Pop Culture Curmudgeon

Visions of Winchesters: The Supernatural Blog Carnival, Nov. 18

Welcome to the November 18, 2009, edition of Visions of Winchesters: The Supernatural Blog Carnival.

Last Week’s Episode
This Week’s Episode
News
Spoilers: On a separate page to protect the spoilerphobes

Last Week’s Episode

On Supernatural, the Meta Outweighed the Mega
Annalee Newitz shares her reaction to The Real Ghostbusters, which she believed was a little too meta. I agree. I really enjoyed the meta fun in last season’s The Monster at the End of This Book, but The Real Ghostbusters was a little too heavy-handed.

Who Ya Gonna Call? Supernatural! Let’s Talk The Real Ghostbusters
The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan also has a few bones to pick with the episode, although she seemed to enjoy it overall. And, as she says, “We nitpick because we love.”

Supernatural: The Real Ghostbusters
Over at Sign On San Diego, where I hope they always stay classy, Karla Peterson also jumps on the “I didn’t love it as much as Kripke thought I would” bandwagon.

Supernatural Recap: The Real Ghostbusters
Someone out there had to love this episode, right? Well, it wasn’t Julia Thorne, who describes the episode and gives her commentary throughout.

Supernatural Season 5 Episode 9: The Real Ghostbusters
We conclude the recaps with a slightly more enthusiastic viewer, Rachel N. over at Nick C.’s Behind the Screens blog.

This Week’s Episode

Mark Pellegrino on This Week’s Episode
Lucifer’s vessel talks about the episode.

Sneak Peek & Promo: Abandon All Hope
Clarissa at TV Over Mind gives video clips and an episode description.

Supernatural: Two Sneak Peeks at Episode 10 Abandon All Hope
Dread Central also has video, and they say the thing I don’t like to believe, that Abandon All Hope is the last new episode of the year.

Supernatural First Look: Dean and Meg Face Off
We close out with Ausiello, who has a clip that shows pretty much what the page title says.

News

Is Supernatural Jumping the Shark?
In yet another lament for the way Season 5 has played out so far, John Kubicek jumps off the bandwagon. He says that SPN has, indeed, jumped the shark, and he doesn’t know if it can un-jump it before he quits caring about all things Winchester. I’m inclined to agree, but I am willing to stick it out until this season ends. I mean, a few more months isn’t that much to sit through while we assess whether the funny and the retcons have been worth it. What else would I watch on Thursdays at 9?

Convention-al Wisdom
Maureen Ryan shares her thoughts on the recently concluded Chicago Con.

Salute to Supernatural Chicago 2009
The SPN Wiki gathers all of the con reports and videos, which they say are spoiler free, on one page. Enjoy!

That concludes this edition. The next edition of The Supernatural Blog Carnival will run in 2010. Submit your posts using the carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on the blog carnival index page or by clicking Supernatural in the tag cloud.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Tags: alona tal, convention, jared padalecki, jensen ackles, jim beaver, misha c, supernatural, visions of winchesters

Uncategorized | Jennifer Roland | November 18, 2009 6:19 am

3 Comments

By katie71483, November 18, 2009 @ 11:45 am

I posted this on The Tribune’s The Watcher’s website in response to a blog post from Maureen Ryan:

Mo, I’ve been considering the progress of season five myself. While I’ve enjoyed the episodes on an individual level, as a whole the season has felt off kilter. The show feels like its lost its way or something. I mean, it’s supposed to be the Apocalypse – shouldn’t they be working more towards tracking down the colt or Lucifer or something? I understand the need for the occasional monster of the week episode to fill a 22 episode order but the first half of the season has been really heavy on those.

I loved the Four Horsemen storyline that was introduced early on; I assumed that we’d be seeing more of them. The season is half over and we haven’t heard anything else about it. It feels sort of like it was dropped. The Anti-Christ was an interesting possible game changer but we haven’t heard anything else about him, either. The comparison I’m about to make will probably upset some people – it feels kind of like Heroes. All of these great story lines are being introduced and then forgotten. Don’t get me wrong, Supernatural is a far superior show and even its weaker episodes far surpass most of what is on tv these days. It’s the dropped story lines that I’m trying to get at.

For that matter, the Supernatural world doesn’t feel like it’s changed all that much since the Big A began. I guess I sort of assumed it would be more umm, for lack of a better word, Apocalyptic or something. I’ve wondered if Supernatural wouldn’t benefit from a shorter 12 or 15 episode arc, if they didn’t have to work as hard to fill out a season. Friday Night Lights has thrived with shorter seasons, for example, and most, if not all, of the original cable series have shorter seasons. Just a thought…
I have faith that Kripke, et al, will be able to pull it off though… I just wish we didn’t have to wait until January!

As you can see, I’ve got some concerns about the direction of the show and the way the season is playing out. Of course, maybe we need to go by Chuck’s quote from The Real Ghostbusters – “Is it jumping the shark if you never come back down?”

[Reply]
By katie71483, November 19, 2009 @ 10:25 pm

I take it back. After watching tonight’s episode, I think the show is back on track. I was just thrown off by too many of the “funny” episodes without much plot advancement.

[Reply]