![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
SV was awesome! This is a top-5 episode -- Lex and Lana and Clark all caught in a wonderful, iconic triangle that helps make clear why, for all Clark's years of loving her, he can't end up with Lana. And they remembered Eric Summers! The only troubling things involved Lois: first, Lois now thinks that some meteor infections can be swiftly cured, but I have no confidence that the show will remember this. Second, the "sexual harassment" crap. I have no doubt that the on-the-job relationship will bite Lois in the ass (giving her another reason to avoid Clark), but I hate that the concept of sexual harassment is being used for an unfunny joke, of a piece with Lois's earlier prison rape joke. In some ways, this episode speaks to the things that could have been done with Lana all along, and the show's continuing lack of clarity about Lois's role in Smallville. (PS: Why did Lois travel to SV's medical center for treatment? Do they not have competent shoulder doctors in Metropolis? Maybe Lex had them all imported to SV for his recurring wall injuries.)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giandujakiss says everything I thought about SPN here. Bonus for "Dean hyperventilates now? Does he also rush through closed doors and leave a perfect outline of his silhouette? Run off the edges of cliffs and remain suspended in mid-air until he looks down, thus causing himself to fall?" As I said to her, unless you're on Farscape, it's not a good idea to turn your characters into cartoon versions, even cartoon versions of the good things about them.
Still, the brotherly relationship did very well this episode. I liked the way Sam's refusal to accept that Bela pulled one over on "us" ties into larger issues. His reaction felt natural and brotherly, but then it also furthered the message that Sam is getting from the demons and, it seems, the rest of the world: Dean is the dumb one. You'd be better off without him. And even if Sam would admit, if pressed, that she'd probably have gotten the hand off of him if their roles had been switched ... he's still thinking that Dean screwed up.
Dean did well with the actual theft, but I deeply wish he hadn't needed to be told what a hand of glory was. I know, and I don't do this for a living. There are ways to exposit without assigning Dean the student role -- he could even have gotten it confused with some other mystical object and had Sam straighten him out, if you want the "Dean v. book-learning" trope to continue. Okay, I'm trying to think this out: the reason Dean's mystical ignorance bothers me more than Buffy's is that Buffy just brought more in the way of unique skills to the table. Dean is a badass physically, and I will extend that to mechanical and electrical engineering generally, but that's not really enough to allow him to ignore the softer sciences of hunting. It might be if, like Buffy, he could depend on having a team around him. But he hunted on his own for at least some time; at least he said so.
I guess I can accept Dean's willful ignorance as a way to assign his father and Sam roles on the Winchester "team." If Dean doesn't do research, then Sam has to stay. It's awfully reckless of him -- but so what else is new? Then, though, his willingness to do research last week would be another sign of the rift between the brothers. Sam is so focused on saving Dean's soul that even Dean can see that Sam isn't fitting in the role Dean assigned him.
Still, I want to see Dean bust out with some useful and esoteric bit of knowledge, not just movie trivia. What would be really awesome would be if his ignorance was just an act in front of company, like their code phrases, in a sort of reversal of the way Sam walks around looking hunched up and meek. If someone wrote that story, I would be very happy.
giandujakiss says everything I thought about SPN here. Bonus for "Dean hyperventilates now? Does he also rush through closed doors and leave a perfect outline of his silhouette? Run off the edges of cliffs and remain suspended in mid-air until he looks down, thus causing himself to fall?" As I said to her, unless you're on Farscape, it's not a good idea to turn your characters into cartoon versions, even cartoon versions of the good things about them.Still, the brotherly relationship did very well this episode. I liked the way Sam's refusal to accept that Bela pulled one over on "us" ties into larger issues. His reaction felt natural and brotherly, but then it also furthered the message that Sam is getting from the demons and, it seems, the rest of the world: Dean is the dumb one. You'd be better off without him. And even if Sam would admit, if pressed, that she'd probably have gotten the hand off of him if their roles had been switched ... he's still thinking that Dean screwed up.
Dean did well with the actual theft, but I deeply wish he hadn't needed to be told what a hand of glory was. I know, and I don't do this for a living. There are ways to exposit without assigning Dean the student role -- he could even have gotten it confused with some other mystical object and had Sam straighten him out, if you want the "Dean v. book-learning" trope to continue. Okay, I'm trying to think this out: the reason Dean's mystical ignorance bothers me more than Buffy's is that Buffy just brought more in the way of unique skills to the table. Dean is a badass physically, and I will extend that to mechanical and electrical engineering generally, but that's not really enough to allow him to ignore the softer sciences of hunting. It might be if, like Buffy, he could depend on having a team around him. But he hunted on his own for at least some time; at least he said so.
I guess I can accept Dean's willful ignorance as a way to assign his father and Sam roles on the Winchester "team." If Dean doesn't do research, then Sam has to stay. It's awfully reckless of him -- but so what else is new? Then, though, his willingness to do research last week would be another sign of the rift between the brothers. Sam is so focused on saving Dean's soul that even Dean can see that Sam isn't fitting in the role Dean assigned him.
Still, I want to see Dean bust out with some useful and esoteric bit of knowledge, not just movie trivia. What would be really awesome would be if his ignorance was just an act in front of company, like their code phrases, in a sort of reversal of the way Sam walks around looking hunched up and meek. If someone wrote that story, I would be very happy.