(no subject)

[charloween]

Sam to Dean: "Don't... don't sugar coat it for her."

So I'm watching the episode (more on that later) and I see Molly in the Metallicar at the beginning. And I swear to Pete that my first thought is, “hey, I wonder if the car is happy to have a girl in the back seat”. As in – I wonder if the car is excited to have a woman sitting on the seat. And then I start wondering if the car is a dude car or a chick car and if it's a chick car does that make it a lesbian? This show does bad things to my brain. And then at the end Dean calls the car “baby”.

As for the episode... when Sammy was having the heart-to-heart with Molly I knew for sure she was dead. I mean, way to go show, making the point with a wacking-the-dead-fish-over-yer-head kind of subtlety. Sammy was earning serious “SHUT UP, SAMMY” points by about the half-hour mark. All the talk about spirits crossing over? They tipped their hand way too much. From like the first minute. And flashing back again? BAH. Overkill.

What is this show and what has it done with my SPN? Quiet, sensitive. Subtle, too, with David and Molly driving the older car and all.

It was a quieter episode, where they got to make the case about what the show is and does, in as blank and plainly philosophical ways possible. It's no secret the show is on its last legs (or, last I heard, anyway) and this was a nice, quiet episode about what the boys do and why they do it. All those discussions about the why and the wherefore, all the weary snark, the quieter bits... It was nice to have a touching episode that wasn't about the brothers' manpain.

Though I could have done without the episode turning in to Dead Like Me. Why is SPN stitched together from a bunch of other shows? Why can't it find a unique voice or at least find a way to hide the seams?

Sam is the Walking Encyclopedia of Weirdness? Pot, meet kettle.

“Call me Dean.” AWESOME.


Det. Raines to cemetary worker: (on who Raines was speaking to) “The dead. They hunger for human brains. The feasting will begin at sundown.”
It starts like Sunset Boulevard; with a noiry voiceover in Goldblum's smexy voice and a few self-referential genre jokes and yes, I am in love. It's like Haunted, but set during the day and with a bazillion times bigger budget. There's even the black ex-partner!

Graham Yost? He’s the one that took credit for Joss Whedon’s script-doctoring on the Speed screenplay…

First thing: LINDA PARK? *happy dance* Way to get a job, former Enterprise actor.

Next thing I notice: Firefly-style camerawork. Casual, lazy zooms, foregrounding the process of constructing a narrative. LOVE.

Thing three: supernatural noir police drama? Dear television: YOU'RE JUST FEEDING MY THESIS, AREN'T YOU? Except here the supernatural bits are hallucinations, rather than being actually supernatural. So maybe not part of the thesis, but definitely worth a mention (along with that aliens episode of House and the vampire episode from the first season of CSI).

I'm glad that the Nancy Drew girl (“Carolyn”) isn't stick-thin. WIN!

Classic movie poster alert: Double Indemnity! More noir reference: the car scenes look like obvious rear-projection. They're shot like it, anyway. (Not bad rear-projection like SPN, but classy, foregrounding-the-process, conscious-reference-to-the-medium rear projection. There is a difference. Trust me.)

More geek stuff: at McSweeney's, the lights from outside? Pretty. That's the great thing about police procedurals – the plots don't matter so much as the style, performance and characters. I think that's why I like police shows so much. There's the one drama genre where the weekly plot truly doesn't matter. (see also: Numb3rs. ...both are cop show, both take place in LA. Oooh, the possibilities!)

What made the episode, though – Goldblum's reaction to the mix CD. *snuggles yet another snarky-sensitive-wounded-grouch*

ARGH TWIST ENDING. (After SPN I shouldn't have been surprised. But still.)

And yeah: “The dead. They hunger for human brains. The feasting will begin at sundown.” Oh, Jeff Goldblum. *snuggles you more*

Thanks serrico for reminding me to watch this!

Comments

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

It was interesting to see the boys through someone else's eyes (Molly's).

Rather than Dead Like Me, I felt this episode came across as a watered down version of The Sixth Sense.

They didn't need to have Sammy hit us over the head with the clue stick. I thought it was obvious enough with farmer-dude so obsessed with Molly and torturing her. Farmer-dude had plenty of opportunity to go after Dean or Sam, but he was strictly focused on her (until Dean threatened his chance to torture Molly).

I liked the episode though. Not the best episode ever, but like you said, a quiet one.

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

It was another case of where I thought they were going to go with the episode wasn't where they went with it. I mean - they had an awesome first act, but after the great lift-off, they just coasted down to the end. (Yesterday's lecture in ballistic missiles has warped my ability to make appropriate metaphors.) When they came back after the crash with the focus still on Molly, I was all excited to be getting a nice little horror story (like the one with the dolls - a nice little mystery, served straight up).

From the minute Molly's car was gone (and the boys weren't fazed by its disappearance) it was pretty obvious what was going on. And Dean did call Sam "Haley Joel" if it wasn't obvious enough, already. But what I meant was that last act totally jumped tracks; it went from being an interesting meta-SPN episode right into a disused back end of a Dead Like Me episode. You know, good for them for trying to address more spiritual things on the show (beyond just guns n' monsters n' killing), but not really sure what the point was.

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

I took that the point was hope.

And really, I think that comes across anyway so ...

The boys were pretty though :D

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

I can buy that, a bit at least. Dean's ruthless (defensive) pragmatism would seem to insulate him from that, but Sammy's now had another experience (first angels, now this) that's hinting at his view of the SPN cosmology. I sure hope that this isn't foreshadowing of any kind.

And yes, the boys are pretty. I find they're even prettier in fanvids than in the show, where I get distracted by stuff like plot, and acting. When they're vidded, they're just pretty objects, moving in time to music. Simple, pure. PRETTY. *love*

[firstgold.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is foreshadowing of any kind. At least, I hope it isn't. There I go, throwing around that "h" word again. I don't think it means what I think it does.

I think that underneath the layers, Dean's ruthless pragmatism is a coping mechanism. He's always been the good little soldier (by the way, here's the lyrics for The Raconteur's Broken Boy Soldier (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/raconteurs/brokenboysoldier.html) which reminds me of Dean), holding things together for his family. He looked after Sammy, did everything his father asked of him and more, and he's always the one left to pick up the pieces. All he's ever known is loss, travel, and what happens if you can't let go of the mortal coil.

His coping mechanism is to bury hope beneath layers of pragmatism. He sees things in black and white so he doesn't get caught in the moral ambiguity that surrounds what he and Sammy do. He knows that he's involved in something much bigger than himself and if he did stop to think about it, he knows he'd be crushed beneath the weight of it. Whereas Smammy knows they are involved in something bigger than they are, and he embraces it. He sees the shades of grey and he looks at where he and Dean and John fit into this spectrum.

[underhand-glory.livejournal.com]

On its last legs??? I hope you don't mean what I think you mean. TELL MEEEEEE :(((

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

There have been questions about the show getting a third season. I haven't seen anything about its renewal (and, yeah, last year it took until May to hear about the go-ahead for season 2); but seeing as shows like Heroes were picked up for another full season back in January... I don't know. It's not exactly leading the ratings, nor is it as popular as fandom would lead us to hope. A third season would be awesome, but it's by no means a sure thing.

[underhand-glory.livejournal.com]

I will cry tears of blood if this happens. Tears. Of. Blood.

I can't have my fandoms disappearing on me like this!

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

I know. I'll miss The Pretty. Luckily, fandom seems strong enough to live far beyond the life of the show (like Firefly did). It'll live on in the hearts and minds of fangirls everywhere!

[siskaren.livejournal.com]

ARGH TWIST ENDING. (After SPN I shouldn't have been surprised. But still.)

I wasn't all that surprised if for no other reason than I really didn't get why the ex-partner didn't question the hallucinations - my reaction was "I had a feeling he might be dead".

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

For most of the episode, I just took that to mean that he'd hallucinated before (as in "before the shooting"), and the partner was used to his slightly cracky behaviour. And that it hadn't happened for a few years, but was showing up again now, for whatever reason (other than being dramatically convenient for the pilot, that is).

Then the ending confirms that yeah, he's been hallucinating before Sandy, but possibly only since the shooting, and I smack myself upside the head for not cottoning on sooner. (Probably because on Haunted, the hallucinating (ex-)detective's black former partner - that the detective goes to for help during the case - wasn't also a hallucination himself, and I forgot which show I was watching...)