Tag: episode review

How Far Will We Go To Love a Monster? Supernatural’s ‘Reichenbach’

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Graphic by @izulec1992
Graphic by @izulec1992

At first I was tempted to just make this review a capslocked EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! That’s exactly how I felt after watching ‘Reichenbach’, not exactly coherent but filled with an intense desire to scream from the rooftops that our Show is the BEST Show and always will be. I’m sure my neighbors would have loved that. It’s Friday now and I’ve calmed down enough to be slightly more articulate and to think a little more coherently, though all of that inarticulate squee is still very much there.

By the way, what’s your guess on this episode’s title? I’d like to think it was for the philosopher Hans Reichenbach, who apparently was one of the first professors to encourage open discussion and debate (the way most of us who teach do now). Is the title an invitation to fandom to engage in some free-spirited discussion and debate about what’s really going on in Supernatural this season? I like to think so. Of course it apparently could also just be evidence that Andrew Dabb is a Sherlock (or possibly a SuperWhoLock) fan.

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Still Believing – Supernatural’s Season 9 Finale

Still Believing – Supernatural’s Season 9 Finale

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Season 9 has had me all over the map, as you’ve seen from my weekly episode reviews here – some things I’ve loved, some things I’ve hated – so I didn’t know what to expect of the season finale. I couldn’t help remembering some finale episodes in the past, especially the ones that left me gutted and unable to think about anything else for days (weeks?) afterwards. All Hell Breaks Loose….No Rest For The Wicked….Swan Song….I still can’t watch those episodes without reaching for the tissues. Last season’s finale was also powerful, both for Sam and Dean’s moment in the church and for the gorgeous shot of falling angels that closed out the season. Would Season 9 end with a bang like these, or would the strange pacing and sometimes disconnected storylines diminish its impact?

By the time yesterday rolled around, I ended up pretty excited – and more than a little nervous. Much of what amped up my anticipation was how excited Jared, Jensen and Misha seemed to be about the finale. At DCCon, when I asked Jensen if he was happy about where Dean’s storyline ended up this season, he said something so provocative (“Oh wow. They went there”) that I ended up eagerly awaiting the finale too. Then at the Upfronts, the boys said over and over that they were shocked by the ending, in a good way. So by 9 pm, I was so anxious I couldn’t even sit still to watch the damn show!

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Newsflash: Women Save Themselves on Supernatural! Thoughts on Alex Annie Alexis Ann.

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Warner Bros/The CW
Warner Bros/The CW

Supernatural is a versatile Show. It’s one of the things I love most about it; it’s part of what makes watching the Show live every week kind of like riding a rollercoaster in the dark. You can’t see the track, so you have no idea which way it’s going to toss you next. It’s both jarring and exhilarating, but it’s rarely boring. And yes, I love rollercoasters.

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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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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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Still Flailing! Supernatural 9.11 First Born

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Warner Bros/The CW
Warner Bros/The CW

Last night’s Supernatural, First Born, was so jam-packed full of action, adventure, angst, plot twists and episodes of nail-biting OMG NOOOOO screams at my poor abused television, that this morning left my head still spinning. Waking up the day after a new SPN episode bursting with thinky thoughts and eager to see what everyone else thought is the way the early seasons of Supernatural were for me – this is not the first time in Season 9 that I’ve felt exactly the same way. How awesome is that?

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Hiatus is Over! Supernatural Returns Packing an Emotional Punch

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xx 9.10 3

Binge TV watching is the preferred method of viewing for many people now that it’s fairly cheap and easy to inhale an entire season (or 2 or 3 or…) of a show. It’s the way we watched Season 1 of Supernatural, after watching only sporadically when it was broadcast. There are certain benefits to binge watching – no commercials for one, and you don’t have to sit through an entire summer hiatus biting your nails and worrying about whether Dean will get out of hell. On the other hand, that anticipation, agonizing though it may be, is part of the thrill that comes from loving a Show. Once we were hooked, we became fans who planned their social lives (and sometimes family lives, but shhhh) around whatever night and time Supernatural aired.

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Holy Terror – Supernatural 9.09 Lives Up To Its Title!

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xxx 9.09 bunker

The mid-season finale of Supernatural is often when something very bad happens – in fact, it’s often when a character I’ve come to love and care about is brutally killed off. Ellen, Jo, Bobby….and now Kevin. The ending of this episode left me reeling, so shocked that for a while, I didn’t even need the ever-present box of tissues beside me. It took a few of the stages of grief before reality set in and I started to tear up. Is Kevin really gone? And why didn’t I see that coming?

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