Season 11 "Love Hurts" and "Safe House" Comparison

            “Love Hurts” and “Safe House” are the thirteenth and sixteenth episodes in season eleven of  Supernatural. While they are written by different writers – Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder co-wrote “Love Hurts,” and Robbie Thompson wrote “Safe House” – they have a few similarities.

                                  

            To start with, both “Love Hurts” and “Safe House” involve the introduction of a monster never before seen on Supernatural. It gives the episodes the same feel as the early seasons, when nearly every episode was a Monster of the Week episode. The creatures encountered in “Love Hurts” and “Safe House” end up being a bit more complicated than the brothers anticipated, and both share similarities with other common creatures on the show. In “Love Hurts,” Sam and Dean begin the case believing they are hunting a shapeshifter. Much like a shapeshifter, the creature they are hunting, called a Qareen, has the ability to look like different people and has a retinal flair when seen on camera. Similarly, in “Safe House” Sam and Dean – as well as Bobby and Rufus – start off the hunt believing that they are hunting a ghost, which is later revealed to be a Soul Eater. Like ghosts, Soul Eaters can cause strange EMF readings, scratching sounds, cols spots, objects to move, and often are invisible.

            The Qareen and Soul Eater also share a trait with each other; both creatures are able to cause their victims to see things, whether it’s thing they love or things they dread. The Qareen causes its victims to see their deepest, darkest desires, while the Soul Eater shows its victims their loved ones dead. Dean sees both of these scenarios; the Qareen shows him Amara, and the Soul Eater shows him Sam dead. However, both seem to have the opposite effect on Dean. While he may be attracted to Amara, he still wants to kill her, and seeing Sam dead he almost finds comforting, possibly because that’s how he knows it’s not real. Or maybe he’s just seen Sam dead enough times over the years.

            Besides the obvious similarities between the cases monsters, there are some smaller ones that can be found in scene. In “Love Hurts” Sam and Dean go down a dark staircase and the camera shows the flashlight beams trail along the wall and different objects. In “Safe House” a similar scene is shown when Dean walks upstairs to the Soul Eater nest. Both times Dean is walking into the “lair” of the monster, specifically due to a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

            Which leads to a contradiction. While “Safe House” includes a lot of continuity – Bobby’s flask is seen, and the origin of the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue seen in “Time After Time After Time” is revealed – the Rock Paper Scissors scenes in “Love Hurts” and “Safe House” go against that continuity. In “Love Hurts,” Dean finally wins Rock Paper Scissors – he finally picks something other than scissors, according to Sam in “Heart” in season two – but three episodes later, in “Safe House,” he seems to forget and ends up losing. It makes me wonder why the continuity can be from throughout series, but not within the season. Maybe the writers are trying to bring in the more popular aspects from the earlier seasons. I have to say, they did make great moments, and who doesn’t love Rufus and Bobby?