Sam and Dean head to Enid Oklahoma to find the out who has murdered a local taxidermist and why. When another murder occurs at the local animal shelter, they notice the only witness to both murders is the taxidermist's dog named Colonel. In order to find out what the dog knows, Dean takes an Inuit potion to mind-meld with the animal. In the process, Dean taps into his inner dog and begins to exhibit decidedly canine qualities. Supernatural 9x05 Dog Dean Afternoon Promo
Review
Written by the writing duo of Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder and directed by Tim Andrew. This is a fun MOTW (monster of the week) episode that does not have any bearing on the overall season story arc.
MOTW are often touted as being fan favorites. However, MOTW episodes are traditionally scary monsters. This is a fun even "cutesy" episode with a deranged man using shaman techniques to save himself from dying of cancer. Not necessarily a "scary" monster. The man is evil in that he has taken to killing anyone who gets in his way but if he had never killed a human, he wouldn't even register on the Winchester's radar.
The humorous tone of some season episodes are needed, if only to keep the fandom from imploding due to stress. This episode has a somewhat lighthearted Dean which traditionally means the viewers, and Dean, will be hurting by the end of the season. The introduction of S.N.A.R.T. (Showing No Animal Rough Treatment) is the play on the slang word which means a sneeze fart. Supernatural is one of the few shows that gets away with toying with crude humor (See season 7 Dick jokes for further proof.) The hilarity of Dean, the Righteous Man who tortured souls in Hell, vehemently saying "I always knew I'd find the source of all evil in a vegan bakery" is fantastic satire. Jensen's portrayal of Dean having dog-like qualities while under the spell was so wonderful it made me want to get a German Shepherd just so I could name him Dean.
The only relevance the story provides to the overall myth arc, is reinforcing the angel presence within Sam. When Chef Leo attacks Sam, slicing open his jugular, Zeke emerges to heal Sam's wound and then disappears again. Sam knows something just happened but he doesn't know how or what. The clock on the time bomb is ticking until Sam discovers he's possessed. Once again, Jared does an amazing job of differentiating the entity within Sam from Sam himself.
Set design for this episode was incredible. Multiple sets must have kept Jerry Wanek and his team extremely busy! The Diamond Tim Motel (shout out to the director Tim Andrew) had a diamond pattern to the room that was evident in wallpaper, bedspreads, curtains and room divider. The restaurant set with the crazy, busy wallpaper must have been interesting for vfx to manipulate for the chameleon chef Leo scene. But it looks incredible and seamless.
 | |
| Terrible screen grab of an incredible effect. |
Questions. Comments. Problems. Concerns.
One thing I always felt season 9 never showed was what a horrible thing Dean did to Sam in allowing him to be possessed. We're told later as Sam is angry but he never expresses why he's angry at Dean. If anything, the writing encourages us to empathize more with Dean's reasoning rather than understand why it was such an awful thing that Dean did. We're told Sam is angry but he never gets to express why he's angry at Dean. As viewers we're just supposed to understand. But remember, this is the boy who was possessed by Meg and murdered a fellow hunter and then tried to murder Jo and Dean as well. He was then possessed by Lucifer and murdered people he knew including Castiel, Bobby and nearly beat Dean to death. He then spent all that time in Lucifer's Cage where it damaged his mind and soul so much that he was, in a sense, still possessed by Lucifer when he was out of the Cage but having hallucinations. He was helpless for all of that. For someone who has that drive to help others, being helpless is torture. I felt incredible sympathy for Dean wanting to do whatever he could to save his brother but allowing any entity to possess Sam, he allowed his brother to be tortured. The writing never conveyed that level of violation. Not to mention the level of betrayal with all the times Dean has lied.
My least favorite kind of MOTW are ones who "bookend" by season myth arc. In other words, if you cut out the first brother scene and the last brother scene, you could insert the episode into any season and you'd never know the difference. These are "throwaway" episodes and are honestly a waste of everyone's time. Build a story that weaves all the tales together and bears some importance to each other and you have a richer story with deeper characters. This episode makes the attempt with Zeke appearing to heal Sam and the Chef wanting whatever it is that Sam is so that he can heal himself. But I also feel like Sam is smarter than what he is being credit for when after multiple clues Sam is made to shrug off any instinct he has that something is wrong. Dean's line to Sam about Chef Leo at the end broment is quite the foreshadowing, "He was possessed by – by something he couldn't control. It was...it was a matter of time before it completely took over." I would have loved to have seen more parallelism within the episode but it did a better job than some others.
No comments:
Post a Comment