NOW ON DVD: As Supernatural enters its fourth season, the timing is perfect to sit down with series stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles -- which is exactly what our sister site VAMPIRES & SLAYERS was able to do at Comic-Con.
SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.7
Fresh Blood
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Kim Manners
Guest Starring: Sterling K. Brown, Michael Massee, Mercedes McNab, Matthew Humphrey
Plot Summary: While on the hunt for a nest of vampires, Sam and Dean run into their old nemesis, Gordon Walker. And if you thought that was bad enough...
Review:
When writer Sera Gamble and director Kim Manners team up, something wonderful happens. "Fresh Blood" bursts onto the Season 3 scene as vintage Supernatural.
Fixated on his conviction that Sam is the Anti-Christ, Gordon Walker has escaped from prison. His first stop is to threaten Bela, who last saw the boys, but she turns his demands into barter for an antique mojo bag he carries: mojo he may later wish he had.
Meanwhile Sam and Dean are hunting a vampire. The creature has already killed three people, and it's a nod back to Season 2 to see the boys so focused and intent. Dean gleefully uses his own blood to lure the vampire in, but once he's incapacitated her with a dose of dead man's blood, the vampire tale takes a new twist.
Under questioning, the girl, Lucy, swears she's suffering an overdose of some weird hallucinogenic drug, and denies the remotest understanding of vampirism. Sam and Dean are unsettled by her plight, yet with her hunger aroused and the blood of her last victim still on her face, they are unwilling to risk the loss of more human lives. When Dean steps away with his machete, we witness her death only in Sam's pained grimace.
But the boys are now armed with intel that a male vampire is stalking women at a local nightclub, and turning them by feeding them vampire blood under the guise of a new designer drug. Focused on this threat, the boys aren't remotely prepared to run into Gordon Walker and sidekick, Kubrick (3.3's 'Hunter for Christ.') The only greeting is a barrage of gunfire, which Sam and Dean escape when Dean barges into the open and draws their fire from Sam. What they don't realize is that the vampire has spotted Gordon, and he attacks the hunter from the dark.
Everything changes when Gordon regains consciousness as a captive in the hidden nest. The vampire, Dixon, quietly seethes as he blames Gordon and hunters like him for the massacre of his entire "family" and the long-ago death of his daughter. The girls he has turned are his attempt to rebuild the family he's lost. Gordon is no less scathing in his opinion of vampires, a zealot's courage in the face of certain death. Yet Dixon decides on another form of justice for the most deadly enemy of vampire kind. Blood for blood: and Gordon's anguished moans turn to a howl as the camera goes black.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dean hold a council of war and reach the grim realization that the only way to stop Gordon Walker is permanently. Dean is surprised when Sam agrees without the usual touchy-feely protest, but Sam grimly says, "I'm done". The stakes of their undeclared war are ever so much higher, now. A phone call from Bela reveals Gordon's whereabouts, but her spirit contacts have another message: the boys should run like hell and not pursue Gordon. Little do they know what has befallen Gordon.
As for Gordon, he awakens to the horrifying discovery that he has become the thing he hates most. Dixon is away, so Gordon breaks free, but when one of the newly-made vampire girls pleads for help, his look turns predatory. When he appears outside, he is wholly the hunter. Gordon resists only briefly before a hapless motorist changing a flat tire becomes the first target of his new powers - and his new hunger.
Unaware of the danger, Sam and Dean pursue Bela's lead to make an unexpected discovery. Gordon is gone, but the vampire, Dixon, simply waits on his knees, weeping before the bodies of his two would-be "daughters". The old Dean would have ridiculed a vampire's grief, but now he listens with reluctant understanding to Dixon's despair over facing eternity alone. Then Sam discovers the girls' heads were not cut off: they were actually torn off. The boys' worst enemy is now their most dangerous foe.
Gordon in the meantime returns to Kubrick's RV, where he explains what happened and in tender tones, the two agree that Gordon must die. Gordon asks only one provision: that he is allowed to kill Sam Winchester first. However, Kubrick gently declines - and Gordon promptly rips his fellow hunter's heart out. He then catches Kubrick and holds him in his arms, whispering apologies as the man dies.
Back at the motel, Dean prepares to go after Gordon with the magick Colt, ordering Sam to stay put. However, Sam has had enough of Dean's kamikaze tendencies, and the Argument of the Week flares again. Yet this time Sam's anger collapses into honest heartache: he just wants Dean to be his brother again. Fans have waited six episodes to see this moment when Dean's walls finally crumble. At last, he sees how much his erratic behavior has hurt and isolated Sam. Quietly he agrees to hole up and wait for daylight. After all, the Winchesters are strongest together.
But a call from Gordon demolishes that plan: he's taken a hostage and demands the boys come face him. Dean tries to remind Gordon that he's a hunter; he doesn't do this sort of thing. But Gordon replies with chilling simplicity, "No. I'm a monster."
Upon reaching the warehouse, the boys find Gordon's hostage easily, knowing it is a trap. They are making a good escape - but a sliding door crashes between them, the lights go out, and Sam is sealed in darkness. The clash to follow is classic horror: red lighting, Gordon's disembodied chuckles, and Sam blindly trying to engage an enemy who is nothing but shadow. Outside, Dean desperately tries to break in but is attacked by the "victim", whom Gordon has made a vampire. Dean quick-draws the magick Colt to blast her into eternity, while inside Gordon announces his intent to do two good deeds: kill Sam and then kill himself. With that, Gordon attacks, driving Sam through a wall in a burst of shattered sheetrock. Dean leaps to Sam's defense but Gordon slams Dean against a wall, fangs reaching for Dean's neck.
Sam is six-foot four of raw fury when he goes at Gordon again, taking some hellacious licks before he seizes a couple rags and a length of steel wire cable. He flips the cable around Gordon's neck, and then ... Sam Winchester pins a rabid vampire down and garrotes his head completely off.
Even Sam seems stunned by what he's done. He is battered, exhausted, and hollow-eyed when he turns to find his brother, and Dean stares back in astonishment. But they are shoulder to shoulder when they turn their backs on the end of Gordon Walker, and together stagger out towards the living world.
Later, it's a scene of classic Americana: two boys, a car, and an ice chest full of beer, and Dean with a socket wrench under the hood. But when Dean straightens to cast a speculative look towards Sam, we know something is up. Then for the first time in the history of ever, Dean invites Sam to work on the Impala. It's his job, he says, to show his little brother the ropes. After all, Dean may not be there to keep things running right.
The Class 5 gale that circumvented the globe was the collective sigh of three million SPN fans, whose hearts just broke in a thousand happy pieces.
Yet the true marvel of this episode was not just the story, but also its execution. What Sera Gamble wrote and Kim Manners envisioned became magic. The deliciously muted colors and ominous shadows of Season 2 again reclaimed the screen. Gordon's awakening to his altered state is almost psychedelic, driven by a heartbeat, drumbeat, jangling soundtrack that transports us with him. Even the worsening of Sam and Dean's situation is quietly underscored by their lodgings. Rather than risk a credit card trail, they are squatting again, this time in a storeroom in the unused wing of a seedy motel.
The cast were also at the top of their game. Sterling Brown chews up the scenery as a hunter whose fanaticism was likely eroding his soul well before the vampire stole his humanity. We feel for Gordon, even as he descends into madness. The final scene between Gordon and Kubrick played brilliantly with its queasily sensuous aura of confession, absolution, and betrayal. Lucy disturbs us with the realization that many vampires were once victims, themselves. Dixon's grief also strikes uneasy echoes, because we've seen that same selfish hunger for family in Dean. Even Bela's cameos carried surprising substance, lending interesting if belated nuances to her character.
Finally, Jensen and Jared hit their portrayals completely out of the park. From the restrained poignancy of shared looks, to the savage deliberation with which Sam pressed his attack on Gordon Walker, staring the man in the eyes as he died, these two young men own Sam and Dean Winchester. Season 3 has not been without its bumps, but the solidity of this episode gives us hope for things to come. And it soothes the aching hearts of countless fans that Sam and Dean are acting like brothers, once again.
Peace, out.
~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua
It would be great to blame unnatural forces for the delay in updating this season's reviews of Supernatural episodes, but a far more earth-bound explanation is all that can be offered: behind the scenes situations that have settled down and allowed us to play catch up. What follows is Voices From Krypton's Gloria Atwater's take on the episodes "Sin City," "Bed Time Stories" and "Red Sky at Morning."
Continue reading "CATCHING UP WITH SUPERNATURAL: EPISODES 3.4-3.6" »
SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.3
Bad Day at Black Rock
Written by: Ben Edlund
Directed by: Robert Singer
Guest Starring: Jim Beaver, Lauren Cohan, Sterling K. Brown
Plot Summary: The boys get a call that a hitherto secret storage room Dad kept in New York has been broken into. What they find missing is only marginally less surprising than who did the stealing, and why. Chaos shortly and enthusiastically ensues.
Review: Supernatural Season 3 is finally hitting its stride. This episode opens with a properly brooding mood inside a gloomy prison block. The prisoner is none other than Gordon Walker, locked up since "Hunted" (2.10). Now another hunter visits to tell Gordon that the Devil's Gate in Wyoming is open and the Winchester boys were there. "Track him down, Kubrick," Gordon orders. "Sam Winchester must die.”
But that's about the last serious moment we see. An argument between Sam and Dean assures us the boys are still brothers - Sam has come clean about the demonic Mystery Girl, now named Ruby, and Dean thinks Sam shoulda put her on an express elevator back to Hell. Sam insists they can use - literally - someone with an inside track to Hell's plans, but in the middle of all this sibling affirmation, a phone rings.
Not theirs, but Dad's, which Dean kept (secretly) charged in the glove box because, you know, things might come up. Like secret storage lockers. Yes, turns out John kept a special storeroom in a secret place he never told his sons about. Oh, come on, you know John too well to be surprised. Clearly, he never thought his boys would need to know where he stored stuff like extra guns, land mines, and curse-proof boxes. And Sam's sixth grade soccer trophy and Dean's sixth grade sawed-off shotgun and...
SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.2
The Kids Are All Right
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Philip Sgriccia
Guest Starring: Katie Cassidy, Nicholas Elia, Cindy Sampson
Plot Summary: Dean pays a visit to an old flame, only to find her precocious son seems oddly familiar. But a social visit becomes a supernatural case, when a rash of fatal accidents points to something weird going on with local children.
Review: This season's second episode sets off with a bang - or more rightly a grisly splash, as the Victim du Jour falls on his own power table-saw. I warned of the Creep Quotient ...
We find Sam continuing his now-clandestine search for a means to break Dean's deal, while Dean, though somewhat less manic than the last episode, is still on his crusade to live life to the fullest. Here he has been seized by the urge to look up a girl he met nine years ago - a really bendy yoga instructor in Cicero, Indiana. Bless the boy; one wonders if Dean lives in a time warp of his own making.
Of course, the girl, Lisa, has moved on since her wild days, and now lives in an upper middleclass neighborhood as the single mom of an eight-year-old son. Anyone surprised at the math, there? Didn't think so, but Lisa firmly denies that Dean is the dad. Though rather ham-handed in its execution, there are some grin-worthy moments with Dean and Ben the mini-Dean, who is a precocious kid played by a wonderful child actor. Mainly, we are led to ponder just how much of Dean's behavior is genetics, while fandom's view of Dean's rapport with children is now cast in stone.
That, however, is the light side of the story. The rest turns dark in several disquieting ways, not the least being in the disconnect between Sam and Dean. They are on parallel paths, but not remotely the same page, and rarely even in the same scene. Dean is preoccupied with tying loose ends and with Ben, and Sam ... well.
Sam sits in a diner continuing his research, when who should slink in but the mysterious knife-wielding girl from 3.1. Sly and smirking, she knows precisely what Sam is up to, but what really interests her is the whole "Anti-Christ celebrity death-match" thing, of which Sam is the sole survivor. She says Sam must still be a pretty big deal among the demons, after all that happened to Mom - and Mom's friends. To which we get Sam's "bzuh?" face, so Mystery Girl suggests Sam go and get up to speed, and she slinks back out again. Just who is this chick, anyhow, that she knows so much about Sammy?
While we chew on that, Kripke launches us into the only thing I find scarier than evil clowns: evil kids. From smarmy little urchins cooing how much they "love you, Mommy", to blank stares at interlopers (read, Sam in a truly atrocious suit), to ghastly reflections of the real monsters in various mirrors, this episode rang the bell on my creep-o-meter. I thought it really tipped off into Stephen King territory when one of the distraught moms drove her car - and her evil child - into a nearby lake. Art imitates life to disturbing effect, reminding us once again that Kripke doesn't play by the usual rules.
Changelings: that's what Sam and Dean face, evil creatures who steal children and hide them underground, leaving behind a life-sucking replica to feed off the mother until she dies. The guy on the table-saw was only one of several victims, the fathers of other children having recently died gruesome deaths. Dean's instincts kick into overdrive when he thinks of Ben, his might-be son, but he arrives at Lisa's house too late: the boy with whom he had bonded so well is now whining for Mom to "make him go away."
The resolution to the tale seems a bit rushed, and we get to see Sam and Dean having their asses handed to them in the big showdown. But we only have 43 minutes and so what if the changelings' "mother" wore a human female form? I loved watching the Bad Thing throw these two strapping guys around like sofa cushions, physically demonstrating what a proper monster can do. Though I gotta say, Sammy and a homemade flamethrower is a thing of beauty. I was also charmed by Ben's coolness in helping the other kids escape their basement prison. The little guy really pulled it off.
Finally, regardless how the rest of the Dean-and-Ben stuff played, the last scene with Dean and Lisa won me. Jensen Ackles knows how to break our hearts with just a look, and I ached for Dean as he walked away from her and Ben with grace and a wistful smile. Oh, Dean, what you might have had, if the road were different.
Sam's concluding scenes are equally compelling, but for different reasons. One, we get to see him in uber-geek mode, as he crams a jillion phone calls and net searches into a what could only be a couple hours' time. Sam soon reaches a chilling realization: his Mom's uncle, her doctor, and all her friends are dead since 2001. The Yellow-Eyed Demon must have begun laying his plans about the time Sam was preparing for college.
Two, listen closely as Sam confronts Mystery Girl for some answers. When he demands for the third time that she tell him who she is ... his shout carries a subtle but distinct echo effect. Does this mirror when Andy in "Simon Says" projected his powers of compulsion on other people? Mystery Girl doesn't react beyond a sort of measuring pause, but then ... she closes and opens her eyes. Which turn jet, glossy, black. A demon's eyes. A demon who wants to help Sam Winchester for reasons we can only imagine. WHOO-YA! Kripke, you magnificent bastard, I take back every doubt I had about this character. She has, in one stroke, become delicious.
Plus, she's offering Sam the one thing he wants: help saving Dean in exchange for her helping Sam. All of which leaves us with new worries for Sam, since keeping secrets among the Winchesters never ends well.... Stay tuned, kids! Supernatural is underway.
Peace, out.
~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua
Episode 3.1
"The Magnificent Seven"
Written by: Eric Kripke
Directed by: Kim Manners
Guest Starring: Jim Beaver, Caroline Chikezie, Peter Macon, Katy Cassidy, Josh Daugherty, Ben Cotton
Plot Summary: As the threat of apocalypse looms, Sam and Dean Winchester brace to face the demon horde that escaped the Devil's Gate. Now they learn that seven demons personifying the Seven Deadly Sins are wreaking havoc in the heartland, having escaped Hell for the first time in centuries. The hunt only gets more complicated when they meet a pair of married Hunters - who don't play well with others.
Review:
This was not an e-ticket, whoop-and-shout, hold onto your seat premiere episode. I don't think it was meant to be. This was an in-your-face notice that, since the devil's gate in Wyoming, Things Are Not Right. And really, seriously, they're not.
From the first scene, we're treated to a seething black cloud that almost gleefully descends upon suburban Chicago. The demon horde is loose and ready to rumble, which is cue for our boys to appear. We find Dean in an almost giddy state of live-for-the-moment, and Sam oddly patient with his brother's excesses, but hey, Dean's got only a year to live. He brings up that fact at almost every available chance, and there's another warning bell to heed. Nobody's that happy when they're slated to die and go to Hell, right?
But Dean insists he is, so when Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) calls with a lead in Nebraska, the boys pile into the Impala and they're off with a whoop and a V-8 roar. And then Kripke et al have fun. From a family of three found desiccated and semi-fossilized on their living room sofa, to a woman going Pulp Fiction on another gal over a pair of shoes, the audience gets a full-face splatter of gruesome effects, and we are left with no doubt the demon invasion has ushered in a new era.
The fun starts when we learn who the nearest culprits are: a septet of demons physically embodying the Seven Deadly Sins. They don't even have to possess anyone: a simple touch is enough to trigger a person's greatest weakness with deadly results. Complicating the boys' investigation is a pair of married hunters, a couple known to Bobby who carry their own tragic pasts - and who don't, they declare, play well with others.
However, when the husband of this dynamic duo suffers a particularly ghastly death (again lovingly handled by the makeup and FX departments) due to the touch of Gluttony, Sam, Dean, and Bobby are caught in the whirlwind. Here the demon war has barely begun, and already the boys are cornered and out-numbered. But two of the best performances of this episode are turned out by the demons, Envy and Pride. These two fairly ooze malice and disdain, and their expressed opinions of humanity are not only chilling but borderline Biblical: reminder of just how long it's been since these characters were "top-side" in the living world.
Perhaps the most interesting detail of this demonic skirmish, however, is a mysterious woman (Katy Cassidy) who slinks around in the background of the episode. Whoever - or whatever - she is, she wields one helluva wicked demon-killing knife, and with little apparent regard for the human hosts the demons inhabit - and she somehow knows who Sam is. Clearly we'll be seeing her again, or at least when she chooses to be seen.
Yes, the requisite angst between Sam and Dean surfaces at the end. Dean's new modus operandi appears to be brutal honesty in all things, including spilling the beans about the expiration date on Sam, if they try to break Dean's deal with the crossroads demon. Sam naturally does not take that well, and Dean's manic behavior doesn't help.
In all, I found this a respectable episode. Perhaps not the thunderclap fans were hoping for during the summer's agony of suspense. Perhaps it tried to cram in a bit too much, at the expense of some development that might have been fun. But it was layered with lots for us to speculate over and analyze, and opens the door to whole new realms of evil and evil-doing. We've new characters, new weapons (why should the magic Colt be the only one?) and new nasty things to hunt. I think we're building up to a good season, so let's hang on and enjoy the ride.
Just be prepared for the accelerated Creep Quotient. I think Kripke wants to scare us even more. Yeah. I'm up for that.
Peace, out.
~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua
by Gloria Atwater (aka ErinRua)
WHO: Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester, two ghost/ghoul/monster-fighting brothers on a perennial road trip to save the world from Evil.
WHAT: Supernatural
WHERE: on The CW Network (formerly The WB)
WHEN: Thursdays 9/8 central
WHY: Remember the early days of the X-Files, when The Truth Was Out There and monsters became real, but only a select knew about it? Remember the good old classic scary movies you watched too late at night, and afterwards went to bed only to lay there awake, because something was scratching on the roof? If you want television that scares, tantalizes, enthralls and engages, not to mention surprisingly touching your heart, you want Supernatural.
The CW Network (formerly the WB) is launching its third season of the cult-hit series, and its fandom is electrified. According to series creator and executive producer, Eric Kripke, this third season is where new viewers should swing aboard, because we are about to rock 'n roll!
For those just coming aboard, here's the scoop. In 1983 in suburban Lawrence, Kansas, auto mechanic John Winchester awoke in his favorite chair to hear his wife, Mary, scream. He rushed upstairs to find the baby's room ablaze - and Mary pinned, eviscerated, to the ceiling. John and his two small sons, infant Sam and four-year-old Dean, escape but Mary does not, and there is no rational explanation for the fire. Desperate to make sense of the tragedy, John finally approached a local psychic, who just happened to be the real thing. What she told John shook the foundations of his world, and he embarked on a bitter quest to find who - or more rightly, what - had decimated his family.
And there John and his sons dropped off the grid. Fast-forward twenty-three years, and baby Sammy is riding a full scholarship as a pre-law student at Stanford. He has broken away from Dad and brother Dean's obsessive hunt and left the transient, dangerous, often gruesome "family business" of monster hunting to seek a normal life. But when Dean shows up with his James Dean attitude, a collection of mullet rock, and the news that Dad has disappeared, Sam agrees to just one hunt.
He gets back to his apartment to witness a replay of horror: his fiancé pinned to the bedroom ceiling, her belly slashed, and she erupts into flame before his eyes. Now, with their black '67 Chevy Impala and a trunk full of weapons, Sam and Dean hit the road once more, hunting down a growing plague of ghosts, ghouls, and nasty paranormal creatures. However, the evil that has haunted the Winchester family for over two decades is stalking them in return. Hell is breaking loose!
Yes, Supernatural is a genre show, but it rises, shining, above the pack. The acting is brilliant, the writing witty and thoughtful, and there is a strong internal story-arc that holds the show together. A fun quirk is that the hunters (and hunter-ettes) are mostly blue-collar types who know ancient Latin exorcism rituals as well as they know how to tune up their pickup trucks. The "monsters of the week" are frequently drawn from American folklore, classics including Bloody Mary and The Hookman, and each is given their own unique twist. Even vampires appear - twice. Once as villains, and once as ... not quite. It's a show that thinks, a show with heart, and one that dares to posit hard questions and avoid easy answers.
It doesn't hurt that the leading men, Jensen Ackles' Dean Winchester and Jared Padalecki's Sam Winchester, are easy on the eyes. But they are also interesting. The chemistry between these two talented actors is electric, and they deliver the entire spectrum from sarcasm to angst to kick-ass action with complete believability. The complicated, dysfunctional, yet no less devoted relationship of these brothers is a strong underpinning to the story's fabric, and works as both their strength and their greatest weakness - a factor the forces of evil do not overlook.
As for the stories, not every episode is perfect, a fact Eric Kripke himself will admit. But it is evident that the good old days of horror movies remain foremost in the creators' minds, and each episode is a feast of the macabre, the bizarre, and the downright weird, all presented with the best special effects television can deliver. Couple that with brilliant dialogue, excellent acting, and drama and action every bit as good as anything on the big screen. Oh, and don't forget the awesome classic rock soundtrack.
The only downside to Supernatural? It airs opposite network giants like CSI and Grey's Anatomy. So if you simply can't choose, then set up your recorder to tape one show while you sit and watch the other, because Supernatural is just too good to miss. You owe it to yourself to watch some quality television. And how delicious will it be to scare yourself again, just as you did when you were a kid? Go on, you know you want to.
Catch Supernatural on The CW, Thursday nights at 9/8 central. The season premier is tonight, October 4th! The Seven Deadly Sins manifest themselves in living, demonic form ... Check your local listings.
