It occurs to me that Sam does have a way to get Dean out of hell once he's dead, but it would involve letting who knows how many demons and other spirits out of the gate.

Matt, I like that idea.

darlini, to quote, put a > before the bit you want to quote, with no space.

before the bit you want to quote

I remember Sam, in the pilot: I like your necklace. (Girl holds her silver pentagram pendant and says something about people believing it's a Satanist symbol). Actually, it's a protection against evil. The pentagram...

And then Dean cuts him off.

But the show--until this season--has been more or less inclusive of many pagan beliefs. Bobby goes to the books to find ancient rituals from a wide variety of beliefs, and John passed many of those on, as well. The unspoken message had been that using the power of any ritual to do harm is bad, while using the same power to prevent harm, or to combat it, is what hunters do. I don't know why, alla sudden this season, "pagans" are suddenly evil.

As far as the witches being women, I'm going to continue to sound like I'm defending the patriarchy, and maybe I am, but when it comes to American mythology, are there really a lot of warlocks running around? Are there lots of male covens? The mythos of a coven of female witches seems much more prevalent to me.

When you've specifically said that Old School Bad Witch Evil Bad Nasty is gender-neutral, but what you show is excessively feminized (spurned by a man revenge! get hubs a promotion! win the craft fair!) and exclusively female, and the language you use to smack talk 'em is as gendered as it was, it reads as very much anti-woman with a "but we don't mean it that way!" disclaimer smacked over the top.

IIRC, though it's been years since I read the things on a regular basis, the American horror genre has plenty of men doing Bad Black Magic Evil Things. There's in no way a female monopoly on it.

Conjure men and male hoodoo priests are pretty common in American folklore. And actually I can't recall any female malevolent witches from what little Native American lore I've encountered, although there are spiritual woman-figures like Blue Corn Woman, Selu, and White Buffalo Calf Woman.

No matter how research-happy Kripke says his writers are, though, it's clearly easier to use the cliches as shorthand. Probably because the majority of the people they envision as their audience is more familiar with Salem than they are with Native American folklore, right or wrong.

The fact that what the coven wanted was primarily feminine-oriented didn't bother me. They're allowed to want to win craft fairs, or get their husband a better mortgage rate.

If anything, the misdirect of making them seem like the homicidal ones is getting old. And how did Sam and Dean know that the first death was anything supernatural in the first place? (I missed about a minute at he beginning, so maybe that was explained?)

As gross as Gordon's head being popped off his neck was, Amy, there wasn't a lingering visual of it in glorious detail. It wasn't the violence of it, it was the cinematography/editing of it.

And this was probably covered in the "bad editing" comment, but the fight scene between Ruby and the demon chick was just atrocious, which I'll pass off to bad editing. Which, hullo bad editing! I know that editing can make or break a fight, and this broke it for me.

No matter how research-happy Kripke says his writers are

Kripke can say a lot of things. Apparently 30 seconds on Google is all the research they do.

the majority of the people they envision as their audience is more familiar with Salem than they are with Native American folklore

I think that's the problem, actually. We all know the Salem/medieval version of witchery; we know it up and down, in and out -- kind of humdrum, to tell the truth. If they'd gone into a mythology that isn't like the back of all our hands, it might have had some excitement or novelty to it.

Also, I mean, you've got "witches are unsanitary and evil" and Ruby having been a witch during the Black Death, and I'm like, Eric Kripke, you did NOT just blame the victim for hundreds and hundreds of ordinary women burned at the stake for looking crosseyed at their neighbor. You did NOT just take a bunch of real people and make their suffering into a backhanded joke. I KEEL YOU.

No matter how research-happy Kripke says his writers are

Kripke can say a lot of things. Apparently 30 seconds on Google is all the research they do.

And Nutty says what I was going to! Because really, Google does not help you construct a decent demon banishing ritual.

The first death? Where the woman's teeth randomly started falling out?

You wouldn't have found that suspicious?

What I get is that these particular woman weren't serious at all. They just tried the spells for fun - they really had no idea what they were doing. I'm not sure that it reflects on anyone with real beliefs and practices at all.

The first death? Where the woman's teeth randomly started falling out?

You wouldn't have found that suspicious?

Sure. Except for how that's not the sort of thing any paper is going to report.