Alpha and Omega

People joked about how in Suicide Squad Harley Quinn was fan service, but since the end of Episode 5 the series has been nothing but fan service for fan girls. Blech. I suffer through it with my wife mainly for the one liners. The guy who punches up dialogue is a genius. The rest of them are Nucking Flutz.

I have no clue why people seem to like season 11. It's total crap, not to mention just flatly blasphemous and poorly written.

Supernatural reached a point that dug into a very primordial, pre-biblical, existential issue. God vs Darkness, creation vs nothingness, yin and yang etc... One can't go on without the other. In addition, fans know supernatural a little to well a little too much and they just want to see their ending. It is very hard -impossible- to transfer the vague idea of creation, genesis, and "the beginning" on to the small screen. I believe they did a good job, it was a great season, not perfect, not a 10 but hey...:

"Endings are hard. Any chapped-a$$ monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible. You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. The fans are always gonna b!tch. There's always gonna be holes. And since it's the ending, it's all supposed to add up to something. I'm telling you, they're a raging pain in the a$$."

I loved this, after 11 years it was a good idea to have a different kind of resolution to the big bad. The penultimate episode was more in line with the traditional 'big final battle' kind of finale, while this gave us something that isn't seen as often: a peaceful resolution where everybody walks away and nobody has to die (well, we know that, but it looks like the characters will have to wait a bit to find out that everybody has survived).

It was actually a pretty beautiful resolution that tied in well with the show's overarching themes of family and redemption. But that's not to say that it didn't still have high stakes and tension, because it certainly did. In fact, the stakes were probably the highest they've been since they boys' first Apocalypse back in season five.

And of course, despite the peaceful resolution to the season's arc, they still managed to set up the next season with a few dangling threads. We've got a potential new threat coming and one of the most shocking, out of left-field surprise cliffhangers that we've ever seen.

Overall, I think this was a pretty solid season with an interesting finale (even if the previous episode was the more epic of the two episodes - I'd definitely recommend thinking of them as a two-part package deal). I can't wait to start on season 12!

This episode is built out of ad hoc parts-Billy helping, the way too convenient asylum-while built on a false tension (of course Chuck isn't going to die)-as it plods along to a predictable outcome. Of course the siblings make peace with each other. Add in that it feels anticlimactically because of the far grander prior episode and this episode brings the season to a whimper. I think the writers knew it too because they needlessly force in the set-up for the British Men of Letters in this episode. At this point in the show's run the writers are clearly recycling as this episode concludes the tablet-mark of Cain-Darkness story that was in the works since season 8m pretty much how Swan Song concludes the first 5 years of the show. The episode feels very tried and true so it hold your attention but it is a poorer copy of the prior material.

Season on the whole:

That largely describes the season on the whole as well. There's less of a drive and spark in this season; the central arch plays it very safe and it's underwhelming as a result. There are flashes of former glory-Collins as Lucifer for example-but the Darkness story, very much including the name, is clunky, pitched and faintly a little too absurd. With that said-frustratingly so-there's a handful of episodes this year that among the very best in the show's run. "Baby" is an absolute gem of an episode and its sheer brilliance shines upon the whole season. Likewise, "Just My Imagination" and "Safe House" are real bright spots that raise the season on the whole a lot. This season is really when the show starts to fall into either truly great episodes or episodes being a tedious bores. Even season 6's unevenness wasn't quite this stark because when season 6 didn't work the show was at least *trying* to be different and move in a new direction. (Season 11 is slightly better overall in large part because the highs are *really* high) This season feels stuck for the first time.

Best 3 Episodes:

1. Baby 2. Safe House 3. Just My Imagination

Worst 3 episodes

21. Thin Lizzie 22. The Devil in the Details 23. Alpha and Omega