Category: Season 09

And the (Fourth) Walls Come Tumbling Down: Supernatural’s MetaFiction

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Warner Bros/The CW
Warner Bros/The CW

This week is the Popular Culture Conference in Chicago, which means I get to hang out with other academically inclined folks and have deep discussions about some of my favorite things – including fandom, the reciprocal relationship between fans and the things we love, and of course, Supernatural. That doesn’t leave me much time to do a review of this week’s episode (so this will be a briefer review than usual). But Robbie Thompson sure as hell gave me a lot to talk about!

I love meta episodes. Any time a character has mentioned “subtext” in the first minute of the Show (while breaking the fourth wall and staring into the camera, no less), I’m a happy camper. My daughter Emily, however, is generally not a meta fan. She likes Supernatural, and she loves to take it apart and critique it, but she usually prefers her characters not to talk back and the fourth wall to stay firmly in place. Imagine my surprise when we watched Show together last night and she announced, “I liked it!”

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Misha Collins Takes it Slow and Makes it Pretty – Supernatural’s Mother’s Little Helper

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Warner Bros/The CW
Director!Misha – in a Sam shirt!

Supernatural is on a roll. Once again, I was swept along by this week’s episode, the hour going by way too quickly – and that’s exactly how I like it. Adam Glass’ script and Misha Collins’ directing were a heady combination, with the rest of the stellar cast and crew all bringing their A game for the first-time director.

When we spoke to Misha at VegasCon, the first thing we asked him about directing was, “So, do you have the bug now?”

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Supernatural’s Blade Runners Cuts Deep (And that’s a good thing)

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Warner Bros/The CW
Warner Bros/The CW

I went into this episode cautiously, because these two writers’ efforts don’t always work well for me. But I try to always be open minded about this Show, and it paid off – because this time Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner penned a kickass episode that I LOVED! The dialogue, the plot, the characters, the progression, all worked for me. And Serge Ladouceur’s directing was spot on. What a pleasure to sit down and write a review full of squee (though also full of plenty of trepidation – this is Supernatural, after all!)

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Winchesters Through the Funhouse Mirror: Supernatural’s Thinman

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Warner Bros/The CW
Warner Bros/The CW

I’ve had so many different thoughts about ‘Thinman’ that my head is still spinning – once again, I woke up this morning already writing this review in my head, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing (unless of course I was supposed to do something else this morning….cough…work…cough…) There was alot I loved about this episode. In fact, Jenny Klein should expect a tackle hug next time I see her for the Weechesters flashback scene alone (fair warning, Jenny).

I love that we saw some progress with the Mark of Cain story arc, which is a road I’m anticipating going down even as I’m biting my nails about the dark places Show intends to take us. I’ve been theorizing about the Mark and what its impact on Dean has been already, and am intrigued by the possibility that part of what it does is pull the wearer away from those he loves, isolating him from family and turning him away from love and affection and his own humanity, so he can kill without remorse or regret. It’s a punishment more than a gift, influencing those he loves most to turn away from him. And that’s terrifying. One of my favorite themes of the Show is Dean’s understanding of why he and Sam are better together, especially after he glimpses a future without Sam in ‘The End’: “We keep each other human.” It’s true. Sam has repeatedly been the one thing that keeps Dean from going darkside, from becoming the vicious killer that he secretly believes he is. If the Mark can separate Dean from Sam, how close to that internal self image will Dean become?

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Supernatural’s ‘Captives’ – Aren’t We All?

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Warner Bros/CW
Warner Bros/CW

It’s been a long time since a new episode of Supernatural didn’t inspire a whole lot of mixed reactions among its fans – from squee to sobbing to gnashing of teeth to threats to flounce from fandom all together. I’ve written elsewhere (http://www.winchesterbros.com/site/index.php/articles/10224-only-love-can-break-your-heart–or-what-fandom-wank-is-all-about ) that there are reasons for that range of reactions that run the gamut, and for the passionate disagreement that follows. As I was watching ‘Captives,’ I thought for a while that this episode might be an exception. For one thing, there was so much going on, I didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that Sam and Dean continue to ignore my desperate pleas for them to get back to being brothers. There were, as often happens in Cas episodes, two story lines running simultaneously, which always makes me feel a little disoriented every time we switch between them. This is far from unusual in a television show, but for many years Supernatural was an odd exception, with Sam and Dean (and the probably very tired Jared and Jensen) in every story line and nearly every scene. I still subconsciously hang onto that expectation.

For another thing, there were some delicious tidbits of consistency, which invariably make me smile foolishly at the tv. Castle Storage reappears, and I love that we’ve seen that distinctive sign in so many pivotal episodes. It even appears in our next book, Fan Phenomena: Supernatural, in the chapter by SPN’s brilliant cinematographer, Serge Ladouceur. That’s how iconic it is!

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