Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Supernatural through the current episode, “After School Special,” originally broadcast January 29th, 2009.

I don’t often get the chance to watch Supernatural “live” as they say. It’s on against The Office and 30 Rock on NBC and those are two shows I hate to miss. But last night (Thursday, January 29th, 2009) both The Office and 30 Rock were repeats while Supernatural was new. So I got to watch Supernatural in its natural habitat (9:00PM Eastern).

I was having problems with my Internet connection so I also got to sit on the couch and concentrate all my attention on Supernatural rather than multitasking. Perhaps that’s why I found myself enjoying this episode so much. Because after having some time to think I realized that “After School Special” really wasn’t a great episode.

First and foremost, it was yet another standalone episode. There was no mention of Castiel, Lilith, Lucifer, the 66 Seals or anything having to do with the season’s big arc. After last week’s episode (“Criss Angel Is A Douchebag”) I had thought — hoped — that maybe we wouldn’t be seeing so many standalone episodes. I was wrong. And after Sam decided it was high time to finally take a swing at Lilith (recall that he drove off with Ruby at the end of the episode) I assumed we would see some follow up to that in this episode. Again, I was wrong.

What we got was a standard Monster of the Week (this time around it was an angry ghost) littered with flashbacks that were, presumably, supposed to flesh out the history of the Brothers Winchester. The date is 1997. The place, high school.  Papa Winchester has dropped the boys off and gone out hunting for a few weeks. Flashback Dean is a tall, strapping “teenager” with an attitude and a penchant for calling teacher’s sugar. Flashback Sam is small and quick to befriend the school’s big nerd.

In the present, a popular girl is given a killer swirly by an unpopular girl who then explains that she was possessed. Sam investigates and decides she’s (probably) telling the truth and that a demon needs to be found and dealt with. So, Sam and Dean get jobs at their Alma mater: Sam as a janitor and Dean as a substitute gym teacher. While Sam checks the school, Dean enjoys the power of the whistle and introduces his charges to dodge ball. When another popular student is attacked by an unpopular student, the brothers realize something is going on. But it isn’t a demonic possession. It’s a ghost.

There’s also a plot point about Sam’s nerdy friend committing suicide and Sam feeling guilty about not doing more to help him. The brothers initially think the nerdy friend’s ghost is to blame for the attacks and deaths but eventually settle on the school bully, whose father drives a school bus and keeps a lock of his son’s hair with him (doesn’t hair deteriorate or dematerialize after a while?) and they are able to find and burn the hair, dooming the ghost to Hell or wherever it winds up.

I think the flashbacks were supposed to show a softer side to Dean and a harder edge to Sam. Dean blows off his school work and makes out with girls in closets, telling them about the sweet set up he has at the motel with no parents around. But he gets called out by one of the girls, who tells him he isn’t cool. He yells back that he’s a hero and stalks off, clenching his jaw. Sam, meanwhile, fed up with the bully, easily takes him down and gives him a new nickname, Dirk the Jerk.

The actor playing Flashback Dean was atrocious. I take that back. It might have been the way the character was written. Wooden. Unemotional. Flashback Sam was somewhat better but finding out who instilled within him the desire to go to college wasn’t something I reallny needed to know. In the end, “After School Special” was a run-of-the-mill episode that tried and failed at being something more. Next week’s episode looks good, though. Killer strippers.