Those of you who have been with me since the beginning of these reviews know that I occasionally complain about the time and effort it takes to write them. The labor is rewarded when the episode is good like The Hunter Games. It’s cathartic when it’s an episode I’ve been dying to take apart, like Charlie’s latest adventure. When the episode is along the lines of I Know What You Did at Final Destination however, it’s like doing taxes.
Hello and welcome to the Gripe Review for lucky number 13, a standalone episode which looks more like an attempt to bring the show into the current decade and ground it in the latest pop culture in hopes of attracting younger viewers of its generation. Sadly, as it is the habit of this group of writers, it is done in the most anvil-on-the-head kind of way.
The writers are so eager to prove they ‘get’ today’s youth they use every bad-writing tool in the toolbox to create the script. As a result the young actors are practically crippled in their performance and become cartoon version of their characters. Their entire time on screen is spent on showing us just how obsessed they are with social media, online apps, mobile gadgets, as well as texting, chatting and bad driving. According to this episode there’s nothing else that occupies a young person’s mind in 2015 than these shallow past times.
What bothers me the most about this and other standalones like it, is that they seem to start and end on an idea alone, in this case making an episode about the current generation’s obsession with Wifi, and a ghost who lives in it. It is an interesting premise, yet the execution is so lazy and uninspired it dates as far back as the slasher movies of the late 90’s.
Aside from its socially and technologically up-to-date premise the story has nothing unique to offer. A group of teens act reckless and kill a man in a car accident. His ghost comes back and starts killing them one by one to exact revenge. That’s basically it. Even the resolution is mind-numbingly tepid. The ghost’s fiancé talks him out of it. No twists or payoffs, no creative use of the premise that would justify the existence of this episode among the dozen or so movies and TV shows that dealt with the exact same plot.
That’s really all I have to say about Halt & Catch Fire. It’s excruciatingly, wearyingly drab. There is no blind-side at the end like Roadkill, or pull-at-your-heartstrings moment like in Long Distance Call, there isn’t even a canon violation I could point at and rage about. It screams minimum effort to fill episode quota for season 10, which means someone, somewhere, got paid to phone in their work by copying screenplays from 1999.
I want to focus on something else now, something I wanted to talk about for a while and came to a head in this episode. The de-characterization of Dean Winchester. Beside the lameness of the plot and lack of creativity, this was the biggest and most irritating gripe I had watching this episode.
The Defamation of Dean Winchester
The first time I touched on this subject was in the review for Rock and a Hard Place. 28 episodes later we’re back in the same mud pit, with writers taking what used to be considered (and confirmed by Supernatural's canon) as Dean Winchester’s mask to hide his real personality and inner pain, and making it his true identity. Here are the instances in this episode that made me want to pull my hair.
Dean Gripe #1 – Dean is a tech oaf
One of the tropes established by the new writers in recent years is the idea that Dean Winchester is denser than your grandma when it comes to pop culture or technology. Since some of these writers seem opposed to watching old episodes I won't ask how they don't know about the EMF meter Dean once made out of an old Walkman and an electromagnet, which was powerful enough to wipe out a room full of computers (Ghostfacers.) The girl in this episode blames Dean’s lack of familiarity with
Dean Gripe #2 – Dean is a womanizer
This is a major one that nearly made me shoot my TV with nerf darts here and during 9.08. For some odd reason the show likes to portray Dean as a guy who thinks with his little head, instead of the big one with the brain, when he's around beautiful women. It was bad enough in 9.08, where women for reasons related to traumatic pasts or religious beliefs, had chosen to remain abstinent, which of course mean Dean had to bulldoze over all those issues on his way to their pants. It’s worse this time because the episode makes a point about how young and oblivious these girls are at the same time it shows a 30-something-year-old Dean sneak a peek at their booties.
Last time I complained about this a few fans argued that Dean being a ladies man was part of his canon personality since season one. Allow me to explain the difference between a ladies man and a womanizer. A ladies man is a guy who impresses women with his charm and skill, gaining their attention by showing them courtesy and respect. A womanizer is one who checks their body parts as if he’s at a buffet and they’re the latest meal being served. Dean’s behavior throughout this episode reminded me of that.
I wished I knew why the writers occasionally do that to him and why the showrunner, or Jensen himself, never complains. If there was an urgency to show Dean still had a libido that only tingled for the ladies, we had Tina for that last week. She and Dean had a nice, adult conversation, with enough chemistry to warrant a night of passion. The writers missed that respectful, natural opportunity, yet went for making him the uncle your parents warn you about in this episode.
Dean Gripe #3 – Dean is a glutton
This isn’t as grating as the others but should be mentioned. Throughout the show we’ve had jokes about Dean eating unhealthy food and being a bit of a glutton. It was mostly about the type of foods he liked to eat though (pie, fast food,) not so much the amount he ate, and that only occasionally and in artful, joyous, funny ways.
Why was he then stuffing his face with disgusting cafeteria food this episode? Couldn’t they at least have gone with pie instead of showing him gorge himself on a revolting mix of Italian and Chinese? Is there a secret mission to turn all of his adorable traits into gross, exaggerated versions of themselves?
Dean Gripe #4 – Dean is full of anguish and guilt
I didn’t get what Dean was saying in that last scene in the car, why he wanted to give up, what he was upset about. It was like the start of season 9 when Sam all of a sudden decided life wasn’t worth living anymore and was asking dream deities to kill him for good . Much like then with Sam, nothing that happened with the MoC so far warrants Dean to have such an I-tortured-souls-in-Hell reaction.
I have no problem with characters feeling desolate and suicidal as long as it is backed by a solid reason. Being marked as an angel condom while your brother is hopped on Demon blood and destined to host Satan who would then bring down the apocalypse is a solid reason. Killing a mob of bad guys and beating up the nasty side of Ginger Spice isn’t.
Episode Gripes
I have to mention these or people will accuse me of phoning it in and I don’t want to be guilty of the same flaw I criticize the writers for. Here are the final Dean-free gripes of this episode:
Bad acting
I know the actors are young, for some of them this might be the first big role on television. I also know the script is in parts unsalvageable. But the acting in this scene is 'The Room' levels of bad. While listening to her say, “Kyle, are you listening to me?” in that stiff overdramatic voice I had visions of Tommy Wiseau yelling at people for tearing him apart.
Bad CGI
Did we really need that image of the mutilated ghost inside the screens of every device the camera panned by? It’s not that the idea itself is bad, but when you are operating on such a low budget that it would make it look like a highschooler used an outdated version of Adobe After Effects to put it there you might want to pass it up.
#7 Bad story resolution
I already talked about this, but it bears repeating. The ghost literally gives up because his fiancé talks him out of it. And it’s not something poignant like a memory they shared or false reassurances that she’d be all right. It’s on-the-nose PSA with lines such as, “Revenge, it’s hollow, and it’s pointless. It won’t bring you back.” They could have Youtubed a motivational speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger and it wouldn't have been as cheesy. Not to mention she’s talking to a scorched zombie of her late husband and holding a meaningful conversation instead of throwing the phone across the room and running for the hills yelling WTF, WTF, WTF!!!
Please give me your thought-cookies in the comments. I may not be able to reply to all of them on time, but I read and cherish every one of them. Next week Cain and Castiel are back, which is two good things at once. I’m looking forward to an exciting mythology episode with lots to talk about after the mundane run of Monster of the Weeks.
Happy Valentines Day everyone.
Tessa
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