Supernatural: Season 06 (2011)
22 episodes, approx 42 mins each.
As mentioned in the Season 05 post, series creator Eric Kripke stepped down as showrunner after the show's fifth year. His successor was Sera Gamble, a long-time writer, story editor, and respected producer of the show. Her history with the Winchesters goes in her favour, but Season 06 is, on balance, a weak continuation.
Each of the three primaries have their role to play in the main story arcs, with each one impacting the others by varying degrees that are equal parts useful and / or contrived.
Without going into spoiler territory, the arcs revolve around a radical change in Sam's personality, Castiel's new plan, and problems for Dean in his newly found 'apple-pie' life.
Some of the series threads are interesting — both on-screen and as general concepts; e.g., the conflict in Heaven — but when they reach the point when their resolution ought to hit hard, much of what is laid down prior to that is either forgotten, ignored, or simply becomes redundant, which is bad storytelling.
Many episodes are built upon underdeveloped ideas that fizzle out into unsatisfying half-endings, much like The X-Files at its worst. (Speaking of which, Mitch Pileggi has a semi-recurring role as a Hunter; his Supernatural character is as bland as his X-Files one was.)
Long-time fans will spot many instances of both writers and showrunner being ignorant of the show's established lore; e.g., Dean not having heard of Ktulu / Cthulhu despite it having been established previously that he's a Metallica fan. That's a largely trivial (and crucially non-spoiler) example, but some of the others might give rise to eye-twitch, at the very least.
Robert Englund guest stars in one of the better episodes, but it suffers from a hurried ending. In fact, crap half-endings are a recurring problem of the entire season. I'd even go so far as to say it's a defining aspect. And that's not even factoring in the many inconsistencies throughout.
The Purgatory storyline was a bit of a mess, and pretty dull, to boot. If not for the hope that Crowley (Mark Sheppard) and / or Castiel (Misha Collins) would turn up and entertain me, I'd have struggled to finish many of the episodes. (Note to future self: Ep 15: The French Mistake was an agonising slog of 'comical' meta dogshit - don't watch that one ever again.)
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