SPNews

On the Box's Chris Philpott posted half of his interview with Mark Sheppard where the wily demon talks about pursuing the role of Crowley because of Kim Manner. Definitely worth a read, no spoilers. I'll link the 2nd half when it's posted.

And then I'm posting this because I happened upon it and it made me giggle, so I thought I'd give you a smile today. Jared is such a crack-up when he goofs on his sexy charm.

"Season 7, Time for a Wedding!"

I love when the writers get all cheeky and poke fun at industry conventions! I wonder what else they'll decide is supposed to be included in season 7.

We start with "Then" and with so much focus on Becky, I'm guessing she's the one who will marry Sam. Yeah, despite my attempts to remain unspoiled, I knew Sam was the one getting married. :(

We're in Las Vegas, with Dean talking up a hot waitress. He's actually pretty relaxed and into the flirtation, which is nice to see. But this opening talk confuses the heck out of me. Since when do they have a sacred annual pilgrimage to Vegas? It took me a long time to get into the flow of the story after that.

Dean's main problem, coaxed out of him by the waitress (stripper?), is actually pretty great. His brother is batshit nuts, but the shit's not hitting the fan. He's all reasonable and stuff, though he's worried about Sam being out camping by himself. She says "we all need to face ourselves sometime," not referring to Sam, and when we get to the end of the episode, that idea is revisited. Nice circle there. But I'll come back to that.

So Sam texts Dean to come down the street, and wear his Fed suit. Hey, I recognize this church! It was the one where Sam defeated Samhain in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester." Pretty sure it was also the entry to the tombs in "Houses of the Holy," too. You know you're obsessed when you recognize repurposed locations. :)

So Dean comes in packing, but Sam assures him he doesn't need the pistol. Dean asks what their pretext is (I love when they use the lingo, though I'm not sure we've heard this one since "Tall Tales"). What are they hunting, a siren?

No. Sam's in love, and he's getting married.

Enter the creepy bride, with the thickest veil this side of the Boar's Head (<---Harry Potter reference). Dean's reaction, to both Sam's announcement and to his bride, is priceless. I LOVE when Jensen gets to do comedy! Beautiful black-and-white wedding cake that explodes into the title shot. That was AWESOME. Dean's still trying to figure this out. Sam's explanation? "We met, we ate..." Ah-HA. She had to do something to him, right? A spell or potion, maybe? But despite Sam being a bit mild and oddly unquestioning, he seems fine. Very natural with Becky, who of course is thrilled beyond belief. She doesn't care about the average life span of his hookups—eyes wide open—and is even paying for the wedding. "Really?! SuperFan99?!"

Sam and Becky leave for her home in Delaware. Dean calls Bobby but has to leave a message, as Bobby's got his hands full with a nest in Oregon. I love that Bobby's presence is so strong, even when he's not on screen.

Sam and Becky pull into a restaurant parking lot. Sam says they just ate, and for a moment I think Becky must be a monster of some sort who needs lots of calories, but no, it all becomes clear when she walks in to the site of her high school reunion, with the requisite mean girl handling the planning. Becky shows off Sam, then introduces him to her friend Guy, who has an interesting reaction to Sam. I assumed on first watch that he was part of Becky's plan, and he is, but his surprise is not just that it worked, as we later find out.

"Guy's a really good friend. We met in the erotic horror section at the Novel Hovel..."

Guy's an event planner, and reunion season is very busy for him, but Becky runs after him to get some silver-clad glass bottle and makes reference to him being Wiccan. Dean drives up as they drive away. He doesn't follow, but goes inside and pulls out Dad's journal, presumably to do research (though I'd think he has that thing memorized by now) or take notes (maybe it's his own journal now). He's immediately distracted by a newspaper story about some guy's good fortune and immediate tragedy.

Sam's sitting at a lovely dinner (rotisserie chicken from the grocery store) and Becky comes out in sexy lingerie. Anyone else reminded of "Wishful Thinking" at this point? Or, like, for the full 11 minutes up to this point? But Sam gets vision-like headaches and comes painfully to reality, with no clue how he got there, and I can't help wondering why I thought he seemed so normal. Now he's really Sam, for a few crucial seconds. Becky gives him the potion, and he's back to being in "love" with her. Poor Sam.

Cut to a guy hitting balls on a baseball field, and another guy using mojo of some sort (his hand movements remind me of Castiel, but I'm thinking more like demon or witch). Baseball to the face, requisite blood splatter, ewwwww.

Dean, being supportive, brings Sam a waffle iron. Sam's a little standoffish but displays no animosity. He's just...I don't know, kind of empty? Dean brings up the job in town. Baseball guy just got called up to the majors. Becky says their first thought was crossroads demon, but there's the 10-year time frame. Dean's totally flummoxed that Sam and Becky are working the case together. He's pissed at Becky, but even when Sam says "that's my wife you're talking about," there's no heat. He's talking the talk, but there's no real emotion behind it.

Dean says people who get their dreams come true bite it pretty quick. Sam says maybe what's bothering Dean is that Sam doesn't need him anymore. Ouch. Dean leaves, and tells Bobby he doesn't want another hunter, but since Bobby's all the way across the country (sorry, Dean, he's not close to his magic South Dakota wormhole), he's going to hook Dean up with someone local.

Sam catches Becky writing in her journal (swirly "Sam loves Becky" crap) and sniffing the presumably scented ink. When he licks his thumb and rubs the ink off her nose, there is nothing romantic about it. Except to her. He's found another dream-achiever...and Becky's journal. But despite her hilarious panic, he thinks it's beautiful and hugs the book. He's so adorable!

Dean goes back to the restaurant to meet the hunter, but the burly guy he approaches first isn't who he's looking for. It's the scrawny guy in the corner (DJ Qualls!), who says, "I thought you'd be taller." Bobby told him Dean would be all surly and premenstrual working with him, but he's cool with it. So do you think he'll go the way of Tamara, a hunter never seen again, or Rufus, recurring until he dies?

Dean (in a sweater vest?!) and his new partner cross paths with Sam and Becky at the CEO's office. Dean plays hard-hitting journalist very well, while Garth cuts right to the chase and hits the guy with "nefarious means" questions about black magic and hoodoo. Between the two of them, they get that the guy didn't want the job. But his bitchy wife obviously did want it. Dean tries to get the story from her, but she blows them off.

"Why do people keep thinking I'm threatening them?"
"Because it sounded exactly like a threat, dude."

Sam's trying to work the case while Becky tweets about going on a romantic getaway. The elixir wears off again, but it leaked in Becky's purse, and she can't stop Sam from reverting.

Dean saves the CEO's wife, whose story makes it sound like a demon deal. But the timeline is whack. Garth shows his hunter chops and lays out the plan. They'll stow the wife with his cousin, a tri-racial paraplegic sniper, while they go after the demon.

Becky makes a desperation call to Guy, Sam is in pain and asks Becky what's going on, and when he says he's calling Dean, she knocks him out with a waffle iron.

Sam wakes up tied to a bed in a nice cabin.

Tied. To a bed.

...

...

Okay, I'm back. Sam's fully himself, and what a friggin' relief! Becky tests him for concussion symptoms, says he's pantsless because they're very constricting, but don't worry, she didn't do anything weird. Guy calls her back on her computer, and she wants the elixir. She says the stuff is wearing off faster and faster and whines that they haven't even consummated their marriage. Guy says to meet him in an hour, and Sam heard everything. He's pissed, while Becky is full of justification. Sam knows right away that Guy is the one killing everyone, and says Becky is on his list. Crazy woman. She refuses to untie him, stuffs a rag in his mouth, and calls "love you too!" as she runs off for more love potion.

I know she's pathetic and doing something awful here, but I really like Becky!

But it turns out Sam was right. Guy wants payment now, and reveals his red eyes. Reunions give him tons of clients, and he admits (kind of) that he's responsible for the deaths. He says he wasn't thrilled to see her new hubby was Sam Freakin' Winchester, but he'll give her a special deal. Twenty-five years—unprecedented—with Sam for her soul and her promise not to tell the Winchesters any of it.

The timeline gets a little murky for me from this point. She wants a drink, but Guy hands over the potion, then she goes back to the house and talks to Sam, then she's drinking at the end of the reunion. I think the editing could have been tidied up a little.

Dean and Garth go to Becky's apartment and find enough clues to send them to the lake house (Loon Lake, nice pun :) ). Becky is there lamenting that her plan to show off Sam—he's tall and nice, and they'd think she was happy—isn't going according to plan. She does a short rundown of her life and fondles the bottle of elixir. Sam tells her she's better than this, she says she's not so sure, and now we're back at the restaurant after the reunion. She tells Guy she's in.

Wow. I can't believe we still have 20 minutes to go. This episode was actually shorter than normal, but seemed to go on for a long time.

Becky gets close enough to the demon to seal the deal, but instead drops a lighter on a devil's trap made from blueberry vodka. Sam, Dean, and Garth show up, so apparently they made it to the lake house. Guy asks for Dean's autograph, Dean pulls out the demon-killing knife. Guy claims to be an innovator instead of a cheater, using an "intern" to arrange accidents and collect early on the souls. Intern flings all three hunters across the room. He's pretty powerful. Fights ensue, Garth gets knocked out, Sam and Dean are getting throttled, season 1 style. Becky saves Sam with a knife through the intern's torso (that knife isn't that long!) and Sam tosses it to Dean, who turns it on Guy.

Guy says "oh crap" and Dean thinks it's because of him, but then Crowley appears. Oh, crap. But Crowley isn't too happy with Guy's stupidity. The "intern" ratted him out. Crowley's pissed at the damage to their credibility.

"There's a reason we don't call our chits in early. Consumer confidence. This isn't Wall Street, this is Hell! We have a little something called integrity."

Crowley makes a deal to cancel all Guy's deals (15 of them) and take Guy from Dean. Sam's suspicious, and Crowley points out that demons have left Sam and Dean alone while they're dealing with the Leviathans.

"You met that dick, yeah? Smuggest tub of goo since Mussolini. I hate the bastards. Squash them all. Please. I'll stay clear."

His "done. and done." when he cancels the deals reminds me of Ash. *sniff*

Man, I love Crowley.

Sam, with absolutely no sympathy for Becky, gets an annulment and says she'll probably never see him again. But he does take pity and tells her she's not a loser, to just do her thing, whatever that is, and the right guy will find her. Then Garth gets all crushy on her, but Dean squashes that pretty quick.

We have the goodbye scene, when Dean tells Garth he doesn't suck. "Thank you, man. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me." I like Garth. I hope we see him again.

Sam says he does need Dean watching his back, but Dean admits Sam's a grown up and doesn't need him any more.

"It's still a Denver scramble up here, I just know my way around the plate now."

Sam says it's about time Dean gets to just look out for himself, but Dean doesn't look too thrilled about that. This is where we're supposed to reflect back on the waitress (stripper?) saying he needed to face himself. Come on, Dean, you can do it. You're a helluva guy, you know.

Final verdict: This wasn't my favorite episode, but I really liked the tone and the characters, and I have a feeling this will be one of my favorites to rewatch. It's always nice to have a light episode among all the heavy, dark ones.

What did you think?

"Slash Fiction" Recap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Man Who Would Be King

Then

We see clips from Sam going into the cage, Castiel telling Dean that Sam's soul is missing, the revelation about Cas creating more souls for the war in Heaven through negating the sinking of the Titanic, Eve telling the boys she wants Crowley, and Crowley referring to having to clean up Cas's messes.

Now

Cas is sitting outside saying he's been around a long time and seen many things -- when the first fish crawled out of the ooze, the Tower of Babel ("all 37 feet of it, which I guess was impressive at the time. But come on, dry dung can only be stacked so high."), Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Sodom and Gomorrah. And he also remembers the most remarkable things, remarkable because they never came to pass, prevented by "two boys, an old drunk and one fallen angel." Of that latter grand story, "We ripped up the ending, and the rules, and destiny, leaving nothing but freedom and choice, which is all well and good except what if I made the wrong choice? How am I supposed to know? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you my story. Let me tell you everything."

Next we see Dean driving down the road, and Castiel pops into the passenger seat to "check in." Both tell the other they haven't seen anything of "Satan Jr.", aka Crowley. It's painfully obvious that Cas is lying, and it's bothering Dean. But Dean's lying too. Poof, and Cas disappears. He shows up at some gruesome lab where Crowley is doing an autopsy on Eve with a side of torture to another monstery schmuck. Cas refers to Crowley saying Eve could open the door to Purgatory, and Crowley says that he believes she could have if she was still alive.

Crowley: "Your best change to get over the rainbow and the Winchesters killed her."

Crowley tells Cas that he's distracted and that makes Crowley nervous. Cas responds by saying he's holding up his end of their deal, but Crowley isn't happy Cas is still hanging with the Winchester boys.

"The stench of that Impala is all over your overcoat, angel."

Next we're back with Cas, telling his story. "We'd stopped Armageddon, but at a terrible cost." He reveals he's the one who brought Sam back from Hell and says he should have recognized the fact that he hadn't brought all of Sam back as a warning.

Crowley asks Cas to kill Sam and Dean or he'll do it. Cas tells him no and not to worry about them. Crowley begins listing all the people who didn't worry about the boys and died because of it -- Lucifer, Michael, Lilith, Alastair, Azazel.

Castiel: "Just find Purgatory. If you don't, we will both die again and again until the end of time. The Winchesters won't get to you."

When Dean reaches Bobby's, Sam and Bobby are questioning a monster named Red who's been hunting things for Crowley. They want to know where Crowley is, and Red isn't being cooperative. Dean tells Bobby and Sam about Cas popping in and how he fed him a line about being on some "crap monster hunt." They all hate the idea of Cas being in with Crowley, but they're being careful in case he is. Unknown to them, Castiel is in the room listening to their conversation about the fact that maybe he's gone dark side. Red finally reveals that he's never met Crowley, that he deals with The Dispatcher, a demon named Ellwsorth. Cas says that if there's a demon counterpart to Bobby Singer, Ellsworth would be it.

Knowing that Ellsworth and his demons would lead the Winchesters to Crowley, who'd tear their hearts out, Cas takes out Ellsworth and two other demons.

Cas: "I did it to protect the boys, or myself. I don't know anymore."

The boys and Bobby arrive at Ellsworth's place to find it empty. Cas laments the lies, the hiding and the sweeping away of evidence. "My motives used to be so pure." After supposedly saving Sam, Cas returned to Heaven. He says that there isn't one Heaven, that each soul creates its own paradise. He tells the angels they are free to choose what they want to do now. But he says those first weeks back were difficult. "Explaining freedom to angels is a lot like teaching poetry to fish." When he went to see Raphael, he asks whose Heaven he's in and Raphael says it's Ken Lay's and he's borrowing it. Raphael says that Castiel and all the angels will have to kneel to him, that he's going to free Lucifer and Michael and get the apocalypse back on the road.

Sam, Dean and Bobby try to call Cas for help, but he doesn't go to them because they have questions he doesn't want to answer. Then some demons show up and say, "Crowley says, 'Hi'." Cas shows up and smites the demons because the Winchesters and Bobby "are my friends. For a brief moment, I was me again." As they're talking, he slips up and reveals he's lying when he refers to going to the dark side, something the other three had mentioned when they didn't know he was there.

Castiel says that Raphael is stronger than him and he'd never stand a chance in a straight fight, so he went to Dean for help. Only when he thought about all Dean had sacrificed, he couldn't do it. That's when Crowley showed up wanting to make a deal.

"I'm an angel, you ass. I don't have a soul to sell."

Crowley shows Cas how he's redone hell. Everyone there is having to stand in an endless line, and when they get to the front they just come back to the end again. Crowley proposes an alliance in which each of them will get half the souls in Purgatory for his own use -- Cas for a civil war in Heaven, and Crowley to shore up his position as the king of Hell. He offers to float Cas a loan of 50,000 souls from the pit. Prideful, Cas accepts the deal and declares war on Raphael so he can avoid the apocalypse.

Back to the present, Bobby and the boys call Cas and when he arrives they trap him in the ring of fire and force him to tell the truth. Honestly, at this point I feel sorry for Cas because he seems like an angel who was in between a rock and a hard place. He might have made the wrong choices, but he had good intentions. But we all know what road is paved with good intentions. Dean tells him that he should have come to them for help.

Crowley shows up, and Cas tells Sam, Dean and Bobby to run, which they do. Crowley asks Cas what he's willing to do. Cas goes to Dean to try to explain, and Dean tells Cas that he's like a brother to him and asks him to stop this quest for Purgatory with Crowley. And if he doesn't, Dean says he'll do whatever he has to in order to stop him. Cas says he's sorry and disappears. Then we're back to Cas praying to God for a sign that he's on the right path. "Because if you don't, I'm going to do whatever I must." When no sign his offered, he drops his head.

Lingering Questions

So it's the first week of a long summer without any new Supernatural episodes. Thursday night feels...odd. But while I was reading a recent Entertainment Weekly special section on LOST and its upcoming series finale, when they mentioned the lingering questions everyone has about the show it made me start thinking about the same thing for Supernatural. So here are some of my lingering questions:

1. Of course, the first one is what Natalie explored on Wednesday: Who is Sam now? I'm not sure I have a theory yet. I was just so surprised to see him at the end of the episode.

2. Doesn't Crowley still have Bobby's soul? If Crowley's around next season, will he still be on the boys' side or start making trouble for them like demons do?

3. What will Castiel do in heaven if he goes back there? Will we see him? If so, how often? I hate to say it, but I'm not sure the show with just the boys will be as satisfying anymore. I like what these great secondary characters like Castiel, Bobby and Crowley bring to the show and bring out in the brothers.

4. Does the entire road to the apocalypse just start over? Someone said (Was it Zachariah?) that this apocalypse wasn't the first one, that the earth had been wiped clean before. Does that mean we could go back to the type of monster-of-the-week episodes we had in Season 1? I'm not sure we could do that without it maybe feeling like a letdown after the past couple of seasons, but I could totally be wrong.

5. Will we see Papa Winchester again?

6. Do we ever get a definitive answer about whether Chuck is God? I'm not sure I like the whole portrayal of God as a figure who sits back and just gets his amusement from moving humans, demons and angels around like cheese pieces. Plus, I really wanted Chuck to just be the goofball Prophet Chuck.

5. Are the spoilers right? Or are they just messing with us? The text is hidden on the rest of this item so those avoiding spoilers can continue to do so. I saw a spoiler that says next season starts several years in the future, with Dean living that apple pie life but perhaps being dissatisfied with it. If Sam is really Sam, is he living that kind of life too? What could they possibly be doing? Is Dean a car mechanic? Working at Bobby's junkyard? Is Sam an attorney? Do they have kids? Wives? And just how far into the first episode of the season is something light-flickeringly weird going to happen to launch them back into the hunting life? How will they feel about that? Resigned? Restored? Useful again?

What are your theories and thoughts about the above questions. What are your lingering questions about the series?

the Late News with Tanya Michaels

Spent weekend out of town with Trish and within the first five minutes of finding each other at the hotel, we were discussing the finale :-) But it's a new week and of course the big SPN cast/crew news for discussion is the influx of reports that Jensen got married! Which means both of the boys are officially taken. (So...is Misha single?)

Speaking of Misha, he does seem to have an Apocalypse theme going on, doesn't he? Somehow I missed previous reports of this SyFy production (the little green sidebar). Potential Misha fix while we're all waiting for the show to come back!

There is speculation about whether Misha and Jim (Beaver) will be back for Season 6, but most reports are positive that they will return for at least a couple of episodes.

And, while on the subject of recurring SPN characters, I was thrilled to learn last week that Mark Sheppard is coming to the 2010 DragonCon! Now, if only we could get Richard Speight Jr...