Grade: B
Cas is gone, but Dr. Sexy M.D. is still on the air. Somehow, the Winchester’s world just got a little bit darker.
I want to take a moment to lament what is, ostensibly, the last we’ll see of Cas for a while, hopefully. When Bobby asks Dean how he’s holding up in the face of Sam’s hallucinations, the rise of the Leviathans, and the “death” of Cas, he mentions that Dean just lost one of the best friends he’d ever had. Hindsight being 20/20, Bobby’s right. For the past couple of seasons, Cas and Dean were, at times, closer than Sam and Dean, despite Cas’ weak grasp of human emotion. So, when Dean fishes Cas’ trenchcoat out of a river after Cas explodes into an ink stain and releases the Leviathans into the local water supply, it’s a tough moment. Cas was a welcome counterpoint to the brother’s constant angst. His lack of any discernable emotion besides confusion was necessary in a series that saw its leads become more hopeless with every episode. Cas wasn’t the brightest sign of hope, but he was never trapped in his own despair like the Winchesters do.
Now, it seems like the fellas won’t be getting that break Dean was looking for last episode because the Leviathans are loose and they’ve already started wreaking havoc. The Leviathans are essentially a cross between Supernatural’s demons and vampires. They possess any unlucky souls who, in this case, ingested the polluted water then they maneuver themselves into positions and places where they can unlock their bottom jaw and become Pez-like people eaters. Like Supernatural’s demons, these new beasties have a pecking order. Apparently, there’s a Big Bad leviathan behind everything, but he/she/it is relaying its orders through a leviathan inhabiting the man who was once The Shield’s Capt. Aceveda (Benito Martinez). A few more leviathans have possessed a pair of teens from a local swim team and another inhabits an innocent young girl. In an effort to circumvent the pattern of Supernatural’s baddies being young women, the little lady leviathan quickly switches to the body of a cheeky surgeon.
The leviathans’ need to satiate themselves leaves a trail of bodies that hits the news, landing them right on the Winchesters’ radar. Normally, this is the point where Sam and Dean mount up for one of their DIY-style hunts, but our boys have learned from their past mistakes. Sam fesses up to his hallucinations, letting Dean and Bobby know exactly how bad it’s been. Dean is only shocked for a second before he benches Sam, and Sam agrees. All the while, Lucifer—Mark Pellegrino delivering finely-tuned villainy that tiptoes between unnerving and hammy—is poking at Sam—who is spending most of his time field stripping and cleaning his guns—urging the poor kid to kill himself and rejoin him in the cage. It occurs to me that Sam has been constantly besieged by mental torment since the first episode, and now, seven seasons deep, is no different. As much as Dean needed that break from hunting last season to live a normal life, I can’t help but think Sam needs it a lot more. While any Supernatural vet knows the boys will always face torment, with Sam more often than not getting the lion’s share, this feels like a retread of many of the Sam arcs from years past, but this time, at least, the brothers have learned enough to avoid avoidance and try to head the problem off.
With Sam benched, Dean on the hunt and Leviathans on the loose, everything seems totally disjointed until Bobby gets a call from Sheriff Jody Mills, last seen in Season Five’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. See, Sheriff Mills was in the Sioux Falls, SD hospital for a routine appendectomy when she spotted LeviaDoc kidnapping his dinner. Bobby wisely leaves Sam by his lonesome and thus at the mercy of Lucifer, who lures Sam to an abandoned warehouse tailor made for suicides. Dean arrives just in time to pull Sam back, thanks to dropping a GPS on him earlier in the episode. This all sets up the standard Winchester heart-to-heart albeit with a lot more honesty than the average post-game wrap between these two. Of course the post-game wrap came about ten minutes early so there was more left to this fairly stuffed episode.
When the boys get back to Bobby’s, they run into Captain Leviathian who gives Sammy a pipe to the head before Dean manages to drop a car on him. Worse for the wear after their first run-in with the Leviathan, Dean and Sam end up in a ambulance on its way to Sioux Falls Hospital while, back at Bobby’s, Captain Leviathan proves that dropping a car on them isn’t enough to slow a leviathan.
This episode was mostly a place setting ep. Hello Cruel World merely put all the players in place and set the stage for the conflict between the Winchesters and the Leviathans that will form the spine of the season. Compared to last year, this is a much more serialized approach, which isn’t a bad route for a series as seasoned as Supernatural. I know and most longtime viewers know that eventually Supernatural will get around to the one-off episodes that are its bread and butter, but, for now, this is a solid way to build the season. Hopefully, the Leviathan arc won’t get buried, forgotten like some of the major arcs introduced early last season. As long as the writers keep with this momentum, we’re looking at the beginning of one of Supernatural’s most promising seasons.
Cas is gone, but Dr. Sexy M.D. is still on the air. Somehow, the Winchester’s world just got a little bit darker.
I want to take a moment to lament what is, ostensibly, the last we’ll see of Cas for a while, hopefully. When Bobby asks Dean how he’s holding up in the face of Sam’s hallucinations, the rise of the Leviathans, and the “death” of Cas, he mentions that Dean just lost one of the best friends he’d ever had. Hindsight being 20/20, Bobby’s right. For the past couple of seasons, Cas and Dean were, at times, closer than Sam and Dean, despite Cas’ weak grasp of human emotion. So, when Dean fishes Cas’ trenchcoat out of a river after Cas explodes into an ink stain and releases the Leviathans into the local water supply, it’s a tough moment. Cas was a welcome counterpoint to the brother’s constant angst. His lack of any discernable emotion besides confusion was necessary in a series that saw its leads become more hopeless with every episode. Cas wasn’t the brightest sign of hope, but he was never trapped in his own despair like the Winchesters do.
Now, it seems like the fellas won’t be getting that break Dean was looking for last episode because the Leviathans are loose and they’ve already started wreaking havoc. The Leviathans are essentially a cross between Supernatural’s demons and vampires. They possess any unlucky souls who, in this case, ingested the polluted water then they maneuver themselves into positions and places where they can unlock their bottom jaw and become Pez-like people eaters. Like Supernatural’s demons, these new beasties have a pecking order. Apparently, there’s a Big Bad leviathan behind everything, but he/she/it is relaying its orders through a leviathan inhabiting the man who was once The Shield’s Capt. Aceveda (Benito Martinez). A few more leviathans have possessed a pair of teens from a local swim team and another inhabits an innocent young girl. In an effort to circumvent the pattern of Supernatural’s baddies being young women, the little lady leviathan quickly switches to the body of a cheeky surgeon.
The leviathans’ need to satiate themselves leaves a trail of bodies that hits the news, landing them right on the Winchesters’ radar. Normally, this is the point where Sam and Dean mount up for one of their DIY-style hunts, but our boys have learned from their past mistakes. Sam fesses up to his hallucinations, letting Dean and Bobby know exactly how bad it’s been. Dean is only shocked for a second before he benches Sam, and Sam agrees. All the while, Lucifer—Mark Pellegrino delivering finely-tuned villainy that tiptoes between unnerving and hammy—is poking at Sam—who is spending most of his time field stripping and cleaning his guns—urging the poor kid to kill himself and rejoin him in the cage. It occurs to me that Sam has been constantly besieged by mental torment since the first episode, and now, seven seasons deep, is no different. As much as Dean needed that break from hunting last season to live a normal life, I can’t help but think Sam needs it a lot more. While any Supernatural vet knows the boys will always face torment, with Sam more often than not getting the lion’s share, this feels like a retread of many of the Sam arcs from years past, but this time, at least, the brothers have learned enough to avoid avoidance and try to head the problem off.
With Sam benched, Dean on the hunt and Leviathans on the loose, everything seems totally disjointed until Bobby gets a call from Sheriff Jody Mills, last seen in Season Five’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. See, Sheriff Mills was in the Sioux Falls, SD hospital for a routine appendectomy when she spotted LeviaDoc kidnapping his dinner. Bobby wisely leaves Sam by his lonesome and thus at the mercy of Lucifer, who lures Sam to an abandoned warehouse tailor made for suicides. Dean arrives just in time to pull Sam back, thanks to dropping a GPS on him earlier in the episode. This all sets up the standard Winchester heart-to-heart albeit with a lot more honesty than the average post-game wrap between these two. Of course the post-game wrap came about ten minutes early so there was more left to this fairly stuffed episode.
When the boys get back to Bobby’s, they run into Captain Leviathian who gives Sammy a pipe to the head before Dean manages to drop a car on him. Worse for the wear after their first run-in with the Leviathan, Dean and Sam end up in a ambulance on its way to Sioux Falls Hospital while, back at Bobby’s, Captain Leviathan proves that dropping a car on them isn’t enough to slow a leviathan.
This episode was mostly a place setting ep. Hello Cruel World merely put all the players in place and set the stage for the conflict between the Winchesters and the Leviathans that will form the spine of the season. Compared to last year, this is a much more serialized approach, which isn’t a bad route for a series as seasoned as Supernatural. I know and most longtime viewers know that eventually Supernatural will get around to the one-off episodes that are its bread and butter, but, for now, this is a solid way to build the season. Hopefully, the Leviathan arc won’t get buried, forgotten like some of the major arcs introduced early last season. As long as the writers keep with this momentum, we’re looking at the beginning of one of Supernatural’s most promising seasons.
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