Some minor thinky thoughts

[feliciakw]

I'm re-watching SPN, and I'm up to 3.04, "Sin City." As I was watching it today, something gelled for me, and I think once I get into S4, I'll be better able to put it coherently.

The gist is this: I miss the element of the show when the brothers' obstacles were intimate and personal. Trying to figure out Sam's visions. Trying to save Dean from Hell. None of this huge, epic civil war in Heaven stuff.

Back when God was not depicted as a big, cosmic meanie, but someone who selected Dean for an important job, someone whom Dean wanted to believe in, even if he couldn't bring himself to.

Back when the Apocalypse would have been demons trying to take over the world, with the forces of Good battling the forces of Evil.

Instead they turned the Apocalypse into a family squabble.

I think what torks me off the most is the fact that partway into S4, it became evident that there pretty much is no supernatural force for Good. There was Cas, and that was about it. Until Joshua showed up for one episode. Michael should have been a good guy. One of the most frustrating things about S3 that compounded the despair of Dean's deal was the fact that there appeared to be *no* supernatural forces for Good that could bolster the Winchesters. It was them against an overwhelming evil. That's why I was so thrilled when Cas showed up. Then the mytharc got out of control and was all but crushed under its own weight.

I'm kind of hoping that S7 will bring us around full circle, to the point where the obstacles are personal, and (this is me being REALLY optimistic) God returns to being the cosmic force of Good who works his good through the Winchesters.

I seem to recall S3 getting a bad rap and causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the fandom. Looking back, it still has that desperate sense of foreboding, but doesn't seem to be near the train wreck it was thought to be at the time.

And I still say that the season finale gave us some of the best hiatus fic ever. (I was not around for the end of S1, so I don't know what the fic was like during that hiatus.) It's the only season finale that left me with an undercurrent of anxiety for the entire summer.

Comments

[ficwriter1966.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's it, exactly.

That quote from Jared makes my brain hurt - something to the effect of, "We're Supernatural! We have to keep getting bigger!" Well, no, you don't, particulary when you don't have the budget or the ability to tell "BIG" properly.

Gigantic, epic stories have their place at the movie theater, where there's a multimillion dollar budget and a big screen to play with. For TV? It's better to go small. Intimate. Narrow the focus, and tell a *human* story. As in...I just got S4 of Everwood today, and I decided to go back to the Pilot and re-watch the whole series. That is some delicious storytelling. Intimate, human, affecting. It's got SPN beat by a country mile.

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things about the SPN Mythicarc of Doom is that it's just such a hodge-podge of stuff. And the BIGGER it got, the less personal it seemed.

I'm not overly familiar with Lord of the Rings, but it seems to me that even with that epic (which, dude, EPIC!), it kept it personal to the characters. I mean, SPN has 22 hours (minus commercial breaks) to tell a story. And it often as a "quest" feel to it. But once you hit . . . mid-S4, maybe? (I'll have a better idea when I get there), and especially S5, the Mytharc of Doom becomes too crushing, and there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut writing plan.

Does that make sense?