Friday 30 November 2018

Supernatural S14E7 - a review (with spoilers)


“Unhuman Nature”

First of all, I want to congratulate the showrunner and co for pissing off 99% of the viewership, who absolutely don’t want to see Lucifer back in any way, shape or form. I remember how they told us before the start of the season that Lucifer was 100% dead. However, it later turned out that his vessel wasn’t. Here’s a loophole none of us foresaw! And do you know why? Because it doesn’t make any sense! I still can’t figure out how Nick managed to be alive after being shot in the head – and that’s among other awful things that his body and mind had undergone throughout his possession. I’m assuming that when Crowley found Lucifer’s vessel it was damaged beyond repair. However, enterprising as he was, he somehow managed to patch it up with the help of his expert demons at Demon Science Department (that obviously must exist in Hell) in order to put Lucifer back inside and under his control. But I’m pretty sure that the actual vessel – the dead body that was apparently reanimated and brought back to life – was no longer meant to be able to survive without the archangel inhabiting and sustaining it through his grace/power. I seriously doubt that Crowley or his demons cared for the well-being or – well – being – of the human this body once belonged to.
By all accounts, Nick should have died when Dean and Michael killed Lucifer, putting an end to this long-winding storyline once and for all – instead of basically nullifying Dean’s sacrifice and spitting in all our faces by keeping him alive and open to the possibility of another – bigger – greater – possession. I must confess that unlike a lot of people in this fandom I was never a fan of Lucifer. I always found him supremely boring and I think he has long overstayed his welcome on the show. I’m angry, outraged, disappointed and discouraged that he is once again in the picture and that he is getting a major villain story arc again – a story arc that by all rights should be Michael’s – a story arc that we were promised before this trainwreck of the season began. Andrew Dabb’s unaccountable fascination with Lucifer/Nick character and storyline, that he continually forces upon us, is criminal, unforgiving and simply disrespectful to Jensen Ackles, for one, whose Michael!Dean should be the major Big Bad of the season as was originally implied.
I knew as soon as I saw the clips before the start of the episode that it would be another episode of “Jack and Nick” rather than “Supernatural”. I almost turned it off – that’s how much I didn’t care about it. Nick was on a killing spree. Jack was growing worse by the second. It all looked remarkably like a soap-opera to me (again!). Especially the scene at the hospital. Such drama! Dean, Sam and Castiel appeared to be nothing more than extras on their own show – just a bit of a background noise and a pretty picture to go with it. As I watched Nick track down people connected with his wife and child’s murder and slowly but surely descending into madness and blood fever, I was literally bored out of my mind and thought that the episode couldn’t come to an end soon enough. I will say this: the scenes where he showed his complete mental breakdown manifested by his craving to commit murder and wash himself in blood without impunity were chilling and gut-wrenching and scary and I would have been touched and impressed if I cared for Nick or Lucifer at this point. But this particular storyline is way past its shelf life and I wish that people who write the show were brave enough to face the truth and finally acknowledge that the time has come to let it go and move on and, hopefully, come up with something new – or else look for a new job – not connected with writing. Unsurprisingly, when at the end of the episode that black gooey substance shaped itself into a black skeletal body with unmistakable Lucifer-red eyes (in answer to Nick’s teary prayers to come and deliver him from pain and remorse and grant him sweet oblivion as he murders instead), I was royally pissed and I know that I wasn’t the only one. I do not want Lucifer back.
I enjoyed Dean and Jack’s short but fun time together. I thought that maybe Dean wasn’t the only one who was atoning (not that I think that he should) for being rough on Jack in the beginning. I mean, according to Sam that was why Jack’s swiftly deteriorating condition hit him particularly hard. I was somewhat skeptical of Sam’s reasoning at first but, remembering Dean’s extreme tendency to blame himself for pretty much everything, decided that it was not so unlikely after all. But maybe Jack, in his turn, was also atoning for saying that Dean didn’t matter by spending this time with him and telling him all those nice things? I wonder if I can go so far as to chalk up Jack’s infamous outburst to youthful exuberance and extreme guilt at having failed to kill Michael when he had the chance. I’m still on the fence about that. I see logic behind Jack’s deteriorating condition and if the writers of the show thought things through and followed their own logic they would see that this is exactly what would be happening to Nick right now without Lucifer possessing him and keeping his body together with his supernatural support. My main complaint in this instance is that we spend way too much time on Jack and his drama, while reducing the main characters to second fiddles or – as the gushiest part of the fandom likes to call them – his three dads.
Michael is presumably still out there – but there have been no mention of him or his activity lately – no more victims of his traps among hunters that are supposed to have been set all over the place – nothing apocalyptic or even pre-apocalyptic. So how are we supposed to take him seriously as a threat to this world – as an archangel who reduced his own world to dust – if there are no further instances of his power or malicious intent? Of course, there’s the fact that Dean (finally!) experienced some funny stuff a few times during the episode. I wish it had been another flashback, though. But! I guess that must be somehow connected with Michael, right? So! Is he still possessing Dean but lying low and biding his time before something mega huge happens? I mean, sure, Andrew Dabb said in one of the interviews that Michael was definitely out of Dean. But then again, that’s the same person who said that Lucifer was 100% dead and not coming back. Or – wait – could it be that we all just assumed that Lucifer wasn’t coming back, because a) we wanted him to be gone for good and b) because we were told that he was dead – when, in fact, Dabb didn’t actually mean to imply that Lucifer wasn’t coming back just because he was dead? Let’s face it, what are the chances of what is dead (especially if it has wings) to stay dead on this show?
Lastly, I probably don’t have to tell anyone that you just don’t trust a Russian shaman. Period. However, his wording at the end of the episode, when Castiel called him after Jack got worse, caught my attention. He mentioned “trial and error” and “victory through experimentation” that sounded extremely familiar. In fact, wasn’t it Michael’s philosophy while he was experimenting with monsters before he finally had a breakthrough? I actually half expected to find Sergei sitting there with him. Or could he be possessed by him at that moment? His smug reply that Castiel could try [but fail] to find him also gave me pause. Was he more than just a human, albeit a shaman, and as such impossible to find? So what if the spell and the grace that he gave Castiel for Jack will work and will work well, but not in the way they expect? What if Michael is somehow behind it? After all, we know that he experimented with his grace while enhancing the monsters’ abilities. So what if he wants to turn Jack into another one of his monsters?

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