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
I went to work for Surfing magazine, which is a big deal – an international magazine,” Carter says. “it was really to postpone my growing up, and those were the best years of my life.
Posted by: hollister uk | May 14, 2011 at 07:28 AM