Saturday, September 24, 2011

Review - Supernatural 7x01: Meet the New Boss


Grade: A

Dean’s right. The Winchesters never catch a break, do they?

Supernatural returned last night and started right where it left off with Castiel having become ‘God’ after absorbing all the souls in purgatory.

One of the most priceless moments of the premiere was Bobby’s reaction to GodCas. Upon realizing that he and the Winchesters are completely outmatched, he kneels. Dean and Sam promptly follow suit. It qualifies as maybe one the smarter things the guys have done and one that is slyly funny because, heck, that’s what most people would do.

After subduing Sam by poking at the walls Death erected to protect Sam’s mind from his memories of Hell, GodCas goes a mission from God to make things right in the world, a totally Cas thing to do. His first stop is at church where a fiery anti-gay preacher is whipping his flock into a frenzy against those ‘degenerates’. Cas arrives, announces he’s God and proceeds to smite the preacher in the way that only the God of the Old Testament would savor. Later, he forces the KKK to disband and restores sight to a blind man. You’ve got to love Cas for at least making an effort to do some good with the Power Cosmic.

Meanwhile, the Winchesters are, in a change of pace, resigned to their fate. Dean, clearly stumped at how to beat God despite their track record with taking on deities, is convinced they’re out of options, while Sam is haunted by visions of his time in the cage with Lucifer and Michael. Sam’s visions are quite reminiscent of those that plagued Dean after his stint in the eternal boiler room—all hooks, chains, and flame. At this point, it’s abundantly clear that Sera Gamble and the good people in the Supernatural writer’s room will never, ever let Sam go even half a season without excruciating torment. That said, it’s hard to blame Dean for feeling like giving up is the best option. No matter where the Winchesters go or what good they do, some higher power, real and/or fictional, has it out for them. But, there’d be no show if the Winchesters didn’t suffer, so here we are. As much as I love Supernatural and kind of wish it would never disappear, I’d like to see the guys catch a break and sometimes it seems like cancellation would be the only way they would get a reprieve.

As the Winchesters lick their wounds, Cas visits the we-always-think-he’s-dead-but he-never-is Crowley. He strikes a deal to restore Crowley as King of Hell with the condition that Cas gets to choose which souls go where. Sounds familiar. I love how the writers at Supernatural actually maneuvered Cas into striking the exact biblical deal the real ‘God’ enforced with Lucifer. Clever those writers are.

Cas obviously has a plan, but he has never been known to be particularly strategic or subtle. When word of Cas’ exploits spreads, the Winchesters finally stop their moping and devise a plan of their own, with some urging by Crowley, to ‘enlist’ the aid of the one force that can stop God, Death. Now, the Winchesters typically come up with some dumb plans—in the sense that their plans are often fly by the seat of their pants bold—but their plan to bind Death, with some old-fashioned spellcasting, and use him to kill Cas might not have been their wisest. Once Cas finds the boys and the recently bound Death, he is visibly disappointed that he’s going to have to kill his old ‘pets’. Cas promptly un-binds Death, but Death notices that Cas is physically falling apart. Apparently, Cas can’t control all the things in heaven, earth and purgatory that man never dreamt of. The worse of those beasties being the ominously named, vaguely–defined Leviathans, who apparently predate humanity. Dinosaurs on Supernatural? They’ve had dragons, so why not? Despite this demoralizing new knowledge, Cas promptly un-binds Death and disappears to enact more divine justice.

While I’m 50-50 on if the Leviathans are actually a reference to dinosaurs, it’s obvious from Death’s response that they’re not to be taken lightly. Cas’ struggle to control the souls inside culminates with him massacring an entire office of political staffers for a congressional candidate he deemed as evil. Cas has always been a moral absolutist—in fact, his struggle to see the gray in the world has been a source of some the series’ best examples of character development—but mass murder is beyond the pail. Thankfully, Death dropped a bit of knowledge that could help the Winchesters and Cas before he goes even further. All Cas has to do is release the souls back to Purgatory. No problem.

The Winchesters draw Cas back to the abandoned hospital where he absorbed the souls of Purgatory and open a portal—more spellcasting here than on The Secret Circle—for Cas to toss the souls into. Everything seems on track until Sam goes missing. The walls in his mind have completely collapsed and Lucifer appears to tell Sam that he’s still locked in the cage. Dun-dun-dun. On the other side of the hospital, Cas successfully releases the souls, dies and returns as everbody’s favorite simple-minded Cas. But, Cas didn’t get rid of all the souls. One of the Leviathans held on and now Cas is possessed, and he’s already starting to ham it up with classic madman villainy. Knowing Supernatural’s propensity to drag out the conflict between the boys and the big bad—and the fact that Misha Collins isn’t a regular this season—it’s likely the brothers won’t be going head-to-head with LeviathanCas anytime soon, which is sad because it would be nice to see a different side to Cas, even if he is at the Winchester’s throats.

And with that, the season is off to an impressive start, especially compared to the more deliberate opening of last season. Gamble and Co. really set the bar with this opening and managed to do a lot in 43 minutes. Not only have they established a viable opponent with a personal connection to the Winchesters, they accelerated the issue of Sam’s growing madness and set Crowley up as a potential thorn in everyone’s side. Sure, some of these beats are just continuations of arcs that could have, and probably should have, been wrapped last season, but the momentum these arcs have right now is pretty fascinating. Hopefully, Supernatural will avoid some of the feet-dragging and tonal swings that defined last season and embrace the madness. And, if they keep up the momentum from this episode, not only will our boys never get a break, but we might be staring down the barrel of season 8. But, that’s just wishful thinking...

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