#fuck episode 11 and the formulaic need for drama

[iguessitsjustme]

I want Mhok to truly ghost. Disappear. I want Porjai to call Night looking for Day and for Day to tell her what happened. I want her to show up and yell at Day and let all of her worried about Mhok come to the surface. I want her to say “the last time I couldn’t find him, his sister died. What if it’s him this time?” I want Mhok to go to Hawaii and send Porjai a post card so she knows he’s alright. And I want Day to spend the time skip becoming independent and capable and worried. So, so worried because Mhok is gone and he has no way to know anything. Day’s gone to his house to find it vacant. Eventually Porjai tells him she got the post card so she knows Mhok is okay but that’s it. Day has to live with his regret. That *he* put his blindness over Mhok’s feelings and pain and hurt. And now Mhok is gone.

[katsidhe]

Ranking Every SPN Season Premiere

15) 11.01 Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire. For an otherwise strong season, s11 sure started and ended in D tier. Not only is there a baffling amount of screen time spent on Cas’s weird and uninteresting rage spell, Crowley’s sexcapades, and too many one-episode characters, but the whole thing is sewn together with uneven flashbacks. The core concept itself is off: Darkness-as-rage-zombie-infection feels totally out of place in the rest of the season, and any personal fallout from 10.23 is mostly brushed aside. The only thing I like about 11.01 is Sam’s determination to find a cure and save everyone, and the mention of the cage.

14) 10.01 Black. Just because I do quite like demon!Dean’s apathy doesn’t mean it’s gripping television: he’s much better in 10.02 and 10.03, and most of 10.01 is spent on Crowley’s overdramatic griping. Cole is objectively very silly, but, look, I’m only flesh: Sam bloodied and in a sling and tied to a chair is good content, and rescues this one from D tier. 

13) 15.01 Back and to the Future. Just like 11.01, 15.01 has to brush past Dean’s willingness to execute a family member in the previous episode, and it introduces a pretty weak zombies plot. However, it gets major points for Sam’s bullet wound visions, and is generally much better staged than 11.01.  

12) 6.01 Exile on Main St. A genuinely interesting episode for Dean--both his domestic montage and being faced with Samuel are fresh takes on his relationship with family. Soulless is great, but isn’t quite hitting his stride; 6.01 lays groundwork but hasn’t yet built into s6′s greatest strengths. 

11) 3.01 The Magnificent Seven. This one’s kinda campy, but there is some legitimately horrifying imagery, like the guy forced to drink drain cleaner. The deadly sins demons are underwhelming on the whole, but Ruby shows up in fine form, and Sam’s anger with Dean’s willingness to throw his life away establishes a great tone for s3. 

10) 8.01 We Need to Talk About Kevin. Kevin is badass, Amelia is amazingly, unapologetically polarizing, Dean is raw, and I don’t really care about Benny. Sam is in a healthier spot right here than we’ll see him for a long, long time, which tees up his anti-recovery arc quite nicely. 

9) 1.01 Pilot. It’s a solid introduction. Sam and Dean’s chemistry is potent and undeniable from the get-go. The way they work together so well, layered on top of so much conflict both spoken and unspoken, the things they want and the things they deny wanting--their first time interacting as adults out from under their father’s influence. It’s good!

8) 12.01 Keep Calm and Carry On. Look, I pretend to have complex opinions, but actually I am very, very simple: I just want to watch Sam tied to a chair and tortured. This is the best BMoL episode of the season by a long shot. On top of that, Mary’s introduction forces the uncomfortable and fascinating realization that she’s not going to fit quietly into Dean’s expectations. That final scene of Sam hurt and imprisoned without hope is gorgeous and memorable. 12.01 promised a lot for s12, and it’s a shame that most of it didn’t get followthrough.

7) 14.01 Stranger in a Strange Land. These next four are difficult to arrange, because they’re all so different. This episode has pretty much the only even vaguely interesting material AU!Michael gets all season. Far more importantly, Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it’s a great look. He has a beard, and he’s looking after Nick (!!), and he’s leading a group of hunters, and he declares that Hell itself better stand the fuck down. Sam for King of Hell 2k18. Iconic. 

6) 2.01 In My Time of Dying.  John’s deal, and his directive for Dean to save Sam or kill him, is a major turning point that colors everything for years. The human intimacy of the small-scale family drama, unfolding with no magic besides a terrible soul deal to rely upon, feels personal and real. Plus, Sam and Dean communicate via ouija board.

5) 5.01 Sympathy for the Devil. Meg and Zachariah are both in fine form. The apocalyptic set pieces are teed up and ready to be set loose. Sam jumps on the bandwagon of his own castigation, and it aches. Lucifer’s introduction is quiet, and chilling, and note-perfect.

4) 13.01 Lost and Found. It’s hard to significantly change the landscape of a 13-year-old show, and for the better, but 13.01 does just that. Jack is a breath of fresh air. His dynamics with Sam and Dean are complex and heartbreaking--he asks after his father, Sam locks himself in a cell with him. Dean’s blank absolutism mixes uneasily with Sam’s relentless determination and Jack’s innocence. It’s a wonderful new twist on an old formula.

3) 4.01 Lazarus Rising. Dean crawls out of his own grave, Sam’s with Ruby, Cas blows out windows and burns out eyes. 4.01 throws the mythological doors wide open with the introduction of angels, and ratchets the season up to an apocalyptic scale: it’s awesome. 

2) 9.01 I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here. I am always and forever intrigued by Sam’s Mind Forests. Dean does something unforgivably horrible to Sam, and in doing so, opens the door to a fascinating arc, wherein his choices here and his treatment of Sam are deconstructed and then reconstructed and then deconstructed again. I’ll never get tired of season 9, by which I mean I’ll never get tired of the fallout from the BOLD choice that 9.01 made to put this conflict front and center. 

1) 7.01 Meet the New Boss. If you thought I wasn’t going to put Hallucifer first, you must be extremely new here. Sam’s psychological undoing is chilling and deeply claustrophobic and possibly my favorite thing the show has ever done. On top of that, we have Godstiel’s terrifying purges, Sam and Dean summoning Death in someone’s living room, and even a taste of cosmic horror in LeviaCas. I would tell you how many times I’ve watched 7.01-7.02, but I’ve wholly lost count. 

[thevioletjones]

The Ian & Mickey Show

Week 3

Timestamps

5:12-6:22 - IxM in their cell. Still bickering. Ian gets a letter saying he has a parole hearing coming up. He hasn’t even been inside a year. Mickey is visibly downcast about it and blows Ian off.

14:49-16:24 - Pretty much an Ian only scene with some randos, and Mickey appearing briefly in the background looking forlorn. More incoherent nonsense where the writers have created this narrative that every man who goes to prison becomes “prison gay” and maintains some semblance of a real relationship with their prison boyfriends. Fucking weird. It’s like they’ve stolen Dan Levy’s Schitt’s Creek formula where homophobia doesn’t exist in this small town America, except with hardened criminals in Chicago who brag about murdering people. Ok. And what is the implication supposed to even be for IxM? Their relationship is very real, and long-lasting, and deep. It’s not a prison relationship, they just happen to currently be incarcerated. This is just more “Oh, Shameless!” stupidity. Sigh.

23:40-25:27 - Jfc........... Of course they have to have IxM start their serious relationship convo with one of them literally taking a shit. It’s like a metaphor for the way the writers have always treated these characters, and us, the dumbass fans. Lol. Of course! So Mickey’s taking a dump and we get to see him wipe his ass! Congrats Noel. Welcome back. Anyway... Mickey finally indulges Ian with actual communication and admits that he’s upset because he thinks Ian owes it to him to stay locked up, since Mickey threw away his own freedom to be there with him without even being asked. So even though they’re acting constantly miserable around each other, Ian agrees to throw his hearing and stay. I guess their issues would magically resolve themselves if that happened? I’m guessing not.

35:38-37:08 - Ian calls Lip, but he doesn’t answer, so he calls Debbie instead. She informs him that Lip had the baby (or rather, the rando new chick he knocked up did, but idon’tknowher.gif). Ian is worried, because Debbie mentions complications, but hangs up without explaining so she can deal with her own drama. Ian goes back to his cell and tries to talk about it with Mickey, but he’s still pissed and barely responding. 

42:52-44:55 - Yet another scene of completely illogical prison dude interaction, as Mickey goes out to the yard to find, drumroll please... Terry’s old shitty prison pal! He apparently is also into being “gay in prison”??? This is so dumb. This old nazi dude sweetly plays fairy godmother and tells Mickey to set Ian free, lest he end up resenting him forever. Cool.

47:18-49:07 - THE BIG SCENE! Ian goes to shiv some dude so he can stay in the big house, but Mickey and a couple of other dudes stop him. Mickey launches into a whole bullshit line about how Ian doesn’t belong there and needs to be on the outside doing uncle stuff, and he can’t throw his parole for him like he asked earlier. Ian says, “I wanna be where you are, Mickey,” and I haven’t heard this character (or this actor) sound more heartfelt in eonsssss. And here we FINALLY get a mutual “I love you” moment. Not gonna lie, they finally evoked emotion in me, and I let out a very sincere little “Yayyyy!!!” It was a nice moment, despite the setting and all the other sheer tomfoolery. They KISS. Tally for s10 so far: ONE. Still no sex. 

55:00-55:40 - Mickey trades a favor with a guard to get Ian a video phone call with Lip on an iPhone.

57:16-58:09 - Ian & Lip facetime and Ian meets his baby nephew. Apparently they named him Fred? Ok.

Episode Tally: 8 scenes. 11 mins 25 secs.

Note: No IxM in the previews. Sigh. Rumor has it they may not be in the ep at all. So lame. They’ll probly just throw them the tired-ass intro stunt. Have I sighed yet?

[comradesummers]

I’m curious about 1. Top 5 TV shows, 11. Top 5 female characters and 20. Top 5 overrated characters

Hi, thanks for asking!

Top 5 TV shows

(This list is based on my current mood, and will probably change tomorrow)

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 

Yeah, I know, what a shocker. It may be flawed, and old, and a little corny, but well, there’s a reason I dedicated a blog to it. No show means more to me than Buffy, and no show probably ever will.

2. Legends of Tomorrow

You know what, more shows need to be as batshit fucking crazy as Legends of Tomorrow is. More shows need to save the day via our main characters joining together to create a giant stuffed animal that hugs the bad guy to death. More shows need to give us killer unicorns, and sentient nipples, and hot girls with weapons who make out with each other.

Fuck the golden age of television, fuck everyone taking everything so goddamn seriously. Give me a pure, unadulterated, chaotic, drug-addled (I can only assume), queer, joyful, wonderful mess, and I will love and treasure it forever.

3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Look, it’s just really good. I don’t really have much to say, beyond just like, it’s great, and it has great songs, and great comedy, and great drama, and great acting, and great writing, etc. It’s not perfect, because nothing is, but I do genuinely believe that it’s one of the best uses of the medium of television that I’ve ever seen. If any show could make me buy into the golden age of television bullshit, it’s probably Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

4. One Day at a Time

So there’s this interview with Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce, where they talk about how the basic structure of any episode of the show, is that there is a topic at hand, whatever it may be, and then we hear the conservative argument (Lydia), the progressive argument (Elena), and the mediator (Penelope). And like, yeah, that’s it, that’s the show. In that sense it’s super reminiscent of Norman Lear’s work in the 70′s - All in the Family was also basically just one big argument.

So, in addition to everything that’s obviously incredible about the show (funny, well written, loving, the representation, Rita Moreno’s very existence being a gift to us all, etc.), there’s just something so brilliant about the simplicity of the basic premise, the argument about traditionalism vs. progress, which is made far more poignant and interesting because the characters are Cuban American. Lydia isn’t Archie Bunker, because her desire to preserve her traditions isn’t rooted in bigotry, it’s rooted in the culture that she was forced to leave behind. And Elena, as admirable as her quest for progress is, often fails to see the importance of preserving that culture (illustrated most obviously by the fact that she doesn’t speak Spanish). And although Penelope represents the middle ground, she isn’t always right either.

Everyone has a point, and that’s what makes each new conflict so fun to watch.

5. Queer Eye

Queer Eye makes me happy. It really is as simple as that. It has perfected the formula of bringing joy to the world, and I think that is a truly impressive feat.

Top 5 female characters

(I’m going to keep it to one character per show, because otherwise I'd be here all day. Also, again, this list is based on my current mood. It could change tomorrow.)

1. Buffy Summers 

Again, what a shocker. I don’t think I need to explain this one.

2. Elena Alvarez 

I really had to struggle to choose between Lydia, Penelope, and Elena, because I love all three of them so so much. But I went with Elena because she’s the person I aspire to be. She’s awkward, and weird, and struggles socially, and she’s not always right, but she also fights for what she believes in, actively. It’s not just about arguing with her grandmother, it’s about taking action, even if that action can be a little awkward and Elena-y. And well, seeing a character like her, who isn’t just the regular armchair activist young person that’s so common on TV, is really important and inspiring and I love her.

3. Rebecca Bunch 

She’s just kind of one of those characters that was iconic right out of the gate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character like Rebecca before, ever. And I haven’t seen any since honestly. It’s small stuff, like the fact that a character with Rachel Bloom’s body type is allowed to be aggressively sexual without being seen as disgusting or villainous for it. And it’s big stuff, like the portrayal of her mental illness, the fact that she was never written to be “likable” or whatever the fuck that means, but we loved her so much anyway. The show may have occasionally faltered, but Rebecca Bunch was always its center and its greatest achievement, and I will forever be grateful for her.

4. Regina Mills and Santana Lopez 

Yeah, I’m cheating, this one’s a tie. My justification for the cheating is that these two are in the same category for me, in terms of characters that I love, but I’m kind of ashamed of choosing because of their garbage source material. So yeah, it would probably be more accurate to say that I’ve chosen the fanfiction versions of both of these characters, but in my defense, the fics are a lot better than the shows they’re based on. Also, kudos to both of these actresses for somehow making these characters interesting in spite of the writing they had to work with.

5. Petra Solano 

Look, if it wasn’t already evident that I like type A control freaks, bonus points if they’re super fucked up, and extra bonus points if they’re into women, well it should be clear now. Petra in particular manages to walk the fine line of being easily the most tragic character of the show, and also easily one of the funniest, while also having one of the best redemption arcs I’ve ever seen. Idk how Grobglas and the writers managed to do all that, but it was really incredible to behold.

(I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to Veronica Mars, Amy Santiago, Rosa Diaz, Sara Lance, Zari Tomaz, and a bunch of other characters who have probably slipped my mind, all of whom would have made the list if I was in a different mood, or was currently obsessed with them. I love them all.)

Top 5 overrated characters

1. Wesley Wyndam Pryce

So, full disclosure, I’m just really not a fan of broody men who’s character development involves them being violent towards women and then brooding about it.

Wesley in particular, I get why people like him, he is a very well written and well acted example of this kind of character. But I’ve seen multiple people suggest that he’s the best character in the Buffyverse, and that drives me a little crazy. Like, no. Wesley becoming a broody asshole doesn’t make him a better character than Buffy or Willow or Cordelia or Gunn or Faith or anyone else, and I am so sick of that kind of broody man story being prioritized over every other kind of story.

2. Logan Echolls (please don’t kill me)

I actually like Logan, I think he’s a good character. I just wish the show, and subsequently the fandom, hadn’t prioritized his character over pretty much everyone else not named Veronica. But I do like him, to be clear.

3. Illyria (I’m so sorry)

Like really, I wish I liked her more. I guess it’s just because I was pissed they had to kill off Fred for Illyria, and she spent all of her time with Wesley, which didn’t do much to endear me to her. I guess maybe if she’d spent time with anyone else, I’d get why people like her, beyond Amy Acker being really good at her job. But she didn’t, and I just don’t get it.

I couldn’t think of a fourth and fifth one. As it turns out, I’m not a fan of the concept of something being overrated. All of the characters I named just aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re bad, they’re just not for me. And I don’t really like saying that people are wrong to like things. Plus, I just really couldn’t come up with anybody, and I really tried, I’m sorry.

[faakeid]

Can you recommend me some good tv shows or movies that get you hooked

Wow, I’m surprised to find a gem in my ask box, thank you for that anon~. I will separate the list by types of media (movie/TV series) so it can be easier to classify. 

And they will have different styles, so you can just look for something that fits your mood

TV Series

Sharp Objects: I love Amy Adams. She’s such a queen and the roles she gets are superb. This series is based on a book of the same name written by the author of Gone Girl. It’s about a journalist who has a lot of traumas and needs to go back to her hometown to report some murders that are happening there. The vibe of this series is really good. If you like mystery/suspense this is a good catch. Just has one season, so you can marathon it well (mystery/drama/suspense. TW to self harm).

Mindhunter: I really like serial killer stories and this is based in real life events. Basically it show how the perception we have now of serial killers started to exist, in terms of how now the police tries to understand the mind of the person. So we see a lot of real life serial killers portraited there and mixes of the main characters personal lives. I didn’t watch the second season yet, but the first one got me hooked well. It’s not fightening, but it may describe some unsettling scenes, so if you are sensitive just ignore this one;

100 Days of My Prince: I’m just enjoying the opportunity to mention this drama and I know I’m cheating but idc. I don’t care much about kdramas and I’m not recommending this just because Kyungsoo is in it. Far from it. I’m doing it because I started watching it at 2 pm and finished at 11 pm of the same day (with my hack techniques but ok) bc I just couldn’t stop. Loved the Woon Deuk/ Lee Yeol and Hongshim, the side characters, the villains, the plot. I admit the last episode was weak compared with the rest but not enough to not recommend this and want to watch it again. (mystery/romance/drama)

Dark: OMG THIS IS PERFECT. AMAZING. NO WORDS. If you love time traveling and just stuff that will mindfuck your brain, GIVE IT A CHANCE. I was traveling at the time I started to watch this masterpiece and I gave up many opportunities of sightseeing to watch the two seasons. Yes, it’s that good (mystery/time travel/mind fuck).

The Perfectionist: I’m recommending this more for the Pretty Little Liars nostalgia than because of it’s quality and because I got hooked by it. There’s also the book, but the series makes a link with PLL when they put Alison DiLaurentis as a main character. There’s some references, mystery, some romance too. A similar formula. But you can give it a try, it makes no harm (suspense/mystery/romance/drama/teen);

Banana Fish (ANIME): ok, I know it’s an anime but it has 24 episodes and a good story. It was designed by the same studio that did Yuuri on Ice and you can see the similarities on the drawing style. The characters are catchy, the plot instigates you to keep watching the next until the end. The second half of it didn’t please me TOO much, but it’s still really good. It mentions some heavy themes like minor prostitution, but I like the way this subject is shown. (action/mafia/drama).

MOVIES

Joker: because WHY NOT. This movie is just too good. Period. Could feel how raw Joaquin Phoenix was during his interpretation, the themes spoken without being sappy, the catharsis. Phenomenal even if you don’t like super hero movies. This isn’t even a super hero movie but ok.

Doukyuusei: it’s so sweet, so pure, it makes me want to fall in love every time. It’s an anime beautiful portraited and just beautiful, tender, soft. I recommend reading the manga that fills out a few blanks the movie has tho (anime/romance/”yaoi”).

The Lobster:  Really good. It’s a dystopic romance, which discuss about it and the lack of it. The messages it has touched my heart tenderly, it can be raw but beautifully raw. Loved it (drama/romance/dystopic);

Get Out: watched three times and it gives you an uncomfortable feeling you know? Of knowing that something will happen, something is wrong and nothing is right. Loved the acting and the way the tension is built (suspense/terror [sort of]);

Batman Begins: that will be the last superhero movie I recommend. I know everyone LOVES dark knight and I like it too, sort of. But everyone seems to sleep on Batman Begins???? Unacceptable. The atmosphere, how they built Bruce Wayne/Batman duality, Gothan being like a living being. It marked me more than the dark knight and you can see it became an inspiration to other movies that came after that (action/super hero).

Donnie Darko: one of my favorite movies of all time. Donnie is weird, but I think everyone can see a bit of themselves on him. The soundtrack is amazing, right gold from the 80s (weird/paralel universes).

American Psycho: a rich mothefucker is surrounded by other rich mothefuckers who compete between themselves to see who’s richer. What could go wrong? A classic and still have messages for us today without being whiny and political correct (terror/slasher/crazy shit).

Moulin Rouge: the last one because I want to give other options and this is an amazing musical/romance story. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman make such a couple here it warms and hurts my soul every time. 

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

“Another Life” Review: Another Hour of Mine I Won’t Get Back

One of the good things about Netlix (particularly compared to traditional TV channels) is that its ability to deliver a wide variety of content simultaneously allows it to experiment with things that might not have wider appeal. This is particularly important where genre fiction is concerned, because you can’t rely on formula to develop something genuinely good in that area. Who’d have thought that a ‘cursed object’ story set exclusively in the art world where everyone talks like they’re delivering a devastating Gustav Klimt review would turn out to be one of the best horror movies of recent years? And yet Velvet Buzzsaw blew me away and gave me a reason not to give up on western culture completely. Likewise, who expected a revenge saga about classical music with (at most) one or two truly graphic scenes to be the most gut-wrenching and powerful psychological thrillers of recent years? Yet The Perfection was one of the only truly transcendent films I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. The same goes for series- it’s hard to imagine that an overwhelming blend of surreal and dystopian imagery, hard-to-grasp technological concepts, semi-obscure literary references, needlessly brutal violence, gleeful depravity, whip-smart humour and a borderline-sociopath with a Hello Kitty rucksack would ever be aired on a proper channel. Altered Carbon, however, turned out to be one of the best sci-fi series of the last decade, missing the top spot only thanks to the existence of Rick and Morty.

The reason I’ve started with all this gushing praise, however, is merely to provide context and a necessary counterbalance to the excoriating review that follows. For you see, an ability to deliver niche or experimental content can lead to abject failures as well as shining successes. For every underrated gem, there must be a meticulously-polished turd waiting to ambush the unsuspecting connoisseur. Ladies and gentlemen, Another Life is that turd.

On paper, Another Life sounds like good, solid sci-fi. A starship captain has to travel across the universe to ascertain whether an alien race that recently dropped probes on Earth is hostile or just curious. Along the way, her journey will be complicated by a crew who’s used to working under a different captain with a radically different style of leadership and all the usual, real-life-plausible dangers of travel through uncharted space (along with a few blatantly made-up ones). It’s not a terrible idea, but every bad creative decision that could be made is made and so the whole things collapses like a poorly-made soufle before the end of episode one.

For a start, let’s talk about the show’s aesthetics and visual decisions. the CG budget clearly wasn’t huge (which is fine), but the show tries to realise as many of its effects as possible using CG anyway, which stretches that minimal budget far too thin and draws attention to how artificial and contrived everything looks. For example, the decision to make the alien probes on Earth giant shimmering walls of crystal that can only be realised through CG is particularly baffling, given that they could just have been big fuck-off metal things that could have been physically built as a set. Meanwhile, the show‘s overall look is... well, bland. If you’ve seen literally any space sci-fi before, you’ve seen the individual elements of the tech in Another Life. I think it’s aiming for Archetypal, but it just looks lazy. It doesn’t help that they liberally borrow terminology from other sci-fi. I know that ‘Impulse Engine’ is technically (probably) the correct name for a slower-than-light engine that works in a particular way, but calling your space engines that just invites comparisons to Star Trek, which won’t be favourable. Back to the point, though: in addition to cribbing heavily from superior shows, Another Life also makes everything look far too smooth and clean. A spaceship is a working vehicle filled with people doing dangerous, difficult, often dirty jobs. Its interior shouldn’t look like an iPhone fucked a trendy west-end bar. Seriously, the ‘future’ set in fucking Crystal Maze looks more convincing.

The problem of everything seeming too smooth and clean extends beyond the visuals and into the casting. Practically everyone in the core cast is in their early twenties. They’re not bad actors, necessarily, but they clearly need older, more experienced hands around them to guide their performances and the absence of these more seasoned actors is felt acutely. There’s a reason why mature sci-fi shows usually cast across a broad age range- you’re asking your cast to deal with conceptual and scientific abstractions that can be challenging for people who don’t have a few performances under their belt. It also feels wildly implausible that a dangerous space-mission would feature a bunch of hormonal twenty-somethings who’s personal drama might get in the way of them making clever decisions. The main lass (whose name I’ve already forgotten), is played by a noticeably older woman. Indeed, that age difference is a big part of her character: can she win the trust and respect of the young hotheads? Unfortunately, one older actress does not a seasoned cast make. Besides, the character she’s playing just isn’t worth rooting for. It’s not that she’s a terrible person- she’s coldly aloof, but so was Picard and everyone loves that dude. It’s just that she has no depth. She has a family back on Earth, and we’re told that she’s missing them and trying to ensure the mission’s success so she can see them again, but the supposed internal conflict has no effect on her behaviour. She just goes about robotically calculating and minimising risk, even though doing so ensures that she’s going to be in space, away from her loved ones, for much, much longer. Within the narrative of the show, she’s making the correct, mature decisions, but shouldn’t they be causing her some introspective strife? No? Yes? Does this fucking show care one way or the other?

Of course, janky characters and budget set designs are kind of par for the cause with sci-fi of a certain type. Sometimes it can be endearing (the fact that the sets literally wobbled sometimes in early Doctor Who was part of its charm, for example). A much bigger problem is Another Life’s total lack of narrative logic. The main character (no I still can’t remember her name, nor be bothered to check) managed to get ten people killed the last time she was in charge of a starship. Surely that’s the point at which you politely ask someone to retire? Even if there were mitigating circumstances (which there probably were because showing fallibility in its lead is not something this show feels comfortable with), why on Earth would anyone put her in charge of a crew of emotional 20-somethings she’s never met before while their previous, trusted captain is still on the fucking ship and clearly feeling mutinous? That’s just bad management on behalf of planet Earth’s top brass. I can only hope that someone in HR got the sack for that one. Or, better yet, that a giant hammer will spontaneously fall out of the sky and hit this show’s script-writer so hard in the head that he loses control of his motor functions and bowels and is forced to retire to a convalescent home for the incontinent.

The captain’s own decision making processes are just as baffling as her bosses. There’s a bit where the crew figures out that they can get back on course and cut down on journey time by slingshotting around a slightly temperamental star using the same shielding they use when traveling at FTL (yeah- FTL space travel is a common thing in this universe, yet humans have somehow never met another alien race before- make of that what you will). They already tried to slingshot round the star once and were forced to abort and break orbit because of the strain on the ship. The plan has an 89% chance of success. The 11% chance of failure doesn’t equate to instant death or anything- logically, it just means the shield would fail and they’d have to break orbit again (because that’s what happened before: remember that we’ve already established that slingshotting around the star doesn’t do anything worse than rattle the ship and give everyone plenty of time to back off). For some reason, Captain Caution decides that the high chance of success, negligible risk of serious repercussions and massive potential benefits just aren’t good enough and vetoes the plan, thereby adding months to the voyage. Isn’t establishing whether the new, technologically superior alien neighbours are friendly or not something of a time-critical op, by the way? Naturally, the crew mutiny (under the leadership of the previous captain), try their plan and it fails miserable.

And there’s the final nail in the coffin for Another Life. It doesn’t play by its own rules. Its established that the FTL shields can’t use much power, because they’re on all the fucking time during FTL. It’s established that nothing particularly terrible happens when you try to slingshot round a star and have to abort. It’s established that combining those two facts to get a speed boost has an 89% chance of success. And yet, when the crew try it without the Captain’s express permission, bits of the ship start to explode, everything goes to shit and the vessel ends up in a decaying orbit around the sun, somehow drained of power. The show’s in such a hurry to show that it’s main character is right and correct and noble in everything she does that it forgets rules it laid down literally five minutes earlier.

The whole shoddy shebang has a weirdly patronising and conservative ethos. “Listen to your elders and official superiors”, it whispers smugly. “They always know best, even when they’re responsible for the deaths of ten or more people in the quite recent past. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t try to improve your situation. The old, safe ways of doing things are always best, even when they seem neurotic or unworkable.” It’s weird, because it’s the exact opposite problem that sci-fi normally has. Normally, sci-fi tries so hard to be forward-looking that you end up with a bunch of wide-eyed fuckwits trusting the power of friendship and love over a more measured, carefully-planned approach. Both sides of the coin are equally annoying since they involve sacrificing the internal logic of the fictional universe on the alter of Some Hack’s personal ethos. However, Another Life earns my full, unmitigated disapprobation, not just a mild slap on the wrist, because it doesn’t even bother to be a good sci-fi show before jumping into the message-mongering bullshit. Remember, all this shit is from episode one. My advice to those of you craving some hard space sci-fi is to re-watch Nightflyers instead. It’s weird as balls, well-scripted, has a properly-established set of hard sci-fi rules and there’s even a romantic subplot involving the hologramatic projection of a hideous mutant. Yeah. Go watch that instead. I think I might, too, come to think of it.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Comparing Season 6 and Season 10 - which one do you think makes more sense as a whole, which one better pulls of seeming like what happened/was revealed at the end of the season is what was supposed to happen/was planned all along?

I may be biased, but for me, season 6 by miles. And almost all of that is Edlund desperately cramming everything that had happened so far into something that either made sense or handwaved why it didn’t make sense in an effectively emotional enough episode that by the end of TMWWBK you sort of feel like you’ve actually got your answers and Cas has been completely honest and open with YOU at least, making it that much easier to handle what was going on. 

I think for me season 10 was poorly handled in ways that weren’t particularly well addressed and the only offered explanation ever was “oh it was Amara after all” which in the context of season 11 gives us some more characterisation to begin to pull things together, though without addressing everything. Still if we’re dealing with things as a whole, season 10 doesn’t have an episode that scrapes everything together in the post-Edlund era and what we get only within the confines of season 10 is extremely unsatisfactory, even if later canon eases it a little bit, along with just… not being actively in SPN season 10 as it airs :P 

Going off my memories of being in the fandom at the time, we had a lot of issues with things like 

Dean’s incomplete demon reversal (so far as in 10x02, written by Dabb who invented the cure repeating the correct steps, then in 10x03 Buckleming not following through with them)

“the river ends at the source” “never mind I was screwing with you”

Did Cain still have the Mark after 9x11? lasting drama until 10x14, and still debated afterwards especially by people who had thought he didn’t have the Mark and had passed it entirely to Dean now being very confused  

What the fuck was this about Lucifer having the Mark and how did that last minute addition affect everything? 

the Colette parallel being wildly mis-applied by fandom but also issues with the show’s fear to explore it leading to “we are all the colette” episodes with lasting drama until 10x22, where Charlie, Sam and Cas all variously and persistently seemed to be suggested to be capable of being a team effort to pull Dean out of the darkness. 10x22 also wasn’t enough to stop Dean, and the final confrontation was with Sam, I think a general consensus was - especially again with season 11′s help - that the memory of Mary drew him back/unleashed Amara metaphorically who unleashed Mary literally - it wasn’t a great note to end on without season 11 context (as a whole, so, like, a whole YEAR later) that Sam had “won” the battle to bring Dean back from himself where Cas had failed, and the subtext and show and fandom most of all had made SUCH a huge deal out of Colette, after 9x11 over-told her story instead of retelling Cain & Abel, that it was set up with the expectation that saving Dean was a romantic quest, not a brotherly one. 10x14 sort of helped set things to rights with the list, but the fighting about what it all meant at the time was AWFUL, and though I think I was right and the show bore that out and these days I type it all with confidence, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of buried wank about it that could be dragged out if we want >.>

the fact there wasn’t really an overarcing Mark of Cain plot except “Dean is suffering” with the only 3 actual plot points they could do with it being demon!Dean, kill Cain, and remove Mark. Because of that, everything else is literally set-dressing to fill the time and add drama in between, but these were played with poorly and there wasn’t any subterfuge we weren’t in on (i.e. sam stealing the book) vs Cas betraying both the Winchesters and US. The only retcon offered in the end was Death’s exposition about the Darkness.

people literally forgetting which order episodes came out in and being very confused about why Amara wasn’t released when Dean was 14 in 10x12 even though he didn’t kill Cain for 2 more episodes (like, within weeks of 10x14 airing, I swear)

the understandable disappearance of Cole but bizarre application of that hunter called Rudy who popped up in his place and featured in 10x23 along with Cas for Dean’s guilt trip. Even if Cole and TAW sucked ass, it’s much easier to understand the emotional impact of what happened to Rudy if you assume he has the exact same backstory as Cole and the same nonsense happened to Dean twice in the same year :P 

Pre-season hype about Rowena made a huge deal out of the Grand Coven, and for a brief moment it seemed like there might be a witch plotline, including new lore dumps about different types of witches in 10x07, characters like Olivette the Hamster, etc, but they squandered her first season and 10x19 was as close as we got to any pay off to her actual storyline

Then Oskaar happened and that was like ??? Okay just introduce him in the second to last episode and throw us into that emotional situation 

the entire cure coming out of nowhere as a random last minute macguffin instead of having been anything they put together over the season - even though the book of the damned thing showed up in 10x11 it changed substantially from the clue Charlie left with (a less than 100 year old book with a library reference number found on an antique rare book website, based on a real book, which we all picked over and were left wondering if the plot was to be about some sort of occultism thing as a result) to a much different lore. Then there were a few episodes dealing with it and the codex, the actual spell had no real struggle, and Crowley delivered all the pieces while Cas stood around scowling and Rowena stood around in chains eye-rolling. Compare season 13′s pacing with Sam and Dean cobbling together what they needed from halfway through the season, and being on the mission to get to the AU from episode 9, with relatively little of the endless sitting around googling and being frustrated of past seasons but ESPECIALLY season 10 where Sam was futilely trawling the results of googling “mark of cain” from mid-late season 9 through to like, 10x18 when an actual brief plot appeared around it directly. 

I think all of it points to a problem of working forwards from where they were instead of backwards to tidy up what was left. In season 6 Edlund took as many loose plot threads, from how Sam lost his soul, what was up with Crowley and Cas, the angel war, explanations for Sam and Samuel working together, why eve happened, everything, and put it all together to explain the elements of the season so far in a new light. Despite how disastrous that season was, PRETENDING you knew like you meant to do it all along glosses over inconsistencies in Samuel’s story or Cas and Crowley’s 6x10 interactions, and makes them relatively inconsequential when most of the details add up. 

The same thing works with the Lucifer as Sam’s vessel storyline, in the sense that while Azazel’s plan is fucking ridiculous in its over-complex bizarre attempt to find a worthy true vessel that Heaven had fated, comparing season 1-2 to season 5 head on is bad, each season explains itself from the last in enough of a way and with enough knowledge of what already happened that really despite vast inconsistencies in the lore, by 5x22 we are pretty much all on board to accept the way it all played out because they use what was previously written to build up Sam’s arc, and little details thrown in towards the end like Brady and then Lucifer revealing ALL of Sam’s closer rando peeps had been demons, tidy up more and more loose ends and there’s left with plausible deniability about a lot of the issues.

In season 10 they kept on introducing elements instead of working with what they had already established, and also discarded what seemed like major plot hooks for Rowena and Cole, one annoyingly, one completely metatextually understandably and fuck TAW, I’m glad the show never brought Cole back as soon as rumours of him groping fans appeared, and it makes me genuinely trust that the SPN set is a safe place. But yeah. 

Things they set up and could have worked with, were the Cas’s grace arc, which was resolved to a small personal satisfaction to Cas without any major plot impact except we could stop worrying about when Cas would get sick and die from bad grace, or steal more. 

The demon!Dean issue was bad writing from Buckleming re: was he still a demon or not, but given Dean was supposed to be struggling with succumbing to darkness the season actually kept him almost completely level without any significant relapses, even after killing Cain. The sense of needing a functional Dean Winchester to keep hunting monsters and prop up the show as both the carrier of the mytharc, the emotional core, and the go-between between Sam and Cas even when the show was trying to figure out if Sam and Cas could function without Dean, it was all still so much about Dean that in 10x21 when they’re doing the cringeworthy “for Dean” thing and Rowena rolls her eyes like “I barely know the man”, I was actually applauding Buckleming snark thinking they maybe briefly had a handle on how ridiculous Dean’s position in the narrative was. (Listen, this was the last 10 minutes of my innocence about how awful Buckleming could be, leave past!me alone. She’s sweet and precious and not bitter :P) In any case, a more effective season would have utilised him more to slip and slide between light and dark and explore it in much deeper detail, but balancing that with a procedural formula doesn’t work as well and they were lacking enough philosophers on staff. I think the Dabb era writing team could handle it, because Yockey, Perez, and Glynn especially, who seems to have a psychology background based on her writing, all have a sharp attention to the exact things in emotional arcs that would have made it work better, even just as it was. Since this was a weaker writing team where Robbie, Bobo and Dabb episodes were little islands of excellence and the motw were fun but more shallow even with strong foreshadowing themes, it just didn’t pay off. 

I think the biggest waste of time was “the river ends at the source” which was either Buckleming trying to introduce a concept and hoping someone else dealt with it, or an agreed plot hook which never materialised, or Metatron literally spoke the truth, that the line had only ever been written to mess with us. However 10x23 could have actually included more of a “river ends at the source” sort of slant and had Death confirm it in so many words because Amara really did sort of seem to be the answer to the question. In 10x10 it seemed like they knew where the season was going, but by 10x17 it was obvious they DIDN’T, and it was during 10x18 that the plot actually got hashed out and Robbie was handed heavy revisions to make to change the Stynes to end of season villains and the Book of the Damned was going to be used how it was. I think this is really weak plotting, as someone who always puts in fun lines and then attempts like crazy to pay off on them. My first novel has the line “you can’t talk to me yet” and I play through that the whole book until they CAN talk and make it a major motif, goal and in the end try to explain it as best I can about how it’s all plot relevant and why using that for tension to put off the explanations and such was a valid thing to throw at my main character, and then the springboard to more adventure when she was ready for it. I literally do not understand putting a portentous line into your story, and not becoming desperately eager to answer it or twist something into revealing how it all fits at the end, if not basing your entire story off of it. Sam and Dean seemed wildly uncurious about how to apply that or what it means. 

In season 6 one of the more frustrating things is the “it’s all about the souls” line because Dean fails to investigate until someone or other rolls their eyes and makes it all clear to him. But we get a few more reminders in Cas’s presence, until we find out his plan, and Crowley repeats that line in 6x20 when making his sales pitch to Cas, if I’m remembering rightly (I hope so :/) and so despite Dean’s infuriating lack of investigation (not that he had a great deal of leads, but still - you could build a plot around it by GIVING him a lead, he’s the fictional character and you’re the writer :P) at the very least they repeat the motif in at least 6x17 and 6x20 to my memory, before the souls thing becomes a lot more obvious about Cas taking the purgatory souls and we’re allowed to actually discuss what he’s up to instead of the vague hints Atropos and Rachel give that they know his plans. 6x07 also hints early on that Purgatory is full of monster souls if you add it all up - the writers knew they were doing SOMETHING with this even if it took to the end of the season for it to all come together. (And that’s something that’s clearly and overarcing plot that Gamble oversaw because she wrote 6x11 and the line then appears in multiple episodes around the place, so that’s not just something Edlund tidied up but an actual effort to write the season well.)

Throwing aside the “river ends at the source” line is wildly frustrating because it wouldn’t have been too hard to apply it thematically and even keep Metatron being a douche while giving the viewer a pay off anyway for our own satisfaction, by showing it had been a theme all along anyway. You CAN squint at season 10 and analyse it through that lens but it’s exhausting when the show doesn’t give us the themes on a platter. It also shows that the plotting is careless and they’re experimenting, and rather than working with what they have, this is in a path of episodes where they’re discarding some plotlines, and we’re beginning to have end of season plotlines hastily pasted onto the end of the season, but they make very little of any of the work already done to build up the season as we’d seen it so far.

Add onto that Charlie being murdered for manpain to motivate some things into action and all the random elements being used, and the sense that Crowley, Cas and Rowena all abruptly ran out of a plotline that had been intended to utilise them and put on a side character duty away from Sam and Dean, the season is extremely messily and carelessly written, and without any real attention to detail to its own themes and characters and plotlines. Even if they’d gone into the season not particularly expecting where to go, they brought a lot to the table early on but then quickly wiped a lot of it off, and brought a lot more stuff to the table instead, which makes season 10 a really wonky, unfinished feeling product as a thing on its own, and the overall story is scrappy and carelessly plotted.

And that is speaking just about the easy plot stuff without getting into the absolute mess of speculation from the Destiel side of fandom wondering wtf was going on with the seeming build up to crypt scenes, colette, the grace cure, etc, that made up the bulk of the speculation but makes actually analysing expectations vs presented product completely impossible to evaluate on that side of things because as always Destiel speculation really overshoots what is expected and was really running wild at that point. I mean, not being judgemental because that was the year I was right in the thick of it. 3 years clear of it now, some of it seems really silly, but those 3 things all seemed clearly built up to our eyes, and we got the reverse crypt scene we’d been expecting since before the season started, and we got the Colette reference which slotted Cas firmly into place as a reminder of how Cain’s peeps lined up against Dean’s, as well as Cas asking Dean to stop, which satisfied the terms and conditions of Dean resisting walking in Cain’s footsteps with the overall set up of the scene. With the way Cas got his grace back and then some other rando cure popped up where Rowena of all people made the sacrifice, I really can’t help feeling like the conspiracy theorist who knows they were right but with the way it all shook out, only people who knew the conspiracy would understand how it didn’t happen and it’s very hard for me to look at that and say that some non-Cas-related cure was coming all along, given the conspicuous dropping of one plotline sort of day of picking up the next >.> But I’ll cede that from my position I might be a bit compromised on that one. 

Anyways. To me season 10 is a disaster that only season 11 really justifies, while season 6 has some truly low points but in the end the actual writing skill hauls it through so that it creates the illusion that there was consistency, if you ignore everything outside of the text suggesting it may have been as poorly planned as season 10. Planning isn’t everything - it’s what you do when confronted with the unplanned wire tangle in front of you that really marks how well they were written, and just shoving it under the table and putting a new wire tangle down vs actually unpicking it and making them as neat as possible? Gamble slam dunks Carver :P

[lapsa-lapsa]

Rob James-Collier: Oh, You Handsome Devil!

As Downton Abbey's hot gay villain, Rob James-Collier finds love -- and redemption.

BY

AARON HICKLIN

THU, 2013-01-03 09:04

Photography by David Bailey

Styling by Julian Ganio

Last March, when The New Yorker’s Ian Crouch declared an “epidemic of Downton Abbey fever,” he wasn’t wrong. The show has been nothing short of a phenomenon, a runaway success for dowdy old PBS, far outpacing in ratings that other popular period drama, Mad Men. It’s a classic tale of love and fortune with a fundamental mystery at its core, namely: How can something this schlocky be this good? Maybe it has something to do with its formula, equal parts high class to high camp (yes, Dame Maggie Smith, we’re looking at you); or its bucolic English setting; or, more likely, its blatant appeal to our closeted hankering for a butler fully versed in the art of decanting vintage port. After all is said and done, who has not wished that they, too, could be in the position to declare, like the Dowager Countess with her imperious mix of disdain and perplexity, “What is a week-end?”

Indeed, what is a weekend without Downton Abbey to cozy up with on Sunday nights? And here it is, back again to keep winter from the door—season 3, and with it the Roaring Twenties to blow away the agony of war and the insult of rationing. Expect flappers and the Charleston, and a Marcel wave or two.

Let me come clean: I haven’t seen a preview of season 3 -- in my home that would be cheating; it’s what we still call appointment TV -- but I have it on great authority that this is the season in which that villainous gay footman-turned-valet, Thomas Barrow, experiences the tender love that his poor, neglected heart so craves and needs. It’s about time. His dalliance with the Duke of Crowborough in the opening episode of season 1 turned out to be a tease. He ended season 2 in the arms of the Dowager Countess, twirling around the dance floor at the Christmas party like a neuter content to spend his prime escorting ladies of a certain age to the ball.

We should have known that creator and writer Julian Fellowes would not disappoint. Season 3 is where it all changes for young Thomas. And for us, too. Although there clearly were gay men in Edwardian England, they’ve been in scant supply on television. There was, of course, Sebastian and Charles in Brideshead Revisited, whose “naughtiness [was] high on the catalogue of grave sins,” as Evelyn Waugh wrote, but they merely hinted at what happened when the lights were off. Thomas promises to go somewhat further. It’s what makes Downton Abbey feel, well, modern.

No one, of course, is more excited by this turn of events than Rob James-Collier, the actor who secured the role of Thomas with the understanding that it was a one-season deal. “My agent said, ‘Listen, you’ve got the part that everyone in town wants—he’s a villain, he’s a great role, the only bad thing is that he dies at the end of the first series,’ ” recalls James-Collier. But Thomas clicked with the audience, and his on-screen chemistry with his maid counterpart, O’Brien (a wonderfully surly Siobhan Finneran), was irresistible. “I gave it 110 percent, and after the first couple of episodes, Liz, the producer, came to me and said, ‘We want you to stay on. Will you?’ And I was, like, ‘Fuck, yeah.’ ”

We are in Bloomsbury, London, sitting in a tiny French patisserie hardly big enough to contain James-Collier’s boundless energy. When he walks in, he immediately begins by quoting lines from articles of mine that he’s found online. It’s discombobulating. Research is my job. At another point, he puts me on the phone with a friend summoned to serve as a character reference. I feel like a luckless audience member at a comedy show, plucked from the front row as a volunteer for a gag. When I accidentally insert a “Smith” into his surname (it’s that damn hyphenate), he is gleeful as hell. “Aaron has got my name wrong, and he’s now floundering, trying to think of it,” he dictates into my recorder.

That double-barreled name, incidentally, was not his choice. He grew up in Salford, near Manchester, as plain Rob Collier, and might have stayed that way had actors union Equity not intervened to avoid confusion with another Rob Collier. “I said, ‘Can I have Rob James Collier, and they said, ‘Yeah, if you hyphenate it,�� and I said, ‘Well, can I have Rob-James Collier?’ and they said -- and this is true -- ‘No, you have to hyphenate the James and the Collier.’ ” He wasn’t happy. In England, hyphenated surnames are for posh people. “I was, like, ‘That sounds like someone from the aristocracy, as if I’m being somebody I’m not.’ But they insisted,” he recalls ruefully. In Britain, still today, there’s little more disreputable than the man or woman who puts on the airs and graces of the upper class.

I went to school with boys like James-Collier. You probably did, too. They are the entertainers and comedians, who laugh at their own pratfalls. What they lack in confidence they make up for in banter. It’s no surprise to hear that James-Collier is the joker on set, and the one with the loudest mouth. “Most actors are really shy and insular creatures,” he explains. “I’ve just always been a dick.” He remembers his first day at acting class (he found it by consulting the Yellow Pages), and realizing that he’d liberated himself. “We were doing these warm-up exercises, running around doing crazy things with our voices, and, rather than feeling stupid, I just felt that I’d come home,” he says. He was working as a marketing assistant at the time, “listening to Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon -- great album, bad album to listen to if you’re in a rut, ticking away the hours that make up a dull day.” Watching Ricky Gervais’s masterwork, The Office, compounded his sense of futility. “It was my office,” he says. “I thought, I can’t do this for the rest of my life, surely?”

Oddly, that is the same dilemma facing Thomas Barrow, shackled to servitude as a footman at Downton Abbey, always looking for an opportunity to elevate his station in life -- and failing. His pitiful efforts to establish a black market in rationed goods during season 2 spoke volumes about the limitations confronting Britain’s working class in the Edwardian era. It’s moments like those that save Downton Abbey from being merely an exercise in sumptuous costume porn.

If you grew up in Britain, as I did, the world of Downton Abbey is a familiar one, conjured in an endless parade of finely wrought television shows, which we send across the oceans like telegraphs from our gilded past. Some of them, like 1981’s 11-hour miniseries, Brideshead Revisited, which introduced Jeremy Irons to the world, or 1995’s six-episode serialization of Pride and Prejudice, which did the same for Colin Firth, strike gold. Few, however, receive quite the rapturous reception of Downton Abbey. The reason, perhaps, is fairly simple: Although Downton wears the clothes (and production values) of quality drama, it has the soul of a soap opera. As my boyfriend likes to say, it’s very efficient, meaning that things happen at lightning speed. Resolutions come thick and swift, which is all part of the pleasure.

Fellowes himself takes credit for modernizing the format by borrowing his style from U.S. shows like The West Wing, but it’s also that the concerns of the show are discernibly our concerns, albeit in Edwardian costume. For James-Collier, “Downton Abbey is a workplace like any other. You’re going to get cliques of people who don’t like each other -- Thomas and O’Brien versus Bates and Anna -- and you’re going to get people who really love doing their jobs and people who are bitter and feel they’re just a number. It’s about relationships in the workplace environment, and people can identify with that because the same problems and political conflicts you have in work today were relevant back then.”

Coincidentally or otherwise, almost all the actors who play servants in Downton Abbey got their start in English soap operas -- gritty exercises in social realism, fully rooted in working-class culture. The oldest of those shows, Coronation Street -- set in Manchester -- has run continuously for 52 years, and nurtured generations of acting talent. James-Collier arrived on the series in 2006, as  “loveable rogue” Liam Connor, and stayed for two years before deciding he wanted to take on a different kind of challenge.

“It’s a great, brilliant show, but you have to make a decision,” he says. “I’m not knocking anyone for going that way [of soap operas] -- you can get security, and God knows we need that, but I think you’re limited then in terms of your options as an actor.” After Coronation Street, he was out of work for 15 months, waiting for the right thing to come along. “I watched people who had left these kinds of shows and had seen what happened,” he says. “So I knew you had to literally put the shutters down and just pray and hope that something would come along, and when the wolves were near the door, Downton Abbey came.”

James-Collier has joked that his character’s sexuality became so muted in season 2 that he called up Fellowes and asked, “Am I still gay?” Yes, it turns out. In season 3, we get to see Thomas outed in a powerful sequence of episodes that James-Collier considers the best acting of his career. “It’s the series where we really comes to grips with Thomas’s sexuality and the impact being gay must have had on him, in Edwardian times,” he says. “If you’re including a gay character, there’s an onus and responsibility to at least show what the impact of the time will be on him, and of him on that time. Thankfully we’ve done that, and I’m so proud that I’ve been used to tell that tale.”

A confrontation between Thomas and the butler, Mr. Carson, proves to be a high point, and one that confers uncommon dignity on the footman. “It’s a lovely, beautiful moment,” says James-Collier, clearly delighted by the opportunity to redeem his character. “If you were gay in those times, the fact that you’re even functioning, how you’re not completely fucked up by that, is beyond me.”

Although not gay in real life, he says he has empathy for misfits and outsiders, perhaps because of his own atypical route to acting. Even now it’s clear that he can’t quite believe that he’s earned his place as an actor. He recalls sitting opposite Maggie Smith during the first read-through (“a proper pinch-yourself moment”) and feeling that everything out of his mouth sounded like wooden splinters. It can’t be easy playing the least lovable character on the show. When she arrived on set, guest star Shirley MacLaine greeted him with the words, “It’s you -- the evil one! Why are you so evil?” The answers, apparently, are all in season 3. “With O’Brien and Thomas, you’ve got these two forces, and it’s a kind of paradox -- they work for this great house that keeps them off the streets and from starving, and yet they absolutely despise the system they’re in, because there’s no other option,” he says. “In a weird way Thomas wants to bring down the system, but if he did he’d be putting himself out of a job and a home.”

As he was talking, I remembered something: My own grandmother, now 92, had started her working life “in service” as they say, at the age of 14, still a child herself. That would have been in the 1930s -- the same era as Julian Fellowes other big country–house hit, Gosford Park, for which he won a best original screenplay Oscar in 2002. At the time my grandmother went into service, her father was ill and her mother was struggling to hold things together. “It was an awful wrench to leave my sisters and brothers at home, but it was one less pair of shoes under the table,” she explains when I ask about her experiences. My grandmother, a country girl, didn’t work in the big house (as one of her sisters did), but for a doctor’s family, where she was excruciatingly lonely.

“I think that’s the reason I got married so young -- to get out of it,” she says. “I did all the cooking and all the cleaning, and had one half day off a week, and a whole day off once a month.”

“No weekends, then?” I ask.

“Oh, there were no weekends,” she says, conjuring Maggie Smith’s glorious bafflement in season 1. It is to Downton Abbey’s credit that this stark double meaning isn’t entirely lost on the audience, or that the disparity between those upstairs and those downstairs isn’t varnished into oblivion. It’s left to us to imagine how people of O’Brien’s resourcefulness or Thomas’s ambition would fare in our own age, but one thing’s certain—they wouldn’t be spending their weekends polishing the silver.

https://www.out.com/entertainment/television/2013/01/03/rob-james-collier-downton-abbey

[rieshon]

Winter 2017 Power Rankings

Pretty late with this but what else is new.

1 Gabriel Dropout: A classic cute girls doing cute things comedy courtesy of none other than the comedy god himself Oota Masahiko. As you might expect from an Oota/Douga Koubou production, the show is pretty similar to Yuruyuri in tone. Satanya is already going down as one of the best girls of the year. This might be a surprising AOTS pick for some, but in the end, comfiness wins out over all else.

2 Youjo Senki: An incredibly smart war drama, maybe actually too smart because my illiterate ass had a hard time following some of the political chicanery going on at times. Nonetheless, Youjo Senki makes itself stand out in a crowded field of 'fantasy WW2' works with both the verisimilitude of its plot and its cynical view of warfare and humanity viewed through the lens of the brilliant protagonist, for whom Yuuki Aoi puts in in my opinion the best performance of her entire career.

3 Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2: Yep, it's Konosuba. I haven't posted by Best of 2016 yet because I'm a lazy shit, but there's a reason this series came in in the top five. It's still a sharp and witty takedown of the isekai tensei genre as ever with some of the best comedic writing I've seen in an anime. Hai, Kazuma desu.

4 Kobayashi-sanchi no Maidragon: Are Kyoani finally getting their sea legs back? I know some people didn't really like the second season of Euphonium, but for me it marks two consecutive really good shows from the once vaunted studio who have been in a four year long slump. Maidragon is finally a throwback to the days when Kyoani made the best cute girls doing cute things anime -- if you ignore the terrible final episode there's no shitty melodrama to be found here, just cute dragons and a cute Kobayashi. Also, Kanna.

5 Little Witch Academia: The much ballyhooed LWA finally gets a TV anime and, as expected, it's pretty good. Yoshinari You's love of Western animation is clearly on display in this series, even if it's not as pronounced as his most famous example, Panty & Stocking. The result is a unique visual style and overall feel to the series that comes across as a kind of East-West fusion... Chumlee from Pawn Stars even makes a cameo appearance.

6 Urara Meirochou: The latest Kirara anime unfortunately seemed to get lost in the shuffle this season. Despite a great cast of girls and a flawless production courtesy of J.C.Staff, it seemed like Gabriel beat it at its own game while delivering better comedy, and this show ended up being overlooked. It's not the best Kirara anime by any means, but it has a unique premise, an interesting look, and actually even an interesting story -- the idea that divination is actually a mystical and potentially dangerous art is played up very well and adds a neat twist to the standard Kirara formula.

7 Akiba's Trip -The Animation-: A show by nerds, for nerds. Okay, I know the Mizaki Man says that's all anime nowadays, and he's right to a degree, but Akiba's Trip is really a show about being an otaku, and not in the shallow way that a million shows about dudes who play video games are. Akiba's Trip, surprisingly not all about stripping clothes off girls, is actually all about that feeling of discovering something new and then throwing your body and soul into it because, damn it, it's just so cool. I couldn't help but grin at every episode because it really captures so well that feeling of nerdy obsession, the kind that you pursue to the point of regret, that we've all experienced.

8 Piace ~Watashi no Italian~: A really cute short that needed to be a full length anime. Cooking shows are a dime a dozen nowadays and Piace doesn't really do anything unique, but what can I say, the character art is really good, and it has a comfy tone.

9 Demi-chan wa Kataritai: This is a show you would think I would like more, but despite Hikari's cuteness it didn't really click with me. Hikari's faces aside, I think the character designs really left something to be desired for me. Honestly, I'm not sure I really even liked anything in the show that much outside of Hikari and her relationship with sensei.

10 Kuzu no Honkai: I expect this is going to be a pretty polarizing show. I've seen rave reviews gushing about how it handles adolescent sexuality, blah blah, etc. For me, it was kind of a miserable experience filled with awful people who really needed a hobby other than trying to fuck each other's boyfriends all the time. Do people really have this much drama in high school? The drama was compelling at first, but the 64-dimensional love chess got to the point where my suspension of disbelief was being strained. At least it was lewd.

11 One Room: Speaking of lewd... I guess you would call this an experimental anime, because I've never seen anything like it before. Another one I'm sure that will be polarizing; I know some people hated this for being too weird but first person romance with a 2D loli is all I could ask for in life. The first heroine was really week, but the Rieshon girl was godlike.

12 Schoolgirl Strikers Animation Channel: Something about this show kept me watching it all the way through the end and I'm glad I did. Was it the high quality lewd character art from J.C.Staff? The surprisingly wacky sense of humor that shines through in some truly quality gag episodes? Saitou Chiwa literally ripping off chunks of the scenery and eating them in her performance as Odir, the best frenemy of the season? The show has charm, but unfortunately it can also be really boring at times so I don't blame anyone who dropped it.

13 Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitenshabu: Bakuon remains the best show about two-wheeled means of transportation. I really liked the comfy tone and beautiful art in this show, but in the end it's a little too boring even for a comfy show.

14 Masamune-kun no Revenge: This show has completely incomprehensible levels of popularity in the West, apparently. The premise was cute at first (I liked the idea of a "dame ikemen" protagonist in this kind of show) but after a few episodes it becomes a stock-standard romantic comedy with little to differentiate itself from the pack other than maybe that funny face Aki makes sometimes. The plot really went off the rails toward the end, too, and the final plot arc & twist don't even get a resolution before the final credits roll.

[ry-ra]

Voice 11-12

Voice is a very well thought out drama that is really well executed. It follows the same formula as Vampire Detective, but this time they did a much better job with the progression of the plot and loopholes.

In these episodes Kang Center delves deeper into why Detective Moo’s wife was in the ally. This was a question I asked myself. She was on her way to deliver his bento box to him, she had no reason to be in an ally... at night.

Mr. Mo, who is our killer thinks of himself as worthy as a God (the biblical verses) and I wonder what syndrome he will have. He was seen in a previous episode imagining strangling and mangling a man’s face in his head. He’s not all good up in there and he keeps hair of his victim’s as souvenirs and even has two empty spaces for Kang Center and Detective Moo. He bathes in blood. It was blurred out in the drama, but the water was definitely red.

Chief Jang is being blackmailed and that’s why he’s doing as he’s told. Detective Moo found out he sabotaged the gas line and confronted him and in episode 12 he talks to him after he found out he’s having an affair with one of the bar maids at Fantasia. He tells Moo that it’s someone from the inside since he knows his every move and muffles his voice. It started recently so he’s not involved in his wife’s case.

The bus company (I forgot already) grew to become a major corporation with the man having his own elite club called Brotherhood. He pulls the strings on everything, but what he doesn’t know is that his son is a psychotic killer. Commissioner Bae is one of his pawns.

Kang Center is investigating Detective Moo’s wife. She worked as a social worker at a shelter and her being in the ally has something to do with Gong Cheol Han. In episode 11/12 Detective Moo and Dae Shik rescue a man from a twisted sick fucked up institute and Kang asks Dae Shik to ask if anyone knows Gong Cheol Han. He’s the only one that knows his name since he goes by another name now and is a bus driver for that big corporation. Told you about all cases being connected to this case.

After meeting with Chief Jang, Detective Moo invites Kang Center for a drink and asks her why she did a background check on his wife.

She tells him that before she died, his wife was looking for a homeless man. Detective Moo recalls his wife trying to get him to find someone for her, but he brushed her off telling her he needed to rest. It seemed she was obsessed in trying to find Go Cheol Han. Kang Center also received a text message from a burner phone saying that Moo’s wife was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that she was secretly a broker for GP Development. He can’t believe any of it and excuses himself.

Nam Sang Tae calls him since Mr. Mo gave him 2 choices. One is to kill Detective Moo and the other he kills him.

He tells him he will help him catch the killer and hand over all evidence if Moo can set him free and uses Moo’s wife as bait. If he refuses he will have to live his life without knowing why his wife died. He tells Moo to meet him up at a hotel, a hotel he used to frequent with his wife and tells him he can trust him.

Umm noo... just because you know the name of a hotel he visited with his wife does not mean I can trust you... not how trust works.

Mr. Mo starts to play with Kang Center. He took the picture of her and her father and he also knows about her hearing ability. He sends her a message to meet up.

So this is getting interesting.

[cupkayke]

For the fanfiction questions thing: 1, 3, 6, 11, 17, 21, 25, 27, 36, 40, 41, 46, 50 and 51 (I hope these aren't too many)

 Not too many at all! I like talking about myself lol.

Under a cut because longggggg.

1) What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Oh gosh, definitely Tokyo Mew Mew. I never wrote fanfics for it but I co-owned and then owned an Avidgamers RP site for TMM called MewUSA back in like 2004-2006. Avidgamers was a forum site engine that was pretty damn nice for its time (also FREE, that was a plus) and I spent HOURS creating characters, storylines, and layouts for it. There were TONS of individual in-character boards and I think we may have had up to 100 unique users at one point. The detailed characters/plotlines were BASICALLY fanfiction- I think I did an entire rp with myself between a few of my characters once- and it was a whole lot of fun. Some of the OCs from that site were repurposed into a longrunning rp I have with @liarino on AIM and I am FOREVER grateful that I met them through that site

Fanfic-wise, it was Full Metal Alchemist. I had a horrendous LITERAL self-insert OC fic called ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ that was based on an RP I did with a different friend. Plot? ‘Fangirl of FMA LITERALLY FALLS INTO HER TELEVISION AND WAKES UP IN THE UNIVERSE AND FALLS IN LOVE WITH ALPHONSE’. The end. I never finished it but holy shitballs it got SO MANY REVIEWS. I’m surprised how many people actually enjoyed it- I did get some criticisms but despite the fact that it was so cringe-worthy that I took it down it still got sooooo much positive feedback. I sometimes wonder if people would still be reading it on ff.net if I hadn’t taken it down the last time I overhauled that account. I still have some Ouran oneshots on there that I wrote TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO that still get reviews. Dayum. 

3) What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

I have to say it’s a tie between the Tokyo Mew Mew fandom circa 2003-2006 and the Ouran fandom from about 2006-2008. My experience with them was limited to RP boards but I had the MOST FUN running MewUSA and a long-running Gaia RP ‘Hosting the Hosts’ because of the warm response to the concepts. The TMM fandom especially was super creative even back in the day- there were so many fan mew mews because the formula was so easy and that was one series that I didn’t mind OCs because the concept was easily applied. In-universe, the creator could have easily made more Mew Mews. So the possibilities were endless. That’s also the fandom I learned the majority of my writing skills from, even if I did get called out a couple times for shitty RPing. I got better and I was so sad when the engine finally kicked the bucket. Aside from the RP sites the TMM fandom had sooooo many fansites dedicated to the show- my other favorite being Neko Tokyo. I think that site might still be up… 

Ouran was limited to that RP I ran but damn I never had one so fun. That group of writers was hysterical and I actually met one of them in person because by sheer coincidence she lived near me. She moved soon after we figured it out but she came back for a convention and we hung out all weekend. Unfortunately I don’t remember her name and I lost her phone number T_T I wonder where she is sometimes. I wonder where a lot of my fan friends from back then are. The problem with early 2000s internet.

Tho I think Boueibu will be my new modern fave fandom.

6) List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

 Ohhhh dear. I’ll keep it to ones that I actually ship characters in because a lot of my early fandoms were MYSELF AS AN OC X HOT MALE CHARACTER. OTL. I was a weeb. Most of these are fandoms I’ve rped in rather than written fanfiction for, however.

Tokyo Mew Mew- PuddingxTart. I like to read IchigoxKisshu fanfics sometimes but that ship is highly problematic looking back on it lol

Code Lyoko - THROWBACK. JeremiexAelita. Adorable.

Ouran HSHC - I’m fond of HunnyxHaruhi (as evidenced by my mostly abandoned ff.net account) but basically AnyonexHaruhi is super cute. I think I read a fic once where Haruhi was in a relationship with ALL of the guys and it was actually super interesting. I don’t think I can find it again, tho.

Harry Potter - Drarry.

Walking Dead - CarolxDaryl FTW. and Richonne. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing fanfics for WD but never quite get up to it.

Mass Effect - Shakarian. Fuck yes. Fun fact I have an unfinished smutfic on the mass effect kinkmeme livejournal that I will EVENTUALLY FINISH ONE DAY AND PUBLISH UNDER MY NAME buuuut for now it will remain an anonymous abandoned fic.

Boueibu - …All of them? OTL I can’t pick one ship… tho if you force me… IoRyuu and BeppuMoto OT3.

YOI - I think everyone’s OTP is Victuuri.

11) Who is your current OTP?

Victuuri.

17)  Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

Since Boueibu is my current fandom- I immediately was drawn to Enatsu since s1 had a relatively large focus on them but I’ve kind of fallen out of actively shipping them. I like them as a couple and I think they’re def boyfriends material but they’re definitely a comfortable ship. Their personalities are just… drama-free, so their relationship to me just seems like a quiet background relationship. IoRyuu is a little more volatile and I really like ships where there is a lot of between-the-lines interpretation and potential for conflict. Also I just really like the Beppus

21) What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The aformentioned ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ FMA OC Mary Sue Self insert fic. Definitely the first one I ever published on the interwebs. Although I think TECHNICALLY my very first one was a Pokemon story that I was writing for a little kid neighbor of mine back when I was like… 11. I think I had just gotten a computer in my room and I remember typing it up and drawing some cover art for it… it was basically an expanded version of the episode where Meowth and Pikachu were handcuffed together or something… except there were more Pokemon involved and ALL of the characters were friends. Like Brock and Tracey were both with Ash and Misty and all of the Team Rocket people were friends for some reason. Idk I was a weird child.

Ohhh maybe a tie for the FMA fic was a Code Lyoko one I wrote around the same time called ‘Desert Rose’. I can’t remember now which was published first because I deleted them all. Another Mary Sue OC fic but I actually am still kind of proud of how I expanded the Lyoko universe in my head. I came up with new areas to Lyoko and like a central region and how they all connected. Nevermind the fact that the girl with a CAT THAT COULD OPERATE THE COMPUTER was the main character and obviously I shipped her with Odd because YumiUlrich and JeremieAeilita were OTPs. It was weird.

25) What’s your most popular fanfic?

If the story was still up it might have been ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ because that fic still haunts me. Buuut it’s either ‘Naptime’ or ‘Desire’, one of my two Hunny x Haruhi fics from my Ouran days that I left up on ff.net for posterity. I have no desire to go read the cringe and find out which one has more hits but I bet it’s the G-rated ‘Naptime’ cuz ‘Desire’ is a) the first M rated Hunny x Haruhi fic on ff.net EVER and b) really really bad porn written by like, 16-year-old me. Oops. It’s a smidgen OOC on the part of Haruhi if I remember right buuut I actually still stand by the idea that Hunny is not as childlike as he seems.

Oh dear maybe that’s why I like Yumoto so much. Similar character type. OTL

27) What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

I feel like I’m horrendous at both but lately it’s titles that are giving me trouble. 2 of the 3 Boueibu fics I’ve written had different working titles that got changed the second the story went up to be published. I’m having a brain fart and can’t remember them but both ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’ and ‘Completely’ were titled something really stupid. And your giftfic was ‘?’ until I decided on the central theme lol.

36) What’s your favourite genre to write?

I don’t like reading romance novels but I love writing shippy stuff. Tension, build….smut

40)  What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Pacing in longer works, definitely. Also just… keeping up with it. I am a horrible procrastinator and if I don’t actually have a deadline with external consequences then I never get anything done. I can’t set my own deadlines because I can always move them. I can’t get my family or friends to set them for me because I know they’ll forgive me if I fail (how horrible lol). I have tons upon tons of unfinished fics from fandoms past sitting somewhere in the depths of my word documents folder and about as many original short stories. I have so many ideas but because I get easily distracted and also because I am now working full time and suffer from typical adult exhaustion I can only put a fraction of them on paper. 

My inner critic is also a fucking bitch. I can’t get her to shut her face long enough to write a sentence sometimes. Again, I have to have a deadline looming before I can put her on mute most times. If I have infinite time, she doesn’t shut up and makes me rewrite a sentence 100 times because it sounds stupid.

41) List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

Ahahahaha… I don’t have 5 simultaneously because I can’t just… not finish reading something before moving onto the next one. I don’t also read things that are unfinished unless they sound REALLY interesting because I’m stupid impatient. But I guess for my current fandom (Boueibu) I’ll link 5 fics I read recently that I liked! 

1) Pink Blood - @magiccatprincess (okay actually this is one I’m going to read soon because it looked interesting… so it fits the question lol)

2) tuesdays - @vagarius (because how can I not love something written for me?

3) Liar - BlackJoker77 (A whoooole lot accomplished here in not a lot of words. Also, Yumoto character study/reading between the lines? Yush.)

4) ….. ok I ran out of ideas. I don’t bookmark anything OTL. I’ll come back to this question at another time with an ACTUAL answer.

46) If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

I’m most proud of ‘Completely’ at the moment- I really like how I pulled off Ryuu’s voice and it’s most definitely a scene I wanted to see written… so I’m happy that I was able to provide that scene

50) How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

It was basically an extention of RPing for the writing portion of it- ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ was basically a cleaned up RP and when it wasn’t rping it was fan gratification for the other early fics I did. As a kid I used to (and still sometimes do) make up stories in my head when I was about to go to sleep, and a lot of them were episodes of my favorite shows that I wanted to see. So I’d put some of them on paper. And then it moved into the ~romance~ category; I was a hopeless romantic as a teenager and like a lot of teenage girls I was kind of horny so fanfiction was a way to explore my sexuality in the comfort of my own head, basically. I still like me a good smutfic and bonus points if it’s romantic AND smutty. My bf can definitely tell when I’ve been reading something naughty….

51) Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

Okay, Imma do both! And I have 2 things to rant about because I can’t shut up.

Rant: This is more of a thing that I hate about MYSELF reading fanfics, but I hate that I get turned off of fics so quickly because of writing style. When I can push past beginners writing mistakes or mediocre quality writing I can sometimes find gem fics with plots/characterizations I find adorable, but more often than not I click out of fics after just a few sentences because I can’t stand poor writing. And I feel so elitist about it! Fanfics are free, fan-generated content. A lot of fanfics are written by kids or beginner writers. I have to keep reminding myself that not every fanfic author has gone to school for writing. They may not know the conventions of literature. They may not realize that they’re head-hopping in the middle of paragraphs. They may not know the proper way to punctuate dialogue (and I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW until grad school!!!!). If I let mistakes get in the way of content I may miss out on an up and coming writer. And lord knows I was horrendous when I first started. Everyone starts somewhere. I hate that it takes me so long to get out of teacher/writing student mode and truck through some writing that may not technically be the best but their heart is in the right place. 

Rant2: I don’t like how isolated fanfiction can feel sometimes. It seems like people don’t comment on fics as much as they used to, and I see these posts going around on tumblr about how authors LOOOOOVE comments and want more of them but then comments just… don’t appear. It’s not so hard to post one thing you really liked about the story, and even one thing you didn’t like. Comments help authors grow.I also don’t like how it’s so hard to find a beta reader or three to bounce ideas off of and proofread your work.

Gush: I love communities. I love the events fanfic authors put together. I love how when communities get tight-knit how everyone builds each other up and gives one another ideas. I just love fanfiction in general, really

aaaaaand SHEW. That was a lot. BUT DEF NOT TOO MUCH

[elizabethrobertajones]

lizzy? what are your 10 top supernatural episodes?

D: what sort of a question is this? Do you know how MANY episodes there are??

Let’s see… Desert Island Discs… What would I take with me?

Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie

On The Head Of A Pin

Monster Movie

The Man Who Would Be King

LARP and the Real Girl

Safe House

Baby

Heaven Can’t Wait

Clap Your Hands If You Believe

Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets

As you can see I am A: Edlund and Robbie trash and B: helplessly sold on the Perfect Monster of the Week concept over any plot episode. 

Can’t tell if my buzz over 12x10 is going to last but it feels like an all time great and I want to roll around in it forever. It also seemed to directly reference at least 2 of the episodes also on this list (like all the clowns) and live up to all my standards of melodrama and characterisation I eat up, and is possibly the most perfect Destiel episode we’ll ever get (it’s like the overtness of 11x18 crossed with the style of an old Edlund or Robbie episode in delivery… Mmm) so… I put it last on the list cautiously because it’s had to usurp yet another Robbie episode to get on there.

The fairy episode is just a weird little favourite of mine, because I was busy procrastinating writing an essay about fairies for university and realised this silly show was still on the air and binge-watched all 6 seasons and somehow or other, the stars perfectly aligned that I crawl from the library after researching folklore and fairies all day, boot up my laptop to get some downtime, and bam, there’s a kid looking dubiously at the cornfields and I’m just like oh shit this show would never do aliens, it’s more fucking fairies. Obviously my kink is being right, so.

9x06 is one of those nuggets of an episode that’s STILL got brilliant mileage for analysing it, and the Dean and Cas stuff is amazing, and… I practically don’t have anything profound to say about it? I just really love watching it and experiencing first hand everything it showed us about Dean and Cas’s relationship.

Baby, Safe House and Meta Fiction I all debated being on here, and any one of them could have been ditched for Lily Sunder. When all’s said and done I love 9x18 with all my heart and it’s what got me into fandom, and I will always be thankful for it, but on the other hand it’s pretty gruelling to watch, I’m 50:50 on if I LIKE Gabriel’s depiction in it or not so half the time I watch it he grates my nerves and half the time I roll around in glee at the ridiculous fan fic version of him… But it’s pretty bleak and better in context, so you can just extract the important speeches from Metatron and hang them on a wall like a trophy but in the end, not necessary to be on this list as a favourite… Which leaves Robbie’s parting gifts of the 2 best-written MotW episodes this show has ever had, just for pure showing off or filming glee. His overall contribution to season 11 was just loving all over the show, but these were the stand-alones and they’re just really really excellent writing and I think can also make you fall back in love with the show when you watch them.

The LARP episode is also Robbie, I know, but I love it again for the fairies (I’m easily bought) and CHARLIE and the fact that the episode’s message was about having fun. It’s a little blob of light in between some dark storylines. It’s a really neat little episode, not exactly transcendent, but again it’s got some great stuff to analyse in it, and it had Charlie making out with a fairy, and… I’m so easily bought, okay. It’s perfect how it is :P 

While 9x18 convinced me Destiel was canon, 6x20 convinced me it existed at all… I have shipped it basically since that episode aired, and watching Cas watching Dean and hurtling into all his bad decisions and slowly unravelling… Ugh, I can watch it over and over and find more reasons to be miserable for Cas every time. I also think you can basically watch 5x22 followed immediately by 6x20 and not actually miss out on anything :P It’s written as a direct answer to it as well as to fixing and explaining everything that happened in season 6 so far. I appreciate the episode a lot for tying the whole story together, and it inspires me to be the sort of writer Edlund is - running screaming at a story and tripping over hundreds of ideas too ridiculous or terrible or implausible to ever fit in the story, before scraping together the horrendous mess you’ve made of it and hopefully by trying to explain it to yourself, also create a masterpiece along the way with some well-applied framing devices to pretend like you meant to do it that way all along :P (9x18 also is bad writing advice for me because it implies you know what you’ve been doing all along, and Robbie sometimes strikes me as the only writer who planned ahead more than maybe the next episode, rather, I suspect he’s planted foreshadowing for season 15 that we still haven’t discovered, and basically this is not my process at all :P)

Monster Movie cracks me up every time. Dracula. On a scooter! HE HAS A COUPON. And Dean and Jamie is possibly my favourite romance subplot in an episode on the whole show. I love them! Jamie is a favourite character of mine, and the episode is completely hilarious, and I’m absolutely fascinated by Dean immediately post-Hell, and this is a good break from all the drama and trauma to see how he would try and cope and be normal, so despite how weird and kooky the episode is, I’m always coming back to it to try and analyse Dean because I just find him so interestingly written there. If/when I get to season 10 in my lengthy rewatch notes, I’m going to have to give myself a gag order on this episode of comparing Dean’s weird coping methods with the nonsense of this episode :P 

Also 4x16 is basically a stage play but happens to be on TV, randomly dumps the formula of the show entirely by forgetting Sam and Dean exist halfway through to focus entirely on Cas, Uriel and Anna having a domestic, and was the first episode that really delved into Cas and began to show the potential of the angels as a seriously powerful force in the story; not that they’d be great for the plot because it seems like they’d have to be involved with the apocalypse one way or another, but it just sells that Cas’s story is worth telling at all. I’m not sure other writers at the time could have sold it quite as effectively and made Cas worth writing about in the same way, but there was a serious risk involved in hospitalising Dean practically at the halfway point, and letting Cas stomp off to deal with it. Please take a moment to stop and think of one very important fact: this was the first episode Edlund wrote with Cas in it :P

It’s not coincidental that my favourite episode on the entire show is ALSO my favourite episode when you ask me to list top 10 Sam episodes. Funny Sam episodes are rare and perfect little gems. Episodes where Sam gets to be what I think of as an ideal, perfect Sam… That list is even weirder than this one because it’s all about when I end up emotionally screaming about Sam and he beats out anyone else on screen for my attention (with my very particular emotional response to what is my favourite version of Sam, which immediately disqualifies all the serious Sam fans’ fave episodes because I don’t like the show getting emo about Sam because it always vaguely embarrasses me and feels like the show’s working too hard with the puppy dog eyes. You know that bit in the The Hobbit where Bilbo spares Gollum because he’s being too wretched and he just can’t kill him? And the movie didn’t play it subtle at all, it had Gollum looking up at the screen doing the eyes from Puss in Boots from Shrek with a perfect man tear running down his pallid face and you really just want to punch Gollum instead of understanding why Bilbo spared him…? When the show gets all saccharine about Sam it just reads like that to me - trying too fucking hard and over-selling something that doesn’t NEED selling in the first place because it’s already sold and like, I don’t know, a favourite armchair or something that’s by now a 12 year old bit of furniture in your house you favour and would never dream of getting rid of and is just always there for you to flop down on when you  need it…) I mean, fair cop, obviously I am a Destiel fan and Dean and Cas occupy like 90% of my waking life. But SAM FUCKING WINCHESTER and episodes where Jared gets to play him FUNNY? It’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. This episode is ridiculous, and hilarious, and plays to all the strengths the show and its actors and writers have, and maybe it’s just because it’s in the middle of season 7 where everything is bleak-bleak-bleak-bleak, but it’s… I don’t know. Same feeling as LARP and the Real Girl, but with extra glitter, and Sam Winchester getting his ass handed to him by the most perfectly choreographed clown fight in the history of visual media.