Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Supernatural 10x15 "The Things They Carried"

Recap/review of Supernatural 10x15 "The Things They Carried" by freshfromthe.comWell, that was kind of a gross way to come back into season ten, huh? After the last episode, which was definitely one of the overall arc episodes, this episode was a break from all of that, focusing on a single case for the brothers to solve. Of course, the case of the week episodes always have thematic connections to the overall story, and this was no exception.

The episode started as many an episode has in the past, featuring a gruesome death of a young woman. This time, she was hanging from the ceiling upside down, and got her throat slit, to drain her blood into a nice bucket, you know, for ease of drinking. The brothers catch wind of this troublesome death and decide to investigate. Or, rather, Dean decides they should investigate, while Sam is still stewing about the Mark. Sorry dear Mark, you need to go on the backburner for a bit.

They head off to a military town, and soon find out that the girl was killed by an army vet. They're a bit suspicious as to whether the killer was actually the killer, but when the local sheriff tells them that he followed that up by dousing himself in gas and setting himself on fire, well, it became a little more credible. They head off to talk to the deceased's wife to see if she knows anything, and find out that he was definitely acting weird. Mostly in that he was thirsty, like, all the time. She also tells them that the husband of a friend of hers has also been acting strange in much the same way, so it's off to investigate this new dude!

But it's only the wife who's home. After some rather unconvincing lies about how her husband Kit is just having a normal decompression after coming home from overseas, she confesses that he has been acting weird, and thirsty, and all that. But what does it all mean? Before the boys can try to figure that out, they run into Cole, who happens to be friends with this wife, and wants to know what the Winchesters are up to, as it never seems to be anything good. They want him to skedaddle, but he has some nice army connections that can give them good intel, so he gets to hang around.

Said intel includes a video of the overseas mission those two army guys were on together, attempting to rescue a POW. But the POW basically attacked them when they were trying to get him, so they ended up killing him. At least that's what is implied. Alas, this does really give them much information to go on, so they really need to find that dude Kit. Cole gets a call from the wife cluing him into a secret cabin that Kit may be at. Instead of telling Sam and Dean about it, though, he tries to be sneaky and go off to check it out on his own. Because, you know, he doesn't want them to kill his buddy. Oh Cole. Oh silly Cole.

Recap/review of Supernatural 10x15 'The Things They Carried' by freshfromthe.comAt least Dean and Sam aren't stupid enough to fall for it, and know he's up to something, so they follow him to the cabin. And good thing, because Kit is there, and attacks Cole. But he doesn't kill him, instead he goes full ick and opens his mouth, dropping out this worm parasite thing right into Cole's mouth. Uh oh. The brothers are too late to stop this, and Kit also manages to get away. But now Cole is infected with this parasite thing, and while the easiest thing would be to just kill him and be done with it, they're not so into that idea. You know, saving people being one of their family mantras.

Sam goes off to try to track down the wayward Kit while Dean stays back with Cole. First they try shocking Cole a bunch, since that worked with the last ear worm thing they encountered, but it's no good. But, since the parasite seems to love water, they decide the best way to try to get it to leave its host is to dry it out, so they turn the cabin into a veritable sweat lodge. Cole struggles to fight against the thing inside him taking over, which is clearly a mirror of Dean fighting the Mark, etc. Though they do struggle, and Cole tries to attack Dean a couple times, eventually the sweat lodge works, and the worm comes back up Cole's gullet to be foot-stomped by Dean.

Meanwhile, back at Kit's house, Sam is not so lucky. Though he is able to tie up Kit for a time, he manages to get free. The only way for Sam to protect himself and the wife is to kill Kit. Right before Dean calls him up with the good news about the sweat lodge, too. Poor Sam feels terrible since he was not able to save the guy, but again this is supposed to be about him being able to accept that he might not be able to save Dean in much the same way.

Cole is back off to go be with his family, and possibly return another day. And that's all she wrote!

 
Random Thoughts:

- Sam, why do you deny Dean his cake? Homemade cake at that! And Dean, why don't you just take some of it and spite Sam? Who cares! It's cake! Ahem.

- I'm not the biggest fan of Cole as a character, but what about everyone else? I feel like the fandom isn't vehement one way or the other, but then again, I may be off base.

- I don't have much to say about this episode, to be honest. Though it was thematically relevant, it was kind of a filler episode in terms of overall story. I mean, that worm thing coming out of Cole's mouth at the end, though, that was pretty gross.

Quotes:

Dean: So I'm gonna keep doing what we do, while we still can. And I'd like you to be there with me.

Dean: And you bought him dinner.

Cole: At least I get a medal for my efforts. But you, I tried to kill your ass.

Dean: All right, let's fire this puppy up.
Cole: You say that like it's just another Tuesday.
Dean: Oh buddy, it's only Monday.

Cole: Guess I've seen it all now, huh.
Dean: Some. Not all.

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3 comments:

  1. Great write-up as usual! I don't have much to say that you didn't cover-- the worm/parasite thing was SO GROSS I had to look away to keep from throwing up, and I'm a nurse, so there really isn't much that grosses me out anymore. Way to be disgusting, Supernatural! Nightmares. Forever.

    To answer your question about Cole, though, I actually kind of like him now? Like at first I thought he was awful, and then when they ran into him again after Dean had been de-demoned, he kind of sort of made me feel a little sympathetic for him, but I don't know, the way that he slowly started trusting Sam and Dean more and more as the episode went on was really endearing to me for some reason, along with the fact that he kept calling them Sammy and Deano. Plus, I'm a sucker for an aggressive hothead who actually ends up opening his mind to differing opinions and admitting that he was wrong, you know? By the end, I was kind of hoping he would have stuck around a little longer to learn more about hunting. I'm guessing this won't be the last time we see him, though, so it's possible that could happen in the future.

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    1. For some reason I find I just don't care about Cole. He's supposed to have this family, yet he didn't care about going off and doing stupid stuff that could get him killed. I wonder if maybe I'm just sick of another guy character or something. Why can't we have more than one recurring female right now?

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    2. Oh, I totally agree with you there! I would be much happier to see some badass female hunter or demon or something around to break up the non-stop sausage party in this show. Cole may have grown on me but not SO much that I wouldn't trade him away in a jiffy for a great lady character.

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