Supernatural 2.05: Simon Says

[rachelmanija]

This wasn't as emotionally intense as "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," but it was a good solid episode, often extremely funny, and notable for being the first one I've seen where the supernatural story engaged me in its own right, as opposed to being either interesting as a mirror of the brothers' story, or boring filler surrounding the all-important fraternal interactions. It helped that the story was about my favorite plot element, psychic powers, rather than urban legends, which hold little inherent interest for me.

This episode had a lot to love. A few of my favorite moments:



The scene in the car where Andy puts the whammy on Dean, who proceeds to blurt out everything on his mind, including the disturbing revelation that Sam is so convinced that he's going to turn evil that's he's started to convince Dean.

Dean cheerfully hands over the Impala.

Dean sings.

Dean rushes over to Sam in great concern when Sam gets a particularly bad migraine vision.

Dean's appreciation of Andy's Love-Mobile.

Everything involving the cool woman in the hunters' bar-- not the boring young blonde, the cool older one who scares Dean. I'd love to see more of her.

"He Obi-Wan-Kenobied me!"

The perfectly deadpan "I have an evil twin."

In terms of the overall arc, I really like Sam's visions and the thing with the demon who likes to pin blondes to the ceiling and set them on fire. It gives Sam some interesting angst and Dean plenty to react to, and is, again, of more inherent interest to me as a storyline than vanishing hitch-hikers.

Two things struck me about the climax:

Andy killed his evil twin to save the lives of at least two innocent people. That is justifiable homicide, not murder, and it shows how freaked out Sam is by the whole vision/demon thing to think that says anything whatsoever to indicate that either Andy or Sam might go over to the dark side. I don't know if we've seen either of the brothers kill a human being (who wasn't already dead) before on this show, but surely Sam knows that Dean would kill a person to protect him, even if he didn't realize that Dean was in the shrubbery with a rifle preparing to do just that. So I am not expecting Sam to turn evil.

Although we'd seen Evil Twin make people cheerfully commit suicide, there was something extra-disturbing about the moment when he made Dean turn his rifle on himself. Given Dean's confession in "Dead Things," I wonder if Evil Twin was tapping into the part of Dean's mind that isn't so much actively suicidal, but that might not mind so much if he couldn't save his own life: the part that says, "I did my best; I accept."

Remember, I have seen only the first season through "Phantom Traveler" and also "Asylum" and "The Benders," and only this and "Dead Things" from season two. Please do not spoil me for anything else.

Comments

[sapphsmum.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the show but it does sound interesting. I like the esp, supernatural, extraordinary ability kind of shows, as does Jill so we're always looking for new ones to watch.

I think there is so much of our brain that is untapped that anything is possible. Not that I believe it all but the possibilities are interesting.

We watch Ghost Whisperer, Numbers and Heroes and they are all different, and something than the usual national broadcast fare which is nice. My favorite is The Sopranos but I have to wait until January for the next episodes.

I'll have to try to catch the show, though if it's been on for awhile I'll probably have to play catch up. Not like I have much else to do but watch tv, so it will be something different to take the monotony out of watching the same DVDs over and over.

Thanks for the post and for pointing me to something new.

Christina

[almeda.livejournal.com]

You'd probably, on this evidence, like the one where they dress like priests -- I forget the title, but I think the main plot had to do with stigmata or something like that.

Dean? Hot like burning in a clerical collar. I know of at least fifteen Wincest fics written immediately after that episode involving the costume choice. :->