vaznetti | SPN 3x09: Malleus Maleficarum

SPN 3x09: Malleus Maleficarum

This commentary is not 100% squee.

I could not watch the opening, with the woman and her teeth, because that is a major squick point for me. Ewww! Ewww!

One thing that made me smile -- I'm fairly sure that I called Sam trying to turn himself into Dean some time earlier this season, but then again, it was a fairly obvious thing. But I got the sense from Sam's dialogue that he has given up hope of Saving Dean and is now more worried about how to live without him. Which, on the one hand, is very Sam, but on the other is not really what I had expected. I mean, I kind of thought he'd keep looking until the end. I guess I can handwave and say that he's lying, but that was not the sense I got from the scene.

As for the origins of demons... I think we've hit the point in the mytharc where a bunch of people are sitting around in a room saying "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and then someone says, "That would be totally cool!" and no one bothers to think about it too much. I guess I can live with this -- it does tie into one of the themes I thought was there in the first season, that evil creatures at some point choose to become what they are. And I guess the older a demon is, the stronger it is? But ultimately, I can see my breakup point with this show coming, sooner and sooner, because I have been there and done that with random mytharc.

When the witch-demon (did she have a name?) had Sam sliding up the wall, did anyone else want her to get him all the way up to the ceiling, cut him open, and set him on fire? No? Just me, then.

The thing that stays with me -- aside from all the men live and all the women (except Ruby, who exists to help male characters rather than herself) die -- was the strikingly sexual nature of Dean thrusting that knife into the witch-demon, again and again and again. I get that sexualized violence is everywhere, really I do, but that was a little more obviously sexualized than most of it. Did anyone else see that? Again, I not only saw it, I saw my breakup with this show coming closer and closer.

Sigh. I like the fandom, for all its craziness, but I'm actually starting to dread new canon, because I have no idea what kind of awful thing they'll come up with next. And without an OTC to focus on, it may just be easier to step back. I don't want to be that person who watches and writes about how much she hates the show.

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Did anyone else see that?

Ayup. If he were on CSI, they'd call him a psychopath.

And again, absolutely no concern any longer about the woman being worn by the demon. Granted, the circumstances were such that they couldn't easily have exorcised her, but nobody bothered to mention it--even in the context of the bad!demon starting to exorcise Ruby.

aside from all the men live and all the women (except Ruby, who exists to help male characters rather than herself) die -- was the strikingly sexual nature of Dean thrusting that knife into the witch-demon, again and again and again. I get that sexualized violence is everywhere, really I do, but that was a little more obviously sexualized than most of it. Did anyone else see that?

No, you were not the only one. Jesus Christ on a crutch; I didn't think this show could get any worse regarding females.

You know, I often whine about Heroes, and I think the SGA writers need several good ass-kickings, but fans who claim SPN "isn't any worse than other shows?" Are flat-out wrong. There's a time and place for relativism, and there's a time for waking up and smelling all these bwitches' burning flesh.

...oh, um, why don't I tell you how I REALLY feel next?

I was waiting for the ceiling and the flames, yes! This doesn't necessarily exonerate Dean, since I don't know if he actually thought this through, but I assumed Tammy's body was already screwed when Elizabeth cast the needle hex on her.

Well, the title didn't help. So, Dean is now the hammer of witches? Ick.

But anyway, yeah. Lots of dead women again. dodger_winslow had an interesting post about how SPN is pretty safe because it has a solid spendy audience-- even if it isn't the cool audience, it is still the audience with money to spend on advertisers' products. But I don't think the post took into consideration the show's herculean efforts to drive its audience away. Someone should explain to Kripke that the space left by a departing audience is not automatically filled by the audience you wish you had instead. And, frankly, I don't think I want to be part of an audience with such a marked preference for dead women.

msscullyred hooked me on this show with season one, but the body count of women (and the decisions that killing women was more fun than bantery sex with them) has made me disappointed in the show since the second half of season two. I keep hoping it's just a phase. But, ick.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was Edlund's writing about how "Witches are whores."

I think you can just replace witches with women there.

While his eps in some ways have been the best written, pacing and action-wise, I have had serious serious issues with them every time.

Dude has a PROBLEM with women and it's right there on screen wrecking our enjoyment of the show. Somebody needs to kick his ass unless the show is being intentionally editorially misogynist. I haven't seen Kripke say anything that leads me to believe they are, so they just aren't editing well.

I think maybe I'll actually write a letter. It's not something I do, but SERIOUSLY.

When the witch-demon (did she have a name?) had Sam sliding up the wall, did anyone else want her to get him all the way up to the ceiling, cut him open, and set him on fire?

*sheepishly raises hand* I so thought they were gonna almost go there, at least slide him on up to the ceiling, and of course the demon would be stopped before Sam got cut or set on fire. But for a moment there...yes. I thought "omgyikesceiling!"

Eh. The knife didn't strike me as sexual so much as very violent, and that he was stabbing a woman in an episode already littered with dead females. There were things in this ep I liked a lot -- I'm not unhappy with the show -- but this is one of the ones I won't be rewatching. (Except I may fast forward to the Sam and Dean conversation and possibly Ruby and Dean's interaction. That I would rewatch.)

Urg. I have my reservations about the whole thing on a MASSIVE level (and keep wanting to go back to that SPN-ized Charmed/SPN crossover 'verse I had ages back. Some way of balancing it out, y'know?), but part of me wondered if the demon she was talking about was Dean himself.

If that's what's going on, it will ease my concerns. If Dean's increasingly scary-assed darkness (and yeah, that behavior definitely pinged as psychopathic) is leading up to that and there's some sort of consequences coming. A wake-up call. Well, i can't say I'm happy to see it in the first place (I feel like grabbing my tape of Terminator and watching Sarah kick some ass. Either that or write another Jennifer Connor fic. *muses*), but I'll at least be able to say I understand it.

In theory.

But yeah, they keep this up, my SPN glee is gonna go the way of the dinosaur.

When the witch-demon (did she have a name?) had Sam sliding up the wall, did anyone else want her to get him all the way up to the ceiling, cut him open, and set him on fire?

My brother! He was calling for one of them to get pinned to the ceiling and set ablaze all episode, and he was excited and then disappointed when Sam got pinned to the wall.

Really, my brother's the only reason I've kept watching this season. Circumstances kept me from ever getting involved in SPN fandom itself; I just knew the show from mainlining all the current episodes partway through Season 2. Then I forced them on my brother last summer, and he got into it enough for us to watch the rest of Season 2 and for him to get excited for Season 3. Although his habit has always been one to pooh-pooh my slashy ways, he really likes to tune in and giggle at all the Sam/Dean moments.

Meanwhile, I've just been getting more and more disgruntled--the episodes and the arcs are all just so sloppy, and I increasingly get the feeling that TPTB just don't want anyone who actively respects women to enjoy watching. But my brother's enthusiasm has kept me watching with him for now, although he also complained in this last episode about the sloppiness (even more so than the general mocking he does of all the episodes). Oh, well, I feel like in the meantime, it's giving me some good teachable moments to get him to think more about feminism--he asked whether Dean's stabbiness seemed kind of disturbing, and I didn't hesitate to agree and elaborate on that.

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