Supernatural 3x13: Ghostfacers

[katikat]

I'm back and I finally saw SPN:

Okay, this episode wasn't bad per se. At least the plot. As a mid-season "funny" thing during a normal season, it might not have been bad. But the execution...

I was never a fan of Blair Witch and all the shaking made me literally nauseous. The best part of the show were the last two minutes or so that were taken with a "normal" camera.

Also, I freely admit that I ffwded through the first 12 minutes. Sorry, but I watch the show for Sam and Dean. And the regulars weren't even there for one third of the episode X(

So yeah, I do understand where the bad ratings came from - besides the pre-emption in Chicago, that is. I mean, I didn't even feel like I was watching a SPN ep! It didn't engage me at all.

Bad move, Kripke, very bad. After a two months hiatus, we get this? I can't believe that he wasted one ep of only 4 remaining this season for that X( And I'm already dreading next week's ratings. After a bad ep, the ratings drop. And if they drop even more, we will be under 2 mil. viewers.

So yeah, Kripke doesn't need other people sabotaging his show, he can do it himself just as well X(

Final ratings for this episode: 2.22 mil., 1.0/2 demo - the worst ratings this show ever got :(

Comments

[astri13.livejournal.com]

While the ratings shocked me, I think the drop was almost too significant. Apparently we started out at 2,38 Million - too low for new episodes usually - and dropped to 2.04 Mill at the half-hour. So apparently a shitload of people (or rather 2-3 Nielson viewers) didn`t even know a new episode would be on (last weeks Smallville was new and ours was a re-run still so I can see the confusion) and those that tuned in got confused, thought it wasn`t SPN and tuned out.

I mean those are re-run ratings for us and I believe misconceptions played a big part. Now next week is the more traditional start of May sweeps so people should be more expecting of new episode, tune in, actually recognize the show and we`d be back to our usual numbers.
If not, then it`s time to worry.

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

or rather 2-3 Nielson viewers

Last time I did the math, 1 Nielsen viewer represents about 15,000 Americans. So, not as drastic as only 2-3 - probably more like 30-35 Nielsen viewers didn't tune in at the beginning (around 500,000 Americans). Still, it outlines how frigging poor the Nielsen sample size is ...

Anywho, I actually talked to a person who tuned out because she thought it wasn't actually Supernatural at the beginning. CRAP. Why is it always the episodes that get really good critical reviews that pull the worst numbers? (Except Hollywood Babylon - critical fave, and it did fine in the ratings.)

Now next week is the more traditional start of May sweeps so people should be more expecting of new episode, tune in, actually recognize the show and we`d be back to our usual numbers.

Sweeps tend to be rather poor months for The CW, but I hope you're right.

[astri13.livejournal.com]

Last time I did the math, 1 Nielsen viewer represents about 15,000 Americans. So, not as drastic as only 2-3 - probably more like 30-35 Nielsen viewers

Ah, I read it was 1:250 000 which would be an even poorer system but 15.000 is quite enough.

Anywho, I actually talked to a person who tuned out because she thought it wasn't actually Supernatural at the beginning.

Sadly doesn`t surprise me, for a new episode after a longish hiatus and another show recently having occupied the timeslot, an episode as different-looking as this could have been hella confusing. Maybe people thought Reaper was back on after all or that since Smallville was new the week before yet followed by a Mystery Spot re-run that this week would be a re-run of Jus in Bello? Unfortunate all around.

Why is it always the episodes that get really good critical reviews that pull the worst numbers?

Hm, probably to do with the venue of the critical reviews. I mean, if the show ever scored the cover of TV Guide with a two-page cover story I`d almost guarantee more people would at least check it out.

Sweeps tend to be rather poor months for The CW, but I hope you're right.

I know, it`s when the big networks amp up but I`d expect better startout numbers at least, say that the usual 3 Million and a bit of change viewers tune in for the first half hour and then maybe a slight drop for the second. Even if we ended up with 2,8-2,9 Million it would be up to the show`s usual standards. And after the abysmally low 2,21 Million it would almost look spectacular. :/

But I do believe a significant rise is needed to show that it was a fluke due to scheduling and the odd nature of the episode and not that the show suddenly lost a Million core viewers. That would be Oy.

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

Ah, I read it was 1:250 000 which would be an even poorer system but 15.000 is quite enough.

Oh, eek, no! The national sample - which is used to collect national ratings - is made up of approximately 4,100 households. Even if there were only one person in each of those households, the most people one Nielsen viewer could represent, assuming approximately 300,000,000 Americans, is about 73,170 people. :)

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I think that it wasn't really wise to use this ep now. It might have worked during a regular season but now... And the pre-emption and GA starting didn't help. Also, I heard that some channel started airing a re-reun of SV again by mistake at 8.30/9.30... X( So yeah, everything went wrong for this ep. I do hope that next week's ratings will go up again *crosses fingers and prays*

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

Well - this one was obviously intended to be 13 of 22, not 13 of 16, and would have worked better if things went as planned ... this particular episode was supposedly nearly complete right before the strike (per Kripke or Sera or somebody - there's an interview floating around somewhere...), and the fact that Edlund was able to finish it up real quick right after the strike ended is part of the reason why they were able to go back into production so quickly, thusly allowing them to have 4 episodes at all. <333

I'm sure next week will pick up. We have a tendency to bounce back after bad numbers. :)

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I also think that they chose to do the ep after all because it was cheap. Very little effects, mostly hand-held camera, barely any crew... Even Jensen said that this ep was done really quickly.

And maybe Kripke used it intentionally, knowing that people won't even register a new ep - thanks to the CW promoting mostly GoGi - and didn't want to waste a "major" ep? Who knows.

But if we don't bounce back, it'll be a major ouch! X( On the other hand, CSI lost 4 mil. viewers in one week, going from 20 mil. to 16, so all the shows are doing badly.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I think that people didn't know about it being a new ep and also, GA started on Thursday with new eps too. These ratings re similar to those that SV received once - 3.30 mil. or so - when the show was barely advertised and nobody knew that new eps started. And it didn't help that the beginning didn't even look like SPN. I still think that it was a bad move on Kripke's part to use this ep now though.

[creedcascade.livejournal.com]

I hope the rating will be back up once we get back our boys.

As I explained it to a friend. I didn't HATE the ep. It was entertaining enough, but it wasn't MY Supernatural. It was a cope out. That one ep that every seems to do. I was hoping they wouldn't do it. Or at least, make the outside POV ep more unique. I much rather would have watched from the POV of a FBI agent hunting them or a fellow hunter. Or hell, Bobby would have been cool.

It was crack!tv.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I also hoped that the ratings will be back up. On the other hand, it's the May sweeps already next week and that means big guns on CSI and GA... X( I think that we are lucky that S4 is a done deal already. We should just hope that they won't cut the ep order X(

I didn't really hate it either. I didn't even dislike it. I just didn't particularly like it. It didn't grab my attention, it wasn't riveting. But that might be me being all tired after 4 hours on the train... It was still better than Red Sky at Morning though!

[misty-writes.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised about the ratings. I personally adored the episode, but if that was the first ep of SPN I ever saw, I would have turned it off probably before Sam and Dean even showed up. Just because I wouldn't even know what was going on.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

If Sam and Dean had been there from the very beginning, I might have liked the ep better. But after ten minutes of secondary characters, I just got bored and not even the appearance of the Winchester boys could remedy that :(

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

You didn't like it? That makes me sad.

I was disconnected the first while as well, with all that focus on unknown characters, but the moment we heard the Impala's engine I felt better. And the second time of viewing I absolutely loved it, the outsider perspective and how the situation of the brothers was unknown to them and yet hints of it still trickled through. I even started to feel attached to the stupid little Ghostfacer crew. It felt like an opportunity to regroup that both we and the brothers needed, given the incredible angst we are surely about to plunge back into. And, unlike Tall Tales or Hollywood Babylon, having the outsider perspective allowed a light-hearted touch without feeling like the funny was disconnected from the ongoing angsty continuity.

The ratings make me sad, though. I know the show was pre-empted in some places, and barely advertised, so many people either couldn't see it or may not have known it was back. The CW are really struggling :(

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I didn't really DISlike it, I just didn't particularly like it. I think I expected much more from a post-strike ep and this stand alone comedy felt like a waste of an ep.

Also, there were some things that worked against me:
a) hand-held camera angles make me nauseauted and headachy;
b) even in S1, I wasn't really over the moon about the characters in Hell House, the ep was good but the characters... well...
c) I don't like "light and funny" eps much and this was a real parody - they even pointed out that they can't curse on the show with all the bleeps - and this genre is really not my cup of tea;
d) after a two months hiatus, it took them almost 15 minutes to bring back Sam and Dean and I felt kind of... cheated, to be honest.

And besides, I'm quite tired after 4 hours on the train so that might be another reason I wasn't all that excited about the ep. Though it's still better than Red Sky or Tall Tales, IMO.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Thing is, this episode was already almost complete before the strike hit, and they didn't know at the time that it was going to be the lead-in to the final three episodes of the season. So when they came back post-strike they had to go with the material they already had - got them up and running that much quicker. I think they did a good job of tying it into the ongoing continuity - that one tiny exchange between Sam and Dean really did tell us everything we needed to know about exactly where they are right now, seen through the unfiltered lense of the camera. It definitely fits ongoing continuity a lot more fluidly than Tall Tales or Hollywood Babylon!

Ed and Harry weren't my favourite guest characters ever, but this episode does a decent job of fleshing them out.

Hopefully repeat viewing will improve the episode on you.

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

I think really any episode that's new coming back from hiatus and writer's strike is going to have low ratings because a healthy chunk of the viewers (i.e. people not in fandom) aren't going to know ahead of time that it's on. Happened to Smallville, happened to other shows as well.

That being said, favorite episode of the season so far. But it probably helps I've seen (and love) the show that it's parodying. Of which it was an excellent parody. It really was a Sam'n'Dean lite epi though probably not perfect for a lead-in. It didn't bug me it was a lite epi though, I belong to the DW fandom and we always get one epi like that a season. So I've learned to appreciate those epis for what they are rather than sigh and complain about what it wasn't (not that you were but I've noticed some have been). I think for me the final question I asked to myself was did I have fun with this epi? The answer was a resounding yes. Funny, touching, creepy, hell just fun period. It was like season one and I've missed that.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I might have liked the ep, if it wasn't for all the shaking and wiggling and weird angles. It really did make me feel ill. That's why I couldn't watch Cloverfield. Also, parodies are not really my cup of tea. Tall Tales and Hollywood Babylon were my least favorite eps of S2 :( Give me Croatoan any day.

So yeah, I did expect more. But it's still not my least favorite ep of this season. I liked it better than Red Sky or The Magnificent Seven.

[lilbabiangel888.livejournal.com]

Even though I liked this one a lot, I can see your reasoning behind why you didn't. I both hated and liked the backstory of the Ghostfacers at the beginning. It did make the eventual resolution of the ghostbusting more resonant since we cared about the characters more but I completely agree that we needed more of Sam and Dean, even more so since we hadn't seen them in a while. I actually had a mild squee attack when the sounds of the Impala's engine and the lovely beat of rock n roll finally appeared.

But one thing I will say that tipped this episode into awesome territory for me was that the medium of using a hand-held allowed the boys to be filmed in extreme closeup and not have it be weird or off-putting. And the boys could look right into the camera. God did Jensen look gorgeous. hee, my apologies for the extreme shallowness -_-

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I just... I don't know. I think I expected much more from a post-strike episode. This was a funny little experiment but I usually don't like the funny eps much. I adore the angst-ridden ones. I didn't really hate it. I was mostly indifferent about the ep.

[yami-tai.livejournal.com]

I'm relived that you were disappointed by this episode of SPN too, hun. Like you say, I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that we have been waiting for this episode forever and then Sam and Dean weren't even in it for ages! I have my fingers crossed that this week's episode will be better.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if it was just another ep in a long stream of eps, I might have enjoyed it but the anticipation just killed it for me :(