Supernatural's stinging meta

[darkemeralds]

If it weren't for vampirefan and our longstanding tradition of chatwatching Supernatural, I don't think I'd have the nerve to face this week's meta episode. I mostly hated the previous ones, and there they only played around with fanfic and fan conventions.



...Ooookay. That wasn't as horrific as I feared--I mean, on the hide-face-and-hope-it-goes-away scale of fourth-wall breakage and fandom meta. On the "THEY KILLED WHO????" scale it was mind-boggling. That they left Misha, Kripke, Singer, and whoever else lying shot to death was just...I don't know.

Kripke's "concern" about dead Misha was pretty funny.

So, is it just me, or have they hired some new sound editor in the last few episodes who loves noisy, noisy noise pollution in the background of every scene? Man, the noise is annoying. What IS that?

I enjoyed having just seen Misha's tweets before watching the episode where he tweeted them. Kind of a nice little mind-bender.

As long as you're going to jump the shark this way, I guess you might as well cop to the sixth-season blues.

The "reveal" that the guy Sam and Dean think is Castiel is really just Misha fucking with them was fun.

Dear Genevieve: let your mascara do the acting for you more often. It's pretty good.

I admit it: I laughed at the way Sam and Dean tried to get some private discussion and prep time, and "Cliff" and "Bob" seemed to think that "Jared and Jensen" were making up their differences in the good old fashioned way. No clue where the "differences" were supposed to be coming from.

Jared's house is hilariously tasteless. The cowboy photo is the best thing ever, and I hope it came from the upcoming cowboy episode.

As to the actual story? Not a fucking clue. To track it, I'd have to a) care what Raphael and Balthazar have been doing, b) remember things about weapons and staves of Moses and stuff that I really can't keep track of, and c) rewatch and be able to focus on anything but the burning meta in this ep. So if anyone wants to fill me it, that'd be great.

Comments

[tehomet]

I haven't seen this episode yet and now I'm madly intrigued!

[darkemeralds]

It's very shark-jumpy. But memorable, as SPN eps go.

[roxy]

That cowboy photo had me in stitches--it looked a lot like a not so good manip. That and the Warhol style prints were killing me. I wonder if the Warhol thing meant something besides AUJared was unbelievably self-centered?

[darkemeralds]

I wondered about those too. I assumed they were just a way of typifying Hollywood-star type egos. They were really bad!

You're right, the cowboy picture barely stood up to the camera shot it was in, so obvious was the manipping. But still. Western episode coming up!

[emungere]

...Wait, what? So they basically wrote a RPF episode? And aired it on actual TV?

[darkemeralds]

Pretty much, yup.

Oh, Show. How you have jumped.

[cookiemom6067]

I really wanted a whole lot more about S/D reacting to J2's lives. Maybe cut one of the phone calls to Sera? Did we need two?

Glad we're starting to see more about the "Heaven and Cas" part of the story arc, but I found the scene where Virgil slits Misha's throat so AWFUL that it completely threw me out of it. I expected a VERY funny episode and I got a MILDLY funny episode that took a sharp turn into completely UNFUNNY at that point.

I imagine Sera enjoyed blowing "Eric" away, though

[darkemeralds]

The two Sera phone calls (which I presume were voiced by the real Sera) were excessive, weren't they?

I did enjoy Sam and Dean discovering the joys of high credit limits. I was a little disturbed by the clear implication that Sam had sex with Jared's wife, but it was hard to get too worked up over it in light of them killing Misha. And in light of the...what word do I want?...undisciplined nature of the whole script.

[donutsweeper]

I didn't watch it. On purpose. The other 'meta' episodes were just too painful. So when my kids suggested watching a movie together I jumped at the chance. I'm glad it wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be though

[darkemeralds]

Other meta episodes have left me extremely uncomfortable because they were making fun of me. It was personal. I'm not Becky, and I'm not a LARPer, and I've never been to a con, but I'm in the fandom, I participate fannishly, and I cringed away from the show's depiction of [some version of] my fellow fans. It bordered on cruel in places.

This meta ep was so busy making fun of insiders on the show that it was pretty painless for me personally. Painless, sometimes kind of funny, but mostly...just shark-jumping.

[silk_knickers]

I chuckled a few times, but there was enough implied behind-the-scenes awkwardness that it kind of turned me off too. I don't really follow the actors' real lives as carefully as some, I guess, so it was hard for me to know how meta!Jared and meta!Jensen compared to the real deals, or to fans' impressions of the real deals. For example, the running joke about how "at least they're talking again" was a bit worrisome -- I never thought they were BFFs 4eva the way that some RPF implies, but I'd gotten the impression from interviews that they did get along pretty well at least -- is that not true? I guess what I'm saying is that the episode seemed a bit self-indulgent. The other meta episodes kind of made fun of the fandom, and I could laugh because I was part of the fandom. This one was making fun of the cast and crew, and... I'm not an insider, so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be laughing at or with. I couldn't tell to what degree any particular joke or situation was ironic, parodic, or serious.

[darkemeralds]

Some other people in my circle also found the inside-joke quality of the episode alienating. I didn't care much for it myself.

Everyone's wondering what the "at least they're talking" motif was about. I'm not the most focused J2 fan (believe it or not), but I haven't heard anything about the two stars' being anything other than good friends of long standing. The script was either trying to start a rumor, or was referring all the way back to the early seasons (Two, I think) where it's pretty well known that J & J had a bit of a falling out (after which they famously moved into Jared's house together).

The only insider joke I really got was Misha's tweeting, because I do follow him on Twitter, and he and Twitter were made for each other.

[silk_knickers]

after which they famously moved into Jared's house together

Wait, that was an actual thing?!? I thought that was a fanfic trope. Gosh, I really am on the periphery of this fandom.

Misha's tweeting and general goofballiness was pretty awesome. :) I'm not sure how I feel about him calling them "J2" and that they "[had] a late one last night" though. Heh.

[darkemeralds]

Oh my, yes. They shared a house, as I recall, from the summer between S3 and S4 until they both got engaged sometime during S5. It was what caused the massive tectonic shift in that part of fandom from Wincest to RPS.

It was one of those fandom things that probably doesn't happen more than once in person's fannish life. The squee could be heard around the world.