Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Firstly I would just like to take a moment to thank The CW and the creators of TV listings everywhere for listing that Summer Glau was in this episode right up to the date of transmission. As someone who helps run her official site and is a mod on her message boards you can imagine what a sheer joy the past 2 weeks have been trying to explain to very eager Summer fans that it was very clear from the promotional stills that had been released that Summer wasn't going to be in the episode. Trying to argue your point when everybody just keeps referring you to The Cw's own bloody website which listed her as appearing was bang your head against a brick wall frustrating.
General thoughts:
Damn this was a quick episode - barely 41 and a half minutes. It hurtled along at breakneck speed (which was probably best as the zombie plot doesn't really hold up to close scrutiny) but I think an extra couple of minutes on the running time might have allowed the Sam/Dean moments a little more time to breathe and given them a greater impact.
Perhaps this is my inner lawyer speaking but was it really necessary to have Padalecki shoot the entire episode with an unprotected broken right hand? I can practically hear your insurers screaming from here Kripke. Having Jared shoot for a week whilst probably doped up to the eyeballs on pain pills and risking significant damage to his hand in every scene maybe wasn't the best idea ever. I appreciate I was looking for it but you could really see how stiffly he was holding his right side throughout the entire episode. Given the nature of the show they could simply have had the episode start with Dean snarking about Sam getting his arm broken in an off screen fight. Bonus points for it having been a ridiulous fight with say pissed off pixies!
It was also another episode where the monster of the week plot was completely overshadowed by the continuing story arc of Sam and Dean trying to cope with their father's death. As much as I like the plotline for the wonderful character moments that it gives us (like the entire last 5 minutes of the episode) and for the fact that Ackles and Padalecki are acting the crap out of it I fear that actually its going to get old real fast. I don't want them to have a stretch of episodes where they completely forget that the demon is responsible for making them orphans but airing a pure fun monster of the week ep in the vein of Phantom Traveller or Dead in the Water wouldn't be a bad thing. The show in the first season was careful not to allow Jess's death to monopolise the plot. I appreciate that John's death is a far more significant event in the boys lives but at this stage I think they need to work on blending the character moments in a little more seamlessly with the plot. The last three episodes the MotW plots have existed purely as a catalyst for the character moments (Dean whaling on the Impala in ELAC, the talk at the end of Bloodlust, the speech at the end of this ep) to the extent that I feel like i'm wading through 30 minutes of bland zombie action in order to get 15 minutes of relationship gold.
As the monster of the week plot was fairly lame lets deal with that first:
Last week I was pretty indifferent to Amber Benson's guest turn as Lenore but with CSPWDT we got our first bona fide lousy guest stars of the season. Congratulations guys! With the exception of Angela's father who did a very nice study in quiet grief the rest of the guest cast was dreadful. Tamara Feldman was hilariously awful as Angel. I can't decide if they cast her because they liked her or if they cast her because they had already cast Summer Glau (who turned them down to film The Unit) and were so stuck on the visual of Angela as a dark haired, dark eyed waif that they simply cast the first girl who resembled Summer. Her fight with Lindsay was like something out a z list horror movie. Neither tragic and sympathetic nor scary or chiling Angela was spectacularly one note throughout.Granted she wasn't helped by the writing. In order for us to give a damn about Angela we needed to see (not be told) that she was a very sweet girl before being zombified so that we could feel for her when she came back as soulless monster. Because we only saw Angela as a pissed off woman scorned it was hard to give a damn about her. Her (fake) plea to Sam about how she was still a person would have had more weight if we had actually seen that or been shown a little more of her relationship with Neal or Matt - guess that's where those extra couple of minutes would have come in handy.
The actress playing Lindsay appeared to be under the impression that she was acting in a day time soap which didn't help although her scene with Ackles was comedy gold. Loved Jensen's little "Is she going to buy that?" look when he announced he was Alan - Angela's cousin and his handing Lindsay a tissue with his head turned because he was so fed up with the blubbering. Nice comic timing from Ackles.
As for Matt and Neal they had so little screen presence I couldn't really bring myself to care when they got offed. I know people got upset that Sam and Dean "left" Neal to die but hey - they gave him an out and every opportunity to use it. He choose to stay there and get himself killed. Sam and Dean can't help those who don't want to be helped. Plus the dude was into necrophilia so no great loss to society there
I love how the special effects team have finally realised that less is more. Some of the ropey CGI effects in season 1 were terrible. But Matt's death was surprisingly effective - having Angela's image appear on a frozen tv image of her face followed by the arterial spray hitting the set was very chilling.
For a guy whose girlfriend was quite comfortable dressing up in a hooker's nurses outfit with sky high heels Sam sure did seem deeply perplexed by whatever porn he'd been watching. There was a real "Oh that's how you're supposed to do it" vibe going on there!
A part of me was slightly disappointed that we didn't get a discussion between Sam and Dean about the merits (or not) of necromancy. I wanted some indication of whether it had every crossed their mindsto try and bring their father back by unnatural means.
Liked how convenient it was that Angela fell quite neatly into her grave so neither Sam nor Dean had to try and move her before nailing her in!
As for the Sam and Dean stuff:
Not quite sure I understood Dean's motivations for not going near his mother's grave. Yes there was nothing of her in that semetary but previously they'd shown Dean to be very protective of his mother's memory - attacking Sam in the Pilot when he dismissed her as gone. I would have thought that Dean would be all about honouring his mother's memory by spending a moment at her grave. Was he hurt by the somewhat dismissive way her spirit pretty much ignored him in Home (yes I am still slightly pissed about the way they handled that)? Was he concerned that if he let himself feel emotion at her grave it would open the floodgates to his feelings about his father being gone? Difficult to say but I guess that's one of the reasons people like Dean - tricky to get a handle on.
Whilst the gesture of burying his father's dogtags with Mary was lovely all I could think was that Sam really could have done with digging a deeper hole. The hole was so shallow the slightest gust of wind would have revealed the dog tags! Wonder whether they kept John's wedding ring or if they burned it with him?
The petty malicious side of me did cackle at Dean's response to being dropped off at the Roadhouse "Being stuck with those people. Having to make small talk" Oh yeah he's clearly real thrilled at the prospect of seeing Jo again!
Dean in the beginning of this episode is clearly hanging by a thread. He's a hairs breath away from a complete emotional meltdown. I thought it was pretty effective that the writers (and Jensen) chose to display this not by having him shouting and screaming every other minute but having him retreat behind the safe wall of sarcasm. Dean throws out clever one liners left right and centre in this episode and its actually pretty disturbing to watch. Snarking with Lindsay, the whole "whatever jump starts the healing" bit with Matt. Dean has always been funny but in this episode the snark was almost cruel. The fact that Lindsay is oblivious and Neal something of a moron doesn't hide the fact that Dean was practically openly mocking them. This of course reaches its pinnacle in the scenes with Angela's dad where Dean is so desperate to find something to hunt that he completely rides rough shod over a grieving man. Whilst the second confrontation with the father was hideous (Dean interrogates him from the getgo and the on paper funny line "Haven't you ever seen Pet Semetary?" is actually horrifying when its being said to a man who has just been forced to bury his only child), I actually found the first scene more upsetting. He and Sam inveigle their way into the man's office and whilst Sam is respectful and sympathetic Dean seems almost completely indifferent to the man's pain, looking out the window when he's talking and rummaging through his shelves looking at his books. Dean may be a bit rough around the edges and he doesn't always say the right thing but he'd always previously been shown to be respectful to other people's pain and grief - but in that scene he really didn't give a shit that this guy had just had his world ripped away from under him. It's a marked contrast to the guy who refused to leave town because he could sense that Andrea's little boy was scared in Dead in the Water.
Whilst I liked the confrontation after Dean's psycho turn with the father it unfortunately didn't ring very true - despite Padalecki doing his best to sell it. Problem is since John died we haven't actually seen Dean be truly scary on a hunt. The chainsaw/gratutious gore in Bloodlust doesn't count because that was so over the top in an Evil Dead II kinda way that it was actually amusing. The only time I've felt Dean has been truly scary on a hunt is when he had Meg trapped at Bobby's (he was seriously hardcore then) and in Something Wicked when he shot the doctor/schtriga the kind of look that could drop everyone in a five mile radius. In fact we've actually seen Dean doing his best to keep it together rather than falling apart all over the screen. Dean was certainly acting edgy and erratic but truly scary? Nah.
And that brings us to the last 5 minutes - what is there to say? Just an incredible scene. Dean not being able to bring himself to even look at Sam while he confessed his pain was so perfectly in character and just ripped my heart out. I also liked that we didn't have Sam trying to make Dean feel better or pretending that he hadn't already worked out a link between Dean coming back and John dying. They both knew that the demon was somehow responsible for Dean's resurrection from the moment he got better but neither one of them could voice it.I know many felt that Sam should have done more in that scene but I think he did all he could. He listened. Dean isn't interested in hearing how John dying isn't his fault, he doesn't want false comfort. Everythig went horribly wrong and nothing can ever put it right again - they both know it so all Sam can do is be there for Dean. Whilst my schmoopy side would love it Dean full on breaking down and being held by Sam would have been OOC for both of them I think (and to be honest I can count the number of times I've hugged my sister on the fingers of one hand - sometimes it's easy to confuse fanfic with the show.) It was still heartbreaking and Ackles was amazing turning what could potentially have been a really quite cheesy moment into something gut wrenching.
Still I'm hoping that next week they manage to balance the plot and the character moments a little better and lay off the heartrending moments for a while before my inner bitch starts shouting at Dean to get over it already.