CaffieneKittySpace

Spotlights, addendum.

2008-05-13T06:17:17Z

For those interested in the spotlight issue, this comment thread now contains first-hand info on the matter.

ETA: And you also may want to watch this space... (Brought to you by the awesome noirbabalon)

*Caution: Post and thread contains spoilers for Season 3*

caffienekitty @ 2008-05-11T21:49:00

2008-05-12T06:28:53Z

Contains spoilers for all aired episodes, plus the Origins comics. Also spoilers for Princess Bride, I guess? And Maybe Season 2 Heroes.

NO SPOILERS FOR UNAIRED SUPERNATURAL EPISODES. But there is a little bit of speculation.

Massively Wordy Reaction and Random Meta for Supernatural 3.15 - "Time Is On My Side"

Spoiler Timeline: (Caution: Contains Origins-related ranting)

-*...spoiler that I'm guessing might not be happening after all carried forward anyway*

-May 3rd Woah! O.O picture of... possibly Dean with head strapped down to a table a la 'Princess Bride', you know, with that life-sucking machine??? Eek! And seriously, what the hell? And then the theories start exploding. OMG, Hunters after Sam catch Dean on a 'last few days fling' thing and use him as bait to catch Sammy? EEEEEEEK! *flail* Maybe. Or he's in hell. Or it's some other guy because I accidentally clicked the link, caught a glimpse and then shut the window immediately so I didn't study it or anything. Or someone wants to trap a Hell Hound and is using Dean as bait. Or Sam stuck him there to keep him inside a hellhound proof circle so he can't be dragged to hell and will keep him safe there forever and ever.... Or... Eek! Or it's not Dean. I think the person's hair may have been longer than Dean's, and seriously, Dean probably only has a few weeks to go, and I doubt they'd skip over the whole Deal resolution so Dean's hair won't have had a chance to grow that much. *wibble* Or the April 26th (?) on the calendar in the background last week was wrong and this guy's going to have Dean trapped for weeks... Anyway, all that aside, it looks like they may have finally gotten that consultant on effective restraints I've been suggesting...

-May 5 Title: "Time is on My Side." Ah. Hm. Possibly some magical time compression jiggery-pokery? Or maybe it is the Princess Bride "Pit of Despair" life-sucking machine, and Dean's been kidnapped by an albino and a six-fingered man. Sure, if the muffins in the writer's bullpen have been laced with 100% pure crack. Which I'm not ruling out. Either way, title might imply potential for messing with time/age/hair growth, maybe. So maybe it is actually Dean on the table then, and something with a bondage kink some capacity for time-bending has him. And it's probably not Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood.

-MAY 7 FREAKING SPOILER INSANITY. (And here's where the ranting starts. Those who like and accept the Origins comics may wish to skip this bit.) Bad guy's name is Doc Benton. As in Doc Benton the stupid lame-ass spleen-eater guy from the thrice-damned Origins comics? The one John supposedly hacked in half with a frigging chainsaw in issue 4 (six months before Sam was even born according to the date in the comics, mind you) That Doc Benton??? I swear I'm having a frigging heart attack here; chest pains, vision going sparkly, shooting pain up the left arm, the whole nine yards. Okay A) he's dead according to the comic B) he's from Origins which I deny the canonicity of completely, so me and this frigging episode are gonna have some issues *cracks knuckles* C) even if he did exist, he's not just dead, John hacked him apart with a chainsaw, and unless this Benton freak is part troll, or regenerates like a damned starfish, or glorps his sundered bits back together like a liquid metal Terminator, (or was somehow revealed to come back to life in issue 5 or 6 of Origins which I still haven't read yet because I have enough stress in my life right now) then just frigging NO and D) The creeping dread that I've had since before AVSC that Kripke is trying to force the comic canon into the series canon despite glaring irresolvable canon errors, continuity errors and John being a giant wuss and PASTOR JIM BEING A BORDERLINE PSYCHOTIC SELF-MUTILATING MEDIUM AND, AND-

*breathes*

Calm, calm. Twittering birds, frolicking kittens, happy place, calm... I've never been this distressed by a spoiler. Ever. But that's mainly me and my personal issues with the Origins series, so it probably won't even bother you sane people. Me though? *huddles into a warm dark corner, rocking back and forth and humming Metallica*

-May 8th - *facepalm* I should know better than to go anywhere near TWoP between hiatuses. Hiati? Intra-hiatatory periods? Whatever. 3.15 may involve a young Bela. It's the tragic backstory now, isn't it? Whee. I liked Bela, I did. But I'm having an allergic reaction to ~~Mary Sues~~ tragic misunderstood pasts lately, and Bela having one is making me itch. It is however distracting me from the other spoiler about which I'm fighting desperately to regain some rationality.

-Also May 8th - Okay, I need to just unplug my internet until 10 p.m. Pacific, don't I? In some article talking about the cuts in the production budget: Bela will die or otherwise be removed from the show due to budget cuts. I'm surprised that I'm not even bothered that I encountered this one, and it involves the possible death of a recurring character. Must be spoiler burnout. Hm. Since she was in the show at the network's insistence though, I wonder about the order of that "budget/casting" sequence. Was it a case of-?
CW: "So sorry Supernatural, really we are, but we're cutting your budget. Yoink!"
Kripke et al: "Well fine! We don't have enough money to pay for the character that was your idea, now, do we? So there!"
Or more a case of -?
Kripke et al: "So sorry CW. We aren't keeping Bela for next season because the majority of the fans will lynch us."
CW: "Well fine! You won't need as big of a budget then, will you? Yoink!"
("Yoink!" being the technical accounting term that accompanies all annoying budget cuts, of course)
It bears serious pondering, it does. Regardless, I actually did like the basic concept of Bela, right up until she developed a tragic misunderstood and mysterious past. Well, and made the boys look stupid in the cause of making herself look better. Ehn. I don't think I'll miss her, but we'll see.

-And again May 8th - Being off the internet didn't help. Caught about two seconds of the commercial on the CW before flipping over to CityTV feed (No next week promo, no big green bars, and no dancing baloney at the bottom of the screen! Win!) It was enough to note that I should skip dinner. Maggots ahoy! :-P

Right then. Let's do this.

....Aaaand work delays me again. Six days a week sucks, but it's so much better than seven. Also, apologies if any of you have had major turmoil in your life, I haven't checked my f-list since before the episode aired. I don't even know what my skip count is at. :-/

Anyway, onward.

-I somehow get the feeling that tonight's show will be earning the 'graphic scenes' warning CityTV puts on every episode at every single commercial break.

-Erie, Pennsylvania! Hee. I may have been somewhere near there once!

-Creepy doctor. And I'm not talking about the one lurking in the shrubbery.

-Also completely blind doctor if he misses seeing Doc Benton lurking ten feet away in the aforementioned shrubbery.

-Ahahahahah! Guts everywhere! Sorry, don't know what came over me there.

-See, though, that's what I mean by subtle gore. No CGI innards, no complex latex wiggly stuff, just a bloody trenchcoat, an offscreen splat and an out-of-focus red stringy thing. And screams and gurgles and stuff. That right there, that's perfect subtle gore. The FX budget only had to cover about a quart of fake blood and some yarn or whatever, and the audiences' imagination can handily fill in the spurty pile of steaming, glistening intestines and suchlike on the hospital floor. Subtlety is good for the budget. Yay! \o/

-Incidentally, is it just me, or did that nurse do a very stupid thing there? Well, obviously in retrospect, of course, but seriously, if someone comes into a medical facility in obvious distress, bleeding copiously and possibly keeping pressure on a wound, treating him like a four-year-old with a skinned knee and pulling his hands away from said wound seems like a generally poor idea.

-Sam and Dean aren't above torturing a demon with holy water for info. Good to know. Also very pragmatic.

-What I'd like to know is why these "tie the possessed person to a chair and splash 'em with holy water" things seem to always have a fireplace in the background. I mean, Meg and Sam were at Bobby's, yeah, but this one isn't, and yet, fireplace. There was a fireplace at Madison's in 'Heart'.... Hey! And Sam tied her to a chair! And she was a werewolf, but not by choice, just like the people who are possessed didn't choose to be possessed. There's meta there, I can smell it. *nods sagely*

-"Who holds my contract?" Pst, guys. It's totally Lillith. Though I guess it's cheating to use the info that there are only two demons who've been given actual names who are still topside, and while Ruby holding Dean's contract would be wonderfully perverse ~~(especially if it turns out she was Meg all along)~~, she's not out nuking cop shops with her creepy white eyes and commanding a significant number of black-eyed flunky-demons. And has that whole 'power rising in the west' thing going on. Which, if it turns out she's based in Sacramento, I will laugh and laugh and laugh... Sorry, sidetracked.

-"Your Mother." God. Wouldn't that be a disturbing twist. Lillith is somehow Mary. *looks nervously in Kripke's direction*

-"Do what you want." Yeah, demon's got a point there. What can you do to interrogate an entity that lives in Hell?

-Ooohoo hoo. "We'll be waiting for you Dean..." Eeeek. Oh. Poor Dean. And very 'gang member to cop who's about to go to jail' ish, only soooo much worse.

-And oh, Dean again. "Send him some place he can't hurt anyone else." Oh, oh Dean. And that face! Oh.

-Beer. Nothing caps off an evening of demon torture in front of a roaring fire, followed by the sedate and quiet burial of the demon-abused body like a nice cold beer.

-CSI jibe! "My man Dave Caruso will be stoked to hear it." They picked an iteration of CSI to snark on that's not counter-programming on Thursdays, but cool. David Caruso needs to be snarked at more often, because he? Is an absolute poser. Or at least his character is. I'm sure Mr Caruso himself is a very nice man.

-"Hot zombie action." Heeee.

-They sure get a lot of use out of that hospital location, eh? Check out the window-grid. It's the same one Dean and Kat walked past in Asylum. Also seen in maaany other episodes.

-Hey! The coroner! It's that guy!! He looks a bit like Quincy... Who is that guy and where have I seen him before? Arg.

-"No, no, we're very smart." Not necessarily cops though. Very honest of Dean there.

-"Please go away." I love the morgue guy. I- *blink* OMG IT'S ELKINS!!! Oh wow! Freaking Elkins! Season 1! Eaten by vampires pre-credits, had the Colt originally, that Elkins!!! Hee! Awesome! So... what, the vampires didn't actually eat him, they just nibbled a bit then turned him into a vampire for kicks (and that whole tragic irony thing) but he escaped the nest before the Winchesters showed up and took it out? And now he's working in a hospital where he has plenty of access to live blood (would blood donations count as live blood? *ponders*) and also in the morgue where he's got access to dead man's blood by the frigging gallon! And Sam and Dean don't recognize him because they never actually saw him, just ~~looted his house~~ investigated the scene of his 'death'! OMG it all fits!!! Undead vampire hunter/coroner Elkins! Woohoo! \o/

-Nice scene transition there. Cool.

-Missing kidney! I'm utterly shocked there wasn't an outright referencing of 'Charlie the Unicorn' there.

-Nice yellow jaundicey tone on the makeup on missing kidney guy. Or maybe that's just my TV...

-Bathtub of ice! Organlegger urban legend is now complete, yay!

-Hey, kidney-less guy, you should maybe be less bitchy. The de-livered plastic surgeon got to walk into emergency half-naked and holding his guts in with his hands. You got a considerate tub of ice in a hotel, and you're still alive jaundice-boy, so suck it up!

-I am still shocked that there was no overt reference to 'Charlie the Unicorn' or Candy Mountain, or anything. Seriously. Well, maybe the guy was named Charlie and it got left on the cutting room floor. I can live with that. I wanted Candy Mountain, though, darn it! Or even a Leopleurodon. Didn't even have to be a magical Leopleurodon. *pouts*

-Ooo. "Medical Procedures of the 19th Century" I wish that was a real website...

-Hey, wow! Sam's laptop wallpaper is the same as it used to be on the original laptop! Arg. Where's a decent screencap? I swear, it's the same one! With a skateboard leaning up against some stuff. So, Sam went and found that wallpaper again after the Impala crash/laptop squishing, and put it on the new laptop deliberately. So the wallpaper and the stickers weren't just a leftover from a used laptop they picked up at a pawn shop. Is this plus the fact that the central blue and black sticker on the old laptop was from a skateboard shop... might this be a sign that... as a kid or teen... Sammy was a... sk8rboi??? *boggles* Not that this hasn't probably been mentioned a billion times since season 1, but anyway. Regardless of what's on it, having the same wallpaper is another sign that inside, Sam craves stability, order and control when in a state of emotional turmoil and forces it on his world in any small way he can, at the most extreme, leading to that freakishly ordered psycho-Sammy from the months after Wednesday in "Mystery Spot". A lot to read into a re-used wallpaper of a skateboard, but hyper-analyzing background detail is part of the fun of fandom, yes? *nods*

-Mr. Giggles? Seriously? It went by a bit fast and not really emphasized enough to be a nickname Sam picked.... So... I dunno, maybe that's his actual name then? Poor guy. Charlie Giggles. No wonder he's so grumpy. It's like there's this person whose mail gets put in the "doesn't live here" box all the time in my building, named "Frank Earnest" I always wonder if as a reaction to growing up with a name that is synonymous with "honest and intensely serious" he's actually a flippant compulsive liar. Wherever he is.

-Wow, there's, like, an entire shrub of some kind hanging from the ceiling of the hotel room. I'm gonna assume that's part of some kind of anti-demonic incursion protection hoodoo the boys have got set up and not part of the room decor. Though with this show and its hotel rooms? Who knows.

-I like the detail on the old medical practices. Silk sutures and I even knew about that maggots vs wound rot thing. That's cool.

-Hee. Sam with the talking about gross things while Dean is eating, what? A burger. Callback to Malleus Maleficarum, maybe? Just a teeny bit? I know if I was eating a hamburger and someone started talking about maggots, I'd have a callback. Of sorts. :-P

-Of course this sounds familiar, Dean, don't you remember that dream you had about the comic where John hunted Doc Benton down six months before Sam was born and cut the guy apart with a chainsaw? No? No, of course not. Never mind. *twitch*

-"Because you heard about it before. When you were a kid. From Dad." Calm. Playful puppies. Doc Benton. Journal. *twitch* Calm. Oh, that glowing pink thing in the comic was a heart. Hacked in pieces, actually. In 1982. With a chainsaw. Grr. Incompatible canons. Continuity error overload. Arg. Calm. Ocean waves on a sandy beach. Happy place. Moving on.

-Nice to see the 'using Daytimer pages' continuity though. *clings* And the page contains the date Sunday March 11, which happened in 1979, 1984, 1990, and 2001. None of which supports the (absolutely impossible anyway) comic timeline. *glares at comic*

-Ya know, if I hadn't read the comics, this whole 'Dad killed him before' and looking things up in the journal thing would be pretty damn kickass, so I think I'll go with that. This kicks ass.

-Side note. My VCR seems to love making Sam look like an absolute moron. It stops on the weirdest facial expressions. Right now, Sam's got one eye half-closed, his head tilted to the side and an open-mouthed smirky thing going on.

-Hee! Sammy with the "little brother trying to gross out the big brother" thing: Denied! (Or Dean-ied. Hee.)

-Really, though, Sam? Have you met your brother? He sticks his bare fingers in ectoplasm and tastes random spell components. Talking about maggots and offal while he's eating are not going to put him off his feed. At least not for long.

-Hey, is that burger just lettuce on a bun? If it is, yay for budget savings! Also hee, coz now I wonder if even though Dean wasn't grossed out, Jensen was and couldn't even pretend to eat a real burger. Aw. *passes him some ginger-ale, just in case*

-Oh, look! A jogger with nice healthy parts for the good doctor to harvest! Jogging alone at night! Don't harvest his brain, Doc. It might be doubtful.

-Damn. Not Dean strapped to the table. Aaaaand the section of fandom hoping to get Dean half-naked and strapped to a table goes "Aww." ~~Aww.~~ *koff* Heh. Oh well. I guess medical torture before possibly going to Hell would be too cruel. Nice fakeout, promo department! The pic I saw, I was almost certain it was Jensen Ackles.

-Jar o' maggots! Whee! So glad I skipped dinner. Seriously, though, does this show have a dedicated maggot wrangler or what?

-Hee. Love that he's still wearing the heart-monitor watch. That's a nice touch. Also yay that it starts going a bit faster when the guy wakes up strapped to a table next to a jar of maggots.

-The make-up and prosthetic work on Benton is awesome.

-Benton is also the fastest and strongest surgeon ever. One slice and he's through all the skin, muscle and sinew of the chest muscles, a few snips and the cartilage connecting ribs to ribcage are cut, spread the ribcage and voila! Heart. Kind of huge heart, I think maybe. Although maybe he took the pericardial sac thing with it. Looks nice and squashy. And poor jogger-guy, awake and aware through it all. This is why you don't want to have an awesome constitution, dude. Passing out from the pain early on would probably have been vastly preferable. *nods*

-And flatline on the watch! Awesome. Poor guy. Put all that effort into keeping his heart healthy, jogging in the middle of the night and all, only to have some undead organ-thief take it from him.

-Hey! I have potholders the same exact colour and pattern as those bedspreads! I loathe them.

-Also, I kind of love that they're leaning on the bed looking over maps and stuff like they're going through their hockey card collections, instead of sitting at the table. That's kind of neat, and makes them seem more boyish and brotherly.

-Wow, that shrubbery hanging from the center of the ceiling is awfully low. Must be a pain for the boys to have to keep ducking around that. Not so much of a pain as having demons invade the hotel room though, so it'd be a tolerable annoyance.

-Hi Bobby! It's Bobby in a junk yard, I don't think it's his junk yard though because there's too much stuff and I really don't think Bobby has any employees *waves at red plaid guy in background* but it'd be kinda cool if he did.

-Oh! I know! It's crusher day! Around here, there's a mobile car-crusher that goes around to all the junk yards every so often to squash and collect their crush pile of dead and useless cars.

-I admit, I had a brief flash with Bobby standing in front of the crushed cars saying "I found Bela" that she'd been squashed into a crushed car. It was a neutral flash though. I didn't go 'Yay' or 'Oh noes!' Actually I went, "Now how the hell are they gonna get the Colt out of a squished car?" Sigh.

-Cleveland Steamer? What's that? Something to do with baseball? Or do I not want to know... I get the distinct feeling I don't want to know. I'm going to pretend it has something to do with baseball, nod my head and move along. *nods and moves along*

-Rufus Turner. New hunter? Cool... Oh! He's a hermit! Hermits FTW!! \o/

-Heh. If the Johnny Walker Blue was a product placement, I really hope they got some decent money for it. At this point I'm all for product placement if it helps the budget. *cheers the possibility of budgetary aid*

-...Sam's lost his mind. He wants Dean to be like this Benton guy? Sam has lost his freaking mind. Oh Sam. Oh. Wow. And he looks so totally rational and calm while he's at it. That's freaking creepy. Wanting Dean to hook up to the immortal organlegger camp? He's insane.

-When exactly was it said that Dean not dying will nullify the Deal? How does that work exactly? Dean does the immortal thingy, the Hellhounds come after him and... what? Gnaw on his head like a tennis ball for a while then give up? *scratches head*

-Oh. Sammy looks so bright and hopeful about turning his brother into a monster. He looks about nine and like he's figured out a way to get free ice cream. Oh Sam.

-Also, Sam needs to give up trying to lie. *facepalm*

-"We have no idea who holds the ticket." Pst. Sam. Clue phone. It's totally Lilith. Like duh.

-"Shoot the hellhounds" Yeah! That's Dean! Go out guns blazing! Well, gun. Is it too late to start mass-production on demon-killing Colts, or maybe convert it so it can operate like a machine gun, or at least take a 300 round magazine? Heh, probably too late.

-I have this teeny meta-theory about the Colt in Season 3... but I doubt I'll get a chance to type it up and post it before the finale. Probably nothing other people haven't already suggested anyways.

-"How you gonna stop me?" That little head-shake and succession of stunned blinks from Dean, like he was expecting his little brother to back down and follow the rational route... Aw.

-Though seriously, I can think of a couple ways to stop Sam or at least slow him down. Most involve pain and some involve vast quantities of rope, but only one involves serious injury... Meh. Knock him out, tie him up and stuff him in the back seat of the Impala. You'll be across 3 county lines before he wakes up.

-This whole scene though, pings off that thing in 3.14, with the phone conversation the Crocotta thought Sam thought he'd hear from Dean. That conversation, the fake Dean has no qualms about letting Sam go off after a soul-sucking monster alone, because Sam figures Dean is ready to let him handle stuff on his own. Now though, we have real Dean, not exactly ready to blithely split up and let Sammy deal with the psycho doctor on his own. Dean's not ready to let Sam go, doesn't think he's ready to handle things on his own, and is taken aback by a confident defiant Sam. Dean's not ready to go. Dean's not ready to let Sammy go into danger on his own. But he has to, because in three weeks he won't be there. It's... Heh. I'm reading too much into things again probably.

-"We're after the same thing." Becoming dubiously immortal at the expense of innocents is the same as trying to get the only weapon that can kill the demon that holds Dean's deal? Ooookay. You go with that Sam. Pragmatism gone insane. This? Is totally a Mystery Spot effect. Reaching the goal regardless of collateral damage. Oh Sam.

-And Dean leaves. After 3 years of Sam doing the leaving, Dean leaves. Yeah. I knew there would be a scene of Dean leaving Sam that as a kind of callback to Scarecrow sometime before the resolution of the deal. This is where I really wish they could have done this episode as two episodes. It feels like there's a lot of unavoidable elision going on in the post-strike episodes, and much of it is at the expense of detailing out the character development arcs. But it's still awesome.

-Thank god for Jensen Ackles' facial expressions. They get across more story than pages of dialog sometimes. Frequently. Like here.

-Hm. Here in my notes I have written in very large letters: "SAM YOU GIANT MORONIC DUMBASS!!!" and I'm not sure why...

-Rufus the hermit on the intercom. Paranoia is fun! I like him. He's totally gonna die or turn evil now that I've said that, just you watch.

-Hey! It's another 'him'! Where's he from? ... Did he have a recurring role in X-Files? I'm getting a creepy conspiracy connotation from him, although it might just be the character. That or a cop. *scratches head* I'd try looking him up, but I'm not going anywhere near IMDB until after the finale. I do occasionally learn that fire is hot after sticking my head in the conflagration enough times. :-P

-Woohoo! Johnny Walker better pay up for this damn product placement, because it's awesome, and even plot-related. And not at all on ten tons of crack like some shows which could be mentioned. *refuses to look in Smallville's direction*

-OMG Bowling trophies!!! On the mantel, as the camera pans around to them at the table. BWAH! I have no idea why I find it so funny that this hunter guy would have a ton of bowling trophies, but... wow! Wonder if back in the day, he was a bowling shark? Hee.

-That dinette set they're sitting at is totally my mom's old dinette set. Well, not actually the same one that sat in mom's house, though that would be totally cool, wouldn't it? Seeing a table you used to finger-paint at on the show? Anyway, exactly the same style and the same fugly vinyl chairs.

-"Skinny stuck-up English girl." Hee. I wonder if that line got edited by the CW... *ponders*

-I like Rufus! Bitter old fatalistic hunter. I really really like him. Can we please keep him? Please? Even if he goes adversarial?

-"Bucket of sunshine" Hee, Dean. Dean likes things in buckets. "Buckets of crazy" anyone? :-)

-What the serious hell is Sam driving? Is that one of those SUV's deer can't hear?

-*collapses laughing* HA!!! Sam with the remote! Again! It's like his control and security issues are all wrapped up in one little button he can push! Though seriously, Sam? If you are sneaking up on a psycho in his lair in the middle of the bush, a loud automotive "KWEEP!" is not your friend. Just sayin'. *facepalm*

-Burned off her fingerprints. Hm. They do grow back as far as I know. If the boys keep it up with the no glove nonsense after all this end of the world/demon war stuff is done with *waves hand* they should probably consider doing that. If they don't already...

-"You do her ear?"/"...that sounds uncomfortable." BWAH! Hahahahahahahah! *snerk* That was far too amusing.

-I knew that thing about earprints... I forget where from. Probably CSI of some variety.

-The backstory for Bela coming from a secondary source is probably the best of a dubious situation. I was really dreading a teary tale of woe, followed by an "Oh. Wow. We have been misjudging you, Bela. Come, let us clasp you to our bosom," type speech.

-That is totally the shack from "Roadkill" Awesome. Do they get a discount rate on reusing locations? *hopes*

-It's the same director as "Roadkill" as well. And "Playthings" He's doing a pretty good this time out, I think. Although it's a good thing he wasn't the one who removed the spotlights from the Impala, because with just those two episodes behind him? The lynching option might have been a weensy bit less resistible...

-Hee! Sam all squished down to get down the staircase into the basement of the creepy cabin. Also, going alone into the basement of the creepy cabin which in all likelihood smells like an abattoir... Sammy, you desperate dumbass.

-Yep. See Sam, the guy kills people and steals their organs. Or actually more correctly, steals people's organs which most of the time kills them. Still want to make your brother an immortal just like this guy? Do you think Dean would want to be immortal like that? Hmm? Oh, sorry, forgot. You're insane. Never mind.

-Dude! Fingerprints on the corpse! Which is something you know the police are checking because that's how you found this guy in the first place! Unless of course the boys have burned theirs off... hm.

-Okay! Maggots! Again, glad I skipped dinner. Am regretting having fried rice yesterday and am very glad there are no leftovers lurking in the fridge to skeeve me out. Bleah!

-Another white nightgown? Those damn things should be outlawed. They have a statistically high percentage of links to people either being evil, dead, or victims of horrible depravity.

-Girl with maggots... What major organs are in the wrist? Oh! Oh, hey! Doc Benton's done so many surgeries and had to crank his hands around into unusual positions to do the installation surgeries on himself, he's given himself carpal tunnel! Makes perfect sense now! Better hope the girl's not a medical transcriptionist or administrative professional there Doc or you'll be needing another one sooner than you expected...

-Eeeeyeah, Sammy. Wrap those maggots right on carpal-tunnel girl's arm before you pack her off. Ew.

-Holy crap, Sam has enormous hands! He just engulfed her entire head! Yike!

-Oooo, Benton's on his way! Is it gonna be Sam on the table? We'll get a Winchester strapped down and tortured yet.

-Car starting noises before the commercial break there? Sam must have gotten an awesome parking spot next to the Doc's lair.

-Aw. Benton looks so depressed that Sam stole his carpal-tunnel girl. Aw, woobie psycho organlegger.

-Whups! No, wait, Sam isn't at the car yet. Yay for the remote door opener thing being useful! Just the thing for packing off damsels in distress.

-I actually like carpal-tunnel girl too. For someone with no lines, she's really getting into the whole 'Victim of the Week' shtick with the ineffectual flopping around being in agony and only half-aware of what's going on around her. Those maggots are still munching on her arm too. Wonder if that tickles. Sorry, sorry, sidetracked. Hee.

-Statement of the Blindingly Obvious Alert! Sam is huge! He's making that SUV look like a normal-sized car, and carpal-tunnel girl look about twelve. (This has been a Statement of the Blindingly Obvious. You may step down from alert status now.)

-Hi Doc! Totally not surprised to see you! Though if you keep smashing windows like that, you're gonna need a new elbow, not that you can't just steal yourself a new one, but I imagine those would be a cast-iron bitch to install in yourself. But I'm no surgical expert or anything.

-Aaaand Sam runs him over. Hee.

-Aww, Sam, you made the monster cry blood. You took away his carpal-tunnel girl. You big meanie.

-Hi Bela! Did Escher design that wallpaper or is my TV screen funky?

-My, what ineffectual flailing from Bela as she's 'trying to escape' Dean when he frisks her. She must be covering lifting something from his pocket. *nods*

-Heh. Shooting a hole in a hotel room door without a silencer, Dean? Kind of draws unwanted attention... usually.

-Oh she totally didn't sell the Colt. But it still isn't going to be in the room.

-"You're not the cold-blooded type." ... no. No he's not. *smishes Dean*

-Bela backstory. Yeah, as expected. It's a typical backstory pick and I dislike when it's used as a throwaway like this. Anyways, I'm sure there will be extended rants about it elsewhere, so that's all I'll say about it. I am curious though; who won the TWoP Bela Backstory thread and how close did they get?

-I do like that there was no attempt from Bela to explain or rationalize her actions.

-What was that above the door? Barbed wire? No, wait, it's a bundle of something herb-like.

-Anyone else thinking, "Oh god, please don't kiss" at the intense face to face "You make me sick"/"Likewise" thing? That would have been so very horribly cliched.

-I love that Dean sees the bundle of stuff above the door and knows what it is! And knows enough about it to get that thinky-face. *glee*

-The Erie Hotel needs to center the header row on its till tape. Also, for a couple guys trying not to leave a trail, they're awfully receipt-retentive. Wonder if they keep, like, a ledger of expenditures, so they know which credit cards are about to die. I mean it's not like checking their balance online is a particularly wise idea, and whipping out another card with a completely different name when the first one gets rejected just would not do.

-Details, just 'coz my VCR has paused with exceptional clarity: The Erie, 267 West Huron Boulevard, Erie, Pennsylvania, 555-0120. The date on the tape is waaaaaay out of whack, because it's either November 6th 2008 or June 11th, 2008. Time is 16:39 (4:39PM) on the tape. Series of numbers 893480 with 0132 underneath. Room rate looks like $45 per night. first several numbers of the card Dean used are: 78925009034 and the first name used was John. Don't see 'Room 15 on there anywhere, but maybe it was at the bottom.

-And Bela calls... heh. Yeah, she's totally working for Lilith.

-Wow. Sam's cellphone ring is annoying.

-Aw. Dean.

-Sam sitting in front of a wide open window. There's a brilliant idea with a creepy immortal organ thief after you for stealing his carpal-tunnel girl. Some days, fresh air is not worth trading for easy accessibility to creepy psychos. *nods*

-Immortality explanation. It's SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically* *looks around for longhairedlady and her assorted 'Science!' Icons* Hee! Weird science! Well, alchemy is a kind of proto-science sort of. I think. *scratches head and shrugs* SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically* Yay! \o/

-Still confused as to exactly how being immortal keeps the deal from working, but oh well.

-Yeah, see Sam? The open window comes back to bite you in the ass. Only not literally; that would be weird. Weird, and not SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically*

-Dean, all these years of hunting and doing dangerous crazy crap and you can't tell when a person on the other end of a phone conversation is being drugged and dragged off for organ harvesting? Okay, maybe it doesn't come up that often, and it's not like Sam had a chance to say "Funky Town" or whatever the Winchester code phrase for 'being attacked by creepy psycho' is. And who knows, maybe Sam is prone to breaking into muffled grunting mid-conversation. In which case I seriously do not want to know. O.O

-Oh, god, not the eyes! I had a corneal abrasion once and had to sit perfectly still and fully conscious and keep my eyes wide open and looking straight forward while the doctor slo-o-o-owly came at my eye point first with a scalpel and then slo-o-o-o-o-owly scraped the abrasion scar tissue off. I've had a thing about eyes being mistreated ever since then. Actually, before then too, so really I didn't need to tell you all about that. Sorry! ^.^

-"Nothin' you got to worry about." Oh of course. Don't worry at all. You'll survive. You won't have any eyeballs, but you'll get used to it. Sure. Thanks Doc.

-Okay, I know that thing Doc Benton is heating over the Bunsen burner (SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically*) is some kind of old specialized medical instrument, but it looks like a frigging melon baller. And what kind of sick company makes specialized tools for pulling people's eyes out? How often do people medically need to have an eye removed anyway?

-Hee. Benton very kindly moved Sam's watch further up his arm so it wouldn't get damaged by the restraint cuff. What a thoughtful immortal psycho.

-"...when your father cut out my heart..." In 1982! And also hacked you to pieces with a chainsaw you freaking- gnh! Calm. Breathe. Sunshine on meadows. Twittering birds. Happy place. Sam strapped to a table. Focus.

-Get your stolen hands off John's journal you psycho freak!

-THE EYEBALL SCOOPER-THING HAS A SERRATED EDGE!!! Or spikes or something! What the hell is that for? Cutting the ocular muscles? Severing the optic nerve? I repeat, what sadistic, sick, medical company makes this crap?? O.O

-Eye socket! Eek! Ow! Ow! Ow! Eye! Ow! Stop it! Owwww!!!! Gyaaaaaaah! That seriously makes my optic nerves ache. Yikes!

-Oh yay, gunfire! It must be Dean! Oh thank you! *wants a stiff drink and some good, solid eye armour*

-Hee. The first shot from Dean as he's got Benton coming at him looked like it went off before he started pulling the trigger.

-It must be Thursday! Dean's getting thrown into... ow, glassware. Eek, sharps! *wince*

-Wiggle menacingly Sammy! Hee!

-Yay knife! Yay for smart Dean! I'm going to completely ignore that there's no way that big knife could be dipped into that little bottle. Also, if I recall correctly, chloroform is a liquid that tends to evaporate and so forth... so I'mma pretend it's some kind of really ancient, potent chloroform syrup, with the consistency of tar, m'kay? *nods sagely*

-(Hee, I ran out of paper in my squee book, so the rest of the notes for this are written on the back cover. This notebook only lasted three episodes, and the finale is getting a 32 page squee book all of its own. *is daunted* Next season, I need to squee in smaller letters, or get bigger squee books, I think.)

-Love the makeup job on Doc Benton, have I said? The stitching is particularly awesome.

-"Forever young." Yeah right. Doc Benton has some serious body dimorphism going on there.

-3 weeks. Mentioned earlier, but still good to know. One thing the Deal has been good for is some freaking concrete timeline in this show, thank you Kripke.

-"A pancreas in 50 years?" Dude, the way Dean eats he'll be chewing his way through a new pancreas in 15 to 20 years. And livers. Well, not chewing through I guess since Doc Benton's doing surgery...

-Hey. Hey! Waitaminute! Stitching!! This Doc Benton has stitching! He's doing surgery on himself, and installs new parts that way... somehow! And getting carpal tunnel from it! The Doc Benton in the comic 'ingested' the stolen organs, and I believe had entirely different reasons for doing so. Lemmee check here. Oh! The one in the comic not only ingested the organs, he 'ripped open the chest of an innocent, and ingested the stolen, still-throbbing heart to thwart his own entry into the afterlife' which is hardly a 'scientific' method of immortality based on years of alchemical research (unless Sam's so whacked out that he's lying about the scientific thing and just planning to cram an 'innocent heart' smoothie down Dean's throat at the last minute under the guise of a 'scientific method') Oh, shut up small voice! *stomps on it* Therefore, therefore, this isn't a merging of comic-canon with show-canon. This is a negation of comic-canon, and show taking a creepy monster and doing justice to it, unlike the throwaway version in the comic. My god, I was so aggravated by the comic connection I almost totally missed that! Kripke is over-writing the comic canon with show canon, not merging it! Damn! I want to kiss Kripke on the top of his sweet fuzzy little head! Yay! \o/ *denial shields at max capacity and holding...*

-Summary of above: *writes on chalkboard a bazillion times: "I will not over-react to the implications of spoilers, and I will never doubt Kripke. Much."*

-Anyway, where were we? Right. Dean's pancreas.

-Sam is freaking me out... It's not just that after everything, he still thinks Benton's scientific (SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically*) immortality gig is a good idea, it's that he's so damn calm about it. Like not a single qualm. *shivers*

-Dean. Still no grey. Is or isn't, good or evil. Of course he'd turn down immortality at the cost of other people's lives. Oh Dean.

-Hm. They left Benton some matches? Okaaaay? *scratches head*

-Oh hey! Burying the immortal alive! Hey, Benton, while you're down there, say hi to... Who the hell was it, the immortal guy buried on TV recently... Adam! From Heroes! Actually, that's not really recent... *scratches head*

-Yeah, the way that fridge lid's wiggling, and the fact Sam and Dean don't have one of those big earth packing down machines, he'll be out again in a few weeks. Just has to pulverize his large bones sufficiently and worm out of the fridge and up through the dirt. And then find some poor sap and steal his or her skeleton. Now, that's gonna be a challenging surgery.

-Also with the book on top like that, and Sam knowing where it is? And Sam currently being crazier than an outhouse rat? I would not put it past him to go back later, dig up Benton's immortality book, and surreptitiously try to make Dean immortal. With SCIENCE! *points skyward dramatically* (Okay, I'll stop that now.)

-Sam and Dean silently burying a screaming guy? Most disturbing thing in the episode. Well except for the eyeball thing because that was just wrong.

-It's that hallway again! Mystery Spot and Dream a Little Dream! Wow. They must go through paint like water for that thing.

-Oh! Hai Bela! How's that tragic backstory workin' for ya? See, she's got a silencer. That's what you use when firing guns in hotels. *nods*

-Wow. She's stupid or totally blind if she thinks those miniscule lumps in the bed are big enough to be Sam and Dean. Oh, wait. It's probably the covers. They've struck her temporarily blind. I get the same effect from my pot holders; I look at them and my eyes shut off in self-preservation. *nods*

-... Blow-up dolls. Now that's disturbing.

-Devil's Shoestring keeps Hell Hounds at bay. Good to know, and explains why Dean recognized it. Stuff to keep away Hellhounds has probably been a major source of googling for the Winchesters over the last year. Wonder how it works exactly, though? Is it something like: "Must collect soul. Must collect soul. Must collect so- OOO! String! Gotta get the striiiing! *playplayplay*" Probably not. They're Hell Hounds, not Hell Kittens. I guess "Devil's Squeaky Toy" or "Devil's Rawhide Bone" just doesn't have the same ring. :-P

-HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh hi creepy little pre-adolescent girl! With a British accent! In a school uniform! That's the triumvirate of "Hi! I'm Evil!" in horror shows, isn't it? Oh and she's also a red-eyed Crossroads Demon, wandering around a playground unsummoned nowhere near a crossroads (unless someone was playing in the sandbox with cars and made one), making freelance deals with the kiddies. Eeeeeeek.

-So... Lilith's a major demon, right? Or at least not one of the standard black-eyed flunkies, who can nuke whole buildings with a thought, and she's using Bela to assassinate Sam? Yikes. That loss of acolytes at the police station in "Jus-in-Bello" must have given her some serious staffing issues... Ooo! Or she's getting Bela to do it because wards versus demons and evil and stuff like that won't have any effect on her, and she won't be affected by the shrubbery still hanging from the ceiling. Aha! Makes sense now. *nods*

-Yep. Lilith holds the deal. Like duh. Lilith holds all deals, though? That's interesting... So the red-eyed demon would be Lilith's 'Salesperson', wandering around ten years ago in Britain and in the US (Crossroad Blues) to collect souls for Lilith, with the deals tocome due at around this point in time... Double Eeek.

-And Bela gave her the Colt. Eeep. The finale just got even more interesting methinks.

-Dean refusing to help Bela. It was too late, and by not coming to them and trying to work through Lillith instead, she picked her side. Also, she took the foot from Sam, which she knew would kill him, she shot Sam, she interfered with the Impala, she lied to them, she tricked them into helping her steal the hand thing, she betrayed them to Gordon who she knew wanted to kill Sam, she stole the Colt, she set them up to be captured by Henricksen (and given this latest news that she was involved with Lilith, I suspect she may have also had a hand in setting them up for the demons to find too), and she would have killed Sam and Dean if they had been stupid enough to stay in that hotel room. And she gave the Colt to Lilith. Even with all that, I'm betting if she had come clean and asked the Winchesters for help earlier, they really would have tried to help her. So Dean refusing at that point? The only option. She asked for help with three minutes to go in her deal. It's like she was asking for help after she'd already fallen off a cliff, and Sam and Dean can't fly. The only way to help her at that point, in theory, would have been for Sam and Dean to stop the car and kill Sam, because that was the latest task Lilith had set her as a 'do this and I'll release you' deal. Even so, I bet Lilith would have let the Hell Hounds have her anyway. So Dean couldn't have helped Bela. Even if he had wanted to.

-Ooo. Nice end for Bela. No gore, but gore wasn't the focus at that point and would have been gratuitous. Barking and fade to black. Kind of chilling.

-Also! Ooo! 42 actual minutes of show! \o/ If the Johnny Walker product placement got us the extra 3-5 minutes, I'm going to go out and buy a bottle first thing tomorrow, even though I loathe scotch and think it all tastes like paint thinner. *nods*

--

So! Last episode of the season coming up, and y'all probably won't even notice, but I'm going into, heh. Supernatural Lockdown. Selectively, mind, I'll still be around, I just won't be poking my head too far out of my happy hermit shell.

At this point, I haven't seen (or have effectively blocked from memory) any plot-related spoilers for the finale. The only non-plot related spoiler I have been carrying forward since ~~the dawn of time~~ January may have been killed by the budget and the writers' strike, darn it. Have not even seen an ad or promo for the finale yet and intend to keep it that way.

However, I am betting, betting I can outline exactly what's gonna go down in the finale, just on personal spec and cues that have happened during the season. Which I may outline in another post, or I might not. *is mercurial*

In related "crossing my fingers and knocking wood here" good news, I've booked the 16th off work. WooHoo! Because regardless of what happens in the finale, I guarantee I'm gonna be totally useless friday morning. So go ahead and do your worst, Kripke! Bwahahah! (Only, y'know, not because that would entail things too horrible to contemplate)

Please note, no spoilers in comments for future episodes, that includes any discussion of promos or ads for upcoming episodes, or related icons.

3.15 Delay of reaction, again.

2008-05-09T16:23:18Z

Darn work wants me to, y'know, show up and actually do things for the money they're paying me, so the - *counts* holy crap - 14 pages of reaction notes for 3.15 which I was up 'til 1AM writing (noting? reacting? scrawling?) will have to wait 'til tonight and possibly tomorrow to be typed up, because it's another annoyingly long day at work and I am a sloooooow typist.

ETA: Also later, responses to everyone about everything.

SPN ...meta? And poll, sort of: Spotlights.

2008-05-07T06:43:22Z

The Case of the Missing Spotlights
All screencaps from Supernatural.tv

While I was in the midst of crazy-work hell, it was pointed out to me that the reason Sam doesn't use the Impala spotlights in 'Ghostfacers' to spotlight the ~~losers~~ lurkers in the shrubbery and has to use a weeny little flashlight, like so:

not the nice bright powerful spotlights like they used waaaay back in Hookman:

You know, the spotlights that have always been on the car, waiting patiently for their time to *koff* shine? Yeah those spotlights. The ones Sam isn't using. The reason he's not using them is that the Impala no longer has spotlights.

I repeat. The Impala's spotlights have been removed. They're gone, vanished, no longer connected, excised from the Impala completely. See?

No spotlights! How the hell did I miss this? Nevermind, I know. It's got four letters, starts with w and rhymes with 'jerk'. :-P

Apparently there is a set report out there somewhere that mentions a fan talking to the Impala-wranglers, who said that one of the directors ordered them removed, but the crew wouldn't say which director for fear of... reprisals....

So let's figure it out. After all, we need to know who to ~~lynch blame~~ thank for ~~defacing~~ altering the Impala. *koff* *hides rope*

So, going back to Bedtime Stories:

Still there.

Fresh Blood?

Yep. Still there too.

A Very Supernatural Christmas?

Absolutely.

Malleus Maleficarum?

Yep.

Dream a Little Dream?

A-HA! There are no spotlights in Dream a Little Dream! See?

And that is the 'actual' Impala, not the 'dream' Impala, or I'm sure there'd be a fine pile of meta about Dean's subconscious Impala lacking lights to find his way demonstrating how lost he really feels about all the deal stuff, but no. That's the "Driving up into the random clearing before naptime" Impala. No spotlights. Therefore it's a reasonable assumption that the director of this episode had them removed, yes?

Which makes the director responsible for removing the Impala's spotlights (according to IMDB) *drumroll*

Steve Boyum.

Mr. Boyum? You have defaced the Impala and this cannot be allowed to pass unremarked (Although probably other people have remarked on it I've just missed it because I was ~~in hell~~ at work). HOWEVER!!! You also directed a damn fine episode (actually two because Crossroad Blues was pretty awesome too). So in lieu of a lynching, have some retcon in the form of a poll:

View Poll: #1183896

(I believe kentawolf may have dibs on the Mothman one.)

Come on! Bring your explanations! Heck, fic them! The truth must be known!

ETA: SEE this thread in the comments for a first-hand account from blacklid!

ETA Again: And you also may want to watch this space... (Brought to you by the awesome noirbabalon)

SPN Reaction: Delayed Reaction to 3.14, plus... meta???

2008-05-05T07:16:47Z

Includes spoilers for the aired episode, hints of theory at future episodes but no spoilers, random meta and a spoiler for one Doctor Who season 2 episode.

Reaction to 3.14 with random meta - Long Distance Call

Much less spoiled for this one than I first thought, but now possibly much more spoiled for the two remaining eps due to that spoiler being carried forward...

*possible future spoiler and theory snipped*

-April something-teenth: See people exploding from squee that maybe they got Jefferey Dean Morgan to come back for an ep. Which would be awesome, and possibly mean flashbacks. I say possibly, because there's one other way I can think of John Winchester showing up again which is in Hell, his appearance being used to torment Dean, and it would be fearsomely cruel... and... yeah. It's Kripke. Oh crap.

-April 24th: Someone reacting to a 3.13 reaction post starts squeeing about how JDM might be in 3.14 based on the promo for next week. Sigh.

-April 27: Further squeeing reveals that apparently there's a phone call from John. Ooo. Also, clever workaround for JDM's schedule. Heh. Damn, I really wish I hadn't found out about that though. Hoping it'll happen in the first few minutes and not be a big built-up-to thing. Dammit. So, I'm guessing he's not calling just to say hi. Figure he's delivering the pre-finale plot bomb, so either something about Mary, or something about Sam, or knowing John, a repeat of the 'save your brother or kill him' order or another order with no explanation that's going to bake Dean's noodle like freaking whoa. Ooo. Or maybe it's something pretending to be John to mess with Dean. Ooooooo...

-April 28th: I turn the TV on to check the VCR's programming for two seconds, two bloody seconds, and there's Dean in a suit on his cellphone looking stunned. I mean, yay for advertising and all, but dammit! So, yeah. Dean gets a call from John from the glowy place. Or a reasonable facsimile.

-April 30th: And title. "Long-Distance Call" *sigh*

*more snippage which may appear in the spoiler timeline for a future ep*

John? Will be awesome, no matter how much crap he's disturbing. But I don't want to jinx it.

Onwards.

-I will say, I am very annoyed with show's budget. This one was great and all, but felt kind of choppy, scene and reveal-wise. Another 5 or 10 minutes of connective tissue to hold the bones of the episode together would have made an incredible difference, I think. 38 minutes is not enough.

-Also, anyone else having difficulties controlling stampeding herds of missing and alternate scene plot-bunnies? *widens bunny corral*

-Anyway. Hi show! *dolphin noises of glee*

-Lillith! Mention in the previouslies! Yay!

-*twitches due to theory based on spoiler carryforward*

-Rain! Yay, rain! Although it might be CGI rain, because I don't recall any downpours in early April, but my recall is shot to hell lately, so no idea really. I'm just amused by the idea that they might have had to CGI rain into a scene shot in Vancouver.

-I like the pre-dawn demon belch victim. The actor does well with his bit here, and seems very genuine. I was glad to find out the 'Linda' calling him was a girlfriend who died in high school and not my first thought which was dead and possibly murdered mistress.

-SHA33. Count down to someone using that as a login id? Whups, nevermind, someone's already got it for LJ as of 1:30 am on May 2nd. Not me. :-)

-Did not believe for one second that it was actually the ghost of Linda speaking.

-Yeah, go ahead, trash the poor phone. Kill the messenger. And of course that's not going to stop the signal. Dumbass.

-Blood spray from off-camera! YAY FOR SUBTLE GORE!!! Because the mind's eye can provide more ick than any amount of latex and CGI. Also, it's good for the budget. *pats the budget*

-*glee* Snarky Dean! Panties! Boy bands! Hee! Especially like how brittle Dean's snark has gotten as the season goes on and his timer ticks down. His armor is starting to crack.

-JDM IN THE CREDITS OMG!!! Not like it was a surprise or anything due to spoilers, but still. *more glee*

-Ooooo... And the Ruby conversation comes out! Hmm. So we started the season with Sam humoring Dean and enabling him in running wild with the girls and so forth for a bit, now we have near the end, Dean enabling Sam in running wild with the research Dean figures he knows is pointless. Did that make any sense? Anyway, I still say 'Demons lie.' *kicks Ruby in the shins and runs away*

-Still, Dean kept that from Sam for a long time, just so that Sam wouldn't lose hope, I suspect partly because he really doesn't want to crush Sam's last hope. Also partly, if not mainly because he figures if Sam has it in the pack of his mind that they can just tap Ruby for the answer, he won't do anything incredibly stupid to try and save Dean because he still figures he's got her as a hole card, or whatever. Now though, all bets are off, and Sam may pull some truly reckless and stupid maneuver in the name of saving Dean. All of which I figure was Ruby's plan from the beginning. Tell Dean there's no way to get out of it so he'll be less inclined to hope and be frustrating to Sam and eventually tell Sam this and put Sam in a position to do incredibly reckless, dangerous and stupid things to save Dean which will all work in Ruby's favour somehow. Not a spoiler, just theory but I think I know what's going to happen anyway.... *looks nervously in the general direction of the finale*

-Oooo. And the start of the fight about secrets Sam's been keeping comes out and bang. Conversation over. We're going to Ohio.

-Sam pitches Dean's empty in the trash can. Not only is he supposed to be Boy-King of the Demons, he doesn't recycle! Gasp! The fiend! Wonder if that's a subtle slam on the CW's dictate that all of its series' have a 'green' episode? :-D

-HI IMPALA! OMG YAY!

-Dead guy's wife is good too. Very realistically freaked and distraught without being over the top.

-Awesome batteries on that phone. Kind of surprising it is still there and not bagged as evidence by the other detectives just in case it's a murder made to look like a suicide or whatever, but I call lazy policework that serves to advance the plot and give it a pass. *handwaves*

-"It's a capital offense..."/*cough and bitchface*/*eyeroll*"...somewhere I'm sure" Heee!

-"I thought he was talking to a woman."/"Why?"/"Because he kept calling her 'Linda'" Well there's some truly ace deductive reasoning, wife of dead guy. What if it had been the LINDA from Doctor Who, hm? Though the thought of them having a branch office in Ohio is ludicrous, and they've almost all been eaten anyway.

-Sam's hair is... pre-emo? It's got a chunky bang tendril heading in the general direction of eye-obscurage. It looks okay, though.

-Campbell and Rainey. Okay, someone enlighten me, what's that a reference to? My Google-fu has gone phooey.

-I know my brain is tired when Sam swats at a random fly or whatever and I get this sudden mental flash of "Lord of the flies! Sam's turning into Beelzebub!" that at the time was this astounding and crystal perfect revelation, but now makes no sense whatsoever.

-Hee. Skeezy tech guy. "Uhhhhh... How did all this porn get here? I have no idea... O.O" *snerk*

-Dean with the big grr voice and Sam trying to look mean and authoritative behind him, and oddly failing because Jared looks like he's pursed lips and a hair flip away from that scene from the season 2 gag reel where he's trying to crack Jim Beaver up when he opens the door and Jared's making, I dunno, supermodel faces or something. Still, it worked on the guy, so yay!

-Dean with the smug face. Hee.

-OMGWTF RENTAL??? Is that a freaking Corolla Sam's driving? With an alarm system? Whoops, nope, it's a Chevy Cobalt LT, based on the taillights since the actual car name goes by too fast and blurry to read on my tv. Chevy really needs to pay them for some serious product placement in this show. I know if I bought a new car today, it'd probably be an Impala strictly because of this show. Hear that Chevy? Send money to Kripke!

-I'm embarrassed to admit it took me far too long to realize they'd split up to cover more ground and therefore Sam had to rent a car for expedience. Still, I bet there was some epic mockage from Dean when Sam rented it. (Oh, go away bunny, I have no time :-P)

-Sammy is an insecure boy, arming the alarm system when he's only going to be about 20 feet away from the car he probably rented with a fake credit card and ID anyway, so it's not like he's out anything but a ride if it gets boosted. I say he just has way too much fun pushing the buttons and making the car go "boop-EEP" Also, control freak, so remote control for car would have Sam all over it. *nods*

-Got sidetracked by the rental and didn't notice the return of the HOMELAND SECURITY SUITS! \o/ (Well, also insurance adjuster or whatever they were in Route 666, but they were ~~bought~~ acquired as homeland security, there for homeland security suits. Or Blues Brothers. Heh. I still think of "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath as "The Suit Song", and didn't know it's actual name till months after Phantom Traveller aired.

-My, what a perspicacious teenager. Good for her. Yeah, the phone company doesn't usually dress like that.

-During the conversation over the roof of the car, Sam's hair is really kind of awesome. Ish.

-"I've been right where you're standing now." My tired brain: "The sidewalk? Beside the passenger door of a rented car? What does that have to do with- Oh. Right. Nevermind." *facepalm*

-Also, I love that accent slippage. He's been "raaht" where she's standing.

-The necrophilia-shocked bypasser (...totally a word... I think) is awesome too. It's nice to have someone react to part of the weird conversations these guys have in public places on cell-phones.

-Hi again Impala! *glee*

-I knew it was coming, and I knew the call from 'John' was going to come right then, just before that commercial break, but still, JDM!!!!!! \o/ And yay show for clever use of budget and scheduling.

-(AD on CityTV: Okay, I freaking up-and-down swear the voice-over on the ad in this commercial break for the Coquitlam Centre Charity Fashion show Strut was done by Samantha Ferris. Absolutely, definitely, 100%, no doubt her. Anyone else on the Vancouver feed hear it? Ellen by proxy. Hee.)

-Oh, Dean, all disturbed by the phone call and off-balance and not ready to dismiss it just in case it is John, just in case Dean's dad and biggest hero found a way back to fix everything and make it all go away, and that Dean still, (even though yeah he's got his issues with how they were raised and all that, who the hell doesn't) still believes in his father enough that he'll turn away from rationality and the case and the clues that something else is going on because on some level he believes in his dad, and since his dad is still his hero so of course dad's going to come back somehow and save him at the last minute when everything's all desperate and last hope is lost and stuff because that's what heroes do but it's all wrong and it's all a trick and Dean's going to get crushed and disillusioned all over again, dammit!

-*inhales* Holy run-on nonsense sentence, Batman. Anyway. *pats poor woobie!Dean*

-"Hello?!" Yeah. That'd be my response too. If my Dad called up from the dead and my sister said to say 'hello', I wouldn't talk to her for a month.

-And Dean's back once he's patched his beleaguered personal armor with extra snark (High-school hook-up rate of 0.0, hee) and found a way that allows it to possibly actually be John on the phone. Aw Dean.

-THOMAS EDISON'S FREAKING SPIRIT PHONE FTW!!!! \o/ That was unexpectedly awesome to have on the show, I wish they'd have had it work though. And Sam had to have known about it. I mean I knew about it. I'm taking Sam's incredulity as "But everyone thinks this thing is a piece of crap hoax." rather than "Spirit phone? Whazzat?"

-"Quotey-Fingers" the tour guide is AWESOME!!! "And we're walking! We're walking! We're not touching that, and we're walking..." Hee. All the little bit characters are just great this episode!

-EMF!!! IT'S THE EMF!!! OMG, GUYS! THE EMF!!! *flails incoherently* The Blues Brothers suits and the EMF, it's like old home week!

-I love the whole working the case thing, with the theories bouncing back and forth and leads and tracking down info and just YAY! Missed that.

-Aw. Dean waiting by the phone in the dark with coffee. Just aw. Hoping, but not wanting to give in to hope, and not wanting to dismiss something that might even be possible and desperate, and miserable, and trying to keep it all from Sam in case it is a false hope and just aw. And ow.

-Content of call to Dean. My take on it? It's what the bad guy thinks Dean thinks John would say. It's stated later on that the bad guy knows they are hunters, so he's not going to pull the standard "come to me" stuff on them, because he knows they'd be on alert for stuff like that. Setting up in a town where there's a convenient alternate possibility in place for ghosts phoning people up shows that he's ready for hunters to start sniffing around. Love that the bad guy has a brain.

-Anyway, sidetracked, sorry. Content of the call and Dean's reaction to it. I have been entirely cloistered from reactions to this episode, so here's my uninfluenced opinion. I buy it. This isn't Dean falling back into step as Daddy's little soldier, hopping to because it's John. This is Dean, in a very different situation than he's been before. He's gotten desperate, yes, but I don't think it's to save himself for the sake of himself. He's never been one to shirk responsibility, the opposite, usually, where family is concerned. I don't think he's trying to escape the consequences of the choice he made, but he has been seeing perhaps that there are more consequences to his decision than just his own death over the past year. There's the turning into a demon thing, there's the leaving Sam alone with an army of demons after him thing, and there's the Ruby still poking her nose into Sam's business and trying to make him dance her tune. Also, and regrettably mostly off-camera so far, I suspect he's noticed a few differences in Sam's demeanor since Mystery Spot, and it's bugging him the same way Sam deliberately changing to, in Sam's words in Malleus Maleficarum, 'be more like Dean', harder and colder and more willing to take a violent course of action and accept collateral damage like, say, a virgin in a besieged police station. These things are what I suspect make up a large part of what is making Dean desperate enough to take the phone call at face value as being from John, given that the boys do not know for certain that the calls are not the actual loved ones yet. Also, Dean's had prior experience (twice!) with dead parents showing up to save the day, so it's not without precedent.

-Whoa. Meta-whump. Sorry about that. Does it even make sense?

-Dean on the phone being anguished. Jensen Ackles can seriously work a phone.

-Given - okay, another bit of meta-y thought here - given that the thing on the phone is a critter that is saying what it thinks Dean thinks John would say, I kind of love and hate that it throws 'I love you' in there. Love because Dean doesn't even question it, just another part of the conversation. Of course his dad speaking from beyond the grave loves him, no need to even call that into question, it's like the air. John loves his boys. Even when John is dressing Dean down for selling his soul to save his brother, the love is still there, just like the air is still there even when there's a storm. How this differs from Devil's Trap, where John was possessed and saying things that Dean wouldn't believe his Dad would say is not that the YED was expressing any kind of love toward Dean that John wouldn't have, it was that YED was not bringing the storm of John being angry for the bullet being used when at the time the Colt didn't have infinite freaking bullets *grumbles and kicks Ruby in absentia* and the use of a bullet may have been a tactical misstep if there were any other options available. Tactics would have been discussed, loudly or not, and they would have moved on from there. At no point during the yelling would John have stopped loving Dean or Sam. Now, that said, I kind of hate it because it's another damn monster telling Dean this, and the second I heard it stated outright, I had a reflex thought of "Well, that's not John." and mentally kicked myself for that. :-P

-I also really wish there would have been a way they could have made it not blindingly obvious that the phone calls were not coming from loved ones right at the start, and left the audience in the dark about whether it was actually John or not. Because really, based strictly on what evidence the boys have, right up until Sam finds out the girl's "mom" has been encouraging suicide, it could totally be the spirit phone and actually be dead family members and John with insider info into the weak points of demons, etc. and dead guy at the start just had other contributing issues that lead him to kill himself. Because the audience knows already that the ghosts are bad news, though, it makes Dean appear unrealistic in the face of contrary evidence (which he doesn't have) and Sam kind of mentally slow for not picking up on clues (he also doesn't have). Unfortunately though, show needed to splatter someone before the demon belch, so there you go, I guess. The boys even have evidence of a ghost phone call that isn't encouraging suicide, with the elderly lady and her dead spouse, though if she has a heart problem the phone sex might do her in. Erm. Anyways.

-Yeesh, at this rate I'll still be reacting to this episode next week, and that simply will not do.

-I love an ancient evil whatsit that can adapt to the times. First phones, then the net. Awesome.

-Did she look over the wrong shoulder... no, wait it's a webcam, not a reflection. She checked the correct shoulder. *nods*

-Ooo! It's danaschulpsing! Hee.

-OMG, Dean doing actual research!!! YAY!!! \o/ I cannot express how much joy I have for researching Dean!

-Hey, that's the same hotel from Mystery Spot, isn't it? With the concrete lattice thing out front? I gotta say, that room is very turquoise. Even the stove and fridge are turquoise. And those starbursts are eating my brain. *glomphs set design*

-Ooo! Storms! Coincidence or foreshadowing... *ponders gravely and deeply upon the thorny conundrum*

-Aw, Dean with the nervous braggy brittle snark about himself that covers up a whole pile of "HOLY CRAP DEMON'S HERE!"

-I love that the monster gives Dean a 15th century exorcism and Sam and Bobby have already gone over it. Which of course means it was discussed over the phone at some point so monster-boy could get at it and throw it in to the 'convince Dean it's really John' package, and picked one that Sam and Bobby hadn't had any concrete proof about so that it could very well be John providing evidence they didn't have, so that Sam and Dean would have this exact argument and be easier to split up. Clever monster.

-Who the hell is Chris Hansen? On second thought, given the context, I probably don't want to know. Unless it's one of the Hansen brothers, in which case the sound of anteka exploding with glee should have registered on the Richter scale. And it also takes the wind out of his earlier snark about talking about boy bands with Bobby. But that's probably not it at all.

-Ow. Dean, all raw nerve endings. Even though I knew from the start it wasn't John, this was the point where I wanted it to really be John, just because of Dean and all his hope that maybe there's a way to make things right again, and his faith in his father. For a minute, I thought it might even be possible.

-And also, ow Sam. Stomping down the hope because he's had so much capacity for blind hope burned out of him. He's probably been careening between hope and despair for the past year, not to mention Mystery Spot time, following leads that went nowhere and just having had his holdout hope of Ruby quashed by Dean revealing what she said. He's not just protecting himself from another crushing disappointment, he's trying to protect Dean from getting his hopes up baselessly, just to have them crushed. Also coincidental side benefit of protecting him from the soul eater neither of them knows exists at this point. There's no evidence that it's John, but really, to them, there's no evidence it isn't John either.

-Dean's got faith. Now, this might seem like a sudden switch-up from earlier episodes, particularly "Faith" and "Houses of the Holy" but all along, Dean has had faith. In his family, and in his dad. And if Dean thinks John's figured out a way to drop him a phone call from the afterlife then by god, he's going to have faith in what his dad is telling him. Again, not a 'good little soldier' thing, just a Dean's belief in his family above everything thing. I think, anyway.

-Sam talking to the girl. "Bad things." Nice misdirect! Totally worked on me, because for a second, it made me think Dean's Soul-deed holder demon (who I am damn sure I know who it is, but whatever) might be behind things. It echoes Scott Carey's line in "Hunted" Cool. Worked on me for a split second. Just a little.

-Freaked out thinky Sammy face! \o/ Awesome. Like "OMG, what if it's telling Dean to off himself with Dad's voice, but it's not, it's giving him a bunch of stuff about demons, what if it's a trap or something, Dean could be in danger right now and I'm not there and OMG!" I think that's the first time in a long time, if maybe ever, I've seen a thought process in a facial expression from Jared, so massive glee for that! :-D

-Sam recognizing the monster from "Come to me" ... yeah, okay, sure. He knows what a crocotta says, I'll buy that. But he definitely would have heard of Edison's spirit phone. *nods*

-That is totally the same staircase from last episode and Bobby's dream house. I wonder if they rented out a house to use for house interiors and such-like, because it doesn't look very set-like, and they keep coming up with different odd camera angles to disguise that it's the same set of stairs. Regardless of what they're doing and how they're doing it, I hope it's saving budget money.

-Orange spray bombs! Jug of DIY holy water! Yay!

-Sammy saving the boy from traffic made me cheer like a mad thing. It's like delayed payback for not being in time to save Doctor thingy from getting mind-controlled in front of a bus in Simon Said. Hm. I wonder how much time he lost there from passers-by (totally a word too) rushing up going "Wow!" and "Are you okay?" and "OMG hero!" and things, because you can shoot a hundred ghosts in the face with rock salt in the dark and never once get thanked, but save one kid from getting run over by a big truck in a public street in broad daylight and they're going to want to shake your hand and plaster your face on the cover of the newspaper.

-So, a crocotta is an enemy to dog and man, eh? No wonder he ran afoul of Sammy. *pats the Puppy*

-The sandwich is probably either some variety of 'croque', kind of a toasted ham and cheese, or a croquette which isn't a sandwich but a deep-fried thing of many varieties. Chicken McNuggets are 'croquettes de poulet' according to the French on the packaging in Canada, if I recall correctly...

-Sam's brief conversation with monster pretending to be Dean is kind of neat, because it's obvious it isn't Dean to the audience, because Dean's busy painting symbols on the floor of some innocent guys house across town and would be way less blase about having the calls from John proven as false. So, this is what the crocotta thinks Sam thinks Dean might say. There's an obligatory reference to food, and a sudden leap of logic that explains everything and sends Sam off alone to deal with the thing. Now, the way I see it, Sam figures Dean's food-obsessed (which we've seen before in Tall Tales), and capable of sudden brilliant intuitive leaps of logic, because while the whole "Hey, the guy with the flies!" thing is totally the Crocotta feeding Sam into a trap, Sam doesn't question Dean's reasoning or sudden knowledge of crocottas. He just goes with it. Sammy thinks his big brother is am intuitive genius. Also, he doesn't question the lack of 'wait for me, we'll go in and get this thing together', because Sam figures Dean thinks Sam can handle himself now, and doesn't need Dean to back him up. Which... kind of a complex 'ow' I think on that. Sam thinks Dean's ready to let him hunt on his own, because unless they pull out some last minute rabbits from some pretty big hats, (*twitches*), Dean's not going to be around to back Sam up. Sam not questioning Dean's lack of 'wait for me' is Sam feeling like he can work without Dean, and that Dean is aware of that and has confidence in that. All of which is a part of letting Dean go. Which, OW, show.

-*whacks meta-bunny back into line* sorry, where was I? Right. Herman Munster? That was one of the few spots where I figured Sam might twig that the call wasn't getting through to Dean, because Dean always has his cell on (from "Scarecrow") and Sam's getting voicemail. Admittedly, if Dean's being sneaky he'd be wise to turn his cell off, and he can't have the damned thing on him 24/7, so... meh *handwaves*

-Heee! Sam's confused face and headshake as he's processing, "I'm holding a knife on this guy, he's supposed to be a monster, but he's not acting the way he's supposed to..." is cute as hell.

-"That's what happens when you mess with the phone company, dillweed!" Heee! I love that guy a little, I think. But seriously, CW. 'Dillweed?' It's after 9PM, surely a 'dickhead' would pass the censor boards? Unless they used all their goodwill in that regard with the Ghostfacers bleepage. Hm.

-Baseball bat and 'fugetaboudit'. I get the feeling that's a reference to some kind of gangster movie, but a drawing a total blank.

-So... two weeks in a row now, Sam has been tied up and made to watch a guy he can't save get killed right in front of him... Gnh! *twitches like whoa and refrains from meta-ing or theorizing about that at all*

-*...and does the same with the discussion about community versus connectivity...*

-*seeks distraction* Ooooh look! Teeth! So, crocotta's are known for having mouths that go from ear to ear and I think they did pretty good with the jaw unhinging thing they're doing here. Even though it reminded me of the rat-eating lizard-aliens from 'V', which I actually never watched, just saw ads and bits of.

-Crocotta mocked the Spirit Phone? Hey, kill random people and snack on their souls all you like, but you do not mock the Edison Spirit Phone! Oh, fine, mock it, whatever. Yeesh. Murderous mythological psychopathic phone-mocker. *glares*

-Set-up of Dean vs the cop with the dead little girl was very clever. I like clever villains and this guy's clever like a fox that's got a degree from the university of smart-ass. But I do like it if they're clever in a way that doesn't make Sam or Dean look like idiots for missing clues they never saw.

-Hee, the crocotta-guy is approaching the lower echelons of YED-level scenery chomping. I love it. I miss YED. *pats the relatively unchewed scenery reassuringly*

-"I might be killing your brother. Or maybe some other guy. We'll see." Awesome.

-Ooo, Dean being all lurky with a jug of freshly blessed Holy Water. Ooo.

-Hee, the cop totally failed his stealth check! But it looks like Dean blew his listen check anyways, so it's all moot. (Sorry, it's a gamer thing.)

-Fight!! Now, I suspect some people might have issues with Dean kicking the guy while he's down but it makes sense to me. Dean's still thinking this is the demon that has Dean's Soul-marker, and although the guy coming in guns blazing instead of doing the usual demonic 'slam you up against a wall' thing is a bit of a tip-off that maybe the guy's not actually a demon, however, thinking objectively is a bit of a tricky proposition when you're being shot at and your adrenaline's up, I'd think. Anyways, besides the serious repressed rage issues Dean's been demonstrating this season, kicking the guy when he's down is kind of like keeping the guy occupied so the demon inside doesn't gather its wits and start with the 'slam Dean into a wall' thing before Dean can get his exorcism on the road. Totally a baseless hope on Dean's part, but it's what's available.

-Fighting back onto the paint bomb seal under the carpet and... dammit. *finds a forlorn and dejected looking plot-bunny scenelet from an unwritten AU in the massive herd and slaps a big "REWRITE" sticker on its head* Crap.

-Hmm. Sam does seem harder-surfaced and tougher since Mystery Spot, but not out in the open intense, I think because part of the months watching Dean die and the months without Dean was not only Sam getting dangerous and stuff, it was Sam withdrawing from his own surface and becoming a dead-eyed vengeance-driven automaton. I think that Jared is still showing this in very subtle ways, and it is awesome. The effect from Mystery Spot is there, it's just not jumping up and down and shouting about it, which entirely suits.

-In the exorcism: "Nom draco." O.O In the name of the Dragon??? Ooooo, I want to see the rest of that exorcism!

-Tandem fight scenes FTW!!

-The Crocotta may be a super-clever monster but he cannot knife-fight worth beans. Attacking someone who is obviously prepared for an attack by stabbing with a (relatively) easily blocked overhead strike which leaves the attacker's entire torso exposed and unprotected for a return hit? Bad tactics. Not wise.

-Oh look! A handy spike thing on the wall right at head height! I wonder what's going to happen there!? *smacks forehead* Good grief. That's subtle.

-Dean with the defensive fighting, not wanting to hurt the guy now that he knows he's not a demon.

-Aaaand Crocotta onna spike. Now, that might count as a pithing. If one was desperate for a pithing. Again, gore, but relatively subdued and budgetarily sensitive. *nods approvingly*

-Hm, there's some CGI happening with the crocotta's eyes... *checks wikipedia* "The eyes of a slain crocotta were said to be striped gems that would give the possessor oracular powers when placed under the tongue." Oh really. Wonder if Bela knows about that... Or... hunh. How tough do you guys think Sam is after Mystery Spot? Think he might stop and scoop out the guy's eyes to use as a bargaining chip for the Colt? Or for other purposes? *ponders nervously*

-Oh poor broken Dean. Oh... "I don't know." Just oh. Although after breaking into a grieving father's house, spray painting demon-related graffiti on his floor and brawling with him, I honestly don't know what Dean could have said that would make more sense.

-(Ad: American Gladiators can bite me too.)

-Yay! Visible injuries and mutual brotherly mocking thereof! \o/

-Dean admits he's scared, which seriously, I'd be worried if he wasn't. With a realistic appraisal of just how screwed you really, fear is entirely appropriate, even if you're a major league badass.

-"Hope doesn't get you jack squat." Oh Dean. The last vague hope that dad had found a way to fix everything from the afterlife crushed. And oh Sam, hearing that from Dean, and knowing that there is apparently no hole card to play anymore. And just oh.

-Sam's 'And me' followed by defensive snark and beer and withdrawing back into their own brittle shells and it's this little brother moment right before the finale build-up and, and, oh freaking crap is the finale of this season ever going to slay everyone. Not a spoiler. The only spoiler I've seen at this point that might apply to the finale (if it isn't false) is not plot-related. Haven't even seen next episode's promo, and I intend to keep it that way. Just a dread certainty. We are so, so, so very screwed, dudes. *twitches*

Please note, no spoilers in comments for future episodes, that includes any discussion of promos or ads for upcoming episodes, or related icons.

3.14 delay of squee

2008-05-02T07:40:06Z

Sleep now, react later. Stupid work schedule. *kicks*

SPN Reaction: Reaction to 3.13

2008-04-25T16:48:19Z

Going to try to have two cuts for this reaction. The spoiler timeline got unbelievably huge.

Spoiler timeline:

Most spoiled episode ever. :-P

-Late March: Vague reference somewhere of someone saying they hope the post-strike four episode batch starts off running in 3.13 and someone who I thought had reason to know something saying '*snerk* Um...' So from that maybe 3.13 is a goofball episode?

-April 9th: Episode title - Ghostfacers. After about a minute of going 'hunh?' I get hit between the eyes. It'll be about one of those 'reality show' ghost chasers/hunters/trackers things gone horribly awry. Mainly hit me between the eyes because the day before I'd been watching the Canadian Kids' channel YTV's version of the trope, "Ghost Trackers" that loads kids aged about 9 to 15 down with a crapload of shiny flashy ghost detection junk and sends them into various 'haunted sites' in Canada. I was imagining Sam and Dean's reactions to A) the 'hauntedness' of the sites and B) the kids running around in them, doing stupid things like "Oh! The EMF meter just maxed out by this chair and I get the feeling someone very angry is sitting in it. I think I'll sit in the chair! Yeah!" *facepalm* Anyway. So, for 3.13 then, a ghost-hunting reality show. Possibly run by the remaining "Hell Hound's Lair" guy, (the actor that didn't get the CSI gig,) and they could drop in some snide jab at CSI in the episode. Or who knows, maybe both if CSI lets the guy they've got have a week or so off.

-April 10th: First 10 seconds of ad, because I was going "Hunh? Whossit?" Hehe. Supernatural meets Blair Witch. Okay, still a chance it's being run by the Hell Hound guy and a tv show, and suddenly I'm reeeeeally hoping they gave Jensen and Jared hand-held camcorders and let them run amok. Hee. Ooo. And now hoping there's a 'Video Diary' kind of thing on the DVD when it comes out to make up for the shorter season. Ooo.

-April 13-15ish: From oblique comments: It's silly and... it's set on Dean's birthday...? Maybe? This should make Vancouver weather quite cooperative as we've had some bizarre late season snow and coldness, to the point where all the trees I drive by that normally bloom at the end of February just bloomed today, so it should look nice and January-y for them in March when they were filming this if they were outdoors.

-April 16-17: Stumble across unwarned promo shots showing Dean with a bunch of corpses in party hats, one of him being silly, and one looking pensive, and staring at a laptop with the word 'Ghostfacers' on it. Sigh. So, maybe not Blair Witch, but something like that MTV show where they lock everyone in a room and send them out to go on little 'missions' through some supposedly haunted locale and play mind games on them. For some reason I get the impression from the caps that Dean's the one who put the hats on the (no doubt fake) dead guys, and is probably attempting to whoop it up on his last birthday while they are (I suspect) trapped in the stupid reality show set-up (probably after the guys in charge disappear or die or whatever), and Sam is not going to react well to this. But that leads me to think there might be something like self-pity coming from Dean, which makes me think I'm very very wrong about that.

-April 20: Further suspect that I'm right about the Hell House guys showing up, because of an oblique comment regarding watching 'Hell House' before the episode by someone who had just said they were annoyed at how many spoilers there were for the episode. Arg. Also suspect that if either of the Hell House guys shows up, Kripke will kill them off. Because that's what Kripke does. Guest stars = death. Usually.

-April 21: Due to influx of oblique commentary and plethora of icons... Yeah, it's both the Hell House guys, in kind of tux-looking things and a sort of faux-Masterpiece theatre set-up. Cool. Betting the guy who's got the gig over on CSI gets killed off, at the very least. Unless it's both of them get killed off. Or the CW is planning a reality show spin-off of Supernatural, which is almost a cracky enough idea to work, except Dawn Ostroff probably wouldn't go for it because it's not 'girly' enough for her imaginary target audience of incredibly wealthy twelve-year-old brain-dead fashion-obsessed princesses. Or whatever. Sorry, my bitter is showing. Sigh. :-P

Ya know, even though this is the most spoiled I've ever been for an ep, I find I'm not minding the spoilage for this one, not sure why. Maybe because I still don't know the details of the MOTW, but probably because I have enough stress in my life already without having a coronary over this. Might just be the enforced drought. I didn't turn my TV on at all for several weeks straight there...

Still, I hope spoilers for the last three eps are much easier to avoid. Because this one was crazy. :-P

Anyway. Onward.

Reaction to Supernatural 3.13 - Ghostfacers

*snerk* Yeah, it's a silly one.

-Ed & Harry! Hi! Knew you were gonna be on tonight, but still, HI! I love continuity, even in the form of vaguely annoying characters from a prior episode returning.

-I knew there was going to be a fakeout opening. It was a given.

-Writer's strike reference! Okay, so since this episode is a slap at reality tv, the writer's strike reference gets extra snark points, so yay writers FTW! \o/

-Dean flipping off the camera in the 'Ghostfacers' credits. Ha!

-Hm... Is that the second or third box of International coffee stuff Corbett's gotten out of that bag... either way, that's a lot of French Vanilla.

-Ed? Is an ass. Nice of them to make that clear right from the start. "My adopted sister." Wow. Jerk. This, however, explains a reference in a conversation about adoption that was happening somewhere in my f-list the last week or so though, I think.

-...Zeddmore is their real name? Ed Zeddmore is his real name?? Ya know, until right then, I never fully realized I had a subconscious backstory for freaking Harry and Ed. See, I figured they were a couple of guys who'd either been friends in high school or met in the foster care system or something and had taken off together and were using the fake "Ghostbusters" mish-mashed character names as they drove around in their little trailer thing, looking for ghosts and whatnot. I had no conscious idea that I'd actually thought that much about those characters until Ed developed a nuclear family and made it all moot-ish. So... uh... damn you Kripke for invalidating my subconscious backstory? I think? *headscratch*

-OMG LEAP YEAR GHOST!!! I was whinging about the lack of any cool leap year legend-y things back on February 29th including a ghost that haunts every four years and, and, eeee! *flails wildly* Hee! I'm either psychic, or I think like Kripke and co! I'm not sure which is more disturbing...

-Harry's Gremlin has zebra striped plush seat covers. I just thought that needed to be pointed out. I think it's a Gremlin, anyways... Something AMC-ish.

-MUSIC!!!! There was music! OMG!

-Hey, why is Sam using a flashlight and not the spotlight on his side of the Impala? It was a perfect opportunity! Or do they unhook the power to the spotlights to get extra power to the speakers? And even with the weeny little flashlight, why does Sam not see the gang of dorks in the shrubbery with their umpty-hundred little glowy 'recording' lights going? Or does he see them and that's why they take off and come back later?

-Why is this 'Spruce' guy reminding me of that jackass from 'Reaper'? Sock? Mainly when he's in the golf cart. It's not a pleasant association and quite weird since I've seen Reaper maybe twice all the way through. Anyways, whatever.

-Yay, Sam and Dean! They do the cop thing well.

-Woah! Hello, cursing!? So, now entering canon from fanon: 'Sam and Dean use profanity when the network's not controlling their words' Hm. *shrug* Not a huge thing for me and I doubt I'll change anything about how I write them because of it... something about it bugs though, which surprises me, because while I could believe that Sam and Dean were raised not to use that sort of language, it wasn't a huge thing for me, and I could believe the opposite just as easily. Just a bit of personal canon divergence, I guess. Hm.

-Hey, is this the same place they shot Hell House in? Or the Asylum hospital again? Something about it seems really familiar.

-I really, really, really hope they gave the boys each a hand held camera and let them go nuts. A video diary would be cool.

-Maybe it's the same place they used for Bobby's in "Dream a Little Dream"? That staircase looks very familiar.

-"Aren't those the assholes from Texas?" *snerk*

-Oh Corbett, you giant weedy moron. He had 'first victim' tattooed on his forehead from birth, I think. But he does scream well.

-"'It'll be our Grand Canyon'" Oh ow. Ow. I realize it's primarily a budget thing (and time thing with the short season) keeping them from doing the actual Grand Canyon on the show, but just from an in-show-world perspective of Dean having settled for a straight up legendary ghost hunt in lieu of a trip to the actual Grand Canyon that they drive past every few months, probably, in the name of getting one more hunt in before he's dragged off to Hell? Ow Dean.

-At the same time, Feb 29th is two months before Dean's deal timer goes off, which fits with the date recently mentioned around fandom for Deal day, so WOO HOO for timeline synchronicity!!! OMG! Supernatural has a logical, straightforward and consistent timeline! It must be the end of the world! :-o

-"Supernatural lockdown", "Death Echoes" Lots of fun technobabble tonight! Well, not technobabble, I guess. Spectrobabble?

-Some really nifty FX going on in this ep, and for the most part, they look like they might be reasonably priced.

-Looking at things through a camera provides mental distance, and allows dissociation from events witnessed. It totally makes sense to me that Dean wouldn't get that concept because he is such a very hands on, direct sense-experience person. Or something. I'll just nod like I know what I'm talking about. *nods*

-Someone on the writing staff has it in for hospital janitors. This nutbag, and previously the guy who got YED'd.

-Hee! MRE's!! I am not at all surprised Dean recognized them on sight, and bet that John maybe made a habit of stocking up from army surplus places once in a while.

-I love the look Dean shoots at Ed as Ed is waving his store-bought EMF in Dean's face. However, I really love the subtle little cut that happens between that and Dean thunking the box down on the table, during which there may have been a ~~smackdown~~ 'discussion' regarding waving beeping objects in Dean's face. Also after the cut, I don't see Ed's EMF anywhere visible...

-Harry has always seemed to me to be the more capable and level-headed of the pair in an actual crisis. Not sure why, and not sure why that occurred to me now, but there it is. My subconscious has been thinking about these two, apparently.

-Did we ever see the suicide death echo? It's not the old guy, although he was a suicide, he couldn't have collected his own toe-tag.

-Maggie does some very nice startle-jumps. Cool. Pity the character is another moron who wanders away from the group in the haunted house. At least she didn't die from it.

-OMG SAM!!! That? Was the most awesome effect ever. And all it was was a simple cut, and the sound of the flashlight dropping. Just bam! Sam go bye-bye. Awesome!!! \o/

-Dean shouting 'Sammy'! Dean having to keep a reign on himself and baby-sit a herd of idiots while Sam's gone missing and not in a position to tear the place down to find him! Aw, Dean! \o/

-Spruce with the 'bow-chicka-wow-wow' cam. Reminding me of frigging Sock again. Did I mention that among many other reasons, Sock is the main reason I am not watching Reaper? :-P

-Hm. Not having a sibling close in age, the whole 'beat up your best friend for making out with your sibling, even though both parties were obviously quite willing parties' thing makes no sense to me at all, especially considering Ed was so disdainful and dismissive of her before.

-However, geek fight! Was Harry doing some kind of fake judo chop flaily thing there? My friends fight like that.

-Yay! Dean bellowing at idiots!! Dean needs to bellow at idiots more often, but that would require more idiots in Dean's life and the poor boy has enough stress already. *pats Dean*

-Oh... Corbett's death was a nasty way to die. I suppose if the guy managed to sever the spinal cord immediately it wouldn't be too bad, but otherwise Corbett would sit there and choke to death on his own blood as his lungs slowy filled, and it would be a lot messier death. It wasn't a pithing, though. No inserting things into the skull and scrambling the brains. So Corbett was not pithed when he died. He wath entirely thober. *koff* Sorry. Reverted to t-shirt there for a second. I need to get more sleep obviouthly. :-P

-Also, oh, Sam. Reassuring Corbett, trying to calm him down, and being tied there and watching him get glitched and die. Another sign that Sam's got some scar tissue built up from Mystery Spot there, I think. I can't tell whether he was reassuring Corbett, knowing he wouldn't be able to save him, to try and make the guy's last moments not so full of fear and suchlike or what. In any case, a far cry from the Sam from Simon Said, who couldn't stop a guy from walking in front of a bus and got a serious case of the guilts. Ow. Aw. Sammy.

-Party Hat! Hee! Sam looks so livid! :-D

-Oh! 'Russkies'! On first watch through I thought Dean said the guy was afraid of the Roosters and was trying to figure out if that was a song reference or some kind of bizarre metaphor, or what.

-Yay for good ghost tactics! Split up the adventuring party! Whee!

-"...Inside your duffel bag?" HA!!!

-"If we live, you can do my sister." Ha! And yes, hit him. Hit him very hard.

-"Is it cancer?" "Shaddup." Hee.

-I think I've figured out what's bugging me about the bleeping, is that yes, it's supposed to be a 'Reality Show' construct, etc, but it's inside the greater construct of the series. Having different diction for the characters based on the differing situation kind of jars me as a result, because that's not what the rest of the series shows. Hard to explain. Or maybe they just use profanity around Ed and Harry. Yeah. That's totally it. I would too.

-Hey! It that Kripke's favourite shelf of weird crap in jars? Same jars from Hell House? I think so! Hee.

-The whole Blair Witch camera thing is actually kind of cool and not making me nauseous at all like the movie did. Less bouncy running through the woods, maybe?

-Poor Sam, tied to a chair in a party hat. Aw. At the same time, I want to make a birthday icon out of him in the hat all peeved.

-Also night vision may suck for detail, but seriously, that is not enough rope and not tied correctly or at the correct height to effectively restrain a person Sam's size. Just saying, they need a consultant for stuff like that.

-Wow. Ed's really slow on the uptake. Didn't Harry just remind him about the death echo thing a few minutes ago?

-"You gotta go be gay for that poor dead intern." *facepalm*

-The guy playing Ed does well with the emotion here for talking to the ghost of Corbett. Thing is, because Ed is such a clueless ass, it felt out of character.

-I'm now suddenly wondering if the guy playing Spruce is actually one of the regular camera guys. Not sure why. Is it the same voice from the mug shot cam in "Folsom Prison Blues?"

-Hee. Mid-combat bleep.

-Now that's a mutual ghost annihilation (yeesh, I must be tired if I can't type annihilation right) No super-slow motion three camera angle thing, just tackle, foom and confusion, and darkness.

-Dean's been thrown into a wall! What day is it? \o/

-(Ad: America's Most Smartest Model can bite me. Twice. Did you guys watching the CW feed get bombarded with that asinine crap too? It was all over the City TV feed every single commercial break. :-P)

-Sunrise over the Impala. Oooo, pretty!

-'New Allies' Yeah, sure Ed. You freaking wish.

-"How gay love can pierce through the veil of death." I repeat. *facepalm* Actually, I think I spent the entire time where Ed and Harry are doing the faux-masterpiece-theatre thing in the chairs at the end of the 'tape' facepalming. Yeesh.

-Corbett was cute. And judging from the interior of the van, a copier tech of some variety?

-Absolute love for the looks on Sam and Dean's faces watching the 'Ghostfacers' thing.

-"Honour his memory while grossly exploiting the manner of his death. Real tightrope you guys are walking." Dean snark FTW.

-Oooo, credits at end of show! I'm amused to note I seem to have a pavlovian response to the credits, as they started to run and I got that "Yay! Show is starting!" feeling.

-See, I thought Sam reaching into the bag was him stealing the disk, and was trying to figure out how they'd get the raw footage too. I love what actually happened sooooo much!

-Ed is still an ass.

-"A straitjacket or a punch in the face. Or both." Hee!

-Simultaneous Sam and Dean 'Yeek!' faces FTW!!

-I love the magnet bomb! I love it like I love air. I especially love the implication that Dean built it that went flying past there, I think.

-Yeah. Totally setting up for a 'Ghostfacers' spin-off. Gawd. So here's a poll:

View Poll: #1176996

-And in conclusion, I lament the lack of snark about the guy that plays Ed also playing a guy on CSI. Although it's not the iteration of CSI that's on on Thursdays and they were nice enough to let the guy come out to Vancouver for a week and do this episode. Still, one teeny little snark about procedural dramas, is that too much to ask?

(Posting and running like the wind. I'll fix any major mistakes when I get home from work at about 11 tonight. :-P )

Introducing....

2008-04-18T07:34:37Z

*trumpet fanfare* At this point in time I would like to introduce you to sandrinnad. She's been a very good friend of mine for many years and has lately been ~~succumbing to my nefarious mind-control~~ getting into Supernatural and LJ aaaaand has just posted her very first fanfic ever! TAH DAH!!!

Go ye forth and read "The Little Things". It's a teensy bit bigger than a drabble, Gen, G, and adorable. Remember to leave her comments!

SPN Fandom: Faniversary the second

2008-04-15T06:19:03Z

On the occasion of approximately two years passing since Supernatural took over my brain, and two years of having had some thought or done some activity related to this show every single day (and no, that is not hyperbole), I just felt like saying this:

Why I love Supernatural.

-Because Sam is Sam, and Dean is Dean. Through all and everything. Epic world-altering demonic invasions, possessions, FBI, racist trucks, itching powder, death, psychic powers and lost shoes. Doesn't matter, it's all just what is pushing on the boys at the moment; the force they are struggling against. They are true to themselves and they are human, and make irrational choices, or change their minds, or say things they didn't intend and don't know why.

-Knowing that Dean without Sam or Sam without Dean is a very bad thing. It's not all about Sam. And it's not all about Dean. It's about SamnDean. And while some stuff seems to be more on Sam, and some more on Dean, it's still the two brothers. It's always the two brothers.

-Myth and legend and lore that's based on actual legends and lore, so that it feels real enough, but no realer.

-One-shot joke-named background characters that become part of the soul of the series, through the magic that is Jim Beaver.

-Looking at an episode like "Mystery Spot" or "Dream a Little Dream" and seeing the shadows of epic future meta, and knowing that even if I can't put it into words, someone brighter than me out there will manage, because damn this fandom is brilliant.

-Set design and all the hundreds of freaky little background details that hardly ever get conciously noticed but add to the whole experience anyway. Also, there's this car...

-The wardrobe people for making two guys living out of duffel bags re-wear clothing that occasionally looks like thrift-bin treasures, because that's what the characters would wear, adding a very grounding real-world touch to a show about the supernatural world and making the epic pie-chart madness of this fandom possible.

-These two guys from Texas, away from their friends and families, up here in cold, moist Vancouver, acting their freaking hearts out to an audience share that would've got the show cancelled years back on other networks. Not just 'phoning it in' and collecting a paycheque because the show doesn't have a high enough profile to be worth real effort. Crying real tears brought up by mentally putting themselves into the places where tears come from. For the people who do watch this little show, all over the world. For the fans. For us.

-Knowing that, as in any relationship, sometimes I may not agree with what show says, and there will be times when I am so angry at show that I can't see straight, but I know I'll find my way back regardless. Knowing that even when things don't align with the canon that I thought I knew, even if things do a complete 180 from what I'd taken as an indisputable fact, I'll still come back.

-And Kripke. Kripke, bless his little cotton socks, has a vision. And regardless of what that vision is, or where it takes the show, or who it kills off to get there, I trust Kripke to follow his vision. And I want to see it unfold, no matter where it ends. Even if it ends somewhere I don't like and I end up shrieking in all-caps for a week. I'm invested in this series harder and further than any series ever before. I want to know how the story ends, whether it's a tragedy, a comedy, a heroic tale, whether the world is saved or the world burns. Or the zombie hamsters invade. Or rocks fall and everyone dies. I'm in. Wherever it goes. I'm in.

*koff* Yeesh. That ended up waaaaaay schmoopier than intended. :-P Anyway, short version; *glomphs show*