Monday, November 26, 2012

Supernatural Season One "Rewatch"

Obviously I've had some more trouble keeping up with things. My health has been kind of up and down over the last few months, so I'm working on scheduling myself a bit better to keep up with this. I've got some ideas, we'll see if they work out.

But for now, back to the Supernatural Rewatch!

Hell House: This episode was a little weird for me. I really enjoyed a lot of the humor in it, but I felt like the "explanation" was a little weird. But I'll forgive it, because like I said, it was really funny.

I was especially amused by the fake ghost hunters and their website, since I've run across that kind of thing quite a lot before. Especially when I was researching amateur ghost hunting for a web series that I worked on. The series did a great job parodying ghost hunting in general.

Also, the monster in this one was actually pretty creepy to me for some reason. So good job all around, even if it was a one-off monster of the week episode.


Something Wicked: This episode generally exists so we can get more into Sam and Dean's backstory, and oddly enough they manage to delve into a dynamic that we hadn't really been getting into before. Usually the Sam vs. Dean fight is "I hate Dad vs We Owe Dad Obedience" fight. But instead this time it's about how Dean was expected to care for Sam even at too young an age. Which is a tried and true sibling dynamic, and much more interesting.

The monster in this was also very creepy, hit on a lot of my own childhood fears. I did think that the third act of the episode was a little rushed and less developed. They focused a bit too much on the character development and forgot the plot too long, so they had to wrap it up quickly. Which isn't the worst thing in the world.

Provenance: This episode was a little predictable, mostly because if you hire Jodelle Ferland to play a small child, said small child will be evil. Which is fine typecasting because at the end of the day she's so dang good at it. But it would be interesting to see somebody hire her as a red herring instead of being so cute she must be evil.

But I enjoyed a lot of things about this episode. Though I get tired of the common trope of "you have to move on and get back in the saddle" after your girlfriend/wife/lover/whatever dies, I thought they actually did a great job of establishing a love interest that was believable and likable, which is more than I can say for Dean's love interest in the Ghost Truck episode. I'm pretty positive she never comes back, and that really depresses me. They did too well establishing her, and I liked her. And that's the problem with this show for me so far, the biggest issue. I get that it's a show featuring two men, but I'm tired of the disposable women.

Dead Man's Blood: I'm really liking the show's take on vampires, and their strengths and weaknesses. It's a little traditional, in this era where everybody is wanting to play with the mythology and do new and different things. But it works really well in Supernatural. Plus, we're finally back to the main story with the demon that killed Mary Winchester, and adding in a new piece - the Colt. I knew that piece was coming, but I enjoyed the way it was introduced.

Though the one problem I had here was that we've spent an entire season hearing Sam and Dean run around and around the same arguments about their dad. So by the time we actually had John Winchester it the mix, it was old and tired. I wanted Sam to display even a tiny bit of growth and clarity on the subject, but instead he regressed even further and turned a bit whiny.

I know, I'm going to get yelled at for not liking Sam all the time, but I'm really a much bigger fan of Dean because he at least seems to be changing and growing when it comes to the subject of their Dad. He may fall back into just following orders, but he's not as blind about it as Sam seems to think.

On Thursday, I'll be finally posting about the end of this season and moving on to Season two!