AAAUUUGH.

[sholio]

Why must both my shows be horribly squick-inducing this week?

I already basically said my piece about this week's SGA at Tipper's journal, and I agree with what she said, so I won't bother complaining about it here.

And then I watched Supernatural to get the taste of that out of my mouth.

Which started out all right -- a light, silly, fast-paced episode; just what I needed. Until SPN managed to prove that, as wrong as SGA can often be, SPN is always willing to go above and beyond (or ... beneath and below). When I realized what they were going to do -- that the brothers and Bobby were actually going to resolve the ghost problem by dragging to death a guy whose only real sin is that he was the victim of a hate crime ... my jaw hit the floor, and I still don't think I've managed to pick it back up. I mean ... the part of the episode where the guy's brother was talking about him being dragged to death was chilling and horrible precisely because this has been done to people in real life, for similar reasons, recently. There's no way that you can watch it and not get that stomach-twisting reminder. It's trivializing enough just to use it as a plot point in an episode, but then to re-enact it for the audience's benefit, and invite us to cheer on our heroes while they do it ... um, no. I feel ill now. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT, SPN.

The only positive benefit is that I now feel less frustrated and awful about SGA. At least it's not SPN.

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh...and here I was mentally congratulating SPN for not having the big guy be black to boot. (I mean, you'd *think* they'd know better, but this is SPN, I really don't have that much faith in them...) I actually didn't know about the real-world incidents, so it didn't hit me the same way.

I'm also trying to figure out if we're still supposed to be cheering on the "heroes" at all anymore; I really can't tell. Oh well, at least Dean didn't hit a woman? One ep and counting...

[sholio]

James Byrd is specifically who I was thinking of, but he's not the only victim of that particular brand of murder; I just can't think of any other names.

... and, yeah, at least they didn't make him black, but I can't figure out if that really makes it better or worse, because as it is, they appear to have taken a real-life hate crime and then scrubbed away the real-world cultural/social/political context, so that the viewer can continue to enjoy their escapist entertainment without having to stop and think about the real-world implications.

[zillah975]

I'm also trying to figure out if we're still supposed to be cheering on the "heroes" at all anymore; I really can't tell.

Me neither. Actually, I feel that way about SPN and SGA both right now. Last night's SGA kind of convinced me that the counsel or whatever it was was justified in wanting Atlantis to answer for what it's done. Sheppard made no case, Woolsey won by bribery -- who am I supposed to be rooting for, here? Who do they want me to be rooting for? (I'm rooting for Teyla and Ronon, actually.)

I just really, really hope that both shows are going someplace positive with this stuff -- that they'll address the moral ambiguities they keep spreading around, rather than just hand-wave them off as throw-away plot points or something. Argh.

[roxy-palace.livejournal.com]

Jesus! I have a constant struggle not to let SPN's unique brand of completely frikken dodgy crap put me off the show, but this sounds like it might be a politically incorrect step too far.

I can't belive that my two favourite shows (SPN, SGA)have such unbelievably scary 'hidden' right wing agendas, and are often so glibly naff. There has got to be something Freudian in that! :)

[sholio]

At least with NCIS (the other show I'm following right now) the agenda is right out there on the surface. XD It wears its political affiliations on its sleeve. SGA seems to lean towards the rah-rah-military end of things without realizing that it's doing so -- I think it's a little weirder and creepier with SGA than it used to be with SG1, because SG1, again, was pretty up-front about it; with SGA, it's more like it sneaks up and smacks you in the face every once in a while.

And SPN ... I don't know what to make of SPN, really. It's never been shy about its roots in blue-collar, guns-and-Nascar subculture -- sort of a latter-day "Dukes of Hazzard" with vampires and demons. *g* And, truly, I really like that about the show -- because, as someone who grew up poor and blue-collar, I don't see that sort of thing represented on TV very often. I don't really feel like SPN is pushing an agenda. But ... it's also showing off a version of reality that just isn't my own, and I'm not sure how to deal with that.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

ITA with you and Tipper.

Or, at least, I think I do; I skimmed her review, quickly realizing that this ep was so bad that I don't even want to read reviews I agree with.

I'm so happy there's no universal gushing!

[sholio]

There's just not really much to gush about! I mean, there have been a number of episodes that were skeevy in various ways, but had enough cute character interaction that it was able to offset it (for me) and give me some nice memories to balance out the places where the episode failed. I'm not really sure if *anything* would be able to redeem this particular episode for me (much like "Irresponsible") but they didn't even really TRY!

[bratfarrar]

See, as soon as I saw the summary for Inquisition--way back at the season's premier, I knew I wasn't going to watch it. Partly because I just couldn't see it actually happening without being a kangaroo court/trial by mob type thing, whether or not the writers intended it to be such, and partly because--well, no, that's pretty much it. I figured, there's no way this set of writers can take this world, set of characters, and subject matter and create something I will be able to stomach watching.

Sounds like I made the right call.

[sholio]

I would say that you did. My expectations for the episode were low, because I knew they wouldn't be able to pull it off, but I believe they managed to undershoot my low expectations on pretty much every axis. It was just a painful mess of an episode.

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

I'm still shocked about that ending, and I haven't commented on it because I still find it hard to believe that they put that in there--that they were allowed to show that on TV. Especially since in Texas last week a black man was dragged to death.

The only thing I can say is that someone thought it was a sign of how far Sam has fallen, that he didn't care about an "innocent" ghost and went for the brutal, "easy" way out. The man's brother was saying hate wasn't the answer, when his brother was the victim of a hate crime. Sam himself let the hatred that's been driving him since Dean died push him into repeating that hate crime.

And even though it doesn't have the racial connotations as much, there are still all those westerns where somebody, usually Native American or some other undesirable, was roped and dragged behind a horse. Same thing, in a lot of ways, but that doesn't get our ire up because we're far away from that culture now historically. But at the time, it would have been the same. Anywya, sorry, not trying to justify things; just thinking out loud here. Should probably take it over to my own LJ.

[sholio]

I don't mind! You're welcome to ramble in my LJ any day. :D

Seriously, you could have heard the "clink" of my jaw hitting the floor when I realized what they were up to, and that they were actually going to show this to us.

I wish I could come up with a justification that works for me ... because, really, the only other scene in SPN that's made me feel this sick was the scene last season where Sam literally lynches Gordon -- and at least in that case, it was very obviously Sam going darkside and I got the feeling that we were supposed to be more horrified than sympathetic. (It still didn't really manage to redeem the scene for me because there was so much else that was wrong with the rest of the episode, but at least I didn't feel like we were supposed to be cheering him on at that point.)

I'd be more willing to buy the idea that this is another case of darkside!Sam if the tag hadn't been so light. Though, admittedly, I'm not really sure how they would have pulled it off any other way, because at this point none of the characters are really in a position to act as a stand-in for the viewer in being disturbed or freaked out at their actions -- it's hard to see Dean feeling sorry for a ghost, because we know that he draws a pretty clear line in his head between "humans" and "everything else". Sam (whiny brat though he was ;p) used to be the character who would have the "omgwtfbbq" freakouts about their actions, but he's been the darker of the two for quite some time now. And while I certainly don't feel like the characters are unjustified in this -- theirs is a dark, dangerous, cruel, kill-or-be-killed world, and it's completely understandable that they've developed a bit of a "soldiers in a war zone" mentality -- it leaves the onus on the writers to express the moral ambiguity that the characters aren't really capable of. Sadly, the writers don't seem to be capable of it either (though overall, I do feel like they're doing a lot better this season than last season).

I hadn't thought about the similarity to "dragged behind a horse" scenes in Westerns! You're right, it doesn't really have the same horrific resonance because we're so removed from it (and, also, I don't think you often see that kind of thing taken to its logical extreme on TV -- that is, you'll see characters getting dragged as a punishment, or sometimes a joke, but not as an execution).

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

westerns where somebody, usually Native American or some other undesirable, was roped and dragged behind a horse.

Sorry to jump in, and this is random and unrelated, but didn't that happen to Elvis Presley once in a Western? Only he didn't die, and wore a handkerchief the rest of the movie ... Right? Meh.

[scarym1.livejournal.com]

I was hoping for a passionate debate about the ethical and moral implications of the actions of the ATLANTIS expedition. Boy was I disappointed. I know those guys can write passionate debates because Daniel has been doing that for the past decade or so. But maybe that is because this is Atlantis and that is SG1.

It just fell flat for me. The overwhelming feeling I got from this ep was how dare “this coalition” questioned what Atlantis has done for them. It was because of Atlantis’ actions that allowed this coalition of planets to be formed. I felt that Sheppard's attitude was You should be thanking us for our intervention and not questioning our every action.

I know that having to defend yourself in a kanagroo court is a usually a no win situation but did the Expedition have to come off as so arrogant.

The people of the Pegasus Galaxy have every right to question the actions of a foreign military, no matter how good intentioned that military force is. Just because they didn’t go about it in the right way doesn’t mean their concerns aren’t valid. I would like to have seen some acknowledgement of that.

That end scene was just them patting themselves for bribing themselves out of a trial.

[sholio]

The people of the Pegasus Galaxy have every right to question the actions of a foreign military, no matter how good intentioned that military force is. Just because they didn’t go about it in the right way doesn’t mean their concerns aren’t valid. I would like to have seen some acknowledgement of that.

Yes, *exactly*. I wasn't expecting a dark and nuanced look at the situation (this is SGA, after all), but what we got was: Oh noes! Our heroes menaced by scary baddies bringing unjust charges against them! Baddies lose, heroes escape! Yays!

... and in light of how morally questionable some of their decisions have been, and the unquestionably negative consequences of many of their actions -- as well as just having an extremely powerful foreign power running around unchecked ... I really wish the show had at least tried to do justice to the Pegasus natives' viewpoint, rather than trying to paint them as paranoid and corrupt. Especially since, if you pull back and look at the characters' behavior in the episode itself, they were basically proving the inquisition's point -- dismissing the coalition as unworthy of their notice (seriously, after five years in the Pegasus galaxy, they have to be *ordered* to attend a meeting of the local planets' self-governing body?), imprisoning an offworld ambassador without trial or (as far as I can see) cause, dismissing the natives' accusations of thousands dead by saying, "Well, we lost a person, too!" At the very least, couldn't we have seen them in the cell discussing the situation and fretting about it? Like you, I got a strong feeling from Sheppard of "We've done a lot for you ungrateful people, what's a couple million dead here and there" and it really left me feeling uncomfortable.

[blucola.livejournal.com]

I don't like the fact that humor was used in an obvious attempt to counter-balance the horror of the act. Pisses me off as much as when they make gorgeous guys into rapists. Like, I don't know, it's supposed to make it somehow better? It would have been more creative to have spooked the ghost to scare him, and might have been more in keeping with the light-hearted element of the episode.

[sholio]

Yes, excellent point. I actually excised a subplot from my webcomic for exactly that reason -- the webcomic itself is very light-hearted, and I wrote a few strips with a racism subplot and then looked at it and decided that by including those strips along with the funny ones, I was trivializing the whole thing; if I was going to do that plot, it needed to be in a more serious context.

I wish the SPN writers had also been able to say "Wait, this is too serious to belong in an episode that's so light; maybe we should shelve it for later."

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

My one issue with SPN is how black and white they are about dealing with supernatural things. It's always salt and burn, and if that doesn't work, then it's silver bullets or a spell or some other physical method. I'd really wanted them to talk to this dead guy, try to reason with him, convince him that he got his revenge and to move on. I wanted them to say they understood, show him some kindness - something other than "he's this kind of ghost, therefore 'this method' is the only way to get rid of him."

I know they've established that once someone refuses to move on, the longer they exist as a ghost the angier they become until anger is all they know. But the fact that they got rid of him the same way he'd died? Wrong, just wrong, and that really bugged me. The guy was a victim, for crying out loud. There should have been another way to go about it. It's like the writers got so caught up in making the show funny that they didn't put any thought into how they should go about defeating this ghost, so went for quick and easy.

[sholio]

That's a really good point! It's something that's bothered me off and on with the show, though we've seen it more often with Dean than with Sam -- the fact that their only solution to the various supernatural entities they encounter is to kill them with no quarter, no mercy. In a lot of cases, it's fairly evident why. But then you have episodes like this one, where the ghost is an innocent person who was treated horribly and murdered, where you'd expect some sympathy, and their reaction is just the same as to a demon -- kill it! I started to become uncomfortable with their treatment of the ghost ("they" being both the writers and the Winchesters) once the full story came out, and then the end scene was just a really nasty cap to the whole thing.

Like someone suggested above, it may be that a funny episode was really not the way to go with a ghost that had such a traumatic backstory. A more nuanced and darker episode might have been able to pull it off.

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the post and for the consideration.

[sholio]

Thank you. :)

[derry667.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I didn't like this week's SPN all that much simply because I didn't think the storytelling was as strong as all the other episodes this season. I know you haven't really liked SPN for a while now, but I've thought that this season (up until this episode) has been brilliant.

In fact, it has lead me to believe that the writer's strike really must have put a very, very palpable dent in the show last season because I was losing faith in it (no pun intended) but this season has rocked my socks. To step up to that degree has to be significant IMHO.

The thing that doesn't faze me in the slightest about "actually going to resolve the ghost problem by dragging to death a guy whose only real sin is that he was the victim of a hate crime" is that so often on SPN, the victims aren't guilty of any real sin.

I see people ranting about how sexist/racist/discriminatory it is that women or non-white people (and now someone who looks like Lennie from Of Mice and Men) get killed in horrible ways on the show, but to me it really seems like looking for a hidden agenda that isn't there. Bad things happen to good people, as Dean puts it.

It goes completely unnoticed heterosexual, white males with no obvious physical deformity and "and apple pie life" get killed horribly too, but as soon as any minority suffers that fate somehow the show itself is guilty of a hate crime. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. Maybe it's becuase I'm not American. I really don't know.

People die on SPN not always because they deserve it. Bad things happen to good people. The deaths are horrible. I get that, but it is a horror show. I kinda thought that was the point. Y'know, the horror. And sometimes the Winchesters are "putting down Evil sons of bitches" and sometimes they're struggling the avert the Apocalypse and sometimes they are just franticly trying to survive in a very brutal world. I think this episode falls into the latter category.

In this case, I thought that they actually made the point that the ghost was someone who was victimised. They also made the point (well, Sam did) that what they did to him was brutal. Dean replied that it saved his life so he wasn't going to complain. In summary, what they did was NOT nice, but Dean's alive. And I very much think that the gist of this whole season is going to turn out to be that heroes have feet of clay and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

And it feels odd for me to be defending this episode - coz, as I said, I thought it was the weakest of the season. But weak, y'know, not actually Evil.

[sholio]

As a side note to my last comment, it may not be evident because I haven't been all that vocal with my fangirling lately, but I'm enjoying this season's SPN a whole lot more than last season. I was very unhappy with the show last season, to the point where, by the time the season ended, I really didn't know if I was going to watch it again in the fall. But, so far, I have been enjoying it quite a lot, and I think I would have enjoyed this episode a lot if it hadn't been for that one thing about the episode (but it was a big thing for me).

I certainly wouldn't call the show evil. But there are things about it that bother me a lot. And I'll readily grant that it's quite possible I'm looking too hard to find them; like I said the last time I discussed this stuff in SPN, I would happily un-see all of this if I could, because I enjoyed the show a whole lot more before I started seeing it!

[derry667.livejournal.com]

Then again, we seem to be out of turn with each other, just in general, this week coz I ended up liking the SGA episode this week a lot more than I thought I would. I liked that the Atlantis team weren't righteous in the end - that Woolsey ended up "playing the game" rather than taking the moral high ground. I initially feared that the resolution would be him revealing the Genii plot and the coalition forgiving the Atlantis expedition because "Look at what those naughty Genii did! You must be better than them. All is forgiven." - which would have been so utterly trite that it would have made me ill.

Instead, they kept it morally murky. I loved that Woolsey used the card "You'd better hope we're on your side when the Wraith come looking for you again." There was a level of pragmatic realism that I didn't think the show would go for - which impressed me, I have to admit. The SGA team weren't angelic - and especially not Woolsey (although I did think he'd come more acropper for his arrogant condescending attitude to the council). They weren't really victims - even thought they were betrayed and ambushed. The coalition made good points. John and Woolsey made good points. And all in all, I thought it advanced the storyline in a remarkably logical way, all things considered. I ended up liking it despite huge initial reservations.

But, as an aside that I should probably keep to myself (but I never know when to keep my mouth shut), I don't think I'll ever really understand people being able to overlook what I see as the obvious racism and political grandstanding of NCIS, and yet being so outraged at what could be at worst described as discrimination by negligent on the part of SPN and SGA. But again, not American, so maybe I'm missing key issues.

[sholio]

But, as an aside that I should probably keep to myself (but I never know when to keep my mouth shut), I don't think I'll ever really understand people being able to overlook what I see as the obvious racism and political grandstanding of NCIS, and yet being so outraged at what could be at worst described as discrimination by negligent on the part of SPN and SGA.

Hmmm ...! You know, I think you make good points (all of your points), and I certainly don't have any problem whatsoever with you disagreeing with me on the shows, of course.

The thing is, I do see it in NCIS but for some reason it doesn't bother me as much there -- maybe because I'm not as emotionally invested in the show? NCIS is just a show I watch, and a show I like but not really one I'm that fannish about.

A creepier thought is that maybe the background anti-Muslim sentiment is so pervasive in this country that it makes it less noticeable in NCIS even though it's more prevalent ... which really is a shudder-inducing thought and something I ought to think more about ...

With SPN, I think maybe it is a US-vs-everywhere-else thing, because there have been a couple of high-profile cases of racially-motivated violence in the last few years using that exact method of execution. This doesn't necessarily mean that the writers are intending to evoke that particular horror, but because it has been in the news and it's something that is a touchy subject for a lot of people, it seems like an awfully insensitive thing to use as a plot point, in the particular way that they did it.

I must admit that it's entirely possible at least some of my problems with SPN simply stem from me not watching much horror in general. :D A lot of what bothers me about the show is pretty standard to the horror genre (especially the way that the camera lovingly lingers on the violence, which makes scenes like the one in the last episode more, well, charged, more sensationalized, than they would be if they took place mostly off-camera).

As for SGA ... well, I love my team and I love them lots, but I do think they've made some very dark, very morally unsound decisions since they've been in the Pegasus galaxy. And truly, that's one of the things I like about the show, that they aren't as white-hat-wearing as the SG1 bunch. "We come in peace, shoot to kill" is very much their motto. :D And while that moral ambiguity is part of what I like about them, I really don't like the way that it's handled on the show sometimes, and last Friday's episode was pretty much the epitome of all I don't like about it. I felt that our guys came across as flippant, callous and unreflective, and I also felt that the writing of the episode itself was contrived to imply that the Pegasus natives didn't have a legitimate reason to be concerned about the Atlanteans' actions over the last four years. That bothered me a lot. I came away with the impression that the show was trying to present their morally gray actions as right, and the Pegasus council's objections as petty and unfounded. YMMV, of course.

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

Ewwww! Didn't that happen to some poor bloke in Texas. It's just not something I want to see in a TV show!

[sholio]

Yeah ... there was a really well-publicized one about ten years ago, and another just recently. Not good.