To be fair, it was fairly evident from the start of Buffy that some sort of benevolent higher power was sending her the prophetic dreams, and I took the resolution of "I Only Have Eyes for You" to mean that both Grace's and James' souls had finally found peace.

Are you equating heaven with peace? There are heavens in Buffy, but I thought the resolution of IOHEFY could also be about release...just plain release.

But, yeah, some power or the other was working with Buffy to fight evil--question is, if the Slayer is the creation of the Watchers back in the day, how did they make her have prophetic dreams? Did they build in a connection to TPTB?

Which is totally off-topic, but there you go.

Because infinitemonkeys on LJ had said that it was cheesy and bad. Huh. Maybe I'll ahem an episode just to see.

Oh, you know, it's cheesy in the way that due South was cheesy. That it's cheesy doesn't endear it to me any less. I don't know, it's entertaining in a cheetos way, and it's not painful to watch like Torchwood is for me. The cast is pretty and Marian is a remarkably engaging female character, and the fellow who plays the Sherriff is quite deliciously wicked. The costumers are also lovely, if "modern" in an entirely unauthentic, but still lovely, way. I like it.

Speaking of Torchwood, last night's episode was just. I want Gwen to freaking nut up and stop being lame. I'd also appreciate if Jack would give all of his team rape whistles, because obviously they are incapable of protecting themselves. Was it really necessary to have Jack sweep in and save the day and shoot every. single. baddie. and the rest of the crew do jack shit?

I also still don't quite get whether it was the rift that made the people crazy--which seems unlikely given that the crazies apparently did this every ten years--or they were just fucked up in group-think on their own. Were they cannibals? Were they serial killers? What's going on there? The resolution sucked. I also didn't like the allusions they made to rural Welsh folk, because it ties in to a lot of residual cultural oppression overall.

And was it really necessary for the annoyingly random Owen/Gwen? I mean, it's bad enough that every character in the show has snogged every other character, but I haven't wanted two people to not have sex that viscerally since Meredith and George on Grey's Anatomy. And while I'm not going to sneeze at next week's lesbianism, at this point all this mess feels gratuitous, and should have been better left to the fanfic. I can't believe I want a show to be *less* sexualised, but that's where I am.

Oh, and askye, I totally caught that Tosh was jealous. Which also annoys me.

I thought the Torchwood thing was basically sort of a cross between Jeepers Creepers and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." I figured out pretty quick that at least some of the humans were in on it, and I had a good feeling there was no alien influence.

The Gwen/Owen thing is problematic, at least for me, because the actor who plays him is really very good. He's so charismatic, and I thought the two of them had great chemistry. I think we're going to have to resign ourselves to saying "I wish they'd built up to that more" a lot with this show.

When it was mentioned that their framework included Hell, I considered it an additional piece of information that fleshed out what I already knew. I have no problem with it.

My take: except for the details of Marble Eyes the demon, the things that are hunted on Supernatural have been pretty mundane: human-mayhem; dead person-mayhem; combination of the two. For values of "mayhem" that are depraved or antisocial or insane, but not black-hat, twirly-mustache, hand-drywashing kind of Evil.

This leads me to certain basic story expectations. (Stage 1)

Add on Marble Eyes and his related mayhem: this graduates us to a considerably more potent and "mine is an evil laugh" Evil, especially as we learn facts about possession, exorcism, self-protection.

Okay, we'd known Marble Eyes was a dangling plot thread from the start; that's a legitimate expansion of the universe. (Stage 2)

Last week on the show we learned that Evil has a newsletter, and presumably a water-cooler and a break room and somebody who steals other people's lunches. Evil gossips one to the next, and Marble Eyes is not the exception in power-terms but the rule. There is a whole class of demons way above and beyond anything the Winchesters have demonstrated competence to handle. And, oh by the way, Hell is a real place where people can be damned to, or anyway they can end up there via unnatural means. Call this Stage 3.

From Stages 1 to 2, I don't have a problem, really. It's development/expansion of the universe in a way I can handle. From Stages 2 to 3, I suddenly need a lot more metatext to assimilate that universe into the show I've been watching these several months. I need to know on what basis humans end up in Hell; whether they are judged or can only end up there if they're really crappy at bargaining; whether the ones that don't end up in Hell are in Heaven, or someplace else; whether the Evil breakroom has a magical counterpart in Good.

In short, I thought I had enough cues to tell me what kind of universe I was dealing with, up through Stage 2. Or anyway, I knew what to expect out of the show. At Stage 3, I no longer know what kind of universe it is, and that bugs me.

This is what ita is describing above.

Re: Torchwood, I want to like Gwen more than I'm actually liking Gwen. I am un-wild about Gwen/Owen, because Rhys is made of awesome and there wasn't enough lead-up. I want to see Tosh escape from more cells. Ianto in jeans for the win!

And I can't help but think that Jack could use some competent American muscle on that team, of the Dean "you people suck at this job" Winchester variety. He earns his emo, and he'd say thank you if rescued by a good-looking man with a shotgun.

Er. But I might be biased in favor of the Dean.

Other Supernatural watchers--please chime in.

Is the existence of Hell too much of an expansion of their universe for you to deal with hearing about it in such a casual and undetailed way?

I agree with Dana on Torchwood, it felt a bit like something Neil Marshall would have done, although with more plotholes and a more rushed development. No aliens was a good thing, they're not perfect at this and would get involved with things that they just assume is their business. I just wished they would have save the strange village story and done a "Shadow over Innsmouth" episode -- but that might just be me.

Jack saving the day, not a problem. John Barrowman could do a special brushing his teeth-episode and I wouldn't complain. That his sidekicks still are a heap of useless human waste is another matter, it's growing old fast and it's beginning to irk me a bit too much.

But the Gwen/Owen subplot was pretty bad because all they've done before was show how they bickered. And that's not really enough yet to go into full snogging mode with them. Sure, I can see why based on how well the actors manage to get the characters to interact but not yet storywise. (Thankfully they avoided Gwen/Jack.)

Damn, ita. Nobody else has an opinion, just us two.

Is the existence of Hell too much of an expansion of their universe for you to deal with hearing about it in such a casual and undetailed way?

No, because it follows the way the season's been when it comes to reveals, so revealing it that way seems like the whole point. (See also: the expansion of the universe with the introduction of the Roadhouse.) Sam and Dean are learning that, yeah, they know a little about a lot, but it's a lot more little than they thought it was, and the dangerous cuts both ways.