Thoughts on Supernatural 9×05: Dog Dean Afternoon

The lies get heavier and the commitment to the cover up gets stronger. This episode was a fun and games round trip with a drabble of plot on top to tide us over. As episodes go, it wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t anything major either. Altogether – there isn’t much here to review as episodes go: it was a pretty basic “hunting things, saving people” plot of the week Supernatural episode.

The bad guy of the moment was nothing particularly spectacular and in fact the only blip he really established was a minor conundrum in that he was a human (it’s that pesky witch factor that crops up every so often) and I was wondering how the boys were going to take care of Mr. Shaman without crossing that sharply drawn don’t-kill-humans line. Of course, the pre-established pack of freed dogs cleared that up rather neatly.

Animal episodes always walk a fine line of too gimmicky but this week I thought Supernatural pulled it off just right. When Dean first crossed over to dog-Dean I worried this would be played a bit too far, instead it was played perfectly. Dean “fetching” the paper scrap, Dean pulling the gun on the pigeon while Sam smiled nervously at others in the parking lot, not eating chocolate – Dean wasn’t made to look overtly stupid but just canine enough we could all laugh with him.

Most of the extras this week were well featured, including Steve Valentine, the chef, who played homicidal people-eater rather well. Undoubtedly, there were some classic moments in this one.

Certainly the Game of Thrones taxidermy moment where Sam holds up the crowned animal to display to his brother; as well as Dean hanging out the passenger window a la canine were favourites.

I think the best was the Yorkie blackmailing a belly scratch in exchange for bad-guy description from Sam “the tall drink” Winchester.

Ultimately, episode five feels like a good place to break away from all things major plot related without causing a foremost disconnect in any story development overall. Somehow, this season is moving at the perfect rate in most chief respects and the continued touchstone in significant ways on the Zeke/Sam storyline such as to allow hinting to Sam and others that something else is going on and forcing maneuvering by Dean to further hide his actions. And all so in a way that isn’t repetitive harping that makes a person want to pull their hair out like was done was upon a time with the killing of a certain demon friend of Sam’s shown nonstop in recapping for weeks.

That said if next week we have further Zeke-saves-the-day moments and Sam doesn’t start asking some solid questions or connecting a dot or too, it’s going to be getting too far down that rabbit hole of believability. Dean is running out of excuses and Sam is no dummy, after all. Zeke can’t continue to be the secret ace in the hole and the magic healing certainly cannot be explained away forever.

Overall, this episode wasn’t too bad. The characters were nothing extraordinary, though they were fun at times and the plot seemed to function as more of a bridge to get to the big query moment of Sam wondering what the chef meant by asking what he was. Next week appears to get back to the key plot points at hand, thankfully addressing the issue of where Cas went – and with any luck maybe giving Sam a hint as to what is really going on inside his noggin.

So, as reviews go this is fairly short – but next week looks like it should be a woozy. So what were your thoughts on Dog Dean Afternoon? PS – anybody else think the Kernel would have fit right in at the MoL bunker?