Mark Watches ‘Supernatural’: S10E07 – Girls, Girls, Girls

In the seventh episode of the tenth season of Supernatural, there’s a lot going on in this episode. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural. 

Trigger Warning: For talk of sex work and anti-sex-worker bias, misogyny.

Seriously, there’s just too much here. It’s like four episodes in one!

Hannah

I guess I get her full story now, but it’s taken this show seven episode to finally get to a point where the plot doesn’t feel aimless. I admit that I’m completely uninterested in the romantic comedy tropes invoked in “Girls, Girls, Girls” because there’s no substance in them. What exactly comes to pass due to what happens here? I think the writers want us to believe that Hannah kisses Castiel and that helps her realize that she must part ways with her vessel. Sort of? Obviously, if Joe hadn’t sought out his missing wife, this wouldn’t have happened so soon, but that’s ultimately the problem with this episode. The story had been wandering about the show for six episodes, and then, over the course of maybe ten minutes total, 90% of the story happens. It absolutely feels rushed.

So will we see Hannah again or is her story completely done? I can’t really tell, to be honest.

Cole

Was Cole’s whole purpose here to provide Rowena with the means to escape Dean? Where the hell did he come from? There’s an interesting story here to be told, buried somewhere within this cluttered and overcrowded script, but most of it doesn’t get to the surface. Travis Aaron Wade does his best to switch between rage and sadness, but it was hard for me to get past how bland this development felt. Like, how does Dean not know what kind of monster Cole’s dad was, yet he was certain in killing him? And are we supposed to accept that Cole buys Dean’s story and won’t ever do anything further? If this story was given more time, I might have found it more compelling, but it suffers from the same issue as Hannah’s plot. It’s too little for me to feel attached to it.

Raul’s Girls

At times, this episode felt actively misogynist. It’s hard to watch Supernatural when women are so consistently objectified as they are here, and it certainly doesn’t help when the show repeatedly fucks up any sort of representation of sex workers. Seriously, all three of the characters here are portrayed as airheaded and naive, unable to navigate a world without someone controlling them. It’s one of the most pervasive and damaging stereotypes about sex workers, and the show doesn’t even bother to make any of these characters seem different from one another. And I experience no shame in calling this show “aggressively straight” at this point because oh my god, could you confirm to us that Dean Winchester is a red-blooded American who likes woman again? Could you, Supernatural? I’d forgotten this was the case.

I know I wouldn’t complain about this as much as I am if the show had offered us anything else, but it doesn’t. None of the three sex workers really matter to the story. What even happened to the third one of them? Where did she go? Just ran off in the alley after punching Rowena? Does she even get the dignity of closure? It just feels so lazy, y’all.

Rowena

And yet I found myself intrigued by Rowena. She’s clearly got a ton of secrets to reveal, and she’s sure of her own power. I’m interested in the idea that she’s trying to recruit women to join a new coven of her own and that she’d seek out women who were exploited or taken advantage of. Except I think that she just wants to do the very same thing herself, unfortunately. While I don’t doubt that she ultimately wants to build a new coven, she mostly uses the sex workers here for her own ends.

So what is it that Rowena wants? If she trains new witches, is her goal some form of domination? A power grab? Something else? I find Ruth Connell’s acting to be so mesmerizing that Rowena becomes fascinating just by default, but I definitely need to know more. Of course, I’m avoiding the big reveal, but that’s because I wanted to talk about the story that happened before we found out that ROWENA IS CROWLEY’S MOTHER. Oh. OH. Is that why she’s here? Does she want to replace or take down the King of Hell? Offer her powers? SOMETHING ELSE?

Jesus, y’all, look at Crowley’s face during that final scene. PRETTY MUCH MADE THE EPISODE WORTH IT.

The video for “Girls, Girls, Girls” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

Mark Links Stuff

– Please help book/finalize the Mark Does Stuff European Tour!
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