I liked Wendigo. It was so early on in the series that I must have liked it or I wouldn't have kept watching. I liked Route 666 and I liked Cassie.
There really are precious few episodes that I don't like. I either enjoy them the first time through or find really interesting features that make them worthwhile on the second viewing.
I think the fairy tales one this season is the only one that I still have misgivings about. Not because there wasn't a story there...I was just bored with it.
This third season is the season I have enjoyed the least but even last night the episode was better than I remembered. So I think my opinion of season three may improve upon rewatch.
If I had magical powers, I would *heavily* edit Malleus Maleficarum, and the dialog of a few other S3 eps. Otherwise, I love what we've been given.
I do love the suspense and speculation of waiting a week to see what happens next, and I love talking about it, discussing it here and on LJ and reading about it and wondering where the storylines will go.
But there's something to be said for having already watched and then mainlining through a season, several eps a week. I can really see things build and change. I've come to recognize trademarks of writers and directors, appreciate set dressers, props and lighting, appreciate themes I never noticed when the eps first aired. And appreciate the tension a character builds as a season progresses.
I think more tv series will be written and filmed with a sensibility to being viewed several eps at once on dvd, to enhance that sense of continuity.
Oh yes, this season Malleus Mallificarum is another one I dislike.
I just pinged on something else that bothered me about Malleus Mallificarum besides the anti-Paganism slant. It made supernatural evil too pedestrian with the whole book club thing, and that made it feel like another show. Charmed, or late-seasons Buffy.
I haven't seen much of Season 1, but my understanding is it was based mostly on urban legends and things that go bump in the night on the outermost fringes of society. Season 2 had a lot of ghosts and the Yellow Eyed Demon arc. I get that the demon war in Season 3 brought a lot more overt occult influence to the world, but at the start it looked like it was going to be a big mythic clash, with the forces of order and reason being overwhelmed by their opposite. The idea of June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson getting together to cast demon-granted spells and then organize bake sales just goes against the tone and makes it harder to take the supernatural seriously.
MM is one of the two episodes I missed this season, and from everything I've heard, I'm regretting this less and less.
Question: I'm racking my brains, but cannot recall--what episode was it where the boys learned that Mary's friends/family had been killed off?
That was The Kids Are All Right, the one with mini!Dean. And only Sam learns that, from Ruby -- he never tells Dean, as far as I remember.
Matt, I really loved S1, simply because of the nuts-and-bolts approach to "saving people, hunting things, the family business." The hunt for YED was exciting, but I wasn't as enthusiastic about global good vs. Evol war. Honestly, I think the best stories are the intimate ones, with our intrepid heroes interacting with one person, one family, one problem at a time.
The CW okayed a huge budget for the Great War Against the Demons, but then yanked it back after the first or second episode. They saw the strike coming and decided to save every penny they could. They've also reduced the budget for S4 to less than they allowed for S3, after the cut. And I think that's probably a good idea. I don't really want to see a Lucas version of CGI demons clouding the earth's atmosphere in aerial dogfights with Sam's mental powers, or whatever.
It's back to human scale, and I think that's where their forte lies. I do want to take up a collection for the music, though. During my S1 rewatch I was made re-aware of the great music in every ep. We had none in S3. Music rights are the first things cut in a tight budget, and then you start reducing cast and staff. Money was one reason, even more than fan opinion, that Lauren Cohan's character was written out.
I don't want to lose our recurring characters--please pay Jim Beaver--and I'd love it if Victor, Ash and Andy got a chance to come back on the side of good, somehow. I'd love to see Ellen, and even Jo, again. But I really really miss the music. It's part of the show's mystique. Mythique? Legend.
CW Source has a podcast for Supernatural.
