Hi Mittens, I’m the anon who asked about Christo. I’m sorry to cause any confusion. One example is how they treated Abbadon. Dean specifically outlines how they are going to make sure she’s dead by dismemberment and burying the pieces in concrete. They even repeat that scene in the episode previouslies where Abbadon comes back. So why didn’t they dispose of her like they proclaimed? Then they both leave the room to take the phone call and she escapes. 1 of 2.
2/2 It reminded me of them leaving the Styne brother alone in the dungeon and he escaped. Shouldn’t they know to lock the bad guys down more securely? Your anon who mentioned President Rooney reminded me of that strange situation with the golden egg. Why were they hanging around in the hotel room just to get caught by the feds? Shouldn’t they have freed him and ran? I feel they should be shown to be smarter. So is the writing face value for their characters or is the writing inconsistent?
Hi there! and thank you for writing back! It’s not a problem at all! I love answering questions if I can, and you’re lucky I have some answers to this one that you will hopefully find satisfying. :)
(note that I would put this under a cut, but tumblr has been breaking them lately, so I’m not gonna risk that... apologies for the very long post)
Let’s start with Abaddon, since that one is incredibly easy. They 100% did do exactly what they said they were gonna do to her. They very much did hack her up and bury her under concrete in/after 8.12. They thought they could use her as the demon for the cure in 8.22, though. They’d been trying to capture a demon, but Crowley had ordered all his demons to stay away from them. Here, from the transcript of 8.22
DEAN: Could we take this hoodoo on a test drive?
SAM: Um, I mean, I have the exorcism right here. All we need is the blood, consecrated ground, and a demon. So, what? We summon a demon, trap it –
DEAN: Or – or we use one that we've already tagged. Do we still have dad's old army field surgeon's kit?
SAM: It's in the trunk. Why?
DEAN: Yeah, I think it's time we put humpty dumpty back together again.
They dug her up and stitched her back together (sans hands), and were intending to use her to perform the Third Trial. Hence the stitches holding her head on:
Agreed they were kinda dense leaving her alone, even without her hands attached, when their phone rang... Crowley was calling to blackmail them and it gave Abaddon time to escape. Which is why they ended up capturing and using Crowley for the Third Trial.
Then in 8.23, when she shows up to tell Crowley that she’ll be taking over Hell now, Sam douses her with holy oil and lights her up. We don’t know definitively what happened to her or her remains after that point because A LOT happened at the end of 8.23, and “making sure abaddon was really dead-dead” was not at the top of Dean’s priority list, you know? Which is the state from which she was resurrected in 9.02...
But in between, she absolutely did spend half a season chopped up under concrete. This is not “bad writing” or incoherent continuity.
They didn’t really have a way to definitively “kill” her, you know? the best they could do was to trap her and bury her, but their own desperation to get the doors of hell slammed shut (which, if you know me you know I think is the biggest act of hubris the Winchesters have ever attempted to carry out) they didn’t really stop to think “hey maybe this is the worst idea.”
I also don’t think they knew that Abaddon had the power to command her hands to do her bidding when they were literally in a box on a table across the room from her... I mean, I would’ve been OVERLY cautious about that sort of thing just because, but I’ll forgive them because they were distracted, stressed, and overwhelmed. Sam was experiencing massive Trial Sickness, Dean was worried about him AND Cas, and then if that wasn’t enough, Crowley called to tell them he was methodically gonna kill everyone they ever saved until they gave in to his demands.
They were kinda distracted... ?
Okay, moving on to the next one: Eldon Styne and the Half-Assed Handcuff. Let’s start by remembering a few details about this Dumbass Scene.
1. It was Bucklemming... something in me always wonders if the crew deliberately fucks around with stuff in their episodes, like the ridiculously ill-fitting handcuff. because
2. this was 10.21, aka the most infamous and egregious example of that one square on the bucklemming bingo card: characters being dumb for plot. Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact wording, but basically having characters at entirely stupid because they need them to do A Plot Thing and can’t think of a better way to accomplish that.
3. this was 10.21, in which the cast, crew, and a good number of the other writers were essentially working under protest, because pretty much EVERYONE other than Carver, Singer, and Bucklemming objected to Charlie’s death.
4. Knowing point 3, please refer back to point 1.
But also, The Styne Family was possibly the STUPIDEST thing the show has ever done, as a whole. The derailing of s10′s overarching plot because whoopsie they were renewed, and Carver wouldn’t be ending the series at the end of s10 like he’d been planning, and oh no they’d come WAY too close to the end of some of their major character arcs and that couldn’t be allowed if the show was continuing, but... double whoopsie Carver was already in development on a new series that he’d obligated himself to, so mad scramble to pull SOMETHING out of his squid-shaped hat and for whatever reason they settled on freaking cartoonish supervillains the Frankenstein Family who had to be both terrifying up front (to pose a serious enough risk to take seriously at all) and then fold like cheap suits when confronted by one (1) MoC-Fueled Dean.
They were scary in 10.18, thanks to Robbie Thompson. It was that final reveal in that episode that let me know we were headed, though. The Styne Family Crest? Yeah, stolen from Young Frankenstein:
(image from the superwiki)
If you’ve never seen Young Frankenstein, please do. It’s freaking HILARIOUS. But it let me know that these were not the terrifying Big Bads we were expecting, they were a parody. They were set up to be Terrible People the rest of the writers could mock. They we were saddled with the atrocity that was 10.21. And Dabb finished them off in Badass Dean Style in 10.22. And that was it, never to be heard from again.
Disclaimer: I have written a whole heck of a lot about this (and about how this was possibly my least favorite thing the show has ever done). the back half of s10 is a hot mess, the Stynes were the worst villains ever (boring, stupid, easily defeated, etc.), and 10.21 in particular hits all the lows even for bucklemming... so I honestly won’t even attempt to defend this one. This was Bad Writing.
And finally, President Rooney... in 12.08, why did Sam and Dean stick around after Cas and Kelly fled? I’ll start this out by reminding everyone that this... surprise... was bucklemming again. Remember that bingo card I mentioned?
(lol I went and found it, credit for this one goes to @messier51 back in the olden days... https://messier51.tumblr.com/post/68535147632/buckleming-bingo is the original post, from 2013)
and there it is, lower left corner, “Sam/Dean makes a decision that makes no sense.” This is a pattern for them, where they knew the end of the episode must have Sam and Dean being carted off to Black Ops Prison, and this was the best they could think of to get them there.
I’ve said before that I am willing to handwave a lot about this episode because of everything it will give to us down the line (12.09, Jack, it’s basically building the stage on which the rest of s12 is set). And I’ve previously offered the theory that they were Concerned For The President and making sure that he would live/suffer no repercussions of his possession by Lucifer. But I mean, the secret service dudes were literally on the other side of the door and would’ve been able to tend to him just as well, if not better. I think Sam and Dean may have-- in Bucklemming’s minds-- believed that they would be fine. They were only really worried about Kelly being caught there. They thought they would be viewed as “heroes who helped save the president” and not “dangerous threats attempting to kill the president.”
Agreed, it was a stupid thing to thing, especially since Rooney apparently didn’t remember his possession, and is never heard from again in-show. He couldn’t corroborate Sam and Dean’s story. I mean, they could’ve said they were staying in the room next door (it was an adjoining room, because Cas and Kelly sneaked out that door after the secret service guys stormed into the president’s room), and they could’ve just said they heard a ruckus, someone calling for help, and simply found him like that. But they didn’t know that one secret service agent had already been warned about them specifically by “President Lucifer.” That’s absolutely something they should’ve considered would happen, but uh... they didn’t, because bucklemming.
But yeah, that’s... a thing with these writers in particular... we try to acrobat our way around these sorts of things as best we can, and move on :’D
If you have any other questions, please let me know! Otherwise, please check out my tags for these specific episodes. I think I got them all on this post...
