Hi folks and welcome back to the Gripe Review, which from now on will be posted on Sundays instead of Saturdays.
As I said in my Tumblr post, with the show moving to Wednesdays I need an extra day to organize my thoughts and write a proper review. I hope this doesn't cause too much inconvenience and keep you from coming here to check out my ramblings. If the CW is ok bouncing a 10 year old show from night to night like a beach ball (perhaps in hopes of tricking its devoted audience into watching a new show, *cough* iZombie*cough*) I shouldn’t feel too bad about bouncing along with it.
With that out of the way, let's get to the episode. There are two things I want to say about this episode before I get to the gripes:
1) This episode had the lowest rating of this season, and possibly of the past ones. The reason behind it isn't that this episode was the most awful of the season, but because it was put against the ratings juggernaut, the Empire finale, which had a 6.9/20 rating in that time slot, an index and share unheard of since ratings became an online thing.
2) This was still an awful episode.
The episode follows every tiresome convention of this season's generic standalone: Sam looks for a cure for Dean, Dean finds a case, Same tells Dean they have more important things to worry about (the Mark,) Dean tells him that's not any reason for them not to do their job (this trope goes as far back as season 7,) the two of them get on the road to meet this week's guest star who, inexplicably and inexorably, high jacks the episode from them and makes it about him/her own character arc. Angst ensues; folks learn stuff; lather, rinse, hang to dry.
It’s a shame the Winchesters went from quality material such as The Executioner's Song to this drab without even a segue. It used to be Sam getting injured, or Dean getting distraught, or there was need to hide from a baddie, or the authorities, and the writers would use that excuse as an opportunity to slot in a one-off episode. Now they don’t even bother. Dean scores a victory against Cain, Sam realizes the magnitude of Dean's dilemma... and after a month-long hiatus we're back to where we started, with Sam doing Google searches and Dean telling him to focus on tripe cases.
Of course Dean's entanglement with Cain, and everything that passed between them that helped move Dean's character story along, is also swept under the rug as he's back to his mope mode where he thinks he's hopeless and should just save random strangers and ignore the ticking time bomb, picking up exactly where he left off in the last MoTW party.
Gripe #1 - Cole rides in the impala's backseat as the boys ride in the backseat of the plot
In the now established tradition of season 10 standalones, a guest star comes in to have his character growth on the Winchesters' time. This time it’s Cole, joining Charlie and Clair on the list of “recurring characters you'd rather see dead.”
I have talked about this in parts of my previous reviews. It's true that the earlier seasons, even the golden years of 1-5, featured guest characters who joined the brothers for an episode or two and became the focus of the plot in those episodes. The difference however was that those characters, and their stories, were presented as an aid to the brother's overall storyline and character development. The guest character went through an arc that closely resembled something Sam and Dean (and in rare cases Bobby and Castiel) went through and as a result, the main cast learned something from the experience, growing both in terms of story and character.
Here the benefits are all Cole's. Much like Hibbing 911, where Donna Hanscum went through an experience that helped Jody learn more about herself, Cole's friend Kit plays the foil to Cole, so he would learn how to deal with monsters and come to terms with his dad's death at Dean's hand. All well and good, but here’s the thing: I don't know much about Cole. He isn't a character I love. I don't care whether he learns this lesson or not, or gets over his internal conflict, or reaches inner peace. I don’t even care if he lives or dies. That’s how much I don’t care about Cole, because why should I? It’s not like I went on a decade long journey with him that would make me feel some sort of loss if he suffers or goes away. I don't understand why I’m forced to spend an entire episode watching him get character development and backstory that would make it more likely for him to come back.
Gripe #2 – Mr. Cole Boren Hausen
It doesn't help that, among the ones who are in the business of plot high jacking, Cole is probably the most boring one. I generally don't jump on actors for their performance flaws, as there usually is a bad script behind every bad performance. But with Cole, I can't blame it all on script. Charlie and Garth at least had unique personalities that kept things interesting even when they monopolized the script. Cole exhibits all the quirks of a walking transistor radio stuck on the traffic channel. He delivers every line with the same intonation, and facial expression, regardless of the situation his character's in or what the line contains. It's as if he himself is bored with the script and is just trying to get through it.
It's almost mind bending how a guy could be electrocuted to the point of frothing at the mouth, yet sound more blasé about it than a guy getting a physical exam. The damage of this is that I - a member of the audience watching his story - end up not caring either. It doesn’t matter whether he dies of electrocution or of Khan worm infection. After he has hogged my screen long enough to make me miss my main characters, Sam and Dean (and Castiel, who is once again unjustifiably absent) I would wish he would die anyway and leave me alone.
Gripe #3 – The *yawn* storyline
So what happens after we meet Cole? We find out he is friends with the next potential victim/murderer. The boys investigate, which is always the dragging part of MoTW episodes, until they reach the exciting segment where they have to deal with the monster itself. Except that exciting part in this episode consists of Cole sweating the monster out of his body while doing character defining acrobatics, while Sam plays bodyguard to a delusional woman who doesn't understand her husband has turned into the swamp monster. How riveting! Maybe if Cole was a more engaging character, or the situation was ramped up to a more heart pumping action sequence, instead of, you know, a series of dialogue scenes, I would have liked it better. As it was, five minutes into the best parts of the episode I was wishing Sam and Dean would kill their respective worm guys and take off in the Impala to find the nun from next week's episode.
Gripe #4 - idiot bit characters
Again, this is something I've talked about before but, by God, I can't understand why it has become a thing on this show. The ordinary folk on Supernatural are supposed to be clueless about the monsters that inhabit the world with them. You would expect their natural reaction to an encounter with such monsters to be one of shock and awe, followed by a sprint. That isn’t even a question of storytelling but a matter of logic. Yet in this episode we have this guy, standing in the middle of a convenience store aisle, dialing God knows what service while his coworker's throat just got slashed by a guy who looks like a real life case of the Walking Dead. Call me nitpicky but in my opinion, if this were real life, the guy would run at least fifty miles before even remembering he has a phone.
Same goes for Kit’s wife. She looks at her husband's deformed, bloody face, and predatory eyes, and tries to level with him, telling him things will be all right and they'll somehow get through this. Lady, your husband is snarling at you! At what point will it clue in for you that there's something worse than post traumatic marital issues going on here?
Gripe #5 - hypocrite (and sadistic?) Dean
We also get Dean and Cole bonding in this episode because... I guess they had great chemistry last time. The writers seem unable to decide what such a bonding involves. First we have Dean looking anguished as he inflicts pain on Cole, which makes me wonder if it's an attempt to make us feel sympathy for Cole through the trickle effect. Then he lectures Cole on not giving up fighting the monster inside him, which is great advice if he himself hadn't told Sam in the beginning that he was resigned to his fate and just wanted to coast along. Can we have a clear definition of what Dean feels about his affliction with the Mark? If he's on the let-it-go team it should reflect in his conversation with Cole, if he believes in the spirit of fighting then it's highly hypocritical of him to expect that from someone else while scolding Sam for trying.
The other WTF-Dean moment came when Cole was being dehydrated and Dean started drinking from a bottle right in front of him, staring daringly at him. I really didn't understand that. Was being baited and tormented part of Cole's treatment process, or was Dean looking for a thrill and thought tempting a guy with a bloodthirsty monster inside him was a good way to get it? Any reason why he couldn't have his chug in the bathroom, or somewhere the Khan worm infected partly insane guy couldn't see him?
Last but not least, and rather off topic, is my irritation at Cole calling Dean "Deano" and Sam "Sammy." I guess it's to show how chummy he is with the brothers despite looking disinterested the entire time. However, for a character to get to that level of intimacy with someone to call them by a pet name, they have to first earn it by playing second fiddle to them a number of times (see Castiel, Bobby, Crowley, and Kevin.) Showing up and stealing the show and thinking that would qualify them to be cute with the main characters is annoying.
Gripe #6 - Sam's arbitrary moping session
At the end of the episode we have the classic Impala scene in which the brothers reflect on what happened in the episode and how it affects their own storyline. This time however, we have a bizarre angst infusion wherein Sam feels guilty about not being able to save Kit. I have no idea where that comes from or how it fits in the overall theme of the episode. As a professional hunter Sam has killed hundreds of infected humans, sometimes without even looking back to see where the corpse has fallen. What was so special about this time that he felt so guilty? Was is because of his deep emotional attachment to the guy's super smart wife?
And isn't the theme of the episode fighting inner demons and understanding one's limitations when the only choice is to kill a monster (re: Cole's dad?) Shouldn't that lead Sam to accept his personal limitations and make peace with killing Kit? Or is the experience a reminder of Dean, in some bend-over-backwards fashion I don't understand?
Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments. Next week’s review, as I mentioned before, will also be posted on Sunday, as will the rest of them from now on. Until then I hope you keep the conversation going and add to it whatever gripes (and praises) you might have.
Tessa
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