‘Supernatural’ Recap — Episode 8.08, “Hunteri Heroici.”
(I did not photoshop that image)
If you didn’t catch yesterday’s episode of Supernatural—go watch it on the CW’s website, please. Do yourself a favor. They might not have the highest special effects budget, but by god did they take what they had and work miracles with it.
The monster-of-the-week plot had people all over town getting into wacky accidents—and by ‘wacky’ I’m talking, getting crushed by an anvil that fell out of the sky sort of
things. A good part of the fandom was screaming and stomping their feet for another Trickster episode, but sadly this one didn’t deliver, so we were a slight bit disappointed. But really, that was the only thing to be disappointed about. Even if the “monster” did turn out to be (spoilers!) an old family friend of the Winchesters who was being manipulated, the hijinks (guns with “bang” flags, physical comedy. A lot of physical comedy) that went on were more than enough to make up for not getting our dear Gabriel back.
And, of course, the sheer amount of Castiel, whose character is finally being explored as something more than a plot device, with his deadpan misunderstandings of slang and pop culture references and eagerness to help out—but also emotional development, where near the end of the episode we find out his reasons for not wanting to go back to Heaven. He also demonstrates a few more special angel powers for exploitation in later episodes, such as being able to pick up any sort of frequency in the air and the ability to jump into people’s minds, which are both way cool.
Then, of course, being Supernatural, there has to be a subplot going on, and in this case we got a few rather crudely introduced flashbacks of Sam’s time with Amelia, over the holidays this time, where she invites her father over…who then proceeds to take subtle but noticeable jabs at Sam the entire time. And even worse—he pokes fun at John, after only learning that he was a Marine, which Sam obviously doesn’t appreciate. Things are understandably tense over the holidays, and…it doesn’t get any better when Amelia gets a phone call telling her, all of the sudden, that her assumed-to-be-dead husband was actually still alive.
Awkward.
So, the monster of the week plot was surprisingly self-contained, leaving little room for emotional run-off into other episodes since it was mainly light-hearted. However, Castiel did end up watching over the old man at the end of the episode, so we can’t expect him for a little bit, and fans are still holding on to the hope that Gabriel was there, somewhere. Maybe if we watch it a dozen more times we’ll be able to spot him.
Next week: Will we find out why Sam’s flashbacks are plot-device-for-plot-device out of a stereotypical soap opera? Probably not, but it is the midseason finale, so make sure to tune in to the CW on Wednesday, December the 5th at 9/8c.