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sylvia_bondYou can read my review of the Supernatural Episode “After School Special” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!
An excerpt:
“Would it have killed Show to accommodate me and all the other fans of The Dad? Seriously. There are two measly little scenes here, one where The Dad drops the boys off and one where The Dad picks them up. There’s also one tiny, little, teeny, weeny phone call. Show could have flown Jeffrey Dean Morgan up for one stinking morning, and filmed these two scenes and this one little voice clip and sent him on his merry way with nary a bobble in his routine. From the way Mr. Morgan talks about having enjoyed working on Show, I’ll wager he would have done it for free. Or, if not, fangirls would have raised the money. What a huge missed opportunity. Huge.“
Rain-speckled Impala...and Dean
On the road with Dean...in the rain-speckled Impala
I never knew that janitor's could be so sexy...
Doesn't like being a gym teacher...especially a sadistic one
Adorable WeeSammy...
Defender of the Weak...
Scenes we thought we'd never see...Dean on a school bus
Dithering on a school bus...
Brooding Dean...
Brooding Sam...
Miserably unhappy Sam...
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Date: 2009-02-03 01:39 pm (UTC)A mixed blessing, this ep, and I'm right there with you in most of your comments, especially all those missing scenes. This would have made an excellent two-parter... But given that was all we had, these are my highlights and lowlights.
Colin Ford was so good as ThenSam - that boy has so much talent! I'd love to see what he's doing in ten year's time. He really nailed that ThenSam was totally without fear. No wonder Dirk took a step back when that cool assessing stare was first turned on him. I loved the way Colin underplayed Sam every step of the way, including that delightfully bemused half-smile when he was getting the accolades from the other kids. To have that kind of subtlety at his age is a wonderful thing. Another thing that struck me was that no matter how ThenSam said he didn't want to be the freak, he still seemed comfortable in his skin. He had the underlying self-confidence that the rather brittle ThenDean didn't have.
Then there was the way that NowSam was in charge. It wasn't just a question of The Sam Eyes persuading Dean to do it his way, it was Sam announcing he had an idea about getting into the school and Dean going along with it even if it meant him shimmying his pretty ass into tight orange shorts. In this ep I had the impression that Sam was the one with authority. Not to mention the self-control to lie there and let Ghost Dirk hammer on him and not hit back while Dean scrabbled to find and burn the lock of hair... Oh, Sam...
Dean The Gym. You're right. The Ackles just did not quite sell it. The only way I could get round it was by telling myself he relates best to kids on a one-to-one basis, not en masse, and that maybe he was training them the way The Dad trained him. But I couldn't quite sell that to myself either.
I couldn't quite buy ThenDean either. His attitude to the teacher did not feel right to me, even for a cocky eighteen-year-old who was only marking time until he could be with his beloved Dad in the family business. I can get that he used his cockiness to cover his vulnerabilities, then and now. When The Blonde cut him down publicly and he lost his cool enough to shout out his hero status to the school, I could only think The Dad is not going to be happy about that, if he ever finds out. At least. Or was that supposed to be when Dean's insecurities began? Not possible. They had to start a lot earlier than eighteen. Brock did his best, though, and I loved the way that The Dad's old jacket was a couple of sizes too large for him. The Rip His Lungs Out scene with ThenSam was perfect. As was Ackles' reprise of it.
All in all, I enjoyed this ep despite the one or two blips, and I'd give almost anything to read ThenSam's essay!
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Date: 2009-02-04 12:38 am (UTC)Oooh! A two-parter would have been an excellent way to handle the material, esp in light of all that seemed to be missing!!
ThenSam. What a fabulous character. I've always loved Sam, this makes me love him even more. The subtle way he played it, you're right, he's so young to be so talented. And I get what you mean about ThenSam being so comfortable in his skin - yeah, he doesn't want to be considered a freak, but it doesn't mean he thinks of himself as one.
Okay, so gym shorts....Sam acted like he was surprised to see Dean in them. I get that Sam was in charge, and was the one to figure out their disguises, but he seemed surprised to me. And then, quickly after, Dean appears in full length sweats. (And believe me, I wanted to believe Dean as cruel gym teacher, but it was just wrong, so wrong....)
Poor ThenDean. So many things wrong there, all that you say. He was likeable enough though.
Ditto on the essay!
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Date: 2009-02-03 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 09:46 pm (UTC)Liked your review btw - delicious pics an' all. *hums*
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Date: 2009-02-04 09:56 pm (UTC)Thank you! I'm glad you liked the review and the pics. Those are fun to select and work with. I usually only allow myself 10 or so, so I spend a fair bit of time dithering with myself over which ones are the funnest and the best. : D
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Date: 2009-02-03 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 04:17 pm (UTC)Pink Raygun
Date: 2009-02-03 05:35 pm (UTC)This is what happens when you neglect to specify that you want the changes to occur over the weekend or during the wee hours of the morning. Sorry, all.
-PinkRaygun.com
Re: Pink Raygun
Date: 2009-02-03 05:37 pm (UTC)-PinkRaygun.com
Re: Pink Raygun
Date: 2009-02-04 12:41 am (UTC)Re: Pink Raygun
Date: 2009-02-04 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 07:01 pm (UTC)I'm usually a sucker for flashbacks, I love Something Wicked and the christmas ep last year to pieces, but sadly, this one did next to nothing for me. I blame it almost completely on the writing, and partly on the teen!Dean actor, who did nothing for me either, though that's of course not his fault. He looked way too old to work for me and totally lacked any charm.
But lets look at the good stuff first, shall we? Beware, there's some shallowness ahead. ;)
Sam looked ridiculously hot in the white scrubs.
Dean looked equally hot throughout the entire ep, but especially in the red sweat suit and the close ups. Props to the make up department for not plastering concealer over JA's lovely freckles.
The kid playing teen!Sam is cute as a button and an amazing actor. He really has Sam's character down. I loved how he stared the bully down in the classroom.
Death by Swirly. I know I shouldn't like that. I just can't help it. *is embarrassed*
Dean handing Sam a cold bottle of whatever to cool his balls after he got kicked by the tiny girl made me go Aww. And also Hee.
Now on to the bad things:
I got stupidly excited when The Dad popped up in the Then segment, hoping he would make an appearance, so the disappointment when JDM's name was not in the opening credits was hard to handle. Sigh. After that, I spent most of the ep wondering who these two guys looking like Sam and Dean were. I mean, Dean terrorizing a gym class and hitting a kid with a ball? Just no. Like you said, he sympathizes with kids, he doesn't treat them like crap. And how did Sam and Dean even get these jobs? You can't just walk up to a school and get hired.
Leaving aside the fact that I really wanted to smack teen!Dean for his rude attitude towards his teacher(s), I just can't believe he would act like that. The same goes for telling the girl, who could easily let this slip to a teacher, he lives in a motel room with his little bother and their dad is away for who knows how long, and for teen!Sam writing about werewolf-hunt family trips in non-fictional essays, carrying a butterfly knife around in school (what did teen!Sam have that for anyway? It's not like it would do him any good against something supernatural, and he seemed more than capable to handle the other kids with his hands) and beating up other students. Not that the bully didn't deserve it. It's just that this kind of behavior leads inevitably to unwanted attention from the teachers and sooner or later to a visit to the principal's office, which then leads to a call home. At best, The Dad would be informed, and from what we've seen of him I really don't think he'd be pleased. At worst, The Dad would be MIA on a hunt and chances are good that then child services would be called. Big trouble that they really have no need for. For this possibility alone I assume The Dad drilled into them repeatedly to fly under the radar.
The "I'm a hero." line... Shudder. Line and delivery were awful. Besides, I can't see Dean saying that, because he doesn't see himself as a hero. His dad, sure, but not he.
Sam's "Are you happy?" teacher talk in the end made me roll my eyes. *ducks rotten fruits* Sorry, but the Apocalypse is coming, and all we're supposed to be concerned about is Sam's happiness? Come on! Can that please wait until Lilith is taken care of?
In conclusion, I didn't like ASS at all. For me it was a huge letdown from last week. But there's always the next ep to make it better, right? I'm really looking forward to this week's. I'm spoiled, and it sounds awesome. :D
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Date: 2009-02-04 12:54 am (UTC)I can see why you didn't like this ep when you explain it like you do - all sorts of things were wrong - I just like flashbacks and am a sucker. : D
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Date: 2009-02-03 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 07:38 am (UTC)Sorry to butt in here, but I kinda feel the need to defend "gyp" at least a little. We all tend to assume that it must come from "gypsy" but honestly, it's simply that - an assumption, and the evidence just isn't conclusive. Etymologists themselves don't actually know from where the term derives. And even if its origin were to be confirmed as having come from "gypsy", it's long established itself as a separate word.
*ducks head down below the parapets again*
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Date: 2009-02-04 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 08:05 am (UTC)I think it's a little silly for people to get offended by an assumption.
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Date: 2009-02-04 04:03 pm (UTC)I was also going to let the whole thing just lie there, but thanks to a_carnal_mink's excellent research, I was actually inspired to speak up.
Here's the entire quote from the second link she provided from World Wide Words:
"[Q] From Stephen Wilder, New York: “Your reference to the Roma reminded me of the derogatory word gyp, to cheat. I had always assumed that this was a racial epithet from gypsy and was a reference to their supposed means of supporting themselves through petty theft and deceit. However, someone recently informed me that there is in fact no connection at all and that the term has a separate origin (which he did not recall). Where lies the truth?”
[A] It’s often said that to gyp derives from gypsy, and it seems highly probable. However, direct evidence is lacking, and the term arose in the US, where gypsies have been less common than in Europe. Gypsies don’t call themselves that, by the way, but Roma, from their word Rom, a man. The verb only began to appear in print near the end of the nineteenth century and took some time to become well known (it’s not in the 1913 edition of the Webster Unabridged Dictionary, for example).
The confusion you mention may lie with another sense of the noun, for a college servant at the University of Cambridge (the English one). Though gyp in this sense is also sometimes said to come from gypsy, it may equally well come from the obsolete gippo, a menial kitchen servant; this once meant a man’s short tunic, from the obsolete French jupeau. (Gyppo, as a modern derogatory term, does seem to come from gypsy, or at least, from the same source as to gyp.)
Even if the verb does come from gypsy, most people who use it probably don’t link the two ideas. It’s a connection that has become stronger as we have become more sensitive to possible racial slurs, as a result of which the possibility of offence is treated more seriously than evidence of actual offence warrants. (Much the same process has happened with squaw).
Incidentally, the word gypsy or gipsy itself was given to itinerants in Britain when they arrived from continental Europe in the sixteenth century; the word is a contracted form of Egyptian by a process called aphesis. It was thought that the people came from Egypt but they really have their origin in north-western India. Their language can be traced back to Hindi, Punjabi and Sanskrit roots, though with a lot of input from other languages that shows they spent extended periods in Persia and Armenia, among other places. They probably entered Europe via Constantinople in the fifteenth century."
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Date: 2009-02-04 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 09:54 pm (UTC)Take a look at the etmology of the word, and you'll see.
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Date: 2009-02-04 11:25 pm (UTC)Antoher example - gay is a word whose etymology means happy/carefree. it has come to be associated with homosexuality. If gay is used as an insult or a pejorative - should I not be offended because as you say "It's a question of the word's meaning being what it IS, rather than what you want it to mean"? My feelings are still hurt.
Surely words do not have inherent meaning, they mean what people want them to mean. Again i would say if a word is hurtful to someone it really doesn't matter what the dictionary says.
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Date: 2009-02-04 11:54 pm (UTC)You are right, words do not have inherent meanings, they mean what we say that they mean, what we agree that they mean. Thus, on the heels of that, since etmologists in general agree that there's no racism in this particular word, and that it very probably came from a French word for a man's short tunic, I think it's a perfectly good word and I'm going to continue to use it. You can continue to be offended by that, if it pleases you. I try to be a considerate writer, but, like I said before, I'm not going to use what I feel is a less effective word simply because I might upset one or two people.
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Date: 2009-02-03 11:27 pm (UTC)Other than that, I have to say that I pretty much disagree with a lot of things you saw. :) I love Jeffrey Dean and I love the character of John, but honestly, having him in this episode would have taken away from the focus: the boys dealing with people other than family at that age. We've seen them deal with each other: the Christmas ep., the Striga episode, so this was a different look at them and without John, I think it worked better.
I love the little tricks with the license plate on the Impala to show the flashbacks - pretty cool and subtle.
The gym scene I'm of two minds about: yes Dean has a canon good interaction with kid(s), but really, he's usually only interacting with one or one main one. And other than Ben who was like him so much, the other boys were being picked on, much like weeSam, who Dean naturally protects. The kids in the gym on the other hand, are a group, and Dean is supposed to be an authority figure, and he likely remembers how HE would react to a substitute teacher. Plus, he likely fell back on what he remembers his PE teacher was like or his father and merely copied that. I do think he was more cruel than the character needed to be though and that was out of place.
The outfit was totally ridiculous, and was obviously for the fangirls. I suspect that like the kids, the teacher had to wear a uniform too. As for the Dean line about him 'not doing shorts', I never took that as gospel or anything. It was a throwaway line to a girl because he was caught in a lie - it's the kind of thing he says all the time. Now, I don't think he would wear shorts too often, not judging by the look on Sam's face!!
I loved the teacher: wouldn't we all want one of those? Just a little aside: he's in a position of authority and would have no reason to fear Sam coming into his classroom in the manner he did: apologetic, friendly and sorry, but being 6'4" does not intimidate everyone, not in the way Sam presented himself. Pissed off Sam, yeah - that would be scary. Maybe that's why no one on that whole disaster of a bus scene got off to check on things.
Anyway, as I said, a mostly enjoyable episode and thankfully a lot more of Sam on screen WITHOUT Ruby!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 01:03 am (UTC)So...as to the "flying low," you're right, it's not canon per se, John never comes out and says it, but they all act it, with their disguises, and their living off the grid; their lifestyle, esp when we see the three of them together, seems to point to an attitude where getting noticed for being exactly what you are is a bad thing. You would want people to believe the disguise and not see the truth.
So if John's left his boys alone for 3 weeks at a dive motel, the "story" would be that he would be back any day now...any day now. He certainly wouldn't want anyone thinking anyone was amiss. So, let's say, for example, that WeeSam or WeeDean got into a fight at school. John's asked to come to the principle's office. But he's miles off somewhere, on a hunt. Sure, he could come back, but now, he's pissed, because the hunt got interrupted. I'm sure he would have preferred it had the boys flown "low." Which, is, true, pure fannish speculation on my part, but seems to be in keeping with canon. Ratiocination, as my dad likes to say.
The whole gym thing (both the shorts and the ball throwing)....people either liked it or they hated it, and I'm not feeling that there's any coming to an understanding - I can see why you see it the way you do, but I just don't agree. That's okay. I can be distracted by thoughts of the parts I did enjoy. : D
The teacher and Sam coming in. It might have been, yes, my feelings as a woman, and what my reaction would be had I been alone in a classroom and someone came in without knocking. Someone 6 foot 4 and all smashed up. But, even with Sam's friendly attitude, it might make anyone a tad alerted to the stranger/danger that's just come through the door. I still admire the teacher, though, he could see right through Sam. I liked that.
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Date: 2009-02-04 08:29 am (UTC)Like everybody else, I loved the whole Sam-storyline. I felt like the writers really understood his charcter and thus did a good job in extrapolating him back into his youth. Contrary to seemingly wide-spread belief, I never thought of Sam as essentially gentle - and I loved how they kept this in place or rather how Colin did it: his interaction with Dirk on his first day in class showed off the same kind of steel under a velvet sheath like adult Sam has down patt as well. So - yeah, beautifully done.
The Dean story-line, however: No. It was as if the writers just took some props of adult Dean (womanizing, mouthing off to authorities, hero worship) and glued them onto a dummy without any understanding for the character himself. Sorry to say that weeDean having neither charm nor sex-appeal (at least in my eyes) didn't help matters either, but I'd say the main problem was with the script. Especially the whole chick thing which was totally unconvincing:
Amanda was seemingly meant to be a "nice girl", one going for relationships instead of plain sex, thus setting her up for the Meaningful Speech in the end. But not only was never explained how she was supposed to have witnessed Dean interacting with Sam - she gave him the eye on his first day in class, when all she knew about him was his looks and a very condescending attitude towards a female teacher. Sorry, that just does not match. If they wanted to show Dean really wanted a nice girl they had to set it up differently, having a token Superficial Cheerleader flirting with him after this display of brash manliness while the Good Girl only came around after some significant scene with Sam. As it stands, they seem to have their cake and eat it, too, which is just jarring.
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Date: 2009-02-04 04:09 pm (UTC)Dean's storyline. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Esp with regard to the blonde chick: yes! When on earth did she learn about Dean like that, to that extent? I was jarred too. Jarred.
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Date: 2009-02-04 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 06:41 pm (UTC)