SPN 5:20

[oselle]

I've received one question wondering where my usually timely episode review is. Well...I was really tired on Thursday night and seriously, didn't find the episode interesting enough to post about. Not only was it boring but I couldn't follow it. It just seemed really disjointed and pointless to me. I don't know why they teased us with that nifty 28 Days Later-style opening bit and then dropped it altogether. I did enjoy Crowley an awful lot but he dominated the episode so much that he seemed to be doing a one-man show. I don't know why Brady mattered at all, and I don't know why they made such a big deal out of Sam and Dean ganging up to shiv him in that alley. And where the fuck was Pestilence? I thought after last week's ending, Pestilence would be the focus of this episode. I thought this episode would mark the beginning of the Croatoan epidemic that would eventually lead to the world we saw in "The End." Are they anticlimactically going to gank Pestilence offstage so they can just go after Death unimpeded?

Another few things. I've often (and fondly) mocked the way Dean can come out of crushing physical abuse with nothing more than a few flattering abrasions, but they gave up on even that much in this episode. Dean gets beaten to a pulp by Brady, we see him wiping his face but then, literally moments later, he doesn't have a scratch on him. Where's my pouty split lip? Where's my pretty little Mary-Sue cheekbone scratch? I don't think it's too much to ask that the show at least live up to my expectations on this score. The next time Dean gets a pounding he'd better have a nice, photogenic laceration to show for it.

Also: twice now they've shown that flashback to Famine's ring, which makes me LOL because one of the really annoying things about that episode was that we never saw Dean cutting off Famine's ring. In fact, I recall bugging out because Dean was just standing there the whole time and I was like, "The ring, Dean! Get the ring!!" Key details like that should happen onscreen, I think.

Finally, I mysteriously have NO recollection of Bobby ever being possessed and trying to kill Dean. When the hell did that happen? And what on earth would make Sam think that he's capable of booting Lucifer out once he's in, just because Bobby was able to do that to Meg? That's stupid.

Finally, I also had to laugh at the preview of next week, with Death telling Dean, "You can't cheat death." Does he have any idea who he's talking to? Dean has literally cheated death three times, and that doesn't even include all of the massive injuries that would instantly kill or irreparably maim any lesser human, but are basically the equivalent of a papercut for Dean. A pretty papercut.

Comments

[emeraldus.livejournal.com]

Bobby seemed to get control back at the threat of violence against Dean but Sam, when Meg was behind the wheel, couldn't seem to exert any influence at all when she's using him to do Dean serious harm, so what makes him think he can get control from Lucifer, when he couldn't from Meg? To quote Buffy, your logic does not resemble our Earth logic.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I saw an interesting speculation that, if this really had been the last season, Kripke's often-mentioned "five-year plan" would have ended with Sam allowing Lucifer to possess him...and then with one final act of will, hurling himself into the prison. Presumably it would have been up to Dean to then bar the gates or perhaps, to throw himself in after Sam and somehow seal both of them and Lucifer in for all eternity. This might have been a heartbreaking way to end the series, but it sure would have been the ultimate expression of the old Winchester "saving people, hunting things" ethos. And talk about there not being a dry eye in the house. Of course now we've got Season Six to deal with, so we're going to have Sam magically able to do something that no one has ever attempted...not just overcome a possession, but possession by an archangel.