Crowley – Episodes 10.01 – 10.21
How in the world can you take such a dynamic, fearsome, totally awesome character like Crowley and put him in lame blue funk the entire season? Okay, until 10.22 anyway, when Sam, generally a super smart demon hunter, finally gets around to trying to kill him, fails miserably and sparks that inner demon that honestly should have been there no later than episode 3.
What a waste of a great actor in Mark Sheppard, who finally got that regular cast member status. That seems to be the kiss of death on this show for interesting characters. Need proof? What have they done with Castiel in recently memory too? They’ve neutered him beyond belief as well. But that’s another topic for another day.
What’s your lowlights from season ten? Anything missing from this list?
Coming up next, I look at the highlights and lowlights of the creatively puzzling Arrow season three.
Demon Dean – great potential, crappy execution. They chickened out with portraying Demon Dean negatively and it really hurt the story.
MoC Dean – went on way too long and, most of the time MoC Dean wasn’t much different than freshly back from Purgatory Dean.
The writing team of Ross-Leming/Buckner – anything ever pitched, breathed, said, or written by them.
The emphasis on the teen girl/soap opera crap they kept force feeding us this season.
The “Frankensteins” – just before the big twist/reveal was made, I yelled at the TV “you better not say Frankensteins (fortunately the windows were closed). So, when Eldoon said it, I laughed out loud. There was absolutely no reason for this and turned an interesting idea and intriguing possible storyline in Season 11 in to an absolute joke.
Crowley and Castiel – you’ve added two very good actors series regulars and they don’t have a clue what to do with them. Castiel will always be a problem because he can be the magic fix but I kind of felt sorry for both of them this season. At least Crowley was back to being Crowley at the end of the season.
Ask Jeeves, I did like Dash. He hunts pheasants. But yes a pretty pointless episode that I did find funny.
Like with Bobby I will never forgive SPN for killing Charlie. I was angry and depressed after that episode. I don’t think that was the response they were looking for.
I thought Jacob Styne was awesome but yes the Frankenstein reveal was stupid. Hopefully they are gone forever. It almost seemed like they were trying to give Bloodlines another look.
Halt and Catch Fire was for me the absolute worst of the season. Dean leering at teenage girls, ghost in the wires… just sad.
I didn’t mind Paint it Black as much as most did. But other than showing that Sam made the right decision on saving and using the journal as a set up for his later choice it served no purpose.
Rowena grew on me. She toned down her performance (or the directors finally toned her down) and she was more watchable for me.
But I do agree…what was the point of making Mark S a series regular. So he can talk to hamsters, sulk and pine for his bromance. What a waste.
Castiel is still on the show because he is popular. He hasn’t had a story line since the very end of S6 and not much of one after S4. Either find a writer for Misha or let him go.
I loved your sense of humor with these picks. I guess you have to laugh or you’d cry.
Thanks njspnfan and cheryl42! I swear I’m rewriting “Halt and Catch Fire” as a screwball comedy someday. Can you imagine Sam and Dean freaking out over how to kill a guy in the Internet? Maybe there could be some pseudo Tron action going there. It was a missed opportunity.
Don’t get me started on Ross-Leming and Buckner. Do you know how many TV professionals get fired for far less than the crimes against TV writing these two do? Life just isn’t fair that these two still have jobs.
I’m a little late to the party but I just discovered this site. I agree with all your choices. Sadly I can’t remember the majority of the episodes of season 10 :(.
TPTB totally wasted Mark S. and Misha. Claire and Rowena were a total pain in my a**. Too bad they wasted the best scene of Episode 3 at the Comic Con.
But my personal lowlight was Chuck at the end of “Fan Fiction”. I guess they wanted to give Rob Benedict an appearance (and I’m fine with that) and maybe it’s just because I never could rap my head around the idea that Chuck is God. But I got really, really angry about that. Chuck/God didn’t give a damn about the angels civil war, opening the gates of purgatory and letting the Leviathans out, the angels fallen etc. Of course he has no time for such things, because he is busy attending school plays. I still want to puke when I think of that 😀
Thanks for your humorous pick on the lowlights. I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks Lena! Welcome to TV For The Rest of Us.
I’m so glad you agree about Mark and Misha being underused and Claire and Rowena being annoying. I put that on the Awards over at the WFB and got criticized for it. Some fans just don’t want to accept how others feel about things. That’s an interesting observation about Chuck. While I agree, I was still thrilled to see him. My favorite part of the episode. Everything you said though, that is definitely why I have so much trouble with this writing team. They tend to gloss things like that over way too much in favor of their weaker stories. Bringing Chuck back in a proper way would be so wonderful! Maybe they will now that The Darkness has settled upon the earth.
[quote]The fact that the Stynes were not only the Frankensteins, they came with a Southern legacy and the look of a power family from a very bad primetime soap opera. Give me a break. A new creative low in my book, not to mention an insult to my intelligence.[/quote]
I am so not trying to rage about it but… yeah, the Steins being Southern just… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more blatant example of the whole “Only white men (preferably rich & southern) can be villains in hollywood any more.” Plus we’re supposed to believe THAT is a world-spanning global conspiracy? Forget insult to intelligence, that was an insult to my [i]being[/i]. Not even the secret-nazi society of episode 8.13 was that cartoonish.
[quote]10.16, “Paint It Black.”
The whole damned thing.[/quote]
Word. On the one hand, I applaud them [i]trying[/i] to do something different – it was almost a return to SPN’s old style of doing something really wacky & weird now and then. But a harlequin romance ghost story? It didn’t work for star trek ([url]”http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t266.php”[/url]), doesn’t work here. Good on TPTB for trying, but it failed, try something else next time.
[quote]A travesty and massive disappointment. Forget the fact it was poorly written, it totally forgot how a demon cure was supposed to work, which was clearly depicted in the brilliant season eight episode “Sacrifice.” The weird looks on Dean’s face were just embarrassing.[/quote]
What’s that? Carver forgetting canon? YA DON’T SAY! 😀
[quote]The idea to revive the Claire Novak story may have looked good on paper, but it fell flat with a major thud. When a show about the supernatural goes out of their way to avoid the supernatural and give us a very bad runaway teen drama, espcially when the episode is supposed to be the midseason finisher, you know that someone forgot to bring donuts to that pitch meeting.[/quote]
NOOOOO you bite your tongue!
lol ok, maybe it did fall a bit flat and I was just so relieved the show as moving in a positive direction. Let’s be honest, the show’s gotten a little too insular and up its own ass. Claire was at least a step in the right direction of reminding the characters (and TPTB) about the FAMILY as well as BUSINESS parts of “family business.” Hell if Claire had maybe teamed up with Rowena to become the new big bad and THEN we could have had a return to the whole “should kill but really don’t want to” dilemma of saving 1 vs many the show used to examine!
[quote]Castiel could have fought back. Fearsome angel, remember? It’s not like he could have killed Dean. [b]It just made no damned sense other than to general false drama.[/b][/quote]
That right there. That’s all of carver’s years summed up. “It makes no damned sense other than to generate false drama.” Everything, EVERYTHING about the last 3 years has been that, with a FEW exceptions in S8 before it really started coming off the rails.
[quote]The whole damned thing. Sorry, I couldn’t fall for anything in the Supernatural universe that was meant to be a homage to a weak movie that was paying homage to a board game. The family was way to cliched and uninteresting, none of it was funny at all and the Dean killing scene was littered with flying anvils.[/quote]
Only because you know I’m pedantic, but it was far more a homage to the game straight than the movie itself. I partially wonder if the whole thing was intended to be an hour long commercial for SPN Clue board game but there was almost nothing echoing or referencing the original movie in that episode.
Except in my remix of it. 😀
[quote]Was it weird that the only time Rowena wasn’t a total pain to watch was when the hallucinated version of her was working with Sam in “The Werther Project”? She is way too over the top for my tastes and every scene with her and Crowley was awkward at best. Which brings me to…[/quote]
Funny, that’s almost the exact same way I’d describe Metatron. Heck after everything, it would have been better had they just finished redeeming Crowley, let Abaddon fully take over hell and let HER be the bad redhead for this season. As it was, I saw few reasons for the Rowena character to exist, much less be “Crowley’s mother” rather than some random old witch. Being abaddon’s mother or servant or something would make as much sense and/or work with the season as mama!Crowley.