Supernatural Season 10 Episode 18 Review: “Book Of The Damned”

Tonight’s Supernatural can be split neatly in two. On one hand, we have an entertaining, engaging hour of television; on the other hand, we are stuck in a vicious circle of plot and character, going over the same things over and over again each season, with little-to-zero forward momentum.

You can set your watch by the way Supernatural does things. It was not a surprise reveal that Sam kept the Book Of The Damned from the fire; rather, it was more surprising when I actually believed he let the damn thing burn. It’s almost comical how much of a repeat this is: A Winchester puts the good of the other ahead of the fate of the world, and they come out on top anyways. It’s pretty disheartening, to tell you the truth.

There is nothing to be learned from this show anymore. No lessons are ever taken to heart; no characters move beyond the arcs established a decade ago. How many times can Sam or Dean do this? How many times can they needlessly lie to one another? At least Dean is being a little more honest; he hid the thing about Rowena, but when the time came, he brought it up. But Sam is still doing the same stupid Winchester things. And I don’t get it.

It was also a really blatant and obvious way to get Rowena back in action. Sam already knows that Rowena tried to kill Dean, and that Crowley kicked her out; she’s probably angry about that. Also, he knows that she’s a crazy person with delusions of grandeur. So, his solution is to take an incredibly powerful spell book TO her? This is— it’s not even a matter of desperation here. Yeah, Dean’s in trouble. Sure. I get that. But really? You already know that the book can unleash unspeakable evil if done improperly; you already can’t translate it so you have no idea what the cost is. It’s so stupid. Rowena is a power-hungry and enraged witch, maybe the most powerful in existence, and you’ve just given her a nuclear bomb so that your brother doesn’t have the gurglies every time he gets around blood and gore!

How many more times must we do this? How many times are the Winchesters going to put their (frankly) boring codependency ahead of everyone else? I suppose it gets easier when all the friends that were helping you have already died.

And this episode knows that! They even referenced it! The whole parallel of this episode was putting the right thing ahead of yourself. Cas should’ve killed Metatron before he could make his obviously coming move. Sam should’ve burned the Book so that the Stein family and others couldn’t get their hands on it. How many more people have to die before that is clear?

It’s so frustrating. Separating it into individual episodes/seasons versus the entire text helps soften the blow, but it doesn’t wipe away the problems. We’ve been here before. We’re always here. There’s never anything else to be gleaned except that the Winchesters are going to come face-to-face with an unsolvable problem, they’ll find a solution that hurts one of them, and they’ll let the world burn around them before they go through with it. Sure, they always find a way. But as a I said before: how many people have to die in that process?

I just want Supernatural to try something different. There were signs that they got what the problem is, but we’ve seen that before too. I have unexpectedly raised hopes for the Castiel side of things, as it was aptly pointed out by Metatron that there were other angels doing the job he was trying to do, only much better. Maybe Cas is the show’s salvation; maybe his character arc of growing up and realizing that playing the hero is only a few steps removed from playing the villain will add much needed freshness and depth to the show. Right now, it’s just a bunch of familiar things put in a sequence to keep us entertained: an amusing cacophony of one-liners and Busy Asian Beauties and confused looks.

I love Supernatural; I’ve been a fan of the show for almost five years now, and I’ve seen every episode of every season at least twice. I know this show very well, and I love these characters: Sam Winchester is one of my favorites. I don’t disparage this show as a way of spouting elitist television rhetoric; I do it because I desperately want it to be the show that it should be. There is so much good in every season, and every episode, so many wonderful little moments that keep me coming back. But the big moments, the ones that move things along, have becomes more and more stale.

Maybe this will be different. Maybe they’ll finally pay the price, or someone will, and they’ll realize. But I don’t know. Supernatural has been renewed for an eleventh season, and the longer it goes the more familiar ground it will tread. I’m not asking for an overhaul, I’m not asking for a u-turn; I’m asking for a veer to the left, against the wind and into the trees, an adventure that we haven’t been on. I don’t think that’s too much to want, do you?

Stray Thoughts 

– Felicia Day was awesome tonight, as she is every time I see her in anything.

– Charlie and Cas’s relationship was so great because it was fresh and new. I hope that becomes a thing.

– Sam taking the Book to Rowena makes zero sense; I just want to reiterate that.

– One of my favorite things about Supernatural is how much power there is in the world. We’re a little sheltered from it, even; we deal with the big, cataclysmic events, but the everyday stuff falls by the wayside. The Stein family is obviously enormously powerful, but they haven’t had any relevance till now. The Angel Tablet sat in hiding for millennia until it was brought out by Dick Roman. There is so much stuff in this world, and I really love it.

[Photo via The CW]