Nate’s Episode Review – Supernatural 15.18 “Despair”

I wonder which would get me more hate… commenting on the election or on this episode…

Final Score:

There’s something I cut out of the video because I realized with my accent it wasn’t sounding right so I’m going to talk about it here.

There’s a TVTrope called Character Shilling. They specifically use the term for when there is a disconnect between what we’re told, vs what we’re shown, however I like to use it in just the general sense of any time a character shills for another on screen – regardless of whether it’s completely accurate or not.

I think there’s an interesting debate over how appropriate shilling is in a work. For me at least, less is more, you always want to keep it to minimum, even break it up here and there to space it out. 

The funny thing is, I can’t think of a single writer I’ve ever come across who doesn’t do this. From the middle-schooler scribbling up a fan fic to the old erudite professor working on a grand novel, it is everywhere and it is crazy how tempting it is.

So it’s almost comical to me that now after 15 years, with only 2 episodes left to go, we have Castiel shilling Dean as hard as he can. As if anybody watching the show really needs to be sold on the character.

That’s probably one of the reasons why this episode didn’t hit me as hard as I’ve seen among others in the fandom.

Well that and I sold my soul for a Kit Kat.

Check out my previous interviews and reviews to learn more about storytelling in and around the Supernatural universe!

Thanks to https://raloria.livejournal.com/ for the header image and some of the images in the video.

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