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mantra4ia · 3 years

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Lucifer 6x09 "Goodbye, Lucifer" Live Reaction'd

"Our siblings are answering prayers and making a mess of it / Apocalypse by a thousand papercuts/ You're not the God of us" soooo, Amenadiel should ascend!

"Where's a goddamn celestial when you need one!" Ultimate mood, Dan!

"Check in on Father Frank" is such a tease you white-board-dry-eraser-wielding jerks!

Water balloons off the penthouse balcony and Bones, now that's a perfect day for these clowns.

Free will or fate or both? Free will is the future, fate is history...this has been the ultimate back and forth of the series and I feel like we're losing ground now instead of making meaningful storyline insights. Literally, send in Father Frank now and clear this up!

Morningstar and Martin are making me a) finally believe in the merits of the last season and b) making me sob silly and it's absolutely unfair.

Morningstar and Miss Lopez making me cry and it's absolutely unfair!

I can't say this enough, Lauren German and DB Woodside on screen together is supremely underrated gold and I am vastly glad for every moment the plot brings them together because it is a shining moment.

"You'll find your calling too, I have faith in you. / Of all our siblings, I'm glad it's you I've got to spend all this time on Earth with. You are my favorite brother, brother, and I will miss you/ You can't get rid of me that easily." HeavenlyBros™ Lucifer and Amenadiel making all the snot come out of my nose and it's absolutely unfair!

PS: can't wait to see a LUX celestial mixer #BootsOnTheGround AmenaGod

Maybe Lucifer's calling is to be human? A better kind of man.

#Goodguyinabadguysbody thank you, finally something worthy of Ghost Dan/ Kevin Alejandro.

If Lucifer doesn't say goodbye to Trixie, if TRIXSTAR™ doesn't get their moment to make me sob unfairly, if I don't get that squirmy hug, I will riot!

Dig out that guilt Dan: he wanted to be good role model for Trixie. Ding ding ding, hello OF COURSE, it's the beating heart of everything in this show. Parents and children. Love and feeling worthy of love! Also, since it is now clear that Lucifer isn't saying goodbye to Trixie —and I have to riot— I'm glad Dan did!

Look at Trixie doing the emotional heavy lifting of this show —on par with all her grown counterparts— like a damn champion! The fact that the power is that be behind this show didn't take into account Scarlett's schedule to include much more is sinful!

But when Dan ascends and leaves Le Mec's body, Trixie/everyone is in danger.

"Everything's fine room," Bigger on the inside. Classic Timelord move. Can I get a don't panic panic room if I try to rewatch this season from the beginning?

All I'm saying is SUPERWHOLOCK should be endgame... Lucifer isn't going to die, he's going to save Rory and Rory is accidentally going to time travel him into the future, closing the time loop like Amy and Rory in "The Angels Take Manhattan" where the Doctor never sees them again but writes an epilogue to Linda's now-charred memoir, hence why Lucifer blips out of existence in Chloe's timeline. And if that's not what canon does, I will scrub canon from memory and that's what will happen in my recollection.

6/10 DETECTIVES, mostly for the abject, vile abuse of my heartstrings!

#lucifer spoilers #netflix lucifer #lucifer season 6 #lucifer s6 #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #deckerstar #goodbye lucifer #superwholock #father frank #trixstar #heavenly bros #trixie was robbed #trixie espinoza

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 4x07 Gimme Shelter

This is the first of my favorite episodes of the season. The second half of season 4 is much stronger than the first.

The main event of this episode is the first “black rain” – radioactive, potentially fatal rain, which all the characters try to run and take shelter from, but the episode is very character-focused, with small, intimate scenes of characters interacting with just one or two other people (sometimes not even in the same location). There are some expected and some unexpected character pairings. The black rain is just a catalyst to see how the characters feel about themselves – some are desperate to survive, some feel that they don’t want to survive, some are desperate to save everyone and feel like a failure if they don’t.

Again, we have three main plots in three different locations, with different groups of characters: as people in Arkadia quickly ran back into the ship, but some remain outside, Bellamy goes in the rover, trying to save a Delinquent and his father who are far away from Arkadia; there’s a development in Octavia’s relationship with Ilian, while they take shelter in a cave, which ends up having a surprisingly positive effect on her; and the third plot is focused on Emori and gives her a lot of screentime and development, as she starts fearing she would be made a guinea pig for the new Nightblood solution and is determined to do everything to avoid that fate. Harper also gets a subplot of her own, for the first time.

After the fake alarm about black rain that Jaha used in the last episode to save Ilian from an angry mob, this time the real black rain falls and causes the people in Arkadia to all quickly run inside in panic, and go on to wash themselves. (Realistically, they should have been washing their whole bodies rather than just the upper body – but this is a network show after all, and actors supposedly refused to take off their pants…)

In the chaos that happened when a bunch of people ran towards Arkadia, Harper didn’t help a man who tried to hold onto her, and pushed him away, obviously scared of falling down herself – but he fell to the ground and got exposed to a too big a dose of radioactive rain, before he was dragged inside when everyone else was already inside. After he gets severe radioactive poisoning and is certain to die, Harper feels deeply guilty. Kane tells her to go and tend to the main in the med bay, but this doesn’t help assuage her guilt, and after the man dies, it causes her to feel terrible about herself for the rest of the season, and was no doubt one of the reasons why she developed suicidal tendencies.

Bellamy’s storyline is simple but effective, due to really good acting and good writing. He takes a rover and a slightly torn anti-radiation suit during the rain to go find two people from Arkadia who have found themselves far away - a man called Mark Colton, who asked for help by radio, and his son Peter, who was one of the Delinquents, and who is already suffering effects of the exposure. This would be more meaningful for the audience if we had known Peter (most of the 100 were just extras that we never really got to know), but it is understandable why Bellamy is all the more motivated – he’s felt personally responsible for saving and protecting those kids, almost like he’s always felt responsible for his sister. Throughout this, Kane keeps talking to him on the radio, on a private channel, while Mark is calling him and desperately asking for help on another line. Bellamy’s mission fails because the rover gets stuck in the mud and Bellamy cannot get out to fix the problem while it is still raining due to his suit being torn, though he actually almost did that, before Kane managed to change his mind. He is desperate to save these two people now – “we save who we can today” – because his guiding motivation in life, ever since he was tasked with the responsibility for his sister at the age of six, has always been protecting and saving, and he feels he has failed to save or caused deaths of so many people. Most of all, he feels like he has failed with his sister – he is not even sure if she is alive, since she walked into the woods on her own, and he’s worried about what Octavia’s state of mind is now and that he barely recognizes her (“What is she now? Is she even alive?”).

Kane tries to convince Bellamy that Octavia can take care of herself, but also that he should stop trying to save everyone: “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved”. Kane genuinely cares for Bellamy and tries to play a pseudo-father role to him, and though Bellamy, this time, shows a certain annoyance with that when he tells Kane (“No more lessons”), he does take Kane’s advice to heart – he repeats it at the end of the episode, and it informs the way he deals with Jasper and the rest of the people who choose not to survive Praimfaya in the upcoming episode. But when Kane tells Bellamy that his mother would be proud of the man he had become, and that he certainly is, Bellamy reminds him: “You floated my mother”. This is a very interesting moment, and one I’ve always liked, because it shows that forgiveness is not such a simple, yes-or-not thing for Bellamy. Even though he has accepted Kane as his mentor and forged a strong bond for him, even if he has maybe mostly forgiven him, he still refuses to forget and ignore the past.

Surprise, surprise, Octavia and Ilian run into each other in the woods again, or rather, he’s managed to find her again, and even though he is gruff and keeps saying she doesn’t need his help, he says he owes her because she didn’t kill him (?!), Huh, well, that’s an interesting point of view. “You could have murdered me, but you didn’t, how nice of you”. I guess Ilian must not have experienced much of actual decent human behavior, if these are the standards he judges people by. They are forced to run for cover and hide in a nearby cave together. Ilian seems to realize that she’s also damaged and messed up like he is, and talks about his trauma – constantly seeing his family’s faces everywhere, the memories of nicer times with them, and the awful things he did to them (he killed both his father and brother, as we saw, and cut his mother’s fingers, which is why she bled out from in the end). He tries to get her to talk about what happened to her, but she refuses and tells him that they are different and that she’s a much darker person: he feels the way people are supposed to feel when they kill someone, but she doesn’t feel anything. She is suicidal and walks out in the rain, and Ilian saves her. Then, as he is trying to stop her from running out of the rain, she kisses him and begs him to have sex with her to make her feel something. This “make me feel something” trope is pretty common, and it wasn’t hard to predict that things would develop that way between those two. Up to this point, nothing was unexpected, though it worked, due to really good acting – Marie Avgeropoulos sells dark!Octavia and suicidal Octavia really well.

After sex, Ilian prepares to go back to his farm, and invites Octavia to come with him if she wants. Octavia lingers a little, then throws her weapons in the fire and goes after him, offering to take him home by giving him a ride on her horse Helios to his farm. This was the first thing that was a bit unexpected to me in this story the first time I watched it. After how dark thing this relationship started, with Octavia almost killing Ilian to take out her issues on him, and with how generally edge-lordy she has been, I didn’t expect this relationship to develop in a more positive way, and so quickly. It’s not a rushed romance like so many others in the show because, for once, we’re not supposed to think they’re in love, they are just both screwed up and damaged, Octavia is grieving and having a rebound, Ilian has been through worse and has no one left, but they’ve bonded, he certainly helped her heal to an extent, and finding someone more messed up than he is probably has helped him, too. Octavia seems generally drawn to people who are gentle and with a positive outlook on life and who can balance out her anger and aggression, even though I’m not sure if anyone can really heal her, since she has been damaged all her life, due to the way she grew up. She was damaged way before Lincoln died, and way before she was sent to the ground, even way before she was arrested and her mother executed. But, at least for a moment, she chose to and genuinely tried to have a positive human relationship and go live peacefully on a farm, instead of using violence and murder to numb her feelings.

Clarke arrives to Becca’s lab and reunites with Abby, she learns some bad news about Raven’s condition, obvious from a scan of her brain (but Raven, just like Jasper, Monty and Jaha, doesn’t appear in the episode), and in turn, Abby learns the bad news about the lost barrel of hydrazine, which means they cannot go to space to synthesize Nightblood there. But Abby tells Clarke about the new plan: they can make people Nightbloods with Luna’s bone marrow, but they would have to test someone in the radiation chamber to see if it works. Obviously, this is disturbing as they could kill the test subject, but Clarke insists they have to do it in order for everyone to survive. Abby is more tormented over the moral implications of it – Clarke has already been there and is already used to having to make terrible choices that her old self from early season 1 would have been shocked by. Later, Kane tells Abby over the phone that her humanity is her greatest strength, but: “We need to survive. Then we can all find our humanity back.” Words that will become Abby’s motto, and remains that for years.

After talking with her mother in the lab, Clarke goes with Emori to the residential part of the lighthouse, which feels very comfortable - Murphy is cooking, music is playing, and Clarke goes to take shower and finds a bed, and for a moment, she is enjoying it probably thinking about how nice it would be to have real, domestic, normal life, instead of this constant fight for survival. This is different from the makeshift rooms in Arkadia, or the palace-like glamour of Lexa’s tower – it’s like a regular home from back before the apocalypse.

But while the next episode is focused on Clarke’s and Abby’s moral dilemmas, this one is a big Emori episode. Emori has overheard Abby’s and Clarke’s conversation in the lab, and, immediately concluded that she will be the test subject, as the outcast, the one they don’t care or need, and is determined to avoid that fate. Whether they would have been able to make that decision on their own, we don’t know, and it’s debatable, but Emori is right that she seems like the obvious pick if they would have to choose someone as “expendable” – it wasn’t going to be one of the doctors or the king of Azgeda, Abby was obviously not going to want to test Clarke, and Emori had no real ties to anyone other than Murphy, who wasn’t exactly held in high regard by himself. I’ve always liked Emori because she was a well-written anti-heroine with a backstory that explained her personality – since early childhood, she’s been used to distrusting people, thinking that she is an outcast that everyone finds disposable and that she has to be really ruthless to survive – and I really liked that the show here showed both how ruthless and how manipulative she can be, while not making her into a villain.

This episode also has interesting interactions between Emori and Clarke – two characters who had barely shared scenes before. A thief breaks in, and Emori overpowers him, and claims he is Baylis, a man who used to torture her and her brother. On first watch, I completely believed her, and I bet most viewers did. Emori is that good at putting on an act – she has been practicing all her life, after all – that the audience is fooled alongside Clarke and Murphy, She uses truth for deception – telling Clarke that she, Clarke, with her privileged upbringing, and family who loved her and told she was special, doesn’t know what it’s like to be cast out, thrown away like garbage as an infant, because of the way she was born, and be forced to steal and kill since an early age. Clarke admits she can’t know that, but knows what it’s like to feel like you have to kill.

Emori asks Clarke if she has ever killed for revenge, Clarke shakes her head – this is true, she has never done it. It was always out of necessity - to protect someone, to survive, to free herself, or a mercy kill. Even Dante – that was about desperately trying to prove to Cage that she was serious. The one time she thought she could kill for revenge was Lexa in 3x03, for very personal feelings of betrayal, and she wasn’t able to go through with that. She even passed the opportunity to kill Emerson for revenge in Polis, because it could have jeopardized the peace she was fighting for, which was much more important.

But Emori is actually not looking for revenge here, either – it is out of necessity, too, or what Emori considers necessary. She beats up “Baylis” and acts like she is going to kill him, while he insists he is just a scavenger trying to find food for his family, but Clarke suggests they make him a test subject instead. If they have to potentially sacrifice someone – Emori has just made the decision so much easier for everyone: they can feel better if they know the person they are maybe going to kill in a human experiment is an abusive monster. He isn’t, actually – not that he is a good guy, either. He’s a thief who broke into the lighthouse and attacked a person and may have killed Emori… but by the same standards, Emori would be also considered bad, she’s also robbed and killed to survive, and so has Murphy. As “Baylis” is injected with Nightblood, Emori cooly admits to Murphy that she doesn’t know the thief and that he is not Bayli, she just wanted someone else to get tested instead of her. Instead of being shocked, Murphy admires her even more than before: “Now that is a survivor’s move”.

This episode makes for almost a two-parter with the next one, God Complex, where this storyline gets its resolution.

One of this episode’s biggest strengths is the amazing music - both Tree Adams’s score, and the song “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.)” by Jim James, which plays over a montage of various scenes near the end of the episode.

Timeline: Like most episodes, this one takes place very soon after the previous one – since Clarke, Roan and the barrels of hydrazine were on her way to the lab at the end of 4x06, and they get there at the beginning of 4x07. Which means this takes place about two weeks since the start of season 4/end of season 3 (i.e. the time when Clarke shut down ALIE and the City of Light).

Body count: As we find out at the very beginning of the next episode, 18 Sky people died from exposure to the radiation, including Louis (the man that Harper didn’t help), Mark Colton and his son Peter.

Peter is the first Delinquent to die in season 4. That means 57 Delinquents have died so far, and 43 are still alive (including Clarke, Octavia, Monty, Jasper, Miller, Harper and Murphy).

Rating: 9/10

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 4x07 #gimme shelter #the 100 season 4 #emori #bellamy blake #octavia blake #clarke griffin #abby griffin #marcus kane #ilian #ilian kom trishanakru #john murphy #harper mcintyre

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dcarevu · 5 years

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Batman TAS: The Clock King

Hi, guys! Gee, it’s been a while! For another week or two, doing these blogs are going to be incredibly difficult to accomplish. It’s the last two weeks of my school semester, meaning that it’s crunch time. Overall, school has kept me so busy that watching the episodes has been doable, but writing about them has been a huge problem. It sucks, because doing this blog and venting my thoughts is incredibly satisfying. To be honest, if I didn’t include screenshots and captions for most of them (like how I used to do things), these posts would likely still be coming out regularly. But they are a lot of extra work. It more than doubles the creation-time, believe it or not. It is work that is worth it, mind you, it adds a massive leap in awesome-factor. But I just don’t have time for it at the moment. I have watched up to Robin’s Reckoning as of the moment I type this. Because of how far ahead that is without actually writing anything about those episodes, it’s going to be hard to write meaningful blog posts about them, simply due to the episodes not being as fresh in my mind. I will try to rewatch them (or at the very least skim through them and read about them). I’m in a bit of a rut. I didn’t want to stop watching episodes entirely, because I’d like to get through the DC Animated Universe in a somewhat timely manner (I’d watch an episode per night if only I could). Luckily, after the 10th of May I should be back at it in full. I’m likely way more excited about it than you are, but hey, I’m mainly doing this for me (with a hearty “welcome” to anyone who happens to discover and enjoy these along the way). Just figured I’d keep any readers updated! This is the last post for the next couple of weeks. I’ll check in soon! In the mean time…

“Thirty-seven pages? That would take a copier exactly one minute and forty-nine seconds. One more delay like this and you're fired!”

Episode: 25 Robin: No Writer: David Wise Director: Kevin Altieri Animator: Sunrise Airdate: September 21, 1992 Grade: B

So lately I’ve been watching these episodes using my Blu Ray copy, and receiving the screenshots from my DVD copy. There hasn’t been too much for variance, aside from one looking obviously better, but The Clock King is an example of a pretty drastic difference in how two episodes can be presented. The Blu Ray copy is much brighter than the DVD copy, and while that does allow us to see what is going on a little bit better in dark scenes such as when Batman and Temple Fugate face off inside the clock, it also makes other scenes uncharacteristically bright, and honestly a little bit tacky. Seeing Batman walking around in broad daylight is odd enough, but when you further get rid of the illusion of how cool he looks by upping the exposure an additional amount, it makes him look really out of place. In the series bible, I can see why they wanted to keep Batman only appearing after dark. In the real world, it would be a lot easier to see Batman as a normal guy in a dorky Halloween costume when not cloaked in the shadows or when the ability to see him before he attacks is present. Of course, this isn’t saying that if Batman were to see trouble during daylight that he should just ignore it. It makes sense to break the rule sometimes, and it’s not even a problem to me in this episode, I just don’t think that the remastering of the Blu Ray release does it any favors in this case. The brightness also brings out the budget, revealing a whole lot of bland blues, grays, and browns. These colors have not been shy since the beginning, but there is no disguising them this time.

Fugate is a villain who’s main flaw is not only how obsessive-compulsive he gets about his schedule, keeping track of things, being on time, etc, but also the fact that he extends this to other people. He expects them to fall in line with his standards. For example, he keeps track of how long he and Mayor Hill have been taking the subway together, and expects Hill to know his name just from that. Also, his employee/intern who brings him a stack of papers too slowly for his standards, because apparently a photocopier should only take “one minute and forty-nine seconds” on that particular stack. And then, the biggest one of all, when he expects Mayor Hill to immediately know the significance of the time 3:15. This is the time that Hill suggested Fugate go on his coffee break, indirectly leading to Fugate losing the court case, ruining his life and creating the Clock King. But this was seven years prior! If someone came up to you and went, “1:47!” would you have any idea what they were talking about? Sure, a lot of things have happened at 1:47, maybe even some significant things, but as far as what they are, most people probably do not keep track. Another theme that I noticed was the idea of hindsight. Have you ever been in a situation where you gave someone a mere suggestion, they willingly took it, and then when something happened to ruin it, they blame you and insist that they knew it was a bad idea? Right, of course in hindsight it’s easy to say that, but truth is, neither of you saw the consequences coming! On top of that, any bad things that happened were completely unrelated to what you suggested, and luck just did not happen to line up. Maybe if Fugate hadn’t gone on that coffee break at a different time than usual, something else would have happened (not to get Final Destination-y on you). Point is, Fugate is completely missing the mark by staying mad at Mayor Hill for that long, and it’s like the old saying goes, “Shit happens.” Ironically, for a man so precise and knowledgable when to comes to all things time and clock related, looking back in time without heavy distortion does not seem to be something he is capable of doing in this case.

The main thing I liked about this episode (as I think a lot of people did) was its incredibly cruel nature. Just how mean to a guy can the writers be? “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy”. That’s a Joker quote (taken from The Killing Joke), and it’s something I think about from time to time. I often wonder how much is between a rational brain and a completely irrational one. How much subconscious effort does being sane take? What’s keeping any of us from letting go and succumbing to the lunacy? Do our minds even work that way? Well, I sure as hell don’t know. And nobody worry, I’m not even the least bit afraid of snapping or anything, hahaha. It probably greatly varies from person to person as far as what would be enough to drive them crazy. In Temple Fugate’s case, it was a lot less than it would take for the majority of us. But this is hammered home by the drama of him being late to court. The bloody browns, dramatic shadows, and violent ticks of a clock do not necessarily represent how Fugate sees the situation, but they are there to represent how the situation affects him. If we were to be affected like him, this is how we would have to experience the situation. After all, everything is relative. This is juxtaposed brilliantly by the prior scene where birds are chirping and the sun is shining. Fugate seems like an alien trying to act casually as he struggles to relax for those few seconds. This is also more from our point of view than Fugate’s. These two scenes being back to back make us feel confused and baffled over our villain, all while allowing us to understand him completely. To me, understanding does not necessarily mean that something makes sense to us. Understanding is knowing the why. But, as an analogy, someone can tell me why they like the taste of zucchini. But that doesn’t make it any more clear to me those reasons can be enough for someone can like it. It just is what it is, and the bottom line is that all of our realities are different. For Temple Fugate, this is an unfortunate reality.

The producers of Batman set a goal of having a crazy set piece at the third act of every episode. They wanted it to aid in the excitement and to be memorable. I’m pretty sure not all episodes did this (it would become formulaic is abused), but this, along with Prophecy of Doom are the two that come to mind as demonstrators of this concept. Unfortunately, the animation lacks the spark that it needs. Luckily The Clock King wasn’t infected by Atom disease, and so the climax downright corny like Prophecy of Doom, and seeing the inside of the clock was neat, but… It wasn’t beyond just neat. I wish we got a bigger sense of scale, seeing further to the bottom of the clock, and maybe getting some better angles along with quicker action. I wanted a sense of height like what Mayor Hill was experiencing from the outside, as he was tied to the clock-hand. Plus just better fighting. It was such a tease of an action scene. I wanted to be at the edge of my seat, but feeling that way would require forcing it. And I just don’t have that kind of energy, man. Sunrise tried, they really did. The scene (and the whole episode in general) looks passable. But the blandness holds it back. It’s like eating the macaroni and cheese from my college. It’s mac and friggin’ cheese. So of course it’s going to be edible. Of course I’m going to like it. But where is the usual flavor? Where is the element that I usually am head-over-heels for? I can make vague comments about what it’s missing or what I would personally do to make it better. But probably the most firm statement I can really make is only, “Just do it better next time.”

I feel bad for people like this. We’ve all met them. They hold themselves (and others) to an impossibly high standard. Think about how much energy that must use.

The shock of Fugate hitting his coffee break at an odd time. She’s worked with him a long time.

Batman’s idea of a nice, sunny day. As noted, it’s brighter on the Blu Ray. One of the scenes where the brightness adds to it. That tree is casting a shadow, but it almost looks like the clock is the one causing it...

The Blu Ray variant.

Great stuff! The tick of a clock gets louder and louder through the scene.

“Then perhaps this will teach you to be on time for a change.” This line holds so much weight, as to someone like Fugate, it cements the idea that one moment of leniency was one too many.

This drawing could have been a little more grotesque, but not bad!

“I take it taxi-drivers are no longer required to obey traffic signs.”

I find it a little whacky that Bruce Wayne noticed trouble from way down on the streets.

Bruce going through that car was animated incredibly strangely. It looked like he entered the car, but then it looked like he emerged from behind it. But anyway, maybe this was a Superman homage? In one of the Superman movies, he walked through a car and emerged completely changed. Batman doesn’t have that amount of speed, so maybe this is kind of like his version of it. In the shadows, where he belongs.

Wow, ugly screenshot. But see how odd it is to see Batman in the daylight?

Again, here is the Blu Ray version. And on a much better frame.

Why he didn’t hurl the explosive directly at Batman is beyond me. He just kinda threw it into the distance. Maybe as a warning (much like Walter White vs Tuco for any Breaking Bad fans).

See what I mean by blandness so far? A little more style would have gone a long way.

What an awful way to die this would be. Split in half by two hands of a giant clock. Imagine the impact this would have on Gotham if it had have worked.

A few bits from inside the clock, including Fugate’s apparent death. But Batman doesn’t seem to think he’s gone... Some of these drawings of gears frankly suck. The line-work just isn’t there. This episode felt like a Twilight Zone episode, I’ve gotta say. I think it had to do with the personality of the villain along with some of the events that happened. Batman and Twilight Zone... Now there’s a crossover with possible potential...

Char’s grade: B Next time: Appointment in Crime Alley

Full episode list here!

#dcau #dc animated universe #batman tas #the clock king #batman #btas #batman the animated series

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 6 years

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Wonky preliminary thoughts

I watched the episode once this morning then I’ve been various degrees of busy and sickly so the episode is sort of nebulous in my mind but I want to throw down the thoughts I remember thinking this morning... on a second watch I could change my mind. Honestly I don’t even know yet what this post is going to be like. I’m gonna make it up as I go. Let’s find out together.

- It’s a finale baby

Okay I haven’t touched my dash but I know my chickens and I know there’s gonna be wank, because people forget that every year when the finale comes out no one likes it. That’s it, that’s the finale, expectations are high because finales are supposed to be epic so people end up disappointed, some things were predicted 8 weeks prior and people complain that they were too obvious, some things were unexpected and people complain they came out of the blue, some people say Cas wasn’t in it enough some people write down explanations why his part was actually meaningful, you know the drill. This has been a typical finale: Dean makes The Sacrificial Decision (having Death kill him, become the soul bomb...) and things don’t just work the way he expected them to (sometimes positively like with Amara, sometimes negatively like with Michael).

I personally expected Dean to let Michael (although until recently I supposed it could be the original version of him) in since 13x15 (the showrunner’s own meta manifesto relatively to the ‘reverse season 5/reverse Swan Song’ nature of the final part of the season) and that it would be about shouldering himself the task of getting Lucifer killed since 13x20 (where he goes after Loki himself and is not enthusiastic about Sam’s revenge intents against Lucifer), and heck the ‘I let you in but you provide the power but I’m behind the wheel’ kind of speech was something I pictured in a thousand scenarios, so I didn’t get any shocks from that part of the episode’s plot, but I still enjoyed how we got there. And then, Lucifer is dead! *celebration noise coming from the fandom*

- Um okay let’s say you did your best

Okay, the impression I got from my first watch: the script worked, but the episode got wonky in its execution. Not even the special effects (insert a wonky gold star for the trying) but I remember being unimpressed by the sound/music? Is it just me? Like, sometimes the sound choices were too over the top? There were also overdramatic zooms but that’s Supernatural, and Supernatural without overdramatic zooms is like Supernatural without the Winchesters.

I liked the recap montage a lot (what do you think came first, Rowena’s line about the music or the idea of having that line inside the season to use it for the finale recap?). I got a bit sad because there was a lot of Wayward Sisters in it, and it would have been better if the finale came in a moment of celebration for it happening rather than anger and bitterness for the CW’s choices. Something I felt missing from the last portion of the season was Jody, but I was obviously okay with it because she was missing in preparation of her role in the spin-off. If we can’t change the network’s decision, I hope next season is packed with those characters.

Anyway, back to the episode - it was weird at times, you all know what times, let’s just run with it and make jokes.

- But in season 5 they said--

No, the act itself of Michael killing Lucifer wasn’t what was going to kill half the planet’s population. It was that act inside the large picture of that spell-like orchestration that was the apocalypse (seals, horsemen, omens, stuff like that). I would argue the large-scale damage that was expected wasn’t an accidental consequence, but kind of the whole point of the apocalypse. I hate myself for bringing it up, but you know Thanos killing half the people to ~save the universe~ or whatever dangerously ambiguous nazi crap that dumbasses have actually fallen for because Marvel is just that bad and dangerously ambiguously conservative? I think that the archangels kind of were similar to that mindset, making a huge sacrifice of humans to bring ~paradise~ because they were tired or whatever. You know, I know some people don’t think Supernatural is particularly progressive, but in the current media climate not framing the mass-murderous, abusive characters with nazi-coded intents as the actual heroes is apparently too progressive for some, so kudos to Supernatural for not making Lucifer or Michael the hero of the story but to stick to common sense and decency. (I know, this part is not about Supernatural but just me being salty at Marvel, but let me, please.)

- So while we’re talking about this...

I can say that what Supernatural did with Lucifer in season 13, in my opinion, has been really good. I’ve never been afraid they were going to ‘redeem’ him, so I wasn’t worried or bothered by the story throwing the tools of redemption at him. Because not only he didn’t pick them up, he couldn’t see them even if they hit him in the face. He didn’t understand what redemption even means. He kept seeing himself as the misunderstood victim, so instead of bettering himself he just felt sorry for himself, and completely missed the point of a ‘second chance’ or whatever he claimed he was after. So, eventually, it was all a lie. I think Lucifer’s “I’ve changed” attitude was partly a schemed lie (because he’s not that clueless), partly something he was convinced of himself, because he has his head up his ass enough to actually believe he was a poor victim. I think this narrative hits the nail on the head - white male fragility works like that, the men wrapped in toxic masculinity and male entitlement think they’re the victims of a big bad oppression from women and queer people and non-white people. But they’re just pathetic, and when the bubble bursts, all they can do is scream in rage and their ‘nice guy’ persona disappears. Lucifer’s 180° change of attitude towards Jack reminded me of the nice guys who start throwing all sorts of disgusting invectives against women after being rejected. So yeah, I think that Lucifer’s arc this season was sort of relevant, if you want to interpret it like this.

Either way, Supernatural, unlike some other pieces of media, doesn’t actually try to make you sympathize with abusive, violent, misogynistic men (unless they actually show to be self-aware and to seek change, and again you aren’t meant to sympathize with their bad side! Toxic masculinity is supposed to be bad, and slaughtering billions of innocents not justified for any reason, and especially does not make you the hero and the ones fighting to save the people the actual villains! *gasp*). There was even a clear dig at Trump, and I am pretty sure that’s Dabb’s answer to accusations of not being clear enough on the subject...

So yeah, I think this season’s big bad was an allegory for white male entitlement and the ‘nice guy’ victim complex, and Dean stabbed him (I’d say with the help of a Black man, sure it’s actually Michael another villain but momentary symbolism, I guess? Or maybe that just isn’t supposed to be relevant.) I felt someone cheer that was still bitter that Sam killed Alastair. You just know someone out there was still bitter about it. I mean it was teamwork, of course, but Dean provided the power and the stab. Oh, Dean letting Michael in to acquire the power to kill Lucifer (who killed Cas and Sam) as a parallel for Sam’s demon blood usage to acquire the power to kill Lilith (who killed Dean) *insert lengthy reflection here*

- Speaking of parallels--

Someone was irked at the apparent belief across fandom that Dean leaving Sam to the vampires in the cave was ~the codepencency being broken~? (I am not a fan of analyzing the show in these terms that have become so simplified, in case you’re wondering.) And of course now we see that that wasn’t so simple, because Dean makes the same face when Sam disappears with Lucifer and Jack, and Cas tries to stop him, but Dean decides to do the sacrificial decision (did he really expect Michael to keep the deal, really really?). But! (I wasn’t saying that things are still stuck in the 10x23 mud puddle, don’t misunderstand me!) This time it’s not just about Sam, it’s about Lucifer being set on really breaking dad’s toys on a large scale this time. Dean Winchester gives up his humanity to save humanity, because that’s his middle name, and not just to save his brother at the cost of harming the universe. Of course Michael is still on the loose and with a stronger vessel now, but hey, one threat at a time... But I also think there’s something significant with the fact that the last sequence of the episode shows Michael on earth, looking in his element and satisfied about it - to stop Lucifer, Sam, with Lucifer inside, went to hell; to stop Lucifer, Dean, with Michael inside... is on earth. Of course, next season he’ll probably be involved with heaven and whatnot, but I think there’s something significant there, but I’d wait to make much meta about Michael-in-Dean when we actually are shown more about it.

- So, overall?

Overall it was a good finale! Satisfying to have Jack discover Lucifer’s true nature and the nice guy lie shatter, emotional the Jack stuff, powerful that we didn’t see Dean actually getting possessed and Cas seeing it but only Cas being fraught about it, just there, kind of like the narrative was telling us, what do you even expect Cas’ face while losing Dean to Michael to look like? Now, this post is long enough and I’ll need a rewatch and some health points more to analyze the details, but I am sure that I’m going to enjoy analyzing them.

- And what now?

Oh, I expect a lot of fanworks of Charlie and Rowena during the hiatus. It’s probably already started...

Alright, more coherent and hopefully meaningful thoughts coming shortly (...maybe) to your screens ^-^

#my spn thoughts #spn spoilers #spn 13x23 #spn meta #spn

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