Croatoan Meta
Dec. 9th, 2006 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fairyd12328 Days Later meets Dawn of the Dead with a demonic twist.
I really like the concept of the demon's waging war through bilogical warfare. What a brilliant way to attack the human population - tear them apart from the inside out. I'm sure that if you were to subject the plot to any scrutiny it would fall apart but as a conceipt I thought it was pretty nifty.
Jensen Ackles was insanely hot throughout this episode. I mean seriously - I'm not sure what was different but he looked amazing.
Interesting wardrobe choice for Dean too. Dean is rarely out of his leather jacket. It's his suit of armour. He seems to grow in confidence whenever he puts it on. It's also a very clear link to his father. Yet for the all action Dean in this episode we got an almost military style black jacket which seemed to enhance his hard core no nonsense actions.
And I loved hard core Dean. Damn. To me he wasn't out of character in Crotoan at all. Dean has always been able to compartmentalise - much more so than Sam. For Dean the townspeople weren't people - they were dangerous creatures that he couldn't help, a direct threat to him and Sam and therefore needed to be dealt with. Still, watching Dean shoot a terrified, crying and cowering woman was not easy viewing.
Loved Dean's snarky lines - "Well you're a handsome devil but I don't swing that way." Hee!
Nice guest stars - the doctor was understated but fine, the Sarge was great and it was really sad to see him die and Duane was fine throughout the episode - it was just at the end that he seemed rather weak.
Cannon suicidal Dean! I didn't expect them to go there and was very impressed that they did. When Sam was facing death Dean didn't even blink - just gave away the Impala (giving away the only other thing he loves apart from Sam), locked himself in the room and waited to die. And that scene between them was amazing. They both really brought their A game to it. Dean is hanging by a thread and Ackles portrayed that beautifully. Dean is exhausted, ready to snap - he can't cope with the pressures on him and yet he can't end it and leave Sam alone. Wonderful stuff.
Whilst an episode of set up with no pay off is annoying I can understand Kripke ending it with a cliffhanger. They're about to go off the air for a month (having just scored their lowest ever ratings), the repeats which would have aired during the hiatus (in early jan anyway) are being pre-empted by back to back Smallville episodes to promote Smallville's Justice League episode - out of sight, out of mind. They're in the worst timeslot on TV - a cliffhanger will hopefully encourage people to come back in January and watch the new episodes.
What I didn't like
The writers desperately need to learn how to write exposition in way that doesn't insult their characters. I get it. They've only got 40 odd minutes they need to tell rather show and they can't assume that their audience is on the same page as them (I've never heard of the Roanoke colony- I'm a Brit we didn't study American history at my school). They only have two main characters so they fall back on Stanford Sam lecturing Dumb-ass Dean. It's an obvious and easy plot device but it's lazy writing. Sam even at his most frustrated wouldn't treat Dean with that much scorn and I find it impossible to believe that Dean doesn't have every word of his father's journal memorised. It was a brief scene that made both of the characters look bad.
Jared - step the hell away from the fake tan. Orange is so not your colour.
Dean - honey you're already wanted for multiple murder. Can we please not put your fingerprints all over what was obviously a murder weapon. And why the hell did you pick up a blood stained knife when you were already aware that the infection was transmitted via blood? Not. Too. Bright.
Sammy - I get that when you woke up that morning top of your to do list probably wasn't "shoot fleeing teenager in the back and then blow away terrified cowering soccer mom" but it's past time you got your hands dirty. We've seen that Dean is prepared to kill to save Sam but in order for the Sam/Dean relationship not to seem completely one-sided I think we need to see Sam kill to save Dean. There's a part of me that thinks the writers are building up to Sam doing something truly shocking to save his own but at the moment it still seems that Dean is the one prepared to make the tough calls while Sam procrastinates and talks them out. It's beginning to irritate me.
I confess I was a little bewildered that Shibhan in his desire to do a "zombie" episode seemed to forget all the rules of the Supernatural universe. Want to find out if someone is infected with a demon virus before blowing their head off? How about sprinkling them with holy water, throwing out a few "Christos" or trying to exorcise them. I get that discussing how they should have reacted to Demonic biological warfare is kinda silly but I would have liked to have seen Sam and Dean making a token effort with the holy water before just shooting everything in sight.
The offhand references about the Roadhouse were odd. I'm happy that the boys accepted that they needed help but the end of No Exit (coupled with the vicious fan reaction to it) should really have put paid to the Roadhouse as a viable plotline. Can't have Dean meeting cute with Jo when John is possibly responsible for her father's death. If they just gloss over that rather huge problem simply so that Dean can have a love interest I will scream.
The show's lack of budget can really hurt it sometimes.The demon "threat" seemed to consist of about 5 extras. If it had looked like there were hundreds of people surrounding the clinic you would have had a sense of the magnitude of the odds Sam and Dean were facing. Instead we got about three extras standing around which wasn't exactly frightening when Dean racked up a bodycount of three in this episode alone. It was also hard to feel chilled at the whole town vanishing when it didn't seem that busy to begin with.
The pacing was all over the place. They arrive, all hell breaks out within 3 minutes of them arriving, then we get a very slow scene in the clinic which ground the action to a screeching halt, funny action packed sequence with Dean, another very slow clinic sequence, then Sam gets infected. We then get an incredibly short (if wonderful) scene of the two of them today in the clinic (and what I wouldn't have given for the majority of the episode to have just been Sam and Dean locked in that clinic facing imminent death - Ackles and Padalecki could have pulled that off (something I wouldn't have said about Padalecki last year) - as it was I actually felt a little cheated by how brief that scene was) before we get the "everyone's vanished" denouement. How the hell did they know everyone had vanshed? The Sam and Dean scene was so short Sarge, Duane and co couldn't have had the time to go 50 yards from the clinic.
New demon spawn was concerning me a little with his "acting" in his last scene. He'd been fine throughout the episode but when he had to go bad ass it all kinda fell apart. Please don't make me suffer through the male version of Nicki Aycox!
What was the point? To lure Sam there purely so they could see if he was immune? Wouldn't it have been easier to have simply had one infected person attack him when he was on a hunt? Or did they also want to see if Dean would murder a human being in cold blood when he didn't definitevely know whether the person was infected or not? I get that maybe it was a test to see how the human population would react to the virus but it seemed like a lot of effort on the demon's part.
I really like the concept of the demon's waging war through bilogical warfare. What a brilliant way to attack the human population - tear them apart from the inside out. I'm sure that if you were to subject the plot to any scrutiny it would fall apart but as a conceipt I thought it was pretty nifty.
Jensen Ackles was insanely hot throughout this episode. I mean seriously - I'm not sure what was different but he looked amazing.
Interesting wardrobe choice for Dean too. Dean is rarely out of his leather jacket. It's his suit of armour. He seems to grow in confidence whenever he puts it on. It's also a very clear link to his father. Yet for the all action Dean in this episode we got an almost military style black jacket which seemed to enhance his hard core no nonsense actions.
And I loved hard core Dean. Damn. To me he wasn't out of character in Crotoan at all. Dean has always been able to compartmentalise - much more so than Sam. For Dean the townspeople weren't people - they were dangerous creatures that he couldn't help, a direct threat to him and Sam and therefore needed to be dealt with. Still, watching Dean shoot a terrified, crying and cowering woman was not easy viewing.
Loved Dean's snarky lines - "Well you're a handsome devil but I don't swing that way." Hee!
Nice guest stars - the doctor was understated but fine, the Sarge was great and it was really sad to see him die and Duane was fine throughout the episode - it was just at the end that he seemed rather weak.
Cannon suicidal Dean! I didn't expect them to go there and was very impressed that they did. When Sam was facing death Dean didn't even blink - just gave away the Impala (giving away the only other thing he loves apart from Sam), locked himself in the room and waited to die. And that scene between them was amazing. They both really brought their A game to it. Dean is hanging by a thread and Ackles portrayed that beautifully. Dean is exhausted, ready to snap - he can't cope with the pressures on him and yet he can't end it and leave Sam alone. Wonderful stuff.
Whilst an episode of set up with no pay off is annoying I can understand Kripke ending it with a cliffhanger. They're about to go off the air for a month (having just scored their lowest ever ratings), the repeats which would have aired during the hiatus (in early jan anyway) are being pre-empted by back to back Smallville episodes to promote Smallville's Justice League episode - out of sight, out of mind. They're in the worst timeslot on TV - a cliffhanger will hopefully encourage people to come back in January and watch the new episodes.
What I didn't like
The writers desperately need to learn how to write exposition in way that doesn't insult their characters. I get it. They've only got 40 odd minutes they need to tell rather show and they can't assume that their audience is on the same page as them (I've never heard of the Roanoke colony- I'm a Brit we didn't study American history at my school). They only have two main characters so they fall back on Stanford Sam lecturing Dumb-ass Dean. It's an obvious and easy plot device but it's lazy writing. Sam even at his most frustrated wouldn't treat Dean with that much scorn and I find it impossible to believe that Dean doesn't have every word of his father's journal memorised. It was a brief scene that made both of the characters look bad.
Jared - step the hell away from the fake tan. Orange is so not your colour.
Dean - honey you're already wanted for multiple murder. Can we please not put your fingerprints all over what was obviously a murder weapon. And why the hell did you pick up a blood stained knife when you were already aware that the infection was transmitted via blood? Not. Too. Bright.
Sammy - I get that when you woke up that morning top of your to do list probably wasn't "shoot fleeing teenager in the back and then blow away terrified cowering soccer mom" but it's past time you got your hands dirty. We've seen that Dean is prepared to kill to save Sam but in order for the Sam/Dean relationship not to seem completely one-sided I think we need to see Sam kill to save Dean. There's a part of me that thinks the writers are building up to Sam doing something truly shocking to save his own but at the moment it still seems that Dean is the one prepared to make the tough calls while Sam procrastinates and talks them out. It's beginning to irritate me.
I confess I was a little bewildered that Shibhan in his desire to do a "zombie" episode seemed to forget all the rules of the Supernatural universe. Want to find out if someone is infected with a demon virus before blowing their head off? How about sprinkling them with holy water, throwing out a few "Christos" or trying to exorcise them. I get that discussing how they should have reacted to Demonic biological warfare is kinda silly but I would have liked to have seen Sam and Dean making a token effort with the holy water before just shooting everything in sight.
The offhand references about the Roadhouse were odd. I'm happy that the boys accepted that they needed help but the end of No Exit (coupled with the vicious fan reaction to it) should really have put paid to the Roadhouse as a viable plotline. Can't have Dean meeting cute with Jo when John is possibly responsible for her father's death. If they just gloss over that rather huge problem simply so that Dean can have a love interest I will scream.
The show's lack of budget can really hurt it sometimes.The demon "threat" seemed to consist of about 5 extras. If it had looked like there were hundreds of people surrounding the clinic you would have had a sense of the magnitude of the odds Sam and Dean were facing. Instead we got about three extras standing around which wasn't exactly frightening when Dean racked up a bodycount of three in this episode alone. It was also hard to feel chilled at the whole town vanishing when it didn't seem that busy to begin with.
The pacing was all over the place. They arrive, all hell breaks out within 3 minutes of them arriving, then we get a very slow scene in the clinic which ground the action to a screeching halt, funny action packed sequence with Dean, another very slow clinic sequence, then Sam gets infected. We then get an incredibly short (if wonderful) scene of the two of them today in the clinic (and what I wouldn't have given for the majority of the episode to have just been Sam and Dean locked in that clinic facing imminent death - Ackles and Padalecki could have pulled that off (something I wouldn't have said about Padalecki last year) - as it was I actually felt a little cheated by how brief that scene was) before we get the "everyone's vanished" denouement. How the hell did they know everyone had vanshed? The Sam and Dean scene was so short Sarge, Duane and co couldn't have had the time to go 50 yards from the clinic.
New demon spawn was concerning me a little with his "acting" in his last scene. He'd been fine throughout the episode but when he had to go bad ass it all kinda fell apart. Please don't make me suffer through the male version of Nicki Aycox!
What was the point? To lure Sam there purely so they could see if he was immune? Wouldn't it have been easier to have simply had one infected person attack him when he was on a hunt? Or did they also want to see if Dean would murder a human being in cold blood when he didn't definitevely know whether the person was infected or not? I get that maybe it was a test to see how the human population would react to the virus but it seemed like a lot of effort on the demon's part.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 06:22 pm (UTC)The ratings are bad - do you know if SVs also been losing viewers? It's been dreadful this season and SPN would lose out from retained viewers if it has.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 06:26 pm (UTC)The ratings were apparently bad this week because the show got pre-empted in one of the markets and Smallville's episode was apparently one of the worst they've ever done and so it got season low ratings which in turn affected Supernatural's ratings. SPN's ratings are actually pretty consistent but they're not going to rise much above the 3.2 million mark if they remain in that killer time slot.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm glad I didn't watch the soon trailer (my horrible compulsion to avoid spoilers did need some kind of payoff...) better editing would have helped I think - and more of just the two of them might have helped with making the "WTF there are only 3 people in this town" issue. Certainly they could have pulled it off.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 03:38 pm (UTC)I agree that the fact that there have been few advertisements for the show also has been a serious detriment. To be quite honest, I didn't even know that there was a new episode of Supernatural on Thursday until Thursday!!! And catching the advertisement was pure accident since I don't watch the CW regularly...I was flipping through channels and saw our boys in scenes that I'd never seen them in before. So I'm wondering how many regular watchers didn't watch simply because they thought the episode was going to be a re-run.
Like I said, just my two cents worth of jingling thoughts.
:)
Emrys
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 03:55 pm (UTC)Of course the major problem is that Crotoan was apparently the most advertised episode of the year and yet got season low ratings - although apparently the pre-emption in a major market was a cause of that. I'm hoping it remains above 3 million when it gets back from hiatus. One Tree Hill and Veronica Mars will have American Idol to contend with when they get back from hiatus so their recent season highs will probably be the highest ratings they're going to get all season. I just want them to move SPN away from Greys and CSI - it won't be able to flourish until they do.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 03:51 pm (UTC)