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Post by paforrest on Mar 10, 2017 9:34:39 GMT -5
I think including Lucille was perhaps Jensen's idea too, but however it happened, I loved it. If putting that in to distract from the poor quality of everything else was the intention. It failed.
I, myself, thought that twist was meh. The idea was good but anything with Luci drains out all interest for me.
For the most part I agree that the Lucifer thing is stupid and I don't care, which is maybe why because I wasn't paying attention to it that the twist caught me unawares, so I have to give it some credit. Ideally, yes, I'd like the whole Luci thing to go away, but given Dabb's lackluster storytelling, it's obviously not going to. I was mostly glad that Mark Sheppard was finally given something decent to do with his character, since the expectation was that Luci would get free all too easily given the set-up, and Crowley made to look like a moron yet again. I wish the rest of the episode wasn't such that I could have enjoyed Jensen's (and I'm giving him full credit here) "Lucille" gag. As for other writers, well, we have Glynn whose two episodes have been decent for Dean, so I hope the pattern continues. I'm on the fence about Yockey. And ... who else do we have? The Nep Duo aren't good writers in general, but I guess at least they don't appear to hate Dean on principle. But they're still beholden to Singer's input, and Singer and Dabb go hand-in-hand.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 10, 2017 8:11:03 GMT -5
Another Perez disappointment. What's his issue with Dean anyways? Dean's computer savvy, he's a neat freak, he suffered a horrific death from a hellhound, he has a strong moral code....all of that got thrown out the window. It's like Perez was writing for a different character altogether. And don't get me started on Dean missing out not only on the kill but on the action altogether! Although, I have to wonder how much of this is originating with Perez himself and how much of this attitude is trickling down from Dabb. Because, aside from the finale, Dabb sidelined Dean in every episode he wrote last season. Dean was saddled with babysitting duties, got smiting sickness, and was pretty dang ineffectual hunting routine werewolves while Super Sam overcoming incredible odds to save the day. And Dean missing out on all these major kills is the work of more than just one writer. Anyways, yeah, not a fan at all of this one. Even HipsterDean in his cool glasses couldn't save it for me I despise Perez, I think he's an even bigger ass than Adam Glass, but I absolutely agree that this anti-Dean attitude is coming from the top down, and IMO confirms what I said all season last year about Dabb being the one in charge almost entirely after Carver turned in his premiere script. Dean being sidelined and kept out of the action and doing a whole lot of nothing, except in Thompson's script Baby, had Dabb's grubby fingers all over it. And somehow I doubt Dean had anything to do in the original version of Dabb's finale script since it took four actors calling him to get to the final, albeit still lackluster, version we ended up with. Yeah, Dean was in it and got to interact with the two Chucks at the end, but he still just stood there. But, hey, it was more than he did the rest of the season. Perez appears to be Dabb's own Glass, who if you recall was a newbie hired by Gamble in season six, yet was elevated over everyone else as her second in command. But even those two with their "Sam alone saved the world" attitude didn't hate Dean as much as Dabb and Perez do - and that's even knowing how openly Glass displayed his personal dislike of Jensen on twitter. It's very disheartening. Crowley had a good story, which was unexpected and probably long overdue. It was the only thing of value I got out of this script.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 10, 2017 7:46:22 GMT -5
Hopefully we are done with this slump (at least for now) and can move on to bigger and better things, that is until the next Perez monstrosity. Which I hope is instead given to Yockey and/or Glynn. I don't think this is a slump. I think this is the way Dabb wants the story to go and I don't see how it's going to change. Shockingly Dabb is a worse showrunner than Gamble for Dean fans in how much he apparently really has no use whatsoever for Dean Winchester and wants him neutered and tossed to the side. I've felt it all season long, and for me with this episode and last week's it's official - Dabb considers Mary/Sam Smith as the second Winchester lead, and Dean/Jensen Ackles is just in the way. It's the only explanation for why this particular writer, who is obviously Dabb's personal favorite given how much he's writing this year, would make the baseless decision right off the bat to hate a lead character going into a new show he is unfamiliar with. Personally at the end I even felt like Jensen was phoning it in, and I could hardly blame him. How thrilled can he be with how worthless Dean has become week after week? I know he's sticking around for the money, but he also loves - or used to - this character, and was at one time highly protective of him. And speaking of bats, I couldn't even enjoy the "Lucille" nod because IMO that was very likely Jensen's idea, and Perez/Dabb gave it to him since they knew Dean had nothing else the entire episode, hoping Jensen's fans would be distracted by the gimme and not bitch about everything else. Plus Perez used it to make Dean look like a neanderthal. Ironically the only good plot point of the episode was the surprising twist that Crowley really is in command of Lucifer. I give the episode a whopping half point for that. 0.5/10
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Post by paforrest on Mar 9, 2017 12:14:45 GMT -5
Personally I don't think we have any really good writers anymore. Berens used to be good, but once he hitched his wagon to Dabb's, his writing skills plummeted and instantly turned douchey.
Given what we've seen so far this season, I have to go with Glynn because she appears to be the predominant, if not only, Dean-fan writer we have.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 9, 2017 8:25:29 GMT -5
I really hope this doesn't mean that Sam had already convinced Dean to "join" the BMoL. I definitely wanted to Dean to hold out on this. (Not totally surprised: Dabb's elitist preferences would probably dictate that everyone end up seeing the worth of being associated with the British twits.) I think that maybe Mick is going as part of Sam and the BMoL recruitment efforts? Maybe they're both trying to convince Dean to join. These are all guesses, but I'm thinking that if Mick knows a way to cure Claire, then Dean will sign up with the BMoL. If she can't be cured, and they kill her, then he won't. I'm sure Claire will live to be snotty another day. Sounds like an outright rehash/rip-off of Live Free and Twi Hard.
Can't be paid enough to care about snotty Claire, my only concern continues to be if Dean will be in the episode - like the whole episode. Or at what point does he drive away and disappear into the woods because ... whatever. But since Glynn is writing it, hopefully we have a better chance than not that Dean will have a decent role. Of course Dean can't hang onto his stance, correct as it may be - that was obvious at the end of the last episode. Yes, this is probably the episode that does it because snotty Claire must be saved. That is, if Dean hasn't capitulated before this. To be fair, the elitism of the MoL started under Carver's reign - that's when the storyline was conceived. Dabb just gave them an English accent and doubled-down on their superiority and entitlement. But, yes, there is still clearly an anti-blue collar hunter attitude at work from the showrunning, and I think it's pretty clear that's never going away.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 8, 2017 14:07:55 GMT -5
While overall I found the episode pretty disappointing, I did cheer for Dean speaking his mind. The pain on Dean's face as he gave up on his dream of a nurturing mother who wants to know her sons and spend time with them - ugh, just heartbreaking. But maybe Dean now having a clearer picture of Mary's nature will help him (and Sam) move forward without sentimental blinders obscuring their judgement. ... I also thought the scenes between Dean and Mr. Ketch were pretty interesting. The show has obviously tried to parallel the two characters all season but in this episode, we saw the major difference between them: Ketch is a sociopathic killer who has no empathy for humans or monsters while Dean uses his conscience. I wouldnt' be surprised if that doesn't come into play later on. Maybe Dean will refuse to play ball with the LoL and Ketch will be sent out to eliminate him. I would love for the BMoL to realize that Dean is never going to join forces - and I hope he doesn't - and, yes, they set out to eliminate him. Of course, if that happens, one would think maybe Mary and Sam would start to question their allegiance to said organization, but I'm not convinced. The best part of Dean speaking his mind to Mary is that he called her Mary, and not mom. Personally I think, and wish, he'd refer to her that way from now on. If Dabb and Sam Smith don't want Mary to play mom, fine, then she's not - she's just another hunter, and let's start seeing Dean, at the very least, consider her as such. Of course, that's not who Dean is, he's a loyal son to a real fault - and that's just one part of what makes Dean the best Winchester. Sorry, Berens/Dabb/Perez, et. al, but you are way off.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 8, 2017 13:59:31 GMT -5
My expectations are so low anymore that my only real hope for the episode is now the same as any episode - that Dean is in it, and more than what we see in the "previouslies" and the "next week's preview". And that he gets to participate, and not disappear 1/4-1/3 into the episode only to drive up at the bitter end after everything is all said and done.
I'd like more Dean and Crowley working together, but that goes along with hoping there's more than what we see in the preview.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 7, 2017 7:12:26 GMT -5
I really don't care if she "tried" to apologise and Dean stopped her. I am sick and tired of everyone and their uncle "trying to apologise" to Dean and Dean stopping them. You know what? If that was me in her place, I don't care what Dean said, I would still complete what I was originally trying to say and APOLOGISE. That is what someone who is truly sorry would do - say what you really feel in your heart. But that's just me. I guess Sam & Mary feel differently. Or the writers / showrunners since they are the ones who are actually making these characters say this crap. Yeah, this writing habit is so old, it's covered in mold and stinks, not to mention it's the epitome of lazy writing. IMO it just proves that whether or not the SPN writers and showrunners are as butthurt as they act like they are over Dean's continued popularity - an attitude that still baffles and would baffle any showrunner working on any other series in the industry - the ironic thing is that at the same time they clearly don't believe characters like Sam and Mary can withstand owning their own crap and having to admit they're wronger than wrong. So Dean will always be dumped on to do the emotional heavy-lifting and crap-owning, especially when it's not even his crap. Or, worse, almost every writer and showrunner who has run through this show in 12 years has been hired because of a very warped/bordering on disturbed sense of values, and no one thinks anything awful that characters like Sam and Mary do is wrong, especially when they do awful things to Dean, even though everyone in the audience without said same warped sense of values can see that they are wrong and horrible. Whichever one it is isn't good. Either way, as she is written and acted, I don't believe for a hot second that Mary is sorry or thinks she's wrong, not to mention the fact I see zero evidence that she likes these guys much less loves them in any capacity. I think the Nep Duo actually wrote the most insightful line I've heard all season in their last episode when Ketch calls Mary a liar right after she's gotten off the phone with Dean. She's acting on the phone with him, she means nothing she says - and I'm not talking about the lies she tells him about what she's up to. I mean she's lying by trying to playact his mother. She doesn't mean it, and at this point she should just come out and tell them she really doesn't care about them.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 6, 2017 8:42:35 GMT -5
To be honest and episode where Crowley and Dean go out for ice cream would probably be a really entertaining episode. I hear that. Probably just about the only thing to get me to tune in live. Heh.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 6, 2017 7:01:04 GMT -5
Gee whatcha know, I'm sure no one saw that coming from about 500,000 lightyears away. Same old, same old. I'd like to look forward to Dean and Crowley hunting a hellhound, but my feeling based on the current trend is that everything we see in the promo is all there is for Dean. And in the ongoing tit-for-tat writing that Perez the Idjit actually admitted to, bringing the hellhound in at all is just so Jared's agent can check another thing off his demand list for his client - i.e., Sam kills the hellhound while Dean ... goes out for ice cream with Crowley? Though if they were really playing by tit-for-tat rules, then Dean should kill the hellhound because Sam already did in season 8 so he could do the trials crap. But I'm sure Dabb isn't considering that one.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 4, 2017 8:43:38 GMT -5
This was my thought as well when Dean showed up at the end ......... again. He is front and center in the Thenclips and very absent in the Now. I just hope the writers let Sam disappear too when PadaLady is born. Seems only right. ... I, myself, do not think that that is the reason he's being written in this way. Because, he had maybe a week and a half to two weeks extra time off besides the holiday break everyone had, and this trend has been going on around a month. They could have kept with the same quantity of on-screen time, and written it in a way that still included him and kept him pertinent, they chose this way instead.
I do think that when Jared's daughter is born, that they'll make sure Sam is included and written in a way for him to be kept pertinent to the episode, while still having the same time off as Jensen.
I agree, we won't see any difference in Sam screen time when the latest is born, there wasn't any when the last one was born, therefore I don't buy the BS about time off for the twins. The Speight episode is when Jensen left for the birth, yet he had a decent amount of screen time in the Buckner/Lemming script which came after. Now maybe they flipped scripts, but now that I'm thinking about it, no, they didn't, this latest "Dean Who?" script was shot well into January, because I remember the tweets between Jensen and Jared. And this lack of Dean screen time and, more importantly, relevance to whatever is happening on screen week to week has been going on since the beginning of the season, when Jensen was fully there and able to work. So there's really no excuse and appears more and more to be an overt choice on the part of the showrunners and most of the male writers on staff, who make it sound like it's personal against Jensen when they get on twitter and praise literally every single actor in the episode they wrote that week EXCEPT for Jensen. There's no way that doesn't look calculated, not to mention childish. For whatever reason they don't want to write for Dean/Jensen this year. Why? We'll never get a straight answer. So now the question remains if this pattern will continue into next season.
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Post by paforrest on Mar 3, 2017 7:49:05 GMT -5
Yep. That, too. Though he and Mary seem to be a lot closer now. Except that Sam just picked up the Idjit Ball that Mary dropped. He and Mary seem to be closer? Not from where I was watching. Dean was forced into that - apologise yet again and made to take back everything that he said in the beginning to Mary which was well-deserved. Shades of earlier seasons - Kripke, Gamble, Dabb, Singer! At this point I am going with the "Dean is adopted" or "was switched at birth" thought. The rest of them John, Mary & Sam all of them are dicks. I've been mostly AFK dealing with a family matter, but I got on twitter last night and read the Dean-fan reaction to this episode. Haven't watched it and I don't know that I want to bother with even the few Dean scenes, especially if the one is totally negated at the end by the patented and frustrating Dean-apology for nothing, for the 3-millionth time. But I have to admit at one time earlier in the series I always thought Kripke was leading up to revealing that Dean was adopted, and more than ever that's my head canon now given Dabb's version of Mary Sue. For me it totally clarifies the info dump we got in the hunter funeral episode that showed Mary essentially abandoning an infant Dean for who knows how long to go play hunter in Canada, because that was clearly more important to her and she had obviously no concern or affection for said infant she was leaving behind. At this point I'm picturing a mash-up scenario of The Omen and This is Us whereby Mary loses the baby we saw her carrying in SRTS in the hospital, and there's a motherless infant in the hospital at the same time that either John passes off as Mary's, or both John and Mary decide together to bring him home. But Mary never bonds with him, because he ain't hers, and once Mary dies, John can't pretend anymore and thereafter treats Dean as the servant-nanny/soldier he always did instead of a son. I'm serious, this is my head-canon now, because it's the only thing that makes sense. Clearly Sam and Mary and two narcissistic peas in a pod, and we know John's loyalty would lie with the two of them. Dean is very much an outsider in this horrible family dynamic - he's just nothing like any of them. Thank goodness. Unfortunately revealing such a scenario on screen would require more than Meredith Glynn as the single resident Dean-fan writer BTS. It would require attention paid to the character by the showrunners, and there's obviously no interest whatsoever in Dean Winchester. So I just have to go on thinking it myself - I don't think I could even FF through the rest of this series any other way.
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Post by paforrest on Feb 21, 2017 7:05:03 GMT -5
It is derogatory if you dislike the comparison between she and her father because of how she played this particular mission for the Colt. I think she played it the way Samuel would have, therefore, I don't think that it was derogatory. For the record, and you can take this with a grain of salt if you want, Mitch Pileggi was not a fan with how the writers portrayed Samuel Campbell in season eight. This was something Mitch told me personally when I asked him about it at a convention.
So, here's what I see of the whole thing. The writers, as usual, are idiots who don't know what they're doing. They wrote Sam Campbell very differently from his very brief time in season four. And now they're doing that to Mary.
I can see why Snow is annoyed, a LOT of people didn't want Mary showing up at all, and no matter what, they were not going to be happy. Add to the fact that the writers are royally making her character fairly unlikable, it can get annoying.
I don't feel under any obligation to like a character just because she's female. But I was one of those fans back in the summer who originally thought it might be interesting to have Mary back, hoping it would give Dean another strong person to interact with who might be better for him than Sam. I did not expect what the showrunners and writers are doing with this character in seeming to go out of their way to make her as unlikable as possible, but this is what they've done and so be it. I don't like her, I think she's pretty awful so far. I'm hardly alone, and I'm including other fans I know who were also originally looking forward to the character being back. And I despised what they did to Sam Campbell too, and not at all surprised that Pileggi was pissed and hated it because they ruined a good strong character, and I feel like Gamble did it purposely still nursing butt hurt over Dean getting "In the Beginning". So Sam Campbell, and frankly the entire Campbell clan, were ruined for what looked like spite. And I love Pileggi, I was excited for them to bring him back. Of course, now I realize wanting characters/actors back is so much "be careful what you wish for" on this show, because it pretty much never goes well, especially as the showrunning changes and, IMO, continues to go downhill as it does. The rub, of course, is that I don't think Dabb et. al. believe they're making Mary as unlikable as she is - and maybe Sam Smith's acting doesn't help matters either. I honestly believe Dabb cares more about Mary than he does Dean and Sam, certainly more than he does Dean, so the fact that she's coming off so badly in the writing and the acting is ironic and probably not the plan.
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Post by paforrest on Feb 18, 2017 13:35:32 GMT -5
I actually decided to try watching the episode online yesterday afternoon since I'd cooled off after reading the discussion, yet had already deleted it from the dvr. I still ended up having to skip through where I could because I don't know if it was the way the episode was shot, or eye strain, or a combination of both, but by the end I was in full-blown vertigo migraine stage. So any episode that quite literally makes me lose my lunch isn't ever going down as a favorite.
Overall, though, I thought it was a hot mess. Some of the lines were almost laughably bad, and the acting worse, across the board. I even felt like Jensen was phoning it in, though I can't say I'd blame him given what he did get from this script. And I don't know what the heck that slo-mo shot was about, but it looked like something you'd see in the end of year gag reel.
I get what Perez and Speight were trying to go for, it just didn't work and looked silly and choppy. Repeating scenes from other viewpoints is supposed to net you new information each time, but I didn't see that happening. Just looked like an excuse to get away with writing as little as possible by simply repeating the same stupid scenes.
The new-old mytharc is simply a straight-on rip-off of Cain and the Knights of Hell, with a generous helping of apocalypse retconning, topped off by going to the annoying Sam check-list of Dean things that must be repurposed. Aka, Sam killing a YED. They've been waiting for years to check that one off the list, and with Michael's spear as an extra bit of salt in the wound seeing as the gag order remains intact WRT no mention at all of Dean's one-time connection to Michael. Good grief, even Dean acted like he'd never heard of Michael before. Come on.
And Mary is the worst. I remain dumbfounded at the portrayal of this character. She sucks the life out of every single scene she's in.
I'm also confused by Lucille in the cage at the end. Um, isn't that Crowley's earth-based lair, not actually Hell? Sooooo ... dude's just in a little cage, not in the supposedly supermax box? That doesn't make any sense, he could just pop out into a vessel anytime. Dumb and dumber. It only makes sense if Lucille is a figment of Crowley's imagination, for whatever reason. Maybe that's where they're heading with this, which would therefore simply be a rehash of Sam's relentless boring Hell pain from season 6/7.
I'll bump my final rating up to 1.5/10. Might have given it a 2, but I deduct .5 for the loss of my lunch.
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Post by paforrest on Feb 17, 2017 6:52:22 GMT -5
0/10, because I dvr'd it, watched other stuff, read the tweets, said hells to the no. Deleted it without watching, and anytime the description of and conversation about an episode makes me angry enough to delete without watching, it deserves and gets a big fat goose egg.
Perez is 2 for 2 in his having no use for Dean Winchester, and any writer who has no use for Dean Winchester is of no use to me. Speight is also 2 for 2 in making it crystal clear he continues to harbor butt hurt over Jensen getting press for singing with the band, however long ago that was. Two petty little men who clearly deserve each other.
Sam is always going to be my least favorite character anytime and every single freaking time he is hand-delivered yet another thing that was supposed to be Dean's. Way to keep him at the bottom of my list. Not that I care so much, but it just gives me ever more justification for being annoyed by the character.
Though he's one notch up from Mary. Seriously, I really don't need anymore reason to despise Mary Sue Winchester, Dabb et. al. have done enough damage up to now. But I was delighted to read that she's even more horrible than she's already presented to date.
It really does sound like last week's final montage to Dean Winchester was a goodbye of sorts, for all intents and purposes. I honestly don't remember reading of anything coming the rest of the season that sounds like Dean is involved beyond the having to use his name in the episode description because the contract stipulates as much.
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