(no subject)

[oselle]

Buh, I have a project I need to work on but this is on my brain and I'm doing that thing where you think if you, say, clean your apartment you'll be able to focus on what you're supposed to be doing. So maybe if I get this out of the way I'll be able to get to my project. AHAHAHAHA! I'm such a delusional asshole!

I have to admit that I haven't had time to rewatch this entire season. So I may miss some things that should be included, but I think I have a pretty good selection of you-must-watch-this-show highlights.

Season Two

"In My Time of Dying" (Episode 1)
Following last season's intensely ass-kicking finale, Dean, Sam and their douchey Dad get carted off to a dismal and apparently vastly understaffed hospital that looks like it hasn't had an equipment upgrade in about thirty years. But one thing they do have, and that's the most adorable outfits for its patients. Please...if I'm ever critically injured or terminally ill, please make sure I'm in this hospital so I can wear a flattering little pants-and-top combo rather than some degrading hospital gown that looks like it was stitched togther from Depression-era bedsheets and is stenciled with "NYC DEPT OF HHS" like the hospital gowns at my local cesspool of questionable care. The highlight of this episode is a not-quite-dead SpiritDean running around St. Dismal Medical Center in bare feet, precious blue scrub pants and a white t-shirt. His ARMS and NECK are showing for the WHOLE episode and his pecs are just majestic through that shirt. He is the best-looking dying guy I've ever seen. We get tons of Deathbed Drama with BONUS! Defibralator Dean and I don't think any unconscious person actually arches off the bed like that when their heart's getting paddled but SO WHAT? I told you to FLING that logic out the window and if it comes crawling and mewling back to tell you that anyone as critical as Dean would be in ICU, not in a dark, isolated, private room, you KICK it as hard as you can!! KICK IT!

Personal Note: My enjoyment of this episode has been impaired by my good friend's recent stay in the ICU for a cerebral hemorrhage. See, he and I have this very TMI relationship and he told me a lot of details about his hospital care that I can't get out of my head. Two words, specifically: Foley Catheter have stuck with me and now when I watch this episode I keep thinking about Foley Catheters and oh, Dean SO wouldn't be wearing precious blue scrub pants or any pants, period :( Don't you wish I hadn't told you that? Don't you?

"Everybody Loves a Clown" (Episode 2)
Just wait for the last five minutes when Sam tries to get Dean to open up to him about their father's death. Just. Wait. Dean clams up and fixes Sam with a stony glare of manly STFU and the camera stays on him for such a long time that you won't even have to hit "Pause." And he is fucking dazzling. AND THEN, when Sam finally takes his encounter-group self off in a huff, Dean (wearing faded jeans, a sweated-up gray t-shirt and black work gloves) decides to take all his pent-up grief, anger and guilt out on the poor, ailing Impala by first bashing in its windows with a tire iron and then grabbing a sledeghammer and demolishing the trunk and Oh mah Gawd! His shirt rides up and he works up a tremendous, panting sweat and then he just goes all fucking stony-faced, repressed-rage again but he's choking back anger or tears and he's doing the heavy-swallowing thing and his CHIN IS TREMBLING AND HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!!!

"Bloodlust" (Episode 3)
Last scene before the end credits is a completely gratuitous and oh-so-worth-it closeup of Dean backlit by a golden rising sun. I'm not making this up. A slow, lingering closeup of Dean by dawnlight. Fucking-A.

"Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" (Episode 4)
Sam busts his hand in this one while poor Jared Padalecki actually busted his hand for real while trying to chase down a zombie chick. Dean does this AWESOME running slide after the zombie chick, like he's sliding into home base when it's really an open grave and hotter than anything I've ever seen in baseball, for sure. Dean has another HUGE moment of angst at the end of this episode and works the living daylights out of the choking-back-tears and horrifying revelation and OMG COME HERE BABY, I'LL MAKE IT ALL BETTER!!!

"Simon Said" (Episode 5)
Dean is simply adorable in this as he gets "pushed" by a kid with freakish mind-control powers to do things he doesn't want to do including handing over his precious car which he has miraculously rebuilt, a task that would probably have taken at least a year if it could have been done at all and GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, LOGIC!!!

"No Exit" (Episode 6)
This is a Jo-centric episode and I have nothing against Jo specifically but I so hate the way they wrote her character and her interactions with Dean. For God's sake, I was a casual and uninvolved viewer of this show when I first saw the "Jo" episodes of this season and even so, I was just bored and annoyed by all the stolen sideways glances and preciously awkward innuendo between these two. Just fuck already, okay? Get it over with. Watching them made me feel like all the awful Happy Hours of my life where I had to play wingman to some on-the-make friend of mine, only now I felt like wingman for both of these nitwits and I'm sorry, I'm supposed to be telling you why you should watch the show but I had to get this off my chest. Don't worry though, the producers realize the error of their ways and are soon to write Jo out of the series. Dean drives a cement truck in this episode and looks incredibly hot doing it and I realize that I'm a hopeless chick because for all my intellectual pretensions the sight of a hot dude driving a cement truck turns me to butter. Keep your nerds and geeks and bookworms and give me a HOT DUDE DRIVING A CEMENT TRUCK. Ain't that a man!?!

"Hunted" (Episode 10)
Another Great Moment in Dean Winchester Bondage, with Dean both bound and gagged. We haven't seen that before. No, we have not.

"Nightshifter" (Episode 12)
This is, in all seriousness now, one of the best episodes of both seasons. Pitch-perfect and expertly plotted, it showcases terrific performances by both Sam and Dean (Sam, especially, I loved in this episode) and by a great supporting cast, including one incredible ball-buster of an FBI agent. This episode made me think of The X-Files at its best, which should come as no suprise since it was written by X-Files veteran Ben Edlund. This episode felt long to me, and I mean that as a compliment -- some of these episodes are just featherweight, this one felt solid, you could really sink your teeth into it. The episode ends with one of the best music montages I've ever seen and please, please, please don't ruin it for yourself by wondering how the boys are going to escape a nationwide manhunt in THAT RIDICULOUS CAR! I love the Impala, but my God, the only way they'd be more obvious would be if they were driving around in the Batmobile. But...they don't even CHANGE THE PLATES!!! Mppppht! Logic....straining to break...free....nooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Seriously though...if for some bizarre reason you only have time or inclination to watch ONE episode out of 44, watch this one. Please. I'll feel better knowing you did.

"Born Under a Bad Sign" (Episode 14)
Sam's possessed, Dean gets SHOT but somehow has a bullet pried out of his shoulder WITHOUT REMOVING HIS SHIRT. An unforgivable oversight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching his knees buckle on that pier as much as I enjoyed watching possessed Sam beat the crap out of him. And I love that this is supposed to take place in Duluth, Minnesota, which only proves again that Minnesota is, somehow, the Great Whirling Vortex of all things fandom.

"Roadkill" (Episode 16)
Dean rips off one of my favorite lines from both seasons. Stalking through the woods and coming up on yet another creepy, ramshackle cabin, Dean quips, "Why can't we ever turn the corner and find a nice house?" The first time this show made me laugh out loud, because I'd been sitting there thinking almost exactly the same thing.

"Folsom Prison Blues" (Episode 19)
Dean gets the shit kicked out of him by GIGANTIC convicts and a faux-cruel prison warden while showing off his gorgeous and alas! rarely-seen arms in a freakishly flattering orange prison jumpsuit. The ball-busting FBI agent from "Nightshifter" reappears for this one and oh, you will so have to drive a stake through logic to get past the end of this, but it's totally worth it -- you don't want to abandon this show now because the next episode is the extraordinary...

"What Is And What Should Never Be" (Episode 20)
The swan-song episode for the wonderful writer/producer Raelle Tucker, who left the show at the end of this season. I'm convinced that she must have been a HUGE Deangirl because she consistently wrote him the best episodes and this one is such a showcase for both his talents and pretty, pretty face. Dean is ensnared by a genie and bewitched into imagining what his life would be like if his mother had never died and his father hadn't gone bananas and dragged him and Sam all over the country raising them like wolves while feeding them Spaghetti-Os and Froot Loops. Dean's fantasy-life is so sorely lacking in so many ways that if you get away from this one without any heartbreak for this poor, tormented bastard, YOU ARE DEAD INSIDE. DEAD, I SAY!!! Dean ends this episode TIED UP AND HANGING FROM A HOOK in an abandoned warehouse. Actually I think he's hanging from a pipe but WHO CARES he's TIED UP AND HANGING!! Also, I was thinking today how hilarious it is that his fantasy-girlfriend is a nurse and I wonder if the writer did that on purpose because the one type of woman that Dean Winchester has probably been around most in his battered life is a nurse and oh God, now I'm thinking of Foley Catheters again. Blurgh.

"All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1" (Episode 21)
Sam dies. Dean cries. Oselle shrieks.

"All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2" (Episode 22, Season Finale)
Dean makes a demon-pact to resurrect Sammy and the thoroughly awesome and wondrously scruffy Bobby bitches him out about it. Dean is extremely pathetic and self-contemptuous while Bobby reads him the retroactive riot act and when Bobby grabs Dean's face in listen-to-me! frustration Dean is so goddamned beautiful that I know I will forgive this show just about anything in its past or future, just as long as it keeps giving us scenes like this. The equally fabuloso Ellen Harvelle reappears, having narrowly missed getting vaporized, and Dean gives her a huge, heartfelt face-in-the-shoulder hug and there is such chemistry between these two it makes me a little sick. This episode seems to wrap up the overarching storyline of the past two seasons, the wisdom of which I'm still questioning. No matter -- near the end, Dean takes a trememdous blow to the head (that would have killed a lesser -- well, ANY man) and walks away from it with a beautifully photogenic trickle of blood running down his perfect nose.

Oh, Dean Winchester. Don't ever, ever change.

U.S. Season Three Premiere: Thursday, October 4, 9 pm, CW. You will be watching...won't you??