SPN Georg

no, really, how does benny know how this portal works? how is he the only being in the universe that seems to know about it, and exactly how it works? how does he know it’s only for humans to pass through? why does cas so easily believe it’s truly only for humans to pass through? i have always believed that it’s because it suits their respective agendas to believe that, whether it was the truth or not. In this essay I will…

Okay, that's just one of my usual questions around the beginning of season 8, and I will continue to ask them! But there's plenty of other things to wonder about in this episode, like how did Sam end up spending an entire year with Amelia... mysteries we will never really understand, I suppose. But at least we do get some insight into just why Dean trusts Benny so much. All this and more! including Dean's exasperation with Sam, Sam's exasperation with Dean, and interesting new facts about vampires!

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I forgot to mention the cut scene on the dvd for this one, or maybe I just blanked it out of my mind, but Sam tries to call someone from a phone booth and then hangs up. When she calls back, he hangs up again. After Sam and Dean leave, Kate runs over, calls the last number dialed, and gets Dr. Amelia Richardson, veterinarian, who is very confused about Kate asking if she consults for the FBI.

I think the only thing this tells us is that Sam is having conflicted feelings about having left her, even despite the circumstances we’ll learn about in a few weeks. But I can see why this scene was cut for time. This episode is already jam packed, even if this likely would’ve helped make Amelia feel like less of an imaginary character.

But there are many scenes that did air, so let’s talk about those.

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why is dean always the target of heartache, heartbreak, heart attacks, and other various and sundry attempts to stab, poke, crush, fold, spindle, mutilate and impale his heart? it is a mystery! but we're gonna wail about it for a bit today...

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We all remember the origin of the tagline, “the destiels will never have that now,” right? When Sam hugs Cas in 9.11, folks cheered that Cas hugged Sam before he hugged Dean, as proof that Dean doesn’t like Cas or some nonsense. And then everyone else just laughed at them, because the destiels had already had the destiel reunion hug in this episode for like a year and a half. So we decided we will also have THIS now!

I swear this episode is about a lot of other stuff, too. We can have it all now!

Including some LINKS!

Welcome to Carver Era! Sam hit a dog, and Dean spent a year in Purgatory. Wait, where's Cas, and why is Dean resurrecting and then hugging a vampire? Now you're all caught up! Kinda... :'D

Sometimes I think we need to talk about Kevin so we won't have to talk about any of THAT ^^ yet. But since we're here to talk about all of it, that's what we're gonna do. :)

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As we bid farewell to the Gamble Era and usher in Carver era, Kevin goes from having leviathan troubles to demon troubles, Cas chooses to take responsibility for himself and he and Dean are destined for Purgatory, and poor Sam is left standing all alone in the aftermath... at least the leviathans are effectively washed from the earth...

Gosh that makes it sound like not much of import happens in this one. I'm really underselling it here, so instead let's just jump to...

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I just realized how threatening the subheading on that graphic looks... I am not actually out for blood over Dabb's nonsense car things... >.>

For those unfamiliar with our longstanding feud with Andrew Dabb over car and driving continuity issues, there’s some pretty glaring examples in this episode. Obviously the Supernatural Universe is not OUR universe, they have cities we don’t and vice versa, you know, like their Lebanon, Kansas is a thriving small town on the show and barely exists enough to mark on a map here, as just one example.

But Hoople, North Dakota to Missoula, Montana is not a 7 hour drive. It’s nearly 15 hours on a good day, on the highway. If that wasn’t enough, they doubled down on looking for somewhere within a 300 mile radius of Hoople. And Missoula is over 900 miles away. So either take this as your occasional reminder that the Supernatural universe is not our universe, and it’s kinda silly to make these sorts of comparisons because of that, or use it to fuel your personal vendetta against Mr. Dabb for not apparently knowing how to read a map.

We’ve reached the penultimate episode of season seven though, and we’re finally almost free of Gamble Era! Everything is coming together now, including a weapon they’re hoping will finally be able to kill the Leviathan, so we get a lot of plot to plow through.

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KEVIN! This poor kid... just add him to the list of Terrible Things Chuck Did.

We have a Leviathan Tablet and a new prophet to read it, which wakes Cas into a state of abject denial and depression of what he did, brings the angels back into play, and sets Sam and Dean on a big scavenger hunt for parts for a weapon powerful enough to end the leviathans.

Also, bees.

I think that about sums it up... oh and there's a lot of suffering of the personal emotional kind for everyone! Wheeee! Thanks, Ben Edlund!

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CHARLIE!

That's all I need to say, right? Oh, we also get the plot set in place for the rest of the season, with the awesome heist they pull on Dick's Brick. Dean gets to be both a lil geeky AND a lil queer. And Bobby goes terrifyingly close to vengeful. So much happening, and we're at least now pointing directly toward the season finale, so borax ahoy!

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It's another one of those episodes I always used to forget existed until it came back around on the loop again. Yeah, we get some weird Bucklemming-flavored ghost lore, but it proves at least interesting in context with Bobby's ghost. Because we also finally get to see Bobby's ghost again, right along with Sam and Dean, with the reminder of the mytharc happening elsewhere feels like a throaway line in this episode.

But this one is worth watching, and we can find enjoyment, especially in meeting the hunter Annie, and reuniting with Bobby. Because after this week we'll run headlong into a cascade of mytharc leading up to the season finale. We can enjoy one last little deviation from that plot.

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We officially have a Gross of SpnGeorg! wheee!

I sincerely appreciate Garth as a person, and as a friend to Sam and Dean. If anyone could've made them feel even a little bit better about the universe after last week, it was Mr. Fizzles Garth.

I also appreciate the expansion of the supernatural universe, especially through the medium of Beer Brands. We talk about beer in Supernatural having meta relevance (think El Sol, Kingdom, and Schultz, for starters), so the genesis of an entirely new category of beer brands (the trendy independent brewery that makes beers that dean ends up enjoying unironically) is fascinating to me personally. I love anything that expands the spn universe like this!

Also filed under things I love about this episode: Dean gets to be the sober one, and for once in his life, it works against him, especially after a season where his excessive and growing alcohol intake had been a lowkey running theme.

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Do I need to introduce this one? Really? We're all here for the return of Cas, and a massive turning point in the structure and narrative of the series. There's just so much good here, even if Cas gets shoved back in a box at the end of the episode. At least he's ~there~ again.

So much changes after this point, but first and foremost, Dean reclaims just a tiny shred of hope. And in season seven, that's huge.

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Yes, things locked in boxes unwittingly released to wreak havoc and ruin lives. Again. Still kinda shocked at how many times Sam and Dean still attempt to lock things up to solve their problems after all the escaped things they've had to round up and deal with over the years.

We also get a lot of innuendo and queercoding for Dean, and Sam's decompensating fast now that that he can't stuff his hallucinations back in their box with the scar button on his hand. We also finally begin to learn some of what the Leviathans have been planning. And while they may be practically invincible and invulnerable, they're also apparently largely... not all that competent as a whole.

Okay, I think I'm pas de done for now, so let's have some LINKS!

Does this make Dean the dog again? Also, a very good reminder that antipossession symbol tattoos are a thing in this universe, and maybe it would've been a good thing for them to have shared with a heck of a lot more people than they did, you know?

Also, some very interesting parallels through the MotW, a guy who went to extraordinary measures to bring back the demon (angel?) because he was in love with him. Two episodes before Cas comes back...

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I love this episode. After half a season of beating on Dean emotionally, while all of Sam's crazy fit under the Hallucifer umbrella he could control with the button on his hand, Sam finally gets some horror from the outside.

From clowns.

I mean, Dean has to face some baggage from his childhood, as well, but it's not as dramatic as Sam getting pounded on by maniac clowns. Plus we get an actual (magically created, anyway) unicorn!

This whole episode just feels like a reprieve from their otherwise unrelenting series of losses, and we really needed the break right about now...

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Oh, bucklemming with their fast-growing monster babies... only they foisted this one off on Dean. To me, this one has always felt like a ham-fisted attempt to balance out the Amy Pond storyline from earlier this season, that just makes it all the more unbalanced.

Sam might think the scales are balanced now, but mostly because he's not exactly in touch with reality himself here... or at the very least not seeing Dean clearly. This is the part of s7 where the writers seemed to forget Sam was constantly hallucifering all over the place, but that makes a hell of a lot more sense when we do remember that while watching.

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Time travel, and Dean gets to meet a personal hero in the flesh, while Sam and Jody have to save his ass from 1944. I love watching them all work at the same problem from opposite directions, and are able to make everything come together in the end. Plus who can resist Dean in that suit? Or resist just how much Dean loves that suit? Plus he's absolutely brilliant throughout this one (thank you Robbie Thompson, yet again!), and brilliantly queercoded. I could talk about this one for ages, but I already did...

Fine, just enjoy this one. I know we all will.

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Sam and Dean each try to cope with Bobby's death and honor him in their own way-- Sam by helping a young girl asking for Bobby's assistance, and Dean by obsessively trying to decode the numbers Bobby died to give them. It's all not particularly healthy, but they all learn something by the end.

Sam learns that Vetalas usually hunt in pairs, and Dean learns that if he doesn't want to quit, to walk away from hunting entirely, he should convince himself he'll be fine until the end of the week and then paste on a smile and be a professional. Thanks for that helpful advice, Frank!

Have I mentioned I kinda love that guy? I mean... the advice itself is kinda horrifying, but it reveals new hidden depths in Frank. Plus we meet Krissy and her dad, who I always wish had been truly able to free themselves from hunting. But this is Supernatural, so you know how that goes...

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Welcome to another episode, it's time to feel Sad and Angry... sangry? That's right, Bobby dies.

Sam is sad, but struggling hard to maintain his grip on reality, and it hurts him deeply that he can't fully mourn Bobby. I mean, we can't see it here, but just imagine how horrible the Hallucifer in his head could be in this situation. His beloved father figure dying could've proved nightmare fuel for Hallucifer.

And Dean is just furious about it, but hey, at least he's feeling something other than the nihilistic depression? He finally had a specific, direct target for all that pain, and it's one Mr. Dick Roman, Leviathan.

Do they have any idea how to actually kill him? Well, no. But that doesn't matter to Dean's anger.

And then Bobby (and Rufus! how awesome is it to see Rufus again, even in this horrible circumstance). I think nearly everyone is still mad about Bobby. :'D

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Can you guess when I joined GISHWHES for the first time? Aah, nostalgia for Team AngrySandwich! So clearly I enjoy this episode (at least until the last two minutes...) :'D

Dean finally gets a little respite from his feelings via the aforementioned sandwich, only for realty to crash back down on him ten times as hard. And he and Sam each have a heartfelt conversation with Bobby, before the aforementioned last two minutes.

But before that, we have an awful lot of fun... A return to the mytharc and Dick Roman and a glimpse at the sinister larger plans the Leviathans are carrying out while the narrative strips Sam and Dean of everything they love... even the simple things like "electricity" and "running water."

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And here we finally get an episode that gets right to the heart of Dean's fears. He's just trying so hard to be a Good Brother. To respect Sam's wishes, to let him make his own decisions about his life, and not only does Sam STILL think Dean is being judgmental and controlling when he tries to save Sam from what is very obviously a terrible situation from the outside, Sam resents him for it the entire time (well, until he snaps out of the love potion spell anyway...)

It's a very specific (and really skeevy) way to show us in small scale how Dean is feeling about Sam and his larger season issues about the Hallucifering, and being concerned that Sam really doesn't have as much agency in all of this as he's trying to convince Dean that he does. Because boy is Sam making some weak choices...

Plus, who can really hate Guy the demon?

I mean, thank heck Dabb gets to bring Becky back in s15 for some redemption after this one, but this one also highlights just how much Chuck's hand is stuck to everything in the story. Always good to keep that in mind during a rewatch.

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I do really enjoy this one, even if a lot of the fandom doesn't. I do enjoy Dean finally getting to feel at least a little relief, justifying his actions and turning at least a little of that back around on Sam.

It's a bit of an unconventional case, and I always enjoy those. And the character growth is incredibly on point considering this is the only episode these two writers ever did. They'd definitely been taking notes.

And since it's Thanksgiving, I'll just let the episode stand on its own this week. It's a good one to just sit back, relax, and enjoy some pie with. :)

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Welcome to the show, Robbie Thompson!

Do... do we need more hype than that for this week's episode? If so, we get more Jody Mills! We get Sam, Dean, and Bobby having to confront their gooey leviathan duplicates, we meet Frank, we get a little trip down memory lane to some early s1 cases, Baby goes into her s7 lockdown and we begin the journey of POS cars. But we also get a breakthrough on dealing with leviathan in general. They're highly allergic to borax. So saddle up your mule team and let's enjoy the ride!

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Bucklemming is back, and for them this one is actually pretty enjoyable, so I'll take it. Plus you can't be mad about Spike and Cordelia as feuding witches.

Dean's guilt is still getting the better of them, and Sam is pushing way too hard trying to make Dean talk about his feelings. I'm sure that won't lead to a catastrophic personal situation for them... This episode is pretty good at pointing out some of the foundations of Performing Dean, though, so credit where that's due. And for a guy that wants his brother to open up, Sam can get pretty snarky and judgmental in the few moments that Dean actually does. It doesn't give Dean a lot of incentive to actually show his feelings.

Especially when half those feelings are worry over Sam (even if this episode doesn't really show it much, we shouldn't forget he's still hallucifering it up in there), half are worry and turmoil over the nebulous situation they've found themselves in (the leviathan, having lost Cas, having lost Bobby's house as a home base, etc.), and half are just plain old guilt. (yes that's three halves, Dean has a LOT of feelings, okay?)

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This episode is here seemingly only to flog us with the fact that Dean Is Not Doing Well. Sam may have bounced back guilt-free and performatively coping with his hallucifering, but when Dean gets a second to breathe he just dives head-first into feeling trauma, guilt, and loss. And that's a super terrible combo platter on a good day.

And this is not a good day... >.>

Yes I get a little grumpy with Sam, and Dean, and this whole stupid situation. At least Osiris has cool decor, I guess.

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The trick to this one is to see everyone's perspective, or you end up hating someone in short order, and that is not what we're here for... >.>

While I like to stick to the watsonian perspective when I talk about the show, and I do in the episode, I want to mention the doylist perspective here for just a second. This one really feels like the assignment was "have Dean cross a line to show just how poorly he's coping" since so much of the first two episodes were about Sam's lack of touch with reality and the couple attempts they made to poke at Dean's mental state through everything were dismissed as unimportant in the face of the rest of their problems, even though it was clear that was a bald-faced lie at the time.

So this feels like an overcorrection on that front, using the unfortunate sequence of events and kind of almost glossing over Sam's Hallucifering, or showing us from Dean's perspective just how subtle it can look, as he does Mostly Okay from what WE see after the initial disconnect from reality in this episode. Yet it has Dean going so far off the rails that he's choosing murder as the safety net of protecting Sam from himself... and of course this will come back to bite him a lot, even into next season. And that I do get into during the episode.

But the writing choices here just lead to some of the emotional unevenness of the early part of s7, and I do find that mildly annoying. >.>

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And boy is it ever cruel! The subtitle there refers to the plot climax of this one, but also to season seven as a whole. The entire thing is built on pain being the key to reality, and doesn't that just suck! Like, massively! It sucks for Sam, it sucks for Dean, and it sucks for all of us! But we shall endure. :'D

We lose Cas right at the start, and then Dean carries his coat away like a widow leaving a soldier's funeral with a flag, and that sets the stage for his grief and guilt for the first long segment of the season. Meanwhile, Sam's just not coping well with his smashed walls and resurfacing Hell trauma, and using Dean's technique of repressing and denying is really, really not working for him.

So, bring on the pain and losses and gooey jerks who are this season's Big Bad-- a metaphor for capitalism. Wheee.

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Same as the old boss... (won't get fooled again... *screaming*)

Welcome to season seven, where they could've done something truly great but instead did this... We could've had a season of Godstiel, trying to save Cas from himself and Leviathan Possession, but no. Though the specific *way* they screwed this up becomes the foundation for the relationship between Dean and Cas for the rest of the series, so at least we have that.

And isn't it a LOT easier to watch s7 knowing that going in? I think so!

Plus Death is in this one, and I adore that guy. At least as much as I really don't like Lucifer-- even this imaginary version currently plaguing poor Sam.

At least we have one more episode with Cas, even if he's really going through it. And I'm gonna spend a lot of s7 referencing s15. Partly because Chuck seemed really enamored with the Leviathan as a monster, but also because it feels very relevant to Chuck's Favorite Story in a lot of ways.

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A season finale that really runs as part one of a two-parter. I had to firmly sort the events of this one out of the events of 7.01, and mostly succeeded, I hope.

Poor Sam has to put himself back together after Cas breaks his wall in a desperate last-ditch attempt to go through with his awful plan. Somewhere along the line, this power grab stopped being About Saving Dean and morphed into something truly awful. And all the while Our Guys have NO idea what Cas's actual goal in his determination to defeat Raphael actually is! They don't understand what Raphael in power in heaven would mean for them very specifically! Resuming the apocalypse, forcing Lucifer and Michael into Sam and Dean, and the end of everything on earth!

I will never be over the fact that if Cas had just shared that tiny fragment of information with them from the start, Sam and Dean both would've been all about helping Cas defeat Raphael, whatever that ended up looking like. But heck, they never even had a chance. And now, Cas has no idea why all his friends are "betraying" him, because he's so single-minded in his goal of busting open Purgatory like a cold one and drinking down the boys... like... without that One Key Detail, it sounds like an insane plan! And it even sounds like an insane plan to folks who DO know what Raphael plans to do (like Balthazar!). So really.. this is just a mountain of frustration and sadness and The Consequences Of Their Own Actions. And it all lands on Cas right here... :(

Things really start falling apart... Cas's plans are breaking down, Bobby's chasing leads from H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean's chasing the demons who went after Lisa and Ben, and makes terrible choices as a result. It's just Bad Decisions Day all around!

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This week: Studies in new levels of crippling emotional pain! That's right, we've arrived at The Agonies! I really don't believe I have to work hard to introduce this one, so I'll yammer about the caption i put on the graphic this week: big plans for that fish.

Hello everyone, this is your captain speaking. If you look out the left side of the plane, you can watch Castiel's carefully constructed plans begin to unravel in catastrophic fashion! Because by the end of this episode, he's reaching the point of no return. He's got maybe one more chance to take it all back after the events of this episode, but we all know he's passed that emotional point of no return months and months ago (when he walked away from Dean raking leaves *insert a bajillion sobbing emojis here*).

So we get Dean's own humanity working against him, but also working for him. And he gets to be a Jefferson Starship for a hot minute. And we see Cas willing to sacrifice his own "humanity" to do what he believes he needs to do to save everyone else (and especially Dean).

It's all just sad.

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We get yet another peek at the undercurrent of season 6, the bigger picture of what's really going on with Cas. And again, it's one of those things you can't notice until you know the full trick of the season. But on rewatch, it's so much more heartbreaking when you know what's coming.

I also really do think this is where Dean's fascination with cowboys and the wild west moves from loving movies about it to actually taking an interest in the real history of it all. Kinda hard not to when you're immersed in all that authenticity! Plus I really love his coat.

We also get a little more of the backstory of the Colt. I honestly wish I could watch the conversation between Samuel Colt and Elkins, considering 140-odd years later we find the gun in possession of a guy named Daniel Elkins, a renowned vampire hunter. I... would honestly love to hear the story of the Colt and the Elkins family, and how they became the guardians of this weapon that was so entirely foundational to the entire narrative. Alas, that's left to our collective imagination... What I do have, is:

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For an episode that feels very much like a throwaway MotW romp of silliness on a first watch of the series, this one sure does have some much stronger implications buried in it when you know what's coming three episodes down the road...

By the time we learn Crowley loaned 50k souls to smack down Raphael before the events of s6 that we've witnessed to this point, I think we forget that this whole wild plan in THIS episode was specifically engineered to manufacture... 50k new souls. It almost feels as if this was a last-ditch attempt for Cas to try and "fix" things, to get out of that deal, to pay Crowley back and walk away. But it failed. It only puts Sam and Dean in more direct danger, and he abandons it as quickly and messily as he began.

IT'S A TRAGEDY. And on a first watch, you can't possibly understand it. Which is why we do this! For the pain! :D

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Yes, the title is Agatha Christie, and the themes are kind of similar in a general sense... a bunch of people all enticed to the same location and everyone ends up dead. Well..., not entirely everyone. Their true "host" for these events is still walking around (Eve) and Sam, Dean, and Bobby all live to fight another day. But everyone else? Eh... not so much.

Khan worm monster gets squished though, which... ew lol.

But as I say in the recording, overall in the big scheme of things, while we do finally learn little bit more about Eve, this one ends up feeling rather sad and pointless in the bigger scheme of things. And I just find that a little disappointing.

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I realized after i finished editing this one that I didn’t even talk about the title of this one. It’s a reference to a very specific fourth wall break in cinema history. From my second favorite movie released the year I was born, Blazing Saddles. I’ll link to a post with the video clip from the end of the film below though.

For anyone who doesn’t know the film though, it’s a western. It’s a dang silly Mel Brooks western, too, with a lot of social commentary (heavily rooted in when it was made… 1974…). And at the end of the movie, at the climax of action, we… cut to an exterior shot of a film studio, and then move into a studio where they’re shooting a big old-timey song and dance number (think Fred Astaire’s backup dancers sort of deal), dozens of flamboyant men in tuxedos singing about “doing the French Mistake” when a director calls cut because someone was out of step. The director himself them proceeds to show the dancers how simple it is (and the flamboyant director refers to the dancers as “Sissy Marys” and “faggots” in his grumpy orders… but then proceeds to throw out his hands, stick out his tush, hands on his hips, give them a push… finishing by accidentally kneeling down in a fountain…

then as the dancers try again from the top, they’ve just begun when… the cast of Blazing Saddles literally comes crashing *through the wall*. Just knock out a whole wall of their set and keep right on fighting. The director desperately tries to call cut, but one of the cowboy characters runs up to him and says nah I’m working for Mel Brooks! like that’s supposed to give him permission to run roughshod over another film, too.

Which… seems plausible, because one of the top-hatted dancers likes the idea of this, yells COME ON, GIRLS to the other (again, all male) dancers, and run right into the cowboy brawl. And it all turns irrevocably gay. All the cowboys paired up with dancers and making love not war.

So I needed to at least make note of that somewhere. :’D

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Do I have to describe this one? >.>

Haunted kidney, Baby is a sex doll, and this is about as far from a win as the Winchesters ever get.

Dean's relationship with Lisa is firmly and officially over. Sam Sams, and pretty much everyone else dies, so... wheee? >.>

In better news, this is officially the shortest episode of the SPN Georg podcast to date, so there's that...

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Yes, I had to watch it again, despite Sam's specific struggles in this episode being a source of... let's call it personal emotional distress for me. So I'm gonna talk lightly about it as much as possible.

I also am super creeped by the concept of the spider people, so... winning all around for me I guess. >.>

In far better news, this episode has our only full draft script from season six! We've got the green draft, which you can read in its entirety at the link below. This was the very first script that I personally bought, long before the Script Hunt server was established, and started us on the long strange journey of collecting as many as possible.

Which brings me to two additional points this week:

No I will never be over the fact this is the only episode we actually hear dragons exist, and they're basically... dudes. I mean, par for the course, but still disappointing just a little bit.

Dean gets to experience having wealth, Sam gets told the truth about his soulless year, Cas is the dingdong who breaks the news (and gosh is he looking ragged too...), and we're into the murky middle of season six. This run of episodes is... not my favorite lol. But here we go.

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This is in my top three favorite episodes of the entire series! Enough said!

Okay, fine, I'll say more.

This one asks us several Big Questions and is as vague as Death about the answers. What is a soul even? Who is Sam without his and was existing without his soul *really* living? Or really *Sam*? And what's the larger point of season 6 as a whole? Because yes it really is all about the souls -- souls as a source of power but at what cost? Oh the humanity, etc. And getting a peek at the Larger Cosmic Order and what it means to keep it in balance, as well as what happens when that starts to break down and chaos and destruction ensue... all important concepts in later seasons (Cosmic Consequences!).

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There's just a lot going on in this one. So much. We get the return of Meg, in an enemy-of-my-enemy situation, we get Samuel and learn the depths to which he's willing to sink to get what he wants, the horror of his current situation, and we learn that Crowley was never able to get Sam's soul out of the cage making all their work for him bringing in monsters to torture (and yeesh to that...) pointless. But at least it looks like Cas is still on their side? >.>

I mean... it FEELS like we're getting to the heart of the truth, it FEELS like at least some of their problems have been resolved, right? *GAME SHOW LOSER BUZZER NOISES*

Welcome to season six... where the second you think you know the truth you fall through a trap door into a deeper layer of falsehoods!

(it's all still incredibly important to the overall narrative, and again, you can only tell that when you already know where this is all leading...)

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I love this one. Even if it ruined Space Oddity for me forever. :'D

It's like nine different crimes against Dean Winchester in a glittery glue bomb. Plus it's also the absolute best Soulless!Sam episode. I do thoroughly enjoy every minute of this episode, though, so I'll just let everyone else go about enjoying it, too and stop yammering in the notes about it. :'D

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(except these dogs, because they're actually monsters, but purgatory probably needs doggos too so...)

I am not gonna sugar coat this one. It's... not good lol. Like it's one of the episodes I'd repeatedly forget existed at all until it came back up on the rewatch. Unfortunately I've rewatched the series so many times now that I'm incapable of forgetting it exists now.

Like all the worst episodes, though, there's like three minutes at the end of the episode that's actually too important to overlook as character/meta/overarching narrative plot points, and I did my best to not talk about it out of order. I mean, I had to suffer through this one (several times, thanks to having to edit it lol), so it's only fair that everyone has to hear about the weird dogs.

I do appreciate this one for demonstrating just how not-great Soulless!Sam as a hunter... Since everyone from Bobby to Samuel has been saying all season that Sam has been an incredible hunter over the last year, it's really satisfying to have some direct evidence that hooboy... being uncaring and ruthless is a terrible, terrible hunting strategy. So that's something, I guess.

Anyway, have some LINKS!

The Campbells are up to some shady shit. The Alpha Vampire gets to break some delightfully terrible news. And oh yeah, Sam popped outta hell wrong!

I think I covered pretty much everything I wanted to in this one, so I’m gonna lay out some puzzling conundrums in this space for everyone to ponder instead:

The Alpha Vampire could tell Sam had no soul at ten paces, but apparently none of the other supernatural beings Sam had encountered in the previous year-plus could tell (or at least none of them bothered to tell ~him~ or any of his cohorts). (obviously leaving out Veritas last week who was shocked he could lie to her, assumed he wasn’t human, but didn’t pick up on the why...) I feel like this was written for a “make for a shocking and badass moment for this episode” while not really considering the wider implications of this statement meant for the cosmology and supernatural beings in their universe on a larger scale.

(maybe because they’re predators vampires have different senses for detecting prey, and more finely honed skills at differentiating what they’re sensing? as opposed to angels and demons who don’t specifically prey on humanity in this way? eh... there’s just so many holes in the logic to poke at! and this is in an episode I generally enjoy!)

It’s never really explained later in canon how the Alpha Vampire survived being taken directly to Crowley for torture, unless Crowley just didn’t have a weapon capable of killing him. Or just like... came to an accord with the Vampire and released him, or the Alpha escaped yet again. He just turns up again next season like nbd. And I have questions :’D

But all that’s not exactly relevant to the episode. What is relevant to this one and upcoming canon for the rest of s6 is that I truly believe this is the first time that Cas actually learns how tragically wrong he’d been in his assumption that he’d rescued Sam from the Cage. (and makes me question the logistics of how that cage rescue actually happened... Crowley-- we’ll learn in later seasons-- had been studying the magic of the cage for his own purposes, he would’ve had access and either granted access to Cas or else yoinked Sam himself and handed him over to Cas to raise from Hell. I just cannot reconcile Cas having done the deed all on his own, all by himself, and *not* realized he’d missed a significant bit. Because he is *genuinely* shaken and disturbed in this episode when he learns the truth about Sam... and it’s one of the main reasons he continues to avoid Dean... guilt, shame, horror...

Anyway, on that cheerful note, please have some LINKS!

aka truth coming out of her well to punch humanity in the nuts...

Welcome to the brutal, painful truth. Let’s start this week with a trigger warning for suicide and implied offscreen rape of a minor, because even if this show will gloss over stuff like that, I try to give a heads up about it. Because yikes…

Poor Dean has been desperate for the truth all season long, but everyone and everything has stood in his way. And now? he’s about to be kicked, repeatedly and forcefully, with the harshest possible version of the truth on all fronts.

He suffers the consequences of his poor choices in the previous episode regarding Lisa (and again, if Dean was actually Ben’s father, you’d think that would be something she would’ve been compelled to reveal in a Most Painful Possible Way in this episode, but she doesn’t, which is the final nail in my personal coffin for the fandom theory that Ben was really Dean’s kid... but that’s entirely beside the point of this episode, really...)

And we learn the truth that Sam has known all along that something was really wrong with him, and he’s been hiding it. And also unfortunately, Cas only shows up BEFORE Dean gets hit with the truth spell, so we’re still in the dark about what’s actually going on with him, though it is becoming clear that he feels pretty dang bad about it all anyway.

LINKS!

Dean gets to be a vampire for just long enough to have some awkward homoerotic tension and blow up his relationship with Lisa. We all get clobbered with just how Not Right Sam is behaving, and if seeing it from Dean’s pov isn’t enough, Samuel explains it in complete sentences for us. There’s just nothing subtle about this one, folks... But gosh is it fun to talk about :D

LINKS!

Welcome to our favorite director, Jensen Ackles! There’s just so much that happens in this episode, and he did a great job with it. Like a lot of season six, it looks like a fairly straightforward MotW case (or series of cases), but rewatching s6 is so much more interesting when you know where everything is headed.

The monsters are all acting “weird;” something is really really wrong with Sam, and Dean is really worried about it; Bobby finds a way to finagle his soul back from Crowley-- so right there we have lots of hints about the whole season. It’s the souls. And that will still sound like a cryptic statement seven episodes down the line when Death gives Dean that exact warning, but it really does sum up... pretty much all of s6 when you know everything that’s actually happening.

So we get to have some fun this week, learning a little more about Bobby’s life when he’s just at home doing his own thing, we get to enjoy Rufus and Jody again, and we get to meet Bobby’s new neighbor, who I assume immediately moved and never looked back. :’)

LINKS!

CAS! IS BACK! FINALLY. And also unfortunately just in time to set him up to take the big fall for basically all of s6.... >.>

So much of season six makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE on a rewatch, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to get to this point in the podcast. For folks who’ve never rewatched the series, or maybe only rewatched favorite episodes, hopefully we’re all learning a new appreciation for some of the less-loved parts of canon. But I think we can all agree that Balthazar is very lovable in all his nihilistic hedonism.

Plus we get new lore about angels, souls, and what’s been going on in Heaven for the last year... sort of...

Something is very wrong with Sam, and Dean’s reaching a breaking point about it that will still take multiple episodes to really come to a head, so I do some griping about that s well.

And we learn that Dean and Cas do share a more profound bond (he wasn’t gonna mention it!) in the very episode where (oops!) the handprint mysteriously disappears from Dean’s arm AND we learn about angels being able to lay claims on human souls... so all that’s very interesting, yes?

LINKS!

Poor Sam (maybe it would help if he actually had a soul?) can’t figure out how Dean knows anything about caring for a 6-month-old infant whose mother has just been brutally murdered...

And poor Dean is Doing His Best and finally realizes there isn’t really a good solution to his dilemma of protecting Lisa and Ben from his life, and what he unwittingly brought to their doorstep. It’s tragic, no matter what he does.

Something is very fishy with the Campbell hunters, though, and it’s patently obvious on a rewatch when we all know how this shakes out. Golly I love doing a rewatch! It makes the foreshadowing hit like anvils.

This week’s links!

Finally back from my personal hiatus, and I’m eager to get right into Season Six! I’m not sure that s6 is near the top of anyone’s favorite season list, but there’s just so much meaty goodness hidden away this season-- especially for my fellow Dean girls-- that I’m 100% serious about being excited to get into it. Maybe I can even change a few minds along the way (though... nobody will ever convince me to like a handful of s6 episodes, which will become abundantly clear when we hit them :’D).

I recorded this episode a month ago and edited it last week without going back and recording anything new for it. New episodes will now begin rolling out on my previous schedule, and hopefully I haven’t entirely forgotten how to do this. Thank you again everyone who’s stuck around to continue this journey out beyond Kripke era with me!

That said, let’s get right into the relevant links for further reading: