Poor Sam (maybe it would help if he actually had a soul?) can’t figure out how Dean knows anything about caring for a 6-month-old infant whose mother has just been brutally murdered...

And poor Dean is Doing His Best and finally realizes there isn’t really a good solution to his dilemma of protecting Lisa and Ben from his life, and what he unwittingly brought to their doorstep. It’s tragic, no matter what he does.

Something is very fishy with the Campbell hunters, though, and it’s patently obvious on a rewatch when we all know how this shakes out. Golly I love doing a rewatch! It makes the foreshadowing hit like anvils.

This week’s links!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag (extra-short this week!)

(the two main posts to focus on are probably my episode recaps from April 2017 and July 2019)

Filming locations map

Finally back from my personal hiatus, and I’m eager to get right into Season Six! I’m not sure that s6 is near the top of anyone’s favorite season list, but there’s just so much meaty goodness hidden away this season-- especially for my fellow Dean girls-- that I’m 100% serious about being excited to get into it. Maybe I can even change a few minds along the way (though... nobody will ever convince me to like a handful of s6 episodes, which will become abundantly clear when we hit them :’D).

I recorded this episode a month ago and edited it last week without going back and recording anything new for it. New episodes will now begin rolling out on my previous schedule, and hopefully I haven’t entirely forgotten how to do this. Thank you again everyone who’s stuck around to continue this journey out beyond Kripke era with me!

That said, let’s get right into the relevant links for further reading:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag

My rewatch notes from June 2020, which basically sum up all my feelings on this one

Filming locations map

Set report and bts photos

Interview with Fred Lehne about playing Azazel again

Interview with Sera Gamble about the “noir” season six

SpaceTV Promo #1

SpaceTV Promo #2

CW Extended promo clip

Welcome to the end of Kripke Era (sort of... he steps back, but is involved enough with s6 to have written 6.22... and he sticks around to help shape s7 before running off to Revolution and taking two free Led Zeppelin tracks with him... thanks for nothing, pal... >.>)

(aside to note i got my annual reminder that kripke is like two and a half weeks older than me while paying more attention than usual to write notes for this-- he gave the impala his own birthday, plus 7 years-- and i always feel like i’ve been mugged when i remember all of these facts)

So this is a fandom favorite, often cited at the top of Best Episode lists and I... don’t really like it much. Sorry! lol I am not sorry. It’s 15.20 turned inside out, with at least the veneer of a hopeful ending because *everyone was alive at the end of the episode so they could continue to live to fight another day.* Which is like one microstep above what 15.20 left us with >.>

Anyway, that’s probably enough side-eyes emoticons for one intro post, and I say more than enough in the episode itself. So let’s get to those links:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag (heftier than usual)

The Production Draft script (white draft)

Filming Locations Map

Interview with Sera Gamble

Interview with Mark Pellegrino

Interview with Julie McNiven and Rob Benedict

CW Promo

SpaceTV Promo

Extended promo clip

O Death! I will always love this episode just for the intro scene (and many other things too, but heck... that’s how you do a character intro!).

The penultimate episode of s5, and of Kripke Era. There’s just a lot going on, and I realized as I lay in bed after recording this that there was so much more I wanted to say about Death, Chuck’s Story/Process, and the parallel of Death having been shackled by Lucifer and prevented from acting independently here and yet how his actions (and non-actions to this point, including his cryptic message to Bobby delivered by zombie!Karen back in 5.15 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid) are SHOCKINGLY similar to how Billie was made a pawn of Chuck’s’ s15 narrative. For many of the same reasons.

So at least now I’ve said it somewhere, but this is how I view Death throughout the series.

But I think I covered everything else in the episode, so...

LINKS!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas are In Love series for this ep (here and here)

Filming locations map

CW promo clip

SpaceTV promo clip

Crowley is the devil the Winchesters know, but the Winchesters are the devil Crowley knows, and everybody’s gonna compromise at least a little to reach the common goal. And they all hope it’s gonna be worth it. With only two episodes left to go in s5 after this one, it’s getting to desperation hours...

I enjoy straightforward plot episodes. The main horrifying revelations in this one revolve around Sam, the awful choice he begins contemplating about how they might even remotely have a shot of dragging Lucifer back into the cage (I still hate the show for putting him through this), and just how tragically and inevitably he’d been manipulated into exactly this position his entire life. Even when he’d thought he’d been safest, when he’d thought he’d freed himself from a life entangled in the supernatural while he’d been at Stanford. It had all just been part of a very, very long game. And it’s heartbreaking to learn here at nearly the eleventh hour how little choice he’d ever really had in any of it.

LINKS!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag

Filming locations map

An interview with Mark Sheppard

Casting notice of Matt Frewer as Pestilence (which honestly should’ve been on the previous ep, but here it is now)

The CW promo video

The SpaceTV promo video

An Extended promo clip

And we’re back after my unplanned and unscheduled week off! I’d probably feel better if our first episode back wasn’t notoriously Problematic™... But we do our best with it, and get through it with a side helping of the best pie in the tri-state area (honestly... what three states are we supposed to be measuring here? this is Muncie, Indiana...)

Anyway! We get Gabriel apparently committing to the side of Humanity, and apparently getting killed for it. Trickster gonna trick, though, and it’s nice knowing he’ll eventually be back again.

But he does provide them with a MacGuffin of hope, and a key to maybe finding a way to defeat Lucifer and stop the apocalypse...

LINKS:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag

My rewatch notes from June 2019

Filming Locations map

Short sneak peek promo video

Interview with RSJ about this episode, honestly worth it for the title alone

Episode 100! *blows party horns* 

regarding my tagline on this weeks’ graphic... I think everyone knows that the outtake we know that quote from comes courtesy of the season 5 gag reel, along with a number of other outtakes from this episode, and it feels suitably celebratory for the 100 episode milestone!

Yes, this is the 100th episode of Supernatural, but it’s also the 100th episode of this podcast! Thank you so much to everyone who’s stuck with me. I love and appreciate y’all so much :’)

We finally meet the real Adam (not the ghoul impersonator), Sam proves his faith in Dean even when Cas (and Dean himself) has despaired of it, and Zachariah meets his richly deserved end. It’s slightly on the long side this week, but I didn’t want to leave anything out... and to that end, I’ve also got a bit of supplemental reading for those interested, as well.

LINKS!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag

A post from norahastuff about the innuendo

Some wildly ironic rewatch notes from June 2020

Some thoughts on Adam

Some thoughts on Zachariah and his fatally misguided sense of self-importance (the citizen kane meta)

Have my whole zachariah tag honestly…

Filming locations map

Teaser post about the 100th episode

Short interview with Kurt Fuller and Jake Abel

Article about the 100th episode cast party

The CW promo

Extended teaser video

And because I am here for suffering, Lizbob’s two posts from the Dean and Cas are in Love series about this episode (part 1) (part 2)

Heck that’s a lot of numbers :’D

We’re approaching the end of s5 and the apocalypse is heating up. Sam is trying to hold everything together while Dean and Cas are experiencing personal low points and losing all hope. And then they run right into the Whore of Babylon, preaching purity culture and manipulating her followers into damning themselves to hell. Good times, good times...

This one went a little longer than I was expecting, because I had a harder time watching it than I was expecting. But I’ll leave that to the podcast I already recorded to cover it rather than writing a whole essay here. This one took it out of me enough already.

LINKS!

The Superwiki page

My tag

My rewatch notes from June 2020, June 2019, and July 2017

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas are in Love series (part 1) and (part 2)

Filming locations map

Casting call for the Gideons

The CW Promo video, an extended promo clip, and the SpaceTV promo

We finally get to explore the Great Gig in the Sky... Heaven, as it were. I could talk about this episode for hours. Days, even. But what is Time. (and yes, I considered just assembling this entire post out of song titles and lyrics from the album, but I figured that would give us all Brain Damage... fine, I’ll stop now)

We finally get a peek behind the curtain, but what are we actually being shown? Who’s actually doing the “showing,” and what agendas (including Chuck’s) are influencing what Sam and Dean experience there?

Plus Dean and Cas both take major blows to their confidence in having any hope of defeating Lucifer and stopping the apocalypse. God has always been a dick, honestly. Sam... is still desperately clinging to hope, for now. Things are looking pretty grim all around, though.

I talked long enough in the episode, so here have some links:

The Superwiki page

My Tag for the episode

My cosmology of the spn universe tag

my tag for Heaven (and hell, purgatory, and the empty)

my tag for soulmates (mercifully briefer than the previous two lol)

filming locations map

the Network Draft script

an interview with Thunderbird Dinwiddie (Pamela)

Slightly off kilter since it was written, filmed, and intended to air BEFORE what we all think of as 5.14, it still punches us all in the face with Bobby Feels, with Sad Dean Feels, with zombie pie, and with JODY MILLS.

It’s an exceptionally short episode this week, so here let’s get right to the bonus material:

The Superwiki page

My tag

Rewatch notes from June 2019 and April 2017

Lizbob’s post about this episode, which I think is essential reading for all the emotional threads, as well as her posts about Karen and pie, (here and here)

The Network Draft of the script

Filming locations map

Two interviews with Jim Beaver about this episode, one in Movieweb (archived) and one in the LA Times