['Supernatural' - 'Slash Fiction']It's been a tempestuous few weeks for 'Supernatural' fans. Well, all right -- for this fan. I can't speak for everyone who watches the show, but I certainly felt many disturbances in the Force as season 7 got underway. It's been a bumpy ride, to say the least, and for me, it led to the writing of last week's 'Tough Love' laundry list of things I think the show needs to fix, address or otherwise improve.
So it comes as a relief to say that I liked 'Slash Fiction' quite a bit, and though it remains to be seen whether the show can fix all of its long-term and big-picture problems, this week's episode was double the fun of anything we've seen in the past month.
Actually, 'Slash Fiction' felt as though it was almost double the length of the usual 'Supernatural' episode -- mostly in a good way. There were lots of scenes and characters and new scenarios to chew on, and several moments to simply savor. We were promised a "back to basics" feel this year, and while I have many problems with the current regime's interpretation of what constitutes the "basics" or the heart of the show, there was indeed an old-school vibe to 'Slash Fiction.' It wasn't just that the second half echoed 'Jus in Bello,' it was the fact that the episode had momentum and stakes and characters (some of them new) that I enjoyed spending time with. I can't perfectly articulate why, but it just had a season 2 or 3 feel.
Now, if you think I've lost all my critical marbles and won't question anything about 'Slash Fiction,' simmer down. As I said, there's still that pesky big-picture stuff that may fall apart or continue to be problematic and inconsistent. I'll just get one of those critiques out of the way at the outset: The separation between Sam and Dean at the end of the episode was the definition of an anti-climax. I don't trust where that will go at all, based on past experience in this arena. The show will no doubt put the brothers back together very soon, as it has in the past. As many of us have said this season and last, the manufactured, repetitive conflict between the brothers is one of the show's weakest angles these days, so to have the concluding scene go to that dry well one more time felt lame to me, especially since the next phase of this been-there, done-that conflict won't be hard to predict.But the hour that came before it? There was a lot about it that I liked, moments big and small. Bobby even got his own damn story line -- and got to kiss a lady! What is the world coming to?
Again, let's get something out of the way: namely, the implausibility of Sheriff Jodie not only finding Bobby's new hiding place but hopping in her car and driving 17 hours to drop in on him. (Yes, I looked up the distance between Sioux Falls and Whitefish on Mapquest.) She did all that just to thank him for rescuing her several weeks ago? A phone call wouldn't have sufficed? Perhaps a muffin basket (one without body parts)? Just one of the problems that comes from killing off most of the show's recurring characters is that it now requires a really large storytelling stretch to find a way to bring in someone who can conveniently spill cleaning fluid on the floor while Bobby tortures a Leviathan in the basement.
But I was willing to wave a lot of those quibbles away because Jim Beaver and Kim Rhodes have an enjoyably easy chemistry together, and because Bobby got to do more than just be Lore Answer Man. Of course, him figuring out how to take down a Leviathan and relaying that information to the boys was Bobby serving a plot purpose, but his scenes with Chet and Jody were entertaining, interesting and even had flashes of black humor. Also, did I mention that Bobby got to kiss a woman? That might strain credulity even more than the Winchesters coming back from the dead again! Seriously, that Bobby-Jodie moment was actually sweet, and, as I said, Jim Beaver is so good that it's nice to see his character get a range of things to do in an episode. (Also nice? Someone acknowledging that Bobby's house burned down and that he deserves more out from life than cold food and regular infusions of Hunter's Helper. And I for one am glad that Bobby hasn't abandoned all hope -- as I noted last week , constant pessimism is one of the show's biggest stumbling blocks at the moment.)
One obvious thing that wasn't on my list of things the show needs to improve was the cast -- they're so good that it sets my teeth to grinding when they're not used to their fullest abilities. Hence my love for the scene in the non-Metallicar, which made great use of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles' comedic skills. There was so much to enjoy in that scene: Dean's look of hatred at the accursed plastic pony, the wail of little pony as it was tossed in the back seat, Dean's secret adoration of 'I'm All Out of Love,' which he sang with disturbingly intense enjoyment, and Sam's increasing discomfort at Dean's hidden love of 80's soft-rock. I could happily watch that scene a dozen times.As for the rest of the episode, there was a lot going on, and though I thought the overall pace and energy of the hour was enjoyably brisk, not every element worked. The "FBI agents" tracking Sam and Dean were especially weak (one of them had no on-camera presence at all, and the other looked 10 years old), and it wasn't a shock to discover that they were actually Leviathans. The fact that anyone can be a Leviathan kind of sucks the tension out of those reveals the more they're used.
Also, if there were two teams of Leviathans drawing out Sam and Dean, why weren't they coordinating activities? Granted, maybe they were and we just didn't see that, but something about the Leviathans' attempts to take down Sam and Dean seemed a little convoluted. In the main, however, I was willing to go along with the premise of the episode because it gave the actors a chance to play very different versions of the brothers.
What do the Leviathans actually want? That has yet to be explained (and I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing that we don't know yet). At least we did meet the Big Boss of the Big Bad: Mr. Dick Roman, who is so powerful that he views Crowley as a piddly nuisance who's not worth the effort it would take to kill him. Somebody think he's important, huh?
The thing is, if the Leviathan are as powerful as Mr. Roman indicates that they are, it'll be hard for the show to demonstrate why the Levs can't simply take out the boys at will. And for the season to have sustain the kind of energy that 'Slash Fiction' had, we'll obviously need to find out much more about what the Leviathans want and who they are. Mr. Roman as an especially douchey douche in an expensive suit isn't going to be enough, as Big Bads go. As I wrote last week, the stakes have to be personal for the boys, and that's what made 'Slash Fiction' work -- the fact that their own bodies had been hijacked to commit grievous crimes, and that could not stand.
'Slash Fiction' did allow for some meta-commentary on what Sam and Dean's ongoing problems and issues are, but I'm glad it didn't beat us over the head with that stuff (i.e., Dean's sainthood applications and Sam's "Satanvision" -- and the latter has not been in evidence in recent weeks, but apparently it's still around). As I've said before, the more the show tells us where the boys are at, rather than shows us through imaginative and creatively told stories, the more it begins to feel like a collection of storytelling shortcuts.But wisely, 'Slash Fiction' didn't overdo it in that department, and honestly, I'm just glad I looked forward to sitting down to write about the episode, which hasn't necessarily been the case in recent weeks.
It remains to be seen whether the rest of the season will demonstrate momentum, consistency and vision. But at this point, I'll take what I can get, and 'Slash Fiction' was a solidly entertaining hour.
A few final observations:
* I bet it won't be long before everyone in America will forget that Sam and Dean's faces were all over the media, even though their crimes were front-page news for days. I have to be honest, my prediction is that the show simply forgets the brothers' brush with national media exposure. And that isn't the end of the world, in all honestly -- it'd be too hard to tell stories if the brothers were being stopped by the cops every 20 minutes.
* Wasn't it Leviathans getting into the water supply that started this whole mess? So why dump the heads into bodies of water? We don't know if they can be revived that way, but why tempt fate?* I'm sure you caught all the 'Pulp Fiction' references, but if not, here's the ever-handy SuperWiki to the rescue! I don't say it enough, but I do love that site.
* So I compared the Leviathans to Cylons and soon enough the show has a guest actor from the cast of 'Battlestar Galactica'! I'm going to take the appearance of the great Michael Hogan, a.k.a. 'BSG's' legendary Saul Tigh, as a welcome shoutout to the Syfy show (and the frequently human-looking Cylons). 'BSG' is one of my all-time favorite shows, so it was great to see Hogan again.
* So how do Leviathans work, exactly? They all downloaded Cas' thoughts and memories when they were inside him, but they also get all the thoughts and memories of each new person they change into? Just want to be clear on how that works. If you have a different theory, let me know.
* Really, you can dismember a Leviathan head and it will somehow crawl its way back to the top of the body? No wonder they didn't show that because it's a cockamamie idea.
* The only thing we really know about the Leviathans' mindset is that they're very arrogant and that human goodness really makes them crabby. And what is their goal? Perhaps they mean to win Wimbledon!!
* We got to meet another new character in the form of Frank Devereaux, who seems like the kind of enjoyable crank we might meet again. He and his paranoia were entertaining, to the extent that, again, I could wave away a question. Which is: Where did the boys get the $ 5,000 they needed to pay him? Guess we'll never know.
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'Supernatural' airs 9PM ET Fridays on the CW.
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