Still from SUPERNATURAL: Bad Day at Black Rock.
© Warner Bros.
Mania Grade: B
Episode: Bad Day at Black Rock
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Created By: McG, Eric Kripke
Episode: Bad Day at Black Rock
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Created By: McG, Eric Kripke
SUPERNATURAL: Bad Day at Black Rock
By: Stephen LackeyReview Date: Saturday, October 20, 2007
I like the funny fueled episodes of Supernatural. Honestly I prefer the darker ones but there’s no reason why we can’t take a break from the drama for a little humor. The only issue I might have is that some residual characters built to be funny may be reoccurring. In this issue Sam and Dean get a phone call informing them that a storage room owned by their father has been broken into. The boys drive to the place and Sam is excited to see that their father had saved one of his childhood trophies while Dean was excited to see that their father had saved his first sawed off, made when he was just six. After a quick look around they discover that one of a group of magic boxes has been stolen. Apparently the box had been enchanted to keep an evil talisman trapped inside. The two thieves crack open the box revealing a rabbit’s foot. One of the thieves takes the rabbit’s foot from the box and automatically his luck changes. At the same time in a scene that seems cut a bit short and simplified Sam and Dean track these crooks down. I understand why the scene was cut so short because a lot happens in this episode but the pacing felt so off that I had to mention it.
The twist with the rabbit’s foot is that as long as you have it your luck is extremely good but if you loose it your luck goes extremely bad to the point where you eventually die. Of course in the fight with the thieves Sam gets his hands on the foot. At a diner a sultry waitress picks Sam’s pocket and steals the foot. Apparently this woman, Bella, paid the thieves to steal the foot so she could sell it to a wealthy buyer. She’s not a hunter but she knows everything there is to know about hunters and all of the valuable devices and talismans they hide. She doesn’t care about the missions of the hunters, she just wants to use the hunters for their goodies and make money off them. When she steals the foot she holds it with a cloth or with some tongs in order not to get infected by the curse. She just simply wants to sell it.
Once Sam doesn’t have the foot anymore the humor really kicked in. His luck changed immediately. He trips and falls quite a bit and knocks a lot of stuff over. Two scenes in particular cracked me up; the first was when Sam lost his shoe in the grate and the second was when the air conditioner caught fire and then Sam’s sleeve. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles have fantastic comedy timing and it was fun to see them use those abilities in this episode. The scene in the hotel leads me to the new characters that will be reoccurring in the series that I don’t like. Two other hunters have been sent by Gordon (the hunter extreme from last season who’s still in jail) to kill Sam. After the opening of the gate to hell at the end of last season Gordon believes even more than he did before that Sam is at the center of the war with the demons and that he must die. Kubric had a run of good luck in his search for Sam, so good in fact that he began to believe that he’s “on a mission from God”. The reality is that his run of good luck was directly tied to Sam’s run of bad luck. Kubric is a bit much for me as a reoccurring character. Yes he’s funny in this episode but his ridiculous nature won’t work for me in a more dramatic setting toward the end of the season. Even Gordon thinks Kubric is ridiculous but he’ll use him as long as he needs too. Speaking of Gordon, he’s a great character and I’m happy to see him back in action.
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