SPN Georg

Where everything is scary. Poor Dean is infected with Ghost Sickness, forced to experience the fear of a murdered man. He’s infected not because he’s a dick, not because he uses fear as a weapon or scares people because of his job, because Sam does all of that too. He’s infected because he’s buried a terrible secret about himself-- one that he feels ashamed of. Times like this I’m glad I do an “all spoilers on the table” podcast, because it’s what he did in Hell and specifically the fact he’s covering it up that made him susceptible to experience the fear of a man who was literally tortured to death and then had his murder covered up by the men who committed or abetted it. It really makes the case in this episode look super on the nose, but only when you finally get the context of Dean’s true secrets from Hell. Which don’t hit us for a few more episodes yet...

There’s an awful lot to be said about this one, not least of which is Dean lip synching to Eye of the Tiger as a little bonus at the end of the episode. :’D

Things referenced in this episode:

The Superwiki page for this episode

Casting sides for Luther, Sheriff Britton, and John Garland

My tag for this episode, but especially these posts:

And for those who want to have Dean’s little speech about how crazy their lives are handy, this kind soul has put it on youtube (it’s about a minute and a half) :D

Aah, I love Ben Edlund. This one feels, in retrospect, like a microcosm view of the Grand Narrative of Supernatural as Chuck’s story. I could probably do a thesis paper on this episode, but instead I kept the podcast version under an hour... I mean, the queercoding in this one ALONE, the direct commentary on the Hays Code shoved into every level of the storytelling from the surface “black and white that’s all shades of grey” in the most literal sense to Dean’s admission that the “simple” film he’d want to live out is Porky’s II, there’s almost nothing about this one that turns out to be what it appears on the surface.

There’s a lot of bonus content for this one, too:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My (remarkably small) tag for this episode

But especially these posts: this one about the metanarrative of the series, my watch notes from my post s14 rewatch, this one from lizbob’s Dean And Cas Are In Love series, this one about the Dracula references, a chat with lizbob from 2017, my old rewatch notes from April 2017, and a very long series of posts on the queercoding in this one

Casting sides for Jamie and Dracula

Two 15 second CW Promo videos for this episode that remarkably still work on youtube: here and here.

and for the heck of it, have my queercoding tag if you’ve got a few hours to kill... :’D

Major important developments, ahoy! Dean discovers what Sam has been up to with Ruby since he was dragged to Hell, and he is not impressed. If it was all so great-- as Sam has desperately tried to convince himself-- then why hide it from Dean? From everyone? Why completely cut even Bobby out of his life completely and lie about Ruby? Sam attempts to justify his choices and actions, but savvy viewers who know how all of this plays out by the end of s4 will be able to see the season-long addiction metaphor Sam is already struggling with. And even we the viewers won’t know what’s driving Sam back to making that choice again, what’s strengthening his powers, for a good long while to come...

Also, Dean uses the nickname “Cas” for the first time, and the entire fandom decides it has one s. :’D

(and nobody enjoys watching Jack Montgomery eat... ew...)

Things referenced in this week’s episode:

the Superwiki page for this episode

my tumblr tag for this episode

but especially this post here

Casting Sides for Michele, Jack, and Travis

Or at least, In the Beginning as it stands in canon until we find out about the earliest events in creation... but this is early enough to be getting on with for the current storyline. :’D

Sam is barely even in this one, off doing shady shit with Ruby. Dean is told to “stop it,” but not what “it” is. He assumes it’s something to do with his parents, something that happened in the past, and runs smack into the knowledge that Mary was raised a hunter and made a deal with the YED that led to all the events in the series to this point... it’s a lot, folks...

But Dean also learns that as a baby, Azazel dripped demon blood in Sam’s mouth, and THIS is the information Cas warns him about when Dean returns to the present. THIS is what Dean must learn-- what on earth Sam is up to with Ruby-- and THIS is what Dean must stop. And if he can’t stop Sam, then the angels will...

Things that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

but mostly these four posts:

Casting sides for Mary, casting sides for John, and casting sides for Deanna

the transcript of the commentary track with Kripke and Carver from the bluray/dvd extras

Aah, and episode where Dean doesn’t get any pie, but instead is handed an existential crisis! After wrestling with issues about his belief in angels and then God, he comes to the conclusion that if God is real, then he has to be a jerk, because why would he let all this awful stuff happen to people? And that is a very valid question.

Cas talks him through it in a way that provides zero comfort, and pretty much only makes things worse by confirming that the devil is also real and trying to escape. Also, the angels are gonna be relatively useless to Dean in trying to stop the devil from escaping... >.>

Meanwhile, they’re confronted by literal ghosts from their past driven to torment and kill them in revenge. So, the fun never stops.

Things referenced in this week’s episode:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode but especially these posts:

The production draft script for this episode that Chris Gauthier (the actor who plays Ron Resnick) auctioned off to benefit the IRSSS

and a link to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society if you’d like to make a donation as well.

Along with a reminder that all the scripts and sides and other little bonus things like that are part of the collection put together by the @spnscripthunt​ group. We have pages and scripts from nearly 1/3 of the series, and always welcome donations of a PDF scan of scripts we’re still missing. Check out the scripthunt for more info!

HERE WE GO! We all know what this one is. This is the one where the destiel starts!

and some other stuff happens, but come on folks... WE GET CAS NOW! Watching him grow into the person we will know at the end of the series is an absolutely glorious journey I’m thrilled to talk about with everyone now. :D

As promised in the podcast, I have a lot more reference posts for folks to read this week, and I hope at least some of it feels worth it to y’all.

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode, which is 23 pages long lol (told y’all this was a big one, I wasn’t kidding) so I picked a few posts I feel are most foundational to how I think about and discuss this episode:

The Three Day DeanCasVersary Post on tumblr (and a slightly outdated version on ao3...

We also have casting sides for Castiel, casting sides for “Kristy,” aka Ruby, and casting sides for Pamela, in addition to the call sheet/shooting pages for Pamela. And I can’t recommend enough doing a compare/contrast between the casting and shooting pages of the exact same scene.

I think that’s enough words to leave everyone with, so I’ll leave off my usual rambling summary. :D

Aah, the end of season three. Maybe it’s not exactly where the writers intended to end up (with six planned episodes slashed from the season), but hooboy does this one pretty effectively set up Sam’s entire arc in s4... and honestly? When we understand what Sam was originally intended to sacrifice of himself to save Dean from going to Hell, I really REALLY appreciate s4 for what we got instead.

So, this episode ends up being a HECK of a lot of Dean saying random things out of frustration/anger that end up being the Oops It Was All True! plot points of the end of s4... and not a lot of meta on its own. But I superduper appreciate it for what it is.

Things referenced in this episode:

The Superwiki page for this ep

My tag for this episode (three pages)

but especially these two posts here and here

The casting sides for Zoey/Lilith, casting sides for her father Jimmy, and for her grandfather

And once again, I realized I left something out of the podcast that could probably be a whole episode on its own... the tagline on my title card this week. In this episode, we learn that John had hunted Doc Benton years ago, probably in the 80′s when he first became a hunter. He cut out Benton’s heart and thought the job was done. Clearly it was not. Over the years, we learn of so many of these old cases that he either half-assed (maybe out of inexperience, maybe out of lack of information, maybe out of carelessness or because his single-minded focus was on revenge for Mary’s death-- whatever the reason), or just ignored entirely as “not urgent enough to look into further,” even when we learn these things were annual or otherwise repeating incidents.

Yeah, sure, no hunter can take care of every supernatural evil single-handedly, but heck... there seems to be a lot of evidence for why other hunters cut ties with John, and while some of those can be chalked up to his own paranoia and desire to shield his kids, some of it sure looks like carelessness. Especially the week after we were reminded of John, even if it was just a ploy of that MotW and not ~actually~ John.

One of these weeks we will delve deeper into this one. But not this week. There’s enough going on in this one as it is. I mean, by the end of the episode, folks even seem to forget what comes off as almost a throwaway line from the opening scenes, the fact that exorcising the last ten demons in a row had led to zero human survivors. That humans who survive possession (especially longer-term possession) are exceptionally rare. Especially when a common complaint about later seasons is that Sam and Dean become more “careless” about just killing possessed people when they could be saving them via exorcisms instead. The show is already drawing this murky line where safety, expediency and practicality have to be weighed against the vanishingly small chance of actually being able to save a single human life post-possession. Yeah, it’s something for us to consider, but the show has been blatantly saying for a while now that in most cases, demon possession isn’t really a survivable situation for the human victim.

Referenced in this week’s episode:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

But mostly these two posts linked here and here

The production draft script for the episode, as well as casting sides for “Demon” and “Victim” (which are just two pages each, and I believe taken directly from that white draft script)

Here at the tail end of strike-shortened season 3, where multiple plotlines of the early season have been put on the back burner to await development in s4 (notably Sam and his demon powers, and the temptation to go to the dark side) in capitulation to the fact they wouldn’t have enough time to develop them fully to save Dean from Hell... instead we dive headlong into the unavoidable and turn the wrench that will seal Dean’s fate.

For the second time in two weeks, Sam is tied to a chair, helpless to save an innocent seated across from him, and instead is forced to watch them die. Kinda meta for Sam’s complete lack of ability to save Dean from Hell...

Desperate to find a way to save himself, Dean falls for the bait-iest bait to ever be baited, and clings to the flimsy hope that his father is really reaching out from the beyond with a way to save him. Of course, it was all manipulation by the MotW who could control the narrative for his own benefit. But it also horrifyingly gave Dean a conversation with his “father” that he never expected to get. Forgiveness, love, and regret, in his father’s voice, that wasn’t really his father at all. Kinda... ouch.

(don’t worry, Sam will have his turn running down a lead built of false hope next week! lolol)

Join me for Crying About Dean Hours!

Things referenced in this episode:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode (it’s a short one, only a single page of results, but there are a few posts there that may be of specific interest)

(and if you have the blu-ray or the dvd of s3, check out the 23 minute featurette about the effects department, and the five minute featurette about Baby and her wranglers... sorry I couldn’t find links to these videos online) UPDATE: mel found the Impala featurette for me! 

A little meta statement on the Writer’s Strike and a genre shift from the Reality TV format back into the standard scripted drama of the overarching Supernatural narrative. Sam and Dean actually curse! The Ghostfacers think what they’re experiencing is “reality,” but from our perspective already entrenched in the Supernatural world of Sam and Dean, we can see how little they really understand about the supernatural they’re merely attempting to prove the existence of. It’s wonderfully refreshing, also, that even after all their experiences over the course of the episode, they’re still able to return to their relatively normal lives while Sam and Dean are off to battle apocalypses... well everyone except Corbett, I guess... Poor guy. He just wanted to be loved

Things referenced in this week’s episode include:

The Superwiki entry for this episode

My tag for this episode

Especially including these two prior rewatches: here and here

The Ghostfacers web series

The bonus episode called “Found Footage” (which was pulled off youtube but I found on tumblr :’D