Friday, September 23, 2011

Supernatural 7x01 "Meet the New Boss"

And we're back! With a bang? Things moved at a quick pace in this premiere, one minute Cas has ingested the souls, the next he's smiting and Dean's all "there is no more Cas!" and then... okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get back to the part where he ingested the souls, because that's right where we left off from last season's finale.

And right where Cas declares himself the new GAHHG (in case you don't remember, that stands for "Great Almighty He Him God" and has the bonus effect of sounding like you're gagging!), and demands Dean, Sam and Bobby bow down to him. Bobby gets right to it, sensing Cas has gone cuckoo off the reservation. Sam and Dean are about to follow suit, but Cas can sense they don't really mean it, and instead gives them this one warning. He'll let them go for now, but they should hope never to see him again.

Recap/review of Supernatural 7x01 "Meet the New Boss" by freshfromthe.comCas then decides it's time for some almighty smiting, of angels, of other people, basically anyone he thinks is doing something worth smiting. Which is often those who don't want to side with him, so he's being rather petty about the whole deal, really. Of course, when one is drunk on power from corrupted souls, it's probably hard to keep a level head.

Back at the ranch, or Singer Salvage, Dean has taken to trying to fix his one true love. Oh wait, that's Sam. But no, he's trying to fix the Impala, which has been put through the ringer again. Although I suppose he would also like to fix Sam, who has started having some troubles with the Hell visions seeping into everyday life. He's doing a good job of hiding it from the others so far, but we all know that won't last long. During this time, Dean has taken the stance that they should just leave well enough alone, not go poking the bear, you know. But once Cas starts getting a little too overzealous in his smiting, they decide, uh, maybe we should do something about this after all. Only where to look?

To everyone's favorite former, and newly reinstated, King of Hell - Crowley! Who else! You see, earlier on, Cas found Crowley and offered him a deal - to become the King of Hell again. After all, someone has to make sure Lucifer and Michael don't escape the cage. Crowley, ever one of self interest, agrees. But when the Winchesters and Bobby come looking to conspire, he's right ready to join up with them too. Like I said, self interest. They basically come to the conclusion that the way to rein in Cas is to get Death to kill him. And the only way they can get Death to agree to that is to bind him like Lucifer did.

They manage to succeed in the whole binding thing, after breaking into some poor couple's home and using a special lightning sand thingy for the ritual. Death, of course, is less than pleased to see they've let it get to this point at all. After all, he warned Dean many moons ago about the whole soul business. Before they can get any deal in place, however, Cas pops in to have a tete-a-tete with Death about, basically, who has the bigger balls. Dean encourages Death to kill Cas, but Cas breaks the bind on him before he can. And promptly disappears. Death warns them that they've got to get the souls back out of Cas and into purgatory, because it's not just souls that are inside him. There are some older beastly beings that GAHHG had made long ago - Leviathans. And they are itching to wreak some new havoc. He gives them a deadline to re-do the ritual at that lab place.

But they've still got to convince Cas. Dean thinks he is beyond convincing, and would rather sit back and watch some Asian cartoon porn with a drink in hand. Sam, however, believes that Cas is still in there somewhere, and takes it upon himself to try to talk to him (via the sky!). Cas, after going nutso and kiling a bunch of people and otherwise realizing he's no longer in control, comes to his senses and goes to them, asking for help.

As they prepare to re-open the gate, Cas tries to make amends with Dean. In case we forgot, he had promised to fix Sam once he had stopped the war in Heaven with this whole Purgatory plan. But now things have gone haywire and he hasn't been able to do it, and won't be able to do it either. Which is not great, because at this very moment Sam has been sent off to retrieve some special blood from another room in the lab, and starts having another hallucination. This time it's Lucifer, who's trying to convince him that this is all a new form of torture - make him think he's back in the real world, then pull out the rug from under him. Ah man, if ever there was a way to make someone question what's real... poor Sam!

Sam, seemingly lost in this hallucination, doesn't get to witness Cas relinquishing the souls back into purgatory. Post-relinquish, it appears he is dead, and Dean finally starts showing a little remorse over the situation. But then, boom, he heals and sits up. Is all well? Has he returned to normal? It seems so at first, until! No, not all is well. Something didn't go back into purgatory with the rest. And you can probably guess what it is since it got name checked earlier - Leviathan(s?)! It quickly takes control of Cas with a gleeful smirk, tossing Dean and Bobby aside like toys.

Dun dun dun!

Random Thoughts:

- Apparently, the writers spell Cas like Cass. This is a bit of a mind boggle to me, since Castiel only has one s. My name has two n's in the full version, and I still think it's weird when people do the shortened version as Jenn instead of Jen. So the double s scenario is a bit of a head scratcher. I digress. This is not important.

- Seeing Misha do demented is kind of awesome. I laughed out loud at that face he made when the leviathan(s?) took over. Laughed in a good way, of course.

- Sammy! Also, Jared was looking really good, right? I mean. Ahem. But, yes. Poor Sam! Next week's episode looks pretty awesome. I wonder how much it will actually focus on the Hell memories, because the promos made it seem like that's all it would be about, but you know how those promos can be!

- What do you think of the new opening titles? I dig them, personally. I like them better than the glass shatter of last season. My favorite still has to be the blood splat of season five, though. That was awesomesauce.

- Can you believe this is season seven?! I remember back in season one when it was possible the show wouldn't be picked up. How far we've come.

Quotes:

"What a brave little ant you are." - Castiel

"I'm not dumb. I'm not gonna get my hopes up just to get kicked in the daddy pills again." - Dean

Dean: Excuse me, you got any Grey Poupon?
Sam: Grey Poupon? Seriously?
Dean: It's what popped in my head.

"Should we kickbox now?" - Death

"Hey, Sam. Long time no spooning." - Lucifer

Previous Episode -- Next Episode

6 comments:

  1. I love the dead angel opening this season really forshadows Cas's demise(?) very nicely. One thing that's bothered me. Why is it no one has come up with official or fan names for the openings in general? It's not that hard to come up with proper names, I've come up with my own.

    Season 1: the EVP opening.

    Fitting because all throughout before the mythology builds up the boys are hunting ghosts almost every week, the sounds and static you hear in the opening sound like electronic interference much like EVP.

    Season 2: The Hellfire opening.

    It seems Sam's mom and the psychic kids' moms going up in flames inspired this opening

    Season 3: The Devil's Gate opening.

    The gate opens and unleashed thousands of demons and once again they wreak havoc the steel letters remind me of the railroad tracks.

    Season 4: Heaven vs. Hell opening

    This was a very difficult one to name at first it's a scream flapping wings white and black backgrounds looks like a battle Angels and Demons obviously is taken and would be in poor taste to name here. The Apocalypse sprang my mind but that's more season 5 than 4. So listening some Sabbath I came across Heaven and Hell and it clicked. The season was about Heaven vs. Hell and Sam and Dean caught in the middle.

    Season 5: Bloodlines opening

    This season was all about Sam and Dean's heritage and their destiny as Michael and Lucifer's true vessels, the blood added to the water and churning about eventually dissolving forshadows the events that unfold as Dean and Sam do everything they can to save each other and not follow the plan set out for them.

    Season 6: Shattered Glass opening

    Dean is in pieces at the beginning of this season Sam is without his soul and Cas is about to go nanners as Heaven rebels against him. The opening is perfectly set for those fractured characters.

    I haven't come up for one for season 7 besides dead angel. As for the episode itself, I liked it better than last year but I felt the plot was overly rushed and Cas transformation and demise(?) was just too quick. One thing that really bothered me was the Impala.

    Why does it take only one episode to fix the Impala. Every time the Impala wrecks it only takes one episode to fix it. I watched last nights episode with my mother and growing up in a family of mechanics we laughed our butts off. No way it would have taken Dean that short of a time to fix the car. Unless there was a time frame. (which was not given)

    C'mon Sara a simple "It's been a month Dean. I thought you said she would be chromed up by now." would have made things smoother and really would have shown how long Cas has been nanners, smiting the non believers and those false profits.

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  2. I am relieved to be done with demons and souls and even angels for a bit. A regular old big bad-- the Leviathans.

    LOVED Death. He is one of my favorite characters of the show-- love his food quirk and his manner. Looking forward to this season. Think it will be the last?

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  3. Darren-- There are those clips of things happening, and they say something about it being 3 months, I think, of him being on a rampage and them working on the car and biding their time.

    Jen-- Have you ever seen a video that just showed all of the openings?

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  4. @Darren - I agree that the episode moved really quickly. I fully thought Cas would be going on a rampage for at least a few episodes. But other shows have a tendency to draw out plotlines, so I do appreciate that Supernatural mostly doesn't do that.

    @Laura - I agree Death is always awesome. Helps that such a great actor plays him. I'm not sure this will be the last season, though the numbers weren't great (only 1.95 million viewers according to last estimates I read!)

    Now that you've made me think about it, I've gone to youtube to check if there are videos of just the title sequences. This one has seasons 1-6 plus all of the special intros: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmzY27syN8U and I just found one with just the 1-7 ones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX7E1teY0KI

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  5. @Laura - If it did say three months at any point during the episode I must have missed it or was in the bathroom. I'll take your word for it, as I'm too lazy to wait an hour and a half to watch one 40 min episode on CW. Stupid commercials and buffering.

    @Jen - It wasn't that it moved quickly it was next day delivery rushed, I'm all for speeding things up to smooth plot lines and not over complicate, and bore things, but this just felt like a hour and a half long movie squeezed down to 40 mins. To me shortening this plotline really ruined his character there was no build up to anything, just direct route from point A to point B. Sera once again has shown how much respect she has for these characters.

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