I was quite let down by this episode, mainly for the reasons that you listed. I didn't care for the unevenness that Sam displayed. On the one hand he says he's been back pretty much the whole time but didn't tell Dean because he wanted Dean to have a normal life. On the other hand he snaps his fingers and expects Dean to just walk away from that normal life and resume hunting with the splendidly awful Campbell family. The contempt that the Campbells displayed towards Dean was completely unwarrented. As oselle said above, it made me wonder if Mary's desire to leave the hunting life had more to do with getting away from her creepy family than anything else.
Any parallels the writers had intended to put in to the pilot didn't work for me. This didn't feel like a clever role reversal. That was just the framework that allowed them to have Sam be cold and calculating. I presume that I'm supposed to think that Sam's time in the worst part of hell has caused him to become the cold, lying guy we saw here, but that wasn't shown in the episode. It felt more like Sam has chosen to be this way now because it was always in him to be this way.
The heavy-handed way in which they tried to make the Campbells, especially granddaddy Campbell seem mysterious and ominous didn't work for me because it was too heavy-handed.
I was very disappointed with the revelation that Bobby had gone along with Sam's deception. I know that the writers had to do something with Bobby, but this? Bobby was a drunken loser by the end of the first 5 seasons. I would have expected this knowledge to put him right over the edge.
I read an interview with Jensen Ackles in which he flat out stated that he was unhappy with the way Dean was being portrayed in S6, and now I can understand why.
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Date: 2010-09-26 02:38 pm (UTC)Any parallels the writers had intended to put in to the pilot didn't work for me. This didn't feel like a clever role reversal. That was just the framework that allowed them to have Sam be cold and calculating. I presume that I'm supposed to think that Sam's time in the worst part of hell has caused him to become the cold, lying guy we saw here, but that wasn't shown in the episode. It felt more like Sam has chosen to be this way now because it was always in him to be this way.
The heavy-handed way in which they tried to make the Campbells, especially granddaddy Campbell seem mysterious and ominous didn't work for me because it was too heavy-handed.
I was very disappointed with the revelation that Bobby had gone along with Sam's deception. I know that the writers had to do something with Bobby, but this? Bobby was a drunken loser by the end of the first 5 seasons. I would have expected this knowledge to put him right over the edge.
I read an interview with Jensen Ackles in which he flat out stated that he was unhappy with the way Dean was being portrayed in S6, and now I can understand why.