Streaming Options
Well, hello there Charlie! I have notyou
Welcome everyone to episode 10x11's Gripe Review, or as I would have called it - had I been justifiably stoned and drunk - my analysis of Robbie Thompson's hour long self-stimulation through his pet character/author avatar, Charlie.
Let's get something out of the way so any Charlie fans who might be lingering around these dark and dingy areas of the Net turn tail. I hate Charlie. She is my least favorite character in the Supernatural universe by a long mile. If the showrunners made an offer to bring back a packaged deal of Amelia, Cole, Garth, Marie and Becky in exchange for Charlie meeting a horrible painful death I would sign it. That's how much I hate Charlie.
Why do I hate her so much? Simple, she is a Mary Sue.
Now before you tell me the accusation gets thrown around a lot and that Charlie is not a Mary Sue but a representation of a strong woman and the LGBT community(both of which I’m willing to take on and debunk in the comments) read this review. I will attempt to prove that Charlie is indeed a Mary Sue using only her appearance in this episode and this TV Tropes article as my reference: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySueTropes.
Many viewers don't assign Charlie the label presumably because she doesn’t have one of the major traits of a Sue: she isn't the object of affection for any of the main characters. In fact most are quick to site her sexual orientation. What they overlook however is the fact that Charlie doesn't have to be the object of Sam or Dean's sexual interest in order to be the orbital center of their love. Making her far from a possible girlfriend is a sure way to make them shower her with as much focus and affection as possible without risking the wrath of a love-interest allergic fandom.
Another reason why Charlie is nobody’s girlfriend is her creator. Robbie Thompson is a straight guy. Charlie is his gender swapped self-insert. He doesn't dream of dating any of the protagonists like fanfiction writers do, rather he wants to be one of them, or all of them, and outshine them at everything. That's why his creation is a mix of all three protagonists. She has Dean's wit and badassery, Castiel's adorable dorkyness, and Sam's smarts and tendency to attract the dark and the supernatural. She does all of these better than either of them every time she's around, and they feel so impressed they turn into mouthpieces of her praise and validation.
Why did Thompson gender swap his stand-in? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he was masking who she really was. Maybe he was pressured by the show’s critics for lack of female characters. We must also not forget that, in her first appearance, Charlie actually did have a function on the show as opposed to being just the Poochy of the Supernatural universe. They needed a hacker and it was a time of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (hence the name of the episode.) She was not a bad addition either as many who now oppose her (including me) liked her and her perky attitude back then. It was only after they gave Thompson free rein to keep bringing her back that the milk went sour. First he made her a queen, literally. Granted it was for a silly role playing game but that didn’t stop everyone from worshiping her. Then she came back with heavy tragic-background baggage, just so she’d earn the tormented-hero badge that every author avatar and pet character carries. This is when things started to slide really sideways and Charlie began hitting her Poochy strides.
Now this episode.
“There’s No Place Like Home” or the "Charlie is a Sue" exhibition
1 - Charlie appears and Sam and Dean drop everything for her (including their long established personalities)
It’s an ordinary day in the bunker. Sam is talking to Cas on the phone, Dean is complaining about healthy food. They are researching the MoC. Then Sam stumbles on a video of Charlie beating up a guy. This is the point when the show goes from Supernatural 10x11 To The Charlie Bradbury Show 1x5.
The boys meet the victim, who is cagey about the incident. They find out he was involved in the accident that created Charlie’s sympathy vehicle all those years ago.[1] Upon hearing this Dean loses it and attacks the guy, a man who is wounded and can’t defend himself. This is the same Dean who remained calm and collected through most of his interrogation scene with Matatron last week. He held it together even when Metatron – the guy who had killed him and brought on most of his current grievances - taunted him relentlessly. Yet here he cracks within seconds. Why? Because Charlie is that important to him, and to Sam too since he just stands there looking confused instead of interfering to prevent the possibility of Dean’s Mark causing a tragedy.
In the car, on their way to the next target, Sam finds out Charlie’s real name is not Charlie but Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and that she’s after every person that somehow was involved in her tragic-past accident. Dean’s reaction to this information is, “Can you blame her?” Allow me to reiterate, Dean’s reaction to someone gone berserk, and on a spree torturing and killing people without a trial is “Can you blame her?”[2]
2 – Meet Anti-Charlie [3]
After the boys warn the next potential victim they stick around and discover Dark Charlie. This is when the writer’s self-indulgence peaks its high. Thompson wants Charlie to be a protagonist, yet at the same time he lusts after an edgy, bad girl attitude for her. So what does he do? Something even fanfiction writers don’t. He makes two copies of her, one good and one evil. That frees him to pander to both sides of his fantasy without risking his favorite's sympathy magnet.
The person who suffers most from this plot twist is Felicia Day. I don’t know much about her outside her role as Charlie but looking at her Wikipedia page, I found out she was more known as a Youtube personality and show host than an actress. It’s reflected in her work on the show because in Charlie, Felicia was pretty much playing herself, and that was probably the only thing that worked well for the character.
Here Thompson tasks her with playing dual roles and she falls short. Felicia is not Jensen, Jared or Misha. She doesn’t have their experience and caliber to perform as multiple personalities, so her Dark Charlie comes out very flat and unconvincing.
3 - But in their universe Dark Charlie is made of awesome
From Good Charlie we find out that Dark Charlie exists because Original Charlie agreed to split herself in two in order for ‘them’ to win the War of Emerald City against Who-Knows-What. Then the exposition takes a mind blowing "My Immortal" turn.
Apparently the reason Dark Charlie is doing bad things is because, like every other character in a self-insert fanfic, she’s obsessed with Good Charlie (the Sue.) But Dark Charlie herself is a Sue, so Good Charlie admires her. According to her, she’s a badass warrior who single handedly won the war in Oz. This could be they only time in TV's entire history in which a character on a show shills a version of herself.
Dean goes after Dark Charlie, who at this point is in full god-mode [4] and foils him at every turn with the assistance of the writer dumbing Dean down to the IQ level of a 5 year old. Dark Charlie gets to her target without Dean realizing she is going to kill him. The target, Mr. Douchey Richguy, also gets affected by Dark Charlie’s godly powers and apologizes to her profusely before she kills him.
Afterwards Dean and Dark Charlie have a drink, a scene purely there so Thompson could establish the next trope he has planned for his self-insert, i.e. drawing parallels between Dean and Charlie. [5] I’m not going to go into detail about their conversation other than to say the whole purpose for it is to anvil-slam us with the theory that Charlie’s dark and light sides are the same as Dean’s hunter and MoC sides.
4 - Good Charlie is also made of awesome
Turns out Good Charlie can god-mode too [4]. When she and Sam arrive at the doorstep of Clive Dillon's house, he’s been living there for years as Michael Carter, not giving a fig about his alter ego wreaking havoc in Oz. But as soon as Charlie makes eyes at him he folds and agrees to not only call out his other self, but sacrifice himself in order to stop him.
So far the idea was to find half of a broken key to get Dark and Light Charlie back to Oz where they could be fused together. Yet, since up to this point, Charlie hasn't done anything heroic and/or self-sacrificial in the episode, Thompson decides to retcon his own script. In an act similar to what happens at the end of the Divergent series, everything realigns itself toward the singular goal of Charlie having her big moment. The deal changes from returning to Oz to killing the Wizard. Sam and Dean both become stunned imbeciles, one lying on the floor staring at the enemy helpless while the other beats on Dark Charlie when he could just hold her wrists and minimize the damage to Good Charlie. Amid all this insanity Charlie shoots the Wizard’s counterpart and saves the day. Naturally her heroics leave her badly injured, paving the way for Sam and Dean to coddle her to the max and fuss over her like a wounded kitten [1]. We’re treated to 3 full minutes of extreme Charlie angst in which Dark Charlie throws one last praise at her alter ego (“The magic was in you all the time,”) before a laughably bad CGI puts Good and Bad Charlie back together.
5 – She forgives Dean
Back at the MoL cave Sam
6 – What’s left...
I want to point out that nothing that happened in this episode really mattered. The only thing that was saved was Charlie's identity and possibly Oz (if there ever was a danger to Oz and she wasn’t just trolling the Winchesters.) The real world – or the show’s universe – was in no danger except for the mayhem Dark Charlie visited upon it, which would have easily been resolved had Sam and Dean handed both Dark and Light versions of her to the cops.
Kudos – The ratings
Since I started watching the show I've been an advocate for the show’s ratings. I remember Saturday mornings, when I had long, heated conversations with non-fans on the TVbythenumbers’ article comment sections, arguing why the show deserved a better time slot and why its ratings were by no means a reflection of its quality but rather a direct result of CW’s mistreatment of it. I always cheered when the show got good ratings and chewed on my nails when it didn’t.
This week’s episode earned a 0.7 in the 18-49 demo and 2.06M in viewer numbers, a clear nosedive from previous week’s 0.9 and 2.42M. And this time, I cheered for the bad ratings.
My hope is that the rating decline works as a wakeup call for the show’s bosses and shows them that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Letting writers run amok in their scripts, turning the show into a showcase of their own favorite characters, or worse, their self-inserts, should have its consequences. Consequences that hit the network's bank accounts are the only ones that are important to TPTB, not fan outrage or reviews like this.
Speaking of writers running amok, next week is Adam Glass’s turn to take the show for a spin. I remember the last time he was in charge of writing teenage Dean he bragged on his twitter how he modeled Dean's story after his own teen years, i.e. another self-insert.[8] I’m sure we’re all going to have a jolly good time watching that fanfiction.
Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section. Below is the list of tropes I used throughout this article. Have fun reading these too.
References:
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SympatheticSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JerkSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodModeSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CopyCatSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FixerSue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuritySue
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonSue
Tessa
tessa-marlene.tumblr.com/
twitter.com/tessa_marlene
Team united in The Mentalist Copper Bullet. When Abbott’s old boss, Agent Peterson, threatens Abbott’s career –and possibly his freedom – Jane devises a risky plan to protect his friend’s future.
They started as enemies and became buddies. Abbott understood Jane's intentions in killing Red John, that's why he first confessed about Agent Petersen and how he felt back in the past. Like Jane, Abbott chose life and the woman he loves and made the big step to move to Washington with her when his duties in Austin will be done. Giving to Kimball Cho his blessing as next chief of the FBI was the top. Cho deserves this, there's no other reasons to explain why. He's the man of honor.
Abbott saved Jane in "My Blue Heaven" by giving him a second chance, now it's time for Jane to return the favor. We all know Agent Petersen is a dirty cop. To make sure his plan works, Jane calls his old friends from the circus, Pete and Samantha, who agreed to frame Petersen and save Abbott's career. Those two have been the family Patrick Jane never had. Also, how much they were happy when they tell him about Lisbon? Does Pete may be right by saying it's time for Patrick to take off his ring?
I felt sorry when she was left alone and in the dark about Jane's plan. She wanted to be part of the FBI's family and I liked the fact that Cho agreed to let her in. He trusts her and she did a great job when she stops Petersen by hitting his car. Also, finally some sparks with Jason Wylie are concreate: they share a dance at the end of the episode.
With The Mentalist coming close to an end, what are your expectations for the finale? No spoilers, please. Share your comments below.
The hunt to save Monroe begins in Grimm Tribunal. While Nick, Hank and Renard try to track down their friend, Monroe stands at the Tribunal, where a special court accuses him to have been married with a woman outside his bloodline and because he's friend of a Grimm.
Wu interrogates Agent Acker, who was supposed to protect Monroe and Rosalie, and turns out he's with Wesenrein and knew Shaw, so he's involved with Monroe's kidnapping. Nick's temper gets hot when Agent Acker doesn't answer his questions.
After giving Rosalee some precious informations, Bud gets kidnapped and take to the Tribunal where he's forced to testify as a witness. Too bad Bud's attempts to waste time are useless.
"Nothing in life is pure." Monroe's speech before his final sentence was touching. Grimm can be a fictional show, but at least speaks the truth against discrimination and racism.
As Monroe and Rosalee get ready to their honeymoon - finally! - Wu is left at Nick's trailer to study a little bit about Wesens. Then, the final surprise: Juliette knocks at Renard's house and shows him she's an Hexenbeist now. Did she show up to him because he knows how to handle a Hexenbeist?
Troubles coming for Nick and Juliette?
Share your comments below.
Hi all, it’s good to be back. Hope you missed the show, and the reviews.
Back in season 9 when I first started writing The Gripe review I compared myself to Simon Cowell, the extremely critical judge of classic American Idol and X-Factor.
One thing that stood out to me about Simon was that he never held back, never forfeited truth and honestly to protect a contestant’s feeling. He called it as he saw it. I’d like to think I did the same with these reviews.
But there was another side to Simon, the side that recognized and acknowledged greatness when he saw it. Precisely why I liked him as a judge. He was so harsh with what he deemed as bad that when he applauded something as good you sat up and paid attention, because you knew his praise wouldn't come for any other reason than greatness.
This week I’m going to do that too, because this week’s episode just might have been the best episode of the season.
In the past I’ve been accused of nitpicking the show, and told that the Gripe Review is about me seeking flaws in the episodes so I could focus on them. Nothing is farther from the truth and hope this review helps to show that. Like Simon, I don’t like it when a writer wastes my time by delivering a subpar episode. Yet also like him, I’m not beyond giving a standing ovation when one does a good job. With a cast of actors this great, it isn’t hard to achieve a grade A episode once the writing is good, which is what happened this week. So this is my standing ovation to Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner, the very people I criticized many times in these reviews, because they deserve it for a job well done regardless of what they’ve delivered in the past.
Of course it’s not a Gripe Review without pointing out the stumbles too, but I'll leave those for last and start on a high note.
The Winners
Dean
On a forum this week someone aptly summarized my feelings about Dean in the Hunter Games. They said he showed guts (well they used the word for spherical, rolling objects but let’s go with guts,) not because he was badass, or fierce, or merciless, but because he was honest.
(You will hear me talk about honesty a lot in this review.)
Dean’s strongest moment was when he came to Sam and Cas admitting that what he did was a massacre. He said there was a time he was a hunter, not a stone cold killer. What stands out about this is that he doesn’t sound defeated, or self-deprecating. He sounds truthful if also distraught. Yet he knows he has come to the right people, the only people in the world who care about him. Accepting a setback but not letting it railroad you, along with opening up to loved ones about how you feel, is a sign of strength. It shows Dean’s finally getting the character growth he so deserved and was overdue.
Another example was his interrogation scene with Metatron, which took me back to a similar scene in On the Head of a Pin. What was great about this scene was how organic it felt. Naturally Metatron tried to guilt trip him about the things he’d done in the past, but Dean didn’t lose it right away. He stayed focused until the very end when Metatron took it so far even the viewers felt like punching him. So when Dean punched him I could understand and feel a bit of satisfaction instead of seeing it solely as the effect of the mark. I was with him in his sentiments and reactions, not judging him for them.
Then there’s his last scene with Sam at the table which is made even more effective by Jensen and Jared’s marvelous acting. We could see he was upset, but unlike the autopilot scripts we had had so far – in which he either shut his brother out and told him he was fine, or broke down completely – he was once again open and honest. He told him he didn't blame him and Cas for storming the room (a complete departure from the end of last season.) He acknowledged that he was in trouble without going overboard about it, which then allows the two of them to talk it over like professionals.
I could go on but I’ll stop. There wasn’t one thing about Dean I didn’t like in this episode. Nothing about him seemed forced or plot driven, and everything he did made sense in the context of the person he is now and the situation he is trapped in. It was very refreshing.
Castiel
Speaking of spherical rolling objects Castiel grew a pair too. One of my major problems with Castiel’s writing since season 6 was that he never seemed to stand his ground whenever he was in dispute with the Winchesters. It only took an biting remark from Sam or a scolding look from Dean for him to back down. It happened when he was wrong but had an defensible reason for his actions yet became tongue tied talking about it. It even happened on the rare occasions he was right. It made me think the writers were trying to portray him as spineless or too obsessed with the Winchesters.
That wasn’t the case in this episode. When he heard about the brothers turning to Crowley he became the alarmist he said he didn't want to be. Dean’s reaction was original too. No longer telling his friend off, he actually admitted it was a terrible plan but the only one they had, manning up to his mistake instead of taking it out on the critic. This kind of dialogue elevates both characters because it’s the type of dialogue two supernatural war veterans - as opposed to emotionally hyper preteens – would have.
The other instance of good writing for Castiel was when he and Sam were trying to break down the interrogation room door to get to Dean. At first I was annoyed by Castiel just standing there and letting Sam beat on the door. Then I remembered the issue with his fading grace. It was an excellent choice to make him remind us through his action – or inaction – of this continuity. Had he just blasted the door instead of hesitating it would have been a legitimate gripe to ask why he didn’t worry about the cost.
The only thing still bothering me about Castiel is his new found paternal attachment to Claire and his validation of all the stupid tantrums she has. He should be wise enough to know it is moronic for her to care about a man who sold her to a pervert, yet he is quick to make an excuse for her that puts the blame on him. I also could have done without his silly cellphone/emoticon moment but it seems to be a mandate to have at least one awkward silly Castiel moment every episode.
Sam
What is there to say about Sam that I haven’t said before? How he’s gone from the character I had the most problems with in the previous seasons to the best character of season 10. If there is one credit I would give this season it is the wonderful transformation of Sam Winchester.
Sam’s problem in earlier seasons was that he was always knee deep in trouble, so much so he had no chance to show us the human side of him. We also didn’t get to see things from his perspective, or see him as a reliable person in the Winchesters’ perpetual war against evil.
That is no longer the case because Sam – as far as I’m concerned – is the emotional and logical rock of Team Free Will this season. He’s the one holding the fort, talking sense when the other two lose the thread of reason and reaction. He’s everywhere and like a titan, holds the walls that threaten to collapse on him and his extended family. And he does it casually yet with an almost heartbreaking sense of responsibility, care and intellect.
Consider the scene where Castiel is dragging Metatron to his car and Metatron is ranting and berating him, trying to get under his skin. Castiel says, “This isn’t about me,” and Metatron asks, “So what is it then?” Right at that moment we see Sam step out of the car like a protective big brother and give him the don’t-F-with-me-or-my-friend look that makes Metatron literally take a step back. It’s a very effective scene, asserting the idea that of the three heroes on the show, Sam is the least likely to fall for the bad guy’s BS and therefore the most reliable and formidable one.
The Losers
Crowley and Rowena
Sadly, in an episode where the A plot soared, the B plot fell flat on its face. I’m still struggling to understand where the Rowena/Crowley saga is supposed to go. It’s moving at a snail's pace and repeating the same sequences: Rowena tries to do mischief; Crowley or one of his goons catches her in the deed; she talks herself out of it; goes back to doing mischief.
All I got this episode was the writers trying to hammer the fact that Rowena was a bad mother and Crowley hasn’t forgiven her for it. We knew that already from the first half of the season so the only thing we’re left with is her mischief, and since those didn’t go anywhere the whole plot revolving around Rowena and Crowley seemed like a giant waste of time.
There was a moment when I thought we were making progress and the A and B plots were converging. It was when Rowena found out about and stole the First Blade. I thought about the possibilities that could come out of this plot twist. Rowena being in the possession of the blade and hiding it from Crowley would have been an interesting development that could pull her story out of its stagnant state and make her important to the Winchesters. Unfortunately the writers took that advantage away from her which put us exactly back where we started, with Crowley in charge and Rowena trying to get in his favour. The only plot development they had this episode was Rowena finding out about the blade. I could hope they make use of that eventually but with the helter-skelter way this season has been going I won’t be surprised if they soon forgot about it.
Claire
Through my last review people pretty much know I don’t like Claire. However in this episode even she was better as a character. She wasn’t a more likable or positive character, but she was better in terms of her involvement in the story.
Claire’s idiotic love for her street dad makes her seem like a character with little intellect or attention span, but we could write that off as her being too young and inexperienced. Her problem however is that the writers do the same thing Castiel does with her: coming up with excuses for her reckless behavior and trying to get sympathy from the audience. If they let her be who she really is, a pain in the butt teen that needs a wake up call and a thorough lecture, her character would be much better.
In this episode they came close to that, almost if not quite. I got intrigued by the role she might be playing in the overall story by becoming the thread that could unravel the boys’ hard-woven, fragile tapestry that kept Dean’s hands blood free. Had the writers not flipped her at the end, had she gone along with her friends’ suicidal plan to ‘teach Dean a lesson,’ Dean’s story would have been a lot more complicated. If Dean had killed Claire’s associates the urgency of the situation would have ramped up substantially and Claire’s presence in the story would have found meaning.
Claire chickening out in the last second for no reason, (though I suspect Dean’s good looks might have something to do with it,) made her story pointless. I understand that they wanted to remove her from the show and couldn’t have her mess with the plot too much, but then why add her to the story in the first place, and why create a plothole by having her suddenly lightswitch into caring for Dean and Castiel when ten minutes ago she was willing to rip both of them apart?
Even though I had these issues with Crowley and Claire’s story I don’t blame them on the writers of the episode. It’s likely that the showrunners didn’t want to take the season-long mytharc to certain places that would prevent them from going back to a semi-procedural format. Rowena and Claire becoming too involved with the main plot would make the show more serialized and mythology reliant and that, as I argued in my mid-season finale review, doesn’t seem to be the plan for the show.
Let me know what you think in the comment section. It’s good to start the year with a positive review about a good episode. I would have said I hope the trend continues but next week is the return of Queen Charlie Sue so I'm not holding my breath.
Note: Due to changes in my work schedule I might have to move the reviews to Sundays, to give myself a little time on the weekends to work on them. So if you don't see a Gripe Review next Saturday don’t gripe, it’ll be posted on the next day.
Tessa
tessa-marlene.tumblr.com/
twitter.com/tessa_marlene
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
