['Supernatural - 'Let It Bleed' and 'The Man Who Knew Too Much']

The scope of the 'Supernatural' finale was epic. It was a showdown between not just the Winchesters and Castiel but between Castiel and his enemy, Raphael, and there was a contest between Cas and his former partner, the devious Crowley, thrown in for good measure. Two factions of Heaven, plus the King of Hell, with an added helping of Winchesters: Those are pretty high stakes.

Yet given the titanic nature of these conflicts, why did the Winchesters' world feel so small when the two-hour finale was over?

There was a lot to ponder when the show's season 6 finale ended. I've come to some conclusions about what what worked, what didn't and what it all might mean, but I have a feeling I'll be mulling this one for a while. I didn't hate the finale, and there were actually scenes I liked, but I have to say, I have misgivings about both what occurred in the finale and where the show is heading in general.

In the main, I had two problems with how the season ended, and I'm going to roughly separate those issues into problems of personal preference and problems of execution. The problems of personal preference are just that: Sometimes shows make artistic choices that I don't necessarily agree with, but when they're part of a fully realized artistic vision, that's all well and good and I don't begrudge a show that choice, even if I'm not a fan of where it's heading.

For example, at some point 'House' decided to become more of a soap opera and less of an exploration of ethical and moral dilemmas. Once I realized that the show had irretrievably chosen that path for good, I mentally thanked the show for years of service, chose to put aside my irritation with its new direction, and got off the bus. No harm, no foul. A show is welcome to go down a certain creative path, but we don't necessarily have to follow it. Sure, I think 'House' became a lesser drama, despite my affection for certain characters and performances, but I can intellectually understand why, after years of doing one kind of thing, the writers wanted to try something else.

I'm not saying I'm giving up on 'Supernatural' -- far from it. I just think there's a certain sadness and hopelessness that is creeping close to the core of the show. It's not just that the main characters go through a lot of pain -- their stoic turmoil appeals to the masochist in all of us -- but all it's that they have no choice but to endure it and no chance of ever attaining anything like contentment, let alone happiness. The fact that the show has been foregrounding that kind of bleakness is tough for me to take, but maybe that's just me. Do I think that's a "bad" choice? I think that's debatable. It's not the direction I would have chosen, but I respect it as a valid one, and it's a direction that is, in some ways, true to this world.

That kind of personal response is different from, say, evaluating a bad performance, critiquing weak writing or spotting plot holes and structural deficiencies. I'm not referring to the 'Supernatural' finale in particular in this paragraph, I'm just saying that sometimes my divergence from a show can arise from artistic choices that were consciously made by the people behind the show. Other times, the critical statements I might make about a show arise from instances of poorly executed artistic choices. It's the difference between personally disliking a certain style of architecture and enumerating the ways in which a house -- or an entire building -- is falling down because it was badly made.

Now, before I go further in that kind of overall critique of where things stand on 'Supernatural,' let me be clear -- there were some very well-acted moments in these episodes. Dean's scene at Lisa's hospital bedside gave us yet more terrific work from Jensen Ackles, who gave a typically understated but very effective performance. His coiled anger and restrained hurt when Castiel showed up were heartbreaking, as was his face as he left Lisa's room. Your heart had to go out to the poor guy (and that fact actually ties in to one of my problems with not just the episode, but the direction of the show). And given the chance to act opposite different versions of their characters, most actors go the hambone route, but Jared Padalecki gave each of the three Sams distinct personalities but never chewed the scenery. Nicely done.

I have a feeling Castiel fans will go ballistic when they see what's happened to everybody's favorite angel (and I have more thoughts on that topic below), but no one can deny that Misha Collins brought a masterful new flavor to Cas in his final scene with the Winchesters. The new, not-improved God!Cas was deliciously condescending; his arrogance filled his being even more than all those souls did. After feeling persecuted and plotted against, this version of Cas felt vindicated in every way, but still didn't quite realize that, as they say, pride goeth before a fall.

Not to leave anyone out, I especially enjoyed Jim Beaver's fine work in the episodes (especially in the scene with the "mad" H.P. Lovecraft dinner party guest), 'Eureka's' Erica Cerra was a good choice to play Sam's "soul guide," and who doesn't love Mark Sheppard's Crowley? And finally, the dialogue was more full than usual of the kind of funny lines and witty rejoinders we're used to on this show. The finale wasn't exactly Fluffy Bunnies 'n' Rainbow Kittens Time, but it was pretty funny now and again.

OK, with all that said, here's my main criticism of 'Supernatural,' the one that I consider a personal preference problem. Let me explain by way of another comparison. An acclaimed show I had a hard time getting into for a long time was 'Breaking Bad,' and that was, in part, because the show can be hopeless and characters' lives can be relentlessly grim. I'm afraid that 'Supernatural' is getting into 'Breaking Bad' territory.

'Supernatural' is a show that has been killing off its secondary, recurring and tertiary characters relentlessly for years now, and if you've read me for long, you'll know that I've never liked that tendency. Why not build up more of a world and thus increase the emotional richness of the hunting community and also increase the stakes for the Winchesters? Even if Ellen and Jo had to die, they had bonds with the boys. Their deaths mattered. There's a coldness to the fact that the only people left standing at the end of season 6 are either megalomaniacs, severely damaged or... Bobby. (It's worth noting here that I began to like 'Breaking Bad' more when it expanded its world a bit and brought in ace actors like Bob Odenkirk and Giancarlo Esposito to play terrific supporting characters.)

But not only has 'Supernatural' persevered with the ongoing supporting-character bloodbath, the show has now, in so many words, declared that Sam and Dean Winchester will never, ever be allowed to have any real relationships or friendships outside each other and Bobby. Oh, they did have this one friend named Castiel, but he screwed them over bigtime and that all went sideways.

Here's how toxic Sam and Dean are to anyone outside their own tiny bubble: They're not only essentially banned from having real friends or non-brotherly loved ones, if the Ben and Lisa parable is anything to go by, they're not even allowed to live on in the memories of the people they've come to know well. Ye gods.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what Sam and Dean have to live for? As I said above, at the end of the finale, the brothers are now stuck in a claustrophobic world in which they only have each other, and no possibility of anything else, ever. Sam is incredibly scarred, and Dean is a hard-drinking torturer who is ferociously repressing the shards of romantic and familial love he felt for Ben and Lisa. I know the brothers' bond is strong, but does it assauge all that pain and hopelessness?

Maybe the unforgiving 'Breaking Bad' tone is what the 'Supernatural' powers that be are going for. The AMC show features a man who's been on a long, hard, bloody slide into hell and there's no possibility of redemption. I have actually come to appreciate the good things about 'Breaking Bad' (and I've always loved Bryan Cranston's performance), but at least that show was upfront from the beginning about where Walter White, the main character, was going.

You might well say that 'Supernatural' was always upfront about the world the boys lived in, but I'm not so sure that's true. The Winchesters have gone through many hard times, but there was something more hopeful, and frankly more enjoyable, about their scrappy underdog fights in seasons past. It's hard to root for characters to win a battle when, at this point, the war looks so dauntingly unwinnable.

While I'm a fan of the film noir sensibility, I do think it is hard to sustain over the long haul, because noir is about the loss of illusion and cynicism in the face of unbearable truths. The show feels like it's no longer about two guys (and a few friends) using wiles and guile and all-American gumption to give the big boys what for. At the end of season 6, it felt like a show about two people who've lost everything and have no hope of things ever getting better.

What's the future for these guys? Is it going to be a very repetitive cycle in which they fight each other on occasion, fight their former friend (who's now a power-mad dictator), and fight various creatures in an unending war against darkness, while slipping further into alcoholism as they try to repress all the awful memories in their heads? Sounds like fun times! Let's do it!

In all seriousness, I like dark shows, but I also like them to have at least a few shreds of hope or at least relief scattered in there somewhere. 'Supernatural' has taken that away from Sam and Dean. 'Battlestar Galactica,' 'The Shield,' 'Mad Men,' 'The Sopranos' -- all these shows could be incredibly dark, but each of them offered something (aesthetically, structurally or emotionally) to offset the darkness. I don't know if a lot of quips and great performances are enough to offset the intrinsic sadness of Sam and Dean's world, especially as it left them in the finale -- broken and betrayed by one of their two only friends. The question is not only, "Where do they go from here?" but "Why do they keep going at all?"

The problem with creating characters I care this deeply about is that it's fricking hard to watch them get dragged deeper and deeper into despair. Truly, I say this with love: I care about these guys, and even though these actors can play the hell out of comedy, irony and black comedy, we need more than quips and sarcasm to relieve the gloom. Let some air into this world. Give them (and us) a break.

Now, as to the execution of the finale, again, I found some things to like (and I mentioned many of those above), but there were a few problems as well.

First and foremost is the Castiel issue. I don't think the show set up Cas' turn into God!Cas well enough. It almost got the character there, but not quite.

I absolutely loved 'The Man Who Would Be King' -- as I wrote in this review, I thought it was a tour de force in every respect -- but we needed more setup of Cas' story line all season long for the final scene of the season to 100 percent work. No matter how great 'King' was, to essentially defer most of Cas' character journey and backstory to one hour just wasn't sufficient, considering the seriousness of the change he displayed in that last season 6 scene.

Obviously there's some logic behind Cas' transformation, but I just don't understand how the serious doubts he was feeling in 'King' suddenly crystallized into the knowledge that he was "right" about his Purgatory plan. Sure, having all those souls inside him gave him an incredible sense of power, and power corrupts. But 'Supernatural' has essentially removed the core of Cas from the character.

What caused Castiel to ally with the Winchesters in the first place was his unusual willingness to doubt orders, to question authority and to act according to his conscience. I can understand why he'd want to fill in for his absent Father, whom he think has done a piss-poor job of running the place. Still, I'm not sure how he could cast Dean's doubts and concerns aside relatively easily. That just didn't quite track for me.

We needed more than a few scenes here and there and one episode to explain why these defining characteristic of Cas -- his conscience and his willingness to see other points of view -- were suddenly just gone. Again, 'King' did a good job of getting us 70 percent of the way there, but the show should have devoted more time to Cas if it wanted that transformation to be a rock-solid moment.

Elsewhere on the execution front, there were a few shortcuts that didn't necessarily bug me in a huge way, but they were hard not to spot. My goodness, the prison where Crowley was holding Ben and Lisa was preposterously unprotected, and Crowley's HQ was similarly undefended. Sure, there were a few guards here and there in either place, but apparently people could more or less walk right in to Crowley's HQ (sorry, "ninja" in).

As far as the Soulless Sam arc, well, that went away for a while and then suddenly it was Back! Remember that wall in Sam's head? Well, it came down and hijinks ensued. I somewhat enjoyed the puzzle-ish/'Memento' angle of Sam trying to recall who he was and what had happened to him, but that whole part of the story was left kind of unresolved, which was frustrating, given how much attention had been paid to the Soulless Sam arc in the first half of the season. Reunified Sam did make an appearance at Crowley's HQ, but we'll have to wait until season 7 to see the full impact of him remembering Hell, the Cage and his time as Mr. Mean, the hunting machine. As it stands now, we've seen a Sam who looks like six miles of bad road, and that's about it.

I do respect the idea of trying out a variety of plot threads this season, rather than trying to execute one big story, but some promising ideas (the Campbells) never got a real shot and others simply fizzled (the Mother). And in the second half of the season, we skipped around from Sam's wall to the Mother to Cas and Crowley and then the finale threw Balthazar, Dr. Ell Visyack and even H.P. Lovecraft into the mix. It's not that there weren't some really excellent episodes and mini-arcs in this season, it's just that various threads didn't quite weave together in organic ways as the end of the season loomed.

All right then, the Road So Far: Sam is incredibly damaged, God!Cas is going to open up a can of whupass on Raphael's supporters and otherwise establish his bona fides as Heaven's ruler, Dean is even more broken and full of repressed pain post-Lisa and Ben, and, well, now what? Do the boys just bow down and pay their respects to Cas and then get back to hunting, once they've fixed the Metallicar? Is it a problem that God!Cas is no longer all that keen on them and that Crowley, the king of Hell, hates them? It might be.

What is life going to be like for the Winchesters in season 7? I honestly don't know. But I do think that these wayward sons deserve a little light at the end of the tunnel.

A few final notes:

• It was nice to see Dr. Visyak (a.k.a. Ell) again, but I wish we'd spent more time on her. She was certainly more interesting than the dreadful Mother of All, and any time we can spend with a Bobby ex is time well spent. At least she had a longer shelf life than Cas' assistant. Barely.

• Nice to know that Sam thinks of Dean as a "male model type."

• Again we heard Crowley's excellent taste in music in his HQ -- he does like the classic R&B.

• Speaking of good music, excellent use of the Rolling Stones' 'Play With Fire.'

• The new catchphrase that will be sweeping the nation this summer: "Bow down or I shall destroy you."

• Some good Balthazar lines this week: "Your howler monkeys." "You bastards!" I'll miss Sebastian Roche on the show, he was a great fit.

• Speaking of unresolved questions -- who killed H.P. Lovecraft's dinner-party guests? And Lovecraft himself? Ell said it wasn't her. Did something else fall out of Purgatory when Ell did? Or is this just an unexplained loose end?

• I'm out of town at a meditation retreat all weekend. So please, assist me in my quest for inner peace by playing nice in comments. Read the commenting rules and please abide by them, as you do so wonderfully every week. I look forward to reading your comments when I return on Monday!

• Finally, thank you for another great season of comments, wisdom, humor and insight, my fellow fans. Reading your comments every week is one of the highlights of this gig. You rock! No really, you do!

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