Just finished watching season 11 of Supernatural for the first time
Favourite episodes included Baby naturally. I’d already heard about how great Baby was, and I’m pleased to say that it more than lived up to expectations there with being an excellent showcase for the brotherly relationship between Sam and Dean, and so cleverly edited. I confess that I had already seen the ‘night moves’ singing clip a few times before heh, but it was all still so adorable <3
And then what to say about Red Meat, other than it was absolutely perfect and felt just like a fanfic brought to life XD I loved the little Romeo and Juliet touch of Dean killing himself just as Sam wakes up from his supposed death! Top-notch direction on every level. I also really liked the female guest cast in this, the actress who plays Billie the reaper has such a great onscreen presence, and I also thought the actress playing Michelle did a fantastic job in her scenes with Dean
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Thin Lizzie as well after I haven’t heard much nearly as much about that episode. I thought that it was such a fun old-school episode with Sam and Dean looking into the hauntings in a tourist trap hotel, and it had soo many hilarious moments with Dean’s reaction to their hotel room and Sam checking out the lavender toilet water lol, or teasing Sam about his fetish for serial killers. There was also a great cast star this week, the guy who had his soul sucked out gave an especially sympathetic performance, and ooh I recognised the little boy from It and Stranger Things in a fairly minor role as the son of the parents who got killed. Guess this episode was right before he became famous?
There were SOO many great moments between Sam and Dean this year as well, it really felt like the closest they’d been in years. Just a few great moments were seeing Sam and Dean enjoying Jodie’s food in Don’t You Forget About Me awww, and lmao at their awkwardness when the sex topic gets raised! And Dean’s excitement at finally winning at Rock Paper Scissors in Love Hurts was the cutest scene ever :D And a Sam and Dean hug in the finale!!! :D
Beyond The Mat was probably my least favourite MotW of the season. I guess that Dean being such a fanboy was cute, and it was a nice touch to mention that they used to go to wrestling matches with John, but mostly it was just a big meh to me. I don’t care about wrestling at all, and also the degrading ~puppy play~ with Lucifer and Crowley was quite cringey to watch.
Another small nitpick was that the flashbacks with younger Sam in Just My Imagination didn’t really work for me, the original young Sam from earlier seasons is so ingrained in my mind that it’s just weird to introduce another young actor to play Sam at a similar age, even though he looks nothing like the one they used in the last flashbacks?? The young Dean was very good, but the Sam they used completely took me out of it, and then I didn’t really think they developed it enough why Sully would encourage an 11 year old Sam to run away with him, or be supposedly so heartbroken at this ‘brutal’ end to their friendship. Idk there were some cute ideas, and certainly some very funny scenes in present time (loved Sam, Dean, and Sully’s faces at the blood everywhere which nobody else could see lol), but ultimately it didn’t really come together for me when the episode was going for pathos
Annnnd then there’s the mythos. I actually thought that it started out really strong, especially in the first few episodes. I was really intrigued by Amara’s character and her connection with Dean, it was a fun idea to have her start off as an evil little girl being mentored by Crowley, and then show her gradually growing up as she consumed more and more souls. But then they started to lose me at around the midway point, Castiel saying yes to Lucifer just felt like SUCH a random choice, especially as they barely explained it other than saying that oh he thought that Lucifer would do a better job of fighting the darkness. But they didn’t really build up to why he would choose that at all, it was just this totally random last minute twist? And then in the end Dean was even thanking Castiel and acting like he had stepped up for all of them in saying yes to Lucifer, even though it was surely a momentally horrible decision to unleash the devil on to the world, what am I missing here???
Honestly it mostly just felt like an excuse to give Misha a chance to stretch and have fun with playing a different character, and maybe it was also part of the writers usual thing of trying to de-power or remove Castiel from the action in some way so that Sam and Dean don’t end up relying on him as a crutch? I thought they did a better job of handling his absences early on though actually with just having funny references to Castiel being offscreen binging Netflix as he heals XD I found it awkward in seasons 8 and 9 with how he would keep disappearing off-screen in a way that made it really obvious that the actor simply wasn’t contracted for that many episodes, whereas the idea of Castiel in the bunker just getting hooked on watching tv is kind of perfect heh
But ultimately I’m not very into the myth arc, episodes like Red Meat and Thin Lizzie feel so much more grounded and emotionally resonant to me, whereas mostly everything with the angels and the demons felt very heightened and cheesy I’m afraid, especially when they’re on some low budget soundstage and telling us that they’re all in hell, yeah okay then. Maybe I need to work more on suspending my disbelief lol, because I thought it was really bizarre when they brought God and Lucifer face to face in episode 22, and they had this jokey scene of Lucifer storming into Sam’s room like a teenager and refusing to come out....I certainly couldn’t take any of it seriously when Sam and Dean were trying to counsel God and Lucifer in episode 22, the whole thing just felt like an awkward farce
I guess that I miss them only showing incredibly brief glimpses of hell for Dean and Sam, with the understanding that less is more, or in season 6 the angels battles in heaven happening off-screen because they could never hope to portray it onscreen. I wish that they were still leaving those bigger concepts of heaven and hell more to our imagination, because imho they do a much better job with making the sets feel realistic and lived-in for the MotW’s. Actually it would be better for me personally if the MotW’s could more easily be watched as complete standalones if I’m honest. I know that logically it does make sense to have stock dialogue in the MotW’s to explain what’s happening with the main arc in-between, but at one point it seemed like every episode was opening in the same place in the bunker with Sam and Dean discussing how worried they are about Castiel...
Frankly I’m not sure how much a rush I’m in to watch season 12 and onwards at this point. I love anything to do with Sam and Dean and character work for them, but the arc episodes dragged so badly for me, especially in the second half of the season, and unfortunately for me there does rather seem to be a steadily increasing number of mythology episodes included in each season :(
And then what to say about Red Meat, other than it was absolutely perfect and felt just like a fanfic brought to life XD I loved the little Romeo and Juliet touch of Dean killing himself just as Sam wakes up from his supposed death! Top-notch direction on every level. I also really liked the female guest cast in this, the actress who plays Billie the reaper has such a great onscreen presence, and I also thought the actress playing Michelle did a fantastic job in her scenes with Dean
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Thin Lizzie as well after I haven’t heard much nearly as much about that episode. I thought that it was such a fun old-school episode with Sam and Dean looking into the hauntings in a tourist trap hotel, and it had soo many hilarious moments with Dean’s reaction to their hotel room and Sam checking out the lavender toilet water lol, or teasing Sam about his fetish for serial killers. There was also a great cast star this week, the guy who had his soul sucked out gave an especially sympathetic performance, and ooh I recognised the little boy from It and Stranger Things in a fairly minor role as the son of the parents who got killed. Guess this episode was right before he became famous?
There were SOO many great moments between Sam and Dean this year as well, it really felt like the closest they’d been in years. Just a few great moments were seeing Sam and Dean enjoying Jodie’s food in Don’t You Forget About Me awww, and lmao at their awkwardness when the sex topic gets raised! And Dean’s excitement at finally winning at Rock Paper Scissors in Love Hurts was the cutest scene ever :D And a Sam and Dean hug in the finale!!! :D
Beyond The Mat was probably my least favourite MotW of the season. I guess that Dean being such a fanboy was cute, and it was a nice touch to mention that they used to go to wrestling matches with John, but mostly it was just a big meh to me. I don’t care about wrestling at all, and also the degrading ~puppy play~ with Lucifer and Crowley was quite cringey to watch.
Another small nitpick was that the flashbacks with younger Sam in Just My Imagination didn’t really work for me, the original young Sam from earlier seasons is so ingrained in my mind that it’s just weird to introduce another young actor to play Sam at a similar age, even though he looks nothing like the one they used in the last flashbacks?? The young Dean was very good, but the Sam they used completely took me out of it, and then I didn’t really think they developed it enough why Sully would encourage an 11 year old Sam to run away with him, or be supposedly so heartbroken at this ‘brutal’ end to their friendship. Idk there were some cute ideas, and certainly some very funny scenes in present time (loved Sam, Dean, and Sully’s faces at the blood everywhere which nobody else could see lol), but ultimately it didn’t really come together for me when the episode was going for pathos
Annnnd then there’s the mythos. I actually thought that it started out really strong, especially in the first few episodes. I was really intrigued by Amara’s character and her connection with Dean, it was a fun idea to have her start off as an evil little girl being mentored by Crowley, and then show her gradually growing up as she consumed more and more souls. But then they started to lose me at around the midway point, Castiel saying yes to Lucifer just felt like SUCH a random choice, especially as they barely explained it other than saying that oh he thought that Lucifer would do a better job of fighting the darkness. But they didn’t really build up to why he would choose that at all, it was just this totally random last minute twist? And then in the end Dean was even thanking Castiel and acting like he had stepped up for all of them in saying yes to Lucifer, even though it was surely a momentally horrible decision to unleash the devil on to the world, what am I missing here???
Honestly it mostly just felt like an excuse to give Misha a chance to stretch and have fun with playing a different character, and maybe it was also part of the writers usual thing of trying to de-power or remove Castiel from the action in some way so that Sam and Dean don’t end up relying on him as a crutch? I thought they did a better job of handling his absences early on though actually with just having funny references to Castiel being offscreen binging Netflix as he heals XD I found it awkward in seasons 8 and 9 with how he would keep disappearing off-screen in a way that made it really obvious that the actor simply wasn’t contracted for that many episodes, whereas the idea of Castiel in the bunker just getting hooked on watching tv is kind of perfect heh
But ultimately I’m not very into the myth arc, episodes like Red Meat and Thin Lizzie feel so much more grounded and emotionally resonant to me, whereas mostly everything with the angels and the demons felt very heightened and cheesy I’m afraid, especially when they’re on some low budget soundstage and telling us that they’re all in hell, yeah okay then. Maybe I need to work more on suspending my disbelief lol, because I thought it was really bizarre when they brought God and Lucifer face to face in episode 22, and they had this jokey scene of Lucifer storming into Sam’s room like a teenager and refusing to come out....I certainly couldn’t take any of it seriously when Sam and Dean were trying to counsel God and Lucifer in episode 22, the whole thing just felt like an awkward farce
I guess that I miss them only showing incredibly brief glimpses of hell for Dean and Sam, with the understanding that less is more, or in season 6 the angels battles in heaven happening off-screen because they could never hope to portray it onscreen. I wish that they were still leaving those bigger concepts of heaven and hell more to our imagination, because imho they do a much better job with making the sets feel realistic and lived-in for the MotW’s. Actually it would be better for me personally if the MotW’s could more easily be watched as complete standalones if I’m honest. I know that logically it does make sense to have stock dialogue in the MotW’s to explain what’s happening with the main arc in-between, but at one point it seemed like every episode was opening in the same place in the bunker with Sam and Dean discussing how worried they are about Castiel...
Frankly I’m not sure how much a rush I’m in to watch season 12 and onwards at this point. I love anything to do with Sam and Dean and character work for them, but the arc episodes dragged so badly for me, especially in the second half of the season, and unfortunately for me there does rather seem to be a steadily increasing number of mythology episodes included in each season :(