If you’ve been following Supernatural from the beginning, you remember how scary the early episodes were. It was a legit horror show, and its main goal was bringing the kind of claustrophobia and paranoia that all the best horror films had in spades to the small screen. That eventually gave way to the more familiar, more campy version of Supernatural, which is what we’re watching today.
I think the show made the smart choice to transition away from the scariness, if only because it gave them a broader appeal and therefore more time on air. But there is something about those early episodes; the monsters and situations were frightening enough to give more credibility to the stakes the boys were facing every week. The Woman in White of the pilot episode is still one of the scariest monsters they’ve done.
Speaking anecdotally, I haven’t seen that super-scary Supernatural since late Season 1 or Season 2. And to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. That Supernatural reappeared tonight, and it really elevated the material. Like, wow. I don’t know if it was just coincidence, but the writing and the directing of this episode created such an incredible and fresh environment. This wasn’t a Supernatural episode that went straight for jokes and the like; the opening scene of the sweat dripping from the tied up woman was so jarring. It literally made me sit up and pay attention.
This episode took itself seriously, and that was really, really good. That made all the humor bits stand out more than they would’ve previously, and it added a layer of gravitas that is sometimes missing when Supernatural is doing it’s typical song-and-dance. In terms of setup and description and shooting, this episode was on a whole different level than the rest of the season.
I will say that I wasn’t pleased with the dialogue. I thought that, as subtle a story that they were weaving was somewhat lessened by the oftentimes fluffy and cheesy dialogue. One of my pet peeves is when characters say other characters names a lot (ex: “I can’t, Dean!” “What are you doing, Sam?” “Gemma, I gotta go”). It drives me crazy. It drives me absolutely up a wall. I’ve never seen the point of doing it unless you are really trying to make a point, and if you do it every sentence, then you aren’t making a point.
Also, Sam’s recitation of the themes of the episodes B-plot and how they fit into the season long A-plot was really frustrating. He couldn’t save Kit from something that wasn’t his fault, because he simply ran out of time. He had to make a choice between stopping a killer and allowing himself and Gemma to be killed, which is no choice at all. That obviously relates back to Dean and the Mark, and serves as the typical foreshadowing for the rest of the season moving forward. I don’t mind them doing this sort of plot (and like I said before, they were weaving a subtle story until expository speechifying), but they’ve gotta not make what they’re doing so explicit. It’s not vagueness, and it’s not ambiguity; it’s trusting your audience to understand the text in front of them.
But anyways.
A really beautiful and stylistically different episode from Supernatural tonight. It was so cool to see the return of that sort of stuff, even if was only for an episode.
Stray Thoughts
– I’d pay good money to see Sam with a short haircut.
– I don’t know what Padalecki hit Kit with, but he reacted like it really stung.
– I know that Cole is supposed to be younger than Sam and Dean, but he does not look it.
– This Khan Worm subspecies is worrisome. The original Khan Worm was a creation of Eve, and the idea that they are in the world for real is a bad sign for the boys.
– They keep teasing Cole’s dad as something big. Dean’s never seen a monster like him before or since; that seems like a weird detail to mention if you’re not gonna use it later.
[Photo via The CW]
Follow Us
