Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Supernatural 8x09 "Citizen Fang"

This season has been interesting. We seem to either have Kevin/Castiel/Crowley episodes or Benny episodes, with a lot of Amelia flashbacks mixed in to both, though those are likely at an end after this week's particular happenings, in the form of a Benny episode!

Recap/review of Supernatural 8x09 'Citizen Fang' by freshfromthe.com
My name is Benny, Roy if you're nasty.
Everyone's favorite southern Vampiman (that's vampire gentleman, duh) has been revisiting his roots, by which I mean he's been working at a gumbo shack with his great granddaughter Elizabeth. How weird would that be? Super weird. Unbeknownst to Dean, however, Sam has hired previously crazy former hunter Martin, the one from the mental institution (you remember - Pudding!), to keep an eye on Benny. And Martin just so happens to witness what he assumes to be Benny eating on a poor innocent humanoid.

Well, Dean is, of course, less than inclined to believe this yarn to be the truth, particularly coming from Martin, and gets Sam to let him have a couple hours to figure out what's going on before they go in all machetes hot. Dean tracks down Benny, who says that he hasn't been munching, oh no, it's just been this other vampire Desmond who wants Benny to join a new nest, so he's been killing people to taunt him. Mind you, Benny is telling him this all while cleaning his hands of blood from another victim.

Recap/review of Supernatural 8x09 'Citizen Fang' by freshfromthe.com
Martin, you little...
Dean heads back to tell Sam and Martin of his findings, and Martin is very much not willing to believe this story, and proceeds to knock Dean out. They handcuff him to the radiator and go off after Benny. But before they find him, Sam gets a text message from Amelia telling him she needs help and to come quick. Which he does in, like, two seconds, leaving Martin all alone in the middle of nowhere.

You see, Sam has been flashing back to more Amelia memories. Lest you forget, last we saw, they had found out that her husband Don, formerly presumed dead, had actually turned back up alive. I think he was in the war or something? I can't remember if we were told this a long time ago or not, but sure. Anyway, basically Amelia has some thinking to do, but when Don actually pays Sam a visit at the bar and is generally nice and tells him he hopes they both can respect Amelia's decision, whatever it is, Sam decides to make it easy on her and take himself out of the equation. Only he isn't over her, clearly, as evidenced by the dramatic racing off. When he gets to her place, though, she's just fine, having a drink and watching TV with ole Don. Wait a minute...

Meanwhile, Dean and Benny team up to take out Desmond, after which Dean tells Benny he's going to have to leave his hometown for good, lay low, that sort of thing that seems like it would make life rather terrible. In any event, he does make to drive off after seeing Elizabeth one last time, but this exit is to be very much short lived, thanks to that pesky Martin, who was surely pissed after not only getting left by Sam but also after getting a talking to from Dean about leaving Benny alone. Because, duh, he decidedly does NOT leave Benny alone, rather taking Elizabeth hostage to get Benny to come back and face him.

Recap/review of Supernatural 8x09 'Citizen Fang' by freshfromthe.com
Let's just pause and take a moment to bask in the beauty.
This decision is ultimately Martin's demise, though for a while there we were lead to believe that maybe Benny was going to let himself be sacrificed. Why we should believe he would willingly go back to Purgatory, I don't know, but whatever. He killed Martin in front of Elizabeth, then presumably hightailed it out of there, leaving poor Elizabeth to call up Dean to help with the bloody mess.

Meanwhile, Sam has grown suspicious about the whole text thing and calls up the number that came up for Amelia. Turns out, the number belongs to one of the cell phones sitting in Dean's glove compartment. He switched out Amelia's number in Sam's phone with the dummy one and sent the fake text to get Sam out of the way while he dealt with the Benny situation. Oh man, Sam is straight pissed about that, he even hangs up on him.

Lest brotherly angst be what we end on, Sam turns around to find himself face to face with Amelia, who apparently saw him lurking outside her window. Ah shizzzzz!

Random Thoughts:

- I enjoy the many random mentions of John Winchester the show has been sprinkling around lately. Perhaps because of this casting announcement?

- Was that a real wound on Jensen's forehead?

- That old dude's ears in the very beginning were so gigantor. Not relevant, you say? These are random thoughts, man, anything goes.

- I kind of hope they don't get Amelia involved in the supernatural shenanigans, I kind of enjoyed that it was all completely normal with her.

- The look on Dean's face when he realized he had flirted with Benny's great granddaughter? Priceless.

- BTW, if any of you are interested in the Supernatural official season 7 companion book, I'm having a giveaway. It ends December 7th, so go enter if you haven't already!

Quotes:
(not a lot of funny stuff this episode!)

Martin: Winchesters. Man.

Previous Episode -- Next Episode

1 comment:

  1. Jen remember when you said back a few weeks ago when you said this is starting to look like the same l same ol? Well I'll give you exhibit A. Such a funny and insightful review Jen still cannot disquise what a terrible and dreadfully familiar episode this was. It was S4 Ep. 4 Metamorphosis repackaged, and served but with lil changes in the plot to be considered new for the producers to greenlight.

    Crazy old hunter tracks beasty, calls the boys for help, and after being assured by Sam and Dean that there's no trouble to be found here he decides to go off on his own to kill the beasty himself and well in his feeble unstable condition gets himself killed. Yep seen that before, except this one plays Sam and Dean like a bunch of impulsive reckless idiots instead of seasoned veteran hunters, like Sam hiring some hunter fresh from the looney bin to track a huge bulking vamp, and Dean then sending Sam on a journey to see whether or not she moved on, while Martin as crazy as he is was still tracking Benny alone.

    Now for the major problems I had with this episode. What on earth would have possessed Martin to cut into Liz knowing she was Benny's Great grandkid? oh and dont say it's because he's crazy that's a lame excuse and really really absurd considering he's still an excellent tracker. Nope bad writing, dont piss off a vamp with blood especially those from a loved one. I actually would have preferred Benny sacrificing himself to save his granddaughter preferring the tortures of Purgatory over watching his only family die. This would continue that running trend I loved about the show in it's heyday that love conquers all how these characters will continue to sacrifice themselves for each other. that would have made for a better ending.

    Dean sending Sam on his lil epiphany was just stupid too, and could have been saved for another episode or maybe towards the end of this one after the Benny thing was resolved, with no loose ends like Vamps dead but wait Martin is still tracking Benny better give em a call, nope it's send Sam off on a goose chase.

    Why bring Martin into this at all? Why? He's crazy and Sam's highly intelligent mind (he went to Stanford for crying out loud) was cultured and as such there's no way the real Sam should have seen this as a good idea. If you wanted to track Benny dont send some guy from the looney bin, Garth would have been a better idea or Cas, not this dude. In fact as soon as I saw him again I knew he would be dead at the end of this episode, when do one off characters with no redeeming qualities ever survive a comeback episode? Uh close to never.

    Then there's Desmond 5 short mins of him and that's it played as an afterthought and nothing more. Nuff Said.

    This was Let it Bleed, and Deaths Door bad and makes Red Sky at Morning and Route 666 look like blasted masterpieces. The problem is despite what season 8 started out as I liked it some of the experimentations this season tried to make things fresh with the flashbacks of what happened a year ago, and that episode told backwards with the teens and their aztec god dilemma. Were they great episodes? No but they were nice attempts to disquise a lame purgatory arc with some fresh (for Supernatural) ideas so I appreciated it.

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