Supernatural 5×06 – “I Believe the Children Are Our Future”

This wasn’t a bad episode, but it wasn’t a particularly great one either. I had problems with certain things, like salt-in-the-mouth to expel a demon; the introduction of an apparently dues ex machine, or a “win” or “lose” button as some have termed it; and some odd writing and acting choices. However, I DID like the acting from our new, young anti-christ a lot. If Supernatural does one thing well — and it usually does many things well, but I digress — it casts REALLY good young actors. Also, Castiel as an action figure, awesome! My only question…when can I buy one. Overall this wasn’t a bad episode, definitely better than the previous ep, “Fallen Idols,” but still not stellar in my opinion.

Supernatural 5×07 – “The Curious Case of Dean Winchester”

This episode I liked a little more than the previous couple, but it still felt a bit odd. It was as if something was off, even though it was mostly written well. What I liked was mostly Bobby. Jim Beaver turned in a DYNAMITE performance for this episode, and I just wanted to give him a big, fat hug. Jared Padalecki was also excellent in this episode, pulling off his own version of a “poker face” that had me quite pleasantly surprised. I also thought the acting of Hal Ozsan, who played the card-dealing warlock Patrick, was also quite good. However, I didn’t like the witches’ backstory, what there was of it, and Chad Everett, who played old!Dean, was just not quite right as Dean. Oh, he tried, sure, but it wasn’t all the way there.

Overall, this season started really, really strongly with some excellent mythology episodes…and then threw us some standalones that…weren’t really that great. The one mythology ep we’ve gotten since “The End” was decent, but I guess it’s hard to hold a candle to that amazing episode. I’m looking forward to more episodes, especially the one coming this week with the Trickster.