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Sam'sManboobs Sharon'sVajeen and how I trust you less now than when I didn't trust you before.
this is not going to be exhaustive, because i'm just rambling here, i'm no expert on film noir, and this is not meta, really. this is just me figuring stuff as i write it down.
i was talking to somebody about noir and it made me realize how going after the genre made season 6 the occasionally boring, mostly entertaining mess it is. i mean, it's not the ONLY reason, but it's one of the main reasons, because i think that instead of going about the whole thing in an organic way, where they realized "WOW THIS SEASON IS SO NOIR-LIKE, LET'S JUST GO FOR IT" they decided that they wanted trendy noir and that they were going to make it fit somehow.
the result? same thing that happens in almost every other badfic. the characters have to twist themselves into OOC stale pretzels to fit the plots, the plots themselves having so many holes they look like a block of Swiss cheese and yes, i abuse and have unprotected sex with my figurative language, what of it?
Eve, Mommy Dearest aka the Femme Fatale
now it makes sense to me that they made the Mother of All a teenage girl, because hello? teen noir, Veronica Mars, Brick, holla. also, they needed her to be seductive (or try to be) even if --why would such a powerful being have to pull the Lolita angle? fits the style, doesn't fit the myth. HBIC don't have to seduce anybody, it's their way or the highway if the highway is in hell.
also, with SPN's history of "bad girls" it all felt kinda played out.
Robo!Sam aka "Sex on Legs"
there needs to be that dangerous sexual element in pretty much all noir films. Sam's rapid fire push ups and sex worker patronage? that was his Sharon Stone showing off the vajajay scene. never mind what that says about the soul and what sex means to some of the writers at SPN. like, why would Sam need sex and not need sleep? (Dean, i'm not sure if i'm disappointed that you made no Samara jokes.) promiscuity implies not having a conscience? not having a soul? really? in this day and age? in other words, and i don't wanna sound like Doctor Ruth, but --psychosexual issues up the wazoo, those writers. then again, Sera. o.O looking at you, girl.
The Shitty Soundtrack aka Did they want to use the sax?
i actually think they are attempting to give it a noir tone with the sucktastic porn music. maybe it's porn noir or something. o.O
Sam's Wall aka Amnesia
seriously. start watching the genre, you'll get what i mean.
God is Dead (actually Chuck is probably just chilling out in Acapulco) aka Cynicism & Moral Ambiguity looks good on You and I would too
with the introduction of somewhat amoral Balthazar (again with the psychosexual issues) we have a personification of the philosophy that morality? for chumps. now i understand that Gabe is actually a totally different character than Balthy, because though he was all for the fun and games, he would never have approved of what Cas is doing. what Cas is doing? again, moral ambiguity.
though i have no truck with those who talk about how Cas is evil. a person can do morally reprehensible stuff for expediency's sake, pragmatism, weighing the options in a moment of crisis. that doesn't make them evil. specially not if they're in noir. :D
Betrayals aka Betrayals
Sampa, RoboSam smirking as Vamp took a bite out ofcrime Dean, Cas' kiss with Meg (which might now have a less OOC motive?), pretending to kill Crowley and stepping out on Dean.
point is, they tried to do noir, but they forgot to tighten the story, so that not one bit of it would come out extraneous/gratuitous/whatever synonym you can use to say WOW THIS CRAP IS SO USELESS FILLER EPISODE AHOY! like, sure, noir tends to be convoluted at times, but in order to make a convoluted plot that makes sense you have to be an AWESOME writer/filmmaker or it will be born as film noir in the mind and then die as a soap opera melodrama on screen.
imo, Sera should have starved the beast, made it leaner and hungrier, narrowed down her focus, and exploited the hell out her guest stars. tension and nope, not anticlimax is what characterizes this genre, though whoever saw S6 of SPN would think that in noir is more about the whimper than about the bang. that sounds slightly dirty. o.O
you see, the audience should feel at the edge of their seat, that at any moment the other grenade's gonna drop and if they just pay attention they'll be able to guess where the explosion is gonna come from. once it all goes to hell, the audience should gasp, be shocked, but also have a sense of head-slapping "of course!" because the genre has the not so easy of job of dropping clues for the audience to follow/diverting attention so that the audience will arrive to the wrong conclusion. it's that paradoxical thing where you have to think you should have been able to see it coming, but that the twist was so twisty it was unpredictable at the time, though now it makes seamless, cleverly constructed satisfying sense.
in conclusion, B-. and this is me being generous as hell and hand-waving the mess away.
i was talking to somebody about noir and it made me realize how going after the genre made season 6 the occasionally boring, mostly entertaining mess it is. i mean, it's not the ONLY reason, but it's one of the main reasons, because i think that instead of going about the whole thing in an organic way, where they realized "WOW THIS SEASON IS SO NOIR-LIKE, LET'S JUST GO FOR IT" they decided that they wanted trendy noir and that they were going to make it fit somehow.
the result? same thing that happens in almost every other badfic. the characters have to twist themselves into OOC stale pretzels to fit the plots, the plots themselves having so many holes they look like a block of Swiss cheese and yes, i abuse and have unprotected sex with my figurative language, what of it?
Eve, Mommy Dearest aka the Femme Fatale
now it makes sense to me that they made the Mother of All a teenage girl, because hello? teen noir, Veronica Mars, Brick, holla. also, they needed her to be seductive (or try to be) even if --why would such a powerful being have to pull the Lolita angle? fits the style, doesn't fit the myth. HBIC don't have to seduce anybody, it's their way or the highway if the highway is in hell.
also, with SPN's history of "bad girls" it all felt kinda played out.
Robo!Sam aka "Sex on Legs"
there needs to be that dangerous sexual element in pretty much all noir films. Sam's rapid fire push ups and sex worker patronage? that was his Sharon Stone showing off the vajajay scene. never mind what that says about the soul and what sex means to some of the writers at SPN. like, why would Sam need sex and not need sleep? (Dean, i'm not sure if i'm disappointed that you made no Samara jokes.) promiscuity implies not having a conscience? not having a soul? really? in this day and age? in other words, and i don't wanna sound like Doctor Ruth, but --psychosexual issues up the wazoo, those writers. then again, Sera. o.O looking at you, girl.
The Shitty Soundtrack aka Did they want to use the sax?
i actually think they are attempting to give it a noir tone with the sucktastic porn music. maybe it's porn noir or something. o.O
Sam's Wall aka Amnesia
seriously. start watching the genre, you'll get what i mean.
God is Dead (actually Chuck is probably just chilling out in Acapulco) aka Cynicism & Moral Ambiguity looks good on You and I would too
with the introduction of somewhat amoral Balthazar (again with the psychosexual issues) we have a personification of the philosophy that morality? for chumps. now i understand that Gabe is actually a totally different character than Balthy, because though he was all for the fun and games, he would never have approved of what Cas is doing. what Cas is doing? again, moral ambiguity.
though i have no truck with those who talk about how Cas is evil. a person can do morally reprehensible stuff for expediency's sake, pragmatism, weighing the options in a moment of crisis. that doesn't make them evil. specially not if they're in noir. :D
Betrayals aka Betrayals
Sampa, RoboSam smirking as Vamp took a bite out of
point is, they tried to do noir, but they forgot to tighten the story, so that not one bit of it would come out extraneous/gratuitous/whatever synonym you can use to say WOW THIS CRAP IS SO USELESS FILLER EPISODE AHOY! like, sure, noir tends to be convoluted at times, but in order to make a convoluted plot that makes sense you have to be an AWESOME writer/filmmaker or it will be born as film noir in the mind and then die as a soap opera melodrama on screen.
imo, Sera should have starved the beast, made it leaner and hungrier, narrowed down her focus, and exploited the hell out her guest stars. tension and nope, not anticlimax is what characterizes this genre, though whoever saw S6 of SPN would think that in noir is more about the whimper than about the bang. that sounds slightly dirty. o.O
you see, the audience should feel at the edge of their seat, that at any moment the other grenade's gonna drop and if they just pay attention they'll be able to guess where the explosion is gonna come from. once it all goes to hell, the audience should gasp, be shocked, but also have a sense of head-slapping "of course!" because the genre has the not so easy of job of dropping clues for the audience to follow/diverting attention so that the audience will arrive to the wrong conclusion. it's that paradoxical thing where you have to think you should have been able to see it coming, but that the twist was so twisty it was unpredictable at the time, though now it makes seamless, cleverly constructed satisfying sense.
in conclusion, B-. and this is me being generous as hell and hand-waving the mess away.