By: Robert Berens
**Spoilers**
If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
Wow. What a mouthful that title is. Supernatural has had some pretty crazy titles before (including, but not limited to, Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester; The Girl With The Dungeons & Dragons Tattoo; and the old favourite Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie) but this just takes tongue twister to a whole new level! They really seem to have an alteration thing going this season too. What's next week going to be...Snacking Sharks Saturday?!
Anyway. Sheriff Jody Mills has become one of the longest-running and most-beloved recurring female characters on this show, but for some time now I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the guillotine, to be more accurate. Or maybe the axe...The point I am trying to make is that female characters on this show tend to not have very long life spans once they come in contact with the Winchesters. We might make fun of Sammy's bad luck with the ladies, but really any person the Winchesters have ever come in contact with has ended bloody. The only reason some of them haven't yet is because it isn't quite their time to die. Thankfully, Jody lived through this episode. We've already lost Charlie to the fae realm and Mrs. Tran is off looking after her dead son...we need all the good girls we can get!
This was another 'okay' episode. Most of Season 9 has been just that...'okay'. Nothing awful, but nothing all that spectacular either. To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. They had something really epic set up with the Angels on Earth and Cured (sort of) Crowley vs. Abbadon thing going, but even now it feels like they're just stalling with standalone episodes instead of getting the arc going. I hate to say it, but I think they've dropped the ball. Maybe I'll feel differently once we get the finale and I can go back to watch the whole season straight through again...but for now I am feeling rather disconcerted by the choices made this season.
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- Right from the beginning I knew this episode was going to be fun to watch at least. How did I know this? Because Jody Mills got to burst in and behead a vampire in the opening credits...coolly stashing the body in the trunk of her patrol car after it is over.
- Vampiric Stockholm Syndrome. Is that nastier than the regular kind?
- "When Mama finds me, she'll kill me."
- I...may have teared up a bit whenever Jody revealed just how much she still misses her husband and son. Poor woman has lost almost everything!
- One thing I have found interesting is that the longer a character spends around Sam and Dean and the more integrated into the odd little family the Winchesters have going, more and more of their wardrobe starts going plaid. I'm not sure if that's an Easter-egg running gag by the wardrobe designers or just an unintentional coincidence. It just cracks me up.
- I am really starting to feel trepidation about what's going to happen to Jody now. She may have survived this episode, but we just never know.
- That girl Jody had arrested (Alex or whatever you want to call her) REALLY rubs me the wrong way. I just want to slap her. And I don't think much of the actress' choices either. She plays the character too belligerent and rude to be taken seriously, but all that prickliness is too flat to have come from a real person, and she is socially functioning enough that there is no way we can believe she was a feral child raised, brainwashed, and used as a chew-toy by vamps since she was very young. The rest of the 'family' is very creepy and strange. Why is Alex so unbelievably different? It doesn't make sense.- EUGH! Oh YUCK! Bobby using the woodchipper to dispose of the okami was awesome because he was improvising. A vamp using a woodchipper to prepare dinner is just nasty. There goes my appetite!
- I'm really starting to get worried about the way the Mark is affecting Dean. Yeah he's always had a bit of a vendetta against monsters who go after kids (or after his brother), but he's never really taken actual pleasure out of putting them down. Relief at a job done, joy at lives saved, and happiness to have lived to fight another day, yeah...but never this almost sadistic pleasure. Not even Hell could do this to him. I have a bad feeling about what the season finale will bring...
- Why is it whenever Sam gets tied to a chair they always use duct tape? Is that like Kyptonite for Moose or something?- If Alex is supposed to be the bait for her brothers' victims...why doesn't she know how to fit into society better? Maybe you could argue that she just wasn't trying whenever she was arrested, but that would have been the BEST time to blend in. So how am I supposed to believe that twaddle?
- At least Jody survived...
This episode was okay. Not great, not bad, just kind of 'meh'. There were moments that were fun to watch (most notably involving Jody), but also a lot of things that just failed to add up or impress. It did little to advance the season arc and felt like filler fodder. Even the Winchesters felt rather phoned-in, while Sheriff Mills OWNED the episode all on her own. Alex Annie Alexis Ann is a 2/5. I probably won't be watching it again.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
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