{"id":2992,"date":"2013-11-05T13:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T21:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=2992"},"modified":"2013-10-31T08:22:16","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T15:22:16","slug":"mark-watches-supernatural-s01e04-phantom-traveler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2013\/11\/mark-watches-supernatural-s01e04-phantom-traveler\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Supernatural’: S01E04 – Phantom Traveler"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fourth episode of the first season of Supernatural<\/i>, the boys combat a bizarre force that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purposely taking down airplanes. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Supernatural<\/i>.<\/p>\n

So, that was okay! This show is fun to watch, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly not the most groundbreaking or layered thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen, especially for Mark Watches. I admit that while I had fun yelling at \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phantom Traveler\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and making LOST<\/i> references every few minutes, this story was a bit simple for my tastes. Not enough of Dean and Sam staring at one another for way too long! Very few emotions! A plot that only sort of makes sense when you think about it!<\/p>\n

But HOLY FUCKING NIGHTMARE FUEL. I was terrified of flying for years<\/i> because of a traumatic flight when I was a kid. We hit some terrible pocket of turbulence on a flight to Hawaii and dropped nearly 10,000 feet in less than a minute, and for many years after that, I was the guy in the cold open of this episode. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten over that fear, especially since I have to fly so often, but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 yeah, I think the video commission speaks for itself. This episode is NOPETOBER forever, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so creepy! And I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why this feels so forgettable to me. This is a demon who, like clockwork, possesses people getting on planes, waits until forty minutes into the flight, makes a terrible pun, and then crashes the plan with the sole goal of killing every person on board. However, by the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phantom Traveler,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no victorious confrontation with the physical form of the demon. It just looks exactly like the Smoke Monster from LOST<\/i>, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s absolutely no reason behind its behavior. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a flaw in and of itself. I actually like the idea that the demon just wanted to cause chaos. But why spread the disasters over ten years? And how did it travel from place to place? And why was it obsessed with killing all of the passengers in the crashes it caused? I have a lot of questions that I suspect don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter in the end? Should I just keep asking them?<\/p>\n

Still, I love the absurd nature of this episode, which is something Dean comments on about halfway through \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phantom Traveler.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exciting to me because it suggests that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much more that the writers can do with the show than to stick to the most simple tropes in the horror genre. (Which is why I was disappointed with the mediocre ending. You created a demon that infects people on planes and crashes them! Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you develop that idea just a little more?) Plus, what interaction we do<\/i> get between Sam and Dean is kind of fantastic. I think that the most memorable aspects of this episode involve the two of them, specifically as we see Sam take charge for the majority of the story. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case during the entire sequence on Amanda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flight. Dean is so terrified of flying that he defers to his brother to take care of the exorcism. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sam<\/i> who saves the day this time, and I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great way for Sam to show his brother that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in this for the long run. Yeah, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still haunted by what had happened to Jess, which is another detail I was thankful for. Sam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability to sleep, his constant nightmares, and the horrible comment about Jess that the demon made all help to convey the fact that while Sam is trying to move on, that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dealing with this perfectly. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be a complicated process for him. Thankfully, Sam has Dean to help him out.<\/p>\n

Other than this, though, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say that I have much to comment on regarding \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phantom Traveler.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that Amanda survived, I was 100% right about which The X-Files <\/i>episode that Brian Markinson (who played Jerry Panowski) was in (though I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know he was in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Born Again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d too), and Dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face when he was admitting that he was terrified of flying was definitely the best<\/i>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping this is just a case of Supernatural<\/i> trying to find its voice. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think this<\/i> is why so many of y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all watch this show.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Phantom Traveler\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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