They walk among us. They look like us. They are dangerous. And they have a plan.
Ladies and gentlemen, the crossover we've all been hoping for has finally arrived: 'Supernatural' has been invaded by Cylons!
All right, technically they're called Leviathans on this show.
(And by the way, I know that at times the plural of Leviathan can just be Leviathan, but I'm going to stick the "s" on there just for kicks).
In any event, our new black-goo-oozing big bads do kind of resemble the 'Battlestar Galactica' Cylons a bit -- but then, these characters also recall any shapeshifter storyline in pretty much any genre. I say this not as a dig, but just as a way of noting that this parallel could be a good thing. A 'Supernatural' spin on the trusty tropes of a "they walk among us" tale could be interesting.
Having said that, something did bug me about the episode: The fact that it didn't end with the words "To Be Continued." Shouldn't it have? I mean, jeebus, I don't mind cliffhangers, and certainly this episode left us with a lot of big questions, but 'Hello, Cruel World' sort of just ended, rather than arriving at a reasonably conclusion-y place.
It really seemed like the first half of a two-parter, but I don't understand the reluctance to call it a two-parter. Ah well. Let's at least tote up the number of questions that are left:
• We don't know if Cas is gone for good or for a good long while. What makes me think that he won't be back for a while is the fact that his iconic trench coat was found in the lake. Maybe his vessel finally is kaput? Though I highly doubt that -- 'Supernatural' has found ways to bring all manner of deceased people back, no matter the state of their meatsuits. Also, the Leviathans kept referring to a "boss" character. Perhaps that's Cas? Hmm...
• We don't know where Bobby is. Could he have been taken over by a Leviathan? I know we saw him talking to the boys from his car, but what if at some point on the way home, he was Leviathanized (or what if the guy temporarily crushed under the car jumped into Bobby?).
• We don't know if Sam's visions are gone for good. My Spidey sense tells me that 'Supernatural' isn't going to be able to pay Mark Pellegrino to appear in a ton of episodes this season, so I'm betting the fact that Sam was able to figure out what is real means that we won't see ol' Lucifer much in future. What does that mean for Sam's mental state? Are there more post-Wall complications to come, or has that whole story been dropped? (A further question for you all: Do you think that Lucifer was projecting himself from the Cage into Sam's mind? Or was the Lucifer projection a product of Sam's own damaged noggin? Thoughts?)
• We don't know what awaited the brothers at Sioux Falls General Hospital. It is probably not sexytimes with hot nurses. Not when Dr. Sexy is running around snacking on patients' internal organs.
So, with all those things in doubt, I don't have a ton to say about the episode, except to say that it was an OK transition episode, one that maybe suffered from a bit of busy-ness, given all the things it had to accomplish. It wasn't a Ben Edlund classic, but there was a light sprinkling of Edlundian humor.
But as I said in my review of the season 6 finale, I'm a little troubled by the grimness of the show's tone these days. Back in Ye Olden Seasons, I'd have described the overall vibe as, "Two brothers go through a lot, but through it all, they have each other." Now I'd describe it as, "Two brothers trudge through a series of hellish experiences, often with the help of alcohol. Also, they have each other, for whatever that's worth."
Now, maybe I'm exxagerating a bit, but I have to admit that I was struck by Dean's go-to response when Sam was having trouble figuring out what was real. He took Sam's wound and pressed it, as if pain was the only thing that could link his brother to reality. It felt as though the intent of the scene was to have the brotherly bond and the real pain bring Sam back from the edge, and if the scene came across that way to you, that's great. But it didn't quite work for me on the brotherly-bond level. It struck me as odd that in that scene, Dean didn't talk about their shared past or any of their memories -- important things that only the true Dean would know about.
It felt like that moment was mostly about making that wound bleed, and that strikes me as a little sad. Can't things other than pain connect us to what's true? Maybe so in our world, maybe not in the Winchesters'. And I don't know that that's a fruitful path for the show to go down. When things are too dark, it can make us check out a little bit. First of all, knowing that things are always going to be grim can make things predictable, and secondly, aren't the tiny rays of hope we carry for the characters part of what keeps us tuning in?
Please keep in mind that my views on the show are always evolving, and I don't mean to imply that I think that 'Supernatural' has fully arrived at the Place of Ultra-Grimness and that I think it intends to stay there. These are just musings, at this point.
But I do have concerns about the way the show is always taking things and people away from the boys. Obviously their parents were the first to go, but also, more recurring characters than I can count have been removed from their orbit, and now Cas is gone too. He may show up in some form or another down the road, but their lives look sadly sparse. And what of Bobby?
Would the show really go so far as to Levianthan-ize him? I don't know. Probably not (and if they did, I'm betting it would only be temporary). But the fact that the bad guys torched the only home Sam and Dean have and that the owner of that home is missing in action -- well, it sounds like even more bad times are coming.
Speaking of Bobby's house, I feel like the boys discovering that it had been torched should have had a lot more emotional and visual impact. Casa Singer is an important place in the mythology of the show, but the moment in which they found the burned house didn't really land for me. For one thing, I don't recall the house having that piece of fence nearby or a road right next to it. I could be wrong, but it looked like the show built a mock-up of a burned house in a different location and tried to pass it off as the crispified version of Bobby's house. But it looked to me like it was in the wrong place, and the episode was so busy with various threads at that point that 'Cruel World' hardly had any time to spend on the destruction of that landmark.
At least all these events -- Cas' disappearance, the torching of the house, the Leviathans' destruction and Bobby's disappearance -- got Dean to finally admit that he wasn't OK. We know Sam's not OK (and the tears in Sam's eyes when he told Dean that Lucifer didn't think Dean was real were heartbreaking).
We'll see where the road goes soon. But I could use a lighter episode sooner rather than later.
A few final notes:
• Shades of Lilith with the Leviathan-possessed little girl, right?
• Biggerson's Pie Bar: "It's like a salad bar, but with pie!" It's Dean's dream restaurant!
• Nice to see Sheriff Mills back, but again, due to how much stuff the episode had to deal with, she was shuffled off stage relatively early. Hope we see her again soon.
• "Don't let Satan change my pre-sets."
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'Supernatural' airs 9PM ET Fridays on the CW.
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