![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Destina says, "Richie was kind of pointless, other than to once more illustrate the fact that Dean had a life while Sam was in school." I think he had another point; SPN has accelerated its use of other hunters to contrast with Sam and Dean, usually with the idea that Sam & Dean represent the superior alternative, the moderate compromise between extremes. And as Dean's, um, difficulty respecting women has gotten more play this season, they needed a more extreme version to make his leering cuter. By the end of the season, I expect the boys to have confronted a flat-out Jack the Ripper type, so that we will see that Dean's attitude is in no way problematic compared to what it could be.
(I am, however, spackling the "nickel ass" comment (why is that attractive, again?) by theorizing that Dean is very sensitive to his environment, which helped him fit in seamlessly both on a movie set and in prison, and so he unconsciously exaggerated the Sin City-compliant aspects of his character in order to fit in at the bar.)
I loved the demon theology and so was happy to watch the exposition show. "... the cavalry or the Indians" was a terrific line. Not sure I buy Dean not knowing exorcisms on his own -- he did hunt on his own, and what looks like a ghost could be a demon -- but I am also willing to accept the idea that the past few years have been particularly demon-heavy for the Winchesters and not usual. But he'd damn well better know it cold next time; there's not being the book-smart one, and then there's being the stupid one.
(I am, however, spackling the "nickel ass" comment (why is that attractive, again?) by theorizing that Dean is very sensitive to his environment, which helped him fit in seamlessly both on a movie set and in prison, and so he unconsciously exaggerated the Sin City-compliant aspects of his character in order to fit in at the bar.)
I loved the demon theology and so was happy to watch the exposition show. "... the cavalry or the Indians" was a terrific line. Not sure I buy Dean not knowing exorcisms on his own -- he did hunt on his own, and what looks like a ghost could be a demon -- but I am also willing to accept the idea that the past few years have been particularly demon-heavy for the Winchesters and not usual. But he'd damn well better know it cold next time; there's not being the book-smart one, and then there's being the stupid one.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Thank you for that spackle; I will gladly accept that explanation. I found it really jarring, even with how Dean's interactions with women have been portrayed previously (because there's a type and a type, which
I was really happy with the exposition moments, too--they've had moments of really clunky exposition, but I didn't think this ep was one of them. And the demon theology was fascinating.
From:
no subject
Also, your point about Richie is well-taken, and made me wince, because rather than have an irritating character to contrast him to, I'd much rather they stick to letting Dean be his own, well-defined character. But this season, that's...apparently tricker for the writers than it used to be.
From:
no subject
No, I think that makes perfect sense--I feel like Dean's whole personality is Big Ol' Beta Dog, and that he definitely follows others' cues, even if he can't help making smartass remarks sometimes to try to get some of the attention he seems to crave.
Not sure I buy Dean not knowing exorcisms on his own -- he did hunt on his own, and what looks like a ghost could be a demon -- but I am also willing to accept the idea that the past few years have been particularly demon-heavy for the Winchesters and not usual.
I do think it's canon that neither of the Winchesters had much experience with demons before all this. And we've also seen Sam have to rely on a book to do an exorcism. I just always thought that was stupid for all of them, not to have memorized it when they knew a demon war was coming.
I do agree there were some cool things in this episode, and I think mainly I was put off the whole thing not only by Dean going farther than usual with his objectification of women, but with the Sin City theme focusing so much on female flesh to the exclusion of guys who'd presumably also have gotten wantonly exhibitionist, and with more instances of words like "bitch" and "skank" getting thrown around than I'm used to, and with more anger than usual. (Also, the tricky thing with trying to use Richie as a foil to make Dean seem less skeevy is that now we know Richie is the kind of guy Dean likes to hang out with. Yeah, Dean does seem to look down on him a bit, but that mainly seems to be because he doesn't think Richie is careful enough as a hunter, not because he disapproves of treating women the way Richie does. I did like Dean telling Sam, "It was when you were at school!", though.) But, yeah, there were some developments here that could certainly prove to be interesting.
Personally, though, I don't know how excited I am about the demon theology. Some of it just felt too repetitious--it's not like clever plot twists had been giving us many hints of demons' beliefs before, and this was just making more sense of them; instead, I felt like the exposition in this episode was mostly just expanding on what demons had already clunkily exposited to the characters. I'm also not crazy about the idea of a goofy CW show coming down on the side of saying that, yep, a lot of Christian mythology is right; there is a Lucifer! I think it'll be cool if it turns out that lots of evil beings just have different kinds of beliefs, including ones about Lucifer and God, and it would make sense if there were a demon that was older and more powerful than others and liked to stay in the shadows and used a Lucifer myth around itself. But I'd prefer not to see secular entertainment suddenly deciding that Christian mythology is The Truth for its universe. In a way, the show's already done that with making hell real and Latin exorcisms and holy water effective, but there was still enough wiggle room to conclude that wasn't about taking certain kinds of Christian tenets for granted. Going on canon so far, we don't really know what hell is like, and we do know that there are lots of malevolent supernatural beings that seem to have nothing to do with demons or hell, and we know that holy water doesn't even work on all demons and that some things that sound non-Christian like the holy wood Tamara and Isaac had does work. It'll be cool to see more about demons on the show, but I hope canon still preserves some of that ambiguity and doesn't just take Christian mythology for granted.
From:
no subject
At this point, I need to be convinced that Dean respects women rather than just liking them. And it will take some doing. That's sad, because it wasn't always true.
From:
no subject
I don't have any confidence that the show will go this route, but I don't think it's inconsistent with anything we've seen.
From:
no subject
Yeah, even after Sam had killed the demons and the Sin-City atmosphere had thus dissipated, Dean didn't apparently find anything skeevy about expressing regret for two innocent humans' deaths in terms of talking about the loss of a hot girl. I guess Dean and I are different that way!
I do find it very plausible, though, that he's quite susceptible to environmental cues and would get cruder about his objectification of women when that's what everyone else around him (including the women) is doing. (I think where Dean really differs from the worst manifestations of That Guy is that he would cut it out and, in fact, would try to make amends if he saw he was upsetting the woman/women in front of him by doing this stuff. And I think that is supposed to set him apart from someone like Richie, probably--but then it doesn't speak very highly for Dean that he'd choose to spend time with Richie.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Between this and the "bitches" comment a few weeks back, I'm sadly in this camp.
This is one of the side-effects of being raised in an entirely male environment, I suspect. No matter how much John would have emphasized respect for women, as an element of keeping Mary's memory alive (and thus supporting the revenge rationale for his choices), it's hard to deal with women as fellow people if you don't deal with them frequently in your daily life. They are Other. Attractive others, but still Other.
It's like 23 years of single-sex parochial school...
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I have 2 competing theories on this. 1) The ritual is very long 5-6 pages and perhaps has several variations so the exorcist has to adapt to what is actually is working on the exorcisee. That would make memorization difficult. We have never seen anyone (that I can remember) exorcise a demon without a book, have we? It's the difference between memorizing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
2) Dean is smart, he just doesn't have that type of memory. I (for example) carried a 4.5 in High School, maintained a 3.95 in college. I Aced tests easily, memorized facts, did well in math and science. And I am totally INCAPABLE if giving directions unless I can view a map and trace the route out, or if I have written them down and can look at how it goes together. Without that it doesn't matter that I can drive the route or have done it a thousand times, I just can't translate what I know into words. I also can't describe people at all, ever. I just tell people that that part of my brain doesn't work, and it doesn't. This is how I see Dean's need to rely on the book for the exorcism. He just needs that backup YMMV.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Dean is definitely Kripke's Mary Sue. Not only has Kripke given Dean his musical tastes, but Kripke makes the same kind of sexist comments in the season one companion book Dean makes in the show.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
It's spoilery for the ep, so if you don't want to see it the objectionable part happens after Sam mentions a Disney movie. Dean looks at Sam like he suddenly stinks, and says "Dude, could you be more gay?"
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Here's a bigger version (http://www.dudetubeonline.com/2007/05/01/faith0501.jpg)-- it's a cover from one of Dark Horse's Buffy comics.
From:
no subject