TV Reviews and more
Supernatural. Oh gawd. Totally not what I was expecting, but in a very good way. (Of course, I was expecting brotherhugs, and didn't get any, but I'm willing to look past that for this week.) The opening was a little weird, what with the quick, almost Arrested Development style, cuts of Dean on the phone with Ellen. Sam has been missing for a week and Dean is "losing his mind out [there]". And then he gets a call from a very frantic Sam. Dean immediatly gets back into the Impala and rushes off to his lil' bro's side. He finds Sam in a motel (in Wisconsin; they were on a job in Texas) covered in blood with no memory of what he's been doing for the past week. Dean does some digging and finds out that he checked into that motel a couple days ago under the same Richard Sambora. "What I find most disturbing is that you're apparently a Bon Jovi fan," Dean tells him.
They try to retrace Sam's steps, and end up at a storage locker, where Sam finds a key in his pocket that opens a locker containing a beat up old black Volkswagen bug also covered with blood. "Tell me you didn't steal this thing," Dean snarks. Inside, they find cigarettes (must... not... make... X-Files... reference...), a bloody knife, and a receipt from a gas station. (One note, on that knife: In this week's Plastic!Winchester Theatre, Plastic!Sam says something along the lines of "You're the shoot them over and over again guy, I'm the stab them to death guy", and seeing the knife just made me squeal.) They head to the gas station, where the attendant freaks out and makes Sam leave. Dean questions him and the attendant says that Sam came in there, chugged some liquor and stole some cigs, and cut the guy with a broken bottle, then drove off without paying.
The Winchester boys go in the direction the guy said Sam went, and find a country house with a security camera out front. They see a broken window, and, concerned, go on in. In a bedroom, they find the body of a hunter with his neck slit open. There's a security camera in there too, so they watch it. And it's Sam barging in there and killing the guy in cold blood. Sam's very disturbed that he's done this, and Dean just doesn't want to believe it and destroys the evidence.
They drive back to the motel, and Dean says that they out to grab some leave and split in the morning. (I was hoping that they were in a room with only one bed, but there were two. Why was Sam getting a room with two beds if it was just him?) Sam thinks that he killed the guy because his evil side is finally taking over, and he wants Dean to kill him so that he won't kill again. The whole scene is great, what with the standing close together (hee, I'm a fangirl) and the acting is just superb. Sam even goes so far as to put the gun in Dean's hand, but Dean refuses and says that he'd rather die first. Then Sam's like "Oh, you will" and knocks Dean out and takes off.
He goes off to a bar that Jo is working at, which was interesting for me because I hadn't seen Jo before since I started late. Most everything I've read online is against her, but I wasn't immediatly turned off by her. (Of course, I've never met a character I strongly disliked. Except Phoebe Green and Diana Fowly (*hiss*) on Files, but they were the type you were supposed to not like.) She gets them some drinks, and Sam starts talking about how Dean likes her, but as an annoying little sister type, and even if Jo did have a thing for him, Dean would never return it. Jo thinks Sam is acting weird and asks about an odd burn mark on his arm. (It looks kinda like a computer power symbol, you know, the line though the top of the circle.) “I had a bad run-in with a stove,” Sam says. He starts making advances on Jo, who tries to fight him off, but he cracks a bottle on her head and knocks her unconscious.
Back at the motel, Dean wakes up when the manager knocks on the door and says that it’s past check out and there’s a “couple” that needs the room. (Okay, politician looking guy and a, uh, lady of the night. Wait, why do they need a room with two beds?) Dean panics, realizing that Sam is long gone, and asks to use the motel computer. He’s on the phone with the cell phone company spinning a yarn about how his “son” “snuck off to a Justin Timberlake concert and he needs his insulin, so could you please activate the locator in his phone”. (Dean on the phone: “…. Yes, Justin is a triple threat….”) He checks the location on the computer screen, and it’s somewhere in Michigan, and off he goes.
Next we see Jo tied to a pole and Sam’s taunting her. (The Doors’ “Crystal Ship” is playing, which was interesting, because I’ve only heard the X cover before this.) He tells her how her father really died, that he and Papa John Winchester were on a hunt, and her dad was the bait. John couldn’t kill the demon fast enough, and her father was left mangled, and John had to shoot him. Jo insists that it isn’t true, and asks how Sam knows all this. “I hear things!” he replies chipperly. He threatens her some more, and then Dean bursts through the door to save a day. Sam taunts Dean to shoot him, but Dean just won’t, and tries to get Sam to cooperate. Sam just runs off. Dean unties Jo and goes after his brother.
He and Sam play a game of cat and mouse around an abandoned warehouse (of course), and Dean tells Sam that he’s figured out that it’s not Sam. It’s a demon inside Sam’s body. At points, the real Sam breaks though, but the demon is in control and taunts Dean about not being able to hurt his little brother. The demon runs outside, and Dean follows it, but the demon sneaks up behind him shoots him in the shoulder, causing him to fall to the water below. Jo finds him and patches up his wounds. (I don’t think she really has a crush on him, as she didn’t make him take his shirt off. She’s so not serious about him.) He has to go after Sam, and he and Jo go through the whole “Don’t go” “I have to” “Let me come too” “No” song and dance, and so Dean takes off.
We see the demon going to the home of another hunter named Bobby (another character I haven’t seen until now, but I haven’t even finished season one yet). The demon acts all chummy, and Bobby gets them beers, but the demon spits it out, and starts burning and writhing. Bobby spiked the beer with holy water. Heh. Dean arrives, and they wrangle the demon onto a chair and tie him up. The demon sees that there’s a sort of magic web thingy drawn on the ceiling, Bobby’s holding a Latin book and Dean has more holy water, and I think there was a ring of salt on the floor. Dean splashes more holy water on the demon and says that “he’s never going to get Sammy”. (There’s a great exchange here (which actually might’ve been in a different scene, but I think it was here): Demon: “I can make [Sam] bite his own tongue off.” Dean: “You won’t be inside him long enough.” Uh… yeah.)
Bobby starts the incantation to drive the demon out, but it doesn’t work, and the demon just laughs and laughs. He uses his demony powers to get himself out of the chair and throws Bobby against the wall. He grabs Dean, throws him against a different wall, and starts beating all up on him. “When somebody wants to describe something as being the worst it can be, they say it’s like hell. Which is true. You see, hell is like…. Well, hell. A cage of flesh and bone and blood and fear. And you sent me there.” Dean figures out that the demon that’s in Sam is the same demon that possessed a girl named Meg a while back. The demon continues to talk smack to Dean, talking about how Papa Winchester is down in hell now suffering, and I think he talks about their mom and Sam’s girlfriend Jess too, who both died in bloody ceiling fires. (If you don’t know, don’t ask.) And the demon just keeps beating up Dean, who’s almost whimpering. Sure it’s a demon, but he can’t hurt his little Sammy. Bobby notices the mark on possessed Sam’s arm, and says that it’s a binding mark, like a lock. I think Dean then burns it with something, and the demon is driven out. It looks a little like the black smoke on Lost, and, fittingly, it flies out the chimney.
Sam is a Sam again, and both boys are just lying on the ground gasping. Sam: “Did I miss anything?” Dean punches him, which could be taken as playful or vengeful, but I like to think it was the latter. Bobby fixes them up with ice pack and such, and tells them that that hunter from earlier died, and the boys fake ignorance. Bobby says that the hunter’s buddies won’t hesitate to kill his murderer, and that the boys had better get going. If you know what he means. He then gives the boys anti-possession charms and sends them on their way. (Awww, they’ll match!)
We see our lovely Winchester boys in the Impala driving…. I don’t know. A motel somewhere. (REO Speedwagon’s “Back on the Road Again” plays on the car stereo, and lodges itself in my brain to played over and over again.) Sam talks about how he was awake for some of it, and he’s horrified at what has happened. And he says that Dean maybe should’ve just shot him. “I said that I’d kill you only if I couldn’t save you. And I am going to save you, if it’s the last thing I do.” Dean’s always going to protect Sam. Then he cracks a joke about how Sam “had a girl up inside him for like a week” and they chuckle and ride off into the night together.
An absolutely fantastic episode. Jared and Jensen just melt my heart every time, they play their roles so well, and this week they really were on top of their games. And Jared? Oh man. JARED’S DEMONIC SAM WAS JUST BRILLIANT. Capital letters brilliant. The demon was just so cocky and knew how to hit people’s weak spots, and I just cannot do it justice here. That possession ruled. I hate to see Sam like that, but Jared was just so…. Amazing. Not to say Jensen wasn’t great too, his aching care for his brother always gets to me. The whole episode was very well done, and went in directions I didn’t expect it to go. I know my geek is showing here, but when I read the plot summary online, I thought of an X-Files episode “Demons” where Mulder wakes up in a motel in Rhode Island covered in blood with no memory of what he’s done for the past weekend, but keeps getting painful, almost seizure-like flashes of repressed memories about his sister. He and Scully spend the episode investigating, and find out that he went to see some doctor that did some bizarre repressed-memory procedure on him and two other people, and Mulder went all out of his head and killed them. I thought it was going to be kinda like that. Sam blacks out and he and Dean investigate what happened to him over that week. The demon thing was a great turn of events that I didn’t expect. The whole thing was just very well plotted and amazingly acted, and although I didn’t get the brother hugs I was hoping for, I was very pleased and cannot wait for next week. Which looks like a comedy episode, with the brother investigating alien abductions and vampire babies and Bigfoot and other tabloid-fodder. Yay!
Earl was also really funny. Joy has a black half-sister named Liberty Washington who is a wrestler and has a white, Crabman-like husband. The husband wants a baby, but Liberty doesn’t want to give up her wrestling career. Joy read that pregnant women get off easier on trial, but she doesn’t really want to raise another kid. Thusly, Joy is a surrogate mother now. Thanks, Earl! And Randy is still so cute.
I watched Scrubs, too, JD and a bunch of other Sacred Heart workers steal Bob Kelso’s RV and road trip to Tacoma for Kim’s first sonogram. Hijinx ensue. (Or is it hijinks? Is it hyphenated? I don’t know. Spell check doesn’t like either.) I love Eliot screaming “Kick his ass, Ted!”, Janitor’s brain troubles after he walked off the RV while it was driving (“I shall toast you with my heartiest wine”), the horn honk running gag, and the “THEODORE!!!!” yell. Hee hee. Kim told JD she had a miscarriage, and they agreed to break up and just be friends, but then we see that Kim lied to him. And Michael Ausiello from TV Guide was her sonagrammer!
And The Office. Hilarious. I love Michael, he’s so needy and pathetic and sad and awkward. It’s so brilliantly painful to watch him. His home movie of his mother and step-father’s wedding and him dragging the wheelchair down the aisle after Phyllis’s dad gets up to walk is great. (I think his parent’s divorce and his mother’s remarriage has a lot to do with how he turned out. I’d like to hear more about that.) I love how Phyllis stole Pam’s wedding, and how even the priest says Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration. I think that Jewel’s “Meant for You” (or whatever the title is) was a great choice for Pam’s song. And Dwight and Angela dancing! How cute! I loved Angela’s dress, by the way. We got to see Scrantonicity play, and Karen sang. And Toby’s girlfriend caught the bouquet and he was so excited! Good for him. I think I laughed the hardest when Michael said “Webster’s Dictionary describes wedding as the fusing of two hot metals with a blow torch.” LOL Another great episode. I love this show.
Read Lemony Snicket all hour yesterday in English. I want to go to the bookstore today and get the rest of the series, but dad wants me to do some cleaning in my room today, which didn't fit in with my plans. I still have Valentines to make. I'm doing those random ones again this year. For those of you that don't know (Ave, pretty much), I make this little quarter-fold cards in Print Shop that have a teddy bear holding a heart-shaped balloon on the front and it says "This happy little teddy bear is here to give you a loving Valentine's Day message..." and you open it up and there's something totally random on the inside. I always tape candy to the back also, and it's lots of fun to do. So, if anyone has any ideas or remembers one you liked from the past two years, I'd like to know. It's a lot of work. Back to school, I thought I was supposed to have a French test yesterday, but I didn't, so yay. No Bio, we met with conselours. I got a 26 out of 32 on my PLAN test. I did have an AdAl quiz, but I think I did okay. Last night I watched more Firefly and talked to Mashi on the phone for forty-five minutes. Today I have do that cleaning, those Valentines, hopefully get to the bookstore, and Caitlin invited me to spend the night.