sholio | A bit about last week's Supernatural

My reaction to this episode was ... mixed. I thought the fandom parody was hysterically funny, and there were bits throughout that I liked. ("I am the prophet Chuck!") But overall, it was too fourth-wall-breaking and heavy-handed for my tastes, and came off feeling kind of, um, masturbatory on the writers' parts. I'm still trying to work out exactly what it was about the episode that made me so uncomfortable, because it wasn't the references to fandom (though I've seen some people reacting badly to that -- honestly though, if you've been in fandom for any length of time and really have no idea what it looks like from the outside, dude, get some perspective!), but the whole thing with the self-conscious "reminding the audience that this is a TV show" just made me feel ... kind of weird. It doesn't help that a lot of shows have done these kinds of fourth-wall-breaking storylines before (and comics too, as well as like 2/3 of everything Stephen King has written) and often done them quite a bit better -- I thought Stargate's "200" episode was a brilliant use of the trope, for example -- and so it mostly just felt like the writers had run out of ideas and were clutching at straws.

I know a lot of my f'list liked this one, though, and I'm happy for them. :D I think I'll bask in my warm glow from the previous week and contemplate the existence of a Sam-and-Dean-are-office-workers AU, because I really kinda want to write it.

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Ah SPN, where subtle goes to die. I liked it but it looks like everybody's mileage varied on this one. And I say again on the 4.17 AU, doo eet!

It seems to be a "love it or hate it" episode for a lot of the fandom, isn't it? I'm on the fence, though; I really did love parts of it, but overall it left me with an uncomfortable feeling that I'm still trying to sort out. (And yeah, I really want to write that AU, but I've got so many projects I'm supposed to be working on right now! Not the least of which is the poor neglected novel I'm writing ...)

I didn't like that it broke the fourth wall either. I thought the fandom portrayal was okay, far better than in many other series (especially considering that the part of fandom they gave a nod to was incest porn), but I don't enjoy fiction about fictional characters becoming aware they are written. I like to pretend the fiction is "real" while I watch to immerse myself in the story, and meta intrusions collapse that fantasy, and make the fiction less real. I'm not into that whole post-modern ironic detachment or whatever this self-referential mindset is called.

Yes, I think that's a big part of what bothered me about the episode -- it reminded me that I was watching a TV show. I think the reason why "200" didn't bother me in that way is because it was so over-the-top and cracky and silly all the way through; it didn't really read like canon at all. But this ... I can't reconcile the cognitive dissonance between thinking of the show's reality as "real", and having canon itself point out that it isn't real. I am generally not a big fan of fourth-wall-breaking, but it can be done in a way that doesn't make me feel like I've been thrown out of the story; it helps a lot if it was introduced in the beginning (the anime "Excel Saga", for example, which is ALL fourth-wall-breaking all the way through, and is hilarious in part because of the characters' self-conscious awareness that they're fictional characters). This, I guess, was just too much of a change -- I'd come to think of the show a certain way, and having that meta level of awareness introduced into the show midstream is awfully hard for me to take.

I like it in rare cases. For example I loved Morrison's Animal Man arc. But that is so surreal throughout, and the meta is then explicit with meeting Morrison, whereas in this episode they are sort of stuck half-way. Also the former then of course required brain-twisting contortions to bring Animal Man back as regularly working character and that's with all the inherent wackiness that is at a comic book's disposal. On SPN they don't have that. The meta is part of the previous storyline, and can't be discarded if the mytharc is supposed to work.

*nods* Most of the examples I can think of where I've enjoyed it have either been really over-the-top and silly, or very thoroughly integrated into the structure of the show. Combining the fourth-wall-breaking with serious treatment of the existing SPN mytharc really did not work for me. I don't think that it makes the episode objectively bad, just not to my personal taste.

Huh, I didn't feel like canon pointed out that it wasn't real. Sam and Dean aren't just characters brought to life by Chuck's writing.

No, sorry, I didn't mean to be unclear. I know they weren't ultimately making the point that it wasn't real, but I still felt that the first half of the episode was pretty heavy-handed with its meta-level reminders that we're watching a TV show.

Ah, okay. I never feel that I'm not watching a show/reading a book (tbh, I don't even understand how that works for people, and I suspect it's not something that can ever be explained to someone who doesn't "immerse" themselves in a story), so it doesn't bother me.

That makes sense! For me, part of the enjoyment I get out of it is temporarily "forgetting" that I'm watching a TV show (obviously I know intellectually that it isn't real, but it's a let's-pretend kind of thing, I guess). I can enjoy the meta-level fourth-wall-breaking if it's part of the structure of the show from the beginning, and Excel Saga is still the best example of that I can think of, but rarely if it's introduced later on unless it's done in a really over-the-top way. (Though the Dark Tower books were an example of one where it actually *did* work for me. Of course, a lot of King's books are meta in that way.)

I'm not in the SPN fandom anymore... I don't think I'm in any fandom except anime... so I tend not to be aware of others' thoughts. In fact there are still some SPN eps this season which I haven't seen...

I didn't mind the episode - I'm not a fan of dark epic doomsday storylines but it looks like that's where it's going. I'm actually finding myself incredibly frustrated with Sam because I feel like he's acting not very intelligently and for once, I see Dean as the voice of reason. I'm also frustrated that they keep painting out the God and angels team as being not perfect and half the angels seem like badass. I'm not religious but I just find some of the explanations of the whole angels and doomsday armageddon illogical.

As for the comment about slash, hmm, didn't really think much about it probably because I have the same reaction as Dean. I didn't read much into it. I do however wonder why they felt the need to include it. Was it meant to be taken as a joke? Or some sort of "You do know this is sick, right crazy gals?"

The idea of the prophet was interesting. I liked Chuck and found his story both funny and tragic. I was almost afraid that he'd die in the end like almost every other non-main character.

I think for me, I had a squee seeing Castiel, hearing Dean call him Cas and dare I say I like Mischa's deadpan expression as Cas? I like the fact that he's being influenced by Dean and in his own way, he does ocassionally do things to help Dean?

LOL - for a non-fandomy person, I sure am silly for spending money going to a SPN con!!!! :)

BTW, on another topic, have you seen the new FMA yet? Subbed Ep 1 has now been released! Gonna check it out!

I'm not a fan of dark epic doomsday storylines but it looks like that's where it's going.

Ha. Yeah. Over the last couple of seasons, I think the only SPN eps that I've really enjoyed have been the lighter ones that aren't part of the big mytharc. I can get into such things when it's part of the show's fabric from the beginning, but this isn't the SPN I fell in love with. I don't think the mytharc makes coherent sense -- it's starting to have the same feeling Lost did before I stopped watching it, sort of a "fling lots of shit at the wall and let's see what sticks!" kind of feeling, i.e. the writers are making it up and changing their minds as they go along. (For one thing, didn't Kripke say in an interview a couple of years ago that they had demons on the show but would never have angels? And now the angels are an integral part of the storyline? Yeah.)

BTW, on another topic, have you seen the new FMA yet? Subbed Ep 1 has now been released! Gonna check it out!

Aha! No, I've not seen it. I didn't know it was out yet!

Let me know if you're interested in FMA! I can put you in touch with Ep 1...

I quite enjoyed it but I have never seem the first version so I don't know if this one is better/worse etc. I love Roy's seiyuu (the new one) so I think I'll definitely stick with it.

hmmm~! I appreciate the offer, but I have so much stacked up to watch right now that I shouldn't add another thing to the mix! But I will probably take a rain check on that a little later. :D

I loved the first series; it's actually one of my all-time favorites. I understand that it diverged very heavily from the manga (most of which I haven't read) and that the new series will follow the manga more closely, though.

A bit about last week's Supernatural

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