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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 23, 2017 20:18:07 GMT -5
Starting now:
Unnecessary recap of Mick's speech about monsters to Mary. More necessary recap of Gavin, since it's been years since we saw him. Recap of last week's ep that shows how much it sucked.
Cut to six months ago in Andover, MA (hi Great-something Grandpa Francis!). Really creepy intro as a Doomed Teaser Gal is brushing her teeth and going to bed. She then gets grabbed from underneath by electrifying hands and we get blood spatter on a nearby family portrait.
Cut to Now(?) and Dean recapping that Demon Baby Mama is still MIA (can she stay that way?). Sam mentions a new victim in the teaser case whose tongue was ripped out. Dean suggests the call Mary.
Mary is killing monsters with a taser as a test in front of Mr. Retch. She gets a call from Dean (who senses something is up) and makes excuses. As she hangs up, Retch very unwisely mentions she's a great liar. Mary growls that she hasn't told her sons about her working with the LoL. They don't trust the LoL. this may have something to do with their "rogue operative" having tortured her kids. Hmm. Trouble in Paradise?
Cut to Crowley, who infodumps the plothole from the crappy "LOTUS" episode, has been mighty stupid, it seems. He diverted the spell to send Lucifer back to the Cage. Blahblah, really stupid retcon, blahblah Lucifer found his old vessel again (which, btw, was actually turned to dust when Lucifer left it), blahblahblah, we've got Nickifer again, new and improved. Oh, well. After all the Chuckawful "vessels" Lucifer has had to this point, if we're stuck with him, we might as well have Mark P. I wasn't *that* wedded to losing Castiel for Casifer.
In the obligatory night time chat, Sam mentions Doomed Teaser Gal and muses about Mary not making it. Dean admits he's suspicious. Sam makes excuses. So, business as usual.
The Brothers visit a museum with a shipwreck and Dean discovers lots of EMF. Sam mentions that museums have lots of objects, so lots of ghosts.
Ugh. Kelly just showed up. In a diner. Feeling whiny about motherhood. Well, hon, you always could've used birth control or gotten that abortion.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 22, 2017 22:45:33 GMT -5
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 21, 2017 23:39:32 GMT -5
2, 4 and 10. I should rewatch 11 to see how I feel about it. But I know that I really, really liked those three seasons and rewatch them fairly more often than others.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 21, 2017 23:25:10 GMT -5
All I want for Mary is better writing. Yes, I find her extremely unlikable, but I'm ok with her being unlikable - some of the best characters in fiction are so flawed as to be pretty awful, but there's usually a redeeming quality, a way to be able to still get behind them. I could stand a few flashbacks or an honest conversation to fill in some of the blanks and give us some motivation or character development. Right now, I feel as though I'm reading a book where the author is deliberately withholding information for the 'big reveal,' and character development simply consists of Mary becoming a lone wolf super hunter, when it actually made more sense to me to have her stay with Sam and Dean and have them mentor their mother in a parent/child role reversal, until she was up to speed.
I wanted to see her more of her struggle to acclimatise onscreen, but too much of her development happened off-camera. Let us witness her journey from stranger to accomplished hunter to matriarch. Once we have a sympathetic character established, she can make all the dick moves she wants because at least then I'd be emotionally invested in her, rather than just irritated by her presence. This. They're hiding too much about her that needs to be shown, probably as a cheap way to handwave the plotholes they can't be arsed to patch up properly or not make in the first place. And it's making her look unsympathetic. Even if we find out everything and she turns out to have a perfectly good reason for what she did, that lack of emotional connection with the audience will persist unless the writers make an effort to repair it. She doesn't have to be likeable and personally, I think her accomplishments have been relatively minor, especially when you factor in the help she's been getting from the LoL. She's the mother of Sam and Dean Winchester. Of course she's an awesome Hunter. But what she's actually done isn't exactly legendary compared to what her sons have accomplished, especially her eldest. What annoys me is that there isn't *enough* of Mary, not that there's too much, because every time we see her, she's in a different place and we don't know how the hell she got there. Hence why I compared her development to Castiel's--he's around for an episode or two, then he's off someplace, then he's back and being a dick for some reason. That worked in season four when he was still an antagonist, less so in season five when he was part of TFW, much less so in season six, and since then, it hasn't made any sense at all. I like Castiel a lot, but I hate the way they write him in the mytharc half the time and I feel the same way about Mary. I don't want her fridged again. I want her written better.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 21, 2017 12:06:39 GMT -5
[sigh] Once more with feeling, guys--my problem with judging Mary worse than John et. al. is not a reflexive feminazi thing. It's that she's not doing this because she's a Campbell. She's doing this because she's a parental figure.
This show has not had a single parental figure onscreen longer than five minutes who wasn't duplicitous and underhanded toward the Brothers. These characters are always antagonists of some sort. John, Bobby, Henry and Grandpa Shady all did things that were equally underhanded or far worse. It doesn't have a damned thing with her being a Campbell. It has to do with her being their mom. This was never going to go well if she was going to stick around for longer than five minutes at the beginning of the season because that's just how this show rolls.
I think people were fooled by Mommy substitutes like Ellen and Jody, or the stardust Fridge Mommy memories of Mary, but those are no more an indication of how the writers do actual mother figures than Sonny from "Bad Boys" was an example of how they do dads. Mary wasn't ever going to be a cuddly mom simultaneously with being any major part of the story. Hearken back to how much pain and conflict John, Bobby and Grandpa Shady generated for the Brothers and tell me how this is so different.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 21, 2017 0:14:44 GMT -5
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 20, 2017 3:36:42 GMT -5
And up it goes.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 21:00:43 GMT -5
Most boards seem to have them these days. Quora posters make an...interesting...use of them.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 18:39:45 GMT -5
It might be not so much ignoring the Carver era as Dabb having his own take on the show. Which is something I feared would happen when I heard he would become the new showrunner. I've read those Supernatural comics. I already knew I wasn't gonna like his own take on the show. I've never read the comics (I already wasn't a fan of a lot of his episodes so I didn't want to chance it). What's his take in it? Let me put it this way: Dabb and Loflin (and from the one ep we saw of Loflin and lots of Dabb's solo efforts, this is largely Dabb) did Lilith a while before Kripke did. She was a BED who pretended to be a teacher of Sam's who got involved (as in, his girlfriend) with John, playing surrogate mommy to the boys. Once she showed her true, obsessively Sam-girl colors, her skirts suddenly got so short that it was fairly obscene and upskirt panels seemed to be the order of the day. Plus, there was that bit where she french-kissed a teenage Dean and he called her a bitch.
In addition, John was roaming around at one point murdering any Hunters he thought might be onto Sam having psy powers. And then there was this weird plot involving a bigoted albino Hunter who was trying to hunt down Sam (it's every bit as awful as it sounds) whom (still teenage) Dean eventually killed in Sam's defense. Again, this was years before Dean had killed any humans on the show. Dean in the comic made Carl on The Walking Dead look like a sweet, gentle, little boy. And the Sam worship was right off the scale, though I always figured Kripke mandated that.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 18:29:39 GMT -5
I'm not interested in playing the Victim Olympics. If you're offended that I'm pointing out a possible bias, perhaps you could take a moment to consider my (and, apparently, Mystique's) irritation at having to write a dissertation on why I like a certain character and why this always seems to involve female characters a lot more than male ones. I've got other things to do this weekend, y'know?
As it happens, I like Mary. As is. Warts and all. And I'm getting quite tired of having to defend that position every single time I make it. Dislike her all you want, but please stop jumping all over anyone who does.
Also, I keep seeing claims that Mary is acting the way Samuel would in the same situation, but I'm not seeing any convincing proof. What part of selling his grandsons off to be eaten by Ghouls makes Samuel like Mary? Samuel made his deal with Crowley at the expense of his grandsons and his cousins to get Mary resurrected. I don't see how that's at all the same as Mary dealing with the LoL to make her family ultimately safer. Hell, *Sam* called them up earlier this season for help and he did it on the sly, too. And Dean has had Crowley on his leash and speed dial for years. Mary isn't doing a thing Sam, Dean or John hasn't ever done--a lot. In that respect, she is a Winchester through and through.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 10:14:40 GMT -5
The Crowley we know is not that stupid. I'll agree on that but I'm afraid that the Crowley ve know will also be retconned. (this thing about how he became King of Hell for exemple) Although I'm not even sure that retcon is the correct word, because in some aspects, they're almost ignoring Carver's era. (yeah, they showed the first blade and the MoC... and the episode makes you wonder why... And Crowley talked about the Darkness, but he apparently watched a different S11 finale than I did, since Chuck was pretty useless...) Urgh... sorry, I must bleach this episode from my mind... It might be not so much ignoring the Carver era as Dabb having his own take on the show. Which is something I feared would happen when I heard he would become the new showrunner. I've read those Supernatural comics. I already knew I wasn't gonna like his own take on the show.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 10:12:10 GMT -5
Never said that Mary was Mother of the Year. Just said it's not necessary for her to be one to be an interesting. In fact, I would argue that it's not a good idea because Mothers of the Year are boring. I just think that if John doesn't get held to that standard to be worthy of having a fanbase, Mary shouldn't, either. As for Mary being "worse" than John, need I remind you--*again*--that the LoL are John's people? As for her fighting while three months pregnant, I've always been creeped out by the idea that this makes her a bad mother. Not like anybody else was stepping up to defend her at that moment and she *was* Anna's target. She gets to defend herself. Besides, Rosalee actively went after a bad Wesen dude in last night's Grimm while pregnant with *three* and nobody in the show called *her* a bad mother. As for Knights vs. Princes, titles are meaningless. If Perez wanted the Princes to be higher than the Knights, he should have tried harder to make the Princes more powerful. I doubt they'll last more than a few episodes, anyway. Dagon is probably toast after next week. Of *course* we saw a WED stabbed with the Spork! Alastair got stabbed in "On the Head of a Pin"! And he nearly died from it! Abaddon wasn't doing grunt work. She was in charge. And it's ridiculous to say that YED ranked above her when he didn't even show up on the scene to do the same work until 15 years after she disappeared. Crowley claimed he was just playing at being scared by Cain, but it's difficult to believe he was cool as all that when he made sure to bring Dean Winchester along as his bullet shield. And he must have been pretty damned stupid if he wasn't scared, since Cain easily outclassed him in power. For all we know, Crowley was playing at wetting his pants with Ramiel. It's not significant how Crowley acted around Cain. What's significant is that Cain didn't give two hoots about Crowley. Snow no, stop twisting in the wind. 1) John never trained with the MoL so doesn't matter if he is 'their people' they never had any dealings so he never hunted or had their tactics. 2) You have have reminded me of nowt with regard to John being their people. Plus seeing how the BMoL stayed out of the Us and French girl high tailed to the US rather than hit London during WW2 the BMoL has bugger all to do with the American MoL that Henry was linked to outside both of them being franchise holders of the name. 3) Mary is Campbell people and I'm just saying she was primarily taught their tactics which she used and it is stupid to think she'd fight like TFW because she was never brought up to hunt like TFW, she has barely hunted with TFW and TFW tactics and I know you don't like me saying it comes from Sam and Dean learning from John and to a lesser extent Bobby seeing how their Dad was the guy they hunted more with. Mary was brought up to fight and hunt like a Campbell and that is what she has done here and we have to get that. That is not blaming her for the things the Campbells did and you know that so don't twist things, you are better than that. 4) John was Anna's target seeing how it was him she got to go to the garage and not Mary. If both were targets she could have just blown up their house end with them in it. As for the rest I am not biting with the how going into the fist fight with Mary knowing she is three months gone is bad because I know you and you just want to be... 5) You have just said that WED got stabbed and didn't die from the spork - therefore spork not effective kill tool against WED or knights Abaddon got stabbed by the spork and she went down first time, again showing not effective in being a end game tool. The Knights and Prince thing as I said sell it to someone else. 6) Cain didn't give too hoots about Crowley because that was never the point, the point was to manipulate Cain to give the mark to Dean and Dean take it and if shitting his pants was a way to go Crowley is the type who would soil his whole Armani collection. Crowley wouldn't go get the lance or colt from Ramiel because it is something 'we have integrity' deal making Crowley wouldn't do on principle because he struck a deal with Ramiel to leave him alone, plus trying to double cross a Prince would make him look weaker once he had dealt with Abaddon and also Crowley was truly scared of Ramiel, not make believe scared like he was of Cain. You know that is what they are going for so it isn't really a retcon it is just an introduction to a weapon that can kill Lucifer and didn't need to be in play before. Plus if Crowley had decided to go get the lance and the colt back to go after Abaddon we know that he'd have needed someone else to wield it because Crowley isn't stupid enough to put himself on the line in a fight if he can get another mug to do it. That is why the set up with the mark; he got Dean to go to Cain because not only would Dean be mug enough to kill Abaddon with Cain's toys which would bring not only a Winchester physically into the fray but Cain's name. So even though Crowley could not be guaranteed to produce Cainhimself, what he did have was a mug with a rep that could be backed up on its own with the ability to wield Cain's weapon and both those could be a help to unsettle Abaddon and her power base before Dean got close to her to kill her. And all the while he'd still be honouring his understanding with the Princes who were left. So I'm now out of this one. It doesn't matter whether John trained with them or not (especially since his mother didn't exactly disappear on him, too, and I'm sure Henry left contingency plans, so there was a lot of continuity in his upbringing there). It's not as though he was a wonderful guy all on his own. Saying that Mary is not like a Winchester really ought to be a compliment because John's reaction to the supernatural world was anything but healthy. Besides, if we're really going to split hairs, the "Winchesters" is a family unit that John and Mary formed together and it belongs to them equally along with their two sons. By the way, let's stay respectful, please. Disagreeing with you is not "twisting in the wind." I'm just not convinced by your arguments, especially since they're getting a bit emotional in the attack. The LoL and the MoL are the same people. Britain was isolated from the U.S. early in WWII. Not really a stretch that they weren't able to communicate as much at the time, but that was a unique situation. If you look at the Bunker and its big old map, it's pretty obvious the MoL were worldwide, which means that, yes, they and the LoL were the same thing. The LoL probably don't want to admit that the main reason they hadn't come back to the U.S. before now was because they were afraid of what had gotten the American branch. Notice how their supposed magical lockdown on the UK postdates the fall of the MoL in the U.S. by a decade. Look, as far as the Mary and John thing, John was no prince among men, so let's please stop putting him on a pedestal. He did poorly, much worse than she is now, as a parent. We also don't know what he might have found of her stuff. I always thought his learning curve was remarkably steep, especially since his wife was secretly a Hunter. And like it or not, the MoL are his biological family, so criticizing her for working with them and saying she'd only do so because she's a Campbell, when he didn't do any better on his own, is just messed up. It's not as though John would have been anything but totally ruthless with that Bunker's resources, and using his sons to mine them, if he'd found them. Mary was always Anna's ultimate target, especially once Anna found out Mary was pregnant. It's a Terminator kind of situation. It's not as though Anna would have killed John and left Mary alone. Also, it's pretty icky to say that Mary should have just left the person she loved most in the world to get killed, despite having the skills to save him, because she was in a "delicate condition." Arf. As far as the Knights and the Princes, it's pretty simple--Princes can be killed by all sorts of conventional magical weapons. High-level ones? Sure. But doable. Knights can only be killed by the First Blade--i.e., only by a Mark-bearer. Also, Knights have powers even the WEDs didn't have. Therefore, the Knights were more powerful than the Princes. I mean, if Dean still had the Mark, there's no way Ramiel could have stood up to him. Even this week, the only reason the Brothers were caught so off-guard was because they went in on bad intel. The whole point of Azazel's storyline was that he used his smarts to win, not his shiny superpowers. Retconning it to say that he and his brothers and sisters were superawesomepowerful reduces him as a villain. It's as simple as that. I'm snorting in laughter at the idea that Crowley has "integrity." Yeah, that's why he's screwed over every single person he's ever met. Trust me. He'd have found some loophole to justify stealing back the Lance. This is Crowley we're talking about.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 9:44:52 GMT -5
Was anyone blaming Mary for what the Campbell family did though? It seemed to me that people were just comparing her to them and saying that she took after her biological family more than the Winchesters. The two times that have been mentioned, specifically when Sam and Cas both stabbed Alastair, both yielded little more than a few sparks. In fact, Sam stabbed Alastair with Ruby's knife the same way Dean stabbed Abaddon. Same result. And no, just because it could hurt Alastair does not mean that it would kill him . . . again, see Abaddon. And with this Michael's lance, Crowley didn't go get it from Ramiel, because presumably, he had another way of killing Abaddon with the First Blade, and given his fear of Ramiel and Ramiel's reaction to someone taking the Colt, I'd say that he went the crafty-Crowley way, the safest way option. Anyway, I feel a circular argument coming on. I think I'm tagging out now. Yes, I think saying, "Well, of course Mary is like this. She's a Campbell," is exactly like blaming Mary for what her family did. And I find it curious that we can't do the same thing with John ("He takes after his biological family. That's why he was a cold, calculating bastard") without getting uncomfortable. The Winchester side of the family was not a bunch of saints, not even in comparison to the Campbells. Abaddon couldn't have been killed by Sam's Hand of Ipecac, either, but that did kill Alastair. Alastair could be killed by relatively conventional magical weapons and Abaddon couldn't. Ruby could be tortured by the Spork without being outright killed. Not a stretch at all to say that Alastair could be killed by the Spork if you put your back into it, but the main takeaway is that *any* demon who wasn't a Knight could be killed by a wider variety of weapons than just the First Blade, whereas Knights could not. And that includes the YEDs. Therefore, the Knights were stronger than any other demons. Look, retconning is not expanding on canon. It's directly contradicting canon. Kripke said a while back his Grand Plan consisted of starting with a powerful demon and going up the ladder until we got to the Devil. And that's what we got. But what that means is that Azazel wasn't a hugely powerful demon in the grand scheme of things. He was middle management. So, this upgrading his brothers and sisters into SuperShiny demons is a huge retcon. It ignores the fact that a big part of what made Azazel so memorable and scary was that he used his smarts and his cunning and his charisma to get what he wanted, not his shiny superpowers. He was relatively low on the powers scale, so he couldn't afford to be Big and Stupid. And what did we get for YEDs this week? Big and Stupid. That's a retcon and a really bad one. As for the First Blade, demons have been excoriating Crowley for it ever since and refusing to follow him because he basically handed a massive upgrade to their worst enemy. Yes, I do think that if he'd had another alternative, he would have taken it. The Crowley we know is not that stupid.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 19, 2017 1:38:28 GMT -5
Just a couple of nitpicks. One, I'm not entirely sure why saying that Mary is a Campbell needs to be defended against by saying that the LoL are John's people. John wasn't raised that way, and I don't hold Henry accountable for the BMoL. If we're comparing family history and comparing Samuel and Henry. They're two totally different scenarios. Samuel chose to bring back his daughter over his grandsons, and Henry chose his grandsons over raising his son. Two, as far as Alistair and Ruby's knife go . . . Sam also used it to stab Alastair in the chest, presumably in the heart, and Alastair's response was to say he'd have to do better than that. When Cas used telekinesis to stab Alastair, that was a hit over the area of his heart, which is why Cas twisted it in further, but even all the way up to the handle, it didn't kill Alistair or come close to it. Alastair mocked Cas, pulled the knife out of his chest, and then attacked Cas. Dean was able to use that knife to draw out Alistair's torture (with holy water and salt), because it couldn't kill him. Sure, it made him spark and hurt him a little the way it did with Abaddon, but that's it. One, because saying the reason Mary is working with the LoL is because she's a Campbell is basically blaming Mary for all the things her family did. If we're going to do that, we might as well blame John for all the things *his* family did, which include the shady things the MoL did. There was a Brit stationed in the Bunker when the Wicked Witch and Dorothy came through, and the American MoL were no less shady than their British friends, so yeah, they're the same people. If we don't want to blame John for everything his family did, then we shouldn't be blaming Mary for everything her family did, either. It's not as though her family was any shadier than his. And she, at least, made an active effort to get away from them. Two, Dean tortured Alastair with the Spork for half of the episode. It doesn't mean Dean couldn't have killed him with it (in case everyone forgot, Alastair used it to torture Ruby and she definitely could be killed by it). It just means that yes, Alastair could be hurt by it. And if he could be hurt, he could conceivably be killed, especially since once Dean was done torturing him, I'm sure the angels had no intention whatsoever of letting him go--which means they knew they could kill him. It just would take a lot more than one thrust to the lung. It would require more like the blitz attack from behind that Dean did to Tammi in "Malleus Maleficarum." Remember that what was being affected by the Spork was not the demon's body (it was using a host) but the demon's essence itself and the demon's essence was definitely being affected. So, stabbing said demon repeatedly ought to have eventually done the trick by reducing that essence down to nothing. Yes, Abaddon could be hurt but not killed by the Spork, but it was a pretty major plot point that she couldn't be killed any other way but by the First Blade. If she could have been killed by Michael's Lance, then one has to wonder why Crowley (who was very, very motivated to kill her) didn't just go retrieve the thing, give it to Dean, and let Dean have at it. Or get Dean to come with him to Ramiel, use it to kill Ramiel, and then go after Abaddon. It's not as though Crowley has never double-crossed a powerful demon before.
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Post by thesnowleopard on Feb 18, 2017 23:43:46 GMT -5
Never said that Mary was Mother of the Year. Just said it's not necessary for her to be one to be an interesting. In fact, I would argue that it's not a good idea because Mothers of the Year are boring. I just think that if John doesn't get held to that standard to be worthy of having a fanbase, Mary shouldn't, either.
As for Mary being "worse" than John, need I remind you--*again*--that the LoL are John's people?
As for her fighting while three months pregnant, I've always been creeped out by the idea that this makes her a bad mother. Not like anybody else was stepping up to defend her at that moment and she *was* Anna's target. She gets to defend herself.
Besides, Rosalee actively went after a bad Wesen dude in last night's Grimm while pregnant with *three* and nobody in the show called *her* a bad mother.
As for Knights vs. Princes, titles are meaningless. If Perez wanted the Princes to be higher than the Knights, he should have tried harder to make the Princes more powerful. I doubt they'll last more than a few episodes, anyway. Dagon is probably toast after next week.
Of *course* we saw a WED stabbed with the Spork! Alastair got stabbed in "On the Head of a Pin"! And he nearly died from it!
Abaddon wasn't doing grunt work. She was in charge. And it's ridiculous to say that YED ranked above her when he didn't even show up on the scene to do the same work until 15 years after she disappeared.
Crowley claimed he was just playing at being scared by Cain, but it's difficult to believe he was cool as all that when he made sure to bring Dean Winchester along as his bullet shield. And he must have been pretty damned stupid if he wasn't scared, since Cain easily outclassed him in power. For all we know, Crowley was playing at wetting his pants with Ramiel.
It's not significant how Crowley acted around Cain. What's significant is that Cain didn't give two hoots about Crowley.
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