While I'm looking forward to next week's ep, I feel like we burned through a lot of awesome characters this week with very little emotional payoff. amyth says, and I agree, that Sera Gamble needs a good sitdown with some ME alums, or to be strapped to a comfy chair and shown all of Buffy s3. Madam, I know have posted with Tim Minear, and you are no Tim Minear. She's got talent, she just needs to not take the lazy, cheap way out.

I have a bit of a hard time buying Jake's actions... he may be a badass but he doesn't know anything about demons, so why would he trust the YED and betray a fellow solider? So much for 'leave no man behind.'

Logic holes big enough to drive the Metallicar through. Oy. I thought we might get Graduation Day or Chosen, but it's looking more like... Judgment? Who knows.

Ellen - no corpse, no dead. I hope that Ash is still alive, too, but I'm not counting on it.

smonster is me. Well, if I was younger, and stuff. But her words, yes, and amyth's, are mine.

we burned through a lot of awesome characters this week with very little emotional payoff.

So much.

I'm starting to doubt Jake's whole story, Ava lied and Jake could be lying about everything too.

ita, I was on guard for the race thing when Jake was introduced, but it didn't end up pinging me. I am not aware of betrayal as a racist trope.

The lesbian thing did. She's the only queer person we've seen, her touch literally killed her girlfriend, and she was schmuckbait.

Here's the thing: day players die on SPN, right? So if you 'boost the stats' with your day players, they aren't going to be around very long. To me it's a result of the maleness/whiteness of the admittedly small core SPN cast, which is the main problem. SPN also does not share Buffy's stated goal of subverting horror movie tropes; it often glories in them. So I'm not surprised that this stuff is coming up.

Recurring women on SPN:

• Ellen - probably not dead
• Ava - evil(ish), dead
• Jo - MIA - have we seen the last of her now that Kripke heard the agonzied wails of fangirls everywhere and nixed the romantic attraction? Or will she reappear in the finale?

Recurring people of color:

• Missouri - MIA
• Henrikson - I'm guessing we'll see him next week
• Gordon - ditto

But how would Ava have survived there for five months, on her own? I get her killing any others who showed up, but she is still human -- what the hell did she eat?

There's nothing to say she didn't get magically delivered meals every day. We weren't there long enough to see how it worked. However, she also appears to have gotten magically delivered showers and clean clothes.

I am not aware of betrayal as a racist trope.

Me neither.

However, she also appears to have gotten magically delivered showers and clean clothes.

She can control demons. She's probably had them build a Playboy Mansion for her just over that next rise.

I'm not convinced Ash is (a) dead or (b) on the side of the angels or (c) on the side of the Winchesters; I always suspected him as Gordon's source. Then again, I don't see the point in luring Dean to the Roadhouse and then ... not doing anything to him there. It could delay the search for Sam, I guess, but it's not like the search for Sam was really going anywhere.

Though Dean's faith that his brother had to be somewhere in the continental US was kind of touching.

Interview with Dylan Neal of Blood Ties.

If Magazine has an interview with EJO that says that season 4 is the last one for BSG.

BTW, I think that the YED's army is an army of the dead. Like the Cauldron Born in the Chronicles of Prydain - possibly more powerful and active than zombies. All the dead kids with demonic powers.

You've never heard, "You can't trust those...fillinblanks" voiced?

Maybe it's just me.

I liked Jake as a character and thought he had potential. I just feel like it wasn't fleshed out enough for me to get anything beyond superstrong, soldier, stabby. Which is basically the structure of most television minority portrayal. Can't generally have them as main characters, so they get sparsely characterized, and all that's left is the Related To My Race issues.

With Ava, we knew her before, we had a relationship with her. Her betrayal was much worse, of course, but we have a more fleshed out character to deal with.

Naturally we have redshirts and oneoff characters, so not everyone can get depth of backstory.