Sam and Dean are back!

Yes, two posts in one day, who'd have thunk it? Answer: no one, because no one reads this blog. Self-deprecation aside, I watched the Supernatural season premiere yesterday. When last we left our heroes, Castiel had declared himself the successor to the throne of Heaven--which is, you know, a bit presumptuous. The only thing worse than his ridiculous claim was that he had the ridiculous amount of power necessary to back up said claim. Anywho, when we return--oops, wait a minute.

***SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE THAT WARNS ABOUT SPOILERS!***

When we return, Sam, Dean and Bobby are all, "okay, you're God now, that's cool, please don't kill us" and Cas is all "You guys weren't supportive of my totally well-conceived plan to team up with a demon and absorb human souls, and now we are no longer besties! I'm updating my Facebook status to 'God--and NOT in a relationship.'" So then he starts exacting holy vengeance on churches who have, in his mind, "gone astray"--basically taking out anyone the executive producers wanted to make not-so-subtle comments about. He starts with the anti-gay dudes and then breaks up the KKK. He's not just smiting the right-wing, though; he also hits a transcendental new age-y place and brings his wrath upon the greatest sinners of them all: MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKERS! In my opinion, it's about time they got what was coming to them. Have you seen Tony Robbins's teeth? That's not natural.

Where was I? Oh yeah, power-mad angel. Meanwhile, Sam is dealing with the busted wall in his head--busted by Cas, of course. Memories of Hell are leaking into his real life and it becomes harder to differentiate between what's real and what isn't. I just realized that re-capping is very tedious work. Cas makes Crowley his Satan (makes sense, when you change administration, the new guy brings in his own cabinet) and then Crowley is promptly summoned by the boys to help with taking Cas down. Crowley does that gravelly British thing and Dean does his gravelly American thing--amazingly, the word "gank" never comes up. [Side note: wouldn't Mark Sheppard make an awesome younger version of Malcolm McDowell on Franklin and Bash in a flashback sequence or something?]

Dean: "You gots a spell what can bind Death!" Crowley: "Blah blah tea and crumpets, blah blah you can't handle it." Crowley doesn't give it up, but the awesome analog Googling skills of one Robert Fisher eventually yield the spell and they summon ONE OF THE COOLEST CHARACTERS ON THE SHOW EVER sorry about that shameless fanboy outburst. All scenes with Death are funny and interesting, and this one is no exception. Dean: "Here's some junk food, DO OUR BIDDING!" Further banter ensues--Dean and Bobby find out about Sam's hallucinations--until Cas appears and releases Death. Death does the usual fist-shaking expected of upper-level supernatural beings and vanishes. ["One wall per customer?" As if he just goes around blocking everyone's infernal memories. These guys never like to seem like they're too available, which makes storytelling sense. Problems can't be too easily solved. But STILL...GRR!] He does tell them how to beat Cas, however: they've got to get him to fart out the Old Ones (shout out to H.P.) and send them back to Purgatory. Later, they do all that. And then...

Lucifer: What's up, Sam? You're still in the cage! You've been MINDFREAKED! Are you ready?

Sam: No. It's not true. It's IMPOSSIBLE!

Lucifer: Search your feelings, you know it to be true!

Sam: DO NOT WANT!

Meanwhile...

Cas: Wow, that was crazy, wasn't it? Remember when I killed all those innocent people? Man, that was out of control. But I'm cool--ah. Wait...no, no I'm not. RUN!

Dean: Let me walk closer to you so I can hear that warning again. What's this about running?

The indestructible bodies of Dean and Bobby get thrown into various parts of the room.

Cas: There is no Castiel, only Zuul!

Black out.

I hope they spend as little time as possible on Sam not being able to tell the difference between hallucination and reality. Or if they do, at least give it some kind of interesting twist. If you haven't noticed, every single sci-fi/fantasy show has an episode where the heroes wake up in some mental institution and they discover that the whole show up until this point has been a delusion. Of course, the mental institution is revealed to be an illusion created by some creature and they return to business as usual. Those plots are so tedious to me because you already know they aren't actually going to write off the entire show as a deranged fantasy. There's no suspense, it's just prolonged resolution. Supernatural had an episode like that, and now they're breaking down the walls between reality and illusion in another way. Sam obviously isn't still in the cage if he's not in every scene. How can he hallucinate stuff he can't see? You can't do a Sixth Sense review of every episode since Sam came back and make it all fit. So, I think the next episode is going to resolve that whole thing--or else it'll be about the other characters trying to restore Sam's sanity, without any Blade Runner-esque questions about what's real and what isn't.

EEK! Mermaid Sighting on Secret Circle

How pleased was I to learn that Phoebe Tonkin from H2O: Just Add Water was actually starring in the new witchy show, The Secret Circle? So now she's a witch AND a mermaid. Welcome to having sci-fi street cred, Phoebe. Also being worth about fifty points in the Obscure Reference game. Her American accent sounds...strange, as do the fake American accents of many an import. But she can work on that. WHO THE HECK KNEW THAT JASON STACKHOUSE WAS AUSTRALIAN? If your answer is "anyone who looked on Wikipedia," then you are a smart aleck and need to shut up. Anyway, if you didn't already know that the person was from a different land, sometimes they can fool you. I was fooled by Anna Torv on Fringe, even though people say her accent is bad. I think the people who say that already knew she was antipodean (look THAT word up on Wikipedia, smart alecks) and were listening really hard for inconsistencies in the dialect. If you aren't looking for it, you won't find it, and you just watch a show and think everyone's American until you learn otherwise. Unless, of course, you hear someone saying, "Howdy you all, this is a totally awesome surf party that we are at, homies! Coca Cola, baseball, apple strudel--I mean pie!" Then some eyebrows might be raised.

Good riddance, Eureka, now time for more ghosts and rasslin'!

Apparently, Eureka is being canceled. Of all the shows in SyFy's highly questionable lineup, Eureka and Alphas (whoops, I called it out, now it'll get the axe too) are the only two science fiction shows amid its original offerings (Enterprise reruns don't count). Everything else is fantasy (Warehouse 13 and Haven), some kind of quasi-fantasy science-ish thing (Sanctuary) and of course, the kajillion reality shows (do we really need a Ghost Hunters AND a Ghost Hunters International?). AND DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIES. It is my theory that their movie development staff is broken up into the "A Team" (Tin Man, The Lost Room) and the "B Squad" (Boa vs. Python vs. Aardvark).

Now, I like the fantasy stuff and I even watch one or two of the reality shows, but you would think that a channel called "SyFy" with so little "Sci-fi" would hold onto whatever it had. Forgive me if I have a little trouble "imagining greater" when they kick all their best stuff to the curb. Actually, all I can do is imagine how the channel could be greater. As I said, I'm no sci-fi snob; I would accept any kind of fantastical scripted entertainment (definitely looking forward to Neverland from my beloved "A Team"), as long as it was well-done (i.e. not Black Scorpion--although even that was preferable to WWE) and could actually stay on for a decent amount of time. I can picture an "In Memoriam" montage similar to the one the Oscars does, except for dead Sci-Fi Channel shows instead of deceased movie people. A moment of silence, if you will...

The Invisible Man

The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne

Lexx

Farscape (This would be like the actor that gets the loudest cheer during the montage)

Why, dang it, why? Rifftrax just doesn't fill the void.

I know this one doesn't actually count as having been created by the Sci-Fi Channel, but like Sliders, it was picked up and they made new episodes. Either way...WHY????

I didn't forget about First Wave...I just found it kind of boring. That having been said, I would take it. I would take a re-boot of a show that bored me to tears over Monster Finders Transcontinental or whatever abomination they're planning to replace Eureka with.

Sure, SyFy...by all means, cancel one of your best shows. I'm getting Carnivale flashbacks (but I'll gripe about that injustice in another post).