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.
