Review: Supernatural S7, Episode 3

Warning: This review will contains spoilers. And opinions. Lots of them.

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Well, I'm home for Fall Break now, and while I do have some work to do, I can finally write and blog in relative peace. For three more days at least...

So, on that note, let's get on to the review for my dear old Supernatural.

As of now, I'm not very impressed with the direction that Gamble is taking this season, but regardless, she's somehow managed to stuff this season's ideas into a (misshapen) plot box.


 The premiere left us with an apparently dead Cas and a group of "Leviathans," who are apparently the big bads for this season. Episode two left us with a first taste of what they can do: take over and impersonate people, eat people, and...um...they can't be killed? Oh, and there's that hilarious "monster" face they make.

You know, this one:

Yeah, not too impressive so far.

Episode three picks right back up where episode two left us. Dean and Sam are rushed to the hospital after being owned by one of the Leviathans. Of course, in typical Supernatural style, the hospital they're taken to is the one where a Leviathan is impersonating a surgeon. Oh joy.

Dean, after a few obligatory shots of morphine and pain-induced blurriness, wakes up with a comically ginormous cast on his leg.

And then (not dead) Bobby shows up to berate him.

And then they break out of the hospital (with unconscious Sam in tow).

In my opinion, the beginning lacks the intensity they were going for. It was a bit rushed and disjointed. Like many of the "suspenseful" scenes so far this season, this one just doesn't make the grade.

Anyway, the episode continues (presumably a few weeks later) with a now conscious Sam and a still cast-ridden Dean hanging out with Bobby at one of Rufus' old hideouts (since, lest you've forgotten, Bobbie's (beloved) house was burned down in Episode two). 

Pretty much the entire episode from this point on centers around Sam, who goes off on his own to solve a case without telling anybody. All his other troubles apparently forgotten (save for a brief reference near the beginning), he heads off into flashback land, which tells the tale of him and some girl he met named Amy way back when he was still a teenager.

The episode gradually reveals that Amy is a "kitsune." Kistune eat human pituitary glands, and present-land Sam catches on to a case that sounds suspiciously kitsune-ish. So he just decides to take off without telling anyone to go solve it. (Which actually may have been a good idea for once, as the end of the episode shows.)

In the past, Amy saved Sam from her mother by killing her, and Sam let her go in response (just as Papa Winchester and Dean were catching up).

So Sam seeks her out, assuming that the kitsune-induced killing spree is her doing. And, look at that, it is. As it turns out, Amy (the adult version played by the same actor as Jennifer Keller from Stargate: Atlantis) started killing people in order to save her sick son (also a kitsune). Normally, she (a mortician) would get the pituitary glands from the dead, but in order to save her son's life, she needed fresh ones.

Sam faces a bit of a moral dilemma here. Amy only did what she had to do to save her son, but what she had to do was kill people. Eventually, Sam backs off and lets her go.

Unfortunately, Dean shows up after he does. Sam is forced to tell him the truth, and Dean, being Dean, hunts down Amy and kills her, leaving her young son with a personal vendetta against him. I can't help but think that'll come back to haunt him...

But what about the Leviathans, you ask?

Well, they were in this episode too. A little bit...They were intermittently shown hunting down the boys, and at the end of the episode, we get a nice, pleasant scene with a convenience store (that Dean and Sam had passed through earlier)...wherein one of the Leviathans dumps boiling nacho cheese on the cashier.

And throws out a cringe-inducing "everything is better with cheese".

That last line pretty much sums up my opinion of the episode as a whole. The flashbacks were a bit cheesy. Dean's "cutting off the cast with a saw himself" was a bit cliche. Amy's death was pretty dull. And the Leviathan scenes just seemed kind of tacked on in order to show that, yes, they do still exist!

Another lackluster episode, I'm afraid.

There is some hint of a traditional Supernatural plot at this point. Unfortunately, it lacks both the subtly building tension and mystery that the first few seasons had and the perpetually apparent danger and drama that seasons four and five explored.

It's lost somewhere in the middle ground, unable to decide whether it wants a slowly building plot or an explosive one, and because of that, it's suffering greatly.

Overall Grade: B-