They head back to…somewhere, where Jo and Ellen are having a drinking contest with Castiel. They’re losing, big time. Castiel knocks back six shots and sets the glasses down next to ten or so of their fallen comrades with no ill effect. As sober as ever, he suggests he may have started to feeling something. Meanwhile, they’re all making plans to go after the Devil, and bemoaning what a stupid idea it is, but they decide that stupid is the family tradition, and they’re going to be stupid ’til the end. And Bobby’s there, too, taking a melancholic black-and-white “last night on earth” photo. Yeah, this is going to end well. It looks quite a lot like the photo in “The End.”

So Ellen, Jo, Dean, Sam, and Castiel head of to the Carthage, where Lucifer is apparently holed up. They find it abandoned, and split up to investigate. Castiel quickly wanders off, as there are about a thousand reapers hanging out in town, looking quite like the angels in City of Angels. There are some more cool shots from Castiel’s POV, both the presence of the Reapers and his translocation from place to place. Anyway, he’s short thereafter captured by Lucifer and stuck in a magic fire circle.  Lucifer has some pressing questions about what it’s like to hang out with humans, and to make him an offer he can’t refuse, except he does.
The actors have great chemistry, and the scene is  quite wonderful. I quite like Lucifer when he’s not going all angsty emo.

Elsewhere, the rest of the group is attacked by a bunch of hellhounds. Jo gets eviscerated by them while saving Dean, and they all take refuge in a hardware supply store. They contact Bobby, who serves really no purpose than to talk Dean through it and to figure out that Lucifer is opening a seal- but this time, it’s one of the classical seals…dealing in this case with the one who rides the pale horse. So they plot some more on how they are going to kill the devil and save the day. Jo tells Dean he’s being an idiot, that she’s dying and there is nothing for it. So she’s going to take one for the team and go all suicide bomber on the hellhounds. Dean kisses Jo goodye, first on the forehead, as if in benediction, secondly on the mouth, in farewell. He tells her he’ll see her sooner or later, and she asks that it be later. There’s then a crushingly sad moment between Ellen and her daughter. In the end, Ellen stays behind with Jo, choosing to die with her, so she won’t go at it alone. And it’s a lucky thing she does, because Jo either dies or falls unconscious before it’s time to push the trigger. It’s beautifully done and heartfelt, if still rather pointless. The entire point of bringing them back to the show, after being gone for two seasons, was so that they could die and drive home the point that the Apocalypse is Serious Business! And, you know, sad! But it would have been more effective, plotwise, if they hadn’t been MIA for two seasons. It was too obviously contrived as a way to sell the cost of the apocalypse.

Dean and Sam confront the devil. Dean shoots the Devil, who of course doesn’t die but he does play dead for a moment, and whine about getting shot “owww!” He knocks Dean into a tree, then tells Sam the Colt can kill everything “in creation” but five things, and he’s one of the five. Lucifer goes back to grave digging. He looks cool doing it, instead of making a minion do it. He speechifies at Sam a bit, asks him to embrace the darkside and agree to be his vessel. He also drops several more family-and-fate anvils. I sure hope he’s simply playing Sam, but that seems unlikely as he’s not the only one dropping those anvils. He lets Sam know that he expects Sam to say yes…in Detroit, in six months. Maybe he’s planning a birthday party. Anyway, the Devil completes the ritual, slaughters his demonic minions (proving Crowley right).

Castiel has some fun playing with Meg, while he borrows a page from Uriel’s book and uses telekinesis to unscrew a pipe from the ceiling. He knocks her into the circle with him, holds her close, and fails to exorcise her. She taunts him a bit, and asks him what he can do. He says,
“I can do this!” and leans a bit closer. She’s totally thinking he’s going to make out with her, but unfortunately for her, he simply knocks her down and uses her as a bridge out of the fire circle. He’s all kinds of awesome. Anyway, this means he’s able to come to the rescue and whisk Sam and Dean away. Death rises.

Back at Bobby’s, it turns out that Cato got his wish (that Cartago Delenda Est). Bobby burns the black and white photo they took just a day ago. It’s a nice imagine, and a passable substitute for the usual pyre, but kind of defeats the point of taking the photo in the first place.

Last week, I found myself wondering if the writers were simply stalling. This week, I’m pretty sure they are. Let’s look at what we learned this week, folks.

1. The Apocalypse means death and destruction.
2. Lucifer is keeping up with his busy schedule.
3. Attempting to short circuit the apocalypse by shooting Lucifer in the face is a stupid idea.
4. Family-and-Fate anvils.
5. Anger leads to the dark side.
6. Lucifer’s vessel is falling to pieces.
7. Lucifer expects Sam to say ‘yes’ in Detroit.

None of these things were anything we didn’t particularly already know, even if just in theory, with the exception of 7. The entire point of this episode seems to have been to kill some more time, but this time with angst rather than humor. It was like a collection of random and beautiful tragic portraits; the bits and pieces were individually compelling – all of Castiel’s scenes, the Harvelle’s deaths, Lucifer finally seeming both charming and totally evil- but there was no larger impact, no strong narrative to tie them all together and give them meaning beyond the sum of their parts.

That said, I do want to give credit for a few things, the call backs to “The End” in particular. In this, the episode managed to toy with the idea that nothing had changed while undermining it at the same time. The similarities- the photograph, Detroit, the shoot-lucifer plan, even the abandoned city- all mirrored what we saw in 5×04, including the fact that it ended in failure. But that is undermined by the very changes that made those mirrors possible; the Detroit timetable has apparently been moved up quite a bit, Dean won’t spend five years chasing after a hopeless plan, and the photograph was destroyed. I also must mention Castiel’s loyalty to the Winchesters, diminished  powers, drinking, and charisma with the ladies (even of the demonic sort). It’s similar enough that to  2014 seems inevitable, but the meaning has changed. The future was nothing but despair; but even in this angsty episode, hope remains in the smallest things.

There was one other thing that impressed me. The idea of drawing parallels between the good guys and the bad guys (especially when fate is thrown around) in a story about an epic battle is not a new one, and always requires that there be some defining difference- usually love, but also sometimes loyalty, camaraderie, and selflessness. It’s a fine storytelling device, but it’s usually clumsy as hell. Normally it involves characters shouting it from the rooftops as clunky exposition. (See Harry Potter for a particularly clunky version, and Lord of the Rings for a less clunky but still anvilicious example).

Not so here, where the contrast between Lucifer’s self-absorption and disloyalty (in more than just the obvious sense; he  feels nothing for his devoted followers, his offer to Castiel is made in terms of self-interest, etc.) and the heroes’ iron-clad loyalty and selflessness is present, but notably not harped on. The conclusion is drawn but not beaten into our heads, for which I am endlessly grateful.

And Lo, the Prophet Chuck realized he needed some cash, probably to fix up his house after the archangel Raphael blew up Castiel…and maybe to also impress his new lady friend, Becky the (crazy) Fangirl. So he decides to keep publishing the Supernatural series, and also to work the first ever Supernatural convention. Becky the crazed Fangirl decides that, like any good convention, this one needs its stars to attend. So she steals Chuck’s cell phone (“borrowed it from his pants”) and sends the Brothers Winchester a fake S.O.S.

Sam and Dean are not happy campers over the whole thing. They’re annoyed at being tricked when they have seriously more important things to do (which really, they’re going to get around to any day now), and they’re definitely not happy that Chuck is continuing to profit off their pain, and they are more than a little weirded out at all the people running around pretending to be them. And quoting, verbatim, some of the more painful and personal conversations of their lives.

One might wonder why they didn’t just make their death threats and leave, but as it turned out, the live action role playing “ghost hunt” turned out to be real, so they feel duty bound to deal with it. This is one case in which being genre-savvy was to their detriment, as while having real ghosts running around at a convention of fans might spell “horror movie” in most situations, in this one, it didn’t. The ghosts never did more than scare anyone until they meddled; they got rid of the one ghost keeping the others in check. So for various murphy’s law (to them) and standard plot (to us) related reasons, the real Sam and Dean end up trapped inside the hotel while the fake Sam and Dean are forced to do a bit of grave desecrating. Though Chuck manages to win the heart of the fair crazed fan girl by taking charge and kicking some ghost ass, so hurray for him.She “breaks up” with Sam, but as a parting gift, she hands him a plot coupon: “This Coupon Good for One Lead on the Gun that Can Kill Anything.”

Oh! And Dean has a conversation with the plucky Fake Dean and Sam duo, and realizes that people do actually appreciate them, and that his life does not suck, and he’s doing something important. In other words, it’s the speech from It’s A Terrible Life. He is then a bit weirded out to realize that the two guys that are into pretending to be he and his brother are actual lovers. So that’s that.

I may seem less than enthused by this episode. Let me be honest, here. I enjoyed this episode well enough, and I love metafiction. Jasper Fforde is one of my favorite authors, and The Monster at the End of The Book was one of the all-time best episodes of Supernatural. This was a truly sweet episode, a little love letter to the fans…but rather toothless. Metafiction is all about commenting on the story. It can and often does comment on the author and the audience, and even the relationship between the two. Mediocre metafiction creates a sense of detachment from the story. It breaks down the fourth wall, but in doing so, it also breaks the suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to disengage. Great metafiction, on the other hand, always manages to bring it back around to the story, and reinvests the audience back in the narrative. In essence, it makes the audience and the author as much part of the story as the characters, and by doing so, makes it seem more real.

This they did not succeed at that so much. There were plenty of amusing moments and inside jokes. It had some great lines an some mushy commentary on how much the writers really love the fans, even if they’re crazy. There was some clever symmetry and echoing of lines, a touch of playing with the idea of roles and how we play them but….toothless. It had the potential to be very sharp. The characters could have been examining their lives from the outside, but this didn’t really happen. They were uncomfortable, but their reactions were muted. There was nothing quite at the level of the author-avatar conversation with Sam about the path he was on and his motivations of last season. In essence, it lacked and development or forward movement.

Supernatural has done two mediocre metafictional episodes, back to back. They still weren’t quite as self-indulgent and conceited as such episodes usually are, but they lacked the bite they needed. I can’t help but compare last week’s half-assed “Don’t we wish this really was a TV show” and this week’s fan nitpicking and “Our lives are not for public consumption.” It’s the same kind of “Hey, we’re breaking the fourth wall! That counts, right?” attitude. I’m beginning to think that the writers are dragging their feet on the apocalypse storyline. This episode had a certain wistful quality, like a “thank you and goodbye” before the shit really hits the fan.

I do have a couple random thoughts that didn’t fit very well above:

• The LARPer Sam and Dean going super husky voiced cracked me up. I do often end up thinking someone needs to slip the actors a cough drop or two.
• Becky amuses me. She may be an over-excitable weirdo with some issues about proper social interactions, but so’s Chuck in his own way, and she’s just so damn upbeat.
• The cell phone ruining the fake-ghost’s scene. I think I’ve seen that on about a hundred blooper reels.
• Chuck! I love the character, I love the actor, and I loved how all those scenes worked. I loved his lovelorn faces and his convention talk. Though I did get a bit suspicious to the end that there was some direct quotations from ComiCons past.

Anyway, in the episode proper, the brothers Winchester end up wandering into a trap set for them by the Trickster (and shouldn’t they be suspicious now of how they’ve only ever met the one?) He used the incredible hulk as bait, for which I must give him points, and then sets about plunking the fraternal duo into a series of TV parodies. Dean turns out to be a secret fan of Grey’s Anatomy (also known as Dr. Sexy, MD), the first scenario. It was a good send up all around, but the music was what sold it to me. They quickly find the Trickster, who quite rightly congratulates them on being quicker on the uptake than they have been previously. Sam tries to convince the demi-god into helping them stop the apocalypse, but he’s a bit pissy about them starting it in the first place, and refuses to hear any such thing unless the boys can survive his game for 24 hours.

So they boys are left with no choice but to stick it out. Dr Sexy, MD, doesn’t turn out too happily for them: the disgruntled husband of a patient shoots Dean in the back, forcing Sam to operate. Sam’s at quite a loss in the operating room, finally calling out for the tools he knows best: some dental floss, a sewing needle, a pen knife, and a fifth of whiskey. I found this even more amusing than the parody itself, but I had trouble believing that Sam could feel so daunted at the prospect of using a scalpel. It’s pretty obvious which side is sharp. Anyway, as soon as Dean’s all stitched up, the guys are catapulted into a Japanese trivia show…where wrong answers are rewarded with a mechanical kick to the balls. You know, Japanese television gets this really weird rep…and it totally deserves it. I was an exchange student. I know.  Since the questions are all in Japanese, they’re kind of screwed, and Sam quickly suffers the consequences. Dean, in an act of desperation pushes the button and somehow manages to answer the question. In Japanese. He was channeling Bobby there for a second. I am infinitely grateful they did not understand the question (”Would your family still be alive if Sam hadn’t ever been born?”) because it just would have been more angst-fodder.

Castiel shows up briefly, and asks them what the hell they’re doing. Apparently they’ve been missing for days, which suggests the Trickster had no intention of having a little chat with them. Castiel is zapped away before he can break them out. Anyway, they quickly figure out that if they play their roles, they survive. At this point, I realized the Trickster either was or was working for the angels, which made the rest of the episode drag a bit for me, but on rewatch, I think that was just a fluke.

So Sam and Dean, having no better ideas, continue to play along through a pharmaceutical ad about herpes and the same godawful sitcom that the show opened up with. Their annoyed facial twitches and obvious teeth clenching were just right. Just as sitcom hell was about to send them around the bend, Castiel shows up again, looking a little worse for wear. He tells them tha the Trickster is far more powerful than it should be, but he just gets slammed into a wall and gagged for his trouble. The Trickster enters (it should be noted that all of this was  accompanied by the most obnoxious laugh track ever), wishes Castiel away to the cornfield, and tells the boys to accept their real-life roles as well, and get on with the apocalypse.

Dean manages to piss him off by asking who he’s bending over for, Heaven or Hell, but the Trickster merely boots them into CSI: Miami. They are not impressed. Oh, so not impressed. But they ham it up, boy do they ham it up, with their Horatio Cain impressions and godawful puns. But they’re being sneaky,  and all their playacting was a ploy to stab the Trickster with  a stake dipped in blood. The scene fizzles out with a TV-static flicker, and they find themselves back in the original empty warehouse. They quickly get the hell out of there, only to discover it’s all an illusion when Sam gets merged with the car to create a Knight Rider parody. Since this won’t do at all, they arrange to trick the Trickster into a circle of holy oil (from Free to Be You And Me), which was helpfully stashed into Sam’s trunk. (To describe any of these scenes in more detail would ruin their brilliance. They really must be seen to be appreciated.).

Their gamble pays off, and the manage to trap the erstwhile Archangel Gabriel. He emos at them a bit, and honestly, the emoing was the episode’s weakspot. I briefly had to take cover under the coffee table to avoid all the family-and-fate anvils. Seriously, guys, we get it. God = John, Sam and Dean = the Angels. IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE THEM. Yup, got that message too over the legion of other episodes that covered that topic. Don’t we all wish this was actually a TV show, so there’d be a happy ending? Gah. My least favorite metafictional reference in television. It’s cheap and it’s pointless. Save your metafictional references for actual commentary.

Still, I have to say I warmed up to the idea of the Archangel-trickster on second viewing. His motives seemed a bit muddled to me, but after some though I can handwave it. He didn’t like his family fighting, so he went into hiding. He didn’t want them to fight more, so he tried to prevent the apocalypse by pounding the message into Sam’s head in Mystery Spot. Now that it’s on, he’s pissed….at Sam especially, it seems, given the worst of this episode fell on Sam’s genitals…but mostly, he just wants to get it over with. Sure, why not. Dean gets him to zap Castiel back, then tells him to grow a spine and stand up to his family. Then he sets off the fire alarm so that the Trickster/Gabriel won’t be stuck in the circle for all eternity. Or until someone walks into the factory. Whichever would have come first. Either way, they save him from it.

What saves this scene for me is that the archangel/trickster’s personality didn’t really seem to change. They gave him some depth, but didn’t just retcon him away. And I really, really like the idea of this clever, pop-culture savvy angel with a sense of humor popping up in future episodes, especially if he’s fighting the good fight. That would be awesome.

So all in all, a good episode. I don’t hold it in quite the esteem I do “The Monster at the End of this Book” for mytharc heavy metafiction, and it’s not quite as perfect at the gimmick as “Monster Movie” was, but it did find a happy middle ground between the two.

One of the most admirable things about Supernatural, in my mind, is that when they do the gimmick episodes, they commit to the idea to such an extent that it rises above the cliche. Usually, shows are a little too proud of the conceit. I had a drama teacher back in college who warned constantly against telegraphing “I’m ACTING!” while performing, and is this is the trap that usually awaits gimmick episodes. Supernatural has done a number of episodes utilizing the gimmicks, but it never has given in to the nervous urge to let people know that “really, this is a joke”: It lets whatever gimmick (say, an old time horror flick or the TVland cliche) inform every aspect of its presentation: the teaser, the title card, the music, the lighting, the camera angles, the storytelling, so kudos for that.

I did have a few other problems and questions with this episode.

One is that I think that the whole destiny thing really does work better with a more subtle touch. The viewers aren’t stupid and can usually figure these things out for themselves. Additionally, subtly tends to lend and aura of depth  and mystery, always valuable. Just look at the X-Files, even though it never followed up on anything. Still, I would say that (for example), the hints of Scully’s immortality over several seasons were far better at effectively hinting at a bigger picture than Supernatural has been whenever DESTINY has come up.

Another was that there were a few plotholes in this episode. Plotholes happen. It’s a fact of life. Optimally, you don’t notice plotholes or are convinced not to care because the story is so awesome (see Casablanca. That thing has more holes than a sieve, but just try to bring yourself to care). For whatever reason, the first time I saw this episode I was on the right wavelength that everything seemed so blatantly obvious that it was a little tedious, so there was a lack of awesome to smooth them away.  So Castiel finding them and the magic oil trick just kind of bugged me. Especially the magic oil trick, jokes about pulling it out of Sam’s ass aside. If it’s not the real deal (i.e. came from the illusion) why did it work? If it is the real thing, how did they get to it? If it were an illusion, why didn’t it disappear with everything else? Why did the trickster return them to reality if he could still control stuff outside the circle?

Feel free to rain scorn down on me for not totally experiencing the awesome of this episode. In theory, I loved it. In practice, I was mildly entertained. So it goes.

Sam and Dean investigate a mysterious death and a few missing persons. They discover that a missing old guy is actually miraculously young and handsome again, so he’s ditched his wife and is partying with hookers. They find out that he won a few dozen extra years in a magic poker match with a faux-Irish dude (I only wish the Irish guys I knew had been so fine). Bobby magically teleports his way to the poker game before Dean finds it, but loses his shirt…or rather, 25 years. He certainly ages very well. I’m sure he’ll be a terror in the nursing home when the time comes. So Dean rushes in and cashes in 25 years of his life for Bobby, but then loses 25 more, making him an old guy. But a spry old guy who also has aged very well. There’s some angsting and exposition and awkward moments of trying to pull a fast one on the poker player (who is 900 something. I wish there’d been a Doctor Who reference).

There are humorous moments, with Old Dean and Bobby performing as a comedy duo and bonding over being old farts. The poker guy gives Sam the clap, but not in the way dirty minds might be thinking. The guy’s girlfriend gives Dean and Bobby a spell that will undo all of the poker guy’s magic (except for those who died), and they work with Sam to get all the necessary ingredients. Sam’s given the job of stalling for time while they dig up all the necessary components. The spell fails because faux-Irish guy was on to them, so Sam has to finish the game for real as Dean nearly dies (again). But Sam manages to pull off a Maverick moment and wins, and so they all live happily ever after. Except Bobby, who is still mysteriously paralyzed. And the poker guy’s girlfriend, who finally decides to commit suicide via poker game. Dean reminds Bobby that he and Sam don’t really have an excess of close personal friends and (adopted) family members. But Dean! Think of the angst if Bobby were allowed to off himself.

So what did we get out of this episode? We learn that Bobby is unhappy about being sidelined, and has contemplated suicide. This is not a terribly shocking plot development, though I will say that Bobby’s little emotional meltdown was kind of disturbing, like when you’re a kid and you see your parents crying. He’s always been kind of above it all, defined by awesome. This show being what it is, it’s always been sort of inevitable that they’d either have to kill him off or catch him up to the other characters in terms of angsting. So we had a little time out from the apocalypse to let him do that.

That’s not to say it didn’t have its good points; the actor they cast to play a much older Dean was spot on. Rarely am I made to forget that another actor is playing a character, so I must give credit there, and there were some genuinely funny moments full of good chemistry.

But all in all, it was kind of boring.

Random question:

What the hell was the 25 year old guy from the teaser doing playing for years? The old guys, I get. But the 20s are a pretty sweet time in my opinion. Also, he’s obviously got stuff going for him, what with the big beautiful house and all. What does he want to do, go back to being a teenager? I certainly wouldn’t. Yuck. What do you think?

Babysitters have the worst luck on television. Take Amber in this week’s episode of Supernatural. She’s stuck watching a snot-nosed little brat named Jimmy, and she only exists to die a singularly unpleasant death that serves no purpose but to draw the attention of the brothers Winchester to this little town in the middle o’ nowhere. Sucks to be her, especially when it’s revealed she scratched her own brains out.

But never mind the poor unlamented babysitter; her employers certainly don’t. They sit on the very couch the discovered her (self) mutilated body as Sam questions them. I often wonder why Sam and Dean are never subjected to the constant skepticism Mulder encountered as an actual fictional FBI agent when he asked weird questions. While the snot-nosed little brat’s parents answer questions about cold spots, Dean wanders off to interrogate the little darling. Jimmy, it turns out, is feeling guilty about something. So Dean plays Bad Cop a bit and scares the kid into revealing that he put itching powder on Amber’s hairbrush. Sam scoffs at the notion that itching powder would cause her to scratch her brains out. Personally, I feel that it just goes to show that she should have known better than to start brushing her hair from the scalp down.

Before the boys can debate this too much, Sam’s phone goes off. It seems the coroner has been nice enough to give them a courtesy call to let them know there’s been another unusual death: random electrocution. Handily, it seems to have taken place in a hospital, but that’s of no comfort to the poor guilt-wrecked old geezer who reveals the cause of death: a joy buzzer.

The boys go back to the house they’re currently squatting in. Dean immediately suits up like some weird mutant cross between Doctor Horrible and Captain Hammer and zaps a ham with the joy buzzer, all in the name of SCIENCE! Or, you know, dinner. In just a matter of seconds, the ham is looking just a tad overdone. Sam is appalled. Dean, less picky, immediately digs in. The boys agree that the next step is to check out the town joke shop.

Sam and Dean interrogate the shop owner, who has some issues over the lack of business. Dean goes all Bad Cop again, and the sight of him very seriously saying, “So you’re taking revenge- with THIS!” and holding up the joy buzzer is a prime example of why I love this show, even when it sucks. The shop owner doesn’t see the humor, because Dean demonstrates to great effect the seriousness of the joybuzzer by savagely melting a plastic chicken in front of the hapless shopkeeper. The shopkeeper nearly has a heart attack. Sam shrewdly deducts that someone so fainthearted is not likely to be the culprit. Surely, they are the greatest detectives the world has ever seen.

Elsewhere in town, a little girl is unconvinced of the wisdom of trusting the tooth fairy, so she sneaks her lost tooth under her father’s pillow. As a consequence, when the evil biker fairy dentist shows up, the Dad’s the one to get all of his teeth yanked out. The boys find this all a tad suspicious, especially in conjunction with the kids who got ulcers from mixing pop-rocks and soda and the guy whose face “froze that way.” The boys quickly catch on to the fact that these are all the sorts of urban legends that kids believe. Sam does some research and discovers that all of these suspicious events took place within a three mile radius of a farmhouse. They go to check it out, although Dean needs a minute to shave his palm. Yes, they really went there. It’s saved from being as cringe worthy as it might have been by the total lack of shame it’s delivered with.

At the farmhouse, they disregard the car in the driveway, and knock only once before attempting to pick the lock. They should have waited a bit longer, for about a half second after they do, they discover a cute kid named Jesse, who is completely unimpressed by their FBI act. Dean quickly picks up on the fact that this kid believes in every urban legend with which the townspeople have been afflicted, and in a stroke of genius, convinces the kid that joy buzzers are harmless. This allows him to both test his theory and pull the greatest prank one sibling has ever pulled on another in the history of television- for no sooner has he done so than he wheels around and tags his brother with the buzzer. Sam is less than impressed, but I can say beyond a doubt that I’d have given anything to have elicited a similar reaction from my little sister back when I snuck a rubber python into her bed.

Sam and Dean wander off, and Sam looks into the kid’s background. He’s a pretty normal boy for all intents and purposes, and the most interesting thing about him was that he was adopted. The fact that the records were sealed doesn’t faze Sam at all; he’s also discovered the birth-mother’s name and address.

It turns out that she’s living the life of a paranoid recluse, and for good reason. When she first meets the boys, she immediately assumes they are demons and throws salt at them. Having ascertained that they aren’t, she spills her story: she was possessed with a demon, who then forced her to give birth to a demonic baby. The pain of labor apparently gave her the means to resist the demon; she exorcised the demon by eating a bunch of salt, and then immediately put the baby up for adoption.

Unsure what to do with this information, the boys apparently give Castiel a call. Castiel meets them at their room, and ominously declaims about how the boy is actually an anti-christ a.k.a. a ‘chambion’ (the offspring of succubi/incubi , for those who want to know,) and that they need to kill him ASAP, because he’s so powerful that he can rewrite reality, and could wipe out the angels with just one word. The boys are a bit hesistant to comply, so the angel decides to do it himself. But he can’t, and gets turned into an action figure for his troubles.

Sam and Dean run to the kid’s…or maybe Castiel’s….rescue, though they changed clothes first. Dean tries to spin the whole antichrist deal into something nice for the kid, telling him he’s a superhero and they are there to take him off to train to save the world….just like in the x-men!

In the meantime, the paranoid birth-mom was apparently not paranoid enough, because no sooner than she leaves her house than she gets jumped by the same demon as before. The demon’s been watching, hoping to find the kid. Apparently the demon was not smart enough to possess someone with access to the adoption records. Anyway, she busts in just in time to ruin Dean’s x-men spiel. She goes on about how everyone has been lying to him, and doesn’t he want to be evil? Well, apparently he doesn’t. I don’t really blame him, her thoughts about how to win kids over involve crushing childhood fantasies by telling them that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real. So Jesse tells the demon to sit down and shut up, and asks Sam to tell it like it is.

Sam doesn’t go with Dean’s “fight evil, be a hero, impress girls” view of the world, and instead talks about the importance of accepting the fact you’re a freak and will only get your loved ones killed, and also about deciding not to live up to your evil destiny. Yeah. There may have been a little projecting there. Even so, the demon had no chance against Sam’s patented Face of Sincerity, so the kid tells the demon to get lost. Dean, happy to no longer be pinned to a wall, is mightly impressed. He’s all for dragging Jesse off to Bobby’s (I’m sure Bobby’d be thrilled) to be trained to fight evil. Jesse is less than thrilled at this prospect, and wants to drag his family along, but the boys explain that this is a good way to get them murdered by demons. So Jesse goes upstairs to say goodbye to his still-angel-mojo’d parents, and decides to run off to Australia instead. Castiel appears and lets Sam and Dean know that the kid undid all the damage (but for the deaths). The episode ends with the guys feeling depressed about, you know, ruining some poor kid’s childhood, and me depressed that there’ll never be a spin-off featuring Bobby, kickass demon hunter, and Jesse, the cutest little anti-christ ever: Together, They Fight Crime.

All in all, this episode was like a good episode of Heroes (anyone remember those?): Fun, but filled with plot holes and other problems. For example:

1. I’m forced to wonder why the offspring of a human and any random demon is so uberly powerful. Maybe they’re drawing inspiration from stories of Merlin.
2. Which leads me to my second point: if it’s so easy to create an all-powerful half-demon, why haven’t they made a bunch of them?
3. Why are the demons so stupid as to not look up the adoption records themselves? Why is the birth mother so stupid as not to have better researched anti-possession measures?
4. After explaining why Jesse is dangerous, especially if he’s scared or angry, why does he try to kill him by attacking him in full view with a big honkin’ knife?

Feel free to disagree or add more examples in the comments.

N.B. With the winter hiatus coming up, I thought I’d ask if anyone had any suggestions for other shows to review and/or recap.

Luckily, a good old American Chevy is charging to the rescue. Sam bitches about investigating killer cars while the apocalypse rages on, Dean tells him to STFU, they need a practice run to get their act together and they both pout at each other and secretly plot to tattle to Bobby as soon as they get the chance. Next we see them, they’re talking to a local cop, doing their whole FBI routine. The cop is supremely confident that Paul McGillion’s the culprit, and can’t be bothered with insignificant little details like cause of death. The unfortunate Paul McGillion (whose name is apparently Jim) is going down for murder, but the boys get the info they need and go to visit the evil car. Seems like it’s James Dean’s cursed evil car. Dean volunteers for the unenviable task of crawling under the car to take a rubbing of the engine number. He manages to do so without getting squashed, but immediately foists the follow up work (doing the research) on his brother. Fair enough. He then goes to get a beer and tries to pick up the waitress with a super-sleazy casting couch con. Complete with fake business cards. Apparently he had fun last time he had to make up some fake IDs. But really, how pointless.  Any straight woman with eyes would be tempted, no lame deceptions necessary. Anyway, Sam calls to let Dean know that the Porsche is not evil, and is annoyed to realize that his brother’s spent the day in the bar while he’s been slaving over the most boring research ever.

Meanwhile, the next bit of monster chow is getting murdered. He’s attacked by an evil Abraham Lincoln. His reaction, “My god! It’s you! You’re supposed to be dead.” Ok, that totally wouldn’t be my reaction to seeing someone dressed up like honest Abe, but sure, why not. Cut to the gore. The earnest local cop is trying to cling to a reasonable explanation…like a trained assassins. I think the earnest cop was the best part of this episode.

The boys interview the guy’s housekeeper, who tells them that “El Presidente Lincoln” did it. This should be funny, but it some how managed not to be. The boys bumble around a bit, realize that James Dean killed Sucker 1, and decide that maybe famous ghosts are attacking their fans. Sam decides to correct Dean on his Spanish, which would be a lot more effective if he didn’t pronounce ‘muy’ like “moooooey.” They then get back on topic, wonder why famous ghosts are attacking some random town, and then discover that there’s a wax museum. Sure, why not. That explains everything! So they go to check out the wax museum. Dean makes fun of Ghandi, there’s some more flat attempts at humor, including another example of Dean’s spectacular failure to be convincingly casual. The curator explains that he’s managed to get a lot of knick knacks that belonged to famous people. He’s apparently been robbing the Smithsonian, because he’s got Lincoln’s hat and the Fonz’s jacket.

The boys return to the motel to gear up. They’ve decided that what they’re dealing with are evil famous ghosts, tied to the objects in the wax museum. Sam goes out to futz around with stuff in the car, so Dean decides to take advantage of  his absence to call up Bobby and tattle. Or not. Either way, he’s still talking when Sam enters the room.

Dean’s phone conversation is just bizarre. Here, look!
Dean: “Yeah, Abraham Lincoln and James Dean, can you believe that?”
Dean: “Why so kill crazy? Maybe the apocalypse has them all hot and bothered.”
Dean: “Yeah, well we all know whose fault that is.”
Dean: “Well, I’m sorry but it’s true.”

Fun game: Try to come up with Bobby’s side of this conversation; both what he might say to elicit such responses, and how fast he’d have to talk to be able to get a word in edgewise.

So Sam’s annoyed, but he’s not alone: I’m annoyed with this whole scene, which is about as unsubtle as an axe as well as being out of left field. Dean suggests Sam pretends the conversation didn’t happen, if that’ll float his boat, so I’m going to try and take his advice and just forget it.

The boys head out. The museum is less creepy than it sounds in theory; it’s just a bit too cheesy to really get worked up over. Dean tries out Abe Lincoln’s hat before wandering off to find James Dean’s key chain. As soon as he’s gone, Sam is attacked by Ghandi. Sam made the mistake of admiring Ghandi earlier this episode, so now Ghandi is trying to have him for dinner.  Dean comes back and manages to destroy Ghandi’s glasses, which causes Ghandi to disappear. But not in a ghostly way.

Sam and Dean go back to the motel. Dean considers the job done and is ready to head out, and Sam argues. There’s more ham-fisted family DRAMA! Dean apparent drove Sam into Ruby’s arms. And he wants to be treated like a grown-up. It’s a relief when the discussion is interrupted by the news that Paris Hilton has apparently abducted one of her fans. Sam and Dean head back to the police station, where they talk to some teenage fans of the infamous Ms. Hilton. This clues them into the fact that they’re not dealing with ghosts, which they probably should have figured out a lot earlier. Sam decides to go all Scully, but unlike Scully who was actually qualified to perform autopsies, he resorts to randomly rummaging around in one of the corpses. He finds two black pebbles, and then, his curiosity peaked, reads the coroner’s reports. I’d have done that first, personally. Apparently the recently murdered fans suffered inexplicable massive amounts of blood loss. Using some magic research skills, he identifies the pebbles as being seeds from one specific kind of tree that only grew in one forest in the Balkans. He then finds legends about a pagan deity who could shapeshift and liked to kill its worshipers and then stuff their stomachs with seeds. The legend helpfully contains instructions on how to kill it: chop its head off with an iron axe. You know, the myths I studied always tended to involve the lust-driven misadventures of the gods. There was a very sad lack of  how-to guides.

Sam and Dean head back to the wax museum, where they discover the missing teenager tied to a tree and unconscious. Their attempt to rescue her is foiled when Paris Hilton shows up and beats the crap out of them. Paris ties them up to trees, too, and then proceeds to torture them (and me) by blathering on about the cult of celebrity. I think it would have been painful even if delivered by an actual actor. Dean points out that they are no fans of hers, so they can’t eat them, and she decides to remedy that by turning into John Winchester. Luckily, Dean breaks free of his bonds and tackles her before she can even begin the transformation, saving Supernatural the cost of having Jeffrey Dean Morgan guest star. While Paris kicks the crap out of Dean, Sam breaks free as well, grabs the axes, and chops her head off with relish.

Then its all over but for a car side conversation, where the brothers Winchester helpfully recap a few off screen conversations: Dean also helped start the apocalypse, good on Sam for killing Lilith. Dean then agrees he’s been keeping Sam on a tight leash and decides that they should have an equal partnership, and as a show of good faith, he lets Sam drive. As Sam did on numerous occasions last season. Allrighty.

Since the show barely made it past the 37 minute mark, they stuffed in an extended promo for the next few episodes which do look pretty awesome.

I had two main problems with this episode:

• The brother-drama was unnecessary. Or rather, if they couldn’t do it well, they shouldn’t have done it at all. Nothing much changed from where things left off last week, and the scene at the end of “The End” conveyed where they stand far more powerfully. It was all in the subtext, where as this episode had very little.

• There were some pretty massive plotholes. I’m still not sure why Dean would want to head out after dealing with potential Evil Ghandi ghost, given that the other murders (they thought) were committed by Evil James Dean and Evil Lincoln. They hadn’t solved the problem of people being killed by dead celebrities.

• It was dull. With a strong enough application of “awesome” it can be easy to over look flaws like the ones above. This would could have been awesome, this season’s equivalent of “Monster Movie”. But it just seemed flat. I’m not sure how they managed that.

I also was fairly skeptical of the premise from when it is first announced. Dread is a typical reaction to the news that a series is going to be reinvented as darker/edgier and younger/sexier. Then there was all the chatter about toning down the “science” in a series that had very little to begin with. It’s hard not to hear that in conjunction with the rest and not immediately jump to the conclusion that the show has moved firmly into the camp of  “the viewers are huge morons” theory of television production. This has turned out to be not exactly the case- it seems that Universe wants to fit more into the mold of BSG or maybe even Firefly: stark, character-driven drama with a lesser reliance on science fiction tropes. My skepticism remains, though, and the first episode has done little to assuage it.

There’s a reason Stargate’s never been much like BSG or Firefly: they really suck at character development and weightier storytelling. This has absolutely nothing to do with the tone. You could magically transport the characters of Firefly into a happier world where the universe is not actively conspiring against them, and they’d still be compelling- the reason their tragic moments and interactions were so moving was because they were layered and complex individuals. And even within Firefly’s very short run, there were subtle but meaningful touches of character development. The sign of a character driven show is that it’s never what happened that matters as much as how it affected the characters. I love it, but Stargate has never had it. Their most interesting characters were more by accident than design- and primarily, I suspect, rested on the talents of the actors. Characters were almost entirely defined by their roles. Look up the appropriate tropes on tvtropes.org and you have them in a nutshell. This has not changed. SG:U is populated by trope-people. It makes them easy to identify but boring to watch when there’s nothing else going on.

There are similar problems with the storytelling. Stargate has always been good at world building, and as a result, creating scenarios that are rife with opportunities for complex and meaningful storytelling (e.g. the Tok’ra, the Jaffa, and diplomatic tensions on Earth and off-world), but they never did more than flirt with these possibilities, usually backing away just as things got interesting and reverting to “the team narrowly escapes from and/or defeats a villain.” That’s not to say Stargate was a bad show. On the contrary, I usually enjoyed it immensely. It’s redeeming features were that it had a sense of humor, and was unapologetically having fun. It’s unrelenting optimism and sense of adventure helped, too. It never took itself too seriously, and so was able to make even the most tired of tropes entertaining.

I always wanted Stargate to take that extra step and live up to its potential. Even as I enjoyed it, it was incredibly frustrating to see how much better they could be. You may be wondering what all this has to do with Universe, and the answer is everything. On the surface, Universe is trying to be a better show. It wants to follow in the mold of more character driven shows…but it’s done so by chucking out everything that made it fun. Stargate could have been a character driven show with complex plots without losing its cheer and humor, but it wasn’t because the people behind it lacked the skill. And they still do. Nothing has changed with Universe but the removal of the redeeming features. The characters are still defined by their roles. Attempts to play off interpersonal conflict and show character depth are still as dull and uninspired as they were in any previous season and series.

The almost complete break with the past mythology doesn’t symbolize a fresh start to me; it symbolizes that the writers and producers still are incapable of building off of complex situations. When Stargate SG-1 began to reach its natural conclusion in Season 7, the solution for continuing was to create a new series with new characters in a new place with new enemies. When SG-1 itself continued on, the floundered around for a season without much purpose before basically doing the same within SG-1 – new people, and a bigger, badder version of the enemy they had before (seemingly all powerful aliens masquerading as gods), despite having plenty of other directions open to them: they had a post-cold-war analogy practically beating them over the head, begging to be explored. So it’s difficult for me to see this newest reimagining as anything but an attempt to escape their own continuity and mythology, and not for the sake of new viewers. They just don’t have the guts to follow through with what they’ve already got. The only real difference with the new series is that they’ve refrained from introducing a new galactic villain (I’d not be surprised if this isn’t remedied eventually.) Without signs of change on more than a superficial level, I just can’t see this show working. Think if Friends suddenly went all Othello. It’d be weird, and probably not all that good. Or if Doctor Who had a spin-off that was gritty and obsessed with sex. That’d be ridiculous. (Oh, wait…).

The most interesting moment for me of the pilot was the very end, as a group assembles to step through the Gate and see what’s on the other side. There was a bit of that old Stargate spark: the sense of adventure. But I fear that it’ll just be more of the same faux-grittiness as this episode with a different backdrop.

Other random reactions:

- It’s a pet peeve of mine, but one thing I absolutely loathe in television is the tendency to have women dressed totally inappropriately- fighting in skintight leather while wearing stiletto heels, for example. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried walking around in stiletto heels, but it goes without saying that they make your balance very precarious. Likewise, leather tends to severely limit range of motion. So it’s stupid and I hate it. One thing I’ve always appreciated about Stargate is that, possibly due to the military involvement in the show, at least the SGC personnel were always dressed sensibly. Generally. The medic on SG:U had me irritated every time she came on screen. I’ve gone to actual formal balls less made-up than she was (and I wasn’t a slouch in that department). Her hair was the worst of it, though the sexy uniform kind of irked me too.

-I’m interested to find out how a show that’s so dark and serious is going to get away with aliens speaking English. SG-1 and SG:A could get away with it a wink and a nod, like everything else. But in a show without a sense of humor…?

- The long-term fan in me was annoyed by the coercion and kidnapping of the video game guy (Eli?)  which seemed wildly out of character for O’Neill, let alone the SGC.  Eli (?) seemed pretty much entirely unnecessary. “He cracked the code!” I can hear people saying. Yeah…but that was about it. He didn’t seem all that impressive.  Oh well, I’ll just file it with the totally contrived self-sacrifice (an alternative solution was fairly obvious) and the fact that they seem to be on the only Ancient ship to not require the Ancient gene at all.

-Why did they keep calling it ‘FTL’? Is that significant? Hasn’t the terminology been ‘hyperspace’ in the Stargate ‘verse?

But I’m interested in what others thought. Any new viewers want to weigh in? Any old fans think I’m totally off my rocker? Let me know.

Dean’s apparently had an exhausting day, and all he’d like is some sleep. But the universe is conspiring against him. I’ve had days like that. First, Castiel is calling him, all set to meet up with Dean and go chasing after the Colt, which he’s heard is still around. Then, just as Dean is dropping off, Sam calls for a little heart-to-heart talk. Siblings who call you at 4 am should be summarily shot. Just sayin’.

Sam wants to join back up with Dean, but Dean tells him it’s a bad idea and probably always will be, so that’s the end of that. And really, what did he expect, calling at 4 am? Dean finally gets back to bed…and promptly gets zapped to the future. Zachariah and the Bad Angels (sorry, it’s in my brain like a rock band, and there it will stay) find Dean via their newly tapped spy network of street evangelists, and send him on a little trip back to the future, and it’s even more depressing than his visit to the past last season.

It’s 2014, Sarah Palin is president, the South has risen again, the Croatoan virus (last seen in season 2) has swept the world, turning lots of people into 28-Days-Later type zombies. The military likes to massacre zombies to the sounds of Motown, and everything is grim and gray and covered with remarkably topical graffiti (also a sign of the apocalypse). There are also lots and lots of wrecked and overturned cars, as per requirement for every post-apocalyptic urban wasteland ever shown on television. Dean goes looking for Bobby, whose house notably does not look all that different from the last time we saw it, despite being the post-apocalyptic version. When you can’t hardly tell the difference between that before and after, it’s a sign. That man needs a house cleaner.

Dean gingerly pokes around, calling out for Bobby. In deference to Bobby’s status as a badass old dude, it’s more along the lines of “Please don’t shoot me,” than “Where are you?”  Unfortunately, all Dean finds of Bobby is his wheelchair, which is covered in bullet holes and blood stains.  Killing Bobby is the single most depressing thing the show hasn’t actually already done, so more than anything else, here’s proof positive that the future sucks. Dean goes poking around some more, finally coming across a photo of Bobby posing with Castiel and some other guys militia-style. They’re helpfully posed right next to a sign for some (summer?) camp, so Dean moseys on down that way. He scopes out the place, which definitely has a ‘survivalist/militia’ theme going. He finally sees something so horrible that he practically yelps in dismay; the poor dismembered ruins of his much-beloved car.

While he’s crooning to it in distress and undoubtedly wondering where in the hell he’s going to get the parts to fix it this time, a figure sneaks up on him and punches his lights out. It’s Future Dean, who is wearing Jason Bourne’s frowny-stony face from the sequels. When our Dean wakes up again, he’s been chained to a pipe inside one of the cabins. Future Dean watches him while messing around with a big damn gun, further emphasizing his role as a post-apocalyptic badass. BDGs, of course, being standard issue for every post-apocalyptic badass. Our Dean manages to prove to future Dean that he is who he says he is fairly quickly by relating an anecdote about pink satin panties. Future Dean believes him, and they both kind of smirk at each other over the anecdote. But Future Dean quickly reverts to hardass mode and stomps off, leaving our Dean chained to the pipe and telling him not to go wandering off. Of course, he really should have known better, because that’s of course the very first thing our Dean does after prying a nail out of the floor and making his escape.

He immediately finds himself in the usual situation that always goes along with cases of mistaken identity: he’s confronted by an angry girlfriend. But this scene also contains one Carver Edlund, also known as the Prophet Chuck, who makes me willing to forgive the cliche. Especially when Dean uses him as a human shield. He pesters Dean a bit about logistics of running the camp. Dean beats a hasty retreat and goes in search of Castiel. He’s in for a surprise: Castiel has been spending the apocalypse as a stoned sex cult leader/guru with an adoring harem. Castiel immediately catches on to the fact that Dean’s been temporally displaced. Or maybe he’s just really, really, really stoned. Could be both. Dean asks him to send him back to 2009, but Cas just kind of laughs in a kind of creepy way and tells him he can’t.

In comparison to that development, Dean’s growing disgust for his future-self hardly comes as a shock.  Future Dean’s an end-justifies-the-means guy, and utterly ruthless about it. He’s been using his mad torturin’ skillz to get intel, much to our Dean’s horror.  Even stony-faced hardass future Dean hates what he’s  become, though he hides it pretty well, until he gets a heart to heart talk with his past self.  It turns out that the mission future Dean was out on was to a) find the Colt (that can kill anything, at least in theory) and b) get some intel on where Lucifer was. Handily, both seemed to be nearby.

So off they all go to kill Lucifer, Future Dean telling Dean he wants him to come along so he can see something: apparently Sam isn’t dead, as he earlier implied. Instead, Lucifer has been “wearing him to the prom.” Bummer. Dean rides along with Castiel, who tells him he lost his mojo when all the other angels bailed (to…where? No really. I want to know. Mars?) Future Castiel’s a real drag, despite all his wild hippy hedonism. Or maybe because of it.  Finally, they arrive at Lucifer’s newest hangout, a mental institution. Future Dean arranges for everyone else (save our Dean) to go in one way, while he and…himself go around the back. Our Dean is horrified to realize that future Dean intends to send that group – including Castiel- to their deaths as cannon fodder. He vows to stop him, so future Dean punches him out again. There’s a stop-hitting-yourself joke in there somewhere.

Anyway, when our Dean comes to, it’s too late to save anybody. He sneaks around back just in time to see Lucifer (as Sam) kill his future self. It’s just hard to get emotional about these things when you’ve got time displaced doubles running around, though. Or maybe Futurama jaded me to the concept. Anyway, Lucifer then spends some time yammering on (“poor me! I’ve got daddy issues too! I’m Mr. Sensitive!”), and Dean tells him to STFU (finally) and vows to kill him. Lucifer goes to wander off, and Dean demands that he Lucifer just kill him now. I’m not sure why. Dean’s done this a few times, but I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish. Obviously dying would be counter-productive. Maybe he hopes one day the bad guys will say, “Okay,” and then trip on a rake and break their necks. I really don’t know.

Despite the fact the scene takes place in a garden, Lucifer fails to accidentally kill himself in a rake accident. Instead he decides to drop a few anvils about fate and destiny and time travel paradoxes, and points out that Dean’s not going to do anything big to change the future: He’s not going to agree to become a vessel, and he won’t kill Sam, so neenerneenerneener.

Lucifer vanishes, and Zachariah pops up to zap Dean back to 2009. He tries his best to pressure Dean into agreeing, but after a tense and emotional moment, Dean tells him to shove it. Zachariah doesn’t take kindly to this, and blusters and threatens a bit…but he’s talking to empty air. This does not make him happy. I think he’s going to give his vessel a heart attack.

Luckily, thanks to their earlier chat, Castiel was there to swoop in and save the day by poofing Dean away.  “We had an appointment” says the angel, who has never been more awwww-worthy. Really. It’s so cute I’m kind of ashamed of liking it.

Dean then does the one thing neither Zachariah nor Lucifer mentioned nor seemed to consider: He calls his brother, and that have a practically teary reunion on some random dirt road by the side of a bridge. It was all very heartwarming.

But there are still a few random thoughts and lingering questions (and do shout out if you know the answers):
1) Seriously, what was up with the soldiers blasting “Do You Love Me?”  while massacring zombies? Do the zombies just really hate that song or what?
2) Is there a giant warehouse of wrecked prop-cars that all the studios have on the off chance they need to show an post-apocalyptic urban wasteland, or do they just raid salvage yards?
3) What is  the proper pronoun to use when you encounter a time-displaced version of yourself?

Dean and Castiel pretend to be FBI agents while trying to find God, though they make time to visit the local whorehouse. Sam feels guilty for starting the apocalypse and getting addicted to blood and spends some quality time with his dead girlfriend, who turns out to be Lucifer,  in between working as a busboy and setting a barmaid’s heart aflutter by being tall, dark, handsome stranger with a mysterious past.

“Free to be You and Me” picks up pretty much directly from where “Good God, Y’all!”, last week’s episode,left off. Accidentally starting the apocalypse being apparently too much for even the brothers Winchester, they divided their massive amounts of psychological baggage between them and went their separate ways. This has been a long time coming, and I must applaud the show for sticking to it. It makes for uncomfortable viewing, and it certainly has their fans in a tizzy, but glossing over it would cheapen the story immeasurably. Since it’s dealing primarily with that, this episode is understandably not the most rocking, but it still works well. One one level, the episode highlights their separation and emphasizes their success. But subtextually, it constantly undermines that premise and reveals it to be false, proving that this show does not always resort to beating its viewers over the head with 2×4s to get its message across (yay!).

Sam’s half of the episode is actually the easiest to sum up, for all that its moodiness.  He’s feeling just awful about the whole apocalypse and demon-blood addiction thing, so he’s hitch-hiked out to the middle of nowhere from his demons, both figurative and literal (and really, if he’d ever watched “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” he’d realize why this was doomed to failure.) He finds work as a busboy at a bar, where he catches the eye of a beautiful blonde barmaid by being tall, dark, and handsome and a mysterious stranger to boot. He goes around feeling guilty, flinching a bit whenever people say things like, “It’s like the end of the world out there, sheesh.” The barmaid spends every opportunity trying to solve the mystery of “Keith”, somehow managing to preface her interrogations with phrases like ‘I don’t mean to pry.’ She also gives him a pep talk about beating your (figurative) demons and how he can turn his life around and find forgiveness. Sadly, she misses her opportunity to say, “Whatever you did, it’s not like it’s the end of the world.” It all goes wrong, however, when Sam notices some demonic and apocalyptic omens and calls Bobby to tell him that someone should take care of it. Bobby is less than sympathetic with the wallowing and angst, but sends in some people to deal with the situation. Of course, for some reason he sends total idiots, who within not five minutes of arriving manage to blow Sam’s cover and also gets the pretty barmaid thinking they’re all mafia hitmen or something. But they soon leave, only to get their asses handed to them pretty damn fast. They return to the bar with the most idiotic plan ever: having heard about Sam’s role in the apocalypse, they’ve decided to force him to drink demon blood by taking the pretty barmaid hostage so that he’ll go all incredible hulk and kill all the demons for them. Yes. I’m kind of sorry that the show passed on the opportunity to make a “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” joke. Instead, they first showed Sam getting his ass handed to him (boo), but they made up for it by having him shortly after kick the crap out of the other guys. Shortly thereafter, we randomly cut back to the story the show started with: Sam having meaningful conversations with his dead girlfriend, who’s a bit bitchy, and who is revealed to actually be Lucifer. (Don’t you hate when that happens?) With this comes the reveal that Sam destiny is to (open the gates to hell) (lead a demon army) (stop the apocalypse) (start the apocalypse) be Lucifer’s one true vessel. Which really would be a bummer, but he seems happy to finally have something really easy and obvious to rebel against; Lucifer needs his consent, after all. And “Just Say No” really worked out for him earlier in the bar, so you have to suspect he’s feeling a teensy bit relieved that that’s all averting his destiny will take. Still, as this episode ended, you have to wonder what happened with the barmaid. She seemed pretty freaked, and booking it out of town might seem the logical next step for Sam, but he seemed to indicate he meant to hang around for a while longer, so…yeah. The transition between the two story lines was not the smoothest.

While all that’s going on, Castiel shows up in Dean’s hotel room to let him know he’s got a lead on the archangel Raphael (incidentally, the one who smote him and thereby inducted Castiel as a member of the fast-growing “Alive Again” club on this show), and he needs Dean’s help. Castiel thinks Raphael will know where Castiel can find God, so they go to see if they can find Raphael’s abandoned vessel, because apparently he’s like an direct phone line to the archangel and all they have to do is know how to dial (I’m not even paraphrasing there.) No, seriously. I’ve got a running list in my head of things to support my theory that the writers all sit around and get drunk (and/or stoned) to generate ideas, leaving one sole writer sober in order to turn the crazy into awesome. This is definitely going on that list.

Anyway, in between tracking Raphael (or at least his vessel) down, Dean and Castiel give some team bonding a try: Dean makes Castiel ride in the car, he drags him along on his investigation, and takes him to a whorehouse.  There are a lot of amusing moments concerning Castiel’s complete incomprehension of how the normal world works. The people behind the show undoubtedly thank their lucky stars that they managed to find someone as talented as Misha Collins to fill the role, for it’s the gravitas tempered with earnest naivety he brings to these scenes that really make them work.

This is the half of the story, however, that really begins to feel off in subtle ways. Dean’s always waiting a beat and half too long for responses that don’t happen, and his punchlines fall flat because Castiel doesn’t understand the references. Castiel’s attempts to emulate Dean (“you’re my little bitch now,”) are equally stilted (if still funny). These are characters who are reading from slightly different scripts. Kudos must go to the actors for maintaining that element of misfiring chemistry. These are characters who aren’t quite on the same page; they’re projecting different people and different relationships on to each other, and it doesn’t quite click.

In the end, they do manage to find Raphael, and they trap him in a magic fiery circle and proceed to ask him where God is hiding. After some bluster and some exploding windows and blacking out the entire eastern seaboard, he gets a bit teary eyed and tells them he just misses his daddy and thinks he must be dead, especially because of how awful the 20th century was. Now granted, the 20th century sucked, but obviously the archangel has a very short memory, because the 19th century was also full of suckitude, as was every century preceding it. But let’s move past that into the real issue here, shall we?

I’m talking of course of the daddy issues. I’m getting a bit tired of daddy issues, and I can’t be the only one.  In retrospect, the earlier line about “This entire industry runs on absent fathers,” seems more like an apology.  Plus remember my earlier comments about subtlety? This is where the show reverts to the 2×4. It jumps up and down and says, “Hey! Hey! Do you see!  Did you notice?! See the parallels? God’s totally like John Winchester! We’ve only made this comparison about ten million times! Maybe we’re being too subtle here. Let’s get a neon sign next time, what do you think?” Bad show, bad. You were doing so well.

Next week looks pretty exciting. Looks like we’re going back to the future. Fun stuff.

The end of summer draws upon us, bringing with it the return of the fall season. Once again we’ll swear television has reached new highs or new lows. We’ll applaud the eagerly anticipated debuts and returns, be disappointed by the filler, and look on with disbelief at the zombies that no one has yet put down.

We’ll speculate, eviscerate, and gossip, thus continuing the tradition of fall television chatter. And there’s no chatter more traditional than complaining about the Nielsen ratings. It’s practically time-honored. We’ve all done it. If there are three villains in the minds of viewers and fans, the Nielsens have got to be in the top two or three, right behind network execs and about equal with those-morons-who-watch-crap-instead-of-good-television.

We’ve all seen it enough to know it by heart. Recite with me, now:

• Their methodology is suspect or completely bogus

• Too much emphasis is put on them

• There are infinitely better ways to track viewer numbers

And you know as well as I do that each and every one of these criticisms tend to be prefaced with, “any idiot can see….”. And you know, they’re convincing arguments; it often does seem obvious. It really doesn’t matter, though. Criticisms of the ratings are nothing new; nearly 20 years ago, NOVA suggested that network executives would have better luck going with their gut than trying to base decisions of ratings…and it wasn’t a particularly novel conclusion.

Even if the Nielsen’s have been unjustly maligned, the existence of these doubts would presumably lead networks and advertisers to look for alternatives, but that’s not exactly happened. So the question before us is not whether the Nielsen ratings system should be scrapped, but why it hasn’t been.

The main players in this farce are the networks, the advertisers, and of course, Nielsen Media Research (NMR).

The networks want to sell advertising spots to their advertisers. The advertisers want to know that they are getting their money’s worth and that their products are being hawked to those who might actually buy them. NMR wants to stay in business and presumably keep the first two reliant on them alone for those all important numbers. Whenever NMR tries to change things up, the networks are unhappy when their cash-cows are suddenly undermined. Whenever the networks challenge the system, as they are now, NMR accuses them of trying to create a cabal to rig the ratings. The result: nothing ever really changes.

But call me cynical, but I’m not sure we should really want them to. One of the more recent criticisms of NMR centers around their decision to not weigh online viewing (either on PCs or mobile devices) in their calculations, nor to update how they weigh DVR recordings. That does seem ridiculously stupid. But it should also make us rethink the whole proposition. Perfect numbers are no longer simply advertisers’ wet dreams; it’s becoming more and more technologically feasible that everything a viewer watches might be logged and added into a great stew of statistics. The advertisers would be thrilled. At this point, privacy concerns may seem like closing the barn door long after the horses are gone, but it’s still creepy.

Besides, I’m not quite ready to give up the kvetching about the ratings. They make far better villains than the morons next door, as we all have our guilty pleasures and can’t exactly point fingers. Murky ratings give fans something to speculate over and fight against. In a world with perfect ratings, there’d be little room for quirky fan campaigns to save their favorite shows.

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