Okay, just a warning here at the start. If you're a fan of Supernatural and you haven't watched last Thursday's episode yet, don't read any more of this! Unless, of course, you don't mind spoilers.
Now, I love the show and I think it's having the strongest season it has ever had, creatively as well as in the ratings. Maybe that's why I was so disappointed and irritated by this latest episode. I think, though, that the poor quality of this episode would stand out starkly against anything this show has ever done before.
Supernatural has always been a show that is well written. Both the long term story arcs and the stand alone episodes always satisfy everything I'm looking for from the show, which is basically that the long term story arcs are essentially about the bond between these two brothers and the lengths they'll go to for each other, and the stand alone episodes are well written and usually provide at least one good scare or creepy moment.
This week, the show returned from a nearly two month hiatus and gave us a very poorly written episode. It started out fine: a creepy farmhouse, a ghost appearing from a closet in the teaser and killing the owner in a locked room. Sam & Dean show up to investigate just as a new family are about to move in.
So far, so good. Sam & Dean try and get the family out of the place until they can figure out who the spirit is and how to get rid of it, but the new owners prove obstinate and move in anyway. Next thing you know, the son is playing catch in his closet with 'the girl in the walls' and someone has written GO on the living room wall in crayon.
There were some really great creepy moments in this episode, I have to give it that. The best was when the teenage daughter is lying in bed and thinks the family dog is licking her hand, only to have the dog walk through the door. She slowly starts to turn her head towards the mystery licker, just in time for her closet door to slam shut.
Long story short, the Girl in the Walls tells the son that he can stay, but the rest of the family must go. Sam & Dean return in time for the dog to go missing and then to be discovered killed, with the words Too Late written above it in blood .
Here's where my problem with the episode started. It turned out that the Girl in the Walls wasn't a ghost at all. She was the child of the murdered former owner and his own daughter, who'd committed suicide, and she'd been thrown down in an old dumbwaiter shaft to hide the awful truth of her existence. She'd grown up in the shaft, never knowing sunlight or human contact and was basically an animal. In another twist, it turned out she had a brother down there with her in the same condition.
Um, okay. So, how did these two who are stated by Sam & Dean to basically be wild animals defending their territory and who have never had human contact, know how to read and write? I mean, they did manage to write out the words Go and Too Late quite perfectly. The girl knew what a baseball was for. They also knew that slashing all the tires on the vehicles would keep the family (and Sam & Dean) trapped there and at their mercy.
It just didn't make any sense once it turned out that they weren't ghosts. It was just a very badly written episode, with more attention paid to big twists for the sake of having big twists- She's not a Ghost! She's got a Brother!- than of making any sense plot wise. I suppose the tires and baseball could be explained at a stretch by saying they'd seen some TV through the cracks in the walls or something, but no way could they have learned to write!
You know I'll watch just about anything with Jared Padalecki in it, so I probably shouldn't complain about a few gaping plot holes in an otherwise well written series. It's just that I go into those other things anticipating that they'll be bad, but with Supernatural, I'm used to far better.
I looked up the writer for this particular episode, wondering if it was someone new that they hadn't used before, and was surprised to see that it was someone who has written a few really good episodes before this, including one of my favorites from last season, The Mystery Spot.
So, maybe we should just chalk it up to a fluke thing. I mean, every series has a bad episode now and then. Plus, as I said, this one did at least offer some good creepy moments. And, let's face it, I'd be lying if I said that I wouldn't tune in just to watch Jared & Jensen read from the phone book, so who am I kidding, really?
Okay, I think I'm done whining like a fanboy scorned! For now.
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