Supernatural Rewatch: Halfway through season 1!

Don't forget to check the "supernatural rewatch" tag to see all the posts in this series! Finally, we're getting some better stories that tie into the overall plot rather than being standard stand alone stories where nothing really happens to change anything. Home:I was extremely happy that right around the time I was getting really bored with the lack of development the overall story was getting that we got this episode, perfectly timed on the part of the showrunners. It manages to delve into the real meat of the story, and gives Sam something new to talk about (his prophetic dreams) and Dean something new to have to process. Though I find it odd that he has a hard time believing in the dreams, I mean really Dean, look at your life.

The actual poltergeist in the story is a little lame, since that isn't particularly the point of the episode. I enjoyed the psychic and really wished she would come back in a later episode, I thought her character was at least giving the brothers some snappy comebacks that they deserved.

The episode also finally starts really working on the angle with their dad, and the fact that he isn't missing so much as he's avoiding them. This is absolutely vital at this point in the series, because that story line was starting to lose it's power, so it punched it up enough to keep it relevant.

I'm saying that I can't count this as a beautiful girl needing the brother's help never to be seen again, even though the guest star was very pretty, just because they played her up quite a bit as a stand-in for their mom. Thank goodness. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll get out of this pattern.

Asylum: Creepy abandoned mental hospitals are pretty much required for any show like this, at least once. But I did think they did a really good job with this one. The opening teaser was really intriguing and the art direction was really well done. I think the story was more than a little obvious (of COURSE the doctor was part of the problem from the beginning and the ghosts themselves were not trying to hurt people but warn them) but they did it well.

The episode also had the fun teenage couple, where the boyfriend was a completely useless blob (played by the actor who played the useless blob of a boyfriend in season two of Heroes, typecasting?) but the girl was actually efficient and useful. I read on a website that there's speculation that she later became a hunter. Good for her, I'd like to see her come back. I'm not putting her on the list of women who have to be saved since she gets a shotgun, but she came close!

Anyway, the episode actually shows a little bit of what I was talking about when I reviewed Bugs, it took the dynamic between Dean and Sam and took it to a new level. Bugs was just a rehash of the same fight, over and over again. But Asylum took a part of the main storyline and used it to actually enhance that argument and bring it something new, and help start to bring some closure to it (I hope anyway).

Overall, I really liked these two episodes a lot, which was good, because they needed some really good eps to keep me interested at that point.

Supernatural Rewatch Continues!

Don't forget to check the "supernatural rewatch" tag to see all the posts in this series! Hook Man: We're now 6 out of 7 on "pretty girls in danger that must be saved by the brothers and never will show up again." I found this episode generally boring, and pretty much "done." When it primed the exact same urban legends as the movie Urban Legend, it was just not that much fun anymore. Not to mention that it took them WAY too long to figure out what the actual item was that was causing the Hook Man to appear. "Oh, let's burn everything silver! Except this one silver thing that is practically glowing and jumping in our faces!" Oh well. Anyway, a mostly boring and dull episode, the less said about it the better I think.

Bug: YAY! The random person that has to be saved and is never seen again is a teenage boy! Combo breaker!

Plus this episode manages to bring us a couple different things, even if it was freaking me out the entire time because I hate bugs (there's always a bug episode, isn't there? This show is just reminding me more and more of X-Files every week). I did get a little tired of the brothers having the same fight about their dad all over again, I want them to find new material on this one. Yes, it's important but instead of rehashing the same fight they should be moving on to other things, maybe different ways of looking at it, or something, I don't know. But not just lather, rinse, repeat.

But in general it was an interesting, if gross, episode. The climax was more than a little dumb (like any of that ever would have actually worked to keep those bugs away for an entire night) but I played along and at least kind of enjoyed it. The whole plot felt a little stereotypical on the Native American portrayal, but not so much that I had a major problem with it. But I'm really anxiously awaiting the point where the show gets to overall mythology a little more, these stand-alones are getting old already.

Scrapbooking got too complex

When I was in high school, an aunt got me a scrapbook for my birthday. I had been saving things and wanting a scrapbook for a while because I had been going through old scrapbooks a relative had (the same aunt? I can't remember) and I thought they were neat.

So I started with this scrapbook, just gluing whatever random things struck my fancy at the time. If an event happened, I would pick something to put in the book to remember it by and write a little note next to it saying what it was. I saved really random stuff, the handle off a plastic fork comes to mind. Confetti streamers from party decorations, a bingo card, and of course pictures, tons of pictures.

I finished up the scrapbook around the end of high school, which was appropriate. And my sister gave me a new one with a custom cover for my college years. I kept up with it decently, but not too well, I was busy.

But I never stopped saving things. Receipts from dinners where I had a lot of fun with friends, metro cards from trips to other cities, articles clipped from newspapers that mentioned me or my friends or something I thought was interesting.

When I went to London, I saved so much stuff and took so many pictures that I ended up with a three volume scrapbook.

But the last time I really took the time to put anything into a book was about five or six years ago. So recently as I've been going through all my stuff trying to get more organized and put things where they go, I found a lot of stuff that I saved for my scrapbook. Only, all my scrapbooks are full, so I needed a new one.

My method of scrapbooking has always been really simple. I glue stuff on a page. Or tape it, or photo corners, whatever. But I didn't design templates or create themes or anything like that. I had a book, and I had a box. I would put things in the box until once every few weeks I would go through and glue it in the book. I would make it pretty, sure, but not through any kind of fancy layouts or patterned paper or photo frames or any of that. I just wanted to remember things so I glued them in a book.

So I decided that I needed a new scrapbook and I went to Michael's to get one. Which is when I discovered that scrapbooking, now that it's a hobby, has been completely taken over and there's no room for people like me. If you're not into cutting out little shaped designs and picking out the perfect paper for each page and making your book have specific themes and spending three hours designing every page (not to mention the money) then they don't really care that you exist. It was horribly frustrating, I just wanted a book to glue things into, and that was apparently too much to ask.

I also collect post cards, so I wanted a smaller book to put my postcards in. But that's not allowed either, because you either pick a photo album (which would only work if they were all the same size, they're not) or you have to put them on pages that then go in sheet protectors, which makes it too hard to take them out of the book to look at the back, half the point of having them.

After scouring several stores, I ended up making two purchases. I got a spiral bound sketchbook for my post cards, and I'm going to remove half the pages (what a waste) so that once I add the cards it doesn't bow the covers. Then I picked up a pack of cheap solid colored papers and a scrapbook with sheet protectors, because what else am I going to do?

I can be a bit picky about my scrapbooks, I want a particular type of cover and I want a design on the cover that I'll really like, but that doesn't lend itself to only one kind of theme. I'd like to go to a store and pick one out, so even if I could figure out what to look for online, I wouldn't want to just buy something without seeing it.

How completely lame is it that when something became a popular hobby they edged out all the people who don't want to spend a fortune and all of their time on it? Why in the world is there a division between hardcore and casual scrapbookers?