All My Thoughts on Bad Day at Black Rock

I planned from the first few minutes of the show to watch it again and type as I watched because there was so much I loved. So I did that.

1. Okay, this one is really funny. I made fun of Misty for not noticing the star in last year’s title, but it took me three episodes to notice the claws in this year's!

2. I still love the way Ruby’s eyes flare into demon eyes and back. It has more impact, for some reason, than when it’s an evil demon about to attack.

3. Is this a guy (Kubrik) I know from a dozen other things, or just someone who looks like him? Gotta be him--no one else could have that same mouth.

4. Hey, Gordon, shut up about Bobby! (Love that Gordon laugh, though.)

5. Sammy, you big liar. Tell him about Mom!

6. Is that hope in Dean’s hesitation for just a moment (about Ruby being able to help him)? Before he says “What is wrong with you?”

7. How cool is it that a guy like Dean can tell another guy, even his brother, that his weakness is him, and not have that other guy protest? I love that.

8. “Dude?!” Dean's all-purpose word.

9. Love that Dean’s so clever about the Dad-phone thing--but how does he keep the bill paid? How do they keep any bills paid, for that matter?

10. LOL at the Jesus-eyes-following-you bit.

11. Creepy storage unit building place. I’m excited about all the possibilities the stuff in here opens up. New weapons, new legends…

12. Sammy played soccer!!!!

13. “About the closest you ever came to bein’ a boy.” AHAHAHAHAHAHA

14. Poor Dean made a sawed-off shotgun in 6th grade. That’s really sad. :(

15. Flimsy lock on Dad’s curse boxes.

16. The casting in this episode was really exceptional. From Wayne and Grossman to Kubrik and Creavy, these are solid, well-drawn and well-acted characters.

17. Gawd these two have great voices. Sam and Dean come bursting into my house, guns out in front of them, yelling at me to freeze, I will be completely unable to. I’ll just be a puddle on the floor.

18. The music during this silly fight scene is perfect.

19. Sammy got throttled! Everybody drink!

20. I wonder how many times they had to practice that gun-toss/catch? I wanna see the misses on the gag reel.

21. I can imagine the boyish glee Kripke felt at the whole fork gag. Heee! Gag. Get it?

22. Bobby can build curse boxes! But I betcha the lock wasn’t his. Flimsy thing.

23. I love the mythology of the curse. Very poetic.

24. Okay, Sam, your jacket pocket is a really dumb place to put something you can’t afford to lose. It should go deep into your front jeans pocket. Here, let me show you…

25. Dean’s ice cream headache. I’ll warm that nerve for you, honey…

26. Funny that Sam is getting hit on--funnier Dean’s expression--funniest the way they lean forward to watch her…and then, of course, it was obvious she’d taken it.

26. Bela is so smug. And deservedly so.

27. “Oh wow. You suck.” Poor hapless Sammy with the skinned knees.

28. I bet a lot of people will be unhappy that the expansion of the Supernatural universe means less screen time overall for Sam and Dean. But I’m loving it, for two reasons--they have interesting characters, mostly good acting, and well-written dialogue (“I like when they drop the whole onion in the fryer”) and Jensen and Jared don’t have to work so hard and be so tired.

29. Poor Sammy, tripping and knocking stuff over, and Dean already taking it in stride and not even turning around. "You okay?" "Yeah, I'm good."

30. Nice zoom on Dean with his little “I can read people speech.”

31. HAHAHAHAHA. Sam lost his shoe.

32. And they come rapid-fire now:
“Just…look out for your brother…ya idjit.”
“I lost my shoe.” Poor, hapless, little-boy Sammy.
“You, my brotha, are stayin’ here…” (Not funny, just funny, with his accent slippin’ in)
“Don’t even scratch your nose.” (And Sam's face! Again!)

33. I love that Sam’s going to do exactly as he was told. Little boy.

34. Wow, Bela’s got money! And she’s smart. The only thing better than a really dumb adversary is a really smart one. She keeps a gun in the wine cooler. What kind of men does she DATE?

35. Even better than a smart adversary is a smart hero. Love the alarm thing.

36. Don’t rock, Sammy! You’ll tip the chair and hit your head! Ooh, much better that the A/C unit catches on fire. LOL at Sammy’s whine. How cuddly can a 6-foot-four guy GET?

37. Stop drop and roll, Sam! Oh, how funny that those guys are right outside the window.

38. Man, Dean’s hot. Sorry,but he’s standing all wide-legged and sturdy, holding that gun on Bela. Let's pause that for a while...

39. Owww, poor Sammy smacked in the face.

40. Cool twist on a thief--communing with the dead.

41. Yay! Dean stole the foot! He can’t be shot! Go save Sam, Dean!

42. Headbutt him, Sam! (I think Creavey’s not fully on Kubrick’s bandwagon here.)

43. Gawd, I love cocky Dean. The pen in the gun! People knocking themselves out left and right. “I’m Batman!” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

44. Oh, yeah, I forgot the preview. I always love how the show seems resolved but we've got 8 minutes left. So of course Bela's back!

45. Oh, Dean, cockiness goes too far. You got poor hapless Sammy shot!

46. “I can aim.”

47. Ha! He got you. "Think fast" always works.

48. “Not even a little.”

49. Or maybe this time you’ll hang him out to dry, huh, Bela? Dean, you fool. Bye bye lottery tickets. Sam won’t let you forget that!

50. I love that psycho Gordon thinks his new zealot is psycho, too.

So I read a blog post after I wrote this wherein said blog poster didn’t like the show very much, and a few people agreed.

Now, any show can be nitpicked. I didn't find it necessary to latch on to the weaknesses because the strengths (the things *I* found to be strengths, anyway) were far stronger than the weaknesses were weak. But I always find I have to address those nitpicks once someone points them out. *sigh* It's a weakness.

So here we go.

Z. Yes, it seems odd that Dad had a storage unit that Dean didn’t know about, and that he had all this stuff in it Dean didn’t know about. But it’s been well established that Dad did not share as much with either son as they (or at least Dean) wanted to believe.

Y. Yes, Dean not knowing about curse boxes stretches believability, but exposition has been the bane of all TV writers’ existence forever. It’s more awkward to do the “as you know” thing.

X. Dean getting giddy over the good luck didn't strike me as out of character. First, he’s a dork that way. He’ll take whatever good he can get, however he can get it, and he's often a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. Second, his current frame of mind lends itself to such a response. It’s not like he wanted to keep it or tried to stop Sam from destroying it or anything. I did wonder, however, why Dad didn’t destroy it when it was possible to do so. Maybe he didn’t feel it was necessary since he clearly hadn’t touched it.

W. It was asked, if Dad had an object that would bring him luck, why he didn’t use it (the luck) to catch and kill the demon. It seems like an obvious question, but if you think about it, the answer is just as obvious. He knew he was “getting close,” but like Harry Potter going after Voldemort, he had no idea how long it would take him to actually confront the demon. Going to retrieve the rabbit’s foot might have meant losing the trail, and taking possession of it was too risky. Losing it was almost a given--remember, Bobby said everyone loses it--and leaving the demon at large with his sons in danger was not something John was willing to risk (until the only other option was letting Dean die, and he obviously found that a worse outcome). Plus, what if demon magic trumped hoodoo magic?

V. There’s some annoyance at convenient writing, jumping to conclusions, etc. I find it amusing in the context of a television show, specifically, though it’s true of all fiction. Fiction is made up. Authors manipulate every single bit of the story to make it what they want it to be. It’s true that fiction has to be different from real life (e.g., the whole “out-of-character” thing, because real people act out of character all the time). But it’s fiction. Dean doesn’t exist. Dean ONLY ever does or thinks or says what the writers tell him to do or think or say. It’s not like he can decide to be suspicious of the rabbit’s foot because it’s “what he would do.”

U. I won’t criticize anyone for not finding the episode funny. Humor is probably the most subjective of all subjectivity. Not everyone finds the same things amusing in any context. But I don’t think it’s fair to be derisive of those who do find it funny, either. It just is what it is.

Overall, if 90% of the people who watch Supernatural find it great 90% of the time, that would be good enough for me.

Or, you know, whatever percentage will keep it on the air. :)