Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Supernatural through the current episode, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” originally broadcast October 30th, 2008.

After two standalone episodes, one I found enjoyable but flawed (“Monster Movie”) and one I thought was excellent (“Yellow Fever”), Supernatural gets back to the latest End of the World storyline. In other words, Sam and Dean are back on the job of stopping the 66 seals from being broken, which would lead to Lucifer rising from Hell and bringing with him a host of nasty demons and other baddies. And it’s Halloween, to boot, so horrible things are sure to happen.

In this case, the horrible thing happening is the attempted raising of the demon Samhain, who originated Halloween centuries ago. In order to raise him, three murders (or blood sacrifices) must be committed before the last day of the final harvest (a.k.a. October 31st). Their investigation eventually leads Sam and Dean to a young woman named Tracy, who is connected to two murders. The stakes are raised when Castiel and Uriel (a specialist) get involved. They plan on destroying the town to keep the seal from being broken. Faced with a threat from Dean to stay in town and be killed, the angels back off, leaving the brothers to keep the seal intact.

Unfortunately, Tracy manages to raise Samhain right in front of their eyes (using her own brother as the final sacrifice). But Tracy’s reward for her hard work is to have her neck snapped by Samhain, who then stalks off to cause further mischief. While Dean cleans up one of Samhain’s messes, Sam goes after the demon alone. He’s forced to use his mind powers to stop Samhain but he’s able to do it. Later, Uriel threatens to kill Sam — who has now used his powers after being warned twice — if he ever stops being useful. And Castiel explains to Dean that their orders were to let him make the decisions. This was a test. And although he was praying for Dean to save the town, Castiel ominously reveals that he no longer knows what is right or wrong or whether Dean passed the test.

This time around, the brothers use their FBI covers again, this time as Agents Geddy and Lee (named for Geddy Lee, guitarist for the band Rush), and Dean also used the name Agent Seger (for musician Bob Seger, I assume). Has anyone ever caught on to these little jokes?

I wish it had been better explained why Tracy killed the first two victims in Halloween-themed ways (razor blades in candy, bobbing for apples) or why attempts to raise Samhain could only come around every 600 years. Or, for that matter, why Tracy and her brother had failed in their previous attempts or why Samhain required three blood sacrifices in order to rise from the dead? Do the demons get to set the terms or what? And why was the episode called “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” when it had nothing to do with Sam sitting around waiting for a mythological pumpkin creature to grant him wishes?

Minor quibbles over mythology aside, getting back to Season Four’s main arc — keeping the 66 seals from being broken — was a good move. Given the magnitude of the consequences should all the seals be broken, one would expect Sam and Dean to be doing nothing but driving across the country tracking down these seals, with the help of Castiel, and keeping them intact. Of course, if every episode was about the seals, then we wouldn’t have standalone episodes like “Yellow Fever” and thus would never have been given the wonderful gift of seeing Jensen Ackles/Dean Winchester lip-syncing to “Eye of the Tiger.”

One last thought. How exactly does stopping one attempt at breaking a seal keeps that seal safe. Couldn’t another demon, witch or goblin (does Supernatural have goblins?) try again when Sam and Dean are off on their next adventure? Food for thought.