Before I get started, I’d like to first apologize again for my lack of posting. Busy summer, no laptop and unforseen real life events make it harder to write posts than I would like. Forgive me.
And also: please note that while I love Supernatural, I am not above complaining about what I didn’t like and season 3 falls under the “what I didn’t like” category. Not that I hate season 3, it’s decent enough, but it was not as good as the two previous seasons or the seasons that follow it. I avoid watching season 3 in its entirety as often as possible. (I’ve only watched it all the way through 3 times compared to the four or five times I’ve watched all the other seasons…)
So I figured since we’re on hiatus waiting for season 9, I’d just sit here and bitch about things until I get new episodes to sob over. Savvy?
One of the bigger issues I have with season three is the storyline. I feel like it wasn’t enough to spend a whole season on. I get that Dean going to Hell was a big fricking deal and I definitely understand the focus, but there weren’t nearly as many diverse episodes that season – it was nearly all demons. It makes sense with the release of the demons, but it was still repeating things we’d already seen and was frankly not as interesting.
Basically, not enough happened. I’m sure the writer’s strike that year really hurt the show – it’s probably a bigger factor in the season’s poor performance than anything. But I’m not inclined to be too forgiving.
They could’ve done more. So much more, but they didn’t.
They cleared up the Gordon issue – excellently, sure, but ultimately that sucked some tension out of the show. I was glad to see Gordon gone, but disappointed that we never saw any other hunters aside from the ones trying to kill Sam with Gordon or the two at the very beginning.
Where were the other hunters? Hundreds of demons were let loose and we didn’t hear one friggin’ peep out of more than a handful of hunters at best. That is just stupid. We should have heard way more about other hunters. Like, say Ellen and Jo? Remember those people? Because they made not one single appearance in season 3 and in fact vanished entirely until season 5 where they were killed off.
It was a brilliant opportunity to play with the whole hunter world and expand it a bit – it’s something we so rarely see on the show. I’d like for there to be more hunters and more run-ins with other hunters. It’d be interesting.
And can we please talk about why it was necessary for Bela Talbot to be part of the show? I hated that bitch.
She was cold, self-centered, greedy, bitchy and horrible. I never liked her. She had no moral compass, no goals past looking out solely for herself and she was annoyingly Mary-Sueish. She was just so fucking “badass” that it hurt because she wasn’t.
And don’t even bring up the abuse storyline they shoehorned in there right at the end because I don’t care. I know people who were abused, I understand that it is terrible and it will scar someone and I don’t blame Bela for having her parents killed and she doesn’t deserve to go to Hell over something like that.
However, that doesn’t excuse her from being a horrible human being. So she had a shitty, awful, tragic background. A lot of people do and they don’t use it as an excuse to be total dickbags to everyone around them. Bela’s past was awful, apparently (since we only get that tiny little glimpse designed to force us to empathize) but that doesn’t mean she has a right to treat everyone like shit.
She has NO EXCUSE for how she behaves. She is greedy and self-serving and that’s not the bi-products of a scarred young woman, that’s the psychopathic personality she has. I’m seriously wondering why the writers included her at all because she was utterly pointless.
Sure she affected the plot, but remove her and they could’ve found otherways for them to lose the Colt and for Gordon to find them. That’s about the only part of the plot she really effected anyway.
The saddest part is that I could’ve liked Bela, if she’d been given a better personality and wasn’t so damn cold and flat. Written properly, a character like her could have been fantastic and interesting and dynamic and deep. She was cold and flat right up until she died and then they tried to make her into a tragic character. It did not work.
Something else that bugs me about season three: the end of the Henricksen storyline. Hear me out, I love the episode “Jus in Bello”, I do. It’s one of my favorites. However, I was disappointed that they ended the Henricksen storyline there and the threat of the FBI altogether for a while.
They closed that subplot too quickly with Henricksen’s death and Sam and Dean’s supposed death. It, like the subplot with Gordon, sucked out some of the tension. I mean, we still had Dean going to Hell, but I liked the FBI subplot. I enjoyed Henricksen’s character and I was not happy that he died so soon after learning the truth.
There was so much potential in that character. Imagine Sam and Dean having a real FBI agent on their side. Imagine them having a contact within the FBI. That would have been amazing. Henricksen could help them cover their tracks, alert them to weird cases, etc. It would have been awesome. And they could still kill him off later, maybe working some case with the Winchesters, where his death would have a bigger impact once we’d gotten to know him better.
I’d have appreciated more Henricksen, is what I’m saying.
Overall those, as I said, my real issue is that the season went mostly like this: demons, demons, demons, demons, random case, demons, save Dean from hell, demons, demons, Dean’s in Hell, ha ha you all lose.
So anyway, that’s the gist of what I feel about season three.
And to prove that I’m not a horribly cynical person, there are things I liked about the season:
Ruby. She was badass and basically the demon version of what Bela could have been if she’d been written better.
Sam’s struggle with trying to save Dean and be strong for him and his gradual shift in character. That was perfect and wonderful and really set up the following seasons perfectly and established Sam’s character arc nicely.
Dean’s struggle to accept that he didn’t deserve Hell and his attitude toward the whole thing.
And of course, the Trickster episode, “Mystery Spot”, because, duh.
And remember: these are my opinions. I’m allowed to have them, but you’re allowed to disagree with them.
Between Heaven and Hell 