My Top 10 Biggest Supernatural Let Downs
I've been putting off posting this because really when I got toward the end of the list, the latter three seasons of Supernatural started to look less horrible, but then I decided to post anyway because, damn it, I spent a long while thinking up and writing this down. I guess, depending on its reception, we'll see how smart a decision that was.
You may have noticed that there is a great divide between old fans and new fans of Supernatural, and there are myriad reasons why this is true. For me, there is a sort of dividing line between seasons 3 and 4, and it's no secret that I absolutely hate the majority of season four and blame it for driving me out of fandom entirely. What changed? I think the answer lies in the headcanon the early fans had that theshow failed to deliver on. I mean, we all know that we can't get everything we want and that fandom is fandom, but by god did this show seem to rip apart many of the good things of yore, and I'm not even talking about it outright featuring Sam and Dean shudder at the thought of people writing wincest in an actual episode.
You probably won't understand this list if you became a fan after season four. Why? Simply because you didn't have time to build up the expectations needed for epic let down. I know a lot of people who simply came to Supernatural fandom on their love for Misha Collins, and while that is a logical thing because he's awesome, it means that a good portion of fandom blew through the first 3 seasons in anticipation of seasons 4-6 and thus the first three seasons are just a springboard for the plots and events of the latter seasons rather than being the core of the show and the foundation upon which everything should be built upon. This list hinges on the expectations and perceptions held by someone who came in mid-season two and thus will seem like extreme bitching to newer fans who don't quite get the ire this show engendered. A good portion of my flist is populated by ex-Supernatural fans who left during seasons 4-6, and even a couple who left during season three.
So for older fans who want to reminisnce and bitch with me and new fans who take me on a grain of salt and are interested in an opposite viewpoint, this is for you.
My Top 10 Biggest Supernatural Let Downs
10. The retconning of the trickster.
For those very new to Supernatural, the trickster (aka Gabriel) was never meant to be an angel. When he was created, Kripke had yet to even think up the inclusion of angels, thus he was simply a minor god until season five when he became a brother to Lucifer. Now it's hard for me to watch Tall Tales or Mystery Spot without seeing him as Gabriel, and that's sad because I liked him better as just a guy that spends his days fucking with people. No rhyme or reason, just chaos and a surefire good episode left in his wake. Let's not even mention the Sam/Gabriel shippers, who are by far the most scarily obsessed rare pairing shippers I have ever seen, and this is coming from someone who ships Teenage Dream. Funny how no one shipped them before it was revealed that the trickster was an arch angel.
9. The change of actress for Ruby.
Let me preface this by saying that I know next to nothing about the actresses who have played Ruby nor have I seen them in any other roles except this one. That said, I absolutely fucking hated Genevieve Cortese's Ruby. I have no idea if the woman can act, but if I absolutely had to base her abilities on this one character, then I'd be forced to call her a shitty actress because I swear, not one word she uttered had me convinced that this was the same Ruby from season 3 nor did she convince me that this new incarnation was interesting in the least. I swear, even Jared was better able to summon the personality of Meg in Born Under a Bad Sign than Genevieve was able to summon Ruby in all of season 4. I don't entirely blame her either because the writers have stated that they intentionally wrote Ruby differently in season 4and that she had changed during her time in hell or something. I suppose I'm biased because I loved Katie Cassidy's Ruby first and, even though I know they're the same character, my mind always tells me that this new Ruby is a whole different character. Put it this way: if Sam wanted to drink blood from the original Ruby, I'd be fine with that. I really had no idea which side Katie's Ruby was on and was kept guessing, but about five seconds into Genvieve's performance I knew that she would eventually screw Sam over and be utterly non-captivating while doing it.
8. Raking John Winchester over the coals.
I think we can all agree that John Winchester will never win any father of year awards. We all know how he put too much on Dean's shoulders, how he didn't listen to Sam enough, how his quest for vengeance came before almost everything else, and how he raised two little boys into soldiers. However, prior to season 4, you could forgive some of that because the show gave us examples of how he was a sympathetic character. He still wore his wedding ring. He had a college fund for Sam until he bought ammo with it, but at least he had plans. He sold his soul for Dean. He withstood something like a hundred years in hell without breaking. It was an equal balance of good and bad and overall you got the impression that he was a lost and broken man who did what he could to protect his children from the very real threat of monsters. But suddenly after season 4 and even in much of season 3, every time John Winchester is brought up, it's in the negative. Oh, look how horrible he was. Look how he spent more quality time with their third brother Adam whose existence he never revealed. They even go as far as to have a younger John in The Song Remains the Same bitch about Sam's father, ironically chastising his future self and even makes Sam's defense of John's parenting look stupid. Give me a break.
7. Lisa and Ben.
When they showed up in The Kids Are Alright, it truthfully wasn't bad. The possible 'is Dean the father of Ben' subplot was cute and Lisa wasn't too horrible. Then they were brought up again a few episodes later and presented as a dream of Dean's. Oooo-kay, that's understandable, I guess. But uh oh, Supernatural is renewed for a sixth season and they're brought in at the last damn minute. This shit is starting to get ridiculous. But then holy shit fuck, Dean's with them a year and they became recurring characters in season six. Why? First off, they're boring. They serve little to no purpose and we're supposed to believe that Lisa is Dean's lost love or something when the basis of their relationship is a sexy weekend and the whole reason he went to visit them in the first place was for a 'I've only got a year left' booty call. As much as I don't care for Cassie, I believed in Dean's feelings for her a thousand times more than I do for Lisa, so why couldn't Cassie have come back? Seriously, she doesn't have a kid and could actually, I don't know, participate in Dean's life and not expect him to be something he's not? The worst part is that we got the message that a hunter can't have a normal life eons ago and the whole Lisa/Dean storyline in season six was beating a dead horse.
6. Sam's powers.
This is truly something a newer fan will not comprehend. To understand it better, I'm gonna take you back a ways. When it was revealed for the first time that Sam foresaw Jessica's death, fans rejoiced at the notion that Sam was psychic. When the nightmares escalated into Sam being able to telepathically push a cabinet aside to get to Dean before he was shot, fandom exploded because now Sam had two powers and there was the huge mystery behind another person having powers like Sam and both of their moms getting roasted on a ceiling when they were six months old. Fic was amazing, all about Sam having multiple powers and speculations abounded over what it all meant. Then, oh man, here came season two's Hunted and now John told Dean that he had to kill Sam if he turned into something he wasn't. This is the era I joined fandom. It was all about Sam possibly being the antichrist and turning into a monster. That sort of ebbed with the whole demon blood explanation in AHBL, but season three was no stranger to excitement because that whole season we were waiting for Sam to use his powers to kill the crossroad demon and get Dean out of hell and most of us were convinced that his powers would show up in some fashion and we frothed at the mouth when Ruby kept telling Sam that he needed to learn what he was capable of doing. So what happened to the powers, did they ever come up again? Sure did. Except um, Sam must drink demon blood to get them. All right I'll buy that, so what are his powers? Exorcising demons and throwing shit against walls like demons, because he's basically part demon or some shit. Talk about a let down. I was hoping to see Sam gain a hoard of powers like the other special kids, and instead he's just like a really sucky demon with a drug addiction. No fair.
5. The expansion of the Winchester family.
Dean. Sam. John. These are the Winchesters. So is Mary, but then it gets complicated. When Mary's ghost came around in Home, it was a touching moment. When Dean imagined her in What Is and What Should Never Be, that was also touching. However, season 4 rears its ugly head and we get In the Beginning in which Dean interacts with her and we get more family, namely, the Campbells. The episode wasn't bad (I loved the YED being in there) but then she comes back as a hallucination at the end of the season and in season five she comes back twice, once for the clusterfuck that is The Song Remains the Same and then for Dark Side of the Moon, just so Zachariah can fuck with Dean. Also, spoiler, she's due to come back in the next episode. There's beating a dead horse and then there's banging your head against a wall until you die. And that's just Mary. Need I remind you how utterly pointless the Campbell brood was in season 6? I think they're all dead now, I don't care enough to fact check. We only really get character development on Samuel and it turns out he's a douche, big shock. The cousins and what not? All I remember is Gwen and I don't know who the fuck the others were and we know nothing about Gwen except she's female and a cousin, whoopee. And then there's Adam, who came out in the cutely named Jump the Shark which is an accurate title because the show really does jump the shark and now we have a third Winchester brother. It would have been acceptable had they let Adam stay dead, but no, they resurrect him so that he could be dragged down to hell and I don't even need to be spoiled to guess that he will come back at some point for drama. All these extra characters and either they aren't interesting or whatever interest they had was fucked over because they were used too fucking much.
4. Sam's character.
For three seasons, I loved Sam. Even for part of season four, I loved Sam. First I loved Dean, but then I fell in love with Sam. Then he started doing morally idiotic things for little to no reason. So Dean's dead and Sam abandons all common sense and shacks up with a demon and builds up demonic powers? Not only that, but he keeps making wrong choice after wrong choice, choosing a demon over Dean time and time again, and it took her flat-out announcing gleefully that she tricked him all along for him to get it? Add that Sam drained an innocent person in this same episode and you get why I hated Sam. Season five patched him up some, but it really took until the season finale for me to sort of forgive Sam, being that he fought off Lucifer by himself and all because of Dean. Then in season 6 they took his soul away and I had to suffer a dozen episodes of robo Sam. Finally I've gotten Sam back, but he's just not the same person and while I like him, I don't love him nearly the same way as I did after Mystery Spot aired. I get that it's essential that characters go through big changes to develop and be interesting to the audience, but there's that and then there's alienating them in the name of drama twice.
3. The introduction of angels and heaven.
Oh, I am going to catch hell for this one from new fans. Don't get me wrong: I love Castiel. In fact, he's part of what got me through season 4 and I momentarily shipped him with Dean, this is true. However, I would trade him and the whole mytharc post-S3 in a heartbeat if it meant a better show. What do I mean by this? It's hard to believe now, but Supernatural used to have a non-Christian mythology, for the most part. Sure the occasional god thing popped up, but it was all questions and no answers. Angels weren't real, God wasn't real, heaven wasn't real. When you died, who knows where the fuck you went. But then hey, all of a sudden we've got angels and heaven is this and that and we're off to find God and wtf is going on? All of a sudden the entire plot is dedicated to the Christian bible, complete with Revelation and Lucifer. Funny thing is, it got even more insulting when they tried to include other religions, as the episode Hammer of the Gods proves when Lucifer busts in and kills the gods of many world religions with no effort and angels seem to be the head honchos. The problem is that they answered too many questions, so a lot of the mystery was gone and thus you get a fabulous let down in the form of...
2. Worst. Apocalypse. EVER.
Technically, this doesn't follow the above pattern because the apocalypse wasn't fully explored in the show until season 4, but I feel that it's big enough to warrant a top spot and you can see a lot of the set up in season 3 with the introduction of Lilith and hell's gate being opened. Season 4 does have some merit: At least it had some nice build up to the apocalypse. As dark and unappealing many episodes were, you clearly saw that they were building up to something huge. The finale was so good that it made me look forward to season 5, but then we get to the big one, the season that was supposed to be the final season and the last one Kripke planned annnndddd....It was rather dull. I liked the actor who played Lucifer well enough, but he didn't really frighten me and though I understood that they wanted him to be sympathetic, it's the devil. I think if you were a really, really good writer you could accomplish this, but sadly, they fell short and just made him a dick angel with a tantrum. Ho hum. The horsemen were all boring and forgettable with the exception of Death, and I admit that he was probably the coolest thing to come out of season 5. Seriously, his intro? I think Castiel's has been beat. Plus, I really loved how Death wasn't just another horseman but was this ancient force that would even reap God himself one day. All while eating pizza. He was so bad ass that when I watched this episode, I was like, "FINALLY, the apocalypse has started and this show is about to make up for every wrong it's committed." Fast forward to the finale in which the final showdown between Lucifer, Michael, and the good guys was in a nondescript country graveyard. In the day time. As much as I adore the brothers montage and Sam internally defeating Lucifer, it was rather anti-climatic when you consider that the last two seasons have been nothing but set up for this moment. You can't even argue that they were low on money because AHBL was also set in a graveyard and on a cheap budget, but hell if it wasn't 10,000 times more epic than this. Besides, if your whole show was technically set to end at this point, wouldn't you have, oh, saved a few bucks to get some epic scenery and effects in here? Did you really need to spend all your money on getting Paris Hilton to guest star?
1. Sam and Dean's relationship.
By far the biggest let down of them all. It literally pains me when new fans talk about how they only watch for Castiel or just Dean and Castiel or any other combination that's not 'Sam + Dean'. The entire reason the show worked in the first place was because of Sam and Dean's relationship. There was huge and thriving fandom long before angels and the apocalypse came along. It was the heart and lifeblood of the show. If you took out their relationship, the show falls flat because based on the monster-of-the-week plots and production value, the show should have tanked. But it didn't and whatever you may say about Supernatural fandom, it creates a slew of loyal fans. You can find semi-interesting shows that deal with ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night everywhere, but this show was special because it was all about Sam and Dean Winchester. Be you a gen or wincest fan, there was no doubt that Sam and Dean would see everything through. The show kept this up for three solid seasons, culminating in Dean being ripped apart by hell hounds and Sam sobbing over his dead brother. But then Dean comes back and holy shit it's like they're on a different show. Now Sam is keeping secrets, and stupid secrets at that. They no longer trust each other. In one of the most heartbreaking (and not in a good way) scenes ever concocted, Sam and Dean slug it out and Sam leaves Dean bleeding on the floor as he leaves. Dude, just, no. Bad show, bad. TERRIBLE. Sure they try to repair the relationship in season five, but it's slow and while things were looking up at the end of season 5, season six brought it all down again by having Sam's soul go missing and only NOW are we seeing the old Sam again, but then again it's not really the old Sam. Look, characters change and if a character goes through five seasons without change then you failed at creating a good, dynamic character. But there's natural change and then there's the kind of change like when a person changes from sober to alcoholic.
So what are some disappoints I missed? Is there anything you think is worse or have a different opinion on my choices? Go ahead and say 'em, I love discussion.
You may have noticed that there is a great divide between old fans and new fans of Supernatural, and there are myriad reasons why this is true. For me, there is a sort of dividing line between seasons 3 and 4, and it's no secret that I absolutely hate the majority of season four and blame it for driving me out of fandom entirely. What changed? I think the answer lies in the headcanon the early fans had that theshow failed to deliver on. I mean, we all know that we can't get everything we want and that fandom is fandom, but by god did this show seem to rip apart many of the good things of yore, and I'm not even talking about it outright featuring Sam and Dean shudder at the thought of people writing wincest in an actual episode.
You probably won't understand this list if you became a fan after season four. Why? Simply because you didn't have time to build up the expectations needed for epic let down. I know a lot of people who simply came to Supernatural fandom on their love for Misha Collins, and while that is a logical thing because he's awesome, it means that a good portion of fandom blew through the first 3 seasons in anticipation of seasons 4-6 and thus the first three seasons are just a springboard for the plots and events of the latter seasons rather than being the core of the show and the foundation upon which everything should be built upon. This list hinges on the expectations and perceptions held by someone who came in mid-season two and thus will seem like extreme bitching to newer fans who don't quite get the ire this show engendered. A good portion of my flist is populated by ex-Supernatural fans who left during seasons 4-6, and even a couple who left during season three.
So for older fans who want to reminisnce and bitch with me and new fans who take me on a grain of salt and are interested in an opposite viewpoint, this is for you.
My Top 10 Biggest Supernatural Let Downs
10. The retconning of the trickster.
For those very new to Supernatural, the trickster (aka Gabriel) was never meant to be an angel. When he was created, Kripke had yet to even think up the inclusion of angels, thus he was simply a minor god until season five when he became a brother to Lucifer. Now it's hard for me to watch Tall Tales or Mystery Spot without seeing him as Gabriel, and that's sad because I liked him better as just a guy that spends his days fucking with people. No rhyme or reason, just chaos and a surefire good episode left in his wake. Let's not even mention the Sam/Gabriel shippers, who are by far the most scarily obsessed rare pairing shippers I have ever seen, and this is coming from someone who ships Teenage Dream. Funny how no one shipped them before it was revealed that the trickster was an arch angel.
9. The change of actress for Ruby.
Let me preface this by saying that I know next to nothing about the actresses who have played Ruby nor have I seen them in any other roles except this one. That said, I absolutely fucking hated Genevieve Cortese's Ruby. I have no idea if the woman can act, but if I absolutely had to base her abilities on this one character, then I'd be forced to call her a shitty actress because I swear, not one word she uttered had me convinced that this was the same Ruby from season 3 nor did she convince me that this new incarnation was interesting in the least. I swear, even Jared was better able to summon the personality of Meg in Born Under a Bad Sign than Genevieve was able to summon Ruby in all of season 4. I don't entirely blame her either because the writers have stated that they intentionally wrote Ruby differently in season 4and that she had changed during her time in hell or something. I suppose I'm biased because I loved Katie Cassidy's Ruby first and, even though I know they're the same character, my mind always tells me that this new Ruby is a whole different character. Put it this way: if Sam wanted to drink blood from the original Ruby, I'd be fine with that. I really had no idea which side Katie's Ruby was on and was kept guessing, but about five seconds into Genvieve's performance I knew that she would eventually screw Sam over and be utterly non-captivating while doing it.
8. Raking John Winchester over the coals.
I think we can all agree that John Winchester will never win any father of year awards. We all know how he put too much on Dean's shoulders, how he didn't listen to Sam enough, how his quest for vengeance came before almost everything else, and how he raised two little boys into soldiers. However, prior to season 4, you could forgive some of that because the show gave us examples of how he was a sympathetic character. He still wore his wedding ring. He had a college fund for Sam until he bought ammo with it, but at least he had plans. He sold his soul for Dean. He withstood something like a hundred years in hell without breaking. It was an equal balance of good and bad and overall you got the impression that he was a lost and broken man who did what he could to protect his children from the very real threat of monsters. But suddenly after season 4 and even in much of season 3, every time John Winchester is brought up, it's in the negative. Oh, look how horrible he was. Look how he spent more quality time with their third brother Adam whose existence he never revealed. They even go as far as to have a younger John in The Song Remains the Same bitch about Sam's father, ironically chastising his future self and even makes Sam's defense of John's parenting look stupid. Give me a break.
7. Lisa and Ben.
When they showed up in The Kids Are Alright, it truthfully wasn't bad. The possible 'is Dean the father of Ben' subplot was cute and Lisa wasn't too horrible. Then they were brought up again a few episodes later and presented as a dream of Dean's. Oooo-kay, that's understandable, I guess. But uh oh, Supernatural is renewed for a sixth season and they're brought in at the last damn minute. This shit is starting to get ridiculous. But then holy shit fuck, Dean's with them a year and they became recurring characters in season six. Why? First off, they're boring. They serve little to no purpose and we're supposed to believe that Lisa is Dean's lost love or something when the basis of their relationship is a sexy weekend and the whole reason he went to visit them in the first place was for a 'I've only got a year left' booty call. As much as I don't care for Cassie, I believed in Dean's feelings for her a thousand times more than I do for Lisa, so why couldn't Cassie have come back? Seriously, she doesn't have a kid and could actually, I don't know, participate in Dean's life and not expect him to be something he's not? The worst part is that we got the message that a hunter can't have a normal life eons ago and the whole Lisa/Dean storyline in season six was beating a dead horse.
6. Sam's powers.
This is truly something a newer fan will not comprehend. To understand it better, I'm gonna take you back a ways. When it was revealed for the first time that Sam foresaw Jessica's death, fans rejoiced at the notion that Sam was psychic. When the nightmares escalated into Sam being able to telepathically push a cabinet aside to get to Dean before he was shot, fandom exploded because now Sam had two powers and there was the huge mystery behind another person having powers like Sam and both of their moms getting roasted on a ceiling when they were six months old. Fic was amazing, all about Sam having multiple powers and speculations abounded over what it all meant. Then, oh man, here came season two's Hunted and now John told Dean that he had to kill Sam if he turned into something he wasn't. This is the era I joined fandom. It was all about Sam possibly being the antichrist and turning into a monster. That sort of ebbed with the whole demon blood explanation in AHBL, but season three was no stranger to excitement because that whole season we were waiting for Sam to use his powers to kill the crossroad demon and get Dean out of hell and most of us were convinced that his powers would show up in some fashion and we frothed at the mouth when Ruby kept telling Sam that he needed to learn what he was capable of doing. So what happened to the powers, did they ever come up again? Sure did. Except um, Sam must drink demon blood to get them. All right I'll buy that, so what are his powers? Exorcising demons and throwing shit against walls like demons, because he's basically part demon or some shit. Talk about a let down. I was hoping to see Sam gain a hoard of powers like the other special kids, and instead he's just like a really sucky demon with a drug addiction. No fair.
5. The expansion of the Winchester family.
Dean. Sam. John. These are the Winchesters. So is Mary, but then it gets complicated. When Mary's ghost came around in Home, it was a touching moment. When Dean imagined her in What Is and What Should Never Be, that was also touching. However, season 4 rears its ugly head and we get In the Beginning in which Dean interacts with her and we get more family, namely, the Campbells. The episode wasn't bad (I loved the YED being in there) but then she comes back as a hallucination at the end of the season and in season five she comes back twice, once for the clusterfuck that is The Song Remains the Same and then for Dark Side of the Moon, just so Zachariah can fuck with Dean. Also, spoiler, she's due to come back in the next episode. There's beating a dead horse and then there's banging your head against a wall until you die. And that's just Mary. Need I remind you how utterly pointless the Campbell brood was in season 6? I think they're all dead now, I don't care enough to fact check. We only really get character development on Samuel and it turns out he's a douche, big shock. The cousins and what not? All I remember is Gwen and I don't know who the fuck the others were and we know nothing about Gwen except she's female and a cousin, whoopee. And then there's Adam, who came out in the cutely named Jump the Shark which is an accurate title because the show really does jump the shark and now we have a third Winchester brother. It would have been acceptable had they let Adam stay dead, but no, they resurrect him so that he could be dragged down to hell and I don't even need to be spoiled to guess that he will come back at some point for drama. All these extra characters and either they aren't interesting or whatever interest they had was fucked over because they were used too fucking much.
4. Sam's character.
For three seasons, I loved Sam. Even for part of season four, I loved Sam. First I loved Dean, but then I fell in love with Sam. Then he started doing morally idiotic things for little to no reason. So Dean's dead and Sam abandons all common sense and shacks up with a demon and builds up demonic powers? Not only that, but he keeps making wrong choice after wrong choice, choosing a demon over Dean time and time again, and it took her flat-out announcing gleefully that she tricked him all along for him to get it? Add that Sam drained an innocent person in this same episode and you get why I hated Sam. Season five patched him up some, but it really took until the season finale for me to sort of forgive Sam, being that he fought off Lucifer by himself and all because of Dean. Then in season 6 they took his soul away and I had to suffer a dozen episodes of robo Sam. Finally I've gotten Sam back, but he's just not the same person and while I like him, I don't love him nearly the same way as I did after Mystery Spot aired. I get that it's essential that characters go through big changes to develop and be interesting to the audience, but there's that and then there's alienating them in the name of drama twice.
3. The introduction of angels and heaven.
Oh, I am going to catch hell for this one from new fans. Don't get me wrong: I love Castiel. In fact, he's part of what got me through season 4 and I momentarily shipped him with Dean, this is true. However, I would trade him and the whole mytharc post-S3 in a heartbeat if it meant a better show. What do I mean by this? It's hard to believe now, but Supernatural used to have a non-Christian mythology, for the most part. Sure the occasional god thing popped up, but it was all questions and no answers. Angels weren't real, God wasn't real, heaven wasn't real. When you died, who knows where the fuck you went. But then hey, all of a sudden we've got angels and heaven is this and that and we're off to find God and wtf is going on? All of a sudden the entire plot is dedicated to the Christian bible, complete with Revelation and Lucifer. Funny thing is, it got even more insulting when they tried to include other religions, as the episode Hammer of the Gods proves when Lucifer busts in and kills the gods of many world religions with no effort and angels seem to be the head honchos. The problem is that they answered too many questions, so a lot of the mystery was gone and thus you get a fabulous let down in the form of...
2. Worst. Apocalypse. EVER.
Technically, this doesn't follow the above pattern because the apocalypse wasn't fully explored in the show until season 4, but I feel that it's big enough to warrant a top spot and you can see a lot of the set up in season 3 with the introduction of Lilith and hell's gate being opened. Season 4 does have some merit: At least it had some nice build up to the apocalypse. As dark and unappealing many episodes were, you clearly saw that they were building up to something huge. The finale was so good that it made me look forward to season 5, but then we get to the big one, the season that was supposed to be the final season and the last one Kripke planned annnndddd....It was rather dull. I liked the actor who played Lucifer well enough, but he didn't really frighten me and though I understood that they wanted him to be sympathetic, it's the devil. I think if you were a really, really good writer you could accomplish this, but sadly, they fell short and just made him a dick angel with a tantrum. Ho hum. The horsemen were all boring and forgettable with the exception of Death, and I admit that he was probably the coolest thing to come out of season 5. Seriously, his intro? I think Castiel's has been beat. Plus, I really loved how Death wasn't just another horseman but was this ancient force that would even reap God himself one day. All while eating pizza. He was so bad ass that when I watched this episode, I was like, "FINALLY, the apocalypse has started and this show is about to make up for every wrong it's committed." Fast forward to the finale in which the final showdown between Lucifer, Michael, and the good guys was in a nondescript country graveyard. In the day time. As much as I adore the brothers montage and Sam internally defeating Lucifer, it was rather anti-climatic when you consider that the last two seasons have been nothing but set up for this moment. You can't even argue that they were low on money because AHBL was also set in a graveyard and on a cheap budget, but hell if it wasn't 10,000 times more epic than this. Besides, if your whole show was technically set to end at this point, wouldn't you have, oh, saved a few bucks to get some epic scenery and effects in here? Did you really need to spend all your money on getting Paris Hilton to guest star?
1. Sam and Dean's relationship.
By far the biggest let down of them all. It literally pains me when new fans talk about how they only watch for Castiel or just Dean and Castiel or any other combination that's not 'Sam + Dean'. The entire reason the show worked in the first place was because of Sam and Dean's relationship. There was huge and thriving fandom long before angels and the apocalypse came along. It was the heart and lifeblood of the show. If you took out their relationship, the show falls flat because based on the monster-of-the-week plots and production value, the show should have tanked. But it didn't and whatever you may say about Supernatural fandom, it creates a slew of loyal fans. You can find semi-interesting shows that deal with ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night everywhere, but this show was special because it was all about Sam and Dean Winchester. Be you a gen or wincest fan, there was no doubt that Sam and Dean would see everything through. The show kept this up for three solid seasons, culminating in Dean being ripped apart by hell hounds and Sam sobbing over his dead brother. But then Dean comes back and holy shit it's like they're on a different show. Now Sam is keeping secrets, and stupid secrets at that. They no longer trust each other. In one of the most heartbreaking (and not in a good way) scenes ever concocted, Sam and Dean slug it out and Sam leaves Dean bleeding on the floor as he leaves. Dude, just, no. Bad show, bad. TERRIBLE. Sure they try to repair the relationship in season five, but it's slow and while things were looking up at the end of season 5, season six brought it all down again by having Sam's soul go missing and only NOW are we seeing the old Sam again, but then again it's not really the old Sam. Look, characters change and if a character goes through five seasons without change then you failed at creating a good, dynamic character. But there's natural change and then there's the kind of change like when a person changes from sober to alcoholic.
So what are some disappoints I missed? Is there anything you think is worse or have a different opinion on my choices? Go ahead and say 'em, I love discussion.