Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season starts off with Sam and Dean (Jensen Ackles) somehow escaping the clutches of the newly released Lucifer and finding out that they have a much bigger role in the now-started Apocalypse other than Dean breaking the first seal when he escaped Hell and Sam breaking the last one with Lilith's death. It seems they are the chosen vessels of Michael (Dean) and Lucifer (Sam), and if they allow the two angels into their bodies, a massive fight will result in an unimaginable number of casualties.
In the meantime, Lucifer has chosen a temporary host that sees quite a bit of wear and tear throughout the season. This "meat suit" for Lucifer is played by Mark Pellegrino... who apparently was playing double roles last year as Lost's god figure (Jacob), and Supernatural's devil incarnate.
Of course, Sam and Dean aren't doing all of this on their own. They are teamed up with Bobby (Jim Beaver) and they still have their friendly angel, Castiel (Misha Collins), who by helping the Winchesters escape, has rebelled against Heaven and finds his powers slowly dwindling over the season.
Many events happen throughout this season, and while they all eventually lead up to the season's finale, some of the more pivotal episodes involve the brothers' encounters with the Four Horsemen, War (Titus Welliver, most recently seen in The Good Wife as well as Jacob's opposite in Lost), Famine (James Otis), Pestilence (Matt Frewer of Max Headroom and Eureka note) and Death (Julian Richings). In each case, these modernized characters unleash some of the more gruesome deaths in the series. War pits a town against itself, while Famine heightens everyone's desire to the point of death. Meanwhile, Pestilence plans to re-release the zombie-causing Croatoan Virus introduced in Season Two and Death ends up becoming the most surprising and interesting character of the four, but that confrontation doesn't happen until "Two Minutes To Midnight," the second-to-last episode of the season.
Pretty much the entire season is devoted to the overall story arc. There are a couple of stand-alone episodes that feel like the older shows, but for the most part, this season is all about the Apocalypse and trying to stop it. Needless to say, this is definitely not a place to just jump into the series since the previous four seasons have been building up to these 22 episodes. In fact, the show was originally planned to have a five season arc, and when you get to the season finale, you can tell that it was planned as the series' last episode; it is called "Swan Song" after all. Instead, because of the show's still growing popularity, it has been continued and series creator Eric Kripke has apparently stepped down from driving the show, but still remains an executive producer for the series. It will be interesting to see where Supernatural goes from here.
As for extras, there aren't any additional features on the Blu-ray version over the DVD one to make it more appealing in that department. Granted, the picture is far crisper and the sound is better, especially if my Complete Fourth Season's DVD version is any comparison, but as for the rest of the packaging, the same special features are offered in both versions, and they aren't really up to par with past extras.
One of the offerings is the entire Ghostfacers web series, as well as a gag reel. There is also commentary for one episode and a deleted scene for another one. It is clear that the makers were hoping to make up for this lack of extras in the Menu option called "Supernatural: Apocalypse Survival Guide." This is a virtual tour of Bobby's house and library where you can watch several extras. A couple of them are interesting, like "Kripke's Guide to the Apocalypse" and "Ride of the Horsemen," but most are meant to be shows that Bobby tapped from PBS, other educational channels and public access stations about various Supernatural related topics. While slightly amusing, I found these generally boring and hard to force myself through.
As an originally-planned series finale, Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season delivers everything it promises. It would have been the perfect ending to the series, and is definitely worth the purchase, even on Blu-ray if you put a lot of value into the visual and audible quality of your home entertainment. It will be interesting to see where the show goes from here, and hopefully it will keep going strong even though the main plan has played out.
