Hello suspense, my old friend...

[astri13]

Used my first "free" day to finally catch up on the last few eps of Fringe. I started watching in real time Season 4, then had to stop quickly because it made me hurt for the characters and I can only really take that when I know it gets better (and soon). So I waited out the Season and have been marathoning properly. Now, I can even take the beginning without breaking a sweat. :D

I dreaded ep 19 "Letters in transit" somewhat, given what I had read about it but my fears were unfounded. I was thouroughly entertained and loved the characters.
I would not want to forego our original Fringe team but I'd love a merge with Etta and Simon in the year 2036. For people only introduced in that episode, they managed to really build a connection with those characters. Kudos writers.

Also, and that was not only brought on by Fringe but several things I watched recently: suspense-building in either a breaking/entering/storming the fortress or a getaway scenario. You know, the good guys either try to get the bad guys or trying to make a run for it. And you know what? I think it's actually not that hard to generate suspense during scenes like that. Working on the assumption that your audience cares about the well-being of the good guys, all you need to do is make it a bit hard for them, have the bad guys nearly catch them, have someone trip and fall for godssakes.

I'm not talking about every show doing it as thrill-rid-y and masterfully as the Person of Interest Finale but watching Fringe today, I kinda had a weird retroactive "okay, that's fucking it" moment re: the SPN Finale. And it's all mareen's fault because she totally put the thought in my head and it grew and grew there. :-P Now, I still am deliriously happy over some stuff in the SPN Finale, mainly the very end, but while it didn't bother me while watching I'm no longer sanguine about: the "raid on Dick".

If I bloody compare that to Etta, Simon and Walter trying to make it out of Massive Dynamic, hunted by an evil Observer Overlord and his evil minions where I KNEW they would make it but still wibbled DURING the scene? I can't even...I mean, how can you write the big fight in a Season Finale with an entire lack of suspense? How is that even possible? It shouldn't be.

Dean and Cas creep down one corridor and find Dick, Sam creeps down another and finds Kevin, Meg crashes the car into something, sprays a few Levis and is captured. Then Dean kills Dick. Which don't get me wrong, I'm glad he was the one who got to do it.

But still, what the hell?

Like I said, it didn't particularly bother me during watching but now even thinking back on it makes me kind of livid. I kinda want to go back in time and kick the middle of this episode's ass. Urgh.

Comments

[astri13.livejournal.com]

and still SPN was written like freaking Augsburger Puppenkiste, while PoI was written like a multimillion dollar movie.

Take that back, that is an insult to the Augsburger Puppenkiste. :-p

But I know what you mean. And, like I said, I don't expect everything to be as well-written as the PoI scenario but even smaller, much cheaper shows with mediocre writing at best manage to bring energy and suspense to those scenes.

The thing is, SPN was never good at those scenes, but they saved themselves through their character interaction, at least somewhat. But if that turns meaningless, too, there's nothing left.

That's very true. They have systematically written their one good area into the ground in the last few years. Which I believe was due to a mixture of incompetence and not taking any risks. Just because something worked well for character(s) in a Season 1 and 2 doesn't mean it will continue to do so, repeated ad nauseum and made ever more prominent five years later.

Fringe hurt me in the beginning but at least they had guts to so some place.

I'm hoping Carver manages to make at least one thing work, plot or characters, ideally both.