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How did another week pass us by already? It is now time for another roundup of Supernatural stories to get us caught up on last week, prepared for tonight’s episode, and informed about happenings with the cast and show.
Last Week’s Episode
Consensus is that last week’s episode was a bit of a letdown after the good work done with “Slash Fiction.” What do you think?
Supernatural: Friends Never Say Goodbye: Our friends at After Elton offer a good recap to remind you what you loved or hated (or both) about “The Mentalists”.
Misha Collins to Guest Star on Ringer: Are you watching Ringer? If not, will you tune in to see how Misha’s character will be similar/different from Castiel and Jimmy?
I got some good responses to last week’s question and to this week’s post discussing the effects of Grimm on Supernatural. We are mostly still on board with the show, but we make no bones about its shortcomings. Thanks to all of you who visited and who responded. I always enjoy hearing all of your opinions.
And now on to the links.
Last Week’s Episode
Supernatural S7E6 Review: Luke liked Slash Fiction, he really liked it. I agree that the doppelganger boys were a lot of fun and gave us some good chuckles.
Supernatural Season 7, Episode 6 Recap: Mo Ryan always brings the love, even when she is dressing down our beloved show. This week, she is also in the group of us who enjoyed Slash Fiction.
The Best of Crowley: This slideshow reminds us of some of our favorite Crowley moments. I enjoy Crowley, and I really enjoyed the dude from All My Children (and a bunch of other shows, I guess) made him feel like an insignificant speck of dirt.
I watched Grimm last week, and it appears that nearly 7 million of you joined me. It felt like an early episode of Supernatural, with the Grimms serving as that series’ hunters and the added tangle of the lead being part of law enforcement rather than on the opposite side of the law. It also had the gritty procedural feel that major network audiences seem to enjoy. If they keep that feel and strike the right balance between genre and mainstream, I think they could do quite well in the long term.
But, where does that leave Supernatural? Grimm is threatening to push it from live viewing to DVR in my household, which hasn’t been the case since seasons 2 and 3, when Mr. PCC (just PCC boyfriend at the time) and I saved them to watch together on the weekends.
Will genre fans jump ship to the seemingly more tightly focused Grimm? Will those people who already watch both Fringe and Supernatural have room to add Grimm to the mix, too? Do we SPN fans feel that our show is pretty safe on a CW schedule that appears to be wearing cement shoes?
As I have been watching this seasons of Supernatural and catching some season 6 episodes on TNT, I have decided that I am glad it didn’t end after season 5. I liked the concept of it at the time, but seriously, if it had ended with Sam locked in the cage with Lucifer and Michael for eternity, I don’t know if I would have been happy. I may not like every episode, but I like that the Winchester brothers are going on and stopping monsters.
Last Week’s Episode
Supernatural Episode Shut Up, Dr. Phil: TV Guide’s reviewer loves the ongoing Bon Jovi references. I can’t help but wonder why no one knows the names of such prominent band members.
Supernatural Review: It’s a Buffy Reunion: I’m going to admit something that is Internet fan girl blasphemy: I could give or take Buffy. I liked the movie, but I never got into the show. UPN was so not on my radar. I was working full time and going to college, and I just didn’t have the time or energy to even know when anything on UPN or the WB came on. Seriously, I have never seen an episode of Dawson’s Creek. So, although I like Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters from other roles they have been in, but I didn’t have the fan girl squee of their big reunion.
Supernatural’s Seventh Season Check Up: Where do you think we are so far this season? I know Katie is feeling totally done (much like me in the seventh season of Gilmore Girls. I’m okay watching each week. We’ll see how things look after tonight’s Grimm premiere.
I can’t even begin to describe how much I’ve been stewing over one scene in this episode, a scene that may have just ended my relationship with Supernatural for good.
In general, The Girl Next Door, directed by Jensen Ackles, was uneven and disappointing. It dismissed the cliffhangers from the previous episode almost immediately.
What!?!? Bobby isn’t upset by the loss of his house, his irreplaceable lore books, or anything at all – he’s not even disturbed by the fact that Sam is still hallucinating. If anything, he’s almost chipper. Bobby, who has been known to dive DEEP into the bottle after a loss. It’s all hunky dory – I made copies of all his books in case of such an emergency. It’s okay – we’ve got Rufus’ cabin to live in now. Umm, no.
Not even a month later and Dean is ready and able to take off a cast on his leg after compound fractures to his tibia? Dean, the eternal caretaker, who is already concerned about Sammy and his mental well-being, falls asleep so Sam can leave and go walk-about? Yeah, not so much.
The worst thing is that even though there were similar inconsistencies throughout the episode, none of them bothered nearly as much as one scene, almost at the very end.
You know the scene – do I even have to describe it? The one where Dean goes behind Sammy’s back and kills his childhood friend, Amy, even though Sammy has explained that she was only killing people (and then only bad ones) to save her sick son.
It felt like a slap in the face. With that one scene in a mediocre at best episode, they took away six seasons of character growth. You can’t convince me that the Dean we know now would see things in such a black and white manner, or that he would leave a child motherless – especially after his experiences as a child.
ETA: I should probably add that this is my reaction. Jen may have had another. -Katie
I want to know what you think BUT please keep it civil. If I come across any comments that can be considered in any way offensive or a personal attack on someone else, I will delete them.
Have you been following the twitter feeds or live blog posts coming out of the Television Critics Association panels? According to Hitfix.com, the executives at The CW would like for Supernatural to continue not just in to season seven, but seasons to come.
I have such mixed feelings about this. I love Supernatural but have had extremely conflicting emotions and/or thoughts about the last two seasons. I acknowledge that there have been episodes that I LOVED in both season five and season six, but overall they felt like they were lacking something.
Do I really want to see a show that I feel so passionately about struggle through mediocre at best seasons long after its prime? Or do I want my beloved Winchesters on the air as long as possible, damn the quality?
I know I blogged about this at the end of season six, but this news made me think about it again. I can’t really seem to make up my mind about it. What are your thoughts on the matter?
It’s been a week now since the season six finale of Supernatural and I’m still stewing over it. I’m afraid that Supernatural and I may have come to a small parting of the way. The writers have decided to take it down a very dark, claustrophobic road. Honestly, maybe a little to dark for my tastes.
My favorite seasons are two and four, followed by one and three. Seasons five and six have been quite frustrating to me. It seems that Sam and Dean are doomed to an eternal struggle with no real victory or (semi) happy ending possible. The earlier seasons were definitely grim but felt like Sam and Dean would ultimately win and find some sort of happiness. It doesn’t feel that way anymore.
I miss the days when it was the guys riding around in their car with a heavy metal soundtrack playing. We were supposed to go back in that direction with season six. Oh, well.
Does this mean I’m giving up on it? Heck, no. As long as it’s on the air, I’ll be watching. However, it does mean that it’s not going to be appointment viewing for me any longer. It’s going to be relegated to my dvr for watching at my convenience. How do you feel about it? Are you going to continue watch? Is it still a quality show or has it outstayed its welcome?
ETA: We are all here to converse about a show that we feel strongly about. Please be respectful of everyone’s opinion. I’m going to quote Mo Ryan’s (AOL’s Stay Tuned) Supernatural rules for commenting: “On this site, we observe the Lurkers Rule: The environment here should be so accepting, so calm and so non-screechy that most timid lurker should feel it’s safe to express his or her opinion.”
I experienced the joy of streaming Netflix over my Xbox 360 last weekend.
I watched the entire first season of 30 Rock, which I didn’t catch the first time around.
Then I tried to watch the second season of Weeds. I loved the first season of Weeds, but I didn’t get to see the second or third seasons. When we got Showtime a while back, I was so excited to be able to watch Weeds again, but the fourth season was awful. No Conrad, no Heylia, Mary Louise Parker sinking into depths of bad motherhood that apalled me, and very little funny stuff. Because it was so awful, it ruined season 2 for me.
That made me think about other shows that had awesome first seasons:
Chuck–continues to get better and better
Big Love–totally meh since season 1
Veronica Mars–continued to be awesome, but season 1 was definitely the best.
Heroes–they keep promising me that it will get good again, but it has been disappointing since the anti-climactic season 1 finale
Friday Night Lights–stuttered a bit in season 2, but definitely back on track with season 3
Supernatural–same as FNL, had some issues in season 2, but they worked through them and it remains a solid show.
I also thought about shows I didn’t watch in their first season:
Seinfeld
Friends
Gilmore Girls
These are three of my favorite shows of all time. Maybe the key to a show’s longevity and continued artistic growth is for me to only begin watching in season 2. Or at least for me to not really care about the show after season 1.
Really, I think the key is the premise. Gilmore Girls explored family relationships, and Seinfeld and Friends explored the relationships among groups of Friends as they tried to make lives for themselves. The other shows I mentioned didn’t have a premise that was sustainable.
Veronica Mars had a compelling overarching mystery that was hard to top in subsequent seasons. Supernatural was slightly less reliant on its overarching mystery the first season, but it struggled to find something as strong as the boys working to find their father in the second season. Thankfully, the CW gave them a season 3, and the show has gotten stronger since then. Heroes keeps trying to cover the same ground over and over again. (I mean seriously, think before you kill off a character with a useful power. Giving Isaac’s power to paint the future to Parkman is just tacky.) Friday Night Lights suffered from network interference during its second season.
But, Chuck is my star. I didn’t think its premise was sustainable, but they continue to put him in situations that work while keeping true to the character’s roots. Other showrunners could take a lesson from this show.
I like a mix of mythology-centric episodes and stand-alones on Supernatural. Stand-alones make a nice break between heavy mytharc episodes. Yet all three episodes after winter hiatus have been lighthearted stand-alones. Does that mean we will have mytharc, mytharc, mytharc next?
supernatural | thejen | 
November 11, 2011 6:39 am | 
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