Bela Talbot - Reception

Reception

Critical response to the character has been mixed. BuddyTV staff columnist Don Williams deemed the addition of Bela a "cheap ploy" to attract teen male viewers, believing the character distracts viewers from the "brotherly bond that made the show so special in the first place". As well, he felt her "sexy cat burglar act, coupled with her flirtation with one of our heroes, is cliched and has been seen a thousand times before", and he likened her to a combination of Catwoman and "the equally annoying Electro-Gwen from Angel". However, he later admitted Bela was "a great comic foil". Moreover, Diana Steenbergen of IGN became "increasingly frustrated" with the "unlikable and manipulative" Bela throughout her appearances. She found the character's tragic backstory to be "too little, too late", but was surprised the writers were able to make her feel "even a tiny bit sorry for " during her death scene. Steenbergen wishes the character had been written differently—"not either annoying or downright contemptible"—and deemed her "a wasted opportunity to give us an interesting female foil for the boys". Although TV Guide's Tina Charles "really liked" the character, she noted her annoyance that Bela continuously steals from the Winchesters, making them "look ridiculous". Overall, she felt Cohan "did one hell of a job". Likewise, Karla Peterson of The San Diego Union-Tribune believed Bela "got gone just as getting interesting", and deemed her a "decent traveling companion".

Fans were at first very wary of bringing in female characters to the male-dominated show; they feared Bela was brought on to be "arm candy or ". To make matters worse, when coming up with the scenes for the auditions for Bela, executive producer Robert Singer spent an hour writing a lackluster script not intended to be used in the show. Mere hours after the script was given to the casting director, the show's fans had found them on casting websites and were "obsessively going over these scenes". According to Kripke, the fan reaction was the characters "really look like they suck". Bela's overly-antagonistic actions throughout the season did not calm the viewers' fears. " over the boys so badly," Kripke explained, "that she became unlikeable to the fans because she was irredeemable". Kripke has confessed part of the decision to kill the character off was due to the negative reaction from the fans.