"Well boo-hoo I'm sorry your feelings are hurt, princess"
-Bobby Singer
Love Hurts Recap:
Valentine's Day arrives and it seems as though the usual affairs are happening. Dean got lucky in the Bunker, Sam is avoiding it as always, and there's a case to be solved as a girl dies by having her heart ripped out of her chest. Sam and Dean take off to Hudson, Ohio to see if it's a werewolf they're dealing with, but when they arrive they discover that the husband, Dan, hired the girl to babysit his daughter while him and his wife went out, was also having an affair with her and had a video of what happened. When Dean confronts him and watches the video they see a flare and think that they are dealing with a shapeshifter. That night, Dan is leaving the office when the corpse of babysitter returns to rip his heart out. Sent in a loop of confusion, the boys are back to square one and go to interview the wife, Melissa. She said she knew of the affair, but still had hope. Skeptical, Sam and Dean leave only to have Melissa come running back to them as her husband's corpse came to attack her. She confesses that she has confided in her hairdresser, a white witch, about the affair and received a love spell when really it was a curse to summon a Qareen to kill anyone who comes in contact with the casters' kiss. Dean steals the kiss from Melissa so that she wouldn't be a target and the Qareen morphs into Amara. Before he is killed, Sam offs the white witch and everyone is safe.
Safe House Recap:
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sam and Dean come across a case when a mother and daughter are attacked by a monster and left in a coma. When they arrive, Sam and Dean have suspicions that this was a case Bobby and Rufus worked on a couple of years ago. Sure enough, Dean finds the entries in Bobby's journal. It seems as though they are hunting what's called a Soul Eater. They take the tips they find and try to do their best work; which means that Dean sets himself up to be bait while Sam does the "smart work." Sam must paint a sigil on the wall of the house while Dean lets himself be captured by the Soul Eater to enter his "nest" and paint the sigil there as well. While in the nest, Dean finds past souls that were taken by the Soul Eater and begins to piece together how the Soul Eater's nest is beyond time and space. Also while there, he gets possessed by the Soul Eater so that it could prevent Sam from painting the sigil. In the end, the brothers succeed and move on to the next case.
Review: Comparing and Contrasting these two episodes, I would like to say that they did a great job targeting Dean with the people he still truly loves the only difference being that with Amara it was to show how Dean's addiction is coming back to him and the other was to show how Dean can still be saved. The parallelism of Sam/Dean to Bobby/Rufus was well done, as surprisingly, Bobby and Sam show similar characteristics of caution, doing research, and being thorough while Rufus and Dean share the characteristics of "shoot now, ask questions later" and being very blunt about things. Another comparison I saw was that of Sam doing all the work to save the day while Dean continues to be his reckless, borderline suicidal, self as he continues to put himself in the line of fire. It's almost selfish, revealing the false hope that even though he is trying to get better, it seems as though the Mark will have everlasting affects on his mindset because of what he had done. It brings up the question, "If Dean continues to get worse while human, is he no different than a demon and thus may need to be killed?"
The contrast I saw in between these two episodes would be that of showing punishment and justice. For example, in "Love Hurts", only the "sinners" (Dan, the babysitter, and the vengeful witch) were punished. Sort of like the "they had it coming" theme. Then in "Safe House" the mother and daughter were just innocent damsels in distress and the boys swooped in to save them. This balances the "righteous justice" scale.
Questions/Concerns: I enjoyed these episodes thoroughly. Although fillers, I thought "Safe House" was a well-written narrative that used parallelism effectively to reveal more character development and that "Love Hurts" was like a warm blanket and tea after enduring a harsh winter. But both of these episodes show the lack of inspiration the writers were beginning to feel as they resort to the "monster-of-the-week" narrative and are still trying to recover from the absence of Rowena (or maybe that's my personal pain).
Review: Comparing and Contrasting these two episodes, I would like to say that they did a great job targeting Dean with the people he still truly loves the only difference being that with Amara it was to show how Dean's addiction is coming back to him and the other was to show how Dean can still be saved. The parallelism of Sam/Dean to Bobby/Rufus was well done, as surprisingly, Bobby and Sam show similar characteristics of caution, doing research, and being thorough while Rufus and Dean share the characteristics of "shoot now, ask questions later" and being very blunt about things. Another comparison I saw was that of Sam doing all the work to save the day while Dean continues to be his reckless, borderline suicidal, self as he continues to put himself in the line of fire. It's almost selfish, revealing the false hope that even though he is trying to get better, it seems as though the Mark will have everlasting affects on his mindset because of what he had done. It brings up the question, "If Dean continues to get worse while human, is he no different than a demon and thus may need to be killed?"
The contrast I saw in between these two episodes would be that of showing punishment and justice. For example, in "Love Hurts", only the "sinners" (Dan, the babysitter, and the vengeful witch) were punished. Sort of like the "they had it coming" theme. Then in "Safe House" the mother and daughter were just innocent damsels in distress and the boys swooped in to save them. This balances the "righteous justice" scale.
Questions/Concerns: I enjoyed these episodes thoroughly. Although fillers, I thought "Safe House" was a well-written narrative that used parallelism effectively to reveal more character development and that "Love Hurts" was like a warm blanket and tea after enduring a harsh winter. But both of these episodes show the lack of inspiration the writers were beginning to feel as they resort to the "monster-of-the-week" narrative and are still trying to recover from the absence of Rowena (or maybe that's my personal pain).
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