Long Distance Call: A Supernatural Episode Review

[sylvia_bond]

 You can read my review of the Supernatural episode "Long Distance Call" at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!

An excerpt:

However, Wardrobe needs to realize that Sam is now a strapping tall lad with pecs out to there and shoulders as wide as an axe handle. We’ve seen the pictures. He can pound nails with his neck. He can decapitate a vampire man with a

Comments

[sylvia_bond]

What a brilliant comment, thank you! I stay away from other people's reactions out on the internet before writing a review, so I felt rather adrift in trying to figure out what the problem was, and why it felt flat to me this time around. That it felt flat to you as well makes me feel better - that I'm not alone in thinking this. I don't feel up to going to look at other people's reviews in the aftermath, and in fact felt BAD at having to point out what I felt were fundamental flaws in this ep. Of course you are right, there's many ways to explain it.

The writer's strike for one, and that I should give Show the benefit of the doubt, and maybe I would have had I not been feeling so under the weather. I just remember my visceral reactions to Dream a Little Dream and Mystery Spot and could not help compare the quality here. But writer's strike aside, the script itself was fine, the dialog was fine - it was a typical episode with a monster and a gig and a little bit of the Deal thrown in. What was lacking was the staging. Sam and Dean do a lot of standing around, with their hands in their pockets. Even given Sam's emotional distance, he and Dean normally don't act like that. Also, there was no "stuff" to add texture as there normally is, no junk in the room (trash, soda cans, luggage, socks), the trunk of the Impala was more bare than usual, no movement, everything was static. I know for a fact that the set dressers are fanatical as to each detail. Did they get the week off or something?

As to the underlying meaning, the one I wasn't willing to dig for, yeah, I can see that. I like your theory, that Sam has HAD it, and can't take it anymore. That he's so worn down that even Dean's pleas don't affect him.

Okay, even if that were true, and I'm totally willing to buy it, there should have been more to show us this. Sam delivering the unspoken line, "I am OUT of here," should have brought the house down with emotional content. Padalecki is the Babe Ruth of mutli-level delivery, he should have hit it out of the park. But he didn't. So I have to ask myself why? Staging? Something the director said? I don't know nothing about making no TV, so I'm in the dark. Plus, given that Sam's early protestations were to complain about the fact that they were doing ANYTHING but working on Dean's deal, given that, why would he suddenly decide that random chick was more important than Dean? The whole "duty first" is not Sam. I can't put it off to a flip, because he wasn't acting like Dean either.

At the same time, Dean is having a hissy fit that Sam is leaving him to help some random chick. Hissy fit is the best way to describe it for me, because his anger seems almost ineffectual and Un-Dean like. It's almost like he's not really angry at all. I would have expected him to come apart. Ackles is a very damn good actor, he is the Muhammad Ali of this show. (I'm so bad at knowing sports, I always loose in Trivial Persuit on account of it!) He will hurt you and make you cry just looking at him, so why, oh why does it feel like he was going through the motions here? Yes, okay, I'm willing to believe that Dean just went and shoved it all down, but even when he's shoving it down, you can feel how bad it hurts him. It normally radiates off the screen like a nuclear reaction. Like Chernobyl. You can feel it in your bones. That's the kind of actor Ackles is.

It has occurred to me that the sense of disconnection that the MOW so helpfully discussed at length (because he's never seen the Overlord's Guide on how and why not to talk too much when torturing your victims), was supposed to be exemplified here both by the boys not talking and the lack of movement and lack of stuff. That would have been lovely had it worked for me. If I'd had just one hint, one tiny inkling that that was the theme? Then I would have been as impressed as all hell. Over the moon. Dancing a jig. Alas. Maybe my bad mood really did get in the way, otherwise I would have seen it.