Does ANYONE out there still enjoy this?

[ratherastory]

It feels like everywhere I turn, all I'm seeing is angry SPN fans. People who hate the storyline. People who hate Amelia. People who hate Benny. People who hate Cas. People who hate the flashbacks/story structure.

People who hate Sam because he's clearly 100% in the wrong and want him to DIAF for being such a terrible brother to Dean.

People who hate Dean because he's clearly 100% in the wrong and want him to DIAF for being such a terrible brother to Sam.

So I figured I'd do a poll, for SCIENCE. What are your feelings, flist? Do you all really hate things as much as it feels like you do? Or are there some of you out there who are still enjoying yourselves?

[Poll #1883371]

Comments

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying this season, enjoying SPN in general again after becoming very disheartened back in...oh, season six.I've decided that the trick is to watch it marathon-style, rather than as the episodes come out. It is surprising how much more enjoyable the show is that way- the faults don't register as much, and there's less time to get hooked on promising subplots or interesting characters or to care about the season arc as much, so when the pacing is a little off or the interesting subplot/character just randomly disappears, it's not as annoying.

[wave-obscura.livejournal.com]

YES THIS. I watched the first 3 episodes week to week and was like NOPE MUST MARATHON, which I really wish I would have started doing around season 6. So, question for you-- how many episodes do you normally stockpile? I've watched episodes 4 - 6, and I'm now trying to decide if I should watch to mid-season or wait until it's all over.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I've just been wondering that myself. I seriously just stopped watching the show somewhere midseason 6 ish (it helped that Fringe was on at the same time) and while I read reaction posts, I didn't actually watch a single episode until a couple of weeks ago, at which point I got bored while working at home and watched all of season 7 on netflix. Then I caught up to season eight....and watched the looney tunes episode live. And realized that I really needed to go back to marathoning.

However, I did not live up to that, as I watched the latest episode live as well.

The hard thing for me is that I enjoy the show so much more, marathon style, but part of what makes the show fun for me is the fandom participation, you know, reading reaction posts on my flist and all that good stuff. I'm thinking maybe the best way to go would be to save up episodes for the mini-hiatuses. IIRC, the show's going to have one in Februaryish, right? So that'd be a handful of episodes, enough to properly marathon, but recent enough to talk about them during a slow time, fandom wise.

[starling-night.livejournal.com]

100% this! I just came from marathoning all 7 seasons and all I can say is dude, only way to watch. It's so much fun, you don't build up expectations or must-haves and then get really disappointed, you get less wound up over little things and you see the story arc the way it was intended. It's a completely different perspective and I find a better one, comparing to my experiences of watching other shows live and then getting super disappointed. What I'm seeing this season is people viewing on an episode to episode basis and getting upset because everything they want to happen is not happening at once and it seems as if what happened in one week's episode is completely indicative of the rest of the season. It's also hard to hold onto the sense that 'this too will pass' and we'll come back to happy Show and huggy talking boys.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that exactly - at least the bit about seeing the story arc as it was intended- II mean, I remember feeling that way when I started watching the show early in season 4 and was doing my own marathon, and thinking OMG, it's all there! and just having all sorts of warm fuzzies, but that's not quite the case anymore because I can still see the flaws and the seams where things didn't quite join together very well. The show still has season-pacing issues, every season still seems to take in a slightly different alternate universe from the last, it is fairly repetitive in its overall structure, and there are still some really dumb forced plotlines (usually brother drama). It's just that, watching them in chunks, I've got less time to be annoyed by those things, whereas if I were going to week by week route (which can be hugely fun and rewarding with some shows, like Justified, even though you may pick up extra details marathoning it) well, each individual episode has to stand on its own more and on top of that, you're getting sucked in each week by the promise of intriguing subplots or season arc, all of which are almost always dropped or suddenly substituted by the time the last four or five episodes rolls around.

So none of that really changes, it just gets smoothed over a bit. But I do agree about the silliness of the "oh no, brother drama, why doesn't the show just admit it's actually the Dean/Cas/Sam show and stop getting our hopes up, woe, woe"

[starling-night.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear you! That's all true and it's definitely not a perfect show. I guess 'as it was intended' is poor wording, because what I think I meant was 'as they probably wanted us to see it eg. ignoring all the flaws and just having fun'. If that makes sense? I do see what you mean with the 'smoothing over'. For me it's like the stuff is still there, but it just seems unimportant when there's always another episode to watch.
I don't think we should let them get away with everything, but I go through phases of being a huge nitpicker and being so dissatisfied with everything, and being very zen about it and just sitting back and enjoying. I've found the second one just makes me happier, so it's nice to get that with the binge-watching method. The smoothing-over effects of that really do wonders!

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, definitely on the zen way as happier and better. Sorry for jumping down your throat; I was coming off reading some comments over at the avclub where someone was all "THIS SHOW IS PERFECT, IT WAS ALL PLANNED FROM THE BEGINNING, IF YOU THINK THERE ARE ANY FLAWS, YOU ARE JUST TOO STUPID TO GET IT." and so I was being a little touchy. ;)