InsaneJournal

SPN 5.05 - It Wasn't Paris' fault
Supernatural S5 seems to be following the Trek movie franchise in its even vs. odd number installments. With episode 4 already being a season standout, and episode 2 a less ambitious but still solid episode, episode 5 disappoints. The title Fallen Idols is a great choice, as is the MotW's connection to brothers who have gone through some serious loss of faith in their family idols over the past few years. My problem with the episode lies in the execution not the concept.

The episode started well enough. The case of Little Bastard seems like a dream job for Dean at least, and the conversation between Sam and Dean in the car on the way to Canton set the tone pretty well by demonstrating how things are not running smoothly between them. At the same time, this is where some of my issues with the episode began. What have the previous three weeks been like? Have we had a generally mute Sam and an increasingly bossy Dean? (It should be fertile ground for fic writers, anyway).

But at least this scene in the episode was doing what's most important. Just about every episode of SPN has had either gaping plot holes or simple head scratchers in the writing. But even throw-you-out-of-the-episode level bungles can be overlooked if the episode delivers emotionally realistic interactions and plot progress with the Winchesters. Some people may be watching SPN for the episode plots but most people, I'm guessing, are watching because they want to see what happens with Sam and Dean, and how they deal with what happens to them (and now that we're finally getting some secondary character development, Castiel, too, has become a character worth watching). I didn't feel the episode really delivered in either plot or emotionally satisfying character development, but more on that later. This scene, at least, was both written and played well, conveying the way both brothers are scrabbling to deal with one another, each in their own way. In fact, it's the very success of their discomfort in this scene that raises the question of how they even got to this point over the previous three weeks. Dean calls it their first real case, so…have they just been calling people and doing research until now? Has he picked this case out of desperation to get in the car and go somewhere rather than be stuck in a room with Sam for another week? This episode, like most, takes place over a few days, making it even more obvious how long three weeks could drag out.

In any case, Dean seems to be making an offer in good faith and Sam agrees to take it that way. So far so good…until the garage scene.

This scene didn't make sense for several reasons. If Cal was so knowledgeable about cars, as one might expect given that he had a collection of them, why wouldn't he have checked out the engine number himself? The whole point was that these victims were huge fans of the things that killed them. Clearly, if Sam could find the engine number's history in an afternoon, Cal should have been able to as well, given his 17 years of searching. So Dean making an issue of the engine number only undermines the reason for Cal's death. To make matters worse, that whole scene with him checking under the car was drawn out and absurd. Why make a rubbing of the number? Why not use a flashlight as Sam suggested and quickly write it down? What's more, you'd think Dean would want Sam around, holding his ankles to jerk him back out from under the car as rapidly as possible. Yes, this was supposed to be our first indication that regardless of what he said, Dean was holding a super tight leash on Sam. But it could have been done in a better way.

On the plus side, pretty car and nice lighting in this scene. I could have used plenty more of that.

The garage scene was only the first of a series of scenes involving the case that were logical train wrecks and raised a bunch of questions the episode then had to stumble over. If the god wasn't really a ghost, why was there frozen breath and a radio popping on for no reason? I assume that Leshi can manipulate all sorts of things, not merely its appearance, but why would it feel the need? Why create the noises that Jim heard while it should have been feeding as rapidly as it could? For that matter Jim was apparently a big James Dean fan himself, hence their competition. Why not kill and feed on him too? And where did the car come from? Was it just coincidence that Cal found it just when Leshi was around hunting? I guess the deposited seeds can just be one of those unexplained ritual things, although I would have assumed the original purpose was to reproduce by having its young feed on a decomposing body. In which case, it would have made more sense for the Leshi to hide and bury the bodies. But speaking of those seeds, presumably they were listed as being in the stomach contents on the coroners' reports or how would Sam have known to look for them since he didn't figure out until later what they were? Why then, were they still in the body rather than having been removed by the coroner? I'm going to fanwank it that what Sam read in the coroner's report was about Cal, and that the seeds had in fact been removed. And I'm going to further assume that he was digging around in Hill's stomach and that the coroner hadn't yet done an autopsy so he was just following a hunch (although that also meant he might have destroyed other evidence the coroner might have found…).

Things don't get any better with the Lincoln killing. Why does Leshi want to kill the fans in the same way their heroes died (this wouldn't have worked with Hilton, after all, since she's not dead yet)? How did Sam and Dean hear about all the details of the death when, from the looks of things, the police are still collecting evidence from the scene? Why would Sam and Dean who don't really speak Spanish want the police officer who presumably did to leave when they needed to interview Consuela? Also, while it can be easier to understand another language than to speak it, if her English was so bad that she had to give her basic description of events in Spanish, how could she possibly understand "stovepipe hat" and distinguish that from "top hat"? There are native English speakers who wouldn't know what that term meant. For that matter since she seemed to understand Hill well enough to work for him, what was the purpose of this whole scene with the interview in Spanish? Was it supposed to be amusing?

On the plus side, we found out Sam speaks some Spanish. And Dean apparently doesn't. And that the boys now have two laptops.

I'm glad Dean could see that the red blur on the screen was supposed to be James Dean. I guess, like so many other things in this episode, the script told him that.

Although I'd be fascinated to know how the set decorators came up with all those wax figures, the "personal effects" angle made no sense. While significant DNA pieces of the dead such as locks of hair are a reasonable sell, the glove in TL was pushing it. It was also the first example I can remember of simply burning an item rather than also salting it (they had the salt, but Sam never put it on the glove). Now in this episode we're supposed to believe that a pair of bifocals and – more remote still – a key chain are supposed to have sufficient DNA decades after the fact to call a ghost. If those minute traces of DNA were sufficient to chain ghosts to them, then there's hardly a space on this planet that would be free of them. And although those examples have already strained this piece of the SPNverse past the breaking point, they never salt these items either. Yet, although we next see Sam feeling dubious about their having solved the case, not once does he mention the complete illogic of what they actually did in getting rid of the ghost – instead he says that the disappearing effect was different (which it was) and that Ghandi seemed to want to eat him (a line that seems inserted primarily so that Siege can turn the fruitarian thing into a joke).

Of course, from start to finish the entire attack scene was just one piece of oddness piled on another. Sam's going to go outside and load guns in the dark just so we can have him walk in on Dean talking to Bobby? Wouldn't it make sense for him to be doing that in the room where he could see but no one could see him doing it and for Dean to be having his conversation outside? For that matter, how long was Sam out there that Dean decided to get in touch with Bobby for no particular reason? I'd like to believe this was written, at least in part, to have Dean showing some concern for Bobby by checking up on him but it certainly wasn't the takeaway from the incident.

On the plus side, it came through that Sam has definitely put hiding and secrets behind him. He's really done a 180 in terms of putting everything out in the open. We also find out, rather conveniently, that Sam's a real admirer of Ghandi. On the one hand, this isn't that surprising. Sam has never been into violence the way that Dean is, and has always been more considerate of others as well. It also explains a lot about his impulse to spare Jake's life in AHBL and his desire not to kill unless absolutely necessary (I'm thinking here of Dean mocking him in Fresh Blood), as well as his tendency to protect the underdog as we saw in ASS. On the other, it makes Sam's descent into violence and death over the past four seasons incredibly sad to consider. It also suggests that Sam's escape to Stanford wasn't just because he wanted to be "normal" or to escape the powerful influence John and Dean both had on him, but because what they did for a living was, on a deep level, repugnant to him. He understood the need for heroes, and shared a desire to help people, but he wanted to be able to do it another way. Unfortunately, Sam doesn't seem to be the poster boy for passive resistance, but he certainly did fit the idea of mind over brute force.

But returning to the museum scene, I was really confused by the shot of what appeared to be Gandhi ducking under Sam's legs only to suddenly appear on his back (choking him, of course). And then Dean's going to stand around and make quips while Sam's being attacked and can't figure out for himself he needs to burn the glasses? And since Leshi is not a ghost, why did it decide to stop attacking Sam just then? It's certainly capable of taking Sam and Dean down later when they return to the museum with the axe that could actually kill it. Why not finish the deed then, when they'd be even more vulnerable to it?

The scene where Sam finally calls Dean out on his behavior also suggests that Sam probably admired Ghandi's patience as well. His confrontation is neither particularly emotional nor laced with a self-pitying bitterness, despite what we can assume have been weeks of the sort of provocation Dean dished out in this episode. At the same time, it's not particularly honest and because of the messy writing throughout the episode, I'm not clear if this was deliberate. My biggest problem with this episode is that so much of its content seemed so forced. There was this distinct Problem to Be Solved and a specific endpoint that Siege wanted to reach, and it seemed like everything along way was being jammed into a round hole no matter how square the peg. So we have scene after scene of Sam being right (or being in the right) and Dean either being wrong or just being a world class jerk. This was painfully unsubtle writing for the most part.

So when it comes to Sam suggesting that he went with Ruby just to get away from Dean it seems less like a revelation and more of a WTF moment. Because within 24 hours of Dean returning, which should have been the miracle of miracles that Sam had been hoping for, he was off on his own exorcising demons. Now granted, in Lazarus Dean did show some of the same tendencies he did here, suggesting Sam suddenly had no right to drive the Impala, making the crack about the smarter brother being back, deciding for himself that Sam should be kept out of the demon hunt which ended in Castiel's appearance, etc. But Dean being back didn't drive Sam off to do what he was already doing which, as we knew from Last Summer, had been going on for at least a month or more.

On the other hand it does suggest that, when in Criss Angel Sam returned to Ruby and decided for good that he would pursue Lilith, he was doing so not just because he was desperate to find some sort of salvation for his and Dean's future, but because he simply didn't want to confront Dean further on how they would fight their war. And if this scene had been written a bit more clearly and with a more dexterous hand, I think that would have come through. The remaining problem is that such a revelation does not put Sam in the right, it just seems to support Dean's behavior towards him as the child to whom he laid down the law. Sam openly fought John, and during S1 he openly fought Dean. But starting in S2, he changed tactics from direct confrontation to subterfuge, something which became incredibly pronounced by S4. While his about face now is dramatic and mature, open and direct but non-confrontational, none of this explains why Sam would have changed tactics like that in midlife to begin with. Instead this just seems like a pat kind of answer as to "why they're not getting along."

I'm also left wondering what Dean was up to while Sam was doing unnecessary seed removal in the morgue.

Aside from the clunky staged writing we had absurd staging in that final scene with Paris. How does Danielle manage to stay unconscious for so long? But more importantly why are all three victims of Leshi standing upright while unconscious? Why wasn't this staged with all three sitting down at the base of the trunks? The sight of that was just ludicrous. And even had they been tied tightly enough that they would have just touched the ground, their hands would have been numb from the weight of their bodies hanging from their wrists. (And I'm only going to mention as an aside my general annoyance with the "they managed to miraculously untie themselves" shtick, which has appeared in episode after episode. If you look at the overhead shot of them tied their ability to do so would seem impossible unless those were the loosest knots ever).

It took Sam five strokes with an axe to cut off that neck? Dean really needs to spend less time cleaning the guns and more time sharpening the stock. I am also assuming the violence and bloodiness was supposed to be a rather unsubtle suggestion that Sam isn't really much of a pacifist regardless of the Gandhi admiration. Or to prove in the show's usual misogynistic way that Sam's not a sissy girl just because he admires someone who doesn't espouse brute violence, and to suggest that Dean is simply because a pagan god took the shape of a popular blonde which, yeah.

Dean's aside about the sheriff putting out an APB on Paris Hilton begs the question of what happened after Leshi was killed. I would have assumed Sam and Dean would have released Danielle, called in an anonymous tip to the cops, and headed out of town. Why risk further involvement at that point? What story did they tell Carnegie at all about how they found Danielle?

At least we found out that Dean has apparently told Sam about being the first seal, and given Sam's immediate response, it's old news to him. I'm going to have to assume then that Dean told Sam while he was still in the hospital post-Pin. Talk about anticlimactic. It's a shocking revelation to Dean in that episode yet we never got to see how it impacted Sam at all. I imagine he reacted then as he reacted now, to reassure Dean that it wasn't his fault. But as much as he thinks about things, at some point he may have felt that he was guilty even for that, since Dean wouldn't have been in hell if he were still dead. What's more, this is perhaps one of the worst of many examples of information sharing between the brothers that goes on off screen and makes the interpretation of what's happening on it so haphazard. Because we never really know at any given point what one brother has actually told the other, what knowledge each is basing their behavior on. Even now, do we know what Dean has told Sam about 5.04? Will we ever?

For some I think the air clearing of each brother both taking responsibility and absolving one another of it for the apocalypse is refreshing. Certainly it lays things out for the audience more clearly that this was always intended to be a situation where both have played into their individual destinies without realizing it, and as a result of both deep suffering and inherent personality traits. Unfortunately, it also played out like exactly that – two actors following an expositional script. I did feel that JA overacted for much of this episode and that both might have played this final scene a little differently to make the script less clunky. On the whole, though, there was virtually no nuance in the writing for either to work with, and this scene was just the unenthused capper to a frustratingly A to B script.

With Superstition kicking in over a callback to Wendigo in the final minute, this ending was clearly meant to be a "setting it all to rights" moment in the season, and maybe the series. But those sorts of moments need to be the cherry on a sundae, they can't just be the whole sundae themselves. Sadly, it didn't work for me even though, given the concept, I'd been looking forward to this episode. Hopefully that won't be the case for some of those upcoming episodes because they look like they could be a lot of fun.

Other Bits

1) Some great shots of the Impala in this episode.

2) I recognize Jim from SGA, but Cal looks familiar too. Wasn't he the werewolf who bit Madison?

3) Police shout out!

4) The interview scene in the jail cell was done in an interesting way. It wasn't until partway through the scene that I even realized Dean was standing behind Sam the whole time. Fortunately the shots through the bars were only used sparingly, as I liked the visual touch but would have found a lot of it distracting.

5) Dean's Lincoln sounded more like the nearby Nixon. Is that his one-size-fits-all presidential impression?

6) Isn't the motel they're staying at the same one from Something Wicked? I also noticed that the bungalows looked really nice from the outside but unusually worn on the inside.

7) Did we see that same image of Leshi in SPN Christmas?

8) Was the "small dogs and spray tans" also a joke about JA?

9) The House of Wax crack marks a trifecta for JP shoutouts. There was also Gilmore Girls in HB, and, but for the last minute licensing problem, a Friday the 13th dream sequence would have aired in Dream. Is there some reason they've never taken a run at JA's other roles?