The Official Christmas Retro Recap and Review: Supernatural 3.08: A Very Supernatural Christmas [AUGMENTED]

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Tagline: The Brothers investigate a series of mysterious Christmastime disappearances where the victims appear to have been kidnapped from their beds and dragged up the chimney. Could it be…Santa?

Recap: No Then recap. None whatsoever. Nada. Instead, we get that spinning, multicoloured “Special” Presentation CBS intro from waaaaayyy back. Then we cut to an instrumental version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and a grandfather arriving at a house in Seattle, Washington a year ago. His beloved grandson asks Grandpa if he brought any presents and Grandpa says maybe Santa will bring some.

Later, Grandpa dresses up as Santa and mimes pulling presents out of a sack for his wide-eyed grandson, who is hiding on the stairs. But things go a bit awry when he hears something on the roof that starts to come down the chimney. The kid innocently thinks it’s Santa’s reindeer. When Grandpa goes to investigate, he is brutally yanked up the chimney and killed, right in front of his horrified grandson. As the boy says hesitantly, “Santa?” a bloody boot drops down the chimney.

Cue an exploding red-orange Christmas ornament and demon hands into some cool title cards that say, “A Very SUPERNATURAL Christmas” with the first two and last words in red, the “Supernatural” in blue, and a little red Santa hat on the first “A”, all with a frosty frame and a black background with falling snow. Not to mention the jingling bells in the background as the “Very” blinks and goes out.

Cut to Ypsilante, Michigan, present day. Dean, dressed in a suit and posing as an FBI agent, is interviewing a woman whose husband, Mike, is missing. Her pre-teen daughter stands, looking shocky, perfectly framed behind glass in the doorway. On the porch hangs a Nutcracker figure and a wreath with pinecones, a white bow and pretty white flowers. The mom says she and her daughter were asleep upstairs, while her husband was downstairs, getting presents ready. She heard a thump and scream from her husband, but then he just disappeared.

Sam comes out of the house, also in a suit, and thanks her for letting him use the facilities. Giving us a start to the episode’s timeline (that it’s now two days before Christmas), the woman asks Dean what he thinks is going on and whether her husband is still alive. Dean has no answers for her. Even grimmer, Sam just tells her, “We’re very sorry.”

As the Boys leave, Sam shows Dean what he found: a bloody tooth in the chimney. Dean points out that full-grown men can’t go up chimneys and Sam replies, “Not in one piece.” In other words, Mike is probably dead.

My God, those two look young. And poor. I first did this recap and review in 2009, but “A Very Supernatural Christmas” is even more relevant now in “Hard Candy Christmas” 2020.

Back at the motel, Sam is looking at illustrations of medieval demons with black faces and red, lolling tongues on his computer. Dean comes in from a food run and asks him how they’re doing. Dean mentions his theory about a “serial-killing chimney sweep” and Sam references Dick Van Dyke. Dean pretends to have no idea who Dick Van Dyke is. Clearly, he’s teasing Sam about Sam’s alleged Disney fetish. Dick Van Dyke about single-handedly introduced generations of children to the concept of Victorian and Edwardian era chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins (1964). There’s no way Dean wouldn’t know about him.

My mom took me to see Mary Poppins when I was very little (maybe three or four) during a revival when Disney put it back out in theaters. I liked it. My mom, not so much. Still not sure why, but the negative portrayal of the suffragette mom in the film might have had a hand in it (My mom was hugely into feminism from before I was born). Then, when I was seven, my dad took me to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in the theater, with his mistress-of-the-hour, not long before Christmas. Yeah, my childhood relationship to Disney is a little, uh, different.

Anyhoo, Dean (backed by a lovely sepia-toned mural of a winter landscape while taking off John’s jacket) has done some interviewing around town. It turns out that the missing person they were just investigating (last name “Walsh”) was the second to disappear out of his house that month. No one saw him go up the chimney, but they did “hear a thump on the roof.”

Sam says he has a theory, but Dean may think it’s crazy – he thinks it’s “Evil Santa.” Dean allows that this sounds crazy. Sam says that there’s “some version of “Anti-Claus in every culture” and that this might be “Santa’s shady brother.” (No, there is no legend I’ve found about Santa’s evil brother, but there are definitely legends about Bad Santas, albeit only in cultures with a strong Christian base.) He references Belsnickel, Krampus and Black Peter as figures who “went rogue” (They’re actually working for St. Nick, not against him) and showed up to “punish the wicked” instead of leaving presents. Dean points out that this theory can’t be true because there is no Santa Claus and Sam retorts that he knows – Dean was the one who told him.

This is said with a bit of a whine (Sam blaming Dean for John’s terrible parenting for the millionth time), but then Sam admits he could be wrong (spoiler alert: He is). Dean says, “Maybe not.” He did some research of his own on the victims. It turns out that they went to the same place right before they disappeared.

Cut to a dispirited guy dressed in a furry reindeer costume as he heads out (presumably on break) under a battered Santa sign past a mom and some enthusiastic kids running in, the Brothers Winchester, and some wooden stand-ups of three Wise Men and a sheep. He says hi to the other teen dressed as an equally shabby elf, who’s manning the entrance. “All Because of Mr. Santa Claus” by Hal David and John Cacavas, from the rockin’ album In the Christmas Swing, blares on the loudspeaker throughout the scene. There is no snow anywhere, which makes the place look much worse.

The Brothers are going to one of those ugly and depressing Christmas Villages, arguing on the way whether they should celebrate Christmas or not. They don’t notice (and I don’t think they care, either) that Elf Kid is staring after them and having a discussion (presumably about two grown men walking around a place for kids) about them. Dean wants to do it up right this year (with Boston Market, no less) because it’s his last Christmas before his deal comes due and he goes to Hell. Sam doesn’t want to do it because he’s depressed for the same reason – next year, Dean won’t be there.

Also, Sam remembers that they had horrible Christmases during their childhood and doesn’t want to repeat the experience. Annoyed and perhaps a bit hurt, Dean calls him a Grinch and walks away. Sam stares at a cross-eyed plastic reindeer and we’re cued into a flashback of the Boys as kids in a truly nasty motel, alone, in Broken Bow, NB in 1991 on Christmas Eve. They’re watching the end of The Year without a Santa Claus, and “Jingle Bells” is on the soundtrack (though on the original soundtrack, it was “Here Comes Santa Claus”).

Young Sam is wrapping a present. When Dean asks him who it’s for and where he got the money (“Did you steal it?”), Sam says it’s something “special” that he got from Bobby for their father, John. Dean shrugs and throws himself down on the couch next to Sam, pulling out a Hot Rod magazine that he briefly reads before tossing it aside. He’s clearly restless.

Every wonder what kind of hunt would have John neglecting his kids on Christmas?

After Dean reassures him that John will be home from “business” (Dean claims he’s a traveling salesman) in time for Christmas, Sam keeps asking Dean questions about why they have to move around all the time, what their father John does for a living, whether John will be home for Christmas, how their mom died. Dean loses his temper and yells at Sam never to mention their mother again. Then he goes out for a while to cool down.

When Dean comes back, he’s brought Sam dinner (junk food and soda). Sam prods him some more about John, noting that Dean sleeps with a gun under his pillow (Keep in mind that Dean is all of 12 in this flashback). Dean gets mad about Sam snooping through his things, but he really gets upset when Sam (all pissy and self-righteous) pulls out John’s journal, which he managed to steal from his father. Dean (rightly) points out that John is not going to be pleased when he finds out.

Sam demands to get The Talk, so, after some reluctance and a clumsy, failed attempt at gaslighting, Dean gives it to him straight (while threatening to “end you” if Sam ever tells John Dean told him). He tries to explain to Sam about monsters and that John is a “superhero” and so on. Santa isn’t real, but most everything else is.

This only depresses Sam even more because he disappears up his own backside “that they could get us. They could get me!” He becomes convinced that the monsters will get John the way he read they got their mother Mary. Despite Dean’s reassurances, Sam goes to bed in tears (Well, kid, you did insist). Dean mournfully assures him that everything will be better when he wakes up.

Back in the present, Dean yanks Sam out of his reverie by complaining that it cost them $10 to get into the place. He then asks Sam again what they’re looking for (Obvious infodump dialogue is obvious, Show). Sam says that “the lore says” their target “will walk with a limp and smell like sweets.” Calling this “Pimp Santa,” Dean asks why and Sam says it’s to attract the kids. That really grosses Dean out (and probably half the audience).

The Boys spot a guy who seems to fit the criteria. He’s the Santa at the Christmas Village, he’s clearly an old lecher, he “smells like sweets” (though Sam thinks it’s Ripple wine), and he limps. We see a young boy on his lap who looks pretty weirded out until his mom rescues him.

A young woman dressed as an elf welcomes the Brothers “to Santa’s Court” and asks them about escorting their “child to Santa.” After Dean says that it’s been Sam’s “lifelong dream” to sit on Santa’s lap, she, very disconcerted, says that the age limit is 12 and under. Sam makes the mistake of saying “We’re just here to watch” and when the elf girl backs away, looking extremely creeped out, an amused Dean throws him under the bus by playing along with her image of Sam as a pedophile, to Sam’s discomfort.

The Brothers snap right to business, though, when Santa goes on break. As he limps past them, they argue over whether he smells like “sweets” or cheap booze, but Dean points out, “Are you willing to take that chance?” (There’s a really funny bit on the Season 3 blooper reel from this exchange.)

Later that night, they stake out his trailer, which has MERRY CHRISTMAS in huge letters on top, a sad string of lights along the edge of the roof, and three wooden stand-ups of singing polar bears out front. Dean asks Sam why he’s “the Boy Who Hates Christmas.” After citing their lousy childhood again (Dean allows they “had a few bumpy holidays”), Sam grumps that he doesn’t care if Dean has Christmas by himself. Dean grumps that it’s hardly Christmas if he’s “making cranberry molds” alone.

Long after the Brothers’ coffee runs out, Santa (dubbed “St. Nicotine” by Dean) furtively peers out and pulls the curtains. Then they hear a woman scream enthusiastically, “OH, MY GOOOOD!” That’s the Boys’ cue to sneak up to the door. Sam makes a crack that Dean may have to waste Santa, which Dean doesn’t appreciate, then they bust in.

It’s not what they think. The guy has a fifth of booze and an enormous bong, as well as a Christmas-themed porno on the TV; he’s not up to anything remotely supernatural. Caught flat-footed, the Boys don’t know what to do until Dean starts awkwardly to sing “Silent Night” and get Sam to join in. Dean’s a pretty terrible singer; Sam’s even worse (According to Jensen Ackles, Kripke actually wrote him a note reminding him that Dean was a bad singer). And neither of them knows the words past the first couple of lines. Fortunately, the guy is stoned enough to think it’s funny and they make a hasty exit.

Cut to a house later that night, where a kid is waiting for Santa while an angelic boy’s choir sings “Silent Night” on the sountrack (Man, that tree is huge). When the blonde, curly-haired tot hears thumping on the roof, he naturally thinks it’s reindeer, but what comes growling down the chimney is huge, dressed in bloody, red leather (human skin?), and terrifying.

It goes upstairs, knocks out the kid’s mother when she screams, and drags his father down in a sack. When the father struggles too much, “Santa” kills him with one crunching blow. It then pressed the terrified child back … but all it wants is a cookie from the plate set out for Santa.

The next day, Sam and Dean are doing the FBI rounds again at the victim’s house and get the kid’s story from the shellshocked mom. Sam notices a strange wreath that looks like one that was at the other victim’s house, with pine cones, a white bow, and white flowers. Both Dean (who has been expressing sympathy toward her) and the mom are nonplussed, and a tad offended when he asks where she got it. Sam explains it afterward as if Dean is stupid (that both houses has the same wreath). Dean claims to have just been “testing” him.

Some more research (and a call to Bobby) establishes that A. Bobby thinks they’re morons and B. they aren’t dealing with the Anti-Claus. Instead, they’re dealing with pagan gods – hence, why the weather has been so mild and lacking in snow, in Michigan, in December. Sam believes the god involved is “Hold Nickar,” a Teutonic sea god (which naturally would explain why he’s looking at Celtic images of the Green Man in this scene [rolls eyes]), which Sam identifies as the “God of the Winter Solstice.”

The wreath that Sam noted in one of the victims’ houses was made of meadowsweet, which is supposedly ultrapagan (no more so than holly, ivy, and mistletoe, the latter given to some of the bog people before they were killed, but whatever) and rare (also nope). Sam says it has a pleasant odor that is “like chum for their gods” in Germanic pagan lore. Anywhere you set it up, it will attract these carnivorous gods, who will then eat any human in the vicinity.

Dean logically wonders why anyone would make a wreath from such a thing. Sam pedantically goes off on a tangent that most (almost all, really) Christmas lore is originally pagan. Dean comments that “Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.” Sam “corrects” him, saying that Jesus was more likely born in fall and Christmas is the Winter Solstice festival.

Neither is true. We don’t really know what month (or even year) Jesus was born. Some biblical scholars speculate that Jesus was born in the spring (because that was when shepherds would be out with their flocks at night, guarding the newborn lambs). The Roman Winter Solstice festival is different from Christmas (and celebrated on December 21 as Brumalia (“bruma” meaning “short day”), when the Solstice actually occurs). Part of the confusion derives from Julius Caesar’s calendar “moving” the Solstice date to December 25 when it reorganized the Roman year.

Christmas was coopted from the Roman festival of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), which was on December 25 and marked the birth date of at least two Eastern-influenced Roman solar gods, Sol Invictus and the Persian soldier god Mithras, as well as the Greek Dionysius, Demeter, and Cronus (who probably influenced the idea of the old year being portrayed on New Year’s Eve as an old man). The Greeks and Romans were wont to create different versions of their major deities to reflect their different place origins or functions, by giving them a follow-up adjective for a second name. So, for example, Sol Invictus came out of the original Roman agrarian deity Sol Indiges when the former began to incorporate foreign and more bellicose influences as the Roman Empire moved its focus eastward in the third century CE.

There is no big mystery why the Christians adopted this festival for Jesus. Jesus is associated with light and the Sun. In ancient mythologies going back to Egypt, the Sun is believed to “die” (either every night or every year) and be reborn in the morning. There are rituals, particularly in the north, to help the Sun return. The parallels with Jesus (even without lines like the one in “Silent Night” that goes “Son of God loves pure light”), and his death and resurrection, are pretty obvious. Because this was a festival that has been set on the Solstice rather than actually being the celebration of the Solstice, further reorganization of the calendar moved the date of the Solstice apart from the date of Sol Invictus/Christmas without much apparent concern.

So, basically, Sam’s wrong.

Incidentally, we had this year a major conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn known in the media as the Christmas Star. This very rare conjunction only happens about every four centuries (but hasn’t been visible since 1226 CE) and even more rarely on the Winter Solstice. One theory about the Star of Bethlehem that, according to the Bible, led the Magi to the Christ child in the manger, is that it was either a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn (a fall birth) or a similar conjunction between Jupiter and Venus (a summer birth).

So, the Winchester theory here is that when people hang the meadowsweet wreaths on their doors, it’s an invitation for the pagan god to come in and eat them. The question now is whether this is accidental (modern humans ignorant of what it means) or deliberate.

Bobby also speculates that pine stakes can kill these pagan gods (If they’re really gods, how can they be killed, eh?), but he doesn’t tell the Brothers until later. The Brothers go to the local Christmas shop (The Cosy Crafts? Something like that) where the wreaths were bought and talk to the owner, with a slow-tempo and rather extemporaneous version of “Deck the Halls” playing in the shop. He thinks they’re a gay couple, which Dean plays into (much to Sam’s annoyance), but still gives them the name of the woman (Madge Carrigan) who made the wreaths. She gave them to him for free (the Brothers suspect this is not quite accurate). He, of course, didn’t sell them for free. There is no evidence he is otherwise involved in what’s going on.

Back at the motel that night (so, Christmas Eve, maybe?), the Brothers speculate how much a meadowsweet wreath would cost, with Sam guessing maybe “a couple hundred dollars.” As they sit on separate twin beds, Dean then reminiscences about a wreath of beer cans John once brought home for Christmas, that he had stolen from a liquor store. Sam doesn’t remember it quite so fondly and is confused why Dean is so obsessed with Christmas now, when he hasn’t “spoken about it in years.”

Dean points out the obvious – that this is his last year. Sam says he knows that and that’s why he can’t celebrate with Dean, knowing Dean will be dead the following Christmas. On the one hand, Sam is so focused on losing Dean in less than a year that he’s not appreciating his brother right now, nor the stories Dean is telling. On the other hand, boy, John sure was a piece of work, wasn’t he?

Off they go to Madge’s house and, what do you know? It’s a Christmas extravaganza. Every possible light, do-dad and plastic deer (but no creches), with Christmas carols blasted to the outside air (It’s an instrumental with lots of flute that I suspect comes from an animated TV special, but I can’t for the life of me remember which one. Help me out, Dear Readers). Dean bets they even have a plastic-covered couch (after scoping out the interior while Sam engages the Carrigans in conversation). Madge and her pipe-smoking husband, Edward, seem friendly (entirely too friendly, really) and offer the boys some peanut brittle (which Dean starts to go for before Sam slaps his hand down).

The Brothers establish that Madge only made two meadowsweet wreaths and thinks they smell divine. That’s enough for them to decide to come back later that night, much later, not least when Sam finds out the Carrigans moved from Seattle (remember the grandfather from the teaser?) the previous January, after two abductions around Christmas (including Doomed Teaser Santa). From their visual check of the inside of the house, Sam establishes that the Carrigans had vervain and mint in the house, rather than the traditional holly (It’s all pagan, anyway, Sam). Neither brother can figure out how the Carrigans are involved, with their current theory being that they’re worshipers of the god, but they need to find out. But first, they carve the pine stakes Bobby told them would kill this particular god.

As the Brothers arrive at the house that night, “O Come All Ye Faithful” is blasting out on a loudspeaker over the neighborhood. At first, I was puzzled because that’s a very Christian song, but then I appreciated the delicious irony of a couple of pagan devotees (or are they?) using a traditional Christian hymn to welcome other pagans.

After picking the lock and arriving in the living room (where the carol turns into a quieter instrumental), Dean quietly comments to Sam on the Carrigans having a plastic-covered couch, as he’d predicted. Inside is just as Christmasfied as outside, with Dean checking out some very Germanic Santas on the mantle and Sam walking past a Santa with an accordion, what looks like a Christmas penguin, and various other holiday bric-a-brac. Dean also finds snow globes and a large gingerbread house, while Sam finds an entire table of gingerbread cookies in the kitchen.

(Probably related – there’s a theory that gingerbread men started as a baked-bread substitution for actual human sacrifices. Hence why I once wrote a story called “The Gingerbread Man” about a minor pagan god from the Mesolithic who is sacrificed by Neolithic invaders as a bog body over and over again for thousands of years – until the day he escapes. FYI, if you’re wondering if my story “Zombieville” (which includes a zombie giraffe) predates the Resident Evil inspiration for the zombie baboons Andrew Dabb was so in a hurry to botch this show’s ending in order to, uh, bring to life – you’re right.)

The Brothers sneak around and eventually find a cellar door. Downstairs they go and – holy crap – it’s a completely different story. Dark, dungeon-y, blood and body parts all over the place. Lots of bones still stuck in various shop tools. Sam looks ready to throw up, while Dean is more clinical (and less fascinated than Sam).

Sam goes up to one of the red-leather sacks we saw before and touches it. Suddenly, the person inside starts thrashing around. This is a rather large plothole. The story has already established that everyone in the sacks is dead by the time they leave their houses and…well…there are too many body parts lying around for either of the two victims we know got taken to have survived. Plus, we never see or hear about this victim again, so maybe it was just a lure?

As Sam jumps back, Madge grabs him and pins him to a wall. Dean shouts Sam’s name and comes rushing to the rescue, but Edward appears out of nowhere, grabs Dean, and slams him head-first into a wall. Dean goes down like a sack of grain (Jensen Ackles does the same sexy stuntfall he does in “Scarecrow.” Not that I’m complaining).

As Madge and Edward stare up at Sam, his flashlight moves across their faces as he struggles in Madge’s grip, showing monster faces underneath. Madge is all sweetness and light as she smacks the back of Sam’s head into the wall and knocks him out cold. She then looks perkily at her husband, who sticks his pipe in his mouth.

As a clarinet-heavy instrumental version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” plays on the house loudspeaker, both boys wake up tied to chairs upstairs (Looks like the dining room, though it’s next to the table where Sam found the gingerbread cookies, so maybe the kitchen), back to back. After asking Dean if he’s okay (Dean took a really hard blow to the head in this one), and Dean says he thinks so, Sam guesses the obvious – that Madge and Edward, far from being mad worshipers, are really “Mr. and Mrs. God. Nice to know.”

Madge and Edward come in, all cheerful, and get started with the “ritual.” Edward calls them out. “You’re Hunters,” he says, indicating they’ve taken down a few Hunters in their past, as well. Dean calls them out right back as pagan gods and suggests they let him and Sam go, and “call it a day.” Edward, unsurprisingly to anyone, demurs, saying they’d “just come back with more Hunters and kill us.” Sam suggests they “should have thought of that before you went snacking on Humans,” while Dean mocks their attempts to minimize their killings by calling them “the Cunninghams” (from 1970s show Happy Days).

This precipitates a rant from Edward about how disrespectful humans are these days.

Edward: You, mister, better show us a little respect!

Sam: Or what? You’ll eat us?

Edward: Not so fast. There’s rituals to be followed, first.

Madge: Oh, we’re just sticklers for rituals.

The sickly smile, all shiny teeth, that she gives Sam is downright creepy.

As they get cracking (so to speak), Madge complains that they used to get a hundred sacrifices a year and now they only take two or three. Edward says that Sam and Dean (“Hardy Boys”) bring this year’s count up to five (which indicates a victim we and the Brothers never heard about). The gods complain that “this Jesus character” ruined their fun long ago.

Edward and Madge’s arrogance seems well-earned at this juncture (even if they’re being total hypocrites about the reason). By their own admission, they’ve killed and eaten over 4,000 humans in the past 2,000 years alone and probably hundreds of thousands before that. Granted, the timeline’s a little fuzzy. If Jesus (and not, say, pagan Roman emperors getting rid of a rival local pagan Germanic cult) is responsible for their downfall, then they’ve been out in the cold a good bit less than the two millennia Madge whines about. Northern Europe wasn’t fully Christianized until around the 11th century or so (Think Vikings. In Iceland. This will come up in the review). But even so, that would only raise their body count. So, there’s no reason for them to perceive the Brothers as threats, now that they’re tied up. Ha.

Dean tries to joke that the gods can’t get started on their rituals without meadowsweet and Madge promptly comes in with two dried wreaths of it to hang around their necks (Dean actually cringes). Edward comments that they now look “good enough to eat.” And he smacks his lips.

They slice the Brothers’ arms for blood and Edward yanks a fingernail off Sam’s right hand, commenting that young men used to “come from miles around to be sitting where you are now” (These gods seem to go only for adult men, not women or kids). When Dean yells at Edward to leave Sam alone and calls him a “son of a bitch,” this precipitates another rant from Edward (Madge chiming in) about how no one respects the gods, anymore. Once enthusiasm for “this Jesus character” came into their culture, their “altars were burned down” and they were “hunted like common monsters.” They cheerfully chatter on about how they “assimilated.” They “got jobs, a mortgage,” and “play bridge on Saturdays.” Dean tells Madge, “You’re not blending in as smooth as you think, lady!”

With unctuous glee, Madge slices Dean’s arm, causing him to call her a “bitch.” Madge schools him on using the “swear jar” and the term “fudge,” instead. Dean says, panting in agony, “I’ll try to keep that in mind!” then uses it the very next time she cuts him. Madge purrs, “Very good, dear!”

Just as Edward’s about to extract one of Dean’s molars as the final part of this first (yes, first) ritual, the doorbell rings (and Dean, still defiant, suggests that they “really should get that”). It’s an overly-nogged neighbour with a fruitcake, wanting the couple to go caroling.

In the kitchen, a hurting Dean tells a hurting Sam, “Merry Christmas, Sammy!”

Madge and Edward beg off (Edward complaining about his back) and eagerly return to their holiday meal with a roll of their eyes at the neighbor, stepping on the fruitcake on their way back to the kitchen. Unfortunately for them, said double-meat feast has got free of the chairs, fled to the living room, and locked them in the kitchen. At this point, Madge and Edward dispense with the assimilation and turn full monster.

I like the soundtrack music in this scene, which manages both to be festive and evoke rising action. Violent action. Nice job.

Dean is able to pull out a drawer from a cabinet and block his door. He goes over to help Sam, who suggests they pull out a cabinet to block that one. Dean wonders where they’re going to get more pine stakes to kill the monsters and Sam suggests the tree (another pagan lore loan). Just as they’re knocking the tree down and pulling it apart, the monsters come roaring out and grab them, Madge Sam and her husband Dean. Edward actually attacks Dean first (He sees him as the bigger threat? I dunno).

“Merry Christmas,” Sam echoes Dean immediately afterward (to Dean’s exasperation).

Madge is especially salty about what the Brothers did to her tree. After she knocks him across the room, Sam kills Madge first, twisting the stake in good, which helps Dean get the drop on a shocked and furious Edward with a branch to the face. Dean brutally stabs Mr. Grendel a couple of times and that’s it for our pagan gods. They lie side by side next to their fallen tree, equally formidable and now equally dead.

I’ve always wondered what the neighbors and the police made of Madge and Edward’s crime scene afterward. Granted, the Brothers’ blood was all over the kitchen, so they might have been tied to the killings of the Carrigans. But the carnage down cellar would have been much harder to pin on Sam and Dean, and you’ve got things like Sam’s fingernail, too. Imagine realizing that nice middle-aged couple next door were brutal, serial-killing cultists. They might have even been traced to Seattle, or further back from there.

In the flashback, it’s snowing hard outside. Young Dean wakes Young Sam up and tells him John came, but Sam slept through it. Dean has presents for Sam, but Sam quickly finds out they’re for a girl (a Barbie and a baton), prompting Dean to make a joke about John thinking Sam is girly, that has not aged well. Turns out Dean pilfered them from a house up the street that looked wealthy. On the one hand, it sucks when someone steals your Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and I sure hope Dean brought those back. On the other, I kinda have to admire Young Dean’s willingness to trudge through the snow to the house up the street in the first place.

Sam decides that John is not worthy of his gift and his devotion. He gives John’s present to Dean, instead. This gift turns out to be Dean’s famous amulet (which we now know is a Grail object). Dean is humbled and awed at the gift and puts it on, promising never to part with it. We get a brief instrumental refrain of “Jingle Bells” on the soundtrack.

Fade to Adult Dean and his amulet coming in the door to the Brothers’ motel to find that Sam has made him Christmas after all, to a modern version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that actually has the original lyrics from the film. Thank God.

(A brief aside about that song: As you may have noticed from my IFP article on Solstice carols back in the day, I’m a big fan of Christmas carols and have strict standards for what I like. I’m a firm believer in the original “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow” line over that insipid “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough” line, especially in this “Hard Candy Christmas” year, and the original is far more appropriate for this episode and show, anyway. I also think the “woke” version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (by John Legend and Kelly Clarkson) and that revolutionary elves song (the Barenaked Ladies’ “Elf’s Lament”) are hilarious. Yes, I’ve been listening to Christmas music since before Thanksgiving. It’s 2020. Don’t judge.)

Dean asks Sam what changed his mind. At a loss for words, Sam hands him some eggnog, instead. When Dean tries it, he coughs in surprise, realizing Sam spiked it heavily with rum. Dean then surprises Sam by giving him two presents. Sam surprises Dean by giving him two back. It turns out they shopped at the same place: “the gas mart down the road.”

As in the flashback, Dean is impressed and touched. Yeah, the tree is tiny and kinda pathetic-looking. Yes, the booze-laced ‘nog is nasty (Jensen Ackles insists his reaction was genuine when Dean makes a face because Jared Padalecki pranked him by spiking the eggnog with real rum – lots of real rum). Yes, the beef jerky and motor oil from the gas station down the road are a little basic (Dean got Sam “skin mags and shaving cream”). But Dean has still gotten Sam some gifts in return and is touched by Sam’s effort (He doesn’t even make fun of it, as he might have in Season 1). Dean wishes Sam a Merry Christmas and Sam returns it. He tries to add something, but can’t. After almost saying deep things to each other, the Brothers awkwardly decide to watch a game, instead. Outside, it starts to snow on the Impala (their motel door number being 12, of course), the pagan-god spell broken at last.

Credits

Review: Watching the Closer Look interview of Eric Kripke on the Season 3 DVD for this one, I probably should have not liked this episode. Kripke merrily states that he set out to smash up every single Christmas tradition he could find. As my articles on Christmas fantasy, paranormal romance, and horror show, he’s a bit late to that game, but I suppose he still had to go there. Ironically, Kripke also seems to love Christmas. I think the clincher is his story about what he went through to get that spinning “Special” intro at the beginning of the episode. A scrooge would have hated that, not remembered it fondly as a part of childhood and gone to great lengths to track it down.

That said, holy batshorts, is this one bloody, gory episode. I’m not sure if it’s the goriest, considering there are so many candidates from the show, but my God, was that R-level gore. It’s gotta be in the top five. And it’s prosecuted with such taboo-shattering enthusiasm. Kindly, Santa-clad granddads are dragged up chimneys to their deaths. Women proposition Santas in porn flicks. A pervy old Santa gets stoned and drunk after his work day is done. Sam and Dean kill two pagan gods with a Christmas tree. And then there’s that dark, grotty, chaotic cellar of horrors literally underneath the safe, sanitized, suburban festival of hearth and home.

Wow.

I hadn’t noticed this before, but the different MOTW-vs.-Doomed Redshirts (literally, here) scenes have what appear to be intentionally different tones. Originally, I thought the acting by the kid in the teaser was a bit broad, but now I think he was directed to do that. The teaser is brutally jocular satire of the kind of Very Special Christmas episode programming that usually came after that “Special” intro and that you can see in all its glory here on YouTube. The scene immediately after is much sadder and gives a more “Face on the Milk Box” feel.

The next scene where the MOTW strikes and kills the father right in front of the terrified little tyke goes right for terror along the lines of “…And All Through the House” from Tales from the Crypt (the 1972 movie and the 1989 TV episode, both of which came from the original comic, which some credit with inspiring Santa-themed slasher horror). The final battle between the Brothers and the pagan gods comes off very much like the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. So, the tonal switches are broad-ranging and striking.

Dang it. I just remembered that Dr. Seuss’ Grinch is basically Grendel made cute for the kids, right down to his motivation for trashing Whoville.

It might seem strange for there to be an actual entire genre of Christmas horror (Christmas slashers, especially), but it’s a well-established tradition. There’s Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, of course, and other 19th century antiquarian ghost stories (such as those by M.R. James) were often set or told around Christmastime. But Christmas horror goes back even further than that.

Icelandic folklore is often cited regarding a giant Christmas cat, the Yule Cat Jólakötturinn, who first appears in Icelandic records in the 19th century. He eats anyone who isn’t wearing a new piece of clothing come Christmastime. But even more terrifying is his much-older owner, the troll mother Grýla, who eats “naughty children” (because of course she does) and is part of a group of “Bad Santa” types known as the Yule Lads that goes back to the 13th century. Icelandic lore can get seriously weird, with its emphasis on the island being populated by “hidden people” (elves, basically, but not the Santa kind) who looked just like ordinary humans (and could even take a specific human’s shape to make mischief), but who had magic powers and a generally capricious nature.

There is, for example, an entire group of stories of house maids being visited by elves on Christmas or New Year’s Eve, while they’re guarding the house (sod houses that were basically like living underground) and the rest of the family is off to church mass. The elves play tricks on these young girls, trying to get them to come dancing with them. Medieval and Early Modern Icelandic authorities were highly suspicious of dancing, since it led to, uh, other things, especially for women.

If the girl remains virtuous and resolute in tending to her sewing or other household duties, she is often rewarded. If she gives in to temptation and runs off the howl at the moon with the elves, the family may find her the next morning (“morning” being a relative term in the month-long nights of Icelandic winters), lying across the threshold with her head cut off.

There is also, in Norway, a Yule Goat. These troll characters reflected a time not so long ago when life in Iceland was nasty, brutish and short, and very, very dark in winter.

Let’s talk a bit about the Krampus type of Bad Santa, with includes (but is not limited to) the group known as the Companions of St. Nicholas. These don’t include the Icelandic Yule Lads, who appear to work independently, within their own lore, or the Swedish St. Lucia. The latter is based on both the fourth century martyr and possibly a demon/minor Diana-like Nordic deity named Lussi, or even Adam’s naughty first wife Lilith.

The Rhineland and Pennsylvania Dutch Belsnickel, the Alpine Krampus, and the Dutch Zwarte Piet (yes, that means “Black Pete”), among similar beings in Western (especially Germanic) Europe, are, according to legend, demons who were enslaved by St. Nicholas to do good on his behalf. These are the figures Sam is looking at near the beginning of the episode (right after the title credits) and mentions in passing, with Krampus, by far, being currently the best-known.

As the example “Black Pete” makes clear, these characters have some pretty messy backstory. Black Pete is a caricature of a Moor (a Spanish or North African Muslim), from whence we get the not-so-nice term “blackamore.” The people who dress up as Black Pete during Christmas celebrations in the Netherlands do so, at absolute best, in blackface.

In medieval times, people in the Mediterranean region of Europe had a lot of contact with non-Christians, both Muslims and Jews. Jews also lived in northern Europe and Muslims lived as far north as the Pyrenees in southern France, but these communities were much rarer and more isolated. While living and working next to Abrahamic non-Christians was pretty common in someplace like Spain or southern Italy, a lot fewer people in Northern Europe were likely to encounter them. In fact, for much of the Middle Ages, those regions had much larger populations of Celtic and Germanic pagans. Hence, Yule Cat.

As such, the study of monsters in the Middle Ages (a thriving field, believe me) is full of representations from that part of Europe of Muslims and Jews as inhuman, pagan, even demonic. So, you have antisemitic figures like Krampus (who looks like a Jewish caricature) and the above-mentioned Black Pete (with some color racism for added squirm). It doesn’t help that the current versions we have date to nostalgic medieval revivals from the 19th century. Yes, they represent a dark side to the St. Nicholas legend (the punishment part), but they also represent something so, so much worse. You can see why the show took a hard left outta there after a few cracks about “Evil Santa” and went straight for the “evil pagan god vibe” deal, instead.

I want to take issue with the whole “When do we tell the kids Santa doesn’t exist” thing that gets played with. According to his legend, the original St. Nicholas left presents for the poor in his community, while hiding his identity. This was a way of fulfilling the biblical injunction to take care of the widow, orphan and stranger during times of the year that were especially tough (St. Nicholas was himself an orphan, albeit a rich one).

Part of the legend is that others began to imitate him, in his name, including a bunch of medieval charitable guilds. The idea that there are different representatives of Santa around the world and that at some point, you recruit the next generation into participating, is really part of the original legend. It’s not some feel-good modernization. Becoming a better community by collectively becoming a bunch of Santas for each other is the whole point.

So, when Dean tells Sam that Santa isn’t real, but that the supernatural world is, he’s basically doing a Supernatural version of the above. That’s what The Talk is about. It’s bringing people into a world and a group that protects humans from darker forces. Hunters are basically year-round versions of Santa. With saltguns.

I know that the weeChester stuff is important and it does have some useful information for future reference, but Lord, are those flashbacks incredibly depressing, or what? How could anybody think of John as anything but a card-carrying douchebag of a father after that? I also am not sure that they do Sam any favors. Sure, Colin Ford as Young Sam is as cute as a button, but I don’t think it helps Sam to show him as a whiny, self-absorbed kid and a whiny, self-absorbed adult relearning a lesson he supposedly learned nearly two decades before, all in the same episode.

Yeah, Sam, we get it. You’re going to be alone next Christmas, so get your act together and make this Christmas happy for the person who will be in Hell next year. Life is not worse than Hell. Yes, Sam does figure it out in time (on both occasions) to make Dean’s Christmas, but having the lesson shown us twice does make him look like kind of a selfish idiot for most of the episode.

Ironically, much of the rest of “A Very Supernatural Christmas” presents us with old-style Long-Suffering Genius Sam having to put up with Dumb Hick Dean, as if the writers didn’t notice how Sam was coming across. But then, these are the folks that gave us Ruby and it can be hard to see that kind of thing ahead of time.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter in the end because both times, Sam goes against his own self-pity and puts himself out for Dean. Sam may need to make the journey twice, but he gets to the same destination each time. That’s rather hopeful, considering the events of Season 4 and early Season 5: No matter how far off the reservation Sam wanders, he always seems to find his way back to his one great compass in life – Dean. (Ah, how young and optimistic I was when I wrote this in 2009.)

I’ve heard fans complain about Ridge Canipe and how his version of Young Dean isn’t very “sympathetic.” Well, I’d say the reason why Canipe comes across as edgy and brittle is because he’s supposed to. We’re seeing Dean under the incredible pressure of a burden that should never have been dumped on his shoulders in the first place (Daddy couldn’t be home for Christmas, my ass), trying to explain the unforgivable to his younger brother a good decade before he mastered how to internalize it. The one thing Canipe didn’t use from Ackles’ older version was Dean’s sense of humor, but one could easily argue that this pre-teen Dean version was before he fully developed that defense mechanism. He does use humor, but it’s bitter and sarcastic, not as light as he later makes it seem.

What I find rather unfortunate, in retrospect, is how this entire storyline is really Dean’s, yet Kripke seemed so determined to make Dean’s story, his personal character conflict (that he’s going to Hell in less than a year), All About Sam’s grief over it (and even though Jeremy Carver wrote this episode, Kripke was clearly in charge of the finished product). The main inspiration for it, I suspect, is Ebenezer Scrooge and his sister in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. You can find two excellent versions of this that came out this year, one for free (by some local friends of mine who do it every year) and one for a nominal fee (by a cast of ghost tour guides from York in England).

In the book, Scrooge has his beloved younger sister, Fan. She acts as an emotional mediator between him and his father, who dislikes him for unknown reasons. But then his father sends him off to boarding school. His sister dies in childbirth and he comes to resent his nephew for taking her away from him (and for resembling her too much). This is when Scrooge begins to turn into the bitter misanthrope we see in the present in the book.

Obviously, Dean is supposed to be an analogue for Fan and Sam for Scrooge. And since Scrooge is the protagonist of the book, so is Sam for the episode. But that doesn’t fit particularly comfortably with the season mytharc. Scrooge’s sister must have gone to Heaven. Dean is very much not heading that way.

I’m not sure how I feel about the amulet at this point. I know I don’t like calling it the “Samulet.” There turned out to be a lot more to it than a visible representation of Dean’s devotion to Sam. On the other hand, what it did turn out to be (which was really cool up to the end of Season 14 – thanks so much for that, Andrew Dabb, jackass) was a Grail object.

Considering how things turned out with God, I can’t help wondering if the way it “just happened” to end up with Dean instead of John was intentional. And not in a good way. More like belling the cat. The amulet was supposed to be a way of locating God. But what if it was being used at this point in the story as a way of keeping tabs on Dean? That’s kind of creepy, that God may have been stalking Dean even this early on. In fact, probably was stalking Dean this early on.

This is also one of the earliest (is the earliest, maybe?) mentions of Jesus in the show. The two gods speak of him as a real person, though it doesn’t appear they ever met him. They really resent him, too. Jesus comes across as a sort of Super Hunter. So powerful was his influence that he marked a transition from a period of literal darkness, when humans were at the mercy of pagan gods and monsters, and even enslaved by them, to a period of light, when humans were able to fight back and kill the monsters as equals and even superiors.

Jesus may not be the first Hunter in the SPNverse, but he certainly appears to have been the most successful. It’s therefore notable (in light of how Dean’s story goes later on) that the Brothers kill two pagan gods responsible for at least 4,000 human deaths over the past two millennia (and who knows how many before that), and that this is a fairly ordinary hunt for them.

Back to the mythology (I discussed this as part of an article on the pagan origins of Christmas in 2009, as well as an article that discusses Sam-as-Scrooge, for Fantasy Magazine the previous year). The pagan gods in this one don’t make a lot of sense. Okay, so they kill people (who have no clue what those wreaths mean) and then they give warm weather in return. It seems to me that the only difference between Mr. and Mrs. God and your garden-variety MOTW is that they eat people and assuage any guilt or responsibility for the murders by giving their community unseasonably warm weather.

Again, the point of human sacrifice is made utterly meaningless, as in “Scarecrow.” However, unlike “Scarecrow,” those making it meaningless are the gods themselves, which doesn’t make much sense. Gods, of whatever system, represent divine principles and I’m not seeing what divine principle these two represent. Yes, their ritual is (sort of) modeled on the Swedish ritual of Midvinterblot, but Madge and Edward bear more resemblance to Saxon(ish) monsters Grendel and his mother than to Odin or Freyja, gods propitiated at the Midvinterblot. Possibly, the writers intended to echo the myth of Norse god Baldur’s death, but Baldur is killed by mistletoe, not pine, and is a gentle precursor to Jesus. And we’ll find out later these gods definitely weren’t Baldur, anyway.

The alleged connection to Hold Nickar (mentioned once and then never again) also makes little sense. Hold Nickar was a sea god who appears to have given some of his traditions to our current Santa Claus, namely: his tendency to ride through the sky at the Winter Solstice and toss down favors to his worshipers in a version of the Ancient European Wild Hunt. How this translates into a male and female god, both equally dangerous but only one of whom rides to a house to grab a victim, I don’t know. And how a Teutonic sea god is vulnerable to pine stakes is also never explained.

I suspect what really happened was that the writers watched William Friedkin’s The Guardian a few times too often and that’s why we get all of this Celtic herbal mythology of the Green Man mixed up with Scandinavian and German traditions (Those nasty druids, they really got around, ya know – she said sarcastically). Then Kripke got it into his head that the Brothers should whack an MOTW with a Christmas tree (He actually has said this), and Mr. and Mrs. God were born. Though I’m especially confused by that after reading visual effects supervisor Ivan Hayden’s interview in Supernatural Magazine. How do you use a tree to kill a tree god? Some kind of like-kills-like sympathetic magic?

Concerning the Anti-Claus, he’s not Santa’s evil brother. He’s a collection of demons in Dutch folklore enslaved by St. Nicholas to do his bidding. Maybe the writers tried too strenuously not to show that they were ripping off Santa’s Slay. Maybe they quickly realised how intrinsically racist and antisemitic those traditions are (which is why they’re being phased out). But there’s shaping the lore to your story and there’s making it mean things it’s not meant to mean, and I think they crossed a line with this one. Roared right over a few, in fact.

So, why don’t I give a crap? Because, you know what? I don’t. Sam-worship, pagan-bashing and mythology-mastication that irritated the hell out of me in the Halloween ep, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” just make me giggle, shrug and turn the gain up so I can hear the mayhem better on “A Very Supernatural Christmas.” I think it’s because, underneath it all, this is a wickedly-funny shaggy-dog story intended to show us the True Meaning of Christmas, which is that Christmas magic is real and you can feel it even under the worst circumstances.

There’s a terrible moment in that dining room when the Brothers are hurting bad and Dean turns to Sam and says, “Merry Christmas, Sam!” And means it. This may have originally come out in 2007, but “A Very Supernatural Christmas” is the Christmas Special sendoff 2020 thoroughly deserves.

Also, the Christmas jokes, when it comes right down to it, are in-jokes and not mean, and episode writer Jeremy Carver has fun with the lore, while director J. Miller Tobin has a lot of fun with the Christmas décor. You can tell Jensen Ackles, a self-professed lover of the holiday, is having a blast as Christmas-crazy Dean. Poor Padalecki gets stuck playing the Boy Who Hates Christmas, which is a much-harder job, though he does get some great lines as a consolation.

I was also surprised to find the Christmas music for the episode, both original and soundtrack, much richer and more enjoyable than I’d remembered. I’d never paid much attention to it on watches (many, many watches) before. I hadn’t expected to find much that was new on this rewatch, so that in particular was a pleasant surprise.

Madge and Edward, with their obsessively “secular” Christmasfied home, are hysterical. Of course pagan gods would hide out under the trappings of plastic decorations and blinking lights. We all knew that in our hearts, in the same weird, secret place that still knows damned-well there’s a monster under the bed, no matter what anybody says.

And the actors they got in were perfect for the roles, especially Merrilyn Gann and Spencer Garrett as Madge and Edward Carrigan. Great job, both of them, alone together and with Padalecki and Ackles (I love the cat-and-mouse back-and-forth, where you’re not sure who’s hunting whom). Also of note are Douglas Newell as the cynical shop owner and Brandy Kopp as the horrified elf girl. See, the CW? See what you’re missing by insisting that actors on your show all be under 30 and anorexic?

Merry Christmas, Everyone!


Fun lines:

Dean [to Sam]: So, what did you find [in the victim’s house]?
Sam: Stockings, mistletoe…this.
Dean: A tooth?! Where was this?
Sam: In the chimney.
Dean: The chimney?! No way a man fits up the chimney. It’s too narrow.
Sam: No way he fits up in one piece.
Dean: All right, so if Dad went up the chimney…
Sam: …we need to find what dragged him up there.

Dean [after hearing that Christmas isn’t really Jesus’ birthday]: Next, you’ll be telling me the Easter Bunny’s Jewish!

Sam [about watching the Santa talk to kids]: We just came here to watch.

Dean: Hey, Sam, why are you the boy who hates Christmas?

Sam [to Dean before they bust into “Santa’s” trailer]: Mr. Gung-Ho Christmas might have to blow away Santa.

Guy in Santa suit on porno [to girl coming onto him in a bar]: Look, I’m just not in the mood, okay?
Girl: Mistle my toe. Roast my chestnut? You know…jingle my bell?

Store Owner: Can I help you boys?
Dean: Yeah, we were playing Jenga over at the Walshes and…well, he hasn’t shut up about this wreath. [to Sam] I don’t know. You tell him.
Sam [stiffly]: Sure. [to Store Owner] It was yummy.
Store Owner[to Sam]: I sell a lot of wreaths, guys.
Sam: Right, right, but you see, this one would have been really special. It had green leaves, white buds on it. Might have been made out of meadowsweet?
Store Owner: Well, aren’t you the fussy one?

Dean: Did you sell [the wreaths] for free?
Store Owner: Hell, no. It’s Christmas. People pay a buttload for this crap.
Dean: That’s the spirit!

Dean [looking at Madge and Edward’s christmasfied house]: So, this is where Mrs. Wreath lives, huh? Boy, can’t you just feel the Evil Pagan Vibe?

Dean [to Madge after she cuts him]: If you fudging touch me again, I’ll fudging kill ya!

Edward: Fingernail…blood. Sweet Peter on a Popsicle Stick – I forgot the tooth!

Madge [to Sam]: You little thing. [head spins disturbingly] I loved that tree.

(Original) Next Week: Houses of the Holy: Sam and Dean investigate when unlikely vigilantes kill secretly-bad people and claim an angel incited them to do it.

(Original) In the New Year (January 21): Sam, Interrupted: The Brothers check themselves into a psych hospital to investigate mysterious doings there, then can’t check back out when the MOTW starts to drive them crazy.

(Actual) Next week: Ask Jeeves: We’re back to Season 10 with an episode where Sam and Dean are called to a moldy old pile for the reading of a will and the solving of a murder.

The Kripke Years

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

The Gamble Years

Season 6 (with Kripke)

Season 7

The Carver Years

Season 8

Season 9

Season 10

Season 11

The Dabb Years

Season 12

Season 13

Season 14

Season 15

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53 thoughts on “The Official Christmas Retro Recap and Review: Supernatural 3.08: A Very Supernatural Christmas [AUGMENTED]”

  1. Good point, yeah, it was probably Dean’s written under duress will from season 5 as you say.
    To Sam it appears from the shrine to all things Winchester, Dean became a stuck in time hero, like a James Dean time situation. Maybe the finale was just in Sam’s head, his point of view of who he felt Dean was and what he’d want, to ease his guilt and his pain, because he couldn’t imagine Dean walking away from him. Maybe that was not Dean’s Heaven at all ?

    I’m coming around to thinking maybe it would have been better even just to have left it open, not knowing what happened to Sam after the last hunt, that he just dissapeared into the wind after Dean’s funeral and that we see Dean ride off into the sunset in Heaven, that the potential was there for both futures as independent people.

    1. Ooh, I don’t know. I’d rather we were at least seeing Dean for real in Heaven. Otherwise, he’d straight-up disappear as a real character from the second half the story and that’s just depressing.

      1. With the final season being rather disappointing and something of a disservice to the show and the story of two brothers who fought the odds I guess there was never going to be a really great ending, it was on the cards because of all the missed opportunities to turn things around. Sam’s life after was pretty sad and mostly empty ( there was a lot of alcohol prominent on his shelves) and NotDean didn’t do anything for me, other than be a slight irritation, like an itch you can’t reach.

        On the plus side, we do have some rather magnificent past seasons in which Dean Winchester more than held his own and became the heart of the show, the true North and proved beyond doubt there were no other men like him, we can skip the bits we don’t enjoy now it’s complete.

        1. This week TNT showed the last three episodes of Season 15 and then my beloved PILOT.

          I think the show would’ve been better off ending with episode 19 than 20. Just the two of them sitting in the bunker sharing a beer while all the other characters they had known/loved/saved were shown in a montage.

          The ending should’ve remained open. PERIOD.

  2. I didn’t see it here, Jensen Ackles won Best Actor in a Horror Show by the Critics’ Choice Assn.

    ONLY CW actor/show nominated.

    I just saw bunch of Walker previews and it is WEIRD seeing Jared with short hair. I mean, he’s going to be a COP so I get it’s shorter hair. But it is strange.

      1. I think WALKER gives us the insight into HOW Jared Padalecki really wants to wear his hair.

        HIS show gave him HIS hair. Not that a Ranger could wear some of Sam Winchester’s hairdos, but he ‘was’ undercover for a year (almost) so I would’ve expected him to look a little scuzzy.

        And now JENSEN is growing his hair longer for Soldier Boy. (But in his case we don’t know if it’s Jensen or Kripke’s idea.)

  3. TNT is showing Season 15 in its entirety; there are so few episodes I want to see (Last Call is tops) BUT on next Tuesday they will go from Carry On to Pilot.

    It always freaks me out to go from the LATEST season to the absolutely gorgeous camera work and actors in the Pilot. I don’t know what the technical change of film technique, that deep sepia-toned photography of the first season, I know the way it’s done now is cheaper and quicker, but the FILM of that first season just floors me.

    1. While the show did have some nice cinematography later on, and the early seasons were perhaps a bit too dark and grainy, I do miss that feel. The pilot is especially nice because it was filmed in CA and not BC.

  4. Now about the Christmas Carols — I have been hearing Burl Ives sing (It’s a) Holly Jolly Christmas for the two hours I have been reading this article/following the links.

    Oh Burl, that guy had a WAY with the words to a song, didn’t he?

    1. …dang it, Eva. Now I can’t unhear that observation whenever I listen to Burl Ives. Yes, yes, he did have a way, didn’t he?

  5. 9.05, what a nice call back to remind everyone how much empathy Dean really has and importantly, it’s sincere , deep and consistent empathy for the very literal underdogs. That depth of empathy was what most likely prevented Dean from ever being to walk away from hunting, it’s in his soul. Probably something that the writers didn’t even see happening as they developed the story lines. Where the character Jensen inhabits took on his own life.
    It’s sad that in the episode we see protective Sam with his genuine empathy and a good deal of affection for his brother fully on display , knowing how things worked out from there.

    1. Yeah, it is a shame. I feel as though they could have developed that version of Sam a whole lot more than they did. More than just as straight man to Dean’s off-the-wall shenanigans. Not that I minded that role, just that I think they could have done some other positive things with Sam instead of making him a whiny shithead all the time.

      1. Protective Sam was a version of Sam I could have gotten quite fond of, small consolation, we saw him surface again briefly towards the end, when he did get some screen time.

        1. What gets me is that Sam apparently couldn’t pull his head out of his thirtysomething-is-way-too-old-to-be-a-teenage-dirtbag buttcheeks long enough to learn how to nurture other people until Dean died and even then, he apparently was only capable of doing it for his son. If you think about it, it’s actually quite disturbing that the show perceived this as a credible and healthy Hero’s Journey.

          Had another look at the IMdB reviews. The one-stars continue to pile up and all the high-rated reviews (which are quite fluffy and butthurt about other fans not loving the finale) are getting downvoted. It’s amusing as hell. But I’d still have preferred a better ending.

          1. Fair to say, season 15 will be way down the rankings and probably won’t get much TV air time again, probably ever. In comparison to earlier seasons if one is totally honest, season 15 only highlighted where the real weaknesses had formed in my opinion and as much as I loved the characters and the show , it wasn’t what it had been.

      2. Paula did you get my check? It was not shown as cashed when I got my end of the month bank statement.

        I should’ve asked if you had the same address; I have a Nashville address on Laurel Spring.

  6. Wow. That was interesting. It took me a few days to read through all the links. I always learn something. I particularly enjoyed the solstice carols. I’ve always loved Christmas carols. They were the first things I ever played.

    Dean may have had a hard life, and he may suffer from depression, but he sure knows how to take his fun where he finds it. That’s one of the things I love best about him. Whether its Christmas, or sex, or cosplay or movies, he finds ways to get joy out of life.

    Sam could have stood to learn from that. The comparison to Scrooge is apt. The thing I always remember about A Christmas Carol was the nephew’s comment about Scrooge not even being willing to spend his money on his own comfort. Like Scrooge, even when fun or comfort is available to him, Sam’s not willing to avail himself of it. And he ends up sucking the joy out of life for others. And that got even worse after Ruby got her claws into him.

    I have mixed feelings about the amulet. Back when I first watched this, I read something that made it out to be an example of Sam’s love for Dean, since they were children. But really, Sam giving the amulet to Dean was more of a “screw you” to John. If he’d wanted to give Dean a gift, he’d have asked Bobby. Dean was always just an afterthought to him.

    I hope the new year is better than 2020. Here’s to 2021.

    1. Thanks! I was starting to wonder if I’d stunned almost everyone into silence! Doing all that research and those links took freakin’ forever.

      As I was reviewing this one, I kept thinking that a bolder choice for the series finale than Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” (apt, sure, but kinda obvious and safe) would have been Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.” I think that sums up how Sam felt when he lost Dean for good. Maybe by the time he got to Heaven, he’d grown up enough to have learned to appreciate his brother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

        1. I went to Iceland (which seems like a lovely place to live now) a while back and got as many books on their history and folklore as I could. I also went to as many museums as I could (though not all of them were open) and even went on a ghost tour. Icelanders are cheerfully open and bloody-minded about recounting their dark past. What I put in the review was just a small fraction of how ugly it got and believe me, I’m no expert on Icelandic history, either.

          For example, infant mortality rate in Iceland was the highest in Europe for centuries. How high was it, you ask? Well, there’s a tradition where a man’s name can only survive through his firstborn son. So, he would name his first four sons after him in the hopes that one of them would make it to adulthood (let alone fatherhood) to carry on his name. And that strategy didn’t always work.

          1. The George Forman Strategy.

            Perhaps that’s where George Forman got the idea. 🙂
            Tho I doubt this kind of infant mortality for any of his offspring was of a major concern.

  7. Merry Christmas to you.

    This episode, it’s dark, gory and pokes fun at the commercial elements of Christmas, but underneath it all Sam( aka Scrooge) quits his whining to finally give Dean what he wanted and needed, a wonderful solid Christmas memory of being loved and appreciated.

    It certainly resonates harder now that Dean is gone. Rising 12 he was clearing up his father’s messes, was so worn down that he didn’t even expect a present or have a single thought for his own needs.
    Dean Winchester’s life from the age of four was pretty sucky, but it had gotten to the point that whilst trying to save Dean, Sam became so consumed with his impending loss, that Dean was left almost begging to be noticed in the short time he had left before Hell. It’s a very dark episode in so many ways, the culmination of everything that had ever gone wrong for Dean because he loved his family so much and didn’t get out when he had the chance.

    The amulet? Yeah nasty little tracker and definitely creepy in hindsight . I believe Lilith actually states out loud Chuck has an unhealthy obsession with Dean, so I’m gonna quote Elf girl…eww.
    The amulet connection to Chuck makes the series ending more impactful, tying in their miserable past very strongly, making what those poor Winchester children went through even worse, they deserved better.

    1. Lilith does, but doesn’t Amara say something, too, about it? And even Chuck kinda admits it at the end when he tries to goad Dean into killing him. Unfortunately, it being a Dean storyline, that was just one more loose end the show didn’t bother to tie up.

      1. Ooh that’s right. I forgot about that Amara does mention it.
        Chuck and Sam both had similar outlooks in so much as they didn’t wholly appriciate what they had in their respective siblings until they were no longer able to access that comfort and care, too focused on their own needs.
        Perhaps that’s part of the reason Dean and Amara were connected. They understood that no matter what, they both still deeply loved their siblings and saw their good qualities over their failings. They chose to see the good and make the best of what little they had.

        1. I certainly think it’s why it worked emotionally. Sam and Chuck were both the Golden Boys in those families. Alas, the show never went any further than that, despite her being a mythological being and Chuck being obsessed with Dean. I am still way salty about the dirty they done Amara.

          1. I certainly didn’t appriciate Amara’s end , consumed by her brother then by Jack. So rude!
            It’s not dissimilar though to the comments Demon Dean made about Sam’s life sucking the life out of Dean’s life. Cruel and hurtful as it was intended to be , it also carried an element of truth . Both Dean and Amara were never able to live their own independent lives to the full , remaining faithful to family and choosing love over vengeance cost them dearly.

            1. I know we were supposed to feel sad and tragic over Dean dying and leaving Sam alone, but I couldn’t help being amused at all the J1 fans who didn’t notice that Dean basically broke up with Sam and moved on. What was frustrating about it was that Dabb then had him literally spin his wheels for the next three or so decades waiting for Sam. What was the point of that speech about wanting to move on, then? What did Dean think he was going on to do?

              1. Yeah, that I had a problem with for a while, it seemed Heaven was like a consolation prize, which we all know Dean wasn’t into, but I guess having been indentured so long, to be able to choose must have left Dean somewhat nonplussed. People who’ve been held captive for long periods can have muted reactions to freedom and I think that’s possibly part of what happened. Bobby is the first person at any point in this saga I recall, to ask Dean what he wants to do and for a moment Dean looks stunned. Maybe Sam just turned up before Dean had figured it out because he was desperate to get back to Dean?

                1. But Sam was an old man by the time he died. I know Heaven time works differently, but Dean seemed older and wiser when he arrived at that bridge, as if he’d had lots of adventures while ‘waiting’ for Sam. But we never saw any of them, which was annoying.

                  1. Maybe that missing time could be the mini series Jensen talked of if he gets the chance?
                    Dean certainly seemed a lot more chilled the last we saw him for sure, leaving his pain behind agreed with him. I’d like to think that on his journey through Heaven, Dean did find his own version of the Valhalla Tessa the Reaper originally hinted laid before him.

                    It was so frustratingly vague and rushed at the end, they whole Jack as God thing needed wrapping up much much sooner so we had more time to finish the Winchesters story, instead of just one episode.

                    1. My headcanon has it that Jack and Castiel “fixed” Heaven for Dean and Dean spent the rest of Sam’s mortal life fixing the rest of the SPNverse so that Sam could have a “normal” life. But I would have liked to have, you know, seen it. But maybe they have something in the works and they’re just not talking about it. Just hope none of the current showrunners are involved.

                  2. I just took it as Dean just drove. Not years. Just a drive. A road trip with no definitive destination other than Sam. Just a glorious drive with Baby, no worries, no fears, no timeline, no strings attached. Just the pleasant anticipation and the knowledge that Sam will “be along”.

                    1. Gotta be honest–that was dull. And if there’s one thing Dean is not, it’s dull.

                      Though it did look as though Ackles had a hella lot more fun filming that drive than Padalecki did with his Normal Family scenes.

                    2. Hey guys, just a heads-up that I’ve “fixed” the links for the first five episodes of Season 10 and 9.05. You can see the comments on them, though you won’t be able to reply on there. You can, however, reply on the Season blog entries.

              2. Lots of people mentioned the over-the-top speech Dean made to Sam as he was dying.

                I saw it basically as a Buck-the-Fuck UP because Dean knew Sam would have trouble ‘dealing’ with Dean dead.

                SAM never got over Dean’s death and from what we saw he really did not much of anything with his life. We saw a ‘woman’ in the background, unnamed and it appeared unmourned by the pictures on Sam’s Wall of Winchesters. We saw a son but knew NOTHING about him but his name. Nice small town style house (imo) with nice yards, more exurb than suburb. We don’t know what Sam ‘did’ for the decades he lives after Dean. We know nothing.

                Sam actually looked like he was ‘going thru the motions’ the whole time imo. It was not a life; it was a PENANCE.

                Yeah, it was sad.

                What do you think of my idea it all should’ve ended with episode 19; just sitting on the table of etched names, sharing a beer?

                1. Oh yes, penance is a theme I also picked up on after a few re-watches.
                  If you look at Sam’s home, alcohol featured prominently on his shelves, alongside the shrine to Dean. The was also way he was around NotDean, it was more the way Dean acted around Sam and the numerous other little kids they saved than his old self, there was lots of tactile interaction, as if Sam had assimilated the best bits of Dean into himself and there was not much old Sam there.
                  There was a heavy vibe of regret for lost opportunity going on, clearly Sam never moved on, he definitely got the sad end. As Dean predicted it ends sad or bloody for Hunters.
                  The end would have been better if they’d wrapped up the Chuck storyline sooner and given time towards the end for the Winchesters story to play out post Chuck.
                  In fact, if we had chance for a do over, no Chuck would have been better. They could have run with making Jack a more well rounded character, following Dean and Sam’s legacy watch him grow and connect with them using their own past struggles as examples, revisit their mistakes, make it the perils of 2 guys and an angel trying to raise an overpowered kid, whilst hunting, it may have felt more organic.

    2. I despise and refuse to acknowledge the whole Chuck always controlled their lives retcon. To me it slightly sours the entire series. Thanks for that Dabb. Asshole. So I ignore it considering it wasnt even a consideration when it was written.

    3. I wish they had gone into WHY Chuck had an eye on Dean 4ever. I wish they had given Chuck some you know MOTIVATION for turning into Super Dick, except I think the reason is so that JACK would be righteous in taking over and ‘making heaven great again’ eh?

      1. Chuck had to go evil I guess in order to give Jack a purpose, because they didn’t really have any other tie in or reason for his existence. It’s not as if Jack was used to show how much the Winchesters had grown and what they’d learned and then passed on, we got one brief episode of bonding with Dean but very little else , Jack wasn’t used well as a character.

        As for Chuck watching Dean all his life, the ending the writers took made it one of two possible things, either Chucks fascination was a bit obsessively unhealthy or it really was Dean who was the most important person in this universe, the centre of all things and Dean who was to be the ultimate hero of this story.

        I’m going with door number two because his determination to be free was the thing that finally broke the Winchester curse and got them off the hamster wheel, his graceful willingness and courage to accept his death broke the cycle of world ending events, thus saving the world, again.
        A simplistic view maybe, but all the pieces fit for me.

        1. I’ve had a theory for a while–quite a long time, as it happens. I’ve been arguing since season four that Dean is the embodiment of Free Will. I mean, why not? We have personifications of Death, War, Pestilence, Famine, the Devil, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Whore of Babylon, and so on. The show can get straight-up allegorical when it chooses. And Dean is the one who spontaneously founded Team Free Will.

          There’s also a point in s11 when Chuck tells Amara that he didn’t create the SPNverse ex nihilo, but out of something preexisting. And he doesn’t appear to mean the Empty. I kind of see Dean as the grit in the oyster that created the pearl. Maybe, after using that grit to create his new world, Chuck realized that it would manifest at some point as a person and that would be the end for him. Who knows? Maybe Dean’s death and the reconstruction of Heaven were connected. But I guess we’ll never know now because the friggin’ writers never bothered to follow any of that to any kind of logical conclusion.

      2. What makes me salty is that if Chuck had been obsessed with Sam, or even Jack, the showrunners would have banged that motivation home in excruciating detail. But Dean? Nope. Just another dropped plot.

        1. I like that theory, Dean was certainly the cog the Supernatural World seemed geared around so yeah the grit that became a pearl suits him.

          Dean was the one who seemed to have the least choices and least control in his life from age four. His Dad, for good or ill made them transcient, put them into poverty, never dealt with Dean’s trauma of losing his Mom properly. Ended up putting a too young Dean in charge of Sammy, if not on purpose, simply by his abscence. No doubt Dean loved his brother but when he tells Mary the honest truth to bring her back, he tells her that he couldn’t just be a brother , he HAD to be a father and mother, to keep Sam safe. It’s clear from the way Dean tells Mary he wished it were not so, but because his Dad was just a shell, he stepped in and did his best to hold it all together, because he had to , if he hadn’t the family would have ceased to be a unit. Dean also tells Mary in no uncertain terms it really wasn’t his job and that he didn’t really succeed, because the adults in his life failed. John also made Dean a warrior, put a gun in his hand age six. Canonically Sam got some protection enough to be able to believe in Santa and the tooth fairy, Dean slept with a knife or a gun under his pillow, closest to the door ( even as an adult) Dean never got to switch off. Dean tells Jo , he wished he could do something else, resignation all over his face that he never got the right to choose his path. It always made sense Dean would seek freedom. Dean was also the personification of real strength and discipline, the sort that can’t be faked, if he got knocked down he’d always get back up .
          Even the Angels tried unsuccessfully to control Dean, when they couldn’t Naomi even tried to get Castiel to kill him, but he became more and more wild with every obstacle and restriction, like a wild bird bloodying itself against the bars of a cage .

          Actually talking of Dean’s determined actions, I’m minded of a quote in respect of Martin Luther that fits to perfection “I cannot and will not recant anything, to go against conscience is neither right nor safe” Dean was spokes person for conscience for sure and the voice of humanity on more than one occasion in this story, something the other characters were not.

          The trouble with the final few seasons seemed to be that the writers had toouch freedom and just didn’t really seem to understand that they’d strayed too far from what was working. The Winchesters as the heart of the show was pretty much what the majority of people signed up for , instead the writing team went about doing their own thing, inserting a new , thinly written character, failing to make that character credible and well rounded so the brothers and we could bond with him, retcons abounded to accommodate the new direction the show runner wanted of superheroes, which ended up with damage to the cornerstones of this universe and wasting the time we had left for wrapping up the brothers story, which honestly would have been a whole lot more entertaining and important than they potted version of their remaining lives we got in 15.20.
          I’d have been quite happy with an almost full season of what the Winchesters did Next ( together) post ghost apocalypse. I believe instead of three episodes of daytime un-scary ghosts , they could have dealt with Chuck, leaving the rest of the season free for more adventures in hunting. But we don’t always get get what we want. Sometimes not even close, season 15 will definitely not go down as a favourite for me.

          1. I wonder if the fact that Dean had so few choices presented to him made it more glaring whenever he broke The Plan. I agree that it’s really regrettable that the writers went off on such a weird tangent, but I think that the showrunners were so obsessed with the idea that Sam was the Hero and Dean the Sidekick that once they got beyond the Jeremy Carver years (Carver being the only showrunner who was fine with making Dean the protag of the mytharc), and they ran out of mytharc stuff for Sam, they floundered. And then they introduced a Cousin Oliver. Since the only constant showrunner involved in all that was Robert Singer, I’m inclined he had a lot to do with that, especially since he complained a lot about Jensen Ackles and seemed to dislike the character of Dean.

            1. I did wonder if the abscence of a consistent show runner whilst bringing fresh ideas, ultimately also brought things to an untimely end as there seem to be quite few people on the show and connected to the show I know of who didn’t want the show to end and wanted the door left open( and it’s more than possible on a show where resurrection is a thing anyhow )

              I get the guys ( Dean and Sam) would not be invincible and couldn’t hunt forever without time catching up, but given the amount of notice the show runners had to create the ending, my major issue is that it still felt a badly paced and forced ending that was done with indecent haste because the remaining time wasn’t as well used as it could have been.

              It was quite obvious from early on when Jack was given Dean’s storylines and position as high on Sam’s list of priorities it was only a matter of time , but with the calibre of actor playing Dean, Jack as written, was always going to be a poor substitute for Dean, the story was just too well developed and too entwined to distill Sam from Dean. Even more frustrating was the show runner who wrote the final episode acknowledged in his writing, it was always about Sam and Dean, the heart and soul of the show always lay with them.

              1. I’m not sure I’d call 15 seasons an untimely end, but I do think the poor quality of showrunners after Carver left did contribute to the show ending when it did. Probably the biggest and brightest red flag was the mystery around Mark Sheppard’s departure. I get that he’d grown bored with the character and that the writing really wasn’t there in s12, even s11 a bit, but there was considerable bitterness on his side that didn’t jibe with the way he left other projects. He especially seemed to dislike Dabb.

                I also think Padalecki had wanted out for quite a while. He’d signed to a new show even before they would have finished filming sans Covid and has shown zero regret about its ending. Ackles, on the other hand, pretty obviously wanted to keep going and would do a spinoff if he liked the idea. And Collins still seemed into continuing, too.

                Yeah, creating Jack just to have him poach Dean’s storylines was daft. Ackles was still into doing the show. Why not let Jack poach Sam’s storylines, instead? There were just a lot of weird decisions from the top those last four seasons, like how abruptly they killed off alt-Michael.

                1. I have no idea exactly when Jared got signed up for his new show, but if Jared had wanted to go early then it could have possibly worked for the show to keep Jack. The Chuck plot could have been ditched asap allowing more effort to go into fleshing out Jack’s character and relationships with the leads , made him much more Sam’s pseudo son ( where they actually had started ) and for Dean to take charge of him on Sam dying, instead of the Jack as absent crucible for Chuck’s syphoned power and the NotDean creation shoehorned in at the end , whom we never got to know and never really needed. It frustrates me they just kept throwing more fuel on the fire by adding characters that were pointless and casting aside the characters we’d got to know ( even if not my favourite by any means)instead of actual development.

                  1. There’s a recent interview where Padalecki explains the timeline for how it went down and that he originally wanted Ackles as the lead while he just produced (I’m relieved that didn’t pan out): https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/jared-padalecki-transitioning-supernatural-walker-producer-1234876420/

                    Then there’s the one today where he said he didn’t think Sam would have ended up with Eileen because Dean wouldn’t have approved (except that Dean enthusiastically approved of Eileen and Sam getting together) and conflated Eileen with Ruby: https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/jared-padalecki-supernatural-walker-defining-deaths-1234852596/

                    “I think it was very, very purposely ambiguous and strangely I agreed with that,” he says. “I feel like a lot of what Sam did after Dean died was almost in honor of what Dean would have wanted, and Dean would not have wanted his little brother to marry Eileen, Ruby, someone in the life.”

                    And he also said this about Dean’s arc: “It was a success story — it was Dean’s success story,” Padalecki reflects on the “Supernatural” series finale. “This guy gave his life for years and years and years and ultimately gave his life to have his No. 1 on the planet live as normal a life as possible.”

                    So, basically, either he’s okay with the way they kept forcing Dean into a support role for Sam of holding Sam’s cape, or worse, he’s admitting that he’s the primary reason they kept doing that. Plus, he’s ableist about Sam’s relationship with Eileen, in ignoring how important her character was. I’ve tried hard to give Padalecki the benefit of the doubt of the years, but I gotta say I am pretty disappointed with him right now. That is some massive privilege, dude.

                    1. Thanks for the links. They do seem to firstly hint the new Walker character has so many shades of um, Dean!
                      Secondly I find it a little odd if that’s Jared’s interpretation of the ending .
                      I know Dean would never have quit hunting, it was as much a part of him as his ability to breathe and that ultimately it probably would have killed him , that I was in board with, but I do think Dean outgrew Sam being his only purpose in life long ago ( season 4 maybe?)
                      It also seems odd if that was the perspective of Sam as a character who did at times encourage Dean to be open to other possiblities ( I’m remembering the season 5 ending for starters, and season 10 when he’s actually praying for Dean who “deserves a life”) Almost like a reversion to season 1 Sam if you read it that way.
                      To me success for Dean who was conscripted as a child soldier , who gave up everything for others would have been to at the very least had chance to semi retire, maybe get a Bar or something, not actively look for hunts, just let them drop in his lap, take the foot off the gas ( as the finale started out ) or Go wild and howl at the moon sometimes ( as a human) or actually do something he wanted for a change ( volunteer firefighter??)
                      Jared’s explanation doesn’t really work for me as Dean didn’t die on the hunt saving Sam, yes he broke the cycle of resurrection and misery ending the Winchester curse, but the bottom line was he died for those kids. Not Sam.
                      Sam wasn’t at risk at the point Dean got hurt, he was armed and back in his feet.

                      Sam was also free to go have his regular at any time he wanted, had been for several seasons. Dean was way past bringing Sam back to the fold against his will. He wanted at least on e of them happy and although Dean loved and wanted is family together and didn’t want to be alone, he’d accepted his place in their lives was not as significant as theirs were in his and knew he could survive, albeit he’d miss them ( seasons 8, 9 and 10 were still fresh in his memory right?)

                      I’m sad they wasted Eileen’s character and heck, Dean was so supportive of her and Sam as a couple, it was thrust in our face that he was agreeable, but the on screen chemistry wasn’t really there between Sam and Eileen when she came back, not sure if that was because Jared knew the ending? I read it that all along poor Eileen wore the redshirt of Doom wherever the reasons and I wasn’t surprised when she was written out.

                      The cynic in me whispers that perhaps Sam knew all Dean’s wishes as the clipboard in Dean room wasn’t holding a job application form, but an “in case of emergencies” list of what Sam should do when he was gone…. Because Dean was that thorough.

                    2. As I said before, I figured if the series didn’t just end with them still hunting, they would have to break up. And they did. I also figured that Dean would have to move on from being human to something else, as they had been hinting from the very start of the show. And he did and we saw him in Heaven. Where I get salty is that after all that, they completely negated the whole thing on his side by putting him in some kind of weird time cold storage where he drives around in a Heaven version of the Impala until Sam shows up at the end of his own life? What the hell was the point of breaking them up in the first place? What did Dean become? It was just…so ugh.

                      Didn’t Dean write everything up that he wanted to happen when he was going to say yes to Michael in s5? It could have been that list.

            2. Where did you hear that Singer disliked both Dean AND Jensen?

              I mean it does SEEM that way but I admit to great prejudice in this matter.

              Would like to read what you have to say.

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