It's a boy!

Congrats to Jared and Gen! Jared announced the big news last night on Twitter. We know that's going to be one beautiful baby and we can't wait to see a picture.

What I Loved About "Out with the Old" (and the little bit I didn't)

I've had a long, tiring day and my laptop battery only gives me about half an hour now, so instead of a long, detail-by-detail recap of this week's episode, I'm going to give you my thoughts as I watch it a second time. Spoiler alert: I was completely delighted.

During the opening sequence with the ballerina literally dancing her feet off, I wondered if the shoes were cursed or if the janitor was responsible (yes, despite the curse boxes in the "THEN" section). Nice parallelism with the mop, though.

Delight number one: Sam and Dean talking openly. Sam's not trying to hide his Lucifer hallucinations from his brother!!! Dean's not trying to father Sam about it!!! This is (one of) what we've been craving for six years!

Oh, backing up a little, I love Frank and Dean's banter. Frank is hilarious. We're getting a nice, quick overview of just how big Dick's reach is, even if nothing makes much sense.

Opposite of delight number one: Isn't this girl a little old to be completely unaware of the absolute creepiness of shoes showing up where they're not supposed to be and then adjusting themselves to her size? Okay, they cast her well--she has the build and moves of a dancer. BUT IT'S CREEPY.

My husband would not watch this episode if they didn't save the girl. I kept expecting someone to walk in and think they were attacking her. Phew that they just saved her, after poor Dean getting kicked in the face a few times. I thought the actress probably had a lot of fun with that scene, but I might have been projecting.

OMG, when they wanted to put the shoes on! "Do they...look like they're your...size?" "Shut up." "Are you..." "Getting the urge to French Siegfried myself into oblivion?"

I thought Joyce and George were awesome. A little cliche with the door thing, but as awful as the Leviathans are, they're FUN.

Oh, oops, we're not supposed to know they're Leviathans yet.

Hey, Scott Freeman is my husband's cousin! Sam and Dean are seeming a bit impatient with the whole flashing-the-FBI-badge routine. Like they think they shouldn't have to bother, that everyone should just see them as feds and do their bidding.

OMG, the scene with the knives was a total throwback to the scary first season. I expected, of course, knives chopping up fingers. Instead, I channeled Tanya and hid my face while the woman boiled herself to death with the cool ornate teapot.

I kept feeling like Scott's mom had to be more important. She had this safe full of curse boxes full of cursed objects. But she's the Macguffin? I don't actually understand what that is, so maybe not.

Sam. Dude. Get a haircut. Please.

They don't even show a hint of dismay at the dead body. I mean, why would they, after seven years? But usually there's some emotion at not getting there in time to save a life. When Sam called it in, I was a little eye-rolly that he wasn't prepared with a response when they asked his name. How many times have you done this, Sam? But I guess I should give him a pass for not having slept in, oh, six weeks. And "Bruce Hornsby" was funny.

So who's next on the list? A gramophone sold to Brenda Gluck and a vintage gentleman's magazine sold to Peter Yanket. Okay, immature and ridiculous, but also very funny.

Uh, oh, another kid thing. He's totally gonna kill his mom. Yet another threat to my husband watching this with me tomorrow. They brought it right down to the wire. Good thing Sam didn't knock! "Kid. This would be a really good time for a lesson in gratitude. Lucky for you, I'm too tired." Interesting that these two aren't more upset about Sam coming in here. Why do they seem to understand exactly what happened and aren't all freaked out?

Wow, I can't believe we're only 20 minutes into the episode. It took Sam WAY too long to get across town. I expected something to have happened to him with the gramophone. In the meantime, Dean's getting clues and is actually pretty into this, more than just "avenge Bobby" and stuff. I guess he listened to Elliot Ness.

I was a little shocked when Joyce turned into the hardware guy. I thought she was killing him with the handshake but then she went all Leviathan. I wasn't sure if George just worked for Mr. Roman and was human or if Leviathans actually have weaklings. I guess they actually have weaklings. Though George had a lot more to him in the long run.

This episode was no "Mystery Spot," but I liked the way all the threads drew together. HATED Sam falling asleep at the wheel (inevitable) and almost doing a head-on with an eighteen wheeler. (Deliberate connection to the end of season 1, or laziness? Given the song they play at the end of the episode, I'm going with deliberate connection. What it means, if anything, I don't know.)

Sam's progression of extreme fatigue brought him logically to the late-night barrista, as did George being sent there by his dictator of a boss ("How about you eat me?" "Don't tempt me." I guess he is a Leviathan!) I loved how George recognized Sam by his voice and seemed simultaneously excited and scared.

"I don't mean to double-dip in your crazy sauce." Ha! I have to remember that one!

"We have a chain of command here, George. You see a Winchester, you don't eat him! You tell me, and *I* eat him!" She's so over-the-top and yet so natural at it.

Frank's sarcasm is awesomeness. That Dean, the King of Sarcasm, never seems to get it is funny.

So Leviathans are Walmarting mom and pop stores in Portland and Lucifer is on a constant "Stairway to Heaven" loop, 50 times and counting. Poor Sam!

I watch Nikita before Supernatural, and Nikita and Michael and Birkhoff and (to a lesser extent) Alex and Sean are almost always one step ahead of their enemies. So it bothered me that Sam and Dean rushed in to save Scott with no preparation and no suspicions, even though they just figured out that Leviathans are operating here and most likely killed Scott's mother.

George doesn't seem thrilled about the idea of being Scott for 30 years. But I was nicely surprised when Joyce was kicking Dean's ass and George seemed about to do the same to Sam but had somehow prepared a bucket of borax and sacrificed himself to it so Sam had time to get the sword and cut off Joyce's head.

"Thank you, I guess." I think everyone Sam and Dean have helped in the last few years could have said it the exact same way. Bye, Scott. Good luck.

Despite the vast history of alliances-with-the-enemy falling apart, I still like the idea of having a Leviathan on their side. Luckily, Sam and Dean aren't so ready to take George at face value. But it's weird, after all the evil stuff we've seen them do, he's so corporate, even talking about the size of the plan.

"Listen to me, you gooey son of a bitch. You're gonna tell us what you're building here, or I'm gonna wash your mouth out with soap." Hee.

Okay, raise your hand if you saw this coming: "It's going to be a research center. This, gentlemen, is where we are going to cure cancer. We're only here to help." What a smug look on his face!

So, wait. That's where they leave it? Sam and Dean believe George? And there's no punchline about not being able to eat you if you're diseased?

And here we are, the very ominous return of "Bad Moon Rising" that transitions them from Oregon to wherever Frank's trailer is, I don't remember. Noooo! Don't kill Frank! He's so awesome! Not Bobby awesome, but awesome.

Well, crap. It looks like they killed Frank.

Guess who's back next week! And he's not the only one!

So what did you think of this episode? My appreciation average tends to be way above that of my fellow Supernatural Sisters here, but am I alone in liking this one a lot? Please share your thoughts!

A Public Service Announcement :-)

As you may know, some of us here at SPN sisters have strong feelings about remaining unspoiled. So we've decided to pass along this (highly entertaining) video from stars of Dexter, True Blood, Walking Dead and more about the epidemic of spoilers and what you, concerned citizen, can do about it.

Enjoy *g*


http://tinyurl.com/spoilertutorial

The Rest of the Season Approaches...

All of the episode titles for the rest of the season have been revealed. Of course, that doesn't mean they're not subject to change, but here's what we have right now:

“Out With The Old” (March 16)

“The Born-Again Identity” (March 23)

“Party On, Garth” (March 30)

“Of Grave Importance” (7.19)

“The Girl With The Dungeons And Dragons Tattoo" (7.20)

“Reading Is Fundamental” (7.21)

“There Will Be Blood” (7.22)

“Get Dick” (7.23/season finale)

I love all the plays-on-words. I have, as usual, been avoiding spoilers, but I've caught some of the returning character/actor buzz. We'll be getting Castiel, Garth (DJ Qualls), and Meg back. Who else would you like to see? I'd love to see the professor who had the dragon-killing blade. And, of course, BOBBY. Do you think they'd be able to keep that one hush-hush? Jim Beaver could be exaggerating the length of the shoot for the AbomSno movie he's doing.

Of course, they could be teasing us with the beer and Greek paper stuff. That would kill me if they were just teasing us.

No word yet on season 8. How many of you think we'll get it?

This Just In! Season Finale News

First, Happy Birthday to Jensen Ackles! He turns 34 today, which suddenly sounds very young to me. That's never happened before. :(

Anyway, as reported by Dread Central, the Supernatural season finale will air Friday, May 18, 2012.

Which is, of course, smack in the middle of my annual writers retreat. It usually is, and I knew it would be (last year being an aberration due to the extra-long Smallville season finale), but it's still kind of a bummer.

On the one hand, I have several fans on retreat with me. We can download the show when it appears on iTunes and watch it together. Yay! On the other hand, I'm not going to be home to watch with my oldest daughter (aka Number One). She hates not having someone to hash out the finale with, and ends up driving my husband insane. This year he'll be in Vegas for work, so that's even worse for her!

What are your season finale plans? Group watching? Live Tweeting? Or are you all "It's season seven. Meh."

Cranky Tanya's Review of "well, at least we got to see Mark Pellegrino."

I know I've lucked out before and got to recap some really fun episodes of Supernatural. This was not one of those episodes (not that the title "Repo Man" particularly suggested a romp...) Anyway, if you don't mind major SPOILERS for the episode, stick around and I'll tell you what I did and didn't like.

(But first, random anecdote! Mark Pellegrino, the show's recurring Lucifer, recently turned up on the Castle episode "The Blue Butterfly." I said, "Hey, it's that guy from--" "Practically everything?" my husband joked. Like the show's recurring demon Crowley (played by Mark Sheppard) Pellegrino does turn up on several of the shows we like, including a vampire on Being Human and mystical island guardian dude on Lost. My husband and I cracked up at a reference to Pellegrino "not aging" on Castle since he's played some sort of immortal on pretty much everything we've seen him in.)

The show opens in Idaho "four years ago" when the boys were exorcising a serial killing demon from a local guy named Jeffrey, a sensitive postal employee. Unfortunatley, they had to torture Jeffrey's body to get info from the demon within but the upside of that was, since the demon squealed on higher-ups, they felt confident it wouldn't be allowed topside any time soon. It would be in hell for a good long while. The flashback included a white magic practicing Wiccan who helped them track down Jeffrey and ended with Dean dropping Jeffrey off at the hospital.

Flash forward... Bad news for the Winchesters (and Idaho in general), the killings have started again. Since Sam and Dean can't get a new lead on Leviathan leader Dick Roman, they decide to return to Idaho on what they consider unfinished business. The Wiccan is their first stop and she says she has to take care of a few things and then she's getting out of town (since the demon threatened her last time) and asks if they've checked on Jeffrey.

We then go to some sort of group therapy session where a guy is complaining about no access to Cinemax and discover that Jeffrey is in a halfway house but is doing better. He's just received permission to care for his very own pet and as soon as he went to get the dog, I turned to my husband. "If the dog doesn't survive this episode, I am going to be upSET." My husband waved away my concerns.

Sam and Dean nab Jeffrey and ascertain that he is not possessed again. (My CW was a bit on the blink, but I think they did this by pressing a magical blade to his skin.) Then Jeffrey tries to recall what he "heard" while the demon was living in his head to give them clues.

What I probably should have mentioned sooner is that Sam has been hallucinating the devil again for this whole episode. Mark Pellegrino's Lucifer is both playfully disturbed and truly scary. He's angry that Sam won't talk to him and acts out for attention not unlike a middle school boy (only, you know, way more gruesomely). When he stuck out his tongue at Sam, I was utterly repulsed (the tongue was forked) but may have also laughed out loud accidentally.

Jeffrey says that he thinks he knows who the next victim his (town librarian) and Sam goes to check on her, with pretend-Lucifer working as his creepy, unwanted but ultimately helpful sidekick. You know how Sam presses on his old wound to ground himself in reality and make Lucifer disappear? He did this several times and my favorite moment was when he reached to do that and Lucifer groused, "Oh, don't bother" and winked out.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey and Dean go to the demon's old nesting grounds. When they get there, Dean is surprised to find a young guy with a bloody wound on his head chained to a chair. (To date, the demon's killings have all been women.) Then we see a hand behind Dean inject him with something and realize...this can't be good. As soon as Dean and Jeffrey walked into the creepy place, I told my husband I did NOT have a good feeling about Jeffrey. He told me he thought Jeffrey would get a chance to help destroy the demon and find closure that way after the last few troubled years. (No, dear, that would be what we in the biz call a happy ending.)

Sam realizes that he's been sent on a wild goose choice and his subconscious (played by Lucifer) points out an inconsistency between the recent killings and those four years ago--the victims now have been tranqued. They also discover a summoning spell written in familiar handwriting and go to see the Wiccan for answers. She greets them by trying to bop Sam upside the head--but have you seen Sam? Tough for a woman to get the drop on him like that and he thwarts her pretty quickly. She tells him that Jeffrey took her son (the wounded college kid) and was holding him hostage for the summoning spell. He wants to bring BACK the demon who possessed him. But he needs the blood of the demon's exorciser (Dean) and the heart of his pet and, I ain't gonna lie, I pretty much checked out in disgust at that point.

Turns out Jeffrey had only been a wishy-washy WANNABE serial killer before his possession, which gave him the power to act on his darkest thoughts. And he misses that power. So he brings back the demon. But the demon inhabits the Wiccan's son and Jeffrey doesn't get what he was after. (Oh, boo hoo for Jeffrey.)

In the end, the demon is vanquished and the woman and her son are reunited but it's hard to feel like this was a victory for the good guys. Especially when Sam tries to banish his hallucinated Lucifer at the end...he won't go. Sam made the mistake of interacting with the devil in head throughout the episode and now he appears stuck with him.

Maybe this episode just seemed so flat and despairing after last week's fairly funny one, and maybe I'm just still bitter (really bitter) about the dog, but I really disliked it. What about you guys? Did you find the moments of genius in it that I haven't done justice here?

PLUCKY PENNYWHISTLE’S MAGICAL MENAGERIE

You know from the moment we see poor Sam getting cornered in a garage between two maniacal, green-haired clowns that this is going to be an amusing episode and it didn’t disappoint. I especially loved the opening splash page exploding into a garish splatter of glitter and paint.

The episode toggles back and forth between Sam’s battle in the garage and the events that led to the clown showdown. For now we’ll rewind 60 hours

Dean’s talking to Frank on a clap-infested pay phone, trying to see if he’s learned anything about Bobby’s murderer. Unfortunately, the answer is he’s got dick on Dick. So the boys head to Wichita, Kansas. (I’ve got relatives there. I’ve always known that place is ev-il!) Dean is happy for the diversion because he’s sworn off bars, booze, babies and hot chicks of any kind. (Dear Lord those Amazons really did a number on him!) The latest strange involves a man with suction marks all over his body from a giant Pacific octopus and a bite mark on his neck that bled him out. It’s Octo-vamp, not to be confused with Octo-mom, but equally scary. The next casualty is a man who was impaled in the chest by a unicorn who appears to have rainbow farts.

The boys soon discover a commonality between the victims. They’d recently taken their kids to Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie, a scarier version of Chuck E. Cheese. It seems Sam’s Coulrophobia stems from the fact that his big brother would dump him off at the kiddie pizzeria while Dean trolled for chicks. Sam doesn’t want to investigate Plucky’s but Dean tells him 99.99% of all clowns can’t hurt you and if it bleeds, it can die.

At Plucky’s, “Where All Your Dreams Are Good” ( I think not!) the walls are decorated with children’s drawings. In an effort to aide childhood development the kids are encouraged to draw their worst nightmares so Plucky can make their fear disappear. A janitor overhears Sam’s discussion with the manager and tells him to come back after closing so he can tell him something in private. The poor guy never gets the chance. After some kid pukes in the ball pit the custodian climbs in to sanitize the balls and—in a clever homage to Jaws’ opening scene—is quickly dispatched by a land shark.

Something or someone didn’t want him to blow the whistle, but the remainder of the victims are all less than stellar parents. The next one on the hit list looks to be a Plucky employee. The harried mom actually gives her son, who looks to be about seven, money so he can take the bus home on his own. Eek! Instead he settles into a table and draws a picture of a robot with laser eyes.


Federal Agent Sam returns to Plucky’s to “lean on” the employees. Dean will then follow them post-interview to see if they reveal their guilt. (But really he’s all about earning the super-sized Slinky by winning double-tickets on Skeeball.) Using every bad cop cliché maneuver Sam hilariously questions the manager, the prize guy (who’s so chipper you want to punch him) and the Lion mascot who takes off running. Only he’s not guilty of Mary Poppinsing the kids pictures into reality. He thought he was being busted for his Breaking Bad bro’s meth connections. However, he does reveal that the basement is uber-scary.

Sam seeks out the kid and his mom before she gets blasted by a robot, while Dean checks out the boiler room (always a bad idea). Wow, it turns out perky prize guy has been taking the kids drawings and a personal item he’s lifted off their parents and thrown them into a fire pit set into the middle of a pentagram. Dean finds the boy’s robot pic and tears it up. Mom might be safe, but prize guy had already thrown Sam’s business card and a clown picture into the fire. That brings us to Sam’s clown chase. The poor boy is getting his butt beaten. Apparently, these juggalos are in the rare minority of clowns who CAN hurt you.

A desperate Dean tries to figure out how to save Sam. It seems prize guy went all berserk because he was passed up for management. But the real reason for his revenge goes back to his childhood. His brother was drowning and when he tried to get his parents attention in order to save him, they ignored him. Dean quickly makes the connection between the story and a picture prize guy had drawn. He takes the artwork and a clown figurine and throws them into the fire. Prize guy’s brother then shows up and causes Plucky’s perky employee to drown. Fortunately for Sam, his clown duo then explodes in a cloud of glitter. When Dean sees him again he laughingly tells his little brother he looks like he’s been attacked by some PCP crazed stripper. (It’s SO good to see Dean genuinely laugh and smile!) He then apologizes for psychologically scarring Sam.

You know, I had a boyfriend in high school who was terrified of clowns. He literally shuddered at the mere mention of them, which of course meant I had to tease him unmercifully. Sorta the same way Dean teases Sam. As the boys get ready to leave Wichita behind, Sam gifts Dean with a giant slinky. Dean says he has a present for Sam too. Unlike the slinky, the clown doll is left on the asphalt as they drive off.

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. There were tons of great one-liners, Jared did an awesome job acting skittish and his bad cop routine had me in stitches. It was also wonderful seeing Dean in a lighter—i.e. not self-destructive—frame of mind and the phobias were fun. That’s all over now. The previews for next week show things are about to take a very dark turn.