Hee! My comment got so long LJ is forcing me to post it in two parts.
The best thing to come out of this season was, for me, Jack. And I wasn't expecting to like him at all (I hated the whole Lucifer's spawn plot line in season 12). I don't know if it's Alex Calvert or if the writers actually did the character justice or if it's some happy combination of the two, but I just adore him. And I adore the bond that he and Sam formed from the start, and how Sam's become Jack's father in every way except by blood. I love how instinctively protective of Jack Sam is (and isn't that a Winchester parallel too, to how Dean is with Sam?). I love how Jack reciprocates Sam's love just as fiercely. It's beautiful.
As frustrated as I was for over half the season with Sam getting sidelined again and again, looking back I feel like Sam had the better storyline. The show finally dealt with his trauma over having been trapped in the Cage for centuries (even if not enough yet), he had lovely moments with Rowena, he went from hopeful to depressed to determined and then maybe hopeful again, and well, the finale crushed him, but he's Sam-fucking-Winchester and he's not giving up. He's not leaving Dean behind. (Please Show, if you do that to Sam again I'll never forgive you.)
There *were* things done to Sam this season that I hated, besides him being sidelined so many times, and I blame it all on the writers, not on Sam. Him not saying anything when Dean pulled a gun on Kaia and forced her to come with them. Him being the butt of Dean's juvenile humor. Him having to be so kind to Gabriel after the unforgivable things that Gabriel put him through, all for the sake of pleasing certain sections of the fandom--that was almost as sickening to me as having to watch him work with Lucifer. Sam being abandoned in the tunnels, and, most of all, Sam not being the one to kill Lucifer in the end. I feel like Sam keeps getting robbed, like all these defining moments keep getting taken away from him. He wasn't the one to get Dean out of Hell, he didn't even *look* for Dean when Dean was in Purgatory, and now this thing with Lucifer. That should have been his. And if they wanted team work between him and Dean then Sam should have restrained Lucifer like he did Ruby so Dean could sink the blade in. What a perfectly beautiful callback to the season 4 finale that would have been, visually. They were in a church then, they were in a church now. The Lucifer was rising, here Lucifer was fading. Poetic and brilliant, and yet they went for cheesy and ineffective instead. Ugh.
I hated the way Dean was written this season, so shallow and two-dimensional, like a cardboard cutout of himself. Most of the time what we got from him was either anger or humor, and it made me feel like the writers completely forgot that Dean has layers. I felt like that impacted Jensen's acting sometimes too, because as wonderful as he is, there's only so much you can do with bad writing. It's a testament to how good he is (and how well he knows this character) that he still managed to bring a semblance of Dean to the fore, but then the writers also had him do very un-Dean things, like threatening Kaia and forcing her to help them instead of trying to protect her, and letting Castiel convince him so easily to leave Sam behind in those tunnels.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2018-05-30 11:27 am (UTC)The best thing to come out of this season was, for me, Jack. And I wasn't expecting to like him at all (I hated the whole Lucifer's spawn plot line in season 12). I don't know if it's Alex Calvert or if the writers actually did the character justice or if it's some happy combination of the two, but I just adore him. And I adore the bond that he and Sam formed from the start, and how Sam's become Jack's father in every way except by blood. I love how instinctively protective of Jack Sam is (and isn't that a Winchester parallel too, to how Dean is with Sam?). I love how Jack reciprocates Sam's love just as fiercely. It's beautiful.
As frustrated as I was for over half the season with Sam getting sidelined again and again, looking back I feel like Sam had the better storyline. The show finally dealt with his trauma over having been trapped in the Cage for centuries (even if not enough yet), he had lovely moments with Rowena, he went from hopeful to depressed to determined and then maybe hopeful again, and well, the finale crushed him, but he's Sam-fucking-Winchester and he's not giving up. He's not leaving Dean behind. (Please Show, if you do that to Sam again I'll never forgive you.)
There *were* things done to Sam this season that I hated, besides him being sidelined so many times, and I blame it all on the writers, not on Sam. Him not saying anything when Dean pulled a gun on Kaia and forced her to come with them. Him being the butt of Dean's juvenile humor. Him having to be so kind to Gabriel after the unforgivable things that Gabriel put him through, all for the sake of pleasing certain sections of the fandom--that was almost as sickening to me as having to watch him work with Lucifer. Sam being abandoned in the tunnels, and, most of all, Sam not being the one to kill Lucifer in the end. I feel like Sam keeps getting robbed, like all these defining moments keep getting taken away from him. He wasn't the one to get Dean out of Hell, he didn't even *look* for Dean when Dean was in Purgatory, and now this thing with Lucifer. That should have been his. And if they wanted team work between him and Dean then Sam should have restrained Lucifer like he did Ruby so Dean could sink the blade in. What a perfectly beautiful callback to the season 4 finale that would have been, visually. They were in a church then, they were in a church now. The Lucifer was rising, here Lucifer was fading. Poetic and brilliant, and yet they went for cheesy and ineffective instead. Ugh.
I hated the way Dean was written this season, so shallow and two-dimensional, like a cardboard cutout of himself. Most of the time what we got from him was either anger or humor, and it made me feel like the writers completely forgot that Dean has layers. I felt like that impacted Jensen's acting sometimes too, because as wonderful as he is, there's only so much you can do with bad writing. It's a testament to how good he is (and how well he knows this character) that he still managed to bring a semblance of Dean to the fore, but then the writers also had him do very un-Dean things, like threatening Kaia and forcing her to help them instead of trying to protect her, and letting Castiel convince him so easily to leave Sam behind in those tunnels.