That was awesome. Issues, schmissues.

Although I really wanted Victor to become a Hunter.

See, that's what I keep saying. (About Victor, that is.)

Issues, schmissues.

...

I'm sorry? You want to expand on that?

I try not to let issues hinder my enjoyment of the show, which was particularly awesome and entertaining tonight. Henriksen was a good character, and I'm sad that he's dead, but I don't think the fact that he's black means he gets to survive an exploding police station. Lilith is a demon who appears in multiple mythologies, and Supernatural pulls from existing mythology when building its own; I admit it's a highly charged name. I knew immediately that people would (understandably) have problems with it, but I hate that it detracts from a pretty awesome episode (and I don't generally think Supernatural is this awesome!).

I was disappointed. Haven't read other opinions yet but I'm tired of the scary little child thing and find Ruby to be useless - and I had thought that the character was interesting.

Now wondering if Bella isn't somehow related to the possessed child. PO'ed that I can't spec about Bella to my SPN buddy because she hates the character so much.

Also - can't believe that we have 2 months for another episode.

Also, I'm really pissed off that they killed Hendrickson. . . and did you guys notice that all 3 Hendrickson episodes were sieges of some sort? What's up with that?

And the thing about Ruby that's wrong is that she is EVIL and she uses evil and I think that you can't fight a war against evil by starting off with an evil act. (So, I'm saying that Dean was right - although he didn't articulate it that way.)

I also think that it would have been much, much better to have "Mystery Spot" after "Jus in Bello" because I feel like it clarifies the Trickster's motivation better. You can really see that Sam needed to be cluesticked to prevent him from going to the evil act in that pragmatic way.

Issues, schmissues.

There are ways to have an opinion that are nicer than this, though.

Yeah, I totally agree [on the boys could not have done the sacrifice]. If our boys went for the sacrifice they would have lost to goal to make the strategy. And it looked to me like the trickster was on Ruby's side of that argument. Sam was ready to make the sacrifice, because he'd already made that choice in the tricksterverse.

Given the particular issues the show has it was really problematic of them to make it a virgin sacrifice. In part they handled it well, with Dean having trouble believing that any would choose to live without sex. On purpose. But then the rest of the episode he kept talking about how they were not going to sacrifice any virgins. So if she'd slept with the lead drummer of the local garage band in high school, sacrificing her would not have been quite as bad? (Though to be fair, Dean wouldn't have sacrificed anyone including Hendrickson.) I'm trying to decide if the whole "virgin" thing was still another example of the shows issues, or a case where the show actually did own its issues.

Really? I thought that the Trickster was trying to make Sam see that going in that direction would do more harm than good.

Well then he went about it wrong. I mean he turned Sam into a real psycho killer, then undid the fact of the trauma, but sent him back with all the memory and experiences. I mean, did he really think that one speech would undo months of experience? I assume that the intent was to turn Sam into a stone killer without Dean having to die first to do it.The writers seem to agree this was the result. I don't think Sam would have bought Ruby's logic so fast before the Trickster trauma. Of course Trickster is famous for screwing up a lot, so maybe he really did not intend the result he obviously got. It is just that Trickster is also a notorious liar and deceiver, so I assumed he meant what he did, not what he said. [Edit: But I have to admit your reading is a fair one too.]