In the nineteenth episode of the ninth season of Supernatural, I LOVE THIS EPISODE SO MUCH. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Supernatural.
Trigger Warning: For blood/gore, grief, Stockholm syndrome, and death.
I’m mostly going to talk about one thing here: why this episode is so much better than practically anything else this season. “Alex Annie Alexis Ann†is a dense, emotionally complicated story, and I don’t want to ignore that in choosing a focus for this review. But I think that season nine has suffered as much as it has because the writers have not been doing what Robert Berens does here.
They made me care about the story.
I know that episodic television faces a challenge every week. While Supernatural tends to be far more serialized than most, it still has to deal with temporary stories. We get plenty of episodes each season where characters will be introduced, only to never appear in another episode again. How do you maintain interest over a season? Over a single episode? How can stories reflect subtle character development in the leads? How can individual episodes grab our attention? I think one of the things that’s been standing in the way of many of the episodes this season is a sense of focus. The season-long arc concerning Metatron, the angels, and Crowley is hopelessly dense and complex, so much so that the show has to cram in exposition liberally within episodes. It doesn’t allow the story to grow in any organic, even sense. We’ll go an episode or two without anything, and then we’ll get something like “Captives.†It’s a jarring experience.
So why doesn’t “Alex Annie Alexis Ann†suffer from the same phenomenon? I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Jody Mills, and this season hasn’t exactly been light on explorations of what it means to be a family. And yet, this episode is raw and refreshing. It’s a ferocious character study for Alex; it’s a disturbing look at the loyalty one might have for a family; it’s a reflection of the problems Dean and Sam are having. It’s a lot of things without feeling bloated or forgettable.
At the heart of this episode (and the primary reason this is so good) is Jody Mills and her relationship with Alex. Look, I know I’m biased because I adore the very ground that Jody walks on, but I honestly think this episode does an utterly fantastic job of building on Jody’s characterization while respecting that Alex needed her own story, too. AND WHAT A STORY THAT WAS. This show didn’t need to make vampires scarier or a bigger threat; no, the best thing they ever did was make them EMOTIONAL. Mama Celia is seriously one of the most fascinating characters in Supernatural’s canon, AND SHE’S IN AN EPISODE WITH TWO OTHER EXTREMELY WELL-WRITTEN CHARACTERS.
But let’s talk about this family because holy shit. This episode builds tension by keeping Alex’s identity and her motivation a secret from the audience. It works brilliantly because we don’t understand how someone can want so desperately to get away from a nest of vampires and resist bringing them any sort of harm. Those two ideas don’t seem to mix at all, and I’m pleased that the show didn’t try to oversimplify it. This is a messy, emotional, and challenging predicament for someone like Alex. The show likens it to Stockholm syndrome, since Celia kidnapped Alex years prior, and I don’t really have a problem with them invoking it. It explains why Alex is so conflicted with her choice. She wants to live a life that isn’t so full of guilt and violence, but she does feel love towards the people who helped raise her.
That’s not an easy thing for anyone to navigate, and that’s where Jodi comes in. I imagine that until Jodi Mills entered her life, Alex had never been on the receiving end of this kind of affection from anyone other than Celia. I’d like to think that this is why Alex eventually changes her mind about her loyalties; Jody Mills showed her that there was another way. She showed Alex that you could express love and affection without the guilt and terror that always went along with it. Jody had no reason to care for Alex, at least in Alex’s eyes, and yet she did. Still, it’s not until after Alex chooses to be turned that she comes to this point, and I think it was realistic for her character that it happened in this order. As upsetting as it was, I believed that Alex would choose her own family over human life, at least initially.
That’s important because it’s a sign of good writing. At no point during this episode was I taken out of this immersive experience. I didn’t question the character choices, I didn’t feel like the show was pandering to me, and I believed it. And that’s certainly the case for Jody Mills, who spends a great deal of “Alex Annie Alexis Ann†projecting her own fears and insecurities on Alex. Sure, I would have loved an episode between this one and “Rock and a Hard Place†to serve as a bridge between the epiphany she has here about her grief, but I still thinks this works. The show draws a painful parallel first between Celia and Jodi, both of whom lost a child and are using Alex to fill the emptiness that loss created in them. But there’s another parallel here, since Alex and Jodi both lost their entire family to the world of monsters. It’s a sad and horrible thing to share, but I think it’s why they’re able to grow close enough to begin to trust one another.
Even what little we get of the Winchesters is pretty damn great. First of all, I found it difficult not to think about this show’s history with the concept of family while watching “Alex Annie Alexis Ann.†But I love that the show doesn’t explicitly reference anything specific throughout this episode regarding that; it makes the story seem a lot more subtle. And as ridiculous as the moment was, the scene where Dean gloated while killing one of the vampire brothers was a lot more nuanced than it could have been. I suspect that this is the Mark of Cain having a noticeable effect on Dean, giving him an elevated thrill in killing. I mean, that seemed to be the case??? I hope I’m not wrong??? But with so much more killing ahead of Dean, I think it’s time to get very concerned with Dean’s state.
So, in conclusion: more Jody Mills, more evocative writing, more in-depth character studies like this one.
The video for “Alex Annie Alexis Ann†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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