The first sentence of this review actually angered me, that's how shitty this show is. This isn't the occasion for litotes, Kaiser! This is war!

Which also means that if Dean is really worried about Sam leaving him and entering normal life, he may also be instictively trying to save Sam from a disaster. Fantasy made concrete becomes a nightmare. Normal family needs to remain a lost object.

Don't know how often Sam hits Dean back. And there is the issue of parental autority, which is what Dean holds over Sam, and which they both accept - that means the dynamic is never equal. What was noteworthy about the last episode was that the punishment for "running away" was taken as natural by both Sam and Dean.…

Killing Firefly has to be taken as a pathetic attempt at reasserting the code that in reality was never much more than a comforting thought. Dean needed to be comforted and tried to prove that the code is alive and well - and failed, since he couldn't extend it to Firefly's son.

Or, maybe, the fact that as someone destined to be a hunter Dean will always be alone - there is never a full trust between hunters, only temporary alliances that can always end at any moment - while Sam has the option of not being alone in normal life.

You're right about my posting history here. Shame that I was forced to submit to the various humiliations of being a registered member.

The episode of vampire Dean scaring his family was symbolic, it's just a question of how far we're licenced to go with our conclusions. In the hospital, after the mindwipe, Dean says to his family, "I'm the guy who hit you," and I take that to be ambiguous.

So maybe behind Dean's parenting-controlling attitude there is something like this: it's not that the brothers are destined or doomed to remain hunters forever, "you are who you are", it's that only Dean is. Dean is afraid and the fear comes from the knowledge that Sam can leave and have a different life. Sam has a…

Good point also about Sam rebelling against this father. The other side of this is just as important: Dean as someone who never got a chance to rebel.

The moral code has always been negotiable. Like you say, that's just how things are. Sam finally accepted that by letting Firefly go (and we know that he was capable of killing her), Dean was forced to face the same reality with her son. The reality is that their (father's) moral code was never as pure as they liked…

I'm as hard on this show as anyone, but I'd also defend this episode. It was predictable but well crafted, and it was careful to hit the right notes about relationships in the hunter lifestyle.

They bought the leviathan mouths from the estate of the V reboot.

Those are fair criticisms. Black ooze takes over people, makes them evil. There's nothing in this season that we haven't seen already. Budget is no excuse.

In that case I think we can forget Lovecraft in any substantial sense. Not enough fan-service for this set of fans. We should expect story arcs based on the Twilight franchise instead.

The Wikipedia page for 'cenobite' in Hellraiser describes Leviathan, ruler of the hell/labyrinth as an "an abstract, ambiguously conscious god" - which is wonderful, and vaguely Lovecraftian even, but not what Supernatural is all about.

And you know what the ruler of hell is called in Hellraiser? Leviathan.

@avclub-3fe1fdfda58715ff89476bc53fe3d5f8:disqus
 I didn't remember that. Seems like the show has been drifting away from that a bit, since the only other clue has been a kind of abstract image of a flaming cage rendered with Amiga 500 or something like that.

Problem is, as God he was a far more interesting evil than as another fun-loving demonic being that has taken over a human body. What exactly motivates these hyperactive hedonists anyway? It's all just, 'Hooray I'm free! Let's fuck shit up!' Fun, fun, fun!

Is there any official word on Lovecraft being a substantial part of this season?

Pellegrino is a pleasure to watch, so I really hope he'll be able to avoid falling into trite mannerisms. Same goes for Collins as 'Leviathan'. Few things more cliched than the 'bad guy who has fun' when it's poorly thought out or executed.