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lilydalexf · 3 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Sophia Jirafe

Seven of Sophia Jirafe’s fics are at Gossamer, but more of her X-Files stories are at AO3 (as sophiahelix). I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Stones and Bones. She was active in the fandom during the show’s run and has never strayed far from fandom in general. She co-founded Glass Onion, a great multi-fandom mailing list that now has nearly 1,000 fics from 100 fandoms at AO3. Big thanks to Sophia Jirafe for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

It did initially, but so many old shows are on streaming now and getting discovered by new people, it makes sense.

I did get a comment from someone who said my first story under this name, posted in early 2000 when I was a college freshman, was older than her by a couple of months, and THAT took me aback.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

It was my first fandom, discovered when I was 17 and searching for info about the show on the school library computer, and it really shaped my whole life! I met a lot of people I still know today (mostly in non-fannish venues like FB, though I do still have some connections in fandom), and learned a lot about writing and just life generally, since I was younger than most of fandom at the time.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I started off on a tiny forum at a website called Squirrel’s Nest, but I kept seeing people thanking Scullyfic in fic headers and eventually I was able to join the mailing list (which was capped to 500 members). Scullyfic was everything to me — I made friends, betas, discussed the show, learned about all kinds of things on Off-Topic Fridays, etc. A lot of those friends, I would email with or more often chat on AIM (individual or these sprawling group chats that would go on all day), and then at the end of 2001 we started migrating to Livejournal. I was getting into Buffy more by then, but it was still mostly the same crowd of people I knew from Scullyfic.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I feel like it started me on a whole life path really — finding that my deep obsession with fiction could be channeled like that and shared with other people, as well as deepening my writing. Online fandom has been a major part of my social life for over 20 years now, and I love the mix of getting excited about things with friends and also the creative outlet.

My corner of X-Files fandom in particular was just very calm and enjoyable for the most part, full of older professional women who were happy to be friends and give me advice about all kinds of things, and it really set the bar for me with my online interactions. Now I’m almost 40 and trying to be that person for my younger friends, as well as having no patience for toxicity and in-fighting in my fandom spaces.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

A combination of the creepy conspiracy angle and just adoring Scully. I remember how mysterious and fascinating the show seemed when I discovered it right before S5, and there was no way to find out more except to keep watching and hoping they explained. Scully was so smart and tough and beautiful and interesting, and as a teen I was just captivated by her (and the UST, though I didn’t care about Mulder as much).

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I ran across it a couple times early on but felt embarrassed by the concept, but then I read the first in Karen Rasch’s Words series and suddenly it clicked for me. After a while I started daydreaming my own conversations between them, very similar to what happens to me now when I’m getting into a new pairing, so after reading tons of recommended fic by big authors, I started writing my own (the 3-4 stories I posted in high school are all wiped from the internet now, though).

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Good memories, though because it was my senior year of high school and college, I know a lot of it is just tied to that time in my life, and also being in my very first fandom. I will rewatch episodes from time to time, but I basically never revisit former fandoms because they’re kind of like exes, even if I finished on a good note. I also think my taste in fic has changed (and there isn’t the same novelty of “characters I like getting together omg!”)

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

So many! None of them had quite the same combination of excellent central architecture (especially pre-AO3) and a really high level of discussion and friendliness without being enormous, but I’ve loved them all in their own ways. I’ve done fandom on LJ/DW, Tumblr, Discord, and now on Twitter, and I think I miss the mailing list days the most. You didn’t have to repeat yourself so much in multiple conversations, you weren’t character limited, and the discussion was all in one place, with personal stuff more confined to your side conversations. Discord is a little like that, but it moves too fast and there’s too much noise for my taste.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Heh, after X-Files I went through a whole phase of faves in the Scully vein — Buffy, Aeryn Sun, Kara Thrace, etc. Like many people I’ve shifted primarily into m/m in the last decade (Sherlock, YOI, and recently The Untamed have been my major fictional fandoms, along with a lot of sports RPF), but for non-fannish shows I’m always looking for awesome new female characters, like Elizabeth on the Americans, Peggy on Mad Men, Nadja on What We Do in the Shadows, etc. And I do LOVE Killing Eve and have written a little f/f over there.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I’ll rewatch favorite episodes occasionally, and I keep thinking about a full rewatch but it takes so much time! I never saw the second movie, and I didn’t finish the first of the new seasons because I was hating it, so it’s a little hard for me to think fannishly about them when I disliked basically everything after “Je Souhaite” so much (as far as I’m concerned the show ends there).

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

X-Files no, but yeah I’m still very active in fandoms.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I lost all my saved fic several computers ago, but I recall loving “Blue Christmas” by Plausible Deniability and “Diamonds and Rust” by MustangSally (obviously everything she wrote was great).

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Looking at my X-Files fic, I can’t believe how short it is and how comparatively little of it there is (I have lost track of a few ficlets). It felt like such a big deal to finish anything back then! I think my favorite remains Alphabetum, which involved a tricky structure and 5 elements given by people as part of the Scullyfic Improv challenge, where you had a week to write a story around those elements.

My favorite of my recent fic in fictional fandoms is probably the GoT/YOI crossover novel I wrote a couple years ago, for a completely opposite experience to this (and proof you can grow as a writer with a lot of effort!)

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

It’s honestly hard to imagine going back (like I said, I usually don’t), but I guess I could get inspired by something.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I certainly still write, and I do have to give credit to XF fandom and Scullyfic in particular for giving me the start I got, where I really wanted to be writing good fiction. The few things I wrote in high school were just me jamming out romantic cliches, but the people I was lucky to know in XF fandom showed me that “just” fanfic can still aspire to be high quality. I am a much, much better and more disciplined writer than I was back then, but I might never have started on this path without fandom friends encouraging me.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Usually just daydreaming about emotional dynamics between characters/people, but sometimes something specific in canon or real life (I write a lot of RPF) gets me going, or maybe something I read.

What's the story behind your pen name?

When I wrote for X-Files, I picked “Sophia Jirafe” combining my favorite first name with a fancy spelling for my favorite animal (I was 18! Don’t judge!) Over on Livejournal, my friend Jintian and I initially shared an account with the same name as our website, double_helix, and when she got her own account I changed to sophia_helix, which is now sophiahelix just about everywhere. A little clunky, but I like the continuity (and I do run across old friends who remember the name).

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

The friends I’ve known for a very long time know about it, but we have never talked about it in depth. My husband, who I met not long after getting into fandom, also knows about it, and he’s encouraging and also a writer so we talk all the time. I told my mom in college and she was pretty dismissive, so we haven’t talked about it since (but my younger sister knows and is cool about it).

When I was younger, it was something I shared readily (I bonded with a new friend in law school I saw looking at LJ), but now I don’t really bring it up with new acquaintances.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I just made a Carrd the other day with all my various fannish addresses (Twitter, locked fannish Twitter, AO3, Tumblr)

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Just that it really was a high quality fandom — so much excellent long casefic, so many cool down to earth people, just generally a great launching place for a young fan. The friendships I made with older people were really important to me, and it makes me sad to see a lot of younger people now getting upset about the idea of anyone over a certain age being in their fandom spaces. I hope someday fandom can get back to appreciating that people of all ages can be the fandom type, and that everyone brings something different to the community.

(Posted by Lilydale on December 1, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #sophia jirafe

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theradioghost · 4 years

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So I’ve realized recently that I actually really really like podcasts when my audio processing isn’t acting up (thanks tma!) and was wondering what recs you have for completed podcasts. I’m cool with basically any genre and theme, though I would appreciate a warning for tragedy. Thanks for your time!

Of course! I’ll put this one under a cut just so the length is a bit less ridiculous.

Some of my favorite completed shows are

Wolf 359 – a scifi comedy about four squabbling coworkers on a malfunctioning, isolated space station which then takes a hard right into a spectacular, heartwrenching drama. Not a tragedy, but many tears are shed when listening. Probably one of the best podcasts out there tbqh.

Ars Paradoxica – a modern physicist accidentally invents time travel, landing her back at the start of the Cold War and changing the course of history forever. The creators literally described it as “a tragedy” and they weren’t lying, although the finale is sort of hopefully bittersweet.

The Hidden Almanac – a grouchy professor in a plague doctor mask offers bite-sized pieces of history and hagiography from his fantastical world as well as gardening advice, occasionally interrupted and/or dragged off on unwilling shenanigans by his tequila-loving accidental necromancer best friend coworker. Fantasy writer/artist Ursula Vernon and her husband put this 4-minute show out three times a week for SEVEN YEARS, and it’s funny and cozy and poetic and can be found in full here, as there are too many episodes for most podcatchers to display.

Alice Isn’t Dead – lesbian Americana road-trip horror. A cross-country trucker searches for her missing wife while monsters and conspiracies pursue her across the vast empty and abandoned spaces of America. Actually also exists in novel form.

The Bright Sessions – records from the office of Dr. Bright, a therapist who specializes in people with strange and secret abilities. However, her patients aren’t the only ones with secrets. Personally this show never completely absorbed me like some others did, but the character writing is genuinely amazing. The story obviously also deals a lot with mental illness and some other difficult topics and content.

Our Fair City – the eight-season saga of the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic underground city ruled over by the remnants of an insurance company, featuring mole people, lightning-harvesting sky sailors, giant ants, and a found family of mad scientists among others. Part comedy, part drama, all anticapitalist satire. You kind of have to give it a couple of seasons to find its stride (this was one of the very first shows in the podcast-based audio drama revival) but it is absolutely worth it. Disclaimer that while I am on the final season of the show I have not quite finished it yet.

Jarnsaxa Rising – a unique scifi-fantasy hybrid, in which a vengeful Norse giantess escapes imprisonment with the goal of destroying the gods and bringing about Ragnarok, only to find herself in a post-climate-change dystopian future.

Glasgow Ghost Stories – a Scottish woman begins noticing the many ghosts inhabiting the streets of her city; but the ghosts have begun to notice her too, and not all of them are friendly. Pigeons are involved.

Big Data – an odd little heist comedy about a rogue journalist investigating a spectacular crime in which the “seven keys to the internet” are stolen, leading to a story about hacking in which no actual hacking is involved. There are two fun side notes to it: one, everything that happens in it could technically happen in real life. Two, it involves an absurd amount of cameos from other well-known podcasts (and also Taika Waititi?), which you don’t need to get to follow the story but which make it kind of hilarious on a whole other level when you listen to those shows.

I Am In Eskew – a surreal, intense, disturbingly poetic horror about a man trapped in a shifting, malevolent, impossible city, and a woman on the outside trying to find him. Extremely good but I do recommend thoroughly checking the trigger warnings on this one. (Surprisingly non-tragic finale, although not a typical “happy ending.”)

The Alexandria Archives – half comedy and half horror, in the form of a late-night radio show at Alexandria University, on the edge of North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp. Half of each episode is a standalone cosmic horror story set in and around the town of Alexandria. The other half features the antics of the university’s students, including the host MW and her friends who are definitely Canadian exchange students, and not a vampire hiding from his ex and a bunch of stranded space pirates. (A little goofy? Yes, but I love it a ton for all its faults anyway. Also, some of the short stories are genuinely terrifying.)

and also, some completed miniseries!!

The Tower – a gorgeous experimental audio drama in which a young woman decides to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one ever returns.

Time:Bombs – a comedy by the folks who made Wolf 359 about a bomb disposal squad on New Year’s Eve, trying to survive their leader’s obsession with breaking a record.

They Say a Lot of Things – upon discovering that she can interact with a dropped tape recorder, the ghost of a young girl tells her story, interwoven with the stories of those who have passed through the abandoned house that she cannot leave over the years that she’s haunted it.

Podcaster A. R. Olivieri specializes in microfiction miniseries, ranging from scifi to experimental to fantasy. (Side note, a lot of his work crosses over with the still-running scifi podcast Girl In Space, but you don’t need to have listened to GIS to understand what’s going on in his shows.)

Nym’s Nebulous Notions – a self-declared investigative journalist decides to check out a mysterious SOS signal and finds herself on a mysteriously abandoned ship – or so she thinks. Arguably a tragedy, although not necessarily in the way you might think.

Palimpsest – technically not finished, but each season of this anthology makes up a complete 10-part story, and seasons 1 and 2 are complete. Season 1 is a ghost story about a woman who is suspicious about strange happenings in her new home and her odd new neighbors. Season 2 is a turn-of-the-century dark urban fantasy about a girl who escapes her career criminal mother’s house, taking a job as the companion to what her new employer claims is an imprisoned faerie princess. (Season 3 is ongoing and is about a codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on London’s streets during the Blitz.) It’s a heartbreaking sort of show, albeit in a very beautiful and moving way.

The Details is a short piece about an office worker who goes in to negotiate for a promotion and finds himself negotiating with the devil himself instead. The number of genuinely surprising and excellent twists it packs into just 45 minutes is really fun.

The London Necropolis Railway – a really underappreciated little fantasy-mystery about a recently-dead detective who refuses to board the train scheduled to take her to the afterlife until one of its hapless employees helps her solve her supernatural murder.

Janus Descending – a scifi horror told in two intertwining perspectives, one in reverse order and one in chronological order, about two scientists who land on a remote planet to investigate the ruins of its lost civilization, only to encounter the thing that killed the former inhabitants. A fantastic story told in a really clever and unique way, but stamp a big old tragedy warning all OVER this one, although because of the structure you technically know how it’s going to end right from the start – what makes this show so good is how you get there. It will make you cry, though.

… and also my show, Midnight Radio, which is about lesbian romance, small towns, old radio shows, the good and bad sides of nostalgia, and ghost stories.

#Anonymous #asks #my posts #podcast recs #bobbie recommends things

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wellntruly · 5 years

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In the past week I finished Maniac, the second season of Killing Eve, the first season of What We Do In the Shadows, Fosse/Verdon, and actually declined to be finished with Fleabag S2, so am vocally rewatching it.

But yeah this feels bananas! Even watching more than one show at a time was out of the ordinary for me, and then 3-4 of them (depending on how we want to categorize a season being dropped onto streaming) all wrapping up at the same time?? It’s FUN, I’m having fun! It’s like wooo, just had finals and spring semester is over, let’s look at what’s in the course catalog for summer term.

But in the meantime, wrap-up thoughts on the ones that weren’t getting episode posts:

Maniac

I end Maniac pretty supportive of Maniac. It was what I wanted, thanks! And the last two episodes reeaaally made up for the previous two, which were starting to test me. The one where he plays a very ridiculous Icelandic official was such a good and bewildering reminder that THIS is the kind of performance Jonah Hill really excels at, so why did they...... I’m still mystified! Emma Stone continued to do be eminently watchable from start to finish, the scientists continued to be the actual best part, and I’m still in love with the Look of it all.

What We Do In the Shadows

Well folks, the movie was better. We kinda thought that would be the case, yeah? I think part of the issue is that the TV show is riffing on a lot of the same dynamics and themes of the film, and it turns out the right length for that set-up was a movie, not a series.

But there are two episodes of the ten that are great and almost make the whole project worth it, and you can absolutely just watch those, it’s fine, this whole thing is a glorified sketch show and that’s part of its charm. One is Ep 7 ‘The Trial’, in which Taika “Power Move” Waititi cast the Vampiric Counsel entirely with actors who have played vampires before, to play themselves as vampires, and it is absolutely as fucking fun as you’re imagining. Also Kristen Schaal is in this one. And the other one I recommend is actually the sequentially following one, Ep 8 ‘Citizenship’, in which Nandor applies for American citizenship and it’s pretty dang good, but MOSTLY, Nadja teaches her brand new baby vampire BEANIE FELDSTEIN how to vamp.

[Sidebar: FX’s VO guy who introduces all their shows does a vampire voice for What We Do In the Shadows, and I realize I want a linguist or dialect coach or Hollywood historian or SOMEONE to explain in detail why we all know what “a vampire voice” is. Because it’s not just a vaguely Eastern European accent, there’s also this like, nasally vibrato thing going on?? I want the history!!]

UPDATE AUGUST 2022: Hahaha this show got better every season and now it literally, literally, is the only currently airing TV series I watch. From this beginning!! But no the gambit change in the finale of S1 is what *makes* this program, everything from there on out let it become its own artistic & narrative enterprise and it is: sublime. Genius stupid perfect vampire sitcom. Also a slow-burn dumbass/badass gay dramedy. Unmatched really.

Fosse/Verdon

I most enjoy talking about Fosse/Verdon out of this set, by a MILE, because I don’t think this is really a good show, I think it’s frequently kind of a mess, but then you get these moments or sometimes full episodes that are kind of actual masterpieces? Fascinating.

The Most Masterpiece though is undoubtedly Michelle Williams, who is probably giving the most magnificent performance I’ve ever seen an actress deliver on television. Imagine that with an understated tone because I very seriously mean it. In this she has proved forever that she is one of this generation’s greatest performers. Just her VOICE WORK ALONE, my GOD!

Anyway, like with What We Do In the Shadows, you can absolutely just cherry pick a few episodes out of this season and it won’t matter (besides missing the gift of Michelle), and in this case that is a criticism. The creators have deliberately constructed their show with a lot of jumping around in time within each episode, though overall it is moving mostly chronologically through Bob and Gwen’s lives. The problem is that if you’re building something through a mosaic each piece should matter, and I feel like you can get away with skipping a lot of this without affecting the impact of the overall picture. Honestly, this is almost a backhanded compliment if you keep carrying it through to its natural conclusion, because the reason why you can skip so much is that you already know, because they almost did too good of a job with their establishing sequences. They really manage to convey a LOT of this story just in the opening episode, and I just keep thinking about how I and every single person I’ve talked to about this show thought it was going to be a movie when we first heard about it, and were startled to find out it was a limited series. I’m really wondering if it always should have been the movie we all automatically imagined. They’d even be able to get away with a long one here---if they built it just out of their really great stuff they would absolutely earn even a 2.5 hour runtime, I’d allow them even that far!

But as is, Fosse/Verdon is an eight episode series that averages 50 minutes each. And if you’re interested, I’ve cut it down for you below:

Ep 1 ‘Life is a Cabaret’ -- The pilot does SO much work in its runtime, watching this is the reason why you can then start skipping. Also it’s about Cabaret.

Just the unbroken 2 minute tracking shot of Michelle Williams doing the infamous Gwen Verdon Can-Can mid-show curtain call in Ep 3 ‘Me and My Baby’. I sobbed. I described it to a friend later and cried again. I’m typing it up right now and I have goosebumps! You can start it at 35:10, gives you a tiny bit of context.

Ep 4 ‘Where Am I Going’ -- This is a 60-minute spiritual [if not technical] bottle episode in which a bunch of famous theatre-makers are stuck together overnight in a beach house during a downpour just drinking and being the worst at each other/the Best to watch. This episode is 110% a classic 20th century stage play, which is additionally fun given the context.

Ep 7 ‘Nowadays’ -- This is the Chicago episode, and also I think maybe their strongest use of the time-jumping, as this time it’s just pinging between two poles, telling thematically parallel stories about Gwen & Bob about a decade apart, and it works really well. There’s also a coooool recurring bit where Michelle Williams is performing a number from Chicago *not* as Gwen Verdon, but essentially as herself, for Gwen? AND it’s the one where they let Sam Rockwell dance the most, AND at one point Michelle Williams delivers this “Oh oh oh!” that I had to immediately rewind and watch two more times.

Ep 8 ‘Providence’ -- The finale, which you watch for reasons of it being the finale, and also because it contains kind of all that is the best and worst about this show. WOW. There’s a lot of good stuff, particularly in the way of performances, but I just have to talk about this one bit. Oh my fucking god. Okay. So, my most charitable interpretation of this scene is that it was supposed to be a self-aware commentary on the onanistic ouroboros that so often is ~*The Theatre*~, and yes that is the most outlandish way anyone has ever said “circle jerk”, BECAUSE: there is a sequence where Fosse/Verdon producer & Broadway star Lin Manuel-Miranda cameos as Roy Scheider, playing a fictional version of Broadway star Bob Fosse, while Sam Rockwell, playing in-world Real Bob Fosse, directs his producer Lin Manuel-Miranda, playing the character he’s playing, in a movie about this character’s life, in an episode about making the movie about his life, and folks I lost it, I couldn’t take it, I was screaming into a pillow!

Anyway, Fosse/Verdon: I actually mostly recommend it! Just watch this half above.

UPDATE AUGUST 2022: I have now watched All That Jazz and am here to report that holy moly hello: the All That Jazz filming sequence in the Fosse/Verdon finale was SUPPOSED to feel that way, that was HIGHLY the point. I mean still I am ~screaming~, but that is what many parts of All That Jazz also feel like. BOB JESUS CHRIST.

#Maniac #What We Do In the Shadows #Fosse Verdon #television #Tarra takes notes

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thewillowbends · 5 years

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Thoughts on Lucifer (TV) Season 4

So I've spot-rewatched parts of season 4, and I've more or less got a sense for what did and did not work for me. Lucifer is the kind of trash television I reluctantly love because I enjoy the characters so much, even as they are stuck in a painful mishmash of bad writing with the occasional moment of brilliance carried along by dedicated and talented actors.

SEASON 4 SPOILERS AHEAD OBVS

Let's get what I didn't like out of the way first -

Stuff That Makes Me Cringe

1.) Up first is my completely shallow dislike for the new devil makeup. The wings were really well done, but the face/body is kind of meh to me. It's not badly designed, per se, but it's definitely narm territory in some places. (While I do like the whole "king of hell" scene at the end and what it portends in terms of Lucifer's final decision, it is hilariously campy, too.) In my opinion, season two and three still feature the best up-close devil look, particularly in the reveal scene to Linda. It's disturbing in an uncanny valley sort of way that gets lost with the heavier makeup, and also...the wet blood is a really nice, creepy touch that I'm sad got dumped after the first try!

Also shallow opinion - Tom Ellis is fine as hell, don't get me wrong, and I appreciate that he worked out like crazy for this season, but I actually kind of miss his slightly less muscular look from the earlier seasons. I feel like he's a guy who looks better with shoulders that are a tad less broadly defined, yeah? It felt like it made more sense for Lucifer to be well built but not hyper muscular, since he wasn't a warrior in the way, say, Amenadiel or Michael were. Samael was the tempter - he's built for beauty and desire, with kind of a sly appeal to him.

2.) Eve. I really like Eve as a character over all, but I do wish her motivations were explored more explicitly. I do really like the vaguely feminist undertones of her story, that she's a woman whose entire life has been dictated to her by God and husband, and her decision to leave Heaven is a rebellion against that, a desire to pursue what she wants for herself even as she struggles to break free of old patterns. While the story does seem to suggest this is her true motivation, I do wish it was given a little more individual reflection. The thing I find the most poorly handled about her character is the punishment fascination. I get that it's part of her tendency to try and mold herself into what she thinks the men in her life want, good or bad, but I would've liked more clarity on whether it held any personal appeal to her - i.e. she discusses her son, Cain, but there's little attention given to what it must have been like for her to watch him walk the Earth cursed, much less losing her son Abel to Hell. Does she resent God? Is she angry that human life is so short yet the recompense for a life well or poorly lived is so permanent? Does she feel like her life was stolen for her in a way that other human's choices weren't?

She's already a foil for Lucifer in that she's daring to go against God's plan to explore her own freedom of choice, with the major caveat being that she left Heaven willingly in contrast to his exile. So while I do feel she was a relatively well rounded character (as far as she could be with what they wanted to do with her), a little more exploration of those motivations was in order, but I absolutely would love for her to come back in a potential season five. She has a lot of opportunities for growth and a lot of directions they could take her.

3.) Mazikeen. I'm actually not completely unhappy with the direction of her story. It feels like a natural continuation of her struggles in season 3, learning how to "human" and find her place in the world, but the problem is she isn't being given much to do outside of that. I like that her relationship with Linda is emotionally complicated (it's honestly one of the best female friendships on the show) with elements of platonic, erotic, and maternal love woven into it, but that the story is making it clear she still needs to learn how to develop herself independently. In season 2, Lucifer states that Maze is like a "baby bird that imprints on anything near." Now that we know demons are naturally inclined to want leadership and direction, that actually provides a literal context for why she's clinging to Linda for purpose afterwards. We just need to move that into a more strongly defined character arc. Since we know have the Lilim introduced as a legitimate threat, I feel like that's a no-brainer for what should happen if season five occurs with her. Let's see a storyline with Maze dealing with her family history (the Lilith), having to confront the fact that Hell is no longer her home, while grappling with a life on Earth minus the companion she's had for nearly all of her existence (Lucifer). Let her evolve into a fully fleshed out character.

4.) Cain. I'm not sad to see him go out with a whimper since they clearly had no idea what to do with his character in season 3, but the fallout gets completely brushed over way too easily. There's no way a federally investigated criminal revealed to be chief of the LA police wouldn't lead to absolute chaos in the precinct for quite a bit afterwards, and God knows, Chloe certainly would've been under the microscope for her role in what went down. It would've made more sense to have a throwaway line about how she was suspended for a month and kept away LA proper for a few weeks until they made certain the danger was clear and the drama had settled down media-wise.

5.) Chloe. I'll be up front that I actually don't mind her more dramatic response to Lucifer's face. For how easy it is to want to imagine she would handle it better, we've seen pretty much everybody freak the hell out when they see it, so she really shouldn't have been different. The context also matters significantly here - she encountered it at a violent crime scene shortly after he killed a person. HUGE difference from how a lot of the other characters were introduced to the truth. So I don't find her characterization completely OOC there, but what I wouldn't give for just one more episode this season exploring her feelings during that period, what drove her to Europe, what destabilized her sense of who and what Lucifer is. What I do like is that we got to see her make mistakes and have to answer for them - up until this point, it's been about Lucifer improving who he was to be somebody worth pursuing, but here we finally get to see Chloe's flaws, her struggles to be the better person she wants to be, to get told 'you f*cked up' and have to accept that she's possibly missed her chance. I felt like her relationship with Eve was well done, that they didn't go the easy route of them being catty with each other all season, but that each provided a different but ultimately legitimate perspective on Lucifer's complicated character. She could easily be set up as a primary protagonist of season five now with all the changes she's going through.

6.) The Father Kinley plot. I actually have no real problem with it for the most part - it provides a central antagonist that is far more threatening than Cain ever was, but I do wish they'd rethought the story of his introduction to Chloe. It seems to me it would've made more sense for him to seek her out in America. As a writer, I would've kept Chloe relatively local and had her confessing her fears and secrets to a local church pastor - who could have contacted the Vatican and brought Kinely to her in L.A. That would've conveyed a sense of Kinley's operation being part of a vast network of religious authorities "in the know" and provided a possible set up for later conflicts if there were others out there like him. Kinley actively seeking her out would've also reinforced her sense of how dangerous Lucifer is knowing that authorities had been tracking him for years, which could have undermined her own beliefs about who he is.

7.) The Caleb plot. I get what they were trying to do, and I appreciate that the show attempted to go there even as it is didn't fully succeed in treating the subject matter as well as it should have. I get that it's meant to show us that life can be unfair, and that embracing the right to free will comes with the potential cost of suffering, that we must accept the risks of loving and caring for each other. However, at the end of the day, you have a male POC killed off for a plot that ultimately leads nowhere, and that's...not great. I mean, I'd rather them try and stumble then completely ignore such things, but it's definitely not the season's shining moment.

8.) Other thing this season didn't shine on - the pacing. I get why it happened, since these writers are used to having more leeway to work with time-wise, and ten episodes is not a whole lot to pack in all of the emotional and story conflicts, but the first four episodes in particularly really feel strained. Even the humor feels slightly off kilter, like they were struggling to find the right tone. It's better than season three's tendency to sacrifice pathos for humor, but to date, season two remains their best work in terms of the over all pacing and tone.

9.) Dan. His backsliding and self-destructive behavior makes sense in light of his depression and sense of powerlessness, but it does feel redundant in light of Lucifer's own backsliding in season 3 and even here. Frankly, Dan has a legitimate point about how their tendency to write off Lucifer's worse behavior doesn't help him in the long run, but he's, y'know, one to talk. I honestly think the best direction for his character in season five is to leave the police force. In particular, I would not be unhappy to see him team up with Mazikeen to fight some supernatural demon crime, actually. I feel like their relationship has a lot of potential.

10.) Dan/Ella. I don't hate it, per se, but I'm just very neutral on it. The age difference is a little off-putting (he's fortyish, divorced with a kid, yo, and she's clearly a twenty-something), but I don't mind it being a hook up that occurred when they were both in a low place. I'm uncertain if I want to see it go beyond that.

11.) Remiel is a lot of fun, but I vacillate over whether her presence is particularly significant in light of Amenadiel's ultimate decision to stay on Earth. I highly suspect she's being introduced now as a placeholder for further events down the road if the show gets renewed. She's clearly there to generate conflict in Amenadiel rather than be the conflict itself, but I wonder if they plan on making Charlie's existence more of an issue if the series progresses.

12.) As always, I appreciate that the series' maintains an unflagging dedication to diversity. They cast an Israeli Jewish women as Eve. All of Lucifer's siblings have been POC. The show has probably MORE bisexual members in the cast than any other mainstream series that I've seen. It's not perfectly handled, it it definitely has its stumbles where race and LGBT+ content is concerned, but it's trying. That's more than I can say for most series.

The Stuff That Gives Me Life:

1.) Tom Ellis acting the shit out of that script, no matter how ridiculous the scenes they gave him were. I really appreciate that he's so gung-ho for giving his all to the character even when the material fails to rise to the occasion. Respect, too, for what I assume was basically him living in a gym for the past year. If Leslie Ann Brandt had to squeeze herself into leather pants two months after giving birth, I appreciate that he rose to the occasion for getting naked all over the place and providing an ass tight enough to bounce a quarter off it.

2.) Lucifer's character development was on point for me across the entire season. I feel like everything we saw building up from previous seasons - the anger, the grief, the self-inflicted wounds he refused to let heal - finally came together here. That moment at the end of episode eight is the perfect culmination of his character development, the painful realization he has about who really is responsible for everything that's happened to him. And now he can start making the real journey to being a better person. What happens at the end of the season is exactly what was bound to happen, no matter what story came before, because he needed to recognize the importance of punishment as a LESSON about the consequences of our actions. Responsibility sometimes means sacrificing what we want to protect what we care about. That's actually a rather clever nod to the comic version of the character who ultimately had to give up his individual existence to achieve total freedom - this version chooses submission out of recognition that to love and be loved, to be good is to be fettered to our responsibility to others.

(Which makes me really wonder if they are going to eventually push a story where Lucifer becomes a true king of Hell - not only a tyrant who deals punishment and controls the demonic masses but one who begins to show mercy and help some of those souls find release and forgiveness. Ah well, don't worry friends, if they don't write it in show, I'm already writing it in a fanfic.)

3.) Deckerstar 4 lyfe. I didn't expect them to wind up together because they weren't there yet, but it ended on such a pitch perfect note. Something this show has done remarkably well is avoid the idea of Chloe as the sole source of motivation for Lucifer to improve himself. It's emphasized over and over again that he has to want it, that he's the one who had to desire the good in himself. The worthiness comes with the recognition that you want to be worthy of love - and that you are. Lucifer had to come much farther than she did, but it was nice to see the dynamic switched up a bit with Chloe having to grow, mature, and reconcile herself to her mistakes.

4.) Eve was MUCH better as a character than I'd thought. I'm a little smug about predicting so much about her, but that's not an entirely terrible thing. While her storyline isn't perfect, I did like that it's a deconstruction of an idea of the "perfect woman/partner." Eve is in love with the idea of Lucifer and the idea of who she can be with him, not so much the reality of who they are. It makes me a little sad because I do think if they'd met at a point where she was further along in her character development, or he wasn't already in love with Chloe and so far ahead of her in growth, they could have actually worked and fallen in love with each other. And that's fine! Part of the point it's making with her character is how important our individual journeys are. At the end, Eve recognizes she needs to figure out who she is outside of God's plan or what she THINKS is what she wants. That honesty toward the end, that she really left Heaven for *herself* and not for Lucifer, is a huge revelatory character point that can go a lot of places next season.

5.) The demons. Just...everything with Dromos is gold to me. From his initial excitement at seeing Lucifer to his frustrated attempts to reason with him...to being much craftier and scarier than anybody possibly expected. Regardless of how we look at it, he played the endgame to the benefit of his stated purpose - loyalty to the infernal throne. Hell has a king again, one way or another. And now we have an established threat to keep Lucifer in line over the next couple of seasons, as well as tying up the arc that was begun all the way back in season 1.

6.) Pulling in the Vatican and a secret society of "in the know" sects was wise. While I wish the introduction had been slightly different, it leaves open opportunities for later.

7.) MY GIRL LINDA. Rachel Harris is such an underrated part on the show. She has such great chemistry with Ellis in the therapy scenes, and her becoming a mother feels like a natural extension of the underlying maternal element she provides the show. I like that we get to see her outside of the office now, engaging in a story of her own, which allows her to stay in the cast without losing significance of no longer being Lucifer's therapist.

8.) AMENADIEL. He's probably had the strongest and most well directed character development out of any secondary cast member on the show. Having him forfeit his power to stay on Earth with the humans he loved is such a nice touch, but I like that it was a decision he had to wrestle with. The idea of human life necessarily being complicated, messy, even unfair and unkind fits well with the theme of responsibility for our choices. If he stays on Earth, he has to accept that his son will not have a perfectly Heavenly life, that to be human is to accept all that comes with it. DB Woodside has great chemistry with the cast, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll do with him in future seasons.

9.) Lucifer holding baby Charlie for two seconds, awkwardly cooing at him, then immediately passing him off like a hot potato. That's real character development, guys.

10.) Amenadiel saying goodbye forever to Lucifer in the baby ward, for what is ultimately and tragically not the reason he expects it to be the last time he gets to say it. Woodside and Ellis have such great chemistry.

11.) Ella's loss of faith is handled pretty well. I appreciate that she had to reclaim it herself and not because she got to see the divine is real. Fits nicely with the theme that we have to actualize our own beliefs and realities.

12.) LGBT+ representation was better this season. It's too late for Lucifer's pansexuality to have any real meaning at this point, but I appreciate him stroking the guy's face while using his eye voodoo in episode 1. Little touches like that make the "Bi the way" aspect of his character seem less tacked on. Mazikeen, on the other hand, is where things got much better - she's actually seen dating both men and women, having difficulty parsing her complex emotional relationship with Linda, being openly attracted to and pursuing Eve (also openly bisexual). Please don't disrupt this improvement next season by giving her a male love interest, Netflix, I'm begging you. Give us at least SOMETHING here. She's got the most open-ended story for a relationship, and her development is clearly suggesting she wants family to call hers outside of what she has with the rest of the cast. (I know I was saying I low key ship her with Dan, BUT I TAKE IT BACK.)

13.) The dragon wings are admittedly very cool looking. I prefer the more streamlined devil makeup otherwise from seasons 2 and 3, but the wings can stay. I imagine the amount of fic tagged "wing kink" on Ao3 is going to increase several fold now. (Yes, that is an actual thing.)

14.) Lauren German showing up to play this season! She finally gets to do more than just be the straight man. All of her dramatic moments with Ellis were well done. No complaints. I have way more faith now seeing her move into a primary protagonist role in season 5 if we get it.

15.) LESLIE ANN BRANDT CAN SING!!! What a sweet moment and what it says about Mazikeen's development as a character (even if it is ruined by Eve's obtuse logic afterwards). How much do we want to bet that Lucifer's reaction to that is what made him decide to leave her behind on Earth?

16.) AJKLSJD;FLSAFDAS THANK YOU FOR FINALLY BRINGING IN MORE SUPERNATURAL STUFF. We finally get to see the throne!!! There are prophecies!!! WINGS!!! (How cool are Remiel's??) Demons can possess people canonically! The Lilim are a well established thing! Lucifer is back in Hell! So many place this can go now.

Anyway, I have good feelings for the most part. It’s still a heavily flawed series, but it’s not so bad that I’m going to dive out of it ala Hemlock Grove, which I’m fairly certain gave me brain damage by mid-season 2.

#lucifer #lucifer tv show #lucifer spoilers

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vmheadquarters · 5 years

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This Veronica Mars review contains no spoilers.

Spring break isn’t for everyone, Marshmallows. And while Veronica Mars Season 4 recaptures much of the original show’s magic, it also makes bold, grown-up choices that won’t be for everyone, either.

Neptune, California has become a spring break destination but not everyone is happy about it. Some, like Big Dick Casablancas (Dick and Beaver/Cassidy’s dad) want to clear out the riff raff so they can gentrify the town more expeditiously. Others, like magnetic newcomer Nicole (Kirby Howell-Baptiste of The Good Place, Killing Eve) are happy for the business, so long as the drunk dudes understand that yes means yes and no means no. But someone is taking their objections to a new level and planting bombs throughout Neptune, the first of which draws in a promising Arab-American politician and two members of a Mexican drug cartel.

Hulu’s new season of Veronica Mars has many familiar elements, like Veronica’s voiceover, that pitch-perfect sense of humor, and noir tropes deployed alongside modern pop culture references. But it also dispenses with the case-of-the-week format in favor of several mysteries: who planted the bomb? What happens with this case that is so bad that Veronica wishes she never took it? What will happen between Logan and Veronica? What’s really going on with Keith’s health? What’s Veronica avoiding – is she really running from Neptune, and if not, why can’t she admit it?

Much has been improved upon since the movie, if you weren’t exactly wowed by the Kickstarted feature film which had plenty of fan service but mostly felt like a lot of familiar elements placed in a different setting that we keep being told is the same one. Notably, while there are plenty of cameos from fan favorites (and even some folks you never thought you’d see again), the length of the series versus a movie allows them to be well spaced out and to fit more realistically into the story. More than anything, this show feels like Veronica Mars again, especially by the third episode when it finds that strange, special brand of dark humor where the show always used to live.

While much of Prestige TV interprets “more adult” as being dark and gritty, Veronica Mars gets down to brass tacks on what it means to being an adult, from caring for a parent who you must realize is, in fact, mortal, to the struggle of adult friendships, to what it takes to be in a committed, adult relationship. If only more of our entertainment were willing to explore the moments after the big kiss, the grand gesture!

In the movie, Logan was a bit of a pod person. This season does a much better job of setting his abrupt emotional evolution from the film into context. The old Logan is still in there, somewhere, but he goes to therapy, he’s putting in the time, he’s dealing with his shit. Most importantly, his quippy sense of humor and the fire for Veronica are back in a way that feels essentially him, while still believably and understandably evolved.

In season three in particular, Veronica couldn’t stop investigating Logan, couldn’t bring herself to let her guard down and trust him. That’s not to say she had no reason, but it’s part of her character that she has to deal with, or at least attempt to address, and it’s satisfying to see Veronica Mars season 4 engage with it so directly and whole heartedly. As thrillingly high stakes murder as accusations were, in some ways they were a cop out, something that let Veronica off the hook because she could count on Logan to be such a screw up. Season 4 asks what happens when Logan Echolls gets his shit together and the only problem in the relationship…is Veronica?

There are a few elements that are harder to swallow – or just plain confusing – when you take a step back from your binge. A number of essential characters disappear around the halfway or three-quarter mark and are never heard from again. Matty’s Veronica analogue is a great addition, but there’s no confidante to force V to explore the parallel. It’s a bit disappointing to see that all of the promising emotional work in season 3 from Dick Casablancas after his brother’s crimes and death by suicide seem to have since fallen away, in favor of his fun guy persona. It all feels a bit cheap and easy…just like Dick. Weevil is done dirty by both the script and the main character in a way that reeks of White Feminism and frankly betrays him, the audience, and the character of Veronica, who was always so aware of shortcomings of the carceral system, especially when it comes to racial injustice.

The central mystery itself has probably one or too many twists. There is such a thing as too clever by half. While the ancillary mysteries held some interesting additional reveals in the denouement, the main mystery starts to feel like it’s jerking you around too much by the third or fourth twist. Mostly, the ending feels like a rush to get where the story needs to go, rather than the steady ache of inevitability at which the show was so adept. Saying this is where the tale was always headed is not the same as setting up that tractor beak-level of storytelling that was both brutal and satisfying in equal measure.

Early on, season 4 throws down the gauntlet: Veronica should never have taken this case, knowing what she knows now. It’s the kind of thing people say all the time on detective shows, but it gets at a larger challenge the show has in moving an already-hard-boiled show from the domain of a teenager to a supposedly darker, more serious world of adults. We’ve seen teenage Veronica survive rape, her best friend’s murder, her mother’s alcoholism and abandonment – and that was just the pilot. So how did Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero-Wright and company raise the stakes and make this case feel like one V would regret more than any other? Fans may struggle with the answer, but if the show is to continue, it was likely the only way forward. Veronica Mars has grown up – will fans be able to grow with it?

#veronica mars #vm spoilers #veronica mars S4 #veronica mars S4 reviews

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sultrysirens · 5 years

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Lucifer, Season 4

So my husband and I watched the whole thing over the course of like 4 days. And it was amazing. And then afterwards I learn they’re already talking about a 5th season?!?

HYPE, YO

But the point of this post is to gush a little and outline some of the thoughts I had during the episodes -- namely one, in particular. Spoilers ahead, so don’t read if you haven’t watched it/don’t wanna know/etc.

YOOOOO BUT IT WAS SO GOOD THO

Remember this?

Linda: [gets phone call] [blah blahs] [GETS UP, SHOCKED] No, no that isn’t possible!

Well, me, being the brilliant person I am, said out loud, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Husband agreed.

Then I said, “She’s pregnant.”

Husband looked surprised.

Obviously we were not thinking the same thing. XD

Also: FUCKING CALLED IT

On that note, one of the best parts was when Lucifer held little nephew, looked all happy, then precisely 4.8 seconds later handed him back. X’D Yep. That’s Lucifer for you.

AND ON THAT NOTE, Lucifer going all avenger when Eve and Trixie got threatened? God, YES. You show ‘em, Lucy. AAAHHHH I loved it so much~

>u<

Gonna say this straight out: I did not trust Eve. At all. Even all the way to the end of the last episode (more specifically, her last scene) I was expecting a betrayal. I was just so used to betrayals in this scenario, I guess. She was just too sweet, too nice, too damn happy and encouraging. She got along with everyone.

It was freaky.

But I suppose if you’re one of the oldest beings alive and just spent the last who-knows-how-many years greeting and speaking with every single soul who went to Heaven, you’d gain some incredible people skills.

Also can we talk about how Adam and Eve were in Heaven? And how they clearly weren’t right for each other? Like I thought for sure they’d be in Hell, having disobeyed le God and all, but it appears they otherwise didn’t have any sins.

Either that or they died before Cain and Abel did, because as Lucifer mentions, Hell was created because of Cain murdering Abel -- even though Cain was cursed with eternal life and Abel became Hell‘s first occupant.

Here’s one reason why I didn’t trust Eve, btw: she mentioned her “sweet little Abel”. Like, right off the bat. And it made me think of a few things: how’d she “fly the coop”? Who helped her? It can’t have been that easy. And she went back to her own body in a crypt? What crypt? How’d she get out? Crypts are usually sealed, guys. Not to mention -- first woman? Possibly tens of thousands of years old? The fact that even her bones still exist is pretty surprising.

For a while I was thinking that maybe her goal was to release Abel from Hell. Get him back. Reunite with what was clearly her favorite son.

I mean I also expected her to say something like, “Yeah, I was the first woman -- not the only woman.” Like Adam and Eve were the test run, and afterwards God went ahead and made a ton more couples placed all over the planet.

Ignoring, of course, that this doesn’t at all agree with history, archaeology, genetics, evolution, or anything else, but still. Suspension of belief is very important for Lucifer.

He started a car by staring at it really hard.

Suspension of belief is a necessity.

Also -- devil Lucy was so hot. Christ. Them wings, yo. [shivers]

I get why Chloe wasn’t able to look at him when he went devil, though -- she knows him one way. And she likes him that way. Whenever he shows her a different side of himself, she tries not to look, not to think; she doesn’t want to remember him differently than the side of him she loves so much.

She’s been viewing him as an angel for a long, long time, I think -- certainly before season 3′s finale. And that’s how she knows him. That’s who she knows he is.

Devil face Lucy fucked her up cause that’s not the Lucifer she knows.

Devil body Lucy fucked her up even worse cause she doesn’t want to remember him like that. She doesn’t want to think “he’s the devil” every time she looks at him.

She just wants to think, “It’s Lucifer.”

I had such hopes for some heartbreaking scenes, btw. And I had one in mind that I legit would’ve loved. Wanna hear about it?

Sure ya do. ;)

Scene: Lucy shows Chloe his devil wings, freaking out about it and such. Chloe comforts him with cuddles.

This is not a joke.

They lay down on the couch, he rests his head on her chest, and she pets his hair, just trying to get him to relax -- all while considering this revelation and how to help him get over it.

Cause she does want him to get over it. She can see him struggling and she wants him to not struggle. If that means getting him to accept himself, so be it; if that means helping him pull away from his darker side, even better.

He falls asleep. It’s super cute.

He wakes up to movement and the sound of choking.

Chloe is fumbling for her gun (yer damn right she has it on her at all times) and...is bleeding from the throat.

Eve had snuck up on her and, driven by possessiveness and envy, slit Chloe’s throat.

But Chloe ain’t going down without a fight.

Lucifer freaks out (understandably), both trying to yell at Eve and demand answers while looking for some way to fix Chloe’s gash of a throat. Then -- bang!

Chloe fired.

She’s kind of upside down but her aim was true: she hit Eve right smack in the forehead.

Eve drops.

Lucifer freaks out harder.

He starts going full devil (this is before I knew he even could go full devil, so it was amazingly well-timed). Chloe flops on the ground, holding her throat and gasping and spitting out mouthfuls of blood.

What do, Lucy?

Your two best girls just killed each other.

He does the only thing he can think of: grabs the both of them, holding them, crying over them.

It was a great rollercoaster in my head and I love it okay thank.

I would’ve loved to see anything even remotely close to that -- just a simple catfight between Eve and Chloe would’ve been amazing, especially considering Eve definitely would’ve started it -- and I’m a little disappointed that no great conflict between the ladies happened, but overall I freaking loved the whole season omg you guys~!

The ending was really touching but also left me a little blue-balled. Four seasons of build-up, three kisses, and that’s all we got? I mean Chloe couldn’t even have asked for a night with him?

Sad.

But...again, very touching.

Okay done ranting and gushing, I got other shit to do. Just wanted to get my thoughts out. :3

- Nightshade

#siren nightshade #lucifer #season 4 #thoughts #critiques #gushing #ranting #i loved it okay guys #lucifer is amazing #season 5 #is gonna be #even better #8O #sfw

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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I stumbled across my own old post from when I ranked all spn seasons in order of my favorite to least and realized I need to figure out where to add s12... was wondering if you had such a ranking and what it is?

Oh no :P That’s a tough one. I’m still thinking about what @k-vichan said on @superspecpod about liking the emotional/motw stuff of season 12 a LOT but ranking the overall plot really really low. (And I just watched 12x15 so I’m freshly annoyed about this exact thing because Perez tried SO MUCH HARDER than he needed to to make the Crowley and Lucifer stuff interesting and to make it go somewhere - anywhere other than 2 more episodes of Lucifer sitting around chained to a chair in a boring room exchanging the same old samey dialogue - so the rest of the Buckleming episodes after just make it like a lesson in not trying so hard because you can coast by on about 3% of the effort >.>)

Maybe it’s time to start getting more nuanced because it’s really hard to decide and there are other seasons which aren’t so starkly split but still have an imbalance in my eyes. I’ll rank them out of 10 for those categories.

So I guess season 12 is 10/10 for motw, probably like 9/10 for emotional arcs and 1/10 for plot, no offence to Berens and Dabb but… Yikes. 12x13 retroactively ruined 6x04 and somehow 9x21 as well and I didn’t think 9x21 was a strong episode to start with… Other plot episodes in the same season don’t stand a chance. I’m putting the good work into “emotional arcs” from those episodes and backing off, although I’ll allow stuff like the good parts of the plot stuff that affected the emotional arcs some leeway into being enjoyable, like all the times the BMoL were used WELL for family drama. (I did also just watch 12x16 after all.) Overall 20/30

Season 11 I thought had some great motw but also some more average ones… Nothing terrible but there were several which were quite rote, so maybe like 8/10, average lifted by Robbie and Nancy Won specifically for 11x04 and 11x19 :P The emotional arc was fairly simple and stretched waaay too long and some parts not resolved, and the whole ikkiness of 16 year old looking Amara hitting on Dean which even when I didn’t think they’d use it as a proper romance arc was horrendously off-putting for the things we SHOULD have cared about, so maybe 5/10. The plot I think was good despite the emotional arc it created being a drag so 9/10 because I really enjoyed watching along with it for the basic drama and twists like Casifer and the hands of god to fill space with decent pacing in the middle, because it generally tied into interesting episodes, and bringing Chuck back and wrapping up was a nice way to raise the stakes and finish the story. Overall 22/30

Season 10 didn’t have any stellar motw except 10x05 - the rest were mostly tolerable-to-good but I can’t give it over 5/10 for the experience because many were plagued by… The emotional arc, which through sheer attrition ends up at like 2/10 and the only redeeming episodes on that were 10x14 for the plot and 10x22 for remembering Cas had a point to be in the season even if it was horrific to watch. But this is the plot that “went where the story took them” so ick, 3/10. Also, the demon!Dean stuff is great but in a bang your fork on the table and yell for more way, which means it’s the only reason I changed this from a 2 to a 3 because I literally forget 10x01-3 aren’t a mini season all on their own, but they still had Cole in them so it’s not going higher than that :P 10/30

Season 9 I literally quit watching over the MotW and the sort of sticky, itchy feeling they have is even worse than season 10 throughout the season, buuut 9x06 and 9x19 are in there. But Bloodlines was a motw. Let’s call it 4, give Berens a consolation cookie, and move on >.> The emotional arc is very strong and I love it a lot even though it’s all angsty and miserable, mostly because I skipped from 9x05 to 9x18 with a quick easy marathon through the Gadreel fight instead of watching along, and then read all the meta on it at once, and it’s got an excellent Destiel plot which a huge amount of the season rides on, so 10/10 because I said so. The plot, as well, flounders in the middle a bit for the angel wars but I think the Mark of Cain is a GOOD part of THIS side of the season and the demon!Dean build up and reveal was excellent, so I’d say 9/10 because once you apply the “Metatron wrote everything the angels do” theory it mostly all scrapes by. Ignoring the MotW, I usually put this as one of my favourite seasons despite the fact I ragequit it once. Overall 23/30

Season 8 has good MotW for the most part but there’s some eh ones and there’s ones I skip so hard I forget they’re part of canon, like the other weird dog episode, so maybe only 6/10. Robbie has another good year. I like Bitten, fight me :P Emotional arcs are much more painful - I’ve read all the meta on the Sam hit a dog fight but unlike the Gadreel one which I find interesting and complex, it bums me out AND feels manufactured, so 8x17 has got to prop the whole thing up to 5/10. The main plot is good. I love Kevin and the trials and Metatron’s introduction and Crowley as a main antagonist. 9/10 with a point deducted for letting Abaddon out and leaving the hell/purgatory portal open. Overall 20/10

Season 7 is a sneaky fave of mine as well because I’m awful :P Buckleming return and write MotW but Robbie arrives on the scene and I think bats a perfect game on his first try. So 7/10 because the other writers also weren’t awful and Plucky’s happened this season. I also think the emotional arc is harrowing but because I mostly remember this season through rewatches where it was all okay and I never knew Cas wasn’t supposed to be gone for good so his return seems waaay more Destiel to me than it might if you didn’t think the entire season was just manufactured to make Dean sad about Cas then give him back, 8/10. And the Leviathan plot was really nicely handled as a season-long big bad who caused a serious and damaging effect to their lives but then they scrounged up all their resources and killed Dick and also the main plot was a series of Dick jokes. so 10/10. 24/30

Season 6 on the other hand… 2/10 for MotW because this was just a resounding failure to make the MotW part of the main plot on the Eve arc but then make it all low budget dragons and spider dudes and mannequins and what have you. UGH. But there IS the fairy episode and it’s the one dang episode with no relevance to anything at all that season except Sam happens to be soulless in it which just adds to the fun. I am a bit uncertain about the emotional arc - it’s miserable for the most part and I am sad about Dean and Lisa being a disaster and going through all the steps of it being terrible. Dean is *buried* in everyone’s angst and problems and it doesn’t even really serve a purpose or let him break. The light in the dark is 6x20 which is going to haul this all the way up from what would have been like a 2 to 5. The plot is also a disaster and VISIBLY a disaster and even 6x20 has some tiny holes and stretches that can’t make it ALL work, though Edlund gives it his best. On the other hand “plot episodes” include Weekend at Bobby’s, Appointment in Samarra, The French Mistake, My Heart Will Go On, and Frontierland, and I am DYING for another season which delivers its main plot through crack episodes of utter gold star nonsense quality. I begrudingly give 7/10 but it’s marking up from like… 3 or something, instead of down from 10 :P Overall 14/30

Season 5… has awful MotW. I’m sorry, it does. All the ones that look like MotW but then turn out to be plot episodes are great (well, except for 5x09), but all the ones that stay MotW are like… Curious Case of Dean Winchester. Swap Meat. Blaaaaah. 3/10. I skip everything that isn’t about the apocalypse properly when I watch - thankfully there aren’t a whole lot of them. Emotional arc is the pay off of 5 years work and it doesn’t make me cry but it is a pretty great heaping of good emotional arc tying up and probably why a lot of the following seasons are wonky or go for manufactured drama to boot up the story properly. 10/10. Plot is almost omnipresent, mostly well-delivered, and although it is too melodramatic for “we literally knew we had a season 6 lined up” with a side order of “it definitely was meant to look like this all the way through and we didn’t cram in any last minute retcons or deuz ex machinas ha ha” *sweats nervously*, at least the original watch was a MEMORABLE JOURNEY so I give it 9/10 with a side-eye for rewatching and also with hindsight attempting to finish the story 1 or 8 seasons and counting from a reasonable place. Overall 22/30

Season 4 is my favourite but it has 4x11 aka “we want to intentionally write an episode so bad they’ll never air it and no one will watch it haha isn’t this a lark” right in the middle, so 9/10 for motw, 10/10 and 10/10 for everything else. Can you even explain season 4 to people who don’t get it? :P 29/30

Season 3 has the best motw to plot episodes ratio aside from season 12 probably. A WHOLE bunch of classics and only really 2 I dislike in it so I’d give it 8/10 because it is allowed to coast on those, and it’s about to take a hammering for emotional arc, because like season 10 it’s got a simple purpose that Dean Is Not Okay And Sam Wants To Save Him, which combines the same angry, reckless Dean and desperate miserable Sam, only then gets a writers’ strike bang in the middle so they’re even more frustrated and miserable and to no good end so 1/10. And I have a personal grudge against the show for ending forever after sending Dean to Hell because it got cancelled after the strike and I had to live with that for nearly 3 years before it turned out this was not, in fact, what had happened. 1/10 for the inevitable tanking of what looked like a strong start and just no way to salvage it but admit defeat and wait for season 4. Overall 10/30

Season 2 is just 10/10 for motw, 10/10 for emotional arc and … maybe like 8 or 9 out of ten for plot. Let’s go with 8 with hindsight that season 4 and 5 trashed Azazel’s hard work so hard I see all the time people wondering “why did he have to go to SO MUCH trouble” and the only conclusion I got is “for shits and giggles” or to waffle about how no one knew anything for certain. (The other problem is that so much of what happens isn’t explained, and it saves a point because Croatoan finally got an answer *3* years later.) But I love season 2. Simple and gets the job done and hollows you out along the way and the much stronger follow up to the first season to really explore the characters and their trauma with a much better understanding of them. Overall 28/30.

Season 1 is more mixed for motw. They’re almost all of the episodes but Bugs and Racist Truck deserve the slamming Word of God keeps giving them in the story because they ARE racist and poorly plotted and relying on chance resolutions. I like the urban legends and the different feel it has to any other season as they find their feet with easy hunts but I don’t think a lot of them are classics in the same way season 2 episodes feel much more firmly covered in the show’s fingerprints because these are the patterns they go on to subvert or explore in much more abstract ways. Maybe 8/10. Characterisation is shaky and one note compared to later on some things, and the emotional arc is simple but also relies on John just not talking to them to the point of frustration and Sam and Dean are so isolated it’s claustrophobic at times. 7/10. But plot is simple and works and is the best hook to watch all the rest so 10/10. Overall 25/30

…

and yeah, adding up reasons I like the season against reasons I don’t, season 12 is way more watchable to me than season 10 even though they literally committed the same off-putting crime in the 21st episode both times. Other seasons score much worse for just being kinda meh or having two out of the three main reasons I enjoy something be really bad, like season 3 or 6, so even though there’s stuff I love in them, I think they’re worse overall seasons…

I don’t know why I spent so much time on this. :P Lack of will to do anything else. Thanks for letting me ramble at you if you read this far :P

#Asks #my stuff #season rankings

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andrewuttaro · 4 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 42 - EDM - Thirsty Thursday

3-2 OT Win

When I was an undergraduate in college there was this special night of the week called Thirsty Thursday. A lot of my classmates created their schedules, so they had no classes on Fridays creating a prolonged weekend for all the activities Animal House taught you college students do. Thirsty Thursday was the beginning of that debauchery. Specifically the mid to late evening as the party people dressed to the nines emerged from their dorms, already tipsy, and climbed into Ubers, Lyfts and Cabs to go to the skankiest clubs and try to cross the border into Canada. Niagara Falls is pretty lit on the other side in case you weren’t aware. The Buffalo Sabres had themselves a bit of a Thirsty Thursday yesterday. This time however I’m excited for the consequences. I drew attention to GM Jason Botterill’s planned 5:30 radio appearance before the game against Edmonton so that when it was called off it seemed cowardly. Not that my lone tweet riled up an angry mob like the gif I used implied, but the timing seemed… well very bad. Dalton Smith was put on waivers the day before after an embarrassing affair on New Year’s Eve against Tampa and it all seemed for nothing: as if our GM had no clue what he was doing and now he was hiding from facing the fans. In reality perfect setups like that never happen. When WGR550 was told Botterill couldn’t make his regular radio hit the negativity around the team right now would naturally make you think of that dodging the press theory. Us wild and crazy optimists hoped against hope he was busy working on… dare I say… a trade!? The whispers came in as game time approached and Thirsty Thursday kicked off with a three-way (Normally something reserved for the end of the night if you know I mean). At about 6:40 pm the team announced a 2020 fourth round pick had been acquired from the Montreal Canadiens for Marco Scandella. The next part unfolded when the team announced at about 6:50 pm that the same 2020 fourth that was yielded from the Scandella trade was going to the Calgary Flames for RW Michael Frolik. No salary retained or conditions, it was essentially Marco Scandella for Michael Frolik.

Set aside all your newfound appreciations for Scandella, even his revitalization was to inflate his trade value. Not to be harsh but he won’t be missed; especially when Jeremy White’s Super-Secret Sabres Source (SSSS) then tells him they’re not done, and they want to bring Lawrence Pilut up from Rochester. This humble blogger says good and good. Scandella for Frolik constitutes a wash in terms of salary if not a little bit more taken on by Buffalo. However, if it gets Pilut back up to Buffalo and or Colin Miller out of buying tickets out of town then it’s a win in my book. In spite of how few trades we saw in the last five months of 2019 it does make a lot of sense that this is the prelude to bigger trades. One can only hope. I hope this analysis of it is outdated by the time I post it. Although we all thought the Jokiharju trade was the prelude to a bigger trade that never came so it could go both ways I suppose. All this figuring out distracted me from the actual game unfolding. I looked up and suddenly the Sabres were down 2-0 to the Oilers at home and certainly a blood bath was to ensue if another egg was laid in downtown Buffalo. Then as soon as I had that thought Thirsty Thursday ticked up again, but this time with some good clean action: Marcus Johansson disposed an Oiler along the wall in the offensive zone and went around behind the net. Johansson got it to Curtis Lazar who tapped it in past Mike Smith in net. It was now 2-1 and Jason Botterill had that much more cover to come out and face the press in the first intermission like we hadn’t gotten three hours earlier while trades were unfolding.

Jason Botterill spoke for about seven minutes saying a lot of things you might expect: Michael Frolik will bring even strength scoring, he’s won a Stanley Cup, has playoff experience and what not. Perhaps the most important things Botterill said is the special teams have to be better. He said that Frolik could help on the penalty kill and could be a bit of a rover on the wing. Botterill spoke to greater roster competition as something of a rationale for seeing as many players publicly want out. Assuming this isn’t the only move to be made its just refreshing to hear that the GM does understand what’s going on. The Dalton Smith Fiasco will probably be pushed under the rug 1984 style and that’s probably the only way to handle it at this point but pushing forward the point that there is in fact a plan here will allow some optimism, however scant, back into the fanbase. Once again, assuming there are more moves coming this move helps. The move itself is more or less whatever. If you get what Frolik was in years past then maybe he’s not just another piece to be traded at the deadline. Getting Frolik was one of those rumors from months ago and evidently the conditions on this Thirty Thursday were just right to make it happen. Conditions were not just right in the second period and apart from a slash on Jack Eichel and the Sabres taking over the lead in shots on goal, nothing really happened. Then it creeps into your head, like I hear it does for the party people at some point in the early morning hours on Thirsty Thursday, that all this momentary excitement could just melt away with nothing truly rewarding coming from it unless… unless you kiss that hot little number down the bar. It was unlikely another trade would happen as the clock ticked past 9pm last night but the clap-back Sabres awoke again. As an early offensive push unfolded in the third period for the home team they began cycling the puck around in the Oilers’ zone. Zach Bogosian took a shot that Sam Reinhart redirected in for the 2-2 equalizer and… well what do you know: Reinhart’s 100th NHL goal. For a moment try not to think about the impending second coming of the Reinhart contract drama and just savor what Samson does and who Samson is. But just like most things with this team, darkness follows close behind and Victor Olofsson was escorted out of the game after a weird fall all on his own just after he got the secondary assist on the equalizer. No new word on that today either mind you, just Scott Wilson getting called up because you can’t let us get too high, right?

The third period went on and the Sabres threw everything and the kitchen sink Zemgus Girgensons at Mike Smith. Nothing went through and we found ourselves in overtime. To Ralph Krueger’s credit most of the Sabres overtime periods have been tight possession affairs like they should be, even when they’re losing efforts. The same happened last night until an absolutely bonkers ten seconds about a minute into the extra frame. Jack Eichel went end to end, like from behind the Linus Ullmark net all the way to Mike Smith’s mouthguard on the other end. Along the way he drew a penalty when Oscar Klefbom hooked him on his final approach. That was good for a penalty shot but before the play was even over Jack almost scored on the rebound. This Thirsty Thursday was about to see it’s last act. That hot little number down the bar I mentioned earlier, that was Jack mother fucking Eichel, and we kissed his greatness to cap off the night. He took the puck, skated in and snapped it far side past Mike Smith, 3-2 Sabres in Overtime! And so the inebriated masses stumbled out of their rides in the wee hours of the morning; still concerned about their future but sated for just a time until the next party comes. Hopefully more parties to come then sadness they hope.

Like, Comment and Share this blog now because some of you will not like what I say next. The game on Saturday was moved to 1pm in the afternoon because the Buffalo Sabres organization shares an owner with the Buffalo Bills and is therefore allowed to be self-aware. You probably already knew that. To those of you whom pointed to that move as a sign of the Pegulas caring more about the Bills I’d just ask you to take a deep breath, maybe play your favorite video game and relax. There is good evidence that theory is true, but the Buffalo Bills also happen to be in the playoffs for only the second time in twenty years. Forgive the whole City around you if they want to focus on that team when they come on at 4:35 tomorrow! I know its 90s night… or afternoon now tomorrow, but please, let good things be good. Enjoy yourself a little bit. The Florida Panthers will be a challenge and then they’ll be off for four days, hopefully while Botterill is making more trades and Michael Frolik is getting his Visa figured out so he can actually come and play. Then its six games leading into the bye week of varying difficulty but mostly difficult. I would guess even if the Sabres miraculously won eight straight going into that break they still might only crack the top three in the Atlantic Division given the spaces between games. Nonetheless the tide of this dissent into another lost season we’ve been experiencing since before Christmas can be reversed this month. It will likely take more work on the part of the GM even though the deadline is still several weeks away. Yesterday’s Thirsty Thursday events were not enough for me to fully get back in the conductor’s chair of the hype train but whether it be for hoped for trades or just the first Buffalo Bills Playoff win since I was in diapers I can enthusiastically say right now: Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. According to NHL PR that OT Penalty shot goal by Jack Eichel made him the first player in Buffalo Sabres history to do such a thing. That is some kind of surprising stat.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #nhl #blog

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whitewolfofwinterfell · 7 years

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I may be wrong but I've read little trivia on IMDb and it said that the writers always knew the 'c' was for Coop. I hate how the writers handled Cole though, it honestly makes me sad.

I checked IMDb and found this: “In the episode ‘All Halliwell’s Eve’ in season 3, it is revealed that the name of Phoebe’s true love would begin with the letter ‘C’. Later in season 8 when it was announced that the show was in it’s final season they brought in the cupid character ‘Coop’ for Phoebe, meaning that 'Cole’ was never Phoebe’s true love, only her first love. The writers made the name begin with a 'C’ on purpose.” So based on that, it sounds like they didn’t always know it would stand for Coop. Like I said, I’m pretty sure the writers didn’t even know Coop would be created until season 8, but they did cater to the prophecy which is why they chose a name that began with ‘C’ for Coop.

Yeah, I agree. The writers handled Cole terribly and I’m not really sure how it ended up the way it did. It still confuses me to this day. Honestly, I feel like because Cole was the first main character they’d ever had on the show that was naturally not good, they were excited to be able to explore that and as time went on they just got too caught up in his darkness and amplified it to a point of no return. I think everyone in the fandom agrees that they shouldn’t have brought him back for season 5 or that at the very least A Witch’s Tail should’ve been his last appearance, because they just ruined him.

The one scene that always sticks in my head is the scene in Centennial Charmed where he says, “What happened to us, Phoebe? How did we get here? We used to be so in love.” That’s the moment you realise just how broken he is.

I know that Cole gets his fair share of hate in the fandom and whilst I understand why, personally, I will always defend him and this is why. (I’ll place the rest under the cut, because it’s pretty long).

In season 3 he was a demon whose sole purpose was to kill the sisters. He was manipulative, sly and cunning (not unlike any other demon on the show), but he unexpectedly developed feelings for Phoebe and couldn’t go through with it. He struggled throughout that early part of season 3 with the human feelings he was feeling (which he even admitted to Phoebe he hadn’t felt in hundreds of years) and his identity as a demon. He was torn and didn’t know what to do. When he finally got together with Phoebe, he changed and fought to be a better man. He went undercover and was willing to betray the people he’d considered family, to help the sisters and put his own life at risk in doing so. Again, he went through hell during that time being pulled in two - his demon half compelling him to give into the Brotherhood and his natural evil urges and his human half clinging to Phoebe and his love for her making him want to be the better man. In Look Who’s Barking, Phoebe and Cole weren’t together following everything that happened with the Brotherhood and Phoebe was determined Cole had been killing innocents, but he hadn’t. Even that is very telling. Cole wasn’t with Phoebe and yet he still wasn’t killing or being Belthazor.

Then we get into season 4, which was by far Cole’s best period on the show for him as an individual character but also his relationship with Phoebe. By this point he was completely devoted to Phoebe, her family and to good. He helped Phoebe save Paige against Shax, went demon hunting with Phoebe and Piper everyday, saving their butts (as Phoebe so nicely put it haha), he was willing to sacrifice himself to lure the Furies to the house to save Piper and he saved Piper from The Source and in the process gravely injured him.

In Black As Cole he came up against his dark past, admitted to killing an innocent and actively tried to do everything he could to make up for that. He turned into Belthazor, risked never being able to turn back into his human form to defeat Sykes and explicitly told Phoebe to vanquish him if he posed a threat to her and her sisters. Then his powers were stripped and he became human, which signaled the beginning of a new phase of Cole’s development.

Muse to My Ears is one of my favorite episodes ever in regards to Cole, because it’s just so great. Here’s this man who was a demon for over a hundred years who had become human overnight and he had no clue how to function. I loved that the writers included the scene at the beginning where he gets the tray out of the oven and burns himself, because that just highlights perfectly how huge a change it was that he couldn’t even do something as basic as that. We saw him struggle with not being able to protect Phoebe and going from one of the most powerful beings to a weak human. And what I love about this episode is that it actually showed Cole’s tendencies towards evil even after all this time and even without his powers. He bought a gun and stabbed a demon that used to be his friend whilst he was in the Underworld, both of which are acts that showed him to be a naturally violent person. But this episode mostly showed a man that was struggling with his identity and trying to find his way, which I think is something we can all relate to.

We saw more of this in A Paige From A Past, with Cole being at the police station for driving without a licence. Admittedly, it’s not a huge crime, but still highlights Cole’s tendency to go against the rules and be bad. Yet in the next scene we saw him (as a human) running to a car that was in flames with no hesitation or thought for his own safety, in order to carry an innocent to safety.

In Lost and Bound we saw him get a job at social services with Paige, which again showed that continuing battle within Cole between good and evil, particularly regarding the slumlord. Though his intentions were good, the way in which he wanted to handle the situation was bad. Cole’s knee-jerk reaction was always violence and we saw that in this episode. But we also saw him trying to resist it to be a better man and more importantly a human man (which is something he was still trying to deal with). Cole soon came to the realistation that the 9-5 life wasn’t for him (which was no real surprise) and for the rest of the episode helped Phoebe and the sisters to save Tyler.

Overall the beginning of season 4 depicted Cole as a good person, with a troubled past and underlying issues regarding his nature and identity, that he was working to overcome. And that is the person I will always percieve Cole to be.

Now we get to the turning point for Cole and the number one reason why I will always defend him. In Charmed and Dangerous, Cole selflessly gave himself over and took in The Hollow so as to save the sisters from The Source. He was manipulated by The Seer to do this (who had seen visions of him becoming The Source and the great future they’d have together and blah blah blah) and had no idea that in doing so he would become The Source. And from this point on, Cole became a victim, which is something I feel is overlooked too much within the fandom. In the next episode when he realised The Source was slowly taking him over he was horrified and determined to fight it. He was a man clearly distraught and desperate to make it stop. It’s difficult, because the thing I always wonder is during this time how much of what we saw was Cole and how much was The Source? Personally, I believe 90% of his actions were completely dictated by The Source. The only glimpse we saw of Cole during that time was his love for Phoebe, because that was the one part of Cole that was strong enough to overcome The Source. I do believe that The Source played on certain dark parts of Cole’s character that already existed, such as him targeting Paige in The Fifth Halliwheel. Cole had never particularly been Paige’s biggest fan, but he would’ve never manipulated or emotionally tortured Paige in the way he did when he was possessed by The Source. And guess what? Cole was the one that saved her in that episode. When he saw what losing her was doing to Phoebe he couldn’t stand to see it happen, so he saved Paige.

And throughout the 8 episodes that Cole was possessed by The Source he continually saved and protected Phoebe and her sisters. It’s taken for-granted that Cole is the sole reason the sisters survived during that time. He literally lived under the same roof as the sisters, they trusted him and he had numerous chances to kill them - which I should remind you was the sole aim of the previous Source - and yet he didn’t, because Cole was fighting against The Source the entire time in regards to protecting Phoebe and the sisters. Even how Phoebe learned about Cole being The Source was purely because Cole fought through The Source’s possession. He loved Phoebe so much and was so happy in that moment, that his barriers dropped and she was able to have a premonition. Even when Phoebe joined the dark side, Cole still didn’t kill Piper and Paige. He still loved and respected Phoebe too much to harm those she loved. And in the end Cole was vanquished because Phoebe knew it had to be done to save herself and her family, and in a weird way even Cole himself.

And this is what irks me about people that hate on Cole. Nothing that happened in 4x14-4x22 (which is how long he was possessed by The Source) can be blamed on Cole. If it had been any of the sisters that had been possessed by The Source, no one would even think of blaming them for their actions. Does anyone demonise Phoebe for her actions when she was pregnant with The Source’s heir and under his influence? No. And that wasn’t even a full possession like the one Cole suffered. A possession means your consciousness has quite literally been taken over by someone else. Cole was able to push through in brief moments, but only when it was something to do with his love for Phoebe. Cole was 100% a victim of evil in season 4 and I don’t see that being acknowledged enough. In fact, most of the stuff I see regarding this story line is all about how Phoebe suffered and how she was a victim, which she was, of course she was, but so was Cole.

Before Cole became The Source, he’d been fighting on the side of good for months, he’d faced his darkness and overcome it, he’d been stripped of his powers so actually had no evil magic within him at all, he was in love with Phoebe and he was happy and no, he wasn’t perfect, but he was working on it. And that was all destroyed because of a selfless act (saving the sisters from The Source) and manipulation from The Seer.

Speaking of The Seer, I’d also like to add here that she is completely overlooked as being one of the most intelligent and underhand villains to ever be on Charmed. She manipulated Cole (and later on Phoebe) from the get go and continued to do so right until the very end. She was always there whispering in his ear, convincing him to do what she wanted him to do, preaching about visions and destiny, but all along it was because she wanted to carry The Source’s heir, which she managed to achieve. There are plenty of times where Cole might’ve been able to escape The Source’s clutches (even if it was just by telling Phoebe), but every time he lost his resolve The Seer would be there shouting at him about how important it was that he continue their plans.

The last episode of season 4 saw Cole in some sort of demonic Hell fighting for his life and I’d just like to point out that those scenes are very demonstrative of just how little of the real Cole we saw in the episodes that he was possessed by The Source, because he seemed very different. Now, I’m not saying Cole is a sweet and innocent child that didn’t deserve to be in hell, cos he did plenty of evil things as Belthazor, but he’d done plenty of things to redeem himself and hadn’t committed a single evil act (to my recollection) until he was possessed, and since he was possessed that technically means all of the evil things he’d been doing over the passing weeks (or months, I’m not sure exactly how long he was possessed for) leading up to his vanquish weren’t directly his fault. So I’d just like to emphasise again here, that Cole was certainly a victim. Just imagine being Cole and going through that. First, the possession and then just being instantly vanquished and ending up in hell as himself (because at the point The Source was finally gone) and having to fight for survival.

Anyway, now for season 5 which we all know is the season that slaughtered Cole’s character in every single way. 5x01 was perfectly fine. Cole was back again and wanted Phoebe back, but she wanted to move on with her life, which she told him and he accepted it.

Again, I see a lot of people talk about this from Phoebe’s POV, but never Cole’s. From Cole’s POV he was human, happy, in love, had just asked Phoebe to marry him and intended to spend his life with her, then he was overtaken by The Source, still fought with everything he had to keep Phoebe in his life and by his side, was vanquished and then he came back and in his mind he was probably where they left off before he was possessed. Cole never wanted any of what happened to happen. He didn’t want to be The Source and he didn’t want Phoebe to be his Queen. He himself even once said to Phoebe there was no such thing as evil love and refused to accept her when she was evil. What happened in season 4 was as a direct result of The Source’s influence. Cole loved Phoebe and wanted to be with her, and The Source manipulated that situation which led to Phoebe being pregnant with his heir and therefore being susceptible to turning to the dark side to be with Cole. So when you consider this is it really any surprise Cole wanted a second chance with Phoebe? Of course, he was completely underestimating the hurt she’d suffered through all of that, but Cole had suffered too.

The beginning of the season 5 really wasn’t that bad in terms of Cole’s character. I think people have a tendency to percieve it as being worse than it was because the way the writers wrote it. They really did make him look like a desperate, obsessive stalker, but when you look at it again that’s not actually the case.

He had evil powers again, but he wasn’t doing evil things. He seemed determined to prove himself to Phoebe and reconcile with her. And actually he respected her wishes and didn’t force himself on her. In 5x03 he tried to help her by warning her, then he saved her and encouraged her to meet with that guy at the end to gain her trust in men again. In 5x04 he saved an innocent to prove to her that he was still devoted to good (and I’d also like to point out here that in season 4 as Belthazor, he still used his demonic powers and used them for good and Phoebe accepted that, but this time she couldn’t. Why?) and the siren spell attracted them to each other, which again was through no fault of Cole. He was manipulated and victim to magic again and although Phoebe partially blamed that on his supernatural powers, when you look at what Cole did to her (he strangled her), that’s something completely unrelated to his powers that he could’ve done as a human (and we know that the Siren did have human victims too). In 5x05 Cole was still devoting himself to good by trying to stop a landlord from evicting elderly tenants, in 5x07 Cole was victim to evil magic again as Barbas targeted him and uses his own fears against him to gain his powers (which was very detrimental to his mental health), in 5x08 Cole confided in Piper and Paige about being told by future Bacarra that Miles was destined to die, instead of just letting it happen and later actually stayed to protect Miles from death all because Phoebe cared about him.

By the time we reached 5x09 his mental health started to deteriorate and is it any wonder after everything he’d been through? All he’d done all through season 5 was fight for the woman he loved and try everything in his power to prove to her he was still capable of being good, yet she didn’t care. Phoebe completely turned her back on him and I’m not by any means condoning Cole’s behaviour by blaming Phoebe’s rejection, but it definitely played a large part. And actually, a lot of the time Phoebe was wrong. She thought he was lying on multiple occasions when he wasn’t, she accused him of committing evil acts numerous times when he was innocent and I think it got to a point where Cole was so tired of being constantly blamed and villainised that he just lost his mind.

Again, this is something that isn’t taken seriously because it’s Cole. But if any of the sisters had been going through what Cole went through mid-season 5 would people have looked at it in the same way? I don’t think so. Cole’s mental health took a serious hit. He was suffering from serious depression, paranoia, maybe even PTSD (not helped by the amount of times his mind had literally been invaded and manipulated by magic). He was in a really bad place and he reached out to the sisters (the only people he had in the world) to help him, but they threw it back in his face, until it reached a point where he felt the only way out was suicide. The only way he could be killed was by The Charmed Ones, so he attacked them so that they’d retaliate and kill him. When that didn’t work and he learned that he was truly invincible his mental health plummeted. And the lack of seriousness taken regarding Cole’s mental health was highlighted during the scene in Y Tu Mummy Tambien where he’s summoning various objects and trying desperately to kill himself, and it’s actually just treated as a comedic scene. But like…what the actual hell? That was a man so broken, so depressed, so helpless that he was spending every waking hour of his life trying to find a way to die. How wasn’t that taken more seriously? Just because he was a demon (or had demonic powers) that meant he deserved that? The closest he got to anyone caring or sympathising with him was Paige in Sympathy For The Demon. And the fact that it was Paige of all people really says a lot.

This is where we got to the stage where Cole really did lose his mind and started to do evil things for the sole purpose of being evil. In Y Tu Mummy Tambien he tried to make Piper choose between Paige and Phoebe, in The Importance of Being Phoebe he kidnapped Phoebe and replaced her with Kya to get to the Nexus. By that point I think it was a case of, “I can’t kill myself, Phoebe doesn’t want me, all I have is evil” and it was so easy for him to give into that and take it a step further since he had nothing else to lose. And then we saw him become so twisted and obsessed with his love for Phoebe that he went to the extremities of creating an alternate world. And this was really his final plea for help. He realised he didn’t care about being powerful or evil, he just wanted Phoebe. And it was almost a case of, “If I can reconcile with Phoebe then maybe all of this won’t have been for nothing.” But of course, it was too late.

As much as I try to demonise and hate Cole for his actions, particularly in the later half of season 5, I just can’t. I think a lot of other people find it so easy to do so because it basically became a Phoebe vs Cole situation, and of course, most people naturally empathise with Phoebe therefore demonising Cole. But what happened to Cole was as a result of endless months and years of torment, magical manipulation, possession and heartbreak which led to a break-down of his mental health. And who did he have to help him? Who did he have to pull him back? All of the sisters have become evil before or struggled through trauma and every single time they’ve overcome it because their family was there to save them. But when Cole sought help and cried out to be saved, there was no one there. And again, this isn’t me blaming Phoebe or the sisters for what happened to him, because it shouldn’t have been their responsibility to look after him. But the fact remains, Cole just needed guidance and somebody to be there for him through a hard time.

And I also stand firm on the belief that Phoebe should’ve gave Cole a chance. And by that, I don’t mean her getting back together with him, I simply mean a conversation. After everything that happened between them in season 4, they didn’t even sit down and have a single conversation about it. They should’ve talked about what happened, how it made them feel, how they still felt about it, what they needed going forward, whether they thought they had a chance etc. But essentially all that happened was Cole came back said, “I want you back” and Phoebe immediately reacted negatively and was like “HELL NO!”, when in reality Cole hadn’t done anything to warrant that. Phoebe was adamant she couldn’t be with Cole based upon his actions as The Source, when he freakin’ possessed. That wasn’t who he was and he came back as himself, wanting to fix things and prove to Phoebe that he wasn’t The Source, that he wasn’t evil, that he was the man he was at the beginning of season 4, the one she agreed to marry. Yet Phoebe was volatile and unforgiving to him from the very beginning and determined to make him the villain at every turn, when what really needed to happen was for them to just have a conversation to understand each other’s POV.

I think that everyone’s opinion on this subject is based almost entirely on how you perceive The Source’s possession in season 4. Personally, I see it as being a full possession in which Cole’s agency, choice and power was stripped therefore resulting in him being completely blameless for his actions during that time. And that’s so important because that one event was the turning point for his arc. Everything that happened in season 5 was a direct result of what happened in season 4. Because of the terrible things Cole did as The Source, when he came back Phoebe distrusted and demonised him, as did the sisters and that broke him down slowly but surely until he started to believe that himself and the added kick of magical manipulation and corruption from Barbas, The Avatars and his powers eventually broke him beyond repair.

Essentially, I do put the direction Cole’s story went in down to bad writing. Like I said, I think the writers just kinda fell in love with Cole’s character and found him incredibly interesting and fresh, but they didn’t really know what to do with him after The Source storyline. I actually feel like initially they wanted to bring him back in season 5 to redeem him and prove that he wasn’t The Source and give Cole the second chance he deserved, but it just kinda went dramatically off track and ended up going in an unexpected direction.

And sorry, I went off on a huge tangent with this, but it’s a subject I think about a lot and I kinda wanted to put my thoughts about it out there. I’m expecting a lot of backlash if anyone does read this, since I know there are a hell of a lot of people that will disagree.

#answered #charmed #cole turner #my meta #charmed meta

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codependentsoulmates · 6 years

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RANKING EVERY SEASON OF SUPERNATURAL

Let’s a-freakin’-go, Mario.

12. Season 7. Leviathans. And Sam’s god-awful wolverine sideburns. ‘Nuff said.

11. Season 6. Soulless Sam was hilariously, sarcastically endearing for a little while, but towards the end of the Soulless Sam arc, just, ugh. I wanted to fast forward so bad. Samuel coming back was unnecessary and anticlimactic, “evil Cas” was an eye roller, I didn’t give a shit about Lisa and Ben, um... EVE??? What the actual fuck was that. She was possibly the single most wasted, ultra-super-anticlimactic use of a story arc that I’ve ever seen. There were a few redeeming episodes (i.e. Clap Your Hands If You Believe).

10. Season 9. Okay, this could be biased just based on how much I truly cannot stand God!Metatron. S10/11 Metatron is great; he’s such a little jerk that you cant help but find him funny. But S9 Metatron... holy shit. It was like being subjected to hours upon hours of having to watch only the Umbridge scenes from Harry Potter on repeat. It felt like legitimate torture trying to force myself to finish the season. Plus, yes, I ended up liking Gadreel later (much later) on, but Gadreel!Sam felt like it went on forever. I was over it and it was like the end of it would never come. Also, I’m just gonna say it: Abaddon was boring and annoying, and the only reason she was even an issue was because Sam and Dean thought, “Hey, wow, let’s experiment on the most powerful demon we know of roaming the Earth right now. We cut off her hands, nothing will go wrong!” Riiiight... okay. Also, Kevin’s death was seriously messed up and unnecessary and I still haven’t forgiven them for it, so. But uh, human!Cas was super endearing though, and even though I really don’t ever want actual human Cas to become a thing, it was cute for awhile.

9. Season 12. Alright. I don’t share the exact same sentiment or level of hatred that a lot of other people seem to for this season, but it had... a lot of issues. So, uh. Buckle up. First of all... Lucifer. While I don’t... hate the idea of him coming back as a villain, just so many things about this were... sigh. Rockstar!Lucifer was - and I’m gonna fucking say it - truly awful. So, so awful. Maybe he could’ve worked on another show, but with Lucifer’s character/personality having already been so established and defined on Supernatural, it just felt out of place. He was not the same character - which is something I often complain about with the Rubys. We had just come from Casifer - which was brilliant and so, so in character - and then we get this... weird, unsnarky, not sarcastic or playful at all version of Lucifer and... pass. Moving on... they finally get to put Luci back in his cage and... then Crowley decides to keep him as a pet? And believe Lucifer - fucking LUCIFER - now bows to him and won’t get away? And assume the demons who have time and time again always helped Lucifer, will now follow him instead? What??? Crowley isn’t that dumb, and he could’ve achieved ruling Hell again with no problems if Lucifer was in the cage. It made no sense to me. And um. Lucifer having a child? Seriously? So much reaching going on. Now to the second issue: The British Men of Letters. Okay. They started off as the enemy this season. The title sequence was the MoL symbol. And yet... they weren’t that relevant or threatening until the last couple of episodes (and those were, well, in nicer terms... questionable.) They either should’ve saved a Lucifer-returning-as-the-enemy storyline for later or saved the BMoL. Together, it was just too much and not enough expansion. Side note: I loathe the BMoL like I loathe God!Metatron. Which brings me to the third - and maybe biggest - issue I had with this season: Mary fucking Winchester. What the fuck. What the actual fuck, were the writers thinking. They legitimately ruined her. Throughout the series you have this wonderful idea built up about her: she was a badass hunter and she sacrificed things for John and she loved her boys so, so much and she gave up hunting for good because that was never the life she wanted and just. Then she’s here and you’re like finally Sam and Dean get to have a fucking parent who is there for them and can nurture them for once in their goddamn lives, and then. Then she’s a different Mary and she’s back to only caring about hunting even though she never liked hunting in the first place and she’s working for the people who tortured her son and she’s leaving her boys who just got her back, who she just got back, and she was going to let them die or get hurt for the goddamn Colt that she didn’t even know was the Colt. And I just. I couldn’t get with it, I’m sorry. Oh, and also everyone fucking DIES this season, so that was just fucking great, too.

8. Season 10. This is an unpopular opinion, I’m sure, but I hated Deanmon and I was glad we didn’t have to see him that long and suffer like we did with Soulless Sam. That being said, they did way overhype Deanmon, which was pretty uncool and unfair. But I honestly hated the Mark of Cain - it went on waaaaay too long - and I really, really dislike seeing Dean be... not Dean... so... Also, I am still pissed the fuck off at Charlie’s death, so I refuse to rank this any higher out of spite, too. But um. They killed fucking DEATH this season. And while I was actually really unhappy about it because Death was cool as hell, that scene with Sam like, just wrecked, and Dean’s “Close your eyes, Sammy” kinda made it really, really almost worth it. (You’ll soon realize I really only care a lot about Sam and Dean’s relationship and their Absolute Best Moments™ that wrench my heart.)

7. Season 8. Unfortunately, the writers decided hey, let’s ruin Sam’s character a little fucking more and write him as OOC as possible by having him not actually give a shit where the fuck Dean was for an entire year because he was too busy fucking some piece of shit girl! Seriously, I didn’t think I could dislike anyone more than I hated Ruby 2.0 or Gordon... and then came Amelia. I have yet to encounter a person in the Spn-verse that is worse than her. No joke. This season ranks above the others though because it was less “meh” or all over the place. And because Mrs. Tran being a complete baller for just a single episode was more entertaining that any of the main story arcs for any of those seasons below. Also, more importantly, it had more of a return to what Supernatural is supposed to be - I’m looking at you S6/7 - and even though trying to close the gates of Hell was pointless and we knew it was never gonna happen, I have a sick love for suffering!Sam at any given time because then Dean goes into overprotective big bro mode and they stop fighting and being jerks to each other for a lil’ while and we get Seasons 1-5 (eh, minus 4) bro’ lovin’ and protectin’ again. Plus, this season holds my favorite quote/speech Dean has ever said to Sam (you know what I’m talking about) and I already said I’m a sucker for heart-wrenching moments between them, so.

6. Season 4. Probably yet another unpopular opinion, but oh well. Ruby 2.0... gag me. Way to ruin a good character. Plus, as much as I love Gen, I loved nothing about her portrayal of Ruby. It wasn’t the same character. That’s the bottom line. Also Sam’s demon blood addiction and him so far up Ruby’s ass all season??? Vomit. Skip. Next. Literally if Sam listened to Dean for legit two seconds, the Apocalypse could’ve been avoided. But Castiel! And the angel arc! The actual saving graces (hah, literally) of the season.

5. Season 1. I feel really weird about placing this season this low because it’s really just as good as the two I’ve ranked above it, but. I suppose that’s cheating. Season 1 holds a very, very special place in my heart, is all. It’s the OG season, monster-of-the-week episodes (which, side note: makes no sense to me when people rank S1 super low because there were “too many monster-of-the-week episodes.” Um, yeah.. that’s kinda... what the show is fucking about? Sam and Dean... hunting monsters? But okay, anyway...) Baby Sam and Dean!!! The world wasn’t fucked yet! Lil’ skulky Sam!! Okay, real talk, S1-3 (and 5) Sam was fucking BALLER. He was the best Sam, and then the writers trashed his character, so. Cool. This season is really only this low because I had to fully rank this and because John was kinda a dick. But I loved Sam fighting with him and Dean getting in between them to protect Sam. (Also, on another note: John was a piece of work but he was a better parent than S12 Mary, jussayin’.) (Also, also, it irritates the shit out of me just how much they ruined John’s character and who they made him out to be post-season 5. He was truly something else and he did some really shitty things, but I don’t think it was fair to do and I don’t think that was ever what Kripke intended for his character, but. Oh well. I digress.)

4. Season 11. Once again, I don’t necessarily rank this fully above S1 or below the next ranking, but. There was a lot of good things going on this season. Casifer was brilliant and delivered some of my favorite one-liners of the series. His interactions with God!Chuck were great. Him helping instead of being a villain, but still being a ridiculous child. God!Chuck was wonderful and handled really, really well. Also, his World’s Best Dad mug? I heart. Freakin’... Baby? Brilliant, incredible, amazing, wonderful, spectacular. Rowena was also bitchin’ this season, the whole flippin’ demons, angels, witches working together (even though it was just one episode) was suh-weeeet, Sam and Dean were vibin’ like early seasons Sam and Dean. I really wasn’t here for the forced Dean/Amara weird as hell relationship/attraction, though. It was... no. Just. No. Also like, Amara was okay and they did mostly show how powerful she was but like. Azazel, Lucifer, the Leviathans, Gordon, or basically... anyone felt like more of a threat than her, even though she was the only actual unstoppable force ever on the show. And while it was kinda nice for the finale to be her and Chuck working it out, it was also... kinda lame. Here’s this dark force that is the most powerful thing in existence, and it’s stopped by God... apologizing and hugging it out with her? Um... okay, I guess.

3. Season 3. Even though this season was short and waiting for Dean to die kinda sucked and put a damper on the whole season, it still is by far one of the best ones, hands down. Not only did we get Katie Cassidy’s badass, savage, cool as hell Ruby 1.0, we got Bela (who had so much wasted potential, sigh) and return of the Trickster, Bobby really becoming the boys’ father figure, and Sam finally getting to kill Actual Piece of Shit™ Gordon Walker. Season 3 also has some of the best episodes of the whole series - Bad Day At Black Rock, Mystery Spot, Ghostfacers - and we got A Very Supernatural Christmas, which gave us the birth of the Samulet, and I swear to god that scene made me actually cry a little bit. (A lotta bit.)

2. Season 2. This is like. THE Supernatural season. All the cool kids are introduced: Ellen, Jo, Ash, the Trickster, Tessa. Bobby becomes more involved, brotherly bonding up the wazoo, total badass, pure monster hunting. Episodes like Tall Tales and Hollywood Babylon. And episodes like Croatoan and Heart (which had one of the best endings to an episode in the series just in terms of emotion and how well it was set up with the song and ugh), and had debatably the best season finale of the whole show with All Hell Breaks Loose Parts 1 & 2. (It killed me.) Great monsters are introduced like shape shifters and djinns. Azazel was annoying but was an actual villain (unlike some of the later big “villains”) and he was that start and end of everything. He was the Winchesters’ reason for hunting, he catapulted everything. And everything was so simple and pure and made fucking sense.

1. Season 5. I mean, there’s really no surprise here. It baffles me when S5 isn’t at the top of everyone’s list. While I don’t necessarily wanna go back and watch S5 episodes like I do with most other seasons, it was just the most well-rounded, well-thought out, well-executed season. No competition. Everything had a purpose and a meaning. Everything was tied up. Ellen and Jo die, which is a downer, but at least they were badass. Lucifer is a total tool, and you love it. It’s also Mark Pellegrino’s Lucifer, which is - quite obviously - the best Lucifer. Death is rad as hell. Cas is in his fucking prime this season. Sam and Dean love each other so fucking much this season. The Trickster/Gabriel is revealed as an archangel!! Crowley!! Bobby in his prime as Sam and Dean’s father figure!! Dark Side of the Moon A.K.A. one of my all-time favorite episodes and also one of the most beautifully shot episodes!! (And Ash in heaven! “Some people share, like soulmates”!!!!!!) The fucking END!!! I honestly would probably rank S5 at the top of this list solely for the scene where Lucifer is beating the crap out of Dean while Dean just keeps saying, “Sammy, it’s okay, I’m here” and then Sam’s montage of memories of him and Dean as he takes back control, and jeez holy shit is that montage beautiful and brilliant. That scene alone is probably the best scene in the whole show and I will defend that opinion until I die. The only bad things really in S5 were how unbelievably annoying Zachariah was and how I still think throwing their random half-brother in there just so Dean didn’t have to be Michael’s vessel was ridiculous and absurd. But really, this is the season. I’m glad the show didn’t end after this season, but holy fucking shit would it have been one of the sickest, best, most baller series finales of all time, and no matter what they do for the series finale now, this finale is so untouchable that it will never even come close to living up to it.

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chucksnerdthoughts · 5 years

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Thoughts on, “The City’s Not for Burning” (Iron Fist)

This was a really great episode! Season two is really shaping up to be much better than season one.

1. I want to complain first and then talk about everything I enjoyed. All the scene with Colleen and Danny together in list episode, feel like they’re just telling the other person about the adventure they just went on. I get that they need to feel each other in, but we literally just watched what they’re describing. I don’t need an instant recap. If it was like an episode or two later, sure! I will have forgotten some stuff by then. But not five minutes later. I still feel like they’d both be stronger characters if they weren’t dating.

2. Alice Eve is great! I first off just love the voice she’s doing for Mary. Its both innocent, but a little terrifying at the same time. That’s so strange, but powerful! This episode also made it clear that she has a split personality and that’s really interesting. So the evil half is stalking Danny, taking those photos. And the good half just wants to draw stuff. I dig that. I’m very excited to see where they take this characters. I’ve tried to stay away from spoilers, but I’ve heard some rumbles that she has a solid story. So I’m excited!

3. I loved that we got the Davos/Danny fight for the dragon. That was really interesting. A couple things that I noticed with it. First off, they didn’t say that knocking a person unconscious counts as winning. So I wonder if you do, does that mean you then have to kill them while they sleep? That’s kind of brutal. Danny really had the upper hand until Davos cheated and broke their rope. But even still, Danny used his smarts and the match was def his. That being said, the match technically isn’t over. Danny’s right, the fight never ended. They gave two criteria for the fight to end. Either yield or death. Neither happened. They’re still fighting! I don’t know if they’re going to build on this point, but its def a thing.

4. Ward really isn’t doing a lot, but everything he does is great! Him yelling at his assistant was painful, but he legit made up for it. And it was adorable! She’s totally going to die because of this, but until then, I’ll be happy to see her. His scene with Joy was also great. He’s legit trying to make things right and she’s just being awful about it. He’s totally going to get screwed this season. I can tell.

I enjoyed season one and am honestly enjoying season two more than I thought I would!

-Chuck

#The City's not for buring #Iron Fist #Danny Rand #marvel #MCU #netflix #defenders #review

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sonofdu · 6 years

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In Search Of…

I didn’t realize the TV series In Search Of… which was hosted by Leonard Nimoy had such a long life. I only discovered the show which originally ran from 1977 to 1982 in syndication when History Channel began airing old episodes of it in the 1990s alongside things like Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. But while there were just 13 episodes of the Arthur C Clark series, there were more than 140 of In Search Of….

In Search Of… covered everything in the pseudoscience arena, from UFOs, to ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis… and everything in between. Most of episodes asked a lot of questions but didn’t provide a lot of answers. Hence pseudoscience.

Ironically, where In Search Of… was an oddity on a channel in the 1990s that aired lots of documentaries and series about historical things, nowadays the simply titled History instead aires a lot of reality series like Forged in Fire and Mountain Men along with pseudoscience series of their own like Ancient Aliens. So I suppose it makes a lot of sense to reboot In Search Of… for a new generation.

Hosted by Zachary Quinto — who ironically like Nimoy also played Spock in Star Trek — this new 21st century version is essentially the old series all over again. The first episode covered UFOs and had the ubiquitous interview with three people who claim to have been abducted; one failed a polygraph test about his experiences, the other had an “implant” in a toe that turned out to be a rock while a third built a contraption so non-abductees can feel what it’s like to have that experience. There were also interviews with scientists too who were searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Spoiler alert, nothing found… yet.

There’s nothing new in this overly long and drawn-out at an hour 2018 version of *In Search Of…” that hadn’t already been done before 40 years ago in the old. Since we’re living in 2018 and not 1977 the questions I would’ve liked answered are — if we live in a world that’s increasingly being constantly recorded from security cameras outside businesses to cameras within people’s doors and if essentially everyone on the planet are carrying around cameras in their mobile phones 24/7, then why aren’t we recording evidence of UFOs and abductions on a regular basis rather than less than before? To me that would’ve made an interesting episode, not the same thing that’s been done over and over and over again for decades now.

So far the new In Search Of… is just that, a lot of looking but not a lot of finding.

Doctor Who “Shada” animated special

I don’t think people are ever going to uncover a “lost” episode of Star Trek. All of the episodes of that show that were ever shot have aired, are available in many home media formats and it’s not like there were any episodes that were aired once and never seen again. Sure, maybe they’ll find clips of episode or reels of henceforth unknown behind the scenes footage of DeForest Kelley eating a hamburger on the bridge of the Enterprise, but not a whole episode people haven’t seen in years. However, that’s not the case for classic Doctor Who series. That show has nearly 100 episodes that are considered lost that aired a few times but the original archival tapes either went missing, were destroyed or taped over.

Shada

But just because those episodes are lost today doesn’t mean that they won’t be found tomorrow. In fact just a few years ago a batch of episodes were uncovered in Africa. However, not all episodes like this can be found, case in point “Shada” which originally was set to air during the 1979–1980 season. That episode, written by Douglas Adams, yes, that Douglas Adams, was partially shot but never finished due to a work strike. So with “Shada” it’s the case of BBC having some completed footage but not enough for a whole episode. What they’ve done is to put together an episode that’s partially composed of these already filmed live-action elements as well as portions of the episode that were created via animation like “The Power of the Daleks from a few years ago to fill in these gaps.

“Shada” is interesting if a bit difficult to watch for a non-Doctor Who fan. In fact, I think even fans of the modern Doctor Who series probably wouldn’t dig “Shada” — Matt Smith obsessives probably need not apply here. “Shada” is difficult to watch partially because the classic stories were always a bit slow — there’s a part of the episode that features the Doctor and his companion taking a long, leisurely boat ride down a river — and also because the switch from live-action to animation can be quite jarring. Because TV shows aren’t filmed in order means that a character can be outside one second in a live-action scene and walk through door into an animated scene.

“Shada” is for die-hard Doctor Who fans only, and luckily since I’m a die-hard Doctor Who fan it means “Shada” is for me.

Killing Eve

Can I talk about Killing Eve for a moment? This series has won loads of critical acclaim and an Emmy nomination and was a show I was excited to see before it premiered. That was before BBC America advertised it into the ground for me. Before the first episode aired BBC America began promoting the show like most networks do for new and upcoming series. But they didn’t just promote it, they promoted it several times each commercial break. Which meant that every time I watched an episode of The X-Files or Star Trek I’d see ten commercials for Killing Eve every hour. Watch a few episodes of anything on BBC America and you can see why I quickly grew tired of Killing Eve before it ever aired. I can still hear that, “I have to kill you, I’m really sorry,” song echoing around in my head from hearing it so much on the commercials.

So I never watched an episode of Killing Eve. And again, it’s getting great reviews so it’s my loss, but I figured that once the first season ended in May BBC America would be done with it until next year. Except they weren’t/aren’t. They’re still airing promos for the show only this time telling views to “binge” Killing Eve this summer and ones congratulating Sandra Oh for her Emmy nomination.

I give up, BBC America, you win. If I publicly say that Killing Eve is the best show on the planet even though I’ve never seen an episode will you please stop airing commercials for this show?

If this works for you contact me via this website. I am not joking.

Doctor Who season 11 commercial

Stranger Things season 3 teaser

Titans commercial

Nightflyers series promo

Better Call Saul season 4 teaser

Young Justice: Outsiders promo

Star Trek: Discovery season 2 promo

The Orville season 2 promo

Movies

Patient Zero trailer

Overlord trailer

Glass trailer — aka Spilt 2 or Unbreakable 2

Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer

Aquaman trailer

Shazam! trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Astronomers discover 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter – one on collision course with the others

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #137 TV In Search Of… I didn’t realize the TV series In Search Of… which was hosted by Leonard Nimoy had such a long life.

#aquaman #better call saul #doctor who #glass #godzilla #in search of #nightflyers #overlord #patient zero #shazam #star trek #stranger things #the orville #titans #young justice

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