Reviews That I Missed: Supernatural 9.21, “King of the Damned”

Here it is, the last review for season nine.  Thank freaking goodness.  To say it was a chore rewatching and writing up reviews for this horrific season would be a massive understatement.  It reminded me of everything I absolutely loathed about this season.  The season where I almost quit watching “Supernatural” for good (multiple friends and staff members did quit that season).  But, this review is about “King of the Damned,” so lets get through this so I can move on to…other mediocre seasons!  

With all the hubbub leading up to “Bloodlines,” not to mention all the contrived brotherly drama, it seems that Brad and Eugenie decided to write an episode that played catch up from all that was neglected in season nine.  They crammed about half a season worth of mytharc plotting in one episode.  With the frantic bouncing between plot lines due to erratic editing, not to mention slamming too much material at us, it was hard to enjoy or even follow what was happening.  I’m not going to say they were bad stories.  On their own, all had their value and were satisfying.  Put them all together though, it was one big mess.   

It’s probably best if I just analyze the different arcs separately, because I’m still seasick over following the episode chronologically.  I mean, talk about short attention span theater!  

Oh Right, Angel War

Let’s start with the angel war. Getting into the episode recap, I forgot that there was an angel war going on!  In my recent reviews, there’s been no angel activity whatsoever.  Yes, there was “Meta Fiction,” but that had too many fake-outs with Gabriel and who was the real writer of this story.  It didn’t exactly move the angel war along any.  All I know is that with Castiel in charge of whatever faction he has, it’s going to go poorly, because they couldn’t write Castiel any other way.  It’s not like he was a smart badass or anything (sarcasm!)

Okay, Castiel did get to be a badass for five seconds and it was nice.  I think they wasted too much time with Ezra the dumbass bragging angel in the bar when it was obvious his fish story was going to get him in trouble.  But seeing Castiel come into the interrogation room all intimidating, it was a nice glimpse of the Castiel of old.  Too bad it didn’t last. 

Tell me, Why do angels need a state of the art electronic command center?  What’s wrong with angel radio? They can all communicate among themselves using whatever frequency or code words they choose.  That was always a big complaint of mine in the later seasons.  Why in the world were Hell and Heaven headquarters a lot like bureaucratic corporate offices?  I always felt like that was a total lack of imagination.  These aren’t humans. I see a corporate setting at my job every day, I don’t need it in my TV sci-fi show.  I like the approach in the earlier seasons when demons and angels lurked in the shadows and you never really saw what was happening behind the scenes.  It added to the mystique.  But hey, camp is the new norm so here we are.   

Castiel did do a couple of things right.  He brought in Sam and Dean to interrogate the dipshit angel Ezra (I’ll cover that more later) and he contacted Gadreel for his assistance.  Of course there were betrayers in his camp because, well, that always seems to happen.  I guess it makes the plot more spicy?  We did learn that there was a moving portal to Heaven, which is actually kind of clever.  Given the source though, how do we not know it was information Metatron wanted leaked?  Yeah, I don’t remember if that became a real thing and I don’t feel like researching it.  

I hate that they were setting up Castiel for a fall, because his ability to read Gadreel was clever.  That was a skill that made him special.  He tried to appeal to Gadreel’s need for honor instead of trying to kill him, which is quite refreshing. Dean would have gut him like a fish.  Cas, last season’s unwitting victim, has a convincing case for an alliance with Gadreel, this season’s unwitting victim.  Aww, these two are bonding over being duped by Booger.   It’s an interesting plea, he just wants information.  Metatron has spies in his camp, he just wants level the playing field.  Not a bad strategy at all.  Something Andrew Dabb didn’t make note of in the next episode.  

Hell is in Cleveland

On the flip side was Crowley, who for some reason was making a power play at a hotel in Cleveland.  I mean, Cleveland.  Yay, Cleveland.  You know, Mistake by the Lake.  First prize, a week in Cleveland.  Second prize, two weeks.  (I live in Ohio and have earned the right to jest!).  Just like with Castiel though, there were traitors among the group.  Oh no, how shocking!  I’ve never seen the double plot twist before!  Oh, except maybe in all of Brad and Eugenie’s other scripts.  For once, how about shocking everyone with 100% loyalty instead?  Then they can all fist fight.  

Anyway, Abaddon appeared with Crowley’s son Gavin.  In the teaser she went back in to 1700’s Scotland to kidnap him.  Really?  Time travel again?  I know that Abaddon has done it before but, shouldn’t there be some rules tied to time travel?  It feels like contrived plotting to me.  Don’t tell me that Star Trek didn’t go there a bit too much.  Unless its a time travel show, it should be a very rare thing.  Abaddon was exploiting Crowley’s new human weakness and it worked?  Okay, I guess.  I liked Crowley in “Weekend at Bobby’s” when he didn’t give a crap about Gavin.  But sure, it fits the current plot.  I’m just bored with it.  

Crowley and Gavin’s scenes were mostly fun though.  I love that Gavin complained about not being able to read, so Crowley touched him and he could read!  That’s a great parlor trick.  They were a convincing estranged father and son, even if the circumstances were totally weird.  I thought it was funny that Crowley and Abaddon were on the same page about what a dimwit Gavin was.  Crowley showing him the lightbulb was priceless.  “Can you cook a pigeon on it?”  Hee.   Sure, once in a while there was a clunker like the silly, “If you’re a king that makes me a prince,” dialogue, but least Gavin knew that demons were bad!

In going through all this though, I feel that Abaddon didn’t need Gavin at all for leverage.  She had already tracked down Crowley.  All she had to do was shoot Crowley with that Devil’s Trap bullet and use that as a way to get Sam and Dean.  After all, Crowley would have called them to save his own skin.  Was there perhaps a plan to have Gavin back for multiple episodes?  I know he got one more in season 12, but his story didn’t go more than that.  Again, too much in one episode.  They could have easily done the Gavin plot at another time.  That would have made the story more entertaining and given it room the breathe.  

I Sense Drama

Sam and Dean got to play in both sides of the story, which was awesome.  They first entered Castiel’s world as interrogators.  Their session with dumbass Ezra was really amusing.  They started off with good cop/bad cop, and once they realized they weren’t dealing with the best and brightest, all they had to do was playfully mock him into telling everything.  The parallels between them dealing with this idiot and Crowley with Gavin was pretty interesting.  Stupid is as stupid does I guess.  The best part of this scene though was the way it was shot.  I LOVE the camera angles looking up to Sam and Dean in this scene from Ezra’s point of view.  They looked larger than life and man were they.  The interrogation was the best part of the episode for me.   

And then, Crowley calls, and now they’re off to Cleveland.  Yay, Cleveland.  You know, Mistake by the Lake.  First prize, a week in Cleveland.  Second prize, two weeks. Oh right, we’ve been there already. :).

Crowley drops a hint first, one that only Dean hears.  It’s a long drive from Poughkeepsie.  Uh oh, code word for things are bad.  Dean should have picked up on that right away!  The fact that Crowley had to repeat it was stupid.  You know, I think Crowley has used Poughkeepsie more than Sam and Dean.  So Dean tells Sam that Crowley used the secret code word and he’s in trouble right?  Hee, this is the season of contrived brotherly drama!  Of course that didn’t happen.  Instead, Dean sent Sam on a wild goose chase in the basement (and Sam did it without question?) and went off to kill Abaddon all on his own.  Boring!!  

In yet another shoutout to prior episodes, just so they can say “continuity”, Abaddon shoots Crowley with a bullet with a Devil’s Trap carved into it.  Just in case we forgot where that came from, Abaddon mentioned she got that trick from Henry Winchester, so that would have been “As Time Goes By.”  So Crowley is immobilized and in pain, meaning he can’t get in the way when Dean arrives.  Not that Crowley would help anyway.  He always let Dean do the dirty work.  

I’m not sure how I feel about the big showdown between Abaddon and Dean.  I mean, Dean was there by Abaddon’s doing.  She really thought she would be more powerful than Dean?  I mean, she was a disciple of Cain, right?  She knew how powerful the First Blade and the MOC were together.  She barely escaped Cain’s wrath, and only did so by killing the love of his life.  She could have captured Sam and used that as leverage.  Instead, she had nothing on Dean that would render him powerless.  So, after two seasons of dealing with the dangerous, all fearing, elusive original Prince of Hell Abaddon, she goes down because of blatant hubris?  That’s, terrible plotting.  That’s a writing team giving up.  

That doesn’t discount what a badass scene Dean killing Abaddon was.  It was every bit as good as I thought it would be.  She had a skewering coming, and Dean fighting her power and eventually overcoming it was a massive parallel to Sam’s battle with Samhain in “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.”   Just like Dean in that scene, Sam came in just in time to see Dean make the brutal yet totally awesome kill.  A big kudos to the VFX team with the lighting, showing Abaddon burn from within and hoisted up as Dean took her out with the jawbone of doom.  I love how the light reflected off of Sam and Dean as she was burning.  Very cinematic!

Crowley had to know that Dean would come out on top, which is probably why he went along with Abaddon’s scheme to begin with.  Again, did she really need Gavin?  I get that she was a brute, but I always thought her to be more clever than this too.  But she’s dead now, and Dean can go on peacefully with his existence now, right?  Mission accomplished.  Ha, I know, that was a good one.  Now that he’s hooked on this killing thing, he needs more.  The cat is out of the bag.  Welcome to your season ten plot.  

I REALLY had a problem with the next scene between Crowley, Sam and Dean.  Sam and Dean are lecturing Crowley on the ramifications of time travel?  Really?  Two guys that have tried to manipulate the time and fate in the past to save their family?  And they can’t give Crowley that same chance?  It makes sense, what father, knowing that his son was doomed for a watery grave after having a miserable life, wouldn’t want to give his son a second chance, even if it’s the King of Hell?  I love that Crowley called them out on their bullshit.  “No one bends the rules like you two bend the rules.” Amen!  I find it funny that Sam had the simple solution, they’ll just find a spell in the bunker to send him back.  If it were that easy, they’d be time traveling all the time!  You know, going back and saving all those relatives and friends.  You know Dean and his man pain would do it!  

Then, Sam and Dean seriously gave Crowley a chance to say goodbye to his son?  UGH!  They knew that he just had to snap his fingers in a second and they would be gone!  They fell for that?  This scene felt like two writers were rushing to meet a script deadline.  It was all very clunky and yay, dumb Winchesters again. I do feel that if the script took time to slow down a bit, they would have had a better conclusion.  I would have liked to see Crowley leave with the first blade instead of his son, really setting off Dean.  Again, that story could have been saved for another time.  But yeah, we did get the nice scene where Crowley sent Gavin out into the modern world left to his own devices with no help whatsoever.  He wouldn’t even hug him.   We’ll have to wait until season 12 to see how he fared.  

After ALL that, we then get the closing scene between the brothers in the car.  Dean claimed he lied to Sam to protect him, so that he wouldn’t get captured by Abaddon and get in the way.  Sam is incredulous, sitting there giving the whole “we’re actually partners in this and we watch each other’s backs” speech. WHAT??  Hello Sam, remember you declared the whole you aren’t brothers thing?  The whole keeping Dean at arms length and the “I wouldn’t have done the same thing for you” thing?  Have these writers even watched this season?  Of course Dean went it alone.  Sam was right to express concern about how the first blade was changing Dean, but of course he was going to get a vehement “no”.  Dean is hooked on that power, and Sam hasn’t exactly earned the right to protect his brother.  Geez, Crowley was right.  I sense drama. 

So, what have we learned here?  The individual stories were pretty good, they didn’t work together, and the editing choices made it worse.  The moral of the story, space your stories between episodes!  Use your 23 episode season.  Oh right, we had to do “Bloodlines”.  All in all, an uneven script that strangely met a satisfying end goal for the Abaddon story.    

Other Thoughts

Crowley had in this episode the line that was runner up (and editor’s choice) for best quote in our Season Nine Awards.  “No one in the history of torture’s been tortured with torture like the torture you’ll be tortured with.”   Great line!  

I wonder if Gavin in the real world finds out who Gavin MacLeod really was.  Kind of a funny parallel, captain of the Love Boat!  

Nice touch of Crowley hiding the first blade in a fresh corpse.  I think he did that because he knew that Sam would be the one that had to retrieve it.  Demons and angels always have it in for Sam!  

Overall grade, a B-.  A little more careful care to the script and this could have been in the A range.  Coming up next…(scans the episode guide)…wow, season 12!  “Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox.”  Huh, how did I miss that one?  It was actually one of the better efforts in what was a totally putrid season 12.