Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Now talk about an amazing aftermath here. The previous episode did it with a flashback, now this episode takes an in-depth look at making a pact with a demon. It’s all about Dean getting over John’s death, and I’m very impressed at how they did it. It’s not just “angst angst angst”, but it also ask the question: “what if there was a way to sell your soul to the devil to bring him back again?”

There is some repetition again (here we have yet another guy who sells his soul to the devil to save a loved one), but I have to say that when looking at these cases overall, they actually discuss quite a number of different cases. It’s very dangerous to try and pull things like these off due to the big potential of repeating yourself and all, but this show did this pretty well. The creators really made sure to make all of these cases relate to John’s sacrifice.

Interestingly, this episode showed that demons can also terminate their own contracts. It wasn’t shown whether or not the woman in this story survived or not, but this also means that in theory the yellow eyed demon can also be blackmailed into releasing John. I hope that the creators handle this rather tacky situation carefully in order not to ruin these past number of episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Whoa, even more background! Seriously, at how many different ages have we seen our characters by now? Apart from Sam’s teenaged years, we’ve pretty much gotten through the entire spectrum of these characters at this point, and it’s really starting to pay off now. And even though we don’t get to see these ten years, you can really start to see now how these characters evolved throughout time. I’d like to applaud this show for that.

I’ve got one more point of criticism though. It’s a bit nit-picky, but it really has gotten to my attention that any cute girl who Sam and Dean meet, ends up possessed by the devil. I mean, I know that that yellow eyed demon is very prolific in creating his servants and all, but if it wasn’t for the Kappa episode there hardly would have been anyone good-natured left who didn’t just act as a random victim during these past number of episodes. And even the guys from the Kappa episode were murdered in the end. Let’s see whether the remaining episodes can bring some variety in this area, because this show certainly showed that it knows how to keep other aspects varied.

Also, the major plot point that the previous episodes have been hinting at for a while now was revealed in this episode: Sam has huge powers and apparently is going to end up destroying the world. Obviously development is necessary to not make a cheese-ball out of that, but with the past number of episodes as an indication that should be no problem. The moose scene in any case did its job really well and made quite an impact.

As for the stiff acting, this pretty much turned out like Rainbow did: the story is more than good enough, and the development of the characters has actually made up for it. Now, this show perhaps is not as intense as Rainbow was, but then again the acting also wasn’t as bad as in Rainbow’s early parts.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Wow, what an episode! This is why I love the “first half episodic, second half story”-type of series: they may take a while longer to get to their point, but whenever they get to it they can really do some amazing stuff. This episode was chock full of character development, which got even better due to the build-up that the first half of this season brought in.

This was an excellent case of taking a cliche and pulling it off so well that it doesn’t matter that it’s been done before: there definitely was no lack of creativity in this episode here. John really made a conscious, and a very well grounded one. It’s the same decision that many others in this series have made as well; it totally fits into place. His repentance at the end, after all of the time that Sam and Dean spent yelling at him was excellent. Unfortunately, this also means that my favourite character of this show is gone now…

On top of that, Dean’s out of body experience and him going against the grim reaper was awesome too. Especially considering how it wasn’t some sort of simple-minded monster or silly parody of it. That reaper made it very clear that unless something would be done, Dean would have died. It wasn’t the most eventful episode, but the wait to see what would end up causing Dean to get out of his coma was more than enough to build up an amazing tension.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Whoa, it’s now really time for the main storyline! And holy crap, talk about being brutal. This episode pulled some pretty nasty stuff on the main characters. This was quite an intense episode especially considering all of the developments that were made on the characters.

Throughout this entire episode, you could see hints that would usually point at a character being about to die (Sam and Dean’s father in this case), and yet he ended up surviving this episode, building even further upon the point that Sam made that killing father was not worth killing the demon. At the same time though, I do wonder why that demon took his time on trying to get that Colt. I mean, even if he didn’t want Sam to die, you’d think that he’d be easily able to just kick Sam and forcibly take the colt from him, seeing as it’s the only weapon that can kill him and all.

By the way, is introducing your girlfriend to your parents such a big deal in America? As in, is that an immediate sign of marriage? Isn’t that a bit extreme here? That twist in which the demon killed Jessica just as she planned that, does add a bit of cheese, but this episode had enough other stuff to make up for it. There was quite a bit of character development in this episode and considering how there still are quite a number of episodes left we’re in something really good here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Scriptwriting 101: if you’re planning to make a major character return to the main story, don’t name the episode in which this happens “Reunion”. It rather gives some major things away, doesn’t it?

so yeah, this episode was full of recurring characters, so even after that spoiler it still was quite interesting to see not just Sam and Dean’s father return, but also the vampires of a number of episodes back. This episode was surprisingly cold, considering that it was based on the long-awaited reunion that has been built up for thirteen episodes now, but then again:: this guy did leave the two brothers without any hint of what he was doing. It’s good to see that in this episode he finally becomes willing to share his information, rather than be all mysterious.

The story of this episode was fairly straightforward, actually, but it already was disturbing enough on its own. The thing is though, that it’s pretty much a copy of that other story, about the mother who sold her soul to the devil. Was this a red herring or something? Foreshadowing?
Rating: * (Good)

For most of this episode, I was a bit disappointed. This series was being all mysterious, but it was obvious that the monster of this episode was a kappa. It was just another average story about a town getting attacked by what looked like a demon. Even the twist that the creature was good natured was predictable. At first sight, at least.

However, at that time I still expected this episode to end with some sort of action-packed climax as usual. And instead, this episode ended without conflict. Everyone just accepted the kappa story and moved on. That’s pretty neat. On top of that, stories about Kappas in regular anime are always told with the Japanese audience in mind: an audience who grew up with stories about Kappas. They’re always portrayed as these silly goofballs, and I never really got their appeal. Here though, Supernatural is aimed at both worlds, and because of this, this episode was actually able to give quite a detailed description on the nature of kappas. I like that.

Nevertheless, I still don’t agree with this series’ concept of luck. This episode had this again: without the Kappa’s inference, the town in which the main characters landed would have been a notorious ghost town, with so many accidents happening at the same time. It looks more like the Kappa causes disasters, only to save people from it. This also appeared in the unlucky coin episode. Interestingly, the few clips I’ve seen from the live-action TV-series (most notably this one, suffered from the same problem.
Rating: * (Good)