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vienna-salvatori · 7 months

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It's been 10 years since 1x07- The Hub first broadcast (Nov 12 2013)

So, in honour of an episode that's been playing on repeat in my head for a decade...

Here's my theory on what's actually going on with Victoria Hand, and why she's actually a paranoid-but-clever strategist, not as petty and incompetent as she comes across as.

Ah, series 1. Those were the days. The HYDRA reveal hadn't happened yet. Everyone was happy! They trusted each other, mostly! Sure, Skye's allegiances were questionable, but they got over that eventually. May might've had that whole "secret line to Fury" thing, but they sorted that too. Coulson might've had his head messed with, but it's not like that caused serious problems with his judgement until series 2.

... that we know of.

Here's a couple facts: 1) The team are running worldwide missions. Despite this, in one season, they end up passing through The Hub on three separate occasions (The Hub, The Magical Place (I think), and Turn, Turn, Turn/the finale arc.) It's clearly a bit of a, well, hub, for SHIELD activity, and sees a lot of people coming in and out. 2) It's unclear exactly how long Hand has been in charge of the Hub, but we know from s7 that she's been in SHIELD a while. There's nothing in series 1 to suggest that her command of The Hub is a recent promotion. Coulson, meanwhile, was recruited by Fury just out of high school. He's been in the field for decades by this point.

and-

3) When Coulson first meets Victoria Hand in 1x07, he claims to know her only by reputation.

Yeah, no.

I think it's highly unlikely that he's never crossed paths with Victoria Hand before. They might not know each other well- I, personally, think it's best if they do, but YMMV- but I cannot envision a scenario where the two haven't run operations together before.

My assumption, then: they did know each other. Coulson's had his head messed with, though, and he's forgotten all about it.

From Hand's perspective: that dude she really doesn't like has just shown up. He was supposed to be dead, but whatever, they work for SHIELD, shit happens sometimes. That said, he's got the strangest team she's ever seen- Melinda May back in the field, two sci-tech kids who didn't even pass their field exams, John Garrett's antisocial protege, and an enemy agent. (We, the audience, know that Skye is clear, but Hand has no reason to think anything but the worst of her.) He's also pretending that this is the first time they've ever met, for some reason.

... Maybe it's a weird prank.

She decides not to engage with it, because she has a lot of very important work to do and she doesn't really want to deal with any of That Bullshit. Except, Coulson's acting really differently to how he did before- I don't think it's very controversial to say that pre-Avengers Coulson and AoS!Coulson are two very different people. Melinda May- who she knows is one of his closest friends- is... not calling it out, for some reason. Also, he does have a history of recruiting wildcard agents, but usually he follows protocol once they're in. This random kid he found in a van is just wandering around poking her head into things, and Coulson isn't stopping her even though that is against the system. Hand might not like Coulson, but she knows that he does his paperwork and follows the rules. He'll bend them completely out of shape, but he won't break them outright without very good reason. Or at least, he used to do that.

The whole situation is alarming on so many levels. So... she decides to test him- the stupidest, most obvious test that Phil Coulson- who has always been pedantic about the safety of his people- will catch instantly.

She'll "forget" to file the extraction plan.

He'll spot it, of course. He'll spot it instantly, and she'll roll her eyes and file the paperwork she's already filled out. She'll say that this is why they have procedures and it's important to follow them, not just turn up in someone's airspace with a team that makes no sense and ignore all rules and protocol.

Except, Phil Coulson does not notice. It takes his team members breaking protocol in front of of all of them for him to spot a problem in the mission paperwork she physically placed into his hands.

And that? That is not Phil Coulson. She might not like Phil Coulson, but she does know him, and he always looks out for his agents. That's not Coulson, and May is playing along with the imposter for some reason, even when she knows him even better than Hand does.

In the end, she just lets it all play out, because this is so far off what she expected she honestly wants to know how far it reaches.

If she tries to chase up Coulson's file afterwards, she'll hit the (canonically very weird) firewalls and restrictions around TAHITI protocol. If she tries to report the oddities to Fury or Hill, they'll brush her off- again, TAHITI protocol. There's something wrong with that dude and no one in her agency is taking her seriously.

So. Once the HYDRA reveal happens, and she starts looking for moles? Well, there's one really obvious place where standard SHIELD protocol is failing. The issue stretches to some pretty high levels, too- this isn't just baby-agent incompetence. That probably means Coulson's HYDRA. May must be too, if she's covering for him. Skye is, still, basically an enemy agent, Hand won't lose sleep over her. I have... thoughts... about the fact that Hand outright tries to shoot John Garrett out of the sky despite, or because of, their working history, but she's definitely suspicious of him, too. Ward is his agent and likely to follow his lead- when the Twist happens, Ward plays up how betrayed he is, and Hand buys it without question, which makes me think she did know they were pretty close. Simmons is already in the Hub, she can clear her separately.

Really, the only actual loss if she was to take that plane down would be Fitz.

Hand brings down the plane because she has legitimate reason to believe Coulson is an enemy agent, and so is the rest of his team. When she sends her people to storm the BUS, she wants Coulson alive, because he's probably the highest-ranking HYDRA member she can actually get her hands on. She wants some answers, damnit. The rest are acceptable losses if it comes to that.

#AoS #agents of shield #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#1x07 #aos 1x07 #1x07 the hub #Victoria Hand #Phil Coulson #SHIELD #HYDRA #vic has been my blorbo for like a decade now. that's insane to think about #I have entire AUs in my head to explain why she is the way she is #none of them are ever getting written but I like thinking about them #she's just. she's such a good character to rotate!!!#fourteen year old me had such a crush on her #twenty four year old me still has such a crush on her.#she's just so fun #she's a character on the side of the good guys who is only tenuously a 'good guy' herself and it makes her so delightful

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mdhwrites · 2 months

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Honestly I personally believe Sasha Waybright character arc was better written and engaging than Hunter and Amity’s arcs combined mostly because there was more agency in her arc and while the other two characters who go from enemies to allies to friends just didn’t engage me as much as Sasha’s.

I’m especially dissatisfied with Hunter and how his story while interesting wasn’t as cool as it could’ve been

So I've talked a lot about this in the past but the angle I'll take this time is simple: Sasha is more compelling as a villain to ally arc because the show let her be a villain.

That might sound simple but it's clearly something TOH itself struggled with. One could argue that ALL of the redemptions in TOH follow a pattern of one bad action followed by them being tenuously on the same side and then on the same side. Amity is out of character for her first episode and then Luz is actually at fault for Covention, even if Amity takes it too far. Then Amity is weirdly antagonistic during Hooty's Moving Hassle and then NEVER AGAIN. Three episodes into knowing her and she is now the person we are supposed to sympathize and want around and her biggest crime feels entirely out of character for the rest of her portrayal.

Hunter is similar. His first appearance is not Hunter. It's the Golden Guard who is WAY more fun a character than Hunter ever was and kind of a bastard. Then the mask is removed in his second real appearance (not counting the stinger in Escaping Expulsion) and he is someone to start sympathizing and working with. He is the sad but mad boy by his third major appearance and his second appearance makes him somewhat sympathetic, just like Covention did for Amity... Or For the Future does for The Collector despite lines like "I can't wait to play amongst the bones!" in Hollow Mind that feel, drumroll please, OUT OF CHARACTER TO THE REST OF HIS WRITING!

Lilith is the only to subvert this... Kind of. No, they actually go out of order but still the same essentially with her. Her first appearance makes her sympathetic and not properly a threat because she's still willing to play ball with Eda for a one on one competition, then she spends the second half of S1 just palling around in shenanigans she should not be allowing but is because... Fuck you. Then we get her one truly evil action in kidnapping Luz, coupled also with having been the one to curse Eda but that's also used to show she's a good person now so the kidnapping is the bigger deal here. Then... She's just a good guy afterwards.

This all makes for the most shallow, bullshit uses of this trope I think you can do while being allowed to claim you did it. After all, a key point to all of these redemptions aren't "Then they sided with the good guys," it's just "Then they're a good person." They don't bring who they were as a villain with them. The strengths that led to their villainy are just gone and they're hard to say what they were in the first place, what they add to the narrative in their redemption and joining of the main party because who were they before they joined. What are they actually fighting against as a person instead of just deciding not to be evil anymore or wanting the cookies that the light side offers?

It'd be like if after Sasha was redeemed, she was as bad as Anne at being able to lead and use people. If the show went "To better erase all the crimes she's done, not only will we say Sasha only is a bad person because her father is Ultra Satan but also she now is entirely incompetent in what she was good at before." Amity loses her intelligence. Her plans are always the most straightforward after she starts getting a crush on Luz and she canonically started having her grades slip. Hunter is the most pathetic character in the main cast with I think zero wins in his belt besides his first appearance despite being the only one with combat training. Lilith is just... Sad in how much they reduce all she was for over forty years of her life to go "Now she's a silly nerd girl. Fuck ambition."

And, of course, their bad sides being blamed on mother, uncle, mother kind of for Lilith actually, just that the exposition for that comes after her redemption, and the Archivists and Belos for the Collector. They aren't bad people, they just were forced to spend time with the wrong people. Now that they're nerds and led by nerd Jesus, everything is okay.

There is a VEEERY real problem in TOH of Us vs. Them mentality that comes from these arcs that's really gross. Swap Luz to a white, male jock and suddenly the show becomes WAY MORE UNCOMFORTABLE!

Sasha dodges all of this because no one tries to excuse Sasha. Sasha never tries to pretend she's anyone other than who she is except for when she's explicitly putting on an act. This means everything compelling and good about her as a villain can cleanly transition to when she is a hero, even if it's hard to believe that which the show even calls out.

There is no Sasha's Angels in TOH. That might be a weird one to reference to you because it doesn't include much Sasha but it nails on the head what makes this trope so exciting. To Anne, Sasha letting others do the work while she gets to theoretically kick back looks like the same old Sasha that she now is suspicious of. Someone who is self serving and so Anne lashes out. However, it's not the case. Sasha's ability to manipulate always came from being able to read a person's weaknesses and strengths. She's a MUCH better manipulator than Belos in this way because she doesn't leverage on you or for you to already be siding with her. She can read you like a book and tear apart your pages until she plays with your spine. And as a hero, that's going to mean she's a great delegator. She's the sort who would go "Nah, we don't need to save them from what you see as certain doom. I know he can deal with it." And she's right. Not because of blind faith but because of the same skills that made her villainous.

Something that wouldn't hit nearly as hard, or feel reasonable on Anne's part, if we didn't get so many examples of this being who Sasha is. Of the fact that Sasha uses other people for her own means. And even now, you can claim the same... Except it's not for her means. It's for their needs.

It actually is part of what makes her becoming a therapist so pitch perfect. A good therapist can call you out when you're trying to hide behind something to not get to the core of your problems. They can catch what is at the root of your issues even as you don't see it yourself. They also can see your value and use your strengths to help combat those problems after helping you identify them. It's actually pretty close to how she tried to get out of Toad Tower in her first appearance. Bring in someone, earn their trust, use their passions against their weaknesses and make them better. The only difference is that now she cares about making them better.

Amity, Hunter and Lilith could never have such a satisfying future because again: What are their strengths? Hell, post redemption, that statement stands true. You can call Amity good at magic I guess but Hunter and Lilith are pathetic people who kind of luck out in being useful at times and that's really it. These aren't people who have anything going for them. They're as good as goons with one of them being an elite in a one off episode as far as villain forces go and that's not very compelling for a redemption of this sort. Not unless you're really going to get into that and A: Lilith was one of the strongest mages on the Isles and studied her ass off so you'd think she'd mocked less for sucking at her job and being a fucking moron and B: they didn't even try for half a second with Hunter who I don't really know if they intended to make look as pathetic as he did skill wise.

So their futures are just random factoids introduced during the story. Does Amity being an inventor say anything about her redemption? No. In fact, it really sucks because Odalia would have LOVED her daughter to follow in her father's footsteps because that's the most profitable option for their company. Good job show. Hunter just takes up the job that connects him with the only thing we know is explicitly Caleb related, no conjecture needed, which sucks for a character who was supposed to be his own person. Then Lilith is... A historian. Because she likes that I guess. Does that have anything to do with her time as the coven head? No. Her ambitions? GOD NO. It's just a random choice that puts her in line with the inoffensively nerdy cast.

And before ANYONE says anything about the shortening, I want to say I've done a blog comparing the fact that Amity, in S2A (so before the shortening) has as many appearances as Sasha does in Sasha's entire redemption arc. You didn't need more time to do this better, the show needed to actually commit to its concepts. Actually needed to be willing to do its tropes rather than slapping it on for marketability and to make lazy analysts happy.

Because enemies to allies is not one of those tropes you can half ass. Not unless you want none of its power and boy, these are some weak character arcs. At least we've got Sasha.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#amphibia #sasha waybright #the owl house criticism #toh critical #amity #Hunter #Lilith

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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13x02 watching notes

i'm on a train. choo choo.

expectations: helpfully wrote them out last time for the season as a whole which this ep is introducing all the plot stuff for since last episode advanced the plot a single day of angst, but this episode especially has a few SUPER low bars to pass. Last time out BL failed spectacularly to not kill Eileen. now we have "don't assault mary, over-sexualise the day old guy, or flub introing the new characters, or reintroducing the returning ones"

our train was like 10 minutes late out the station because there was no driver. is this a metaphor.

i also had to eat krispy kreme doughnuts before I could dig into the episode.

oh jeeze Drexel survived season 12... no one really has a fanclub for the random minions, probably because around Simmons we realised there was no point getting attached. and he was in some of the worst scenes of last season just because of the context. which is a shame. also he's a lucifer fan and that's not really a worthwhile position. anyway hope springs eternal that colonel sanders is such a charismatic character he makes the demon scenes worth watching... and Drexel gets to be interesting. And stop saying lines like 'make hell great again' which is so not a good thing to put in his mouth - at least the other demons who were going around saying it it was the white demon who said it and got the stink eye from the other demon.

One of the other demons says "can you even hear yourself" but idk if BL would crit their own writing unlike competent writers whose first port of call is stressing that they are bad writers and mock their corny dialogue

this also raises the semi perpetual question since season 11 that if Crowley's throne room is here why would any of the pretenders to the throne even want it. they seriously need to justify it. We know devil's gates are a pain and not usually open so smuggling minions out to work topside is an issue but there are other workarounds than establishing a campy hell set that's not even in hell, then getting confused about if it's hell or not, and never really explaining why Lucifer would stick around in it except for the fact Crowley is really good at setting up a system and it would be a shame not to use the pre-established set up.

but eh

I really sincerely hope Asmodeus is just here because Crowley's ex-minions are here and will relocate post-haste to his plantation.

He hung up his coat. Drexel survived though. I guess being a named character has its perks. the sun shone in my eyes the entire time so i was quite amused when the train turned a bit and i saw demons dropping with burned out eyes, angel-style. like Dagon being super duper powerful, I guess they're giving him extra powers - because this is just a few steps up from how Sam was exploding demons with his head at one point and he got his powers from a YED... though in 5x10 when Lucifer killed all those demons he also didn't burn the eyes out. it's probs a stylistic choice. in character and out.

Nougat!!! he's so cute. he's sleeping at an angle to be behind Sam in the convo. The camera points at Sam from the dash and at Dean from Sam's POV, and Jack is in his background. methinks this is about Sam.

He's trying to make Dean sleep and calling out how he hasn't had any, which is nice because I was worried about that earlier.

Dean is calling Jack "it" which I think was in some people's pre-season fic, or else if it weren't it was in the one i didn't write :P Blatant convo is blatant but does at least have an actual honest to god lead into the next scene via the mom is dead conversation. Again we get the super zoom close up on sam being sad and questioning dean's thoughts. assert yourself, sammy! i believe in u

(totally on your side too Dean but the sun is too bright to examine your micro expressions and the camera isn't favouring you anywho so you're a rewatch flavour today)

Satan wants to trade Mary for Jack. Well if Dean knew he'd sell Jack for a corn chip anyway (is that Crowley's phrase from the original weird dog episode?) so that's just a great big victory. methinks the choice will fall on Sam or fall on Dean after he's had a chance to bond with Jack some more - that's the other side to the tension about Dean liking jack that i was talking about earlier whensomeone asked me why everyone wants dean to adopt jack.

ideally mary saves herself or it never comes to it but for now i'll assume whatever else happens between here and there, some version of this plan will at least be floated, even if it's random circumstances and not lucifer's hand any more or something

makes sense anyway to tie mary back into the main arc in a way like how she mirrored cas the entire time last season - if her fate and jack's are connected even tenuously it gives her a connect back into the main thing

oh good the woman next to me has finished her dangerously over-full cup of Pimms because I was terrified it would be bye bye laptop

nnnoooo as I type she refilled it

the train is swaying back and forth so much

anyway Mary asks Lucifer why he wants to be a parent and he hints several times in a row that he has hidden depths without actually showing any of them. i don't want him to have a redemption anyway and i really super duper don't want him to have one written entirely by BL

Colonel Sanders continues to try and liven up the story while giving us surface level exposition

I'll be honest, 'write that down' is the first good line... must be whichever of BL is quippy currently writing. I think they just introduced a monster taht lucifer is scared of but I couldn't catch what it was and for some reason another demon is listening in so is he getting ideas? I mean why to what end? also what exactly was the thing that was locked up because it sounded like a cut price Leviathan expo dump but obvs not that because a leviathan would eat Lucifer

i mean i don't think we pay enough attention to the fact that dick roman would just gobble lucifer up and end of story. bring back dick.

*Pimms lady sways dangerously close to my laptop*

I think Sam accused Dean of hallucinating "shit" on the road because it's too noisy to hear him say "sheep". I just assume that is what he actually said in the non-censored version

pls drink your Pimms fast enough to end this danger but not so fast you're sloshed and throw it on my laptop before it's all gone

Cashing in on that new Scooby Doo partnership! Some bank like Halifax is currently using Scooby Doo to sell stuff so I see that dog on telly all the time and the fact they exist in the same fictional universe as Sam and Dean is kiiiilling me. I think we have all been assuming Jack takes us to Scooby World so plonking him in front of the telly to watch some is how it all begins. Dean, like every fan fic between 13x01 and now hates Jack unreservedly for having childlike enthusiasm about the telly because Cas used to do that, while (semi)unaware that Jack is mirroring HIMSELF from 12x11 most closely right now. I think that's an interesting parallel I don't know how much work has gone into but pls poke me to write about Jack's 1 day old child-like wonder compared to sweetie pie no memory Dean if no one else has done it because they're essentially the same character from completely different angles, and we're about to hit Jack mirroring Dean excessively.

Me: don't excessively sexualise the kid

BL: "here read a book" *chucks the Bible at him* *he opens it to the Song of Solomon* We're NOT having this chat right now.

I suppose some people just meta-gasmed all over this. I don't know much about the Bible but I do know that's the sexy bit.

the "I can take the couch" conversation probably put the exact same thought process in Jack's head as mine when my very lanky brother looked at the lil brick hard bed set up in the corner of our hotel while we were stranded in Glasgow, and looked at me, princess and the pea-syndrome sufferer, and nobly offered to take a bed that *my* feet stuck 3 inches over.

No.

Thanks but no.

aw man we're only at Carlisle.

It's the promo scene as well, which mostly just drove home how much Jack is mirroring Dean... We've had basically no character interaction in the missing day, although we can assume it's mostly gone like this... Dean annoyed, Sam forgiving Jack for being adorable, and Jack being adorable. He's getting better at sarcasm as well, which can't be making Dean feel any better about him.

And that means that the "Castiel is my father" revelation happened off-screen and we're not being given any room for a reaction about it, which is the most annoying part of this. I knew 13x01 was an anomaly and going into a BL ep so soon after would deprive us of some of the emotional depth, but it's like having a bucket of cold water dumped on us :P

I think Dean's 'sometimes' about family being good is going to be a criminally underrated line and I don't even know if I can bring myself to remember it all the time in discussions about how Dean feels about family going forwards but this is a note that i heard him say it and acknowledged it means he has some issues with blood family ongoing.

Jack being adorably human blah blah, Dean aggravates the issue by being really mean about insisting Lucifer is his father and asking if he reached out to Jack and now Jack's remembering him doing that. Hey leave the kid alone, Dean, his blank slate was slightly messed up by waning to be like Cas which is obviously an excellent exemption to having a blank slate.

Maybe there's a metaphor in him agitating the bad father sitation over here.

I don't know if Jack should have asked for clarification there so let's pretend there was a hesitation and a "Ca -" "*Lucifer.* Your father." exchange. Or something.

And now Nougat is lying about emotional strife, like's been agitated into being a Winchester from his great blank slate

GAH Stop gesturing by the STILL FULL glass of Pimms

they keep topping it up and it's not good for my stress levels

I think I just missed basically everything that happened because all I could see was my own reflection but then they were like *rising tension music* *scuffle* *donatello* so I assume he jumped out on them. Mental note to go back and see who was defensive of Jack and what he did.

*casually mopping up my neighbour's Pimms as it splashes dangerously close to my laptop while listening to Donatello's exposition*

the good thing about BL episodes is that you can often just kinda chill and listen to the exposition if it's just a chunk o dialogue and nothing offensive is going on so we're making progress through the ep

*dean is super bitter about who does and doesn't have a direct line to god for some reason*

Awww Sam says they're brothers and it's a family crest when he is saying Jack should get the tattoo <3

*completely* robbed of Dean's reaction

WHY DID THEY NOT TELL JACK IT WOULD HURT

I went to the loo and came back to them wiping Pimms off their phone

Well Jack just completely put Dean in his place RE: pain, when he told him to man up about it and Jack was like right we accept pain as a sign of maturity... this is absolutely not what Dean meant but it is probably a healthier approach to it minus all the toxic masculinity

can we get to 13x03 and an ep written by Berens soon :P

Jack accidentally absorbs his warding. Oops. I guess that angel warding was a WEE bit OTT I mean I'm no expert but that looks like a total pain to be dealing with all the time for the makeup department :P

Also must have taken friggin ages

I still don't get why Donnatello is here except to use as a chip in their arguments... Ah well. Dean arguing intent doesn't matter freaky powers are freaky powers because he's still pissed about what happened to Cas and can't see the much more basic thing that Jack didn't mean to get Cas killed and OBVIOUSLY didn't intend it if he was waiting for Cas to be there for him when he popped out of the womb. I think for all the random avenues this took in fandom this is probably about as deep as the show will go if this is how BL are spelling it all out for us... And the answer is all there on the page already but we're just using Dean as the alternate side of the argument to show his own character stuff going on where he can't deal with Jack because he's upset about Cas. And he was always more concerned about Cas than the philosophy of whatever else was going on

Train going through the Lake District... I am enchanted. It's a grey day w/ very low clouds and water on the ground and all the trees are autumnal. Sue me, this is more interesting than Donatello being unhelpful. He backed up Sam's argument earlier w/ saying Lucifer felt toxic and Jack is somewhat more like his grandfather, but then once he starts talking he's like hurr blurr as a scientist nature wins and he's a monster and then Sam's like I thought you were on my side dude and then Dean angsts about Cas some more and calls Jack the devil and he decides he better start teleporting now because leave me alone not-dad and get off my case

I hope we see his wings. Dean asks in 13x01 if he had wings and equated it to teleporting and I suppose we don't know how demons do it but the assumption is if he's half-angel adn can teleport then he has wings

Oh no it is KILLING me how Jack's thing is sitting cross legged. PROTECT HIM.

Sam finds him, thankfully, after the Sad Kelly Montage. There's a very Northern man behind me talking loudly on the phone so I'm gonna concentrate SUPER HARD now

The hotel is called the Black Hat which I think is western coding for the bad guy. There was a house in the prairie art on the wall, and the single isolated house is how Jack came into the world... He's dealing with towns now.

Exposition Mooose! Telling us Dean gets some wires crossed about getting angry whe nhe's frustrated and scared like yes good expose dean for us some more... explaining him to jack is like hey so um he's an acquired taste... trying to make this about protecting everyone instead of pointing out the obvious that he blames jack for what happened to cas

Jack is a winchester because he's like maybe i'm not worth it

help

and them Sam brings up w/o knowing it was on jack's mind that kelly thought so but also is a blatant link to how they used dead!mary to guide their lives right up until she came back...

... and then so would Cas and so would I. Sam aligning himself with Jack's parents to show he has emotional guardianship of him right now

has dean gone down to the bar because it's called th eblack spur and obvs not the same one but i'm like 100% sure that's the bar from 10x01 where he was hanging with Crowley and I'm not gonna fact check that. it's "black" again aka more nature stuff, more coded evil stuff I guess? I don't know anything about Westerns I admit

And hey look a blonde bartender is chatting to him - there's a Jack ale sign on one side... and hahahahahaaaa no there's a Kingdom Beer sign behind Dean over his shoulder because the director wants to kill me

So far this is the weirdest BL episode Ive seen in a long time because they're trying so so hard to be all nuanced and deep and to explore character stuff and carry on the mood from the first episode, while being direly under-equipped to handle it, so everyone's just blurting exposition all over the place in a series of awkward exchanges. The overtness of the dialogue is actually helping in a weird way to rush through the tick boxes because Dean just admitted to seeking his neglectful father's approval from a standing start which is a sign of progress for him to just leap right into admitting his issues with John. I don't have a frame of reference for this because tired and white noise and noting we're pulling into Lancaster and it looks like rain now and there's a guy travelling with an enormous silver mirror with an ornate frame as tall as he is on the other platform and more pimms is on the table... but yeah when DID he last talk about John? Is this the increased openness since 12x22 we were hoping for? Is my backpack okay because it's in a luggage rack I can't see and if someone nicks it they're only stealing all my laundry but I like some of those t-shirts so it would be a bummer...

Lol surprise Asmodeus, no wonder she pushed all the father stuff... Was he talking about Lucifer then? It's everyone has father issues season. He's fitting in as another mirror in it all. Like the great big shiny mirror the dude at Lancaster station had. I'd honestly not be surprised if John came back in some way just cuz we had the Mary season where motherhood was a theme, and now we're doing this. I don't think John would come back for good liek Mary but they could scrounge up a more direct way of confronting his memory at least.

This also is so unsubtle bcos Dean had no idea what the bartender looked like so he coulda just tended the bar and chatted to Dean b4 he knew who Asmodues was, and we could have had some cool tension like we all know that Colonel Sanders is the bad guy and Dean's just chatting him up a bit. But then when do we ever get such things in a BL ep?

Sam just goes and spells it out about Jack being molded and the ambiguity of his father figures aka the dual nature battle they think Jack should have, with a deciding vote already thrown in there by Kelly and of course that Jack has free will and choice

So Mary just nearly got assaulted, tho not by Lucifer, which was not exactly a pleasant surprise. >.> idk what that guy's problem was but he seems to be implying women can't fight and something something I didn't catch but clearly he doesn't see a whole bunch of women. This is literally the antithesis of the show's handling of female hunters since the start so I'm going to have to assume that this is an AU thing like, total worst timeline, and everyone's sexist to boot. Not really a fan of doing this at all because why are humans made out to be just as bad as meeting angels and demons in this world - Mary being at risk from ALL of them (where is BOBBY I wanna see wtf was going on between him and AU mary and our mary and our bobby) - and it being disappointing that Mary's at risk BECAUSE she's female and might get assaulted.

Lucifer continues to try and act like a good guy by saving Mary and then of course the Nice Guy twist that always comes - if you won't give me what I want that I'm pretending is mutually beneficial then I will just hurt you.

They're chilling by that church from 8x23 now so I guess Mikey will be along soon.

Preston Station looks like a hellscape as well - it's packed and there's no ticket barriers. I'm so glad we were only passing through

Dean comes in and sits down with Sam with the shadows of the blinds falling over them - prison imagery I missed you! We're trapped in these mindsets...

Sam wants to get them on the same page and Dean is like F U and Sam's like lemme do exposition while you sit with the shadow over your eyes.

I wish there was a shadow falling over my eyes... We've passed back through to hazy sunlight south of Preston.

Sam says people who we love, and who have been in our lives for a long time, in such a way I bet some asshole is excluding Cas from one category bcos Mary doesn't count in the long time category so maybe one is for her and one is for Cas

obviously that's the real donatello because he only cares about breakfast and is an object of ridicule while Asmodeus was presumably the other and actually talking plot.

this is an idiot ball moment tbh because Jack hasn't been in any hotel scenes for a while and somehow we've shuffled through all the characters here and not had any of them with Jack or checking where he is despite him being the most precious cargo, and it was bugging me earlier that dontatello and sam talking meant jack was alone because he wouldn't be w/ dean so where was he but Sam didn't ask? they just chatted? And obvs that was asmodeus but yeah... no one's keeping an eye on him and D. wasn't even supposed to be taking Jack to get breakfast or what? If that wasn't him then what exactly did Sam think Jack was up to?

Also Sam tanking the mytharc Dean tanking the personal arc - he talks to both of them w/o them knowing and guess what each's conversation is

And also Dean came in with food as well like there's major miscommunication going on here if the real donatello was getting breakfst and so was Dean but is that the point or is that just a plothole where this doesn't add up properly if you actually try and map who knew what and - was Dean the one SUPPOSED to be watching Jack? But Sam didn't ask him either.

Anyway here's the demon that Dean's entire fight scene is about straddling to death.

I also loved his march down to the room where he was all in shadows

The last shot of that fight though where Dean's cowering away from the demon on a bed while it advances on him with a knife

like wow that was a good fight scene for the dynamics going on there. Dean as a victim being absolutely dominated by that demon and all the associated knife and weirdass positions imagery. Dean on that table with his legs around the demon is like an entire meta on its own as well

okay it was too bright when I saw the scene where Asmodeus was talking about that whatever it was he let out but I THINK that was the same demon I thought I saw overhearing it and now I am wondering what on earth that was about because Dean just killed him :P

Awww Jack out in nature. I love the flowers and the buzz of insects and life all around him. And Asmodeus is testing him.

Okay it's been like one episode how can he have character inconsistency with himself from earlier in the episode - he now wants to unleash the things he got in trouble for unleashing before? I mean unless he's decided that Lucifer really isn't coming back so might as well just throw a party while there's no adult supervision, and get back to all that chaos and destruction he loves. If he thought there was remotely a chance Lucifer would come back he wouldn't do it, but then is he just doing it now out of spite that Lucifer told him no before, and instead of whatever nonsense he said about family dynamics back then is not really true at all because he wants to rebel now instead.

If Jack unleashes the thing because he was tricked then it will be the biggest Sam and Cas mirror thing ever and will set him up with some angst and guilt for the rest of the season.

One of the downsides of Dean not getting along with him is that Jack doesn't know how much scepticism about God is a healthy amount in this universe. He basically just knows that God is his grandfather and family is usually good. But God is suuuch a bad concept to rally behind here, it's not even like God wouldn't ask him to do it because God never tells anyone what to do about anything (which is like the first thing Dean would have told Jack if he hadn't still been sulking God wouldn't lift a finger to help him over the whole dead Cas issue), God would also just never have any positive reinforcement for anyone or get excited about having a grandson, at least in a way to get actively involved :P

I mean Chuck probs thought that Donatello making his way to Jack was about as useful as he could be and that immediately went sour when no one kept 2 pairs of eyes on each other at all times.

Wyoming has some pretty nasty stuff under it :P

I wonder if Hell maps exactly to earth but just kinda deeper.

Also point to me for rambling about hell gates earlier and then Asmodeus actually listening to my suggestion box for once. Maybe he will be the one character who can actually hear me in this show.

Hey you, you're an asshole

Is Lucifer aware he literally just lead them in a circle because I am so not telling him that, because it's too funny.

I hope Jack didn't inherit his sense of direction but this is Dabb era, as soon as that kid gets a car, trouble starts.

The midlands are so bleak.

These angels are wearing heavy tactical gear and yet more kneepads. The human had them too. This is just kneepad world. I don't see the necklaces of baby ears so maybe that design thing got ditched or maybe Bobby was being metaphorical. The important thing is they don't look like Cas. The weird thing is we know Mikey's costume sort of does look like a ragged Cas.

Anyway Lucifer is so offended to hear Michael killed him even though it was literally the most obvious thing ever the entire time we've known about them and since 12x12 we've had extra info to prove it :P

Omg why are you opening champagne on a traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

MIKEY

He wanders in like hey I'm awesome but also I need to immediately open with super obvious exposition lines

Lucifer accuses him of being dressed like he came from a western too which goes with the thematics back in the Earth part of the story and also makes me think maybe the costuming choice was supposed to kinda mirror Frontierland Dean's 2nd costume because why the fuck not this is Dabb era, rules are for suckers :P

I can't see it w/o the hat but maybe he has a hat elsewhere.

this hole down into the centre of the earth looks REMARKABLY like the one the 2nd season of Shadowhunters had in the season finale, so I need Magnus to just wander over the rise and close it now. Also his eyes glow gold and cat like. Is his power literally equivalent to Jack's? He's like ridiculously OP in that show. I guess all that hiatus watching was research.

Ah, Asmodeus has learned the "Oh shit it's the Winchesters" moment already, especially recognising the car. Them driving right onto the scene has the oddest shades of 5x22 without anything being remotely like it except it's a field, hole in the earth, and car.

Okay why did Donatello yell "that's not Donatello"

this is like the reverse of the best version of this scene I've ever heard which is the one from the end of Here Be Gerblins in the Adventure Zone which I will not spoil for you except to say this is the worst and also it doesn't take too much listening to get to that point and I nearly cried laughing so you should probably go listen. More hiatus watching research!

The other option is D is having a total crisis of self w/o a soul or the evil D is actually the real thing and Asmodeus is helping them for some reason.

LOL he's like hi I'm Crowley's replacement so the line now is "howdy boys" intead of hello boys

As soon as Jack knows what's up and sees his new peeps getting hurt he stops because he is precious and he did nothing wrong and I love him

AWW HE THINKS THEY'RE HIS FRIENDS I LOVE YOU NOUGAT

Deal with that, Dean.

Mary like "... should I be shuffling backwards?" "I SHOULD BE SHUFFLING BACKWARDS, BYE"

Lucifer said he needed Mary, Mikey says he needs Lucifer... I think that phrase is being turned over and ruined now. The necessary step of Dean having said it to Cas that one time when he shoulda said I love you... They had a brief critique of "need and want" and some stuff about i and we, which was what last season was doing, but Cas feels bad bcos he feels needed but not wanted, and this is as much as Dean has said to him - from the depths of his heart - but it's not enough because that was season 8 and he hasn't felt like he belongs and he needs that I love you. Uh but w/o using "need" - look, they're gesticulating with champagne again, I have 1 eye on this at best as we roll through the midlands for an eternity :P Anyway I guess it is time to put "need" in the firing line as the Wrong Word that means that you're USING someone.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? DEAN DOES NOT SIT AT THE TABLE LIKE THAT. OH MY POOR, POOR BROKEN CHILD LET ME HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS

I know it's probably for that wonderful shot of them through the door but Dean fundamentally does not sit up against the wall - he and Sam have their places at that table when they have their chats and it's a serious thing since the entire time theyve been using the kitchen for important plot chats.

Anyway he super not okay bcos that's his seat he sits at when he's in his proper place in the dynamic - or improper one but the point is the dynamic is the dynamic when they sit opposite each other and Dean's opted out and flopped back against the wall instead of sitting where he normally does when he and Sam are in balance. Sam's connection to his seat has some other flavours of his side of the codependency issues but largely about his lack of assertiveness or getting too messed up about saving Dean, so we'll see

AAAH Sam is sitting one seat over as well.

I know it's a free table but there's 8 seats and REMARKABLY little flexibility about it.

Dean's wearing a black henley which is also baaad news. *pats him on the head and follows with a blanket*

Sam stands (or sits) his ground

Dean, gosh, I don't like when the camera follows you because this is probably going to be awful for my heart.

We also have not really had his POV much this ep except the Asmodeus chat up scene

He's mostly reacted. Like he thinks Jack is only reacting.

I DON'T LIKE THIS SCENE

PROTECT JACK FROM HIMSELF TOO

I hope he was just being curious like a super amped up version of how Kira on Orphan Black found out she has super healing powers so sliced her own arm open while being scared and fascinated with what she was and pissed off the adults wouldn't tell her anything but this was gross and violent and pls protect Jack because that was awful.

Dean's suitably horrified though because he has to contemplate Jack is just as freaked out and lost as he is about this whole thing because this is a gross and horrifying way to show that Jack is as fucked up and lost as the rest of them. I don't think he was actually trying to kill himself esp. because he knew the angel blade already stabbed him and did nothing and even if he doesn't know what it is and why that's signficant he knows he didn't die of something that should have killed him... I hope it's just childlike curiosity mixed with bleak existential horror as he comes to understand how much he doesn't understand himself even in the context of the world he's in...

OH NO

but also good lines of dialogue they acted super well. Jack is starting to think he can't be saved if Dean doesn't think it and is silently asking him to do it because he doesn't want to hurt people and oh gosh this isn't 10x09 at all where Deran asked Cas to do it to him... But completely different emotional landscape where Dean WOULD do it and wants to and Jack is only just starting to doubt himself and wonder if he would hurt people and the important thing is not like Dean thinking there was a line he would cross and half-tricking Cas into saying he'd do it by asking him for a favour first, but Cas not being able to oblige him in 10x22... This is Jack being such a good pure piece of nougat that he's SCARED of what he is and what he can do and beginning to think that he might need to be killed esp. because Dean thinks so and this has been a bad day for him... even though again his nature shone through, Dean thinks it was a "sneeze" and Jack still doesn't have a developed enough moral compass to understand what he did except that we can see it was a good thing.

And final shot Jack reflected in the mirror all bloody and sad and I need to zoom in on that later to see his face because like magic the sun is out again when I want to look at the screen.

End episode here. Good. That means Dean angstily listening to music is in 13x03 almost for sure because I want it to be (uh, sorry that's not science :P) but it would be a great Berens to Berens chat with self about 9x14 and Dean angstily listening to music there.

I am not actually where were we are any more except powering towards London, but I'm gonna put my laptop away because they're still topping up the champagne and I just survived a BL episode where nothing so awful happened that I can see the fandom outrage from a million miles away and the worst I can say is that they are an exposition machine and I wish they had more nuanced dialogue because in someone else's hands that character stuff would have been delivered well rather than just delivered :P

#13x02 #my stuff #season 13 spoilers #I actually got some of this answered by Tink & co on whatsapp later #but then I had to explain my #look at this effin table #tag to them and me vs typos while texting and no signal in the bleak wilderness #yeah I hope they even have half a clue what I was on about :D #tomorrow I will have to make a post about wtf is going on with that table but tl:dr I flipped out about it completely #and regret that the last time i was drawn to make a Big Post about it it was from the Destiel perspective #with just a handful of codependency chat #because now I really really wish I had a big post about the codependency stuff there #with just a sprinkle of the Destiel stuff on the side #NOT PROOF READ HOLY SHIT LIKE NOT AT ALL WHO AM I WHERE AM I #I am lucky this entire post isn't soaked in a glaswegian's prosecco

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thelaughingserpent · 7 years

Text

Sherlock Spoilereview

[Obviously Sherlock spoilers] [loooong boring post]

I probably would not have started watching Sherlock on my own. Every so often my Mom will get hooked by a show, (usually a British historical drama/mystery series) and I’ll start watching it with her every time I visit. Sherlock is one of those. So while I probably wouldn’t have watched it on my own, we both liked it and got hooked by it. I’m speaking mainly of seasons 1-3 which were all we had on Netflix, which she had seen and showed to me afterward.

So when season 4 came around a couple weeks ago, we were excited. This would be the first time we watched new episodes with neither of us knowing what would happen. to me, The show is okay, but having something both of us could get invested in at the same time was what made it more interesting.

But yeah, season 4? Not great. Ambitious, sure, but not very good. My biggest problem, like several other folks, was the finale, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Episode 1: good return-to-form stuff. Getting back into the groove. Cool mystery and all that jazz. THEN Mary gets killed. A very interesting and progressively re-imagined character who added a lot to the story, dead.

Yes, her death serves a narrative purpose, but it does feel like she’s been yanked out looooong before she’s had a chance to give the story everything her character has to offer. As probably the strongest female character in the show, she carried a very big and very important torch, but now she just dies in order to create more conflict between John and Sherlock.

On the other hand, in Episode 2, it has the interesting side-effect of removing her from the normal restrictions of that character. As a “halluci-ghost” or whatever, she can now show up in ANY scene between John and Sherlock, without the narrative having to accommodate for WHY her character is there. Technically her character now has more potential screen time. But the problem is, she isn’t really a character anymore. She’s a figment of John’s imagination and thus merely an extension of his character, which feels like she’s being robbed of her legitimacy a bit. She may still be “in the show” but she’s not real anymore. A pretty steep downgrade for any character, really.

But yeah, Episode 2: probably the best of the season, because it creates a new villain that is different than the others and is interesting to watch. This is mostly due to the fact that Toby Jones is amazing.

I love Toby in anything, he’s a great actor who has gotten good at playing a broad range of characters and seems to relish playing villains whenever he can. He’s a good villain in episode 2 because he’s contemporary, he’s a legitimate threat, and while he might not match Sherlock in genius, he drives the point home that the rich and famous can (and sometimes do) get away with murder.

He’s interesting because, like a certain somebody who’s being elected to high office in America today, he’s vile and horrible, and everyone knows it, yet is given a free pass by literally everyone because of how wealthy and influential he is.

And yet, sadly, we only get Toby Jones for 1 episode. He appears, causes trouble, and is soundly defeated in what feels like 20 minutes. Mary, postmortem, instigates a new cathartic understanding between John and Sherlock, culminating in saving Sherlock’s life and nabbing the bad guy.

If this had been the last episode of the season, I’d have been perfectly fine with it. But no, we’ve got another, and it turns out to be kind of a stinker. My mom and I seemed equally disappointed for identical reasons.

Episode 3 is where we find out, SURPRISE, Sherlock and Mycroft have an evil sister. A sister who, once and for all, officially violates what I’m willing to accept as plausible.

She’s magic. She has magic fucking powers. You can attempt to call it her “genius intellect” or her ability to “mess with people’s heads” or whatever. At the end of the day, her powers basically amount to magic. She can predict the future, she can brainwash people into being her mindless slaves just by talking to them for 15 minutes. She can convince “ordinary” people to do anything purely by talking evil to them.

Sherlock the TV show: sorry, I do not buy any of this.

First off, this show has been pushing what is realistically possible since day 1. It’s fiction, Sherlock and Mycroft and Moriarty’s intellects are exaggerated and overreach what is actually possible for human beings. That’s fine, that’s the show. Sherlock Holmes and his villains are over-the-top and impossible in their capabilities, but they “work” in this show because they’re broken down into parts the audience can parse and they’re limited in their range.

But Sherlock’s sister “Eurus” is just too bonkers. She spends the episode trapping Sherlock, John, and Mycroft on the island prison she was supposed to be contained in, which she took control of thanks to her magic ability to get people to do whatever she wants. She tortures them in an INCREDIBLY Saw-esque series of no-win moral puzzles where (like the bad guy in Saw) she hopes to somehow prove that everyone’s moral compass is stupid and that it only makes logical sense to be evil. Not a very new or unique premise for a villain.

Long story short, the gang survives thanks to Sherlock’s quick thinking, and Eurus is ultimately revealed to be basically a scared child who just wanted her brother to love her more than other people. Sherlock & family visit her now, in THE SAME ISLAND PRISON SHE ALREADY DEMONSTRATED SHE CAN MIND-FUCK HER WAY OUT OF, and everything is supposed to be okay. John and Sherlock go back to London with a renewed bond, end of the whole thing.

Fucking WHAT. The entire episode is spent drilling into our heads how unbelievably evil and twisted and apparently powerful Eurus is, yet every character forgives her and things just go back to normal because she “didn’t know any better”. This chick can magically mind-fuck people into committing evil for her, has spent EVERY MINUTE OF HER ENTIRE LIFE trying to hurt and kill people for no reason, and you KNOW THIS, and yet your system for dealing with her hasn’t changed at all? We have been shown quite bluntly that she has had zero regard for human life since she was 5 years old! How am I supposed to believe that one teary-eyed heart-to-heart with Sherlock at the end is going to change anything?

The other side effect of this episode is, if you EVER had any sympathy for Mycroft, kiss it goodbye. In this finale, Mycroft is outed as probably the dumbest fucking dude on the planet. He locks up his sister for her entire life, forbids anyone from having any contact with her because he’s aware of her mind-fuck powers, BUT THEN thanks to her magic ability to see the future and predict terrorist attacks after an hour on twitter, he accepts her request of 15 minutes unsupervised conversation with Moriarty. (Whom he KNOWS is also cartoonishly evil and has near-unlimited resources)

It was enough of a shock in season 2 that Mycroft gave Moriarty information on Sherlock in exchange for info on criminal/terrorist organizations. That showed Mycroft as a truly fallible person who fucked up royally and almost killed his brother in the process. Since that fuck-up, the series did a good job of beginning to make us see Mycroft as a redeemable character again.

But not anymore. Now all I can see is a dipshit who KNEW he had an evil crazy supervillain sister and LET HER meet with the other evil crazy supervillain that he KNOWS wants to destroy his brother. And in the end, all he gets is a stern talking-to by his parents.

So what me and my mom got were 2 okay episodes, and a finale that was some of the whackest shit we’ve ever seen. For a series that, at least tenuously, tried to keep itself grounded in believable reality, this was a hard train to goofytown.

#sherlock #tv #bbc

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