#dabb criticism

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

Hi. I just wanted to say, that i read back all your meta and opinions and i completely agree with you about the loss of the quality of the show. If im being completeley honest which i am, i have to say that i believe this show would have been easily the best show on tv, if the Netflix, HBO or Cinemax were taken it. Cw always ruins everything. This show should be scary, mad-toe-to-toe action filled with great writing. People in the chair with a pen not doing such good job. Have nice day. :)

Hi dear!

It isn’t a lot of fun to be so filled with disappointment regarding the show that despite all the bad writing and bad everything really of the last couple of seasons under Dabb still is the show that means most to you. And I am mostly keeping my mouth shut about it these days, because nobody likes to be bombarded with negative thoughts.

But I agree with you, the show deserves much better than it what it is cursed with at the moment. I have wondered many a times how much better SPn could have been even in its best seasons if it had a budget like let’s say “The Walking Dead”. I’m sure it would have been just breathtaking. Which is not to say that I haven’t felt absolutely enthralled by seasons past the way the show ran - I have been, I fell in love with it the way it was and now I seem to be falling out of love with it, because it is painful to me to see the show lose everything that it once stood for and that made it unique and an emotional journey to be invested in. There is just barely anything left of what made this show the show I love.

I will not type up again all that I am missing on the show these days, I have done that more times I can count - and it wo’t change anything. At this point I am just sad that SPN - the show closest to my heart - will just trickle out in meaningless cheap melodrama, when it had all the potential in the world but a showrunner who lost himself in the hype around himself and the fanservice strewn across all of the seasons without it actually being planned out in a proper and meaningful way, but just given as little pieces of candy for certain groups of the fandom. It doesn’t work for me that way. The show lacks integrity, it lacks heart, because frankly that heart, that core is not being the focus anymore (with this week’s episode being an exception), but storylines with characters I don’t care about and that are executed poorly and just foot on cheap drama.

I never would have thought I would come to this point but I think SPN should have ended with S11 when Dean held the amulet glowing in his hand and Chuck said “hi”. Everything that came after that... It’s a different show and it may feature the Winchesters (now and again, sadly Dabb isn’t truly interested in their story but rather everybody elses) and the Impala and the bunker, but it’s not the same show, it’s not the same depth, the same thought and love poured into it, it’s just... heartless. And that is painful, because what this whole show rests upon is emotion, emotion delivered and felt through the main characters with Dean as the narrator most of all, but he is barely in the picture these days (again this episode being an exception).

So yeah, those are my two cents once again that nobody wanted to hear. And to end this reply with a nod towards the episode: Maybe the writers should take a look at their set up and what Dean saw when he read that book, which I think is a blank page. Dean, ultimate symbol of free will, uniting humanity and divnity within, re-writer of the apocalypse, the one ripping up the pages of destiny, his “book of life (and death)” now has a blank page and what could possibly be more scary than that for Dean? He’s overwhelmed, he’s got all the possibilities in the world, in the end this action and though all other books having been rewritten don’t matter, because they haven’t been written by Dean himself. It’s up for Dean to decide, to write his own story, be the master of his own destiny. He isn’t just the God of his own story, he is also the Death of his own story.

And that is kind of the thing that Michael despite all his boasting doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need to kill God, really, he can’t kill God, because he is already dead. Nothing made this more clear than this blank page - that I assume is what Dean saw in that book and that is what freaks Dean out more than any other scenario written down would have (though granted with this writing team, they probably go down some idiotic blatent route and explanation) imo. Maybe Dabb should leave the pen to Dean Winchester, I’m sure he’d be a better writer than any of the people currently on staff...

[stuffsko]

Look im not expecting a glory or a rennaisance to spn. Those passed already. I just want to have soemthing to engage.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

Yeah, I also wondered if Dabb was planning to revisit boy king Sam. Otherwise the whole Kip plot seemed like such a random story to dominate what should have been a big Michael episode. The only way I'd buy into elevating Sam like that would be if Dean then eventually took over Heaven. He's Michael's vessel and angels were already ordered to follow him back in S4. And Dean could agree to help with all the human souls in Heaven. But sadly, I don't think Dabb cares about Dean enough to go there.

Hey dear!

That whole scene with Kip and Cas has so many plotholes and frankly idiotic inconsistencies written all over that I would not be surprised if Dabb wasn’t even aware that with this scene he very heavily implied that Sam indeed set himself up as the new King of Hell, but only wanted to convey Sam’s annoyance and “being done” with everything Hell related. I mean, it’s Dabb we’re talking about here... So, I would be surprised if he revisited that plot. If he did however it would only make sense to also re-explore Dan’s ties to Heaven beyond Michael as well. I doubt he will do either, because it would bring the show full circle to S5 and would negate all free will and choice the show so hard tried to strengthen and the Winchesters always fought for, so if any or both of them would end up as “boy king” or “heaven’s favourite” it would be a slap in the face and the worst negation of character development ever, so I hope that is not what Dabb has planned.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

Welp. Promo for Season 14. All your interesting ideas? Too deep. Too imaginative. Dabb will never go there with Dean. He will cheap out. I truly believe Dabb finds the character Dean boring. Every chance he has had to really go there and let Jensen off his leash-he never does. I’ve read on another blog that it’s because of Jensen’s acting range, that he simply can’t carry it off but I don’t believe that for a minute. I’m very curious as to how MichaelDean will play out tho. 1/2-3?

He and Daniel Loflin wrote some decent episodes. Dabb strikes me as a writer of the superficial. A lot of times he goes for the obviouspredictable. Read the list of episodes he’s written since Season Eight and see how many you liked. The shame is that some of them are really good. So he’s more than capable. I think he buys into his own hype. Whenever he says something is going to be really cool, we’ll love it? Well... I just don’t trust him with Dean (or for that matter Sam) anymore.            

Hey lovely!

I am so sorry for the uttelry late reply. Just not on here much anymore or at least since SPN has gone on hiatus. So apologies if you have been waiting for a reply for days.

I think Dabb is in general more interested in all characters other than the Winchesters and that is one of the problems I have with his style of showrunning. Sidelining the main characters, the ones who “made this show” just doesn’t work for me, because you take away the emotional core of the show. SPN is a show built around the relationship of two brother, their story, naturally there are people that have broadened their horizon and that have come in and that are important for them, but Dabb and the way he has been juggling storylines is just dissatisfying on so many levels I don’t even know where to start. And yeah, I feel Dean has drawn the shortest stick during Dabb’s run, which is a shame because not only is Dean the POV character and narrator of the show, he is also it’s heart, the show simply wouldn’t work without Dean - and that is also why Dean will not be gone for long, because the show doesn’t work without a narrator and character through whom you watch and “feel” the show, which is Dean most of the time. Interestingly enough however, despite the fact that Dean is so important to the whole of SPN the character in itself is treated poorest under Dabb - but of course there could be tons of people arguing the opposite. It’s a question of taste and for me Dabb has destroyed pretty much everything that made SPN such a great show - though I will give him the benefit of the doubt with the Michael!Dean stuff, but to be perfectly honest my expectations and hopes are low and still I expected I will still feel let down.

As for Jensen’s acting range. WTF?! Has that person ever watched SPN and Jensen’s performance? If someone is able to deliver layered and nuanced play it is him and I am certain he could do so much more with Michael then they will go for in the end, because Jensen is a damn good actor.

Dabb has developed to be and to choose the most boring and obvious routes, yes. Though I feel that has been different in the past. I actually have loved a lot of his episodes prior him becoming showrunner. I mean, Reichenbach, The Prisoner, those are GREAT episodes - it often times feels now what he does now and wrote back then can’t possibly come from the same person. But then again I always feel about Dabb similarly as I felt about Sera Gamble (whose showrunning I much prefer to Dabb’s even though I disliked her style a great deal as well): Both of them have written some of my favourite episodes but they simply aren’t made to be showrunners. These things are two different animals altogether and just because you’re good in one department doesn’t mean you can deliver in the other.

And actually yes, I have to agree, I think Dabb takes himself to serious and has bought into the hype around him - and that’s never a good thing for anyone... So yeah, I am watching the beginning of S14 solely to see what Jensen is doing with Michael!Dean, but at the moment I doubt anything beyond that will excite me to actually watch the whole season (maybe I’ll always just watch the Winchester / Dean bits lol) - not after the disasters that were S12 and S13... But we’ll see maybe Dabb can unsink this ship with the new season, would take a whole lot of wood though to fix that gaping hole in it.. ;P

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

Hello, it's been a while. I know you got a lot of metas to do, but I couldn't help it, I would like to ask you about your insights on AU cas? Thnx have a good time ^^

Hey dear!

Hope you have a good time. :) I am just dreading having to go back to work after being on holidays.

Lol, actually I don’t have any metas planned (except for maybe continuing my rewatch meta series over hellatus, but maybe I will actually truly for once take a couple weeks a complete break from tumblr, but I don’t know yet. We’ll see), because this season was so bad that I had nothing I really wanted or thought one needed to meta about. :) But thank you for your ask. xx

My insights on AU!Cas? :) I am afraid my opinion on that entire bit of the penultimate episode is a very unpopular opinion (as it is regarding the entire season and season finale), therefore it goes straight behind the cut.

I am not one to get all up in arms and rain on anyone’s parade or be unnescessarily mean, but I think Misha’s performance in that scene was frankly… horrible, I felt second hand embarassment tbh and I don’t say this just to be wanky, but it sadly was just cringeworthy to me - almost the entire season finale was too for me, so… it really might just be me.

But ignoring Misha’s imo truly bad performance there and just thinking about AU!Cas while also ignoring all the plot holes regarding his vessel and Jimmy Novak, etc.. to me it was absolutely unnescessary of the show to waste minutes on it. I get why they included it and why they thought it was “cool” or “shocking”, but to me it was actually neither, but just one more incident of way too many over the course of the season to highlight bad showrunning and writing.

I guess they wanted to drive the point home with AU!Cas how integral and important the Winchesters were in Castiel’s “coming of age” for lack of a better word and what/who he may have become if he was never assigned to save Dean from Hell: a soldier working for Michael and feeling delight in torture, etc. I guess they also wanted allude to how that Castiel may have also been subjected to mind wipes and reprogramming as our Castiel suffered under Naomi, but none of that was truly developed in the episode or explained or properly worked out. To me this face-off could have been much better (like so much else this season) if the millions other things introduced had just been cut away and they would have concentrated on a few bits and truly worked with them. Castiel meeting his other self and being horrified by it, it starting to have an effect on him, spurring thoughts and memories within him. All that would have made for an interesting story spanning over a couple of episodes, with how it was handled now it was just quick quick, kill and kill and didn’t work for me at all.

I get that they wanted to use this as a callback to Cas in the Empty and how that entity approached him in his own form and he needed to “face” himself in a way, but imo Castiel killing off this dark/shadow self of himself in order to fully drive the point home that Castiel completely leaves his “angelic” ties and his past and what he could have become/been behind could have been handled way better.

Sorry for the short reply and the very critical words, but Dabb’s showrunning is just a big old pile of disappointment for me. *sighs*

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

So any ideas on who you might think dean will say yes to in the finale

Hey lovely!

Has there been any official statement on Dean “saying yes” in the season finale? Because I have not been keeping up with spoilers and had just assumed that probably whoever that other character Jensen would be playing would likely end up being part of a cliffhanger but I hadn’t read any of that and of course there are many different ways Jensen could play a different character without any possession needing to be involved.

Just think for example that 2014!verse were Zachariah put Dean back in S5 was actually an alternate reality and with the whole multiverse collapsing - which I assume the show may tackle given Billie as the new Death made such a huge deal about how she doesn’t “need some big old Winchester tearing it all down”. He could perfectly well slip over to the normal SPN world and possibly trade places with our Dean - which would make also an interesting twist given that Dean had “screamed for Michael to be able to say yes”.

So, really maybe Dean doesn’t have to say “yes” to anyone or anything (again if that was a spoiler that is out there and that I don’t know of of course that would allude to possession but could still mean a lot of things lol). Since Jensen said that it was a character we met a long time ago and that he would have to do some research, I kind of went back further than Michael (though the Michael in the cage would be the most obvious route to take) and thought what could be really terrifying and a huge deal and twist in regards to mythology etc. would be if Jensen played Azazel. Though Dean as Death could be interesting too but I doubt that the show would go there (though there would be enough groundwork laid throughout seasons for it to work).

In any case I think it would have to be a character that we have met more than once. I briefly also pondered if they may go and let Jensen “play” John in some twisted universe but I dearly hope that that won’t be the case because that would be just horrible imo.

If we talk angelic possession however aside from the possible most obvious ones such as Michael or Gabriel, I thought about Anael or - which would work with a character from a long time ago - Anna.

I guess we’ll find out more soon! For the time being I am trying to not get my hopes up too much about Jensen getting the opportunity to do something new, because sadly I’d be very surprised if the show under Dabb managed to create something even just half as exciting and wonderful as big parts of the fandom hope for and are able to imagine and come up with. But of course I am always happy to get surprised and proven wrong. ;) Though really if the way this season unfolded is anything to go by, I try to not have any expectations at all in order to not be let down even more than I already feel by this season.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

thejabberwock replied to your post “Things about 13x14 “Good Intentions” #3”

to have Sam and Dean's entire arc revolving around getting Mary (and now Jack) back from the apocalypse world is just... underwhelming to say the least

Yes, it is. Especially when that as well is only coming up when it is convenient, but seems forgotten every second episode. *sighs* The lack of emotional involvement and exploration to me is the key problem of “Dabb Era”. SPN has become successful, because it did one thing well, emotion, interpresonal relationships, that was the core of the show, that is what resonated with people, how these two boys (and later Cas with them) dealt with what life threw their way. Their reactions, their struggles, that was integral to each myth arc and each overlaying arc, but that to me feels completely missing in S12 and S13 or at the very least gets WAY TOO LITTLE screen time. And that ripps the show of it’s soul imo, it turns it into a heartles version of itself, because what always captured me most was feeling with the main characters. Of course I still feel with them now, but man there are worlds between how that used to be in seasons prior and how it is now.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

Things about 13x10 - or rather - 1x01 “Wayward Sisters” (warning: includes some critical thoughts as well)

Back from Paris and managed to watch the episode this morning. I don’t have too many things to say really. I enjoyed watching the episode and I also like all the characters of the spin-off (and yeah, I am feeling a little smug about being right with the “the bad place”-traveler turning out to be Kaia (’s shadow self) - hell, they even went as far as having her “die” by a bone to further play up the entire parallel to Dean with the MoC arc (as talked about here and here). They found charismatic actresses for the parts for sure.

Also something I really liked was the look of the episode, the camera work, but I have to admit - and I know this will just leave me getting tons of hate probably, but that is simply the way the episode felt to me and the general tone and set up of the spin off - overall to me the episode fell a little flat, felt rushed and too matchy matchy for plot sake and just really more than that “overscripted” for lack of a better world. So much just felt forced and over the top. Imo they should have focused more on the emotional arcs and worked on that more rather than the boosting over and over how “cool” everybody is. To me this approach kind of negated and defeated the purpose of showcasing that this team of girls/women is strong and badass - it was just not tone right for me. I can just compare it to “Wonder Woman” and how that showcased also an indepent strong and badass female lead, but to me that movie worked, because it felt natural and not highlighted and overemphasized here and there all the time how badass this character is. I don’t know… I know people will kill me for saying this, but just something to me didn’t connect that well with WS as it does in WW.

I also struggle a bit with the “throwbacks” and “one liners” inserted to early SPN, because to me this just doesn’t work, but that is an overall issue with Dabb’s SPN and not so much with this episode in itself. Similarly I feel about the set up of Claire’s arc being a turnaround to SPN where she basically kind of “tells” the story of “Dean”. Meaning she leaves (like Sam), but not to study and have a normal life, but to pursue hunting. I of course see all the reasons why the show decided to go this way and script it this way and I’m sure many will love it for this exact reason, but to me it sadly cheapens everything. I would have preferred it by far if it was truly independent in that regard. The way the characters were introduced through SPN to go over to the spin off was a clever move, but something just doesn’t click for me in terms of how it relies on “Supernatural” and turnarounds and mirroring of things that happened there. But I am sure I am a minotity in feeling this way.

So verdict: I think it was a good and entertaining episode. But also one with a lot of bumps in the road. I liked it as a one off episode, but I am not sure if the episode really captivated me enough to be interested and to watch the spin-off. I will, of course, watch the first few episodes if it is picked up, but if the issues I had with this episode will remain in the general show, I think it just won’t be a show for me. Then again, I never needed any kind of SPN spin off to begin with, I’d be perfectly happy if the writers/crew put as much effort look and shooting wise and everything else on SPN itself, because that is still the show I fell in love with and care about most - even if right now I have deep issues with the showrunning and approach of storytelling. But what can I say: I am silly and hope against hope that things will change and SPN will be more like the SPN I love so much. We’ll see….