tvthatdoesntsuck

Today, we’ve got a double review of Supernatural.  Sorry for missing out last week, but hopefully the beefiness of this post makes up for it.

Supernatural
Season Four
Episode Nine and Ten
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” / “Heaven and Hell” 
Written by Sera Gamble / Written by Eric Kripke and Trevor Sands
Directed by Charles Beeson / Directed by J. Miller Tobin

Supernaturalreally out did itself this year.  It’s about to go on a little mid-season break, so we won’t see the Winchesters in action again until late January, but Kripke and the rest of the creative team managed to elevate this from a crazy good genre show to the best show of the season (so far).  These past ten episodes are the strongest the show has ever been.  There is a compelling, apocalyptic season-long story arc, both Sam and Dean have developed immensely, and the monster-of-the-week plots have been fantastic.  I’ll miss the hell out of the show while it’s gone, but the team deserves a break.  They’ve given their all and more.

As for the past two episodes, they mark a turning point in the season.  Dean, Sam, and Ruby try to save a woman who has somehow tapped into the angels’ conversations from angels and demons alike.  The uneasy alliance between the boys and Ruby leads Sam to reveal to Dean what happened between them while Dean was in hell.  I thought those scenes were by far the strongest Sam-centric stuff we’ve gotten all season, and that both the writers and Jared Padalecki did a great job selling the “bond” between Sam and Ruby.  What I didn’t like, however, was Dean’s reaction to discovering that Sam and Ruby had sex.  It seemed like it would be treated in a very dark manner, what with the way it was built up to and the battle scene music that played while Sam and Ruby bumped uglies, but Dean’s response was more “Ew, don’t tell me that!” than “You had sex with a demon, Sam!?”  I don’t expect them to keep going down the Dean thinks Sam is an idiot plot, but I’d at least have liked Dean to be as horrified as the viewers.

When the demons rush in, about the same times as the angels do, to pick up this “special girl,” things get very interesting.  Seeing Castiel and Uriel throw down with demons–namely Alastair, who remembered Dean from Hell–was so, so epic.  The way that fight was tied up to was well done, and really leaves a lot of options open for the writers.  Dean and Sam are sort of clashing with the angels, who need them, but will dispose of them the moment they aren’t useful.  All of this makes for a very tense drama with sooo many possibilities that it’s really impossible to guess where they’re going.

These two episodes were pretty good, but didn’t take it to the next level like I expected.  A lot of the episode this season really shat on the expectations and delivered a shocking good product, but this episode just about met my expectations.  Genevieve Cortese, who plays Ruby, is pretty much a godawful actress, though.  How she got past the first casting call is beyond me, and she’s pretty much been the only consistent stain on this season.  From her facial expressions, to her delivery of the lines, she simply can’t act.  It’s not even that she’s not doing as good a job with the character as Katie Cassidy did, it’s that she’s twisting the lines to be completely whiny… and is overall an appallingly bad actress.  In a show that casts guest stars as good as Misha Collins (Castiel), I don’t see how an error this gaping can be overlooked.  Ruby’s body got cut up pretty bad last episode, so hopefully she’ll vacate that shell and find a new one so we can wave goodbye bye bye to Ms. Cortese.  As long as we’re on the not-so-shiny side of things, I thought that we got a lot of angelic mythology dumped onto us in one sitting (the “Heaven and Hell” episode) that it was a bit overwhelming.  Other than the three problems I mentioned, these two episodes were solid.

I loved the way “Heaven and Hell” ended.  Dean finally reveals to Sam, in a teary monologue, exactly what happened to him in hell.  Ackles is a f**king great actor, and really sold Dean’s pain and regret.  It was astonishingly well done, both the build up and the execution.  We won’t see this show again until January, but Kripke and co. sure left us with a damn memorable scene to ponder for these few months.

Rating (4×09): 8/10

Rating: (4×09): 8/10

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