In the fifth episode of the second season of Supernatural, HOW IS THIS SHOW REAL? HOW WILL I EVER SURVIVE THIS EXPERIENCE? If this intrigues you, then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.
I’m curious to know what this was like for those of you who watched Supernatural, both in real time or after the fact. Did y’all suddenly feel like the quality of the acting and the writing improved as dramatically as I think it has? Because with these first five episodes of season 2, Supernatural feels like an entirely different show than the one that I first started watching. The serialization, the tone of the episodes, and the mysteries at hand are altogether more intense, more thrilling, and more emotionally visceral than most of season one. The show feels like it found a voice and found a focus, and it’s just barreling forward, our own feelings be damned. STEAMROLLING OUR EMOTIONS. That’s what this is doing. It was also nice to get an episode that centered around Sam after the last one, and gods, this one was SO MESSED UP. Can we talk about this?
- Just in terms of visuals, this is an immensely disturbing episode, though the eventual explanation of what’s going on is SERIOUSLY NOT OKAY AT ALL IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. However, it’s the exploration of free will and destiny that really got under my skin here, especially in terms of what this means for Sam Winchester.
- So! After a particularly horrifying opening – where Sam has a vision of a man committing murder before killing himself seemingly because of a phone call – we are back at Harvelle’s Roadhouse, MY NEW FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD. The characters in this place are just so much fun, and ELLEN IS RUTHLESSLY PERFECT. But I love that the writers key us in right from the start that the Winchesters’ appearance there, combined with the information they seek, is fairly risky. What if another hunter figures out the connection between the Special Children? (I’m just gonna capitalize that because I have no idea how I should refer to all the kids who are psychic in some way.) What if it’s possible that these kids were all given powers for some sort of sinister purpose? I could tell that Dean wanted to get a grasp on what was going on before they ever revealed to anyone else what was going on.
- I wasn’t really surprised, then, that Jo, Ellen, and Ash all figured out there was more to what the Winchester boys wanted from them. Y’all don’t try to get anything past Ellen because SHE WILL FIND YOU OUT.
- I LOVE THAT DEAN IS TERRIFIED OF ELLEN. AS HE SHOULD BE.
- With the information that Ash gives them, the boys head to Guthrie, Oklahoma to track down another possible psychic, one who might be able to explain why Sam got a vision of someone from this town. It’s here that they discover Andy Gallagher, who initially appears to be Dean’s soulmate. HIS VAN IS SO RIDICULOUS, OH MY GOD. He seemed harmless enough!
- YEAH.
- YEAH.
- AND THEN, WHILE SAM FIGURES OUT HOW TO STOP DR. JENNINGS FROM ENTERING THE HARDWARE STORE, ANDY TAKES THE IMPALA.
- BY SIMPLY ASKING DEAN FOR IT.
- At first, I thought it was part of some plan of Dean’s to distract Andy, but then I saw that Andy was on the phone at the exact moment that Dr. Jennings was and IT ALL HIT ME AT ONCE. Andy’s power? He could order anyone to do anything he wanted. He could assert his willpower on ANYONE. And it instantly made me realize that this was both Sam and Dean’s worst nightmare. What if these powers weren’t for something good? What if they were designed to be used for the Yellow-Eyed Demon, to create chaos and evil on earth? Because holy shit, how could Andy’s control over Dr. Jennings be anything but completely fucking evil? HE MADE THAT POOR MAN WALK IN FRONT OF A BUS AFTER SAM STOPPED HIM. WHAT THE FUCK!!!
- OH MY GOD, THAT WHOLE SCENE WHERE ANDY COMPELS DEAN TO TELL THE TRUTH IS SO INCREDIBLE. I mean, just watch Jensen Ackles’s face during that part. I admit that it was kind of funny to watch him try to stop himself from speaking the truth, but then he admitted he was terrified of what might be happening to Sam and WOW, YOU ARE SERIOUSLY NOT OKAY, SUPERNATURAL. I know that Dean tries to pass that off as nonsense later, but CHRIST. He was telling the truth, which makes me want to know what the hell John told him EVEN MORE THAN BEFORE.
- Of course, this wasn’t nearly as simple as I thought it was. Because as Sam and Dean interrogate Andy, a phone rings a few miles away, and a woman douses herself in gasoline and IMMOLATES HERSELF. WHILE ANDY IS CLEARLY NOT ON THE PHONE. And it’s interesting as an audience member because suddenly, I’ve got to re-think Andy. Up to this point, he went from being hilarious to super scummy/creepy, but as it turns out, he’s not behind a single one of the murders. So he just uses his powers for… god. Inconsequential things? He gets a cup of coffee, he steals a car, he probably got someone to paint his van, and… that’s it? For someone who has a power that can be used for SEVERE EVIL, he sure chose a whole lot of strange things to use it on. Which is the point of what happens here. If Andy is, at worst, someone who manipulates people’s willpower just to get material things, then who the fuck is using the same power to murder?
- HA
- HA
- HAHAHASHDFLKAJSHDFLKASJDHF
- Look, there’s actually a brilliance to using a LITERAL EVIL TWIN in this case, and that comes from the fact that this is BROTHERS FIGHTING. Which is what SAM AND DEAN DO ALL OF THE TIME. However, in Ansem, we see what happens when love is perverted by obsession, and Ansem is easily one of the creepiest antagonists I’ve ever seen on this show. HE WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME. HE WAS THE GUY WHO WORKED AT TRACEY’S RESTAURANT. OH MY GOD, JUST THINK ABOUT HOW AWFUL THAT IS. Remember that scene when Dean and Sam try to talk to Tracey about Andy and Weber just slides in and starts talking about how awesome Andy is? I BET HE WASN’T EVEN PRETENDING.
- This would be bad enough if this was about a twin who grew up separately from his brother and then became unhealthily obsessed with reuniting with said sibling. But oh no, the writers are not at all content to ruin us with creepy, slightly incestuous dynamics. NO, THE GODDAMN YELLOW-EYED DEMON VISITED ANSEM AND COMPELLED HIM TO DO ALL OF THIS AND WHAT THE FUCK. Is that demon trying to corrupt these kids? I DON’T UNDERSTAND! I DON’T GET IT, THIS ISN’T FAIR.
- And let me also definitively state that Ansem is clearly the worst thing here. He was going to rape Tracey if Sam, Dean, and Andy hadn’t stopped him. He viewed Dr. Jennings and Andy’s birth mother as THREATS TO THEIR RELATIONSHIP, which is just downright unsettling. And I got serious “Join the Dark Side” vibes from what Ansem wanted of his twin. This was about absolute power in one sense, wasn’t it? He wanted them to combine their abilities to get everything they wanted.
- That’s why it’s not lost on me what a huge deal it was that Andy killed his own brother. Sam outright addresses why this disturbed him. Was he capable of murder? Was the Yellow-Eyed Demon trying to come up with ways to push all of the Special Children so that they’d break like Ansem or Andy did? However, I have a sneaking suspicion that this upset Sam because he wondered if Dean would one day have to kill him if he turned into someone like Ansem.
- HEY, WAS ALL OF THIS NOT UPSETTING ENOUGH FOR YOU? THEN LET SAM REVEAL THAT ANSEM BROKE THE PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED PATTERN. HIS ADOPTIVE MOTHER DID NOT DIE WHEN HE WAS SIX MONTHS OLD.
- GREAT. THERE COULD BE CHILDREN EVERYWHERE WITHOUT ANY WAY OF TRACKING THEM.
- FUCK THIS SHOW, IT HURTS TOO MUCH.
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