Supernatural – Season 10 Episode 19 – The Gripe Review

Hello SPN fans. Welcome to this week's Gripe (but not really) Review.

Man what a difference another writer makes. Just when I was wrestling with myself to watch another sub-par Supernatural episode - and write another scathing review- along comes Robert Berens and saves the day. Like the last well-crafted, entertaining episode he wrote, this one too was one of the season’s best.

Berens is one of the newer writerd on the staff and twice now he has left me with wall to wall praise for his work. It's interesting that a writer who has a shorter history with the show can produce denser, more engaging, and more relevant episodes than the veterans. His episodes focus on the main characters instead of his own pets. His side characters are multidimensional and real instead of cartoon villains or gimmicks. He shows that he cares more about the story than what pleases him or his twitter followers. That's what good writing is to me, putting the story before your ego, and Berens shines that way. He even manages to make Rowena interesting. He reminds me of Edlund somehow who, in his later years, showed up every once in a while to clean up the mess other writers had made after they’d partied and smashed the SPN mythology house.

This is where I usually start listing the things I found questionable or substandard in the episode. This time however I'm going to post the things I thought worked well, and I wished were done more often, in hopes other writers would see and copy.

Things that made 10x19 a quality episode (SPN writers take note!)

Telling a story through setting

One the most impressive elements of this episode was the fact that, aside from a few scenes in the Impala, with Rowena, and the flashbacks, nearly all of it was filmed in Suzie’s house. In that sense it reminded me of the finale of season 3. It’s a treat to watch drama unfold within a single, confined space and still be entertained by it. Part of the reason of course was good acting and dialogue. Another part however, was the house itself.

I don’t know if it was in Beren’s script or the director’s choice, but every room in Suzie’s house tells a story about her. It’s cluttered, it’s dirty, it’s in shambles, and it is alive. In a way, the house is a part of Suzie’s character. It shows us Suzie’s history, what her life has been like since her family died. It’s a brilliant strategy to give information without adding exposition to dialogue.

Writing dialogue that represents character (or good dialogue in general)

Dialogue is still the main storytelling tool in a script. When used skillfully however, it can do multiple tasks. In this case we have the scene between Dean and Suzie in her kitchen, right after he tells her he’s from the neighborhood watch. Suzie is a slightly unhinged woman who, at a tender age, watched her whole family commit suicide. She can’t put coherent thoughts together. What shines about her dialogue is that her level of insanity comes through. A person like Suzie wouldn’t sit on the couch, drink coffee with Dean and tell him what happened, yet we have seen similar scenes many times in previous episodes. Such exposition doesn’t tell us much about the character. It’s just passing information to the audience, information that in most cases was already shown in the intro or the flashback.

Berens is clever enough to make his dialogue work harder than that. He makes Suzie talk all over the place and when she finally arrives at the cause of her horror, he has her say this, “I told her (Suzie’s aunt) not to go on the basement. No one goes in the basement.” This dialogue is intercut by shots of Sam walking through the basement and finding the forbidden box. The dialogue does three things at once: 1) It informs us of the fate of Suzie’s aunt, 2) It shows us the state of Suzie’s mind through the broken, grammatically incorrect way she speaks, and 3) it ramps up tension by making us worry what might happen to Sam. This is what every line of dialogue in great TV shows like True Detective and Hannibal sounds like. This is how every line of good dialogue should sound like.

How to infuse every scene with tension

One thing this episode did well was to produce tension for its entire run. Berens and Pleszczynski made sure that in every scene there was something keeping us on the edge of our seats. Whether it was Suzie’s unstable mind that could make her pull the trigger on Dean any time, or Sam opening the box unprepared, or whatever happened after the box was opened, we were always kept in a state of unease. The only parts that fell a little short were the parts with Rowena and Sam trying to decode the box, and the long stretch with Dean walking through purgatory and Benny chasing after him. But even those ended in events that made up for their slowness, and hence worked as buildup for highly tense or emotional scenes.

Continuity with the season’s overall arc

One of my favorite details of the Cain prophecy is the tale that Dean will kill a pile of people plus Crowley, then his best friend Cas, then his brother Sam. This part of the mythology was introduced in The Executioner’s Song (10x14,) by Berens. In that episode it was implied that Dean did not intend to go through with it, and if it came down to it he would rather die at the hand of Cas or Sam.

The detail was brought up by imaginary Benny in this episode, to be used as a weapon against Dean. Since fake Benny is created by Dean’s subconscious mind and therefore carries all of his thoughts and feelings he knows what Dean wants to do as well as the doubts he has. Through him we realize that even though Dean is firm in his resolve, he knows his friend and brother's feelings on the matter too. They are his white and dark knights and as much as they want do the right thing, their love for him would get in the way. Benny even adds a dash of salt to that apprehension by reminding Dean of what it would do to them if they were forced to kill him, effectively guilt-tripping him to change his mind.

All these canon relevant mind games create a mallet that the spell-generated Benny grabs and swings, hitting Dean over the head with the better idea to end it now, while he could, before it’s too late and either his brother or his best friend fall victim to Cain’s curse.

Twist #1 - Dean on the brink of suicide

The image of a dazed Dean with a broken bottle in his hand reminded me of the other times I’d seen a similar image on the show. Usually it is followed by the other brother, either emerging victorious from a fight or newly arrived on the scene, bursting in to save the spellbound Winchester and snap him out of his funk.

This episode gave us a different outcome, once again tied to canon. Dean cannot be killed with ordinary weapons. His mark won’t let him. It begins to glow and jolts him out of his fake reality. Although slightly predictable this twist breaks the long standing trope mentioned above and reminds us again of the workings of the MoC. I don’t recall any episodes written by the other writers that addressed the mark (the show’s current conflict) as often and in as much accuracy and detail as the two Berens episodes of late. Again writers, take note!

Twist #2 - Rowena

The episode’s best twist however was Rowena’s presence in the house. I confess I didn’t see it coming, which is impressive since I was one of the few who guessed the ending of M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense half an hour before the end of the movie.

Rowena being Sam’s hallucination was a very well-played stunt, aided by her clever entrance in which she destroys the previous hallucination. I wonder if the Werther Box possessed some intelligence if it could produce such a smart trick, to first present an obvious hoax, then cannibalize it by the real one to fool the victim. In the end, when Rowena was encouraging Sam to bleed to death and Dean ran in and didn’t even look her way, the penny dropped for me. It had been a long time since the show surprised me with a clever twist and because of that, the discovery of fake Rowena became one of my most enjoyable moments of season 10.


Teeny-weeny gripes

Of course it won’t be the Gripe Review without gripes. But these are so insignificant I’ll just list them in bullet points:

. In the intro flashback why did young Suzie suddenly feel compelled to break the wall and unveil the box? Was she possessed? Why then and not sooner? I don’t imagine that was the first time she took laundry down to the basement, and I don’t remember an explanation for why the box would act up at that time.

. After present day Suzie discovers Dean’s con and pulls a gun on him she strangely sounds more sane. I wished Berens had continued her slightly lopsided persona.

. I was happy to see Benny back, yet I wished Ty Olsson would soften his accent a bit. He was really laying it thick this time around. I didn’t understand half the things he said to Dean and had to dig up a transcript.

. The Rowena twist was great. Only problem was that hallucination-Rowena actually did crack the mystery of the box. How did that happen? Did Sam somehow get smarter under the spell? When fake Rowena told him the box needed more Winchester blood and he started cutting himself I thought it had nothing to do with the box and was a trick by the spell to have him kill himself. But when Dean arrived and snapped him out of it, he gave the box some of his own blood, and it did the trick.

. At the end of the episode Dean seemed really happy that he and Sam closed the case together. It was a sweet moment they shared in the Impala, yet it was soured by Sam’s sideways look, indicating he was still lying to Dean. That of course is not Berens’ fault but something chosen by Carver. It doesn’t make it any less disappointing, or unoriginal, and creates a faint stain in an otherwise flawless episode.

I look forward to your comment below. I have realized in the past I disappoint a few people every time I post a positive Gripe Review but I can’t help admiring Berens. He is a tough opponent for any grumpy critic, one who gives nothing to gripe about and makes me love him more with each episode. Luckily (sadly) it’s Thompson’s turn next week (again,) so I’m sharpening my slating pencil for that one.

Tessa

tessa-marlene.tumblr.com/
twitter.com/tessa_marlene