Supernatural – Episode 9.21 – ‘King of the Damned’ Review

I considered leading this review by saying this was two very different reviews, but as I thought about it more I realized it’s many more than two. Watching the episode I found myself having a number of conflicting and very strong reactions to this episode, so I’m reverting back to my earlier format for reviews – segmenting into various subcategories – good, bad, huh? – because this episode cried out for segmentation. Except in this case I’m starting with The Bad, as opposed to The Good, because there are a few issues I want to address that just won’t wait. Just to warn you, if you offend easily, you might want to stop reading now (at least the next few paragraphs).

The Bad

Did they really just go there? – Man, they just keep stepping into this deeper and deeper. This has been the season of the show getting flack from multi-fandom-fronts about the insensitive dealing with sexual and gender topics. One of these complaints (this one mostly originating from the Sam portion of the fandom, although other fandom groups seem to have their own gripe lists) has been the whitewashing of possession – a topic that has been linked with rape. The connections early on were more metaphorical. The demon Meg dressing the real Meg’s body up like a “slut,” in the words of Meg’s ghost. Demon Meg in Sam’s body assaulting Jo. Tales of victims being awake while demons did “horrible” things while in their body. When angels were introduced in season 4, the idea that they needed to get consent was stressed, because they were supposed to be the good guys.

In season 7, those connections between possession and rape became more direct. Sam, hallucinating Lucifer, was reminded by Lucifer of their time in the cage in a series of allusions to prison rape: “spooning” in the cage, “the rapier wit.” Whether the connection should be taken literally or just loosely symbolic is not the point. It was an the association that Sam made in his mind about his time being possessed by Lucifer back at a time when writer Ben Edlund still wrote for this show and treated possession as being a serious violation for the victim. Remember Repo Man? And this is the relevant point here – that Sam saw rape with his possession and incarceration with Lucifer – and his will was once again taken away.

And here we are with Sam, a character who has been possessed by both Lucifer and Meg and as a child was violated in a different way – his body was tainted with demon blood making him feel like he was bad and “unworthy.” This season he’s deceived into consenting (he doesn't understand that he's saying yes to possession) to being possessed by an angel and having his body used to do something Sam would find horrible – used as a murder tool of Kevin. Whether you agree with whether rape is a fair association or not, the fact is that the connection has been made on the show and has been a big topic of debate in the fandom. And the response this week was that Sam, when asked by Castiel about his time being possessed, seemed like it was just fine. According to Sam, he wasn’t even sure what he felt. He says his sensation was, “Maybe that I wasn’t completely alone,” and that Gadreel didn’t seem hostile. Whether Sam was conscious for it or not is beside the point. The point is that his body was taken and used against his will, and that point was minimized. The response seems to be along the lines of, well, if he wasn’t conscious for it, then it doesn’t matter, because everyone knows if someone is roofied and unconscious, or in a comma, while raped, it’s not really rape.

The irony here is that if the show had tactfully acknowledged the injury – they didn’t even have to linger on it for more than an episode or two – but just long enough to directly acknowledge the damage – then this would have blown over and they might have even gotten some recognition of having some quality on their show.

And then of course there’s the damage this does to the character – the aftermath which I’m sure is getting a lot of attention right now in the fandom. For the last few months, Sam has been taking a lot of heat from both Dean and in the fandom over strong words to Dean – the most notable being that they can’t be brothers because Sam can’t trust Dean. His response now makes it seem that Sam was being unreasonable. This development just whitewashed any credibility to the claim that Sam was justified in being angry because he was injured – that there is injury in having your body hijacked. The show has once again repeated a pattern of the past few years of treating Sam as a plot device – having something done to him and the dropping the story when it’s time to explore how the event impacted Sam’s character. I wish I could be surprised by this, but by the way the show seemed to be stepping around dealing with the issue all season, I can’t say I am.

Now for slighter lighter topics …. I promise.

Still bad - So we finally get a more prolonged conversation between Gadreel and …. Castiel?? You know, I hate getting into character-attention competitions, and especially try to avoid them in my articles, but Cas has had lots of story of his own this season. Stay out of Sam’s, OK? Sam was the person Gadreel hurt most deeply and personally. What have we gotten so far? A threatening comment … “Remember me?“ And then the Gadreel confrontation gets passed off to Dean (in his last episode) and to Cas in this one. It looks now like we'll get to know Gadreel better through Cas' point of view.

And speaking of poaching storylines, we have Dean with the psychic kid, demon powers. Dean should have an interesting story, as should Sam, but why does Dean’s story have to look so much like Sam’s storyline of earlier years? Dean has his own issues and the sky’s really the limit in what could be done with him. Could the parallels of Sam psychically moving the bookcase Dean psychically moving the blade and Sam Dean lying to his brother, saying he was fine and in control when he’s obviously not, be any more obvious? But to be fair, Dean isn’t the only character replaying Sam’s arc this year. Crowley took over the blood addiction portion, and Ennis last episode took the Jessica part.

The Huh?

I usually put this at the end, but this feels like it belongs with The Bad.

Changing the past – "The lore all says the same thing.  You change any one thing in the past, the ripple effect impacts everything that follows." Excuse me? Every now and then there needs to be a show check with the writing team of this episode: Eugenie Ross-Leming and Brad Buckner. I said in a review earlier this year that this writing duo has an annoying tendency of seeming to forget what show they’re writing for. Just so we get it straight – ripple consequences after changing the past is Charmed. "What happened happened" is Lost. Changes in the past don’t matter because destiny will course-correct is Supernatural. Yes, the role of destiny since the failed Apocalypse has likely changed, but this nasty possibility of changing the past didn’t seem to bother the Winchesters too much in season 7 when they traveled back in time to the Wild West. They messed with some things, but the outcome seemed to along the lines of "what happened happened." And how on earth is there lore about ripple effects from changing the past when angel destiny was in effect until only four years ago?

Cas encouraging Dean to torture – I know it’s going to be a bad night when I find myself getting irritated by the sneak peek, and it started early for this episode. The last time we saw Cas he was showing concern over discovering Dean’s Mark of Cain. He seemed to recognize it. This week he recruits Dean to torture for him – apparently because he’s become too much of a delicate flower to handle it himself. And also apparent is that none of his angel underlings can handle it either, even though angels are supposed to be the best torturers in the universe. Continuity people, continuity.

The Good

Dean’s story finally had some forward movement. Yes, we’ve seen it all before, but at least it’s moving. Yes, Abaddon had to be killed to get it going, and while disappointing, it’s certainly not the first time an interesting character was sacrificed to move a bigger story forward.

I found myself pleasantly surprised by a couple of parts:

Crowley and his son – They were actually not awful to watch, and I was rooting for them. How often do I root for the King of Hell? Not every day. And Alaina Huffman as Abaddon was awesome as always. She’ll be missed.

Sam and Dean were smart and used their brains rather than brawn to get a poorly written angel to talk. And they were funny doing it. Jared and Jensen are great comedic actors, and their delivery of good cop/good cop was perfect. And although I give the writing duo a lot of crap for other areas – especially mytharc - they sometimes do a good job in writing the more personal scenes for Sam and Dean.

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