Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #48 – “Sin City”

Posted on May 25, 2015 by lost_limey

A quick note by way of introduction may be required here. For quite some time now, certain members of the Richmond WriMos have been trying to persuade me to watch the CW show Supernatural. I have relented and am now embarking on watching Supernatural via the wonders of Netflix. This series of posts will simply be my first impressions, almost stream of consciousness style, presented in the form of the time elapsed in the episode and my thoughts expressed as bullet points. It’s effectively live tweeting the episodes except I don’t have to stick to 140 characters or fewer. So without further ado here’s my take on:

Season 3 Episode 04 – “Sin City”

00:51 – The previouslies focus a lot on Ol’ Yellow Eyes defeat at the end of last season, a bit on Ruby, and a bit on the Colt that killed Ol’ Yellow Eyes.
01:20 – We see a nun placing Bibles on church pews before some candles flicker and a priest appears to an ominous music sting. I’m calling the nun as our Inevitable Teaser Death of the episode.
02:06 – I’m immediately proven wrong when we see a guy named andy who has a back and forth dialog with the priest about God not being “with us” anymore. Andy ramps up his Inevitable Teaser Death chances by shooting himself in the head.
02:55 – Sam’s following up some leads of potential demonic activity in a small town in Ohio. One of those omens mentions a suicide in church, so I assume that’s what we saw in the trailer. Dean seems less keen to follow these leads, and Bobby is doing something to the Colt.
04:38 – Apparently some kind of pall came about on this town roughly two months ago, which is about when the Devil’s Gate got opened. That apparently brought more lying, cheating & stealing to the area, to the point I assume that it was possessed by Eddie Guerrero.
04:50 – Apparently the guy who went psycho in the hobby shop and killed some folks was named Tony Perkins. Cute, show. very cute.
05:58 – The boys just bumped into a slightly skeevy guy named Richie, who Dean knows, presumably from an older hunt. He’s accompanied by a blond in a very short skirt who he claims is a stepsister, but I reckon is someone Richie’s paying by the hour for services rendered in a hotel room.
07:30 – Richie tips the brothers off to a potential third possessed, seeing how the first couple of candidates are dead and therefore hard to tell if they were possessed or just suffering from late onset jerk disorder (the official disease of all internet forums). He owns a bar, so that’s where we go.
08:01 – For an alleged boarded up rust belt town, the bar is giving off very much a beach bar vibe, possibly due to the rather prominent scantily clad female clientele. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through The Jungle” provides an appropriately sleazy soundtrack.
09:24 – Dean comments on the derriere of one of the barmaids, who apparently has an assignation with Richie later, and is busted by the priest, who is there because “you go where the flock is.” Free drinks probably don’t hurt any either.
10:11 – The general devil-may-care attitude of the bar drops a couple of notches after a disheveled guy named Reggie shoots another guy for sleeping with Reggie’s wife. Reggie goes to shoot himself but is tackled by Dean before he can. Sam also sprinkles some holy water on him, but there’s nothing demonic here.
11:34 – Richie and the bartender apparently snuck out while the cops were taking care of Reggie’s altercation.
12:15 – The bartender knows that Richie is a hunter. Probably because she just flashed the black eyes of the demon possessed. I’m pretty sure Richie is a dead, priapic, man walking.
12:21 – Yup. Dead by neck snap.
13:27 – Bobby seems to have restored the Colt to functionality as a firearm, even if it doesn’t have it’s demon-killing abilities anymore. He has a visitor who comments on the Colt’s look – Ruby.
14:01 – Ruby reveals her demonic nature to Bobby, who eventually responds by shooting her with the Colt. thus confirming that it doesn’t have those demon-killing abilities.
14:21 – Ruby offers to help Bobby out with the gun, which wasn’t the response I expected. Her grousing about the bullet hole in her shirt, that I was expecting.
15:31 – The woman hitting on Dean in the bar turns out to be a prostitute, but at least mildly pragmatic, offering him a 50% discount on account of him tackling Reggie.
16:17 – Instead, Dean leaves with the bartender, who he doesn’t know is a demon. Not going to end well…
16:28 – i finally figure out where I recognize the bar owner from. He’s General Hammond from Stargate SG-1 (which I’ve never watched outside of SFDebris reviews)
17:21 – Based on the holy water sprinkling neither Bar Owner Hammond nor his bodyguard are demons, just corrupt hicks.
18:04 – Bartender has lured Dean into her basement of killing Richie.
18:38 – Apparently Dean has been there before thanks to tracking the GPS in Richie’s cell phone (was that a thing back in 2007 when this episode aired?) and gave Richie a proper burial. I guess this means that Dean does know that the bar tender is at least partially demonic.
18:45 – Oh, he definitely does, he hid a devil’s trap under her basement rug, and now she’s stuck there. I assume an exorcism is coming up real soon.
19:43 – The exorcism is thwarted as the bartender has some serious wind summoning powers and rips the books incantation pages apart and traps Dean in the basement with her.
20:39 – I’m honestly surprised that Dean hasn’t committed a basic exorcism incantation to memory. It seems like something his crazy-prepared Daddy would have drilled into him. Though I guess Sam is more the scholar and more likely to know the Latin.
21:02 – Apparently the Winchester boys are famous in the demon community. Not Lohan famous but still…
22:17 – The male bartender needs to be bribed to tell Sam where Dean went. We also get the name of the female bartender demon – Casey.
23:43 – Interestingly, Casey didn’t directly kill anyone in town other than Richie, just introduced Bar Owner Hammond to the idea of making money from some vice based businesses. I guess she’s more of a corrupter type of demon.
25:32 – While Sam is across town in Casey’s apartment discovering sulfur and other such evidence of demonic presence, Dean & Casey are having a theological debate in the basement of dead Richie. Casey is naturally siding against God and humans, pointing out that the body counts that humans have amassed via war and genocide in the last century alone simply astounds demons.
26:26 – Sam calls Bobby to let him now that things stand at Found: Sulfur. Lost: Dean. sam then wanders over to chat with the priest.
26:49 – Interesting mythological quirk here, some demons don’t lie because they believe in a higher power, Lucifer who’s their equivalent of God, and not just a mere devil/adversary as he is in human Scripture. I guess the implication is that Casey’s a believer and thus being truthful.
27:17 – Lucifer also seems to be missing, so I guess he’s a demon god in absentia. I imagine that he’ll be a later season villain (or at least antagonist) on this show. Season three just seems too early to bring in the Fallen Light Bringer.
27:32 – Not sure why, but I love that the demon’s go to example of evil humanity is Dick Cheney of all people.
29:14 – Sam’s attempt to pump the priest for information about potential places Casey might be has backfired somewhat as the priest wants to come with him to help. I figured that meant the priest was getting a one way ticket to murdertown, but then he flashed the black eyes of demonic possession at the camera and I realized that Sam is so, so screwed.
29:45 – Dean’s not entirely happy to be described as “likable” by a demon. He doesn’t seem entirely unhappy either, mind you…
31:18 – Having the priest demon refer to Sam as his “brother’s keeper” feels like the kind of crashingly obvious symbolism that this show’s usually a bit better than. I mean the show hasn’t ever really trafficked in subtlety, but it’s not often that ham-handed.
31:55 – Dean asks Casey a fairly penetrating question, to whit, what was the plan after the Devil’s Gate opened.
32:09 – And as part of her answer, we learn that Ol’ Yellow Eyes was in fact Azazel. If my dim religious studies memories don’t fail me, that’s a name associated with scapegoat rituals and may possibly be a fallen angel. The show treats him rather differently from that interpretation.
32:27 – Apparently, the creature that was supposed to be Ol’ Yellow Eye’s second-in-command and lead the army of demons was Mr. Sam Winchester. That didn’t go quite as Ol’ Yellow Eyes had planned, did it?
32:49 – Casey points out the downside of Sam not leading a demonic army from the pits of Hell: “Now you’ve got chaos, a war without a front, hundreds of demons all jockeying for power, all fighting for the crown. Most of them gunning for your brother.”
33:51 – Sam and the priest have arrived on the scene and found out that Dean & Casey are in the caved in basement. Unfortunately for Sam, the priest just revealed his demonic nature.
33:55 – Luckily Bobby just showed up and shot at (but missed) the priest. Enough of a distraction for Sam to run…
34:05 – Unfortunately the priest just uses his demon mojo to fling sam at the Impala and starts busting down the door to the basement.
34:25 – Bobby hands Sam the Colt and tells him to go. Ruby appears and echoes Bobby’s sentiment.
35:06 – The priest breaks the Devil’s Trap and embraces Casey. Apparently these particular demons are a couple.
35:36 – Casey asks the priest not to kill Dean. Before we find out if he obeys, Sam shoots him from offscreen, presumably with the Colt.
35:48 – Sam then shoots Casey with the Colt also. Apparently whatever Ruby did to help Bobby repair the Colt worked as it’s back to it’s demon-killing ways. Casey and the priest are dead, as are the demons that inhabited them.
36:39 – Dean’s not sure that killing the two demons has made much of a difference as the town is still pretty much it’s same corrupt self.
37:19 – Dean’s also wondering if Sam didn’t come back as “100% pure Sam,” just like Ol’ Yellow Eyes implied before Dean shot him. Bobby’s verdict: “Demon’s lie.”
38:32 – Ruby wants to celebrate with Sam over killing two demons. Sam’s not really down with that as he also killed two humans in the process.
39:51 – Ruby apparently wants some quid pro quo for helping out with the Dean demon situation. The kind of quid pro quo that involves the phrase “collateral damage.” I really am trying to figure out what her agenda is. Though I do like her self description as “That little fallen angel on [Sam’s] shoulder.”

I liked this one a lot. It fed into the unleashed demons plot, teased some more stuff with Ruby and exposed some of the banality of evil that the brothers are going to have to deal with. We also got some very interesting mythological information about Lucifer, a clearer idea of what Sam’s role in Ol’ Yellow Eyes’ plan was going to be. Granted, I think the audience knew most of that already, even if Dean perhaps didn’t. We also got Ol’ Yellow Eyes real name, which feels like it should really be a bigger deal of a revelation than it was.

Bobby also once again proved to be a useful mentor/backup figure for the boys which makes me think that he probably won’t see out the end of the season as death is an occupational hazard for mentor figures, something which Daddy winchester proved back in season one, and the burning of the road house and Ash reinforced in season two. It’s also nice to see that the brothers have access to a demon killing weapon again with the rejuvenated Colt. Of course, now that their target isn’t the singular Azazel, they don’t need a numeric limitation for plot contrivance purposes.

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #47 – “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Posted on May 24, 2015 by lost_limey

Season 3 Episode 03 – “Bad Day at Black Rock”

00:30 – The previouslies focus on Dean’s demonic deal, the mysterious blond demon woman and then throw a slight curveball, by featuring Gordon Walker, the Hunter with a grudge against Sam who was last seen getting arrested.
01:38 – The episode opens with Gordon receiving a visitor in prison, who tells him that the Devil’s Gate has been opened. Since this is backstory related, I don’t think we’re getting an Inevitable Teaser Death. Seeing as this is likely the second Death-less teaser in three episodes, they’re becoming more Evitable Teaser Deaths…
02:28 – Gordon’s visitor, who goes by the rather unlikely sobriquet of “Kubrick” says that sam checks out as just a Hunter. Gordon isn’t convinced Sam is even human…
02:49 – Gordon: “Sam Winchester must die.” Technically Gordon, he already did, so your work here is done.
03:09 – Looks like Sam is recounting his little tete a tete with the mystery blond demon to Dean. Apparently, she has a name (Ruby), which means I won’t have to refer to her as mystery blond demon lady after this bullet point is done. Dean wants to know why Sam didn’t send Ruby back to Hell.
03:34 – Dean points out that Ruby was probably lying about being able to help with Dean’s crossroads demon deal. Though he phrases it in the slashiest possible manner: “She knows what your weakness is, it’s me.” Also, it looks like Sam didn’t tell Dean about all of Mommy Winchester’s friends getting deadified.
04:20 – The boys argument about Ruby is interrupted by a cell phone ringing. It’s Daddy Winchester’s cell.
05:02 – Looks like someone broke into one of Daddy Winchester’s storage containers that was so secret even the boys didn’t know it existed.
05:39 – Apparently Kubrick has hunted with Gordon on a fairly regular basis in the past.
06:53 – To my utter lack of surprise, Daddy Winchester’s storage container has a Devil’s Trap drawn on the floor and bloodstains abound. It looks like how I’d imagine a Hunter’s cache to look.
07:17 – It was also booby trapped such that one of the two people who broke in got a shotgun blast.
08:14 – Daddy’s mementoes for his boys: Sam’s 1995 soccer trophy and the first sawn-off shotgun Dean made as a sixth-grader.
08:38 – Whoever broke in didn’t steal any of the guns, grenades or land mines that were stored here. Clearly they had a specific target in mind.
09:11 – So this is a repository of cursed stuff that Daddy had discovered whilst hunting, kept in sealed “curse boxes” to stop the bad mojo escaping. I assume that whoever stole one is going to open it, else there wouldn’t be much of an episode.
10:07 – The box is opened slowly and semi-reverentially to reveal… a rabbit’s foot.
10:57 – After the robber who got shot (Wayne) touches the rabbit foot, their neighbor visits. Apparently he’s some kind of army veteran medic and is going to be able to fix up Wayne’s shotgun wound. That seems like a remarkably lucky coincidence.
11:46 – Wayne also getting very, very lucky at cards in the game he’s playing against his co-robber.
12:35 – Dean & Sam confronting the robbers. Dean is just the tiniest bit pissed off that they opened the box. I’d say on a scale of 1 to Pandora he’s at “Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en.”
12:51 – Due to Wayne’s hilarious luck based abilities right now, he knocked Dean’s gun out of Dean’s hands, where thanks to some contrived ricochets the bullet also disarms Sam. Looks like we officially have ourselves a comedy episode.
13:19 – The boys are taken down with incredible, slapstick, ease. Though Sam just grabbed the rabbit’s foot, so I imagine a comeback is due.
14:21 – Yeah. The robbers get defeated by the mystical power of pratfalls, and the brothers Winchester promptly leave with the rabbit’s foot.
15:13 – Dean tests how lucky Sam is by buying a bunch of scratch tickets. The first one is a $1,200 winner…
16:28 – Wayne’s luck has definitely taken a turn for the worse as he just slipped an impaled himself in the throat on a barbecue fork. That’s probably not how he imagined bowing out of this mortal coil.
17:32 – Bobby exposits exactly how the rabbit’s foot curse works. “You touch it, you own it. You own it, sure, you get a run of good luck to beat the Devil. But, you lose it, that luck turns. It turns so bad that you’re dead inside a week.” and of course, everybody loses it sooner or later.
17:53 – Those scratch tickets are now up to $15,000 in winnings.
18:18 – The boys just won free food for a year due to being the one millionth guest of this diner chain. Hee!
20:07 – Sam just spilled his coffee and knocked a whole lot of stuff over in reaction. I’m fairly sure the attractive waitress that just refilled his coffee stole the rabbit’s foot and was probably the “she” our robbers were supposed to be stealing for.
20:22 – Yep, she took it.
21:16 – Sam’s luck is now so bad that Kubrick and his partner see the picture of Sam & Dean on the diner chain’s website and can now start to track them down. It’s a completely implausibly contrived coincidence, and as such absolutely wonderful in the context of this episode.
23:39 – Seems Kubrick is a bit more of a “Jesus freak” than your run-of-the-mill Hunters.
23:54 – Bobby’s found a way to cleanse the rabbit’s foot curse, which would have been great if Sam hadn’t already lost the thing…
24:28 – The woman’s real name is Bela Talbot, but she uses “Lugosi” as an alias. That’s kind of cute and kind of dumb.
25:38 – Dean’s dumping Sam in the motel so that his current run of bad luck doesn’t end up getting everybody killed. It should be noted that Kubrick’s RV is in the parking lot to said motel.
27:02 – Bela’s British (Yay!), and has been careful not to touch the rabbit’s foot directly. It looks like she’s been handling it with tongs or through cloth. I guess she doesn’t want to be cursed.
27:18 – Judging by the size of Bela’s Queens apartment, she must be rolling in some serious cash.
28:09 – Meanwhile, in Sam’s motel of boredom, smoke is belching out of the air conditioning unit. Perhaps unwisely, he approaches it.
28:54 – Now Sam’s jacket is on fire… Poor guy can not catch a break right now.
29:05 – Kubrick just showed up outside his window to prove that point.
29:34 – Meanwhile, Dean & Bela are having a friendly stand off at gun point.
30:51 – Sam meets Kubrick, rolls his eyes when he finds out that Gordon sent Kubrick, and then really rolls them when Kubrick decides that he’s on a mission from God instead.
31:43 – Bela has a pretty cold read on Hunters after Dean points out the lack of honor in her thievery. “A bunch of obsessed, revenge-driven sociopaths trying to save a world that can’t be saved?” She’s not an optimistic kind of gal…
32:05 – Dean managed to steal the rabbit’s foot for himself while Bela monologued. So right now he should be preternaturally lucky. Bela fires her gun at him. I can’t imagine that it’ll go well.
32:16 – It doesn’t. Ricochets break a lot of her stuff and wound her Siamese cat.
33:58 – Kubrick seems to think that all the coincidences that brought him to Sam are signs from God that it’s destiny to kill Sam.
34:01 – Dean disagrees whilst cocking his gun.
34:28 – Thanks to his rabbit luck, Dean disables Kubrick’s gun by throwing a pen at it. This is after Dean has put his own gun down.
35:04 – The boys are in a cemetery preparing to dispel the rabbit’s foot curse. Dean is delaying things while he scratches off more tickets…
35:22 – The delay allows a gun-toting Bela to interrupt.
35:46 – While Dean claims that Bela won’t shoot people and can’t shoot him, she shoots Sam in the shoulder, rather forestalling Dean’s line of enquiry.
36:34 – Dean goes to put the rabbit’s foot on the ground and then throws it to Bela at the last minute. She reflexively catches it meaning that she’s both extraordinarily temporarily lucky and also cursed.
36:55 – The foot is destroyed and the brothers are rather unsympathetic to Bela’s situation with her “fairly psychotic” buyer.
38:11 – Bela did steal all the winning scratch tickets, $46,000 worth. Much to Dean’s chagrin.
38:53 – Kubrick visits Gordon in jail, and it’s clear that even Gordon thinks the dude is crazy. Not that’s he going to stop using him to get free and kill Sam though.

A fun, if tonally uneven comedy episode. After all a fanatic mission from God type hunter doesn’t integrate well with entertainingly shot scenes of slapstick comedy representing good and bad luck. Bela seems like an interesting idea, though I’m sure I’ve seen the relic thief on the fringes of the supernatural world character type somewhere before. Likely Buffy or Angel as it seems like a positively Whedonesque idea. This was a trifle, in that it was a fun and light way to pass an hour. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #46 – “The Kids Are Alright”

Posted on May 24, 2015 by lost_limey

Season 3 Episode 02 – “The Kids Are Alright”

00:45 – A lot of focus on the deal Dean made with the Crossroads demon and a bit on the mysterious blond from last episode in the previouslies.
01:36 – We see a father bring his daughter home to her mother in the teaser. I assume one of them to be the Inevitable Teaser Death. As the daughter is talking about her dislike of the dad, I assume that daddy’s gonna die and the little kid is evil. Mostly because kids are evil. (Except mine, they’re awesome…)
02:09 – Dad appears to be making a rocking horse with a power saw. I think I know how he’s going to bite it, and it ain’t pretty.
03:16 -The power saw just came back on of its own volition after Daddy shut it off. He’s for the chop isn’t he?
03:36 – Yes, in an extremely bloody and surprisingly graphic for network TV fashion.
04:00 – Sam’s explicitly ignoring Dean’s requests not to figure out a way around the Crossroads demon deal and researching stuff that includes a demon dispelling ritual of some kind.
04:08 – Sam’s cover up for being on the phone with Bobby about the research. “I was ordering a pizza.” Perhaps it would have been mildly convincing if he wasn’t in a diner.
04: 55 – Dean wants to go investigate the power saw death, not because it might be a case for them, but because it’s near an ex-girlfriend he wants to catch up with.
05:27 – Dean using a lot of “dying wishes” as part of the whole demonic deal thing. Sure that won’t backfire.
06:44 – The ex (her name is Lisa) recognizes Dean after close to nine years. She clearly has a better memory than i do.
07:21 – It’s Lisa’s son’s birthday party. The kid looks to be about eight, and is also utterly ecstatic to get an AC/DC CD as a birthday present. I’m pretty sure we can see where this might be going. Sometimes you forget this is a CW show until soap opera bits like that crop up.
07:59 – Kid is chomping down on a big ol’ sandwich and has a classic car racing themed birthday cake. He’s about four nanoseconds from doing a “Bitch.” “Jerk.” exchange at this point, right?
08:19 – Two of the ladies at the party are nakedly lusting after Dean. I imagine Ackles enjoyed that script element.
09:05 – Kid describes party as “so freaking sweet.” Dean totally has a mini-me. I assume because they’re laying it on this thick that the kid is not Dean’s son. I’ve mentally renamed Lisa “Billie Jean” to reflect this.
09:15 – Kid: “It’s hot chick city out there!”
10:01 – The daughter from the trailer is a guest at the birthday party, and her mother thinks that there’s something wrong with her.
10:35 – Really wrong, to the point that the mother says: “I’m not sure that is my daughter.” Lisa puts it down to grief over the dad’s power saw death.
11:17 – Dean is the worst at trying to nonchalantly figure out if he’s the father.
12:08 – The power saw is only the latest in a rash of neighborhood “bad luck” incidents. Interesting…
12:26 – Mysterious blond from the last episode just came into the diner and sat across from Sam. Curiouser and curiouser. (I honestly didn’t think we’d see her again this soon into the season)
12:58 – Sam asks mystery blond about the demon-killing knife she had. She calls him a damsel in distress.
13:27 – Whoa. She’s aware of Ol’ Yellow Eyes and Sam’s relationship to him, or as she puts it: Generation of psychic kids, Yellow-Eyed Demon rounds you up, celebrity death match ensues. You’re the sole survivor.” I definitely want to know what the heck her deal is. I have to imagine she’s more than a common Hunter as I doubt that most of that stuff is common knowledge within the community.
13:51 – Sam exposits that he hasn’t been getting any visions since Ol’ Yellow Eyes died. Which I think makes sense if they were demon-granted powers.
14:24 – Mystery blond apparently knows that something has been going on with Mommy Winchester’s friends and gives Sam her number to call when he figures out what that something is. Why am I starting to suspect that mysterious blond semi-ally is going to turn out to be this season’s new Big Bad?
14:33 – Dean confirms what mystery blond told Sam: “There’s a job in town.”
15:00 The job has mostly manifested as a set of freak accidents happening to people.
15:34 – Daughter from the teaser is some kind of monster, as her skin goes all grey and she appears to be absorbing some kind of energy from the mother.
16:41 – Sam poses as an insurance agent to find out about one of the other freak accidents, a father fatally falling off an external ladder, with the young daughter being the only one present. I’m thinking that the kids are evil in this one. Also, Jared Padalecki is rocking the hell out of that suit.
17:03 – The mother has a curious red lesion on the back of her neck. Almost looks like it’s had a squid tentacle attached to it.
17:45 – Teaser mom has a matching lesion on her neck.
18:39 – The realtor, who is one of the women lusting after Dean at the party pays a visit and is trying the hard sell on a recently bereaved widow in regards to the house which seems like a real dick move. Or whatever the female equivalent of “dick move” is.
20:39 – Dean’s having a little chat with Lisa’s kid (Ben). It’s hilarious awkward and culminates with Ben attempting to get his own back on a bully.
21:08 – Two swift knees to the bully’s nards and Ben got his game back. He’s also gotten into trouble with his mom. Real trouble, because she drops the full name bomb: “Benjamin Isaac Braeden…”
22:43 – Teaser mom keeps seeing her daughter as some type of monster in any mirrored surface. She’s freaking out as teaser daughter (Katie) is incredibly creepy even when not monstrous.
23:46 – That said, strapping her in a car and attempting to drown her in a lake seems excessive.
24:56 – Katie being safe at home, waterlogged but apparently unharmed and still demanding ice cream suddenly makes it seem not excessive enough. What the heck is going on with these kids?
25:19 – Sam’s researching Changelings, and Dean’s convinced that there’s something wrong with the kids in town. I wonder if those are related phenomena?
25:43 – All the creepy kids are in fact changelings who feed on the mothers and can only be destroyed by fire. I’m guessing the show probably won’t show a lot of burning children though, can’t imagine that would meet with network approval.
27:28 – Dean is trying to get Ben out of town so that he’s not a changeling victim, but judging by Ben’s attitude towards Dean, that ship has sailed. Fortunately, Sam’s already mentioned that the real kids aren’t killed by the changelings straight away, but stashed somewhere…
28:23 – The weird red markings we’ve been seeing at the changeling victim’s house, which I took to be bloodstains look like some kind of curiously red dirt.
29:02 – Dean traces the red dirt to a house the realtor has on the market which has a big old pile of red dirt next to the “For Sale” sign.
30:26 – The actual kids are being kept in cages on the property.
31:05 – And it looks like the “realtor” is an adult Changeling who’s behind all this.
31:56, Dean’s smashing cages and rescuing the kids.
32:51 – Lisa’s worked out that the “Ben” she’s with isn’t her son. Sam & Dean have worked out that the Changelings keep the kids alive so that the mother changeling can feed upon them.
33:52 – Mommy Changeling is kicking the brothers Winchester’s collective rears in this fight. Sam can’t seem to get his flamethrower on. Luckily, it seems like Dean got the kids out already.
34:33 – Mommy changeling finally gets blasted with an enormous gout of flame, courtesy of Sam.
34:39 – The other changelings also go up in flames and incinerate as the mother changeling burns. Which means that the mothers see “Ben” & “Katie” incinerated. Us viewers are lucky enough just to see reflected flames with no detail. Has to lead to some hefty therapy for the parents who just saw what looked like their kids burning to death though, right?
35:47 – Dean returns Ben to Lisa. And explains both Changelings and his job as a Hunter to her between camera cuts.
36:01 – Lisa confirms that Ben isn’t Dean’s kid, due to a blood test when Ben was a baby.
37:11 – But she also points out that Ben would be dead if it wasn’t for Dean.
38:40, Sam’s making calls about friends of Mommy Winchester, I assume he’s following up on Mystery blond’s advice from back at 14:24
39:00 – Common theme seems to be that they’re all dead.
39:35 – Mystery blond seems certain that it was Ol’ Yellow Eyes behind this particular mass outbreak of death. And he seemed so goshdarned friendly too.
39:55 – Sam to the mystery blond: “Just tell me who you are.” I concur. She claims it doesn’t matter.
40:09 – Mystery blond is a demon, she’s got the black eyes. Sam immediately goes to grab the holy water.
41:18 – Mystery blond demon wants to help Sam find out what Ol’ Yellow Eyes really wanted with Sam, and that if he lets her, she can help Sam save Dean from his demonic deal.

While this episode was definitely lower stakes than the previous one, and had no real connection to the unleashed hellish demons, it felt like a meatier episode. I think a lot of that was that the story beats were better crafted and paced out, with the obvious something “off” about the children from the get go. And of course, we got a lot more on the mysterious blond demon person, and I’m a sucker for anything that ties into a larger mythology arc, which she clearly does, even though it’s not exactly clear at this juncture how.

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #45 – “The Magnificent Seven”

Posted on May 24, 2015 by lost_limey

Season 3 Episode 01 – “The Magnificent Seven”

00:01 – Appropriately enough for a new season, we open with a “The Road So Far” montage. This one is soundtracked by AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bell’s.”
03:52 – We start the episode proper with a fairly nebbish looking guy, who I incorrectly assumed to be the Inevitable Teaser Death, putting out the trash, listening to a dog bark, and getting possessed by one of the demons unleashed from the Devil’s Gate at the end of last season.
04:12 – A large number of the black demon cloud essence blot out the skies around nebbish teaser guy as the show’s title card fades in.
04:33 – Sam’s reading Faust, probably looking for ways to get his brother out of the deal Dean made with the Crossroads Demon to resurrect Sam.
05:08 – Bobby basically tells Sam that he’s not going to find an answer to that mystery in a book. Sam & Bobby seem extremely cheerful considering that they saw the vast demonic armies of Hell unleashed on Earth (well, Wyoming, which as Garfield has proven, doesn’t exist) a week ago.
05:32 – Sam walks in on Dean having some kind of sexual escapade to pass on news that Bobby finally found something. The younger Winchester sibling is just as traumatized as you might expect from this imagery. (Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” was a particularly apposite music cue, I thought.)
06:28 – Apparently there’s been five days since the demon clouds from the Devil’s Gate appeared above seventeen cities with absolutely no signs or omens. It feels like Buffy’s halloween, the one day when the forces of darkness stayed home in bed.
07:14 – I kind of like Dean’s excuse for a bacon cheeseburger breakfast: “Sold my soul. Got a year to live. Ain’t sweating the cholesterol.”
08:28 – The boys hear the sound of a woman screaming coming from the next room. They don’t react with much urgency. I’m distracted by the fact that Sam’s hair is no longer terrible, depriving me of one of my favorite running threads in these blogs.
08:43 – We’re presented with a family of rotting, fly-covered corpses who apparently just sat there watching Dallas re-runs TV and decomposing.
09:38 – Dean detects some kind of presence on the front porch and goes exploring.
10:01 – The presence turns out to be people that Bobby recognizes well enough to know their names: Isaac & Tamara. I assume that they’re Hunters following the same signs that led Bobby & the boys here.
10:44 – Isaac & Tamara are Hunters. They’re also married. So, naturally, I assume one of them is going to be dead before the end of the episode. They’re also throwing in some exposition about some kind of Peruvian holy wood that’s toxic to demons. I’m sure that’ll come up again.
11:31 – The family from 08:43 apparently died of dehydration and starvation despite having a fully stocked kitchen just a few feet away. That’s certainly a very bizarre modus operandi for whatever demon or entity attacked them. Seems rather more subtle than this show generally goes in for.
11:49 – Isaac & Tamara don’t want to work with Sam & Dean, or as Isaac puts it: “We’re not teaming with the damn fools who let the Devil’s Gate get open in the first place.” Isaac apparently works in the burn unit when he’s not on the hunt.
12:57 – We get a shot of a random blonde woman with ominous music stings watching the house where Dean, Sam & Bobby are.
12:58 – And we finally see possessed guy from the teaser again. I think a nine minute interval might be a record for a non corpse showing up after appearing in the teaser. (Granted “non-corpse” is a pretty huge qualifier in this show.)
13:55 – Nebbish teaser guy uses some kind of wacky mojo influence to make two women fight over a pair of allegedly nice green high-heeled shoes. I’m rolling my eyes at both the “women be shopping” stereotype and the fact that the shoes really ain’t all that.
14:06 – Though the beating to someone to death over the shoes was a little bit more grisly than I expected.
16:10 – Same random blonde woman from earlier (12:57) seems to be following Sam around for some reason.
16:22 – But she disappears into the ether when Sam turns around. So, I guess she’s probably a spirit of some kind. She hasn’t interacted with any of the deaths directly though. I wonder if she’s some kind of emotion enhancer/manipulator, but that might just be because I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately.
16:56 – Nebbish trailer guy is named Walter Rosen.
17:46 – And Isaac & Tamara have trailed him to this bar, which kind of blows apart Bobby’s eminently sensible “use caution” plan.
18:37 – Isaac & Tamara pull the Han & Leia “I love you.” “I know.” exchange. One of them is definitely gonna be dead.
19:04 – Turns out that the bartender doesn’t like Hunters in his bar. Probably due to him (and all of the other customers) being demonically possessed.
19:55 – One of the demons forces, via some kind of hypnosis, Isaac to start chugging bleach. So it looks like he’s going to be the dead one of the formerly happy couple.
20:24 – Before Tamara can be forced to do something equally as unpleasant as Isaac’s bleach-drinking, a car (not the Impala) bursts through the door of the bar.
20:43 – Bobby, Dean and Sam leap out the car and start throwing holy water around at the various demons as they drag Tamara kicking and screaming out of there, leaving Isaac’s dead body behind. It’s an incredibly badass scene, and acts as a badly-needed adrenaline shot in an episode that had been dragging up until now.
21:56 – Turns out that there are seven demons that they’re up against, and that they are anthropomorphic personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins. That explains the Magnificent Seven of the episode title. Based on what we’ve seen so far, whoever killed the family via starvation earlier was probably Sloth. Walter is likely possessed by Envy, seeing as how jealousy about shoes after exposure to Walter led to a murder earlier. I assume that Gluttony was probably the demon that forced Isaac to down an entire bottle of bleach, but there’s wiggle room for all three. This also leaves the random blonde woman that’s been following Sam unaccounted for. She could be Lust, but I think that’s the female demon that said she wanted to do a thousand depraved things to Tamara right before Isaac got his bleach on.
21:59 – Dean reacts with exactly the same way I did, doing a bad Brad Pitt “what’s in the box?” impression.
22:58 – Bobby justifiably gives Tamara both barrels about going in half-cocked and losing Isaac’s life in teh process. Tamara doesn’t take it that well.
24:16 – Walter/Envy gets all Biblical on us: “Call me Legion, for we are many.” in reference to the large numbers of Demon’s that Sam & Dean let out of the Devil’s gate.
25:35 – Envy: “We’re not sins, man. We’re natural, human instinct.” Demonic entity or not, he’s got a point. And using Dean’s gluttony & lust as well as Tamara’s wrath as examples makes it very hard to shout him down.
26:09 – Envy is confident that the other sins will be coming for him. Dean says it won’t matter.
26:38 – ..and to prove that point, Tamara exorcizes him with the most gleeful look I’ve ever seen plastered across her face.
27:13 – Sam & Bobby shout down Dean’s apparent death wish/martyr complex and point out that if they’re going down vs the six Sins still at large, they’re going down together.
27:34 – Walter didn’t survive Tamara’s exorcism of Envy. Since it was off-screen, I’m not sure that she tried very hard to ensure otherwise…
28:42 – We see Isaac screaming for Tamara. He’s clearly in a lot of pain.
29:19 – Bobby points out that Isaac is almost certainly one of the Sins who is possessing Isaac’s corpse.
29:57 – Seems that it was the death of their daughter that led to Isaac & Tamara embracing the Hunter lifestyle. Based on the taunting that seems designed to drive Tamara to anger, I’m assuming that Wrath is the Sin that’s possessing Isaac.
30:15 – It backfires on Wrath, as it leads to Tamara staking him with the holy wood that they mentioned a lot earlier on in the episode, which is described as toxic to demons, paralyzing them. That takes Wrath out of the field, only five Sins left to go…
30:38 – Another demon wanders under Bobby’s Devil’s Trap and gets stuck that way. Bobby calls this one “fat, drunk & stupid.” As Gluttony was a different guy in the bleach-drinking scene, I have to assume that makes this one Sloth. Three down. Four to go…
30:56 – Bobby exorcizes Sloth while Dean is confronted by Lust. To no one’s surprise, Dean gives in to his own libido almost immediately. I have to assume it’s a trick, but you never really know with Dean…
31:51 – Unidentified Demon: “Here’s Johnny!” in full on Nicholson mode. A little bit later he says of the Devil’s Trap: “You think that’d stop me?” Sam: “Let me guess, you’re Pride.” Top marks for deduction there. Pride then does some kind of seismic thing that cracks and neuters the Devil’s Trap.
32:01 – Apparently, Sam has reputation as a prodigy among the Sins. Presumable because he was the favored tool of the late and unlamented Ol’ Yellow Eyes.
32:37 – Dean effectively waterboards Lust in a bathtub full of holy water. A sentence that I think could only possibly to this show even if it wasn’t Dean’s name at the start. I imagine that immobilizes her. So now we only have three Sins left to deal with. Possibly two, because Pride seems to enjoy monologuing to Sam rather than actually doing anything.
33:02 – Mysterious blond lady who’s been stalking Sam (and who needs a shorter name to save my typing fingers) comes charging in, slits Pride’s throat with a knife. The knife appears to have some kind of magic going on as it definitely kills Pride. Two Sins remain.
33:13 – She also kills Greed by stabbing her with the same knife. Just one Sin left active, Gluttony.
33:19 – Mark it zero! Glutton also gets the stabbity stab and the glowy death effects. Though it looks like sam gave mystery blond more of an assist with this one.
33:31 – Sam asks the blond: “Who the Hell are you?” I, of course, answer “I’m Batman.”
33:32 – She answers with: “I’m the girl who just saved your ass.” Which, while true, isn’t all that helpful or informative.
33:40 – She seems to know who Sam is though.
34:41 – After exorcizing, it seems the humans possessed by Lust & Sloth will survive, while the other ones got the salt and burn the bones treatment.
35:04 – Sam & Dean raise the two biggest questions I have: “Who’s that girl?” and “What kind of a knife can kill demons?” At this point, I’m assuming that first question will be part of what drives the narrative of this third season, along with the Winchester’s ongoing quest to reeturn teh demons they unleashed back into Hell.
35:40 – Tamara departs with a mutual “be careful” from Bobby. Pity, she seems like she’d have been an interesting character to have stick around, plus a non-white heroic character wouldn’t hurt this show any.
36:41 – Especially as she apparently had some contacts in Louisiana that might be able to help out with Dean’s deal with the Crossroads demon.
37:33 – Sam calls out Dean about the latter’s apparent death wish when it comes to the whole demonic deal thing. Dean explains that any attempt to back out of the terms of the deal returns Sam to being dead.
38:06 – Sam shoots back by pointing out the hypocrisy of Dean’s actions based around how Dean felt when Daddy Winchester made the deal for Dean’s soul. Sam calls Dean’s actions selfish. Dean actually agrees. And then says he feels entitled to a bit of selfishness and wants to spend his last year killing some evil sons of bitches and raising Hell.

Season three of Supernatural gets off to a surprisingly slow start, considering how significantly the season two finale raised the stakes with a veritable army of demons unleashed. Given that set up, it felt like this episode spent forever in wheel spinning mode and really didn’t get going until the scene in the bar a good twenty minutes in.

After that scene though, things got really good in a hurry. I was impressed by the direction and suspense of the action, and the extremely high stakes that going against the actual Seven Deadly Sins introduced. Though I do feel like it was a mistake to have them all so soundly defeated in a single episode like this. After all they seem like a good candidate for at least a small story arc, and it would help give the show direction for the first third of the season, as right now, I don’t know where it’s really going beyond the ever present background notes of Dean’s damnation of a demonic deal and the unleashed hordes of Hell needing to be returned to the pit from whence they came. I guess these seem rather more nebulous than the initial season one goal of “Find Daddy Winchester” and the season two goal of hunting down Ol’ Yellow Eyes and avenging Daddy.

There are a couple of mysteries set up here that I am curious to see if and when they pay off. Notably, what’s the deal with the mysterious blond that’s kind of stalking Sam, and who killed three demons (presumably fairly major ones, after all Seven Deadly Sins should be a big deal) in under a minute. This was a pretty good episode, but I feel like “pretty good” isn’t a good enough standard for a season opener, and there’s really nothing here that would compel me to want to watch the next episode.

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #44 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2”

Posted on May 11, 2015 by lost_limey

Season 2 Episode 22 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2”

00:03 – Once more the previouslies get “The Road So Far” labelling, and this time we get to hear “Carry On My Wayward Son,” even on the Netflix version.
00:17 – As well as a lot of focus on the currently-late Sam Winchester, we get to hear Daddy Winchester talk about Samuel Colt’s special gun.
00:39 – We also get to hear about pacts being made with Crossroads demons, which makes me think that Dean is going to do something very stupid when the episode proper starts. Also, I guess that due to teh previously montage, Sam is our Inevitable Teaser Death of the week.
01:47 – The episode begins with Sam’s body led out on a mattress and Bobby bringing a bucket of chicken and some cola to Dean, who turns it down.
02:34 – Dean refuses to burn or bury Sam’s corpse.
03:01 – Bobby tells Dean that something “end of the world big” is going down. Dean just screams “Let it end!” I sense that he might be in a bad place.
04:09 – Bobby loves the Winchester brothers alone.
04:34 – Jake, Sam’s assassin, is getting a dream visitation from Ol’ Yellow Eyes.
05:39 – Jake seems pretty determined that he won’t be a foot soldier for Ol’ Yellow Eyes, and in fact will kill him. Ol’ Yellow Eyes just chuckles, tells Jake that it isn’t the first time he’s heard that and Ol’ Yellow Eyes ain’t easy to kill.
05:47 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes forces Jake to do his budding by threatening to force feed Jake’s family their own intestines.
07:05 – Dean’s reminiscing about their younger childhood, and frankly, young Sammy sounds incredibly annoying.
07:41 – Quoth Dean, on protecting Sam: “I had one job, and I screwed it up.” Followed by manly tears.
09:08 – Dean drives to the crossroads. My prediction from 00:39 looks like it’s coming to fruition faster than I thought it would.
09:59 – The crossroads demon makes Dean wait just a little bit too long, because she’s sadistic like that.
11:01 – Dean’s trying to trade his soul for Sam’s life, similar to Daddy Winchester’s deal for Dean. Crossroads demon starts haggling about how much life Dean gets until his soul is claimed.
12:45 – She settles on one year, but if Dean tries to weasel out of that, then Sam instantly drops dead. By this, I assume the season 3 finale will end with Sam dying again, Dean being dragged into Hell or, knowing this show, both.
13:15 – Deal is sealed with a kiss and sam awakens.
13:55 – The brothers are alive and reunited.
14:21 – Sam apparently doesn’t remember being dead, but he does remember the injury that sent him there.
15:56 – Dean: “Oceans aren’t boiling, frogs aren’t raining from the sky.” That boy has a messed up sense of time and danger.
16:14 – Dean tells Sam the bad news about the Road House.
17:13 – Bobby plays off seeing Sam alive like it’s no big thing…
17:50 – Apparently there has been a veritable tsunami of demonic omens lately. Something very big is about to go down. Convenient that the demon world schedule intersects so neatly with season finale time…
18:13 – There’s a demonic dead spot in the centre of the activity and Bobby doesn’t get it.
18:58 – Bobby reams Dean for making the deal.
20:34 – Bobby and Dean hear footsteps and immediately go on the assault. Fortunately the footsteps end up belonging to Ellen, formerly the proprietor of the Road house, rather than any demonic or spiritual nasty.
20:54 – Bobby gives Ellen a shot of holy water to make sure that she’s not possessed. She isn’t, she was just out ordering when the bad stuff went down at the Road House.
22:35 – Turns out that Samuel Colt had used churches and railway lines to create an enormous Devil’s Trap in Wyoming that demon’s can’t cross, which explains the dead spot Bobby mentioned earlier, and was probably what Ash wanted to tell the boys last episode.
23:47 – Sam realizes that the chosen children of Ol’ Yellow Eyes, including Jake and himself can cross the devil’s trap despite the demon blood in their veins.
24:05 – And we cut to Ol’ Yellow Eyes goading Jake into trying that very thing.
25:01 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes shows Jake the key to this Devil’s Trap, the Colt that the Winchesters failed to kill him with. Or as Ol’ Yellow Eyes puts it: “The only gun in the whole universe that can shoot me dead.”
25:49 – Apparently the crypt at the center of Samuel Colt’s devil’s trap contains Ol’ Yellow Eyes’ demonic army that he wants unleashed.
26:56 – Jake heads to the crypt where he’s greeted by Bobby, Sam, Dean and Ellen, all toting guns.
27:18 – Jake tells Sam that Sam was, in fact, dead. Sam doesn’t take this well. I’m sort of surprised the terrible haired one hadn’t already figured that out.
28:02 – Apparently Jake’s picked up some mind control powers since we last saw him. He uses them to make Ellen put her gun to her own head.
28:57 – Jake goes to open the crypt and gets shot in the back several times. By Sam.
29:23 – Sam then shoots Jake in the head a coupe of times, despite his pleas for mercy. Apparently Sam doesn’t take getting killed at all way.
30:12 – The crypt was opened enough anyway. As per the title of this episode, all Hell is breaking loose.
30:24 – A whole lot of demon’s escaping the devil’s gate door to hell. We see the black mist start forming into humanoid forms.
31:03 – Dean grabs the Colt from Jake’s body. Unfortunately Ol’ Yellow Eyes, now able to breach the trap steals it away with a mocking “Boys shouldn’t play with Daddy’s guns.”
32:39 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes is gloating at Dean for resurrecting Sam. He makes a point of asking just how certain Dean is that the resurrected brother is “100% pure Sam,” which is a sadistic beat that I hadn’t even considered. Ol’ Yellow Eyes also points out that Sam was his favorite choice over Jake to win last episode’s battle royale.
33:17 – Bad ass! One of the things escaping from Hell via the devil’s gate turns out to be Daddy Winchester, who promptly attacks Ol’ Yellow Eyes. I may or may not have punched the air at this point.
34:05 – And it was enough to give Dean to shoot and kill Ol’ Yellow Eyes with the Colt’s last bullet! Awesome. Ol’ Yellow Eyes is dead. Now there’s only the tiny matter of the hordes of hell to deal with.
34:12 – Fortunately Bobby and ellen manage to re-close the gate, so only the demons that have already escaped need to be tracked down and exorcised.
35:21- We get a silent, triumphant reunion of Daddy Winchester and his boys before Daddy disappears in a bright light. I assume that means he gets to stay out of Hell for good now.
37:05 – Dean’s last words to Ol’ Yellow Eyes’ corpse: “That’s for our Mom, you son of a bitch.”
37:41 – Sam asks the awkward question: “what happened after I was stabbed?”
38:41 – Dean confesses to the deal.
39:27 – Sam swears he’s gonna get Dean out of the deal.
39:51 – An army of one to two hundred demons just got unleashed. The boys reaction: “We got work to do.” roll credits.

And season two wraps up with a much happier ending than season one did. There are a few dark undertones, including the whole unleashed demon army, and Dean only having a year to live, but mostly the season ends in triumph. Sam’s alive. Dean’s alive, Daddy Winchester is no longer trapped in Hell and Mommy Winchester has now been avenged, seeing as how Ol’ Yellow Eyes is dead. I think that most of the lingering metaplot threads from these two seasons have been wrapped up satisfactorily as well. The chosen children are all accounted for, and aside from Sam, they are all pushing up daisies. The stuff with the Colt is covered, the whole Faustian bargain aspect of crossroads demons has been addressed, and will definitely linger over season three. Perhaps even more surprising is that Dean did tell Sam the specifics of his crossroads demon deal, so for the first time in a while, I don’t think either Winchester brother is keeping a secret from the other.

I wonder if the show had been officially been picked up for a third season at this point, because this works almost as a self-contained series finale if the show hadn’t been renewed. A strong finale to what I think was a marginally weaker season than the first. I look forward to seeing how the boys handle the fallout from all Hell breaking loose when I get to the third season opener…

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #43 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 1”

Posted on May 10, 2015 by lost_limey

Season 2 Episode 21 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 1”

00:05 – The previouslies get the “The Road So Far” title, just like they did back in the penultimate episode of last season. This time we get “Foreplay/Long Time” by Boston as the soundtrack rather than Kansas’ “Carry On My Wayward Son.” As ever, the visuals start with Mommy Winchester going all burn, baby burn, ceiling inferno.
00:11 – We also get an Ol’ Yellow Eyes sighting in the montage. Makes sense that he’d be back for the season finale two-parter.
00:40 – Other things we get shown in the montage involve the kids like Sam who got a visit from Ol’ Yellow Eyes in their cribs. This includes Andy, Ava and Max from earlier episodes. I can only surmise that this episode is going to involve a plot based around the psychic children and whatever Ol’ Yellow Eyes’ nefarious plans for them are.
02:00 – The episode proper starts off with the boys driving up to a little diner shack and Dean demanding that Sam bring him extra onions and some pie. I’m assuming that the onions are on an unrelated food item to the pie or else that’s really kind of gross. Boston’s still playing on the Impala’s radio, which is a nice touch.
02:20 – Or it was until it started to go all static-y.
02:31 – And now Sam’s upped & disappeared from the diner. Instead there’s a customer face down in a pool of blood.
02:54 – Dean reacts by drawing a gun. That seems like overkill until we see the diner staff equally dead and lying on the floor with slit throats.
03:31 – Dean finds sulfur on the back door. Demonic activity is pretty much implied at this point. And given teh deatsh, it probably ain’t a friendly demon.
03:55 – We cut from an anguished Dean screaming Sam’s name to a terribly-haired psychic Winchester brother waking up on a wooden cellar door.
04:42 – Apparently Sam’s woken up in an Old West looking town. I don’t think Supernatural does time travel, but I start scanning fro DeLorean’s anyway.
06:03 – Sam runs into Andy, just about avoiding swinging a plank of wood at the latter’s head. They have a brief exposition dump conversation where it’s revealed that Andy also just woke up in this place and has no idea why.
07:03 – Now Sam’s found & rescued Ava. It’s like a game of psychic Pokemon in here and Sam’s gotta catch ’em all.
07:23 – Interestingly, Ava’s no idea that she has been missing for five months, implying that whatever force brought her here plucked her from outside the time stream. Still no DeLorean, phone booth or police call box visible though.
08:15 – Before Sam manages to tell Ava about her fiancé’s fate, they find two new psychic children, Jake and Lily.
09:04 – Andy has improved his telepathy abilities to the point that he can project images into people’s heads now, but he doesn’t think it’ll work on Sammy and the Psychics.
09:36 – Lily has a pretty gnarly ability: “I touch people, their hearts stop.” Kind of reminds me of Anna Paquin’s take on Rogue in the first X-Men movie.
10:18 – Meanwhile, Sam’s consulting with Bobby. The latter shows a suspicious reduction in demonic signs over the last month…
11:06 – Apparently Ash down at the Roadhouse has found something “huge,” but in his usual endearingly paranoid/batguano insane (delete as applicable) he won’t share it over the phone.
11:49 – Jake reacts to Sam’s perfectly sane and reasonable explanation that they’re all demon soldiers chosen to bring about an apocalypse (possibly The Apocalypse, I guess) by questioning Sam’s sanity and deciding that he (Jake) is better off without the other whack jobs. I can’t say I blame him, after all he doesn’t know that Sam’s in the show credits.
12:11 – During Jake’s storming off, he says a girl appear and disappear at the window of one of these Old West style buildings. I’m assuming she’s one of four things in increasing order of unlikeliness: 1. An unknown psychic child, 2. A ghost, 3. A possessed demonic servant, 4. A miniature giant space hamster wearing a human suit.
12:59 – The room that disappearing girl was in is a classroom, where someone’s gone full Bart Simpson on the blackboard with “I will not kill.”
13:15 – Girl was an achiri demon, Sam proves this by swinging an iron poker at her so that she temporarily dissipates into the familiar black cloud
13:54 – After Sam does the poker thing, the psychics are reunited, and it feels so good. Reunited ’cause they understood there’s one perfect fit… Also, Sam thinks that they’re in Cold Oak, South Dakota. “A town so haunted that every single resident fled.” Which seems a natural reaction to ~~South Dakota~~ haunted towns.
15:39 – Lily’s hanging back a little from the group and getting ominous music stings. After her little outburst of not being part of the collective “we” of the group and the reveal that she accidentally killed her girlfriend with the whole heart touching thing, I get the impression we aren’t supposed to trust her. Given how this show tends to work, I’m assuming that she’s actually not being villainous and will soon end up being the next death.
16:00 – The Roadhouse is a burnt out husk. Patrick Swayze’s death impacted us all.
16:54 – Ash is one of the bodies gone crispy critter in the Road House. Ellen doesn’t seem to be, and we already know that Jo isn’t there these days.
18:46 – Lily’s body is hanging in a noose from the town windmill. We have our first psychic death… and it’s the gay one. Seeing how Jake is the only non-White psychic and this show does like horror tropes, I assume he’ll be next, but I really, really want the show to prove me wrong.
19:27 – Ava’s really freaking out about Lily’s death.
20:17 – Andy’s going to attempt to use his image projection ability over super long distance to beam the psychic’s location into Dean’s head. That’s actually a fairly brilliant idea. I’m sure it’ll never work.
20:37 – Well, I’m wrong. Dean’s getting Cold Oak images and the headaches that generally accompany glorious technicolor Sam-O-Vision.
22:02 – Bobby, the Dean Whisperer interprets Dean’s vision to identify that Sam is in Cold Oak.
22:34 – Jake’s special ability is apparently super strength.
25:29 – Sam finally musters up the courage to tell Ava that her fiancé is no more, he has ceased to be, he has expired and gone to meet his maker, he’s a stiff, bereft of life, he rests in peace, his metabolic processes are now history, he’s off the twig, he’s kicked the bucket, he’s shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. In short, he’s an ex-fiancé. She takes it less-than-well.
26:17 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes just popped up behind Jake, scaring the crap out of Sam (and me, in fact).
26:24 – This is apparently a dream or vision of Sam’s as no one else reacts to Ol’ Yellow Eyes’ presence.
27:15 – Seems this Cold Oak thing is Ol’ Yellow Eyes pulling a Hunger Games on the psychics. He’s backing Sam as the winner, or at least that is the reason he’s claiming for this manifestation.
28:53 – Bringing up Dead Jessica isn’t going to endear you to Sammy-boy…
29:44 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes just snapped his fingers and now current-day Sam is about to have to watch Mommy Winchester get burned and see what happened to baby Sam way back then.
30:23 – We see that Ol’ Yellow Eyes was feeding his demon blood to baby Sam before Mommy interrupted.
30:33 – Also, Mommy Winchester recognizes Ol’ Yellow Eyes. Really didn’t see that coming. Was she a Hunter before Daddy came along?
30:55 – Back in 2007 Cold Oak, Ava’s gone missing.
31:52 – She’s not that missing. Looks like Miss Ava is up to something. She’s breaking the salt barriers they put down…
32:11 – …And summoning the achiri demon that apparently killed Lily. She sics it on Andy, who dies. Messily.
32:40 – Ava’s “terrified” screams at “discovering” Andy’s body bring Sam running in…
33:18 – Sam sees the broken salt line and immediately figures out that Ava’s the homicidal little monster.
34:10 – Ava’s apparently been here for five months, merrily killing her way through psychics in batches of three or four at a time. She describes herself as the “undefeated heavyweight champ” of this particular demonic Battle Royale.
35:10 – Ava’s no longer undefeated, as her summoning a demon to attack Sam is interrupted by Jake snapping her neck like a twig. I believe that leaves just Sam & Jake as our final two…
35:20 – The Impala gets to the edge of the woodland surrounding Cold Oak. Bobby & Dean have to finish the journey on foot.
36:02 – Ol’ Yellow Eyes has also been having words with Jake, it seems. He’s aware that only one of the psychics is getting out. I yell “Run Sammy!” at the TV screen.
36:45 – Sam does the dumb, but noble thing and drops his weapon on the ground between Jake and himself to prove that he won’t turn on Jake.
37:05 – Jake surprises me and drops his weapon also.
37:11 – He then promptly ruins the goodwill that accumulates by using his super strength to punch Sam in the face.
37:46 – Sam & Jake get into a pretty brutal fight, with bones a-breaking.
38:30 – Sam can’t bring himself to deliver the death blow to a temporarily incapacitated Jake. Honorable, but so, so dumb.
38:44 – Dean’s found Sam. This distracts Sam..
38:52 – …which goes less than well, as despite Dean’s “Sam! Look out!” yell, Jake stabs Sam in the back with a Bowie knife.
39:50 – Sam bleeds out and dies in Dan’s arms. To be continued…

Well, that was intense. After two episodes in a row where I’ve complained that the stakes didn’t seem high enough, the show comes roaring back with a vengeance. It helps that this is obviously tied in to the series and the season’s metaplot arcs with Ol’ Yellow Eyes and his chosen children being all over this episode. There were a couple of very nice reveals in this one. The first being that Ol’ Yellow Eyes already has an army (though we don’t yet know of what type) and is looking merely for a leader among the children. The revelation that intrigues me most is also the one that seems the least likely to get followed up in part two, namely, how in the blazes does Mommy Winchester recognize Ol’ Yellow Eyes?

Another reveal that the show handled very deftly was the reveal that Ava was the villain of the piece here and had gone full dark side. I didn’t suspect that at all until the big reveal, so full credit to the writing and to Katharine Isabelle’s acting. Jake’s turn to evil was a lot more jarring and sudden, but I suspect (and strongly hope) that we’ll get a better explanation for that in the next episode.

Also, the decision to keep the brothers split and have this episode mostly focus on Sam worked, though I generally prefer to see the Winchester boys get equal seeming screen time. Of course, now that Sam is apparently freaking dead (I read comic books, so I assume most fictional deaths are temporary for main characters, not super worried) means that the next episode is going to have to be Dean-centric. I also imagine that if Dean discovers that Ol’ Yellow Eyes is present, then a revenge rampage and death seeking attitude are going to be big character notes…

I’m sure I’ll find out later today, as I can’t leave season two hanging for too long.

I hunger…

Posted on May 6, 2015 by lost_limey

Just a quick note to say that the Supernatural blogwatch thing will be resuming shortly, I just want to find the time to do both remaining season 2 episodes more or less back to back. I’m also going to try to get the season 3 entries out on a more predictable schedule. For now though it’s all coming soon.

In the meantime, my fiancée and I have created a food blog on tumblr as we adjust to our changing living dynamic.

Check it out at: http://littlesbites.tumblr.com and see what your stomach thinks.

Thoughts of a Lost Limey

Musings of an Englishman living in the USA. Job hunting, writing, random thoughts and anything else that strikes my fancy.

Monthly Archives: May 2015

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #48 – “Sin City”

Season 3 Episode 04 – “Sin City”

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #47 – “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Season 3 Episode 03 – “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #46 – “The Kids Are Alright”

Season 3 Episode 02 – “The Kids Are Alright”

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #45 – “The Magnificent Seven”

Season 3 Episode 01 – “The Magnificent Seven”

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #44 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2”

Season 2 Episode 22 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2”

Lost Limey Watches Supernatural #43 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 1”

Season 2 Episode 21 – “All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 1”

I hunger…