Episode Title: “Rock and a Hard Place”
Writer: Jenny Klein
Director: John MacCarthy
Previously on “Supernatural”
Since becoming a CraveOnline contributor, I’ve engaged in conversations with friends about the shows I review. Last week’s episode, “Bad Boys,” was a hot item of contention. Granted, when “Supernatural” does the emotional, touchy feely episodes, they generally do them well. The emotion was largely authentic, but last week’s episode was lacking in story quite a bit.
Within the context of the season, why did “Bad Boys” even matter? If “Supernatural” wasn’t so consumed with sub-plots this season, I might have cared a little more. But it’s hard to care about a show that does everything to push its fan base away. Maybe I’m just too hard on the show, but after nine seasons of ups and downs, it’s time it learned from the downs.
I may be beating a dead horse here too, but when does the season long story arc arrive? Or at least a few episodes to anchor us to it. While season eight wasn’t perfectly executed, there were a number of episodes that kept the season from floating away, moving in a specific direction. In the scheme of things, season nine is a mirror image of season three, with angels as your big shakers. However, their threat continues to be so minimal; how many additional angels have been introduced so far? Five? Six maybe?
Now that I’m done ranting, for now, let’s get to this week’s episode. Kim Rhodes reprises her role as Sheriff Jody Mills and calls Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) in a on a case. Judging from the “Then” sequence at the beginning of the show, the monster of the week is dragons. Yet another stand alone.
This week’s plot involves a church group and members that turn up missing. The link between them is that they all broke their chastity vow. From there the episode becomes one giant sexual euphemism after another. To get the inside scoop, Sam and Dean join a chastity group after re-virginizing themselves and asking for forgiveness. From here, “Supernatural” begins to lay on the comedy pretty heavy.
During a meeting, one of the Chastity group’s members wants to share a poem called “Sex is a racket and God’s ball is in your court.” Dean’s fake confession as to why he hates sex causes the largely female support group to react in the typical way you’d expect: panty bunching and paper crumpling. He’s particularly eloquent when he says he “feels bad when he’s drunk and shacks up with a girl and then you have to say adios.” Everything else is just a cherry on that sundae; I mean, it’s Dean, who wouldn’t go nuts for that?
The leader of Good Faith’s support group, Suzy Lee (Susie Ambromeit) appears familiar to Dean. He follows her home for “additional counseling” only to find out that she used to be a porno star. Of course, Dean being Dean, how could he resist or as Sam puts it, “crossing another thing on his bucket list?” Doing so lands him in a secret bunker with Suzy and the rest of the missing churchgoers, which renders him useless for the rest of the episode.
Sam and Sheriff Mills have their moment in this episode. She’s still reeling from Bobby’s (Jim Beaver) death and Crowley’s (Mark Sheppard) plot to kill her from last season. It’s what drove her to the church and this week’s subplot. Through Internet research, “Supernatural” does the old side step and reveals our monster of the week to be the Roman Goddess, Vesta. She specializes in virgins. Like, this chick digs virgins so much that if they violate their thirty year chastity vow, she takes and buries them alive. The weak mythology addition is lost on this episode, as Vesta turns out to be Bonnie, the woman to whom Sam and Dean took their chastity vows. It’s like they’re not even trying anymore. Way to suspend disbelief “Supernatural.” You never cease to amaze.
It seems like every monster in the “Supernatural” hierarchy has a bead on everybody’s soul, as if they have a window into them. Vesta tells Sam that his soul is “held together with band aids and duct tape.” How many monsters have said something like this to Sam? Three or four maybe? After dispatching Vesta with the weapon of the week (something to do with virgin’s blood on a stick or something), Sam goes back to questioning the condition of his soul. Just when Dean is about to snap and tell him the truth, Ezekiel comes through and tells him the usual B.S. about not spilling the beans or Sam will eject him from his body and he won’t fully be healed. Blah, blah, blah. After eight episodes, it’s getting old.
Again I’m forced to ask myself again: why does this episode matter? “Rock and a Hard Place” was your typical stand alone episode; decent, better written than last week’s hug fest. But why are they still introducing gods that don’t need to be there? For the sake of this show, why not just shorten it instead of injecting more filler than your average jelly donut.
It makes me wonder what has changed at the CW and in the writer’s room to present this shoddy kind of plotting. How do you go from a well plotted out season (season eight), with great character development, solid and relevant additions to an already bustling mythology, to a show that struggles to tell a good story week to week. These kinds of questions shouldn’t keep me up at night, but they do. Okay, that sounds a little too pathetic, but the line of logic that “Supernatural” now runs on is a turbulent fault line.
Next week’s episode is the last before the mid season break. “Holy Terror,” promises, or at least looks like it promises to tie into something larger. It’s practically a guarantee that there’ll be a cliffhanger of some kind, as is the protocol. Until then, let’s just continue cursing this show till no end!
