By: Andrew Dabb & Daniel Loflin
**Spoilers**
If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
For a television show to 'jump the shark' means that it has "...reached a point at which far-fetched events are included merely for the sake of novelty, indicative of a decline in quality." (To quote wonderful Google Definitions.) Usually whenever a show does this it is a sign for me to stop wasting my limited time following it. Unless it's Merlin. For some reason I give that one a free pass...
But I digress. I was rather nervous whenever I saw this episode title in the Season 4 list, but because of all the other things SPN had done right, right, right, I decided to give it a try anyway. And boy am I ever glad I did!
Apparently I'm not a very good barometer as to what will be good and what will be bad when it comes to my own personal tastes in television shows. Things that I think I'll love end up disappointing and things that I am unsure about turn out so extremely good that I'm kicking myself in the rear for a day after watching them. This was no different. Not only did it introduce an awesome Supernatural character (Adam Mlligan), but it was also a cracking good story in and of itself.
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- The episode starts out with Horror Staple 111: blond getting chased and attacked by some unseen force. This time, though, the blond is a little less Princess Peach and a little more Buffy as she manages to evade her attackers for a while and actually does something smart for a change...instead of, I don't know, opening the door back up once everything goes quiet?
- She also keeps a framed picture of John Winchester on her bedside table.
- We then cut to Dean waking up after spending the night in the Impala. Sam's slouched against the hood, looking groggy and brushing his teeth. Guess they've been living rough for a while. What...have the demons infiltrated the FBI again? Or did the set designers just not want to have to dress two motel rooms this week?
- This is one of those days for the brothers when nothing seems to go right. And we're not talking big, epic, Apocalyptic not going right (or dying for the millionth time). No, this is more the small annoyances of life. Like waking up to discover you've been drooling. Or whacking your head off of a solid steel frame. Or finding out that your Dad slept with some woman and now you have a half-brother that he never told you about. You know...the little things.
- Dean's convinced that 'Adam' is a demon or a shapeshifter or some other 'fugly' that they've got to 'gank'. Sam, on the other hand, takes the news surprisingly well. Guess he just holds John up on less of a pedestal than his brother does. Or it could be because he doesn't remember Mary either.
- "Well now I'm thinking about Dad sex. Stop." Sam has just a little bit too much fun goading Dean about how Adam could possibly be their brother. He points out that John wasn't exactly a monk. Eh...I can see that. The Winchester patriarch definitely wasn't quite the lady's man that his eldest son is, but he doesn't strike me as exactly the 'straight and narrow road of abstinence' type of guy. Adam's mother was blond too. Apparently John Winchester has a type.
- Adam is totally a Winchester. He has the same talent of making bizarre and strange faces that his elder brothers do:
- Adam passes all of Dean's increasingly paranoid tests with flying colors, but proceeds to tick the eldest (living) Winchester off as he rambles on about how wonderful of a father John was and how John took him to games and how John let him drive the Impala (that one really gets Dean's eye twitching) and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! Jake Abel does a great job with this speech, delivering it in a way that, looking back on it, sounds like a classic villain monologue. Far from killing the scene, though, it makes it deeply funny in retrospect.
- I also want to give credit to the casting directors for giving the part to Mr. Abel. Not only does he do a fantastic job with portraying all the subtly different versions of Adam that the character ends up going through, not to mention evil!ghoul!Adam, but he also looks enough like Jensen, Jared, and Jeffery (note how all the main Winchester actors have names beginning with 'J'...interesting) to legitimately pass as a younger half-brother. From the moment you see him walk into that diner you know he's the one.
- Dean eventually can't take any more of Adam's tripe and blows up at his half-brother, snarling that he and Sam are the only sons John has. I guess Dean woke up on the wrong side of the Impala...
- As Dean gets up to leave, Adam says pitifully, “I have brothers?” and insists he can prove his identity to them. He doesn’t ask them to prove theirs, saying only that they're his brothers and he believes them. That should have been our first clue that something less-than-canny was going on.
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- Adam takes his new 'mechanic' brothers over to his house and shows them around, wasting yet more time monologuing about how wonderful John was and generally making a jerk out of himself. Both Sam and Dean are obviously jealous of this (no doubt thinking of buggy mattresses and hungry nights every time Adam opens his mouth about their Dad), but despite it all Sam seems to take it in stride and even come to like Adam just a bit. Dean, on the other hand, doesn't appreciate Adam recounting all the happy times John spent playing house with the Milligans.
- For a single mother who worked as a nurse, Kate Milligan sure does have a big house. Was it a family heirloom or something? Because it wasn't like John was paying Child Support...
- Sam and Dean finally get the brilliant idea to check out Kate Milligan's bedroom. How the police that scouted out the place ever missed those scratches on the floor is beyond me. Even if they thought they were nothing, pictures still would have been taken.
- A nice little game of Rock Paper Scissors ensues...and Dean loses, which means he has to climb down into a narrow duct. Ew.
- “Godzilla’s not real!”
- Dean doesn't appreciate Sam giving Adam the talk about how being a Hunter means giving up the rest of your life.
- Sam, for his part, actually looks a bit excited at the chance to be the big brother for once. The scenes where he and Adam are cleaning the guns together and practicing their marksmanship never fail to illicit an "Awwww!" from me.
- Dean can't take it any more and storms away to blow off some steam. And apparently his version of that today is to don his FBI suit and go snooping about the town, concluding with a visit to the robbed graves.
- "Pardon me for asking, but have you ever considered where you would like to spend eternity?" "All the damn time." Haha. That's not funny. Not funny in the slightest. It's ironic, given Dean's recent history, but not funny.
- Wait. Since when is a motel’s ventilation system connected to a sewer (Think of how that would smell!!!) that is for the disposal of waste that could be toxic for your health? Sewer workers have to wear special suits and masks too. The different gasses (no jokes, please, I'm not talking about that) emitted from the sewage and garbage can be deadly. No way would a ventilation system be in any way connected to the sewer!
- I would complain loudly about Adam being dumb enough to park right over a man-hole when his mother was dragged off and killed that way...but we all know that Adam is really a ghoul having some fun toying with the Winchesters before chowing down, so I'm not even going to go there.
- Dean ends up trapped in a crypt by the second ghoul and gets the biggest 'Oh Crap!' moment ever when he opens up the coffin and finds Adam's dead body inside. If Adam is lying dead here...then what have they been cozying up to and...OH NO!
- Poor Sam, waking up with his 'brother' standing over him and slitting his wrists while delivering a monologue sure to have Syndrome cringing in a corner.
- And, of course, Dean finally breaks his way out of the crypt (By smashing an angelic hunk of stained glass, no less. Probably some sort of imagery there...) and rushes in just in time to save the day. It's disconcerting to see Sam so weak and helpless because he's been so juiced up on the psychic powers for so long that we've forgotten that they're pretty much useless against anything that isn't a demon.
- There's something very savage and Lord of the Flies in the way Dean ruthlessly and viciously beats ghoul!Adam's head in with a lamp. He gets so into venting his feelings on the mutilated thing that he forgets all about the fact that he still has a brother alive, although bleeding to death, until Sam musters the strength to call out for Dean's help.
- I really want to know what lie they fed to the ER people to keep Sam off of suicide watch. Or did they just tough it out in a motel room? He'd lost a lot of blood and those ghouls' mouths CAN'T have been even REMOTELY sanitary...!
- Before drilling a hole in his side, ghoul!Adam revealed to Sam that the actual Adam...the Adam Dean found stricken and decaying in the crypt...was indeed their brother. He said that John had killed the ghoul patriarch years before and they had bided their time until they could destroy his sons. (This was all revealed through that ridiculously long monologue I mentioned earlier.) Knowing this, Sam and Dean steal Adam's body away (hopefully removing their fingerprints from the Milligan house) and give him a hunters funeral deep in the forest. The parallels with In My Time of Dying/Everybody Loves A Clown are obvious as we watch yet another branch of the scrawny Winchester family tree wither and die.
Even though the story may be a bit predictable in places (though they do manage to misdirect you beautifully several times), this is still one of my favorite SPN episodes of all time. Not only does it delve a bit more into the character of John Winchester (albeit through the skewed perspective of the vengeful and manipulative ghouls) but it also introduces us to a new member of the Winchester family while paying tribute to an infamous trope. It should be noticed that Adam also played the part of a Who Are You Again? character, due to the fact that he conveniently dies by the end of the episode and doesn't upset the status quo...yet. It's dark, it's scary, it's savage, and it's utterly heart-breaking. Jump The Shark is a 4/5.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
But I digress. I was rather nervous whenever I saw this episode title in the Season 4 list, but because of all the other things SPN had done right, right, right, I decided to give it a try anyway. And boy am I ever glad I did!
Apparently I'm not a very good barometer as to what will be good and what will be bad when it comes to my own personal tastes in television shows. Things that I think I'll love end up disappointing and things that I am unsure about turn out so extremely good that I'm kicking myself in the rear for a day after watching them. This was no different. Not only did it introduce an awesome Supernatural character (Adam Mlligan), but it was also a cracking good story in and of itself.
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- The episode starts out with Horror Staple 111: blond getting chased and attacked by some unseen force. This time, though, the blond is a little less Princess Peach and a little more Buffy as she manages to evade her attackers for a while and actually does something smart for a change...instead of, I don't know, opening the door back up once everything goes quiet?- She also keeps a framed picture of John Winchester on her bedside table.
- We then cut to Dean waking up after spending the night in the Impala. Sam's slouched against the hood, looking groggy and brushing his teeth. Guess they've been living rough for a while. What...have the demons infiltrated the FBI again? Or did the set designers just not want to have to dress two motel rooms this week?
- This is one of those days for the brothers when nothing seems to go right. And we're not talking big, epic, Apocalyptic not going right (or dying for the millionth time). No, this is more the small annoyances of life. Like waking up to discover you've been drooling. Or whacking your head off of a solid steel frame. Or finding out that your Dad slept with some woman and now you have a half-brother that he never told you about. You know...the little things.
- Dean's convinced that 'Adam' is a demon or a shapeshifter or some other 'fugly' that they've got to 'gank'. Sam, on the other hand, takes the news surprisingly well. Guess he just holds John up on less of a pedestal than his brother does. Or it could be because he doesn't remember Mary either.
- "Well now I'm thinking about Dad sex. Stop." Sam has just a little bit too much fun goading Dean about how Adam could possibly be their brother. He points out that John wasn't exactly a monk. Eh...I can see that. The Winchester patriarch definitely wasn't quite the lady's man that his eldest son is, but he doesn't strike me as exactly the 'straight and narrow road of abstinence' type of guy. Adam's mother was blond too. Apparently John Winchester has a type.
- Adam is totally a Winchester. He has the same talent of making bizarre and strange faces that his elder brothers do:- Adam passes all of Dean's increasingly paranoid tests with flying colors, but proceeds to tick the eldest (living) Winchester off as he rambles on about how wonderful of a father John was and how John took him to games and how John let him drive the Impala (that one really gets Dean's eye twitching) and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! Jake Abel does a great job with this speech, delivering it in a way that, looking back on it, sounds like a classic villain monologue. Far from killing the scene, though, it makes it deeply funny in retrospect.
- I also want to give credit to the casting directors for giving the part to Mr. Abel. Not only does he do a fantastic job with portraying all the subtly different versions of Adam that the character ends up going through, not to mention evil!ghoul!Adam, but he also looks enough like Jensen, Jared, and Jeffery (note how all the main Winchester actors have names beginning with 'J'...interesting) to legitimately pass as a younger half-brother. From the moment you see him walk into that diner you know he's the one.
- Dean eventually can't take any more of Adam's tripe and blows up at his half-brother, snarling that he and Sam are the only sons John has. I guess Dean woke up on the wrong side of the Impala...
- As Dean gets up to leave, Adam says pitifully, “I have brothers?” and insists he can prove his identity to them. He doesn’t ask them to prove theirs, saying only that they're his brothers and he believes them. That should have been our first clue that something less-than-canny was going on.
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- Adam takes his new 'mechanic' brothers over to his house and shows them around, wasting yet more time monologuing about how wonderful John was and generally making a jerk out of himself. Both Sam and Dean are obviously jealous of this (no doubt thinking of buggy mattresses and hungry nights every time Adam opens his mouth about their Dad), but despite it all Sam seems to take it in stride and even come to like Adam just a bit. Dean, on the other hand, doesn't appreciate Adam recounting all the happy times John spent playing house with the Milligans.- For a single mother who worked as a nurse, Kate Milligan sure does have a big house. Was it a family heirloom or something? Because it wasn't like John was paying Child Support...
- Sam and Dean finally get the brilliant idea to check out Kate Milligan's bedroom. How the police that scouted out the place ever missed those scratches on the floor is beyond me. Even if they thought they were nothing, pictures still would have been taken.
- A nice little game of Rock Paper Scissors ensues...and Dean loses, which means he has to climb down into a narrow duct. Ew.
- Sam and Dean tell Adam to call the police about the bits of Kate left in the duct (that's really disgusting, by the way...it looks like the ghouls scalped her) but hurry off before the cops get there. This apparently tips Adam off that his brothers aren't what they seem and he comes storming into their motel room to confront them. Dean and Sam have a truly epic fight about whether or not to bring Adam in on the whole family business.
- Adam, again, takes the news that the supernatural is out there extraordinarily well (not surprising, seeing as how he's actually a ghoul) and Sam and Dean really should have picked up on that. "You're my brothers and you wouldn't lie to me...right?" is disgustingly naive for a nineteen-year-old going into pre-med. Nobody says that sort of thing. Nobody over the age of three, that is, and even most three-year-olds would be giving him reproachful looks!
- Dean doesn't appreciate Sam giving Adam the talk about how being a Hunter means giving up the rest of your life.
- Sam, for his part, actually looks a bit excited at the chance to be the big brother for once. The scenes where he and Adam are cleaning the guns together and practicing their marksmanship never fail to illicit an "Awwww!" from me.- Dean can't take it any more and storms away to blow off some steam. And apparently his version of that today is to don his FBI suit and go snooping about the town, concluding with a visit to the robbed graves.
- "Pardon me for asking, but have you ever considered where you would like to spend eternity?" "All the damn time." Haha. That's not funny. Not funny in the slightest. It's ironic, given Dean's recent history, but not funny.
- Wait. Since when is a motel’s ventilation system connected to a sewer (Think of how that would smell!!!) that is for the disposal of waste that could be toxic for your health? Sewer workers have to wear special suits and masks too. The different gasses (no jokes, please, I'm not talking about that) emitted from the sewage and garbage can be deadly. No way would a ventilation system be in any way connected to the sewer!
- I would complain loudly about Adam being dumb enough to park right over a man-hole when his mother was dragged off and killed that way...but we all know that Adam is really a ghoul having some fun toying with the Winchesters before chowing down, so I'm not even going to go there.
- Dean ends up trapped in a crypt by the second ghoul and gets the biggest 'Oh Crap!' moment ever when he opens up the coffin and finds Adam's dead body inside. If Adam is lying dead here...then what have they been cozying up to and...OH NO!
- Poor Sam, waking up with his 'brother' standing over him and slitting his wrists while delivering a monologue sure to have Syndrome cringing in a corner.
- And, of course, Dean finally breaks his way out of the crypt (By smashing an angelic hunk of stained glass, no less. Probably some sort of imagery there...) and rushes in just in time to save the day. It's disconcerting to see Sam so weak and helpless because he's been so juiced up on the psychic powers for so long that we've forgotten that they're pretty much useless against anything that isn't a demon.
- There's something very savage and Lord of the Flies in the way Dean ruthlessly and viciously beats ghoul!Adam's head in with a lamp. He gets so into venting his feelings on the mutilated thing that he forgets all about the fact that he still has a brother alive, although bleeding to death, until Sam musters the strength to call out for Dean's help.
- I really want to know what lie they fed to the ER people to keep Sam off of suicide watch. Or did they just tough it out in a motel room? He'd lost a lot of blood and those ghouls' mouths CAN'T have been even REMOTELY sanitary...!- Before drilling a hole in his side, ghoul!Adam revealed to Sam that the actual Adam...the Adam Dean found stricken and decaying in the crypt...was indeed their brother. He said that John had killed the ghoul patriarch years before and they had bided their time until they could destroy his sons. (This was all revealed through that ridiculously long monologue I mentioned earlier.) Knowing this, Sam and Dean steal Adam's body away (hopefully removing their fingerprints from the Milligan house) and give him a hunters funeral deep in the forest. The parallels with In My Time of Dying/Everybody Loves A Clown are obvious as we watch yet another branch of the scrawny Winchester family tree wither and die.
Even though the story may be a bit predictable in places (though they do manage to misdirect you beautifully several times), this is still one of my favorite SPN episodes of all time. Not only does it delve a bit more into the character of John Winchester (albeit through the skewed perspective of the vengeful and manipulative ghouls) but it also introduces us to a new member of the Winchester family while paying tribute to an infamous trope. It should be noticed that Adam also played the part of a Who Are You Again? character, due to the fact that he conveniently dies by the end of the episode and doesn't upset the status quo...yet. It's dark, it's scary, it's savage, and it's utterly heart-breaking. Jump The Shark is a 4/5.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
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