8x9 "Taxi Driver" Review

“Taxi Driver”

Summary:

When Kevin tells the Winchesters of the second trial they try to find some way to rescue an innocent soul from from Hell and unto Heaven (which is how God talks). After getting a crossroads demon to talk, they search for a rouge reaper to smuggle them into Hell only to find the very reaper who drug Bobby into the pit after they burned the flask. Sam goes on by himself and one of Crowley’s men overhear the exchange. Crowley kills the reaper and strands Sam in Hell/Purgatory (since they're the same place apparently). Dean has a run in with Naomi who wishes to get on his good side by telling Dean that the reaper’s way to hell is through Purgatory. Finding the reaper’s body still in his cab, Dean calls in Benny for a favor that will cost him and arm and a leg (and a head). Benny gets Sam and Bobby to the tear and when they make it out topside they're delayed by an aggravated Crowley. Naomi turns up once again to scare him off an let Bobby into heaven to try butter Dean up for a future task. Back at the safe house, Crowley found Kevin and took him but not after telling him he killed his mother. The episode ends with the Winchesters thinking he just bolted and Sam in a weakened position from the second trial.

Review:

“Taxi Driver” is an important episode in Supernatural because it shapes the lore of Hell in a way that can’t be undone. This is not to say that “important” connotes it value as an asset of the show but rather acknowledging how it has somehow bastardized the impact of Hell in the previous seasons. To look at it from a standpoint of critic rather than upset fan one needs to take into account the intention of certain choices the writers, director, and other creators on the team have made and then deduce why it doesn't work. 

The taxi is undeniably an allusion to ancient Greek mythology (for the sake of specifics) and the ability to buy passage into the Underworld and the taxi driver is the ferryman who carries souls into the Underworld. Unlike Grecian mythology, Ajay is a rouge reaper who is known for smuggling souls out of Hell rather than in but exchanges the price of a future favor for Sam’s 24 hour admittance and retrieval. The route becomes complicated when Ajay reveals his path to hell is through Purgatory. 

Now the reason a ferryman into the underworld works while a taxi to hell does not is the concept of spiritual vs corporeal. In the Greek mythos, the Underworld is a physical corporeal place that is connected to the world of the living. Spirits of the dead dwell there but it remains a part of the physical world while Hell on the other hand has been portrayed as a spiritual realm. Demons and Hell-bound souls are non-corporeal beings who dwell in a conceptualized realm of eternal pain and suffering, as established in previous seasons. After Dean is “raised from perdition” he has a hard time dwelling on his time there and can barely vocalize what it was like to Sam. Even  demons like Casey in “Sin City” describe it as a place demons hate and wish to escape.

These narrative choices to keep Hell in the conceptualized form effectively utilize the absence of a visual to give the audience an opportunity to create a Hell of their own. Within this form, glimpses of hell such as Dean’s torture via suspension in a seemingly endless realm serve to emphasize is conceptual quality.

With the introduction of Purgatory as “hell adjacent,” the lore becomes complicated but not to the point of justification. We see Purgatory in its entirety through Dean’s flashbacks but we also know that his memory can be a flawed perception of reality. What we do know, though, is it is a corporeal place because he is able to escape into the world of the living with the filth of Purgatory on him and carrying a weapon he procured there. This weapon’s ability to exist in both Purgatory and our realm and the fact that death exists there as well secures Purgatory as corporeal. 

Now, before “Taxi Driver,” this “hell adjacent” business could be ratified by the knowledge that all of these realms (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Earth) are all connected in the way that certain entities, like angels, can exist in all of them but “Taxi Driver” corrupts that hierarchy by having a (in no way secure or hidden) door between Hell and Purgatory and letting little-ole-Sammy exist corporeally throughout.

This blatant disregard for lore seems even more intentional in its actual portrayals of Hell as an almost childish haunted house walkthrough with the worst horror of all: Bobby as a flat character. Not only is Bobby unfazed by the supposed inexplicable pain that broke Dean but he is easily convinced that Sam is the real one by the reveal of a petty embarrassment that couldn’t have been learned by an expert torturer. The consequent dramatic zooms and cheesy one-liners paralleled by the emotional exchange between Dean and Benny seems like a cosmic joke where Gabriel would pop out in any second and chastise Sam for thinking it would be that easy. Furthermore, Bobby’s nagging and exasperation about the boys’ choices while he was gone minimizes their complicated situations to children needing to be chastised.

Though Naomi can’t always be trusted, even she complicates the lore within this episode with an offhand comment about Cas’s rescue from Purgatory costing the lives of many angels. This wouldn't make sense to be a lie because she isn't gaining some trust in Dean by revealing how Cas was rescued, in fact Dean’s rescue from Hell was much the same. It seems as if the episode want’s the viewer to be aware that Sam’s Hell trip shouldn't work.

The final kicker that he events of this episode should be a trickster illusion or a psychotic break is Kevin. From the beginning of the episode, Kevin is being tortured by an unknown; He thinks Crowley is in his head and knows everything he knows even though later on in the episode, Crowley is revealed to be suspicious of the Winchesters but entirely unaware of what they’re doing. Crowley even says, “I need Kevin Tran.” in the midst of his confusion so when the audience sees the windows break in the safe house and Crowley’s exchange with Kevin the audience might conclude that he finally found Kevin. However, when Sam and Dean return to the safe house, the windows are unbroken but Kevin is gone. This leaves the question of what is real and what is not throughout the entire episode (though it is unfortunately revealed later that the whole hell thing is cannon).