Still from SUPERNATURAL: Bedtime Stories.
© Warner Bros. Television
Mania Grade: C+
Episode: Bedtime Stories
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Created By: McG, Eric Kripke
Episode: Bedtime Stories
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Created By: McG, Eric Kripke
SUPERNATURAL: Bedtime Stories
By: Stephen LackeyReview Date: Saturday, November 03, 2007
I’m an unabashed champion for Supernatural but when it slips I’m also the first one to mention it. There were missed opportunities in this episode even if the main story was a rehash of an idea that we’ve seen many times in previous series. The problem here is that there’s a stand alone story and a very brief entry into the overall mythology. The problem is that since both of these stories are told completely independent of each other they are both hampered by time constraints.
The main story finds Sam and Dean investigating a murder. The murder, which occurred in the episode opening, was a play on the classic fairy tale The Three Little Pigs. You might not have caught onto it at first but as the episode continues it becomes obvious. During their investigation Sam and Dean quickly discover that a doctor in a local hospital is reading his comatose daughter stories from a book of fairy tales and the murders happening in the town are all symbolic of those stories. This whole story could have turned entertainingly surreal but it’s all over with so quickly there just isn’t time for the story to get developed. There are some scenes that show the potential the story had but the story had to get tied up quick so Sam could get the Colt and confront the demon holding the contract on Dean’s soul.
Sam’s idea is to force the demon to release Dean from the contract or to use the newly revitalized demon killing Colt to just take her out. As is common with this series, especially this early in the season, there’s no way things can go so simply. Dean doesn’t want Sam to do anything because he knows that if he survives Sam will die. Sam’s a determined dude though, so he sneaks out while Dean is sleeping. Once he confronts the demon she doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the Colt at all, even after she realizes that the Colt was rebuilt by Ruby and that it will work. Her comment that Ruby will get hers is interesting to me. It seems that Ruby must be at odds with some of her demon brethren. Things get more interesting when she tells Sam that she couldn’t release Dean from his contract even if she wanted to because she’s just a minion and her boss really wants Dean’s soul. She even says that Sam has nothing to trade that her boss would care about. This seems odd because we’ve been led to believe for so long that Sam is central to the demon’s plans. It could be that the demons don’t need Sam because they believe he will become one of them down the line. There were hints at the beginning of the episode and in previous episodes that Sam might not have come back to life in the same form as he once was. When he realizes that this “salesperson” can’t help him and she won’t reveal who her boss is Sam puts a bullet in her and she burns up. I was a little sad to see her go. I liked how tough she was and I hoped we’d see her here and there throughout the season. This is another one of those scenes that set Sam up as being more violent than he once was. Is he truly more violent or just more desperate? Now Sam will go back to Ruby and demand answers.
Here’s the problem I think, this little interaction between Sam and the demon is absolutely all the creators wanted to reveal to us at this point in the season. This simple scene isn’t enough to build out more time for an episode, so they added it like a coda at the end of a stand alone episode. The result is that the stand alone story suffers by being cut short. This last 15 minutes really got me excited for what’s going to happen next and the stand alone story felt incomplete or under developed. I enjoyed the episode but it didn’t feel as well executed as most episodes in the series. Here’s another complaint; what the hell happened to the soundtrack of Supernatural? One of the staples of this series is the retro hard rock but there’s nothing this week and there’s been very little the past several episodes.
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