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Supernatural - Season 10 Episode 11 - The Gripe Review

31 Jan 2015

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Well, hello there Charlie! I have not been looking forward to your reappearance so I could rip you your episode to shreds.

Welcome everyone to episode 10x11's Gripe Review, or as I would have called it - had I been justifiably stoned and drunk - my analysis of Robbie Thompson's hour long self-stimulation through his pet character/author avatar, Charlie.

Let's get something out of the way so any Charlie fans who might be lingering around these dark and dingy areas of the Net turn tail. I hate Charlie. She is my least favorite character in the Supernatural universe by a long mile. If the showrunners made an offer to bring back a packaged deal of Amelia, Cole, Garth, Marie and Becky in exchange for Charlie meeting a horrible painful death I would sign it. That's how much I hate Charlie.

Why do I hate her so much? Simple, she is a Mary Sue.


Now before you tell me the accusation gets thrown around a lot and that Charlie is not a Mary Sue but a representation of a strong woman and the LGBT community(both of which I’m willing to take on and debunk in the comments) read this review. I will attempt to prove that Charlie is indeed a Mary Sue using only her appearance in this episode and this TV Tropes article as my reference: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySueTropes.

Many viewers don't assign Charlie the label presumably because she doesn’t have one of the major traits of a Sue: she isn't the object of affection for any of the main characters. In fact most are quick to site her sexual orientation. What they overlook however is the fact that Charlie doesn't have to be the object of Sam or Dean's sexual interest in order to be the orbital center of their love. Making her far from a possible girlfriend is a sure way to make them shower her with as much focus and affection as possible without risking the wrath of a love-interest allergic fandom.

Another reason why Charlie is nobody’s girlfriend is her creator. Robbie Thompson is a straight guy. Charlie is his gender swapped self-insert. He doesn't dream of dating any of the protagonists like fanfiction writers do, rather he wants to be one of them, or all of them, and outshine them at everything. That's why his creation is a mix of all three protagonists. She has Dean's wit and badassery, Castiel's adorable dorkyness, and Sam's smarts and tendency to attract the dark and the supernatural. She does all of these better than either of them every time she's around, and they feel so impressed they turn into mouthpieces of her praise and validation.


Why did Thompson gender swap his stand-in? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he was masking who she really was. Maybe he was pressured by the show’s critics for lack of female characters. We must also not forget that, in her first appearance, Charlie actually did have a function on the show as opposed to being just the Poochy of the Supernatural universe. They needed a hacker and it was a time of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (hence the name of the episode.) She was not a bad addition either as many who now oppose her (including me) liked her and her perky attitude back then. It was only after they gave Thompson free rein to keep bringing her back that the milk went sour. First he made her a queen, literally. Granted it was for a silly role playing game but that didn’t stop everyone from worshiping her. Then she came back with heavy tragic-background baggage, just so she’d earn the tormented-hero badge that every author avatar and pet character carries. This is when things started to slide really sideways and Charlie began hitting her Poochy strides.

Now this episode.

“There’s No Place Like Home” or the "Charlie is a Sue" exhibition

1 - Charlie appears and Sam and Dean drop everything for her (including their long established personalities)


It’s an ordinary day in the bunker. Sam is talking to Cas on the phone, Dean is complaining about healthy food. They are researching the MoC. Then Sam stumbles on a video of Charlie beating up a guy. This is the point when the show goes from Supernatural 10x11 To The Charlie Bradbury Show 1x5.

The boys meet the victim, who is cagey about the incident. They find out he was involved in the accident that created Charlie’s sympathy vehicle all those years ago.[1] Upon hearing this Dean loses it and attacks the guy, a man who is wounded and can’t defend himself. This is the same Dean who remained calm and collected through most of his interrogation scene with Matatron last week. He held it together even when Metatron – the guy who had killed him and brought on most of his current grievances - taunted him relentlessly. Yet here he cracks within seconds. Why? Because Charlie is that important to him, and to Sam too since he just stands there looking confused instead of interfering to prevent the possibility of Dean’s Mark causing a tragedy.


In the car, on their way to the next target, Sam finds out Charlie’s real name is not Charlie but Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and that she’s after every person that somehow was involved in her tragic-past accident. Dean’s reaction to this information is, “Can you blame her?” Allow me to reiterate, Dean’s reaction to someone gone berserk, and on a spree torturing and killing people without a trial is “Can you blame her?”[2]

2 – Meet Anti-Charlie [3]

After the boys warn the next potential victim they stick around and discover Dark Charlie. This is when the writer’s self-indulgence peaks its high. Thompson wants Charlie to be a protagonist, yet at the same time he lusts after an edgy, bad girl attitude for her. So what does he do? Something even fanfiction writers don’t. He makes two copies of her, one good and one evil. That frees him to pander to both sides of his fantasy without risking his favorite's sympathy magnet.


The person who suffers most from this plot twist is Felicia Day. I don’t know much about her outside her role as Charlie but looking at her Wikipedia page, I found out she was more known as a Youtube personality and show host than an actress. It’s reflected in her work on the show because in Charlie, Felicia was pretty much playing herself, and that was probably the only thing that worked well for the character.

Here Thompson tasks her with playing dual roles and she falls short. Felicia is not Jensen, Jared or Misha. She doesn’t have their experience and caliber to perform as multiple personalities, so her Dark Charlie comes out very flat and unconvincing.

3 - But in their universe Dark Charlie is made of awesome


From Good Charlie we find out that Dark Charlie exists because Original Charlie agreed to split herself in two in order for ‘them’ to win the War of Emerald City against Who-Knows-What. Then the exposition takes a mind blowing "My Immortal" turn.

Apparently the reason Dark Charlie is doing bad things is because, like every other character in a self-insert fanfic, she’s obsessed with Good Charlie (the Sue.) But Dark Charlie herself is a Sue, so Good Charlie admires her. According to her, she’s a badass warrior who single handedly won the war in Oz. This could be they only time in TV's entire history in which a character on a show shills a version of herself.

Dean goes after Dark Charlie, who at this point is in full god-mode [4] and foils him at every turn with the assistance of the writer dumbing Dean down to the IQ level of a 5 year old. Dark Charlie gets to her target without Dean realizing she is going to kill him. The target, Mr. Douchey Richguy, also gets affected by Dark Charlie’s godly powers and apologizes to her profusely before she kills him.


Afterwards Dean and Dark Charlie have a drink, a scene purely there so Thompson could establish the next trope he has planned for his self-insert, i.e. drawing parallels between Dean and Charlie. [5] I’m not going to go into detail about their conversation other than to say the whole purpose for it is to anvil-slam us with the theory that Charlie’s dark and light sides are the same as Dean’s hunter and MoC sides.

4 - Good Charlie is also made of awesome

Turns out Good Charlie can god-mode too [4]. When she and Sam arrive at the doorstep of Clive Dillon's house, he’s been living there for years as Michael Carter, not giving a fig about his alter ego wreaking havoc in Oz. But as soon as Charlie makes eyes at him he folds and agrees to not only call out his other self, but sacrifice himself in order to stop him.


So far the idea was to find half of a broken key to get Dark and Light Charlie back to Oz where they could be fused together. Yet, since up to this point, Charlie hasn't done anything heroic and/or self-sacrificial in the episode, Thompson decides to retcon his own script. In an act similar to what happens at the end of the Divergent series, everything realigns itself toward the singular goal of Charlie having her big moment. The deal changes from returning to Oz to killing the Wizard. Sam and Dean both become stunned imbeciles, one lying on the floor staring at the enemy helpless while the other beats on Dark Charlie when he could just hold her wrists and minimize the damage to Good Charlie. Amid all this insanity Charlie shoots the Wizard’s counterpart and saves the day. Naturally her heroics leave her badly injured, paving the way for Sam and Dean to coddle her to the max and fuss over her like a wounded kitten [1]. We’re treated to 3 full minutes of extreme Charlie angst in which Dark Charlie throws one last praise at her alter ego (“The magic was in you all the time,”) before a laughably bad CGI puts Good and Bad Charlie back together.

5 – She forgives Dean


Back at the MoL cave Sam vents to Cas about the crap he just went through talks to Cas about the MoC when Charlie shows up. Sam inquires about her health, tells her about the MoC (as if she's totally in on it,) and asks her about Dark Charlie. Charlie gets into this spectacular zone where she simultaneously highlights her whumped state, reminds us of her parallels with Dean, and talks like she is the voice of reason, compassion, knowledge and wisdom all at once. She tells Dean, “We are going to fix this,”[6] and “I’m not letting what happened to me happen to you.”[5] and “I forgive you.”[7] After she receives her return ticket from Sam – a quest that guarantees we won't see the last of her – she departs with an Italian variant of her trade-mark, misogynist catch phrase, and the "bitches" stand staring longingly after her.

6 – What’s left...

I want to point out that nothing that happened in this episode really mattered. The only thing that was saved was Charlie's identity and possibly Oz (if there ever was a danger to Oz and she wasn’t just trolling the Winchesters.) The real world – or the show’s universe – was in no danger except for the mayhem Dark Charlie visited upon it, which would have easily been resolved had Sam and Dean handed both Dark and Light versions of her to the cops.

Kudos – The ratings


Since I started watching the show I've been an advocate for the show’s ratings. I remember Saturday mornings, when I had long, heated conversations with non-fans on the TVbythenumbers’ article comment sections, arguing why the show deserved a better time slot and why its ratings were by no means a reflection of its quality but rather a direct result of CW’s mistreatment of it. I always cheered when the show got good ratings and chewed on my nails when it didn’t.

This week’s episode earned a 0.7 in the 18-49 demo and 2.06M in viewer numbers, a clear nosedive from previous week’s 0.9 and 2.42M. And this time, I cheered for the bad ratings.

My hope is that the rating decline works as a wakeup call for the show’s bosses and shows them that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Letting writers run amok in their scripts, turning the show into a showcase of their own favorite characters, or worse, their self-inserts, should have its consequences. Consequences that hit the network's bank accounts are the only ones that are important to TPTB, not fan outrage or reviews like this.

Speaking of writers running amok, next week is Adam Glass’s turn to take the show for a spin. I remember the last time he was in charge of writing teenage Dean he bragged on his twitter how he modeled Dean's story after his own teen years, i.e. another self-insert.[8] I’m sure we’re all going to have a jolly good time watching that fanfiction.

Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section. Below is the list of tropes I used throughout this article. Have fun reading these too.

References:

  1. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SympatheticSue
  2. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JerkSue
  3. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiSue
  4. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodModeSue
  5. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CopyCatSue
  6. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FixerSue
  7. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuritySue
  8. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonSue

Tessa

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twitter.com/tessa_marlene 

36 comments:

  1. If any of the links don't work please let me know.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know the use of tropes in writing isn't inherently bad, tropes usually become called tropes because they work. They are proven methods, structures and plot devices to aid effective story telling. However, they are not all created equal and the Mary Sue is one of the worst offenders.

    Supernatural used to be able to use some of the tropes with deft precision, sometimes subverting or playing against them smartly . Unfortunately those days have long since passed. It is refreshing to read an article from someone who HATES Charlie as much as I do, and can explain why much more eloquently than my "Ugh she's just worst" .

    Bravo.

    http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/013/974/clap.gif

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  3. I think with this team we have it would be better to serialized SPN now. Because when they go off to wonderland they forget to develop the main characters and arc the whole 9 yards.Amen to this. This new episode of the week format is what enables the writers to have their own mini movies within a show with a core audience and an established universe. It's another form of fanfiction (the official form,) plain and simple. was looking at teen wolf for the first time got to around season 3. In I was like damn they developed Dark Stiles better then Moc Dean.Stiles goes dark side? Damn I should go back to watching that show.

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  4. Is this by any chance your first Gripe Review? It's the typical style of these reviews; they are meant to sound angry and ranty. These are for fans who are frustrated with the direction of the show and need a place to vent. There's also an element of sarcastic humor in them.

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  5. Yep with stiles he had hallucinations seeing words backwards, Nightmares waking up screaming, had half of his dark half take out a hospital of innocent people and go after his friends. Dean : got drunk did Karaoke, look into the mirror for the 50th time. Shake once in a while in killed demons in pedophiles. SPN have ideas, but lack execution when the storyline get to hard in they just bail and in return we get fluff fillers.

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  6. interesting, a while I don't think the best of the Charlie episodes, the article just comes across as angry and ranting a bit too much.

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  7. you do know that is a scene from Citizen Kane where he (Kane) claps for his wife, who had a piss poor stage performance (an nobody clapped because she wasn't good and financed a play just so she could star in it), so he maniacally stands and claps forcing others to do so as well.

    so the clear message is “Everybody else thinks you’re shit but I,
    through my own foolishness and vanity, feel the need to support you!”

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  8. Thanks for the applause. I told myself if I was going to vent about my frustration with Charlie I would come with an arsenal of evidence. That TV Tropes link was a surprisingly useful resource that came to my rescue. I myself had a ball spotting all the Sue variants in this episode.

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  9. yes, I understand but you can review things in the negative and not have it sound whiny or petulant. But that is just me and maybe these are not intended for me. I would rather read a more well reasoned argument, even if it is deriding.

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  10. Hey thanks. I was expecting tomatoes from Charlie fans. It's good to know most have a sense of humor too. And Felicia isn't a bad actress. Her challenge is that she's in the company of some high class talent that makes it tough for her to compete with.

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  11. They spend half the time trying to put themselves into the show instead of writing it. I wish I could do a gofundme page for new writers. lol But I think with this team we have it would be better to serialized SPN now. Because when they go off to wonderland they forget to develop the main characters and arc the whole 9 yards. By doing this maybe they can keep the storyline to flow in actually think. But all these fillers, in then try to dump the story at the end is not good pacing. I was looking at teen wolf for the first time got to around season 3. In I was like damn they developed Dark Stiles better then Moc Dean. After that I was like SPN definitely need to shake it up ASAP.

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  12. I love reading your reviews. I happened to like the episode and like Charlie, but I also agree with your review with the exception of Felicia Day's acting--I thought she did fine. I had to look up what a Mary Sue is so thanks for the link. Made me laugh because you are very right!

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  13. It's a meme that has been re-appropriated by the Internet generation as a universal gif for applause. Most of us weren't even bornwhen that movie came out, many haven't seen it, so it means something else to us. Still I'm very amused by the true story behind it, thanks.


    And hey, maybe Kane's wife's performance wasn't that piss poor. Maybe the majority of the audience got it wrong while the smartest person in the room (Kane) saw the true value of it. As a writer with a critical, yet sarcastic take on things I sometimes feel the same.

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  14. um, I wasn't alive/born when it came out (1941) either but have seen it. and re-appropriated is just another word for not understanding the history of something/seeming uneducated.


    And no, that scene further stressed the nature of Kane and his elitist , controlling (he forced his wife into performering), and delusional world.

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  15. Teen Dean could be a good story. But with this regime they will just turn it into campy comedy in not explore deep enough.

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  16. Dark!Stiles was such a gift. Too bad we only had him for one season.

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  17. I also thought the waitress was a good character and wanted to see some more of her. She was smokin' hot. But I liked that she wasn't the simpering type the show sometimes uses, if i am expressing myself correctly.

    Also, I thought she looked at Dean speculatively but saw he was thinking about something, let him nurse his ONE DRINK UNDRUNK for hours. And usually in Charlie episodes EVERY female is hot for Charlie. And she was not googling at Charlie. I liked that, because I was so sick of EVERYBODY LOVES CHARLIE.

    I don't know about the size or percentage of the lesbian population, but AGAIN if we are going with Robbie Thompson's mental state, I'd say he'd like EVERY girl to want HIM so he wants every girl, even and especially the straight girls, to want to go gay for Charlie. I mean, does he think it is that easy to hook up?

    On another site we were discussing Kripke's use of Sam as avatar. Here we are discussing Robbie Thompson and Charlie. Next week it mAY be Adam Glass' troubled teens with Dean.
    Guys, get some therapy.

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  18. This site Spoilertv.com has a "regular" type of Supernatural review, I think it posted on Wednesday.

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  19. If it don't fit the mighty guess stars all these possibilities with Sam and Dean is forgotten or ignored. Robbie did say when Charlie appears the episode basically got to focus on her and her strengths. So I can assume he will change the whole format to fit her. Bad writing.

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  20. Ratings are tricky business. I'm fully aware that external elements - Superbowl games, important movie premiers, daylight savings, snow storms - affect them more than the content of the episode. But historically Charlie episodes had higher ratings than ordinary MotW episodes due to Felicia's fanbase checking them out. So I made a note to mention that her clout didn't seem to cover Robbie's shtick this time.

    Rout666 aired in 2005 when ratings in general were higher. Technically you shouldn't compare ratings of previous years to later years because you'd fall into a trap called the Violation of the Gunsmoke Rule.

    My Sue-dar on Charlie went off way before Slumber Party, but that episode was my least favorite Charlie episode before this one. It seems as time goes by Robbie's head keeps growing bigger. His idea of every woman falling for Charlie is in fact a form of wish fulfillment and proof that he indeed puts himself in her shoes.

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  21. My husband said Yippee when Dean broke Charlie's wrist. I backed up the dvr for THAT little gem.

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  22. I wonder if Teen Dean has The Mark of Cain (henceforth MOC). The snippets they showed were had the actor so ON as adult Dean. And in the car when Sam said, It's puberty, I thought maybe no MOC to screw with Dean. Or maybe it's there and dormant because 14yo Dean has never killed yet?


    What I would like in the episode, would be that Dean has to save the other children from the Witch (MRS PADMORE!) and so embraces the MOC to give him the power boost to save them. And in effect becoming himself again. But this time he knows he has done it for the right reasons (saving people, hunting things)


    So it COULD be a positive for Dean finding a way to control the MOC.

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  23. I do not have any issues with paring DC with Dean and GC with Sam. GC said she can't hack online account because its wrong, so what her being all good and Dean being at Dean's computer knowledge level do any good?
    And they needed to show interconnection between 2 half's in each person, so they need someone to hurt BC. Sam would never do this, so it had to be Dean's super evil Hyde.

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  24. I hear your issues about pairing up Dark Charlie with Dean. But I think I know why they did it. If you've read the third book in the godawful Divergent series (I couldn't get through it, but I read a synopsis of it) you see what I mean. Everything is designed so the heroine would sacrifice herself in the end, even if the road to that outcome is riddled with plot holes. Here they needed Charlie to suffer for her heroics, so someone had to beat up Dark Charlie bruised and bloody. They couldn't go with Sam because this season has been all about MoC making Dean extra mean, plus I think Thompson has a thing for Dean. Why else would his stand-in become the #1 important person in Dean's life whenever she shows up? So he wanted Dean to be the one who felt guilty for punching her, and also to facilitate the last seen in which she tells him she forgives him.


    As for the bartender scene I contemplated mentioning it but then I realized I would end up with another review as tall as this one. I can't wrap my head around this show's stance on sexual freedom. On one hand normal Dean acts like a character from a sleazy collage film when he meets a group of chaste women, on the other hand they label it as part of someone's demonic characteristics. Same with alcohol. It's like the writers can't make up their minds. Also Charlie acting like a horny jock because she's a lesbian tells me Thompson never bothered to research lesbian culture and just went with "straight guy with female parts."

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  25. High class talent, who can make bad writing seem good. That's a very difficult thing to do as an actor. The J's have never seemed "fake", no matter how silly their lines have been sometimes.

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  26. I don't hate Charlie as much as you do, although I agree with each appearance she becomes more of a Mary Sue, or at least threatens to eat the entire show. I had huge issues with Dark Charlie winning the war in Oz single handedly, especially once we get the reveal on the Wizard. I mean would Dark ex-MOL* really want a competing power that strong in Oz? But he told Charlie to split herself in half?

    I had other issues with the episode. Why on earth did they decide to send influenced-by-the-MOC Dean with Dark Charlie and leave used-to-be-good-with-computers Sam with Good Charlie. Wouldn't the scenes have made more sense reversed. Dean has never claimed to know computers so him needing help hacking makes sense. Dean is influenced to lose control so shouldn't Sam who isn't fighting the MOC go off with the Charlie that is likely to get violent? I mean, yes they had to show us that even half a Charlie is better than Sam, but still.**

    When did being attracted to someone and wanting to find out if by any chance they are attracted back become "bad"? When did being a bartender become a job someone needs to be rescued from? The whole Good Charlie saying if she had her bad part she would hit on the waitress, but now she just wants to send her to college irked me. I mean I have a Masters Degree and I believe in college. I also think that earning an honest living is great and if someone wants to be a bartender that works. College degrees are not necessary to have a job you like, or to be a good person.



    *How many still living MOLs are there? Maybe Sam and Dean should look for a roster and do a head count of who wasn't killed by Abaddon? Plus, it's not good when the only name I come up with for a character with major impact on the episode is ex-MOL.

    **I think the split was done this way because there have been complaints that Charlie only related to Dean even though she does have a lot in common with Sam. So they wanted Good Charlie to bond with Sam. Now if Sam had gone with Dark Charlie he could have talked about what he did when he didn't have a soul and/or when he was on demon blood and he could have been more on the lookout for signs that Dark Charlie was lying, but that would have meant actually talking about Sam's past and actually recognizing that there was a story told by Sera Gamble, which apparently is verboten. In fact the whole ignoring of Sam's previous storylines irked. Sam did the demon blood in a failed attempt to save the world and later took on Lucifer a truly great evil in order to actually save the world, but all we get is how hard it is for Charlie to turn to darkness to save the world. I mean would it kill them to give Sam a couple of lines about how he had been there and done that? Not to mention that Sam was literally split in two with one Sam up top and soulless and the other stuck in a Cage with Lucifer and Michael. Couldn't he at least have told Charlie that he could relate to having to look back at things that had been done by a bad side of himself, so he could relate?

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  27. I actually didn't see any difference between Light Charlie and Dark Charlie acting-wise. The only change was the dialog. I agree that Felicia, in every incarnation, plays herself. She appears to be a delightfully dorky person in real life.

    She is not an "actress" in the sense that Jensen or Jared or Mischa are "actors" but she IS an internet "personality" who has now been burdened with the weight of Robbie Thompson's lesbian leanings.

    I was surprised that Dark Charlie did not try to pick up the bartender, but maybe one thing both Light and Dark Charlies were holding onto was love of Dorothy? BUT she seemed to take NEVER going back to Oz and what I thought was her erstwhile great love VERY easily.

    That business about her forgiving Dean made me want to break her other wrist. I'll read more comments to see if anybody hit on things I thought/felt better than I have stated here.

    Actually, my least favorite Charlie episode is Slumber Party. This is second least favorite. I liked the first three, really I did. But the Charlie Sue stuff really began to hit me in the noggin in Slumber Party.

    It seems everybody's rating were down this week. The eastern storm so people watched Weather Channel and Weather Central or just went out snow mobiling? I don't know. (Side note: the best ratings ever for the show was supposedly Route 666 in Season 1, and that is a DOG of an episode. Only good part was shirtless Dean getting hopped on by Cassie. REALLY a bad episode. Whoever wrote it had NO IDEA of racial doings in the '60s. And it showed that it was originally supposed to be "set" in Mississippi but because it snowed in Canada they changed it to Missouri because while things probably weren't wonderful in Missouri for black people, Mississippi was the Gold Standard for lynchings at the time.)

    But I AM looking forward to Teen Dean next week. You know, I admit I was not that excited about the Return of Charlie and am willing to think others weren't either. But I don't know WHY the ratings were so bad. On another site I read that the +7 ratings almost double.

    But now to find out that Teen Dean is an avatar for Adam Glass (who the hell wrote the CBGB story? I can't remember.)

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  28. I finally watched the episode yesterday. Honestly, after reading comments here and there I was expecting something horrible, but I was pleasantly surprised. I actually liked the concept, Js were heavily involved, it was emotional and somewhat sad. Yes, nothing new here, cliché Jekyll and Hyde story but at least it resonated with Deans current struggle.
    I am not FD fan, as I am not Charlies fan either. I can tolerate her in small doses (aka once a season), and I do not hate-hate this character. I always thought her interaction with boys is kind of cute, and IMHO I'll take Mary Sue over Xena the warrior (if boys need to be rescued) or bitchy Amelia ect.
    I absolutely didn’t like anything Oz-related, even Wizard was silly and out of place. All war-in-Oz story was horrible. I didn’t like Felicia acting as BC, but I thought she was decent at playing small, broken GC. I actually felt sorry for her when Dean was beating BC up. I liked her interaction with Sam a lot.
    This time she did kind of save a day again, but I wouldn’t take it any other way at given scenario: otherwise the message would be that only evil makes us strong, our good half is weak, winy and pitiful.
    I did roll my eyes from time to time while watching it, but I did like this episode more then any of Charlie’s previous ones, and honestly surprised that it got so much hate from fans.
    BTW my husband, who is a very casual viewer, said it was the best episode so far this season. Go figure, we are so different.

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  29. There was a moment in the episode that I actually liked Good Cahrlie (when she said she couldn't hack because it was bad,) but that went away when they started portraying her as a martyr. Of all the different Mary Sue types Sympathy Sue is my least favorite. It's so shamefully out of amateur fanfiction it even has a name: Whump. Fanfiction writers whump their favorite characters to ramp up the sympathy of the cast and the audience for them. On a show where Kevin almost dies of exhaustion without the Winchesters raising an eyebrow, and the brothers' only reaction to Cas' multiple torments has been to scold him (not to mention everyone and their aunt telling Dean to toughen up when he's hurting,) for cute Charlie to get this much sympathy is puke inducing.

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  30. Well I don't want to get my self into possible sexism - feminism mess, but Charlie is just a girl. It make sense to me that she gets more sympathy when strong man beating her down . Its just hard to watch.

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  31. I didn't know Felicia Day was an internet personality? I only know her from Buffy, she was one of the so-called Potentials in season 7 (my least favorite Buffy season).

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  32. Charlie is just a girl. It make sense to me that she gets more sympathy when strong man beating her down . Its just hard to watch.Which is exactly why the writer would put a scene like that in his script. It's an underhanded, cheap way to create a reaction in his audience for his favorite character, like those lazy writers who - when aiming to portray a character as a villain - make them kill cute puppies or baby chicks. Of course everyone would feel terrible, they are human after all. But that's not good story telling. It's emotional manipulation.

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  33. I am joining Jackson with long and loud applause. I felt like I was watching a Thompson wet dream...a wet dream while sitting in a kindergarten class, because I don't think there is a single viewer out there that didn't already realize Dean is dealing with the darkness he carries inside him.


    This whole Thompson Charlie thing is disgusting to be coming from a supposedly professional writer. I, too, cheered at the ratings; particularly the 17% drop in audience at the half-hour mark. I wonder if Day's next appearance will be touted with the "fan favorite" moniker?


    I didn't know Glass openly admitted that he wrote Bad Boys about his own teen years, but that was readily apparent while watching it. I hated that episode, too, and am not looking forward to another episode carried by a one-off teenage actor. I hope the ratings tank for that one, too, because it IS the only way the network is going to get a clue that things are not going well. As I understand it, JA filmed one day for this episode and JP filmed three -- so teenagers it is again.


    I didn't expect your review until Sunday, so I am happy, happy to have it today.

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  34. I only know it from her Wikipedia page. Apparently what put her on the map was a Youtube show she created and co-hosted called The Guild. It made her a well known personality in the geek circles apparently.

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  35. The fact that overall viewership dropped from 2.5 mil to 2.1 mil in half hour indeed indicates people either switch their TV channel or turned TV off. Many say that due to heavy snow storm on East Cost people did watch weather news or some claim they even had power lines down, but it could be just a fan excuse bingo. We'll see next week if horrible 0.7 is new low (as happened to TVD last spring) or it just a flick due to Charlie or other factors

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  36. You seem delightful. Thanks for setting us straight.


    http://i1302.photobucket.com/albums/ag137/nelsonmonty/themoreyouknowshootingstar_zps9ddf9000.gif

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