Quick Reaction: 5x05 Fallen Idols

[hells_half_acre]

Our first MOTW of S5!
 

All in all, a fine showing. Definitely full of fantastic moments...really, it was an episode filled with one-liners, with an important partnership conversation thrown in at the end.

Anyway! On to what I loved....

"Need a flashlight?!" HAHA, I love how Dean is scared of the car and Sam just falls down on the ground beside him and completely scares the bejeesus out of him and then doesn't seem to understand why he's being so abruptly dismissed. So adorable.

Oh, BTW: GRUESOME EPISODE! Seriously! This episode has, I think, some of the most gruesome - if not THE most gruesome - shots in it than any other Supernatural episode.

Ok, back to the show - I love how smooth Dean and Sam are with the FBI routine now. They seriously don't even really need to act. They ARE the more experienced law-enforcement on the show. I love how in this episode it was them giving the sheriff the "are you crazy?" looks and not the other way around.

Next next....

SPANISH!!! I'm so happy that Supernatural FINALLY had Spanish in the show...and that Sam actually SPOKE IT! (I don't speak Spanish myself, so I don't know if he did a good job or not, but that doesn't matter.) For a show that's supposed to be set in the US, I always wondered when they were going to include some of the US's other language-groups. I know there are LOTS of different languages in the US, but being from Canada, I always sort of equate Spanish as the unofficial second-language of the US (whether this is correct or not)...I'm used to living in a country where everybody has to learn French as a second language in school, and although in the US you don't HAVE to learn Spanish, I sort of think that if an American is going to chose to learn a second language they are most likely going to try to learn Spanish - this belief is supported by TV shows and movies about US highschool which seem to always offer a Spanish class. Anyway...yeah, really happy that Sam could fumble his way through a small conversation. I am proud of him.

Ok, what came after...

Dean's ABRAHAM LINCOLN IMPRESSION! HHAHAHAHAA! Priceless. I want to kiss that boy ridiculous when he does stuff like that. So lame and therefore hilarious!

Oh man...then that scene where Sam is staring down Abe and the tension is mounting...so well done...and you get a nice profile shot. Haha.

On a more serious note: I'm glad Sam called Dean on the "keep Sammy in a box" thing (I am completely stealing that from this awesome meta I read - which I think is recced somewhere in my journal)...but yeah, I'm really glad that Sam recognized that part of the problem was the way the two of them related to each other - or well, the way that Dean won't DENY that Sam is an adult, but he also won't treat him like one. It's hard. I still want to treat my little sister like a kid...it's hard when that's been the dynamic of your relationship your whole life. And the truth is that Sam NEEDED Dean to look after him after Jess died and while the vision crap was going on...and then Sam didn't care what Dean did when they were pre-occupied with the Deal...and then when Sam tried to reverse their roles and look after Dean last season, everything went to shit because Dean resented being looked after and Sam resented being taken care of by someone who he preceived as being worse off than he was.

We also got Dean asking Sam if he wanted to drive for the first time since S1! Man, it really is a rare event.

Ok, I got off track there...other frivolous things I liked:

The cut-away shot to Sam/Jared when Dean says he's never seen House of Wax - reminiscent of the shot of Sam on the studio-tour as it heads into Gilmore Girls territory.

Paris Hilton getting her head chopped off with an axe - I gotta agree with Kripke here, she's a good sport ...and that was awesome.

Oh man, let me jump backwards and just say: SAM DOING AUTOPSIES!!!!! Manno! I don't know whether to be disgusted or thrilled, and I think it's a bit of both - it's amazing how much Sam and Dean have grown from the S1 - you would NEVER see them doing that before. I also love how Sam looks like he wants to vomit the whole time still - some things never change, I guess.

Alright...now we get to things I was iffy about:

Dean! What the heck dude?! First off - totally sleezy that you made yourself a fake agency-or-whatever-card to score random bar chicks. I mean, I know you don't have MUCH class, but I always thought you had a little more than THAT. Do you know what you look like?

And on a more serious note: That phone conversation with Bobby - I mean...part of me wants to say that he wasn't really blaming Sam for the apocalypse, because that's totally unfair and had to have just been Sam's guilty conscious mis-interpreting, but then why would Dean not want to acknowledge what Sam heard? So, yeah...harsh man.  Not cool.

And finally SAM ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THE FIRST SEAL!

Man, I was hoping for a SCENE, you know. But apparently Dean being the First Seal is old news to Sam - which means that the SCENE happened off camera sometime already - maybe even in the hospital after Dean himself found out - Sam and Dean did have a solid month and a half between On the Head of a Pin and It's A Terrible Life that was lived off camera. (Seriously, check my timeline). This does however mean that Dean's record of only being able to keep secrets for 10 episodes at most holds true (longest kept Dean-secret is a tie between John's last wishes and remembering hell - though, you could argue that he kept the torturing secret for 11 episodes.)

Things I'm glad about:

I'm glad that Sam's reaction to Dean being the first seal was just: "You didn't know." (Susie thinks that  an unspoken "You were in Hell" is Sam's reaction to EVERYTHING Dean tells him, haha). And I also like that at the end Dean said: "Who knew killing Lilith was a BAD thing!" or whatever the exact quote was...this is why it irked me so much to think that Dean WAS blaming Sam for Lucifer rising - because Dean himself only found out about the Lilith-last-seal-thing like 10 minutes before it happened. It makes more sense for him to be mad at Sam for cheating on him with Ruby.

Man, for a MOTW, I sure had a crazy amount of things to say...oh! And there's one more: I like how Dean was talking to Bobby - I worry about Bobby being all alone dealing with his altered life. It's nice that his boys call him to say hello.

Ok, now I think I'm done.
Pretty long  for a Quick Reaction

 

Dude! Also: The boys have TWO LAPTOPS! One each! No longer will we be able to write fics and talk about "THE laptop." 

Also, we see their printer! It's very small and portable - good choice, prop-people.

Comments

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

A lot of this episode felt off to me. The bar scene was a good example. Maybe it was that it was too sleezy for me. But also, as you said, entirely unnecessary. Any straight woman with eyes would need very little incentive to jump into bed with either of the boys if she were so inclined.

And the phone scene was just....weird. Actually, the thing it put me in mind of is when you read some fic, and it's not exactly terrible, but there's just something artificial about it.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yes yes, exactly that. It was just off. Like the writer came CLOSE to understanding the characters, but not close enough...exactly the usual stuff that I can blame on "well, it's fanfic, they can't get everything perfect" only I can't because it was on the show.

Sigh...I do so love the show, but yeah, those two scenes especially irked me.

I mean, Dean's used the talent-scout angle before in S1, but he didn't have a CARD printed up. It's the fore-thought that ruins it.

My "fix-it" for the phone scene is that when Dean said "we all know whose fault that is..." the answer was "ours" and not "Sam's." Because Dean is more of a share-the-blame guy (as in the ending scene).

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

"Like the writer came CLOSE to understanding the characters, but not close enough.."

Yes! That! Like they've got the surface, but took it too literally and missed the subtext. I read a fic exactly like these scenes, and that was precisely it. At the beginning I wondered if maybe the point was that Dean was passively-aggressively getting back at Sam (which still would have been kind of weird), but then I realized that was more depth than they were actually going for. I just have no idea what was going on. Is it possible that in the phone scene he was blaming, I don't know, Zachariah? I could have understood that tone if he were. But then there was all the stuff in the museum and towards the end, sooo....oh, I give up.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I will just sort of...ignore it in my mind when I think of the show. :-P