No Rest for the Wicked

[feliciakw]

The ep was so stressful when it first aired. So tense and the impending doom was just . . . ugh. And yet, humor sprinkled in, but humor with a melancholy doom to it.


Everything about this ep is intriguing, with so many details that are never explained. I know I've talked about this elsewhere, but apparently not in my own journal, because I can't seem to find the entries.

The humor in the ep--not ROFL humor but heartwarming moments humor--are great. "Do I look like a ditchable prom date to you?" "Family don't end in blood, boy." The whole Bon Jovi scene.

The girl who played Lilith was fantastic and does Bad Seed creepy extremely well. For those fans who used to watch The Sentinel, Inspector Megan Connors, aka Anna Galvin, plays the little girl's mom.

The sticky wicket in all this, especially considering how things turned out, is Ruby. Ruby says that she can help Sam save Dean, but she needs time. We now know she was referring to getting him hopped up on demon blood (like that's ever gonna happen while Dean is still breathing) to kill Lilith. BUT . . . If Ruby was in the know from the beginning, as we're told at the end of her run, then she would know that killing Lilith first would accomplish nothing (except maybe take a huge weight off of the Winchesters). If this were the case, that she really did want Sam to kill Lilith, was Ruby trying to set herself up as the . . . advisor/consort . . . of the leader of the demon army? Was she planning on eventually maneuvering herself into the position of leadership? Was there an alternative way to open Lucifer's cage? We're told at the end of Ruby's run that everything she did was to get Sam at the cage's gate at the right time, to kill Lilith there. But how do her machinations in NRftW fit in with that plan? If Sam had taken her up on her lessons, would she simply have stalled for time? Was it all a shell game from the very beginning? It had to have been. But all in all, the whole thing seems like a very risky plan on the part of YED and Ruby both, because there are a lot of variables that could have gone a different way. I mean, knowing the Winchesters, the odds were really good that they would do what they did. As Dean points out, he and Sam are each other's weak spots, and the bad guys know it. But still . . . there's a lot of opportunity for error in the overall plan. I'll have to think on this more. It's making my brain hurt.

However, I must say that I really liked the way Katie Cassidy played Lilith. She played her like a child in a grown-up's body, which is as it should be, given how Lilith is presented to us. She's a spoiled, bratty little girl with the intelligence of an adult. And a completely different demon than Ruby. Bad Seed all grown up. I think Katie could have made Lilith pretty darn terrifying if she'd continued in that role. (As it is, the adult Lilith they ended up with didn't really impress me much.)

When Geo and I first saw this ep when it first aired, we were convinced that Dean was only mostly dead. The camera zoomed into Dean's eye, and we took that as meaning Dean was actually trapped in his own mind, and it was going to be up to Sam to figure out that Dean was only mostly dead (which is still partly alive. I'm sure Bobby has a recipe for a miracle pill. Probably passed down from Miracle Max himself). See, I was holding on as long as freakin' possible to the idea that Dean wouldn't really go to Hell. Of course, come S4, I find that is not the case, and it makes for some . . . interesting . . . character development.

Oh, and speaking of Bobby: turning the town's water system into holy water and turning on the sprinklers to provide a demon-proof shield? Reason #453 why Bobby is awesome!

So, yeah, this ep has a lot of good stuff in it. It's got funny, it's got hurt-y, all with an overlaid sense of urgency and desperation. I'll tell you what. It was a really long hiatus that year. Oy.

I started doing full commentaries with the beginning of S4. They should be tagged accordingly, if you're interested in reading them. So I won't, as a rule, be reviewing them again. If some brilliant bit of insight strikes, I'll try to share it, but for the most part, I think we're done for now.

Comments

[girlyghoul70.livejournal.com]

I think it can still work with Ruby "helping" to kill Lilith. Now, again, it may be that the writers still didn't know yet that Ruby would be part of Lucifer's plot all along. But they still managed to make it match here. To me what makes it work is even though Ruby sets out to help them- she winds up doing the switcheroo with Lilith. If Ruby was good- she just was overpowered by the enemy. If Ruby was bad, they'd planned the switch all along and the boys never had a hope.

Lilith trying to kill Sam is problematic, but again, Lilith was always a bit rogue. She wasn't fond of being the last seal so her attempt on Sam's life makes sense.

I think the writers had it all going on pretty well plot wise. Ruby's storyline does fit with where it ended up. Where they derailed was in S5 and all the talk about how this was all planned from the beginning of time. No, there were too many variables at work. They would have been better off just saying Lucifer had this plan... and it worked, lucky Devil! I think I'm just going to tell myself that all the angels and demons telling them this was set up from the beginning of time was just their way to trick the Winchesters into giving them what they wanted... Yay! Team Free Will!

And your idea that Dean was only mostly dead was a good one. They could have gone that way if they'd thought about it. But actually having him in Hell for reals was more dramatic. And how would he get out? CASTIEL! YAY!!!

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

Ruby's storyline does work better than Gabester's storyline (or any of the other ret-conning), I will agree with you there.

I totally think they didn't know at this point that Ruby was part of Lucifer's plan. Because I don't think they'd planned on bringing Lucifer in. Remember, up until S4, Kripke said they would NOT be bringing angels onto the show. Some people say that was all a ruse. I say he wrote himself into a corner, and Castiel was an awesome way to get Dean out of Hell. (Which, he totally was. I was THRILLED when Cas showed up.)

But part of me suspects that they were going to make Ruby "good," which, no. She's a demon. Demons might not all have the same agenda, but they all have an agenda. None of them are good. Period. You can't trust any of them. They're demons. Not only that, but making her a demon with a heart of gold would have been so freakin' cliche that I'm not sure I could stomach it.

My biggest problem with the character of Ruby is that her portrayal seems to be all over the place. Kate Cassidy I think could have pulled off the "I look like I'm good, but I'm actually manipulating you six ways from Sunday, and I'm gonna make you start the Apocalypse." Gen Cortese, while I'm sure she's a delightful person, and possibly a good actress in other roles, just didn't play the multiple layers of manipulation the character had going until the very end of the season. Now, part of this might not have been her fault, as she probably thought that Ruby actually was on the level and no one told her any differently. But there's that whole demon thing, so even if she was actually trying to help Sam, it certainly wasn't for Sam's ultimate well-being.

And even Ruby tells Sam, "It had to be you. It always had to be you." Again, I point to everything that could have gone wrong with that plan.

Basically, Ruby and the mytharc make my head hurt.

[girlyghoul70.livejournal.com]

Well, even the whole "It had to be you, it always had to be you" bit I can go with. Because when it worked, Ruby was jumping up and down and saying "I'm awesome!" and admitting that while she had Sam right where she wanted him, getting him there was HARD WORK! You're right though about Gen's Ruby. She never gelled with me. I always thought she played Ruby kind of flat which did take away some of the impact of how significant this character was to Sam's ultimate downfall.

I've never seen her in anything else so I don't know if she's just not good at doing multi-layered characters or if it was just Ruby she didn't grasp.

Ermm... her choice in wedding dresses was fabulous though! :-)!

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can totally by her "I'm AWESOME!" attitude, but it's the whole "It always had to be you since the beginning of time" that annoys.

But dude! I LOVED her wedding dress. That whole thing just made me want to have another wedding. Heh.