"Slash Fiction" Recap

Hmm, methinks the Sam and Dean who are robbing a bank and killing all the patrons and employees are not the real Sam and Dean.

Next we have Bobby trying to make the captured leviathan talk and he's having no luck. When Dean asks the leviathan how he found them, the guy says it was easy and starts talking about using algorithms tracking their known aliases.

Bobby: "Great. Just what we need, a Mensa monster."

The monster says he's the least of their worries, and Sam and Dean see the news that they supposedly robbed a bank and killed everyone.

Dean: "Those sons of bitches Xeroxed us. We find these ass monkeys and we kill them ourselves."

Bobby sends the boys to see a friend of his, Frank, but when they arrive the guy pulls a gun on them and asks who sent them. "NSA, the Feeb, March of Dimes?"

Frank seems freaked out and trigger-happy when the respond with Bobby's name. Okay, this guy is funny. He gives the boy new aliases, Tom and John Smith, and tells them no more rock shout-outs with their names. He tells them to ditch the Impala.

Dean is obviously not happy about having to leave the Impala behind, saying something about putting baby in a corner.

Sam: "You know that's a line from--"
Dean: "Swayze movie. Swayze always gets a pass."

LOL! Dean starts singing to the radio playing Air Supply's "I'm All Out of Love."

Sam is looking at a map of where the dopplegangers have hit, and he realizes they're places where he and Dean have done cases before. Jericho -- Lady in White. Black Water Ridge -- Wendigo. Lady Manatonka -- the kid in the lake. They're in order, from the day Sam left Stanford. Hello, Season 1!

Sam and Dean roll into the next town the dopplegangers are to hit and see them, but the cops roll up and arrest the real Sam and Dean. Oops.

Meanwhile, back at Bobby's cabin, the leviathan has turned into Bobby but then something starts dripping from the ceiling and burning holes in the guy. It's the first thing that has had any effect. Bobby runs upstairs where the lady sheriff (Jodi) is cleaning the floor and...he kisses her!!! Then he asks what was in the bucket.

The dopplegangers switch forms into two cops to get into the police station to see Sam and Dean.

Hey, look, the sheriff is Col. Tigh from Battlestar Galactica.

Sheriff sees the baddies eating one of his deputies and decides to trust Dean. He helps him take out bad Sam. Then we see bad Dean talking with real Sam, and he spills the beans that real Dean killed Amy a couple of episodes back.

Uh oh, one of the FBI agents is a leviathan (I had that suspicion) and comes back to kill the sheriff and his daughter, the medical examiner.

Crowley shows up in the car of the head leviathan trying to make deal, but the head leviathan doesn't think too highly of demons and tells Crowley so in no uncertain terms. I'm thinking this will tick off Crowley enough that he will go back to helping Sam and Dean, but who knows. Maybe I just want to see Crowley on the side of good because he cracks me up sometimes.

Sam confronts Dean about killing Amy then walks away, telling Dean he can't be around him now. And then Sam walks off. Sigh. Brothers separated again. I wonder how long this will last.

"Shut Up, Dr. Phil"

We had some technical difficulties, so we apologize for not having our usual timely, amusing, insightful recap and review of the most recent episode. :(

I'm sliding rapidly into the semi-conscious blur that comes with having two books coming out one day apart (Behind the Scenes on 10/31 and Under the Moon on 11/1! /plug), so this is just an impression review rather than a full recap.

This episode has the long-awaited featured guests Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters, formerly of Buffy and Angel fame. They played husband and wife witches having a little feud. Don Stark stepped out on Maggie, who is punishing him by murdering everyone connected to his affair—the woman he slept with, the guy who introduced them, someone who covered for him. Don retaliates by killing Maggie's best friend and ruining the art she's so passionate about. But, as the boys point out in an under-duress counseling session near the end, there must still be love there, because they're not trying to kill each other.

This wasn't a high-emotion, high-intensity, high-mythology, high-anything episode, but as I break it down, I really liked it. The boys engaged in true sleuthing-style investigation, following clues and conducting interviews like someone from a non-paranormal crime drama or something. They worked really well together, despite New!Sam irritating the hell out of Same!Old!Dean, and Dean getting even further into the bottle (I wonder when that's gonna come to a head?).

Bobby's presence on the show was so solid I have to keep reminding myself he never was actually there. I loved how Maggie knew the boys were hunters from the get-go, and Don was actually a pretty quiet character, so different from his flamboyant Spike, while Maggie could have been the original high-school Cordelia all grown up.

A show this old starts to struggle with freshness. But I thought they altered the familiar just enough. They offered great, gruesome new deaths (frying under a hair dryer, nail gun through the eyes, little tiny beating hearts in cupcakes and literally coughing up a lung). We've had witches before, but these are old married witches with no grand agenda, no evil plans, just a typical, personal battle taken a little (lot!) too far.

Probably my only quibble with the whole thing was that Dean killed Amy when her motivation had been pure, when she'd worked hard not to kill in the first place, and now he didn't seem to try hard enough to kill the Starks. Yes, they are extremely powerful witches who totally outmatched the boys, and they haven't actually defeated witches before, but they seemed to give up too easily against people who killed innocents without compunction.

On the other hand, Don Stark putting a spell on the Leviathan and saving the boys from his wife was kind of cool, and left things open for them both to return, which I'm fully in favor of.

So what did you think? Love or hate the episode? Did the guest stars make the show, or was their cult standing too distracting? Do you want to see them again? Weigh in in the comments!

Why We Love These Guys So Much

 

Read the article at Zap2It!

Supernatural/Whedon Crossover!

Some of these surprised me, some humbled me because I should have recognized them! See how many you get!

Slideshow‘Supernatural’ and the Whedonverse: 20 Stars Who’ve Crossed Over

Defending Your Life

I’m currently recovering from having my appendix and gallbladder out on Tuesday, so this will not be a full recap. Instead I’m just going to share my thoughts on Defending Your Life. However, I’m doing so under the influence of pain killers.

Between the killer car (and I called Christine before Dean did) and the killer dog my first thought was that Stephen King was responsible for killing these people. Frankly, I kinda liked the idea of an author’s fantasies materializing. I wanted to see ole Stevie with a cameo. But it wasn’t long before I realized their demise was caused by the method of their guilt. When the old dude was being haunted by the couple he killed in a robbery I actually felt saddened to lose the King connection. (Maybe there still is one and I don’t know it.)

What really struck me in this episode was how old and tired Dean acted. From stretching out his aching back to bitching about just wanting a simple day job for once, he’s showing a wear and tear we haven’t seen before. Did anyone else think he seemed more than a little resigned to his death sentence? Has the fight gone out of him?

I actually enjoyed the character of Osiris and particularly enjoyed the trial…until the end. The whole time I was thinking, “Oh, no, here it is, Sam’s going to find out Dean killed Amy.” Dean positively squirmed with guilt and the viewer knew it was that deadly deed and lying to his brother about it that would ultimately cost Dean his life. But he wouldn’t allow Osiris to call her to the stand. I was concerned for nothing.

While Dean was waiting for Sam and Bobby to figure something out I just knew Amy would show up then…but no, it’s Jo. Okay, I get that. It’s a lot meaner for Osiris to send Jo to snuff Dean out. It’s more personal. Cruel. Reciprocal, even. But still…

Overall, I wasn’t real keen on this episode. I like that we learned Dean never wanted to be a lone hunter. I liked seeing Jo again. But the false threat of Dean’s betrayal hanging over the episode like a black cloud and then amounting to a whole lot of nada made me feel cheated. At the very least wouldn’t Sam press him harder to find out who that secret witness was? What did you think? Maybe I’ll rewatch the episode one day and see if I feel different post-recovery. In the meantime, I’m just looking forward to seeing Cordy and Spike next week!

Netflix to Stream Supernatural

Netflix, Warner Bros. Television, and the CW have signed a deal to stream CW shows instantly on Netflix for U.S. customers.

Supernatural will start in January 2012. This season will be available in the fall, and future seasons will be added in a "commensurate window." It sounds like they won't be streaming current episodes in any ongoing season; those will stay on the CW's website.

The Power of Fandom

So a few days ago, @jarpad announced on Twitter that he and Genevieve will be having a baby. Apparently some people wanted to send gifts, and he asked for donations to St. Jude Children's Hospital instead. Someone started an official fundraiser, and in 12 hours, they'd raised $3,700 for cancer research.

Part of me thinks that's incredible. Sometimes entertainment seems so frivolous, and our focus on celebrity ridiculous. And then it's turned into something so beneficial and powerful. The ease with which a group can be incited to do good is astounding.

Part of me wonders why we need to be incited. Why do we leap into action just because some tall, good-looking, good-natured guy asks us to? Why is his request more worthy than the little entreaty cards we get in the mail every other day? Is it just because we want him to think well of us?

I hope that's not it. I hope it's more that there is so much need in this world, and we're bombarded with requests and get jaded because it seems so impossible. The focus by someone we admire makes it easy.

In reality, it's probably a combination of the two, and that's okay. The children being helped by that money don't care why it was given, after all.

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If you'd like to participate in this specific fundraiser, click here. They are just shy of $8,000 toward the goal of $20,000.