Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show

[hells_half_acre]

Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show

Swap Meat.

Let's review the problems, shall we: 
-Wasted potential of premise
-Inconsistent representation of main characters
-No new mytharc information
-No new depth to characters
-Nothing gained out of the experience at all

(On a side note: I'm totally flaking out of work today...let's hope no one figures it out and fires me)

Comments

[raloria.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more with your assessment. It is by far the worst episode of SPN in all 5 seasons. Bleh.

Let's hope we don't have something like that in S6.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I can forgive episodes like Bugs and Hookman, because they are back when the show was just getting its footing...but S5! Really?! I think being in S5 just makes it all the more cringe-worthy.

[kairia.livejournal.com]

Second that. I also dislike their take on the Body Swap trope - how they made Jared play Gary while in his own body (ugh, I don't know how to articulate this properly but you get me right?) - it was so awkward -_-

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that falls into the "wasted potential of premise" category. How much funnier would it have been to have Jared playing Gary!Sam...a whole hell of a lot, more funny, and a whole hell of a lot less awkward.

[kairia.livejournal.com]

Ah, my bad! Yes and the dinner scene between Dean and Gary would have been more meaningful too...

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

You've really just described 9/10ths of the season there, IMO. I didn't especially *mind* Swap Meat, probably because it wasn't as bad as I expected (yay, low expectations!)

But the lack of consequences was odd (though kind of par for the course.) It was like an episode of the Simpsons. "Let's never mention this again!" along with you know, the dead teenager and the formerly possessed girl.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you are far harder on the show than I am. I think it's a testament to how bad this episode was though, that even *I* didn't like it. :P

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I'm harder about it on some things, I think. I did actually enjoy watching Swap Meat, while recognizing its many flaws .(Worst episode of the season for me would be 'Fallen Idols').

I suspect in part it relates to getting hooked on the show in Season 4, when it really, really was on the top of its game.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally understand where you are coming from. Ironically, although I can recognize that S4 has more seamless (writing) than any other season...the fact that the whole season was so pessimistic makes it hard to me to actually say whether or not it was my favorite season.

Fallen Idols at least had SOME character moments and no one acted horribly out of character, so it gets a better rating than Swap Meat for me. But yeah, it wasn't a stellar showing either.

I'm sure they'll turn things around a bit in S6. Even if they go back to MOTW episodes (ala S1) for a while. It'll be nice to have a brand new mytharc.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I didn't really notice the pessimism of season 4 until the very end, all things considered.

Partially, at that point I was still able to laugh at the lengths they'd go to for angst. And part of it was that Season 3 seemed a lot more dire. The only reason I was able to watch it was that I would think, "but he's going to get pulled out of hell by a really awesome angel! And God himself took interest in it!" It kind of deflated a bit as the season went on, but I was kind of immune to it because a) I just lumped it in with "the writers are ridiculously addicted to over-the-top angst that they can't possibly follow through on" (ala 40 years) and b)"that's really inconsistent, so I'm just going to ignore it!" (ala the angsty, angry angels, which were the sign I guess that they were Bad, but I ignored it up until the very end). I like the first half of the season a lot more than the second half. I was kind of disappointed by the 'the angels are evil' angle, but mostly because it's so not edgy anymore, and I crave novelty. I'm a novelty junkie.

This is why I was a bit disappointed when they made Sam Lucifer's vessel. I'd kind of hoped they were going to do something new and interesting with him, after so many seasons of him angsting over having an evil destiny. I mean, what do you do when you've fulfilled your evil destiny, and now you're done, left with regrets and guilt? Could have been some interesting character development there. Not that it's the only thing they could have done, nor that there was anything inherently problematic about the vessel storyline. Just would have been a little different.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Hm, interesting. See, I disagree. I'd have been disappointed if Sam hadn't turned out to be Lucifer's vessel and didn't have some other horrible destiny after killing Lilith, and I liked the fact that they were able to actually bring Dean into the mytharc too - instead of just having him as the brother of the person in the mytharc. So, I liked what they did with the vessels.

Also, I liked the fact that the angels had questionable morality. I thought it added a great dimension to S4, since it all became about who you could trust...angels, demons, Winchesters...

I didn't find S3 pessimistic at all, but maybe that's just because the brother relationship was at it's strongest. Yes, the situation was dire, but for some reason I didn't find it pessimistic...maybe I'm just weird. When I watched S3, I did not know that Dean would be rescued by angels - nor did I really know that he would actually go to hell.

And we've long since established the fact that the angst levels don't bother me as much as they bother you ;)

Now, in S6, I would be more than happy to finally have the "horrible destiny" storyline be over and done with. I'm hoping whatever the boys get into next is at least somewhat their choice to get into.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

Me too. I just really, really, really hope they don't decide to parallel season 1 (with Sam and Dean's roles swapped.) There was nothing wrong with Season 1, but as I said, I crave novelty, and I kind of have my doubts that the writers could refrain from trying to hit us over the head with it.

I've been thinking about writing something on season 5, because a lot of my feelings and opinions on it probably would require a few digressions on narratology and history (it's just how i think about things), as it's not really "I didn't like X". It's more like "X is fine, but it becomes problematic in reference to Y given context A"

The truth of the matter is that I can't make the pieces of season 5 fit together in my head. They're like thematic fragments. I can talk about individual episodes, and their merits and difficulties, but I can't connect them to anything larger than that, because I can't make sense of it.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wouldn't want them to do a mirror of S1 for S6 either. I'm really hoping for some "Dean can't actually fit in with 'normal'" but I'm not sure how high I should get my hopes up :P

Hoping anything for S6 makes me think of Jared being interviewed after the start of S4, when he admitted that he had really been looking forward to storming Hell to get his brother back - and then he got the first script and found out that we didn't actually see what Sam had been doing at all and angels got Dean out...and Jared was all pouty, because he wanted to be a badass brother-rescuer.

Which is to say, that they'll probably do something I'm not expecting at all, and I'll like it anyway.

And yes, I agree...S5 is much more fragmented than the other seasons.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

If they do something I wasn't expecting at all, I will be a very happy camper.

It does seem though that the show's strongest seasons were the ones where they shook things up and had to create something new.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read someone somewhere say it followed the Star Trek movie rule: even numbers good, odd numbers bad.

If that's true, S6 should be good :P

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

From your keyboard to god's inbox ;-)

[micaiah67.livejournal.com]

That one would definitely have to be in my bottom five, I think. It would have been so much funnier if they had left it like the first scene with Jared playing the awkward teen. Even better if Sam and Dean had swapped bodies. I think Bugs would still have to be my least favorite just because the whole story wasn't really good and daylight came way too quickly. But at least there were the little bits and pieces of family drama thrown in. I don't totally hate any episode. I love this show way too much.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said in a comment above - I forgive a lot of S1 because the show was still finding it's footing. By S5 though, I think they should be more consistent, which is why Swap Meat was such a disappointment to me.

The beginning scene was hilarious, and then they never used it again - and we all know Jared could have pulled it off so well if they actually had him playing the awkward teen.

And yes, now I'm worried that since they've done a "bodyswap" episode, they'll never use that premise again - which means we'll never get a Sam-Dean bodyswap, which, would have been awesome to see.