3x06 first thoughts
1. The arguments, they have broken me. I love it that the show starts & ends with the same fight -- the issue isn't going to go away, Sam isn't going to forgive Dean no matter how much he apologizes. (ETA: Apologizes without actually changing his attitude or trying to do something to save himself, I mean. "Gee, Sam, I'm sorry you're going to be sad, but *shrug* I got no regrets for myself.") Oh, god, it hurts.
2. Tiny thing here: there was a moment during the boys' first argument when their lines were overlapping. Very, very nice little detail -- that's how people actually talk.
3. Of course she was going to steal the damn hand. Come on, guys.
4. Wasn't this an episode of Angel? With electricity-girl needing his help, so they go to a fancy party, but it turns out to be a plot to get him to steal the McGuffin for her?
5. Shouldn't Dean know what a Hand of Glory is? I hate it when the show dumbs the boys down -- surely there are less clumsy ways to get the necessary exposition in. They've been doing this their whole lives. They should know more than any six professional folklorists.
6. The scene when Bela first comes to the boys' house screams "threesome!" There is a very prominent zipper sound at just the right moment to get the ball rolling. Heh. Of course, I have been reading a lot of teh p0rn. :-)
7. Dean's little "Woo-hoo, money! Let's go to Atlantic City!" seemed a bit tired. Wait, that sounds like I'm criticizing either the writing/directing or the acting, but quite the opposite. Dean knows that a couple of years ago that's how he would have reacted, and he's trying so hard to hang on to that normalcy, and maybe he genuinely doesn't know what to feel in its place. He has of late lost all his mirth and knows not wherefore. But he's starting to crumble. *pharis wails*
8. Nice Monster-of-theWeek. An old-school ghost ship with gorgeously creepy visuals. The ghost's backstory resonated with what's going on with the boys, not so much that it was too tidy, but enough to hint at the awful damage they do. One sibling does what he feels he has to, and it hurts the other one so damn much. The obvious parallel is with Dean's deal, but I think Sam's going off to college fits that pattern too. Where did it begin? How tangled are they in each other's pain? (*pharis wails again*) And yet ... this ghost story gets resolved (and by the ghost brothers themselves; Sam's intervention just allowed it to happen). "You gave him what he wanted: his brother." (Yeah, there are a lot of good candidates for slashiest quote this week, aren't there? :-) So although we have conspicuous lack-of-resolution in the foreground (the continuing fight in the Impala), in the other story we see one path to a resolution. Not a happy one (please don't kill each other with your angst, boys!), but something, rather than the confusion and hurt and abandonment and nihilism that is all they have now.
In short, well done, Show. Please to be paying your writers lots of money so that the supply of delicious angst continues uninterrupted.
And a couple of random things that I would like to see, in canon or fanfic:
1. A hunter who uses a pack of dogs. I'm picturing a cross between a herding breed (Belgian Malinois, maybe) for speed and smarts, plus something heavier, maybe a mastiff? (I don't actually know anything about breeding dogs -- could be way off base there.) We haven't seen much or anything of animals being sensitive to the supernatural, but that's a staple of all kinds of folklore, so they could be like living EMF meters. Even a pack might not be able to take down something like a wendigo or werewolf, but they would sure help with tracking it.
2. A story where they end up "hunting people, saving things." I am easily amused.
3. Ellen and Jo. I miss them.
That is all.