**Due to recent misinterpretations of some one post
from this blog, a disclaimer is now apparently necessary. If this is your first visit to The
Scratched Camera, please read the introductory post and discover, for yourself, that every typed word that
follows is unabashedly my opinion and mine alone. In said introductory post, which,
shockingly, I did not simply type up for my own good health, I state that we
all read events and characters with our own baggage in mind; no one observes
with a perfectly clear lens—hence the
name The Scratched Camera.
Therefore, it is completely your will to disagree with any material that
follows, just as it is my will to agree and advocate for what is mine.** ~End, irritating obligatory disclaimer~
Charlie Bradbury—The Only Way to Be Me is to Be
Indispensable
If
Hermione Granger taught me intelligence was admirable, Charlie Bradbury told me
it was acceptable to put it on full display. She’s obsessive, nervous, brilliant, cunning and
witty. She is, unabashedly, unashamedly, unapologetically herself.
I have been a self-proclaimed nerd
from my very first page of Harry Potter,
a.k.a. the gateway fandom, somewhere in the vicinity of 2001. From there, my obsessions only grew in
number. I dedicated my time to
engaging in nerdy activities, without really allowing the quirks I acquired in
the process to touch my interactions with others. I was embarrassed to think how other—normal—people would react to my oddities.
This
changed with my introduction to Charlie Bradbury last October. When we first meet her, she isn’t
completely self-assured yet, choosing to nervously hide her nerd-dom from
others on occasion. For instance, she
briefly pauses her dance up the elevator when interrupted by a fellow
human. However, as time progresses,
and we periodically catch back up with her, we watch her grow to a point where she
no longer feels fear in putting her nerdy tendencies on full display.
There
are many instances of this as it develops. Charlie’s best friend, prior to the entrance of the
Winchesters, is the Hermione bobble-head she proudly displays on her desk and
fist-bumps when she succeeds in a task, most notably in the matter of
decrypting Gibbs Frank Devereaux’s hard drive, which was, by the way,
“hardly the Chamber of Secrets.”
The series of collectables that liter her apartment, which are dedicated
to all things from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings, continue to confirm
her obsessive tendencies to us.
She’s the only character able to not only match, but occasionally outwit
Dean in a pop culture centered conversation, showing a vast knowledge of video
games, movies, books and television shows in the process. She’s a queen LARPer—Live Action Role
Playing, for those of you not in the know—in which she holds the ability to
persuade fellow LARPers to support her enough to elect her as their queen. Then there is, of course, her
impeccably vast knowledge of computers and all things I.T. related; there’s no
computer problem she can’t solve.
On
the surface, Charlie projects a sort of confidence. However, much like her idol Hermione, she has a deeply
insecure side she tries to hide. Her
first episode hides the bulk these insecurities from us, just as she hides them
from the Winchesters.
As
she spends more time with Sam and Dean, she grows more confident in herself and
her abilities. She knows she can
master any computer issue that sits in front of her. She doesn’t know she’s capable of so much more than
that. When she attempts to break
in to Dick Roman’s office in the middle of the night, she panics right outside
the door. Sam, knowing precisely
what she needs to hear, asks her what Hermione—a.k.a. Charlie’s favorite Harry Potter character, in case you
couldn’t tell based solely upon the above mentioned bobble-head—did when
Voldemort attacked the school.
When Charlie responds, “she kicked ass!” it pushes her to do what needs
to be done.
The
next time we run into Charlie, she’s taken to actually living out her nerdy
tendencies as a LARPer. The
Charlie we knew may have quipped about Star
Wars, but I’m not sure she would’ve gone so far as to live out a nerdist
fantasy such as the one she’s involved in when the Winchesters are reunited
with her.
To
further prove this point, Team Free Will’s parting is distinctly different in LARP And The Real Girl than it had been
in The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons
Tattoo. In Dungeons and Dragons, Charlie, literally
broken and battered with a mending broken arm, requests the Winchesters never
contact her again. By the end of LARP, she has bonded with the brothers,
but in particular, Dean, to the point where she offers to help them any time
they need it.
This
is a big step for Charlie. It’s
her first step towards becoming a full-time hunter, something I’ve eagerly been
awaiting since her first appearance.
I won’t deny her parting words in Dungeons
and Dragons bummed me a bit; I had been hoping she would become a recurring
character. I adored Charlie
Bradbury, but I saw a lot of room for development in her. In her first episode, we learn that
she’s started over at least once previously. We know her name isn’t her real one. We learn that she’s insecure, but we
don’t discover what’s made her that way.
LARP develops her character, but doesn’t
show us much of her history; it moves her forward without telling us much about
how she became the way she was when we first met her. That being said, I enjoy the development we see here. In Dungeons
and Dragons, Charlie essentially needs saved by the brothers. By LARP,
she’s the one doing the saving,
blatantly stating as much as she stabs the spell book full-on Chamber of Secrets style.
Her
third appearance in Pac-Man Fever
gives me everything I want and more.
We finally learn about her past—and it’s even more heartbreaking than I
had expected it to be. When she
was twelve, Charlie had been attending a sleepover. She grew frightened in the evening and called her parents to
come get her. On the way to her,
they were hit by a drunk driver, prompting an accident that killed her father
and left her mother in a coma, where she’s been since.
Despite
the fact that I feel assured neither her mother or her father would blame her,
she carries a deep guilt over the situation. This is the source of the bulk of her insecurities, infusing
Charlie with a feeling that, had she just had the courage to see the night
through, her parents would still be alive. In an attempt to amend things with
her mother, she sneaks in to visit regularly and employs various aliases in
order to pay for her hospital bills.
While she knows it is unlikely her mother can be roused, Charlie feels
she owes her mother no less.
A
year or so after the accident with her parents, Charlie stole a video game
shortly before it was to be released and reprogrammed it to support her liberal
views. She leaked the revised game
online and allowed for free downloads of it. As a result, she was arrested and forced to flee. Charlie’s been on the run since,
prompting new names, new friends and new jobs each time she settles, although
she never settles for long.
There’s a budding sense of
rebellion here in Charlie. Beyond
that, I can’t quite read what her motivations behind stealing the game might
have been. Had she put a small fee
on the download of the game, I would’ve surmised she was perhaps attempting to
assist in the paying of her mother’s hospital bills. But, alas, that wasn’t the case and, therefore, I see her
agenda as merely an attempt to spread her liberal beliefs, a very advanced
concept for a barely-teenage girl.
Although, of course, Charlie has never exactly been average.
Regardless,
it would appear her mother instilled some rather strong beliefs in her before
they were forced to part ways. Not
many teenage girls are daring enough to steal a video game, let alone use it to
make a political statement. Then
again, I don’t know many mothers who read The
Hobbit to their very young daughter, so perhaps it was in her blood to be
on the borders of society.
During one visit to the hospital to
read to her mother, Charlie discovers a man who has had his insides liquidized,
prompting her to contact Sam and Dean.
As Sam is in rough shape due to the trails, Dean and Charlie work
together to solve the case.
Charlie assures Dean that she has become a hunter, going so far as to
take down one ghost and a teenage vampire (it really does sound like a Y.A.
novel…), however, he insists on training her a bit before they hit the
streets.
Charlie’s
shockingly good at shooting on target and shockingly bad at choosing
inconspicuous federal agent-worthy clothing, two aspects that only make me like
her even more. Once again, Charlie
falls prey to the monster of the week, being forced into a nightmare state that
she can’t be shaken from.
Typically, this would aggravate me, as, on the surface level, it appears
to be a step backwards for her.
However, I see Dean entering her nightmare world and shaking her out of
her loop not as a ploy to save the Damsel in Distress, but as something along
the same lines of Dean and Sam continually making every effort to keep each
other safe. Charlie is simply at a
low point in this episode—she’s reliving old issues and coming up with no new
answers. Dean, instead of outright
saving her, simply lends her a hand and helps her get back to her usual self.
Her
nightmare world involves her dressed like Lara Croft, fighting through the game
she stole all those years ago. She
makes her way through the hospital and must defend her still comatose mother
from the evil super-vampires (Uber-Vamps, anyone?). Dean crashes the party and helps
Charlie sort out the dream, eventually persuading her to let her mother
go. Her mother’s dream death
rouses both from her nightmare state.
Charlie, guilt-ridden yet relieved, collapses into a hug from Dean. The two are even closer now than they
were at the close of LARP, a tie
Charlie desperately needs in the face of what she knows she needs to do to
spare her mother.
Shortly after, Charlie goes and
authorizes for her mother to be disconnected from the machines keeping her
alive, but not before one last reading from The
Hobbit. She parts with one
last Vulcan-goodbye and an echo of her favorite “I love you,” “I know,” from
Dean, the brother she never had.
Charlie
returned recently in the ninth season for Slumber
Party. Sam and Dean call her
in to help with a computer that literally takes up the size of an entire
room. In the process of figuring
out the computer, a Wizard of Oz type showdown takes over the bunker. Crowley, Dorothy, the Wicked Witch and Game of Thrones makes for one interesting
evening. If only Cas had been
there to join in on the fun.
Slumber Party has Charlie officially
joining the ranks as a Winchester with her first personal death experience. In order to do so, a two-step
initiation is required. For step
one, you must sacrifice yourself to save someone you love (family, of
course. There are no star-crossed
lovers here on Supernatural).
The second step one must take if they are hoping to become an official
Winchester is something that is completely out of their control. Once you have died, you must wait probably
in hell for your remaining family to resurrect you. Don’t worry, it usually doesn’t take
too long, unless you’re Dean.
Charlie’s moment comes in Slumber Party. The Wicked Witch shoots off an energy blast, aimed directly
at Dean, prompting Charlie to jump in and protect him. Step one, complete. She sacrificed herself to save Dean (well,
someone should. He seems to be
doing all the sacrificing in this family), and, in the process, died trying
to protect him. Naturally, Dean is
the relative to complete step two—he always is. He orders Zek, the not yet evil
angel to bring her back.
Slumber Party was a bit of a slow
episode. I was glad to see it put Charlie
back in the position of the savior, not the saved, as she shoves the red
slipper into the witch’s head.
Some would call her resurrection as an instance of being saved; I,
however, just consider that common practice amongst the Winchesters.
The episode did complete Charlie’s
path to becoming a hunter and a Winchester. I’m sad to see her go to Oz at the end of the episode, as I
assume this means it’ll be a little while until we see her again. But, on the other hand, I can’t help
but feel happy for her. She’s spent
the bulk of the episode discussing how hunting hasn’t quite satisfied her like
she thought it would. She grew up
on magic, not hunting. Charlie wants a different type of
adventure, one with wizards and witches and, if possible, an Ork or two.
Oz
gives her the opportunity she’s been waiting for. But I, much like the Winchesters, am a bit sad to see her go. In four small episodes she won me over,
as effortlessly as if it were…well, pie.
From Bella to Katniss:
Is Charlie a good role model?
There was a time while writing this post that I worried Charlie may be
shaping up to be my next Fronting Feisty Female Triple F—a female
character (predominately redheads.
For real, what is it with phony feisty redheads?) who is smart
enough to use her wits to catch a man’s attention, but too stupid to protect
themselves from being kidnapped, thus giving their chosen male a chance to save
their Damsel-selves. Charlie does
tend to get captured a lot.
Fortunately, so do both Sam and Dean. Generally speaking, it’s very difficult to get through one
week of Supernatural without someone
we care for being in peril danger of some measure. With a system like this, if a character more or less breaks
even—saving roughly as often as she needs saved—I consider it a win,
particularly in the matter of a civilian like Charlie trying to hunt with
professionals like Sam and Dean.
Charlie strikes a good balance, in that she saves the Winchesters often
enough to earn my respect, and yet falls prey to traps enough for me to believe
her as a real person (I refuse to admit she isn’t real). There’s also a true sense of rebellion
in Charlie. We saw hints of it in
her recreation of the game she stole as a kid, but confirmation of it is
evident from her very first episode.
She assertively assures Dick Roman, her boss to nearly the eighteenth
power, that she’s “just always had this problem with authority—no offense—and
because of that, I think the only way to be me is to be indispensable.” There’s a great message here, and it
isn’t go be a jerk, just make sure you have a skill no one else can
replicate. Charlie’s telling us
two things with this quote. First,
you’ve got to stand by your points of view, even if that means aggravating a
few people along the way. Second,
you must make sure that you can do something with a unique flair as insurance,
in the case that the aggravation goes a bit farther than originally
intended. Charlie has some
unpopular views but she isn’t about to compromise those simply to suit the
needs of others. Exposure to such
determination—particularly to a set of very liberal beliefs—could go a long way
to opening minds.
Role Model Rating:
9/10
From Lorelai to Wonder Woman: Is Charlie relatable?
In a sense, Charlie, along with Garth and a few others over the course
of the years, serves as the audience advocate. Let’s face it, we all wish we could go hunting with Sam and
Dean. Watching Charlie achieve
that dream allows us to vicariously live through her. She’s also nerdy and a wee bit obsessive, if by a wee bit
you mean completely, of the same material the bulk of Supernatural’s viewership is dedicated to, adding another level of
relatability to her character, in a way that is far more realistic than the
overly eager borderline terrifying means of Becky Winchester
Rosen. Her obsessions are realistically
covered; she’s able to culminate all of her interest cohesively into her every
day life, just as we wish we could. Charlie also does an excellent job of
towing the line between confident brilliance and suffocating insecurities that
allows us to relate to her even more than her idol Hermione Granger, who pushes
the fake persona a little harder and, therefore, makes herself a little further
unattainable than Charlie. Bradbury
acknowledges that Granger “practically saves Harry Potter in every book.” Alternatively, neither the Winchesters
or Charlie does all of the saving; instead they settle for saving each other,
forming a team—Team Free Will, to be precise—bound together, improving each
other and always moving onwards and upwards. By the time Charlie parts for her own magical adventures at
the end of Slumber Party, she’s made
her peace with her sordid past and has become someone I wish I could call a
friend. Even if she does ship
Harry/Hermione…
Relatability Rating:
10/10
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