That was a mediocre season finale. It makes me think the show is running out of gas. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next season is the last although I guess if the ratings are good and the actors are willing it will go on and on.
What I think they need to do is scale back and get away from the story arc that is the end of the world every season. I’m really tired of all the angel stuff. Just let them hunt a nasty nest of vampires or a witches coven for an entire season with quite a few one-off stories mixed in. Think of Justified and that series story arcs. Something more human in scale.
Make Cass human. Figure out a way to use Crowley where he isn’t the all-powerful king of hell. Let’s have the gang fight werewolves and stuff and forget about the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
I agree. The cliffhanger on the finale makes me think of a bunch of different directions they could go with it, and every one of them is tedious and irritating. The series desperately needs to get back to the core concept. The dynamics of the core cast are so one-note without Bobby it’s painful.
I know the series took off when they built in season long story arcs and made the focus more on the Sam and Dean relationship, but I’ve grown tired of the bickering. Right now I have no enthusiasm for season 10. I’m sure I’ll watch but if it’s angry intense Dean and angst-ridden Sam it’s not going to be a lot of fun. I’d rather see Castiel and Crowley go on the road and fight…something. At this point I’d say Crowley is the most entertaining character on the show.
Crowley’s great (I’m a huge fan of Mark Sheppard), and a Cas and Crowley buddy road trip episode would be a lot of fun. That said, I thought the season finale was fine. It ended pretty much where I thought it would, with the First Blade and Mark being the thread tying seasons 9 and 10 together. And now the final season (which 10 very well may be) should resolve the conflict between the brothers once and for all, which I agree is overdue. As I said a few months back:
I wasn’t surprised by the cliffhanger. It was foreshadowed heavily. I thought the whole Metatron thing ended stupidly. The problem with this season is they had two story arcs, Abbadon and Metatron. Abbadon vs. Crowley and the Winchesters was interesting then ended suddenly. The whole Metatron story I never liked and it became the season climax, so that was disappointing to me.
Oh well, maybe next season will be better. At least the awful spinoff got cancelled.
I thought it was a fitting ending to the season. Didn’t wow me or shock me like I was hoping for (the big surprise reveal I had seen coming, although for a minute I thought maybe Cas would sacrifice the last of his grace – and his life – to save Dean, I’m rather glad they didn’t go that route, just because I love Castiel,) but I didn’t have any issues with it. I thought it was a fun ride. The angel storyline may be bugging a lot of people, but I feel like the writing has been more “on track” this season than the last couple.
“How’s Hell?”
“…It’s complicated.”
“Game of Thrones is complicated. Shower sex is complicated. Hell’s not complicated.”
I just wish they’d make some of these season ending predicaments final and ongoing though. Keep Dean a demon from this point forward. Make part of his character arc his attempts to come to terms with that. Every time they have one of these grand season finales, they clear them up and reset within a few episodes when they return.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the demon thing is the season-long story arc. I expect a Cain and Abel storyline. What I don’t like is Dean is now super-powered. Mark of Cain powered, First Blade, he’s a demon. I like it when Sam and Dean are a couple of guys in car heading out to fight vampires, ghosts, etc.
Me too–that dynamic is great, and there are at least a hundred episodes of it. I think the writers have tired of it, though, or have nearly run out of new twists they can give the formula. All of the later seasons have a few episodes that hark back to the show’s beginnings, and they always make me smile, but I think it would be easy to overdo the nostalgia.
Personally, I hope season 10 is a great sendoff for the show. It’s been fantastic, but I do think it’s pretty much run its course and it’s time to say goodbye. I prefer the shows I love to go out on a high note, intentionally. That’s always better than limping along until cancelation. If the ratings and quality justify more than one additional season, I won’t complain, but they should still work towards that final high note.
That seems like something they’ll clear up towards the end of the season, if at all. And probably only then if it’s the season finale.
I agree with Mark that it’s more relatable when they’re just a couple of guys, but now that they’ve pulled the trigger on this, I hope they see it through for a while.
A Cain and Abel storyline might be the way to end the show. I have a feeling next season will be grim, however, and I’m not looking forward to that. I enjoy Dean’s wisecracks.
What I’d like to see is the show run its course and then perhaps the network ordering some two hour Supernatural movies. I’m thinking something along the lines of BBC’s Sherlock series where we get three hour and a half shows a year. I think a lot of the fatigue I sense in the show is due to them running 23 episodes a year. That’s a lot.
Can’t disagree there, I find myself definitely enjoying the BBC/Cable method of maybe 6-13 episodes a year much more than the American way of doing things.
I have to agree as well. Less is more, sometimes. I think our shows are starting to adopt that paradigm though. Hannibal and a few others run about 13 episodes or less a year. AMC and FX have been doing it for a while, too.
Yeah, less filler, tighter writing (usually). I mean even at 10 or 13 episodes you might still have some crap, look at Dr. Who, but on the whole they seem to do better. Hell, maybe 6 is ideal, look at IT Crowd or something, not a bad one in the bunch.
So in a strange parallel these two kids who tried to murder a friend did it for Slender Man to somehow invoke him and prove he was real, or so the initial stories seem to say. Slender Man was a made-up horror figure that became an internet meme. The Ghostfacers episode this season was based on Slender Man renamed Thinman, and was about someone dressing up like Thinman and committing murders. Very odd.
I commented about that Ghostfacers episode upthread a ways, although no one else did. It was a real disappointment to me in that it 1) pretty much ruined them going forward and 2) lacked the humor of previous outings, the humor caused by the combination of their glimpse of The Truth with their ineptitude. Now I’ll have another reason to dislike it, one that’s far too real…
I only caught up to the rest of you with Supernatural in the last few weeks. I’ve missed all the comments other than those for the last few episodes.
It felt like the writers were done with Ghostfacers and that episode was the send off for them. I thought it was a good episode. Some good lines and the Ghostfacers schism echoed that of Sam and Dean. They were foils for Sam and Dean.
It was also an odd episode because it’s the only one I remember that didn’t have any paranormal elements in it, unless I missed something. It was a couple of deranged guys who were not any kind of monster other than the ordinary human monster. Has there ever been another Supernatural episode that didn’t feature a supernatural creature?
You didn’t miss anything, and that’s a good question. I don’t think there’s ever been another episode like that, but my memories of the first few seasons are hazy at this point. Either way, I see what you’re saying about the Sam and Dean parallels, but they weren’t enough to save the episode for me. The Ghostfacers have always been the anti-Winchesters: short instead of tall, weak instead of strong, scared instead of brave, horrible fighters instead of badasses, and so on. The only similarity was the bond between them, so naturally their connection was weak when Sam and Dean’s was too.
