"There's a demon in you... and you're going to your safety school."

I suck because I've been away for a couple thousand posts and now popped back but that was funny. I assumed she was a dead woman walking so it could still made me laugh. Her death never shocked me.

And what the fuck is the "pure purgatory" thing? Did Dean actually find his place? Is his like coming back from Hell a pure demon? Coming back from Hell with his own monster to whom he's addicted? Coming back from the cage without a soul?

Dean is a hunter. Like, capital H. It's what defines him. And that phone call with toothy dude was sketchy as hell. It felt like a clandestine relationship. I can't help but feel like it was intentional. Dean lost his brother but gained a brother in arms. I don't know.

I'm possibly conflicted about the show (or not conflicted but I've drifted at times) but I watched and I'll watch the next ep.

I know that first shot of Dean was pretty as hell.

BOWLEGS

iTunes came through for me!

I'm having a hard time with all of Sam so far. WTF dude? WTF writers?

Also, Jimmy's wife was Amelia, did you forget that? Was that so insignificant? I'm bothered by the repetition.

I'm having a hard time with all of Sam so far. WTF dude? WTF writers?

Oh, I've been walking around all night going WFT writers? (According to imdb, Eric Kripke and Jeremy Carver themselves are credited for this episode. I am trying to convince myself that this doesn't bode ill for the course of the season.)

Seriously, everytime Sam opens his mouth, I feel like he's making excuses or apologies for the writer's lack of imagination or intelligence. "Well, I guess now that Dean's called me on my shenanigans, I'll do the right thing now, and gosh, I realize the errors of my ways, let me help now. BTW, I totes read about people dying weird deaths, which counts as my due diligence".

It's not his retirement and getting out of the hunting life that bothers me, it's the reasons they (the writers) gave for it. "Oh, well, Dean's gone, guess I'll just move on". How about "Dean, I had no leads, I had no idea where to even start. You and Cas were just gone and eventually, amongst all this fruitless searching, life happened and I bumped into a girl, and eventually realized that I had to move on or else I'd become an obsessed psychopath like that time the Trickster killed you a hundred times".

Also, the phone thing. Sam ditched his phones, they were out of service, but Sam still had them stashed away for Dean to charge and listen to the voicemails? There shouldn't be this many hoops to jump through to get the story you want at the outset of a season.

OK, done bitching and moaning.

Hi Show! So happy you're back!

(but, seriously, is it because I'm a Dean girl that I have absolutely nothing to complain about with Dean? He hit all the right notes for me.)

But wait! There's more to loathe! Just met the vet. And she guilts a man she doesn't know into adopting an animal. Without knowing if he's abusive or neglectful or has family with allergies or lives in an apartment that doesn't take pets and already knowing that he's on the road a lot. Excellent candidate to be a pet owner: a total, unvetted stranger. It's easy, everyone should do it and the animal should thank them when the get stuck in a crate all day. Hi PSA written by someone who doesn't own dogs.

I'm dying over the accent Dean develops everytime he talks to Benny. (Also, he' makes a sneaky phone call to him to say that maybe they shouldn't speak to each other anymore?).

Just met the vet. And she guilts a man she doesn't know into adopting an animal. Without knowing if he's abusive or neglectful or has family with allergies or lives in an apartment that doesn't take pets and already knowing that he's on the road a lot.

I was going to let it go here but that's a terrible set up. It's not why you should want a pet. Or keep an injured stray. It's going to be neglect.

I'm going to pretend that Sam thought this out even a little before agreeing. And then he wasn't a hunter.

Yes, shaming Sam to take the dog was stupid... and un-vet like, I imagine.

Maybe Sam just feels too crappy right now to mount a serious defense (about why he ditched everything, and didn't look for them). It didn't feel to me like the show was going to drop it, though, so that's fine.

Can you tell us whet you were tense about, ita !

Most of everything I'm mad about now.

I do not like how Sam's been written at all. I'd imagine if I were a Sam girl I'd be through the roof right now. Why put him in such a lame position to be making those lame apologies to Dean? Fine, get out of hunting, break Dean's heart, but that whole "Oh, I paid attention up to the point where I left them on their own to live or die" thing sits really badly with me. I don't think he should have to be guilt tripped into saving everyone for the rest of his life, but dozens of crappy curtain fics settled one or both of them down better than this.

I'm assuming there's more to the story than this, because as far as I'm concerned, this is highly lame so far.

And from a pacing point of view--writers, you strung out the Dean tortured in hell thing for a while, and that worked, and it was earned, and shit. You strung out finding out Sam had no soul, and that was cool, although maybe a touch sooner would have been great.

If your stringing out why Sam is a douche right now, and why Dean is just acting plain weird, you're merely making me twitchy. This isn't a well earned tension. This is a "Oh, this is why everyone wanted Carver to save the show from the evil Gamble?"

Please. Make me eat my words. But I want to enjoy the show between now and then. That's my problem. For a third season to start and I don't like Sam...that's way too high a percentage, no matter how amazing the reasons are. A huge reason I watch this show is because I *like* them. Don't let me lose investment.

But wait! There's more to loathe! Just met the vet. And she guilts a man she doesn't know into adopting an animal. Without knowing if he's abusive or neglectful or has family with allergies or lives in an apartment that doesn't take pets and already knowing that he's on the road a lot. Excellent candidate to be a pet owner: a total, unvetted stranger. It's easy, everyone should do it and the animal should thank them when the get stuck in a crate all day. Hi PSA written by someone who doesn't own dogs.

Sing it! Not only that, but her off the cuff remark about maybe if he was such a nice guy he wouldn't have hit the dog really rubbed me the wrong way. Because as we all know, dogs only run out in the road in front of bad people, good ones are never involved in accidents.

My one consolation is if the vet is Amelia, Sam's Penis of Ill Omen has probably already relegated her to monster chow.

Maybe I'm looking at this strictly from a writer's POV, but last night really didn't upset me. I mean, I don't love that Sam and Dean are not simpatico right now, but that's the tension you need to compel the story forward. Lee was saying she didn't love the flashbacks, but even that makes sense to me -- most viewers aren't going to be happy with two parallel real-time storylines where Sam and Dean never interact. And this way we're feeling what they're feeling -- that they've been apart for a year and have no idea what the other has been through.

I also sympathize with Sam. His entire life has been this, with added death and torture and hell. Being at a loss and exhausted by the whole thing seems perfectly understandable to me. I don't like him less because he's human and has flaws -- I want him to be a hero, sure, but I also like that we see how hard that can be.

I'm not really mad at Dean, either. Whatever happened in purgatory gives him a bit of pass for shady deals with new buddies, even if I hate that he's keeping things from Sam (who is also clearly keeping things from Dean). I guess I also can't see how whatever he did in purgatory could possibly be worse than years as Torture Master in hell. The "pure" thing seems logical, too -- purgatory was black and white, kill or be killed, no shades of gray. For a lot of reasons, that's an easier way to live.

It seems a little like Carver is resetting the show, to me. And the black and white versus shades of gray plays right into it. This is very much like pilot!Dean coming to get Sam at Stanford, reminding him that he has an obligation to the family and to the family business, and not seeing how there's a question of agreeing for Sam.

And there's Sam, living another another life, resisting being drawn into a life he hates -- and one that by now has taken even more from him than it did in the pilot.

I can see the TV show reasons for a lot of this, even the vet. It's ... TV. Would someone do that in real life? Probably not. But people aren't hunting demons in real life. When it's not a novel, you don't always have the luxury of perfectly developing the narrative, and you have to shortcut a little bit.

I guess most of all, I simply love them. I may not be happy with them right now, but I enjoy seeing the "what ifs," and nothing going on so far seems out of character to me.

I forgot -- I'm still assuming the vet is Amelia, and I think their interaction isn't bothering me because it seems very stereotypically "meet antagonistic," which happens in romance as much as "meet cute" does.