Well, after a long holiday weekend (at least here in America–do you Canucks get Labor Day?), this was kind of the perfect episode to come back to.  And absolutely nothing of mythological importance takes place in this episode, but it’s totally one of my favorites.  I mean, to this day, whenever someone says anything about PA, in any context, I think to myself, “That’s one hell of a PA.”  And at my current job, that’s a common abbreviation that I hear at least, oh, daily.  It’s just a funny episode, light hearted and also fun in that Dean geeks out on horror in a way that a lot of fans of this show can probably identify with pretty closely.  I mean, I know what got me into the show was that each episode was (initially) like a little mini horror flick.

And you know what else?  I think this might’ve been the first episode where the show played around a little bit with having a meta episode.  I mean, there were little jokes, like the LA weather being practically Canadian (since they filmed in Vancouver) and the nod to the Gilmore Girls set (which JPad was on), and that was kind of like the Linda Blair joke.  But beyond that … the show, via the actors in the movie, asks questions like, “Why would a GHOST be afraid of SALT?” and “How do ghosts in hell hear the chanting?”  And they come back with things like, “A shotgun?  That’s even stupider than salt,” and incorporating, “Maybe the ghosts have super hearing!” into the script, which demonstrates to the audience how stupid it is and how sometimes you’ve just gotta roll with it.  I enjoyed seeing them playing with meta early on, since we see it again later.  Plus, I think you get an idea for certain opinions of the writers, such as replacing a good story with tits and fart jokes is hack-y.  I just enjoyed that because I think every profession has its own set of inside jokes and pet peeves, and it was fun to be let in on that.

This was a very son of a bitch-heavy episode, since they wrote that line into a script for the movie, and it got rehearsed a bunch.  I caught four, plus one “son of a …” that never actualized.  So that (plus one ass), brings my best guess Supernatural Cuss Count to …

• Ass: 63
• Bitch: 22
• Son of a bitch: 42
• Bastard: 16
• Dick: 3
• Crap: 57
• Damn: 84

As for guest stars, I personally am always, ALWAYS in love with Gary Cole.  In anything.  And he’s SO GOOD at being skeevy.  I thought it was kind of bizarre, in hindsight (when I looked at IMDB) that they had McG as a character but he didn’t play himself, especially when he’s a producer on the show.  I was just like … uh?  But it was funny and nice that he had a good sense of humor about himself.

Alright, just a couple of random and/or funny things (in bullet form, duh), and then I’ll wrap this up and we can get to the discussing.  Here goes:

• Loved the Three Men and a Baby discussion, since that’s one of the great classic movie background moments.
• The boys always make grave digging look so … tidy.  They always dig perfect rectangles, with no messy piles of dirt, and they always hit the grave like, dead center.  They don’t ever dig up like half the coffin and leave the other half buried.  I mean, I guess that’s everyone on TV and in movies, it’s just that these guys do a lot more grave digging than average.
• Loved the preview in the episode–totally made me giggle AND reminded me of Grindhouse, which reminded me to tell you all … I totally saw Machete this weekend.  It was awesome.  I had a whole weekend of campiness.
• Sam using his phone to find ghosts was pretty cool, but I just keep thinking that if this episode would’ve been a few years later, they would’ve HAD to have made a “there’s an app for that” joke.
• I looooved Dean’s assessment of the afterlife–”Oh, there’s an afterlife, alright, but mostly it’s a pain in the ass.”  Hee!  So true, at least for those two.

Alright, I’ve gone on enough.  I just loved this one, and it had the perfect ending too–walking off into a fake sunset.  Thought you were clever, huh, The Hills?  Well Supernatural beat your ass to it by a couple of years.  Eat it.  What did you guys think of this episode?  Any observations or things I missed?  Chat it up with me, people!  I gotta get back in the groove, and comments help!