Tag: Sera Gamble

Supernatural Rewatch ‘The Kids Are All Right’ – Or Are They?

Supernatural Rewatch ‘The Kids Are All Right’ – Or Are They?

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Season 3 continues in our Supernatural Rewatch with the second episode of the season, which introduces the character of Lisa Braeden and her son Ben. She’s part of Dean’s last-year-to-live tour of living it up that he’s insisting Sam support him going on, no matter how painful Sam might find the constant reminder of his brother’s upcoming death, but she turns out to be alot more than that. Lisa is a polarizing character, but I think many fans appreciate how the character is written and admire Cindy Sampson’s portrayal of her. I had the pleasure of meeting Cindy at a Supernatural convention in 2022 and she is absolutely lovely and seems to have a genuine appreciation for the Supernatural fandom.

I’m one of the people who liked her character from the jump, and at the same time did not think that Dean and her could really work – or Dean and anyone for that matter. Especially not in Season 3 with his trip to hell breathing down his neck! But Lisa is a nuanced character and a believable mom thanks to Sera Gamble’s writing and Cindy’s acting – which means the couple of things that didn’t make sense in this episode really bothered me.

Which brings me to…

Full disclosure: This episode is not one of my favorites. I know a lot of people like it, and it has moments that I also enjoy, but it also has things that don’t quite work for me. Also? Damn Kripke and Gamble, it is SCARY. And disturbing. And bloody and creepy and all those other things that Kripke and company love. I had to close my eyes a few times during this rewatch, ngl.

Written by Sera Gamble, who I love, and directed by the venerable Phil Sgriccia, there’s a lot that’s very well done in this episode, but changelings? Ewwwww. I guess that’s a testament to the fact that they came through just as creepy as they were supposed to!

THEN

Sam’s death, Dean’s deal, his tearful explanation to Bobby, the terms of the deal, the mysterious woman and her demon-killing knife. And…

NOW

In Cicero, Indiana, a truck pulls up, a dad dropping off his daughter from visitation. The child runs to the mom and hugs her, tearful, saying there are monsters at her dad’s house and begging not to have to go back. The mom is confused, saying she usually loves to go to her father’s. Later, we see the dad working in his garage, carving a wooden rocking horse for presumably his daughter. Poor guy, that whole begging not to go back must have been tough.

But his life is about to get much tougher – and shorter.

Suddenly as the guy goes to leave, the table saw starts up all on its own.  The man turns back and goes over to investigate, leaning in and getting his face up close and personal.

All of us watching: NOOOOO!!!

He turns it off, walks away and turns out the light. It starts again. He goes BACK to it OMG.

All of us watching: NOOOOO why would you do that??? Run!!!

As he approaches, he stumbles and it snags his shirt and pulls him onto the saw – the blade slices right through him, blood splattering everywhere. Have I mentioned that in early seasons Supernatural truly was a horror show?? How did they get away with such a graphic bloody scene? Again, worthy of The Boys.

And then it was time for Sam and Dean! Yay!

Sam’s in a diner, chatting with Bobby on the phone about a demon dispelling ritual he found, and sounding more than a little desperate trying to find a way to save his brother. Dean walks by the window and waves a newspaper at Sam, as Sam hurriedly hangs up.

Dean: Who was that?

Sam: Uh, I was just ordering pizza.

Dean: Dude, you do realize you’re in a restaurant?

Sam (shrugs): Yeah, I just, I felt like pizza, you know?

Dean: Okay, Weirdy McWeirderton. So anyway, I think I’ve got something.

Who could resist that FACE though? Sam and those puppy dog eyes and those shaggy bangs and that SMILE?

Let’s pause for a second and just appreciate Sam and Dean circa 2007, with their beautiful baby faces and the way they still smile and joke around so much, even with Dean’s deal hanging over their heads. Let’s also appreciate that this was 2007 and they got their cases from the newspaper. One of the things I love the most about Supernatural is that it always seems timeless. Even when I was watching it in real time, it always had a sense of being in the past anyway, with its past-their-heydey motels and little Americana towns. So Sam and Dean reading a newspaper? Fits right in, even now.

When Sam is skeptical about it being a case, Dean admits there’s another reason he wants to go to Cicero – Lisa Braeden.

Sam: You want to drive all the way to Cicero just to hook up with some random chick?

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Supernatural Rewatch: The Season 2 Finale That Left Me Reeling – All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1

Supernatural Rewatch: The Season 2 Finale That Left Me Reeling – All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1

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I still remember how shaken I was by this episode. It was Season 2, the show was on the verge of being cancelled constantly. We didn’t know for sure what its future was, and that made the ending of this episode unbearable as Sam died in his brother’s arms. I remember just sitting on the floor and sobbing, and then being unable to stop thinking about it all week as we waited for Part 2, the season finale. It wasn’t the first time the Show ripped my heart out, but it was the first time I couldn’t shake it off with a reminder that this was a television show and not real life, that Jared Padalecki was out there living his best life in spite of just having watched Sam Winchester die, and everything would be fine. It didn’t feel that way.

And that is damn good story telling.

This is a Sera Gamble penned and Kim Manners directed episode, which should tell you alot about how incredible it is. The THEN reminds us of the Winchesters’ tragic history, Mary burning on the ceiling setting her boys off on this dangerous road they’re still traveling. The Yellow Eyed demon and the special children that were chosen for something still unknown – Andy, Ava. The warning that there’s something big brewing, enough to frighten a scary man like Gordon. Bobby’s warning that a storm is comin’ and Sam and Dean are smack in the middle of it.

Sam’s scared, wondering if maybe this is the YED’s plan, that they’re all…

Dean: What? Killers? Give me a break!

Refusing to believe that about his little brother.  They find sulfur at Ava’s house, know that the demon has been there.

Sam: You can’t run from this — and you can’t protect me.

That, right there, is Dean’s worst nightmare.

Dean: Damn it Sam, this whole thing is spinning out of control!

NOW

The impala pulls up to a café in the middle of nowhere, an example of the brilliant location scouting of Russ Hamilton and set dec of Jerry Wanek and the amazing collaboration that Supernatural was. Most of this episode’s outdoor scenes (which is most of it) are filmed on dark rainy nights, puddles and mud on the ground and raindrops glistening on Baby’s sleek black metal. It sticks in the boys’ hair, on Bobby’s battered cap. It’s beautiful, but it adds to the sense of tragedy that’s coming, and Kim Manners takes advantage of every moment of it.

Sam goes inside the diner and Dean reminds him not to forget the extra onions. It’s a few glorious moments of the brothers being brothers, Sam arguing that he’s the one who will have to ride in the car with Dean’s extra onions and Dean grinning smugly.

Dean: Hey, see if they’ve got any pie – bring me some pie!

He settles back in the seat, murmuring what will become a Supernatural-ism – “I love me some pie”

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Sam scoffs as he goes inside. A few of the simple pleasures that the brothers enjoy on those long drives, a random cafe in the middle of nowhere that might have some home-baked pie. An opportunity to annoy your brother by eating lots of onions on your burger, or an opportunity to bitch at him if he does.

Supernatural excels at setting you up with a feel-good scene, all warm and cozy, and then suddenly turning everything ominous and dark in a heartbeat. There’s static on the radio suddenly, the rainy night now seeming dangerous – and when Dean looks up at the diner, he can’t see anyone inside now.

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Supernatural Breaks All Of Ours with Season 2’s Powerful “Heart”

Supernatural Breaks All Of Ours with Season 2’s Powerful “Heart”

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The 17th episode of the second season of Supernatural is one of the best, most emotionally impactful episodes of the series. That’s no surprise when you realize it was written by Sera Gamble and directed by Kim Manners. Together, Manners and Kripke and Gamble shaped Supernatural in essential ways, and the team of Gamble writing and Manners directing was bound to be incredible. Add to that Ackles and Padalecki knocking it out of the park and guest star Emmanuelle Vaugier keeping pace with them every second and you have one of the episodes that fans often use to lure unsuspecting new fans into the Supernatural fold. I’ve seen this episode many times, and it still brings tears to my eyes and breaks my heart a little every time. That’s good television!

The episode begins in San Francisco, an attractive woman named Madison (guest star Emmanuelle Vaugier) laughing in a bar with friends. She blows off some guy Nate who wants her to come back to the office with him, and then sees an even more creepy looking guy staring at her through the window. It understandably freaks her out and she leaves – though walking out into the dark alley to get to her car seems like a bad idea to me, but what do I know? I would have at least had someone walk me to my car!

Nothing happens, though, other than the creepy guy watching her drive away. And some gorgeous Kim Manners mirror shots.

The next morning Madison makes coffee in her office when she notices a smear of blood on the wall – and then more on the floor. She walks with trepidation toward Nate’s office, and we see his hand covered in blood before we see him. When she rounds the corner, Nate is lying dead on his desk, torn apart. She drops the coffee pot, screaming. The pot shatters.

All of us: Now that’s a Supernatural opening if I ever saw one!

It’s pure Kim Manners brilliance, from the way Madison at first sees just a small smear of blood and isn’t sure what it is, to the tentative way she comes closer. The shot of just Nate’s arm and hand, bloody, all she can see as the realization of what this is slowly sinks in, and then the full on shot of Nate very very dead, torn apart and bloody. The close up slow mo shot of the coffee pot dropping and shattering is just perfect. Chilling.

Teaser ended, we cut to the boys, as we always did especially in the early seasons. They view poor Nate’s corpse in the morgue, Sam using his puppy dog eyes to charm the attendant into saying that off the record it looks like Nate was attacked by a wolf.

Attendant: But unless I know that the zoo is missing one of their lobos, I’m going with pit bull. I like my job.

Sam: (smiling) Yeah, I hear you.  One more thing – was this guy’s heart missing?

Attendant: Yeah, how did you know that? I haven’t even finished my report.

Sam: Lucky guess.

These boys though, who could resist giving them the information they’re after? I mean, look at them!

Then we get a little glimpse of Winchesters on the road, iconic in its simple familiarity. Early seasons Supernatural life in motel after motel, sleeping in the Impala in between, is the stuff that fanfic is made of. It warms my heart today, fifteen years later.

Dean cleans his guns as he and Sam discuss a new case – “hookers” murdered in the week leading up to the full moon, their hearts missing.

Dean: Awesome.

Sam: Could you be a bigger geek about this?

Dean’s excited about the prospect of “badass” werewolves, which they haven’t seen since they were kids.

Sam: Okay, Sparky. And you know what? After we kill it, we can go to Disneyland.

Gamble was so good at exploring the dynamic between the brothers – the affection beneath their bickering and teasing especially. Sam and Dean are very different, but at this point in the series, they’re accepting their differences and starting to appreciate each other’s strengths more. Most of the time anyway.

Rewatching this episode now in 2022, we all started giggling as soon as this scene began – because it is also one of the iconic gag reel moments, as Jared and Jensen start bickering just like their characters while Jensen has trouble with the prop gun.

Jensen: I’ve got a line, you moron!

The truly wonderful thing is that there’s just as much affection beneath Jared and Jensen’s teasing as there is Sam and Dean’s. At this point, they had already become brothers on and off set. And that chemistry powered the show for 13 more seasons!

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Supernatural’s First Mention of Angels in Season 2’s Houses of the Holy

Supernatural’s First Mention of Angels in Season 2’s Houses of the Holy

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The unlucky number 13 episode of Supernatural’s Season 2 is actually another iconic one. It’s one that was striking at the time because it was so beautifully directed and filmed (by Kim Manners) but it’s even more striking now as we’re doing a rewatch in 2022 because it’s the first episode to mention something that will become integral to the show – angels. Kripke famously didn’t want to include actual angels in the show originally, thinking that would be too much of a stretch and a venture into religious territory the show wanted to mostly avoid, but the writer’s strike changed the ending of Season 3 and Dean went to hell and they needed something to quickly pull  him out – voila, an angel! That decision changed the course of the show, but at this point in Season 2, angels were still something outside the realm of Supernatural.

Of course we don’t know that for most of this episode, which makes it a nice tease – and then a crushing disappointment for Sam. Knowing now, post series, that the God who Sam desperately wants to have faith in turns out to be a real dick, makes young Sam’s desperation to find something good to believe in even more heartbreaking. Sam is just plain good himself throughout the show, but he can’t see it, and religion/God/angels bring him some hope. Unfortunately that hope is misplaced – it will take Sam and Dean a while to realize that they need to put their faith in each other instead.

The opening segment is scary, a young woman watching television alone, smoking a cigarette (which was probably a little more common on network television in early 2007 than it is now). I’m not very observant because I didn’t realize she was supposed to be a sex worker, but I guess the heavy makeup and smoking a lot were supposed to convey that?

In typical Supernatural uh oh something’s wrong fashion, the lights start flickering. The woman changes the channel to a televangelist proclaiming that “the Lord is with you, look up and see the light” and even when she turns the TV off, it comes right back on. That is never good!

We see her alarm through the angel figurines in her apartment, in one of many striking Manners shots.

“The lord is talking to you right now, you have a purpose, it’s time to receive the message he’s sending,” the TV says. The camera pulls in closer and closer as everything starts to shake, furniture falling over, lamps crashing down. An angel figurine on the end table spins around madly as the woman becomes more and more terrified. Suddenly there’s a bright light, and then a figure appears in the light. The woman’s mouth falls open in awe.

And then it’s some time later, the same woman sans makeup and cigarettes sitting on her bed and reading a bible. The psych tech in very attractive white scrubs (aka Sam Winchester) comes in to ask her some questions, and she asks if he wants to know if she’s stark raving cuckoo for cocoa puffs (which is a reference some people watching the show now might not even get!)

Sam’s empathic.

Sam: I didn’t say that.

His empathy (and that adorable shy smile most likely) allows her to open up, and she says that she thinks that what she saw was real. Sam closes the chart and makes eye contact instead of writing notes – he’s so good at making people feel at ease so they’re comfortable confiding in him – and says he’d like to know what she saw. Did God talk to her?

She says no, but he sent someone – an angel.

Sam is skeptical, but he listens.

The woman insists that what she did was important, that she helped the angel smite an evil man (who she stabbed to death). That even though the angel didn’t give her the man’s name, he told her to wait for a sign – and then she saw it.

Sounds like a very dangerous way to go after evildoers!

Sam goes back to the motel and finds Dean enjoying the bed’s Magic Fingers. He’s lying on his back looking super happy, trembling all over with the vibrations and listening to his iPod, mouth gaping a little because, as always, Ackles is very good at conveying what Dean’s feeling. In this case, pleasure. Mmm.

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Quintessential Supernatural – Crossroad Blues (Supernatural Rewatch)

Quintessential Supernatural – Crossroad Blues (Supernatural Rewatch)

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Crossroads Blues is one of those quintessential Supernatural episodes that seems to encompass what the show is all about. It’s scary, creepy, horrible – and at the same time, it has a lot of heart. Sera Gamble is one of my favorite writers, and her early seasons episodes are some of my favorites, including this one. Steve Boyum, who directed multiple episodes, takes the helm for this one.

In the THEN, we revisit the tractor trailer smashing the Impala, Sam confronting his father when Dean was dying, and John’s deal with the Yellow Eyed Demon to bring Dean back. Their father’s death is still weighing heavily on both brothers, and both are probably thinking way too much about the suspicious circumstances under which it occurred, as we go into

NOW

Greenwood, Mississippi, 1938. Summer time, blues music playing, a man plays guitar in a smoky dimly lit club. The flashback is filmed in sepia tones, and the whole scene is surreal, haunting.

The man pauses when he hears wolves baying outside, then growling, and we see a woman in the audience growing increasingly worried about him. He resumes playing, startling as we see shadows outside the window, the growling getting closer. The cigarette he’s been smoking falls from his mouth and the man looks terrified as he runs out of the place and down the road in the middle of the night, pursued and surrounded by unseen creatures. The trees shake with their bulk, and we hear their growling and barking. The man drops his guitar and runs, hiding in a deserted barn and locking the doors behind him.

The unseen wolves throw themselves against the door as the terrified man puts a chair in front of it, sobbing. The door breaks finally – and the woman and some other people find the man lying on the floor.

Woman: What happened?

Man: Dogs…black dogs…

Woman: Robert, don’t you die on me!

But it’s too late.

That whole scene is so scary, largely because we never see the black dogs – but we hear them and clearly see how terrifying they are to Robert. Well done, Show, well done.

Back in the present, Sam and Dean are eating at a diner – you can’t get much more quintessential Supernatural than that. I do love the early seasons when the brothers were on the road all the time, living out of their car and cheap motels, sharing diner booths, Sam on his trusty laptop.

Sam finds a mugshot of Dean online and Dean preens, saying he’s like Dillinger or something. Sam warns that it makes their job harder since they have to be more careful, and Dean snarks back that they don’t have anything on Sam.

Dean: No accessory? Nothing?

Sam: Shut up.

Dean: You’re jealous.

(Dean is inordinately pleased about this).

Sam: No, I’m not.

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