Author Interviews Emily Perkins, Supernatural's Becky

Angela Campbell, a fellow author who is as die-hard a fan of Supernatural as we are, had the opportunity to interview the actress who plays superfan Becky Rosen on the show. Find out how much input she had into her character and where she sees Becky ending up by clicking here.

The Kick It In The Ass Guestbook

KICK IT IN THE ASS 
SUPERNATURAL REWATCH GUESTBOOK

 Did you participate in the A Very Special Tribute to Kim Manners

The Kick In The Ass Supernatural rewatch?

If you did, then sign our guest book! 

Go to comments and just leave your name or twitter name. 

If you like you can leave a message about the rewatch, what Supernatural means to you and Kim Manners.

If we get a few people, I'll forward it on to Jim Michaels.

So join in and sign in!

#kickitintheass

*Post note: From what I can tell we had between 25 - 30 participants. A definite 25 who attended throughout the bulk of the rewatch and a handful of people who popped in to make a comment. Pretty good!

News and Hiatus

The TCA was held recently, and there's an interview with Jared Padalecki that's FULL OF SPOILERS, so beware!

There's also an interview with Robert Singer at Digital Spy.

I admit, after last week's awesome episode, I gobbled up details about what's upcoming, and I'm excited. :)

Not so excited, though, about another hiatus. According to a sneak peek note on Dread Central, we're back to reruns until February 3rd. WTH?

(In a related note, the local CBS and CW stations went black in Verizon here in Central PA from late Thursday through Sunday, because Verizon and the station group owner couldn't agree to a new contract. There was much wailing and anger! Luckily for me, I'm on DirecTV. :) )

A Very Special Tribute to Kim Manners

January 25 marks 3 years since the world and our Supernatural family lost Kim Manners.

To remember Kim and celebrate what he means to us all

We're inviting everyone to join in...

A Very Special Tribute to Kim Manners

The Kick It In The Ass Supernatural Rewatch

We'll be synchronising our DVDs and watching 4 of Kim's best loved episodes....

Scarecrow

All Hell Breaks Loose 2

No Rest For The Wicked

Lazarus Rising

 So join us Sunday January 22 at 11am Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time  (Sydney)

to remember Kim.

Follow along on twitter #kickitintheass

Follow me on twitter @AmyinSydney

You can use tweetchat

Check for your local time on the world clock

I hope to see you there - Amy

Review - Supernatual 7.12 "Time After Time"

 

Warning contains spoilers.

Does this mean I’m an Untouchable now? 

Confession time. I’m a Kevin Costner fan. There. I said it. The reason I’m baring my soul to you is that I share Dean’s passion for the movie The Untouchables. You see there was a period of time there, where every Friday or Saturday night, after coming home from having a few drinks, I would stick on The Untouchables DVD to send me off to sleep. That or No Way Out, or Bull Duhram – from which I can recite large hunks of dialogue. Geesh, now I’m really coming clean! You know how Dean said he’d seen The Untouchables fifty times? Hey Winchester, I reckon I can beat that! So guess who was I was a teensy bit excited about Time After Time? Me! Which is why I ask you to excuse me if I come across a tad over enthusiastic.

Shall I just say it? I loved Time After Time. It was pure fun. It had so many things that made me all tingly. From Sam and Dean’s banter, to the time period, to the Back To The Future references, to Eliot Ness, to Alex Krycek – sorry – Nicholas Lea, to Dean in those suits with that hair and that waistcoat and that hat and that gun holster and…quick, someone stop me, to Sam’s epic sideburns that I just want to touch. Hey, maybe that can be my question at the Q&A in LA! “Hey Jared, can I touch your sideburns?” Cut to Amy being bodily evicted from the room. Hmm maybe not…. Anyway, it was one of those episodes that simply popped. It was everything the show does well. When Supernatural gets it right, man, it gets it right.

So we kick off with the boys in another non-Impala eating fast food while staking out the house they think the bad guy lives in. The boys plural were eating fast food. Praise Chuck, Sam was eating a burger! I was starting to worry about his iron count. Then bad guy comes out of the house as Dean articulately points out, “Dude. Dude. Fedora dude” and the boys are off on foot with the big plan being “Don’t die”! Dean gets to Fedora dude first, run tackles him and as Sam comes around the corner, Dean disappears in a burst of red light and a gust of wind that sends Sam’s hair gloriously apfoot! And ladies and possibly, but not likely, gentlemen, that was just the teaser! I was already hooked. I think I clapped my hands.

Okay, I’ll try to restrain the giddy but I’m afraid I have “enthusiasms, enthusiasms, enthusiasms.” The Untouchablesreference….Dean would so get it. 

This is about where I heap a great big pile of praise on Robbie Thompson. For a Supernatural rookie writer he’s doing an, dare I say it, AWESOME, job. His previous episode Slash Fiction is one of my favourites of the season and now he’s delivered again with Time After Time. He delivered a tight script, full of sharp, insightful dialogue. It was a well-structured story, complex, but the parallel times gelled perfectly. In amongst the humour, he was able to mix in pathos, never losing site of the recent losses by adding some poignant moments. He writes Sam and Dean beautifully, capturing their relationship and individual personalities and he gave us a couple nicely drawn supporting characters to fill out the Winchester’s Universe. Well done Mr Thompson. Please write more. PS. I may have developed a crush on you.

This was the second week in a row that Sam and Dean were apart, but as in last week’s episode, they never felt apart. Even when operating in different centuries they were working ways to work together. I know I keep harping on about this, but this feels so gosh darn good to me. It’s been such a long time coming. It’s been promised to us over and over that the brothers would find some kind of equilibrium in their relationship, that they would find their way back to each other again. I feel like finally, finally all those promises from season 5 and season 6 are coming home to roost. Finally. To see them ribbing each other, dirty diaper face, are you strictly into Dick now; Sam’s poop face in response to Dean’s new computer skills; the rock/paper/scissors for the bedroom; made my Sam and Dean lovin’ heart stutter with joy. And did you notice their stances for the rock/paper/scissors? They take this stuff serious!

So Dean’s a geek, we all know that. He may be a badass, but underneath that tough hunter exterior, he’s a geek. But you know the other thing about Dean? You can pretty much drop him anywhere and he’ll adapt. Whether it’s prison, or the Wild West, or his own (alternative) future, or 1944, Dean adapts. He’s very adaptable…amongst other things. I think that’s a big reason why I enjoyed this episode so much, I enjoy seeing Dean being plonked somewhere out of his comfort zone and yet feeling very comfortable. He seems to fight everything about his day-to-day life, but put him in a situation like in Time After Time and he just goes with the flow. I wish he could bring a bit of that sensibility into his everyday.

I liked Dean’s easy relationship with Eliot Ness. I thought they had good chemistry. Part of that was the writing, part of that was the actors. Jensen and Nicholas Lea, had nice energy. Nic Lea’s Ness felt like he was straight out of some old movie and as the past was highly stylised in characterisation, music and production, this felt spot on. His “Boo hoo cry me a river ya Nancy” in response to Dean saying he didn’t know why he hunted any more also felt spot on. This was not a guy who would want to hear some other guy’s sob story and sit in the car feeling his feelings. His response also reminded me of Bobby’s “Boo hoo Princess.” I’ve always felt Dean reacts well to a kick in the pants, that’s why Bobby spoke to Dean like he did, because he knows, ahhh damn, he knew Dean and knew how to get through to him. I also liked how Ness described hunting. “Hunting sets me free.” Plus, what he said to Dean about making a difference, about not many people having that opportunity was right in line with what Zach said to Dean in It’s A Terrible Life. “Most folks live and die without moving more than the dirt it takes to bury them. You get to change things.” And Ness “… at least you’re making a difference. So enjoy it while it lasts kid ‘cause hunting’s the only clarity you’re going to find in this life, and that makes you luckier than most.” I’m not underplaying Dean’s grief, I think his pain is deep and real and should be recognised and dealt with, but if he needs to find a ‘reason’, making a difference is a damn good one, much better than revenge, or simply just ‘cause. That’s the “saving people” bit of the family business. I hope he had his ears on. 

In the present, Sam is frantically trying to find a way to stop Chronos the God of time and retrieve his brother. This gives him an opportunity to work alongside Sheriff Mills. Isn’t she just a delight! I thoroughly enjoyed seeing these two working together. Sam creating the wall of weird, both of them hitting Bobby’s books, huddling over the computer, Sheriff Mills sending Sam to bed! Their scenes were lovely. They had what was probably my favourite moment of the episode, when Sheriff Mills found the bottle of whiskey Bobby won in a bet from Rufus. Sam’s smile as he thought about Rufus and just the silence that followed said more than any words could. 

Jared finds a way to convey so much of Sam through silence. And they were right; we know so little about the hunters that we’ve lost. This scene, in the midst of all my happy, managed to make me tear up. I also liked how Sam described the Gods and how today the various Gods have very little power because no one worships them anymore. I think I went “Ohhhhh” because I’ve never been a big fan of the Gods in Supernatural. Angels, Demons, Lucifer sure, but all the other Gods we’ve come across have been kind of impotent. Sam gave that a reason. Or Robbie Thompson did. Maybe it’d always bugged him too.

I had massive flash backs to Swan Song when Sam found Dean’s scrawl of his name on the skirting board. Looked like the boy’s scratchings in the Impala yes? It made me all nawwww. Dean’s a damn smart hunter, even if he has to count on his fingers (bless). And that was the final piece of the puzzle that Sam was looking for to get his brother back, a date. Once he had that, he had all he needed to pinpoint a time. The Winchester brothers working together across centuries. Nice. How funny was that little old lady playing Chronos' ex-girlfriend when she turned around and saw Sam? She nearly jumped out of her skin! I think she came up to his belly button!

Of course….the future is covered in thick black ooze was a bit of a downer at the end there. “Enjoy oblivion.” Gee thanks Chronos! While pondering their plans I’ve often found myself thinking that the Leviathan are here to reclaim what they feel is rightly theirs, being as they were God’s first creation and all. A world covered in black ooze seems like something they would like.

Anyway, I could go on and on, with all the moments that I loved. I just thoroughly enjoyed ever aspect of Time After Time. Once again this was an episode more about the relationships than the monster, though this weeks monster was still solid. I enjoyed all the secondary characters; everyone did a fantastic job and Jensen and Jared were both great (as usual), Jensen once again displaying his comic chops. I enjoyed Sam and Dean both having the opportunity to work with someone else; do them the world of good! I enjoyed that Bobby’s loss still hung in the air and that both the brothers had moments where they recognised it. I enjoyed the brothers being brothers and not being angry, or mistrusting or any of the other emotions we’ve had to wade through over the past couple of seasons out of love for this duo. I dug the overall look of the episode, Phil Sgriccia’s camera angles, the beautiful production design, the lighting, the wardrobe, the Supernatural crew really kicks it in the ass. And I loved the dialogue and I guess that kind of encapsulates what I enjoyed most about Time After Time, it was just so wonderfully written.

I do have one very minor complaint though….if you’re going to use a Terminator effect to send Dean Winchester back in time, you could at least use the entire concept of the effect and have him land naked…..just sayin’. 

Oh wait….February 3…. 

Thanks for reading, I’m sorry for not being all that insightful, but it was nice to have an episode that makes you feel good all over instead full of angst and worry for a change don’t you think? 

Let me know what you thought!  Oh and here's THAT promo...almost feels worth the wait! -Amy

Time After Time After Time

Time After Time After Time already has a Cyndi Lauper song playing in my head. I miss the music from the old days. In fact, I heard Bad Company on the way to dinner and thought of Meg. Remember Meg? I liked her.

ANYWAY, tonight the boys are stalking something that looks like a priest from The Exorcist movie. They split up to follow him, and Dean comes upon the monster sucking the life force out of what looks like a homeless man. As Dean rushes forward, the creature dissolves into a ball of red light, taking Dean with it as Sam arrives, shouting his brother’s name.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

Dean is looking up Dick Roman info on the laptop when Sam’s phone rings. It’s Sheriff Jodi Mills, and she has a case for him, a mummified body in Canton Ohio. (OMG—credits, RAT BOY is going to be in this one!) Apparently the sheriff knows about Bobby because she’s choked up when she speaks his name, talking about all she went through with him and the Winchesters. Sam (who needs a hair cut, he’s about to be a dad , already!) tells Dean she caught a case for them. Dean replies with, “Aw, I feel bad. We didn’t get her anything.” Sam then chides Dean for reading Dick Roman stuff over and over, that he’s just punishing himself.

In the next scene, they pull up in what looks like a new car in front of a dilapidated house (from Ghost Facers?) The brothers do rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets the bedroom. Apparently Dean has moved on from scissors because he chose rock and Sam chose paper. “How does paper beat a rock?”

They show up at some guy’s house. Apparently he witnessed the victim being sucked dry. They go back to the house where they’re squatting, and can’t find anything about turning bodies into cryptkeepers, but Greater Canton is a magnet for weird bodies. Random years, but always in threes. Two bodies have already been found. Dean taps into local surveillance cameras, a trick he learned from Frank, impressing Sam. But they found pictures of the same man on local surveillance and in an old newspaper story about one of the strange bodies. They locate the girl who found the body in 1957 and ask if she recognizes the man. She does, and the boys go stake out the house.

And we’re back to the first scene, where Dean attacks and disappears into a ball of energy. He’s grappling with the creature—and finds himself in on a street in…the 1940s? The police see him and demand he drops the gun. He is arrested and learns he’s 68 years in the past. He takes a minute to do the math. “I’m stuck in 1944?”

The cop leaves him and another man in plainclothes comes in. Rat Boy!!! Wow, X-Files was a while back, huh? Dean figures he’s screwed anyway, so tells the truth, and is surprised when Rat Boy (OMG, Elliot Ness!) believes him. He accuses the man of being a hunter, but Ness rolls his shoulders and denies it, then introduces himself. Dean is suitably impressed.

Meanwhile, back in 2011, Sam is on the phone with the sheriff. BTW, those shirts he wears? Hella expensive, because I keep trying to buy them for my husband but don’t trust him in $70 shirts. Okay, now the sheriff wants to help find Dean since she got them into this mess.

Back in the ‘40s, Dean is going fanboy on Elliott Ness. Ness says they’re hunting the same thing in different centuries. Dean gets all excited to be an “untouchable” but Ness doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They go shopping to get Dean new clothes. Ness tells the seamstress Dean is from the future. Dean says, “Gas is $4 a gallon, you can get cheese from a spray can, and the president is a black guy.”

In 2011, the sheriff is bringing Sam paperwork from Bobby’s locker. She’s pretty sure something is alive in three of the boxes.

In the 40s, OMG, Dean looks GOOD. Goooooooooood. He keeps saying “awesome,” which makes the seamstress ask if he’s a religious kook. Then she calls he and Ness “idjits,” which amuses Dean. He tells her she reminds him of someone.

In 2011, Jodi is helping Sam on the internet. They are magically able to enhance a picture to see a ring on their suspect’s finger, which bears the symbol of Kronos, the god of time. He’s an old god, who used to get his power from people feeding him. Now he makes up for lack of power with being “twice as pissed, and a lot more hands on.” Sam decides they have to summon him.

In the 1940s, Dean and Ness go to find the house Sam and Dean had staked out. Dean quotes Sean Connery from The Untouchables, but Ness says, “Who talks like that?” Dean swears he’s never watching one of his favorite movies again. They break into the house and discover Kronos is laying bets on races where he already knows the outcome. So Ness and Dean go look for the bookie who places his bets. Dean plays muscle, loving every minute of it, but doesn’t have to do much to threaten him to get a location.

In 2011, Sam and Jodi find a way to call Kronos, but Dean has to be touching him when they do, or Dean will be stuck in another time forever. They find an old bottle in Bobby’s things and decide to drink it.

In the 1940s Dean and Ness stake out the bar where Kronos is drinking. Dean asks Ness who died in his life that made him become a hunter. Ness calls him morbid, and says he started because vampires were turning people and he caught the bug. Ness asks why Dean is doing it and Dean said because of his family, but they keep dying and he doesn’t know why he does anything anymore. Ness calls him a nancy and wants to know if all hunters are as soft as Dean in the future. Dean is taken aback—certainly Dean has never been soft. “At least you’re making a difference. Hunting’s the only clarity you’re going to find in this life. That makes you luckier than most.”

After Ness makes his speech, a lovely woman walks by the car, and Kronos follows her. Ness leads Dean to the trunk of his car—loaded with all manner of weaponry. “Sweet merciful awesome!” Dean exclaims.

Dean and Ness follow Kronos, weapons at the ready (could that BE any hotter?) only to see Kronos and the girl embrace. They’re stunned.

Ness and Dean split up, Ness going to watch Kronos, I guess, who went home with the girl. Dean goes back to the seamstress. She’s found a way to kill Kronos, with an olive branch carved by vestal virgins and dipped in the blood of you-don’t-wanna-know-what. Dean realizes if he kills Kronos he’s stuck in 1944. The seamstress tells him there’s lots of ways to pass the time and lays a kiss on him. As he’s leaving he remembers Back to the Future 3 (is that the western one?) and decides to write himself a letter—at least I think so.

Okay, I JUST recognized Kronos as Logan from Veronica Mars. Holy smokes, I love Logan. I didn’t recognize him until he spoke, before beating up Ness. He’s interrupted by the girl telling him he forgot to take out the trash, apparently his excuse for going out. Ness disappears. Kronos tells his girl to pack a bag, she’s going with him. When she hesitates, he snaps at her, which surprises her.

Dean pulls up in front the house Sam and Dean were squatting in. He tells the owner he’s the head of homeland termite inspection. He finds the bedroom where Sam made his bed, lays on the floor and looks for the perfect spot to hide his message to Sam.

Back in 2011, Jodi sends Sam to bed, and he sees the message from Dean—his name carved into the baseboard and Dean’s note behind it. He runs down to show Jodi the letter which has the name of the woman, Lila, and the exact date Dean had contact with him. Sam and Jodi find Lila at a rest home and ask her about Ethan. She hadn’t seen him since 1944, the night the clocks stopped at 11:34, when he said awful things, and strangled that poor man. Sam shows her a picture of Dean and she said Ethan choked the life out of him.

In 1944, Dean goes back to the house looking for Ness and breaks in. He and Kronos fight. Ness holds Lila hostage with a gun pointed at her belly. Kronos said he does his sacrifices so he can get back to Lila because he loves her. He used to wander but now he has her. When she calls him a monster, you can feel his heart breaking.

Meanwhile, Sam and Jodi call Kronos, who slides back to 2011. Ness tosses the olive branch to Dean just as he and Kronos disappears in a ball of light. Once back in the house, Sam stabs Kronos, who dies after telling the brothers their future is covered in a thick black ooze. They’re everywhere. And then Kronos dies. The end.

Now, I’m not a fan of the drawn-out ending but THAT was a little abrupt. But awesome.

People's Choice

In case you, like me, have your head buried in your to-do list, Supernatural won the People's Choice award for both Favorite Network TV Drama and Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show. The boys did a short thank-you video to the fans:




Laura Prudom at Huffpost TV has a really good article about the injustice of the Favorite Network TV Drama being left out of the live telecast.

Jim Beaver's New Bullet Phobia

Did you guys see this great TV guide interview with Jim Beaver?

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Jim-Beaver-Supernatural-1041550.aspx

Maybe we won't see Bobby again for a while on SPN, but looks like fans can catch Jim on Justified sometime in the future!

Guest Star Bingo

Seriously, we should set it up. I bet someone else has, though. Anyone got a link? :)

Okay, here are some places I recently saw Supernatural guest stars:

An episode of Entourage from the last season, the one where Vince buys the dinosaur head. The actress who played Sarah in "Provenance" was in a similar role in the auction house.

Last week's episode of Leverage (two Sundays ago) had Todd Stashwick and the actress who played Casey in "Sin City."

I know there were others but I failed to write them down and my brain is starting to malfunction from hunger. I'm going to go make dinner--you tell me more in the comments!

Review - Supernatural 7.11 "Adventures in Babysitting"

Warning contains spoilers...

I'm not gonna quit. It's not even an option. I'm not gonna walk out on my brother. 

And we’re back….though, it appears, not everyone made it through the hiatus alive….. 

I always think there’s a lot of pressure on the mid-season premiere. Supernatural generally gives us a rip-snorted of an episode as the mid-season finale, often with a cliff-hanger, usually with something that rips our heart out and makes us scream no, or makes us gasp out loud, or cry buckets of tears. We are then left to our own devices for 4-6 weeks to ponder the outcomes and feed each others frenzy. As we get closer to S-day we start counting down and I mean that literally. We rewatch the last episode. We hungrily keep an eye out for clips, spoilers, anything that will give us a tiny hint of what to expect. We discuss and theorise possible outcomes, motivations, arc directions. By the time the episode actually airs, the excitement is palatable; as well it should be, because we love this show and every moment without it is a nightmare. But I think this level of anticipation, this build up, often leaves us feeling a bit flat. 

I’ll be honest and say, traditionally, the mid-season premieres have not been the strongest episodes of the season. But what they do, particularly in the later seasons, is bridge the gap between the first half and the second half of the season and show us where our characters are and how they are dealing, or more specifically, not dealing with what ever tragedy just befell them. They give us a sense of where we go next and set up questions that will take us through the next 10 or so episodes. If we look at them from this angle, they do their job well. All this sounds like maybe I didn’t enjoy Adventures In Babysitting….but, I did. For me, Adventures In Babysitting acted as a character piece, allowing us to, once again, witness the diverse nature of grief experienced by Sam and Dean. It also acted as a preamble for the remainder of the season by setting up some intriguing mystery and it stayed purposefully obtuse about the loss of Bobby and what his final decision was, stay or go, allowing for the possibility of something powerful to be revealed at a later date. It may have been a bit of a weak MOTW episode, but if you think for a minute Adventures In Babysitting was all about the Vetala, then you weren’t paying attention.

I liked how the passage of time was demonstrated after the loss of Bobby. Okay, before I go any further let’s talk about Bobby. As I said earlier, I feel like the writers are being purposefully obtuse as to whether Bobby chose to stay or go. We didn’t see Bobby answer the Reaper, we didn’t see the end result at the hospital, we didn’t see his body burned by the boys, a funeral, burial, cremation, nothing. For all we know he’s still in a coma in hospital, as per Dean in In My Time Of Dying, except that both the boys alluded to his death, specifically Sam saying he passed away, so we’ve got to assume he never made it through that final flat line. But by not discussing it in detail, by not giving us a clear cut answer it keeps us engaged with Bobby and his storyline, because we’re left wondering what he decided and how will this impact the arc moving forward. We’re left to imagine and discuss the possibly options and outcomes. It leaves us with a glimmer of hope that maybe we might see him again in some form, and hope can be a hard thing to come by on Supernatural so we hang-on to it like it’s a life preserver! But most importantly, it leaves us intrigued by the possibility of a crack in the door. I thought that was smart writing, manipulative sure, but smart writing. Of course we also had the mystery of the disappearing beer. Was that Bobby, looking after that idjit Dean from beyond? Making sure he didn’t go the route of the senior Winchester and get lost in a mire of alcohol and grief induced revenge? Well only time will tell….

As devastating as the loss of Bobby is to me, somewhere inside I feel like it’s a loss we had to have, because the nature of death in Supernatural was starting to lose meaning. It had almost become a gag. You die, so what, they’ll bring you back later. Death was beginning to no longer have the impact that it had when the boys lost John. I feel like we're being shaken out of our complacency, that we're being given a wake-up call. Real death still happens on this show and it still has a significant impact and a death this large is going to reverberate through the boy’s lives and somehow change them. It’s for this reason alone, that I have sort of come to a place of peace with the loss of Bobby (also because I’m still in denial), because if his death has an importance to the season arc or is imperative to the development of Sam and Dean, individually or collectively, then, as dead Ash said when he came back, I’m cool with it. Having said that, in my heart of hearts of course I hope it’s not forever, but I no longer feel cocky about that assumption.

Okay, back to the boys. Sam and Dean have always dealt with grief differently but somehow, they seem to have come to a place where they now share one aspect of their processing, they internalise. As they’ve got older and encountered more and more crap, they’ve turned less to each other to unload. A lot of this comes from the breakdown of trust they’ve experienced through their various transgressions and lies. You can’t expect them to just open up, not when there’s been so much water under the bridge. Once upon a time, Sam would have tried to make Dean talk, but not anymore, he knows it’s futile, he knows his brother wades through denial like no one else. Once upon a time Sam may have tried to open up about his feelings, but now Sam’s dealing with a whole other problem inside his head. Seeing them sitting on the couch in silence, experiencing their own grief personally and yet together was powerful. Jensen and Jared need only look at each other to show the well of emotion their characters are feeling or show Sam and Dean’s isolation even though they’re sitting next to the person they love most in the world. I got the sense from those looks that each wanted to reach out, but neither no longer knows how. There was a tragedy to that scene that just floored me.

Three weeks in, as they moved through their grief they both took different paths which I felt was totally appropriate to how they would react. Sam chose to follow a case that related back to Bobby. The kid of one of Bobby’s hunter friends needed help. Sam chose to go that route; I’m sure thinking that if he could save this one life it would give some kind of meaning to everything. Restore some kind of balance. Dean chose to bury it all deep as usual and angrily pursue revenge, focusing on the numbers Bobby gave them with his dying breath and continue the search Dick Roman. In having a separate focus, they went their separate ways. This would usually freak me out! But though they weren’t working together, they never actually felt apart. They kept in contact, didn’t cut the other out, ensured the other knew what was going on. Sam told his brother he could do with his help. Dean dropped everything when he realised Sam was in trouble. They weren’t working the same case, but they were still working together. Somehow, this felt like a step forward. It felt like they were leaning on each other just a little.

As Sam went in search of the missing dad, Dean went in search of the silent Frank, only to find that the conspiracy nut had gone even further off the grid due to helping Sam and Dean with their Leviathan problem. Dean’s interactions with Frank reveal some things about Dean and his grieving. He doesn’t want to talk about Bobby, getting openly hostile when Frank tries to share stories. He appears even more torn than usual about living the life, but he resolutely will not leave his brother. That and revenge seem to be the only things moving him forward right now. He's so bottled up it's explosive. He’s operating on fumes. He’s tired. When he finally crashes out, Frank lets him sleep for 36 hours. When he wakes up, Dean gets some advice from Frank about how to keep going. I’m not so sure it was what Dean needed to hear quite frankly. Frank essentially told him to either quit or fake it. Wake up everyday and slap a smile on your face because that’s what you do because it’s your job. You’re alive. Be a professional. To quote T. S. Eliot, “Put on a face to meet the faces that you meet.” Read: bury your pain. The last thing Dean needs to be told is to bury his pain. He’s already a master at that. And I mean, look at Frank, the man is obviously buckets of crazy, and as we find out, after finding his wife and children butchered in his home, he’s been burying his pain like a dog with a bone ever since. No, Dean needs to get it out, somehow, and I think he will and I think when it happens, it’ll be violent.

When Dean finally gets the message from Sam and realises Sam’s working on old information, he leaves Frank to continue the surveillance of the mysterious field owned by Dick Roman enterprises and hot foots it to find his brother. In doing so, he meets Krissy, the daughter of the missing hunter. Personally, I adore any interaction Dean has with kids. I love the way he speaks to them. He susses Krissy out almost instantly as a tough brat of a hunter and talks to her accordingly. He talks to her like she’s got a brain. She calls him a dweeb. During their conversation we also get to hear a story from when Dean was hunting and Sam was at Stanford. I may or may not have geeked out a little over this! I love nothing more than hearing about the brother's lives before we met them. Of course this also gave Dean the chance to tell Krissy she could go to Stanford too. Become a hunter/paediatrician. He’s a good man Dean Winchester, with a great big heart and I love it when we get to see this side of him.

Of course, Sam’s case of Krissy and her missing father, directly mirrored the lives of Sam and Dean. Murdered mother, father driven by revenge, kid dragged along for the ride. By saving Krissy’s father and then by saving Krissy from the brother’s fate of living the life, the Winchester brothers finally got something they desperately needed. They got a win. Lord knows they need a win every now and then.

As the episode comes to a close we have the two brothers, alone in the car. They discuss how good it is to finally walk away from a case feeling like they've made a difference. Dean asks Sam how he's doing. Sam openly admits, once again that he’s not doing great, but says he just wants to work, saying to his brother, “Should I even ask?” Of course, Dean answers, “I’m fine.” and adds he also just wants to work, after all, they are professionals. Sammy knows it's a heap of crap, frowns at his brother, turns up the music and swings around to try and sleep off the recent attack. Then as his little brother rests beside him, Dean takes Frank’s advice and practices smiling….  Though his eyes are filling with tears, Dean practices smiling…. He’s going to fake it. That's how he'll be able to keep going, by faking it, by putting on a smile. In this moment, Dean’s true level of grief and despair is revealed. This scene. This scene was amazing. To be honest, I burst into tears. Great big wracking sobs. Jensen Ackles is just…I don’t know, I can’t even put it into words. Why these two guys don’t get the kind of kudos their far less talented peers receive is one of life’s great aggravating mysteries. 

Adventures In Babysitting was in absolutely no way the best episode of the season, I think we’re all honest enough to say that, but it offered us a lot to think about and I feel like that was it’s job. It set up the mystery of what the Leviathan were doing in the field. It made us question what was the fate of Bobby, by keeping that information hidden and having that beer strangely disappear. And it proliferated the scenes with engaging characters such as crazy Frank and fiesty Krissy, which helped us see how the brothers are doing both individually and as a pair. Through conversations and actions, tragic and heroic, we saw Sam and Dean’s inner struggles as they process their grief. Sam always seems to be doing better, but his eyes and their sadness reveal his struggle with in. Dean is in a deep pit of anger and despair, but he's going to try harder to hide it. I want nothing more in this world than for Sam to be whole again. I want nothing more in this world than for Dean to find his spark. I want them to come through this and be better for it. And that's what I hope will happen, because though I feel like the worst is yet to come, I felt like some small progress may have been made here and this is why Adventures In Babysitting worked for me. 

There’s been a lot of talk about the show no longer having hope, but I don’t see that, because I choose to see the Winchester brothers as the hope. As long as they keep getting up and fighting the good fight. As long as they keep battling evil and not letting the supernatural S.O.B.s push them around. As long as they stick together through everything, even when they're mad with each other, then as I see it, there’s hope. Because they do keep getting up and fighting the good fight. They do keep choosing their own paths. They do stick together. Maybe they sometimes forget why, maybe they sometimes can’t stand the pain of it, but they do keep doing it and in a way, that shows they still have hope. It shows that somewhere inside them, they still believe that they can win. They still believe that good can triumph over evil. They still believe that what they’re doing means something. They still believe in each other. And this gives me hope. They give me hope. And that’s all I need.

Well, there you have it....I'm nothing if not optimistic, though some may say delusional...feel free to tell me in the comments.

But one thing you should know, I'm on this journey with the Winchester brothers until the end, thick and thin, good and bad, I joined this ride a long time ago and I'm sticking with them.

I'm pretty excited about next week's episode. It looks interesting....and hot! Here's a preview! 

See you next week...and thanks for reading! -Amy

Adventures in Babysitting

It's the beginning of new episodes after hiatus, so you know we had to have a recap at the beginning of the show. And, yay, we had some classic rock with REO Speedwagon's "Riding the Storm Out." We were reminded about saying bye-bye to Cass (sniffle), the nasty leviathans, and Bobby's final moment of writing down the mysterious numbers, saying, "Idjits," then dying (sniffle, sniffle).

When we launch into this episode, we see a guy in a diner watching out the window. Seriously, this dude (the actor, Ian Tracey) has been on everything I watch lately. Since he played bad guys on Sanctuary and Hell on Wheels, it was nice to see him play one of the good guys. He follows a woman out of the diner/truck stop, but she disappears between two semi trucks. When he turns back around, the waitress he'd just been talking to turns out to be a little more than a waitress. She's got herself some sharp-ass teeth and she bites him. When he crumples to the ground, she says, "That's for the crappy tip." Moral of the story: always tip your waitress well.

Next we see the words "Week One" and Sam and Dean just sitting in a room staring at nothing. We know they're still in shock over Bobby's death (I hate typing those words, btw). Then it's Week Two, and they're look at the mysterious numbers and trying to figure out what they can be. Week Three, Dean has constructed a clue board and Sam comes in and asks if they should call "Bobby's people" to let them know about his passing. But neither wants to be the one to do it. Sam answers a call from a young girl who sounds scared. Her dad told her to call Bobby if anything happened to him, so when Sam can't produce Bobby she hangs up on him. But Sam tracks Chrissy down and soon realizes that her father is a hunter and he's gone missing. Sam says he'll find her father and leaves.

Meanwhile, Dean has gone to find super computer nerd Frank to see why it's taking him so long to get back to him about the numbers. Frank's cleaned out his house, but he shows up pointing a gun at Dean in case he's a leviathan. Dean says he's not, but Frank says that, sure, he's not. Neither is Dick Roman or Gwyneth Paltrow. To end the standoff, they each cut themselves to prove they blood red blood instead of black goo. Frank takes Dean to a stashed RV where he's set up his computers. He says that the five numbers Bobby wrote down are a dead end, but he figured since Bobby was dying he didn't have time to write down all the numbers. He created a probability program and figured out that it was actually six numbers and that they were coordinates to a field in Wisconsin owned by Dick Roman's company.

When Sam calls to check in, Dean tells him what is going on. When Sam expresses concern about Dean and Frank heading there, Dean says, "Relax. It's a field, not the Death Star." :) Dean and Frank (by the way, I think Frank is hilarious and a necessary comedic edition in the absence of Bobby and Cass) pretend to be line workers to stake out the field, and the sight of Dean trying to operate a cherry picker was funny. As soon as he gets the picker up though, Frank tells him to get back down because there are cameras all over the place on the Roman property. Instead of setting up their own surveillance, Frank hacks into Roman's cameras and sees a woman who works for Roman and a surveying crew. They're going to build something on the property, but what we don't know. Goofy Frank also goes serious long enough to tell Dean that he wasn't always like he is now, but that he has to find a way to get through each day since he was 27 and came home to find his wife and kids gutted on the floor. Damn, everyone on this show has lost someone in a horrible way. Even Chrissy saw her mother killed.

Back in Sam-land, he thinks he's tracking one vetala. But since he doesn't know they work in pairs, he gets attacked and dragged back to their lair too. When he wakes up, there are lots of dead guys lying around but Chrissy's dad, Lee, is still hanging on. When Dean figures out what has likely happened, he goes to Chrissy's to find out where Sam might have gone. But Chrissy has destroyed the map and notes so that Dean has to take her with him. Enter some smack talk between Dean and a 14-year-old girl, LOL. When they finally find and follow the vetala back to their lair, Dean cuffs Chrissy to the steering wheel of the car and goes in. Luckily for him, she had not one but two lock picks and rushes in as he's getting his butt kicked. She pretends to get captured by one of the vetala, but then she stabs and kills her then cuts Sam's bonds. This gives Sam and and Dean the chance to kill the other vetala.

When we see Lee recovering in a hospital, the boys urge him to quit hunting so Chrissy can have a normal life. Lee asks if they've ever known anyone to quit the hunting life. Dean says no, that they all end up dead first. When Chrissy runs out of the hospital after Dean, she says they're giving up hunting. She also tells Dean he's "kind of amusing for an old guy." LOL.

What did you think of the episode? What about Frank? What do you think Dick and his leviathans are going to build in that field?

Supernatural Season 1 Awards - Part 2

So yesterday I posted part 1 of the Supernatural Season 1 awards, as awarded by me, Kara and Tiny!  An indepth look at what makes Season 1 special to us. Well tonight, I present, part 2 where we get right into the nitty gritty of our favourite episodes, character moments and brother moments. So here it is, the final piece of the puzzle, part 2 of....The Supernatural Season 1 Awards!

Best Character Moment

KARA: The book ended moments. The Pilot and Devils Trap had mirrored scenes first it was Sam saying, “Killing this thing isn’t going to bring Mum back” and then it was Dean saying “Killing this thing isn’t going to bring Jess back.” Their reactions were the same. It just showed how both Sam and Dean had changed, how they both viewed what happened and what they were once willing to give up and what they were no longer willing to give up. 

AMY: When Dean finally stands up to John. He does it twice. The first time in Dead Man’s Blood when he tells John, “That’s a bunch of crap” when John says he’s trying to keep the boys safe by not allowing them to fight alongside him and the second time is when his dad takes him to task for not calling him when Sam started to have nightmares. I loved seeing Dean do this. I think being with Sam, Sam’s influence and being a big brother again, finally gave him the chutzpah he needed to do it. I love that Sam and his relationship with Sam had, by this stage, become more important to him that bowing down to his father. 

TINY: Dean in Something Wicked -- This was when we started to see Dean's true colour, we were slowly seeing his emotion and weight on his shoulders. He isn't just the smartass, womanizer, there is more about Dean, kudos to the writers and Jensen Ackles for bringing the awesome character to life. I love the flash back scenes in Something Wicked, we saw young Dean was given the responsibility to look after Sammy. The whole getting-approval-from-his-father aspect has been a recurring struggle for Dean throughout the show. I mentioned about Dean's Hero Syndrome before, Something Wicked definitely showed us how it all started. 

Biggest Foreshadowing Moment 

KARA: “I’m Sorry.” When Mary said that, man who would have guessed the magnitude of what she was really saying? That everything was partially her fault. 

AMY: For me, this is a toss up between Home and Faith. Home when the spirit of Mary says "I'm sorry" to Sam and we don’t find out until Season 4 that it was Mary who made the original deal with Azazel, which sealed Sam’s and her fate and set the whole damn thing in motion. Faith where Roy tells Dean he is a young man with an important purpose, a job to do and we don’t find out until season five that Dean is the sword of the Archangel Michael. Or then again it could be Devil’s Trap when the YED tells Sam he’s special and he has plans for him and the other children like him. It’s all pretty good stuff. Really hard to pick. 

TINY: In Home, when Mary said to Sam, "I am sorry." Eric Kripke is a genius! It’s simple amazing how three words can tie everything together! 

Most Underrated Episode 

KARA: The Benders -- That episode freaks the hell out of me. But that’s not why I think it’s underrated. People often forget about this episode, its got humans as the bad guys, but it shows that monsters don’t just come from Hell.

Honourable mention: Nightmare-- Dudes this whole episode set up the season two plot of ‘The special children’ and also hinted (through Johns reaction in Salvation) that John seems to know what Yellow Eyes had planned.

Honourable mention take two: Faith-- The reason why I didn’t say it was the Most Underrated Episode is because I believe in the confines of the season there is an excuse to say there is a reason that it is underrated, but in the bigger view of series Faith being unjustly underrated. 

AMY: People put a lot of crap on Bugs but I don’t think it’s that horrible. It’s got some good moments. There’s some nice conflict between the brothers, where we see their different views on their dad and how they were raised and then of course there’s Dean in the steam shower with a towel on his head….hmmm? I think Route 666 with the stupid racist truck concept is way worse. Anyhoooo… Most underrated? I always really enjoy The Benders. I’m not sure if it’s underrated, but it’s one that you don’t often hear people talking about. I love how Dean is so desperate in his search for Sam and like I said earlier, I enjoy deputy Hudak. I love that the monsters turn out to be humans, reinforcing that humans can be just as monstrous as the things of our worst nightmares. I love how kick-ass Sammy is when he finally gets out of the cage and I totally love Sam and Dean’s little banter at the end and how Sam teases his big brother…. DEAN: Never do that again. SAM: Do what? DEAN: Go missin’ like that. SAM: You were worried about me. DEAN: All I’m sayin’ is, you vanish like that again, I’m not lookin’ for ya. SAM: Sure, you won’t.  Nawwww! Adorable. 

TINY: Something Wicked. I am a lover of all Winchester family episodes such as Home, In the Beginning and The Song Remains the Same. I think Something Wicked isn't getting the love it should. It has a lot of great stuff that helped developing characters, the brother relationship and the mythos of the show. 

Favourite Sam and Dean Moment 

KARA: This is going to sound like a weird one. But in Devils Trap where Sam and Dean go to save John and Dean makes the off the hand comment about how Dean used to always want to be a fire fighter. In that one moment I believe Sam saw Dean in a new light, that he didn’t see Dean as just an extension of John, but that Dean was like him. Dean wanted the normal life, but he chose to stay with John. I donno maybe I am just looking too much into a throwaway line. I blame the amazing acting. 

AMY: I’m going to cop out here and say the whole of Something Wicked. Every moment in this episode whether in the present or in the past reveals something about the brother’s relationship. We see so much of what makes Sam and Dean, Sam and Dean. We see so much of why Dean is how he is with Sam. We understand them better because we see what they went through as kids. It’s no longer an abstract concept, and Dean finally get’s to rescue Sam from the creature he failed in killing when they were children. The whole thing is a great big wonderful dollop of Sam and Dean brotherness from whoa to go.

Honourable Mention: Home. When Dean tells Sam he carried him from the house on that fateful night and Sam says, “You did?” There’s just something so beautiful, innocent and intimate about that moment between them. I don’t know; it just grabs my heart every single time. 

TINY: In Devil's Trap, when YEDJohn told Sam to give him the Colt but Dean told Sam that he wasn't their father. Sam chose to trust Dean. As much as John Winchester was their father, Dean was more a father figure to Sam than John ever was. Sam looked up to his big brother the most. Sam trusted Dean more than anyone. This moment really showed how close the brothers were. 

Favourite Comedic Moment in an Episode 

KARA: Can I just say Hell House? That whole episode was full of comedic moments, but gotta love the itching powder. 

AMY: Cassie’s acting in Route 666? You’ve got to admit, it’s hilarious! Ok, ok. I always giggle at Dean humming Metallica on the doomed plane in Phantom Traveller. I also like Sam’s very loud radio prank on Dean in Hell House. I love both Sam and Dean’s reactions to that one. But I don’t think of Season 1 as being very comedic. There are plenty of snappy lines, but outside of Hell House, there really isn’t much big comedy. 

TINY: In Phantom Traveller, when revealed Dean was afraid of flying. He was so scared he was humming Metallica during the flight! What I really love about this is that it was a well thought-out detail that tied up Dean, the Impala and the style of the show. Not only it was hilarious, it also explained why Dean drove everywhere and it further supported the fact Supernatural was like a road movie, the brothers travelled in the Impala across the country week in week out, and sometimes they were on the run from the authorities. Air travel was too luxury for them and did not fit into the mythos of the show.

Supernatural really gave Jensen and Jared numerous opportunities to shine as actors. Moments like this really showed their chemistry and comedic side. 

Biggest Unanswered Question 

KARA: This is going to sound petty, but season one was the season of ‘We will see you soon’s and then we never see that character ever again. So my biggest unanswered question is what the hell happened to Missouri?

But really, How much did John actually know? 

AMY: Easy, why on earth would Cassie dump Dean? Ok, ok. I’d always wondered how Dean knew to come back for Sam in the Pilot. But just the other day I read that there was a scene before that scene, which was cut. In it Dean notices his watch has stopped and hears static on the radio and he heads back on a gut feeling. So I guess that’s no longer unanswered! Oh I know! Why do Dean’s eyes bleed in Bloody Mary? What was his secret where someone died? 

TINY: Why did Mary apologise to Sam in Home? -- The answer was finally given/ explained in multiple episodes in season four and five when the show revealed Mary made a deal with YED and it was never Mary's intention to raise her children as hunters. I love how Mary was never really there, but she was the missing puzzle of the whole picture. 

Favourite Episode 

KARA: This is a hard one, season one was full of really strong stand alone episodes. I really enjoy Dead Man’s Blood and Devils Trap, but I think I will say Home. Home is just a beautifully written and acted episode. We saw just how that one night effected Dean with his reluctance to go back. We heard about the steps John went through between the death of Mary and then going out killing every supernatural monster he could find. We saw the first signs of Sam’s psychic powers. We also saw that John was very much alive and keeping away from his boys.

That John Winchester, I could hit him with a spoon. 

AMY: Faith, as you’ve probably guessed! I think Faith is an incredibly important episode. It establishes another world beyond the ghosts, monsters and demons by introducing the concept of the Reaper, which essentially introduces the concept of an afterlife and a world beyond which the boys had previously dealt with. It also poses the question if there’s a Reaper and an afterlife, is there then a God? It was the first time we saw the boys face a life or death decision by being forced to choose one life over another. We hadn’t seen this kind of moral conundrum before. Previously, good and evil, live or die and been cut and dried, but not in Faith. It was the first time we saw how little Dean values his self. It was the first time we saw Sam step up and take on the role of big brother. It sets up later mythology by revealing Dean has an important purpose, a job to do. It’s the first time we see Dean as vulnerable as this and it’s the first time (and only time) we see him in a hoody....sorry, had to be said! It was also the first time we saw the notion of a binding spell, something that would be later used in the series by the Devil and by the Winchesters on poor old Death…some synergy here don’t you think? It’s beautifully shot. I love the grade on this episode. The colours are muted. It’s filmic. I adore the use of (Don’t Fear) The Reaper and the scene it accompanies. I love everything this episode stands for, so much of which the brother’s have to embrace later in the series. Even Eric Kripke loves this episode. He says in the Season One Companion; "It's when I first realised what the show was capable of. Here's this episode about: Is there a god? What's meant to be? And is there free will? And is your life worth the cost of someone else's life? It's a metaphysical and moral study of the boys' universe.” I think Faith is as close to perfect as this show gets and they managed to get there just 12 episodes in. Awesome. 

TINY: Home -- It is one of the most watched Supernatural episodes on my TV. It was second episode with all four Winchesters in it since the Pilot. It took the audience and Dean and Sam back to the origin of the story -- Lawrence, Kansas. It has one of the biggest foreshadowing moments in the history of the show. It was the first time Sam found out it was Dean who carried him out of the house during the fire. It was the first time Sam met Mary. It has one of the very few scenes where Dean and Sam interacted with their mother, and she wasn't possessed or an evil clone. John's "I can't see my children until I find out about the truth" really got us all hooked about the family past, the story and the evil that killed Mary. Just when you thought it was just a random evil-killing-mum story, Supernatural showed us beyond the obvious, the mythos got stronger and stronger throughout the series. To me, it all began with Home. 

The Nostalgia 

KARA: The Nostalgia. To explain this I feel like I should explain how I first started watching Supernatural. I had just finished high school and I was going on schoolies (those who don’t know what schoolies is... look it up) Anyway I was nursing a hangover, which is really what the mornings during schoolies is for. My friend, which I was sharing the house with brought the first two seasons of Supernatural and was shocked when I told her I hadn’t seen it before. We powered through the first disk and since then I had been hooked.

But back to the Nostalgia. Bloody Mary will always hold a special place with me. It was the episode that my whole house sat around the small TV and watched it while eating burnt barbeque meal from the night before. And then came that scene when Mary came out of the mirror everyone was drawn in. It was awesome. 

AMY: Wow, can I say the whole of the season? There’s definitely a different vibe to season one, but that goes without saying. It was the beginning and for a lot of us, it’s where we fell in love with Supernatural and fell in love with Sam and Dean Winchester. The whole of the Pilot and Wendigo make me nostalgic, so many great lines, so many wonderful brother moments. Then there’s Dean allowing Sam time with the girls in Hookmanand Provenance. Looking out for his little brother. Then there’s Sam telling Dean in Something Wicked that Dean was just a kid and that he should forgive himself. Looking out for his big brother. There’s an innocence to Sam and Dean’s relationship in season one, in the way they banter and take care of each other. It’s not that they don’t love and look out for each other now, it’s just now they do it so vehemently and with such intensity it has sort of transcended love! Back in season one, it seemed all so simple; their relationship was simple, or at least as simple as the Winchester’s relationship can ever be. So I guess for me, it’s Sam and Dean’s relationship that smacks of nostalgia. As much as I love and adore the later seasons with the rich mythology, as much as I love and adore how deep and complex the brothers have become, I often find myself pining for just a little of who Sam and Dean were to each other back in season one, before God, the Devil, the Demons and the Angels screwed it all up for them. 

TINY: Home -- This will always be the one episode I talk about when referring to the core theme, season one and Supernatural as a series. This is one of my ALL-TIME favourite episodes. Home is the reason I became a superfan and the reason I am in love with Supernatural.

THE END!

So that's it! Part 2 of the Supernatural Season 1 Awards. If you missed part 1 it's here. I really hope you enjoyed it, that it made you think about how wonderful this show is, how wonderful the writing is, how wonderful the brothers are and all the characters that proliferate their Universe. Maybe it even made you want to go back and rewatch the series from the beginning. I'd love to hear what you thought!

Thanks to my buddies Tiny and Kara. You ladies are AWE-SOME!
And special thanks to Supernatural Wiki for being the amazing reference source it is.

I'll see you next time for my review of "Adventures In Babysitting."
Thanks for reading! -Amy