“Not going to get my hopes up just to get kicked in the daddy pills again.” – Dean
Season 6 its bright moments, sure, but overall the entire schizophrenic storyline felt like a crummy sequel to the original five-year arc about Sam and Dean Winchester, their sweet ‘67 Impala, and the apocalypse-that-wasn’t.
Where do you go after the apocalypse? What could possibly be worse than the devil?
This is the question that plagued Season 6 season and to be brutally honest, I don’t think we ever really got our answer.
The premiere of Season 7 picks up immediately after the events of last season’s finale: Castiel has swallowed all of the souls in Purgatory and declared himself the new God. Dean and Bobby are looking a little worse for wear after their disastrous run-in with Raphael and Crowley, and Sam is clearly on a different planet than everyone else after waking up from his trip down Hell-Memory Lane.
Castiel demands that his once favored “pets” bow to him, but changes his mind when he realizes that their gesture is born out of fear, rather than love and respect. He refuses to heal Sam’s damaged soul and flutters off to smite some hypocritical church leaders, manipulative motivational speakers, and a thinly-veiled Michelle Bachmann clone. It’s pretty awesome, actually, until Castiel’s meatsuit starts melting in a Lucifer-esque fashion and he starts hearing voices in his head.
Two-thirds of Team Free Will is now effectively in need of some antipsychotic medication. Back at Bobby’s salvage yard, Sam is awake and managing to “put on [his] own socks,” but he’s also hallucinating visions of Hell, torture, and Lucifer; Mark Pellegrino making a pleasantly surprising return as our favorite Prince of Darkness. After watching Dean inhale whiskey and watch anime porn for most of the episode, then lament to Bobby that Sam’s miraculous recovery is the only good thing in their lives right now, Sam decides not to tell Dean about his hallucinations.
Yeah, that won’t backfire or anything.
Ultimately, the boys decide to call up Death and ask him to kill Castiel.
Again, there is no possible way this could backfire, right?
Right.
It turns out that there were things a lot older and a lot meaner than mere souls trapped in Purgatory, things that don’t respond so well to being suck down in a soul-smoothie by an angel in a trench coat.
The first episode of Season 7 had the feel of a mid-season installment, leaping right into the thick of the action, rather than building up to it. It was nice to avoid the aimless wandering for once, and gain our momentum from the very beginning. Despite my initial misgivings, we seem to be off to a fantastic start. I just hope the show can keep it up.
Some stats and info about Supernatural, “Meet the New Boss”
TV SHOW – Supernatural
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 7, Episode 1
AIRED ON – September 23rd, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – CW/Netflix
GENRE – Drama, Teen Dramas, Horror, Fantasy
CREATED BY – Eric Kripke
CAST – Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard, Jim Beaver, Alexander Calvert, Mark Pellegrino, Samantha Smith, Ruth Connell
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.