The Companion

I am never gonna endorse Sam's angst speeches from last season and particularly his blaming Dean for stopping the trials, which I think was terrible writing. There was a way to have him be upset about the consent issue and to be upset about the fallout, and the writers completely blew it.

Definitely. Also, Crowley is so uncomfortable because Dean didn't have to make any demon deals, if you know what I mean. I liked this. It wasn't as tight as some season premieres, but I thought it set up some interesting storylines. I assume Demon Dean will get darker, without being irredeemable (though fuck that skank comment). It is an interesting conflict. It puts a wedge between brothers without secrets, lies and betrayal. I am interested in where it goes. I like Sam's frantic search. FWIW, I don't personally see this as inconsistent with his assertion that he wouldn't have done what Dean did. Dean wouldn't want to be a demon or a demon meatsuit, so Sam is honoring what he knows Dean would want. The angel story brings this episode to a screeching halt, and I think the problem is that Castiel is still angelly enough not to make it interesting to see him with angels. It is just too far away from the main storyline. I was sad to see him on that rickety bed. He should be in the bunker!

Fingers crossed! I saw some references to discussions in the other threads and do wish I could freely browse them sometimes, but it has been nice to get what I do get. I enjoyed the first half of S9 better than the second half, probably because of a lot of the issues discussed in that thread. I will say it again, but I am really impressed by how many people go back to respond to my comments. It is really cool to hear other perspectives on episodes that aired years ago. Onto S10!

Hey, at least one thing is consistent?

This would have been my favorite thing ever. It sounds like there was a lot of speculation and maybe there were some spoilers, but I didn't anticipate DemonDean (I did wonder if he would get an internal angel). It was devastating. The death and the demon eyes. It was all I could do to not immediately start the next episode. Poor Dean and Sam. I loved the brothers together. I don't care that they made up so this would hurt more lalala. Team Winchester. Also, thank you for finally having Sam talk about remembering killing Kevin. Metatron/Marv never quite resolved for me, and he was super talky, but he did end up fairly formidable. And so ends S9. After S8, I think I could have handled just about anything. There were more good moments than bad overall, I think and despite being a bit of a mess, it mostly came together. I am cautiously optimistic that S10 is a bit of an improvement.

Yeah, I am finding ragey Dean hard to watch. JA is doing too well at selling him. Loved Cas choosing Dean. I hate what they have done to the reapers. They were so much better before. I am legitimately upset by what they did with Tessa. It's interesting to hear about realtime reaction, but I don't get this reaction at all. Absolutely. It is so hard to watch. I overall liked this episode and the angel storyline has gotten infinitely more interesting for me, but I hate what they did to Tessa here. I think they could have had a "what is this doing to the reapers?" storyline without this being the result. It could have been great. Coming to the home stretch of S9, I am actually really enjoying it and I don't feel like it is as much of a plot dump as prior seasons.

Oh I agree Macguffin was the wrong term. I stand corrected. I was really just getting at the necessity of having a spell or a special weapon, etc. I will also note that the MoC aspect of the First Blade has a lot more impact than, say, the Leviathan blade, so perhaps it isn't the best example. Really, I was getting at the actual fight and killing of Abbadon. You can't really have a protracted fight because of the power imbalance. Same was true of the Leviathans.

I definitely nerded out. Here is the trunk now. I am pretty sure the angel sword was signed by Misha.

I am saying there is almost always some arbitrary weapon/thing that by its nature doesn't hold any intrinsic power other than to kill the particular enemy/advance the plot that is immediately discarded once its plot purpose has been served. Perhaps the more appropriate way to describe it, as I have in the past, is a quest item rather than a macguffin. Honestly, it isn't a criticism. As I was saying, you HAVE to have a mythological quest item type weapon to even the score or a secret weakness (e.g., silver bullets). It's the only way to create an apparently unbeatable enemy much stronger than the protagonist and then have the protagonist prevail.

Hooray for Abbadon's demise. I think it was a bit anticlimactic but that is just how it goes when you have such unequal opponents. A human can't beat a knight of hell or a Leviathan, etc. They need a macguffin to make it work. So it doesn't really bother me. Abbadon was a good villain to hate, so it was at least satisfying. More objectionable to me was her ridiculous plan. The queen of hell doesn't even bother with backup or contingencies? Sending Sam to the basement was dumb drama for drama's sake and I just can't care about it. Also, Dean is being an idiot for not considering the effects of the MOC. It's as stupid as starting the trials without knowing anything about them. Whatever. This show has a tendency to do these things to advance the plot or ramp up the drama and that won't change. I loved the part with Ezra. I find the discussions between Gadreel and Castiel way more interesting than the Bartholomew vs. Metatron story.

I loved that line. Agree so hard. So many of the monsters overlap but the shapeshifters were different and memorable because they were gross and gory. If they are going to rewrite it, make it interesting. But here they clearly did it for one reason: to make their character more attractive. Nobody wants to have sex with someone whose ear can peel off. But that was the entire problem with this pilot. I get that there are a lot of people who love the shows about pretty people with monster qualities, power and money. Personally, I would rather have dental surgery. I just don't find these types of shows compelling, WHICH IS WHY I WATCH SUPERNATURAL. I like horror and sci fi. I want blood and gore and aliens and monsters. My complaint about last year is continued here. They don't seem to understand that female viewers doesn't mean that we need melodrama, soapy storylines and pretty 20 somethings. I mean, this was also more in line with the other CW shows, and at least it can be entirely discarded from the show, but it was entirely unrelated to Supernatural and just didn't belong. The only link to Supernatural was the gross misogyny. I mean, one episode in and the fiance has been fridged, another female character is called a bitch, told to be quiet and subservient and is defined entirely by the men around her and a third is clearly going to be villified when she doesn't want her brother coming in and discarding her years of running the family. Barf. I did get to meet the Baby used in this episode at Wizard World, which was pretty awesome. That was about it for stuff I will take from this episode

I really like Jodi but don't like the Supernatural version of vampires, so it was a bit of a wash. I did love her trunk full of dead vamps. I also liked how, at the end, she offered to be whatever Alex needed. The Mark of Cain continues to have its effect. Honestly, i would watch externally induced drama like that 99 out of 100 times over the pure internal angst, so it wasn't too bad.

Including himself. GABRIEL. I miss the trickster and don't care how they justify if if they bring him back. Metatron still confuses me in the sense that he didn't seem to be planning any of this until he was tracked down. But he does make for a different and interesting villain to me, personally. I mean, i want terrible things to happen to him, but he does feel different.

I liked getting some backstory on Abbadon. I am not sure the episode holds together entiely, particularly the no soul thing, but I enjoyed it. I hate seeing Dean spiral but I am resigned to the fact that we are at the point in the season where one if them inches toward rock bottom. 😆

I even read the spoiler to ensure Baby would be avenged. Lol.

This felt like a late season episode to me with the 4 hours of plot in a 1 hour show. I have just accepted that sometimes Supernatural fastforwards its own plots. I agree that some of the above tweaks would have helped a lot, but I really did enjoy the concept of a new player and wish he hadn't been outright killed here (then again, maybe there is a spell for re-heading). I really liked Bela and the concept of someone who was totally in on the Supernatural but didn't become a hunter. Magnus/Cuthbert was an interesting variation on that concept. I wanted a lot more exploration of his zoo and bunker and I am hopeful we will get it some day but don't want the spoilers so I guess it will be a wait and see for me. I know people love Crowley, but I tend to find him tedious, despite really liking Mark Sheppard. I found him more tolerable in this episode. Perhaps because he was doing more than monologues about how smart he is. I think the idea that he was getting high on emotions was an interesting concept. I would have liked it if he was playing Abbadon, though, as mentioned above. There was definitely a lot of go from a to b because plot stuff going on here, and there were too many ideas crammed into one episode, but I found the episode itself servicable and I appreciate that it moved the ball downfield, even if I would have liked a bit more.

I really liked this story. The creepiness of the mask. The twist that it was humans (which I thought was a bit predictable but still enjoyable) was actually pretty fun. It has been awhile. I don't care that it was emotionally manipulative and meant to bring the angst, I love loved the story of jumping off the roof and the great moment that followed. I will take what I can get. The ghostfacers have always been douches and obnoxious, and unfortunately they took away the funny in this one. That being said, I still didn't hate them or their addition here. Their angst was annoying and I kept hoping the brothers would be like "Do we sound like that? We have got to do something to change that." At least they pulled all the angsty portions of the script so we could have some non-miserable Winchester time. There were some odd choices (what was up with the weird slow motion stab shot?) and the angst was annoying, but the story was good enough to bring this solidly into watchable for me.

This episode had me trying not to wake the baby. It was hilarious. The Jacksonville plea bargain. The complaint that corkscrewing eyes gets old. Timothy Olyphant interrupting. The software updat on the computer. I can't even come close to naming all the hilarious moments. It was The Good Place at its finest. I loved that Chidi finally became decisive. His simple declaration that he loved Eleanor. His newfound confidence. His desire for soft pretzels (nummy nummy num, or whatever ridiculous thing he said). 😂 Hooray for Michael reading the situation clearly. Honestly, hooray for the whole team. It was so much fun to watch.

Oh for sure. Watching it so quickly completely changes the experience. It is usually most noticeable when I like one offs because the departure doesn't mean I have to wait an entire week for continuation of the story, but it is also probably true that the compression affects ny view here too. I was super into the angel story early in the season and it is hard to explain why it is boring me but I think it is because I was really excited about the "what will the angels do now?" concept and it turned into factions of angels fighting, which seems like what they were doing before. I am having trouble picking a side between them and they talk a lot. I think that the change in this episode where Castiel now has followers and he is proposing something different will likely turn it around for me.

All of this is spot on. I totally agree with this and think that the writers have made a major misstep in the way they have had Sam articulate it as evidenced by how many people are unsympathetic. And I don't mind him lying to Kevin. What's he gonna say? No? Dude is dead. Besides, lying to poor Kevin may be the most consistent thing that has happened in the last three episodes. Heh. I may have been in an angel induced coma (seriously, how do you make this plot so boooooooring) but weren't there THREE storage units. Who was in the third? Did they just leave him/her? I guess I am interested in the veil stuff. I am not really sure that I understand the distinction between closing heaven (as Castiel wanted to do) and throwing the angels out (as Meta did). Does this take the teeth out of the big reveal that this was actually a spell and not the trials for heaven? Would the same thing have happened if Sam completed the trials? Will anyone think to answer this (almost certainly no)? I am going to be honest that I don't really care enough about the angels to keep track of the two factions who seem to be basically the same to me. I actually enjoyed this storyline at the beginning of the season, but at this point I am so bored with it.

We went from meh in the previous episode to outright hate on this one. Obviously the poorly written angst was terrible. Poorly written, inconsistent and ridiculous. I think it has been more than covered here but I will say that this feels like a showrunner problem to me. The lack of continuity in the characterization of Sam and Dean. The unclear or inconsistent motives. The reason this feels like melodrama instead of having some real depth is primarily because there is a clear failure to have a coherent character motivation. There are dribs and drabs of what could have been an interesting story. Something about whether it is more important to consider potential consequences (like Kevin's death) or it is more important to save the person Dean loves. Something about Dean's commitment to save Sam at all costs and Sam's guilt over the things that have happened. This could have been a slow burnout from Sam starting with the loss of his brother (in purgatory), a mental breakdown where he was barely hanging on by a thread, a coping mechanism of embracing a quick fix by finding a girlfriend, throwing himself into a new purpose to save the world and then feeling like there is nothing left for him when that goal is taken away. On the Dean side, we can see a man desperate to hold on to whatever he can. Someone who really needs to believe that he is doing good in the world, and whose worldview was shaken when people they saved began being murdered (another reason Cassie would have worked better for the ex who was killed). Instead, we get consent muddled with the end of the trials. We get the brothers talking at each other and making ridiculous declarations. We get this entire garbage "not brothers storyline" that only shows up in the beginning and the end (in the middle they are laughing and messing with each other). The heart to hearts at the beginning and end just did not go with the tone of the rest of the episode (an old problem) but also they didn't go with the prior episodes either or with the prior characterization. But the rest of the episode was no prize. There is a way to do a monster (or alien in the case of Doctor Who) who removes fat without resorting to the cheapest of ploys and fat shaming. Yet the writers picked all the low hanging fruit. HAHA, look at this fatty. He is in eating competitions and he eats hot dogs even after he was in an eating competition. TWIST, someone actually wanted to bang him. But don't worry cause we are just fetishizing fat. He isn't a good person or anything. His personality is "a little cushion." His competition is thin and a competitive eater. How? Oh, he eats lettuce. Look at this woman. So fat. Close up on her weight. Did you get that she is 180? What a cow! Can we get another close up? Gotta make sure you know so that we can have Dean make a joke about women lying about their weight and age. SO HILARIOUS THAT WOMEN FEEL LIKE THEY HAVE TO BE YOUNGER AND THINNER TO DESERVE LOVE. Check out this Sheriff. She must be a porker because she eats doughnuts. I mean holy shit, the story she told should have had a much bigger impact because the biggest monster in this show was definitely her ex. Fuck that guy. Of course she loved shakes more than him. She should have loved root canals more than him. Sure, they had Dean throw some acknowledgment of how fucked up the story was she just told, but it would have been nice to take a beat to say that dude should be next in line for allllllll the monsters of the show. Then there is the continued confusion on what to do when monsters aren't murdering people. This show cannot figure out where it wants to land, so you end up with nonsensical solutions like: take away her nonharmful food source in a location where we can confirm nothing else happens and send her on her way to another country where she may or may not get all murdery again when she gets hungry. I don't think it has ever occurred to them that there are almost certainly monsters out there like the werewolves and this pishtako (sp?) who aren't doing harm. Literally, the only way they know about a monster is if he/she/it does harm. So, logically, they have no idea if there are monsters out there who aren't doing harm. They would never interact with them unless one of them slips. Anyway, this episode was not may favorite. Can you tell?

Thank you! So many people describe "Bless your heart" as an insult but it is actually quite versatile. I believe we have even seen Sam and Dean don't want to work together and Garth is there. Sigh. This episode was firmly meh for me. I hate the angst for angst sake. A better job by the writers might have at least had Sam reiterating his fear that people die because Dean saves him, but instead we get a nonsense explanation about being brothers as the problem. There is no nuance when the angst comes out. I also hate when something happens in the show that begs discussion about prior episodes and it gets ignored. How do you have an entire episode of maybe good monsters and NOT discuss Benny or Lenore? Dean's assertion that they are definitely bad didn't feel organic without some discussion of his gut. He was just so insistent there couldn't be a group of werewolves that behaved this way. And then of course there was a subgroup and how much more interesting and unpredictable would it have been if that wasn't the case? Or if Dean and Sam pushed them into bad acts. I didn't hate hate it. There were some good parts and I liked that they left Garth, his wife and FIL alive. I like that Garth was happy. So, it wasn't a total wash. ETA: I stand corrected that there was a line about prior friendly monsters but it was blink and you miss it. I think there was a missed opportunity here to bring in the show's history and to justify Dean's hostility (as simple as, "I just have a gut feeling on this.")

I loved this episode. It felt like Doctor Who, if that makes sense. I loved the way they incorporated Ada and Noor. They were interesting and fun to watch. I also thought the separation of the companions was great. I admit I could have watched Graham shooting those ridiculous shoes all day. I thought it was hilarious. I enjoyed this version of the Master. I didn't mind the kneel scene because it was supposed to be unsettling. I like the Master a little manic.

I love Timothy Osmudson so very much. I loved him in Psych and in Galavant. I haven't seen the new Psych movie yet and I haven't seen his work in This is Us, so the last time I saw him was when he was still early in his stroke recovery. I really miss his work and I hope he continues to recover and do more stuff. He was fantastic in this role. He really got the humor in the scene where he is just letting the fight happen. The story was compelling and interesting. It was one of my favorite one off stories, I think. I am sad about Tara, but not surprised. I would have loved to have her for more than an episode. Feels like a bit of a waste. I had to roll my eyes a bit at Dean taking the mark without even asking the consequences. Sure, you are going to say yes, but shouldn't you at least know what to expect? Sam and Castiel were really treading water but I LOVED getting to see some fallout from Castiel's time as a human. So often things get dropped after they are resolved on this show. Also, Castiel arguing that he is a good liar because he deceived the Winchester boys was hilarious. Also, I liked that they continued Sam's line of thinking from the first episode of the season. He said: My life's not worth any more than anyone else's -- not yours or Dean's...or Kevin's. Please. Please, help me do one thing right. Keep going It is consistent with his objection in episode one. And I think it is important insight into what has him willing to push even if it kills him. He doesn't want people to keep dying so he can live. I liked the continuity there. AND I liked that he let it go and ultimately understood Castiel's perspective as well.

The good probably outweighed the bad on this episode except for the ridiculous angst at the end, which felt oh so melodramatic and ridiculous. Would it kill them to write a scene where the brothers are upset at each other and they actually speak to each other instead of stomping away or talking around one another. The "I'm poison" talk was so over the top to me, and somehow Dean managed to make it about him. The thing is that Sam specifically said he didn't want to live if it meant others had to die. His whole fear, as expressed at the beginning of the episode, was that survival came with terrible consequences. Dean can take all the blame he wants, but Sam has to live with the fact that his body killed Kevin and that sucks. Also that his brother lied to him again (though he sort of doesn't have much of a leg to stand on). Backing up, despite the nonsensical way they went about it, I really enjoyed the fight in Sam's head. It was funny that apparently he was able to walk and function with those needles in his brain as a human. I was thinking: Cas, get on healing that STAT, dude. I really enjoyed Cecily (RIP). As much as I dislike Crowley, who loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice, I loved the way he manipulated and frustrated Castiel and Dean. It was entertaining. I did hate that Dean agreed to go along with everything Crowley proposed after deciding not to deal with him, but I get it. I did not care about Abner. Not killing him would have been more surprising. I did wonder what happened to his wife and kid. They were going to a movie and apparently never came home. Oh, and can I please laugh at the fact that Dean needed to scrounge up a ride and they had to walk miles with a gas can. If only there was an entire garage full of cars and motorcycles. You are going to tell me he hasn't gotten one of those in working order?