REVIEW/ META ON SPN 4.16
Mar. 21st, 2009 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fannishlissImmediately after watching 4.16, I was stunned. I couldn’t even think of what I wanted to say. Then all day Friday I was processing. I didn’t want to read anyone else’s reactions, I just wanted to let it percolate in my head. I think 4.16 may have been the most amazing hour of television I’ve ever seen. Just think about how almost four years of work by all these amazing, talented folks, has gone into preparing us for this episode. Then think about the national US conversation regarding the legality of torture, and compare with how other shows (24, Lost) have handled the idea of torture.
Just watching Jensen Ackles’s performance was amazing, as he portrayed so many levels of what Dean was going through: hatred of what he was being forced to do, a front to Alistair that he was prepared to enjoy it, determination to win the war by this extremely dubious method, despair that this act would lead to the final, irrevocable damnation of not just his soul, but his sense of who he is, not to mention his helpless sense of frustrated anger at the Angels’ betrayal, how they are so willing to make him into a tool the exact same way Alistair did. He says no, he tries to leave, and they just won’t let him: “You ask me to open that door, and walk through it? you will not like what walks out.” Jensen did such a great job leaning in to the torture, with his blank, psychopathic stare.
It was incredible but to be expected that throughout the scene, Alistair remained in control, STILL effectively torturing Dean far moreso than being tortured by the physical pain Dean was inflicting on him. It was almost a relief when Alistair got off the rack and beat Dean senseless.
It was amazing, on the other side of the episode, watching Sam spring into action when he realizes the Angels have kidnapped Dean. He immediately summons Ruby. He immediately does the VERY BAD THING (someone in a story I read totally called it!) to power up. He doesn’t even flinch when Ruby calls him Sammy (but we all did!! way to go, Ben Edlund.) I love how his spring into action was foreshadowed by the way the Impala is barrelling down the road, the first time you see them, and then Sam is at the wheel. I super, SUPER loved how Sam barrelled into the torture room, assessed the situation, saved Castiel, slammed Alistair against the wall, got the information, and totally killed him -- kind of, in a nutshell, the difference between premeditated, stupid, useless torture, and Jus in Bello, the rules of war. Not really able to keep Alistair around as a POW, Sam couldn’t very well just banish him – I have to say it felt like the edge of murder, but you could justify it as a battlefield killing – I wonder what other folks think about the ethics of Sam’s action. I mean, kill monsters is kind of what the Winchesters DO.
Then, it was DOUBLE supersuper amazing watching Sam at Dean’s bedside. OMG, didn’t it seem like we’ve seen Dean so near death like this just TOO MANY TIMES! Sammy must’ve been thinking that exact same thing. I love how when he told Ruby back at the hotel, “He can’t do it. He can’t get the job done. Something happened to him downstairs, Ruby. He’s not what he used to be, he’s not strong enough.” It wasn’t in order to belittle and hurt Dean, like with the siren, but because Sam is desperate to protect his brother. In my opinion, the thing that Dean’s missing is his sense of himself as a hero-- “a hero!”
When Sam sees Castiel in the hall, how awesome that he just charges out there and orders Castiel to heal Dean: “Miracle. Now!” but Castiel can’t (or won’t). And then Sam totally indicts Castiel about how useless it all was – now Dean is broken to the point of beyond repair, and for nothing – all because of the Angels’ bad intelligence, and, in fact, bad faith.
Then Anna also came back with her own agenda. It’s kind of icky the way she keeps making the moves on Castiel.... he seems very much like “no means no!” Still, she certainly seemed to be on the right side of the question when she asked Castiel if he thought his orders were righteous. Castiel really knew he was doing the wrong thing – and I was really expecting him to fall RIGHT THERE. But at the same time, Castiel is a warrior, and he’s fighting in the apocalypse – he can’t afford to sacrifice his Angelic might unless he’s REALLY SURE about his DOUBTS-- right? I love that Anna told Castiel to think for himself, and then he figured out what had gone wrong with the trap. Awesome.
Then finally, I was disappointed that Uriel turned out to be a villain. I really thought it would have been better if angry, unsympathetic Uriel had ended up good – and possibly even a good idea if Anna had been the schemer. But I guess they’ve been building Uriel’s dislike and disdain for humans the whole time. It was just a bit hard to believe that he would kill his own kind. But I thought Robert Wisdom did a great job making Uriel’s malfeasance believable and “satanic” (better to rule in hell than to serve in Heaven): “to raise our Brother... you do remember him? – how strong he was, how beautiful, and he didn’t bow to humanity. He was punished for defending us! Now if you wanna believe in something, believe in Him.” Pretty strong speech I thought. And now Castiel has no idea how many of his fellows are converts now.
So I am ALL OVER 4.16. I feel like I could comment at length about every single scene. – how about that opening scene with the woman in the white dress, posed just like Mary and Jess, on the pavement WITH THE SHADOW OF HER WINGS. Amazing! Plus Castiel has assigned gender to them – not just brothers, but sisters as well.
--the way we now know JUST WHY Dean is so important to the Angels – and it’s for a worse reason than we could ever have guessed. “You have to stop it.” Meaning – ALL of it!!
--the scene where Dean turned away to recover his composure, and just as he turned back, Alistair was loose.
--the expression on Sammy’s face as he kills Alistair!! think he enjoyed it much?!?!?
--and NOT LEAST, The last scene, with the way Dean is filmed in such heavy shadow – I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it on SPN before.---- heavily echoing Dean’s shadowed face as he peers through the door into the torture room, and the complete darkness surrounding him as he pushes along the torture cart.
Y’all --- S4 is SO surpassing my expectations. For all of you who enjoyed Watchmen, just let me shove you a little ways to the left. Before Watchmen, before V for Vendetta, and almost twenty years before League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore was working on a comic book called Saga of the Swamp Thing. It was, for one thing, THE comic that toppled the Comics Code Authority, and paved the way for the founding of Vertigo and Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Moore has his hero (who happens to be a SHAMBLING, MOSS-ENCRUSTED, MOCKERY OF A MAN) fight all kinds of terrifying demons, and eventually, he goes to Hell to retrieve the soul of his unjustly taken wife. Oh, the EPIC!!!!! John Constantine made his first appearance in those pages, so take Note! I have been waiting MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS for that storyline to see its equal, and THAT DAY HAS ARRIVED MY FRIENDS.
ROOT ROOT ROOT! SUPERNATURAL SEASON FOUR!
Just watching Jensen Ackles’s performance was amazing, as he portrayed so many levels of what Dean was going through: hatred of what he was being forced to do, a front to Alistair that he was prepared to enjoy it, determination to win the war by this extremely dubious method, despair that this act would lead to the final, irrevocable damnation of not just his soul, but his sense of who he is, not to mention his helpless sense of frustrated anger at the Angels’ betrayal, how they are so willing to make him into a tool the exact same way Alistair did. He says no, he tries to leave, and they just won’t let him: “You ask me to open that door, and walk through it? you will not like what walks out.” Jensen did such a great job leaning in to the torture, with his blank, psychopathic stare.
It was incredible but to be expected that throughout the scene, Alistair remained in control, STILL effectively torturing Dean far moreso than being tortured by the physical pain Dean was inflicting on him. It was almost a relief when Alistair got off the rack and beat Dean senseless.
It was amazing, on the other side of the episode, watching Sam spring into action when he realizes the Angels have kidnapped Dean. He immediately summons Ruby. He immediately does the VERY BAD THING (someone in a story I read totally called it!) to power up. He doesn’t even flinch when Ruby calls him Sammy (but we all did!! way to go, Ben Edlund.) I love how his spring into action was foreshadowed by the way the Impala is barrelling down the road, the first time you see them, and then Sam is at the wheel. I super, SUPER loved how Sam barrelled into the torture room, assessed the situation, saved Castiel, slammed Alistair against the wall, got the information, and totally killed him -- kind of, in a nutshell, the difference between premeditated, stupid, useless torture, and Jus in Bello, the rules of war. Not really able to keep Alistair around as a POW, Sam couldn’t very well just banish him – I have to say it felt like the edge of murder, but you could justify it as a battlefield killing – I wonder what other folks think about the ethics of Sam’s action. I mean, kill monsters is kind of what the Winchesters DO.
Then, it was DOUBLE supersuper amazing watching Sam at Dean’s bedside. OMG, didn’t it seem like we’ve seen Dean so near death like this just TOO MANY TIMES! Sammy must’ve been thinking that exact same thing. I love how when he told Ruby back at the hotel, “He can’t do it. He can’t get the job done. Something happened to him downstairs, Ruby. He’s not what he used to be, he’s not strong enough.” It wasn’t in order to belittle and hurt Dean, like with the siren, but because Sam is desperate to protect his brother. In my opinion, the thing that Dean’s missing is his sense of himself as a hero-- “a hero!”
When Sam sees Castiel in the hall, how awesome that he just charges out there and orders Castiel to heal Dean: “Miracle. Now!” but Castiel can’t (or won’t). And then Sam totally indicts Castiel about how useless it all was – now Dean is broken to the point of beyond repair, and for nothing – all because of the Angels’ bad intelligence, and, in fact, bad faith.
Then Anna also came back with her own agenda. It’s kind of icky the way she keeps making the moves on Castiel.... he seems very much like “no means no!” Still, she certainly seemed to be on the right side of the question when she asked Castiel if he thought his orders were righteous. Castiel really knew he was doing the wrong thing – and I was really expecting him to fall RIGHT THERE. But at the same time, Castiel is a warrior, and he’s fighting in the apocalypse – he can’t afford to sacrifice his Angelic might unless he’s REALLY SURE about his DOUBTS-- right? I love that Anna told Castiel to think for himself, and then he figured out what had gone wrong with the trap. Awesome.
Then finally, I was disappointed that Uriel turned out to be a villain. I really thought it would have been better if angry, unsympathetic Uriel had ended up good – and possibly even a good idea if Anna had been the schemer. But I guess they’ve been building Uriel’s dislike and disdain for humans the whole time. It was just a bit hard to believe that he would kill his own kind. But I thought Robert Wisdom did a great job making Uriel’s malfeasance believable and “satanic” (better to rule in hell than to serve in Heaven): “to raise our Brother... you do remember him? – how strong he was, how beautiful, and he didn’t bow to humanity. He was punished for defending us! Now if you wanna believe in something, believe in Him.” Pretty strong speech I thought. And now Castiel has no idea how many of his fellows are converts now.
So I am ALL OVER 4.16. I feel like I could comment at length about every single scene. – how about that opening scene with the woman in the white dress, posed just like Mary and Jess, on the pavement WITH THE SHADOW OF HER WINGS. Amazing! Plus Castiel has assigned gender to them – not just brothers, but sisters as well.
--the way we now know JUST WHY Dean is so important to the Angels – and it’s for a worse reason than we could ever have guessed. “You have to stop it.” Meaning – ALL of it!!
--the scene where Dean turned away to recover his composure, and just as he turned back, Alistair was loose.
--the expression on Sammy’s face as he kills Alistair!! think he enjoyed it much?!?!?
--and NOT LEAST, The last scene, with the way Dean is filmed in such heavy shadow – I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it on SPN before.---- heavily echoing Dean’s shadowed face as he peers through the door into the torture room, and the complete darkness surrounding him as he pushes along the torture cart.
Y’all --- S4 is SO surpassing my expectations. For all of you who enjoyed Watchmen, just let me shove you a little ways to the left. Before Watchmen, before V for Vendetta, and almost twenty years before League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore was working on a comic book called Saga of the Swamp Thing. It was, for one thing, THE comic that toppled the Comics Code Authority, and paved the way for the founding of Vertigo and Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Moore has his hero (who happens to be a SHAMBLING, MOSS-ENCRUSTED, MOCKERY OF A MAN) fight all kinds of terrifying demons, and eventually, he goes to Hell to retrieve the soul of his unjustly taken wife. Oh, the EPIC!!!!! John Constantine made his first appearance in those pages, so take Note! I have been waiting MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS for that storyline to see its equal, and THAT DAY HAS ARRIVED MY FRIENDS.
ROOT ROOT ROOT! SUPERNATURAL SEASON FOUR!
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-22 01:02 am (UTC)As a comic geek aside, I have Swamp Thing 37-52, which is the John Constantine arc. Mad love to Alan Moore and Steve Bissette.
This ep. broke me in so many ways, and I can't wait to see how all the pieces fall and if they will make a pretty mosaic, or just a bunch of broken glass. ;->
no subject
Date: 2009-03-22 01:42 am (UTC)But it really grew to FREAKISH LEVELS during Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing -- and now again with Supernatural. Even XFiles didn't move me to this extent. I don't know why, the boys just KILL ME.
I hope you are having a great time at EyeCon with fangirls, despite all the cancellations. I'm sorry for the lousy disappointments!!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-22 06:32 pm (UTC)Today has been salvaged somewhat by having breakfast with Jim Beaver in place of my aborted banquet. I've only had 3 hours of sleep, though.
I have never been as involved in a fandom as I have with SPN. I have no idea why it has captured my imagination the way it has...
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:16 am (UTC)I do think I'm okay with Uriel being the baddie, though. One, he was easy to dislike, and yes, he was a rather obvious villain in retrospect, but at the time ... I had no idea. I knew he detested and looked down on Humanity, but I also felt he simply represented a much-removed facet of Heaven. It would be hard for someone as ancient and removed as him to have any more empathy for us than we'd have for a next of rats. But I also found myself deeply intrigued by the realization that Uriel's arrogance is an *exact* mirror for Lucifer's! The revelation of civil war in Heaven and a rescripting of Lucifer's rise from the Pit is astounding, epic stuff to me, and I'm actually really excited about the story potential in this. So, in that context, I'm perfectly fine with Uriel turning out to be just as nasty a piece of work as he seems.
I'm actually finding *Zachariah* interesting in that he holds all of Uriel's prejudices ... but evidently he's working for the side of Good. Same outlook on Humanity, same disdain, but we're led to believe he's on God's side, against Lucifer. He's playing out the role that we thought Uriel originally held: the Heavenly warrior-messenger who wants to accomplish a cosmic task, and Dean happens to be the best tool for the job. Which ... may not be so good for Dean, which will lead to even *more* interesting storylines! *G*
I'm *glad* Anna was not the villain - at least not that we can see - simply because I felt she would have been even more obvious, and since so many fans detest her, it would have been a weak storytelling choice to leave fans saying, "See? I knew she was a conniving wench." I'm still not sure what her ultimate role will be, but I strongly suspect it will end up somehow tied to or parallel with Ruby. Just a vague hunch. ;-)
Anywho, I really enjoyed reading! Thanks for posting your thoughts. LOL, now I've got to try and organize some thoughts for my review of 4.18 ... *G*