We are about to start the second half of Supernatural‘s sixth season and so far, it has been quite the uneven year. As you may recall, I was excited about Sera Gamble and her promise of more monsters for our beautiful boys to fight back at the beginning of the season, but I fear her promises were not kept. Not really.

First of all, I am not here to rip apart Sera. She obviously loves working on the show, and when Kripke decided he didn’t want to continue, I am sure she happily stepped up to continue the story of The Winchesters, both for her career, and for the joy of this little family she has helped create. Unfortunately, I think that maybe she has been too close to the show for too long to see through the weeds.

My favorite thing about Supernatural from the beginning was the love of the brothers Dean and Sam. They never said it, and rarely showed it with a hug, but it was obvious to me that it was strong. The annoyance of the last few seasons was the slow destruction of that love. I soldiered on though, because I knew that this was part of Kripke’s grand plan, and so I was happy to follow along. When Sera took over I had hopes that she would restore the love between Sam and Dean, and instead we got more suspicion, more angst, and more of Dean pulling away from his family. How disappointing!!

The reintroduction of Grandpa Winchester as villain made me miss Papa Winchester even more. If they can bring back all kinds of dead characters, and in this kind of show this is certainly plausible, why oh why can’t we get, even for one episode, a visit from John? I have no idea if Jeffrey Dean Morgan can’t find time in his schedule, or if he simply hasn’t been asked, but his character is sorely missed, and just one little episode with him could reinvigorate those poor, lost brothers.

Another disappointment is that once again there is a war being waged that we see nothing of. If this was the best idea they had to keep Castiel a part of the action, I am grateful because I adore that little angel, but would it be so hard  to actually show us some of this war up in Heaven? This was the similar flaw of last season, where we were told over and over that he apocalypse was raging, but we never really saw much of it. This isn’t a book, this is television, a visual medium, and I would like to see some of these so called wars.

All is not lost, however. Among the dismal familial relationship storylines, and having to listen to Dean mope about his brother yet again, we did get some wonderful Supernatural-ness.

• Soulless Sam was the most entertaining version of Sammy in the whole series. Sam has traditionally been the level head of the two, and to see him unleashed from his dreary soul was a treat. It was nice to see Jared get to flex his acting chops in a different way.
• Jensen was handed some wonderful moments in this first half. I love Dean, clearly, and he got to be HilariousDean as a vampire and as a faerie abductee, and EmoDean with the sadness of leaving Lisa, a storyline that I surprisingly mostly enjoyed.
• Bobby gets his very own episode! Possibly one of the best episodes of the season we see the sweet hope of a romantic possibility and the tragic consequences that Bobby has endured by being a hunter and pseudo daddy to those kinda selfish Winchester boys.
• Crowley returns in a shaky arc, but who cares because Mark Sheppard just kills it no matter what kind of material he is given. I’ll watch that guy do just about anything.
• Castiel get a bit of a reboot, which was nice seeing that his angel became sort of a caricature by the end of last season. I love the fish out of water aspect of Castiel, but I also like the badass edge of his warrior angel.

I find myself looking forward to the next half of the season. I was pleased that they resolved the Sammy Doesn’t Have A Soul story before the break. I just hope that the ‘damaged soul’ story doesn’t grate, because it has the potential for major suckage. Is it asking too much to make the Re-en-souledSammy the thing that brings those lovely boys back together? We’re getting the return of a few well loved characters this second half (go ahead you non-spoilerphobes, google it!) and that always makes me happy. Most of the muck of the first half seems to have been resolved, albeit clunkily, and there is hope that things can be set straight.

Supernatural is one of my favorite TV indulgences, and it gets a lot of leeway from me because of that fact. I will be sitting in front of my DVR on Friday with my fingers crossed.

PS – took a bunch of my old motivators to decorate this post, mainly just to amuse myself. 🙂