Regarding today's episode gimme shelter....why is everyone thrilled about the fact that real Mary was bitch to Dean. That somehow ruining a perfect mom image created by a 4yr old to find strength in face of danger is good. They're like 'yeah good writing...live in now...humanisied Mary...no one is perfect...blah blah' Whenever Dean was depressed/down he had 1 figure he could look at & cherish her memory and think of what ifs...bcuz aren't we all thinking of what if this n that.
& was Dean really living in the past that he needed to Learn a lesson? What kind bullshit gets praised to high heavens. Praise the acting not that cringefest writing
Probably because that speech Amara gave was almost word for word lifted from the meta/general opinions of the Dabb apologists who defended the writing of Mary during s12-14, so by applauding that scene they’re applauding their own opinions being backed up as canon. These fans and Dabb and co have always been in their own little jerk circle see, they actually communicate with each other sometimes (via that writing assistant probably) so it’s not a stretch to assume the writers aren’t influenced by their crap meta which then ends up in the show. I’m amazed these particular fans aren’t on the payroll.
The Dabb apologists are happily ignoring the fact that this speech is a complete retcon of Amara designed to cover up Dabb and co’s bad writing of Mary, and the writers are now saying - “see, this was our intention all along!” when it wasn’t.
In s11, Amara said that bringing Mary back was a gift as a reward. There was no mention of it being a lesson for Dean to learn.
Then what happened was Dabb and co attempted to write Mary as some kind of feminist ideal, only they used outdated 20th-century feminism mixed with a storyline that was too complex for them and the actress Samantha Smith to handle, so it backfired.
The Dabb apologists turned this failed writing into something else though, like all their meta they turned whatever was going on with Dean and Mary into their usual “Dean needs to learn a lesson” and it looks like the writers have co-opted it.
You see, being a strong female character no longer means she has to be like a man, it doesn’t mean she has to be “kickass” all the time, it doesn’t mean she has to be the just the “cool chick with a gun”. It also doesn’t mean she can’t be soft, or caring or be a mother. Being a strong female character means being complex, interesting, charismatic, a female character the audience loves to watch on their screens. In Peaky Blinders, one of the main characters Polly Gray is a mother, played brilliantly by Helen McCrory and she’s one of the most interesting characters on the show, hell the actual main character Tommy Selby is a father who is adores his son. Love for their children does not weaken them as characters. Helen McCrory has also spoken about what makes a strong female character and has rightly criticised this idea that SFC’s are just girls with guns, because nine times out of ten they end up as just male fantasies more than anything else. They’re a man’s version of a SFC, written as an ideal to men, not women, and Mary was very much the product of male writing.
Mary according to Dabb was more than “just a mom” which ok fine, except she wasn’t a mom at all, she didn’t really try to get to know her now grown up sons and when they fought, Mary’s arguments were very black and white (again written by a man) as in Mary saw herself as just a hunter/her own person like she couldn’t be that and a mother, and also ridiculous because not once did Dean ask or expect Mary to put on an apron and make him sandwiches! He just wanted her presence.
Yes I know she went from being in Heaven with her babies to suddenly being alive again face to face with her grown up children and there was no inbetween but here’s where that level of complexity was just too much for the writers and Samantha Smith to do it justice. It just ended up very cack-handed, whatever their intentions were it failed to come across because I’m sure we were supposed to see Mary as conflicted towards her now grown up children, she loves them but doesn’t know who they are, and she’s out of her depth in this strange future world, but instead we just saw her as cold and uncaring, more like an older sister who didn’t really want to spend time with her brothers, who would rather go run off and be with anyone else.
By the time the writers tried damage control, it was too late.
It’s a shame actually that they had to cast Samantha Smith, because while she is the iconic Mary from the pilot episode she just didn’t have the skills to handle this kind of storyline. I’m sure Amy Gumenick would have done a better job. Speaking of which....Mary was already a decent version of a SFC anyway before Dabb got his grubby hands on her! In In The Beginning and TSRTS we discovered that young Mary was actually a hunter in a long line of hunters, and could hold her own in a fight, but we also saw her love for her future children, her world view and hopes for their future, her not wanting them to grow up like her, and we saw her love for John which lead to her making that dreadful deal setting everything in motion, all of which added much needed complexity to her character....which DEAN WAS MADE AWARE OF because he witnessed it all when he went back in time.
So this whole idea that Dean only saw Mary as this “perfect untouchable mythical person” and needs to learn that she’s “human” is wrong anyway, his view of his mother was drastically shifted over 10 years ago in s4! So if that really was the sole reason for bringing back Mary then it was uneccessary. Not that there’s anything wrong with holding precious memories from when you were 4 years old, especially when you’ve had the traumatic life Dean has had. I can imagine Dean spent the first few years in Hell trying to remember her face, and the comfort she gave him when he was a child, as a way to get through the never ending torment until he could not remember anything at all, and can anyone seriously point their finger at Dean and say that was wrong?
Plus, as a mutual said the other day...all those years when Dean dreamed of his mother as he remembered her, they were HIS memories, HIS thoughts, locked away in his head, he never knew he was going to see Mary ever again except maybe in Heaven when he died, so exactly who was he harming with those thoughts in his own head anyway? They had no effects on anyone except Dean himself, which were postive.
So yeah, this speech from Amara was just the writers covering their own arses. They’d wanted to turn Mary into a feminist icon but through a male lense, forgetting that she was already a well written fleshed out character thanks to In The Beginning and TSRTS in s4 and s5. In better hands the whole Mary storyline could have been a complex story of a mother who doesn’t know her own sons, but it fell flat and Mary was ruined. So the writers likely turned to their cheerleaders here on tumblr, who had interpreted the whole mess as another case of “Dean needs to learn a lesson” and went “sure, we’ll use that and imply that was our intention all along”.
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