Episode poll 12.14: "The Raid"

[caranfindel]

[Poll #2064088]

No spoilers in the comments, please!

ETA... Y'all, I'm sorry I didn't close an italics tag in the poll and now all your comments look like you're a lot more enthused than you actually are.

Comments

[z-publicizes.livejournal.com]

That seems like a pretty good summation of what the writers are going for. It gels with my interpretation of Sam's general headspace/motivations, anyway.

But yeah, plotting is a big weakness. Unless the whole kidnapping/torture opener later pays off in some big way, I think it was a pretty major misstep to have that be the BMoL's introduction. If the show was going to go the should-we/shouldn't-we-work-with-them route they should've been set up as a temptation from the start--introduce some genuinely sympathetic members, have them contribute something useful, make the audience want to trust them. Then we get gradual reveals of their shadiness and have to guess at which members can be trusted and which can't and how deep the corruption goes. Basically, what was done with the angel story arc in season four.

That said, I still can't get around how anyone is supposed to buy that the BMoL are going to be the big picture saviors of North America when they failed to even show up for multiple apocalypses--apocalypses which would presumably have also taken out Great Britain. Which I get is the unavoidable plot wrinkle of introducing a new world-building element on top of so much established history--it would be really hard to come up with a seamless retcon, but they could've at least tried to handwave it.

There's also the ethical issues--the xenophobia/fascism the BMoL espouse which so far has been only glancingly addressed. Well, I'm pretty sure the endgame conflict and resolution is going to hinge on that--there's going to be an oh-fuck-we're-in-the-belly-of-beast-and-the-beast-is-committing-genocide moment. I'm undecided about which side of the Doyalist/Watsonian line I'll fall on--more annoyed with the writers or the characters when that happens.

[caranfindel.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm pretty sure the endgame conflict and resolution is going to hinge on that--there's going to be an oh-fuck-we're-in-the-belly-of-beast-and-the-beast-is-committing-genocide moment.

I can live with this if they actually address the situation.

[z-publicizes.livejournal.com]

I suppose, if the show wanted to annoy me even more, they could make the final conflict/resolution about quibbling over the BMoL's precise means instead of the full implications of their ends. Reveal that they've been assassinating humans and have that be where the Winchesters draw the line.

I know this could never happen on the show, but I have been entertaining the premise: what if that wannabe Jack Bauer dude from 12x09 actually managed to track/put Sam and Dean - and by extension the BMoL - under surveillance and the US intelligence services are about to blow the roof off everybody's operation?The big bad hell our heroes unleash this season turns out to be the US government and the lengths they (and the American public in a monsters-are-real frenzy) would be willing to go to in the name of, er, securing our metaphysical borders. Which would mean a dystopian hellscape brought on not by monsters but by the people who fear them.

[fanspired]

That would be a a good way to go for a series finale :)

I think the fundamental problem with the show's season arcs is that they're clearly planned in two halves: they run with one plot for the first part of the season, then they adjust their plans for the second half once they've got some viewer feedback on the early episodes. This can make for some really awkward disjoints when the feedback on their original plans is negative.

[z-publicizes.livejournal.com]

The two halves structural problem makes a lot of sense. Oh, network television, how frustrating it can be...