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.

Badfic is bad. What started off as amusing (Gabriel is relegated to playing a cat, who is not appearing in this film, yay!), and then awesome what with the zombies, and possibly also excellent with the post-we-almost-died-let's-have-the-sex, but then the second part of that is -even-though-we-haven't-washed-the-zombie-gore-off-yet, and then gets more laughable and redunkulous from there. Le sigh.

I have to say, I'm with ita. I don't read it the same way at all, Bev. I think, also, you might be basing too much on one line. The whole point of watching, for me, was to see what they did with the obstacles they faced, and what choices they made for what reasons, with so much at stake.

The decisions they made affected nothing. The end game was always going to be the same. If S5 was the last one, it wouldn't have been Adam riding Sam's coattails into hell. There was no averting destiny, no matter what. I'm unhappy with foregone conclusions, it trivializes those "decisions" they were "allowed" to make, and turns the entire series into a Disney ride rather than an actual exploration. If we're going to hell, let's get to it, and not bother with the angst and the rescues and the dithering and the glayvin.

Your journey of course may vary.

The decisions they made affected nothing.

Huh? If they had not gone into the pit, much of the world would have been wiped out. If Adam hadn't been sucked into the game in time, Luci would have wiped out humanity. I don't get "nothing."

I mean, the world wasn't going to end for meta reasons, sure, but shows don't end the world. That's not something craven Kripke did. Somehow Sam and Dean were going to save us. That's a good thing, nu?

I'm surprised you're tuning in on Friday.

There was no averting destiny, no matter what.

I just don't understand how you're getting to that point, Bev. Dean averted his destiny, didn't he? And Sam made a choice, for the good of the world. Maybe it feels like destiny because he did what "they" wanted, but he actually didn't have to.

I guess I don't understand what you wanted to happen instead.

I'm surprised you're tuning in on Friday.

MJMV.