Reviews That I Missed: Supernatural 12.15, “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell”

I sat down and did the rewatch of “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell” knowing that I didn’t remember a darned thing about the episode. After watching it, I’m not sure I ever watched it the first time! I know there were a couple on my “never watched” list so maybe this was one of them? Either that or because of the slow pace and the mere filler nature of the episode, I was multi-tasking while I watched. Either way, it had a “watching for the first time” impact. Did I like it? Meh.

I really loved “Stuck in the Middle (With You),” so I was little bummed to find this tepid filler episode was written by Davy Perez. He’s usually capable of much better. The ideas were there and the episode moved the plot along a little, but it was so freaking slow! Painfully slow. I kept looking at my watch wondering when it would end, and I wasn’t even watching with commercials. It felt like a script half completed that they just decided to run with.

Let’s start with Castiel, who was essentially a blip on a screen in this episode. Obviously Perez was inspired by Ben Edlund’s Ron Resnick. I love how the appearance of Dagon on the antiquated video camera and the yellow eyes was blamed on the “Reptilians,” just like the Queen. Okay, that’s pretty funny. It didn’t have the Ron Resnick Mandroid type delivery, but it was still funny. But that’s Idaho for you! A bunch of conspiracy nuts up there, but perhaps with less flare than Wisconsin. I also like that Castiel just took the evidence and moved on.

The real development we were supposed to follow with Castiel, though, is him being approached by a disciple of Joshua. We are meant to believe that is the Joshua from season five’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” Castiel listened, so obviously he has deep respect for the guy. Maybe Castiel is also really tired. He looked flat during the whole encounter with the conspiracy kook, so the chance to return to Heaven had to appeal to him. He also probably realizes that he’s going to need help in taking on Dagon to find Kelly Kline. So, good for him. I liked seeing the playground sandbox gate. It’s still creepy that angels hang out in playgrounds, but I liked seeing it!

Sam and Dean again felt like supporting players, even though they started by driving the main story line. As we learned from the agonizingly long and pointless teaser, there was a hell hound after Gwen, victim of the week, for no good reason. Okay, maybe one, Gwen pissed the invisible canine off by smacking her on the nose with a stick after she randomly shredded the guy Gwen was about the reject. It was cute that Sam and Dean tried to lie to Gwen about the existence of hellhounds at first, but as we know lies never work. It was Gwen’s deception of her now chew toy boyfriend that guilted Sam to come clean with Dean about working with the British Men of Letters. It was a nicely done parallel, but it was really subtle, too. It faded into the background much like Sam and Dean did this week.

Kudos, though, to Dean for accepting what Sam was saying and not pulling his usual “man pain” fit. I like how he conceded that they have to work with people they don’t trust. “I just Liam Nessoned it with Crowley.” Hee, good line. It was a nice bit of maturity, one that has been so absent in the later seasons (see season 15, aka Dean Train Wreck 10000). I looked through the remaining season 12 episodes to see when Dean reverts back to unreasonable man pain mode. Ah yes, episode 12.19, “The Future.” Thanks Robert Berens.

The real star of the episode though was Crowley, which is usually not a bad thing. He took over the focus of the episode once Sam and Dean called him about half way through the episode. It was the return of smart Crowley, so I guess that was something. Too bad it didn’t last in coming episodes. Honestly, when I first saw him with Lucifer, I thought the whole thing was a campy mess and Perez was taking his cues from Brad and Eugenie. The early conversation between Crowley and Lucifer was cringeworthy. It was a very poor decision to bring Lucifer back, but I’ve said that a few times before in other reviews, so I’ll let it go here. My favorite bit of the episode was Gwen deciding to hug Crowley, of all people, for helping her. His stunned reaction was too priceless.

I also thought the dumb minions in the Hell Lair with their corporate meeting demands made the camp ten times worse. Their dialogue and scenery chewing was atrocious! How do low level demons like that get access to the Hellhound cage? I like that Lucifer easily dusted them. They had that coming. I only wish Crowley was the one to do it. I still really hate the whole “Hell is a corporate bureaucracy” plot that took way too much time. Make Hell great again? I kind of threw up in my mouth a little. I’ve said this before, but bring back the days of Hell where everyone lurked behind the shadows. The unknown is creepy. I guess that would make Hell great again. Yuck, I just cornered myself there.

With some patience though the bad start to the Crowley story line did pay off. Crowley exerting his complete control over Lucifer was wickedly awesome. That had to be the payoff he wanted, even though he had to know his plan was going to backfire eventually. This Crowley pay back idea was dumb, dumb, dumb. Crowley was smarter than that! He usually didn’t play with fire and was overly cautious. It did at least work out for him in this episode, so we’ll take the Crowley win. I also hate that Perez continued to write Lucifer as more of a clown, a la Brad and Eugenie. That made his character so unbearable to watch.

Stray Thoughts

It there was one significant shout-out in this episode, it was Sam and Dean returning from their hunt in the beginning with the Lucille baseball bat! A nice callback to Jeffrey Dean Morgan and The Walking Dead. Dean even had wraith bits in his hair. Nice touch.

I loved how we got the return of Winchester glasses, a la the hellhound hunt in “Trial and Error.” They’re every bit as hot as before! Another great shout-out.

I also love how Dean was more worried about Sam taking the Impala than Sam helping Gwen. “Imagine she’s a beautiful woman. A beautiful, beautiful woman.” Now that was more like Dean!

Despite the slow pace, the erratic editing continued. It didn’t help the pace one bit and still didn’t blend the stories together very well. Better editing would have brought up the quality of the episode!

So yeah, all in all not a total waste, but they could have told this story in about half of the time. Overall grade, B-. Coming up next, I start digging into season 13! I missed a lot of reviews that season because of personal issues at the time, both the good and bad episodes. So let’s dust off this season I barely remember and take a nice little deep dive. Hopefully it won’t be as painful as season 9.