I get the impression that fandom at large hated it, but I'd love to know how the viewership at large felt about it.

I only watched it live the once. I plan to rewatch this week. I think I'm a little frightened.

We just watched it again. I don't hate the episode. The only thing I don't like is Chuck being God but maybe he's more like Jesus or The Holy Ghost.

The love! So much love! So little epic battle!

And the Impala!

Of brotherly love!

Stargazing and Ozzy concerts. I go fuzzy thinking of it.

I liked it. It would have been even better if Sam & Dean had gone to hell and Bobby and Castiel had died to defeat Lucifer. But I'm willing to live with that not happening to have a season six. And, given the existence of other God's and a 'Death' as old or older than God who will reap God someday I'm taking it that this Universe's God is neither all-powerful or all-knowing - which means he is not responsible for Lucifer's fall or humanity's.

Joshua or Jacob, the gardener/Jesus in Heaven, talked about him in the all knowing traditional way. Maybe that was just unreliable narrator though.

Loved Swan Song. I would have its children if I weren't menopausal.

Kripke said at Comicon that he was leaving the Chuck!God thing up to the viewers. He also said God is on Earth banging whores.

I heart Kripke.

Well Death and the other gods told the story differently from the Gardener. So we have to choose between narraters. If the Gardener is right, God is a Dick. Which I'm OK with.

I'm pretty ambivalent about Kripke. I'm grateful to him for giving us Winchesters and the Impala and Ellen and Bobby and Henriksen and Gordon, the special kids, the Roadhouse, Ash, and and and. I'm pretty sure I hate him for planning from jump to kill 'em all.

The whole "it was a test, for Sam and Dean" pisses me off enormously. I hate tests on principle. A learning experience is one thing, but being put through hellish experiences just to find out how strong/resourceful/clever you are is another. And when you come out the other side and know what level you achieved, then what? What do you do with that?

To me, without some payoff the whole saga is pointless, and from everything Krip has said, Sam as Luci and Dean as Mike in the Thrilla in Manilla was the end game. The contest was the intended payoff, and had 5.22 been the series finale, just this once, Sera, Everybody Dies! Honestly, if I'd known that going in I'd never have let myself care about these characters.

I'm not needing a happy ending, necessarily. But the inescapable destiny at the end of five years' efforts to avoid or avert it just points up the futility of following the characters and the story. If it's a foregone conclusion, then why the hell have I been watching?

CW's sneak peek #2

Sam and Dean made choices they didn't have to make. Their roles were pre-determined, but what decisions they made were not. They might both have said yes or no. God didn't make them do anything.

I don't see any inevitable futility at all. I've found it and their struggles very rewarding.