Ugh. For as much as I like her novels, I find her insufferable every time she offers up a dead-wrong definition of science fiction designed to distance herself from it. It's like she's afraid that she'll be banished from the literary cool kids' table and will have to eat lunch in the stairwell with the genre dweebs if…

It's very much an outlier. I love Jesus Christ Superstar, and musical theater normally holds no appeal for me at all.

I think he's very important now for young Deanmon's tutelage, but, yeah, they were really making the character scrape the bottom of the barrel with that stupid, pointless blood junkie tangent. One minute he's lolling around like an effete rock star in a hotel room that's way too high-rent for Supernatural to the…

I'd be okay even if his appearances were limited to him and Jensen Ackles alone on a bare set trading barbs. He's actually better when they don't try to make him larger than life.

I hope they make better use of him as a regular than they have of Misha Collins.

She's cuter than Wil Wheaton, so there's that. But as an older, pre-intarwebz kind of nerd who had to be content with whatever 7-years-late Dr. Who the local PBS station saw fit to give us, I find the 24-hour nerd-news cycle to be excessive. To me, people like Wheaton and Day are just anchormen.

I'm okay with Felicia Day as an actress, though she tends to just play slightly different versions of herself. I liked her in Buffy, Dollhouse, and other parts of the Whedonverse. I couldn't stand her in Supernatural, though, because her schtick just didn't jibe with the muscle car, mullet rock, and monster huntin'…

They're all symptoms of new media nerd pandering.

Exactly. Whenever I see a sub-par episode of Supernatural, I use late-series X Files as a point of comparison. (It helps that SPN has a lot of X Files in its DNA.)

I don't think SPN has gotten so bad that the actors have been reduced to turd-polishing, but I do think it's a bit past its freshness date now. In all fairness, I can't think of any genre show that wasn't stale after 9 seasons on the air. Still, I have had online conversations with people who think I'm being…

God yes. That's why I limit my Supernatural discussions to the AV Club. My fate as a genre nerd was sealed decades ago, but even I get a little queasy when I see fans who are incapable of conversing (in person on online) about anything but their favorite franchise and who bristle at honest criticism thereof.

Edit: comment removed after noticing that Mihovil said the same thing right below.

I think a lot of the John-as-abuser speculation is fanfic fodder because it makes the boys into wounded birds who need all manner of nuzzling and comforting. The show itself presents them as a couple of guys who realize that their childhood was kind of messed up, but it could have been so much worse. Just look at…

I know I'm always banging on about Buckner & Ross-Leming as the show's two worst writers, but they're the ones who wrote most of the angel arc this season, and the blame lies with them for most of its problems. (Well, with them and a showrunner who doesn't have enough sense or backbone to rein them in.) It's not just…

I think you just covered every last thing about the angels that has annoyed me this season.

I love me some Helo, but I still think Penikett is a bit limited in range. YMMV.

Either that, or he wants a right-hand man. Or maybe he wants a bit of both. They had so much more fun together than any of the other character pairings this season.

Now that you mention it, there is an odd symmetry with the beginning of the season. Dean tricked Sam into being an angel vessel because he can't handle being alone. Crowley tricks Dean into taking on the Mark of Cain because ruling Hell is a lonely business.

Genre TV gets zero respect when it comes to handing out awards, so it has to be twice as good (GoT, BSG) to be considered half as worthy for an Emmy. The People's Choice Awards don't measure anything but whose rabid fans cast the most online votes. Metatron was right to sneer at them.

Depends on how long Galavant actually lasts. It looks like ridiculous fun but unsustainable. Based on his Twitter feed, TO keeps in touch some of the Supernatural writers and recurring guests (lots of Psych overlap there), so it's safe to assume that they'll at least try to bring him back.