Supernatural
Wendigo
Previously
on Supernatural – stuff happened.
This
episode plunges right in to the Monster of the Week by opening
up onto a group of youngish guys on a camping trip in the
deep woods. Aside from the conspicuous lack of drunken teenage
girls in various states of undress, it looks like a pretty
standard horror setup. You know they’re about to get
attacked and probably eaten. No big surprise when it happens,
but the execution is good. We never get a good look at the
monster. At this point I’m guessing the Forest Monster
from Lost is making a cameo.
Cut
to Sam at the grave of his late girlfriend. He spouts some
sappy goodbyes and bends down to lay flowers. Suddenly a
hand reaches up from the ground and grips his wrist!
Oop!
Naw...just a dream! Admit it, you jumped.
The
rest of the episode proceeds at a brisk pace. The Brothers
Winchester encounter the sister of one of the campers in
the opening bit. The coordinates Pops left them are the
same as missing-brother Bobby’s last known location
so the boys team up with Hailey to find her brother. The
three of them, a third brother whose name I never caught,
and a guide/hunter hired by Hailey head off into the woods.
The rangers and the guide, Roy, are convinced that the only
things lurking in the forest are grizzly bears, but unless
the bears are were-grizzlies, we know that ain’t it.
After
coming upon the ruined campsite, Dean and Sam use their
powers of deduction and encyclopedic knowledge of supernatural
phantasmagoria… and find the answer in Dad’s
grail diary.
This
happened in the last episode too. Before the guys could
do any detective work, Deus ex Daddy slips them the cookie.
I hope this isn’t the beginning of a pattern. It’s
really no fun if the answers are provided before the test.
Turns
out it’s a Wendigo, a creature out of Native American
myth that’s impervious to bullets and blades. Fortunately
(and again, too easily) they already know its kryptonite,
all they have to do is find the missing campers (who are
most likely being stored in a monster larder), dispatch
it, and not get killed in the process.
There
was some great chemistry between Dean and Hailey, and all
of the guest characters were well developed. This lead me
to speculate that both her brothers would get killed and
she’d have to join the team, rounding out the cast
a bit. Alas, no dice.
We received
some nice development for the season arc, providing a bit
of mission tension between the leads. Sam is all for barging
in headfirst and finding Dad. He believes that the sooner
they find him, the sooner he’ll have resolution for
his girlfriend’s murder. It comes as a surprise to
Dean, who has always been the more gung-ho of the two, that
he’s now the one who wants to take the search one
step at a time. His goals are to find their father, yes
– but also to help as many people as they can along
the way.
This
seems almost out of character for what we know of the cavalier
Dean, and stands in contrast to formerly reluctant Sam,
whose pain from the loss of his girlfriend is pushing him
along a the path tread by his father 22 years before.
The
MOTW story was a fun, Buffyesque romp. They played the Wendigo
for maximum creeps by taking a cue from Ridley Scott’s
Alien. We caught only the merest flashes of the creature
until the very end, and even then we never got a really
good look at it. Thus we were spared groaning over a fake-looking
monster.
Next
week – there’s something spooooky in the lake,
and Angel’s Amy Acker guest-stars!
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