#CUDDY IS A CASUAL ENJOYER OF THINGS

[daddykainnee]

CONSUMING THE MEDIA IS NOT ENOUGH I NEED TO EAT IT

[zmediaoutlet]

So, Tumblr is always toxically depressing after a Supernatural episode and probably the thing to do would be to just log off and go work out or something, and in fact I think that will be the plan for the rest of the morning. But I’ve been thinking a lot about two things, having seen all the dramatic rending of clothing and vicious anger and whatnot, so I might as well get it down somewhere.

1. The function of secondary characters.

So, you’re writing a text. The first thing to do is decide what the text is about and the character(s) you’re going to use to explore that about. In an ensemble television show, you often have a ‘main’-ish character or two, but they share the load of the about with their co-stars. Game of Thrones is actually a great example of an ensemble cast--there are big ‘mains’ with Cersei, Jamie, Arya, Sansa, etc., but no one character bears the full burden of the storyline; the story is told through all of their combined mini-stories. A slightly different ensemble-style show would be House, where House himself is obviously the main character, but Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman, etc., get their own storylines to spread the load slightly from House. Most of the show will be about him, of course, but there are times when the side-characters hold an equal share of the storytelling load.

Then we have Supernatural. This is absolutely not an ensemble-style show. There are two main characters, Sam and Dean, and everyone else is reduced to secondary status. (There is an argument to be made for Castiel and Crowley, given the extra-textual contractual status of Misha and Mark, but functionally the show remains entirely about Sam and Dean.) ((Or did, but that’s something to return to later.)) There are no real storylines external to Sam and Dean; they carry the entire weight of the show, because it is about the two of them, their relationship, and how they grow as people.

So. What function do secondary characters serve, in that context? They can’t meaningfully bear storylines or real weight, because they’re necessarily extremely secondary in importance to the actual mains. When we’re writing, we create secondary characters not to be interesting characters in themselves (though if they are interesting, that’s a nice bonus), but to serve as support for the story of the mains. What does this mean? Secondary characters can be a goad to action for the mains (villains often serve this function); they can act as guide or support (Bobby, Jody); they can provide an emotional spur (Mary, John), or teach a lesson (Garth), or give them an opportunity to be heroes (Claire). They can also just be friends (Eileen), but that’s part of it, too--the importance of the friendship doesn’t rest in the secondary character, it rests in how the main’s feelings and character are expressed with that friendship.

When a secondary character gets a spotlight shone on them, it is never for the sake of that character; it is because what the secondary character is going through has meaning for the main. When Claire has her little Randy storyline, it functions within the larger story because it provides contrast to Sam and Dean’s childhood with John (the CGBG story), it gives Castiel something to do (as a quasi-main), and it provides the situation where Dean slaughters the room full of men with little provocation (hooking into the larger MoC storyline). It’s not about Claire, though it’s easy to see how someone would say it was. More pressingly, when Eileen is brought in as a character in s11, she provides a parallel to Sam and Dean, as someone whose family was killed and who is now seeking her revenge. When she’s brought back in s12, what function does she serve? We know the BMoL are trying to control hunters. Functionally, the character is brought back for a minor setpiece involving the BMoL; this reminds the audience who she is and sets up the plot of that episode. We see her being friendly with Sam and Dean (=mains feel kindly toward this secondary, so there is an emotional tie-in the actual about of the story). When she kills a member of the BMoL accidentally, Sam and Dean protect her (=goad to action for mains & precursor to future conflict with larger plot arc). When she is then murdered in 12.21, we know exactly why that happened: the foreshadowing is complete, the mains feel sad, they are goaded to action to engage with the larger plot arc by now figuring out what the BMoL are up to. It isn’t just killing for shock value. It is functional. Which brings me to:

2. ‘Fandom’ is an extremely small set of the audience.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, this. So--if we go by TV by the Numbers, SPN Season 12 has carried between 1.38 million and 2.15 million viewers per episode. (The 2.15 is an outlier; the average is closer to about 1.7 per.) The population of those viewers who are actively engaged is lower than that, necessarily--most viewers will be relatively casual viewers. They like it, but not necessarily more than the other shows they watch. Of the people who do engage enough to be part of ‘fandom,’ there are subsets on Facebook, on reddit, on Tumblr. These are a small section. Of that section, the group that ships characters is even smaller.

This show is not on HBO or FX, which have a more artistic sensibility behind their decisions. It’s on the CW, and therefore is written to maintain a solid viewer base who will watch the commercials that the CW sells during SPN’s timeslot. With the changing nature of television viewership, they’re also hoping that people will be engaged enough to buy individual episodes on Amazon (this is what I do), watch on the official CW site (again--pageviews = advertisements), or watch through an officially licensed provider (Hulu, Netflix), so that the network will gain a percentage of the revenue. (This means, by the way, that if you pirate the show you really don’t have a leg to stand on as far as complaining about it.) The show is written to be broadly appealing to as many people as they can cram into these revenue-generating views as possible, and the casual viewer is a major part of that.

The point I’m circling around is that--the things that ‘fandom’ cares about are not the things that the casual viewer cares about, and therefore aren’t the things that the creators care about. Fandom randomly seizes on characters to love, often because of the opportunity to ship (since we know that ship-fic is miles more popular than gen-fic; just look at the hitcount differences on AO3). Fandom obsesses over those characters. They invent backstories and personalities for those characters. They decide, based on very little information, how the mains could relate to them, how they fit into the larger universe, etc. They elevate these secondary characters nearly to main status. Then--because of the functional reality of how secondary characters operate, particularly on this show where nearly everyone dies--one of those secondary characters dies. The fandom explodes. Screaming, rending of flesh. Threats to the writers. Demands that they be fired. Insistence that there was no point to the death, that the character deserved better, because the fandom cared about them so deeply. Forgetting, again, that Character X was never important or alive beyond the function that they served in the story. Forgetting, too, that for the casual viewer it’s an ‘oh, dang’ moment, and then the casual viewer just watches to see what happens next. ‘Aw, Sam sure is sad about that one girl dying. I guess they’re going to go after the British dudes now, huh.’ End emotional engagement--and also, therefore, end the creators’ engagement with the secondary character, because they’ve served their purpose.

I don’t know where this leads. Clearly some people deeply enjoy their anger, and I can’t say that they shouldn’t feel angry. I am also generally disappointed by season 12, so I understand those reactions (more than the ‘how dare!’ reactions after character death). Since the show is about Sam and Dean, it’s troubling that the larger season seems to have so little to do with them. Right now the show’s stuck in an awkward space between what it always has been--the Sam & Dean Love Show, per Kripke--and... like, half of an ensemble show, where the secondary characters remain unimportant and yet we’ve got to trudge along with their storylines anyway. I know the extra-textual reasons behind this (and here’s hoping J2 get vasectomies so the show doesn’t continue to be boring and not-itself), but it’s still disappointing that the executives in charge couldn’t write something more artistically pleasing, given the strictures tying their hands. Casual fans probably haven’t noticed much, though, and so there’s little incentive to change.

There are certainly problems that the show has. Killing secondary characters is so far down the list that it seems inconsequential, and the furor generated over it masks the much more important flaws that could be discussed. The ‘fuck Bucklemming’ meme, while it’s clearly enjoyable for a lot of people, is just that--a meme, repeated ad nauseum, providing a handy semi-masturbatory thing to focus on while more nuanced discussion withers away, left by the wayside.