Nate Winchester’s Journal: Supernatural 9.04 – “Slumber Party”
Once again we learn that Winchesters’ Law is immutable: “Every time a character appears on Supernatural, the odds of their death will eventually reach 1.” They just don’t always stay that way…
Then there’s… man, two weeks in a row of crap? Sure I was on board with this episode for most of the way but then…
I mean Charlie is an awesome character, you can’t hate on Felicia Day too much but…
I… I can barely type out the words…
A WINDOWS 8 tablet??? Seriously? Goodbye suspension of disbelief! No way a hardcore nerd like Charlie would be caught dead with one of those. And it hooks up to a thirty year old computer? Bullshit! I can’t get a windows 8 machine to connect to a printer made last week! Fail. 0 out of 5 score for this episode!
…
Nah, I’m just kidding, but as an IT employee who generally works with computers so it’s tradition to make at least one joke about the product placement here. (From Alice – This IT employee agrees with you!)
Ok, serious review now: Was this a bad episode? Nah, it had a lot of nice touches, but unless Charlie & Dorothy’s adventures in Oz are going to be their new spinoff (actually… that doesn’t sound bad) one wonders what the point of it was. What I mean is… what was really the point of using Oz in the mythos? It would be understandable if Dorothy or the Wicked Witch (tWW) were being used as shorthand to induce certain expectations and feelings in the audience but they weren’t. Dorothy was just a generic feminist stand in (charming, though) while tWW was silent. Adding the identities of “Dorothy” and “Wicked Witch” didn’t add (or subtract if we’re being honest) to the character on our screen. The only point that really utilized the identity would be her rather charming scene with Sam about having books written about your life – but that could have just as easily been Alice and Wonderland in this episode.
The revelation that Oz “exists” somewhere in the SPN multiverse I don’t mind. Heck one could argue that Heaven/Hell/Purgatory are other dimensions and we did confirm that there is a “Fae-zone” out there in 6.09 and 8.11. Who knows, maybe Oz is just a particular zip code of Fae-land. This bit doesn’t stretch existing lore that badly or break plot holes open so no big deal. It’s just something I’d like to see the show keep reigned in since “world hopping” is more the domain of Once Upon a Time (which I also like, and I want the shows to keep their distinct flavor)… although if Emma, Snow and company all end up in Oz where they meet up with Dorothy and Charlie…
Where was I…
Oh yes, so most everything was pretty good, heck I very nearly felt sorry for Crowley by episode’s end (nearly). I must say that I thought Jared had some pretty good chemistry with Dorothy. Had that actress played Amelia, I would have bought his reluctance to return to hunting a lot more. I was disappointed that they didn’t mention Castiel hanging out with Kevin on the latter’s “vacation”. You know… keep the family together? Maintain tabs on everyone? Let everyone watch each others’ backs? Normally I’d complain about tWW taking over Sam’s mind when Zeke is already in there (seriously, that boy’s skull needs zoning regulations) but the writers did a good job and showed the latter getting weakened from helping out Charlie. A nice touch of plotting there. Though now it seems even weirder that Charlie could figure out Dean did something to save her but Sam can’t figure out the same. FREAKIN’ TALK ABOUT IT ALREADY YA IDJITS!
A good standardized episode. Too bad Castiel wasn’t around to go to Oz too (THAT would have kept him out of angel hands).
(cross posted @http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/episode-review-slumber-party/)
Nate, I enjoy reading the reviews on this site but yours seems to come off negative most times and I don’t quite understand that but you are entitled to your opinions. As for the point of the ep, well it was a “one off” this week which they do to lighten things up but they got so much more detail in there that you never reflected on. There is the fact that we finally got to see Sam’s room and touch on why he does not feel like it is “home” to him. Then there was the amazing garage that finally gives Baby a place to rest also. We’ve also never seen Dean possessed by anything so that was a great addition to add to Jensen’s already amazing talents. Another amazing thing is the way Jared switches from Sam to Zeke in just a blink of an eye.
As for Charlie figuring out about Dean saving her, that isn’t much of a stretch since she and Dean were the only ones in the room with the witch and she knew the witch was going to zap her when she jumped in the way. In fact, Dorothy had to tell her she died to clear that fog up. Sam on the other hand is getting suspicious and questioning some things so I don’t think it will take much longer before the sh__ hits the fan. He trusts his brother and for the most parts buys what Dean tells him each time even though he is questioning some of the answers.
As for the IT part, I am not one, but I have seen an item advertised on tv that looks just like the one Charlie had so I as a non-IT person did not find that a stretch. TPTB seem to do a pretty good job of researching and getting facts as true to life as they possibly can so I would not dwell on tiny things like that. All of this of course is JMO. 🙂
Oh I know, this one was heavily tongue in cheek (notice the rating at the end).
I try to talk about whatever will inspire the most words. “Nice, baby finally has some shelter” isn’t very long. Though I am impressed Dean was able to apparently drive her backwards all the way into that garage. lol Sam & Dean finally having rooms again? Eh we’ll see where they’ll go with that before I’ll have much to say.
[quote]Oh I know, this one was heavily tongue in cheek (notice the rating at the end).
I try to talk about whatever will inspire the most words. “Nice, baby finally has some shelter” isn’t very long. Though I am impressed Dean was able to apparently drive her backwards all the way into that garage. lol Sam & Dean finally having rooms again? Eh we’ll see where they’ll go with that before I’ll have much to say.[/quote]
Yes, I also wondered about how he got that backed in there the whole way. Must have been quite the trick to get such a large car through that narrow tunnel but she is his baby so he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Would have been interesting to watch though, but then we know the walls open up and move for great shots so the technical aspect of it is no stretch. 🙂
Nope, in my personal canon I now believe he did it like Goomer in that episode of Andy Griffith. Dean took Baby apart and reassembled her in the garage. XD
[quote]Nope, in my personal canon I now believe he did it like Goomer in that episode of Andy Griffith. Dean took Baby apart and reassembled her in the garage. XD[/quote]
Oh that is way too funny Nate. 😆 Thanks for the laugh first thing this morning, I needed that. Yes he could do that, not like he hasn’t built her from ground up before, and gotten so much faster at it. 😉
I think the floor in the center of the garage turns in a circle so that cars can turn round – or better yet you get in to the garage by driving, you get out of the garage on a rising platform like Torchwood… 🙂
Oh and the point at which you hit ground level using the platform is magically ALWAYS 2 hours drive from where you need to be! (because the magic knows Dean needs to drive for a good chunk of every day). :-*
[quote]I think the floor in the center of the garage turns in a circle so that cars can turn round – or better yet you get in to the garage by driving, you get out of the garage on a rising platform like Torchwood… 🙂
Oh and the point at which you hit ground level using the platform is magically ALWAYS 2 hours drive from where you need to be! (because the magic knows Dean needs to drive for a good chunk of every day). :-*[/quote]
I do like the turnaround idea although it did not look like there was enough room for that kind of option but hey, it’s Supernatural so anything is possible. 😆
I think they’ve kept the alternate dimension element of the mythology in check, with the aforementioned fairy realm and Oz to the “Meta-universe,” and I’m willing to say that Asgard exists from the fact Vili in season eight had a frost giant finger bone.
With Charlie being able to figure out that Dean something, that came on the heels of Dorothy telling her she died, so I see it as a bit different.
But there is supposed to be a big moment regarding the Sam/Zeke stuff in the next episode,
Loved the opening of your review Nate; hilarious!! and so true. Supernatural is generally more subtle about it’s product placement, but this was beyond blatant. Perhaps we are seeing the proof on an interesting article in Variety recently explaining why Supernatural has been able to demand higher fees for it’s product placements (that coveted 18-49 demographic) while all other shows have been tanking and dropping their rates; maybe that’s why the product placement was so obvious this time around: Windows got bank!
Any way, I pretty much agree with you on the episode too. Meh. So, we got to see Sam’s room…. we got one sentence of Sam ‘bonding’ with Dorothy, we got Charlie joining the ‘died and revived’ club. But what did that tell us about all of the important and recently set up season long story arcs? Cas? Kevin? Bart? Angels? Crowley? Abadon? Metatron? Nothing much that I could see. I don’t mind a one-off episode, but back in the day even a one-off informed the audience about either the current plots or the Winchesters themselves, there were always kernels of pertinent information that fed into the main story enriching it. I didn’t see much of that going on here. The only really relevant thing to happen in terms of how it might affect the overall seasonal stuff is Dean’s shout out to Zeke when he needed help of the angel kind. That could have been pretty interesting, but there really wasn’t enough follow up on that front to make Dean using Sam like his own ‘blunt instrument’ have much relevance or meaning; it didn’t ratchet up the tension or heighten the stakes… well, at least not much IMO, and it really should have. Twice now Dean has called on Zeke in his time of need to fix some pretty serious problems, each time cramming Sam down inside himself with no way to control his own actions. It’s one thing for Dean to let an angel inhabit is brother to save his life, it’s quite another for him to call on that angel when he sees fit to use him as his own personal Mr. Fix-it. That whole scenario should have carried more weight and been more significant considering its the second time we’ve seen Dean do this. But the payoff of the event was weak. Now, if Sam had been far more suspicious after waking up on the floor in a stupor AGAIN, if he’d begun to pick apart Dean’s increasingly weak and convoluted explanations, if we’d seen Sam grow concerned, or even recognize that Dean was lying, then the episode would have felt like it had more meaning or was more necessary in the grand scheme of things.
It wasn’t a bad episode by any means; it was well acted, decently (if somewhat slowly) paced, the bunker is beyond awesome, charlie is awesome, the Wicked Witch was awesome (you know, they could have slipped in a scene that showed the witch giving something to Crowley…creating tensions with the viewers as we wondered what that something was and how Crowley might use it against the boys in a future episode?….just a thought).
I guess that I had a hard time caring about OZ, I mean are we ever going to see it again? Will OZ ever play a significant role in the Supernatural world? Will fairies or flying monkeys or even Dorothy help the Winchesters defeat Crowley, Abadon, Bart or Metatron? I doubt it. I just wanted there to be something that made seeing and knowing about OZ seem necessary to the world of Supernatural, and to Sam and Dean.
[quote]. I don’t mind a one-off episode, but back in the day even a one-off informed the audience about either the current plots or the Winchesters themselves, there were always kernels of pertinent information that fed into the main story enriching it. I didn’t see much of that going on here. The only really relevant thing to happen in terms of how it might affect the overall seasonal stuff is Dean’s shout out to Zeke when he needed help of the angel kind. That could have been pretty interesting, but there really wasn’t enough follow up on that front to make Dean using Sam like his own ‘blunt instrument’ have much relevance or meaning; it didn’t ratchet up the tension or heighten the stakes… well, at least not much IMO, and it really should have. Twice now Dean has called on Zeke in his time of need to fix some pretty serious problems, each time cramming Sam down inside himself with no way to control his own actions. It’s one thing for Dean to let an angel inhabit is brother to save his life, it’s quite another for him to call on that angel when he sees fit to use him as his own personal Mr. Fix-it. That whole scenario should have carried more weight and been more significant considering its the second time we’ve seen Dean do this. .[/quote]
E when you talk about it being the second time Dean has done this are you talking about Zeke saving Cas last week? You possibly aren’t.
Anyway I think it is quite interesting that they chose to have 2 rescuing-dead-people episodes in a row (assuming it isn’t just that they reorganized the episodes and there was supposed to be another one in between – which I believe there was). In last week’s episode Dean didn’t ask Zeke to rescue Cas. Far from it. Dean saw that Cas was dead and possibly for the first time ever he treated a person being dead the way the rest of us would. His reaction was not ‘how can I bring this person back to life’ it was genuine grief over the death of someone close to him – and it was very moving.
Zeke walked into the middle of that and undid the finality of it, but Dean actually had felt it, even just for a moment. Move on a week and another person dies and this time Dean doesn’t hesitate. He is back to messing with the natural order of things because he has a way to do it.
One of the things the events on the show have tried to make them all understand is that you can’t keep coming back from the dead – it tends to just make things worse. Dean with his guilt over how much he knows Sam would hate the situation he is in (if he knew about it) had, maybe subconsciously, finally taken that to heart and now he is back at square one and also (mixed metaphor) on a slippery slope where calling for Zeke and suppressing Sam for the good of … whatever … is gong to lead him further astray and really into making more and more reckless decisions. And the first time he uses Zeke to prevent Sam from doing something Dean doesn’t want him to do is going to be a big emotional shock to not only Sam but to Dean himself.
I do think that he really really wants Sam to find out, because oh my Chuck is he a terrible, awful, dreadfully bad liar 🙂 . How does he ever convince anyone of anything when they are on a case? 😕
Hi eilf,
No, I was referring to that time in the Impala in the same episode when Dean said to Sam “I’m letting you know,” in a plea for Zeke to make an appearance. Then he asks Zeke track the reaper that is following Cas so that they can find Cas quicker. It’s the only reason that Sam and Dean actually WERE able to find Cas so quickly and ultimately to save him. All their previous searching wasn’t getting them anywhere and the boys were tired, so Dean called up Zeke (and squashed Sam) to get the information that was needed. That was the first time he deliberately called Zeke up for help, and he did it again in this most recent episode. So, Zeke has appeared to take action twice of his own volition, once to kill the demons and once to heal Cas, and twice at Dean’s behest, once to find Cas and once to heal Charlie.
And yes, I agree with you, slippery slope indeed. The tension and conflict from this scenario is delicious isn’t it? I completely understand Dean and his motivations, but I also know how terribly upset (and rightfully so) Sam will be when he finds out. It’s awesome isn’t it?
😉
[quote]Hi eilf,
No, I was referring to that time in the Impala in the same episode when Dean said to Sam “I’m letting you know,” in a plea for Zeke to make an appearance. Then he asks Zeke track the reaper that is following Cas so that they can find Cas quicker. It’s the only reason that Sam and Dean actually WERE able to find Cas so quickly and ultimately to save him. All their previous searching wasn’t getting them anywhere and the boys were tired, so Dean called up Zeke (and squashed Sam) to get the information that was needed. That was the first time he deliberately called Zeke up for help, and he did it again in this most recent episode. So, Zeke has appeared to take action twice of his own volition, once to kill the demons and once to heal Cas, and twice at Dean’s behest, once to find Cas and once to heal Charlie.
And yes, I agree with you, slippery slope indeed. The tension and conflict from this scenario is delicious isn’t it? I completely understand Dean and his motivations, but I also know how terribly upset (and rightfully so) Sam will be when he finds out. It’s awesome isn’t it?
;-)[/quote]
Yep! And being able to understand Dean’s motivations and see how they can result in whatever happens (and how it wasn’t his intention) is SO MUCH BETTER a way to do a storyline PTB, thank you!
*remembers: “it’s all about perception” from last season, grumble, mutter*
Sorry I have seen a few comments where Dean seemed to be getting the acknowledgement / blame for calling Zeke to help Cas so I just wasn’t sure. 🙂
Quoting eilf
“Yep! And being able to understand Dean’s motivations and see how they can result in whatever happens (and how it wasn’t his intention) is SO MUCH BETTER a way to do a storyline PTB, thank you!”
At the risk of opening a can of worms, wouldn’t it have been nice if Sam had been given even half the motivation and insight into why he didn’t look for Dean in season 8 as Dean is getting now for what he is doing to Sam? Ah, more’s the pity. 🙁 To have such clear cut motivation actually ratchets UP the tension rather than creating a dividing line among the fans. Just MO of course. 🙂