Whispers, Spoilers & Speculation Corner: 02/06/13

This week, we have more news and spoilers about upcoming books, Once Upon a Time, returning sci-fi shows, and Supernatural. You can access previous spoilers columns here.

Horrific Reads, Bloody Off the Press
By Nathaniel Katz

The week’s biggest news is no doubt Subterranean Press’ announcement of a new collection from Joe R. Landsdale. Entitled ‘Bleeding Shadows‘ and containing a plethora of (in many cases, previously uncollected) fiction, it will not be released until November, but is available for preorder now. The final novella within it may be of particular interest to denizens of Innsmouth, combining as it does the works of H.P. Lovecraft with Huckleberry Finn. This week also sees the release of Landsdale’s newest crime novel, Dead Aim, for those that also enjoy that less horrific side of his writing.

Centipede Press, meanwhile, is selling a collection of the works of Maurice Level, a macabre French writer from a century back. The luxurious volume – a href=”http://www.centipedepress.com/horror/mauricelevel.html”>Tales of the Grand Guignol – promises illustrations, twists and brutality. In other Centipede-related news about hallowed reissues, the Cornell Woolrich set of five volumes that Centipede produced some time back is now available in paperback.

Once Upon a Time (Sunday nights, 8pm, ABC)
By Heather S. Vina

Adam Horowitz announced the title for 2.18 on his Twitter as “Selfless, Brave and True.”

Adam also announced that Jamie Dornan (the Sheriff, the Huntsman) is doing a guest appearance.

It looks as if Jamie’s return will involve flashbacks to pre-curse-breaking. As there are also scenes of Ginnifer Goodwin, Meghan Ory, Lana Parrilla, and Raphael Sbarge filming a pre-curse-broken flashback scenes in the town, according to YVRshoots.

Vancity has up a video of a car chase scene involving Jamie Dornan and Lana Parrilla. There are some pictures of them here.

The official ABC Once Twitter account revealed three snippets of the season finale script. You can see them here, here and here.

David: He paid the ultimate price for his arrogance. He’s dead.

“Mr. Gold: How terribly uncivilized.

“Mr. Gold (con’t): Have you ever been impaled on a cane before?

Don’t forget that the show returns this Sunday with an all new episode!

Sci-Fi Spoilerpalooza
By Heather S. Vina

The British magazine, SFX, has up on their site a “spoiler free” preview of episode two for the British version of Being Human. You can see the preview for it on Spoiler TV site.

Spoiler TV also has up the synopses for episode two and episode three on their site.

As for the American version of Being Human, Spoiler TV has up a synopsis for episodes 5-7.

Supernatural (Wednesday nights, 9pm, CW)
By Paula R. Stiles

The episode tonight is 8.13, “Everybody Hates Hitler,” written by fan favorite, Ben Edlund. In addition to the official press release and official photos, we have the CW promo, a Producer’s Preview, a sneak peek, and the Canadian promo. In addition, Ben Edlund and Robert Singer gave interviews about the episode and the new “Men of Letters” storyline. Edlund also gave a mini-interview to EW in which he warned that the new hideout the brothers have found will not be without problems – and that Dean will be the first to point them out, albeit not this week.

The press release for 8.15 is up:

“Man’s Best Friend With Benefits – DEAN REALLY DOESN’T LIKE WITCHES – A police officer named Kevin (guest star Christian Campbell), who turned to witchcraft after working a case with Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), is plagued by nightmares in which he murders innocent people. However, when the murders actually happen, Sam and Dean are called in by Kevin’s ‘familiar’ (guest star Mishael Morgan) to help – but the brothers aren’t sure they want to save a witch. John Showalter directed the episode written by Brad Buckner & Eugenie Ross-Leming.”

Jared Padalecki was interviewed for Watch! Magazine. No new spoilers.

The CW has a new promo out. This appears to be a slightly longer version of the one issued a few weeks ago. It has clips from the show but nothing new.

The episode titles for 8.19 and 8.20 are “Taxi Driver” and “Pac-Man Fever,” respectively. Someone has already posted here, in a hopeful tone, that the former might involve Dean going ballistic. However, considering how underwhelming some of the better titles have been in recent seasons (though kudos, show, for making “As Time Goes By” entirely on the nose), I’m not holding my breath.

No word yet on when these episodes will air, since 8.18 is scheduled for March 27 and there are eight more weeks until May 22, with five episodes left. So, there will be some hiatus or two during April and possibly May.

YVR Shoots has photos from 8.17 of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki filming a scene in which the brothers drive down a road, park, get out of the Impala (in suits) and rush into a building.

Finally, ratings for “As Time Goes By” had another 0.9/2 and 2.12 million in audience, putting the show once again at third on the network (Arrow also got a 0.9, but it was a 0.9/3, which is slightly higher). The demo was steady and audience was up 11 thousand.

So, speculation: I’m not too wild about the constant flip between mytharc and comic MOTWs this season. It feels abrupt and jerky. Nor is it necessary for so much of the show to be light and flaky. It’s horror. It should feel like horror. And while Edlund can be a very good writer, his explanation that he picked Nazis because they’re one of the few groups out there that it’s PC to beat to a pulp doesn’t fill me with confidence for this week. There’s a reason why Godwin’s Law was formulated.

There was yet another fan kerfuffle this past week over Singer’s interview. The main points of contention were Singer’s reiteration of Sam’s statement about “brain” and “brawn,” casting Sam as the brain and Dean as the brawn, and that the reason why Samelia went down like a lead balloon was because female viewers don’t like female characters. I’d like to point out that spoilerage in Singer’s interviews is often very inaccurate. Note, for example, that Edlund also talked in vague terms about the “library” (It’s actually an archive), so the brain-and-brawn statement should be taken with a hunk of rocksalt. Many fans have already pointed out that Sam was anything but smart in “As Time Goes By,” and Dean was the smartest character in the episode.

I talked last week about Singer’s sexist assertion that fangurls hate Samelia because she’s a love interest (Not that they’re the only ones whose opinion matters, but I’m not seeing much love for Samelia amongst the fanboys, either. But I digress). I’ll just point out, then, that spacing in the very same interview why it might have been good to at least mention John’s mother in “As Time Goes By,” and greenlighting an episode in which a guy has a girlfriend who used to be his dog, aren’t exactly indications of feminist thought, and leave it that. I’m pretty sure the female fans don’t hate Amelia because she’s Sam’s girlfriend. I’m pretty sure it has a lot more to do with her being weak, whiny and an unapologetic adulteress.

As far as brains and brawn, parsing this out from the whole SamvsDean debate, I think the main problem many fans are having with this “new” reason for Sam to go a-hunting (i.e., geeking out over his snobby new family heritage, as made manifest in the Men of Letters and their archive) is less to do with Sam being the “brains” and more to do with the thing that’s been sabotaging every Sam storyline since at least the middle of season six. Bu that, I mean his doing nasty things to people and then feeling no need for guilt or apology. What Sam needs is a redemption storyline not a shiny new playground. Any new story element involving Sam, whether it be a girlfriend or an underground “Batcave,” is going to founder if it doesn’t serve Sam learning to grow up, which involves (among other things) owning up to his mistakes and no longer being a selfish prat. The guy is 30 at this point and his behavior is beginning to look very narcissistic. There’s nothing nice about that.

Regarding Dean, I disagree that there is nothing for him in this storyline so far. The hints about the story in the Singer and Edlund interviews, paired with how the spoilers for last week actually turned out in the episode, turn up something intriguing. Dean is neither a passive nor an enthusiastic recipient of this new, game-changing heritage. Instead, he is in conflict with it. Edlund hints broadly that the archive will not come without risks and that Dean will uncover this aspect of the brothers’ inheritance. Note that Dean’s conflict with his inheritance is currently due to unresolved feelings about his father, which he took out on his grandfather last week. In other words, this is the father-son conflict of season one, recast in a different brother in season eight. And unless this show changes its MO a lot, the brother in conflict with the father figure is the one with the mytharc.

What that mytharc will be I have no idea, but it’s clear that the MoL archive will have a great part in it. This set is obviously intended as a story generator (as Edlund himself admits concerning the Nazi necromancers tonight) along the lines of Warehouse 13, the vault in Friday the 13th: The Series, or even the old anthology series, Night Gallery. But the mytharc element will have to include some conflict and wanting to explore it doesn’t strike me as much of a conflict. So, I think Dean’s the one who will be bringing the conflict over the archive and probably the mytharc, too.

Some may argue that we have been down this road before and we have – with other showrunners. But the archive is something no one saw coming and it is a major gamechanger. If it lasts, we can expect it to change the shape of the show quite a bit. That will affect both brothers.

We’ll be back next week with more spoilers. Stay tuned and check out our reviews of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Event, Once Upon a Time, Grimm and Supernatural.

If you like these spoilers, please help continue our site by making a donation, buying one of our fiction issues, or buying one of our books: Fraterfamilias, Historical Lovecraft, Future Lovecraft, and our Gothic horror anthology, Candle in the Attic Window. You can also buy Paula’s non-fiction book on medieval Spanish history, Templar Convivencia.