Screenshots of SUPERNATURAL: Long Distance Caller(2008).
© CW

Mania Grade: D
Episode: Long Distance Call
Starring: Joel Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Written By: Sara Gamble
Directed By: Charles Beeson

Related Links

0

TV Review of SUPERNATURAL: Long Distance Call

What’s happening with Supernatural? This show has been consistently one of the best series on the air, but these last two episodes have been subpar in comparison to the previous seasons. Ghostfacers at least had some quirky characters that were endearing. This week is basically another single story episode with some very minor threads connecting it to the overall story of the season and there are barely any characters in this episode outside of Sam and Dean. Strange phone calls that preface suicides bring Sam and Dean to this week’s small town. Sure there’s a victim of the week, a young girl, but she only gets a scant few minutes on screen and almost no character development. The writers do nothing to get the audience involved with her.

Once in town, Dean gets phone calls from the brother’s dead father. Dean is so desperate to get out of his deal with the devil that these phone calls – promising just such a way out – hit Dean in a way that his desperation overwhelms his common sense. The season has followed Dean’s evolution from denial to acceptance, to where he is now – ready to fight for his life. While he follows his father’s instructions, Sam continues to be the more pragmatic of the two of them and he finds the solution to this week’s mystery. 

Even the assembly and shooting of this episode is flat in comparison to other episodes of the show. The episode appears as bland as it is written. There wasn’t even a great classic rock tune this week! The episode isn’t a complete train wreck though. It does manage to hit the high points in its look and feel to make it mesh with the rest of the season but overall there was nothing interesting to look at to take away from this week.

This episode has no real depth and the demon of the week is a sort of “been there, done that” entity that we’ve seen on this series many times. On top of that, the character that’s in jeopardy is given no attention by the writers making her nothing more than a plot device. Long Distance Call just isn’t smart writing, especially compared to the best this series has to offer. This episode works better in promos than it did in execution.