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Supernatural: Raising Hell

"A town full of ghosts. Messy even by Winchester standards."

I so enjoyed this one, more than the premiere. Maybe it was the delightful returning guest stars. All five of them.

We're still in Harlan, Kansas, and I wonder – are they answering every fan who wondered what happened in the fallout of a major supernatural incident? Two days stuck in a high school gym is too much time stuck in a high school gym, and the good citizens of Harlan weren't swallowing the benzine leak story anymore. Unfortunately, sneaking back into town for your kid's asthma medicine isn't a good idea when there's a squad of big name ghosts waiting for you. Francis Tumblety, a.k.a. Jack the Ripper, decided to organize the ghosts, sort of like GM employees, and find their way out of there past Belphegor's warding.

Fortunately, Dean and Sam assembled their crack team: Rowena and Ketch, and can I say how much I loved those two together? The idea of them as a couple made me laugh. Just think about it: what she could do to him, what he could do to her. An interesting progression of near fatalities would seem inevitable – or actual fatalities, since they are both in the habit of resurrecting. It's interesting that Rowena and Ketch were both evil characters that I initially disliked who are now on Team Winchester, even though they have managed to retain their original evil flavor. I hope Ketch's injury isn't too serious, because I'd love to see more of this particularly strange romance.

The boys took a back seat of sorts to the big name ghosts and the Rowena and Ketch show, but we did get a critical Dean and Castiel scene where Cas admitted he "dropped the puck" with Jack and tried to clear the air. Dean felt that there was no point in anything he and Sam ever did since it was all manufactured by Chuck, but Castiel was still "team free will," that the boys always did the best they could with the situations that were handed to them. I'm with Castiel there.

Meanwhile in Reno, Amara has acquired a lot of new human interests: massage, yoga, a brand new wardrobe, and a solid distaste for her brother Chuck. In turn, Chuck was hoist by his own Equalizer petard; he's not at full strength and can't leave the world without Amara's help, and of course, she has no interest in helping him these days. Go, Amara. It's interesting that the wound that's affecting Chuck seems to have physically connected him to Sam. At the end of last season, I was actually wondering about Amara as the answer if Chuck is our ultimate bad guy. Or maybe it won't be that simple.



It was lovely to see Kevin Tran again, but I am bummed that he is once again a ghost walking the Earth and that, since he was cast down to Hell, he can never return to Heaven. But Chuck made an exception for John Winchester and Bobby Singer? What about Dean and Sam, who have both been to Hell and Heaven? I'm a bit confused.

At any rate, Kevin in Heaven had better be one of those final season threads that gets sewn up, guys.

Bits:

— Belphegor was sort of just there this time, helpful but probably waiting for the right time to be totally evil. I'm enjoying this new version of Jack, but I'm also realizing that he should be making me laugh, and he isn't. I wonder why?

— Liked the soul bomb. It made sense in a Supernatural sort of way. I also liked the gun with the iron flakes, and the iron necklaces. Ketch, next time, leave your iron necklace on.



— Ketch was hired by someone to assassinate Belphegor. But he didn't. Why couldn't Castiel heal Ketch? Was it the iron bullets?

— Francis Tumblety (here is my friend, Wikipedia) was indeed a minor Jack the Ripper suspect, but not a probable one.

— Rowena asked Dean about Ketch, and Ketch asked Dean about Rowena. Very high school. Come to think of it, they actually were in a high school.

— The scenes with Rowena in bright daylight made me go, man, that hair is red.

— This week: Harlan, Kansas; Reno, Nevada. The boys were still FBI, but no aliases.

Quotes:

Amara: (to Chuck) "Did you smite my masseuse? We agreed to give each other space."

Dean: "This is quite the list of ingredients. Hope you got an Amazon account."
Rowena: "Prime."

Castiel: "We'd call it life, because that's precisely what life is. It's an obstacle course. Maybe Chuck designed the obstacles, but we ran our own race. We made our own moves. And mostly, we did well with that."

Castiel: "Dean. You asked, what about all this is real. We are."

Ketch: "So based on what you're telling me, the enemy is actually… God?"
Dean: "Yeah. Go figure. You guys didn't come up with a cool weapon for him, did you?"

Kevin: "Kevin Tran, former prophet."
Ketch: "Arthur Ketch, former assassin. Mostly."

Kevin: "Since God himself cast me down, I've got kind of a bad boy rep."

Chuck: "What? Do I have a booger?"

Francis: "You know how the hellspawn are. All they talk about is Sam and Dean, Sam and Dean."
Lol.

Rowena: "I do like a left-brained man. Logic, cause and effect, calculations, very butch. It does, however, lack the more nuanced perspective of the right brain."
Ketch: "The, um, voodoo booga-booga perspective."
Rowena: "One might welcome the coupling of… both. The dominating analytic enforcer, you… and the pulsating throbbing firebrand, me."
(Rowena and Ketch exchange flirtatious glances as Ketch strips wires. Billie laughs out loud.)

Dean: "Take care, Kev."
Kevin: "Love you guys."
Me, too.

More like this one, please. A solid three out of four iron necklaces,

Billie
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Billie Doux has been reviewing Supernatural for so long that Dean and Sam Winchester feel like old friends. Courageous, adventurous, gorgeous old friends.

2 comments:

  1. I kept waiting for them to mention Kevin's mom. Last time he was a ghost with no home, so to speak, he stayed with his mom so that he had less chance of going insane. I thought they would encourage him to at least find his mother seeing as he has decided his best option is to stay on earth.

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  2. I really enjoyed this episode too! There were good moments as well as some interesting questions that came out of it. And I've crafted some semi-hopeful theories. First observation, it seems Chuck and Amara'a family getaway after the end of season 11 didn't go to well. Either that or something else happening between them and now for him to piss her off again. Second observation, which leads to a question. I'm remembering that we learned that neither God nor Amara can die without the other also dying or otherwise the universe will end. So Chuck can't be killed unless Amara is going to be killed. But I suppose they could just retcon that or more likely ignore it. But the way Chuck acted this episode, and the information we learned, it made me wonder if maybe the endgame isn't to killl Chuck or lock him away or whatever, but to redeem him by forcing him to grow up. He was obviously planning to leave the universe. He was scared and done with Sam and Dean. But he can't. His sister abandoned him, called him petulant and childish and said he never changes. For forever he's made sandbox after sandbox to play in and abandoned it when he got bored, just like alt-Michael said. But now he can't do that. Times like this force people to change. And something hit me about the remark Belphegor made about Chuck making exceptions for John and Bobby and that Chuck used to like them. I think maybe there's a chance he was hurt emotionally by Sam and Dean turning on him. They were his favorite show and characters, and even though he has done twisted things to them, I think he cared for them in some way as the only thing he had left in his life after abandoning countless universes, stories, characters, heaven and the angels, and his sister leaving him. It's like the comfort any of us might find in this show when we lack anything else substantial at trying moments in life. Maybe, if my theory about Chuck being unkillable because of Amara is true, instead of killing him they will go the more interesting route of having his favorite characters from his favorite show teach him how to be the God he could have been all along. But I don't know if any of this will happen, I'm just hopefully speculating because I really don't want Chuck to still be bad at the end of the show and just get killed like all the monsters on the show. I like his character. Belphegor saying God used to like Sam and Dean and God's later scene with his sister both just really stuck with me for some reason and lead me to all these ideas. It would also be in keeping with how his character evolved in season 11. He learned then, even if he didn't really change. Maybe this time he will. One can hope.

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