"Hook Man" Supernatural S1: ep:7

Okay this episode is rife with that Dean Winchester lechery I hate so much. Not much in the way of character growth for our main duo, although Sam is presented with a conflict of sorts. The side characters in this one are a little interesting, but there is still the whole "damsel in distress" trope that seems to pop up quite often in this show. So here's the DL.

The show opens with a girl (Lori) getting ready for a date. She starts out in a very conservative outfit, which her party girl roommate (who just happens to be black, seems a tad like a racial stereotype) thinks is too stuffy and of course she lends her something a little more revealing to wear. Lori and her date park on a deserted road because he insists they can't show up early. She knows he's up to something and doesn't seem to mind at first. Then he tries to slip his hand inside her shirt, she tells him no, he tells her it's okay (seem a bit rapey to you? It did to me too). He tries again, but they begin hearing some kind of metal scraping against another metal. The guy goes out to investigate and the car is scratched by an invisible hook and the tires slashed. The guy disappears and the girl, frightened out of her mind, locks the door and rolls up the window. Then she hears scratching on the roof. Eventually, she decides to make a run for it and that's when she sees the mutilated corpse of her date hanging above the car. The horror element here is pretty high. With the hook scraping and only getting glimpses of the killer, the ambiance of the lonely deserted road also plays into this well. After seeing the body, she does the characteristic "damsel in distress" scream. I guess that's a common trope in horror too.

We cut to Sam and Dean. Sam is still trying to find their father. Dean reminds him that "Dad probably doesn't want to be found" then redirects his brother's attention to a news story from a nearby town about a college girl who witnessed a murder by an invisible assailant. The boys decide to investigate. This time they pose as new fraternity brothers as they investigate the murder. A frat boy is painting himself purple and asks for help which Dean defers to Sam while giving a kind of disgusted look (seems a bit homophobic). He tells them about the guy that was murdered and how he was taking out a hot sorority girl named Lori who is also a preacher's daughter the way he says this is dripping with innuendo (what did you expect from a show centered on frat boys and sorority girls?).

Sam and Dean go to Lori's dad's church as he's giving a sermon about the tragic death of one who has only begun to live and to my very pleasant surprise I recognize the actor. It is Bob Bulldog Briscoe from Frasier. Although I hated his character in the show Frasier, it is cool to see him playing an altogether different and much more nuanced character (albeit a short lived one) in this show. The boys talk to Lori to get a feel for what happened. Sam believes her, so they hit the books. They are looking through old arrest records and they find one that seems to fit the bill. A preacher about 200 years ago butchered a bunch of prostitutes and he used a hook, not to mention the red light district where he committed the crime is in the same vicinity as the attack. The boys think they're on to something and go to find the ghost, carrying a shotgun filled with salt. Meanwhile, daddy dearest tells Lori he doesn't think she should go back to the sorority, and that he knows what goes on in that type of place and what kind of a person her roommate is.

Lori gets in and the lights are off. She sees that her roommate is already asleep so she doesn't turn them on. She cuddles into bed. Cut to the boys off to fight the ghost only to run into a sheriff who's patrolling the area. Sam, who's holding the shotgun is in a lot of trouble. The next day, Lori awakens to find blood dripping from her roommate's bed. Her eyes roam up to find a mutilated corpse and the words "aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light" along with a symbol carved into the wall above the bed. Lori screams her "damsel in distress" scream one more time. The scene then changes to the Winchesters who are leaving the sheriff's office. Dean has somehow convinced the sheriff that Sam was just being hazed into the fraternity by being forced to "hunt ghosts" because salt repels them. I should mention that Dean makes several remarks about sorority girls during their time in this town especially once they find out that a murder was committed in a sorority house. The boys break in, which isn't hard because the small town police security is pretty bad, and see the message. Sam recognizes the symbol and they check it out. It matches a symbol they saw on the poster about the murderous reverend 200 years ago. So they have their hookman. Now all they need to do is salt and burn the bones. Too bad the guy was buried in an unmarked grave.

The boys attend a party (who knows why because all they do while there is talk about the murder and the likelihood that the ghost has attached itself to the reverend Bob Briscoe [sorry I couldn't resist]) and Dean agrees reluctantly to find the spirit's grave and get rid of the bones while Sam keeps an eye on Lori. Sam is sitting outside of Lori's house and witnesses her fighting with her dad about some relationship he's in. Dean, digging to unearth the bones after he sees the same symbol on a gravestone, laments that he didn't get to watch the "cute" girl's house. Lori comes out of the house to where Sam is. She tells him how her father is having an affair with a married woman and how she thinks that when people do immoral things they should be punished. Then she tries to kiss Sam but he tells her no. She guesses correctly that the person he lost was his lover. Then her father is attacked by the hookman, but Sam is able to chase it off with the salt packed shotgun. At the hospital the next day Sam asks Dean why he didn't burn the bones and Dean says he did. They decide the ghost is attached to the hook so they need to find it. Going over the execution record tells them it was given to the church and going over the church record says it was re-forged. The boys need to find whatever object the silver hook was repurposed into and melt it in a salty fire. They also realize that the ghost is not attached to the reverend at all, but to his daughter Lori.

The mystery element in this is pretty high because it surrounds not exactly who the spirit is, or why he's vengeful (obviously he's a self-righteous prick who wants to kill anyone he deems unworthy) but whose emotions he has attached to and what is keeping him tethered to this world. Lori comes back to the church to pray as the Winchester boys are burning everything silver they can find. Sam hears her and goes to investigate. Lori tells him she thinks the murders are her fault and that she deserves to be punished at which point the hookman makes his appearance. Sam fend him off, but gets hurt. Dean comes up after melting all the silver then they realize that the necklace Lori is wearing is silver. It was a church keepsake that her father gave her. Dean leaves Sam with the shotgun while he runs to throw the necklace in the fire. The necklace melts and just as Sam and Lori are about to be hacked to pieces, the hook begins to melt and hookman burns away.

The sheriff doesn't seem to believe Deans story about the hookman which they all saw but who got away, but he doesn't act like he thinks he can do anything about it. He gives Dean a warning but Dean tells him not to worry, they're leaving town. Sam is at the back of the ambulance just having gotten his arm bandaged from the hook's gash. Lori thanks Sam but he leaves her and it shows her in the rearview as they drive away. Dean tells Sam they can stay, but Sam shakes his head not quite ready to move on from Jess.

I didn't mind certain elements of this show, but others were extremely distasteful to me. Here's my rating: For horror this one gets a solid 9/10, mystery suspense is also pretty high at 8/10, the misogyny is there and undeniable so I have to take -3 points off this for that, not a lot of character growth for our main duo I give that part a 5/10 for showing just a bit of Sam frustrated about not being able to find their dad and his hesitation to move on from Jess. The side characters were pretty interesting, especially reverend Briscoe (lol, you can't stop me from calling him that). Lori was interesting in her own right, but not quite as nuanced. I give the side characters a solid 8/10 for this episode. Overall this episode nets a 6.75/10.

T.V. Show Review -- Supernatural: Season 1: Episode 1

Okay, for those of you who have not seen Supernatural, it is a dark suspense/horror show about two brothers who hunt monsters after their mother was killed when one of them was a baby. The show opens when the oldest (Dean) is 26 and the younger (Sam) has just passed the test to go to law school so probably about 22. I'll be reviewing the show episode by episode, and I'll try to do as many as I can within a week, but it all depends on time and energy so I doubt I'll be cranking a new one out every day.

Okay, so to get to the meat of my review. I gave this episode an 8 out of 10. It's up pretty high because I think it's a good kicking off episode but I took away for a couple of things which I found distracting. I'll get to that in a minute.

The episode starts with the event that catapulted the boys into the hunting biz in the first place, their mother's murder. The suspense and horror are on point in this scene as she sees a flickering light (one of the horror tropes I think actually works really well without the use of jump scare tactics) then realizes the man standing over her baby in his crib was not her husband. It is well acted when she runs to her baby and the scream is realistic enough to make you startle right along with her husband, who rushes to find his baby in the crib seemingly fine. Then the blood drips from the ceiling (another trope that works well in this scene) and he looks up to find his wife pinned right before she spontaneously combusts along with his house. He frantically removes the boys and then tries to save his wife to no avail. The scene then cuts to the present day as Sam celebrates his test results with his girlfriend and best friend. There was a line in this scene I didn't really like. Sam says "we're not exactly the Brady Bunch" talking about his dysfunctional family and his friend says "Well we're not the Huxtables" which I felt might be a bit of a micro-aggression but I couldn't be sure. Anyway, back to the script. Jess and Sam go home and Sam is attacked by an intruder and they fight. Before long, however, Sam realizes that the intruder is his brother Dean. Sam introduces Dean to Jess and the way Dean eyeballs her in her pajamas is kind of painful to watch, but it sets the mood for what his character is going to be like throughout the show. Dean tells Sam that their father is hunting and hasn't come back for a couple of days, and Sam sends Jess away to discuss the private family matter with his brother.

Here is where they do the exposition, in the form of an argument, on what has gone on in the past 18-20 years or however long it has been (I'm sure it had a caption at the very start but I'm not re-watching just for that). I didn't really like this route to exposition because it felt a little bit forced. People don't really argue like that. If I were to write it, I might go about it a bit different even if I were going to keep it in the dialog, but I feel like a better exposition might have been to have Sam say something about how they were raised and then show a flashback scene of the things he was talking about instead of him going into explicit detail about it. It just felt awkward. Maybe if Sam were telling someone else, but for an inside argument, naw. It doesn't work. 

Sam finally agrees to go with Dean to find their missing father and the scene cuts to show the monster at work. The monster this episode is definitely some kind of ghost who preys on men driving along a stretch of highway. She is a good looking woman, dressed all in white, tattered garments, the picture of a damsel in distress. The guy picks her up, she asks him to take her home. He drives her there only to find out it is abandoned some years ago. Something spooks him and he goes to leave but she appears in his back seat as he's driving away. He freaks out and crashes into the guardrail of a bridge. Then it cuts to the outside of the car and you see blood spatter across the windows indicating that the man has met a gruesome fate. The blood spatter without showing the actual massacre is another trope I think works really well to build suspense.

Then the boys show up. They come upon the abandoned car on the bridge surrounded by police cars and Dean pulls out a fake badge from a box in the glove compartment filled with such stuff. They go to have a look and Dean flashes the badge to the detective before asking him some questions. The detective observes "Aren't you a little young to be U.S. Marshals?" to which Dean responds by playing it off as a compliment that he looks younger than his actual age. Dean then says something derogatory to the detective for which Sam not so subtly stomps his foot. Having gotten their information they go to leave just as two FBI agents walk up and Dean makes an x-files reference (he calls them agents Scully and Mulder). They go to research the case on a public computer and find out that a woman jumped off that very bridge and committed suicide.

The boys go to get a hotel room just to find that their father has a room already paid for a full month. When they break into their dad's hotel room, they find out that their father had already solved the case, but are puzzled as to why he has not yet vanquished the monster (a lady in white, which is to say a woman who found out her husband was unfaithful, murdered her own children and then committed suicide). They are about to go dig up info on where the body is buried so they can salt and burn it, when Dean is arrested by the local cops who have by now realized that he is not a U.S. Marshal and that he is using a fake credit card. The cops grill him while Sam goes to talk to the husband of the woman suspected of being the lady in white.

While being questioned by the detective, Dean finds an important clue in their father's journal which the police are using to interrogate him. He then escapes custody by unlocking his handcuffs with a paper clip (a trope which I do not enjoy seeing as I think it is overused and implausible) when the detective has to rush off because they got a 911 call about shots fired. Turns out the call came from Sam which Dean jokingly admonishes him for. Sam is heading out to the burial site to dispose of the lady in white by salting her bones and burning them.

As Sam drives he passes through the ghost who stood in the road to block his car. Then she appears in his back seat and demands that he "take her home" he refuses. She takes control of the car and drives to her house anyway. He tells her she can't hurt him because he's never been unfaithful. She tells him he will be and proceeds to sexually assault him then try to rip out his heart. Just in time, Dean shows up and shoots at the ghost, which chases it away just long enough for Sam to drive the car into the farmhouse. There, the woman picks up a photograph of herself with her two children. Then she starts attacking the boys, but the children are there. They run to her and I can only assume what happens is that they've drug her down to hell because they disappear into a puddle in the floor with a fiery fury.

As they drive away, Dean tells Sam where their father's coordinates are and says if they book it they can be there by the next day. Sam says he has to get back for his Law School interview and Dean agrees to drop him off. The show ends as Sam, having just entered his apartment lays down on his bed. The same blood dripping from the ceiling makes him look up and see his girlfriend Jess trapped just as his mother had been before combusting in the exact same manner. As the firefighters douse the flames, Sam is at the back of his brother's car looking at weapons. Dean approaches and Sam tells him, "We'd better get a move on." an indication that he has changed his mind about going to law school in the wake of this tragedy. This is where the show ends.

Some final notes: I didn't really like the way Sam's character starts off. He comes off as a bit of a snob. Understandably, it is because he wants to get away from his childhood and the way he was raised, but I really like his character later in the show and was disappointed that he came off as a bit of a prick in this one. Dean comes off much better, even if he is that kind of character that just exudes toxic masculinity. I did like the way, even at this early stage, the Impala was treated almost like a character all to itself. This is an important detail as the show progresses and especially going into the 5th season finale, so I thought this was an especially nice touch. 

When they read the newspaper article about the woman's suicide it said that she left her two young children in the bathtub unattended for too long and they drowned, then the woman was so distraught that she took her own life. However, seeing the ages of the children when their ghosts showed up to drag their mom to hell, there's no way anyone would buy that story. A child of three or under might drown, but there's no way a child three years older than that would. Not in a bathtub at any rate. I also noticed that the husband while being questioned became aggressive when Sam suggested that the wife had murdered the children, I think this indicates that he knows his wife murdered their kids.