#shine leads innocent bystanders down the primrose path into terminal spn derangement | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shinelikethunder · 1 year

Text

SPN Brain Rot Tasting Menu

this is not a viewing guide. (the only SPN viewing guide i'll sign off on is "bomb your way through the first 3 to 5 seasons in order, then decide whether you want to watch the direct-to-VHS sequel eras.") this is a "someone near you caught SPN brain rot and you're trying to decide whether to join them in hell" tasting menu, based on what piqued my personal interest when i was still on the fence about continuing with the show.

criteria: basically, "ideal episodes to catch by wandering through the room with no context while a roommate is watching SPN." so, skewed towards self-contained, less-spoilery, solid episodes that don't make me want to fistfight them in the denny's parking lot, but did made something in my subconscious sit up like it had been slapped.

okay, shine, what the fuck is this show's deal: 2x16 Roadkill. god's perfect little self-contained one-off ep. nothing spectacular, just a solidly-executed ghost story set on a lonely mountain highway. fairly representative of how SPN monster-of-the-week episodes roll, requires zero prior investment in the characters to be good, and i'm fond of it because this is basically the point where i buckled in and committed to watching the rest of the show. but also, quietly, almost covertly, a thesis statement for some of the core underpinnings of the whole thing.

shut up and give me the sickos-haha-yes.jpg: 1x06 Skin. what if you thought you were in an X-File but ended up getting erotically tortured by a shapeshifter in the guise of your codependent brother? what if you fuckers were so repressed that this was the only way the show could bring itself to air the dirty laundry of your sibling dynamics. what if the monster was all the parts of yourself you could never quite bury deep enough. what then, huh.

tell me more about the childhood trauma AND/OR c'mon gimme more sick shit: 1x18 Something Wicked. still obsessed with how fractally disturbing this episode is. there's a monster that preys on children at night in their beds and the only way to stop it is to catch it in the act. if SPN were a show with anything to say about morality it could eat itself alive chewing on the question of using children as predator bait, but it's not. it's a show about The Horrors + the shit that couldn't be buried deep enough + family as the first and most inescapable hell + the ways it intertwines damage with salvation. also there's lots of Winchester family flashback content in this one if you want to get invested in these assholes and their daddy issues.

under the cut: duos and trios of episodes on specific themes, including some spoilery ones

fine, get me invested in these assholes and their daddy issues (low-spoiler Lite Edition) AND/OR gimme those Americana aesthetics: 1x11 Scarecrow + 1x12 Faith + 1x16 Shadow. 1x11: SPN does "small town that sacrifices people to the harvest gods" and the brothers have their first big fight (guess who precipitates it). 1x12: SPN does "faith healer with some shit going on" and we get our first go-round with both Sam's belief in a higher power and Dean cheating Totally Certain Death No For Serious You Guys. 1x16: SPN starts in on the relentless pilfering of world mythology and the construction of its own demon lore, and we finally get to meet dad in person, which will exacerbate the mental illness of zero overly-enmeshed twenty-somethings.

(early SPN demon lore fucks incredibly hard, btw, and goes some creepy-ass Twin Peaks places towards the end of the season, which the show later doubles down on just when demonic possession is at risk of devolving into a plot device. this doesn't prevent it from devolving into a plot device, but it does retroactively justify some wild gothic-horror readings of s1.)

the I DON'T CARE ABOUT SPOILERS AND I'M FINE GOING IN WITHOUT CONTEXT menu

get me invested in these assholes and their daddy issues (spoiler-tastic speedrun): 2x08 Crossroad Blues (+ 2x11 Playthings) + 2x14 Born Under a Bad Sign. 2x08: a banger of an episode based on some classic "earthly success by selling your soul at a crossroads" folklore; gains twelve extra layers of crazymaking if you end up finishing the season. 2x11 (optional): a "haunted gothic mansion" monster of the week with some fun stuff between Extremely Normal Siblings. 2x14: more quality sickos-yes content a la 1x06 Skin, with a "woke up covered in someone else's blood with no memory of the past week" setup that goes even further off the rails from there.

i want to study Dean Winchester like a bug: 2x18 Hollywood Babylon + 2x19 Folsom Prison Blues + 3x10 Dream a Little Dream of Me. no comment. no fucking comment. don't look at me. we're not going to talk about it.

ok but tell me about the angel content: 2x13 Houses of the Holy + 4x01 Lazarus Rising. you HAVE to get down in the crunchy details of how SPN has been treating the entire concept of god and angels to get the full effect of 4x01, which is one of the show's banger episodes of all time. 2x13 is great, self-contained, and surprisingly low on spoilers, but 4x01 of course contains massive ones for season 3, my stealth favorite of all SPN seasons.

people keep talking about SPN's goofy and/or meta episodes, what's that about?: 3x11 Mystery Spot + 4x18 The Monster at the End of This Book. both casually spoilery. 3x11 is the beloved "yesterday was Tuesday, but today is Tuesday too" time loop episode where Sam watches Dean die approximately 8908234 times (and then shit gets dark). the arc-plotty parts of 4x18 require head-spinning amounts of context, but this is the one where the show exists in-universe as a series of trashy pulp novels by a guy named Chuck, and it flies impressively close to the sun of some kind of meta-storytelling singularity.

i am a masochist who loves fun side characters whom the show will end up mistreating horribly: 3x12 Jus in Bello. contains all three of my problematic(ally treated) faves: Bela Talbot, a shameless con artist and dealer in supernatural artifacts who's just enough of a Dean parallel to drive him batshit cuckoo-bananas insane with hatred for her; Victor Henriksen, the cocky ambitious FBI agent assigned to investigate the Winchesters' multi-state crime spree; and Ruby, a demon who shows up claiming to be a defector from hell and tries to befriend Sam. this is SUCH a well-constructed base-under-siege ep with SO many moving parts, forcing Henriksen and the Winchesters and eventually Ruby into a great reluctant team-up. it's also my big exception to "no recommending episodes that blow my socks off AND make me want to hunt the writers for sport." mostly because its Big Bullshit is an unnecessary sucker-punch inserted after the main plot wraps up, so i can just cross it out with my mental red pen and go "it's fine, they're lying, all my faves are alive and well and in witness protection." if you've made it this far, you need a warning shot anyway about what this show is going to do to you.

notable omissions that also rot my brain like a compost heap: the last 3 eps of s1 for being best viewed with a whole season's worth of intricate rituals as context; fully half of s4 for being incomprehensible without a ten-minute spoiler reel; 2x17, 3x06, and all the Gordon eps, among others, for being simultaneously incredible and enraging. (notable omissions that are important and have their moments but put me off watching the show for over a decade: the pilot and its 2-for-1 special on women in refrigerators.) do NOT @ me for leaving out other Core Brainrot Episodes. i laid out my criteria already.

#supernatural #meta #shine watches spn #shine leads innocent bystanders down the primrose path into terminal spn derangement

138 notes · View notes

shinelikethunder · 1 year

Note

Hellooo i was intrigued by your "fucked up supernatural shit" posts so i binged the fucked up episodes you suggested and now I'm a supernatural fan, sadly. I still refuse to watch all of it so i would very much appreciate if you could recommend some more fucked up episodes, especially focused on sam-dean-john dynamics. Also I like your taste in fucked up stuff so if you have any other fandoms to recommend I'd also appreciate that

idk if you caught the reblog with the Sicko Cut Bonus Episodes but every suggestion in there is also a doozy; for a broader range of "sick shit and fucked-up family dynamics" episodes i'd expand it to (previously recced eps in parentheses):

season one: 1, (6), 9/10/11, 14/15/16, (18), and (20/21/22)

season two: (1)/2/3/4/5, (8), 10, 11, (14), and 20/21/22

season three: this is where my ability to pick favorites starts breaking down; s3 is kinda my fave of all the seasons, but for the overall vibe rather than particular standouts. it's only 16 episodes long, so watching it in full is more doable. but the fucky family shit is strongest in episodes 1, 2, 8, (10), 11, and 14/15/16.

season four: i regret to admit that just about every episode in this season is a straight fucking banger. like, the only two i'd be tempted to skip aren't even bad. but extra-special sicko shoutouts to episodes 1, (3), 9/10/11, 14, 16, 19, and 20.

on to the slimmer pickings...

season five: the first five are a fun time and the last two or three SLAP, but man, the handful of salvageable eps in the middle are buried in a minefield of ones i WANT to slap.

season six: look, i may not respect s6 or think it's good, but by GOD do i enjoy it. the WHOLE THING is the new showrunner's grody id-fic, but episodes 5 and 10 are on a special level of sick.

season seven: .....no.

ok, ok, MAYBE 1, 2, 11, 15, and 17. but this is where SPN starts getting truly wretched.

after that... 8x03 i guess, 9x07, 9x19, 10x03, 10x09, 11x04...

s11 i actually found pretty enjoyable, and everything from 11x09 through 11x14 starts serving GREAT grody id-fic vibes again. but bail out after 11x19 at latest, because the end of the season is. bad.

s12-15 have a couple of arc plots with sicko potential i guess? but in my head most of the episodes are an undifferentiated blob of Does Not Fuck.

there are also a handful of early-seasons eps that are softer and sadder that i love a lot: 1x03, 1x12, 2x13, 2x16... plus for "mixed bag but the fun parts are a total blast," 2x17, 3x06, and 3x12.

#supernatural #shine watches spn #shine leads innocent bystanders down the primrose path into terminal spn derangement #glaukopiscal

21 notes · View notes