Reviews That I Missed: Supernatural 13.07, “War of the Worlds”

Aw nuts.  I don’t get it.  Where does any writer think, “This season has been very even keeled in it’s storytelling.  Let’s blow it all apart with a kitchen sink episode!  The fans will love it!”  Yeah, right.   I went into “The War of the Worlds” with fresh eyes since I couldn’t remember a damned thing that happened in it.  I was…underwhelmed. 

I mean, come on, season 13 has been going well so far.  While there have been a few stinkers, the episodes have succeeded in evenly balancing the monster of the week/mytharc stories with some rich character development.  Sure, Dean was a super annoying jerk for a lot of it, but at least it was there for a purpose and his drama did blend with the story unfolding.  I didn’t always like it, but it blended.  Jack has been a pleasant surprise, until they cast him away last episode.  

Here, it was all blown apart for a “sensational” story that was meant to shock and awe.  It didn’t.  It was once again a short attention span theater mess that juggled too many stories loaded with plot holes and, of course, a couple of “shocking” character resurrections.  After all, you’ve got to have character resurrections so they can be killed again.  Talk about lazy writing.  It was just a bunch of random events that didn’t add up in the end.  

Let me count the ways in how this failed.  As you’ll notice, a lot of these points are the usual rinse and repeat from other bad reviews.  So, apology up front for being a broken record, but I’m telling it as it is.  

1.  Lucifer.  Brad and Eugenie were the only writers by season 13 that felt there was plenty of Lucifer story to tell.  To me, Lucifer wore out his welcome a long time ago.  The fact that they found an easy way for him to come back from the alternate world felt cheap.  It was pure dumb luck!  It completely invalidated Mary’s sacrifice in the season 12 finale.  All so he could pal around powerless with Castiel?  This guy is still an ass clown instead of being the true danger to society he used to be.  

2.  A sensational resurrection of a dead character!  Again!  Oh boy, look who’s back.  Mr. Ketch?  It’s not like he was a fan favorite.  I can think of plenty of others to bring back, especially since we had long put that disaster known as the British Men of Letters in our rear view mirror.  Oh, but he’s a mercenary for hire now.  How original.  Naturally, he would be working for Asmodeus.  The good guys don’t pay enough I guess.   

3..  The hunt for a missing character.  Again.  It should be called a hunt for a missing character because the actor isn’t contractually signed to be in all episodes.  Jack is missing and Sam and Dean have no leads, so now they can work a case!  Ugh. That’s only been done hundreds of times.  Why was that still a thing in season 13?  I’m so craving originality at this point.  

4.  Evil Colonel Sanders.  I’ll give them credit, at least that very description was used in the episode!  Why is it shocking or enhancing the story to see a powerful demon like Asmodeus cruelly kill some normal human he’s interrogating?  Is that supposed to make us fear him?  It didn’t work.  I just wanted some chicken.  Brad and Eugenie were often guilty of building up the body count for no good reason.  Asmodeus is still annoying as hell and now he has Castiel and Lucifer captive.  Why am I not worried?  Why do I care? 

5.  Alt world, aka more stunt casting!  Why in the world do we want to see Lucifer and Michael go at it?  Can’t they both kill each other and it’s all done?  Oh no, this angry Michael wants to come and destroy our world.  Welcome to the season 14 plot.  We did get alt world Kevin, aka an excuse to bring back characters they hastily killed previously.   He’s a meth head prophet?  What a waste of Osric’s time, and he was a fan favorite.  He should have made it through that rift with Lucifer, or better yet instead of Lucifer.  Maybe new Kevin would be fun.  We didn’t get to find out.   

6.  Plot holes and flimsy leaps in the writing that seem contrived. Again.   If Ketch was working for Asmodeus, did he hire him to kill those witches?  Was that ever answered other than the hint that Ketch thought they were bad?  He got caught for that?  Of course because there had to be a cheat, so Ketch had the same mechanism inside him to bring him back to life like Rowena?  Honestly, him being the twin brother Alexander was way more plausible.  They should have stuck with that.  That’s also a glaring hint that Rowena is alive too, so look for her resurrection in an upcoming episode.  Also, Ketch’s escape from the bunker was too convenient and easy.  Blah.  I hate it when they play the dumb Winchester card.  Crowley never escaped!   

Speaking of Crowley, if it was so easy to remove an archangel’s grace like Michael did with Lucifer, why didn’t Crowley do that when he captured Lucifer?  I also have issues with Lucifer siphoning off grace from other angels later when he’s an archangel, but that’s a gripe for another time.  In other words, they’re playing fast and loose with the grace rules again.  

Then, Castiel decided to follow a lead about Jack, but he had to go to the Heaven gate?   All so he could be attacked by angels who want to use him?  He’s been around the block a few thousand years, shouldn’t he have seen that coming?  Especially when he told Dean that his contact Dumah was jumpy?  Also, why do the angels think Jack can make more angels?  Was there some sort of written lore that only Nephilim can do that?  Shouldn’t Castiel have known that too?  Was that whole conversation that needed in this episode?   It could have easily been done in another episode, and given more time to breathe.  It also kind of sucks it was a setup for the Castiel/Lucifer buddy comedy.   

 

7.  Pacing and editing.  Again.  In other words, because they tried to pack too much into this episode, scenes jumped scattered from one to another without any real flow or logic.  It felt like whiplash.  That again could be blamed on shaky editing, but I’m sure the script didn’t do the editor any favors.  

Should I say at least one nice thing about the episode?  I did like this line:

Lucifer: I’m Lucifer.
Woman: Honey, you’re not Lucifer. My ex-husband’s Lucifer.

Overall grade, a D.  If this wasn’t another repeat of prior crap plotting, I might have pushed it up to a C-.  Given that this episode hurt what was some pretty good momentum for season 13, the lower grade it is.  Coming up next, something light and fun!  “The Scorpion and the Frog.”