Tonight’s episode of Supernatural was a perfect microcosm of the good and the bad of this season. It had the majority of the cast together and interacting, which is good, and then it had big ideas, which have been not so good.
We’ll start with the bad, because I’m not a nice person and I want to hurt people’s feelings, but also because I want to get this stuff out of the way. This was a good, enjoyable, functional hour of television that isn’t limited so much by what happened it as much as the execution of those moments.
My biggest problem with this episode, and this season as a whole, is that every cool idea we’ve come across has been either too big or not set up enough or (frequently) both. The Styne family is the perfect example of that. The reveal of them being the Frankenstein family is kind of interesting, as is their choice of home after they changed their name. Why Louisiana? Why southern? What drove them to that area of the world? But the Stynes are too big. They’re too powerful.
It’s an appealing fantasy/supernatural trope: apply order to random chaos through backroom manipulation. I’m no less a fan of it. But the problem with putting someone behind every significant event is that they start to lose their power. It robs us of our actual history, and puts us in this weird place that invalidates all that comes after those events. It’s also, quite frankly, ludicrous; the Winchesters have been fighting the biggest of bads for a decade and for them to have never come across the Stynes is not realistic for the show.
Not to mention that the setup for the Stynes was about as brief as possible. I can believe that they are powerful and that they influence things, especially with knowledge of magical objects like the Book of the Damned. But only coming across them then just doesn’t work.
The good parts of this episode have everything to do with the ensemble cast. We have Cas, Rowena, Charlie, and Sam all interacting at the same time, and it is so much more interesting than just a few characters alone. There is a real sense of movement and energy that has been lacking; the Rowena-Charlie stuff was especially excellent. I want more of that. I want more of side characters having relationships. I want more of other people besides Sam and Dean.
I want to single out Jared Padalecki for this episode, as well. He’s always good, and he always takes the little material he’s given and elevates it, but tonight he really went for it. He was much more a focal point than usual and he really expressed the desperation that Sam was feeling. The acting he did when they found Charlie in the bathtub was excellent.
Charlie being killed was both good and bad, because it goes back to my main problem with the last few seasons: the Winchesters never pay their own debts. Someone else always pays the price. If I thought this was a conscious choice, done to make a point about the Winchesters, I’d be cool with it. But I think it’s just a way of punting.
Now, I don’t think that Charlie was killed because she’s a woman; that’s a theory that has been floated around the fandom for a very long time. I tend to take the view that the reason women die on this show a lot is because a lot of the supporting characters are women, and they die because they are unwilling to put the Winchesters to the fire. Sam should’ve died at the end of Season 8. Dean should’ve been burned at the end of Season 9. That’s the facts. Imagine: if Sam had died at the end of Season 8, we could’ve had a really cool split-season where Sam is fighting up in Heaven and Dean is on Earth. It would’ve been something different.
I’m off track, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this much negative talk; I really didn’t. This really was good, entertaining television. But until Supernatural fixes those problems, it’s always going to be on my mind.
Next week looks exciting. I hope it delivers.
Stray Thoughts
– I really hope Rowena sticks around for the rest of the show’s run. She is so, so good.
– Crowley is making some moves too; thank you talking hamster.
– Cas was less of a unwieldy doofus and more just awkward. I can live with that version of Cas.
[Photo via The CW]
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I really liked the introduction of the Stynes; they could be really cool. I wish we they had done the backstory better but just like the Men of Letters there is probably a lot that Sam and Dean don’t know and haven’t seen. The interaction with Rowena, Cass and Charlie for me was irritating. I never liked Charlie but they did manage to give a cool death. I have always disagreed with the flak SPN has gotten about women characters. They have had some of the best women characters on TV and they kill everyone. But to suggest that they kill one of the brothers before the series end is ridiculous. Just can’t happen.