Bergamot

This is upsetting to me for a personal reason. A friend of mine who is a librarian told a patron that he had to leave the library because he was drunk and was causing a disruption. The man came over, reached across the desk, and punched her in the face. She was really hurt – the EMTs took her to the hospital to check for a possible concussion. She is okay, but it was a very traumatic and frightening experience. So it really bothers me to hear about this. I can’t say, like I have seen fans elsewhere saying, “What’s the big deal?” Because it is a big deal.

Maybe this is just what they (the writers) wanted. Since they couldn't come up with a brilliant storyline that would draw attention and generate excitement for the last season, they settled for creating controversy, nastiness, and hysteria on social media. Yeah, great job, guys. I am sorry that you saw upsetting stuff, Myrelle! ☹️ Here is a virtual hug for you: (((Myrelle))) Just keep telling yourself, only one more season to get through! And after that, we can just look back on and remember the good parts!

Haha! I love it in the sneak peak when Dean calls this a "sloppy ass ghost-pocalypse"! (And refers to Dabb Chuck as a "glorified fan-boy!") It's like he feels the same way about the start of this season as I do! I mean, has there ever been a more uninteresting, unscary, and lame portrayal of Jack the Ripper than the one we have just seen on Supernatural? Here we are, already at the third episode of the ultimate season of the show, and the story still hasn't managed to move on from this stupid plastic town and its boring ghosts.

One thing I didn't get, or maybe I missed it, but are all the souls that escaped from Hell, or any that are still to emerge, now trapped in the town? Or just some of them? It sounded as if this was the only spot where this was happening, from what Sam saw in the news. So is the place the souls are escaping from already inside the magic circle that Bel created? I agree completely with how lame that scene was. I also found the episode with the original Bloody Mary to be perhaps the scariest one the show has had. But this time around, she was pathetic -- the way she was desperately grabbing onto the woman's foot and just trying to hang on to her, and the lumbering way she finally clambered out of the pool, it looked sad and silly to me. Nothing like the chilling character the show originally created. (And you know what else was stupid? When Bloody Mary grabbed the woman's foot, instead of pushing her daughter away and telling her to RUN, the woman actually grabbed her daughter's hands and held on to her, as if expecting her daughter to help her get loose. This episode had some very poor directing.)

Ha! You're right, I had forgotten about that! No offense to the song or to Bob Seger, but I disliked it as well, for similar reasons. Also it was too loud. As they were fighting they were calling each other's names and saying "Over here!" and the music was so loud it was like they were trying to shout over it. I admit that I disliked the whole opening scene in particular. The last thing we saw of the guys at the end of last season, they were about to be totally submerged by a huge tidal wave of zombies. So how did they manage to get out of the middle of all that without a scratch? Turns out Dabb wasn't really interested in that question. Instead we get a few murky, half-visible shots of them fighting, where I couldn't see much of what was going on, and next thing you know they are safely barricaded in the mausoleum. Glad that I didn't spend any time worrying about their fate last season.

Demon Jack -- that is, Belphegor, or "Bel", as I think my closed captioning called him -- was very entertaining. Please can we keep him instead of bringing Jack back? If the show absolutely must have a "kid" around, maybe the team can "adopt" Bel instead. I know that he's a demon and not really a kid, but then, Jack wasn't really a kid either. And one big bonus would be no more of those excruciatingly dull and repetitive father & son chats between Castiel and Jack. I know that it would make Castiel very sad to lose Jack, but that's okay -- Castiel can just go off somewhere and mope this season. I wouldn't mind. Of course it would be nice if the show could add some layers to Belphegor's character, maybe some conflict or mystery, so that he would not be just a one-note smart aleck. But surely that would not be beyond the writers' capabilities, right? And it is always fun to watch Dean interacting, in his own stubbornly "Dean" way, with a supernatural being. Scenes where we get that type of Dean / supernatural character interaction have always been some of my favorites. And this was true as well of this episode. Thank you, BabySpinach, I was thinking the same thing! Except I don't think that these ghosts would have been scary in the dark either. They looked like a bunch of people dressed up in Halloween costumes from Party City and were about as scary as an inferior Goosebumps episode. That whole "clearing the town" segment was so dragged out, and was in my opinion poorly acted and directed as well. And the big climax of the episode, with the ghosts running after them in broad daylight down the street? That was just cringe-worthy. Yes, they are not doing themselves any favors by setting themselves up for those kind of comparisons.

Well, Mr. Adams says that he has been a fan of the show since day one, so that's good! Hopefully he has watched all the episodes since then, and that is the primary requirement I would ask of a new writer for this show. (Sadly he is already receiving certain cringeworthy tweets from the "SPN Family" regarding what should be made canon and which fan groups he should ignore. It makes me very glad that this show is ending next year.)

I would have thought that the earlier version of Chuck in Season 11, for example in "All in the Family", would be equally problematic to many. A God who admits that he could not fix his creation, and so stopped trying? Dean very rightly called him out on that. Or as the Nobel Prize winning writer Elie Wiesel put it, in response to a similar premise put forth by author Harold Kushner (that God cared about the suffering of humanity but could not do anything about it): "If that's who God is then He should resign and let someone more competent take over." But my point is not which version of God we should see on the show (no way do I want to get into that discussion), it's that it was just a very, very bad idea for the show to bring God onto the show as a character, rather than leave him as a mysterious and unknowable figure. Not that who God is should never be discussed on a TV show, but not on this show and definitely, definitely not by these writers. These writers? Trying to be clever about writing God as a character? No thanks. Chuck the prophet was a wonderful and original character, and I thought the way he was written worked well for the show. But Chuck as God was a big mistake.

I agree. I think that Dean was pretty awesome there. I was afraid before I saw the episode that the climax was going to be about "Dean learning a lesson" or "Dean experiencing personal growth" in regard to Jack. Fortunately it wasn't like that at all. For a moment I honestly didn't know which way it was going to go. But Dean has very good instincts and he made the right choice, and then had the guts to stand his ground in the face of God himself. Me too! And as for Chuck being totally focused on Dean's role in the story, well, at least he and I have that one thing in common!

You can hear it spoken here, at the beginning of this audio of Genesis Chapter 22. (I looked it up because I was curious about the story of Abraham and Isaac that was referred to in the show, but after listening I decided that the Genesis story has very few points of comparison with what actually happened in the episode, and provided no illumination of it. Dabb obviously just thought it would be cool to include the reference.)

Yes, I'm afraid I'm done with Castiel. (I can't even call him "Cas" anymore, it sounds too friendly.) I remember when he first appeared on the show, writing long letters to Kripke saying how much I enjoyed the character and I hoped he would stay. Now I wish he had never come back from the Empty. I am so tired of his constant puffed-up "HOW DARE YOU" self-righteousness. And he is such an incredible hypocrite. Like with his "HOW DARE YOU lie to Jack!" As if he has never lied to or manipulated Dean and Sam. And then there's his "HOW DARE YOU try to lock Jack up!" And why exactly was he trying to go to Hell in this episode to look at and "study" the Cage? Hmmm? Could it possibly be that he was trying to find a way to lock Jack up? But of course it would be okay, if he was the one doing it! They ruined Castiel when they made him into Jack's faithful dog. Actually none of the relationships among the main characters on the show work the same anymore, because none of them are allowed to put anything before Jack.

Yes, I think you might be right about the long-game, gonzosgirrl! As I've already said, I find this version of Chuck to be a pretty uninteresting prospect for the big bad of the final season. Sure, he is God, and thus the most powerful thing they've ever faced (except for Amara, of course!), but it's not how much power the bad guy has that makes him interesting. It's the bad guy's motivations and layers, and the complications and nuances of his relationship with the good guys, that make the story work. (Michael would have been much more interesting as their final foe, in my opinion. For a lot of reasons.) And of course there is also a problem with having Jack as the hero of the story who defeats big bad Chuck. He is so two-dimensional -- it's like the writers are allergic to adding any layers or complexity to the character whatsoever. All that fuss about Jack losing his soul, and that "Oh no! Jack might be dangerous now!" stuff, was completely pointless. It made absolutely no difference at all. Jack killed Mary, the main characters' mother, mind you, because she was crowding him and he wanted her "gone" -- and it has been brushed aside as an "accident" or a "mistake". (And hey, it's okay -- he didn't kill his grandmother, did he? What a sweetheart!) Jack then killed the atheist author and probably the minister of that church, not to mention the people in the congregation, but that's all okay, because he was being "manipulated" by Dumah. Poor misled boy! And Jack tells Castiel he feels nothing at all, and minutes later, we see him kneeling with sorrowful eyes and a sad face in front of Dean, telling him he "understands" why Dean is going to kill him. Um, if he doesn't feel anything, why should he even care why Dean thinks he should die? The fact is, the writers pretend that they are doing things with Jack as a character, but it means absolutely nothing, because in the end he is completely unchanged from the nougat woobie baby he has always been. So considering how I feel about the two big contestants, sorry, not looking forward to a "Jack versus Chuck" match for the final season.

Yeah. That's probably what Billie wants to talk to Jack about. And Chuck knows that Jack is supposed to be his replacement, which is why he is scared of him. I wish I could care, but it's not a story I am interested in seeing. Not when it is being handled by this group of writers. I'm sure that words like "brilliant" and "daring" will be flung about in regard to the idea that Chuck is evil. As if no one in the history of the world, none of the great thinkers throughout the centuries, have ever thought of that possibility or considered what that would mean. (Actually, of course, they have.) One reason I'm less than impressed by the "brilliance" of the idea is that is so clearly a set-up to continue the story of Jack. And I am so, so tired of the show being about Jack. I never particularly liked the idea of Chuck as God, or the way he was written, but it is just so obvious that the character was given a total personality transplant (this Chuck is nothing like the Chuck we have seen before) because of what they want to do with Jack and his story. And that is the only thing that matters on the show, right? I am also unimpressed with the version of Chuck they came up with as an antagonist for Jack. Typically for the show now, the new Chuck has no ambiguity to him, no nuance or mystery, no layers. In spite of his god powers, he could not be any more human in his small-minded pettiness. And of course he is Evil with a capital E -- a two-dimensional stereotypical villain twirling his moustache. As it stands now, he looks like maybe the least interesting big bad that the show has ever had, and that's sad considering this is going to be the last season.

Well, sort of. When Dean refuses to kill Jack, Chuck says "All, right, have it your way" and snaps his fingers to burn Jack to a crisp. Dean says "Stop it!" and starts forward, only to have Chuck flick a hand and send him flying through the air. Chuck then turns away and starts to leave; it is only after Sam picks up the magic gun and tries to kill Chuck with it that Chuck loses his temper and announces that "The story is over". I think it probably should have been evident that Chuck would not make a gun that could be used against himself. But setting that aside, the point had been made, both with Amara and earlier in this episode, that ending Chuck would end the whole world. Apparently Sam thought that destroying the universe was worth it to save Jack. However, it is entirely possible that the rest of the world might not have appreciated being sacrificed, without a second thought, for the Nougatbaby. Personally, if I had been there and had been given a vote, I would have given a thumbs down to being sacrificed, along with everyone else in creation, for their precious Jack. Since I had trouble getting emotionally involved in this episode -- like I said, it basically left me cold -- I don't know how important all this is to me. Maybe Dean would have been the one to pick up the gun and fire it if he hadn't just flown headfirst into a tombstone. I admit though that I am still glad to he wasn't the one to do it.

Of course, who can't see that coming? Silly of me to think that the show's final season would focus on anyone else. LOL, no doubt! Or else the Empty will be played by Mark Pellegrino. Because heaven forbid that we should have to go through the season without him!

Yes. And the prospect pretty much leaves me cold. Kind of like this finale. I thought for a few episodes that Jack might actually develop into an interesting character. But it turns out that no matter what cosmic events Jack undergoes, whether he loses or gains grace, or a soul, or special new powers -- he is still completely unchanged. Still the same two-dimensional woobie that he has been from the day he was born. And the show managed to make Chuck two-dimensional and boring as well. He is nothing more than your standard evil mastermind now, just with extra-special all-powerful god sauce. The battle between him and Jack will be the clash of the two-dimensional cosmic beings. Whatever. I'm not sure it's a good idea for the show to bring back monsters from earlier seasons for the Winchesters to face. The comparison between then and now is going to be pretty stark. To see a re-match between them and Bloody Mary, for example, is only going to make it glaringly obvious how much the show has lost since then. I mean, compared to back when it was about real human beings with deep and complex emotions that you could care about. I don't think that's going to happen. Unless by "Winchesters" you mean the Faux Winchester, Jack. Yeah, I have to admit that I did like that part of it!

Yes, I agree. I remember very well how the situation at the beginning of Season 8 was presented to us by Carver and Singer. If you look back at interviews they gave, there was no attempt to villainize Sam -- quite the contrary, in fact. Carver and Singer spoke very sympathetically of what Sam might have found in his life with Amelia. Also, Singer stated that Sam's conscience was clear as far as his decisions after Dean disappeared were concerned. (Although Singer did admit that "they" were responsible for Kevin, adding that this was what brought Sam back into hunting.) Singer also said that at the start of the season Dean was being "less than forthcoming" (referring to the fact that he didn't tell Sam about Benny right away,) and that because of this, Dean being "judgmental" of Sam was "unfair" of him. In other words, I guess, because Dean didn't immediately spill about Benny, Carver and Singer felt he had lost any right to be upset about what Sam did. Sorry, I have to say I didn't see the equivalency there. One article referred to Dean's feelings about Sam not looking for him as "petulance" -- as if he was being childish and sulky about the whole thing. Carver added that while at first Dean was "piling on Sam", later on the tables were going to turn "in terms of who has to answer for what" and Sam would get his "licks" in. I remember I was convinced that we would learn that Dean had done something horrible in Purgatory, something that would take away any moral standing he might have. (There never was anything, of course.) But nothing makes me think that that they wanted to destroy Sam's character. To the contrary, they bent over backwards to defend and excuse Sam, and yes, make him look victimized. Let's face it, when someone gets "piled on", they are not being treated fairly. And I agree, the text message was a heavy-handed way to try to make Sam look mistreated by Dean, while totally ignoring what Sam had done that caused Dean to find it necessary. The funny thing is, I didn't mind as much as I could have, that the show and its writers were determined to excuse Sam for his decision not to look for Dean. I think because Dean was allowed to express exactly how he felt about it, more than once -- he even brought it up in the final episode of that season. That makes a difference for me. And I was with Dean -- I never thought he was being petulant or unfair about it; I thought he was entirely justified, no matter what the writers said about it. It was the situation with Benny that really bothered me, because the truth about what Sam did was never allowed to be spoken, by Dean or anyone else. I hated that Dean was forced to repudiate Benny because of Sam. But they didn't have to make Sam unlikable to make me like Benny. I just did, because I enjoyed so much Dean's interactions and relationship with Benny. Which brings up the elephant in the room as far as Season 8 is concerned -- Sam and Amelia. When you read what was said about the season before it began, there can be absolutely no doubt that Sam's relationship with Amelia was supposed to be as important, as significant, and as compelling as Dean's interactions with Benny. Yet it was a total failure -- in the conception, in the writing, and in the acting. Sam and Amelia generated none of the interest and excitement that fans expressed about Dean and Benny. I think most fans either did not care about Amelia or actively disliked her. Whatever hopes that Carver and the writers had for the storyline, I think it just withered on the vine. The whole idea kind of crumbled and washed away, like a sandcastle on the beach when the tide comes in. I think that the concept was to have the two sides balance each other, with Sam and Amelia on one side, and Dean and Benny on the other -- both brothers learning something about themselves and having to make choices. But with the disintegration on takeoff of the Sam/Amelia story, there was no balance, and no choices that Sam actually had to make, since there was nothing there, not really. And without the Amelia storyline, Sam was reduced to complaining about and obsessing over and ultimately working to sabotage Dean's friendship with Benny. Which made Sam look really selfish and weird and for me, terminally unlikable. Which I really don't think is what they intended, but along with the collapse of one ill-conceived storyline, that's what they got.

(Bringing over my comment from the "Jack in the Box" thread.) I was thinking along these same lines lines after watching "Absence". I saw people saying that Jack had been driven "mad with guilt" because he killed Mary, but my impression was that what we were seeing was not a feeling of guilt. Jack was not judging himself for killing Mary, accepting responsibility for what he had done, or even feeling grief at losing her. Rather what he was feeling was an intense fear of the consequences of his action. "Jack in the Box" confirmed that for me. He knew, or at least feared, that Dean and Sam might reject him for killing Mary, but he didn't seem to accept that it would be deserved. The thing is that Jack has never been human, whether or not he had grace, or a soul, or either or both of them. He is a supernatural creature, who learned to act human by observing and imitating the people he had attached himself to. And to me, the most interesting aspect of Jack was his motivation for this mimicry: he genuinely and deeply wanted their acceptance and approval. It was very important to him, and he did his best to act in a way that would earn him this acceptance. This is interesting to me, because it was something different for the show, although there have been hints and aspects of it before. Jack is, as AU Bobby said, a deadly monster who can't tell right from wrong, and the Winchesters have dedicated their lives to eradicating monsters like this as a danger to humanity. But Jack was a monster who moved into their house and became attached to them and looked up to them and wanted them to care for him. He was a monster who wanted to become a Winchester. But in spite of this intriguing idea, Jack as a character never really worked for me. Mainly because with the way that the story of Jack was told, it was not about our heroes, the Winchesters, trying to deal with this situation and being affected by it. Instead, Jack is the focus and the center of the show, and the main characters of the show have become side characters in the story of Jack's journey. And that's where the show has lost me. It's like when you read a Supernatural fanfic story, and it ends up actually being all about an original character the author has inserted. It makes me feel cheated. If the author wanted to write a story about their own character, they should have just done that, and not tried to trick me into reading it by pretending it is about the Winchesters.

Yes, I agree. (The rest of my comment on this is maybe too general for the episode thread, so I will move it to the Jack thread.) I loved him in that scene too! I agree that it was something we hadn't seen before from Dean, but it was totally real and believable. Jensen was amazing, I couldn't take my eyes off him. Sorry, but when I hear about all those fans who are busy hating on Dean for being "mean" to precious baby Jack, it just makes me wish that the character of Dean could somehow be transported to another show -- one for grown-ups.

Well, one thing that is ignored in the conversation in the sneak peek is that deploying the "soul bomb", the method they came up with to handle Amara, is a suicide mission. And of course there is absolutely no way Dean would intend anyone but himself to be the one to carry it out. But look at how casually Dean suggests it as Plan B, not even bothering to mention this aspect of it -- that he will be sacrificing himself to try to stop Jack. Unfortunately I don't think Dean will have anything to do with saving the world in this finale. Or Sam either. In the past the climax of the season always rested on the actions of the Winchesters, on their courage, their strength, their willingness to sacrifice, their devotion to each other. But ever since Jack entered the show, it really has been all about him, not about the Winchesters. I fear that they will be nothing more than bystanders in the finale, although I hope I am wrong about that.

I would not mind as much if Sam goes, "I wish we hadn't done that" or "I was wrong to help you with your plan", although I don't think much of people who second-guess and "I told you so" after the fact. But if Sam says something like, "Now look what you've done, Dean!", I am going to kind of despise him. As has been pointed out, Sam is not someone's abused wife. If he didn't think they should try to trap Jack, he shouldn't have helped do it. If he felt in his heart that it was wrong, he should have stopped Dean somehow. Heck, he could have snuck up behind Dean and knocked him out, maybe locked Dean up in the box instead, if he really felt the plan was that big of a mistake. Yes, and Castiel can just shut up too, with his idiotic burbling about how Jack can be "rehabilitated". Sure, Jack will be fine, just so long as you tell him exactly what he wants to hear, and are extremely careful to never do anything to annoy him. And if he "accidentally" vaporizes a few people who crowd him when he is in a bad mood, so what? It's all worth it to keep Jack pacified and happy, right Castiel?

Actually I thought it was Castiel that looked foolish and misguided. I thought he looked especially stupid when he seemed to think that what Dumah was up to meant that Jack bore no responsibility for the lives he was destroying. Oh, but people were being mean to Jack and manipulating him and so nothing was his fault! Tell that to the loved ones of the people Jack killed, why don't you? (Plus I am really tired of Castiel's bitchy, huffy self-righteousness. I'm sorry, but I have had enough of his pompous indignation and I wish he would just go away.) I think that Jack has become a more interesting character the last couple of episodes, but the fact is that he has never had a moral center or the ability to tell right from wrong without being constantly coached as to what his next move should be. And now that he is all powerful, and willing to listen to whoever flatters him and tells him what he wants to hear, the situation calls for something more than Castiel's "helping" of Jack. Dean's plan was actually not a bad one; I guess it was inevitable that the box wouldn't hold Jack but it was worth a try. Dean is obviously really messed up by Mary's death, but he wasn't wrong that Jack needed to be stopped And you know, although it remains unsaid, that Dean wishes he had gone ahead with his plan to trap Michael in the box, in order to prevent any of this from happening. I would like so much for him to remind Castiel and Sam, when their inevitable criticism and second-guessing starts up, that the fate he had planned for Jack was nothing that he was not first willing to do to himself in order to save the world.

The next episode may clarify things as far as what is going on with Jack. (Or it might just show what others have said and what I also suspect, which is basically that the writers really haven't thought it through.) We saw Jack come close to murdering an innocent once before (and this had nothing to do with the state of his soul.) It was when he attacked the convenience store clerk that he thought was responsible for what happened to Maggie. If Dean hadn't shot him, he might have killed that kid. Tellingly, I think, Jack was not remorseful afterwards, but instead was just shocked and baffled by Dean's action. For myself, I don't see Jack as suffering from guilt at Mary's death in the sense that a human being might feel it after killing someone. Not because of the loss of his soul, or partial loss, or whatever it is. (The whole soul rigamarole with Jack seems pointless to me.) But because whether he has a soul or not, he is not human. From the beginning, Jack has known what was good and what was bad not from any internal compass, such as a conscience or a soul, but from measuring himself against Dean and Sam and Cas. For whatever reason, he is attached to them and wants them to like him, so he tries to act in a way that will gain their approval. He even admitted once that he really didn't feel things as a human being would, so he was always trying to mimic the reactions and feelings of those around him. Jack was definitely feeling very strong emotions in this episode, so his emotions are obviously not dependent on him having a soul. But I didn't see any grief for Mary, any remorse or sadness for her losing her life, or really any guilt in the way that a human murderer might feel it afterwards and see blood on his hands. Jack's feelings centered on the fact that he was afraid that Dean and Sam and Cas were going to find out what he did, and turn against him. He needs them and doesn't want to lose their affection, and he was terrified that this was going to happen and would have done anything to prevent it. But I still don't think he understands why he would deserve this fate. Jack killed Mary. It was not premeditated, but it also was not an accident, like the first time he killed someone. He admitted to Rowena that for one moment, for "one second", he had the thought that he just wanted Mary "gone". He was like someone with his finger on the trigger of a gun, losing his temper and pulling it. Maybe it was just one second of losing control, but it was still causing someone's death. I guess in a legal sense it would be manslaughter rather than murder, but it was still his actions, his choice, that caused Mary's death. But Jack still doesn't understand this. He doesn't feel guilty -- he feels scared, angry, and increasingly resentful, and also I think he feels that it is unfair that he be blamed for what happened to Mary, or that he should have to pay for it. After all, it was just an accident, wasn't it? He doesn't understand that whether or not you are the most powerful being in the world, you can't act out whatever you happen to feel. Jack does still care what his friends think of him. Last time Dean had to shoot him to get his attention, but I wonder if there is any way to get through to Jack this time.

Yes, I'm sorry. I was reading too fast.