Rigoletto? S12E11 insta reaction

[amberdreams]

Spoilers, obvs.

Insta reaction consists largely of a big WTF? I now have a ton of questions, some of which I have never bothered about before, so thanks Show.

List of questions arising:

1. Donna e mobile - was that a deliberate choice for Ramiel to whistle? Woman is fickle? Was that a message about Mary's duplicity here? And who'd have guessed ancient demons would be fans of Verdi, huh.


2. Why are mutilated cattle a sign of demons? Do they go round compulsively slashing cows for shits and giggles in their spare time? In that case, why is there never a trail of bleeding cattle littered around every time Crowley shows up?


3. The Colt glows gold now? And Ramiel's had it all this time? Where did Crowley get it from?


4. Slow motion walking? WTH?


5. What was that chopping back and forth about? After the second or third time I started feeling it was only there because they didn't have enough story to fill the 45 minutes without the endless repetition. Frankly, by halfway through it had stopped being amusing and was downright annoying.


6. Crowley has Lucifer in an ordinary-ooking cage in his living room when previously Lucifer couldn't be contained in Hell except in the special and inaccessible, super-duper, extra secure Cage. So how's Crowley keeping the Devil in there now?


7. Having had the BMoL land her in it, why on earth would Mary be stupid enough to a) hand over the Colt and b) even think about working with them again? In fact, why did she even meet up with Arthur at all. I'd have left him hanging in the wind after that debacle.

Apart from this rather long list of puzzlement my comments are -

• Nooooo, poor Wally!


• Loved the use of the Pilot danger piano chord when they talked about Azazel and Yellow Eyed demons.


• I never for one second thought Cas was going to die.


• The constant jumping about reduced the impact of Crowley saving Cas, and took all the tension out of those scenes.


• Castiel's little declaration of love was totally lost too, with all the messing about.


• I kinda liked Ramiel, he was cool and quite scary - it would have been fun to keep him around a bit longer/


• Sam turning the Lance on Ramiel was badass.


• Most of the best fighting etc was too dark to appreciate properly.


• I hope next week's is better than this one.


• I hope the rest of the season is better than this one.

Yup, in conclusion - I guess they were going for something different but I don't think it worked. It certainly didn't work for me.

Comments

[fanspired]

I agree with pretty much all of that - except, Ketch didn't say "could I have the gun" but "can I see it" so I'm thinking it was Mary herself who wanted the gun and I'm wondering (and this is all total speculation on my part) if the reason she's been working with the BMOL is because they promised the intel that would enable her to get it. This raises the question: why does she want it so badly? Maybe the key is in the famous statement: there's only 5 things in creation it can't kill. I'm thinking, what if she sees retrieving the gun as the means to achieving a world without monsters? Because a world without monsters would mean her sons wouldn't have to hunt, which is what she's always wanted - and if that's the end that she's been working to all season, all of her behaviour would suddenly make sense.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Well I thought that too for a brief second - and that would have been a cool storyline, given the gun's history (which she may not know??) - but then she just handed it over. So... that seemed to kybosh that idea.

[fanspired]

Well, I took it that she was showing it to him rather than giving it to him but, either way, it could still all be part of the grand plan to rid the world of monsters. But, then again, several times in recent seasons I've allowed myself to get excited because I thought I'd seen a grand plan merging then been disappointed so I don't like to get my hopes up too much these days. It would be nice to think Dabb's actually trying to tell a coherent story. I do think there's been more of an effort this season to give the characters some emotional depth and connection with their history. When Sam first gave Mary the journal, we saw her reading it and then getting a look of something like determination - and they made a big thing of that in one of the promos. It would make sense if she'd then been spending all this time going through that journal, retracing John's history in order to find a way to free her boys from hunting. If she's read the journal, then she does know the gun's history, and it sounds like she may know more that she learned from Samuel. So maybe she read the journal and put it all together with her own knowledge and what Dean told her and formed a plan, and what she's been doing all season is searching for the gun so she can use it to put an end to hunting for good.

Well, I hope that's where they're going with this, anyway. If I was Dabb, that's what I'd do. But then, if I'd been Carver, I'd have made S8 all about the dog and not the girl, so what do I know? :P

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

I might have to watch that bit again just to see what I think Mary's doing with the colt - but if they told her to go get it, and she's working with them, it seemed to me she was just handing it over... I hope not!

[fanspired]

If my theory has legs then she'd be working with them because they promised intel on where she could find the gun and/or possibly they have the means to turn the Colt into a weapon of mass monster destruction. That was the price of her co-operation.

[toratio.livejournal.com]

It kind of killed the mood for me about Wally, because of "Where's Wally?", which made me giggle. Except the Americans have 'Waldo' instead, so that probably didn't make them giggle.

You didn't think Cas was going to die?! I'm shocked. Yeah, nah.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

This episode was a bit like that all round - I liked Wally, he was cute, but there was the Where's Wally joke that got killed off when he did. It was an odd mix of LOL moments and WTF moments, and not in a good, Changing Channels, way either.

[toratio.livejournal.com]

SPN is like that - sometimes it does mood whiplash extremely well, other times, not so much.

[fanspired]

There were so many filmic cliches in the ep I found a lot of it uncomfortably humorous, so much so that I couldn't really take it seriously, and I couldn't tell if that was what Speight was going for or not.

[toratio.livejournal.com]

My understanding is it was a very Tarantino-esque thing. But I'm not familiar with a lot of his movies, so I don't know how that all works. I suspect familiarity/love of those tropes might've helped people enjoy it more.

[fanspired]

I've only seen Pulp Fiction, which was very tongue in cheek. That's how the ep came over, too, but it seemed to me to jar with the script which. I felt, was intended seriously. So I can't help wondering whether Speight adopted the Tarantino-esque style because he genuinely thought it was appropriate to the material, or whether he was just imposing his own fan-kink on a script that didn't really merit it.

[toratio.livejournal.com]

That's a very-good question. I mean, I guess it depends on whether the script was written to jump around like that, I don't know.

I think Tarantino is really love-it-or-hate-it, and it doesn't really appeal to me. I can see why it might suit SPN, but I don't think it gels 100%. I think you're right, though, that they took what could've been tense and serious and maybe undermined that a little.

[fanspired]

Yes, I'm afraid it left me feeling that way a bit.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Yes to all of this - would this kind of spin be a directorial thing or a writing thing? I assumed it was written in that way, so had to be filmed in those bite-sized pieces. Not that it really matters, I suppose. Either way, it didn't work for me. Maybe I'll ask Richard a question about it at JIBcon! (Though someone will probably get him talking about directing before then).

[fanspired]

Hard to say. It's possible it was written that way, or it could have been brainstormed to be that way in a production meeting before it was even written but, to me, it feels like it was written as a serious ep and it was a directorial decision to ham it up. Perez' previous scripts were American Nightmare and Lily Sunder - both pretty serious. Not that a writer can't do both, of course.

[elvit.livejournal.com]

Yes, agree with every word of yours.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

I wanted to like it but... yeah.

[elvit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, brothers were wonderful most of the time, nothing new here. Other scenes... arrrgh.

[jennygeee.livejournal.com]

The whole back and forth thing got me too, I didn't know where I was half the time, shame really because this could have been a really good episode!

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Exactly! And I wouldn't have minded that if there was a reason for doing it, but it just felt like an affectation.

[katwoman76.livejournal.com]

I can at least answer question 4 - it's a Tarantino reference just like the dinner scene and the title cards and the jumps in time and the song reference from the episode title

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

yeah...oh well. It was funny.

[atxstnic.livejournal.com]

Loved the Tarentino references.
Hated Mary for almost getting the boys killed and not even thinking about handing over the gun. She can yell at the BMoL all she wants, but a lot of that was on her.
Not real sure what's going on with all the glowing this season. First Lucifer's eyes, now the Colt. I think the FX department got a new toy during hiatus and decided to use it on everything.
Sam being a BAMF was awesome. We don't get to see enough of that.
Hell's big bads with their nature hobbies. Cain and the bees and Ramiel with his fishing.
Wanna know what's up with Crowley and Lucifer. Always love when Pellegrino shows up.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to see Mark P back as Lucifer - he is SO good in that part. But the Reservoir Dogs thing just didn't work for me - it seems like everyone who loved RD loves this episode.

[hugemind.livejournal.com]

In 1x21 they mentioned cattle deaths happening before Azazel appeared to kill Mary and Jess. So maybe it's a yellow-eyed demon thing. Don't ask me why, because now I'm picturing YEDs just going "dammit" every time they materialize too close to a farm and the cows just going *splice* before the YEDs can even blink. Number 3 and the glow is a Tarantino thing - in fact numbers 4 and 5 are too as this ep was very heavily referencing Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs". Now #7 is a very good question, but I think she has her motives for doing it (making the world safer for her boys or something).

I enjoyed the episode, but it's probably a lot easier to do that if you're familiar with "Reservoir Dogs". :)

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

The cattle mutilations thing has been mentioned a few times now, along with weird weather, but neither have really been explained or even featured really - oh unless you count the purple lightning smoke from Jus in Bello.

So having Things of Significance glow golden is also a Tarantino device? Huh. Before now, that's only been used for those hand of God items in SPN that I can remember.

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I see everyone caught up with the Reservoir Dog reference. I like me some Tarantino now and again, but this was the wrong episode to fiddle with that. The time jumps, the cheesy music, the title cards...would've been great on a MotW episode, but not something as weighty as this. That being said, it did a little better in the ratings! So...what do I know?

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Ha ha indeed, what do I know either! Even less than most people as I've never seen Reservoir Dogs! LOL

[madebyme-x.livejournal.com]

I loved all the Tarantino vibes and homages, but they're not everyone's cup of tea, that's for sure.

I am struggling with Mary though, and I hope they have a grand plan or something because she did, for me anyway, come off very closed, cold and 'all business' here (maybe she wants to rid the USA of monsters so that her boys don't have to hunt? Or maybe she's working as a double agent and the boys know what she's doing? Or maybe she's trying to figure out what the BMoL deal is to protect the boys?) I hope there's something, but I guess we've got a lot more to watch yet!!!

[sillie]

Yeah, with you on this one all the way. This ep did not work at all for me.