SPN Rewatch #9
7.2 What's Up, Tiger Mommy?
Definitely one of the stronger episodes this season! We meet Kevin's badass mom, who, once she wraps her mind around what's happened to Kevin, is not letting herself be relegated to the sidelines! So many little touches, starting with her being unfazed about getting tattoo'd, to totally blowing the douchewad pawn shop guy out of the water (bonus points for Sam's instant calculation of the 5% tax!) to punching Crowley in the face to selling her soul to save her son...one very impressive lady (and knock on wood, she's not dead yet!)
Rewatching, I was struck with the same thought I had the first time seeing it--how callous both Sam and Dean were about killing the meatsuits possessed by the demons staking out Linda Tran's house. The gardener, the postman, and Linda's friend were all dispatched without even a moment's thought about saving the humans. It made me feel like the boys have really lost something since the show started. Not the first time I've felt this way, they were both horrifyingly effective torturers in Repo Man last season, but these kills seemed particularly ruthless.
And what was the deal with the reverse exorcism Sam spouts? Never seen it before or since, and with the emphasis on Sam being out of the loop for the last year, where the heck did that come from?
Other than that, this episode had a smart, well-constructed plot...including a very effective throwback to Purgatory scene when Dean reverts to his info gathering methods from there with the smug thief in the lock-up--that was a scary Dean (shades of what we're going to gt with demon!Dean?)
First meeting with babe-in-the-woods angel Samandriel...knowing how that is going to end made me more tolerant of his holier-than-thou attitude...
Moment I adored: Sam wielding Thor's hammer--he totally rocked it!!! They should have kept it, you know, in the Impala's trunk with the other weapons. It would have come in handy!
And then the whole thing goes south and Kevin and his mom take off. Shoot...
7.3 Heartache
...because we get a couple of lame episodes next :(
Heartache really bothered me because of all the OOC behavior from both Sam and Dean in this episode, and the logic gaps with having a super sportsman vanish and appear in a new incarnation every 10 years or so...And I know when I start trying to figure out how the behavior of the big bad could have worked in the middle of the episode, well, I'm not feeling the love, or intensity, that show is capable of making me feel :(
First warning sign that this was not going to be a stellar episode--Dean's reference to Sam as a kid being all geeky about a football player. Okay, it's not impossible that Sam used to be a football groupie, but on the surface it's at odds with the geeky, bookish young Sam we've always been fed.
Then there's Dean being all cool with Eleanor knowing her husband was a monster for years and just turning a blind eye to it.That is not Dean! I kept waiting for him to tell the lady she was as bad as her husband for not doing anything to stop him, but Dean was all 'whatever, cool' about it. Especially after a year in Purgatory killing all the monsters, this was fine???
But the worst part of this episode was the Sam character assassination. I might have been able to slide past the 'Sam never looked for Dean' glaring wrongness by giving lip service to the idea Sam had a mental breakdown, but here he was just coolly dismissive of hunting with Dean:
--I had a year off. I took the time to enjoy the good things.
--Maybe you don't need me. I mean, maybe you're at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world's crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody.
--Look, I'm not saying I'm bailing on you. I'm just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something.
--I'm just looking at options. (Sam's response to Dean finding college info on the laptop.)
--Dean, the year that I took off, I had something I've never had. A normal life. I mean, I got to see what that felt like. I want that. I had that.
No. Just no. How could Sam be saying these things on the first weeks of his brother being back from the apparent dead??? Also--Sam had 4 years of a normal life at Stanford. And I'm sorry, but there's no way he had the 'love-of-his-life' relationship with Amelia like he had with Jess. Especially when we see more of Amelia in later episodes and see just how dysfunctional their relationship was. Jumping ahead to what I know is coming, Amelia was a very emotionally damaged person whose issues complemented Sam's emotionally messed up state. Her character was actually written coherently, when we get to see it. But the lines above aren't even reasonable things for Sam to say if he's trying to b.s. Dean--because the Sam I know from Supernatural wouldn't lie to himself about everything being a bed of roses with Amelia.
That being said, I did think the flashback to the birthday picnic was significant because it conveyed Sam's discomfort with 'the normal life' even as he was trying to embrace it...
So between Dean being OOC regarding Eleanor's culpability and Sam being OOC about his perfect year, I find this episode really hard to swallow.
7.4 Bitten
I am so glad I went to college 40 years ago if these are the kinds of self-absorbed idiots that fill college dorms nowadays...
Seriously, do kids go around filming themselves having conversations (or filming themselves filming themselves conversing...)
I did find the basic plot interesting, and it was fun to see the boys from the students' perspective, and I can't begrudge Jensen and Jared getting a little time off...Michael was a fairly sympathetic character, he didn't ask to be turned...Brian's love/envy relationship with Michael felt believable. Kate was kind of over-the-top, although she did get my sympathy at the very end of her movie when she asks to be given a chance.
Which they give her, because she hasn't eaten anyone human yet. And one could say that shows character development for the boys...it just seems awfully soon for Dean being back from being a monster-killing machine to have him be so sympathetic.
Guess I'll just have to see what happens next...
Definitely one of the stronger episodes this season! We meet Kevin's badass mom, who, once she wraps her mind around what's happened to Kevin, is not letting herself be relegated to the sidelines! So many little touches, starting with her being unfazed about getting tattoo'd, to totally blowing the douchewad pawn shop guy out of the water (bonus points for Sam's instant calculation of the 5% tax!) to punching Crowley in the face to selling her soul to save her son...one very impressive lady (and knock on wood, she's not dead yet!)
Rewatching, I was struck with the same thought I had the first time seeing it--how callous both Sam and Dean were about killing the meatsuits possessed by the demons staking out Linda Tran's house. The gardener, the postman, and Linda's friend were all dispatched without even a moment's thought about saving the humans. It made me feel like the boys have really lost something since the show started. Not the first time I've felt this way, they were both horrifyingly effective torturers in Repo Man last season, but these kills seemed particularly ruthless.
And what was the deal with the reverse exorcism Sam spouts? Never seen it before or since, and with the emphasis on Sam being out of the loop for the last year, where the heck did that come from?
Other than that, this episode had a smart, well-constructed plot...including a very effective throwback to Purgatory scene when Dean reverts to his info gathering methods from there with the smug thief in the lock-up--that was a scary Dean (shades of what we're going to gt with demon!Dean?)
First meeting with babe-in-the-woods angel Samandriel...knowing how that is going to end made me more tolerant of his holier-than-thou attitude...
Moment I adored: Sam wielding Thor's hammer--he totally rocked it!!! They should have kept it, you know, in the Impala's trunk with the other weapons. It would have come in handy!
And then the whole thing goes south and Kevin and his mom take off. Shoot...
7.3 Heartache
...because we get a couple of lame episodes next :(
Heartache really bothered me because of all the OOC behavior from both Sam and Dean in this episode, and the logic gaps with having a super sportsman vanish and appear in a new incarnation every 10 years or so...And I know when I start trying to figure out how the behavior of the big bad could have worked in the middle of the episode, well, I'm not feeling the love, or intensity, that show is capable of making me feel :(
First warning sign that this was not going to be a stellar episode--Dean's reference to Sam as a kid being all geeky about a football player. Okay, it's not impossible that Sam used to be a football groupie, but on the surface it's at odds with the geeky, bookish young Sam we've always been fed.
Then there's Dean being all cool with Eleanor knowing her husband was a monster for years and just turning a blind eye to it.That is not Dean! I kept waiting for him to tell the lady she was as bad as her husband for not doing anything to stop him, but Dean was all 'whatever, cool' about it. Especially after a year in Purgatory killing all the monsters, this was fine???
But the worst part of this episode was the Sam character assassination. I might have been able to slide past the 'Sam never looked for Dean' glaring wrongness by giving lip service to the idea Sam had a mental breakdown, but here he was just coolly dismissive of hunting with Dean:
--I had a year off. I took the time to enjoy the good things.
--Maybe you don't need me. I mean, maybe you're at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world's crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody.
--Look, I'm not saying I'm bailing on you. I'm just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something.
--I'm just looking at options. (Sam's response to Dean finding college info on the laptop.)
--Dean, the year that I took off, I had something I've never had. A normal life. I mean, I got to see what that felt like. I want that. I had that.
No. Just no. How could Sam be saying these things on the first weeks of his brother being back from the apparent dead??? Also--Sam had 4 years of a normal life at Stanford. And I'm sorry, but there's no way he had the 'love-of-his-life' relationship with Amelia like he had with Jess. Especially when we see more of Amelia in later episodes and see just how dysfunctional their relationship was. Jumping ahead to what I know is coming, Amelia was a very emotionally damaged person whose issues complemented Sam's emotionally messed up state. Her character was actually written coherently, when we get to see it. But the lines above aren't even reasonable things for Sam to say if he's trying to b.s. Dean--because the Sam I know from Supernatural wouldn't lie to himself about everything being a bed of roses with Amelia.
That being said, I did think the flashback to the birthday picnic was significant because it conveyed Sam's discomfort with 'the normal life' even as he was trying to embrace it...
So between Dean being OOC regarding Eleanor's culpability and Sam being OOC about his perfect year, I find this episode really hard to swallow.
7.4 Bitten
I am so glad I went to college 40 years ago if these are the kinds of self-absorbed idiots that fill college dorms nowadays...
Seriously, do kids go around filming themselves having conversations (or filming themselves filming themselves conversing...)
I did find the basic plot interesting, and it was fun to see the boys from the students' perspective, and I can't begrudge Jensen and Jared getting a little time off...Michael was a fairly sympathetic character, he didn't ask to be turned...Brian's love/envy relationship with Michael felt believable. Kate was kind of over-the-top, although she did get my sympathy at the very end of her movie when she asks to be given a chance.
Which they give her, because she hasn't eaten anyone human yet. And one could say that shows character development for the boys...it just seems awfully soon for Dean being back from being a monster-killing machine to have him be so sympathetic.
Guess I'll just have to see what happens next...