Malina Now

Insofar as the trilogy storyline goes, the best change the show made was Mal. He still is the same character from the books, but much more likable. The pining was... a lot (too much in episode 4, I felt) but Malina is a ship I actually enjoyed in the show while I NOTP’d it in the books. Mal has complexity and layers to his motivations (somewhat) and a likable if awkward charm. Archie Renaux was fantastic.

Ben Barnes is the perfect Aleksandr Kirigan, and 15 year old me, who had the biggest of big crushes on Ben Barnes (first celebrity crush over a decade ago lol), was pretty damn happy lol. He’s magnificantly acted--sympathetic and terrifying, sincerely caring and yet villainous in moments. Story-wise, I think it was smart to reveal his name earlier on than in the books, because it helps with the humanization especially in a visual medium like film. Luda was a fitting (if heartbreaking) backstory, but it is also hard for me to stomach knowing what the endgame of his character is. Like... I get the X-men fallacy thing, but I hope the show gives more kindness to his character than the books did, yet I’m afraid to hold my breath. Just saying that if you employ save the cat, if you directly say you added this part (Luda) to make the character more likable (as the director did) please do not punish the audience for feeling what you intended.

I also liked the change that made Alina half-Shu. It adds well to her arc and fits with her character, actually giving her motivations (she kinda just wants to be ordinary in a lot of ways) a much more interesting foundation than in the books. Also it’s nice not to have another knock-off Daenerys (looking to you Celaena and book!Alina). Jessie Mei Li does a good job playing Alina’s insecurities and emotions, but...

Narrative: The Ehhhhhhh

Alina the Lamp

Sigh. Here we go. Alina has little consistent characterization. She’s almost always passive when we see her, yet she apparently punches an officer for calling her a name and this seems to be normal for her, but it doesn’t fit at all with what we know about her thus far. Contradictions are a part of humanity, but it’s never given any focus, so it comes across as inconsistent instead of a flaw or repression.

I have no idea what Alina wants, beside that she wants to be with Mal, which is fine except I have no idea what the basis of their bond is. Even with like, other childhood friends to lovers like Ren/Nora in RWBY or Eren/Mikasa in SnK, there’s an inciting moment, a reason, that we learn very early on in their story to show us what draws them together. Alina and Mal just don’t have that. There’s the meadow/running away thing, but they were already so close, and why? Why, exactly? What brought them together? The term “bullies” is thrown around but it isn’t ever explored and it needed to be this season. If I have to deal with intense pining for so many episodes at least give me a foundation for their devotion. You need to put this in the beginning, in the first season. You just do.

A “lamp” character is a common metaphor to describe a bad character: essentially, you could replace the character with a lamp and nothing changes. Considering Alina’s gift is light, it’s a funnily apt metaphor, but it really does apply. Her choices just don’t... matter. She could be a special lamp everyone is fighting over and almost nothing would change. The ironic thing is that everyone treating her like a fancy lamp is exactly the conflict, but it’s never delved into. We’re never shown that Alina is more than a lamp. She never has to struggle because her choices are made for her and information is gifted to her when she needs it. Not making choices protects Alina from consequences and the story gives her little incentive to change that; in fact, things tend to turn out better when she doesn’t make choices (magic stags will arrive).

Like... let’s look at a few occasions when Alina almost or does make choices. For example, she chooses to (it seems) sleep with Kirigan, but then there’s a convenient knock at the door and Bhagra arrives with key information that changes Alina’s mind instantly despite the fact that Bhagra’s been pretty terrible to her. If you want to write a woman realizing she’s been duped by a cruel man, show her discovering it instead of having the man’s abusive mother tell her when she had absolutely no such suspicions beforehand. There’s no emotional weight there because Alina doesn’t struggle.

When she is actually allowed to carry out a bad choice, the consequences are handwaved away instead of built into a challenge for her. Like... Alina got her friends killed. More than once. I’m not saying she’s entirely to blame for these but could we show her reacting to it? Feeling any sort of grief? She never mentions Raisa or Alexei after they’re gone, just Mal, and I’m... okay. They were there because of you. Aren’t you feeling anything? Aren’t you sad? The only time Alina brings up her friends’ deaths is to tell Kirigan he killed her friends when they were only there because she burned the maps. She yells at Kirigan for “never” giving her a choice, but she almost never makes any, so why would he? Alina has the gall to lecture Genya about choices, but she herself almost never has to make any.

Which brings me to another complaint in general: Alina’s lack of care for everyone around her when they’re not Mal, even if they care for her. Marie dies because of her (absolutely not her fault of course) but as far as we know she never even learns about Marie. She certainly doesn’t ever ask about her or Nadia. Alina seems apathetic at best to people, certainly not compassionate or kind.

The frustrating thing is that there is potential here. Like, it actually makes a lot of psychological sense for an orphan who has grown up losing to be reluctant to care for people outside of her orbit and that she would struggle to believe she can have any say in her destiny (ie make choices). It’s also interesting that a girl who feels like an outsider views others outside her. But the show never offers examines Alina’s psychology with any depth; it simply tells us she’s compassionate when she is demonstrably not, it tells us she makes decisions when it takes magical intervention to do so. It’s a missed opportunity. This does not change between episodes 1 and 8, despite the episodes’ parallel structures and scenes, which unintentionally reinforces that Alina had little real development.

Inej and ironically Jesper and Kaz embody the concept of “mercy” far better and with far more complexity than Alina does. The Crows have reactions to the loss of people who even betray them (Arken, etc), learn, and course-correct (or don’t) when they are even loosely involved in having strangers die. They’re good characters because they change and learn and have their choices matter. When they kill we see them wrestle with it and what this means even if they are accustomed to doing so. Jesper can’t kill in front of a child. Kaz wonders what his killings do to Inej’s idea of him.

Narrative: The Mixed Bag

Tropes, Themes, Telling vs. Showing

So the show’s themes in the Alina storyline are a mess, as they are in the trilogy too. Tropes are a very valuable way to show your audience what you’re trying to say. They’re utilized worldwide because they resonate with people and we know what to expect from them. The Crows' storyline shows us what it wants us to learn.

Preaching tells, and unfortunately, the trilogy relies on telling/preaching against fornicationBad Boys. It’s your right to write any trope or trample any trope you want--your story--but you should at least understand what/why you are doing so. The author clearly knows enough about Jungian shadows and dark/light yin/yang symbolism to use it in the story, but then just handwaves it away as “I don’t like this” but never does so in a narratively effective way: addressing the appeal in the first place. If you really wanna deconstruct a trope, you gotta empathize with the core of the reason these tropes appeal to people (it allays deep fears that we are ourselves unlovable, through loving another person despite how beastly they can be), and address this instead of ignoring it. Show us a better way through the Fold of your story. Don’t just go around it and ignore the issue.

The trilogy offers highly simplistic themes at best--bad boy bad and good boy good, which is fine-ish for kid lit but less fine for adult complexity, which the show (more so than the books) seems to try to push despite not actually having much of it.

Alina and Mal are intended to be good, we’re told they are, but I’m not sure why beyond just that we’re told so. Alina claims the stag chose her, but in the show it’s never explained why at all. Unlike with Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and hell even Matthias and Nina, we don’t see Alina or Mal’s complex choices and internal wrestling.

Like, Inej’s half-episode where she almost killed the guy they needed was far more character exploration than Alina has the entire show, to say nothing of Inej’s later killing which not only makes her leaps and bounds more interesting, but ironically cements her as a far more compelling and yes, likable, heroine than Alina. We see Inej’s emotional and moral conflict. We can relate to her. We see Kaz struggling with his selfishness and regrets, with his understanding of himself through his interactions with and observations of Inej, Alina, the Darkling, Arken, and Jesper.

We don’t explore what makes Mal or Alina good and what makes them bad. We don’t know what Alina discovers about herself, what her power means for her. We are told they are good, we are told she knows her power is hers, but never shown what this means or what this costs them/her. Their opportunities to be good are handed to them (the stag, Bhagra) instead of given to them as a challenge in which they risk things, in which doing good or making a merciful choice costs them. Alina gets to preach about choices without ever making any; Inej risks going back to the Menagerie to trust Kaz. Her choices risk. They cost. They matter and direct her storyline and her arc, and those of the people around her.

Production Stuff:

The Good:

The production overall is quite excellent. The costumes, pacing, acting, and cinematography (for example, one of the earliest scenes between the Darkling and Alina has Alina with her back to the light, face covered in his shadow, while the Darkling’s face is light up by her light even if he stands in the shadows) are top-notch. The soundtrack as well is incredible and emphasizes the scenes playing. The actors have great chemistry together, friend chemistry and romantic when necessary (Mal and Alina, the Darkling and Alina, Kaz and Inej, Nina and Matthias, David and Genya, etc.) All are perfectly cast.

The Uncomfortable Technicalities Hamliet Wants to Bitch About:

The only characters from fantasy!Europe having any trace of an accent reminiscent of said fantasy country's real-world equivalent are antagonists like Druskelle (Scandinavia) and Pekka (Ireland). When the heroes mostly have British accents despite being from fantasy Russia and Holland, it is certainly A Choice to have the Irish accent emphasized. The actor is British by the way, so I presume he purposely put on an Irish accent. I'm sure no one even considered the potential implications of this but it is A Look nonetheless.

The Anachronisms Hamliet Has a Pet Peeve About:

The worldbuilding is compelling, but the only blight on the worldbuilding within the story itself (ignoring context) was that there are some anachronisms that took me out of the story, particularly in the first episode where “would you like to share with the class” and “saved by the horn” are both used. Both are modern-day idioms in English that just don’t fit, especially the latter. The last episode uses “the friends we made along the way.” There are other modern idioms as well.

IT’S STARKOVA and Other Pet Peeves Around the Russian Portrayal

Russian names are not hard, and Russian naming systems are very, very easy to learn. I could have waved “Starkov” not being “Starkova,” “Nazyalensky” not being “Nazyalenskaya,” and “Safin” not being “Safina” as an American interpretation (since in America, the names do not femininize). However, “Mozorova” as a man is unfathomable and suggests to me the author just doesn’t understand how names work, which is a bit... uh okay considering a simple google search gets you to understand Russian names. They aren’t hard. I cannot understand why the show did not fix this. It is so simple to fix and would be a major way to help the story’s overall... caricature of Russia.

Speaking of that... Ravka is supposedly Russian-based, but it is more accurately based on the stereotypes of what Americans think of Russia. Amerussia? Russica? Not great.

The royals are exactly what Americans think of the Romanovs, right down to the “greasy” “spiritual advisor” who is clearly Rasputin and which ignores the Romanov history, very real tragedy, and the reason Rasputin was present in the court. The religion with all its saints is a vapid reflection of Russian Orthodoxy. The military portrayal with its lotteries and brutality and war is how the US views the Russian military. The emphasis on orphans, constant starvation, classification, and children being ripped from their homes to serve the government is a classic US understanding of USSR communism right down to the USSR having weapons of destruction the rest of the world fears (Grisha). Not trying to defend the Soviet Union here at all, but it is simplistic and reductive and probably done unconsciously but still ehhhh.

However, I’m not Russian. I just studied Russian literature. I’ve seen very little by way of discussion of this topic online, but what I do see from Russian people has been mixed--some mind, some don’t. The reality is that I actually don’t really mind this because it’s fantasy, though I see why some do. I'm not like CANCEL THIS. So why am I talking about this beyond just having a pet peeve?

Well, because it is a valid critique, and because it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The Grishaverse is heralded as an almost paragon for woke Young Adult literature, which underlines itself what so frustrates me about how literary circles discuss issues of diversity and culture. Such praise, while ignoring its quasi-caricature of Russia, reflects a very ethnocentric (specifically American) understanding of culture, appropriation, and representation. All stories are products of their culture to various extents, but it bothers me on principle what the lit community reacts (and overreacts sometimes?) to and what people give a pass to. The answer to what the community reacts to and what it gives a pass always pivots on how palatable the appropriation is to American understandings and sensibilities. There’s nuance here as well, though.

I'm not cancelling the story or thinking it should be harshly attacked for this, but it is something that can be discussed and imo should be far more often--but with the nuance it begs, instead of black/white. But that’s a tall ask.

#s&b #hamliet reviews #shadow and bone #six of crows #kanej #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #alina starkov #malyen oretsev #the darkling #darklina #malina #aleksander kirigan #netflix shadow and bone #s&b review

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skullsandwineglasses · 3 years

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You Are My Hero (2021) Review

Overall impression: The drama started off really cute and promising in the first half, but was weak and underwhelming in the second half. In-depth review below (with spoilers).

A cute and fluffy romance premise

Right off the bat, the love story between the leads is tropey as hell, but manages to not be tacky and is actually really endearing. The ML, a SWAT officer, rescues the FL, an aspiring neurosurgery medical resident, from a bank robbery 2 years ago. They leave a lasting impression on each other, but don't keep in touch afterwards. The FL never sees his face because he's wearing a mask, but the ML remembers her name.

Fate brings them together again 2 years later when the FL enrolls in an emergency rescue training camp that’s supervised by the ML. He recognizes her and falls for her immediately, but she doesn’t know he’s the one who rescued her years ago.

Their relationship starts off rocky, similar to how a CEO romance would start: the ML first appears cold and distanced, strict and brooding, but actually has a huge soft spot for the FL. The FL is put off by his coldness, but is sometimes surprised as random moments of tenderness. When the training camp is complete, the ML becomes a cute and awkward lovesick puppy who tries to figure out how to woo the FL because this is his first time (and hers) falling in love. It’s fun seeing him become so flustered around her when he’s usually so calm, collected, and in control as the leader of a SWAT team.

On other hand, the FL slow falls for the ML when he reveals a more real and vulnerable side of himself. They banter a lot, but she slowly warms up to him.

And as a no-nonsense drama, the two leads acknowledge their feelings for each other quickly (although they haven't directly admitted it to each other yet). They're in the awkward phase of attraction and going on semi-dates, but they haven't defined the relationship yet. *Sigh* First love.

Things I enjoyed

I appreciate that although the FL is a Mary Sue, she does make mistakes. She's smart, but she isn't the top of her class. She’s kind and selfless, but she also isn’t overly tolerant of people. When people overstep their boundaries and are unjust to her, she’ll confront them. Ma Sichun is such a natural actress. She can do cute and flirty, she can be clueless and lost, she can be confident and in control, she can be angry and indignant. I especially loved her character’s adorable interactions with her best friend Xiao Xia.

The acting in this drama was all around great. It’s probably the best part of the drama. It was so comfortable and fun to watch. I think AvenueX described it best: the acting in the drama was so natural that sometimes it felt like the actors broke character but the director kept the take. Some of the laughing, giggling, and gestures felt so genuine that you wonder if it was improvised, scripted, or a blooper scene that became canon.

I like how the FL and ML are each experts in their respective fields. They have very separate careers that occasionally intersect. I'm tired of CEO dramas where the FL is working for the ML, or there are class differences between them. Instead in this drama, the FL faces problems everyday at work that the ML doesn't know about. Her problems do not relate to him at all. She has problems that he can't understand or help with. Likewise, he also goes on missions that she isn't aware of. They work in completely different fields with different skill sets. They even talk about how their philosophies differ. Her job is to save lives but not make moral judgments of character, while his job is to enforce the law, which is all about assessing character. Where their careers do intersect, is the goal of saving others and putting others first before themselves.

Another dynamic of the relationship that I really like is that the FL and ML are always occupied and on the move because of their professions, and yet, their loyalty and devotion to each other never change. They are each other's rock. Despite encountering so many different situations and people, despite all of the chaos and noise from their careers, nothing can really outweigh how important they are to each other. Despite being out in the field, far away from home, their hearts are anchored to each other. I just like this trope a lot, i.e., the trope of being away from home, but remaining true and loyal and unwavering. Despite having bigger and more important things in the world to deal with, their ultimate dream is wanting to just spend some time together. It's analogous to how in ancient period dramas, there are generals who command armies and and maintain a strictly professional demeanor and don't mention a word about their family to their soldiers, but when the general retires to his tent at night, he's writing a long and thoughtful letter home, because his loved one was on his mind all day.

The supporting characters are great, but I do like the older and mature supporting couple (Xing Ke Yao and Shao Yu Han) more than the younger supporting couple (Xiao Xia and Shu When Bo), despite the actors playing the younger couple being literally my age. I also appreciate how the FL has multiple close friends who are quite separate from each other, instead of just the single token sidekick best friend (although the second half of the drama does just focus on one of her main friends). It's relatable because we all have different groups of friends. We have friends from high school, we have friends from college, and we have friends from work. Most of these friends are kept separate, and sometimes they interact. But I like how this drama shows that the FL has a small network of friends from different walks of life.

Things I didn’t enjoy as much

The plot derailed and lost its charm after episode 30. There were fewer hospital cases, and the ML had to complete a mission that I had no interest in following. There was no other point to the superfluous mission besides to show that the ML has a busy and demanding job that prevents him from being at the FL’s side when she needs him the most.

I also really, really disliked the introduction of the random love rival in episode 31 just to try to stir some angst. The plot device was pointless because in the end, there was no angst because the leads have a strong and healthy relationship, and so the love rival’s attempt at sabotaging the relationship was just laughable and completely random. It just disrupted the mood and pacing of the drama because that plotline just came out of the blue. It was just so annoying seeing the love rival and her sister cause trouble and wreak havoc in the FL’s workplace.

The drama did a good job at showing how the leads put their careers first, which caused strain and tension in their relationship that they tend to ignore. But, the drama never explores this further, even though it’s a very real problem that many career-driven and ambitious couples face. The drama presents a very idealized vision of a relationship between a police officer and a doctor. Like when the FL leaves for a special research and training program in the States, the drama shows that the leads breezed through the two-year long distance relationship in a quick montage. They had no issue in communication. Yes, they miss each other, but they’re blissful. But what kind of long distance relationship has no bumps in it? The drama also implies that they never saw each other in person during two years (in the final episode, Xing Ke Lei squeezed her arms and said that since they haven’t seen each other in 2 years, he had to check if she was missing anything), which is highly unrealistic. Was she never able to go back home for the holidays? Did Xing Ke Lei, whose parents live and work overseas, never bother to visit his girlfriend? Overall, it seemed a little off to me that despite the budding tension and issues they’ve been having between them, they were able to overcome a long distance relationship so easily. You could argue that they’re used to long separations because of their work, and the drama has shown that they’re used to communicating over video calls, but I was just a little disappointed that they rushed this final plotline when so much more could have been done with it.

Speaking of parents, we never actually got to see their parents. I understand that the parents are not relevant to the focus of the story, but the parents are rarely even mentioned, which further makes the romance in the story seem too idealistic. Whether it’s a near-death situation, getting engaged, or studying abroad for 2 years, the FL never mentions talking to her parents about these decisions and life changes. The drama handwaves the parents’ absence and lack of influence by having the FL mention early in the drama that her parents are busy with their business back home, so they don’t have time to worry about her. She also no longer bothers to update them about her work because she’s afraid they’ll be worried about her. And then from there, we never hear the FL mention her parents again. It’s just so weird to see that the most important person in her life is the ML and she only ever talks about major life choices with her friends. I mean, if the plot had said that she didn’t have a family, it wouldn’t have mattered. But the fact that she does mention her parents, but they’re completely absent and non-existent just felt a little off, like something was missing. But in the grand scheme of things, this is not really an issue. I’m just nit-picking.

Lastly, I just want to comment on Bai Jingting as Xing Ke Lei. I admit that he sells the part well. At first I was skeptical about Bai Jingting as a SWAT officer because of how skinny and baby-faced he is, but he actually pulls it off surprisingly well and has some unexpectedly good chemistry with Ma Sichun too. Although during moments when he isn't talking and we're just left with his resting face, I'm suddenly hit by how young he looks, but then he speaks or is back in uniform and again, the gestalt shift goes back to Xing Ke Lei, the handsome SWAT officer. They made a point of showing how muscled his arms are, which was a little jarring to see in comparison to his youthful face, not gonna lie. So, while I liked him as Xing Ke Lei, it was a little distracting switching back and forth between seeing him as a really young, adolescent-looking actor, and him as the broad-chested character.

Should you watch?

All in all, a really cute and easy-to-watch drama with some thoughtful and sentimental moments. Very fluffy. Minimal to no misunderstandings. Charming characters. There are the storylines of three couples with medical/police subplots interweaved between the romance. On bilibili, some people even edited clips of the drama with theme songs from TVB medical and police dramas like The Hippocractic Crush and Tiger Cubs. So, as someone who grew up with TVB dramas, it was nostalgic to see those thematic parallels.

But, the drama does lose steam in the last 10 or so episodes, and has a lot of filler to stretch it out to 40 episodes. That’s the issue I have with modern dramas. The plot in modern dramas is usually quite basic, and I would argue that the modern romance is easier and less angsty. You either love each other or you don’t. You either are willing to commit or you’re not. There aren’t many external excuses for angst or misunderstandings. (Of course, I’m trivializing things; real life isn’t as easy).

Still, I would recommend this drama for anyone who’s between dramas. I watched this drama to help me get over the rut I was in because I was going through withdrawal after finishing The Rebel Princess, so I needed a light-hearted drama whose genre was completely different from TRP. And this drama was perfect for breaking that rut.

Rating: 8/10. Simple, fluffy, and not too much to complain about. I also forgot to talk about the great humour in the drama, but there were many moments when I laughed out loud or couldn’t stop grinning. This is also a drama you can take your time with because there aren’t constant cliff hangers to peg you on. It doesn’t consume your life, and you can pause (although, the first 18 or so episodes are definitely binge-worthy because the development of the leads’ relationship is just too cute, and so they suck you right in). However, while it is one of the better modern romance dramas I’ve watched (and the characters are very consistent), it’s not a very memorable drama. It doesn’t make me linger. I guess it’s because I’m more of a historical and xianxia drama kind of person. So take from that what you will.

#you are my hero #你是我的城池营垒 #cdrama #bai jingting #白敬亭 #ma sichun #sandra ma #马思纯 #cdrama review #cdramanet

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shirtlesssammy · 5 years

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15x13: Destiny’s Child

Welcome to our last new recap for a while (frowny face). We’ve got a couple requests that we’re going to work on in the next couple weeks, and then chip away at all the episodes we have yet to do while we not-so-patiently wait for more episodes. If you have requests, don’t hesitate to ask!

Then:

Cas loves one (1) pizza man.

Now:

Late night study sesh in the bunker is interrupted when Sam and Dean hear a weird noise down the hall. They take off for the armory, only to find a Fiat and ---SAM AND DEAN?! (And while I guess it’s not, I’m just rolling with the idea that Savage Garden is blasting from that little clown car. I mean, really, what a perfect song and one I never thought would EVER pop up on this show --okay, or any show, it’s been like 20 years since I’ve heard that song, lol.)

The rift flickers and Alt!Sam and Dean disappear.

They tell Cas about what happened. Billie pops up to tell them that Chuck is almost done destroying all the other worlds. They have to be ready --and by that, she means, it’s time for the next step in Jack’s training. He needs to find the Occultum. Sam helpfully translates that as “hidden.” It is hidden --lost for centuries.

Once Billie takes off, Sam sets to learning more about the Occultum. There isn’t much. Dean ponders the futility of killing God. Doesn’t Jack need to kill Amara too? Cas gets a lead on the Occultum from Sergei. Dean and Cas flirt unnecessarily. Cas is so patient with all of Dean’s ideas, I can’t help but think that this is a common thing with these two.

Anyway, the Occultum was owned by the Jacobson family for a long time, until they used it as payment to heal their son. The healer was “attractive, and she healed the child by laying on hands which glowed.” I don’t know if there’s been an unattractive person in this universe, so good luck finding the healer!

Lol, j/k, there’s only one angel healer that’s attractive out there! Sam and Dean find Anael and want her help with killing God. She thinks it’s wiser to stay on the side of the all-powerful being. When the brothers flash their angel blades (eerrr…), Anael confesses that the Occultum is really with Ruby. (I was one of the many rage viewers with this, but well, we’ve been rage watching these writers for so long, and we’ve had to handwave SO much over the years. What’s another plot point that we can easily headcanon at this point? Sigh.)

We get a flashback of Ruby and Anael negotiating the sale of the Occultum. Anael then tells them that the Occultum was never actually sold because they ganked Ruby before she could do anything with it. It’s now safely hidden in Hell.

Jack, meanwhile, is busy getting back to life.

Cas finds him in the kitchen eating EVERYTHING. Jack notes that coming back alive really makes you pay attention to what life is. “Hot, cold, sweet, spicy, funny, scary.” (Kind of like Sam when he was soulless, Jack is describing sensations, and not feelings, emotions, not really getting at what life really is.) They talk about Jack’s soul and what he felt when he had one.

Jack admits that he understands that he hurt Sam and Dean, and wonders if Dean will ever forgive him for what he did to Mary. “Dean, he feels things, more acutely than any human I’ve ever known. So, it’s possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode, and let it all out, and breathe deeply and move on.”

Okayokayokayokay. Jack wants to know how long that’ll take and Cas admits that he doesn’t know, and I’M FEELING about how this ageless, ancient being is just WAITING for Dean to do this very thing. He has all the time in the world from his perspective. He knows Dean --really knows him, and it doesn’t matter how long for him because time doesn’t really matter for Cas (I mean, I think being close to humanity and all it probably means more than it used to but...I’m just rambling about my feelings right now. This is Boris --Natasha is far more coherent and eloquent with her thoughts, lol.)

The brothers make it back to the bunker, planning on heading to Hell. Cas leads them to a room where Alt!Sam and Dean are stuck between the worlds. Dean doesn’t care at this moment --he wants to get the Occultum. They tell Cas their plan and he thinks they’re crazy. They could be searching forever down there. (UH, they’re LITERALLY BFFs with the Queen of Hell.)

Anyway, Dean and Sam head south while Cas babysits the spell.

Cas still doesn’t like this plan and hatches a plan with Jack so he can talk with Ruby in the Empty.

(I know, you just have to roll with Buckleming episodes, etc., but their insistence on making it beyond easy to jump from realm to realm is MADDENING.)

We get a mention of Cas’s deal with the Empty, so that really is still a thing. Cas is “far from happy”, so we’re good!

His plan is for Jack to “draw out most of [his] lifeforce” and store it in a flask. What’s his “lifeforce”? His grace? Something more? Something else? How does he die without his grace? How is he just mostly dead but still able to go to the Empty?

We’re also giving this exchange: “If I screw up?” “Well, then I’ll be lost forever.” WHOA. What kind of fucked up parenting are you writing, Buckleming? Good thing Jack doesn’t have a soul, because that’ll mess with a child forever.

Also, why can Jack use his powers now?

Sam and Dean are ambushed in Hell. Anael wanted them dead apparently and made a deal with some demons (ONCE AGAIN, like Rowena would allow this to happen!?!??) They’re Sam and Dean Winchester though and easily dispatch the demons.

Cas stalks through the Empty calling for Ruby. “Hello, Clarence,” a familiar voice says and Cas turns to find Meg reclining on a throne. He looks sweetly surprised to see her before his face falls as he realizes she’s the Shadow from the Empty.

The Shadow may be allied with Billie, but they’re definitely not good buds with Cas. Nevertheless, “Go get her, pizza man,” Shadow!Meg says and a ball of flame swirls towards Cas and turns into Ruby.

Cas asks about the Occultum, and Ruby asks after Sam. Cas refuses to answer and, since I’ve been stress re-reading some regency romances lately, I’m gonna go ahead and say he acts like an affronted chaperone.

For Gratuitous Cas Science:

We see another flashback of Ruby and Sister Jo’s wild adventures, only this time Jo is the one who invited Ruby to talk to her. Jo tries to tempt Ruby into hiding from the apocalypse in the Occultum. It turns out it’s a place AND a thing. A whatever, if you will. Ruby cut a deal with Jo, hid the object, and then died her noble death.

Ruby promises to help Cas as long as he can get her out of the Empty. You see, instead of lullabies and sweet dreams, or even quiet and no dreams, the Empty is nothing but endless reels of regrets playing over and over for every angel and demon trapped there. “Yeah, I know,” Cas says quietly and we all break a little bit thinking about how he swore it was nothingness instead of constant emotional torture. (That’s SO on brand.) Cas promises to try to free Ruby in exchange for her intel.

The Winchesters return to find Jack babysitting the spell alongside a MOSTLY DEAD Cas. Despite Jack’s (actually really terrible) explanation, Dean and Sam demand that Jack bring Cas back right away. Jack unscrews the flask.

Cas isn’t getting out of this so easily, though. The Shadow smirks and clenches Shadow!Meg’s fist, sending Cas to the ground in pain. The Shadow still is no fan of Cas, and is only willing to uphold deals with Billie, who promised to send the Shadow back to a lovely snooze if they cooperate.

The Shadow ruminates on the fact that Billie has never mentioned Cas as being essential to her plan. This makes Cas expendable.

Cas sputters to life suddenly, only to face Dean’s angry-worried greeting. “You’re an idiot, by the way!” Apparently still in pain or just suffering from almost-not-quite-dead-and-now-actually-quite-alive syndrome, Cas hauls himself up slowly and explains that he now has all the info they need to find the Occultum. “Am I still an idiot?” Listen, boys. Kiss and make up, mmkay?

They’re off to tackle the Occultum quest, but before they go they need to set out some decoys to throw Chuck off their scent if he tries to spy on the bunker. Dean suggests pulling AU Dean and Sam out of the void and setting them up as fake Sam and Dean. He flippantly suggests using Cas’s grace to power the rift this time and FOR THE LOVE OF PIZZA DEAN it’s called body autonomy.

Cut to the Winchesters Set One and Set Two seated at the map table with beers all around. We learn:

Alt Winchesters are also hunters

Their dad is alive (but still SUPER controlling)

They don’t drink beer or watch porn

Private planes fly them all over the world to fight monsters

Their AU could be a middling CW pilot about wealthy monster hunters called “Hunter Corp”

I have a greater appreciation of our flannel-clad boys

Dean and Sam clumsily explain their ploy and their relationship with God and it’s not weird at all!

Later, Team Free Will 2.0 heads to a small church. It’s guarded by a hellhound, which makes Dean SUPER happy and comfortable in his skin. They break into the church and look for clues about where the treasure is hiding. The clue is that the top of a cross points to the treasure. Moonlight streams conveniently through the window and at JUST the right angle to cast a cross of light on the floor. They pull out a little velvet bag from the floorboards.

Cas reads Enochian on the little golden snitch-style ball. “In order to be in the Occultum, the Occultum must be in you.”

Back at the bunker, Alt!Dean and Sam enjoy their new rugged life. Sam watches kitten videos, and we continue to identify very strongly with him, indeed. Alt!Dean finds porn on Dean’s computer and I continue to ask WHY WHY we have to constantly cycle back to Busty Asian Beauties. Porn isn’t objectionable, but that SPECIFIC porn franchise should have died a swift death back in season two. (Boris: AMEN)

Jack swallows the Occultum, as one does. “Spit it out,” Dean demands. But Jack disappears into a flare of light. He wakes up in a garden.

No, he wakes up in THE Garden. He’s greeted by a young girl who tells him that humans are prohibited. A snake confronts Jack. “Who are you really? Who are you meant to be?” Jack flashes through his good and bad memories and suffers an epiphany.

He flutters back into the church like Tinkerbell in a ball of light before zapping back into reality. His reappearance burns away the two hellhounds.

Back at the bunker, Dean sends the Alt Winchesters off to Brazil to enjoy the beach. He’s a little uncomfortable around them until he learns that the Alt Winchesters drove Baby. Then they get shoved out of the bunker just as fast as you please.

Once they’re gone, Cas tells Sam and Dean that Jack has returned changed. He leads them to Jack who hunches over the kitchen table. Jack is crying. He apologizes for killing Mary. He has his soul back!

“Please forgive me,” Jack whispers, and a symphonic line carries us into the black.

Overall Surprisingly Enjoyable Quotes:

The healthcare system sucks so I pick up the slack

Cas, you know what’s good about being dead?

I’m far from happy, so I should be fine

We had a good thing until he killed me

You’re gonna have to lose the man bun

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn 15x13 #destiny's child #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #jack kline #anael #ruby #the shadow #meg masters #supernatural season 15

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bluerosesburnblue · 4 years

Text

Nothing upsets me more than a legitimately good story being ruined by “extra” content. I’ve already complained at length about Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon’s story changes over the original games so now it’s The World Ends With You: Final Remix’s “A New Day’s” turn because CHRIST

I’m writing this as I come across points while watching a playthrough, so:

God, Coco is the single most insufferable being. “totez hilar” just dated this content so baaaad, and I’d even say it was dated language when Final Remix came out. No other character abuses modern slang as their entire character. Like, slang is used but not as a substitute for personality. Beat speaks in a very casual, urban style but it never ends up being detrimental to his character as a bit of a punk with a “perfect little sister” that he wasn’t as naturally smart as, so he just gave up on trying and ended up being a bit of an aggressive slacker. Heck, he tones it down a bit for emotional moments, too. Coco, though, comes across like her ultra-modern “cutesy” text message slang is supposed to be her personality, and even when it’s revealed that she’s the villain of the episode you just can’t take her seriously through the “like, ohmigosh, I can’t believe you’re ruining my plaaaaaans” bullshit. What does she have going for her if you rewrite all of her lines without that speaking style? She’s just a generic manipulative brat

Frankly I also just disagree with the entire premise of A New Day and the plot threads it sets up for a potential sequel, i.e. “having Neku and Beat run through a game again as a trap to get Neku into yet another game in a possible sequel.” TWEWY is a complete experience and had been for at least a decade. Literally every character had a complete arc. The worldbuilding was rich enough that they had more than enough to come up with a sequel set in the same world, but in an entirely different town with an entirely new cast and, heck, even entirely new rules for the Game that would’ve expanded upon the world of the games without taking away from the characters whose time in the Underground was already done

But, noooooooo, we’ve gotta bring Neku back. Can’t have a game without Neku they literally SAY THAT (”The Game, like, literally can’t go on without Neku.”). And let’s bring Minamimoto back, too, as a good guy! The fans loved him! This doesn’t come across as pandering at all!

Just... you have the girl with the red headphones designed! Make the sequel set in Shinjuku with her as the main character! (Hell, I don’t think I would have even minded Minamimoto coming back for that because there was enough leeway in the base TWEWY for him to have survived his encounter with Josh, just leave Neku out of it). This is the most infuriating part because it actually takes away from Neku’s story. The entire GAME was a test of character to see if even the worst, most closed off person could learn empathy and respect and Neku DID. And in return, that sparked a change in Josh. His story is done. Coco using Neku, though, has nothing to do with him as a character and everything to do with him being the face of the game and it shows

And why the hell is Neku so trusting of Coco anyway? I get that he opened up over the course of TWEWY, that was kind of the point. But you come back to life, everything’s fine, and then suddenly you’re in a death game again and so is one of your best friends, like, he should be WAY more concerned and suspicious. But one little Reaper gives him the sad eyes and he just caves instantly like “fine, come along.” Even when Neku grew to like some of the Reapers, like Uzuki and Kariya, it was still far more of a rival-like respect. He knew damn well that it was their job to see him gone and while he accepted their help when they gave it and helped them when their lives were in danger (possibly, up to player choice), they weren’t buddy-buddy with each other, knowing that as soon as the immediate danger to them had passed they’d be on opposite sides again. And these are the Reapers he’s closest to, even at the end of the game. And then all of a sudden Coco goes “but I’m a wittle wost baby weaper” and Neku’s response is, “well, shit, welcome to the team.” WHAT

I hate using the term “Mary Sue” but Coco is absolutely a Mary Sue in its original meaning. The plot bends over backwards to accommodate her at the expense of the main characters’ personalities or reason, all while giving her a clothing style incongruous with everyone else’s meant to stand out and make her look special and not having her face any repercussions for her actions (so far which is, again, another issue with the very premise of A New Day since that’s exactly how things will end off if TWEWY doesn’t get a sequel, the possibility of which is not a guarantee AT ALL)

Shiki and Rhyme start saying blatantly false things about themselves and handwaving it away with “ohhh, that must have been our new Entry Fee! Just the exact same ones as the first time again!” and only BEAT is suspicious and NEITHER OF THEM are suspicious of Coco, the only non-generic Reaper they’ve met so far. Christ, I appreciate Beat being attentive with matters of his sister because that’s in-character but NEKU was always the more paranoid AND observant one yet all he thinks about is “gee, I’m sure having weird visions today, huh?”

And then Coco starts BLATANTLY gaslighting them about Kariya and Uzuki’s personalities and they’re STILL not suspicious of her like ughhhhhhhhhhh. Nekuuuuuuu you LIVED THROUGH JOSH WEEK 2, you have BEEN IN A SITUATION where the mastermind partnered up with you to divert your suspicion and keep an eye on you how are you less suspicious of this brat than Beat is???

And why are none of the characters bringing up the fact that you have to be DEAD to be in the Game??? You all spent three weeks of hell to claw your way back to life, how are you not more upset about what seems like you all dying again, basically immediately after you just got brought back? And I know the Shiki and Rhyme in A New Day are illusions, but Neku and Beat AREN’T. Nobody even comments on the implication that they’re dead again and what that means!

I can’t believe they made new expressions for the fake Josh’s changed personality but still refuse to make anything for Shiki’s true appearance

Hell, there’s enough lore with Josh that you could make an entire prequel about him becoming the Composer instead of this mess and, you know, EXPAND on someone’s character and what led to him being so disillusioned with Shibuya as the Composer instead of employing the Happy Ending Rewrite on Neku and then gutting his personality to make Coco the focus. I’d LOVE a Josh prequel with competent writing. Kingdom Hearts made the Xehanort prequel and hooked me in a single chapter with expanded worldbuilding and interesting ties with Xehanort’s character to friends that humanize him, do the same for Yoshiya “Joshua” Kiryu!

Pfffffff hire me and let me make the dream TWEWY trilogy: Joshua prequel > TWEWY sans A New Day > sequel set in Shinjuku starring Red Headphones Girl with Occasional Josh and Hanekoma Interaction

It is so unnecessarily cruel to make Beat relive Rhyme’s erasure and subject Neku to believing that Shiki was erased as well, and yet they do NOTHING with it except have it be cheap tension for five minutes. The characters basically say “wow, I’m so sad!” and then IMMEDIATELY move on to “OMG is Neku seeing the fuuuuuture?” Your LITTLE SISTER and FIRST REAL FRIEND IN YEARS just seemingly died permanently! When Rhyme was erased the first time it took Neku one and a half in-game days to even talk about it because he was so upset, and from then on he was focused on avenging her/bringing her back. Shiki was his entry fee in Week 2 and that made him hyper paranoid the whole time! WHY ARE WE JUST GLOSSING OVER THIS especially since they made SUCH a big deal about how they just finally started believing that the fakes were real (after a whole TWO conversations)

And then at the end they say that they’re inside Coco’s Noise that is SO BIG that it has an ALTERNATE DIMENSION INSIDE IT and Hanekoma’s like “I’ve never met a Reaper POWERFUL enough to make a Noise like this. Wow, Coco, you’re so POWERFUL that even I, an Angel, am impressed!” This. Coming from the guy who specifically chose Minamimoto as his failsafe to kill the Composer should the Game go wrong because a Taboo Minamimoto, heavily refined using forbidden methods, would be strong enough to defeat THE COMPOSER. And he’s now going on about how Coco’s the strongest Reaper ever, basically admitting that she’s probably stronger than the Composer of Shibuya. SURE. BECAUSE COCO WASN’T BAD ENOUGH ALREADY SHE HAS TO BE THE STRONGEST REAPER EVER, TOO

And then it just ends with Josh and Hanekoma exposition dumping about how Shinjuku got erased as Noise entered the RG (WHAT?), Neku’s visions were probably caused by the red headphones girl who’s super special (who???), and Coco’s just so special powerful (why...), but it’s not their problem so fuck it. Oh, and also Josh doesn’t care about Neku anymore, despite that being the whole point of TWEWY. Yeah, the guy who flew off all upset when Hanekoma asked him if he wanted to hang out with his friends at the end of the game. Uh huh. Even if he’s lying, why even put that THERE instead of saving it for the sequel?

And then Coco just... revives Minamimoto. Even though, oh, right, the Taboo Refinery stuff was so precise that the only reason Minamimoto came back the first time was because Hanekoma, THE PRODUCER AND AN ANGEL, set it up for him. But I guess Coco’s just soooooo super powerful and knows FORBIDDEN HIGHER PLANE KNOWLEDGE and can just do whateeeeeever she wants. Not like Hanekoma was so paranoid about someone finding out what he did for Minamimoto that he went into hiding, certain that he’d be reported to the higher Angels and destroyed

A New Day is so painfully shallow from a writing experience. It’s a poor continuation off of the solid, complete TWEWY story experience that just doesn’t have a handle on Neku’s character, turning him into this bland vision machine with no emotional connection to anyone. The way that it expands the worldbuilding with “Inversion” does one thing that I HATE, which is taking an emotion-and-character driven story and turning it into a generic “end of the world” scenario, “raising the stakes” in a way that divorces it from what made it memorable in the first place. If Kitaniji directly effecting the RG during the main Game’s plot was the point where he crossed the line in-universe, then that loses its special nature and impact if you then go “oh, btw, Noise can destroy the RG city if you let them”

And then there’s the absolute black hole of a character that is Coco Atarashi. She wasn’t designed to fit into the world of the game, she was designed to stand out. On its own that’s not a bad thing, especially given the themes of the game that revolve around owning your true self and baring it to the world, but then you combine it with no personality beyond being a manipulative brat obsessed with the events of TWEWY, extremely lazy text message slang dressing up her dialogue to make it stand out, the way that Neku and Beat’s personalities change to accommodate her presence just to shoehorn her in and then have a cheap “omg she was bad” twist, and then dumping powers on par with Josh and Hanekoma on her and there is NO saving her character

The only good part of A New Day is “Wake Up.” And even then, there’s better TWEWY songs, I just like the vaguely Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance vibes it has in parts

#the world ends with you #the world ends with you spoilers #liz's shenanigans #the playthrough i was watching to refresh myself on twewy's story hit a new day and my blood pressure spiked instantly #i have never lost interest in a sequel quite as fast as i did this #i just... how do you fuck up this bad???

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angrycowboy · 5 years

Text

Okay, time for coffee and rewatch!

I did a rewatch last night after watching it live and flailed at @haloud, because this episode was everything I wanted for the premiere and getting the show back. It made me hurt and it made me happy and it made me excited for all the things to come.

After I’m done with this, it’s off to find a decent download and start giffing!

- I love the little Echo flashback. I mean, I think it’s interesting to include Max mentioning the Alighting and the whole “savior” thing. Though, I wonder if it’s going to come into play more than just the mentions in this episode that allowed Liz to connect the dots about Max. But I am heart eyes at this cute Echo moment.

- Liz’s “you smell like rain” comment is also interesting. I am just gonna sit here and think about Maria’s comment about Michael smelling like a river now and what is up with these aliens.

-Jeez, Liz and Rosa. Oh my god, Rosa. And Liz, with tears on her face, needing to switch into crisis mode.

- Graffitti! Omg Rosa’s artwork. “We don’t believe in humans” Omg I love it.

-This is an Arturo Ortecho appreciation blog. He’s adorable being so proud of Liz. I just smile at this scene so hard. It’s perfect.

- “I reject good-bye” I love Maria DeLuca, y’all.

- So in my happy place headcanon, Michael did just get some sort of flash about Max’s death, left the Pony, and basically has been avoiding Maria ever since. Simplest explanation and I can live with it.

- BUT as always, my biggest gripe with the show, it’s been two weeks and no one has talked to one another. Though I kinda understand Liz avoiding everyone while she’s trying to deal with Rosa.

-”Came to vent about Michael Guerin ghosting me” Yeah, I mean, I’m glad that the show established this right off the bat. Especially after this fucking hellatus this fandom decided to go through in regards to Miluca. I’m actually happy about this. But see ya’ll? Fucking overreaction central.

- “And now just one more Roswell good time before I hit the road.” The delivery on this, and the look on Liz’s face. Fuck, Jeanine just nailed every scene in this episode.

- Michael Guerin, Resident PigPen and Disaster Bi, stumbling int the church and shoving his way into a filled pew. Oh, Michael, you are a mess and I love you so much.

- Oh, Isobel. Also, I love the overacting in the beginning when Isobel is trying to talk about Noah vs how she changes when she starts speaking about Max instead. I love that use of Noah’s funeral to publicly mourn Max. It’s so good.

- Fuck, this flashback to the cave. To Isobel seeing Max dead. OUCH.

- Oh my god, the staple of every funeral and wake - people bringing way too much food and it’s all the same fucking thing. ISOBEL GIRL, I FEEL YOU.

- “Mrs. Evans! That’s a phenomenal cape.” Listen y’all, have I mentioned how much I love this sad disaster alien cowboy? Cuz I do. A lot. He is a MESS.

- I really love this shot of Alex watching Michael at the wake. Just that little bit of concern - it’s so Alex and I love him so much. And I operate under the “if Alex knows, Kyle knows” and vice versa, which means that Alex isn’t watching Michael like this because he knows Michael is spiraling because of Caulfield and Max, he thinks Michael is only spiraling because of Caulfield.

- Kyle being all practical and realistic about dealing with Jesse, and Alex is just like YOLO LET HIM DIE. Like I kinda love how Alex just kinda doesn’t want to deal with Jesse.

- “I’m not a murderer.” “No, you’re not. But he is.” Also, are we gonna talk about Alex’s little eyebrow raise and the look in his eyes, and how he’s still possibily talking about himself? Cuz, oh my god. I have feelings. Alex Manes, you stubborn bastard, I love you so much. (cc: @ober-affen-geil)

- “Seemed like a kiss at least worthy of a text back.” Oh Maria, my darling. You keep holding onto the hope you have for him, because girl, you are gonna need it with this massive spiral of his.

- “Regulars shouldn’t drink alone when they’re grieving.” Oof. The fact that Maria thinks Michael is acting like this because of Noah is dead kinda yikes, and really just makes me desperately want her in on everything else that is going on, because it just makes it so obvious how little she knows. But I also like that line because he comforted her in 1x07, no questions asked, and in a way she’s doing the same back for him. She’s telling him she’s there if he needs someone.

- SHERIFF VALENTI WITH HER HAIR DOWN. I LOVE IT.

- Also her and Ann. “Graffiti is an early indicator of gang violence.” Ann Evans is the epitome of suburban white mom. I love Michelle Valenti just nodding along, like yeah, I’ll get right on that and not looking into this suspicious shit surrounding your son and your son-in-law.

- Lol @ this little public display of anger between Liz and Isobel.

- Oh shit, the fact that Liz hasn’t told Rosa about the cover-up is interesting, because that means that’s definitely coming. And oh my god, I cannot wait.

- ALSO I CANNOT BELIEVE WE WERE ROBBED OF THIS HUG.

- “a glowing ooze filled egg coffin from outer space” Listen, if that’s not the most accurate outsider description of the pods ever. (Also creepy Noah scenes are creepy.)

- Liz talking about burying Max, y’all that shit HURTS. Like, obviously we know that isn’t gonna happen but the fact that Liz and Rosa are sitting talking about it as a finite ending in that moment is just... OUCH.

- “...where’s my hole t-shirt?” um... as of 1x04 it was in the backpack that Fredrico returned! What’cha doing with it, Liz?

- God, Liz and Rosa is just so perfect. “I never thought we’d get to have this stupid fight again.” I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

- Isobel, darling. What are those pajamas. They’re wild.

- “I meant to call - I heard you and Evans broke up” So that does establish that Kyle was too preoccupied dealing with Jesse, and Liz has been singularly focused on Rosa that they haven’t talked in the two weeks. Cool cool cool.

- “Lemme guess? Alien thing?” Kyle is so tired of this shit.

- Omg Maria beating people at pool. I love it. I love her. More of that please! Also this outfit she wears is super cute. FIGHT ME.

- Mimi and more alien movie references!

- “It’s been ten years since [Rosa] died.” “Not always.” I love love love the roundabout ways Mimi is telling the truth about the things she knows. When you don’t have all the facts, of course it would sound like she’s not making sense, and of course it would appear to present as dementia. But what does she know that she’s even talking in this kinda code at all? And why? And what’s up with the wandering?

- This scene with Kyle and Rosa is fabulous. “Ten years and my half-brother is still pining for my sister. Cool cool cool.”

- Hahaha “What’s your drug of choice?” “Why quarterback, you wanna party?” I LOVE THIS ENTIRE SCENE SO MUCH IT’S HILARIOUS AND FANTASTIC.

- Upon rewatching, it’s much more obvious about the hows and whys of Kyle not knowing Max was dead. Because I missed all of that the first time around, and thought it came out of left field, but it really actually doesn’t.

- Rosa is clearly like, “when the hell did Kyle fucking Valenti get so smart?”

- this continued implication that Alex shows up at the Airstream and just basically invites himself in will never not completely fuck me up about them

- A FUCKING GUITAR LIKE HOW DARE THIS SHOW

- Okay first off, where the fuck is Alex? Is this his new house? Why does Michael know where to find him? Is this Jesse’s house and Alex is housesitting while he’s in a coma? It’s also the same place as this shot Carina posted over the summer that we all died over. Can’t wait to maybe get an definite answer to that (and also, what happened to the cabin). Just the fact that Michael knows exactly where to find Alex when all through S1 Alex always came to the Airstream is again, more shit about them that just fucks me up.

- Michael mentioning Alex had said he was getting out of the Air Force to make music... um, question. Where? When? I am going to handwave this because I can handle it may have gotten cut, and Alex did talk about fighting his own battles and not his fathers in 1x13. And I can see them having talked a bit about it during their junkyard talk in 1x10 too.

- “came back the next morning after clearer heads had prevailed - wanted to show you something.” Okay, Alex, honey, We need to talk about this. Michael just saw and felt his mother die, giving him a folder with that information, with that photo, is not how you should be going about this. I get it - Alex operates on having as much information as possible. If it exists, he wants it to make the informed decision. But that’s not Michael. And Alex pushes just a bit too hard, and Michael snaps. And I love this scene because Michael says things that needed to be said between them. Michael needed to say them, and Alex needed to hear them.

-ugh that photo... but if there’s prop consistency, then it’s interesting that it took a year after the crash for Michael’s mom to end up a prisoner at Caulfield. It really makes me excited for the flashbacks, because if she wasn’t caught in the initial melee after the crash, how did it happen?

- Alex’s little “hey” when MIchael pushes the folder back into him. Just. Fuck me up, okay? I’ll be here, in the middle of the floor, sobbing. It’s just, it makes it so obvious they’re no where near being on the same page. And Alex’s asking if he left, and if Michael would come with him - it really reads like a hail mary attempt on his part. Because he’s still thinking in that moment, that Michael will say yes, like Michael always says yes. Alex doesn’t really know what it’s like for Michael to say “no” to him.

- “I wanna be good for somebody.” (and with the fucking Malex theme playing over them what the fuuuuuuuck) 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

- Hahaha Isobel using the good crystal to practice - THAT’S MY GIRL

- Handprint talk! Also lol @ Liz mentioning the handprint Max gave her in 1x13 during sexytimes and Kyle, not knowing what she’s talking about immediately just assuming she’s talking about the one from the pilot. Though it’s interesting that neither Liz nor Michael had residual physical handprints show up, but we know Liz was able to still feel Max die in 1x13

- “exorcising demons” Yoooo, I am here for this Isobel. She is determined, and she wants her life back and she is going to take it by force if necessary. Also, that’s a fantastic use for that good crystal.

- But it also breaks my heart a bit because she clearly is in this huge denial about Max. She really believes that she can bring him back if she tries hard enough, if she focuses and learns. And the way Michael is just... so resigned to this whole thing. His hope is just... gone.

- “Max’s heart was weakened before he decided to lasso lightning” Michael really does get some great lines. But omg he’s so angry, and he’s so determined to get Isobel to see reason.

- Ahhh Liz and Rosa. Also, Liz in the bathroom. Breaking down because she’s got that moment to herself to finally break. That scene in the shower. It always just fucks me up. It’s fucked me up since the first time I saw it at NYCC, and it still fucks me up now.

- These nightmares are creepy as fuck.

- ‘Don’t treat me like the little sister.” OH SNAP, LIZ ORTECHO.

- I adore messy flirty disaster Michael. And smiling through a punch? Oh, Michael.

- The way Liz’s mind works, just bouncing and making those connections and conclusions and realizing how there might still be hope for Max. Woo boy, I need to take some time to process that (and don’t get me started on Michael’s loss of hope).

- “So she wants to use Noah’s heart? He’s the actual devil.” TOO RIGHT YOU ARE, ALEX.

- Also, this is @el-gilliath‘s fault but Alex brings up that when cremated, the aliens give off toxic fumes - so what does that mean for Caulfield? All those aliens would have been burned alive someone somewhere would have noticed then, right?

- Alex is so soft looking in this scene.

- Which is hilarious cuz the next scene is him throwing the morgue doctor agains the wall.

- “I thought he was you.” Oh boy. Let’s not even begin to unpack that.

- Aaaaah this scene. Okay first off, fuck Flint. I hate him. “There’s a chain of command in this family.” Oooooh boy, so we’re gonna see that this season, right? Cuz I am so curious about the other two brothers and their involvement as well.

- “there’s a sealed incinerator at area 51, can’t exactly storm the place” I’VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU, ALEX. But it’s nice to see confirmation that Liz knows that Alex knows about everything too. Woo hoo, communication!

- “Flint was the Manes in my grade. He was always such a dick.” YESSSSSSSS.

- Michael’s speech about hope. Shit. He is just. “Hope screws people up. Hoping that your family will come and save you from the system. Hoping that anyone can be saved at all.” And poor Maria, she doesn’t know anything. Did she know about how Michael grew up? Because even Alex only knew he was living out of his truck as a rumor, and didn’t know the full extent until the junkyard talk in 1x10. So maybe Michael did have that hope for a moment in 1x13, that he went to the Pony thinking things could be different. But then Max died, and it reminded him that hoping just means more of the same shit.

- Also, Maria. Honey. Taking Michael’s keys doesn’t really mean anything. He’s a mechanic and a telekinetic alien.

- “Need help moving a body.” “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.” LOL!

- No Kyle, your life is never going to be normal again. Nope.

- “The last thing Isobel needs is to get her hopes up.” Lots and lots of talk of hope this episode.

- “I always thought it was synthetic but if it’s organic” YOU MEAN LIKE HOW LIZ HYPOTHESIZED IN 1x08? Cool cool cool. I also love how their brains work, speaking of that callback. Liz is a biomedical engineer, this is her jam. Michael seems to lean more towards mechanical engineering, especially in 1x08 how he talked about the pods being “tech” and having a seam. But I am super curious about this idea that the alien organs can be fixed in a way, essentially being in line with Liz’s chosen field of study and her career path.

- It’s so cute how Michael gets a bit squeamish before he’s just totally in awe, like he’s probably never really gotten the chance to actually know anything about his own biology, and how it differs from humans - especially not before working with Liz in S1 to develop the serum antidote.

- Liz and Rosa, omg I love them so much. This conflict Liz is dealing with, she’s so happy to have Rosa back, but she’s so angry and so mad and so upset over losing Max at the same time. i LOVE LIZ ORTECHO.

- “I’m gonna fix it” GODDAMNIT Y’ALL LIZ ORTECHO. JUST... LIZ FUCKING ORTECHO.

- I am so looking forward to figuring out what’s up with Mimi and this wandering and why she had Rosa’s bracelet from the roadside memorial.

- Poor Isobel. This is gonna be an interesting story arc to see play out. Knowing what Carina said about it, I am much more interested in letting it play out before making any decisions on it. I’m not crazy about a pregnancy story line, but who knows what Carina has in store with it.

- Zombie!Max I think it’s interesting he says, “you’re the only one I can reach” and how that ties in with Liz’s earlier remarks about the handprints. Why was Rosa the only one to get a handprint? Is it because she was the most recent one Max healed? In the pilot, Max did say, “the mark could show up” so he knew there was a possibility it wouldn’t. But what does that mean? There’s definitely something more there, and I am excited to find out.

#roswell new mexico #notso liveblogs roswell #notso rambles #rnm 2x01

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hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews · 5 years

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Untold Tales of Spider-Man 06: The Doctor’s Dilemma – by Danny Fingeroth

An unexpected gem!

Dr. Bromwell grabs Peter by the arm and tells him he must talk to him about "his double life." But Bromwell hasn't stumbled on Pete's secret identity. He's talking about the dangers Pete gets into as a Daily Bugle photographer. He asks Peter, for May's sake, to give up the job. Although Peter has worried about the dangers himself, he stiffs Bromwell, saying "I'd appreciate it if you'd mind your own business, Doctor." Regretting every word, Peter goes into an unfair critique of Bromwell and a defense of his photography work. Taken aback, Bromwell gives Pete a new prescription for May and heads toward the door. Peter calls him back and apologizes. He tells him he has considered the dangers but still thinks the reward is worth the risk. Once Bromwell leaves, Peter changes to Spider-Man, eventually web-swinging to the pharmacy to fill May's prescription.

Back at his office, Bromwell can't stop thinking about Peter. Suddenly, he gets a brainstorm. He wants to give Peter a job in the sciences instead. First he goes to Metro Hospital and talks to Dr. Gordon, who saved May's life after Spider-Man brought in the needed ISO-36 (in Amazing Spider-Man #33, February 1966). Gordon reveals that, shortly after Spidey left, a beaten and bruised Peter appeared. Bromwell doesn't know what kind of deal Peter has with Spider-Man but he suspects the web-slinger is taking advantage of him.

Out web-slinging, Spidey comes upon "an eight-foot tall, four-foot wide gent in the green spandex suit" who is trashing an armored car. He is also "amazingly fast and as strong as the Hulk." When Spidey asks for a name, the giant comes up with "Impact," revealing that he volunteered for an experiment involving radioactive steroids (a combination just asking for trouble) for which he never got paid. Now paying himself in his own way, Impact slams Spidey against a wall and escapes.

The next day, Bromwell makes a house call and finds Peter all battered and bruised. He offers Pete a job in his own office helping with his research and lab work. Peter accepts. Aunt May overhears this conversation and is wracked with guilt for letting Peter risk his life taking pictures simply because they desperately needed the money.

So, Peter goes to work for Bromwell. There he researches steroids and finds out that Impact is Walter Cobb, a family man whose mind was warped by the experiment. As the days go by, Peter works at Bromwell's office, just missing catching up to Impact at his various crime scenes. Finally, Bromwell is called to the ER to help treat some victims of Impact's latest assault. As he leaves, Bromwell asks Peter to not go out for news photos. But Peter has to go out to stop Impact. Arriving at the scene,he finds Impact holding two hostages. The police bring out Impact's wife and kids to plead with him. It appears to work, with Impact releasing his hostages. Peter starts imagining a day when his work with Bromwell will lead to greater things than his web-swinging. Then a shot rings out and Impact goes on the rampage again. Spidey tries to calm him but he is too far gone. After pounding on the wall-crawler for a bit, Impact collapses. Bromwell is on the scene and pronounces the giant dead. As Spidey swings home, he reflects on it all. "Bromwell tells me that I should think about my aunt – like I don't do that enough. Impact shows me that there's a right way and a wrong way to try to help those you love. All these lessons! But...what am I supposed to learn from them? Where's the curriculum? Where's the syllabus?"

A great ending, right? But, oops, there's more! On his way home, Peter realizes that he could be as dead as Impact and decides to give up the webs. But at dinner, Aunt May tells him to keep doing what he's doing if it's what he wants to do. The next day, Bromwell waves the Daily Bugle at Peter, indicating the front page photo Pete took, and tells him he let him down, abandoning his lab work for the very work he begged him to avoid. He tells Peter that he has done all he can and that he's letting him go from his job. Pete can tell that Bromwell is hoping he will ask for another chance but Peter doesn't. He has come to completely understand that he does not become Spidey for thrills but to help people and that Uncle Ben and Aunt May would approve if they knew. Or, as he puts it, "Love the power. Guess I'll just have to live with the responsibility."

Had you told me that a Spidey story (and a prose story at that) about Doc Bromwell witten by Danny Fingeroth was going to be cracking I’d have never believed you.

Fingeroth’s body of Spidey work is a mixed bag to put it kindly. This is the man who wrote arguably the single best page of Mary Jane ever in Web of Spider-Man #6, eloquently summing up her emotional conflict regarding her romantic feelings for Spidey. But this is also the man who editorially mandated the creation of Maximum Carnage.

And yet here he doesn’t make a single misstep.

Okay that isn’t exactly true. His opening narration makes Peter sounds like a goddam psychopath. “Love the power. Hate the responsibility.” Er….that’s not exactly true, Peter has moments of enjoyment of his power and frustrations over the burdens it places upon him. But he doesn’t truly revel in his power and typically treats his responsibilities as simply something that HAS to be done moreso than something he resents doing. But that’s nothing compared to “…to take what I need. And to make anybody who gets in my way real sorry they got there.”

WTF dude! I was half expecting that the twist here was going to be that this wasn’t Peter speaking but it was. Fingeroth nicely bookends these sentiments by the end of the story but that doesn’t change the fact those sentiments shouldn’t be there in the first place.

You can maybe just handwave this as Peter being in a really bad mood and not believing what he is thinking. But I dunno, I suspect the real intent here was to clumsily set up something to BE bookended by the end of the story and more poignantly to smack the readers in the face with the central theme of the story. This lack of subtly rears its head again towards the end of the story when Fingeroth seriously spells out for us that Impact is a dark reflection of Spider-Man and the exact ways how. Everything the dialogue says is correct and Impact is actually a very good reflection of Spidey. But couldn’t Fingeroth have been a tad more subtle about it?

But other than that this story unto itself is pretty much flawless. I say unto itself because through no fault of Fingeroth the story’s placement withint he anthology is kind of weird. It clearly takes place after ASM #33 as there are very direct references and fallout from the Master Planner Trilogy. However the nature of the story also makes it highly unlikely to take place after ASM #39 because in that issue Peter is shaken by Bromwell informing him of just how frail Aunt May is. He pretty much tells Peter that if May learns his secret she will keel over dead. So this happens between ASM #33 and #39 but the Looter story clearly happens after ASM #36. Whilst far from inconceivable that this story could happen afterwards, because the last story with the Goblin was obviously tipping the hat to ASM #39-40 this story would’ve been better placed just before the Looter story. As is it’s oddly the THIRD story in this book to take place in this extremely small and specific gap of time after ASM #36 but before ASM #39.

Enough of the nitpicks though. I said this story was a gem and I stand by that.

What pleasantly surprised me most about this story was that Fingeroth seemed to be able to handle the prose format better than every other writer thus far sans perhaps DeFalco.

He wisely knows to emphasis the inner conflicts within the characters’ heads and play up the soap opera rather than leaning in on the action setpieces.

And yet there are two significant action set pieces in this story. Indeed the crux of the whole story REVOLVES around the physical danger Peter puts himself in by going into action. Fingeroth handled these deftly. The action wasn’t over explained and painted a clear picture in your head but didn’t linger too much. Sure you might feel things would be more interesting if you could actually see things but you aren’t drifting off as the writer belabors the combination of punches and kicks Spidey lands. It’s all very streamlined and designed to support the emotional arc of the story as opposed to the action being the point unto itself or simply the means to REACH a conclusion.

In this regard Fingeroth actually edges out DeFalco. Reading/listening through DeFalco’s story the action scenes can just be boiled down to Spidey fights some thugs, drags out the fight for pictures and then one them accidentally dies the specifics don’t matter even though we do get them.

Here Fingeroth forgoes the specifics to simply give you the broad beats to the fight (Impact throws a car, Spidey webs people to safety, etc) whilst ensuring he returns to Spidey’s inner thoughts and peppering in dialogue that is moving the plot and exploring the themes, even if it is simply lightly.

In a way this is a rare example of an action set piece that works BETTER in prose than it would visually. Sure Mark Bagley or Ron Frenz could embellish the fight scene to make it look cool, but the visions of a possible future Peter imagines are more potent and organic when we simply read his train of thought like this. Were it a comic such dialogue would come off as excessive or (if communicated through art) needlessly existential. Additionally as a villain goes Impact is fairly generic, but having him not have any visual presence mitigates that because his importance is more about what he is doing and why than having a dynamic appearance.

To go back to Bromwell, he’s developed more here than he’s been in over 55 years of Spider-History. Were he written like this in his appearances he might’ve become a more beloved character. What’s great is how organic his personality feels. We learn new stuff about him but it feels like a totally logical extrapolation of what little we saw of him in the 1960s. He is a quintessential doctor and Fingeroth lends him a surprising amount of nuance. He isn’t endlessly caring, he has his limits but even so the fact that he wanted Peter to ask him for a second chance at the end was a brilliant touch. It’s a small moment but it helps make Bromwell feel more multidimensional.

And because of this characterization the story earns the pathos of Peter letting him down. You feel sad for Bromwell and for Peter that things didn’t work out for both of them.

Aunt May is also done very well here. She is in typical Aunt May mode but Fingeroth chooses to make that the central conflict of the story rather than a background element. Refreshingly though the issue isn’t that May is on her deathbed, but rather the impact (if you pardon the pun) upon her if anything happens to Peter. The story is almost a spiritual cousin to JMS’ opus ‘the Conversation’ in that it comes to a reasonable and positive resolution.

What in particular what holds this all together is the brilliant (yet rarely used) idea of treating Peter’s cover story as Spidey’s photographer as a metaphor for him being Spider-Man. It’s something that’s pretty clever when you think about it because the cover story means his loved ones go into relationships with him knowing he takes risks and potentially endangers them, just as if they knew he was Spidey.

Through treating the cover story as a metaphor Fingeroth is able to have Peter get a lot of feelings about being Spidey off of his chest. This chiefly comes in the form of his bookeneded confrontations with Bromwell, his angry (and highly unjustified) outburst at the start and his quiet resigned acceptance at the end.

Perhaps the best bi of narration in relation to Peter’s character was when Fingeroth spelled out that Peter might enjoy being Spidey but even if he didn’t he’d do it anyway because he was hooked on helping people. It eloquently emphasis the innate heroism and core of the character. And it does so in a nuanced way too as too often writers have Peter outright hate being Spider-Man or else cynically lean on the idea he’s a thrill junkie of some kind. Fingeroth gets that peter DOES like his work but that isn’t the reason he does it.

Nuance is actually the key word here. There is a lovely sequence where the story acknowledges that Peter might subconsciously be avoiding Impact out of a loss of confidence. It plays very realistically. How often in life has one bad moment shaken us up and made us hesitant to do things we previously did without even thinking about it.

Really I don’t know what else to say about this story that isn’t self-evident by just experiencing it for yourself.

Tiny issues aside it’s really quite excellent and highly recommended.

#Spider-Man #Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #Danny Fingeroth #Tom DeFalco #Peter Parker #Aunt May #May Parker

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caranfindel · 6 years

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Recap/review 14.13: “Lebanon”

THEN: They hit me right in the face with gorgeous young 1.01 Dean saying "Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days" and beautiful baby 1.01 Sam saying "we've got work to do" and we end with 14.12 and Sam furiously punching his brother and then furiously hugging him and Dean saying "let's go home" and does anything else matter? No.

NOW: We see the reflection of Sam and Dean walking up to a pawn shop, with a nice selection of guitars and sunglasses and that weird monkey that was in Rocky's Bar. The proprietor seems friendly enough. Dean flashes him a wad of hundred dollar bills because they're looking for "the really good stuff." This gains them admittance into a secret back room full of things hunters would be interested in, including a hockey mask (?) and a perfume atomizer full of dragon's breath. They tell the guy they're looking for the skull of a specific woman who was executed during the Salem witch trials, and the fact that he has it basically proves that he killed the friend of theirs who previously owned it. (Also Sam picks up a teddy bear and starts to pull the string to make it speak and the guys warns him not to and this is Dean's role, isn't it, messing with things he shouldn't be messing with? But I don't care because chastized Sam and eye-rolly Dean are precious to me.)

Sam goes through a ledger of the guy's inventory and says he's got a lot of occult objects that they should take with them. (Dean plays with the dragon's breath. Sam ducks and flinches and does the really, Dean? thing with his hands and face. I laugh again.) Dean agrees they should take the stuff home.

Title card!

The Impala zooms past a sign welcoming us to Lebanon, Geographical Center of the USA. Then we find ourselves in front of a movie theater showing Beetlejuice and Hell Hazers (All Saints' Day is coming soon, and I imagine Route 666 can't be far behind), where a group of teenagers is talking about... somebody. "People say they're brothers," a kid in a knit cap says, "but all I know is, I was standing right here, and I heard this bam from the trunk of their car. And then, this like, shallow breathing." I'm pretty sure this is a fake-out, and it will turn out he's talking about someone else, but the Impala pulls up in front of the theater and Knit Cap Kid says "that's them!"

As the Winchesters get out of the car and enter a liquor store (decorated with that Family Business neon sign from Rocky's), Sam is still reading the ledger, which lists things like a hangman's rope, fairy dust, and John Wayne Gacy's cigar box. Well, that's oddly specific! The guy working there greets the "Campbell brothers" and knows their usual order. Oh, wow. I love that they're actually known in Lebanon, and that they're going by Campbell. And we know that actual Lebanon, Kansas is too small to have a movie theater or this much business downtown, but I'm happy to handwave that.

What do you mean, "happy to handwave that?" You're always complaining about the inaccuracies regarding tiny Lebanon having traffic cams and whatnot.

Well, maybe this episode just MAKES ME HAPPY, okay?

Anyway. Sam thinks cataloguing the confiscated items would be a good way to take Dean's mind off "things," but Dean's pretty convinced nothing will ever take his mind off that.

Outside, the teens are asking where the guys even come from, and what about their weird trenchcoat-wearing sidekick, and "that kid with the dumb Bambi look on his face all the time" (!) One girl says that, whatever the deal is with these guys, they do have an awesome car, and no one can argue with that. And the other girl, Max, who seems to smitten with the first girl, gets an idea.

Inside, Sam has discovered something significant in the ledger - the "beyzoo" (no, I know that's not how you spell it), which is one of eight ancient Chinese treasures. A pearl that gives you "what your heart desires." Oooh, getting rid of Michael, maybe? But as the guys are discussing this, Dean sees the Impala drive by the window. Guess Max figured out how to impress that other girl! (BTW, there are couple of COOL old trucks on the street.)

The guys see Knit Cap Kid standing on the sidewalk looking confused, and while Sam tells him the car is dangerous to whoever stole it, Dean looks like he wants to murder someone. And yet the Winchesters are confused when the kid says he doesn't want to die. (Or get locked in the trunk!) He says Max is new and he doesn't know where she lives. Dean raises a fist, but Sam pulls him away.

MURDER. I'D MURDER THEM.

Post office. There's a poster of stamps featuring old cars behind the customer service counter. I'm really getting my old truck fix tonight. Sam comes in with his sweet anxious smile and asks for help finding the girl who washed his car, since he forgot to tip her. Post Office Lady is not amused or helpful, or the least bit swayed by his sweet anxious smile. Then Dean comes in and calls her by name and asks about her grandson and she MELTS and he gets sincere and puts his hand on hers and she does exactly what I would do, which is offer up ANYTHING YOU WANT, ANYTHING AT ALL, WOULD YOU LIKE MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER WHILE I'M AT IT? Unfortunately, all she knows is where Max's mother works.

SAM’S FACE.

(Sidebar: Have I mentioned that Sam is wearing that nice blue jacket from the episode where he killed the alpha vampire? I like it. Toss that stupid orange jacket, Sam, and wear this more often. And Dean's wearing the black jacket that I always love.)

At the restaurant where Max's mom works, we learn that she has no idea where her daughter is, because she was supposed to be in school. But the guy working in the kitchen knows February 7 is Skip Day (is it always February 7? what about when that falls on a weekend?) and that she'll probably be at a party at this old house on Route 36. (Yes, I did confirm that Route 36 is just outside of Lebanon. Yes, I did use Mapquest. I'm old school up in here, y'all.)

Party house. The little batch of delinquents has taken all the boxes of occult objects out of the Impala for some reason. Including the evil teddy bear. Luckily, someone announces "pizza's here" before a girl pulls the teddy bear's string. At some point I've got to find out what would happen if you pulled it. Fic it for me, friends! (Also, I just noticed the teddy bear's mouth is SEWN SHUT and that's not creepy AT ALL.) The camera slowly pans to a wooden box, and we watch the lid open to reveal a smoky/dusty ghost hand. With a ruffled sleeve. Uh oh.

Knit Cap Kid runs in to warn the partiers that "those guys" are looking for Max, and he's told to chill. Another teen goes into the bathroom, where the mirror frosts over and then the CREEPIEST CLOWN EVER comes out of it. Seriously, creepier than the clown in Plush, which you wouldn't think was possible.

The Winchesters pull up in yet another antique truck, where Dean greets his car with "Baby, Baby, please tell me you're not hurt." Sam's more concerned about the boxes of dangerous occult objects missing from the back seat. Ghost Kid comes running outside and the girl following him tells the brothers that he saw a clown ghost that tried to kill him. Maybe it's my imagination, or maybe Sam has a flash of crap, a killer clown ghost expression before they run into the house.

Dean announces they're FBI and everyone needs to get out, now. Once the room is cleared, he asks if "anything screams clown to you?" Sam immediately notices John Wayne Gacy's cigar box and guys, I'm ashamed to say I didn't put the two together until now. The killer clown ghost is John Wayne Gacy. And Sam is freaked the fuck out about it. "We should burn that right now," Dean says, in a lovely holding-in-the-freakout way, and Sam rushes to throw it into the fireplace. Then Dean says "I mean, this is like a best worst thing that's ever happened, because you love serial killers, but you hate clowns" and I'm DEAD. (I'm also loving TWO gifts from the Continuity Fairy in once sentence.) The lights start flashing before Sam can get his lighter lit, and then the killer clown ghost shows up and tosses Dean around. Knit Cap Kid and the girls run back inside just in time to watch John Wayne Gacy's ghost go up in flames. So the kids get the "monsters are real" speech and are told to keep it secret.

Back at the bunker, Sam's going through the occult goodies and thinks he found the magic pearl. Dean's ready to use it right now, and dismisses Sam's suggestion that they call Mary or Cas. If it doesn't work, he doesn't want to have gotten their hopes up. Sam looks distressed at the idea it won't work, but agrees. The pearl doesn't come with any instructions, so Sam suggests Dean hold it and concentrate on what his heart desires. "Michael out of my head," Dean says, and I'd have been more specific. I'd have concentrated on Michael out of my head and destroyed, and me perfectly fine, but, well, what do I know?

(Also, I KNOW all you Wincest and Destiel fans are gonna have your own ideas about what - or who - appears in front of Dean when he’s granted what his heart desires. This setup is better than sex pollen. Have fun, my kinky little friends.)

Dean clutches the pearl and concentrates, and the lights flash and then go out, and in the red emergency light we see someone in the bunker. Someone fighty, who knocks both brothers down and then pulls out a shotgun and says "don't you move," but it's a familiar voice and then the lights come on and what do you know? Winchester Surprise!

So, was anybody truly surprised? I covered the guest stars on first viewing, as I always try to do, but I noticed on rewatch that they didn't even credit JDM at the beginning of the episode. Which they sometimes do, to avoid spoilers. And yet. Has there been a single episode of this series that was more spoiled? I don't think so.

(Sidebar: What do you think would have happened if Sam had taken the pearl and made a wish? I think Michael would be gone. Because I don't think there's anything Sam wants more than saving his brother.)

Back to our story. Everyone is shocked. John thinks Sam should be in Palo Alto, apparently in his 14th year of post graduate work. He thinks he's still in 2003, and he doesn't notice his boys are older. And they apparently don't notice that his hair is very short and a lot greyer than it was when we last saw him. (I mean, really, they slapped a wig on Samantha Smith to make her look like The Last Version Of Mary, so why couldn't they do the same thing with JDM? It's distracting.) Sam figures they must have accidentally summoned John from the past. So they do what one does in this situation - sit down and drink.

John's astonished. Dean's proud. Sam's visibly anxious. We don't get to see exactly how much of the backstory they tell him, but they do tell him about the apocalypse and Lucifer and living with "an angel and Lucifer's kid." And now John thinks he died "taking out Yellow Eyes," which... not really? But okay. And they don't tell him Mary's back, until he mentions her and Sam's, all, yeah, about Mom, and then she comes in and John hears her voice and tears up and dammit. This reunion is everything I didn't think I ever wanted. I mean, I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a fan of John Winchester. He's a fascinating character and JDM does a great job with him, but he's such an awful father (don't bother arguing with me, you will not change my mind) that I can't really like him. And I'm not too impressed with resurrected Mary, either. But when these two come together... damn. It's good. It's very good. Well done, you two.

I love that the boys give them some privacy, because it's been over a decade since John saw them, but it's been even longer since he saw his dead wife, and this should really be a John and Mary reunion.

Out in the hall, Dean's gleeful and Sam's all, how the hell did this happen? Dean explains that he's wanted this since he was four years old (oh, my heart) but Sam warns that messing with time will not end well. I don't actually remember Sam being that concerned about the unintended consequences of time travel, but I'm sure there's a good reason he's bringing it up now. Dean doesn't care. Dean just wants one family dinner together (oh, my heart again, remembering his one last dinner with Mary).

Sam, sans Dean, runs into John in the library, because Mary's off making a shopping list and he decided he'd rather examine the bunker than be involved in that I guess? Okay. But then this happens.

I screwed up with you a lot, didn't I?

No, that's okay.

No, it's not. Sammy, tell me the truth.

I don't want to talk about that.

You didn't have a problem talking about it before you left.

Dad. For me, that fight, that was a lifetime ago. I don't even remember what I said. I mean, yeah, you know, you did some messed-up things. But I don't... I mean, when I think about you... and I think about you a lot... I don't think about our fights. I think about you... I think about you on the floor of that hospital, and I think about how I never got to say goodbye.

Sam. Son. I am so sorry.

I'm sorry too. But you did your best, Dad. You fought for us, and you loved us. And that's enough.

OH MY GOD. This is everything I ever wanted.

1. John admitting he was a crap parent to Sam.

2. Sam trying to sidestep that - because he's Sam Winchester and that's what he does - and John not letting him.

3. Sam finally calling him out instead of just saying nah, it's fine.

4. John calling him Sammy.

5. Sam pointing out that he didn't get a goodbye from John. (Did he ever find out that Dean got praise and an apology?)

6. John apologizing.

7. Sam forgiving him.

8. "And I think about you a lot."

9. The way Sam keeps having to stop talking and look away and make that little "hmmm" noise.

10. And the tears.

10b. The way Sam tears up even before The Talk, when he remembers them as kids trying to make Winchester Surprise.

11. The shaky voice.

12. And Sam's shirt.

13. And the way Sam's expression looks so much like his expression in Sacrifice, when he tells Dean that his confession was about how he let his brother down.

This, right here, is two minutes and 24 seconds of the best television I've ever seen. I don't care what else this episode does, this 2:24 is worth it. And yes, this is three weeks in a row that Jared Padalecki has ripped my heart out of my chest and STOMPED ON IT.

And I love it.

Meanwhile, Dean gets the shopping list from Mary. Sam finds him and tells him he's right, because Sam also just got everything he ever wanted, and then offers to go shopping with him. (Saaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmm!!!!!!!)

When they get to town, the guys split up - Sam to the grocery store, Dean to the liquor store. Dean's surprised to see the liquor store guy, the one who remembered his "usual" earlier in the day, has no idea who he is. If Dean had ever seen "It's a Wonderful Life," he might say this is just like when George Bailey goes into Martini's Bar and isn't recognized. But apparently Dean Winchester, pop culture aficionado, has never seen that movie (no, I haven't gotten over that, and I never will) so he doesn't recognize a classic uh oh, we changed the course of history moment when he experiences it.

Meanwhile, Sam steps out of the grocery store and finds that neither Max nor the postal clerk recognize him. And then he sees a wanted poster in the post office window. Dean Winchester, wanted for assault, murder, and credit card fraud. Whoops! He trots to the car, where Dean is waiting, and tells him they have a problem. "Yeah, we do," says Dean. "Check this out."

He shows Sam his phone and it's a video of SAM IN GLASSES AND A BLACK TURTLENECK AND SLICKED BACK HAIR GIVING A TED TALK. HE RUNS A LAW FIRM AND LOVES KALE. IT IS THE SECOND MOST AMAZING THING I'VE SEEN TONIGHT.

HE'S STEVE JOBS.

So, those of you who were spoiled... did you know about this? Or did they actually keep THIS AMAZING THING under wraps?

Sam Jobs tells his audience that being your best leaves no time for hobbies or a family, and Sam has seen enough. He tells Dean about the wanted poster, and Dean says yes, of course he googled himself too ("a lot of beheadings," hee!!!) and wonders if there are alternate versions of them running around. Sam thinks it's a "temporal paradox," and time is self-correcting, changing to the new one. If they don't fix things, they'll become those alternate versions of themselves. "Well, I'm cool," Dean says, "but you're, ugh." Sam's less worried about them, and more worried about what else might have changed.

(Sidebar: You know, I could quibble about why bringing John forward in time has such a significant butterfly effect, but bringing Mary back, and their other time travel, and Henry's time travel, changed nothing. I absolutely could. But I choose not to, because SAM JOBS, Y'ALL. But okay, let's think about it. 2003 John would have disappeared while Sam was at Stanford. Dean wouldn't have gone to get Sam. Or Sam would have refused to go. Maybe the hurt on both sides was still too fresh. Maybe that's why Dean's hunting alone, and Sam's an internet-famous lawyer.)

What else has changed, you might ask? How about ZACHARIAH? That's right, my favorite angel is back. And with him is ORIGINAL FLAVOR CAS WITH HIS FLUFFY HAIR AND THINGS JUST KEEP GETTING BETTER AND BETTER. Zachariah calls him "Constantine" and Castiel says "I don't understand that reference" and THANK YOU BABY JESUS, I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID TO DESERVE THIS, BUT THANK YOU. They enter Max's mom's restaurant and ask who's been messing with time. (Because she would know?) And if they don't start talking, he'll have Cas murder all of them. "My name is Castiel," he intones solemnly. "I'm an angel of the Lord." YES YOU ARE. He reveals himself like he did to Dean (no, not like that, jeez) with the shadow wings. Outside, the Winchesters see the bright light of an angelic reveal coming through the restaurant windows, and they know something's up.

They herd everyone out of the restaurant, and are shocked to see Cas and Zachariah. Zachariah is equally surprised to see them. He says they had big plans for the Winchesters, but then their father disappeared and... and he doesn't finish, so we'll never know why yoinking John out of 2003 changed any of that vessel stuff. (Handwave!) Cas, of course, doesn't know them, and when Zachariah orders him to kill them, he complies.

Dean pulls out an angel blade but is, of course, unwilling to actually kill Cas, so he starts hitting him with other things. And Cas, for whatever reason, doesn't just put a finger on his forehead and kill him dead. (Handwave!) Zachariah chokes Sam and asks him what they did, even though he can't talk because he's choking (handwave!) and Sam acts like he's trying to speak so Zachariah gets closer to hear him, and Sam stabs him with an angel blade. Cas continues fistfighting with both of them, and slams Sam head-first into a table a couple of times, leaving him spitting blood on the floor. Which Sam uses to paint an angel-banishing sigil while Cas is choking Dean. Smart Sam for the win!

Bunker. Pretty bruised Dean has explained the temporal paradox, and John accepts that he has to go back, or else Mary will probably disappear. "Okay," he says. "I mean, me versus your mom, that's not even a choice." DAMMIT JOHN WINCHESTER DO NOT MAKE ME CARE ABOUT YOU. Elsewhere, pretty bruised Sam explains it to Mary, and tells her John won't remember anything.

John tells Dean he never meant Dean to have this kind of life. He's proud of him, but he hoped he'd be able to have a normal life, with a family. "I have a family," Dean says. They sit down and have one final family meal together, and everyone's quiet and sad until John points out that they can either think about what's going to happen, or appreciate what they have right now. They cheer up and listen to Bob Seger (well, we listen to Bob Seger) and talk and laugh and have the family dinner Dean has always wanted.

Later, while doing the dishes, Sam says how unfair it is that they all had this and then have to throw it away, and John has to go back to being Dad. He thinks it would be nice for John to go back knowing what he knows now. "I used to think that too," Dean says, and admits that he's blamed both John and Mary for their crappy lives. And if they could send him back to 2003, or even earlier, maybe none of the crap would happen. "But here's the problem. Who does that make us? Would we be better off? Maybe. But I gotta be honest, I don't know who that Dean Winchester is. And I'm good with who I am. I'm good with who you are."

Later. Mary and John are holding hands, and I guess they're doing the thing now. I'd hoped they'd at least let these two have one last roll in the hay (especially since I'm pretty sure Mobby is permanently done after this), but no. They have a very sweet goodbye and their sons are brokenhearted and I am too. John tells his boys to take care of each other and Sam says "we always do." That's a nice change from telling Dean to take care of Sam, isn't it? He tells them both (BOTH) that he's proud of them and loves them, and they have a three-way hug and Sam wipes his eyes and Dean says "love you too" and I REALLY CAN'T, BOYS, YOU HAVE TO STOP. Then John takes Mary's hand again and Sam crushes the pearl (why does Sam have to be the one to do it?) and John glows and then fades away.

We get a quick glimpse of downtown Lebanon returning to normal, and the three teens talking about how cool it is that "those guys hunt monsters," and then we're back to the bunker. Cas walks in the door and sees the remaining Winchesters, obviously distressed, and asks what happened. "Well, there's a story," says Dean.

And finally, we see the Impala WITH HER ORIGINAL KANSAS PLATE. John's asleep in the driver's seat when he gets a phone call from Dean. "No, I'm okay, I just had one hell of a dream. No, it was a good one."

GUYS. GUYS.

When I heard there was going to be a musical episode for the 200th, I was sure it would suck. When I heard about the Scooby Doo crossover, I cringed, because I knew it would be awful. WHY AM I ALWAYS SO WRONG.

Eh, who cares why. Let's just appreciate what we were given. Happy 300, my friends. Here's to 300 more.

(Please help me stay unspoiled for future episodes, thanks!)

#spn #recap #tv recaps #14.13 #things that make my heart hurt #sam winchester #dean winchester #john winchester #mary winchester

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Comparing Season 6 and Season 10 - which one do you think makes more sense as a whole, which one better pulls of seeming like what happened/was revealed at the end of the season is what was supposed to happen/was planned all along?

I may be biased, but for me, season 6 by miles. And almost all of that is Edlund desperately cramming everything that had happened so far into something that either made sense or handwaved why it didn’t make sense in an effectively emotional enough episode that by the end of TMWWBK you sort of feel like you’ve actually got your answers and Cas has been completely honest and open with YOU at least, making it that much easier to handle what was going on.

I think for me season 10 was poorly handled in ways that weren’t particularly well addressed and the only offered explanation ever was “oh it was Amara after all” which in the context of season 11 gives us some more characterisation to begin to pull things together, though without addressing everything. Still if we’re dealing with things as a whole, season 10 doesn’t have an episode that scrapes everything together in the post-Edlund era and what we get only within the confines of season 10 is extremely unsatisfactory, even if later canon eases it a little bit, along with just… not being actively in SPN season 10 as it airs :P

Going off my memories of being in the fandom at the time, we had a lot of issues with things like

Dean’s incomplete demon reversal (so far as in 10x02, written by Dabb who invented the cure repeating the correct steps, then in 10x03 Buckleming not following through with them)

“the river ends at the source” “never mind I was screwing with you”

Did Cain still have the Mark after 9x11? lasting drama until 10x14, and still debated afterwards especially by people who had thought he didn’t have the Mark and had passed it entirely to Dean now being very confused

What the fuck was this about Lucifer having the Mark and how did that last minute addition affect everything?

the Colette parallel being wildly mis-applied by fandom but also issues with the show’s fear to explore it leading to “we are all the colette” episodes with lasting drama until 10x22, where Charlie, Sam and Cas all variously and persistently seemed to be suggested to be capable of being a team effort to pull Dean out of the darkness. 10x22 also wasn’t enough to stop Dean, and the final confrontation was with Sam, I think a general consensus was - especially again with season 11′s help - that the memory of Mary drew him back/unleashed Amara metaphorically who unleashed Mary literally - it wasn’t a great note to end on without season 11 context (as a whole, so, like, a whole YEAR later) that Sam had “won” the battle to bring Dean back from himself where Cas had failed, and the subtext and show and fandom most of all had made SUCH a huge deal out of Colette, after 9x11 over-told her story instead of retelling Cain & Abel, that it was set up with the expectation that saving Dean was a romantic quest, not a brotherly one. 10x14 sort of helped set things to rights with the list, but the fighting about what it all meant at the time was AWFUL, and though I think I was right and the show bore that out and these days I type it all with confidence, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of buried wank about it that could be dragged out if we want >.>

the fact there wasn’t really an overarcing Mark of Cain plot except “Dean is suffering” with the only 3 actual plot points they could do with it being demon!Dean, kill Cain, and remove Mark. Because of that, everything else is literally set-dressing to fill the time and add drama in between, but these were played with poorly and there wasn’t any subterfuge we weren’t in on (i.e. sam stealing the book) vs Cas betraying both the Winchesters and US. The only retcon offered in the end was Death’s exposition about the Darkness.

people literally forgetting which order episodes came out in and being very confused about why Amara wasn’t released when Dean was 14 in 10x12 even though he didn’t kill Cain for 2 more episodes (like, within weeks of 10x14 airing, I swear)

the understandable disappearance of Cole but bizarre application of that hunter called Rudy who popped up in his place and featured in 10x23 along with Cas for Dean’s guilt trip. Even if Cole and TAW sucked ass, it’s much easier to understand the emotional impact of what happened to Rudy if you assume he has the exact same backstory as Cole and the same nonsense happened to Dean twice in the same year :P

Pre-season hype about Rowena made a huge deal out of the Grand Coven, and for a brief moment it seemed like there might be a witch plotline, including new lore dumps about different types of witches in 10x07, characters like Olivette the Hamster, etc, but they squandered her first season and 10x19 was as close as we got to any pay off to her actual storyline

Then Oskaar happened and that was like ??? Okay just introduce him in the second to last episode and throw us into that emotional situation

the entire cure coming out of nowhere as a random last minute macguffin instead of having been anything they put together over the season - even though the book of the damned thing showed up in 10x11 it changed substantially from the clue Charlie left with (a less than 100 year old book with a library reference number found on an antique rare book website, based on a real book, which we all picked over and were left wondering if the plot was to be about some sort of occultism thing as a result) to a much different lore. Then there were a few episodes dealing with it and the codex, the actual spell had no real struggle, and Crowley delivered all the pieces while Cas stood around scowling and Rowena stood around in chains eye-rolling. Compare season 13′s pacing with Sam and Dean cobbling together what they needed from halfway through the season, and being on the mission to get to the AU from episode 9, with relatively little of the endless sitting around googling and being frustrated of past seasons but ESPECIALLY season 10 where Sam was futilely trawling the results of googling “mark of cain” from mid-late season 9 through to like, 10x18 when an actual brief plot appeared around it directly.

I think all of it points to a problem of working forwards from where they were instead of backwards to tidy up what was left. In season 6 Edlund took as many loose plot threads, from how Sam lost his soul, what was up with Crowley and Cas, the angel war, explanations for Sam and Samuel working together, why eve happened, everything, and put it all together to explain the elements of the season so far in a new light. Despite how disastrous that season was, PRETENDING you knew like you meant to do it all along glosses over inconsistencies in Samuel’s story or Cas and Crowley’s 6x10 interactions, and makes them relatively inconsequential when most of the details add up.

The same thing works with the Lucifer as Sam’s vessel storyline, in the sense that while Azazel’s plan is fucking ridiculous in its over-complex bizarre attempt to find a worthy true vessel that Heaven had fated, comparing season 1-2 to season 5 head on is bad, each season explains itself from the last in enough of a way and with enough knowledge of what already happened that really despite vast inconsistencies in the lore, by 5x22 we are pretty much all on board to accept the way it all played out because they use what was previously written to build up Sam’s arc, and little details thrown in towards the end like Brady and then Lucifer revealing ALL of Sam’s closer rando peeps had been demons, tidy up more and more loose ends and there’s left with plausible deniability about a lot of the issues.

In season 10 they kept on introducing elements instead of working with what they had already established, and also discarded what seemed like major plot hooks for Rowena and Cole, one annoyingly, one completely metatextually understandably and fuck TAW, I’m glad the show never brought Cole back as soon as rumours of him groping fans appeared, and it makes me genuinely trust that the SPN set is a safe place. But yeah.

Things they set up and could have worked with, were the Cas’s grace arc, which was resolved to a small personal satisfaction to Cas without any major plot impact except we could stop worrying about when Cas would get sick and die from bad grace, or steal more.

The demon!Dean issue was bad writing from Buckleming re: was he still a demon or not, but given Dean was supposed to be struggling with succumbing to darkness the season actually kept him almost completely level without any significant relapses, even after killing Cain. The sense of needing a functional Dean Winchester to keep hunting monsters and prop up the show as both the carrier of the mytharc, the emotional core, and the go-between between Sam and Cas even when the show was trying to figure out if Sam and Cas could function without Dean, it was all still so much about Dean that in 10x21 when they’re doing the cringeworthy “for Dean” thing and Rowena rolls her eyes like “I barely know the man”, I was actually applauding Buckleming snark thinking they maybe briefly had a handle on how ridiculous Dean’s position in the narrative was. (Listen, this was the last 10 minutes of my innocence about how awful Buckleming could be, leave past!me alone. She’s sweet and precious and not bitter :P) In any case, a more effective season would have utilised him more to slip and slide between light and dark and explore it in much deeper detail, but balancing that with a procedural formula doesn’t work as well and they were lacking enough philosophers on staff. I think the Dabb era writing team could handle it, because Yockey, Perez, and Glynn especially, who seems to have a psychology background based on her writing, all have a sharp attention to the exact things in emotional arcs that would have made it work better, even just as it was. Since this was a weaker writing team where Robbie, Bobo and Dabb episodes were little islands of excellence and the motw were fun but more shallow even with strong foreshadowing themes, it just didn’t pay off.

I think the biggest waste of time was “the river ends at the source” which was either Buckleming trying to introduce a concept and hoping someone else dealt with it, or an agreed plot hook which never materialised, or Metatron literally spoke the truth, that the line had only ever been written to mess with us. However 10x23 could have actually included more of a “river ends at the source” sort of slant and had Death confirm it in so many words because Amara really did sort of seem to be the answer to the question. In 10x10 it seemed like they knew where the season was going, but by 10x17 it was obvious they DIDN’T, and it was during 10x18 that the plot actually got hashed out and Robbie was handed heavy revisions to make to change the Stynes to end of season villains and the Book of the Damned was going to be used how it was. I think this is really weak plotting, as someone who always puts in fun lines and then attempts like crazy to pay off on them. My first novel has the line “you can’t talk to me yet” and I play through that the whole book until they CAN talk and make it a major motif, goal and in the end try to explain it as best I can about how it’s all plot relevant and why using that for tension to put off the explanations and such was a valid thing to throw at my main character, and then the springboard to more adventure when she was ready for it. I literally do not understand putting a portentous line into your story, and not becoming desperately eager to answer it or twist something into revealing how it all fits at the end, if not basing your entire story off of it. Sam and Dean seemed wildly uncurious about how to apply that or what it means.

In season 6 one of the more frustrating things is the “it’s all about the souls” line because Dean fails to investigate until someone or other rolls their eyes and makes it all clear to him. But we get a few more reminders in Cas’s presence, until we find out his plan, and Crowley repeats that line in 6x20 when making his sales pitch to Cas, if I’m remembering rightly (I hope so :/) and so despite Dean’s infuriating lack of investigation (not that he had a great deal of leads, but still - you could build a plot around it by GIVING him a lead, he’s the fictional character and you’re the writer :P) at the very least they repeat the motif in at least 6x17 and 6x20 to my memory, before the souls thing becomes a lot more obvious about Cas taking the purgatory souls and we’re allowed to actually discuss what he’s up to instead of the vague hints Atropos and Rachel give that they know his plans. 6x07 also hints early on that Purgatory is full of monster souls if you add it all up - the writers knew they were doing SOMETHING with this even if it took to the end of the season for it to all come together. (And that’s something that’s clearly and overarcing plot that Gamble oversaw because she wrote 6x11 and the line then appears in multiple episodes around the place, so that’s not just something Edlund tidied up but an actual effort to write the season well.)

Throwing aside the “river ends at the source” line is wildly frustrating because it wouldn’t have been too hard to apply it thematically and even keep Metatron being a douche while giving the viewer a pay off anyway for our own satisfaction, by showing it had been a theme all along anyway. You CAN squint at season 10 and analyse it through that lens but it’s exhausting when the show doesn’t give us the themes on a platter. It also shows that the plotting is careless and they’re experimenting, and rather than working with what they have, this is in a path of episodes where they’re discarding some plotlines, and we’re beginning to have end of season plotlines hastily pasted onto the end of the season, but they make very little of any of the work already done to build up the season as we’d seen it so far.

Add onto that Charlie being murdered for manpain to motivate some things into action and all the random elements being used, and the sense that Crowley, Cas and Rowena all abruptly ran out of a plotline that had been intended to utilise them and put on a side character duty away from Sam and Dean, the season is extremely messily and carelessly written, and without any real attention to detail to its own themes and characters and plotlines. Even if they’d gone into the season not particularly expecting where to go, they brought a lot to the table early on but then quickly wiped a lot of it off, and brought a lot more stuff to the table instead, which makes season 10 a really wonky, unfinished feeling product as a thing on its own, and the overall story is scrappy and carelessly plotted.

And that is speaking just about the easy plot stuff without getting into the absolute mess of speculation from the Destiel side of fandom wondering wtf was going on with the seeming build up to crypt scenes, colette, the grace cure, etc, that made up the bulk of the speculation but makes actually analysing expectations vs presented product completely impossible to evaluate on that side of things because as always Destiel speculation really overshoots what is expected and was really running wild at that point. I mean, not being judgemental because that was the year I was right in the thick of it. 3 years clear of it now, some of it seems really silly, but those 3 things all seemed clearly built up to our eyes, and we got the reverse crypt scene we’d been expecting since before the season started, and we got the Colette reference which slotted Cas firmly into place as a reminder of how Cain’s peeps lined up against Dean’s, as well as Cas asking Dean to stop, which satisfied the terms and conditions of Dean resisting walking in Cain’s footsteps with the overall set up of the scene. With the way Cas got his grace back and then some other rando cure popped up where Rowena of all people made the sacrifice, I really can’t help feeling like the conspiracy theorist who knows they were right but with the way it all shook out, only people who knew the conspiracy would understand how it didn’t happen and it’s very hard for me to look at that and say that some non-Cas-related cure was coming all along, given the conspicuous dropping of one plotline sort of day of picking up the next >.> But I’ll cede that from my position I might be a bit compromised on that one.

Anyways. To me season 10 is a disaster that only season 11 really justifies, while season 6 has some truly low points but in the end the actual writing skill hauls it through so that it creates the illusion that there was consistency, if you ignore everything outside of the text suggesting it may have been as poorly planned as season 10. Planning isn’t everything - it’s what you do when confronted with the unplanned wire tangle in front of you that really marks how well they were written, and just shoving it under the table and putting a new wire tangle down vs actually unpicking it and making them as neat as possible? Gamble slam dunks Carver :P

#Asks #season 10 #we don't talk about season 6

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wtf-hollywood · 6 years

Text

My first post is a repost. Deal with it.

I wrote this months ago after seeing The Mummy. It was on my main, and I recently have been thinking about other movie rewrites and shit, so, hey, yet another blog.

Lets start with the mummy movie. The antagonist is fucking strong, but the protagonists are lame.

So we’re going to do better. We start by getting a restraining order against Tom Cruise, and a costumer who can do “Sexy, but empowering” for our Egyptian Princess. Then we strike out all references to Set, and instead use Apep, who is basically the evil god of ancient Egypt that these movies keep wanting. We spill some exposition in the mummification scene about how mummification was the ideal method of burial in ancient Egypt, and Ahmanet’s deal was specifically not mummification, but ritual execution and imprisonment, possibly handwaving historical inaccuracy in the law and order part by making it explicit that this whole “bound alive in bandages, put in a sealed sarcophagus, and submerged in mercury” thing was him basically taking his best guess at how to make it as hard as possible for her to come back.

Next, we make our protagonist an awesome archaeologist who isn’t a cis male. Like, maybe we go Lara Croft, but less “tomb raider” and more “properly trained archaeologist who does things by the book but cannot fucking wait to learn shit.” So she finds this site in Egypt, or we can keep the “why the hell is there Egyptian stuff all the fucking way out here!?” thing, whatever, but she finds the site and says “Ho-ly shit, this is a big fuck all prison for someone they didn’t want getting up. I cannot wait to crack it open and see who was such a big bad!” And we get a very speedy montage of her doing basic archaeology, then cut to her cracking open the sarcophagus with a notebook full of drawings and notes about the site next to her.

And I mean, otherwise, we can follow the majority of the 2017 movie outline. We just don’t bring in Prodigium, and we have better characters. And we have actors for any Egyptian characters that are at least vaguely ethnically correct.

Side benefit- we can have some seriously empowering ho yay between the archaeologist protag and the Egyptian princess. Maybe Ahmanet can take a living disguise for a limited time and uses that to try to get close to Archaeologist Chick and we get some very sweet GALS BEING PALS scenes before its revealed that this awesome person is actually the Egyptian princess who wants to unleash Apep on Earth. But would also really like to do that with said Archaeologist chick by her side.

Oh, and we finish up with Prodigium coming in during a mid-credits scene, because lets not fucking pretend we’re not trying to pull a Marvel deal. We could use Dorian Gray instead of Dr. Jekyll, too, because getting some canon bi representation on screen would be kinda cool. So, end of the Mummy, Ahmanet is dealt with, definitely sealed back up and not killed, because we’re establishing an antagonist-based franchise, here, and Archaeology Chick is aware of, but not part of, Prodigium.

Alternatively, we could kick the “Ambition is Evil” trope to the gutter, and let archaeology chick redeem Ahmanet through the power of “Look at this cool new world you could have power over without slaughtering people.” And lesbian cuddles.

For the second movie, we could go with a Creature From The Black Lagoon movie. I mean, Shape of Water just came out, and is essentially an iteration of that creature, but it’s Fox, not Universal, so whatever.

We’re going to keep the Brazilian setting of the ‘54 movie, but we’re going to make a concerted effort to have a primarily Latinx cast. In this version, however, Gillman is some manner of eldritch god. Worshipped by an indigenous tribe centuries ago, but left starved for faith since then. Hell, we’ll throw Western Europe under the bus they oh-so-richly-deserve-to-be-hit-by and say that European conquerors killed the tribe. So the god has been left in a semi-submerged temple for centuries. Alone. And bored.

Now some asshole American has showed up, paying locals to aid their expedition, looking for “aztec gold.” (Plenty of people tell them that Aztecs lived in Central America, and proceed to list off tribes that were located in what became Brazil until they realize the asshole isn’t listening.)

They find this previously completely unknown temple, and the American strides right the fuck in, while the locals are all talking about how important it is, and that they should call the local college, and so on. Then realize that if they don’t do something, Asshole American will strip the place of anything that might be valuable, and destroyed the rest through negligence, by the time archaeologists get there. We could put in a “Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It” shout out to Asskicking Archaeologist Chick from The Mummy here for a bit of arc welding.

So the locals rush in to look for Asshole American. They carefully shuffle around, and eventually find him.

Or his corpse.

He’s in an obviously ceremonially important basin, with giant fucking gashes in him.

The locals of course decide that there’s some kind of dangerous animal in the temple, and they need to get out. And probably call someone.

This is where they find they are completely unable to find the exit, even though it didn’t seem that big, or that labyrinthine going in.

The movie then plays out like a bit of a slasher, a bit Aliens, a bit Haunted House, while the bored god makes sport of them. Maybe there could be a sort of Saw-like deal, where mostly they’re put in death traps that have an out. Those outs could be various things that strengthen the god, and maybe there’s one big one towards the end where the locals have managed to reunite, and the out is for them to worship the god.

You could even get some Designated Asshole Victims here, maybe through a B Plot about corporate exploitation of nature, or some cartel fucks. This allows the locals to be put in positions where someone has to die, but it doesn’t have to be them. The god doesn’t care who dies, they care that someone kills someone else in a ritual dedicated to him. Maybe one of the locals buys in early because they’re sympathetic to the god’s concerns about the natural world, and a bit radical, and it doesn’t take much for the god to goad them into slitting some corporate exec’s throat.

End of the movie, the locals escape. It’s a personal win. It’s the thing they care about, that they live. The god isn’t dealt with in anything even approaching a permanent fashion, but he’s not powerful enough to be anything more than a monster that haunts that temple. For now.

We could get a mid-credits scene that shows Prodigium monitoring the temple, but taking a “wait and see” approach to it. Maybe they actually care about the lives of the people who live around there and not ravaging the wilderness, and mention that going in would risk undue collateral damage.

There’s no reason you couldn’t make a good, faithful, adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I mean, you’d want to skip the part where Frankenstein’s Monster immolates himself after killing Victor, but otherwise, you could just do a straight adaptation.

But, lets say you want a new take.

Why not make it a love story?

Replace Ambitious Asshole Victor Frankenstein with a med student who flunked out after the death of their beloved. Med Student was already into some pretty experimental shit that the admins frowned upon, and Deceased Lover donated their body to science. Maybe Med Student’s friend sees Deceased Lover being brought in, and slips Med Student in to say their last good byes.

But Med Student has other ideas.

They steal Deceased Lover’s body, or at least their head, or brain, and maybe some stuff for the experimental gene therapy and tissue rejuvenation stuff they were looking at before flunking out.

Or hell, maybe Med Student convinces Friend to help. Actually, that’d be pretty cool, especially if Friend’s name is something that is just similar enough to Igor.

Anyway, they make off with Deceased Lover, and they start the work of applying Experimental Gene and Tissue Rejuvenation Tech to Deceased Lover.

And it works.

Mostly.

There are some complications, and Deceased Lover doesn’t recognize Med Student, or Friend, and isn’t too rational, or controlled, upon waking up. Maybe Deceased Lover’s groaning and such draws attention, and between Deceased Lover seeming to have Come Back Wrong, and Someone Coming, Med Student and Friend flee. Deceased Lover lashes out in instinct at the person who investigated, killing them with inhuman strength, and Deceased Lover is alone. They slowly come to full consciousness, and slowly begin to realize that Med Student left them. They brought them back, and then left them, but not before showing an expression of horror and disgust.

Deceased Lover tries to find old friends and family, but is rebuffed in horror by the people who last knew them to be dead.

Then Prodigium gets involved, because someone reported a person apparently coming back from the dead. They attack Deceased Lover on sight.

Overall, the movie plays out similarly to Frankenstein, except, perhaps, in timescale. At the end, Prodigium decides to let Deceased Lover be, provided they don’t become a threat. Prodigium has Med Student’s research, but so does Deceased Lover, and Deceased Lover has realized that there is something about them that makes the living fear them. Deceased Lover’s best shot at not living alone until they kill themselves is to 1) find other monsters, 2) create more of themselves, or 3) join Prodigium.

I personally like the idea that they decide to create their own society, creating a third faction that can oppose both the monsters and Prodigium in the franchise. This could be presented in the mid-credits scene.

The complication with this route for the Frankenstein movie is that you can’t really use the name Frankenstein, because it’s just corny unless you’re doing a direct adaptation. But you could just call it Promethean or something similar, it’s fine.

This is probably a good point to bring in Dracula, and it could be the Dark Universe’s Period Piece to mirror Captain America. We’ll set it in the early 1900s instead of the late 1800s, though, because I forgot about this as I writing, and cars were decently available in the early 1900s, but almost completely unavailable in the late 1800s. Early 1900s still works quite well.

We start with a narrator who is dictating a report on a case handled by Dr. Van Helsing. It’s a “How We Got Here” intro. The narrator’s voice is feminine, so audiences may expect Van Helsing to be getting a gender lift in this version, but the narrator never speaks in the first person.

We’re going to embrace some parts of various versions of Dracula, and kind of weld them together. We start by making up some history, saying that a Wallachian prince set out in a deranged, and desperate mission to establish a hold on what would become the British Isles. He managed to build a castle there, but was lost to history otherwise. The reason he wanted to do this is not given particularly straight, but we use some bad christian eschatology, and have it be some kind of religious quest, because we’re totally going to embrace the whole blood drinking/eternal life thing from Christian tradition as an impetus for Dracula’s origin.

So, Prince Dracula is some mad Wallachian prince, maybe he’s actually exiled, and he goes and builds a castle in the British Isles on a shaky religious justification. We get a very bare cliff notes version of this in the intro, and it really just sets up why in our next scene we see a British real estate agent walking up to a castle in bad disrepair, on a small island in the middle of a lake. Hell, we’re going to go super symbolic, and make it a caldera lake. I honestly don’t know how likely it is for a caldera to exist on the British Isles, but, eh, fuck it.

So, the real estate agent is writing to their fiance over breakfast in their B&B, explaining that the castle was owned by some super private individual, and pretty much completely unknown to the outside world until recently, when said owner was committed to an institution and his property liquidated. So now the agent’s firm has acquired the land, and they’ve been sent to determine whether it’s a better investment to tear the castle down, or repair it.

Deep inside the castle, they find a very odd chapel. It looks normal enough at first glance, but a closer look reveals that every saint has a monstrous face, and angels and demons have traded places.

Also, there’s the altar, which seems to be hollow.

The Agent who is completely untrained in archaeology cuts themselves while looking the scene over, deeming it “creepy as fuck,” and making a note of it before moving on. There’s a close up of the blood dripping through a crack in the altar, and a sound that Agent dismisses as just the settling of an old building.

As it gets dark, Agent calls it a night, and heads back to their B&B, where they get various ominous warnings about that island. One of which is that its known for having vicious wolves who only come out at night. Which Agent dismisses as ludicrous, because wolves have been extinct in Britain for a decade at least. The person who mentioned it just gives a knowing look and walks away.

Agent goes back the next day to continue their work. They note that things are slightly different in the chapel, but doesn’t think much of it. Figures a bird knocked shit over, or something.

Time gets away from Agent, and they find themselves walking back to their car after the sun has dropped below the trees of the surrounding forest. And they hear a howl. They dismiss it. Must be hearing things. Then there are more. They hurry back to their car.

It starts to rain. Hard. And the road goes through winding forests, and there are those howls, getting closer. There’s a quick shadow bolting across the road, making them lose control for a harrowing trip across the bridge from the island to the ring, and a sudden peal of thunder distracts Agent just as they make it across, causing them to crash into a tree. They call a tow, but wind up having to walk to the B&B in the rain when told that the area has no drivers on the road and he’ll have to wait til morning.

Next day, he gets a cab, and we get to play a little homage to the carriage in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie. Back at the castle, shit has definitely changed, and now Agent is seeing apparitions. Also, there’s some weird old man there, who introduces himself as a descendant of Dracula, and a relative of the man who previously owned the castle. A relative whom holds a copy of the deed, and persuasive arguments about the ownership of the castle. But he’s less interested in arguing over some small sum of money than he is in purchasing property in London and moving some of his more prized items there.

And then it plays out pretty similarly to the Dracula story, but with more “deal with the devil” and “dark inversion of communion.” Yes. More. Agent’s Fiance gets bit, and becomes a vampire. Van Helsing is called in, and is in fact a woman, but her voice doesn’t match the narrator’s. Dr. Van Helsing can totally be a woman, there were tons of women doctors in the 1800s.

Dracula starts a reign of terror on London, and Dr. Van Helsing has to reach out to others for help. Fortunately, she has a group of learned men and women, mostly women, who gather to trade stories, collaborate, etc. Mostly after going on expensive expeditions that polite society considers extremely wasteful and pointless. Their motto is “Prodigium de monstrum” (ess. “Prodigy out of monsters”), and they’ve proudly taken on the name The Prodigal Circle.

In the fight, Van Helsing dies, but Dracula is defeated, partially because of Mina’s ability to fight on his level as she resists his control.

Finally, it is revealed that Mina is the narrator, who has taken Van Helsing’s position in The Prodigal Circle, guiding their transition into a vigilant order from Van Helsing’s notes and instructions after being inducted by Van Helsing in one of her vigils over Mina when Mina was her patient.

The mid-credits scene shows Prodigium scientists removing Van Helsing’s body from storage, preserved through something between magic and science, as Mina, who doesn’t look a day older, supervises from above..

That is four fucking movie premises. And I think that’s enough for tonight. If there’s interest, I could write up premises/outlines for Wolf Man; Prodigium, the conclusion of Phase 1; and maybe a start of Phase two.

#Dark Universe #Universal Horror #Dracula #The Mummy #Creature From the Black Lagoon #Frankenstein #Frankenstein's Monster #Monsters #Universal Studios Monsters #The Dark Universe #Universal Studios Cinematic Universe

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finalproblem · 7 years

Text

Willing Suspension

So, six months later... *cough*

Fans have had a lot of issues with alleged inconsistencies in Sherlock Series 4--especially The Final Problem. Some I agree with, many I don’t, and others I’m undecided on or just don’t care about.

But there is one issue that, to my mind, carries more weight than any of the others.

It starts with the “missing glass” scene.

But note that I said my issue starts with this scene. It’s not the scene itself.

Sure, I know lots of people didn’t like that Sherlock Holmes, the most observant man in the world, didn’t notice there was no glass. It was even the first thing someone who’s had zero contact with fandom and had never discussed the show with me before brought up as a complaint when the episode unexpectedly came up as a conversation topic soon after it aired.

And I get why people have issues with the scene, I do.

But for me personally... meh. 🤷 I don’t mind it. The question of how Eurus had the glass taken away before her brother arrived is easily covered by the fact that she controlled the entire prison staff. And Sherlock’s writers have long since set up the idea that Sherlock gets worse at thinking when he becomes emotional, a trait that can be reasonably supported with ACD canon:

He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.

Meeting your long-forgotten sister in a secret island prison counts as a situation likely to generate strong emotion, I think.

So, sure. Why not. I’ll go with it and let them off the hook regarding whether Sherlock should’ve felt Eurus’ breath, noticed the violin sound wasn’t just coming through the speakers, etc. I honestly found the no glass reveal entertaining, and it’s not as if the whole thing was impossible.

Well...

Maybe not the whole thing.

Even if I stand ready and willing to cut them all the slack in the world in terms of Sherlock having an observational breakdown, there’s still one problem.

Eurus: Do you see how it was done? I know you like explanations. Sherlock: Signs, you suspended the signs.

There are six signs in Eurus’ cell. Each of the three big “panes of glass” has a a sign in the lower center that reads “MAINTAIN DISTANCE OF THREE FEET” and a sign in the upper right that reads “ELEPHANT GLASS / SHOCK PROOF.”

The sign layout may be slightly easier to see in this screenshot from Jim’s visit, though of course the real glass wall was still in place then:

Once the glass wall is gone, the Elephant Glass signs (and no, that’s not a real brand, and I’m still not sure why I saw people insisting it was after the episode aired) are easy to explain.

The Elephant Glass signs are suspended by attaching one end to the window frame. Easy peasy. (And probably why it’s the thing we see at the end of Sherlock’s sign deduction--that’s what sticks in your head.)

But the Maintain Distance sign?

Here’s more of what we see when Sherlock “figures it out”:

You may not have noticed because they showed it very quickly before cutting to the clearly-attached Elephant Glass sign, but this sucker isn’t “suspended” at all.

It’s just floating in mid-air.

Defying the laws of physics.

That, my friends, is impossible.

And that’s the part I have an issue with.

“Who cares? It’s just a TV show. It’s not real anyway.”

Here’s the thing.

I gladly will--and have--let all kinds of things go on this show because it is just a TV show. People who think Series 4 was the first time Sherlock has included elements that don’t make a ton of sense frankly haven’t been paying much attention.

BUT.

There’s “TV impossible,” and then there’s impossible-impossible.

To illustrate with another example from Series 4:

In The Six Thatchers, Mary jumped into the path of a bullet to save Sherlock.

That is not a thing. You cannot do that. It defies the laws of physics to have time to get in the way of a bullet you’ve seen fired at close range.

That said, while I have very strong opinions on what the Actual Deal With Mary’s Death was, her miracle leap has never been a thing that bothered me.

Because even though you can’t do that in real life, people do it all the damn time on TV.

So I don’t care why the writers deployed that trope. I’m willing to accept it as the trope it is and move on.

Compare that to the magical, anti-gravity sign.

There is no magical, anti-gravity sign trope that gets pulled out in detective stories (or stories about detectives, if you prefer) on a regular basis. And there’s a reason for that.

I’d like to call my next witness:

Collider: Are you surprised that people seem to always want to know about the possibility of a cross-over between Doctor Who and Sherlock?

STEVEN MOFFAT: That’s a question that I get asked so often, and I can’t keep answering it. It’s all right for Doctor Who. That’s fine. But it would change Sherlock’s life, if he met the Doctor and knew that time travel was possible. He’d have to factor that into every crime he solved.

Good answer, Steven. That is the Right Answer. Sherlock Holmes can’t meet the Doctor and go on an adventure in space and time because it would permanently alter Sherlock’s ability to do logic-based detective work.

Think about what happens to the show if we accept that Shit Can Randomly Float Now.

“But how did the robbers get twelve tons of gold out of the bank while it was surrounded by police?”

“Obvious. They levitated it through the hole they cut in the ceiling.”

“Oh, right, I keep forgetting that Shit Can Randomly Float Now.”

“You murdered your husband by cutting his parachute cords.”

“Look, I admit I cut the chute. But if he didn’t want to die he should’ve just deactivated the power of gravity before hitting the ground. I didn’t murder him--it was clearly suicide.”

“Fair enough. You’re free to go.”

“So how did someone manage to kill her in this room that was locked from the inside?”

“I dunno. Wizards, probably? Who cares. We don’t have rules anymore.”

Even if the audience is willing to handwave all kinds of cheesy tropes and plot holes because it’s TV, there is a point in a show like this where a line is crossed and logic fundamentally breaks down.

You cannae change the laws of physics. Or at least not that much.

“Okay, but is the sign really not suspended by anything?”

It’s really not.

First of all, remember that completely invisible support structures are simply a different type of impossible. So that’s out or we’d just be getting to the same problem in a different way.

...turned out to be a visible man with a visible knife. Because things can’t be invisible according to the rules of this particular fictional universe.

Second, when Eurus leapt from her cell to attack Sherlock, we can very briefly see she knocked the sign down (bottom right):

And there’s no hint of any kind of support system going down with it.

About 30 seconds into Series 4 bonus content Behind 221B: The Final Problem, you can see them filming this moment.

And if you watch them filming the moment Eurus made her jump, it looks like Sian was basically given a loose sign to toss aside.

“Wait, I saw a YouTube video--”

The one where they said the floating sign was only an Indiana Jones style optical illusion? I saw that, too. But they got it wrong.

The “leap of faith” illusion in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (video here) relied completely on making sure the observer--Indy--stood in only one spot with only one angle of view.

If Indy had been able to move right or left from his starting position before taking the leap, the optical illusion would’ve been ruined.

But Eurus didn’t make Sherlock stand in one place the whole time. In fact, she asked him to go all the way to the far left side of her cell to retrieve the violin. (Note the floating sign on the right edge of the image below.)

If it’d been a perspective illusion, that would’ve ruined it.

Also, all the behind the scenes & rehearsal images make it even clearer this wasn’t set up as an optical illusion / perspective trick:

The signs were all exactly where we thought they were.

Speaking of behind the scenes...

So how did they do it? If it’s impossible for signs to float in midair, how did Sherlock’s crew make it look like they were hovering?

As you can see from the images above as well as Production Designer Arwel Wyn Jones’ current Twitter header...

...the Maintain Distance signs were all on stands that were erased by an effects team in post-production.

(If you look closely at some of Arwel’s photos, there was also fishing line or wire being used to support the top corners of signs part of the time. Seems like that may’ve been more of a “please don’t knock our important set pieces out of place during rehearsals but we’ll take this down while we’re actually filming” measure, but if not they obviously erased it from the final footage as well.)

“Look, the writers are just lazy. They probably came up with an idea that sounded cool and didn’t realize it made no sense.”

Ehhhh... Even if I’m willing to entertain that notion to a certain degree, it only goes so far because of the multiple layers of people involved in planning and executing the special effect. Even simplifying quite a bit, we have to account for this making it through at least three layers.

Layer 1: The writers--both Moffat and Gatiss on this episode. Personally I think it’s unlikely they wrote this into the script with zero concept of how they wanted it to work, but sure. For the sake of argument we’ll say they just thought it would be good TV and didn’t care how it would work. But they still had to hand the script over to...

Layer 2: The production design team. Arwel and company needed to go through the script with a fine-toothed comb to work out what they needed to build and what it should look like. Did they see the part about suspended signs and decide, “Well, if the writers didn’t spell out how this works we’re going to have to assume it’s magic gravity powers”? No, of course they didn’t. For a number of reasons, not least of which being because you need to have extra budget discussions with the producers before you decide to call in...

Layer 3: The post-production effects team. They would’ve worked with the people making the set to decide how best to set things up so the support stands for the signs could be erased later. Do we really think there was no point in these discussions when one of them asked, “Okay, if we’re taking the support stands out digitally, are we adding in something to replace them? Because you know signs can’t really float, right?”

And like I said, that’s a very simplified version. In reality, there were actually way more layers of people involved. Not limited to but certainly including the dozen or so people who we know were standing by watching as these scenes were rehearsed and filmed.

You don’t need to be an expert in anything but real life to notice the problem. An intern who’s primarily in charge of coffee runs knows enough to work out the issue here and ask the question: “But how are they suspended?”

I know it’s popular to accuse Sherlock’s writers of being clueless. But even if that were true, how many other perfectly reasonable adults are you willing to say forgot that gravity exists?

The team as a whole didn’t get through making this scene without realizing what they were doing. No way.

“Maybe they just did it because they wanted the glass to be missing and there was no other way they could’ve had it happen.”

But there were other ways to handle this. Here, I’ll give you three relatively simple and low-budget alternatives right now.

Alternative 1--The Fix:

There’s something simple they could’ve done that would make the whole anti-gravity problem not exist, while still getting to do the “gasp! missing glass!” moment.

Arwel clearly thought through the design of this sign before they manufactured it. He styled it so all of the letters touch the border. If he hadn’t, we’d also need to wonder how Eurus got each individual letter to float.

And like I said earlier, the Elephant Glass sign is a-okay. It’s attached to the window frame, so there’s nothing impossible there.

All they needed to do was combine these two approaches and they would’ve been fine.

UK safety rules require markings (“manifestations”) to be placed on glass walls so that people know there’s glass there and don’t walk right into it and hurt themselves. This usually takes the form of frosted glass dots, squares, or stripes, though more elaborate designs are also an option.

If you’ve never noticed before, now that I’ve mentioned it you’ll probably start seeing these frosted glass markings all over Sherlock. Often because they’re shooting in real-world locations that have to follow the safety rules:

But the production designers add them to sets they style or build, too, presumably for a sense of realism. For example, here’s the prison governor's office from The Final Problem:

And they custom-designed the large frosted stripe we saw at St. Caedwalla’s in His Last Vow to include the hospital logo they’d invented:

So Arwel is completely aware of the option of designing a custom glass stripe that goes from edge to edge in a window frame...

And hopefully by now you see where I’m going with this.

If they’d just treated the Maintain Distance sign more like a custom glass safety marking, they’d have no physics problem. Add some stripey extensions to the sides. Or do something more elaborate and work the prison logo into the design. It doesn’t matter, as long as all parts of the design are connected to each other and the ends of the sign connect to the sides of the window frame.

This change would have virtually no impact on the story. The only difference would be Eurus potentially knocking down a larger sign when she leapt out of the cell to attack Sherlock, but that’s only on screen for a fraction of a second as-is.

And to be totally clear before someone tries to argue the point, no, I’m not saying secret government prisons would be required to follow typical health and safety rules for their glass cell walls. I’m just saying that people are subconsciously used to those rules, and the production designers could’ve used that expectation to their advantage to design a trick that would be possible in the real world.

(Also, if anyone should appreciate the value of safety markings on glass walls, it should be Sherlock’s crew.)

Alternative 2--The Cheat:

At this point in the post, I’m sure someone is already screaming at me through the internet: “Invisible thread! Eurus used invisible thread like in a magic trick!”

If you’re not that screaming person, here’s a little background info. Invisible thread is a tool used by magicians to make small objects appear to levitate.

Invisible thread isn’t actually invisible, it’s just very thin and therefore hard to see when the lighting and background are right.

If you were trying to pull off Eurus’ trick for real, I think there would be a lot of problems with using invisible thread to suspend the signs. You’d have to not reveal the thread via the scene’s lighting changes, it would have to be equally invisible whether seen against the dark walls of the cell or Eurus’ pure white outfit, you’d probably have to construct a whole web of the stuff to support the weight of the signs, even if you got the signs to stay up it would still be hard to keep them perfectly still, etc.

So I don’t consider invisible thread an actual fix for the problem the same way as I do Alternative 1 above.

But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t accept it as a cheat.

And it would’ve been so simple for them to do. Just show some fishing line or whatever holding the Maintain Distance sign up when you do the zoom in for the “you suspended the signs” reveal. Or even easier, show some snapped clear thread hanging off of the sign after Eurus knocks it down. Either of those could’ve been done as practical effects for pennies.

Invisible thread still wouldn’t be a great solution to the “how,” but for me it would at least be better than anti-gravity and enough to get to a point where I could say, “screw it, they tried.”

Alternative 3--The "Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain”:

Look, I’m not kidding when I say there’s a lot I can handwave and ignore.

This is the least-good alternative, but if they’d simply not gone out of their way to draw attention to this problem it would still be better than nothing.

They didn’t have to have Eurus ask if Sherlock knew how she’d done it and point out how nice explanations are. They didn’t have to include closeup shots of a very clearly un-suspended sign that blatantly contradicted Sherlock’s explanation.

Just... don’t.

Don’t do that.

Yes, it might mean not giving a firm answer to the question of “how,” but since that answer was a lie anyway who cares?

It would at least look less like they were trying to get caught. Because as it stands...

“But WHY?! Why would they do this to us?”

I feel ya.

I feel ya like whoa.

And obviously I can’t give you a definitive answer to this one, because I’m not in the showrunners’ heads.

But the thing that keeps coming back to me is a Sherlock Holmes quote. The one that may be his most famous piece of advice.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

If an anti-gravity sign is impossible and can’t happen, then what remains is... it didn’t.

If the writers, FOR WHATEVER REASON, decided they wanted to end Series 4 with a wild fantasy sequence but, FOR WHATEVER REASON, didn’t want to come right out and say this is all imaginary / a dream / whatever... They’d have a problem when it was time for Series 5.

If they came back for the next episode and said “that last ending was all a dream, but we totally planned it the whole time” who would believe them? Since they had to keep most of what happened in the ending at least in the range of TV-plausible to disguise the imaginariness, it would come off as them having written a weird ending that wasn’t very well-received and trying to retcon it after the fact.

But if they slipped in one thing that’s not just improbable, not just an over-the-top version of a common unrealistic trope, something that’s straight up impossible-impossible... They could at least say, “Look at this right here. It was an anti-gravity sign. That’s clearly impossible. And we even drew attention to it with the dialogue. We did plan for this to be an imaginary sequence the whole time, and we told you but you didn’t listen.”

I mean, they’d still get yelled at.

And tons of people still wouldn’t believe them.

But it would at least be a stronger starting position when it was time to begin unraveling the fantasy.

“It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock, because it’s not real.”

“So you think all of Series 4 is fake?”

Nope.

I don’t even think the whole episode is fake.

I’m aware “everything’s fake” has emerged as the single most popular Sherlock theory post-Series 4. And, as always, I feel everyone has a right to their own fan theories. But considering it took me six months to start writing this post and over a week of barely fitting in a few moments here and there to finish it, I hope you’ll accept that lack of time is just one of several reasons I’m not really interested in debating the “everything’s fake” theory with anyone. I’ll just be over here trying to squeeze in time to write about the things I believe or think are interesting, and you do you. Cool? Cool.

Here’s where I think the borders of fakeness lie.

The events of the “missing glass” scene affect everything that comes after it, until the end of the episode. So I think Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place is the end border of fake. (I count the girl on the plane sequence from the start of the episode as part of this chunk, too, since it chronologically “happened” after the missing glass scene. But we know that’s fake no matter what, so hopefully I don’t have to make an argument as to why.)

To figure out where the fakeness started, I look back for the most obvious break point. Directly before the missing glass scene, we had the boys hijacking a boat and sneaking into Sherrinford. If everything that followed at Sherrinford was fake, I think those parts are probably fake as well.

Step back once more and you get... Hey, the part where John and Sherlock make it through an explosion and a leap from an upstairs floor without so much as a twisted ankle. That seems like a good break point. We’ll label that the beginning border of fake. (Which means the patience grenade detonation is where the true wait for the rest of the story began.)

Yes, weird stuff happened at Mycroft’s house before that, but nothing impossible. If Sherlock’s effects team can make paintings bleed, so can Sherlock the character.

And yes, it probably means Mycroft was at least partially lying about Sherrinford and Eurus’ backstory in 221B, but they already gave us a hint about that one.

Meanwhile, if everything from this:

To this:

was fake, that conveniently does a lot of cleanup on some of the sketchiest parts of this episode.

No more questions about how John and Sherlock were fine after the explosion even though they totally overshot the awning Mark Gatiss later claimed they landed on. (And if they did get hurt before switching to fantasyland, that could explain the weird running hospital theme, too.) No more wondering about Eurus’ mind control, which was pushing the limits of even TV-plausible. It doesn’t matter that the method Sherlock used to solve Eurus’ song puzzle was totally borked, because it didn’t happen anyway. It’s no longer contradictory for Eurus to have sent a bomb that could’ve killed Sherlock when she was so desperate for him to survive to finish her plan later, because the second part didn’t happen. And so on.

Sure, saying this portion of Series 4 and this portion alone was fake doesn’t fix all the remaining weirdness from the previous two episodes. But in my opinion, it doesn’t need to. “Fake” isn’t the only way to fix things. I think the writers have left themselves room to clear the rest up with a combination of the audience having been presented with true-but-incomplete information along with characters lying, being tricked, or having other forms of mental lapses. (There’s a freaking memory drug in play, for goodness sake.)

[And I guess here it might be worth reminding everyone for the gazillionth time (never works) that I’m not a shipper (though I don’t care if / what others ship) so there are certain things I’m not trying to “fix” and will not be discussing in future posts. And if everyone could please hold off on asking me what I think of shippy “evidence” and/or yelling at me for making everything about my nonexistent ship, that’d be really super. Thanks.]

“But I don’t want there to have been a big fake sequence. I’d rather have the ending we got.”

Fair enough. Whether you don’t like this whole idea because it feels like a waste of time to give most of an episode over to unreality, or because you were happy with the ending (or even just some of the Sherrinford moments) we got and you don’t want that wiped away... I hear you. That’s fine with me.

And if they never make more episodes, it won’t even matter.

In the meantime, you can just think of my posts as being like someone writing an alternate universe fanfic you don’t care for and ignore it.

Bonus track!

There’s something else Moffat and Gatiss might--MIGHT--have snuck in to support their “of course this is fake, Shit Can’t Randomly Float Now” escape hatch.

Remember when Mycroft said this?

Eurus was “beyond Newton.”

Isaac Newton is known for doing and discovering many, many things. (Including sticking a bodkin in his eye to learn how it works, which could’ve inspired the story of young Eurus using a knife to see how her muscles worked.)

But if you had to name the thing Newton is most famous for, the thing the average person would be most likely to name if you asked what Isaac Newton discovered, it’s gotta be gravity.

The BBC iWonder page on him is even titled “Isaac Newton: The man who discovered gravity.”

He did way more than that, but it’s the shorthand most people know.

Newton = gravity.

We’re told Eurus is beyond Newton... and then when she designs her missing glass trick, she’s all

And as a possible bonus-bonus, the story about Newton discovering gravity is probably so famous because it’s been mythologized in the form of a story about Newton’s revelations being sparked when he saw an apple fall from a tree.

The fallen apple has become a go-to symbol for Newton’s gravity theories.

When the Royal Mail celebrated Newton on stamps, one of them was an apple.

Buy an Isaac Newton bobblehead, and he’s got an apple at his feet.

You get the idea.

At the start of the episode, one of the first things that catches plane!Eurus’ attention is...

...that the flight attendant has collapsed in the aisle, and dropped several apples.

Maybe UK airlines are super into healthy snacks and give out whole apples all the time, choking hazards and leaving passengers with sticky cores to shove into seatback pockets be damned.

But I’m just saying.

[Before anyone asks: I do have many more thoughts and notes about Series 4 I’d like to write up eventually. Some of those will probably (hopefully?) clarify some topics I didn’t get into very deeply in this post. But like I posted after Series 4 aired, my new rule for myself is that I’m going to take my sweet time doing it. So it’ll happen when it happens. It is what it is.]

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock theories #eurus #sherlock holmes #mycroft holmes #john watson #sherrinford #isaac newton #steven moffat #mark gatiss #arwel wyn jones #behind the scenes #the final problem ep #long post is long #welp #this is toothpaste i'm not going to be able to put back in the tube

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joshversus · 7 years

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... Somehow, Still Talking About This Captain America Shit (Now With Bonus Spider-Man and Agents of SHIELD)

So now Secret Empire has revealed its Shyamalan Twist and given the readers a Good Guy Steve Rogers as well as Hydra Cap, and the kinds of dickbags who, when this whole bullshit began were dismissing people’s complaints with “oh come on, don’t you know how comics works, it’s all going to be put back at the end, blah blah blah...” are crowing I-Told-You-So’s.

But here’s the thing:

Yeah, fucknuts. We always knew this.

People were never upset because we thought suddenly, for the first time in comics history, a major publisher would decide to throw one of its foundational heroes in the garbage bin and leave it that way. We always, always knew that they’d walk this shit back. Find my earlier posts where I specifically talk about how they’re going to do that (and why it’s still going to stain the character for ages, possibly permanently). People were upset because you took a shit on the character they came to read, and who means something to a lot of people.

See, Cap’s not cool. Captain America is not hip. Nobody’s putting the goofy flag costume on the list of “most badass looks in comics” or anything. His super powers are not flashy or even terribly impressive against the lineup of Marvel’s other premier characters: he’s pretty strong (again, not all that strong comparatively), and he has a shield that he can throw. That’s it. Those are not top-tier powers, and from an objective viewpoint, they’re barely putting him above Hawkeye if you wanted to do power rankings for the Avengers.

Because those aren’t his real superpowers.

His real superpower is his moral center. As Tony says in The Avengers, he’s a living legend who lives up to the legend. Tony’s not talking about Steve fighting some mind-controlled bad guys to get to a switch on the helicarrier, or punching Chitauri. He’s talking about the way Steve inspires people - the way Steve’s sincerity and certainty in doing the right thing, defending people, and standing against wrong makes other people want to be better. Captain America has never been a symbol of blind patriotism, but of the better nature of the U.S., and of people in general. Someone else online, I forget who (possibly someone at the Mary Sue? maybe a different tumblr?) said Cap’s superpower is being right, but while kind of true I don’t think that’s quite it. Cap’s superpower is doing good, and making other people believe, even for a moment, that they can, too.

Which, in a way, is a trait he shares with Spider-Man (and, I’d argue, is now a thing we’re seeing in Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl). Lots of heroes are inspirations to people in comics, textually, but Spider-Man, like Cap, has been shown in-comic to be someone the other heroes of the Marvel Universe recognize as a kind of moral anchor, someone who’s going to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing - or the dumb thing. Even if it costs him everything, and even if there’s an easier way. The big difference between the two is that Pete will fuck up a few times first, but that’s because Pete’s other core character trait is being a fuck up.

That brings me to a compare-and-contrast I wanted to make. Obviously, a lot of people are hating the Hydra Cap/Secret Empire story. A lot of people hated the Clone Saga in Spider-Man. Not nearly as many people hated the Superior Spider-Man arc. I think I know why.

See, the Clone Saga’s biggest flaw, the thing that sticks in everybody’s teeth when they read it (aside from the actual bad writing and plot spiraling out of control) is that the Clone Saga tried to tell the readers that their Spider-Man wasn’t real. Peter Parker, the one you’d been reading for years, wasn’t the real guy, he was a clone, and the real Peter Parker had been off somewhere else, living a different life, as Ben Reilly. Now, obviously nothing is “real” in comics, but the problem here is that this story then tries to set up the character the readers care about as the unwitting impostor, an intruder into a life that doesn’t belong to them, and then went so far as to suggest this Ben Reilly should get that life. At its core, the Clone Saga tried to say, “the wrong guy is wearing the suit, and suit’s what matters.” It tried to tell the readers what they loved and cared about, and the audience rejected that. Now, contrast that with Superior Spider-Man. Here, Doc Ock’s mind is living in Pete’s body. I’m sure there’s a good number of people who don’t like this arc, but I’ve never seen it generate the ire of the Clone Saga. I think this is because it doesn’t do what I just illustrated above. At no point does it say, “Hey, look, Doc Ock’s a superior Spider-Man, he should be Spider-Man now.” Doc Ock definitely says that, but the entire story is about him failing at it. The whole point of the story is that while he’s more efficient, a more vicious fighter, more ruthless in the pursuit of goals, and more focused on direct progress in the aspects of Pete’s life that he’s usually bad at (he finishes Pete’s doctorate and gets a girlfriend), he’s ultimately not as good a Spider-Man. The power of Spider-Man isn’t, at the end of the day, in the web-swinging and wall-crawling, but in Pete’s goodness. The things that make Spider-Man great are the things that Flash Thompson cites as inspirational - he never quits, he always keeps going, he always does the right thing, no matter if everyone in New York hates him, no matter if he never gets thanks. He’s going to go out there and try to do good, and stop people from getting hurt. Pete’s a fuck up, and there are things the Doc Ock does as Spider-Man that could increase the good he can do, but by the end of the story it’s clear that Doc, lacking Pete’s moral compass and heart, can’t be better at being that inspiration to others. He can’t be your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and while he does certain practical things better than Pete did, he also ruins (or risks) a lot of the personal connections Pete has built up over the years by virtue of being the fundamentally good person that he is. That’s the key: Superior Spider-Man used a villainous character in the role of the hero we love to examine why we love that hero, and why it’s the person, not the suit and powers, that make them the hero we love. And it did so without ever trying to sell us on any bullshit “this is how things are now and forever and what you used to read and love is a lie” nonsense.

And that’s where Secret Empire and all this Hydra Cap stuff falls on its face. Even if you put aside all the ways the real world history of the character and the politics makes the whole thing gross as hell (for which, see all my previous posts), it doesn’t really work as a character examination. It doesn’t show us something about the character. We get Steve pushing people out of planes and plotting government takeovers, and instead of some substantive reason why Steve is villainous, we get “well, he was actually always like this but Cosmic Cube”. That’s not a reason, Nick. That’s a handwave.

You want “moral center character goes horrifically evil” as a story that does a great examination of the character in the process? Look to this past season of Agents of SHIELD, where Framework Fitz is the Mengele-like second to Madame Hydra. They don’t just show us Evil Murder Doctor Fitz and treat that as a good story because WHAT A TWIST, they ask the question: how could our Fitz do such things? And they answer it, not with “Framework!”, but actual character development: Framework Fitz was raised by his shitstain of a father, who abused him and inculcated in him a truly poisonous morality that prioritized strength and ruthlessness over compassion - and his desire to do right and be loved by the people who matter to him (his father, Ophelia) leads him to go down this dark road, believing it to be right. So when they finally escape the Framework, Fitz has to actually deal with the fact that he’s capable of those things, because he now knows that the things that make him good could be corrupted.

I mean, fuck, Superman: Red Son did this bit better than this Hydra Cap nonsense, and that was kind of trash itself.

So, this whole Hydra Cap thing doesn’t actually serve to show us why we care about Steve, nor does it have anything interesting to say about how someone of Steve’s moral character could lose their way and become evil, and it is plagued by attempts to insist that this is the truth and it’s always been this way and this is how it’s going to be now and no really we’re serious. It’s trying to Clone Saga we the readers, while being super disrespectful to the character, and showing us nothing new in return. And the apparent payoff after all this controversy, it seems, is that the whole thing is an even crappier version of that dumb Star Trek TOS episode where Kirk gets split into his good and bad sides by the transporter.

Boy, all this ill will, insulting your audience, bad PR, reader walkaways, cloud of antisemitism, and actual fucking Nazis adopting Cap as a symbol sure were worth such a bold, original story. You dumb fucks.

#fire nick spencer #captain america #spider-man #clone saga #superior spider-man

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 8 years

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Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows V2 #4 Thoughts

Click here to see my older thoughts

Story:

The Parkers flee the Mole Man and the Moloids who are firing the Regent’s big green laser device at them. So focuses are they upon avoiding the blasts they inadvertently (because they don’t have Spider Senses apparently) find themselves plummeting over a pit of lava.

Whilst Peter and MJ are able to right themselves Annie isn’t so lucky, prompting her parents to dive down to the rescue. Unfortunately between MJ getting sprayed in the face by Peter’s webbing and the pair colliding mid-swing Annie is left to rescue herself.

Meanwhile above ground news reporters are covering the recent events at the Regent’s HQ. Among them is Betty Brant who informs Jonah over at the Bugle about Spider-Man’s involvement along with a new mysterious spider woman (no mention of Annie though). Whilst demanding an inventory of the site (and all information on Annie), young Normie Osborn spots the damaged remnants of Peter’s camera drone amidst the rubble.

Back in the Mole Man’s domain, Peter and MJ bicker over getting in one another’s way, though they soon make up. Their moment is interrupted when Annie asks about a codename for herself, prompting Peter and MJ to argue over her role as a hero. As they continue to ‘talk’ Annie takes note of a hole in the cave wall where the Mole Man’s voice seems to be emanating from. She tries to inform her parents about the hole and how she should use it to sneak up on Mole Man (given how it’s too small for her parents). When they fail to listen she crawls into the hole, infuriating Peter and MJ (though they confess they are sort of proud of her).

As Annie sneaks up on Mole Man he rants about making his enemies pay and how the device converts ‘life energy into weapon energy’, leading him to begin killing his own forces. Soon though the Parker’s ambush him and his forces, making short work of them.

Later the family observes Normie Osborn fume over the feds impounding the Regent’s device, with Annie commenting on how she finds him cute (*coughjustlikeMaydaycough*). On Mj’s prodding Peter reluctantly accepts Annie as a hero, dubbing her Spiderling.

Review:

Pros

· The arc is over. Whilst enjoyable we’re done with the set up and can now hopefully move onto more of the meat that fans wanted out of the series. Also we don’t need to see more of this annoying interpretation of Mole man

· Whilst there was not enough action for a climax to an arc, the action scenes we got were energetic and well rendered by Stegman who, as I have said before, is exceptional on this book. Of particular note is his opening double page splash and the sequence where Annie climbs down the hole.

· Annie is cute and smart in this issue and does that thing kids do wherein they do something they know they aren’t supposed to do after telling their parents whom they know is not listening just then. It was funny (especially when presenting the conversation from her point of view) and fairly true to life. Okay yeah it was maybe on the cliché side of things but in fairness we’ve never seen such a cliché employed in Spider-Man before.

· The conversation/argument scene itself was also...well it was sort of neat to see again because it’s another down to Earth domestic thing that happens in real life. It was also nice to see the scene balancing out Peter and MJ’s relationship. They were presented as loving, but also far from the perfect couple and like most couples prone to arguing. And fittingly, like many couples such arguments centred upon their kid. So at least conceptually having the scene in there was great though there were problems with it which I will discuss in the cons.

Their earlier disagreement though about working together was in contrast better handled and similarly worked in balancing their problems with their love for each other. The scene leading into it where they got in one another’s way was also amusing and (as the issue itself mentioned) highlighted some of MJ’s more fiery personality traits.

· Peter is not however left out as appropriately he demonstrates a real resistance to his daughter being a hero but simultaneously has pride in her when she shows her skills. A great balancing of the mixed emotions our hero would be feeling in the situation.

· Normie Osborn continues to be intriguing.

· Betty’s reintroduction is a fun bit of nostalgia especially if she sticks around. In the min universe we’ve seen little of her and whether you enjoy her as a reporter character and/or for her...eccentric antics shall we say, it’s nice to see her all the same. She’s just part and parcel of the classic status quo and cast we know and love.

· There is some funny/endearing dialogue towards the climax of the issue where Peter and MJ talk about punishing Annie. There is another nice exchange when MJ brings up an old proverb about families fighting together which Peter is sure isn’t really a proverb.

· Finally we have a nice little nod to Mayday at the very end of the issue which also undermines her recent stupid name change into Spider Woman.

Cons

· Whilst I’m glad the arc is over and we can move onto to more low key plots with Spider-Man elements (as opposed to Fantastic Four elements), the issue kind of felt like it went by too fast. It wasn’t liking rushed exactly but it was more like...It just felt like too quick of a read for a wrap up issue.

· Part of that is tied to the Mole Man’s goal being underwhelming, along with his defeat. Essentially it amounts to running away, sneaking up on him, dodging some blasts then a one punch knock out. As much the Mole Man was annoying I feel like it was a lacklustre way to wrap things up and wasn’t worth the price of admission. I mean this whole arc was fought over like...a laser basically...that’s it...

Then again this arc is for setting up the characters and the Mole Man is supposed to just be somebody for the family to fight. At which point though there was really little point making Mole Man the villain instead of a Spider-Man centric character. Well, little point except to thematically poise this series as partially a Fantastic Four substitute.

· Going back to that conversation I mentioned in the pros there are some real problems with it which go right back to the underlying problem with the concept of the series. Look...the series is supposed to be about the Spider Family. The essential problem being that what parent allows an 8 year old to go into dangerous situations like this? I’ve said this many times before. It was part and parcel of the problem of Renew Your Vows volume 1 when Annie was drafted into the battle. At least there it sort of made sense on the grounds that with so few active super heroes the characters needed all the help they could get. Here though with heroes existing in the world what justification is there for allowing Annie to be an active hero?

In this issue Peter’s natural opposition to this role for Annie is brought up and prompts the conversation/argument between him and MJ. And the thing is that it’s partially consistent and partially inconsistent.

On the one hand its consistent because in Renew Your Vows volume 1 MJ was towards the end of the story onboard for allowing Annie to help out whilst Peter throughout the story was protective of her (going so far as to retire for 8 years and remain in hiding). So in this issue Peter being opposed to Annie’s life as a superhero whilst MJ defending it makes sense with what we’ve seen before for this universe’s versions of the character.

However it’s inconsistent because in issues #2-3 MJ grounded Annie for coming to the Regent’s HQ and Peter has clearly already consented to Annie being a hero earlier in the series, hence her costume. Similarly in issue #1 the implication was that he’d discussed and accepted that she was going to fight crime with them.

How the question on consistency pales next to the fact that again...why is Mary Jane defending and even encouraging an 8 year old to fight crime? For the sake of argument lets presume her and Peter’s histories are more or less the same as their 616 counterparts. If that’s true then she knows all too well the dangers her husband has endured in that line of work. It’s one thing to ask for Annie to be trained in her powers that she might defend herself in the advent of an enemy attacking her. This is different though.

And the problem really for this book is that it really needs to either come up with a convincing explanation or just not mention this issue and make the concept enjoyable enough that readers just accept that this is just the point of the series. In this issue though they bring up the incredibly valid criticisms of Annie being a hero but the best defence presented is that Peter is too stuck in his ways and won’t let anyone else help him, which is a weak argument against his point. The problems are compounded when the conversation switches to Annie’s POV and we don’t hear anything else being said. It’s evocative of how Conway is at least struggling to legitimately justify this concept from a character point of view. But the solution to that is not to pay lip service to the fact that Annie’s parents would argue about it without finding a genuine justification.

Making matter worse at the end of the issue Peter’s problems with his daughter’s dangerous new direction in life are essentially handwaved and he just welcomes her to the team.

· Similarly Conway is again seemingly trying to make the point that having MJ stay at home whilst Peter went off to be Spider-Man was a bad status quo back in the day. The thing is that...it really wasn’t. I mean sure MJ just waiting by a window all the time was bad, but the idea that MJ not being actively involved in Peter’s crime fighting life somehow was undermining of her isn’t true at all. She had her own subplots to deal with, one of which involved her cousin Kristy which you know...Conway wrote.

· Another dilemma in this series is its relationship to the first Volume of Renew Your Vows. Conflicting answers have been given as to whether or not Volume 2 takes place in the same universe or a different one or if it’s the same universe albeit it altered. This issue continues to present confusion as it has a caption referencing Volume 1 as though the events o it happened exactly as we saw. Which clearly isn’t the case as other heroes are alive in this universe and it seems unlikely that Peter wasn’t Spider-Man for 8 years.

· Moving onto some smaller quick fire points, Peter and MJ getting in one another’s way was fun but if we are to presume Peter’s history is mostly the same as his 616 counterparts then surely he must’ve worked with other people before in the past. Whilst never an Avenger in this universe did he really never work with Black Cat, Daredevil, Captain America or other such characters? Surely someone as experienced as him would be able to avoid getting in someone’s way or letting someone get in his? If nothing else wouldn’t their respective Spider Senses have allowed them to avoid one another?

· The cave hole was a little too convenient.

· The codename Spiderling is pretty lame if we’re being real here.

· If Normie Osborn is only 10 years old why is he in charge of his family business and acting like he’s an adult? Also whilst creepy to most people why were Peter and MJ so distant and even a little mean to their friends’ son/their godson?

· The way the Regent’s device worked was poorly explained. It converts life energy to weapon energy? What does that mean exactly. It acted as just a big laser but then Mole Man behaved as though by sacrificing his Moloids by shooting them with the laser it somehow powered it up?

· Normie finds Peter’s drone that he used to take pictures of himself. Read my thoughts on issue #1 to hear me elaborate on the drone, but this issue fulfils some of my points about it. It’s large size and colourful design make it a big target and could possibly compromise the Parkers’ secrets.

· Finally...how did the family get free in between last issue and literally the first page of this issue?

Ultimately my problems with this series roll right back to the inherent conceptual ones I’ve had since day 1. Beyond those though the only real sins of this issue are being a bit too fast and anti-climactic. Still it was fun enough for what it was though.

B-

#RENEW YOUR VOWS #Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #RYV Thoughts #Spinneret #Annie May Parker #Annie Parker #Mole Man #Normie Osborn #Gerry Conway #Ryan Stegman #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #marvel #marvel comics

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eisforeidolon · 8 years

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Episode: First Blood

I did actually enjoy the episode. I just hated that pretty much every plot development required turning your brain off, starting from last week where they got caught for no good reason in the first place. If the writers had put half as much effort into making the setup make sense as they did in executing it, this episode would have been brilliant. As it was, it was enjoyable in the particulars but blatantly flawed.

In the recap at the beginning, they list the two of them dying in a shootout with police, but having their records, somehow they don't make particular note of Sam and Dean supposedly dying in that helicopter explosion in Colorado or Dean's body being found after Saint Louis? Well, of course they don't, because then maybe they'd be a little more freakin' suspicious about these guys being pros at faking their deaths! Including leaving convincing bodies behind!

I also simply don't believe that sitting in a cell for a couple months is worse than the decades either Winchester spent in hell. Maybe if they were having flashbacks or something, I could see it being such an untenable situation they had to get out right now rather than giving their allies time to find them. As it stands? Nah. Not even as hyperbole, it just plain Does. Not. Make. ANY. Sense. Also, if they're gonna give in and pray for help, why go to Billie first over Castiel? I cannot remember if Cas has been able to find them without them giving some kind of reference to activity near them since the rib scribbles to hide their location from angels, but regardless? Even if that were still in play as a blockage, the first plan should have been to ask for the interrogator guys' names and have Cas track them down with his supposedly restored mojo. Just that simple, and no deals involving death required. I mean even if you're going by either one being worried about the other, even if you're going to buy isolation somehow never being tried in hell at all? This is the absolute last resort step, not the thing you try first after barely six weeks! I’m not saying it was fun or enjoyable or even not awful, but seriously, worse than decades in hell? Seriously? Give them some other reason they needed to get out right away that’d actually make a vague stab at being believable.

Yet the episode did have some great dialogue. The agent guy turning the conversation about not actually knowing back around on the other. Mary and Cas both trying to blame each other for not being there for Sam and Dean because they're frustrated and upset and then eventually apologizing to each other and working together. Crowley both already having talked to his contacts, and being absolutely 100% sure the Winchesters will find their way out just fine without him doing anything - as well as not being willing to do anything because they're more frenemies than straight up allies. Dean telling the agents they have no clue what they're up against and being proved emphatically right. Sam's quip about how they're the guys that save the world. Cas' speech about how the world needs all the Winchesters it can get and how dumb they are to keep making these self-sacrificing deals.

Although I have a bit of a caveat about the last one, as considering Cas was the one to let Lucifer have his body last season, it seems a wee bit questionable for him to be talking about other people's dumbass sacrificial choices. Coupled with his story about trying to do a hunt and failing by giving up, it seems to tie into that arc about his personal self worth issues. Which, well, it was ridiculous the show invented that but never really went anywhere with it, then seemed to handwave it all off via that idiotic conversation in the car with Dean last season. So maybe it's good it's back - then again, I have little faith in it actually being executed in any better way going forward, so maybe not. I mean, he talks about learning from the Winchesters, but makes one effort at a single hunt and then just gives up? Won’t even consider trying again with backup? Well of course that failed if his powers weren't able to solve it for him, Sam and Dean don't solve every case with their first effort either. And less flatteringly, it leaves less question why he and Mary managed to do fuckall to save the Winchesters until they saved themselves if that’s all the effort he has to spare for his convictions. If he’d just agreed to go back with Mary it would have made a whole hell of a lot more sense, because Cas shouldn’t have amazing powers of investigation from nowhere, but just giving up?

There were a lot of great story moments, though. Mary and Cas being shown lonely and alone in the darkened bunker in turn. The montages of the Winchesters in their cells, really bringing the monotony and despair of their situation home. Mr. Ketch showing why they haven't been having any luck with American hunters. All the secret detention center people being so perplexed that Sam and Dean suddenly dropped dead the same day for no reason. Everything about the action of the hunt through the woods for the Winchesters and their obvious trap that the soldiers fell right into. Especially that, because there's nothing I love more in this show than it allowing the guys to actually be as supremely competent as they have trained to be and are. All the family reunion hugs. Mary being willing to sacrifice herself for her sons, and Castiel refusing to let her.

Despite the flimsiness of the premise, there were also some decent carryovers from previous episodes and ones obviously planted towards going forward. Billie's earlier suggestion they should just contact her any time if they're willing to reconsider dying has a clear purpose now. The BMOL having entirely different standards about who should be killed being a running theme that's going to eventually have to come in direct conflict with the Winchester's feelings on the subject (although how they expect an entire facility of government agents getting killed off will not going to cause just as many issues I do not understand). Mary being so impressed after Castiel contacts the BMOL with their resources and sucked in by their spiel about getting rid of all the monsters (am I the only one that felt weird Serenity echoes in that speech Mr. Ketch gave?), which will obviously have repercussions moving forward.

Still want to know why, after all this time, now is the time the BMOL really want to make good with American hunters, but glad we're finally progressing that storyline instead of more angel stuff. Although, of course, the episode does raise the question of if there will be consequences for killing Billie, so angel stuff is hardly likely to go away. Also, alas Billie, I was hoping she’d have a longer or grander role, but c’est Supernatural.

#spn spoilers #spn season 12 #spn 12x09

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