I’m Back, Baby! And Good Omens Episode 1

I’m back, baby!  I forgot my password, and I also don’t use the email that I had used to set this blog up anymore, so I was sort of screwed and only had access through the WordPress app on my phone.  I tried about ten times to change the email address or password through the app, but it kept telling me I couldn’t unless I verified the new email address through the old email address, which I obviously couldn’t do because I no longer had access to that email, and all of my password guesses were wrong even though I’m pretty sure I entered the right one at least once.  Then I got pretty sad for awhile, because seriously even if I haven’t used this blog very often I’ve had it for years and years, and we’ve had some good times, right?  I mean, that Theremon, what a lady- (and man-) killer!  Oh, and what about the time that Laura burned down Almanzo’s house???  And my Blacklist and Supernatural reviews, which I have never finished even though I promised I would, because I am garbage in human form??  So yeah, I hated that I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore, but then…but THEN!  I don’t know how, maybe the stars were aligned or my magic powers started working, I was able to change the password on the app, and I thought “oh that’s not going to work, it never worked before” but it somehow DID and I was able to LOG IN from my computer, and I changed the email and it worked too and suffice to say I’m using all these run on sentences to convey, in literary form, my abject happiness that I’VE GOT MY BLOG BACK!

So what’s been going on?  Good Omens is what’s going on!  Remember way back years ago when I reviewed Nightfall and said that I wouldn’t be reviewing Good Omens even though it’s my favorite book EVER?  Well, Neil Gaiman did an Amazon original series, six episodes, and I’ve watched them all numerous times.  It was amazing!  So I will be reviewing the episodes.

What’s funny is I follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, and he started tweeting about this awhile ago, and I was all worried because usually when things I love get translated into new forms it means they’re terrible, or I wait a decade to watch some MAGA-inspired bullshit about how white dudes are really BETTER AT EVERYTHING, it’s just THE TRUTH, and fuck you Game of Thrones.  But Neil Gaiman wrote each episode and acted as showrunner, so the show is faithful to the book, and he’s given some really lovely interviews about how Terry Pratchett asked him to do this before he died, so he was doing it for Terry.

So!  Episode 1.  Frances McDormand is God, and acts as the narrator.  (I read one less than positive review that said the narration made it feel like an audiobook being acted out, which is probably another reason I love it so much.)  God does the opening narration from the book about the Earth’s creation, and then we’re in the Garden.  We see Crawly whisper to Eve, and Eve and Adam (who are black, and let me tell you, Nazi Twitter fucking EXPLODED because clearly Adam and Eve are white, and I rolled my eyes so hard that they will never sit right in my eye sockets ever again) eat the apples and are kicked out of the Garden.

Aziraphale watches them leave the Garden and Crawly…uh, slithers up and turns into his regular David Tennant form, except with snake eyes.  He has the first of many terrible hairstyles, but he’s a ginger!  Only took about twelve years, right?  That made me smile.  He and Aziraphale chat about the basic nature of good and evil while Adam hacks a lion apart offscreen.

What’s funny is that Crawly claims he was just told to get up “there,” meaning the Garden, and cause trouble, but it’s pretty clear that he did it to get Aziraphale’s attention.  I mean, why else would he immediately mosey on over to chat with his favorite angel?  I mean, other than the plot.

Crawly asks about Aziraphale’s flaming sword, and Aziraphale reveals he gave it to Adam and Eve, and worries whether he did the wrong thing by doing that.  Crawly sarcastically says he doesn’t think angels can do the wrong thing, but Aziraphale thinks he’s being sincere and thanks him.  He makes eyes at Crawly while they talk about God’s intentions regarding the apple tree, and then it starts to rain.  We see Aziraphale hold up one of his wings to shield Crawly.  Aw!

I really want an apple now.

The credits are fun, and I’m just going to get this out of the way: the CGI is not that great, but again, this isn’t HBO so I’m not complaining.  Also, I have apparently been pronouncing “Crowley” and “Aziraphale” wrong for literally half my life.

We open in a dark…churchyard?  I don’t think it’s a churchyard, but it feels like one.  Hastur and Ligur rise from the ground, and that is an effect I liked.  They bitch about waiting, and then Crowley’s vintage Bentley rounds the bend, complete with Bohemian Rhapsody.  Apparently they weren’t sure they’d be able to use it?  Because the movie was coming out?  I don’t get that.  “We didn’t want people to be confused” I mean about what?  That a song can be played in more than one context?  I mean, this context isn’t even shitting all over Freddie Mercury’s legacy like some other contexts it’s been used in recently, but whatever.

Crowley hops out of the car and debuts his second awful hairstyle of the evening.  They solemnly recount their Deeds, and then Hastur gives Crowley the Antichrist.  Crowley is quite unhappy about this, and doesn’t even try to hide it, but I can’t even tell if the demons know he’s upset or if they’re basking in his discomfort.  He dejectedly gets back into his car and dumps the Antichrist in the backseat.  I feel it’s important to note that the Antichrist is literally in a picnic basket.  Like, in the book I thought “basket” was just the way they said car carrier or something, but no, it’s literal.  Crowley bitches and curses, and Freddie Mercury stops singing long enough to tell Crowley what a good soldier he’s been, with the M25 and all (I have never driven in England, so I will just assume this is like malfunction junction and yeah, that is pretty demonic).  Freddie gives Crowley his instructions and Crowley almost runs into a semi.

We cut to Aziraphale, who is about to enjoy a beautiful plate of sushi, and I’m so envious because I haven’t had sushi in AGES.  Gabriel appears, startling him, and looks down on the sushi because he sucks.  But Jon Hamm is fucking DELIGHTFUL, he’s perfect as a smarmy middle management type.  I never watched Mad Men so I don’t know if this is like his thing, but he’s very good at it.  Gabriel lets Aziraphale know about the Antichrist, and warns him to keep an eye on Crowley but not to let Crowley find out he’s around.

See, it’s incredibly exciting to watch this, because the actors are clearly having just as much fun as the viewers are, and it just makes me so happy.

Then we speed off to meet the Youngs and the Dowlings, both headed to the same hospital for the ladies to give birth.  They got Ron Swanson to play Thaddeus Dowling!  I saw his name in the credits and was like, who the hell did he play, but this is fantastic.  Also, one of the Bushes appears to be the president, because we see him briefly on the monitor when Harriet curses out Thad for not being with her.

I wonder when this is supposed to take place?  The book was published in 1990, when Bush I was president, but they have cell phones and more modern technology.

Cut to the hospital, where our favorite Satanic nuns are preparing for the Dowlings’ arrival, because the plan is to give the Antichrist to Harriet.  Mary Loquacious wants to know where the Antichrist came from, which…yeah.  Did Satan just will him into being, or does he have a birth mom?  The nuns are super bitchy about this, because they are mean girls.  And I’ve already used the mean girls on the prairie, so I need a different metaphor because I don’t want to copy myself.  Maybe Heathers?  That would allow me to turn Hastur into JD, which is probably appropriate.

(Please note: I have never seen Heathers.)

Moving on.  The nuns are super excited when they hear the sirens, and we see Harriet’s escort and the Youngs’ car pull up.  Poor Mary Loquacious doesn’t really get a job, so Mother Superior Heather Duke tasks her with getting some cookies.  Mary makes a face like she knows this is bullshit, but goes off to comply.

Harriet is wheeled in past the smiling, serene nuns, and then Arthur and Deidre come in, much to one nun’s horror.  It seems that Deidre wasn’t scheduled to give birth till a week later, but, y’know…birth, and all.  The nuns don’t turn her away for being early, because they’re Satanic, not evil, though that might’ve been a fun “no room at the inn” callback.

The nun refuses to let Arthur in, though, and I assume it’s because they don’t want any other random people wandering around and maybe seeing what they shouldn’t see.  One of the nuns tells Arthur they’ll be in Room 3, and Arthur goes out for a smoke.

God interjects about the shell game we’re about to see, except she uses playing cards to explain it.  The narration slows down and we see Deidre Young with her newborn baby, then Harriet Dowling still giving birth, and then Crowley shows up.  Arthur’s still outside, and Crowley assumes he’s with the nuns or something.  Arthur thinks he’s the doctor (ha!) so he tells him that Deidre’s in Room 3, because he doesn’t know any better.  Crowley heads inside, and, clearly wanting this task over with as soon as possible, flags down the first person he sees, who happens to be Mary Loquacious Veronica Sawyer.  He tells her to take the baby to Room 3.  Mary has a great little bit where she’s babytalking at the Antichrist, and Crowley makes the funniest, fakest excited face ever.

How could anyone besides David Tennent play this role?

Mary hops over to Room 3, and gets waylaid by Sister Heather McNamara, who bitches that Mary was supposed to get the cookies.  Mary haughtily tells Sister Heather that Crowley told her to deliver the baby, and Sister Heather takes a peek at the Antichrist, then snappily tells Mary to get on with it.  In the room, Deidre is conveniently asleep.  Mary wheels the Antichrist in (red blanket, further from the bed), and Arthur comes in.  She thinks he’s the ambassador, so she tells him the Antichrist is his and his real son is an extra baby.  Arthur doesn’t ask about this weirdness, because he’s enchanted by his supposed son.  Meanwhile, Harriet has given birth and Thad is all bro-excited and he’s shockingly likeable for a dude who missed out on his baby’s birth for work.  But that’s probably the Ron Swanson thing.  Sister Heather Chandler says she needs to take the baby to be weighed, so they attempt the switch but no one can find the Antichrist.  Sister Chandler runs into Sister McNamara, who tells her where the baby is in Room 3.

Sister Heather Chandler takes the wrong baby after a miscommunication, and takes that baby back to Harriet.  So the Youngs have the Antichrist, the Dowlings have the Young baby, and the Dowlings’ baby is wheeled away while God talks about the good things that might’ve happened to the extra baby.

We’re supposed to infer from this that the nuns did something terrible to the baby, but we find out later in the book that they didn’t.  This is a minor quibble of mine, I know it did nothing to really move the story forward but it would’ve been nice to briefly see Greasy Johnson and get that acknowledgement.  Oh well.

Oh yeah: the name thing.  Both Mary and Heather Duke push “Damien” pretty hard, and I think it would’ve been funny if they were both named Damien.  Harriet doesn’t like it because it’s too alliterative, and she’s right.  Arthur just thinks it sounds too out there.  Harriet ends up naming the baby Warlock.  Mary ends up suggesting Adam, and Arthur and Deidre like it, so Adam it is.

Now Crowley’s at a pay phone, because he messed up all the cellular lines in London so couldn’t get through.  We see Aziraphale in his bookshop, hanging up his coat and singing along to some classical music (yes, this is a thing you can do).  He politely tells his caller that they’re closed, but it’s Crowley and they agree they need to talk about Armageddon.

We’re at a park, and our two nerds are chilling and watching the ducks, chatting about the Antichrist and how it sucks that the world is going to end.  Aziraphale toes the company line until Crowley reminds him of everything he’s going to lose regardless of which side wins.  Crowley, of course, was the original tempter, so he’s very good at this.  Aziraphale looks interested (or tempted, heh), but then says he wants to have lunch first.  Because Crowley will clearly give Aziraphale whatever he wants, they head over to the Ritz and Crowley watches Aziraphale eat.  Then Crowley demands they get drunk, so they head back to Aziraphale’s shop and dig into some rare stash of wine.

Harriet and Deidre take their babies to their respective homes, and then Hastur shows up to disband the Order by blowing up the building, but not before he murders Sister Heather Chandler.  I told you he was JD.

Anyway.  Aziraphale and Crowley are drunk and Crowley is directing Aziraphale’s attention to everything that’s going to suffer because of Armageddon, which makes Aziraphale sad, so they both decide to sober up and it’s weirdly uncomfortable to watch.

Crowley uses logic on Aziraphale: he’s a demon, and angels are supposed to thwart demons, so if he stops the Antichrist he’s actually doing his job.  They decide they’ll try to influence the Antichrist, and we get a delightful montage of Crowley as Warlock Dowling’s nanny complete with Mary Poppins-style hat, and Aziraphale as the Dowlings’ gardener.  My favorite part of this is where Warlock complains the gardener told him to “never ever destroy the Earth.”  I feel you, kid.  If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me!

Aziraphale and Crowley head to their respective head offices to report.  This is a great little scene, where they enter the same big office building and we see Aziraphale take the escalators up, and Crowley takes the reflected escalator down.  I read an interview with I think the set designer who said he got the idea when he walked into the building’s lobby and saw the escalators reflected in the shiny floor.  They report; the demons seem pleased, and the angels clap happily, but Michael and Gabriel promise Aziraphale they won’t be mad when he fails.

Aziraphale is shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that the angels also want Armageddon to occur.  Didn’t he see Season 4 of Supernatural?  Gabriel insists it’s the Great Plan, and that they’ll win anyway, and give everyone paradise.

Next we see the boys chilling on a bus, discussing that Warlock is too normal.  Aziraphale is happy because he thinks the heavenly influence is winning out.  In the book, Crowley explains it more, that the Antichrist should be warping reality without even trying because it’s what he’s meant to do, but they don’t really cover that here.  Then we see Warlock and his mom looking at dinosaur statutes.  Warlock is unimpressed; he wants to talk about his birthday party, which he wants in an escape room.  Harriet says no, but we pan out before we can find out what, specifically, she objects to about escape rooms.

Our boys are watching, and Crowley FINALLY has a good hairstyle.  It’s sort of similar to the one he had as Ten, but a little longer in the front and spikier.  I like it.  Oh wait, they’re talking.  Crowley drops the hellhound bomb: on the Antichrist’s eleventh birthday, a hellhound is going to be delivered to him at exactly three pm, and by naming it, he’ll kickstart Armageddon.  Then Crowley slides right into tempter mode, and basically tells Aziraphale that he could kill Warlock and stop everything.  Aziraphale is pretty damn tempted, I must report, although the jury’s out on whether it’s killing Warlock or Crowley in general he finds tempting.  He shakes himself out of it and says they should be at the birthday party to watch for the hound, and then gets excited about dusting off his old magic routine.  Crowley is SO MUCH like an exasperated, disgusted wife in this sequence, I laugh every time I watch it.  And I’m so happy they kept the whole “Aziraphale is bad at fake magic” thing from the book, it was a tiny part but I liked it.

Cut to Warlock’s party, which looks pretty typical of a kid’s birthday party to be honest.  They have a tent in their backyard and handmade signs.  I expected I guess more from a rich diplomat’s kid’s party?  My sister’s kids go to a relatively well to do school, and while they’re not super wealthy, some of their kids’ friends are, and I’ve heard stories about whole villages of bouncy houses, concerts, lavishly catered food, and so on.

Well, they do have staff at the back of the tent, and I assume they’re catering, security, and clean up.  Crowley is among them.  And don’t get me wrong, it’s sort of charming that they went the homemade route, I can picture Harriet stenciling those letters and it makes me smile.  She hasn’t been on screen that much, but I like her a lot.

Aziraphale is, of course, super into his magic performance, down to the silly outfit and penciled on moustache.  The exceedingly British (one of them is called Tarquin) kids hate it, of course, and tell him he’s rubbish (that’s British for trash) while Crowley watches his watch count down the seconds.

There’s a short cut in here somewhere of Arthur and Deidre.  Deidre has a single layer cake that she’s lining with candles and little candies (they look like M&Ms).  She tells Arthur that she told Adam to be home by teatime, which I looked up and I think is meant to be about four in the afternoon.  Arthur steals one of the candies and leaves the room.

Cut back to Warlock’s party, where they’ve started an epic food fight.  Aziraphale is covered in cake, and Crowley managed to get out of there relatively unscathed.  Warlock tells the camera that it was the best birthday ever, so at least he enjoyed himself.

Our boys head back out to Crowley’s car, and I’m surprised he let Aziraphale sit in it while he’s covered in food.  Dean Winchester would never!  It must be love!  Crowley turns on the radio and asks about the hellhound, and is answered by Dagon, Lord of the Files (that’s not a typo BTW) and Master of Torment.  Before Dagon can catch on that there’s a problem, Crowley lies and says he sees the dog, calling it a “lovely helly-hellhound” which sounded so very Ten to me.  He shuts off the radio as he and Aziraphale realize they’ve been concentrating all their energy on the wrong boy.

God tells us that the “right boy” was playing in the woods with his friends, as it was his birthday.  Except…he does this every day as far as we know.  Anyway, we’re introduced to the Them, and God said they named themselves that, except that’s not entirely true.  They picked it up from their disapproving neighbors.  But I guess that’s not super important.  What is important is that they’ve got Adam reclining on a throne, which I really loved.  In fact, the child actor is great, even if he’s not blond and also has the haircut of a middle-aged woman named Carol.

Pepper bitches about getting a girls’ bike for her birthday because it’s sexist (never stop fighting the patriarchy, Pepper!), and Adam says very firmly that he wants a dog.  In the background, our hellhound stalks up, and…does not look at all like I expected.  Again, this isn’t HBO, it’s fine.  So Adam starts to describe the kind of dog he wants, small and clever, and says he’s going to name him…Dog.

There’s a sort of popping noise, and then instead of a big bad CGI nightmare we get an adorable black and white mutt with glowy red eyes.  Dog barks and wags his tail and runs to unite with his master.  Adam is ecstatic, and Dog learns what cuddles are.

Aziraphale and Crowley are commiserating in Az’s shop (yeah it’s a long name, sue me) with whiskey.  Then Crowley sort of exhales and says something’s different.  Az is pleased that Crowley FINALLY noticed his new cologne, this stuff isn’t cheap you know, but Crowley’s talking about the Antichrist.  He tells Az that the dog is with him, wherever they are, and so Armageddon has begun.  Az raises his glass and morosely toasts the End Times.

Test!

For real just a test

Supernatural: The Vessel

I was really not looking forward to this episode, I’ll admit.  I really can’t explain why, but I hate, HATE 1940s stuff.  Maybe it’s the uniforms?  Maybe it’s that Hitler is somehow always involved?  Maybe it’s that they’re always in fucking submarines, and I don’t trust submarines?

I mean, really.  They’re compressed metal tubes hundreds of feet below the ocean surface.  WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?  I guess you could say I feel about submarines the same way that Dean feels about flying.

Okay.  Episode starts with a creepy Nazi (redundant, I know) and his French lady lover, named Delphine.  She is very pretty and very sexy, and excited about some weapon he found.  She gets him to let her see it, and then she murders him with her hairpin.

I’m not the only woman (or person with long hair) who has elaborate fantasies/plans about murdering people with their hair accessories, right?

So Delphine steals the weapon and kills her lover, and tells him that pretending to love him was the worst thing she’s had to do in her very difficult life, but that watching him die is the best.  Delphine is a badass, and I already love her, so we know she’s a dead woman, right?

I didn’t really like the “The Men of Letters send their regards.”  I know it’s a play on Game of Thrones, but it felt weird and stilted.  How about, “The Men of Letters thank you for your service” or something, since this is wartime?  I dunno.  Maybe if she’d said it when she stabbed him in the neck, that would’ve been better.  But maybe that would’ve been too much like Game of Thrones?

In the present, Dean is pissed that Sam drank all their coffee.  Sam has been WORKING, Dean, what the hell have you been doing?  Sexting with Casifer, I bet.  You do look pretty tired for a guy who slept in his own bed, after all.  Sam is looking for a way to stop Amara.  Sam has discovered the Nazis had a whole branch dedicated to evil archeology, and that they claimed to have found a weapon that would win the war.  Dean points out that they didn’t win, and Sam says it was stolen.  It turns out that Delphine was the Nazis’ suspect, but they never found her.  Sam thinks she was a lady Men of Letters.

Of note: Dean has no idea what “Une Femme des Lettres” means.  Jesus fuck, Dean.  You must be tired.  You’re smarter than that.

Unless he’s just fucking with Sam because Sam drank all the coffee.  Let’s go with that one, as it is both in character and funny.

This leads to the boys searching through the library, and Dean mentioning that he’s surprised the MOL were all about the gender equality, and Sam thinks it was just because it was the 1940s and they needed lady help since men were fighting the war.  I am not going to talk about the sexism and misogyny and whatever because that would take me way too long and probably require flow charts.  I just want to register my displeasure about the whole thing.  But hey, at least the boys are mentioning it, and not me?

Sam and Dean find an accounting of Delphine’s mission, and that she was coming back on the Bluefin, a submarine (of fucking COURSE), but that it went down and the wreckage was never found.  Dean decides they’ll use the angel up their sleeve to time travel back to the sub, grab the weapon, and come home.  So easy!  Nothing at all will go wrong!

Meanwhile, Casifer is hanging out on Hell’s throne, playing Angry Birds or Flappy Bird or some other game with obnoxious music on his iPad.  (Aside: did anyone else expect the throne to be bigger?  And maybe made of skulls?)  A bunch of demons are standing around awkwardly.  They all are wearing suits.  Just once I want to see a demon wearing, like sweatpants or something.  Is this some sort of demon uniform?

Okay, so I realized that it’s Crowley’s throne, and he would never use skulls.  So Casifer isn’t even in Hell, he’s at that asylum.  For some reason I found that funny.  Nobody wants to stay in Hell.

Anyway.  The demons try to get Casifer’s attention, and he tells them he doesn’t care about their problems.  So a lady demon (Simmons?) says she wants to deploy some troops to look for Amara, since they’ve had a coward on the throne too long.

Casifer has Crowley chained up in a “kennel,” which is basically a cage in the wall.  He’s also dressed him in the strangest outfit we’ve ever seen Crowley wear.  It is a thing of beauty, and I laughed so hard when I first saw it that I had to stop the episode, back up, and watch it again.

So Crowley’s in his kennel, wearing what appears to be every dad ever’s vacation outfit, and you KNOW Casifer made that part of the torture.  It’s what Crowley would’ve done, after all.  Remember Meg’s hair?  Crowley bitches at the other demons for being rude and disrespectful.

Casifer lets Crowley out of his cage, and gathers his weapons, which I guess suck, because he sends all the demons away and chats with Crowley.  Crowley thinks that if Casifer thought he could take Amara out, he’d have already done it.  Casifer agrees, calls Crowley “puppy,” and mentions he knows Crowley’s still defiant, plotting his escape.  Duh.

Before they can really get into it, though, Dean calls, and Casifer pretends to be Castiel.

Quick cut to the bunker.  Hey, where’s all the stuff I wrote?  Fuck, this is another episode that was lost in the Computer Crash of June 2016.  Fuck!  That computer crash was the gift that keeps on taking.

Sigh.  Okay.  So, Casifer was aware that Hands of God exist, but assumed they’d all been lost “in the Flood.”  Interesting.  Casifer says he can time travel, and when Sam questions it, makes noises about it being a different system than teleportation.  Dean is so eager for him to be right that they don’t question it, even though they should.  But then Dean says he’s going, because he can’t fight Amara but Sam can.  Casifer promises he won’t leave Dean alone, and Sam relents.  Casifer transports Dean, but Dean’s alone in on the ship.  This part feels like the end of an episode.

Sam’s in the bunker, researching or reading, and Casifer trudges down the stairs, soaking wet.  Sam is aghast, and Casifer explains the ship was warded, so he wasn’t able to get past the hull.  Sam argues he could try and go back earlier, but Casifer shuts that plan down, probably as much from irritation that a puny human outsmarted him (Delphine fucking rocks) as just not wanting to do it.  Casifer is acting very non-Castiel-like, but I will forgive Sam for failing to notice since he’s so worried about Dean.

Back in the 1940s, Dean manages to trick a soldier and steal his uniform, and ends up talking to Delphine in the first five minutes.  See, I like this.  The episode isn’t stalled and we don’t get a lot of garbage about Dean figuring out the past, because Dean Winchester is fucking smart and also badass, and does what he needs to do.

Delphine is in the process of kicking Dean’s ass (nobody else on the ship knew her real name) when they’re caught by the guy he stole the uniform from.  The captain is there, and Dean makes his declaration that he’s a time traveler (you know he loved doing that), and that the ship was going to be attacked by a Nazi warship within the hour.  The captain laughs and starts talking about imprisoning Dean and court marshaling him, but then they are interrupted and he’s told about the approaching Nazi warship.  Man, that captain’s face is so red right now, I bet.

Dean and Delphine are left alone with the one guy while the captain goes to investigate.  I think the guy’s name is Pete, so that’s what I’m going to call him.  Dean and Delphine talk about the warding and that Dean needs the weapon for a holy war in the future.  During this, Pete continually interrupts to ask for future information, like the next president and who wins the World Series in 1944.  This always happens in movies and TV shows with time travel, and I have never understood why this is helpful information for proving you are a time traveler.  There’s no way to verify it, at least not for awhile, so Dean could say anything he wanted.  The Nazi warship thing was more proof-worthy, I think.

Delphine shows Dean the weapon, and tells him the little stubby wooden thing used to be the Arc of the Covenant.  Oh my GOD, you guys.

Remember that episode from the sixth season?  I think it might’ve been Caged Heat, but I’m not sure and I’m not going back to look.  But it was the one where Sam was still soulless and trying to get Cas’s attention, so he tells him they found an artifact that burned some peoples’ eyes out, and then made fun of Cas when he asked where it was, because it was the plot of Raiders.  IT WAS REAL, SAM!  HE SHOWED UP TO HELP BECAUSE IT WAS REAL, AND YOU’RE LUCKY HE’S NOW THE DEVIL BECAUSE OTHERWISE HE’D BE THROWING IT BACK IN YOUR FACE!

Okay, I’m done now.  But that was so exciting, to get that confirmation!  At least for me it was.

Dean is excited about going “full on Raiders,” even if Delphine and Pete have no idea what he means.  She cautions him not to touch it, because touch activates it and no human can stand that much power for very long.  Then she wraps it up, pushes the box toward Dean, and heads off to clear the rest of the ship’s warding.

Back in the future, Casifer and Sam are researching.  Sam finds a spell that can blast through angel warding, and they’re excited for a minute, till he continues reading and realizes that only an archangel is strong enough to perform the spell.  Casifer twitches, and he oh-so-casually says they might as well try it, since it’s the only option.  Sam refuses, though, because it’s a waste of time as far as he’s concerned, and he walks away to do more research.  Casifer looks down at the book, considering.

Pete quietly questions Dean about the end of the war, which Dean tells him won’t happen till 1945.  They discuss that the ship is going to go down, and before things can get too melancholy, Delphine reappears holding a knife.  She pulls down her top a little to show the warding carved over her heart, and tells Dean he has to kill her.

Pete is horrified, and Dean explains he doesn’t have to kill her, just cut through the warding to break it.  Delphine says that’s not the case with this one, though: it’s tied to her heart and her blood, and the only way to undo it is to kill her.  Damn, girl.  Way to be through!  Dean takes the knife and prepares to do so, clearly reluctant, but before he can, the ship jolts and the lights flicker.

Some boring stuff with the captain and the crew tells us what we already know: the ship is under attack.  Dean and Delphine make their way to the cockpit (what’s it called on a ship?) and it turns out the warship’s being captained by her not-so-dead German lover, who tells her that he’s part of the Thule Society and that she should’ve burned his body.  Well, fair enough.  He did look like a ghoul even when he was alive, to be honest.  He then addresses the crew: he’ll make sure they’re all treated fairly as POWs if they give up Delphine and her cargo.  And if you can’t trust an undead Nazi, really, who can you trust?

There is a joke in there somewhere about Trump, but I’m not going to look too hard for it.

Sam comes out from – somewhere, I don’t know, the bathroom maybe, to find Casifer chopping up what might be a tamarind.  He’s got a bunch of other ingredients spread out.  Sam asks what the hell he’s doing, and Casifer says he’s going to try the spell.

So I should be paying attention to why Casifer is trying to convince Sam that he can do the gathering spell when he’s supposedly not an archangel, but I am super distracted because one of the spell ingredients is apparently a brain.  Like, there is a fucking BRAIN sitting on Casifer’s worktable, and Sam sees it and doesn’t mention it AT ALL, which means he knew they needed it.

I have questions.  Whose brain is that?  Did it have to be a specific brain that the Men of Letters just happened to have, or will any old brain do?  Is it human or animal or something else?  WHY DO THE MEN OF LETTERS HAVE RANDOM BRAINS JUST HANGING OUT IN THEIR STORAGE AREA?

It is suspiciously clean.  Maybe it’s just a model of a brain?  But that makes even less sense.

Ahem.  Sam tells Casifer that he remembers that time Cas used Bobby’s soul to power up for time travel, and offers to let Casifer do the same.  This part is great, because you can see Casifer sorting through Cas’s memories, and he looks so surprised, like he’s thinking he hadn’t realized his baby brother was such a kinky motherfucker.  Then Sam says he trusts Cas, even though the “procedure” could be fatal, and that would be super sweet if it was actually Cas he was talking to, or if Cas could hear him.

Casifer laughs and laughs, and then rips off his (metaphorical) mask.  Sam nearly pisses himself, and then Casifer takes the soul power and does a hilarious imitation of Cas’s voice.  People, this whole Casifer experiment has been wonderful, not the least because Misha Collins is doing such a fantastic job.  Like, whenever Casifer is on screen, I’m just sitting there, grinning like an idiot, wondering what he’ll do next.

But the threat to Sam’s life gets Castiel’s attention, and he manages to overpower Lucifer and talks to Sam briefly, saying he did want the possession (which, duh, angels can only possess after consent) and that they need Lucifer to rescue Dean.  I guess then he uses Lucifer’s power to time travel back, or lets go and for some reason Lucifer decides not to kill Sam.

Back in the 1940s, the captain and his crew promise Delphine they’d never give her up to the Nazis, because their orders were to see her home safely.  It’s a nice little moment, and bittersweet because we know they’re all going to die anyway.  Delphine and Dean confer about his “ride” and she says she’s going to use the Hand of God to blast through the warding and destroy the Nazi ship.  She takes it out and holds it, and starts to glow with a brilliant white light.  After a minute or so, she hands the Hand (ha) over to Dean, who wraps it in the cloth.  Everybody watches, and as she starts to go nuclear, Casifer appears beside Dean.  He watches for a second too, looking shocked, and then puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder and they’re back in the bunker.

Sam, still on the floor, sees them return and tells Dean it’s not Cas.  Casifer’s all, oops!  Then he tosses Dean into the wall and picks up the Hand, all excited, but finds out immediately that it’s a “one shot deal,” as Dean puts it.  Casifer tosses it aside and approaches Dean, all pissed and scary, but Sam’s drawn the banishing sigil and manages to banish Casifer before he can do anything.

Later, they sit by a broken pier.  I don’t know what the significance of that is.  I assume there are lakes in Kansas?  I mean, obviously there must be, unless Sam drove Dean hundreds of miles to some coastline so he could properly brood.  They chat about what happened, and how Cas said yes.  Dean’s in denial about his boo wanting the possession, and they agree they’re going to find him and save him.  Then he asks what happened to the Nazi ship, and at first I was annoyed because I thought he was referring to the Bluefin and we know it went down.  But then I realized what he was talking about.  Apparently, the Nazi ship went down too, but they found the wreckage, and it was like something had blown a huge hole into the insides.  So while Delphine couldn’t save the Bluefin and her crew, she did manage to take out the Nazis.  Dean sits there and stares off into the middle distance, probably contemplating the raw power of God.  Or maybe he wants a burger.  I don’t know, it’s not really clear.

I just realized that the episode’s title referred to the Bluefin.  I spent more time than I care to say trying to figure out what it meant.  I thought it was a human vessel.

What Jenny’s Watching: Movie Review: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Went to see the new Pirates movie today.  And had some thoughts!

1. Holy shit, this is dark. Right out of the gate, a kid committing suicide so he can see his dad?  I was really excited here, because this is some deep shit and I was hoping we’d be exploring it.  (Me from the future: ha ha ha!)
2. Will is all Davy Jones’ed up, which is confusing, because I thought the whole barnacle thing was because Davy Jones broke his pact with Calypso to ferry souls to the beyond. But then he’s all worried about the rest of his crew finding out Henry was aboard, like you’re the fucking CAPTAIN, Will.  What the fuck is this bullshit?
3. This is supposed to be two years after the end of At World’s End, or at least the bonus scene where Will came back after his ten years at sea. He looked fine then.  Why the starfishface?  I am so confused.
4. I suppose we’re retconning the whole thing into a terrible curse.
5. I mean, yeah. It was basically a curse, but it was also to save his life, and now everyone’s acting like that didn’t happen.  Or at least I feel like this is a retcon.
6. Henry ends up back in his tiny boat, and then we jump another nine years, and Henry’s now an officer with the British Royal Navy, which I can’t fucking believe Elizabeth supported.
7. Know what else I can’t believe? Where the FUCK is Elizabeth?
8. But whatever, moving on, they’re about to sail into something called the Devil’s Triangle, and Henry freaks out and tries to warn his captain. His captain is an assmunch, however, so he convicts him of treason without even a court martial (seriously, fuck this guy and his lack of due process) and has him tossed into the brig.
9. Henry fights pretty well, and I really, really wanted someone to ask who taught him, and for him to respond, “My mother.” What can I say, I love me some badass Elizabeth Swann.  But nobody does, because we can’t fucking acknowledge awesome characters from the past, because that would put a bit of a damper on the more mediocre characters of now, I guess.
10. This kid isn’t really all that bad, honestly. He even looks enough like Orlando Bloom that I buy he’s their kid.
11. Then, of course, they sail into the Devil’s Triangle, and Captain Assmunch and his crew are promptly murdered by a CGI’ed version of Javier Bardem and his CGI crew. Ha, that’s what you get!
12. CGI Bardem heads down to the brig, and chats with Henry about Jack Sparrow, because for some reason there are about a billion wanted posters of Jack Sparrow down there. He leaves Henry alive to tell the tale, and gives him a message for Jack about his magic compass.  Javier Bardem is a better actor than this role deserved, honestly.  This CGI looks so shitty when you compare it to the undead pirates from Curse of the Black Pearl, and that movie came out fourteen years ago.
13. Jesus Fucking Christ, I feel old.
14. Anyway! Now we meet Carina Smyth, a lady condemned to die because she’s a witch, except she’s actually a scientist, and she picks the lock on her cell and punches the priest there to give her Last Rites.  I’d say that’s rude, but really, fuck that guy.  Keep being awesome, Carina!
15. So she runs through the town, escaping. This is supposed to be in St. Martin, which I was told by someone I went with looks nothing like St. Martin.  I think this was filmed in Australia, not in the Caribbean.
16. The town is dedicating a special bank, with an impenetrable vault. They talk and talk about how the vault is so awesome and nobody will ever get into it, for sure, and obviously Jack is snoozing in the vault, we all know this, right?
17. God, I wish they’d stop trying to top his entrance in Curse of the Black Pearl. I get it, but it isn’t going to happen.
18. At this point I should mention I’m pretty sure that Jack’s extreme drunkenness was added in as a thing in post because Johnny Depp was apparently drunk the whole time he was filming this. I know he’s an actor and Jack Sparrow is always drinking rum, but it seemed way too real.
19. Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen more of Will? And again I ask, where the fuck is Elizabeth, anyway?
20. I WAS PROMISED ORLANDO BLOOM AND KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, DAMMIT.
21. Okay, calming down. Jack’s crew drag the whole bank through the town (just suspend your disbelief that the horses wouldn’t have dropped dead), and he runs into Carina, who he is a jerk to, but they both manage to escape separately.
22. Oh, and Carina also wanders into an astronomer’s shop (I think), and fixes the guy’s telescope. He tries to shoot her, because this movie could’ve been subtitled “Yeah Right There’s No Patriarchy.”
23. So Jack pratfalls into an escape, and it’s funny and the action sequence is good, but it all seems like a copy of something better we’ve already seen.
24. But then! All the gold from the vault ended up on the streets of St. Martin, so Jack’s crew deserts him because he’s down on his luck and doesn’t even have a real ship.
25. Even Gibbs! I think that was the most emotional resonance I felt the during most of the movie, Gibbs walking away from Jack.
26. So Jack wanders through St. Martin and ends up covered in mud in a literal pigsty, and trades his magic compass for a bottle of rum.
27. Oh, this was a little funny: the wanted posters are all over the bar, and the bounty was crossed out to be steadily lower until it was like a dollar or something. That did make me laugh.
28. When he trades it, the whole bar shakes, and we see the Devil’s Triangle breaking up. CGI Bardem and his crew have escaped, but are still creepy CGI undead.
29. Jack wanders away and someone shoots his bottle of rum, and he’s captured and immediately sentenced to hang at dawn, like what the FUCK was happening with the British and their due process?
30. Whatever, the important part of this is that Henry’s nearby, and he hears them call Jack, Jack Sparrow.
31. Wait, maybe something happened first? I think that Henry was in a medical ward, and some new Captain Assmunch declared he would be killed for treason because of his coat being ripped, I guess because coats never rip ever, and most especially not when someone’s involved in a massive shipwreck.
32. Oh, and Carina was there too, disguised as a nun, and helps him escape, even though her totally logical and scientific mind thinks he’s crazy. She tells him about her map and the blood moon, and says she’ll help him find the Trident if he can secure a ship and a crew.
33. Yes, that happened first. So then it’s the next morning, we have a totally unnecessary cameo by Paul McCartney nonsensically singing a Rod Stewart song, and then Jack and Carina are to be killed first thing.  Henry watches from a bell tower as Carina starts to lecture everyone (she is way less fun than Lizzie), and then swoops in and totally fucks up his rope swing.
34. Oh, and sorry: he met Jack the night before, and Jack was pretty horrified to be confronted with a new Turner on a mission, and described Will as a “cursed eunuch” and wow I miss the easy back and forth between Johnny and Orlando. He also says lots of gross, inappropriate things about Henry’s mom, but funny enough, Henry’s mom never mentioned Jack!
35. I find that hard to believe, but then, I also find it hard to believe that Elizabeth Swann, Pirate King, would just sit on her island and wait for Will rather than actively try to find a way to release him from the curse and bring him back.
36. Or at least spend her time at sea, killing evil people, and slipping notes for Will into their pockets and occasionally drowning herself so she could see him. Henry had to have gotten that idea from somewhere.  I would’ve much rather seen that movie than what we ended up with.
37. So anyway, back to what we have. Henry’s rope trick was a diversion, and Jack’s deserter crew comes to the rescue (because Henry paid them)!  It’s another action sequence and it’s fun and funny, and they all get away to Jack’s barely-a-ship, which they are thrilled to discover actually floats.
38. It’s called the Dying Gull. The Black Pearl is still trapped in a bottle from the fourth movie that I refuse to even acknowledge because it was stupid.
39. They set sail and trap Henry and Carina, who argue pointlessly. Jack then pretends to kill Henry to get Carina to admit she likes him, and also to tell them about the special map she has.
40. I just don’t see the chemistry between these two kids. Or rather, I just don’t buy that they like each other that way.  In the first film, it was well established that Will had a big crush on Elizabeth, and probably had for years.  And Orlando Bloom played that puppy love so believably.  The whole “I’m in love with you” thing with these two who literally just met a day ago seems rushed and pretty cheap.
41. Where was I? Oh, yeah.  Speaking of cheap, there’s an unfunny joke about Carina being a horologist.  She’s using a watch to calculate the position of the stars, which will lead them to the island where the Trident is.
42. In the meantime, we catch up with Barbossa, who’s been living the good life as a pirate admiral. He finds out that Salazar is destroying his fleet, and then somehow they end up caught by him, and Barbossa makes a deal that he will give him Jack within two days.
43. I’d have asked for longer, but whatever. Also, Barbossa somehow has Jack’s compass.
44. They get up to the sunrise of the last day and still no Jack, so to buy some time Barbossa tricks Salazar into telling his tale: he was a Spanish navy guy or something, and spent his life killing pirates because a pirate killed his daddy. Then he had killed all the pirates, but it turned out that was wrong, because a young Jack was on a ship and tricked him into the Devil’s Triangle.
45. I originally thought that young Jack was CGI’ed Johnny Depp, and it was creepy and distracting, but then my brother (one of the people I saw the movie with) said it was an actor made up to look like young Johnny Depp. I can’t find evidence of either online, but I’ll admit I didn’t look that hard.
46. So Jack is called Jack Sparrow because he was in the lookout and looked like a little bird, and he got his compass from a dead guy on that same ship. After they tricked Salazar into the triangle, all the crewmembers gave him stuff, which turned out to be his accoutrements, like the hat and the jewelry and whatever.  Did we really need to know that?
47. I mean, it’s not like it’s been a burning question for me since 2003. “Where did he get his hat???  I MUST KNOW!”
48. Also, isn’t he wearing that hair thing he had to give up in the third movie to release Calypso?
49. By the time Salazar is done telling this long ass story, they’ve found Jack’s ship.
50. Jack’s tiny crew ends up mutinying because I think Jack told them to, and Carina, Henry, and Jack are on a tiny rowboat headed toward an island.
51. I do like that Carina sees the ghosts and immediately accepts them, even though she’s freaking out that her whole scientific worldview has been shaken. I was afraid she’d keep trying to find logical explanations for the supernatural and that would’ve been very tiresome.
52. Action sequence! They escape to the island and it turns out the ghost pirates can’t step on land or they turn into black mist.  So they’re safe, as long as they stay on land.
53. Except they are idiots and get captured almost immediately. At first they think they’re to be hanged, but it turns out that some old frenemy of Jack’s is on the island, and forcing him to marry his “comically” ugly sister.
54. Barbossa shows up, and kills the frenemy, then declares he wants to help Jack. I can’t remember why.  It doesn’t matter.  He uses Blackbeard’s broken sword and breaks the bottle the Black Pearl is in, and they have a new ship.
55. Night sequence where we establish that Carina is Barbossa’s daughter. Oh, and she’s steering the ship because she’s got the compass.  She also expresses surprise when Barbossa tells her he knows about stars.  The man’s a sailor, Carina, how do you think he fucking navigates?
56. So, wait a second. Why did they need the map if they had Jack’s compass?  I mean before, sure.  But with the compass, why do they have to read the map?  It’s supposed to lead you to whatever you want most, and for Carina, it’s the island.
57. Jack and Barbossa have a somewhat stupid conversation about how “Smyth” is an uncommon name, and pull the other one, writers. I think Jack might be tied up during this too?  This was to establish that Jack knows Carina is Barbossa’s daughter, but they could’ve done it in a less stupid way.
58. They make it to the island, which is actually very cool – it’s supposedly a representation of the heavens, and the visual from above with them walking on it was awesome.
59. They find where they are supposed to go, and when Carina puts the ruby from the diary in place, there’s a big boom and you know the island’s going to split in half, but these idiots don’t bother moving so of course Jack and Carina end up in the caves below.
60. Oh, and Henry was captured by Salazar, and Salazar possesses Henry, which allows him to walk on land. This is dangerous, somehow, the crew tells him.
61. Jack and Carina find the Trident, and are waylaid by Salazar-in-Henry (Senry?). They fight, and then Senry gets the Trident and also gets depossessed.
62. Another action sequence, which ends with Henry and Carina breaking the Trident. Glad Henry did something useful, finally.  He’s clearly more like Will than Elizabeth.
63. That was a little joke I just made, by the way.
64. Then the Pearl is on the edge of the ocean between the divide, and the anchor chain is dangling down to help them up. Barbossa’s riding the anchor (…sorry) and I honestly thought it was Cotton at first.  So he scoops up Henry, Jack, and Carina, and then Salazar, who is human now, catches a ride.  They all climb, and Carina finds out that Barbossa is her father, and then he falls to his death and takes Salazar with him in order to save her.
65. I laughed so hard in the theater, you guys. He just sort of drifted down to the ocean.  Seriously, that fall to his death took for fucking ever.  GEOFFREY RUSH DESERVED A LESS STUPID DEATH THAN THIS.
66. Alrighty! They get aboard the ship, and Jack, wingman extraordinaire, hands Henry Carina’s map diary so he can give it back to her.  They chat and I guess are in love (boring) and Carina says her last name is Barbossa, now, because fuck her mom.
67. Eh, I guess it’s touching?
68. Okay, they go back to what I assume is Shipwreck Island, and meet a de-cursed Will, who hugs Henry and meets Carina. Henry wants to tell him the story, and Will is excited to hear it, till Elizabeth just fucking appears over a hillside.
69. She’s dressed weird, too. Like a lady, with the fancy skirts and the hair and so forth.  Why?
70. Will sees her, she sees him, and they run to each other and embrace, and he kisses her for what’s probably the first time in fifteen years.
71. I’m not crying shut up you’re crying! THIS IS THE MOVIE I PAID TO SEE!
72. It would’ve been better if Elizabeth had gone on the search party with them, though. I refuse to believe she just sat there and waited!
73. Also I’m surprised there was no scene between Elizabeth, Will, and Jack. They parted mostly friends.
74. The only way any of this works for me is if Keira and Orlando both saw what a hot mess Depp’s been in the last few years, and said, “Eh, no thanks” to filming with him.
75. The movie ends with Jack on the deck of the Black Pearl, watching Will and Elizabeth through his spyglass. He makes a joke about love and then they make sail for their next destination, which is probably whatever the next movie is going to be.
76. Overall, it wasn’t a terrible movie. When compared to the rest of the franchise it was pretty weak, but as a standalone it was fun.  It’s difficult to divorce Depp’s behavior from his character, so that kind of killed it for me.  As I’ve said more than once, I really wish we’d gotten more Elizabeth.  She didn’t have to be a main character, but not having her there really took me out of the story, because as her character was previously established, she wouldn’t have sat this out.  You can argue that time and motherhood and blah blah blah, but we weren’t told any of that.  It was like she barely existed at all until the end there.
77. Well, that’s it for me. I’m off to watch the original trio and remember a time when I still liked Johnny Depp.

Supernatural: Love Hurts

So I didn’t hate this episode, I just didn’t like it as much as most of this season.  I thought the monster was fine, the story was okay, but the acting just really pulled me out of the episode.  Also, it was apparently written by the same people who were responsible for that horrific haunted kidney monstrosity, which means it’s already down a grade in my book.

We see a man and a woman getting ready for a date.  The man goes to let the babysitter, Staci, in, and it turns out they’re having an affair.  She goads him into making out with her right in front of the nanny cam, and then complains that he hasn’t left his wife.  Oh, honey.  I know you’re young, but in this day and age that doesn’t give you an excuse to be this fucking stupid.

For the record: he says he’s going to tell his wife that night.  On Valentine’s Day.  During what is clearly intended to be a romantic date.  Yes, I’m certain that is exactly his plan.

So the couple leaves and Staci just hangs on the couch, watching television.  Someone comes in from the back door and startles her, but she relaxes when she sees who it is.  It’s clearly the dude, who is called Dan.  He gives her a massage and then rips out her heart.  I’d say it was nice knowing you, Staci, but it wasn’t.

Now, Sam is in the bunker’s kitchen, and Dean stumbles in with a visible hickey on his neck.  They joke with each other about Dean’s promiscuity and Sam’s prudishness.  It’s cute.

One of three things happened here.  One, Dean went out to a bar, picked someone up, and is just now getting home.  Two, he went out to a bar, picked someone up, and brought them back to the bunker.  Or three, he had sex with Lucifer.  Now, he doesn’t look like a man who slept in a stranger’s bed and did the walk of shame.  He’s too rested.  I’m also vetoing the idea that he brought someone home to the bunker, because no matter how cute he is, no way would anybody willingly go into that creepy-looking likely death trap.  Also, Sam would’ve thrown a fit.  So I’m calling it.  Dean struck out at a bar, came home after Sam fell asleep, and called Casifer.  Don’t tell me Lucifer wouldn’t be all about that, if only just to fuck with both Cas and Dean’s heads.

Anyway.  Sam’s found the case, which is in Ohio (of fucking course this fucked up monstrosity of an episode would take place in Ohio).  They head out and don their ever-present FBI suits (screaming forever) and talk to Dan and his wife Melissa.  Melissa tells them nothing was missing except the nanny cam, and Dan is about as good at hiding things as Tom Keen was, which is to say, not at all.  Sam and Dean decide to question him at work, when he’s not with his wife, and see if that helps.

Sam goes to the morgue to see the body while Dean goes to see Dan.  The pathologist is confused, because usually she’d say it was an animal attack, but Staci was indoors and there aren’t claw marks or anything else in the house.  Apparently whoever killed her was strong enough to push her heart through her back before they pulled it out of her chest.

We check in with Dirty Dan, who is sadly scrolling through Staci’s Facebook page.  Oh, if you’re keeping score?  Dan clearly didn’t tell Melissa about his affair.  Dean comes in and Dan immediately confesses that he was having an affair with Staci, and he took the nanny cam because he was going to wipe it because of the makeout session, but when he watched the recording he saw himself enter the house and murder Staci.  He and Dean watch, and Dean tells Dan he believes him, but that he shouldn’t tell anyone about the video.

At the motel, the boys watch the video, and see the telltale shine in “Dan’s” eyes, so decide they’re after a shifter.  At the same time, a pair of jean-clad legs get off the elevator at Dan’s office, and we see it’s Staci (duh), and she murders Dirty Dan the same way she died.

Sam and Dean head to Melissa’s and confront her.  Surprise, though – she knew about the affair, but swears she didn’t kill him.  They make her touch a silver pen, and nothing happens, so she’s telling the truth.  At least about not being a shifter, that is.  They head out, disappointed and fresh out of leads, but oh guess what?  Melissa hurries around the house and pulls out a box, then starts shredding stuff in the disposal.  She calls a mystery someone and says the spell went wrong and she needs this person to call her back ASAP.

I’m really trying to make this interesting, but honestly, it wasn’t.  Did anybody believe that Melissa killed Staci and Dan?

So anyway.  That night she’s drowning her sorrows in some wine, and someone knocks on the door.  This is the worst fucking acting on the planet, you guys.  This scene is such fucking garbage.  Dan’s at the door, and he tries to get in, and smashes the door like “Here’s Johnny!” except nope, nobody cares at all, and Melissa just stands there and screams like the stupidest fucking bitch on EARTH, like bitch do you SEE the vast expanse of hallway behind you?  It leads right to your kitchen, and then to your living room with the sliding door.  And yet, it takes her an ETERNITY to figure this out.  She gets away, but no one cares.

Sam is alone in the hotel room, as Dean has gone out for the evening.  Yeah, you can’t exactly call Casifer for a quick hookup when you’re sharing a room with your brother.  But Dean returns with takeout, and asks Sam what a “dad bod” is.  Dean, you really need to stop hitting on much younger girls.  You are extremely hot, but in your thirties.  At some point it does become a little creepy.

God, I really did hate this episode, don’t I?  I’d rather re-review the Jody and Claire one.  And the next one is so good, too!  And I don’t hate filler episodes.  I mean, technically the Jody and Claire one was filler.  Also later this season “Red Meat” and “Safe House” are excellent too.  So you can be a filler episode and still be good.  This one just wasn’t good, in my opinion.  I didn’t care about the cheating assholes, I didn’t really care about Melissa, I didn’t care about the villain.

Okay, let’s get this over with.  Melissa shows up at their hotel.  I have no idea how she found them, and I don’t care.  She tells them that she knew about the affair, but still loved Dan, and performed what was supposed to be a “return to love” spell.  She’s managed to bring them the spell, which Sam identifies as a curse, not a spell, and one that’s spread through kissing.  So it’s the magical equivalent of a venereal disease, I guess.  Okay, that’s sort of funny.

Melissa got the spell from her hairdresser.  They prepare to head over to her shop, but Dan arrives.  Dean kisses Melissa, which stalls the curse, and they escape.  At the shop, Dean and Sam play rock paper scissors to see who will investigate the curse and who will go looking for – other evidence?  I guess?  Dean wins for the first time ever, which means he’s going to the tarp-lined room and Sam is researching.  Sam discovers it’s a creature called a qareen, which takes the form of whoever the person most loves, and kills them.  To kill the qareen, you have to stab the heart, which isn’t in its body.  So it’s Pirates of the Caribbean.  Sam is lucky he doesn’t have to take the qareen’s place.

Oh, sorry.  But clearly that’s what happened.  Sonja the witch/hairdresser shows up, and they manage to subdue her and Sam finds the heart and stabs it.  Meanwhile, Dean has confronted the qareen, which has obviously taken Amara’s form.  They chitchat, and she tries to punch him to death, but he tells her that he can fight her since she isn’t actually Amara, and he knows that.  So he basically spends his time dodging her till Sam kills her.

Now, this part is important.  Back at the hotel, Dean finally confesses the Amara bond, and confides in Sam that he doesn’t think he’ll be much help in killing her when the time comes.  Sam tells Dean not to worry, that he’s got this.

The next episode makes up for this bullshit, I swear.

Supernatural: Don’t You Forget About Me

Okay, this is another one that got partially deleted, dammit.  I have learned from my earlier mistakes.

I really liked this episode.  I love Jody, I love Claire, and I love seeing the boys somewhat out of their depth.  So this episode hit all the good stuff for me.

Claire is such an interesting character to me.  I feel bad for her and also happy that she was able to find her place in the world and mostly land on her feet after all the stuff that happened with her parents.  I love her weird relationship with Cas.  I love that she saw the darkness out there and chose to fight against it, rather than run away from it or hide.

So we star the episode in Sioux Falls.  A teenaged couple is at makeout point, and is that even something the kids still do these days?  That idea was old fashioned when I was in high school.  Which was…not that long ago.  I mean, in the relative sense of time and all.  But anyway, so they’re making out, and then get attacked by Claire with a big knife.  She thinks the boy is a monster, but isn’t sure what kind.

Cut to the bunker, and the boys chatting about the recent, relative quiet.  Sam’s found a picture of a squirrel riding an owl, or something, so that tells you how bored he’s been lately.  But guess what Sammy, no more Tumblr for you, Claire calls and says she needs their help with a case!  So they pack their bags and head up to see her.

We see Jody in a car rider line or something, at a high school.  She’s waiting for Alex, and watching Alex talk and flirt with her boyfriend and some friends.  Jody’s clearly very happy that Alex is doing so well.  I guess I’m happy too, but Alex’s storyline never resonated with me like Claire’s did.  I mean, I don’t dislike her or anything.  I just care less about her than I do Jody and Claire.  But anyway, Alex hops into the car, and Jody sees that she’s got something in her backpack.  I think it was condoms or birth control.  Well then.

Jody and Alex get home to find the Impala parked in the driveway.  Jody is mystified by the boys’ appearance, as she’s not currently working a case, and gets irritated when they tell her Claire called.  She invites them for dinner.

The World’s Most Awkward Dinner.  Jody has made chicken and there’s wine for her and the boys.  Alex chats about her day at school and Claire slumps in her seat.  The girls snipe at each other, and OH MY GOD I’m flashing back to high school and the fights my sister and I had with each other.  Alex is the popular one and Claire is the sullen loner and it was just like that for us too!  (One guess which one I was.)  During this, Sam and Dean enthuse about the food and how good it is, and Sam is surprised chicken can taste that good, and that it isn’t in patty or nugget form.

Guys, don’t you have a kitchen?  Wasn’t it established back when you found the place that Dean was a pretty good cook?  Is maybe Dean mad at Sam and being passive aggressive about it by cooking bad food?

Anyway, they talk about Claire’s hunt, and Jody is dismissive, because Claire is basically the girl who cried wolf when it comes to monsters.  Apparently she outed the mayor or the city attorney as a cosplaying vampire fiend, and wow Sioux Falls sounds way cooler than I would’ve anticipated.  She’s also been arrested a few times, and the only reason she isn’t in jail is that Jody is the sheriff.

Alex mocks Claire’s ineffectiveness and weirdness, and in retaliation, Claire brings up Alex’s plan to take boyfriend Henry to some cabin and lose her virginity (little sisters, don’t mess with your big sister, seriously she knows ALL!).  Jody jumps right into the sex talk, and tries to get Sam and Dean to help her.  Jody, you’d be better off calling Crowley and having him assist.  These boys don’t have a great track record when it comes to sex.  Sam’s advice would probably be, “Just don’t, since your partner will either end up dead or evil, or possibly both” and Dean will teach them his best pick up lines.

Okay, now I’m imagining Crowley and Jody giving the girls the sex talk, and I can’t stop laughing.  Remember their fake blind date?  They had great chemistry up until he tried to kill her.

So anyway.  Claire and Dean agree that the dinner is the best one in a long while.  I also love their somewhat antagonistic relationship, too.  Remember that episode when he gave her a gun for her birthday, and Cas gave her a stuffed animal?

Somehow, Dean and Jody end up in the kitchen together.  Dean is somewhat horrified that the monster of the week is birth control, and Jody confides she had no idea how to talk to either of them, or how to handle Claire, who’s skipping all her college classes.  She’s worried that Claire is hiding in hunting and is all alone with no friends, so who best to talk to her about that problem than Sam and Dean?  She’s got a point.  Dean wisely sends Sam in to talk to her.

Claire is sitting at her desk and cuddling the stuffed cat Cas bought her.  Aw.  I wonder if they ever really talk.  I like to think that they text all the time.  God, how weird for Claire, for him to be her dad but not.  We’re lucky she turned out as well as she did, honestly.

Sam gently broaches the subject of her hunting, and Claire is annoyed because she knows Jody set him up to it, but admits she hates college and doesn’t feel like she fits in with Jody and Alex, who have their own mom-daughter thing happening.  She thinks that Alex hates her, which tells me that Alex loves her because teenage sisters always say they hate each other.  My sister and I didn’t start really getting along until my senior year of high school.

Claire also says she won’t give up on hunting, and mulls over the idea of striking out on her own.  Sam doesn’t try to make her stop, which is nice; he simply encourages her to take advantage of the opportunities she’s been presented (stable home, good foster mom, college) and let hunting take a back seat for the moment, since it’s always going to be there.  Claire seems to consider his words.

Back at the school, Alex’s favorite teacher is attacked, and they find him strung up on the flagpole the next day.  Jody is there investigating, as she’s the sheriff, and Sam and Dean come in as FBI agents to assist.  Just one episode where they aren’t fake FBI, it’s all I ask.  I thought Dean hated procedural cop shows!

Claire butts in, and Dean pulls her aside and lectures her about having respect for Jody.  He then intimidates the fuck out of Alex’s boyfriend by just staring at him.

You know, this episode, even more than any of the Ben episodes, really made me see what Dean would be like as a dad.  I half-wish that Ben had somehow stuck around, or Emma from a few seasons ago, because I think Dean as a dad is pretty awesome.

So Sam and Dean investigate at the school.  Dean comes up empty, while Sam thinks the janitor was creepy.  Meanwhile, Henry tries to comfort Alex, who tells him that there are bad things out there, and that she wasn’t always a good person.

For some reason, Sam and Dean have split up, and Sam is with Claire at the house doing research while Dean and Jody…I don’t know, I guess keep looking for clues.  They reconvene at the house, and share information: the fibers at the scene of the crime were asbestos, and also the janitor’s social security number is fake.  Sam and Dean make to go talk to him again.  Claire wants to go, but Jody says she can’t since they’re meeting with the registrar at the local college, to try and talk Claire back in.

Claire and Jody argue while they’re getting ready to leave, and are attacked by a vampire – the janitor.  Jody managed to call Dean and alert him of their distress, but by the time the guys are back at the house, they’re both gone.  Oh, and they find out from some of Jody’s staff that the janitor’s family is all dead, and they were from the same town Alex is from.  Dean rushes off to find Alex and Sam heads to the janitor’s house.

Alex and Henry are on a date, which appears to be just sitting in his car outside a fast food place or a gas station.  Nice moves, jackass.  Alex is very upset, and tells Henry he shouldn’t be around her since she’s not a very nice person.  Henry apparently agrees, and attacks her, because he is also a vampire.

Dean is too late (how did he know where to find her anyway?), and finds her cell phone by a dumpster.  He calls Sam, and they decide all three women were likely taken to a closed school building (being repaired because of asbestos, like these geniuses with the full backing of the Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department didn’t have that information already), and decide to meet there.

This is indeed where they are.  The janitor has Jody and Claire tied up, and Henry brings Alex in, who demands to know what’s going on.  Well, it’s payback, in the “revenge is best served ice cold” kind of way.  See, the janitor used to be human, and he was turned because of Alex – he’d met her one night and tried to help her get home, but she’d been acting like bait for her vampire family.  He then killed his family.  Despite this, he claims he’s a good person who deserves his revenge.  Sorry, gotta disagree with you there, guy.  Being turned wasn’t your fault, but killing other people definitely was.

So the janitor’s plan was to turn the most popular boy in school into a vampire and have him pretend to like Alex and be her boyfriend.  The he killed her favorite teacher, and now he’s going to kill her family – Jody and Claire.  Janitor grabs Claire and threatens her, and Alex begs them not to hurt her, even offers to work with them the way she did with her old vampire family.  Janitor bites Claire, but doesn’t kill her.

Sam shows up and is promptly attacked and incapacitated by Janitor and Henry.  Sam, the guy who beat Lucifer and nearly closed the Gates of Hell all on his own, is incapacitated by a couple of newbie vampires.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen!  Lucky for him, Claire managed to get out of her bindings and attacks Janitor, and Dean arrives right on time to decapitate him.  Sam gets up and subdues Henry, and Alex punches him for being a dickbag and Claire chops off his head.

The next morning, Claire and Alex try to make breakfast for Jody, who has a broken leg.  Jody assures Alex that what happened wasn’t her fault, and they are a family.  Claire promises she’ll be careful hunting, and Alex says she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to live in that world again.  Sam warns her that other vampires might come after her too, and then he and Dean are on their way with all of Jody’s leftover ribs.

When did Jody have time to make ribs?

Supernatural : Into The Mystic

Happy New Year!  I was looking over my posts from last year and wow, I really didn’t post that much, did I?  First I was underemployed, and then I was busy, and writing my own stuff too (I still might share some of it…maybe).  I’m going to try to post more this year, and even get back into book reviews.  But I do want to finish the Supernatural posts too, since this year I’ve decided I’m going to finish things I start!  So here goes.

We start the episode in Ireland, where a man is playing that “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” song from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.  His wife comes home and he dances with her, and says their baby loves the song.  Well, it’s a great song, so the baby clearly has good taste in music.

You know, sometimes I remember that Patrick Swayze is dead, and it makes me really sad.  And then I remember that Prince and David Bowie and all sorts of other amazing people are dead too, but at least we got to be alive when they were, and experience their talent.  So that’s something, right?

Anyway.  The wife goes to put her groceries or whatever away, and the husband starts to hear this high pitched shrieking.  He starts bashing his head into the wall to make it stop, and the wife obviously knows what’s going on, so she starts a spell to kill the creature.  The husband ends up dying, and the wife does destroy the creature (or maybe just send it away), but the wife dies, too.

I wasn’t clear on that originally.  I don’t know if she died from blood loss or just the power of the spell she was doing.  Regardless, we focus on the baby for a minute before heading into the opening credits.

Okay, so – why did this happen?  I mean, considering what we find out later in the episode about the creature and how it chooses its victims – why?  It’s a good opener, but looking back, it’s pretty confusing.

Sam’s sleeping in the bunker, or trying to at least.  He’s replaying his conversation with Lucifer about how he didn’t even look for Dean when Dean was in Purgatory.  He wakes up from a restless sleep, and Dean has a possible case at a retirement home only fifteen minutes away.  One of the residents was found with his head bashed in, but no signs of entry from the outside.  Sam is reluctant because they haven’t heard anything about the Darkness or from Cas since they put Lucifer back in the Cage (ha ha ha!), but Dean dismisses his concerns, saying Cas is fine.

I’m surprised Casifer didn’t show up at the bunker earlier than this.  I guess his original plan was just to abandon the boys altogether.

Speaking of our new favorite character, Casifer is hanging in a park, watching kids on a playground and feeding the ducks.  Ladies and gentlemen, the Serpent, the Prince of Darkness, the Adversary and the King of Babylon, spends his weekends on nature hikes.

He encounters another angel, who has the worst poker face in the history of creation about seeing Casifer.  He lures the other angel deeper into the forest.  The other angel, quite stupidly, follows, apparently thinking he can get the jump on Casifer.

They have a conversation about how Casifer is there to save them all and will stop the Darkness.  Man, Misha Collins really studied Pellegrino’s mannerisms.  It’s like watching Mark as Lucifer, almost.  I mean, I know he’s an actor and it’s his job, but it’s pretty impressive.

So, long story short, the other angel doesn’t believe Casifer can stop the Darkness, or maybe he doesn’t believe Casifer wants to stop the Darkness.  He tries to kill Casifer, who snaps his fingers in his trademark move and explodes the angel.  Seriously, that angel was pretty fucking stupid.  Casifer saunters back off, because he’s not going to let a little killing ruin his peaceful afternoon communing with nature.  Or perhaps it made the afternoon all the more enjoyable.  Casifer is the old dude at the park who sits on the bench all day and just watches nature in between murders.

I now think that Casifer and Raymond Reddington would probably be besties.

The boys are at the retirement home now.  I guess we’re still FBI?  I’m telling you, life would be so much easier for hunters if they just had supernatural cops!  Anyway, they talk to the manager, who says he heard the guys screaming for something to get out of his head, and then they found him dead.

The boys find out the dead man was sued by someone, but the case fell through.  Turns out the plaintiff is dead, so they salt and burn his remains.  But back at the retirement home, the manager is the second victim.

Back at the retirement home, Dean talks to another resident, Mildred, who describes the ghost woman from the cold open.  Sam talks to one of the employees, a girl named Marlene.  She’s hearing impaired and doesn’t give Sam a lot to work with, but then we see her reading the boys’ lips when they talk about their next approach.  They decide it’s a malevolent banshee, who preys on the vulnerable and can only be killed by a gold knife.  Luckily, Dean has one back at the bunker, so they split up so he can head home real quick for supplies.

Must be really nice for them to work a case so close to home!  Back at the bunker, Dean hears a bunch of noise and discovers Casifer in the library, making a mess.  The best part about the scene is Casifer, clearly going through Castiel’s memory and looking for the appropriate way to greet Dean.  He then tells Dean he’s looking for a spell to draw Amara out, and confesses that “he” (Castiel) wasn’t able to kill her when he had the chance.  Dean, wanting his bestie to feel better, tells him about the two times he had the opportunity to kill her and didn’t.

Okay, I take exception to this.  It comes up again later in the season, and I think it’s kind of dumb.  The first time, yes, when she was a teenager, Dean was clearly reluctant to do anything to hurt her, and I don’t know if he would’ve been able to if Crowley hadn’t intervened.  The second time, though?  When she was an adult and she spirited him away to that wilderness area?  He did try, and the angel blade shattered.  I mention this specifically because it’s used later in the season as proof that he can’t or won’t kill her because of their bond.  It’s stupid, because he did try.  I doubt even Dean Winchester could’ve made that angel blade shatter on purpose.  If they really wanted to run with this idea, they should’ve shown him lifting the blade up to her and then being unable to actually deliver the killing blow.

Anyway, moving on!  Dean confesses to Casifer his attraction to Amara, and Casifer is clearly interested in the bond his auntie shares with Dean, though he thinks some of it comes from the Mark itself.  This is interesting, because we know this is actually Lucifer talking to Dean, and Lucifer had the Mark at one point.  He probably is the only person – angel – who could understand Dean’s attraction to Amara, because he’s probably felt it too.  He promises they’ll find a way to defeat her, and then Dean finds his gold knife and heads out, happy about the talk he had with his friend and newly emboldened for the fight with the Darkness.  Aw, poor Dean!  I know I’m really hard on him, but I do love him a lot and I just want him to be happy.  Behind him, Casifer smiles a secret smile.

Meanwhile, Sam is stalking Marlene, who is also stalking Sam.  She traps him in some sort of complicated sigil and comes at him with a gold knife of her own.  Sam convinces her he’s a hunter too, and not the banshee, and Marlene reveals herself to be Eileen Leahy, the baby from the cold open.  The banshee’s shrieking made her deaf, and she was raised and trained by a hunter after her parents died.  Also, her grandfather was a member of the MOL, which explains why her mom knew that spell.  I love it when things make sense!

I mean.  We still don’t know why the banshee targeted her dad specifically.  Was he pining for someone else?  Sure didn’t seem like it in the cold open.  Dammit.  Now that I’m thinking about that it really irritates me.  They could’ve made it make sense very easily: make the mom his sister or some other platonic friend, not his wife, and make him pine for his dead wife while raising their baby.  See?  One sentence and it makes sense.

Dean arrives back, and somehow they’ve decided that Mildred is the next possible victim I guess.  Because her husband’s dead, which makes her unique in this retirement home I guess?  Whatever, moving on.  I like Mildred.  She gives Dean some advice on living a long and happy life, and then Dean hears the shrieks, because of course he does.  Mildred traps the banshee in the sigil, and then Eileen kills it.  Nice!  I like that she was able to get her revenge.

As the boys are leaving, Mildred tells Dean she knows he’s pining for someone.  Really, show?  Pining?  I’d buy that Dean sort of pines for Cas, and I don’t even mean that in the romantic sense, necessarily.  Just him missing his friend and wishing he was around more, but not being able to actually say it because he’s emotionally constipated.  I still don’t buy that Dean pines for Amara.  As I’ve said before, they should’ve developed this more than they did.  It sort of feels like it was an idea they tacked on at the end of the season and then went back and added a few things to clear up continuity.

Dean does tell Sam, when they’re back at the bunker, that Cas seemed weird to him, but Sam dismisses his concern because Cas is always weird.  What Sam wants to know is why the banshee went after Dean, and Dean lies and says that he thinks it’s because it saw his blade.  But later at night, Dean can’t sleep, and he’s clearly thinking a lot of unpleasant thoughts, and Dean you’re really being a hypocrite here, aren’t you?  How many times in the past have you gotten pissed at Sam or Castiel or John or anybody for keeping secrets?  Sam’s demon blood and powers, Cas’s deal with Crowley, John vanishing to hunt Azazel, those are just a few of the times I can recall you getting pissed at someone for having a secret they either weren’t ready to tell, or were keeping to protect you.  And here you are, in the exact same situation, and you’re keeping this from Sam.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Dean, I do.  But this is very hypocritical of him.

Anyway, next time we get Jody and Claire, so that’s going to be a lot of fun.

 

Supernatural: The Devil in the Details

I’m so irritated right now.  I had this review, and a bunch of other reviews, almost done, and then my computer shut down for updates and I wasn’t able to recover them.  So unfortunately most of my hilarious jokes and keen insights have been lost to the sands of time (or the updates of my laptop).  So we’ll have to make due with what I can remember.

The episode opens with Crowley, dressed in footie pajamas, crouched by a large Christmas tree.  Rowena comes down the stairs wearing horrible Christmas attire, complete with reindeer antlers and a blinking red nose.  Some heartwarming Christmas carol plays in the background while Crowley rips into his gifts.  He exults that he got a Funko Pop Sam doll.  Rowena is less than impressed.  Me, too, honestly.  My Funko Pop Castiel has wings, Crowley, and he’ll be gracing the top of my tree this year if I have anything to say about it.  Sorry, Grandma, but your heirloom German pointer thingy might end up displaced.

I can feel Grandma’s irritation all the way from the afterlife.  Maybe they can share.

Someone bangs on the door and knocks it down, and Santa himself waltzes in and murders Crowley with a sharpened candy cane.  Rowena reveals that she’s having a nightmare, and Santa reveals himself to be Lucifer, much to her delight.  So I guess Dana Carvey was right, huh?

That joke made me feel old, but I’m leaving it because it’s hilarious.

Cut to Sam and Lucifer in the Cage.  Lucifer explains that Rowena did help him (duh) and calls her a groupie with a dismissive look on his face.  He’s way more into Sam, you see, and takes him on a walk down memory lane.  The first memory is teenage Sam (Colin Ford!) having a study and makeout session with a girl.  Lucifer says that this is the Sam he remembers, who was bold and take charge and a “solid B on the tongue action” so now I know what some of Sam’s Cage memories are.

The second memory is from the apocalypse, when Sam regained control of his body and jumped into the Cage.  Lucifer says that he respects Sam, but doesn’t like him (he’s sort of prissy), because he stood up to Lucifer and won.  Oh, and we get to relive “assbutt” which makes me really happy.  Oh, Cas.  And we get the sad “Swan Song” music in the background during the flashback, which was kinda WTF – like, were Sam and Lucifer hearing the music?  Did Lucifer include it in the flashback?

The third memory is of Sam and Amelia, talking about – what was her husband’s name?  Dan?  Dave?  Don?  It doesn’t matter.  Lucifer says that this is the worst thing that Sam ever did, when he didn’t look for Dean while he was in Purgatory.  Personally I think it’s the most out of character thing he ever did, but then, this isn’t a review of Season Eight.  Lucifer argues that, because of this and how guilty Sam still feels about it, Sam would do anything to save Dean (and vice versa), even at the expense of the world.  And…he’s not wrong.  Sam gave up the Trials and failed to slam the Gates of Hell (also Season Eight!) because Dean asked him to.  And technically, if he’d gone forward with it, they wouldn’t be in their current predicament.  Abaddon would’ve been locked in Hell along with the rest of them (most likely) and Dean wouldn’t have needed to take the Mark to kill her.

Back in Limbo’s anteroom, Crowley and Rowena argue.  Rowena reveals she’s been working for Lucifer for about a month, and Crowley mocks her for needing a man, since she used to be all about the #girlpower.  Rowena says that Lucifer isn’t a man, he’s perfection.  And…let’s see.  Mark Pellegrino, Jared Padalecki, and (spoiler spoiler bo boiler!) Misha Collins…yeah, I’m going to go ahead and agree with her assessment.

Crowley chokes Rowena, and she gasps out that Lucifer will be angry if she dies, and that he shouldn’t pin his hopes on Sam Winchester’s ability to resist the dark prince.  Crowley backs off, grumbling.

Elsewhere, Dean drives.  He calls Sam and Crowley, and gets their voice mails.  I don’t know why Sam kept his, since Dean was making jokes about waxing, but it was funny so I laughed.  Crowley’s voice mail is a businesslike greeting that includes the words “ginger whore.”  Is that fair?  I never got the feeling that Rowena was particularly promiscuous.

Anyway, while he’s driving, things go blurry, and he ends up having to pull the car over and jump out to vomit.  And it’s gross, and I was eating dinner when I watched this episode, so thanks a lot, Dean.

Castiel’s voice comes to Dean out of a haze.  Turns out that he’s behind him, and says he came as soon as Dean called.  When did Dean call him?  We saw the calls to Sam and Crowley, why not the one to Cas?  Did Dean just pray to him?  Also, how the everloving fuck did Dean know where to go?  Amara transported him to the freaking wilderness and then back again.  There weren’t any landmarks and they didn’t talk about where they were.  Where the fucking fuck are they even?  How did Castiel get there so quick?  Did Dean call him before he left the park to drive to this unnamed location?  He can’t teleport, remember, and his car’s right there behind the Impala.  And when did he get that back, anyway?  Did he steal it back from Metatron?  I didn’t think Metatron had it anymore.

I fucking hate this scene, if it wasn’t already obvious.

Okay, moving on.  Cas says that Dean’s suffering from “smiting sickness,” and that it’s what killed Lot’s wife.  I thought Balthazar’s handy salt crystal thing was what killed her, but WHATEVER, moving on again.  Cas performs an adorable medical examination, ending by telling Dean he needs to take his temperature while holding up a finger.  Dean slaps his hand away, horrified.  You know, Dean, I assumed Cas was just going to touch your forehead, but considering your reaction I now think you thought he was going to do something much, much dirtier.

Castiel says that he can go to the nuke site, since smiting sickness doesn’t affect angels, but that Dean can’t.  Dean tries to argue, but a new wave of nausea hits him, and he says he’s going to check on Sam.  He tells Cas that if Amara’s dead, he wants Cas to bring out her body.  Why, so you can cry over it?

Wow, that was way harsh, Tai.  I need to get out of this scene.  Even Castiel’s adorable medical eval wasn’t enough to save it for me.

Dean ends up back at the bunker, bellowing for Sam.  Crowley calls, and Dean postures, and honestly, Dean, their doing this without you is on you, not them.  You bailed at the eleventh hour to go investigate a maybe, and they needed to move forward.

Crowley clearly told Dean where to go, because next he’s showing up at some dingy warehouse.  Billie’s inside, and she asks for a password, which Dean is extremely reluctant to give.  Finally he sings a verse of “Camptown Races” and oh, Crowley, you sneaky bastard.  Why go for pain when you can go for humiliation, I guess.  I wish we could’ve seen Dean’s face when Crowley told him the password.

Billie introduces herself, and Dean recognizes her name.  She ominously tells him that she doesn’t plan to kill him or Sam, just make sure that when they die, they stay dead.  Then she gives him a large wooden box to give to Crowley.

Crowley and Rowena are still sniping at each other, and a demon comes over to serve them tea.  It’s a ruse, of course, because Crowley poisoned the tea and Dean traps Rowena with the witchcatcher that was in the box.  Crowley says now she has to do what he says, so she’ll do the spell to put Lucifer back in the Cage.

Castiel investigates the forest, and runs smack into the cutest little bean counter Heaven has to offer.  Her name is Ambriel, she’s an angel, she has great hair and glasses, and she makes awkwardly funny about Cas’s penchant for killing his own kind.  I adore her on sight.  Can we keep her, please?

Cas waves his blade around, demanding to know if “they” say he kills angels.  Ambriel suggests they work together, so “no one murders anyone,” and Castiel agrees, putting away his angel blade.  He looks so disappointed that he won’t get to murder anyone!

Castiel says he never wanted his own kind to hate him, and Ambriel assures him that she doesn’t hate him, since they have a lot in common.  They both look awesome in a trench coat, and their names rhyme, after all!  She then tells him that she searched the other end of the forest and didn’t see anything weird.  Cas asks her why, in that case, is it dark in the middle of the afternoon?  (Sidebar: do you think he’s enjoying the first time ever he gets to be the knowing one?)  She admits this is an excellent question, and he raises his eyes to the sky in long-suffering exasperation.  I’ve seen that look on many people’s faces, usually because of something I said or did.  Which makes no sense, because I am both funny and adorable.

Oh my God, you guys, I think I love Ambriel so much because I am her.  So what do you think will happen to the show’s version of me?

Ambriel tells Castiel that she knows the stories about him, and thinks they’re both expendable, since they aren’t heroes, but they do the job, and she thinks there’s nobility in that.  Wow.  She’s self-hating too?  It’s like looking in a mirror, people.  Well, a mirror that reflects a far more attractive person who is also probably younger.  But other than that!

Cas hangs back a bit, saddened by her assessment, and says he’ll catch up.  Really, Cas, you should realize she clearly heard these stories from Metatron, who sucks.  Maybe you could go beat him up again to feel better?  You enjoyed that.

Ambriel stumbles across Amara’s body, and leans over her.  Amara wakes up, grabs her, and eats her.  So I don’t last more than a couple of scenes because Cas needed to contemplate his navel.  Sigh.  Seems pretty fitting, honestly.  Fare thee well, you gorgeous little me!

One effect I really liked: as Amara healed, all the darkness sort of rushed up back inside of her, making it daylight again.  That was pretty cool.  What isn’t cool (maybe we could even call it uncool?  Sorry not sorry!) is the conversation that girlfriend Amara has with ex-boyfriend Cas, where she calls him weak and used up and not even worth the effort to kill.  Sure there, Amara.  You not killing him has nothing to do with how pissed off Dean would be if you did.

You know, she didn’t even try to convince him to join a three way with her and Dean.  Bush league, Amara.  I mean, I know you’ve only been alive for like six months, but that’s the kind of short sightedness I just can’t get behind.  Then she says she has a job for him anyway, and teleports him away.  She leans up against a tree, clearly winded.

Cas appears in the warehouse, gasping and in obvious pain.  Billie barely looks up from her reading.  “Hey,” she says, totally placid.  Maybe she’s mildly annoyed he interrupted her when she got to the good part.  Between her and Rowena, this season is about men who freak out and the women who roll their eyes at them.

Sam and Lucifer are back in the cage (but not the Cage, just the temporary holding cell from last episode).  They are arguing.  Lucifer argues that because Raphael and Gabriel are dead and Michael’s in no shape to be fighting, he’s really their best shot.  He says he knows he’s not the good guy, but he’s willing to pitch in and help out.  He’s so into his pep talk, it’s amazing.  Sam wants to know what happens once the Darkness is defeated.  Lucifer says he’ll move to L.A. and solve crimes (ha!), but Sam thinks he’ll just re-start the apocalypse.  Lucifer is hilariously defensive when he protests that Sam doesn’t really know he’d do that, but then says even if he did, it was better than what Amara had in store for them.  Sam still refuses to say yes, and so Lucifer starts with the physical persuasion portion of the evening.

Castiel has made it down to Limbo, and shows off Amara’s message.  His chest is burned with the words “I am coming.”  What the actual fuck is that?  I mean, yes, I know they are words.  I guess this was just an excuse to see Misha Collins’s chest?  That’s okay by me.  Maybe I should stop complaining when the show tosses half-naked hotties at us.

They hear Sam’s yells, and Dean and Castiel run into Limbo.  Lucifer calls them “Dean and the other one,” even though he makes it clear a few seconds later that he knows Castiel’s name.  He snaps them into the cage, and then decides they need some ambiance.  “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel” starts playing overhead, and Lucifer dances for a few seconds.  It is wonderful.  He looks so happy.  You know how you feel when you run into an old friend, and you didn’t realize how much you missed them till you saw them again?  That’s sort of how I feel about Mark Pellegrino.  I missed you so much as Lucifer, Mark, and I didn’t even realize it till you came back!

The expression on Dean’s face is wonderful.  He literally cannot believe that this shit is happening.  And Castiel attacks.  Lucifer pretends to beat him up while whispering that he’s the only one who can take out the Darkness, and that Castiel knows it.  When Castiel isn’t convinced, he starts beating him up for real.

Anteroom.  Rowena is getting the spell ready.  She cautions Crowley that if Sam says yes, Lucifer will be anchored to earth in his new vessel, and the banishment spell won’t work.

Back to the cage.  Lucifer briefly gets the upper hand.

Anteroom.  Rowena lights the candles.

Cage.  Lucifer beats on Sam some more, then attacks Dean.

Anteroom.  Rowena pulls out an athame and slices her palm.

Cage.  Lucifer has Dean pinned, but Castiel jumps on his back.  Cas is thrown against the bars.  He goes for his blade, but Lucifer steps on it.

Anteroom.  Rowena spits into one of her hands.

Cage.  Lucifer draws back his fist to deliver a killing blow.  “Any last words?” he asks.

Anteroom.  Rowena incants and claps her hands together.

Cage.  A brilliant yellowish light engulfs Lucifer and the cage, and when it fades, Lucifer is gone.

OR IS HE????

Aftermath.  Crowley complains about how big a waste of time that was, and tells the boys he’s keeping Rowena.  Then he kicks them out of Hell.

The boys exit the warehouse, and Castiel tells them to go on ahead.  The boys depart, Sam wondering if Cas is okay.  Dean thinks they all just need time, and Sam wonders if he should have said yes to Lucifer.  Dean disagrees, because he thinks that having Lucifer topside along with the Darkness would’ve been a nightmare.

Back in the Limbo anteroom.  Rowena is massaging Crowley’s temples and looking pained.  Crowley asks why she hates him, and she gives him a long yarn about her terrible upbringing and what he reminds her of when she looks at him.  She ends by saying that if she didn’t hate him, she’d love him, and love is a weakness she’ll never allow herself to feel again.  It’s a great little scene, and excellent work by the actress.

It’s really too bad it’s going to be overshadowed by what’s about to happen.

We hear a noise like a metal door screeching shut, and Crowley looks over to see a suddenly healed Castiel.

BUT.  IT’S.  NOT.  CASTIEL.

Flashback.  Lucifer asks for last words, and Castiel’s are, “Can you really beat her?”  When Lucifer confirms that yes, he can, CASTIEL SAYS YES.

So he is “Casifer” for the duration of this experiment.  That was the portmanteau I liked best.

Casifer flings a terrified Crowley against the wall, and flirts with Rowena.  He frees her from the witchcatcher, confirms she’s the only one who can open the Cage, and snaps her neck.

Fucking DAMMIT, I have to lose two female characters I like in the same episode?  And what’s with murdering all the sassy redheads?  Anna, Abaddon, Charlie, and now Rowena.  Four is a pattern, and I bet I could think up more if I wanted.  You have a problem, Supernatural!

All right, onward.  Since I knew this was going to happen way before I watched the episode, I was afraid that Castiel saying yes was going to be contrived somehow, or make no real sense.  I couldn’t understand why Castiel would ever agree to become Lucifer’s vessel, knowing what he knows about him and how dangerous he is.  But really, I understand it now.  Castiel’s spent the whole season feeling weak and expendable because of Rowena’s spell and the recovery.  In reality, a lot of his feelings of weakness likely stretch all the way back to Season Eight, when he was briefly human, and then with the stolen grace issues.  He hasn’t been a fully powered angel for a really long time.  And being told over and over that he’s not a hero, that he’s not going to help in the fight, clearly wore on him.  And here’s Lucifer, his brother, an archangel who’s faced the Darkness once before, and is ready and willing to face her again.  This is how Castiel feels he can help, and I think it’s a great and subtle look at the process of his thoughts.

Finally: this should’ve been the episode before the fall hiatus, not the last one.  I know it was exciting, with Sam trapped with Lucifer and all, but how much shit would you have lost if the last thing we saw before the break was Casifer, free and ready to bust some heads?

Supernatural: O Brother Where Art Thou?

Hello everyone!  IS THE ELECTION OVER YET???

We start the episode in a park, with a bunch of fundamentalists talking about God’s wrath and fire. Amara’s there, all grown up now, and talks to the leader. She finds out that God gets irritated, and so decides to try to irritate him. She calls down lightning and murders the fundamentalists, then asks the sky, “Well?”

Now to another of Sam’s visions, this time of him in the Cage with Lucifer. When he snaps out of it, he asks God if what he’s seeing is really what God wants. A nearby bush catches fire.

Dean and Sam argue about Sam’s visions and seeing Lucifer. Or rather, they discuss it very loudly. Dean tries to argue that “sometimes bushes just burn!” Oh, Dean. Sam wants to know what Dean thinks they should do instead, but Dean doesn’t really have any answers.

So they go to meet with Crowley, in an atmospheric alleyway, to find out if they can talk to Lucifer. Crowley doesn’t really want to help them, and they fight about the Darkness. Crowley calls her Dean’s girlfriend, and asks what their relationship really is. Dean doesn’t want to answer that, so he tells Crowley that Amara is God’s sister.

Crowley, ever practical: “He has relatives?” Ha! Then they get down to business. Crowley thinks there’s a way they can talk to Lucifer, and it has to be in hell, so they have some measure of control. Oh, ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. These silly boys, thinking they’ll ever have any control over Lucifer.

Voiceover of some guy urging all angels to stand together and fight. Then we’re in a room, and it’s that same angel from the third episode, the one who had a drink with a demon in that bar. The way it’s shot, I think at first that he’s practicing a motivational speech, and it’s pretty funny, especially with how completely earnest he is about the whole thing. But then it pans out and we see he’s got other angels with him.

The angels complain that the Darkness is God’s sister, and so she’s God’s problem, not theirs. Our brave little toaster angel rightfully points out that since God’s not around, she’s likely to take out her anger on his creation, including them. A little more of this and he’s successful in convincing them to band together and fight the Darkness.

Amara’s found a church, now. It’s large and picturesque and almost totally empty except for a few women praying, and the priest. Amara tells the priest that she needs to talk to God – a meeting “in a room.” He clearly has no idea what she’s talking about or what he’s dealing with, so he tries all the priestly platitudes about faith and prayer. He urges Amara to try prayer out, and hilariously, she does.

Any guesses on what her prayer was? “Dear Brother, if you don’t get your worthless ass down here RIGHT NOW I am going to SMASH ALL YOUR TOYS!” Or something. Shockingly, it doesn’t work, so she and the priest chat a bit about God. She’s pretty disgusted when she finds out what Christianity’s all about, and offended when the priest says that God is the Light that banishes the Darkness. Well, can you really blame her for that? So she starts with the killing.

Crowley’s back on his throne, and he’s captured Rowena somehow. Just go with it, because they need her. They bicker till the Winchesters come in, and Rowena is disgusted that Crowley’s just handing her over to them. She mocks Dean for whatever horror he’s unleashed on the world now. In all fairness, that wasn’t Dean. That was Sam, and Cas, and Rowena herself. Dean told them not to do it, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame him.

Instead, they’re going to work together, even if they don’t trust each other. They explain the Cage to her, and discuss the warding. Rowena says she needs the Codex and Charlie’s codebreaker, and asks what’s so dangerous about the Cage. She’s very hesitant to help, but once Sam tells her they’re going to talk to Lucifer, then she’s all on board. I mean, come on, boys. That should’ve been a gigantic clue as to what was going to happen.

Back to church. Amara has killed everyone and is in the process of eating the priest’s soul. Then she yells at her brother for letting this happen.

Dean went to investigate the church, which seems like a waste of time considering what they’re planning. He and Sam chat on the phone. Why the hell did Dean go to this church in the first place? I mean, it’s Amara, of course, but they didn’t know that till he got there. Dean tells Sam he hates “this” – meaning Sam’s planned chat with Lucifer. He tells Sam not to do anything till Dean gets there.

Okay, number one: how did Dean even learn about the church thing? Number two: why even go? Based on the conversation he has with Sam, they had no idea it was an Amara thing until he got there and talked to the witnesses. Oh, and three: what fucking witnesses? Weren’t they all dead?

Well, this is all just a way to get Dean and Sam separated, of course. So let’s check in with Sam, why don’t we?

He and Rowena are at the bunker, and arguing about whether or not Sam trusts her – I mean, the answer is obvious. Rowena mocks him for his daddy issues, and then finds whatever it is she’s been looking for. So they’re ready to head to hell.

With how quickly she found it, I can only assume that Rowena found it before their talk, and delayed telling Sam so she could needle him. See, this is why I love Rowena. She always takes the time for the important stuff, like sarcasm.

Dean wanders around a children’s park, and then everything goes quiet. Sound comes back briefly, and he orders a hot dog. Sam calls, but he ignores it, because he turns and sees Amara standing in front of him.

Rowena is pissed at the wait, and so Sam decides to move forward even though he can’t get in touch with Dean. To be fair, he did try.

Amara transports Dean…somewhere. In the wilderness. They talk, it’s vaguely boring. Nothing we don’t already know. They have a special bond, they will always help each other, they can’t kill each other. Amara does talk a little about her plans. She says that the souls she’s consumed are a part of her now. Dean wants to know what she plans to do after fighting God, and she won’t tell him. Oh, and Amara tells Dean she and God had no daddy, so they can’t go back next season and fight God’s father I guess. Maybe they had a mom.

So now’s as good a time as any, I guess, to express my abject disappointment that Amara is God’s sister, and not God’s wife. There’s even mythological precedent! Yahweh or El are the typical names used for the Christian God, and Asherah or Athirat is his consort/wife in both the Israelite and Ugaritic pantheons. Christianity typically considers her a demon, but they consider all creatures that aren’t God or angels demons so whatever to them. And personally, I don’t see how there can be a God but not a Goddess for Creation to exist. Most species on Earth require a male and a female for procreation. So I would’ve preferred for Amara to be God’s wife, but whatever. I guess that ship has sailed.

All right. Hell. Crowley claims they’re in “limbo” which is where he banishes pesky souls, but is not the same as Purgatory. It’s secure and in the farthest reach of hell, so ideal for meeting Lucifer. Rowena sets up, marking up a cage with symbols, and assures Sam she’s a total professional so the warding won’t fail. She’s exceedingly giddy throughout the process, lighting up the symbols and surrounding the cage with fire, and then saying she was going to have a try at the actual Cage.

You know what I just realized? That fire is probably some kind of holy oil, to keep Lucifer from breaking free. I thought it was just ambiance. I’ll show myself out.

Rowena continues. The fire flares, and then dies down a little, and then Lucifer appears, all glowy eyes. He bitches at Crowley for sucking in general, but his tune changes when he catches sight of Sam. He’s so excited! “Hug it out!” Oh man, I missed you, Lucifer.

Crowley and Rowena are in the background, trying to figure out what Sam and Lucifer are saying. They argue about whether it was okay for her to try to kill him. Crowley, I mean, not Lucifer. They’re so cute together, guys. I want them to reconcile.

Lucifer wants to know what’s up, as “I don’t really get visitors.” Aw! Why does that make me feel bad for him? He’s the ultimate bad boy, I guess. Sam and Lucifer talk about the Darkness. Lucifer wants to know where God is, and Sam tells him about the visions he’s been getting. He’s quite excited that God wanted Sam to talk to him. Oh, and Lucifer says that the Darkness is “determined to take over everything…prone to tantrums.” Like somebody else we know, I think! Like aunt, like nephew?

Dean and Amara. She’s still pissy about God. Why couldn’t these two yahoos just make their own creations? Was the universe too small for them both? Couldn’t they both have their own toys and play quietly next to each other?

Sam and Lucifer continue talking. Lucifer mentions he needs a vessel. Sam is shocked – SHOCKED – at this turn of events. I guess he thought Lucifer would just tell them how to defeat the Darkness. But how on earth did Sam think he’d be able to accomplish it, considering he’s just a human?

Okay, dumb question. But I was surprised by how shocked Sam was about the whole vessel thing.

Dean tries to kill Amara with an angel blade. Of course, it doesn’t work. He looks very surprised. Amara makes to eat Dean’s soul, but instead they kiss.

Sam and Lucifer argue. Well, Sam yells, and Lucifer is all, yeah, I do need your vessel. I do think it’s hilarious that Lucifer is offended that Sam thinks he’s crazy, considering that Sam is working with Crowley, which makes him even crazier, and crazy people shouldn’t throw stones at glass houses or something like that.

Dean and Amara break apart, and Dean is horrified by the whole bond thing. Their conversation gets interrupted by Toaster and two of his henchangels, who say they’re taking Amara into custody. If she fights, Heaven will team up against her in a single nuclear angel blast. She kills all three of the angels without a thought. Including our brave little motivational Toaster.

I guess you could say he was…toasted.

You shut up. That was an excellent joke and I have been waiting for WEEKS to use it!

The sky starts to boil, and Amara says maybe God will finally hear her. She sends Dean back to the park, and we see Heaven’s blast engulf her.

Okay, I know she’s supposedly evil and all, but that was pretty fucking badass, am I right?

Dean reappears at the park, and nobody even notices. Sadly for him, he doesn’t get his hot dog.

Sam tells Lucifer he’ll never say yes to him, and the warding starts to fail. The fire dies. Crowley is horrified, but Rowena just tells him to follow her and they leave the chamber or wherever they are. Lucifer brings Sam into the cage. Sam says he actually feels very calm, just as his visions indicated he would. But then Lucifer reveals that it wasn’t God who’d sent Sam the visions, it was him. Because the Cage was damaged when the Darkness was freed, he was able to peek through and send out messages to the outside.

A tear slides down Sam’s face, and I’d mock the single manly tear thing, except Sam looks so freaking lost. We never see Sam look hopeless, and we don’t often see him cry. Dean’s the more emotional one, despite his whole “no chick flick moments” shtick. But Sam, he’s more level headed. This isn’t to say he’s not kind, because I think he’s kinder and more empathetic than Dean.

But Sam has always wanted to believe in God and in angels. He used to pray. (My personal headcanon is that he stopped praying after the Cage, but that he started up again when he started getting the visions – hence, “It’s been awhile” when he was sitting in the chapel back in Episode 2.) He was disappointed in what angels were when he first met Cas and Uriel, but I think he still had some faith in God. And he’s been thinking he’s been communicating with God, and that in turn God cares about him and the rest of the world enough to send the messages. But now, knowing that God wasn’t the one who did it, that he hasn’t been there for Sam or anyone else, that he likely doesn’t even care? Man, that tiny moment spoke VOLUMES to me about Sam Winchester’s faith. And seeing it crumble broke my fucking heart.

I mean. Not enough that I don’t want Lucifer around, of course. And we will be seeing more of him, of course, since Sam’s locked in the cage with him and all.

So I guess Rowena’s warding failed only enough to bring Sam into the cage for an up close and personal talk? Or is Lucifer free to leave, but doesn’t, because he doesn’t have a vessel so it would be pointless? We never really find out, so I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

Supernatural : Just My Imagination

This episode felt very Whedonesque to me.  I actually looked the episode’s writer up to see if she was a former Buffy/Angel/Whedonverse writer, but as far as I can tell, she isn’t.  But the absurdity of this episode felt very like an old school Buffy episode, with Dean standing in as straight man for Buffy (or Angel, depending on the episode in question I guess).  The episode was also directed by our very own Gabriel, or Richard Speight Jr. as I guess he is also known, so I suppose the whimsy makes sense.

Anyway.  We start in a little girl’s bedroom.  She’s having a tea party with her imaginary friend, a sort of man-unicorn hybrid she calls Sparkles.  The little girl leaves to go to dinner with her parents, and Sparkles settles in with a book.  A little later, an unknown person enters the room and murders him.  When the little girl comes home, she sees the horror before her and screams.

Bunker.  Sam gets up and makes some coffee and completely ignores the kitchen table totally full of unhealthy treats.  Sully hops out of nowhere to surprise Sam, and Sam punches him.  Hee!  Dean, hearing the ruckus, enters, and sees Sam holding on to thin air.  Sam is confused that Dean can’t see Sully, and says he was Sam’s imaginary friend when he was little.  Dean wants his gun, and refuses to believe Sully exists even when he can see him.  They fight, and finally go to the library, where Sam finds a passage about zannas, which are helpful creatures that assist lonely children.

Sully wants them to check out Sparkles’s case, because he knows they’re badass hunters.  Dean agrees reluctantly, and they end up outside the house.  Sam offers to handle this alone, but Dean refuses, and they go up to the house and introduce themselves to the little girl’s mom as county-appointed grief counselors.  They look like a Mr. Rogers strip-o-gram (and THAT is a fetish I could’ve lived forever without knowing I had, so thanks a lot, Supernatural), so I don’t know why she believes them, but she lets them in and takes them up to the bedroom.  Maddie, the girl, won’t sleep in there.

Somehow they manage to get this mother of a troubled child to leave the strange men alone in her daughter’s bedroom, and Sully lets them see the bloodbath.  Jesus, the blood is glittery!  Somebody had a hell of a lot of fun with the set design, I think.  Dean notices the glitter, and Sully says that Sparkles couldn’t stop shining even in death.  Shine on, you poor dead mancorn.  Shine on.

The mom comes back in and cleans up the tea set, unknowingly smearing blood all over herself as she talks, which horrifies the boys.  See?  Whedonesque.  Dean suggests a family shower, and I guess the mom is so worried about her kid that she doesn’t realize how obsessive this strange man is being about her family’s personal hygiene.

Flashback to little Sam, who is disappointingly not Colin Ford because Colin Ford had the audacity to actually grow up.  Sully is with Sam, and encourages him to answer the phone.  It’s young Dean, and they got that great kid from Season Ten back for this short scene.  Young Dean tells Sam that he can’t go on the hunt with them, and that he needs to wait at the hotel.  He belittles him for having an imaginary friend too, because young Dean has clearly been spending way too much time with his asshole of a father.

Back to the present.  Somewhere else, another little girl is playing in her pool with her mermaid imaginary friend.  The little girl leaves, and again, mermaid’s dead.

Sully leads the boys to this house too, and they see the dead mermaid.  They bury her, and how long was that family going to be gone for anyway?  They’re there a really long time.  So Sully thinks maybe Nicky’s (the mermaid’s) boyfriend Weems might’ve killed her, since Nicky and Sparkles maybe had a thing on the side.

Another flashback, same hotel room.  Sam and Sully are playing a game where they talk about things they might want to do.  Sam confesses that he sometimes thinks about running away.

Present.  Weems is hanging with his charge, and starts cleaning up their toys when the boy goes in to get ready for bed.  He wanders around some laundry drying (who has that many sheets?) and gets stabbed.

You know, Sully really sucks as a manager.  He didn’t think to send out an APB on the zanna killer?  Let the others in the area know to be careful?  Doesn’t even have a special zanna cleanup crew for poor Maddie’s room?  Anyway, so they go to interview Weems and find him nearly dead, and tell him about Nicky and Sparkles.  Weems is devastated, because that’s their whole “crew,” and I’m telling you this feels like a Whedon episode.  I’m not complaining, it’s just a little odd.  Supernatural has its share of comedy and absurdity, but it has a different feel than what we’re seeing here.

Weems then realizes who Sam is, and tells Sam that when Sam rejected Sully, Sully was devastated.  Sam then remembers it happening, where Sully had packed for them to leave but Sam had gotten a call from John, telling him he could join them on the hunt.  How fucking old is Sam supposed to be here?  John just expects him to travel to wherever he and Dean are and join them?  Did Jeffrey Dean Morgan piss off the writers at some point, because really, he’s the worst father in the history of the universe.  So Sam and Sully fight, and Sam says he wishes he could unmake Sully and runs off.

Oh and during this, Weems remembered seeing a girl and a VW Bug, and Dean takes off to try and track the killer.  I’m so happy this doesn’t work, because that would just be dumb.

Back in the present, Sam apologizes to Sully for how he treated him.  Sully says he doesn’t consider Sam to be his biggest failure, because he kept track of Sam and knows he saved the world and all that good stuff.  Sam tells him about the Darkness and his visions, and Sully wants to know if Sam still thinks about running away.  He doesn’t, and hasn’t for a long time.  I wonder when the last time he thought about it was.  Back in “Shadow,” he talked about wanting to kill the demon and go back to his normal life.  Sometime in the second season, I bet.  I don’t think he thought about running away after “All Hell Breaks Loose.”  He stayed in the game after Dean died, albeit drunkenly, and in Season Five when he and Dean briefly parted ways, it was more because Sam was worried about the demon blood thing than any desire to have a normal life.

Dean texts Sam and tells him he found the girl and where to meet him, but when Sam and Sully arrive, it turns out the girl managed to overpower Dean and tie him up, and she texted because she wants to kill Sully.  She was one of his kids too, and her twin sister was killed when they were playing tag and the sister ran into the street.  Man, Sully has a terrible track record.  I just don’t know that I’d trust him to be my kid’s imaginary friend, you know?

Sully goes all angsty and apologizes, and says that if it really will make the girl feel better, she can kill him, because he does what the kids need.  But Dean manages to talk her down and she and Sully hug, and then she gets to just go on her merry way even though she’s a murderer, because murdering creatures is different than humans, even when those creatures are established as being basically as good as humans.

That’s what the spinoff should’ve been.  None of that Chicago first families bloodlines crap.  Supernatural cops!  I await my check, CW!

Denouement.  Sully makes himself vanish after bidding Sam and Dean goodbye.  As they drive away, Sam talks about the Cage.  Dean insists they’ll find another way to beat the Darkness, and Sam says that’s fine, but wants to know what that is.  Dean doesn’t have an answer for him.  So we’re going to be seeing Lucifer pretty soon, I think.

Overall, not my favorite episode of the season, but it was fun and engaging and made me forget it was basically filler.  Next time we’ll get to the good stuff.