Supernatural Season 7 recap

Season 7 episode 1 - Meet The New Boss

Jeez I dislike Castiel as God.  He goes around punishing the wicked and smiting angels, and generally being quite unlikeable.  There's some bad scriptwriting where Castiel gets described as sexy by a witness.  Sam's Lucifer hallucinations start - Lucifer is pretty vile and has a little pot belly, which feels incongruous to how characters like him are normally seen.  Dean doesn't notice that Sam is hallucinating.  Crowley and Death gets summoned, those two are always a pleasure to watch.  Most of the ep is about Cas though, and it does nothing for me.  At the end the Leviathans take Cas over and Misha's acting just gets on my nerves.  That might be because I find Misha himself quite unlikeable.

My verdict? Meh.  No reason to watch again.

2. Hello Cruel World

At the end of Season 6 Cas broke down the wall in Sam's mind.  This ep we get to see the effects of it. There is a lot of Hallucifer, who is defeated by the power of brotherly love and faith.  That makes the show sound more wholesome than it is..  Honestly though, the scene where Deam gets through to Sam and grounds him in reality, giving him the strength to reject Lucifer is powerfully good shit.

Bobby's house is burnt down by the Leviathans, so they team ends up in a cabin in the woods.  There's a lot of Leviathan bollocks in this, and Cas dies at the start of the ep.

The brothers don't seem to mourn Cas much thouh.  It's not strongly felt, not like when Bobby dies later on, not when Sam deals (briefly) with Amy's death,

3. The Girl Next Door

Sam works out a kitsune (Amy) is in the area and that he met her when he was a kid.  John and Dean were hunting the ma kitsune, Sam and Amy date without realising who the other is.  Amy saves Sam from her Ma.

Now Amy is feeding, but to save her sick son.  Sam decides to let her go.  Dean pretends to agree then kills her, and lies to Sam about it.

I hate this decision from Dean.  It's cruel and it makes no sense.

4 - Defending Your Life

Osiris finds Dean feeling guilty in a bar and so puts him on trial.  Dean's witnesses are Jo and Sam, he declines to have the third witness be called because he knows it will be Amy and he doesn't want Sam to find out about her.

I felt a bit better about the depiction of Osiris on this second watch.  On first watch it felt a bit too clunky, a bit too Smallville-gimmicky for me.  Either I'm able to gloss over that now or I feel it works better now I have more context for this season.

At the end of the ep Sam says Osiris didn't go for him because he doesn't feel guilty about what he's done because he's paid his dues, what with being in the cage and everything.  That felt a little too easy.  There were no signs before now that Sam didn't feel guilt, and it wasn't neccessary to ensure that dean got hauled up to face trial.

No leviathans in this ep!

5 - Shut Up Dr Phil

I had this on my rewatch list but gave up partway into it. I don't care for James Marsters' and Charisma Carpenter's performances, and I don't recall the couples therapy session being anything more than a cheap joke.

7 - Slash Fiction

The Leviathans impersonate the brothers and go on a killing spree.  Given how much I hate the leviathans, it's surprising that this is pretty good.  Ackles and Padalecki give good monster performances.  They also have to abandon the car.  sobs.  It doesn't come back until the season finale.  double sobs.

At the end Sam discovers that Dean killed Amy and leaves.  For non SPN fans, this means he leaves his brother, which is tantamount to someone walking out on their 30 year marriage.

The bad thing about this ep is the dreadfully contrived way they discover the chemical mixture that hurts a leviathan. It makes me cringe thinking about it.

8 - The Mentalists.

It's the town where everyone is psychic! And it comes with two problems. There is ZERO mention of Sam's psychic powers, which is a big missed opportunity and incredibly aggravating. You'd think there would be one throwaway line or something.

The second problem is Sam forgiving and seemingly forgetting Amy. Bad, bad writing. BAD CHARACTERISATION AND WRITING. I understand that he'll see Dean's point of view. He shouldn't be forgiving him. It makes no sense for him to just change his mind completely, with us seeing no pathway towards forgiveness. It felt like the writers just wanted to make Dean be in the right. However the way they did renders Sam's anger about Amy null and void and misses an opportunity to see Dean grow and take responsibility for his actions. Dean deserves to be bollocked and to feel the guilt. If we know his character we know that killing Amy likely is eating away at him, but that should be explored. This plot started off as a really solid moral quandary/ethical dilemma and was resolved by 'Dean is in the right because he's our favourite'. This scene did both brothers a disservice.

The monster of the week story was pretty good though.

8 - Time For A Wedding

Becky doses Sam with a love potion and they get married.  It feels like it's going to be played for laughs but this is evened out when Dean obviously has problems with it, and when Sam reminds Becky that she's planning to rape him.  Towards the end Crowley arrives and deals with the crossroads demon who is welching on deals.  Props to the actors for making this work.  It could have gone badly wrong.

Thought - Given how much of a fan Becky is, you'd think she'd have learnt right and wrong from the books.  She can't seem to understand that the boys are not things, they are real people.  I know she's a parody of the maddest kind of fan, but still....

11 - Adventures in Babysitting

I skipped Death's Door so it came as a shock to realise that Bobby had died in the previous ep... fuck man, the grief in this show really hits me hard.

One of Bobby's phones gets a call from a kid (Krissy) looking for Bobby.  She's not interested in talking to anyone else.  Nevertheless Sam goes after her.  She's a hunter kid and her Dad has been missing.  Turns out a Vetala has taken him (one of the Vetalas is played by Ruby from Once Upon a Time!). The kid and Dean bond, grumpily.  First appearence of Fraaaaaaank.

No real leviathan rubbish in this ep.  Great episode. 5 out of 5. 

12 - Time After Time

This is very much a silly, fun episode.  Dean is hunting Chronos and gets thrown back in time to 1944 where he meets Eliot Ness (who I hadn't heard of before watching this) and they take Chronos down together.  It feels like an excuse to stick Ackles in a natty suit and give Dean the chance to fangirl over someone.  Good shiz.

13 - The Slice Girls

Dean has a daughter.  I have certain moral and theological issues with this episode given that it posits the Amazons as evil.  On a rewatch, it's a good enough stand-alone episode, if you don't take the Amazon's depiction personally.  But I do.  Harrumph.

14 - Plucky Pennywhistle

Lots of clowns and creepy childhood nightmares.  Sam's fear of clowns is portrayed really well.  The unicorn killing someone with their horn is a favourite SPN death of mine.

Ep 16 - Out With the Old

There are lots of cursed objects - ballet slippers make a dancer dance her feet off, literally.  It gives us a particularly gory yet delightfully absurdist horror scene where the ballerina is lying dead on the floor, legs cut off at the ankles, in a pool of bright red blood.  The shoes are in perfect nick.  There's also a cursed teapot which gives a much ickier death scene, and a cursed gramophone.  Sam averts the gramophone death.

Dean wants the ballet shoes, that's amusing.

Sam is hallucinating Lucifer constantly.  Lucifer is talking to him all. the. time. so Sam is not sleeping.  The brothers are impersonating FBI agents and whilst all professional and courteous with the police, as soon as they get to the shop suspected to be selling the cursed objects, there is no charm from Sam. No grace, just sheer irritation at the objects being let into the wild and an impressive level of impatience to get the case solved.  I can't imagine this was scripted, I think it's all Padalecki's interpretation.  It works really well, it builds on Sam's character at the stuff happening in his head, and it makes him super real.  

Dean has a far calmer demeanour - he's unhurried and business as usual.  Sam's urgency makes sense in terms of sleep deprivation and the devil stuck in your noggin 24/7.

Ackles and Padalecki really make this show work - they put so much into the characters even when it's not in the script or the directions.  Their performances are solid and they tell so much of the story with their faces and body language, and it never looks contrived.  It's a wonder to watch.

The second half of the episode is Leviathan heavy, but interesting leviathans, for once.  The lady estate agent and her downtrodden assistant.  The scene where the assistant takes a taste of the boss from the sword, and the brothers' reactions, is telly show magic.  It's makes everything so much more real and draws you in and makes the bad plots worth it all.

17 - The Born Again Identity

Sam is checked into hospital because he's not sleeping as Lucifer is there all the time.  Padalecki gives a really good performance here.  Dean looks for someone to help him and comes across Cas, who has lost his memory and is now named Emanuel and is healing people.  Once Cas gets his memory back he takes Sam's pain and then he hallucinates Lucifer.  Good episode.  Really good episode.

18 - Party On Garth

Garth leads on a hunt and asks the brothers in for help.  It's a Japanese Shojo that people can only see when drunk.  Much hijinks (for the viewer) ensues.  Dean's alcoholism has really ramped up this season, I feel it got worse in season 5 then increased in season 6, but by this point Sam is making lots of comments.

The ep starts off wobbly, but ends up excellent. 

19 - Of Grave Importance
Sam and Dean go to help another hunter - Annie.  She ends up killed in a house filled with other ghosts.  Bobby is haunting his flask so he ends up there too, and finally manages to get a message to the brothers.

The house ghosts (ghuests?) are being held there by a particularly mean boss ghost.  the brothers do their salt n burn business and it's all cool.

Notable for - it being revealed that Dean, (soulless) Sam and Bobby all shagged Annie (at different times).  Lucky Annie.

Ep 20 - The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo. AKA Where we meet Charlie.
I decided to rewatch this as it's the episode where Dean talks Charlie through chatting up a bloke.  It's an amusing scene, in quite a lot of ways.  I wouldn't have guessed that it was this late on in the season.  It did reinforce my previously held opinion that I don't like Charlie's characterisation.

She's written and portrayed so obviously.  Her geek credentials are shoved in your face at every opportunity, but they are such, sorry to use the word again, but obvious.  She was born in 1985, which makes her 12 when the first Harry Potter book came out, so I understand her being a Potter fan.  Choosing to make Hermione her hero is too easy.  Choose any of the other women.  Choose Luna.  Choose Mrs Weasley or Professor McGonagall.  The Lord of the Rings laptop wallpaper is too easy.  The Star Wars references are too easy.  It's like she's been written for people who aren't familiar with sci-fi and fantasy.  Given that the show is Super-friggin-Natural this is ridiculous.

After the boys have outlined the plan she agrees to join them far too quickly.  She's not freaked out at all.  Her love of adventure stories is cited as the inspiration, but come on.

She does something in IT  She's an amazing hacker.

She does not read as one-of-us, she reads as some twat's idea of what one-of-us is.  I think the term is Mary-Sue or Manic Pixie Dream Girl.  We are meant to identify with her, but I just can't.

Friends have talked about how she doesn't fit in tonally with the rest of the show. I agree.  She's just so damn chipper.  She's not properly weird, she's kooky weird.  She's a man's idea of what a cool girl is. It's so disappointing.

21 - Reading is Fundamental

Kevin Tran the prophet is brought in.    I have issues with bringing in another plot this late in the show. It does not make for smooth viewing.

Ignoring that, this ep is otherwise pretty good.  Solid performance from Chau as Tran.  Great performance from Collins as crazy Cas.  Meg is delightful.  All languid drawl and relaxed suggestiveness, all overlaid with such withering scorn.

22 - There Will be Blood.

The boys realise that corn syrup is the thing that the leviathans are using to subdue humans, so much to Dean's disgust they have to eat actual vegetables.

They find out that to defeat the leviathans they need angel blood, ruler of fallen humanity blood (Crowley) and alpha blood. so off they fuck to get alpha vampire blood.

All does not go well, UNTIL the alpha vamp realises that the leviathans are going to kill the vampire race through contaminating humanity's blood via their corn syrup, and then he helps the brothers.

Better episode that I expected.  Crazy Cas remains fun and far more watchable than regular Cas.

23 - Survival of the Fittest.

The finale!

The opening montage and Carry on Wayward Son get me in the stomach every time.  I am so sad this show is ending. 

The boys get the car back. They go to defeat to the leviathans.  Dean and Cas are shot into purgatory.  It's good shiz, but not the best finale.