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Post by paforrest on Apr 28, 2017 6:15:05 GMT -5
I'm thinking that's because at this point, he doesn't really look at that picture anymore. I mean, he used to have it on the nightstand where he could see it all the time, but by the time Ketch found it, it was in the drawer. I mean, it must have been pretty painful to look at a picture of something that Dean now knows wasn't what he used to think it was... Yes, this. I now think Amara's "gift" was a trick to show him that she is the only one that actually cares about him. Maybe it's no trick - maybe she really is the only one who cares about Dean, and her "gift" was to show him the harsh reality. Anyway, I was out of the house last night, but judging by what I saw on twitter a couple hours after this one aired, wow, smells like a real stinker. I'd forgotten this was the one that Meredith wrote with Berens - and if what I'm reading is correct, apparently Dean fans no longer have a friend in her. This season can't end fast enough, and the impending writers strike can't last long enough where this show is concerned. All I know is that Dabb needs to be fired bigly.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 26, 2017 6:17:26 GMT -5
What is infuriating is that the whole reason Mary is alive in the first place is because Dean represented the entire universe in negotiating a peace between Chuck and His own freakin' sister. Dean did that. All by himself. And Chuck's response was basically, Well, of course. You're the Firewall. I'm leaving you in charge.And then Chuck's sister, who was grateful to this representative of All Her Brother's Creation for finally giving her a sympathetic ear and what she'd wanted all along, gave Dean something impossible. She gave him back his lost, much-loved mother. That's why we have Mary this season. But does anybody remember any of this? Well, whoever does, they don't seem to include either of the showrunners or any of the writers because none of them has ever bothered to follow that up in any significant way. I'll admit I felt a certain amount of dread when Dabb was trolling on last summer about how they were going to dial things back down to a more "human" level. I feared that this was really Bullshit Speak for "We're going to use this as an excuse to totally ignore Dean this year." I really, really hoped they wouldn't just drop only the biggest plot they had ever had like a hot potato and just move on as if nothing of any significance had happened. Sadly, that is exactly what they did. If anything, they've done even worse than I feared. Well... I guess that SPN version of fake news, since Dabb's dearest sweetheart Perez said it in his episode via Crowley "It took a act of Chuck to stop the Darkness"... So we obviously dreamied this finale, and Mary is back because... well they didn't written the new version yet. A escape pod in Heaven maybe? (bitter bitter sarcasm...) I still wonder what the original version of Dabb's finale script was before four actors called him with complaints? I continue to believe it was probably 90% Lady Skank, 10% the cast, and I doubt seriously Dean was much involved given how little he was involved overall in season 11 - which continues to confirm my belief that Dabb had been in charge since episode 2 last year. But even if Dabb somehow always intended to grudgingly allow Dean to meet with the two Chucks, since it was the absolute least he could do for Jensen seeing as the absolute least is what his character got all year - it's just that much worse this year - it's very clear that Dabb never meant for Dean to really matter, as his right hand douche Perez spouts the company line as proof. As for Dabb's version of Ugly Mary, she bears so little resemblance to Kripke's Mary that it seems the old prop pic of Mary and little Dean was viewed by Dabb solely as a one-dimensional device for bringing his OC into the cast - period. He never intended for Mary's return to have anything to do with either brother, really, and certainly much less Dean. Dean and his picture were just a means to an end to bring this character in to upstage the original Winchesters. Yes, I think Mary would have been liked a whole lot better than she is right now, which is very little and for damn good reason, if her returning had some freaking thing to do with Dean. But it doesn't, and Dabb never intended it that way. There is nothing in this article that interests me in the slightest.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 19, 2017 6:23:59 GMT -5
What gets me is that the reason why Dean's kills are usually cool and Sam's usually suck is simple--Dean's kills are usually about how badass the monster is, how dangerous it is, how hard it is to kill. Sam's kills are about checking off a list. Did Dean get to kill an Alpha? Let's give Sam an Alpha kill, too! Did Dean get to go to another realm? Let's have Sam go there, too! So, instead of telling a good story, it becomes about stupid things like "balance" (which translates to "Don't let Dean be any more awesome than Sam") and we get terrible, boring writing. I agree. In fact this entire season - apart from brief moments - has been boring. And mad as I was at Sam getting all the kills, I have to admit that I would not have been happy if I was a Sam fan either. Because all these kills - as you mentioned - have just been shown as "checking off a list". Nothing in the least bit interesting about any of them. And the focus this season has been very much on the guest stars - who may be good but frankly IMO - cannot carry the show and the results are telling. I really don't know how Dabb & Singer can't see that. The one saving grace of Dabb's relentless deconstruction of Dean as a character has been the fact that he's doing no favors for Sam. Then again, I don't understand why after 12 years the showrunners continue to try and pull this crap. Shoving Dean off to the side and giving him nothing to do has never ever, not once, made Sam more popular. If anything, it only loses Sam just that many more "fans" - i.e., fans who may have always leaned Dean but at one time liked Sam and the brother unit. By trying to force viewers to hand-wave away Dean and pretend he's not one of the primary reasons the show has even stayed on the air this long, resentment against Sam only builds up because of how obvious it is that the showrunners are trying to shoe-horn the character into the viewer's heart instead of, not complimentary to, Dean. It certainly doesn't help when Dabb's new golden boy Perez came right out and admitted they were doing ticky-box writing for Sam. Honestly, whether I'm watching or only reading recaps - as I'm pretty much doing now - all I can see every time Sam gets yet another ticky-box kill is Jared's agent jumping up and down in the background waving a copy of JP's contract in his hand. The whole thing is a bad joke now. No, Sam's unending ticky-box list of weekly kills are unremarkable because they look exactly like what they are. Plus, sorry, but JA and JP are very different actors, and I'll leave it at that.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 18, 2017 17:17:01 GMT -5
So once again, no aknoledgement that Dean was right, another zero accountability for Sam and Mary, and a questio about Dean used to talk about others. Give Dabb the sack for the show's sake! Yeah, the whole "Dean went into it with his eyes open" reads to me as "Dean voluntarily joined up, he knew what he was doing, so now he can't say anything." Nevermind that he would have alienated himself from both Mary and Sam if he'd continued as the lone Winchester holdout. Which makes me wonder, with no payoff, what was the whole point of Dean protesting in the first place. The only reason in Dabb's mind is to make Dean look shortsighted and wrong. My Chuck, the man really does hate Dean Winchester. The only question now is if Dabb also hates the actor playing him. He couldn't move fast enough to deflect the question away from Dean to his two favorite Winchesters. WTF? Did Jensen run over Dabb's dog or turn him down for date? Unbelievable. Dean fans are so thoroughly screwed.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 17, 2017 6:09:23 GMT -5
If anyone wants to send Pedowitz a letter, this is the address I found: Mark Pedowitz President of the CW Warner Brothers Network 4000 Warner Blvd., Building 34R Burbank, CA 91522 Thanks, paro. Yeah, looks like we're back to having to do this. It's exhausting. That "missing flyer" idea sounds good. In fact, I'd like to tweet a version of that to Pedowitz, Dabb, and I've actually started to include Jensen in my tweets because at this point I think he really needs to know how unhappy some of his fans are with the deterioration of his character. Jensen has stepped up before when he was unhappy - in season six and after season eight. He needs to do it again, because at the end of the day he's really our only hope.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 14, 2017 6:52:17 GMT -5
As a MOTW episode, it was pretty good. But what the hell is with Sam getting both kills? And using the Colt? There's no way that Dean's not being deliberately shut out of these heroic moments. Another one deleted unwatched, because I can't anymore - I just can't with the utter destruction of Dean Winchester, a one time (but no longer) heroic iconic BAMF, and the only damn reason I've stuck around this long. There's no way anyone can claim this isn't deliberate on the part of the showrunners. Things weren't even this bad under Sera Gamble, and I never thought I'd see the day I could say that. I know Jensen Ackles is getting paid a lot of money to do nothing every week now, but his fans aren't getting paid to sit back and be made fools of watching their favorite character turned into a joke. Is he happy seeing the character he's devoted most of his acting life to limping toward the end as a do-nothing know-nothing loser? Is Jensen aware that Dean Winchester has been so obviously demoted to a drinking game meme? Woe to him if he had to slap together a resume reel of his recent work for another job, because the material is nonexistent. Maybe Jensen asked to be killed off at the end of the year to get out of his contract and we haven't heard that yet, and that's why Andrew Dabb very clearly despises him. At least Dean being killed off and put out of my misery would be something to look forward to.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 11, 2017 5:48:49 GMT -5
Jensen seemed more re-engaged this weekend then he has all season. I can't blame him for being distracted. I mean, twins on top of a toddler? Any parent who wants to stay married was going to be mentally elsewhere for a while. But I was beginning to wonder if the distraction might become permanent and that Dabb & Singer had finally motivated him to check out and phone in the rest. Since he's talking about directing next season, I'm guessing not. I hope so. This season has been very depressing from a Dean point of view and I really hope this means there is some hope for a better focus on Dean for S13. Well, directing doesn't mean Dean is likely to be written for next season anymore than he wasn't written for this year. That actually gives Dabb/Singer et. al. exactly the excuse to continue to do the opposite of writing for Dean. But Jensen may as well direct, especially if 13 is anything like 12 where he literally has nothing to do on screen but stand around in the background or spend the few minutes he is in any given episode in the cornfield. In fact, he should negotiate to direct more than one episode - without having to worry about acting or learning lines or directing himself in scenes, he won't need extra time to prepare to direct. I wish I was being sarcastic. I know he likes to direct, it's certainly more intensive and creative than the acting has become, and he does like a challenge. So I'm glad he's going to direct again. But I'm serious when I say he and his agent should try and negotiate for more than one berth, mostly because I think he could do it easily enough and it's good for the resume.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 8, 2017 13:47:45 GMT -5
Well... Giving the trend if this season, we might have to add a new category, something like "Less than Zero, doesn't even warrant a rating..." Even for the ND, that was a new low. I'm can even gather the energy to comment in details on last night drivel, all I can say is that I think the showrunners should thank their lucky stars that Imdb closed... I'm not sure I'm gonna watch the rest of this season, I might just stick with the recaps to see what happens I like the idea of a "less than zero" rating, because I think it's warranted this season. Yes, I'm sure the showrunners are very happy not to see what fans are actually saying about their scripts in any kind of depth or debate. I've done the recap route this year, did it with this episode. Sad, but true. I will say I was surprised to hear that Mick was killed off, especially on the heels of last week's episode where it looked like he was being set up to possibly appear in a potential Claire spin-off. In fact, it really feels like there was a radical shift in plans between the two episodes. One week the BMoL look like one of Dabb's favorite playthings that he's gonna WUV forever and ever, the next week he's so over them that it's decided they will now be fully evil so they can be completely discarded in favor of something else shiny. Maybe Dabb is in need of some ADHD meds.
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Post by paforrest on Apr 6, 2017 9:10:01 GMT -5
For those of you wondering how this week's Nep Duo entry will fare--the forecast is looking a lot like Suck City. According to this mini-doc (in which Singer and Dabb come off as totally clueless), we are going to get lots more ugly Brit stereotypes and Just Plain Dumb Writing ahoy: www.spoilertv.com/2017/03/supernatural-episode-1217-british.htmlAlso, 'scuse me while I giggle at the idea of Retch being a match for Sam, let alone Dean. I doubt Dean is even in this episode that much - I believe this is the episode shoot where Jensen only shot like one day out of eight. Jared may have shot two. So, sure, sounds like an episode intended to feature the Brits, characters Dabb and Singer clearly love.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 31, 2017 12:04:15 GMT -5
I rated it lower mostly because my hopes were so high for it. Glynn was writing this so she was my last hope for one last good dean story this year. Once again, we get more build up on how super the BoL are. I guess the "tease" for 13 is they are trying the spin off again. On the surface it looks like a Buffy/Giles thing with Clair and Mick, good luck with that. So the BoL have taken down hundreds of U.S monsters now (probably all by Mary and Ketch) all in the course of 16 episodes making Sam and Dean look ridiculous. To make up for it Sam gets a yellow eye, Alpha and mother of all Hellhounds and Dean gets to wander around the woods. It almost makes me root for the writers strike so the CW can get a new showrunner before the current one writes this one into cancellation. I'll admit I'm not "almost" rooting for a writers strike. I think me and this show need to take a long time out. Maybe we'll both be better off for the break. I too rated this much lower for the same reason - higher expectations because, after her first two scripts, I really counted on Glynn staying the course as the lone Dean fan on staff. My mistake because, sadly, she's new, she's green, and apparently was brought to heel by Dabb too easily and too quickly. So now what can I look forward to? This was I think the most obvious attempt at a backdoor pilot for Claire, probably with the intention to include a generous helping of Dabb's pets Mick and the BMoL. Dean and Sam were there, and that's pretty much all they were - putting their guest-starring presence and name stamp on yet another spin-off attempt. Good luck with it, I don't give a damn, just go forth and do and suck or not. I. Don't. Care. The biggest disappointment was Glynn falling into the mandate of never ever again allowing Dean to have another kill. At this point Dean may as well clear out the Impala trunk and use it to carry groceries or flowers or something, because he has zero need of guns or machetes or anything remotely along the line of "hunting" tools anymore. It's become quite the weekly drinking meme - how will Dean not get the kill or be an effective hunter this week? DRINK! But, hey, at least he wasn't sent to the cornfield, which is the other and far worse Dean meme of the week. As our orange dictator would say, sad! As for surly Claire and the perpetual retconning of werewolf lore, whatevs. 3/10 - and that's being way generous.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 29, 2017 6:26:12 GMT -5
Yeah, the network programming is safe through the end of this season, which is coming up soon. I'm guessing most cable programming that is scheduled to start in April - and there are a few series I'm looking forward to - is safely in the can. If they walk it will result in network programs starting later than usual in the fall/spring. Cable and streaming programming will likely take longer to be impacted depending on when each series was actually shot since they don't adhere to the same network shooting schedule, and often whole seasons are sitting on a shelf ready to air or be uploaded. And, of course, whatever impact a strike has will be a boon to the reality programmers.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 20, 2017 6:37:33 GMT -5
Too bad....as you say, at least Dean isn't usually shut out of the Nepotism Duo's episodes. Canon might go flying in the wind but that's now become par for the course anyways. Yeah, canon-bashing is the new black where the SPN writers are concerned - they all do it, so the ND can hardly be faulted alone for that kind of writing. But for the most part they don't seem to have anything against Dean or Jensen, and at this point that is my #1 criteria - not hating Dean and wanting to write for him. No, I didn't know about an impending strike, snow - that's interesting. Though I still don't think that's any excuse to constantly screw over just one guy or write bad copy. But I do agree that a strike might be the best thing to happen to the SPN writing staff at this point. And, too, maybe after a chunk of time off the Js will actually want to work again. Given how much material is already uploaded to the streaming services, especially in terms of original series and movies, how much reality programming is always being produced, and how many cable shows are already in the can just waiting to be released, the writers may not have as much leverage anymore precisely because of the way audiences watch material these days - i.e., not being beholden to airing schedules or network programming. In other words, I think it would take longer for audiences to start to see the difference a writers strike would make now, depending on how long it lasted.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 19, 2017 8:33:43 GMT -5
paro, do you think this is the one where the Js may not have worked at all, or didn't work more than a day? I've lost track, because at this point it would be more newsworthy to say an episode wasn't going to be J2-lite, or Jensen-lite, than one that is since lite is sadly the norm now.
As for the Nep Duo writing it, hearing they've written this or that week's script doesn't fill me with the same level of dread that the names Perez/Berens/Dabb do anymore, especially Perez and Berens. But none of the three are good for Dean fans.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 14, 2017 6:27:02 GMT -5
I want to say yes, but something is niggling in the back of my mind, and I also want to say I think they've done back-to-back episodes for a finale once before. But I honestly can't be certain.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 10, 2017 14:42:53 GMT -5
Loved Dean/Crowley (Dean's little shudder in response to Crowley's "I rubbed off ALL over you" was hilarious), Dean's glasses, Dean's glasses, Dean's glasses. Also Dean's glasses. And I was pleasantly surprised by Crowley's ingenuity regarding Lucifer's vessel. Other than that . . . ugh. Dean is a neat freak, always has been--since S1. He would never agree to go on another hunt without washing all the monster guts out of his hair. It's a small detail, really, but it pissed me off. It just seemed to dumb him down into lol!neanderthal territory--again, perhaps trying to create a contrast between blue collar Dean and the BMOL. I disagree that Jensen was phoning it in. His line deliveries were my favorite part of the episode, esp: "A hellhound, hard to explain. It's a giant invisible hound from hell. Oh, that wasn't hard at all." I also loved his performance at the end when he was trying to accept Sam's decision, but you could still see how hurt he was by it. Not loving Cas' story development. How many times this season has it been established that the bunker is his home and the Winchesters are his family? In the past two episodes the Winchesters have risked their lives to save him. Now he's going to back heaven and lying about it? I mean, it's his decision to return if he wants. But it just rubs me the wrong way how they did it. Basically, I'm not crazy about yet another person lying to Dean and Dean needing to just maturely accept it. I'll concede that maybe what I felt was phoning-in was Dean way too meekly accepting Sam's deception to work with the BMoL. Not that I love that option anymore than the possibility of Jensen phoning it in, but by this point I was so livid and fed up that I simply couldn't wait to delete the whole thing as quickly as possible lest it infect other better things I have sitting on the dvr to watch. Sure, I admit I did enjoy the Crowlean banter in the woods. What killed it for me, however, was the too obvious realization that Dean was sent off to the woods for the 5000th time this season so he wouldn't be anywhere near the action, AGAIN! Otherwise, yes, very flirty, and I think Dean protests way too much since it's pretty much canon that Demon Dean and Crowley very likely spent some time rubbing against each other during their summer of love. Mark certainly played it that way. I honestly paid no attention to Castiel's part of the episode, it was so boring and just another lame overdone plot device to keep him away from Dean.
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