Reply To: Let’s all talk about – The Winchesters – Masters of War (S1 E4)

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journalbookbinder
    November 2, 2022 at 5:18 pm #24369

    My fears do seem to be well-founded as now there are articles out about how The Winchesters (and Walker: Independence) has not had the second half of the season ordered…so the first season will stick and hold at 13 episodes. Damn you, Nexstar for buying the CW!!!! But they say that NOT ordering the second half of season one does not mean they won’t order a second season. I want this show to have the chance to succeed. Bad timing on this change of ownership for our shows. But shows have much shorter runs these days…so I could see it just being a shorter-run show (like The Boys with only 8 episodes per season!).

    BUT, on to the episode…

    I love Drake as John. I can see John, Sam, AND Dean in his performance and I love it. For someone so new to acting, he’s a natural. He was inspired casting and I will keep watching just for him. Seeing the characters I love IN his portrayal right now feels to me like the only thing connecting this show to Supernatural.

    I am continuing to have a hard time with the weird monsters. I understand that these are monsters from all different cultures and Mary is surprised to see them turning up so it is out of the ordinary and THAT has something to do with the Akrida. As we learned, the Akrida want to do away with everything on earth; humanity AND monsters and it seems that, judging by this episode, even Gods are worried about it! I wish I knew WHAT the Akrida wanted and WHY they want to do this! I can’t find this threat very threatening when it’s so vague and so weird (giant spider/crab dogs that so far just run around and follow a figure in a cape and hood).

    I am just not finding these monsters scary. And I loved the scary monsters of early SPN. The actor playing the God in this one did a fine job – going from veteran to God and I didn’t see that coming! But the Samurai outfit…the fact that the guy in it was very “American” yet supposed to be from a different culture…it just didn’t fit for me! The spear…all of it was way too fantasy/video game for me! Not scary. I did like that this week’s God/monster was a thinking and talking being that obviously had some kind of plan for John; to make sure he was ready/violent enough to fight the Akrida (and deemed he WAS ready). I wish a thinking, scheming adversary would last more than one episode though.

    I liked finding out more about Carlos, but…I wanted more. I wanted a war story – more than just apprehension from seeing the burning cigarettes of the Viet Cong out in the jungle. I wanted something that we didn’t expect of Carlos; a story about some kind of uncharacteristic and traumatizing war violence. He seemed surprised at the violence displayed by John after he killed the God. I did like the moment when he hugged John. For all Carlos’ bravado, he cares about John and I liked that. I also liked him in his Navy uniform because it looks so out of character to his usual hippie-equse wardrobe and I enjoyed the revelation that we really don’t know much about these characters yet.

    The whole storyline with Maggie’s death is falling flat for me. It was a big trauma for Mary and Lata but we never knew Maggie (no flashbacks, etc.), so her death doesn’t have the traumatic urgency for me I want to feel.

    Let’s talk about Lata. I love that there is a character of Indian descent. Love it. But I do not like this character!!!! She’s too…nice. She doesn’t seem real yet. And she ALWAYS has or finds the answer! One of the things that made Supernatural feel so real was Sam and Dean scrambling to find answers on their own. There was a “time is of the essence” feel and it was suspenseful. Here, they go to the “clubhouse”, Lata pulls out a book, and voila; she has most of the info. they need. It’s…boring and I did not expect that from Robbie Thompson.

    Right now, this show has too much of a young adult novel fantasy feel to me. Not horror. Not Supernatural.

    But I love John. I love Carlos (“What kind of heterosexual mating ritual am I interrupting?”) but want Carlos to be revealed to be a lot more of a badass!!! OR show that he was forced into violence at some point and that is why he’s now adopted the holy water water gun and less hands-on violence: because he didn’t like the person he was when he WAS violent. There’s no sign of that yet, but THAT would be interesting to me.

    I haven’t talked much about Mary because…I’m still just not feeling Mary. Again, I know this may be by design. We had a little peek into what were supposed to be more real emotions when she was trying to escape the monster and talking on the CB radio to John last week…that was a step forward, but she seems overly-confident in her knowledge (maybe on purpose; maybe so it can bite her in the ass later) and what made Supernatural so good was Sam and Dean NOT having answers. If anything, I expected this show to be even more “in the dark” as far as how to fight monsters because it was decades before Sam and Dean so I thought the knowledge would be more scanty. But if anything there seems to be MORE info. from Mary and Lata.

    I like that Mary is a strong female and not a pushover…she’s the leader really and I like that IDEA, but I’m just not feeling much from the actress yet. Unlike Drake who does make me empathize with him.

    Millie REALLY accepted the whole crazy “God” story from Lata WAY TOO FAST! This is supposedly new to her (unless she’s also some kind of closet hunter!) and she accepted all of that without question which seemed very lazy writing to me. Wow. Never thought I’d EVER accuse Robbie Thompson of lazy writing when he wrote such intricate & thoughtful dialog as he did in “Don’t Call Me Shirley”.

    Somehow, this show does not feel REAL to me yet. In spite of the crazy stories and monsters and concepts, Supernatural always felt REAL which is why I cared so much about Sam and Dean and WANTED them to “win” and figure things out at the last minute and save each other every week. I don’t care much yet about these characters. It’s still early. But I already cared immensely about Sam and Dean by the 4th episode of Supernatural. I did.

    I would have enjoyed the fight scene with John because it’s the first time we really saw his “cold blooded killer” side – but the glowing SPEAR was so video-game ridiculous I couldn’t take it seriously!

    So, this one had moments between characters that I liked…but I’m still wishing for more.

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