In the twelfth episode of the second season of Supernatural, the reappearance of a shapeshifter brings the Winchesters to Ronald Reznick, who’s actually one step ahead of them. Sort of. If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.
GOOD GOD WHAT HAS THIS SHOW BECOME???
It’s always fun to get the chance to have a show or a book completely exceed my expectations or to utterly surprise me. I went into Supernatural with the idea that this was all going to be garbage (but a fun sort of garbage) and that I’d have so many complaints that I’d never have anything good to say. That’s not to suggest that Supernatural isn’t without its problems, and I hope I’ve been honest about those. (Every so often, I just say “racist ghost truck” aloud to another Supernatural fan, and we have a good laugh.) But what the fuck has this show turned into?
It’s with “Nightshifter” that we’re given a story that’s touching, meta, heartbreaking, and then REALLY, REALLY STRESSFUL. The twists and turns of this episode are part of another serialized plot first introduced in “Skin” in early season one, and then they’re taken to this disturbing end. How responsible should Dean and Sam be for what they’ve done? That question is posed initially through Ronald Reznick, who Dean and Sam meet while trying to investigate a series of thefts and suicides in Milwaukee. In him, they find a mirror for themselves, in the sense that what Ronald believes is really happening in the world is utterly unbelievable to anyone who hasn’t seen what he’s seen. Granted, Ronald is wrong, though I was downright tickled to hear the word “mandroid” said so many times in a row. But that’s not the point. Ronald, who fits every trope of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, is then openly validated by the events of “Nightshifter.”
It’s one of this episode’s most redeemable qualities. Dean instantly takes a liking to Ronald, and it’s not just because Ronald was able to brilliantly connect the dots between all the various crimes. I think Dean saw himself in Ronald’s veracity for knowledge, in his quest to pursue this creature without the support of anyone else. Remember, Dean was hunting on his own for years before Sam was thrust back into Dean’s life. So it makes sense that Dean would be a bit irritated with how willing Sam was to shut Ronald down, and it makes sense that once Ronald was very much a part of this hunt, Dean took him under his wing. It was powerful and touching to watch Dean validate something for Ronald that had made him an outsider for years. Gods, y’all, it’s one of my favorite interactions between a side character and a Winchester in this whole show! Ronald is both comic relief and an interesting reflection on how the supernatural world intersects with the “real” one.
Which is precisely what “Nightshifter” eventually turns into. I was so impressed with the show’s eagerness to put the Winchesters into a situation where they couldn’t skirt under the radar. Given that Ronald’s entrance into the bank was as conspicuous as it was, it was necessary that the police get involved somehow. Just in terms of a narrative device, the presence of the police and the SWAT team injects the story with a lot of tension. A lot of it. WAY TOO MUCH OF IT. Because this isn’t just about a hunt, though all of the hunting in the bank itself is pretty suspenseful, too. It’s about the outside world rushing into a collision with the world that the Winchesters live in. They can’t just deal with the shapeshifter and leave in this episode; no, they’ve got to also figure out a way to escape undetected.
It’s a story of escalating odds and impossibilities. It was also a great way to take a common trope we’ve seen on the show before and in the genre and add some drama to it that would otherwise have been impossible without the claustrophobic setting. We’re left to wonder how the boys are ever going to identify the shapeshifter without killing the wrong person.
This is all exacerbated by the shocking (and downright cruel) death of Ronald, who is killed by a sniper. I AM NOT OKAY WITH HIS DEATH. IT IS EXTREMELY UPSETTING TO ME, Y’ALL. And Dean doesn’t even get a chance to fucking mourn Ron’s death, and I’m certain that had he done so, he might have been able to express some guilt over Ron, since Dean was the one who kept him around instead of sending him away. But that’s one way that the show builds urgency. Another way? They bring in Special Agent Henriksen, WHO HAS BEEN HUNTING FOR SAM AND DEAN FOR LIKE A YEAR AND HOLY SHIT, THIS JUST GOT A BILLION TIMES WORSE. As I mentioned before, this is an intentional way to bring the Winchesters into the non-supernatural world, and it’s a great analysis of how the law enforcement world would most likely perceive Sam and Dean. How could they ever explain away the deaths or the disappearances or the cons or the deception? How could they ever justify what they’ve done to someone like Henriksen? Obviously, we know the true story, but it would be silly to assume that the rest of the world would just totally accept what the Winchesters have done over the last year and a half. Truthfully, they’ve broken hundreds – maybe thousands – of laws in these 34 episodes. (Please tell me there’s a blog devoted to counting their illegal acts. I would subscribe to that in a heartbeat.)
“Nightshifter” is resolved in a way that acknowledges what’s happened over the course of this episode while hinting at an intriguing future. Holy shit, the shapeshifter pretended to be dead. IT’S BRILLIANT. If Sam and Dean hadn’t found it, that means it would have gotten out by pretending to be dead. This shapeshifter in particularly is a lot more vicious and adaptive than the last one, but Dean finally subdues it. AFTER SAM BEATS UP TWO SWAT TEAM MEMBERS AND STEALS THEIR CLOTHES AND BREAKS SO MANY FEDERAL AND STATE LAWS THAT I CAN ONLY ECHO THE ENDING: The Winchesters are fucked. How are they going to cope with this? I don’t think this is the last time we’ve seen Special Agent Henriksen, y’all. And we still don’t even know what’s going on with Sam’s special powers. SO MUCH IS HAPPENING ALL AT ONCE.
The video commission for “Nightshifter” can be downloaded right here for just $0.99.
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