Only about three years after everyone else, but I'm finally caught up on season 8 of SPN:

[frelling_tralk]

As Time Goes By was one of my favourite episodes of the season, I really enjoyed the time-travel aspect and the new mythology that was introduced with the Men Of Letters, and aww at how gleeful Dean was at finally having a home base. Hunteri Heroici was another episode that I really loved, I just loved the absurd humour of the cartoon world, as well as Castiel's attempts to be a hunter lol

Oh and I don't know if this moment was actually supposed to be funny, but I absolutely cracked up at Dean's annoyed whisper in Blood Brothers, 'That is NOT what I wanted to talk about' when Sam points out that he doesn't have any friends, all of his friends are dead *g*


I had a lot of issues with how Benny got treated in Torn And Frayed, Sam's self-righteousness over Benny felt really hypocritical for a start when he's always been the one to advocate giving the 'monsters' a chance in the past if there's any suggestion that they're not hurting anyone, and yet time and time again he refused to believe anything but the worst of Benny. It just felt like he refused to give Benny the benefit of the doubt because of jealousy over Dean's relationship with Benny. I ended up feeling really bad for Benny, he had no one in his life except for Dean, and he was pretty clearly desperate and in need of a friend when he got ditched :(


I must admit that Amelia never really worked for me, I found the actress quite wooden and charmless in the role, her line readings seemed really stiff in the beginning, but to be fair I don't think that the writing was giving her much to work with either. It seemed like the initial aim was for her to come across as snarky and ~feisty~, but instead it just came across as rude and unpleasant IMO. The writing for Benny was a lot stronger in comparison as his prickliness with Castiel for example made sense, and it was easy to understand why he would be defensive around Dean and Castiel as a vampire, whereas I was never sure where Amelia was supposed to be coming from when she was say lashing out at Sam for accidentally hitting a dog, even though he had brought it straight to the vet for treatment

I think that it would have been a much better choice to just have the one episode to properly devote to Sam's past with Amelia. Teasing the flashbacks worked better when it came to the mystery of what happened in purgatory, but it was hard to get invested in Amelia's character and her relationship with Sam when we were just given random snippets of their life together, it all felt really incoherent in the beginning. For example they could have opened one episode with Amelia presenting Sam with the birthday cake, and then used flashbacks in the rest of the episode to show how they got to that point, instead those scenes were so all over the place in the first half of the season that it was hard to get a handle on any of it. I guess that I can see what the writers were going for with Sam and Amelia both being damaged and trying to heal together, but I wasn't a fan of how they choose to tell it


And then, much like The Born-Again Identity from season 7 in fact and how it dealt with Sam's breakdown, Taxi Driver was also pretty disappointing and anti-climatic for me after it had the potential to be the emotional high point of the season. Sam going into Hell could have been a really epic episode (well and Dean too, I was never clear on why Sam HAD to do the trial alone), so I was really disappointed at how easy it suddenly was for Sam to access Hell and rescue Bobby simply by torturing a crossroads demon. It took an Angel to rescue Dean, but now Sam can just stroll into Hell and stumble across Bobby right away?

It also felt very convenient that Bobby was even in Hell in the first place when Sam needed to find someone to rescue from Hell, there was never any hint of that in the past, and it seems odd that Crowley would have that much power to just decide that he doesn't want Bobby going to Heaven. Honestly Bobby's characterisation didn't really work for me either, it felt like really one-note ~grumpy old man~ Bobby, but surely spending well over a year in Hell should have had a bigger effect on his character?

And massive eye roll at the writers again bringing up that Sam didn't look for Dean in purgatory, it seems an odd way to treat one of your main characters when you want to keep emphasising what a terrible brother he was to not look for his brother. It's one thing when it's the fans objecting to that and not understanding his motives, but it comes across like the writers don't really either when they keep having Sam just stand there looking guilty whenever it's brought up? At least they could have Sam explain more his reasons for not looking, outside of one mention in the premiere of believing that Dean was dead, but it's been brought up several times since then with Sam saying nothing in his defense everytime. I'm not sure why the writers would write it that way in the first place when they obviously think that it's going to reflect so poorly on his character?! If they had some deeper characterisation reason for it then okay, but as it stands it just seems to be a way for other characters to beat up on Sam for not being a good enough brother to Dean, even though it's really not in character for Sam to just not look for his brother because he can't be bothered, and yet that's almost the impression the show gives you in episodes like this when he offers no defence at all for his actions...


I was happier with how the finale left things for them though, and they did have some very sweet H/C moments while Sam was doing the trials :D

Comments

[liliaeth]

Actually, I think it's more that the writers utterly didn't get why the fans might hold it against Sam that he abandoned Dean the way he did. Like they got annoyed that the fans still wanted answers, while as far as they were concerned, they'd already given an answer. It's why I loved Bobby finally calling Sam on it. Would have been better if Sam had actually given some kind of answer, true, but the more seasons pass, the more I'm starting to think that Carver just doesn't see how badly he's been writing Sam. It's like he's pulled between writing Sam the way that Sam haters see him, and wanting to tell everyone how great Sam is as if to make up for how he writes him.

On one hand, he keeps having characters go on about how great Sam is, how much sacrifices he makes and so on, and on the other hand, they have Sam pretty much acting like an asshole

I also didn't get why they kept wasting time on the Amelia flashbacks that never went anywhere, while instantly dropping the far more interesting Dean flashbacks.
But then Carver, imo doesn't really seem to care for Dean or Dean's viewpoint all that much.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Hmm I'm not sure I agree on Dean not getting enough of a viewpoint, I always feel like Dean is more the audience PoV character in fact and it's generally easier to get where he's coming from, for me it was Sam who was given practically no PoV on why he wouldn't look for his brother. It felt like the writers did get how the audience would respond to that because they kept emphasising just how great a betrayal of his brother that was, and that was what was strange to me that you would write in something like that, and yet never give Sam much chance to defend himself on why he didn't look. There was a mention in the premiere of believing that Dean was dead, and so it would make sense to not want to get into deals into bringing Dean back from the dead, but then the writers never did any more with that, instead they seemed to settle on the narrative of Dean being trapped and Sam just not looking for him for whatever reason. They could at least have thrown in a protest of 'I thought he was dead' in the later mentions of it

Agreed on the Amelia flashbacks, I really didn't think that they needed to spend half a season on them. If there had just been a couple of episodes with more focused flashbacks, I think that would have worked much better when it came to trying to tell a story with an emotional focus, whereas Purgatory was more about the mystery of what happened down there with Dean, Castiel, and Benny, so those short flashback teases worked a lot better

[liliaeth]

I think the biggest problem is that since around the middle of s6, Dean's been pigeonholed into the role of Sam's nurse/babysitter/caretaker. He doesn't get any storylines of his own, his own feelings aren't treated as if they matter, and what little he gets is usually quickly stopped and made all about Sam within a few episodes. Whereas Sam's storyline and Sam's emotions, and Sam's feelings get all the focus. It wasn't yet so bad up to s7, but by s8, it's like the writers, just stopped caring about Dean.

As viewers we got to see Dean was hurt, mostly due to Jensen's acting, but it's like the writers didn't care about it, and hence they saw no reason for Sam to explain himself. It's why Sam's constant blackmailing of Dean to shut up or he'd leave, only made Sam look worse. And don't even get me started on that horrendous scene in the s8 season finale, where after a season of Sam telling Dean that he didn't want to be with him, he suddenly starts talking how he doesn't want Dean to have any other friends either.

I loved Sam up until s8, but S8 is the season that made me lose all sympathy for Sam. (s9 is when I lost all interest in Cas' feelings)

For me, the biggest mistake they made was to give the trials storyline to Sam. If they'd let Dean do the trials, then Sam could have redeemed himself by taking care of Dean and showing that he doesn't think of Dean as a burden. But nope, can't have that, it must be all about Dean looking after Sam.

It's why s10 was the first time since s8 began, that I actually started to care somewhat about Sam again. But by that point, it was way overdue.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

We see things on the show pretty differently to be honest! I've never got the sense that Sam begrudges Dean having any other friends, I felt like his jealousy of Benny was all because of Dean pointing out that Benny had been more of a brother to him, and that really hurt and stuck with him. (Honestly I felt worst for Benny there because it seemed like both Sam and Dean were using him more in their war against each other, whether it was Sam insisting that Dean shouldn't be trusting him, or Dean using what a loyal brother Benny was in his arguments against Sam, poor Benny kind of got treated as a pawn in the end in the bothers battle)

Nor did I ever feel like Sam was constantly blackmailing Dean over how he was gonna leave, he expressed his wishes to Dean for a normal life, but I never felt like Sam was using those wishes as a threat, he was just feeling disconnected from the hunting lifestyle in the beginning of the season and Dean was trying to convince him otherwise.

And yeah, I agree that Dean has always been a caretaker for Sam, but then that's been his characterisation since the first season IMO, I've never felt like that means that the storyline doesn't care about Dean's feelings as well.

Maybe it's just a case of agreeing to disagree :)