some thoughts on 7.08
I haven't been doing these for the last couple of weeks, but I actually have quite a bit to say about this episode.
...Unfortunately, none of it is good. I think I have actually found my least favourite episode. Not just of the season, but of the whole damn show.
Let's run down the list, shall we? Reasons I hated this episode:
- The consent issues. I'm not even going to get into this, because everyone has already said it much more eloquently than I ever could, but can I just point out how much more horrifying it is when you take into account Hallucifer's insinuations from 7.01 - 7.02? It's been heavily, heavily implied that Sam was raped in Hell, and yet in this episode we have Becky dosing him with roofies and tying him half-naked to a bed -- and it's passed off as comedy? Not fucking cool.
- Becky's characterisation. Granted, I was never overly fond of her, but in her S5 appearances she seemed to be a mostly-sweet-but-quirky girl whose sole function was to poke gentle fun at the fandom. And I was, you know, fine with that. But this episode seemed to turn her into a total psycho, and any attempts at making her more three-dimensional just came across as the writers' snide take on fangirls as pathetic friendless geeks so desperate for their fictional hero to come along and sweep them off their feet that they'd be perfectly happy to date-rape him. Fuck you, Dabb & Loflin. Fuck you very much.
- Oh, look, the black guy is the villain! Didn't see that one coming! Oh, and now he's being handed off to the King of Hell for what probably amounts to an eternity of excruciating torture! Considering that last episode also had some unfortunate racial implications, to say that this bothered me would be a massive understatement.
- On a related note, I also could have done without Dean handing the guy off to be ~made an example of~, even if he was a demon. I think it was implied that he didn't want to, and for a moment I thought he was just going to deliver a mercy kill, but I guess not. Seems kind of inconsistent when compared with his reactions to all the torture going on last season.
- Garth. I will confess that I have no idea who the fuck DJ Qualls is, but considering the amount of publicity hype surrounding this character, I expected him to be something special. And I wanted to like him, I really did -- god knows this show needs some interesting new secondary characters, after killing off 90% of the old ones -- but he just... didn't really seem to do much? He had some not-particularly-funny one-liners and blundered around acting inept, but for the most part he just faded into the background.
- On top of all that, there were so many things plot-wise about this episode that just plain didn't make any sense. What was up with the random silent mook? What was the deal with the whole 'crossroads deals must last ten years' bit? I know that generally they do, but Dean's deal didn't, and neither did John's? Where does the 'Sam & Dean's scared annual trip to Vegas' thing come from, when it's never been mentioned before in the last seven years? Going back to Garth, why the everloving fuck would Dean even need a temp? He's worked far more dangerous cases than this on his own before. I wouldn't mind it just being played for comedy if it was actually funny, but... it wasn't. At all.
Now for the bits I actually liked. Granted, there weren't many, but:
- Crowley. All three minutes of him. I am also loving the dishevelled look he's rocking lately. He looks like a dude with problems.
- Dean and his sweater.
- The final Sam 'n' Dean scene.
...Aaaand that's about it. I was also quite relieved that Becky didn't die or sell her soul, as I was convinced she would -- and she even got a few badass moments in there, amazingly -- but I kind of hope Sam was right in saying that we'll never see her again. Which is a shame, because there are so few surviving female characters on this show and I definitely belong to the 'needs more oestrogen' camp, but when a character is as badly written as Becky was here it kind of makes me wish they didn't bother.
IN CONCLUSION: What was even the point? I got nothing against filler when it's actually entertaining, but this episode was pretty much the opposite of that. It was nonsensical at best, astoundingly offensive at worst, and did nothing whatsoever to inform the overall plot. And I don't enjoy being so negative, but I call it like I see it. Definitely one to skip on the DVD rewatch; here's hoping next week is better.