I am sensing a pattern here, and I just hope that it means from now on that if the third-to-last episode of the season/series bores me (I’m looking at you, Lost), then the penultimate episode will be awesome, as occurred here.

All the goodness! Castiel came back to save those beautiful Winchesters from Pestilence, even though he is less angel-y and more human-y. How awesome is Castiel? Anyhoo, Bobby actually did sell (or lend?) his soul to Crowley, sealed with an iPhone documented kiss, and for his trouble, got the use of his legs back. Which was great as he and Sammy headed to firebomb the warehouse full of the Vaccine That’s Really Croatoan, where Sammy proceeded to be a BigDamnHero saving all the non-zombied workers from the Croatoaned zombies. Meanwhile, Dean finds Death at a diner in Chicago eating yummy pie. Turns out Death is just as sick and tired of Lucifer’s antics as everyone else, so he gives Dean a few tips about the rings, and makes him promise to throw his darling bother Sammy into the void. Which turns Dean into a liar as he agrees, because we all know he would never do that. Right?

I love how this show continues to tweak the presumptions we have about myth and religion, and much like Lost, has been toying with the idea of Good vs. Evil, and all those hues in between. I wonder if Darlton and Kripke are cursing each other for stealing each others ideas. Hee.

So, what can only be seen as the stupidest plan in the world seems to have been hatched. Sammy will let Lucifer use his vessel-ness and then, THEN! Sam will use his demony powers to make Lucifer jump back into whence he came, so the rest of the crew can seal him back in with the Horsemen rings. It seems like a really bad idea, although I certainly don’t have a better one, so I guess we’ll go with this.

I have no idea how it will all play out, but after this episode, I am very excited to find out.

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I love Mark Sheppard. He has shown up on every single one of the shows I love, starting with The X-Files way back in the way back, and including shows like 24, BSG, Dollhouse, Firefly, White Collar, Chuck, and on and on. I think the only one he has missed is Lost. I suppose the island was just to much for him, eh?

Regardless of my love for the man, and his character of Crowley here in Supernatural is fun, I found this last episode a little… unnecessary? I mean, we are going back to Sam’s college life, and flogging that dead girlfriend Jessica yet again? Really show? We get it, Sam has been in the pipeline for a while.

I am sick of the show giving us a reason to worry about Sam and Dean’s relationship. I was very happy to have those delicious boys back in each others good graces, and that look Dean gave Sam after he killed Brady (or whatever his stupid name was), made me worry for those boys all over again.

Plus, after that wondrous introduction to Pestilence the week before, we get nothing of him. A totally Matt Frewer free episode! How unfair…

So, it took a whole episode for us to get to anything worthwhile and relevant to the coming apocalypse. Crowley talks Bobby into selling his soul (Oh boy, I DO NOT want Bobby to die, Kripke!!), and that nasty Croatoan virus may be the death of us all. Two episodes to wrap up the apocalypse? We shall see how that goes (do you sense a little bitterness this week? Sorry about that).

Also, if you saw the promo for the penultimate episode, you now know that you don’t want to be walking down the street and brush up against Death. Because that would be bad.

eta: I forgot to mention that Misha Collins will be tweeting during this week’s episode of Supernatural. He will be tweeting like mad from 9-10pm EST. Thanks to Lisi for the heads up!

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I would like to admit up front that I have always felt that Supernatural is really Dean’s story. Don’t get me wrong, Sam is vital, but I feel like the whole story of the Winchester’s is all about Dean’s journey more than anything.

So this week, we had to put up with sad, vaguely annoying Dean for half of the episode, as he whined about how useless it all was, and how he was just gonna let Michael have his way with him. Quite frankly, feeling-sorry-for-himself Dean is no fun. Imagine my happiness when Castiel showed up and kicked Dean’s ass all over that dark alley!

I like the addition of making BabyWinchester Adam part of the mix. Once he was dead, it never occurred to me that he might be brought back, but that Zachariah is a wily one! I thought it was pretty clever, because Dean just can not resist the family thing, especially someone he sees as an innocent.

So, we end up in Van Nuys, of all places, in the Angel room. After Castiel once again shows us his mad Angel skillz, Dean and Sam crash in on Adam and Zach, and all kinds of gory business takes place, resulting in the spectacular ganking of Zachariah, and the mildly unexpected taking of BabyAdam by Michael (who is a big, loud Angel, it seems!).

The best part of this episode, is that Dean finally stops feeling sorry for himself, and it looks like he is ready to embrace Sam again. Hooray! Hopefully, this is gonna be a race to the finish line of this apocalypse, our brothers fighting shoulder to shoulder.

I know that Lucifer is busy being Jacob over on Lost, but I sure hope we get to see him again soon.

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As much as I love my shows, and end up obsessing over them, it does always annoy me when they shove in a minor character that we haven’t seen for years, and expect us to remember everything about them by a quick ‘previously’ snippet. You know, unless it’s someone I love, like Ash. Or The Trickster.

So anyway…

I have tried writing this post in my head a bajillion times, and I keep getting all hung up with the details. I keep trying to recap the damn thing, when all I want to do is talk about Dean. Please bear with me while I try and work through this.

I get it, Dean has put everything into his family. He feels like Sam has betrayed him, that Bobby can’t help the same way he used to be able to for physical and emotional reasons. Let’s not even get into Daddy Winchester. Even Dean’s latest man crush, Castiel, probably didn’t do Dean any favors by showing up LOADED. BTW, LoadedCastiel was awesome. Misha Collins has done such a great job with that character. So everyone is gone, Dean finds out that he has the Hand of God – or whatever – after killing the Lying Liar Who Lies (and I think I was just as surprized as Dean was, actually), and he runs off to give himself up to Michael? I mean, that’s where we’re going with this, right?

Sam made a comment like “Wow, so that’s what it’s like to have back up.” after their fight at the farmhouse with the townspeople. To me this was a very telling moment between those pretty Winchester boys. For all of Dean’s bellowing about how they had to fight Lucifer, no matter what, Sam seems to be the one who is willing to change their M.O. While Sam was marveling at the thought of having an actual army to fight the demons, Dean was shutting down in his misery and alone-ness and self pity. Just when Sam seems to really be getting the idea to truly be on board for the fight, Dean is at his end. Why can’t these two ever be on the same page at the same time? It’s all so sad, my friends.

So Dean takes off, in some kind of last ditch craziness, and shows up at the door of the woman who gave birth to the NotDean kiddo we met a few seasons ago (or was it last season? I can’t remember, show!). Apparently setting himself up a potential happy and normal life if he lives through housing Michael and dealing with, no doubt, the shenanigans of Zachariah. Not to mention Lucifer. OMG, we are headed right for it people! Sam v. Dean in the showdown of the ages.

Awful if you love these beauteous boys named Winchester, but compelling. I just hope Kripke can pull it off.

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I dare any Supernatural fan to have walked away from this week’s episode without their heart torn out of their chest. “Oh”, Kripke said, “you’d like to see Heaven would you? Well, let’s have a stroll then, shall we?”

After last week’s zombie fest – a perfectly gory and horrifying, if apocalypse light episode – I was ready for some movement on the continuing story of the Winchesters v. Lucifer. But after ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is it actually Winchesters v. God? Will it ultimately be Dean/Michael v. Sam/Lucifer? Or are we still just plain old Good v. Evil? Like my other deep thinkin’ show, Lost, this one has blurred the lines of good and evil, sometimes to a frustrating end. If you grew up being taught that you were either a good person or a bad one, it is quite disconcerting when you find out that the world is actually a big vat of grey. Each step we take with the Winchesters their world grows more grey and bleak.

Not to mention that Kripke loves to torture us, right along with our Beautiful Brothers Winchester. Even when they were slogging through, fighting their familial demons along with the demon-y demons, we were given Castiel to help sheppard them, and to give us, the viewers, some semblance of hope. But now, even Castiel’s unyielding faith is being slowly pounded out of him. Our boys step daddy, Bobby, has been knee-capped and taken out of the fight, and his heart broken yet again. Honestly, how much more can we take? Watching Dean get his heart broken again and again, while in Heaven of all places, was rough. It in turn became almost unbearable when he tossed the amulet necklace that was arguably the one last connection he had that proved the love he so desperately wanted from his brother. How sad is it that while Dean has spent his life protecting, nurturing and raising Sam, only to find out that Sam’s happiest memories involved anything but his own family. At least Dean had Metallicar up there with him, because he certainly didn’t get any relief or joy.

I gotta say, I am enjoying the hell outta these episodes. Nothing like angsty existential drama with a dash of absurdism to keep me entertained. Egotistical Angels and gleeful Demons? I am in. Happy to see Ash and Pam again, and the whole concept of Kripke’s Heaven, everyone’s own little cell of heaven, but connected to each  other, spanning out from The Garden. The idea that even in your own heaven, an Angel can come and ruin your day appeals to me, especially if the Angel is as deliciously horrible as Zachariah. Speaking of Zach, how many of you out there think this version of Heaven may just be another trick? He obviously manipulated the scene where he was hitting on Mary, so who’s to say that the whole thing wasn’t a fevered version of the ‘real’ thing. In the end, though, that doesn’t really matter. Dean is heart broken, Sam is guilty, Castiel is dejected, Bobby is helpless, God is missing and I just want my boys to be happy again.

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The first episode back after the winter break gave us a very different view of the brothers than we’re used to. Each had to come to grips with the demons (pardon the pun) they face, in his own way.

I think what I liked best about this episode was that just when we thought we knew what it was about, we were wrong. More than once.

Sure, in the end, the identity of the wraith was obvious, but what’s that they say about hindsight being 20/20? I’m consistently impressed by how original the show manages to be.

First, I want to say this about the episode’s final scene: I loved how it made Dean FINALLY forgive Sam, even though that’s not what it was about on the surface. Dean’s entreaty to Sam, “Are you WITH me?” wasn’t simply a question. It was a question, an invitation, a plea.

Those four words were Dean’s way of saying, “You’re my brother. What’s past is past. We have a world to save and the only way we can do it is together. I love you.” Well, that’s what it meant to me, anyway.

The show has spent so much time with Dean making cracks about Sam sucking down demon blood and trusting Ruby more than him, Dean took a real step here. And maybe part of it was that he gave himself a little therapy in the form of his imaginary (hot) doctor. Have to admit, we should have realized the second his doctor introduced herself that she was a figment of his insanity – she was way too attractive to have been the doctor. Not that psychiatrists can’t be attractive, but I even thought to myself, “Figures Dean would get a hottie for a doctor.”

In the end, though, the wraith was right: She ramps up the crazy in her victims, but the special brand of crazy that exhibits itself is all theirs. Dean is frakkin’ ANGRY. And I don’t think it’s because of what he’s done or that Lucifer is waiting to use him as his vessel.

He was born to be Lucifer’s vessel. Or, at least, after the demon blood was dripped onto him. Just like Dean is the vessel for the archangel Michael, and so no matter what he thinks he wants to do, he does the Right Thing, so Sam is the vessel for Lucifer and he bears this extreme rage inside him – the rage that Lucifer has felt against God since his fall.

Wow. Just got really philosophical there for a moment.

Think about it, though. Dean pretty much always tries to be bad, but he just always does the right thing and has dedicated his life to hunting demons and protecting people. Sam is always mad and when he didn’t have his brother around to watch over him, he crossed a line and drank demon blood.

Sure, in a way you can’t really blame Sam. He believed Ruby and thought he was doing the right thing. And I don’t mean it as a slam against Sam. But he was the reluctant hunter. I can’t help but think that the part of him that is Lucifer’s vessel made it so that he would be the one to spring Lucifer from hell, that didn’t really want to go around killing demons. It wasn’t really that he wanted to be “normal,” it was that he was the vessel for the greatest Demon of all.

I’d love to hear what others think. I basically came up with everything I wrote here as I was writing it and haven’t thought this through AT ALL. So please feel free to dispute what I’ve said.

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An interesting episode of Supernatural last night. The main question posed is one that seems to come up on all the shows I watch, somehow.

Can we change our future? Our past? Is the timeline immutable? If you see your future, is it possible to change the past, or are you stuck because you’ve seen it, so whatever you do to avoid it will end up just changing the details but not the end result?

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the five-years-in-the-future zombie-ish apocalyptic reality doesn’t have to happen. First off, the angels as we’ve seen them have not been exactly honest with Sam and Dean up to this point, and I wouldn’t put it past them to show Dean a reality that could, but doesn’t have to happen.

Second, would Eric Kripke really have embarked upon a five-year journey like this and, in the end, let the Devil and his minions win?

Of course, one of the things I’ve liked about Supernatural is that it doesn’t always deliver the nice, happy ending (thinking right now of Season 4′s “Jump the Shark,” when it turns out the Winchester brothers actually did have another brother, but he was killed by the ghouls pretending to be that brother and his mother). So does that mean the world will survive the apocalypse?

I like not knowing. Makes it more interesting to watch.

OK, so back to last night.

First off, I see that Kripke/McG subscribe to the super-fast zombie model, a la 28 Days Later, as opposed to the slow, shuffling zombies of the Romero oeuvre. OK, certainly made for a more suspenseful scene there toward the beginning when Dean was trying to escape. Nice save (also a bit 28 Days-ish) by the military, though Dean had as much of a chance to be killed as the infected.

So then we have the issue of the Dean duo. Dean knows himself pretty well and wasn’t going to make it easy for himself to get free. So, of course, when Dean does get free, he pretty much goes out and about and freaks the crap out of a bunch of people, except for the no-longer-angelic Casteil who immediately sees that this is a former Dean.

Dean’s become hard. Harder than he already was. I suppose five years of fighting against the apocalypse when the angels and God have abandoned the planet and Lucifer has taken control of your only brother does that to a guy.

And speaking of, Jared Padalecki did one heckuva job channeling his dark side in playing the white-clad (interesting choice – reminds me of Lost, actually) Lucifer. Once again, Kripke shows the issue of black and white and evil and good isn’t quite as simple as it seems.

Of course, the fact that Lucifer infected humanity with some sort of zombiefying virus kind of makes him evil, but what of his point about the evil that men do? It’s all very philosophical, frankly. Fortunately, it doesn’t give me as much of a headache as Lost does. Or Fringe, even.

So in the end, we have the Winchester brothers together again. Does the simple fact that Sam & Dean are together change the future we saw? Will this prevent Sam from letting Lucifer in, or will it happen now anyway because he will believe he can control Lucifer?

Whatever the end result, the brothers are together again. No good ever comes of their being apart, because the demons and ghouls and other bad creatures just take advantage of that.

The world – the one on Supernatural, at least – needs the Winchester brothers together.

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Supernatural‘s fifth, and perhaps last, season premieres soon. Very soon. Sept. 10 soon, in fact.

There’s been lots of news tidbits here and there over the summer, but the most exciting of all, IMHO, came out of Comic-Con. Warning, there are some spoilers, but nothing that should spoil your viewing enjoyment, I think. Even so, be forewarned.

Sci-fi uber-site io9 talked to producer Sera Gamble and showrunner Eric Kripke at Comic-Con last month, and they confirmed that Season 5 is a big ol’ stew of apocalypse. We ended last season with Satan himself escaping from Hell, thanks to a completely duped Sam Winchester.

I would imagine, however, that the Devil is not quite as we might expect, given the twists SPN writers have given us on the angels and demons to this point. Though, to give Dean credit, Ruby was pretty much a horrible, evil demon who was using Sam. There is that.

Anyway, Gamble said Lucifer would be “very nice and likable.” Which actually makes sense. Because how else do you think he could get people to follow him? Through fear? It has seemed to this point that the God in the world of Supernatural is the one who rules through fear.

That’s not to say that the SPN team are Satanists, it’s just to say that nothing really is as  simple as it appears on the surface. And Lucifer was, once, an angel. (Reference point for nice demons: the late, lamented Reaper.)

Don’t expect all the battles to take place on screen, though. Kripke said, “We call it the Walmart apocalypse because of our budget.”

The four horseman of the apocalypse will show up, too. From io9:

Kripke said the four horsemen of the apocalypse will be introduced in different episodes throughout the season – Gamble is currently working on the first episode featuring one, called War. “He’s got great monologues,” Kripke said. “At one point he says, ‘I was in Germany. And then I went back to Germany. And then I was in Darfur. And then I got paged about coming here.’ Also, our horsemen won’t ride horses – they have muscle cars.”

Whether or not there’s another season is still up in the air, though they promised the apocalypse will be over by the end of this season. I’ve written previously about the likelihood that this would be the last season, and how that might not be such a bad thing. But it seemed at the time that Kripke wasn’t open to going beyond five. Perhaps things have changed?

Oh, and God apparently is missing. (And might not be a dude.) The archangels have started this apocalypse all by themselves. Nice. Just wait ’til Dad (or Mom) gets home!

Anyhow, lots more goodies are in the io9 article, so check it out if you want even more spoilage.

Anyhow, here’s a (veryshort) preview for Season 5:

Then, just when  you didn’t think things could get ANY better, we learn that none other than Paris Hilton herself is going to be a demonic creature, according to Watch With Kristin.

And Kripke told Maureen Ryan over at the Chicago Tribune:

“She’s flat-out awesome for playing along,” producer Eric Kripke says. “If you want to see a bloodthirsty Paris attack and kill somebody, this is your chance.”

And they created the part specifically for her after she agreed to be on an episode. She plays a demon who takes the form of Paris Hilton.

Look, I’m no fan of Paris Hilton, but given the goofy humor that’s always injected into SPN, I think this could be a giant mug of awesome. I trust them to do their job and do it well.

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The last three episodes of Supernatural have been utterly, well, super.

“The Monster at the End of This Book,” “Jump the Shark” and “The Rapture” took the show to truly new levels and also took some potentially shark-jumping moments and made them new.

First, with “Monster,” the thought that someone out there was writing the canon of the Winchester brothers was an inspired bit.

I have to admit, I didn’t see it coming that he was a prophet. I wasn’t quite sure what Carver was, but prophet wasn’t what immediately jumped to mind. The whole addition of angels and the war between heaven and hell to this season has been fascinating.

And Castiel continues to evolve as well. The idea that he couldn’t interfere but could give Dean some “inside information” that had the same effect as saving Sam & Dean was, admittedly, cliche but still clever.

Is that why Castiel was sent back to Heaven?

As for “Shark,” it avoided actually jumping the shark with the episode for more than one reason, including among them the fact that it acknowledged it was sort of jumping the shark by even having a plot that involved a secret Winchester brother.

But what was so different about it was that he actually turned out to be a real brother; just one that had been killed and then inhabited by a ghoul. I love how they continue to bring in new kinds of bad creatures from the beyond without getting just plain silly.

The third brother, Adam, was kept a secret because John didn’t want his third son to be trapped into the life his first two sons had been forced to lead, understandably. But by doing this, Sam & Dean sadly never had a chance to know their brother, who was their only living relative (is that true? A bigger SPN expert – Beth, Jane, Erika, please answer?).

Then Thursday, on “Rapture,” we finally saw the downside to being possessed by an angel.

Jimmy is finally free of Castiel, but what does he do? He heads home, putting his wife and daughter and friends in danger from the demons who want to punish him for his having been a vessel of heaven.

He refuses to listen to Sam & Dean who tell him this will be the case. Perhaps that’s understandable, as he desperately wanted to be with his family again, but you’d think after a year of being an angel, he’d have put a little more stock in what Sam & Dean had to say. I mean, I know he didn’t have full recollection of what happened over the previous year, but he should have had enough of a memory to know they spoke the truth.

That said, I can understand why he went back home; I have two sons. The chance that demons might want to follow me versus being able to see them after not having any contact for a year? Hard choice to make.

Just two more episodes – “When the Levee Breaks,” on Thursday, and “Lucifer Rising,” on May 21 (yes, that’s a three two-week break, dammit!). NOTE: I’ve been told Lucifer Rising is going to air May 14, so that’s no break at all. Yay!

I’ve been thinking about it, and I truly think having just one more season to tie it all up is kind of a stroke of genius.

Like Lost, the Supernatural has a very specific mythology behind it all. Once you have that wrapped up, to go on and try to add to it or branch off it can only water down the excellence of the original.

Go on, Kripke, blow our minds in the next two episodes and then wrap everything up in a Season 5 to remember. I’m ready.

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The last two episodes of Supernatural have given us an intersting look into the psyche of the Winchester brothers.

Let’s take “After School Special” first.

Dean was, not surprisingly, quite the Lothario in high school. But he also was, surprisingly, afraid to get hurt.

I thought the whole sub storyline of Dean’s romance with the wholesome girl next door gave an interesting insight into his character. He always had to play the protective older brother, he had no time to let himself become emotionally invested in anything.

The true twist on the story, in fact, wasn’t even that the vengeful ghost wasn’t who Dean and Sam first thought it was. Nor that the vengeful ghost considered Sam a bully and was going through a particularly tough time in his life when he himself was being a bully.

The true twist was that Dean was the one with bad memories of the school and Sam was the one who had fond memories of it.

Then, last week, we saw more of the brothers’ strained relationship in “Sex and Violence,” where the siren tried to tear them apart.

The brothers have a lot of anger at each other, and that only seems to come to the fore when they’re under someone else’s influence. The need to resolve some of these issues, pronto, or else there are gonna be real problems down the road.

Such as SPOILER ALERT!!!!!! when they find out they have another brother. TVGuide.com is reporting that Jake Abel has been cast as a third Winchester brother, the product of their father’s dalliance while he was on the road fighting demons.

Abel’s a relatively new face, wrapping up work on the film version of The Lovely Bones right now. Sci-fi fans might remember him from three episodes of the (much too) short-lived 2005 series Threshold.

Upon eventually being told by a onetime paramour of Adam’s paternity, John paid the lad the occasional visit. Never, though, did John alert Sam and Dean to Adam’s existence, nor vice versa.

The question, which TVGuide raises, rightfully so, is whether he is truly what he says he is, or if it’s a demon trick.

Me, I think it’ll depend how the fanbase takes to him. If you’ve read this far – what do you think of the addition?

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