Supernatural Season 7 Review

• 12th Nov 2012

Supernatural follows the Winchester Brothers, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki), as they trek across America fighting monsters – ghosts, vampires and gods – and generally attempting to prevent the end of the world with the help (and hindrance) of a select group of friends, demons and angels.*

As with the previous seasons, this one has a ‘big bad’ that forms the main story arc, interwoven with several other storylines, as well as a range of standalone ‘monster of the week’ episodes. This season’s major villains are the Leviathan – biblical toothy monsters with a taste for man-flesh that are apparently such “clever, poisonous things” that God himself created purgatory to keep them locked up. Lucifer is also a recurring player in this season as Sam’s personal hallucination.

So, big things in season 7: without giving too much away, there is a significant death in this season. It’s one I had hoped wouldn’t ever come, so I was pretty devastated about it. It does, however, give rise to a new storyline which nicely intertwines with the major one. It results in a quite emotional set of episodes that I really enjoyed.

The season zeroes in quite heavily on Sam’s precarious mental state after his time in ‘the cage’ with Satan. He is constantly tortured by visions of Lucifer (the excellent Mark Pellegrino), who keeps up an almost constant stream of sarcastic comments. Sam’s character has always tended towards a bit of naval gazing and coupled with his slightly delicate sensibility, we see him fully embrace the crazy and almost succumb to the madness. In a way I kind of wish he would – Padalecki’s brand of acting is too heavily based on nostril flaring/heavy breathing for me to ever really love his character (with the exception of the ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ episode from season 3, “I lost my shoe…”).

The main leads are really what keep the series going. For me, Dean’s delivery of one-liners and his mouthy charm is pretty much the main draw. And he is just a sarcastic and tactless in this season as all the others. I have to say Crowley is another one of my favourite characters. The gay boss of hell and purgatory is a gravelly-voiced mix of macho-camp, always quick to chirp up with some funny threats. Fan favourite Castiel (Misha Collins) has a very tumultuous set of episodes in this season. Starting out as the god of Ezekiel 25:17 – vengeful and murderous – and quickly taking a nose-dive into crazy.

One of my only issues with the series is the choice of villain. Since the demise of Yellow Eyes and then Lilith, I have always enjoyed the monster of the week episodes more than those dealing with the main story arc. This may be more about my personal preferences than major problems with this choice of a big bad, but I do find the Leviathan a little toothless. Granted, Dick Roman is very good as the smarmy leader with plans for creating the ultimate feeding pool. He is basically what I imagine Mitt Romney and his pals are like in real life; a wide white toothy smile and perma-tanned face hiding a multitude of nefarious plans to subjugate the human race; but they hardly have the darkness of their predecessors.  Lucifer, The Yellow Eyed Demon, Lilith (my favourite) were all much more fundamentally evil, more menacing baddies. There is also a small problem with the mythology of the series. The Leviathan have appeared from nowhere (much like the angels did in earlier seasons), despite Purgatory, god, heaven and hell all playing a fairly major part in the previous seasons – Leviathan haven’t been mentioned once. On a much more superficial level, the effects when they go for the bite are pretty shoddy, and not even slightly scary.

There are some pretty good standalone episodes, but in the end, there may just be a few too many stories and episodes that feel familiar. Witches, cursed objects and foreign gods – we have met these all before. I am starting to worry that the writers have skimmed all the cream off the top of the subject matter and we are now dealing with what’s left at the bottom. Even so, as long as they keep making Supernatural, I will be watching.

There are some fun appearances from fellow sci-fi/paranormal series actors – Battlestar Galatica’s XO, Michael Hogan shows up in ‘Slash Fiction’; Firefly’s Kaylee (Jewel Staite) stars as an old acquaintance of Sam’s in ‘The Girl Next Door’; Buffy’s Spike and Cordelia star in the ‘Shut Up, Dr. Phil’ episode; and another of Mr Joss Whedon’s favourites, Felicia Day, as an awesome hacker girl in the episode ‘The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo’. Even Crowley appeared as a young pyro in the first season of the X-files. All brilliant pedigrees.

In the end, if you are a Supernatural fan, you will love this series. The brothers are just as funny, messed-up and charismatic as always; in fact, they are nicely summed up in the season as “Chuckles” and “Schizo”. There is a selection of brilliant supporting characters, and although some of them aren’t at their best in terms of storylines, there is more than enough to make it addictive TV.

Oh – as for extras, there a few treats – top of the list being a longer version of Dean singing “I’m All Out of Love”, of which we get a little taste earlier in the season. There is the now standard gag reel, as well as 3 episode commentaries, a short, Directing the Supernatural, where directors discuss the challenges of  making Supernatural and, focusing on the music of the series, Washboards & Tommy Guns: Scoring time after time, in which the series’ composers discuss their work on the film noir homage episode ‘Time After Time’.

Hannah Satan Turner

*A small caveat here: I absolutely love this series and worship the ground the Winchester boys walk, talk and gank on, so I have had to try very hard to be objective about it. Ahem.