Supernatural complications

[sqbr]

First: I recently read "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science" by Atul Gawande which was quite good. It's a book of essays on surgical error: what happens, how it happens, the consequences (both personal and wide ranging) and what can and has been done. He goes into the positives and negatives of the culture of medicine as well as telling more personal stories, it was really interesting and I reccomend it to anyone involved in medicine (especially surgeons!) though I don't know how similar the australian system is to the american.

Second, I watched season one of "Supernatural". I watched the first few episodes when it was on tv but found it a bit too scary and wasn't engaged by the monster-of-the-week format. Cam eventually got into it and told me there was an interesting plot later on, but I was still put off by the fact that the premise isn't my sort of thing: you know that nothing will happen which permamently changes the basic formula of two brothers alone, moving from place to place fighting bad stuff. So there's huge limitations on where Sam and Dean's lives and relationships can go, and there's no chance for a real ensemble cast with complex unpredictable plots, which is my Thing.

And sure enough, that's one of my main issues with the show. My other main issue is that it has a very stright forward, undeconstructed take on the supernatural genre. Men are manly and fight bad things, women are damsels in distress or evil sexy Bad Girls (or maybe spunky side kicks), bad things are just bad by nature and have no interesting or relateable motivation (beyond the traditional "I'm a freak and everyone was mean to me", and none of them are redeemed) and overall it doesn't have anything new to say. Which isn't to say it's bad for what it is, there's nothing inherently wrong with playing fantasy/horror tropes straight, it's just not what I personally find engaging.

So to the good: it's very slickly made and effectively written, the characters are engaging and very pretty when they cry. While the relationship between the brothers and their father is pretty much the only real one in the whole show it's strong and interesting enough to carry it. The monsters are scary, the single episode plots engaging (if not that original) and the season long plot is actually really good if you like that sort of thing. The reason fantasy/horror writers use hackneyed tropes is that they work and the show does a good job of tapping into established archetypes and myths. The season-arc bad guys are effectively nasty and scary. There's lots of very effective angst without dragging the show into being too depressing.

I will say: the end of season cliff hanger is just mean :) (Luckily I was expecting it thanks to vids)

I was reccomended "Complications" off 50books_poc and its exactly the sort of thing I was looking for: a good book which I quite enjoyed but would never have picked up normally. Unfortunately, I got inspired to request a whole bunch of interesting looking books and they've all come in at the library at once, I may not have time to read them all!

Comments

[david adam <zanchey> (from livejournal.com)]

You might also enjoy http://surgeonsblog.blogspot.com/

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks, but I think I've had my fill of surgeon talk for a while :) I will try to remember to pass that on to some medical-dr-y friends though.

[velithya]

There are more female characters introduced in seasons two and three which challenge the women are damsels or evil thing, and also they do investigate the other side of the supernatural things as well (in fact, in season two episode one, for example!).

edit: not that I'm trying to defend season one or anything! but the writers do learn from each episode and the series really hits its stride in season two. So uh, you should watch more ;)

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, I do mean to watch season 2 eventually, though I feel like bit of a break and anyway Cam lent it to one of his friends. I've seen S2 Ep 1 (back when Cam was watching it) and it was pretty awesome.