Supernatural: "Night Shifter"

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26 January 2007 @ 11:46 am

Just some random thoughts on this week's episode, because too much wankage and squee make me tired every week.

Damn, Hurley, why you always gotta be getting in trouble that way?

Okay, just had to get that out. ;)

My love list for this week includes the wonderful Geek-Out between ~~Hurley~~ Ronald and Dean, and the fact that the man DID do some good research except for that whole "Mandroid" thing. Oh, Lone Gunmen-- how we miss your weird.

I also loved the title (just so creepy and multi-layered), how stricken Sam and Dean were when poor Ronald got shot, the coming-home of all those bad-luck consequences from St. Louis, and how the boys very much realize now the terrible situation they're in.

On a side note, I'm very pleased that Kripke's show is no longer so incredibly white as it was in Season 1. We had Missouri, Cassie, and an Asian guy that the shapeshifter passed through in "Skin," and then that was it. This season, we've had black families, a black hunter, random ethnicities of various cops and minor characters (poor suddenly-evil shoot-em-up Doctor in "Simon Said"). This is a VERY welcome change.

The black FBI agent that showed up... at first, I thought he might be the Shapeshifter, because he knew so much about Sam and Dean and the incriminating details of their past. But instead, it turned out that he was incredibly competent instead, which is even BETTER. In a sure-to-be-angsty future way. :)

Of the nitpicking side... if "Dean's" body remained after the Shapeshifter's death in "Skin", then why is everybody on a manhunt for Dean? Alternatively, if the body disappeared... then so will the dead "twin" the police found, and shouldn't THAT bring up some interesting questions (not to mention what happens when they interview the living version of the replica). My point is, I'd like some continuity here (because the 6-month-old-baby-demon-visit thingy with Sam and the other "special" kids and the dead/not-dead moms is already damn inconsistent).

Plus, I really do not like the closing song, "Renegade." I have never liked that song. Kripke's music is really hit/miss with me, and anything along the lines of hair-band/Journey-Foreigner-Genesis/pure-metal is usually a miss, and sad to say my love for "Styx" was fleeting and has been deader-than-dead for years now. :(

All you people who tempt me with your photobucket pix today... *grouses*... I can't see any of them, and I don't know why. I'm just getting "www.photobucket.com" with no specific picture. :(

9 comments | Say what you feel

9 comments —

( 9 comments — Say what you feel )

bluesister on January 26th, 2007 11:28 pm (UTC)

anything along the lines of hair-band/Journey-Foreigner-Genesis/pure-metal is usually a miss
Gawd yes. Maybe because we lived through it the first time?

And the not-everyone-is-anglo thing! Done in an incidental way. *whew*

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halfshellvenus on January 27th, 2007 01:23 am (UTC)

Gawd yes. Maybe because we lived through it the first time?
You know, it just never appealed to me even then. And god, was it ever popular.

My musical tastes were late-60's Yes!, early-70's Yes!, mid-70's Uh-Oh except for Led Zeppelin and Boston and "Radar Love" and ELO (for totally ecclectic reasons), and then it was "help me, god" until I found New Wave music, and then another big fat radio drop-out until Grunge started up.

I love Led Zeppelin, I've since learned to love The Who, but in general I don't like "metal," funk, disco, hair-band music (I swear that's a genre), pop, pop, alterna-pop (it comes in so many flavors, but I never like it).

It's hard to explain why, but maybe it's really Hard Rock vs. other stuff.

And the not-everyone-is-anglo thing! Done in an incidental way. *whew*
I am SO loving that, because it was one of the things that bugged me about Season 1. As in, "Kripke, have you not noticed that everyone Sam and Dean encounter is white? Does that not strike you as very strange? It's a big country."

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destina on January 27th, 2007 12:30 am (UTC)

My love list for this week includes the wonderful Geek-Out between Hurley Ronald and Dean, and the fact that the man DID do some good research except for that whole "Mandroid" thing.

Hee! It was a very cute geek-out, wasn't it? And I loved how Sam had trouble encouraging it. *g*

The whole shapeshifter thing disturbs me on levels that are hard to quantify -- I get that they need Dean to be wanted to really make it work, but some of it doesn't make sense. Alas.

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halfshellvenus on January 27th, 2007 01:25 am (UTC)

Hee! It was a very cute geek-out, wasn't it? And I loved how Sam had trouble encouraging it. *g*
It was cute for how Dean responded, and wonderful for the juxtaposition of "This guy is coming off as a nut" and "You know, this is what Sam and Dean's maps and research would look like to anyone else." ;) And Sam coming down so hard and mean on that poor guy-- and Dean looking so "Dude, why you being like that?"-- was so unexpected and funny.

I get that they need Dean to be wanted to really make it work, but some of it doesn't make sense. Alas.
Yes, exactly. I prefer writers just avoid the areas that are going to create inconsistencies, or work around them-- not open them up so that they stare me in the face and bug me.

Months later, BTW, I still love that icon like you can't believe. I wish I'd thought of it! :D

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sorrelchestnut on January 27th, 2007 04:12 am (UTC)

Yeah, I've never understood why everyone's on the hunt for Dean. I mean, it's a good plot device and all, but I've watched so much CSI that I know it's bullshit. They would have crime scene photos, DNA, fingerprints, everything. Even if the body disappeared later, melted into whatever, when Dean got arrested that one time, all he had to do was get them to call up the case files, and the St. Louis PD would have to tell them that yeah, Dean Winchester was very, very dead, with some genetic weirdness, and Dean's DNA wouldn't match. Even if the cops were too slow to figure it out for whatever reason, this big-shot FBI agent, who's apparently heading up a task force assigned to hunting Dean *specifically,* would not be there at all.

It just irritates me, is all. I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing the FBI manhunt thing playing out, but it's stupid. Sigh.

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halfshellvenus on January 29th, 2007 05:00 pm (UTC)

Even if the body disappeared later, melted into whatever, when Dean got arrested that one time, all he had to do was get them to call up the case files, and the St. Louis PD would have to tell them that yeah, Dean Winchester was very, very dead, with some genetic weirdness, and Dean's DNA wouldn't match.
Yes! Exactly!

Either Dean is actually Dean (in which case, no man-hunt), or the "Dean" body dissolved, in which case there would have been a LOT of weirdness to explain-- and will be, when the "twin" dead female dissolves too.

The one thing that screams out loud and clear is that the boys should seriously be smarter about leaving their fingerprints all over the place-- I mean honestly, that just makes them look dumb, and I don't know why Kripke's doing that.

Nice to know you're still watching. :) Remember that lovely Dean-running-off Wincest fic you started? Any thoughts to finishing it? (you can tell I really liked it)

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sorrelchestnut on February 5th, 2007 02:45 am (UTC)

I've just read somewhere that the shifters mimic DNA, which I didn't know. And that makes things make a lot more believable, but still, the crime scene photos part, that gets to me. Well, maybe they'll surprise us and have one of the brothers use them as evidence when the inevitable confrontation comes with FBI man.

...I really do want to finish that fic, or at least, the next part. And technically speaking, I do have it done. I have all sorts of revisions I had planned to make it better, but honestly, I'm starting to be tempted to just post it as-is, mention the intended revisions in an author's note, and leave it up to the audience to decide. Because I'm not sure that I'll get to the revisions part any time soon, since Dr. Who and Torchwood ate my brain and I'm writing an epic for each fandom plus another one for SGA, all at the same time, and it's not really going well for me working on other projects, y'know?

What do you think? To post, or not to post?

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mooyoo on January 28th, 2007 07:38 am (UTC)

if "Dean's" body remained after the Shapeshifter's death in "Skin", then why is everybody on a manhunt for Dean?

Thank you. As much as I've always wanted to like "Skin" I've never been able to get past that point - why, when Dean killed shapshifter!Dean, did they not stick around and wait for the cops, say "hey, look, some guy who happens to look remarkably like Dean Winchester! But it's not. Because see? Dean Winchester, right here, alive and well, and not a murderer." I know they want to fly under the raidar all the time, but that would've solved a whole lot of problems for them. It's been bugging my forever. Leaving the scene of the crime in "Skin" seems like one of the stupidest things they could've done.

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halfshellvenus on January 29th, 2007 07:01 pm (UTC)

why, when Dean killed shapshifter!Dean, did they not stick around and wait for the cops, say "hey, look, some guy who happens to look remarkably like Dean Winchester! But it's not. Because see? Dean Winchester, right here, alive and well, and not a murderer." I know they want to fly under the raidar all the time, but that would've solved a whole lot of problems for them.
Yes! It's as if they're trying to have the logic both ways-- Dean guilty AND deadNotDean left behind (that funeral reference, or whatever it was).

Had they stuck around, they never would have been able to explain who did all the killing... but they never would have had to, and that isn't their job. All the earlier victims were killed long before Dean and Sam arrived, and in addition, by the time they left Beca knew the truth, so she wouldn't have said that the real Dean tried to attack her.

It was just so DUMB for them to leave, as you said. :(

And it's like Kripke's trying to have THAT both ways, too-- they're Supernatural Smart^tm but Real-World Dumb, except when it comes to B&E and posing as people they're not, and... oops. Doesn't make sense, does it?

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