I cry a lot for Sam too. I don't think I will ever stop crying.

Love this post, Sylvia. Your words are true.

Seriously, if you magically slotted two different characters into Show, I would not have tuned in for four plus seasons and eagerly looked forward to a sixth season. I don't tune in to find out what's going down with those wacky Angels or just what kind of mischief the demons have got themselves up to or how, exactly, Lucifer is going to kill all of humanity. I buy the DVDs and watch each episode multiple times because I enjoy watching Sam and Dean deal with the stuff that gets thrown at them. As long as Season 6 doesn't change the Sam and Dean characters fundamentally, I'll be there to watch.

That said, I'd love to see a season-long arc that deals with some form of the boys passing the torch. Kind of the way Buffy finally got some semblance of a normal life by sharing her slayer powers with other potentials so that she was not longer The One, I'd love to see Dean and Sam find some kind of peace in passing along their skills and knowing that others out there will share the burden or even take it over. Not that I want the boys to learn they have some long lost illegitimate children out there (GAH!!), but some way for them to go on even after they're gone.

^^^ If we get this I will be ecstatic. This apocalypse storyline, with the boys as afterthoughts, has sucked the heart and magic out of the show. I want next year to be about the boys, their angst and their relationship.

I love that Sera is taking over next year and hopefully she'll rein in the Dean show.

And my Sam hair fetish is hoping for many glorious Sam hair moments too.

So yeah, Jared is actually getting the better deal by getting harder parts to actually act – not having teary monologues. From an actor's POV, Sam's type of characters (darer, introvet and explosive amidst the normalcy) are more demanding to act and it must be more satisfying in the long run. Dean has been turned into an angsty Fonzie by now, all (stupid) quips and has by now become a sad caricature. In one ep he dreams about hot and slutty demons and angels, in the next he's dead inside? I admit, I lol'd when I read the recaps at times.

So yeah, as for future employment, i think Jared got the winning hand by playing Sam as he has and managing to keep the interest in such a neglected character. Takes one hell of an actor to manage that.

The sad part is that the network needs this show because they have a bad line-up to begin with. The last few new productions they have gotten on air have all more or less failed. Only Vampire Diaries is bringing in the ratings.

Show is an old milk-cow that manages, with a small budget, thanks to the leads. Forget SA, they tried to sell him but fandom is not always equal to general audience and they found it out by dropping ratings. The End was supposed to be the big Dean/Cas episode that got heavily promoted and it had very dismal ratings, second worst to this day if I remember correctly. So they make him the comic relief to hush outcries of indignation on too little SA/Dean. CW is just milking for all it's worth right now.

It's all business.

It was a business decision, on the part of the CW and Kripke, not a creative one. But sadly, most TV decisions are business-based, and I watch a lot of TV, so I sold my soul a long time ago.

I'm 99% sure I'll be watching season 6, sell-out or not, unless things go really poorly for Sam in the season five finale.

I love what you say here about Roswell, about how you saved what you loved but in saving it, you lost what you loved.

I was trying to say that a bit in my article, about whether having Season 6 would be worth the price we had to pay for it. And what price was that? If Show and the story get away from being about Sam and Dean, if the road we walk to get there means that Sam and Dean are grace notes rather than the central theem, then even watching Sam and his Samhair and Dean and that beautiful face of his won’t be enough. Yet I’ll still watch, but it’ll be a poor imitation of the real thing and gradually I’ll forget why I loved it in the first place. That’s what I’m afraid of.

Thanks for saying it with me and for understanding. I only want the basic story; I’m a meat and potatoes kind of girl, you see, and the more crap you pile on that steak, the less I’ll like it.

I'm with you, the show was a thousand times better before the critics caught on. I'm definitely in the unhappy fan category, as you well know, and for me personally, the devotion has been waning, pretty seriously, lately. I'm not going to argue with making more money…as long as it brings us more Dean AND Sam, not what we've gotten in the past couple of years. That's when my devotion began to wither, when I realized that I, as a fan of the brothers and Sam especially, no longer meant diddly squat to them.

I guess in all fairness it was worth the effort on Roswell, because it kept us from bemoaning the "what ifs" for the rest of time, a la the Firefly fandom. But on the other hand, it destroyed what we loved enough to save too. We lost either way, and had no way of knowing upfront that we couldn't win that one. I'm not entirely sure Show has jumped the shark yet. Yet. But that shark gets closer with every episode. MASH is an excellent example of what I was saying. I believe that was also the reasoning against another season of Home Improvement, at the time, was that they wanted to go out on top. You should leave them wanting more, not drag it out until they get bored and wander off. The frequent, and lengthy, hiatuses aren't helping their case one bit either.

I'll keep saying it with you. Back to basics, back to the brothers, and back to what we loved. I don't think anyone is listening, but I'll keep saying it as long as I stick around.

I personally think we loved Show more when the critics were going “Supernatural, who?” It was ours and belonged to us and the critics and the ratings be damned, we were watching it. Now, so many people have told me, (some version of) “I don’t really care about the story any more, I just watch Sam and Dean,” or “I am watching because I’m one of those people who has to finish watching a show or reading a book – even if it SUCKS.” So we’ve got dedicated fans, and devoted fans, and unhappy fans, and all that doesn’t mean a squirt of piss to the people for whom Show sells soap and makes money. But then, if it’s making money that keeps it on the air, can I really argue with that? No…not if it brings me more Sam and Dean, right?

Overall, I keep having an argument with myself, and many of the points you raise come into it. Like was it worth every bottle of Tobasco you sent in to get an additional seaon, if that season was crap? Yes and no, right? I hate the idea that Show has really jumped the shark, and, as you say, outlived its usefulness. To your point, that’s how MASH went out, on a high note.

The story really has to go back to the basics here, something pure, something more true to the idea of the brothers. I’ll keep saying that till I’m blue in the face, I think. Maybe someone will hear us.

Yeah, S1 and S2 are benchmarks that subsequent seasons have yet to match. Sure, there were good eps, who can argue with Mystery Spot or In the Beginning? But I want more of what I was promised in the beginning and I’ll go on saying that till I don’t want to any more!

Sam’s story makes me sad, mostly because there’s so little of it. And it makes me even sadder to see, like SGP pointed out, the fact that Sam don’t get no lovin’ from nobody! Nobody cares that he lost Ellen and Jo too, nobody cares that he’s mired in self-recrimination, nobody seems to have a kind word for him. As for the Soap Angel saying Sam was his friend, that was some kind of mistake, because I’ve never yet seen the SA engage willingly or voluntarily with Sam for any reason. So Sam gets the shaft, and Dean gets all the good dialog. And lord knows, I love me some Dean, but watching Sam makes me weep like I’m one of those wailing women who cries at Hallmark commercials. Which I am. As for ratings, I don’t know nothing ’bout no ratings. Besides, good ratings almost couldn’t save Show, and now bad ratings don’t mean a thing because its a cash cow for the networks – so I’m totally confused and baffled and find I don’t look at ratings unless someone puts them in my hand, you know? The pudding line, yes, that one killed me too – who wrote that and thought it was a good idea? And the soul…gone. I think Whiskey said it a few weeks back: the only soul is in Sam’s eyes. I want Show too! And more Samhair, please.