Everywhere else I read, everyone hated this episode, but I really enjoyed it. I was a little disappointed with S8, but this showed me it hadn’t gotten too far off track to be fixable.
I liked this weeks episode. I think it’s cool that Garth is stepping into Bobbys’ role. Someone needs to be the head office for all the hunters scattered around. He’s also really “manned up” since Sam and Dean had been gone for a year.
I was disappointed with seasons 6 and 7, but feel 8 has been a step back to quality.
November 28 2012:
Best episode of the season, so far.
My prediction is that Sam’s girlfriend was not real and he was held in some kind of dream state while Dean was gone. Or that he did a bunch of stuff and his memory has been altered.
Definitely best of the season thus far. Cas acting weird and misunderstanding humanity will never get old. Best line of the night: “I’ll interrogate the cat.” 
Or possibly the “Dean Winchester (Hunter Heroici)” sight gag.
Sam’s girlfriend being imaginary would be a nice twist. Actually, anything resembling a twist in Sam’s flashbacks would be nice, because they are boring. As. Shit. Every time Sam goes into that thousand yard stare and someone runs in and smears vaseline on the lens, I want to throw something at my TV. But Dean and Cas’s man talk about their manly feelings, while gazing into one another’s eyes (manfully) made up for it.
Come to think of it, how does an angel commit suicide? Is Cas planning to fall off of the bed onto one of those angel knives, ala Spike on Buffy?
The very thought of there being no twist depresses me. There. had. better. be. a point.
I was riveted by Mike Farrell even when he was staring silently at the screen.
Cool effects too.
It was cool he was in it, but I kind of think they wasted him. It could have been any old actor in this one. I wish Mike Farrel had a larger and more recurring role on the show.
So, apparently Sam’s relationship ended because his girlfriend’s presumed dead husband is alive. I’m betting the angels brought him back to life to get Sam back together with Dean again.
Oh, the guy from MASH! I didn’t know who he was, I had to look him up. Yeah, he was really good.
After the pointlessness of the “Bobby is a ghost” arc from season seven, Sam’s boring flashbacks are practically innocuous in comparison. I do hate them, but in a very indifferent manner.
No “Citizen Fang” discussion?
Season eight is really surprising me - it’s shaping up to be so much better than six or seven. The Benny issue as a driving wedge between Sam and Dean is pretty interesting, because the writers are actually giving both Sam and Dean a decent argument. Compare this with last season’s “you killed my monster friend Amy!” arc, in which both of the guys came off terribly, especially (to go off on a tangent here) Sam in “The Slice Girls” in which he berates Dean for not killing his ‘daughter’, instead of seeing the parallel and using it as a stepping stone to understanding why Dean killed Amy. I like that with the Benny arc, despite being on opposite sides of the subject, Sam and Dean can see one another’s point, and even defend that point to others (Sam pushing Martin up against the wall and threatening him into staying away from Benny, Dean begging Benny to run, hide, and not to underestimate Sam).
On the other hand, Sam’s pointless flashbacks are still pointless. I’m hoping the writers drop the whole thing soon, even if it’s with nothing more than an “oops, that wasn’t really going anywhere. Let’s drop the filler and make good use of Sam from here on out.”
Is it over now that he visited her and saw she is happy? I hope not, because that makes it pointless, which is what I feared.
I’d rather the whole thing be pointless and over than for the writers to continue to keep Sam chained to this terrible subplot for the rest of the season, even if it is going somewhere good. What’s the point of a good ending when the journey is unbearable? To paraphrase a fan on another site: ‘The story’s trucking along, and then Sam goes into a flashback, and it’s like the entire episode is getting tasered to the ground.’
I doubt that they would just drop it. I’m sure they have some reason for doing it, but I agree that it is dragging on too long.
I think this season has been a fair amount of fun so far, though I agree that the Sam flashbacks are tedious as hell. Good lord, the girlfriend is boring. I’d be more entertained if they focused on his relationship with the dog.
I’m glad that they resolved the Dean/Castiel mystery fairly quickly. I know they wanted us to wonder whether Dean screwed Cas to get out, but I never did. He might have left him there if he had to, but he wouldn’t have sacrificed him in that situation. To save the world, yes. To save Sam… maybe. To save himself, of course not. Dean is a guilt-riddled self-loathing mess who literally cannot conceive of a world in which every bad outcome isn’t somehow all his fault, so naturally he assumed that he’d failed Cas. Meanwhile, Cas is even MORE guilty and self-loathing than Dean (with better reason, after all) and is all “Oh, you poor poor dumb kid.” Perfect resolution for these characters and their relationship.
On a shallow note; Benny is hot. More Benny please.
Funny that the actor playing Benny was also the vampire Eli from Bloodlust, back when the boys first met Gordon Walker. Talk about typecasting!
Anybody here?
I just watched “LARP and the real girl” on Amazon. A fun diversion with the return of Felicia Day as Charlie.
I liked it as well, though I thought last week’s with Castiel was better. I am becoming more and more convinced that Sam’s story about that girlfriend was/is nothing but fluffy character development.
I thought LARPand the real girl was hilarious.
“By wand, you mean a…magc wand?”
“No, agent, I mean a NON-magic wand…cause that’s just what I would want in a duel, a NON-magic wand…”
I liked the episode, but Dean needs to stop with the self-flagellation and Sam needs to stop piling on the guilt trip.
I hope that in this 2nd half of the season, things come to light that put some of the lesser aspects of these season in a different light.