There are probably worse things that Supernatural could do (luxuriate in the ANGST like it used to, perhaps?), but why are we watching episodes as boring as last week's "All Dogs Go to Heaven"? When we know the show can give us "Weekend at Bobby's," why do they think we'll stand for this dog's breakfast?

In all honesty, an ep like "Dogs" isn't boring because it's poorly directed or written or acted or cast or anything of the sort. It's boring because it's wheel spinning. We see what appears to be werewolf attacks and eventually learn that they are the handiwork of a "skin walker," a human who can transform into the shape of a dog (or possibly any animal?) at will. Sam and Dean track down a Cujo who's actually broken his pack's rules by enacting vengeance on behalf of the family that took him in. Sam wants to follow the doggy all the way up to the top, snag the Alpha, and trade him for his soul, but Dean's still in his moralist snit about 1) working with Crowley (unlike, say, when they worked with him to save the damn world) and 2) not into handing over Alphas to be tortured. So in the end Sam and Dean take out the entire pack, save Lucky, our murderous dog from the opening who trots off down the road like The Littlest Hobo.

It has all the elements of a solid episode, but it ends up more or less giving us exactly what we got the week before in "Family Matters." Break it down: