bratfarrar

Both of these are more season-arc episodes, so neither of them thrilled me the way "Mint Condition" did, but that's just to be expected. There were some nice details, though:

• For all the positive/negative hype at the time about Danneel finally playing a character on SPN, I thought Sister Jo/Anael was ... just fine? She felt very much like any other "I'll be around for a few episodes" character, and if I hadn't known Danneel came in as Jensen's wife, I wouldn't have been able to guess it from either the writing or her acting. It's a plausible enough scenario, and she played it seriously, so kudos there.


• Lucifer's mix of "I'm not really that bad a guy" followed by casual brutality/betrayal is still uncomfortably effective. Again, I know there was chatter at the time about a redemption arc, but I'm not seeing it. He's still as awful as ever, just without any facade of grandeur left.


• I dearly love that Jack continues to be a sweetheart with good intentions (yes, yes, title is very apropos) but not enough experience to predict longer-term consequences of his actions. Even on the small level of "if I make impossible shadow puppets, the people who are being slaughtered by angels might freak out about it". Though really, Mary, that was a very poor choice of when to be overly honest. Just say "yeah, he's kind of psychic" and things probably would've gone a little better. Well, up until the angel attack, anyway.


• Dean's amusement over Gog and Magog's loincloths and Castiel's repressive responses--Sam would've been repressive too, of course, but differently. He would've been able to see the joke even if he disapproved.


• Dean taking out Gog/Magog pretty handily despite not having a bladed weapon, and then saving Cas's butt. Always nice when he gets to show off his skills--as long as he's not trying to deal with telekinetic powers/sneak attacks he's pretty unstoppable.


• Sam subduing Donatello despite the sneak attack and lack of backup. (Also, he's cute with an ice pack.)


• Always interesting when Cas locks into "damn your ethical quandries" mode. He's definitely the hatchet man, even when Sam and Dean don't expect/want him to be. Every now and then it even solves problems instead of creating them! But not often.

The fun thing about doing these 6 months after they aired is not having to worry in the slightest about spoilers. :)