Review recs

[ash48]

A great review of last night's episode. Supernatural: Mothers and Daughters

It starts like this:

Did the planet just backflip off its axis? Are pigs doing cartwheels across the sky? Did Michael Jackson moonwalk out of his grave and buy a ticket to Shrek 5? Because something impossible just happened: Supernatural based a whole episode around female characters. Three-dimensional ones, even! None of them love interests.

I think this might be an outsider review (not entirely sure if it's fan written), which I enjoy reading in order to get a different perspective. I think fan reviews are great because they come with the history and provide a personal response as a fan, but outsider reviews make me think more about how the wider audience might see the show. How it might appeal to viewers who aren't watching for the brother angst or potential shipping opportunities. In fact, I suspect the lack of brother angst might be more appealing to the general public (my torrent DL last week was titled "I would rather run my balls along a cheese grater than watch this show" - made me laugh out loud, but it also gave me insight to how some people (like my hubby!) see this show).

The ratings were up significantly as well - 2.2M compared to 1.6M last week. I'm so happy about that because it proves (maybe?) that "classic", MoTW, female strong episodes are popular with the general public (and fans too I would think).

It makes me wonder if fans got a bad rep early on for not liking females. SPN fans were almost "famous" for hating on females in the show. Looking back I think this was more to do with the women that were written (and how they were introduced) and not just a general dislike of seeing females on the show. I'm not sure. It seems to have taken them a while to work out that well-round (other) characters, whether male or female, are the most satisfying and interesting to watch.

ETA: Great post celebrating the women on SPN by milly_gal. There's been some great female characters over the years.

Comments

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting!

I have a lot of trouble with the women on SPN, from a writing perspective, though things have gotten *so* much better in the past two seasons, IMO.

One of my go-to rants about the show is about the creators blaming fans for not liking the women and girls on the show. I don't like most of them, and for very good reason, IMO. I love characters that have a whole lot of meat to them, characters with complex, touching, interesting personalities. I like characters are well written as Dean and Sam. No woman on the show, ever, was as well written as those two. Perhaps no woman on the show was even as well written as Crowley or Cas, or even Bobby. Blaming the fans for what I consider careless writing (if not just misogynist writing), and going as far as saying it's just the fans being jealous, like stereotypical women, annoys me a lot. And that's without even getting into how they're generally the most hegemonic of women, and so far from telling stories I feel I need told.

In fandom, people created some wonderful stories about women, and developed some of the bland characters we got from the show into good ones. That still doesn't make the show OK.

[ash48.livejournal.com]

I think the show has really struggled in the past to work out how to write women into this world without them either being a damsel in distress, a villain or a love interest. All those "types" of characters can be interesting but because they are usually there to enhance Sam and Dean's story they are often not fleshed out very much. They started to do it with Ellen and Jo and gave Ruby a bit of meat before all of them were killed off. I prefer it when they are characters like Jody -who are allowed to be women (not just a kick ass stereotype) and given layered characteristics that celebrate that. Maybe they'll start to see that fans can most definitely enjoy females on the show (I think Becky set them back quite a bit).

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Until season 8, my strong opinion was that they simply don't know how to write female characters, and that it was just bad for everyone and needed not to happen. But I do love a lot of the women on the show since - Meg (she is probably my favorite, but only as written by Robby), Linda, Charlie, some of the others. But seriously, until they give me a woman as fleshed out as Dean or Sam, I'm not gonna be satisfied. And since they don't even write Dean and Sam as fleshed out as Dean and Sam anymore... well, that is not going to happen - maybe unless there is a different show runner, IMO.

Then again, I also said Dean was never gonna have a heart to heart with a women he didn't intend to sleep with or at all, and then he did.

I agree they were trying, with all the women on early seasons, I believe. And I also prefer a character who has character to a stereotype, though being kickass or being "feminine" can both be written either way, IMO.

Anyhow, I do agree that in the last episode Jody was the most fleshed out and real probably on the show ever, that was cool.