askye, I haven't seen Saw, so I don't know how gory it is, but my guess is very. This episode is probably not that bad. It was definitely a higher level of grossness than I was expecting; but bear in mind also that I really don't do gore at all, so it might be an acceptable level for you.

Just found out that Matt Frewer is a busy man. Not only is he now a series regular on Eureka, he's also a series regular on what sounds like an interesting Canadian spy/crime drama called, Intelligence. [link] I haven't seen any episodes but I'm sorely tempted to ahem what's available so far.

I watched a little bit last night of Torchwood and - when Gwen started asking but who they'd last kissed I cringed immediately because I knew Ianto had last kissed Lisa (he looked so hurt and lost and on a shallow note he looked good in casual clothes). Was it just me or did Sato look jealous when Owen said he kissed Gwen? Again I think they are rushing things because I didn't really see any heat between Gwen and Owen except when he had her pinned against the tree and I would love to see some build up before they acted on their feelings.

I have more Supernatural musings/questions.

When it was mentioned that their framework included Hell, I considered it an additional piece of information that fleshed out what I already knew. I have no problem with it.

Nutty does have a problem, and I'm not going to try and sum it up, because I don't understand it and will do it wrong. But I wanted to have the discussion here because I really don't get it, and maybe multiple people explaining it to me will make the lightbulb go on.

You know it never bothered me that on Buffy they had demons, they had hell, they had multiple demon/hell dimensions but nobody ever mentioned heaven until season 6.

And here -- doesn't bother me either. I mean, explanations from Supernatural about things like Urban Legends is that they are real. So, a legend about Robert Johnson selling his soul? Real. Therefore, there are souls and they can be sold to the Devil.

To be fair, it was fairly evident from the start of Buffy that some sort of benevolent higher power was sending her the prophetic dreams, and I took the resolution of "I Only Have Eyes for You" to mean that both Grace's and James' souls had finally found peace.

Are you equating heaven with peace? There are heavens in Buffy, but I thought the resolution of IOHEFY could also be about release...just plain release.

But, yeah, some power or the other was working with Buffy to fight evil--question is, if the Slayer is the creation of the Watchers back in the day, how did they make her have prophetic dreams? Did they build in a connection to TPTB?

Which is totally off-topic, but there you go.

Because infinitemonkeys on LJ had said that it was cheesy and bad. Huh. Maybe I'll ahem an episode just to see.

Oh, you know, it's cheesy in the way that due South was cheesy. That it's cheesy doesn't endear it to me any less. I don't know, it's entertaining in a cheetos way, and it's not painful to watch like Torchwood is for me. The cast is pretty and Marian is a remarkably engaging female character, and the fellow who plays the Sherriff is quite deliciously wicked. The costumers are also lovely, if "modern" in an entirely unauthentic, but still lovely, way. I like it.

Speaking of Torchwood, last night's episode was just. I want Gwen to freaking nut up and stop being lame. I'd also appreciate if Jack would give all of his team rape whistles, because obviously they are incapable of protecting themselves. Was it really necessary to have Jack sweep in and save the day and shoot every. single. baddie. and the rest of the crew do jack shit?

I also still don't quite get whether it was the rift that made the people crazy--which seems unlikely given that the crazies apparently did this every ten years--or they were just fucked up in group-think on their own. Were they cannibals? Were they serial killers? What's going on there? The resolution sucked. I also didn't like the allusions they made to rural Welsh folk, because it ties in to a lot of residual cultural oppression overall.

And was it really necessary for the annoyingly random Owen/Gwen? I mean, it's bad enough that every character in the show has snogged every other character, but I haven't wanted two people to not have sex that viscerally since Meredith and George on Grey's Anatomy. And while I'm not going to sneeze at next week's lesbianism, at this point all this mess feels gratuitous, and should have been better left to the fanfic. I can't believe I want a show to be *less* sexualised, but that's where I am.

Oh, and askye, I totally caught that Tosh was jealous. Which also annoys me.

I thought the Torchwood thing was basically sort of a cross between Jeepers Creepers and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." I figured out pretty quick that at least some of the humans were in on it, and I had a good feeling there was no alien influence.

The Gwen/Owen thing is problematic, at least for me, because the actor who plays him is really very good. He's so charismatic, and I thought the two of them had great chemistry. I think we're going to have to resign ourselves to saying "I wish they'd built up to that more" a lot with this show.

When it was mentioned that their framework included Hell, I considered it an additional piece of information that fleshed out what I already knew. I have no problem with it.

My take: except for the details of Marble Eyes the demon, the things that are hunted on Supernatural have been pretty mundane: human-mayhem; dead person-mayhem; combination of the two. For values of "mayhem" that are depraved or antisocial or insane, but not black-hat, twirly-mustache, hand-drywashing kind of Evil.

This leads me to certain basic story expectations. (Stage 1)

Add on Marble Eyes and his related mayhem: this graduates us to a considerably more potent and "mine is an evil laugh" Evil, especially as we learn facts about possession, exorcism, self-protection.

Okay, we'd known Marble Eyes was a dangling plot thread from the start; that's a legitimate expansion of the universe. (Stage 2)

Last week on the show we learned that Evil has a newsletter, and presumably a water-cooler and a break room and somebody who steals other people's lunches. Evil gossips one to the next, and Marble Eyes is not the exception in power-terms but the rule. There is a whole class of demons way above and beyond anything the Winchesters have demonstrated competence to handle. And, oh by the way, Hell is a real place where people can be damned to, or anyway they can end up there via unnatural means. Call this Stage 3.

From Stages 1 to 2, I don't have a problem, really. It's development/expansion of the universe in a way I can handle. From Stages 2 to 3, I suddenly need a lot more metatext to assimilate that universe into the show I've been watching these several months. I need to know on what basis humans end up in Hell; whether they are judged or can only end up there if they're really crappy at bargaining; whether the ones that don't end up in Hell are in Heaven, or someplace else; whether the Evil breakroom has a magical counterpart in Good.

In short, I thought I had enough cues to tell me what kind of universe I was dealing with, up through Stage 2. Or anyway, I knew what to expect out of the show. At Stage 3, I no longer know what kind of universe it is, and that bugs me.

This is what ita is describing above.