I'm going to bed in a minute because I have stuff to do before work tomorrow (the penultimate day before the full horror of unemployment hits me on Wednesday)... I'm not convinced I have done the right thing by quitting my job as it turns out I am much more overdrawn than I was expecting to be, thanks to Christmas, rent timings, and recently switching from weekly to monthly pay. Hopefully I will be able to get a new job pretty soon though, and thus not struggle too much to find February's rent...

Anyway, enough of that. There's no point stressing out about that right now. Instead I want to talk about TV...

"Family Remains" was great! I may be biased by the fact that I was going crazy waiting for new Winchester Time, but I thought that it was a good example of Supernatural doing a self-contained episode that ripped off some favourite genre cliches and did it really well. It was scary, definitely the scariest episode of season four. It was different, too. For a change the Bad Things weren't things, but people removed of their humanity (but, apparently, not their ability to write) which is something I don't think we've really seen since season two's "Benders". And the episode pacing was unusual for the show, too. A lot of time was spent building atmosphere, acquainting us with the Victims of the Week and their story, and very little was spent with the boys and their ongoing saga of mantears. I absolutely LOVED the "psycho under the bed licking her hand" scene. This is one of my favourite sleepover horror stories, and I know Kripke is a fan of this one too, so I was so excited (not to mention freaked out) to see it done on Supernatural.

As for the scenes with the boys dealing with the ongoing plot arc of the season that bookended the episode, they felt a bit stuck on. Much like in season two's "Croatoan", you get the sense that the boys spend all this time in close quarters not talking to each other at all, so they can have these teary little exposition scenes a few episodes later. Also, if I was Sam, I would get a seriously bad feeling every time Dean randomly pulled the Impala over in the middle of some picturesque scenery and went to sit on the bonnet for no good reason that I can fathom.

So Dean tortured people, and he liked it. What does this mean? Will it just mean that Dean will be all torn up inside with the guilt, or will it have repercussions later on? I must admit, I'm more curious as to why earlier in the season Dean was all "I died but now I'm back with a renewed sense of purpose. Let's save people!" (see "Monster Movie") and now he's all angsty about the torturing. It lends credence to the theory that I have always held, that at first Dean really didn't remember anything of his time in hell, and that those little flashes he had in earlier eps were him starting to recall things. Now he seems to remember everything, hence the chipper outlook earlier on and the angst now.

Anyway, my favorite boys moments in this ep include Dean saying "Please nobody grab my leg!". The boy lives in a horror movie, yet he still gets freaked out by the suspense. Love it. Also Dean's Juno reference (when do the Winchesters have time to keep up to date on their films? Do they watch bootleg downloads on Sam's laptop post-hunt? I need fic of this, people!) and the fact that for once, someone questioned their clearly very flimsy alibis. Even if doing so did lead to death.