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Supernatural: Something Wicked

Dean: "Don't worry. I'm sure there's something in Fitchburg worth killing."

I didn't like this one. Maybe it was too overly dramatic and simplistic. Maybe it was just too much like a truly awful Buffy episode called "Killed by Death." If you're going to rip off Buffy, people, why not rip off a good one?

At least there were interesting flashbacks to little Dean taking care of little Sam in a (familiar) ugly, kitschy motel room while John was out demon hunting. Unfortunately, big brother Dean identified so strongly with young big brother Michael that he decided it was okay to use Michael as bait – which I thought was a leap Dean shouldn't have taken. I also noticed that the boy who played Michael looked a lot more like Dean than Ridge Canipe, the boy who played young Dean. Stronger actor, too. I wonder if that was a deliberate choice by the director?


So Dean confronted his childhood fear and guilt. He got to replay the past and save Sam this time, all by himself. All valid dramatic themes, yes, but this episode still left me cold. There wasn't a single witty line, either. I like a little wry self-deprecation and black humor with my horror series...eses. Buffy has pretty much spoiled me for anything else.

Bits and pieces:

— I liked the red herring with the old woman and the inverted cross. If she had turned out to be the shtriga, I would have felt cheated.

— Dean was really good with young Michael, but that didn't seem Dean-like. He was more uncomfortable with kids in "Dead in the Water," and that wasn't that long ago.

— This week, we went to Fitchburg, Wisconsin. In flashback, we went to Fort Douglas, also in Wisconsin.

— Dean had a MasterCard with the name "Kris Warren" on it. Google told me that Kris Warren is a guitarist. Sam masqueraded as Dr. Jerry Kaplan, Bikini Inspector at the Center for Disease Control.

— During their CDC masquerade, the guys were wearing nice suits. Much better than their earlier Blues Brothers Homeland Security garb.

— Who was Pastor Jim? Was he mentioned earlier or was this the first time?

Note from 2017: I put together an article tracking every Supernatural appearance of Dean and Sam as kids. It's called Kid Winchesters: The Younger Versions of Dean and Sam. In "Something Wicked," younger Dean and Sam were played by Ridge Canipe and Alex Ferris.


Sam: "I've really given you a lot of crap for always following Dad's orders. But I know why you do."
Dean: "Oh, god. Kill me now."

Two out of four stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

7 comments:

  1. Not one of the best but I loved seeing those flashbacks.

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  2. Wow, Billie. Didn't think it was possible, but for the first time, I don't completely agree with you!

    Agree that it was a poor homage to the 'Buffy' episode, which I thought was one of the weaker ones as well. However, I thought the character stuff for Dean really made up for it.

    Many eldest children have an over-developed sense of responsibility, and Dean is no exception. I thought this episode showed us not only that, but put a lot of his earlier comments and actions into some perspective.

    I would have given it three, not two, but hey - I'm the eldest of three. Could you tell?? :-)

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  3. Hey, if we all agreed all the time, life would be boring! I still think this is one of their weaker episodes.

    My sister was six years older and was constantly stuck babysitting me. So while I find Dean a lot more attractive, I tend to identify with Sam.

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  4. I really liked this episode, but then, I'm the oldest, so I could identify with Dean. (Except for the whole" saving my brother from monsters" bit). And it helped us understand why Dean has an insanely over-developed sense of responsibility--the one time he messed up as a kid his brother almost died. It's entirely too much responsibility for a kid, but both Dean and Michael willingly accepted that for the sake of their brothers. And I'm a sucker for protective older sibling stories. So despite the similarities to a sub-par Buffy episode, I really liked this episode.

    Mandy

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  5. I'm the eldest sibling in my family as well, so I do identify with Dean a lot. Maybe that coloured my perception of this story.

    It seemed to me that, while I do agree the plot was rather bland, that it was just a framing device for this delve into Dean's character. They needed a case to give us an excuse for No-Chick-Flick-Moments to actually open up. Otherwise I would probably be the first to blow the whistle on 'Out Of Character' behaviour. The plot was secondary with the real focus being where it should be - Dean.

    It reminds me of A Study In Pink (the first episode of Sherlock that is based off of the first Sherlock Holmes chronological story)where the villain was fairly obvious and the case generic and straightforward, but that didn't matter because the purpose of the story was to introduce our new Holmes and Watson. Sometimes an episode is really about something else and the case or mystery or scandal is really just a backdrop for the REAL story.

    At least that's how I see it.

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  6. I liked it too and for the same reason. I'm the elder of two and I've done exactly what dean did, except that my brother didn't almost get killed by a lamia (which is the Roman name for them, and I'm glad to see the boys' Latin has improved)

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  7. Dean was struggling to find a way to flirt with a single mother, he wasn't uncomfortable dealing with her son. Everyones been known that he's always been good with kids. Which makes sense cause he did raise his younger brother.

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