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snick_backupOn to S2! I will say this: already quite an improvement with the titles.
In the Time of My Dying
*wails*
I feel like this ep deserves a rewatch and a whole post of its own, and it's not going to get one. So.
* I'm genuinely sorry to see John go.
* I loved the whole Dean-and-his-out-of-body-experience subplot.
* Loved watching the others interact around him; those kind of visual disconnected-yet-not shenanigans always make me giddy.
* Loved the explanation for where angry spirits come and watching Dean struggle with deciding if he was willing to risk going that route. (Clearly this needs to be a fic, where Dean chooses to stick around and tries to help things and is constantly paranoid about going crazy. Could be dark or sad or... whatever.)
* Was a little iffy about how they reworked the reaper mythology; the one in "Faith" was my single favorite spook of S1, and I'm not sure I buy this "they can look however they want" business.
* Loved how they continued what we saw in "Devil's Trap," that Sam's rethinking his priorities, revenge vs. life
* So Dean really got his "I'm proud of you" from his dad after all. It felt a little weird the second time around.
* The slow-mo at the end, and the time of death given as the screen goes black, was very nicely done indeed.
* So John said something to Dean. Which we are then going to not be told for however many episodes. This show really does get on my nerves sometimes with the way it withholds info from the audience, as if that were the only way to generate suspense. Feh.
Overall: Quite a strong episode, and thematically and emotionally a very nice end to the mini-arc begun in "Salvation."
Everybody Loves a Clown
Yanno, when Scully and Mulder did the carney episode? That was funny. One of my favorites of the whole series (of what I watched, anyway).
This? Was not funny. Or much of anything, really. The actual plot here was basically irrelevant to the bits I actually cared about, which were:
* Jo, Ellen, Ash. Like Ellen - yay for another source of information. Like Ash (who, early in his career, was Dave in "I Robot, You Jane" - I knew I recognized him from somewhere), because my weakness for eccentric geniuses knows no bounds. Am ambivalent about Jo. She pulled a gun on Dean, which never fails to amuse, but the "gal takes no nonsense from Dean but is won over anyway" trope is already stale, particularly since they've yet to do it well. I can't see that there's anything else to her yet.
* Dean/Impala. Dean trying to fix his world by fixing the Impala. Dean pulling the strong silent act, which he's always pretending at but has never played in earnest before. OH DEAN.
But the clown stuff was pretty stupid.
Bloodlust
This ep clearly wanted to be so much, and it failed so badly. It wanted to be about Dean dealing with his grief, about Dean having his worldview turned outside out and his father's basic life purpose questioned, about how living according to absolutes is bad, about the civil rights of vampires, about the man Charles Gunn might have become and didn't (for which we are all grateful).
And it made a hash of every one of them. Gosh dang it. This had better not be the only ep in which the Winchesters face the moral complexity of what they do, because that's a theme that deserves a thorough, well-written treatment, and this wasn't it.
What it did manage to get right about Dean's grief was heartbreaking. Dean, confessing his grief to a total stranger when he won't tell Sam. "Gotta keep my game face on." Argh. You silly lost grieving person, Dean. That's exactly what you don't have to do. ['Course, it's pretty clear that whatever John told him is also screwing with his head. All the more reason that this is not the episode to also try and enact AN ENTIRE WORLDVIEW SHIFT, YOU RIDICULOUS SHOW.]
In other things, it turns out that after Tara got turned, she changed her name and hair color, but otherwise stayed pretty much the same. And seriously, did someone sit down and say, "Hey, let's swipe Gunn's entire backstory, cast a black man in the role, and then make him crazy. That'll make it original and stuff"? 'Cuz the similarities were uncanny.
In the Time of My Dying
*wails*
I feel like this ep deserves a rewatch and a whole post of its own, and it's not going to get one. So.
* I'm genuinely sorry to see John go.
* I loved the whole Dean-and-his-out-of-body-experience subplot.
* Loved watching the others interact around him; those kind of visual disconnected-yet-not shenanigans always make me giddy.
* Loved the explanation for where angry spirits come and watching Dean struggle with deciding if he was willing to risk going that route. (Clearly this needs to be a fic, where Dean chooses to stick around and tries to help things and is constantly paranoid about going crazy. Could be dark or sad or... whatever.)
* Was a little iffy about how they reworked the reaper mythology; the one in "Faith" was my single favorite spook of S1, and I'm not sure I buy this "they can look however they want" business.
* Loved how they continued what we saw in "Devil's Trap," that Sam's rethinking his priorities, revenge vs. life
* So Dean really got his "I'm proud of you" from his dad after all. It felt a little weird the second time around.
* The slow-mo at the end, and the time of death given as the screen goes black, was very nicely done indeed.
* So John said something to Dean. Which we are then going to not be told for however many episodes. This show really does get on my nerves sometimes with the way it withholds info from the audience, as if that were the only way to generate suspense. Feh.
Overall: Quite a strong episode, and thematically and emotionally a very nice end to the mini-arc begun in "Salvation."
Everybody Loves a Clown
Yanno, when Scully and Mulder did the carney episode? That was funny. One of my favorites of the whole series (of what I watched, anyway).
This? Was not funny. Or much of anything, really. The actual plot here was basically irrelevant to the bits I actually cared about, which were:
* Jo, Ellen, Ash. Like Ellen - yay for another source of information. Like Ash (who, early in his career, was Dave in "I Robot, You Jane" - I knew I recognized him from somewhere), because my weakness for eccentric geniuses knows no bounds. Am ambivalent about Jo. She pulled a gun on Dean, which never fails to amuse, but the "gal takes no nonsense from Dean but is won over anyway" trope is already stale, particularly since they've yet to do it well. I can't see that there's anything else to her yet.
* Dean/Impala. Dean trying to fix his world by fixing the Impala. Dean pulling the strong silent act, which he's always pretending at but has never played in earnest before. OH DEAN.
But the clown stuff was pretty stupid.
Bloodlust
This ep clearly wanted to be so much, and it failed so badly. It wanted to be about Dean dealing with his grief, about Dean having his worldview turned outside out and his father's basic life purpose questioned, about how living according to absolutes is bad, about the civil rights of vampires, about the man Charles Gunn might have become and didn't (for which we are all grateful).
And it made a hash of every one of them. Gosh dang it. This had better not be the only ep in which the Winchesters face the moral complexity of what they do, because that's a theme that deserves a thorough, well-written treatment, and this wasn't it.
What it did manage to get right about Dean's grief was heartbreaking. Dean, confessing his grief to a total stranger when he won't tell Sam. "Gotta keep my game face on." Argh. You silly lost grieving person, Dean. That's exactly what you don't have to do. ['Course, it's pretty clear that whatever John told him is also screwing with his head. All the more reason that this is not the episode to also try and enact AN ENTIRE WORLDVIEW SHIFT, YOU RIDICULOUS SHOW.]
In other things, it turns out that after Tara got turned, she changed her name and hair color, but otherwise stayed pretty much the same. And seriously, did someone sit down and say, "Hey, let's swipe Gunn's entire backstory, cast a black man in the role, and then make him crazy. That'll make it original and stuff"? 'Cuz the similarities were uncanny.
