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Supernatural – The French Mistake

Once again Supernatural goes after the fourth wall, but this time they freaking demolish it. The brothers have had a spell cast that put them in a TV show before and even god himself wrote a book about their adventures. However, this week they surpass even that. The brothers are sent to; I guess we can say an alternate universe, even though that ironically feels like Fringe territory. That said universe is ours and includes the show Supernatural literally being the show Supernatural, along with the actors and producers being themselves. It’s great to see that the show and actors aren’t afraid to make fun of themselves, since if they can’t do that then it would be pretentious for them to call out other shows, like they did for their old time-slot rival Grey’s Anatomy several times. The self-deprecating humor included the show being on its sixth season, the power shift with the show creator moving on, the lead actors not getting along, the series not having huge ratings, and many other potentially touchy jokes. Of course, that begs the question if there really is truth behind every joke or if these circumstances are so exaggerated that they aren’t afraid to bring them up; it’s probably a bit of both but more so the latter.

At the episode’s core, it was heavily comedic and standalone. This might have been a problem, since last week’s episode was pretty standalone too, but due to this episode being so funny, out of the box, and the last few minutes helping develop the civil war storyline, it was very fun to watch. Story wise, it does feel like the opening and closing scenes were somewhat thrown together to simply create an excuse for the brothers to come to our universe. The show taking such a huge leap brings up a multitude of questions. I think many of us as viewers of TV shows or even movies look at them as “what if” situations. What if we could really go into people’s dreams, what if aliens came to Earth, what if monsters really existed, etc. However, Supernatural has now thrown that logic out of the window. There is the brothers’ reality/universe where magic and monsters are real, then there’s our world where those things are completely fiction. While it may seem simple on the surface, this is definitely one of the more mind-bending plots that a TV show has done in quite awhile.


Looking past the complexity of the circumstances, this episode was for the most part about fan service and comedy. The scene with Dean and Sam trying to act is one of the show’s funniest scenes ever. Really, on the outside looking in, their entire behavior was hilarious from beating up supposed extras almost to death, randomly jumping through windows, to supposedly buying monkey kidneys or something else weird online. Of course, that reality now has some very strange problems since an extra apparently came to set and killed the show’s creator, director, several other people, and the two leads are now missing forever. It seems as if the story is about to shift more towards heaven’s civil war, which is a plot that has yet to be interesting. That storyline has a few problems, the two big ones being that it is too ambiguous and Raphael isn’t a very good villain. So far, Raphael has just been a Terminator that wants to end the world. Coming off the heels of Crowley being the show’s last big bad, Raphael needs to step it up a notch personality and motive wise.

It does seem a bit strange that Mother was brought back into our world a few episodes ago with no mention yet and now they’re resurfacing the civil war storyline. This goes back to some of the overarching storylines needing to be brought together or at least timed better. Going from an episode about Sam’s soul to a standalone episode then randomly bringing back up the civil war doesn’t exactly flow naturally.  It was interesting to see the brothers, surprisingly more so Dean, being okay with the idea of staying there. If the show ended in that manner, perhaps with the aforementioned shootout never happening, then surely many fans’ heads would explode, but it’s one of the few ways the brothers can get a happy ending. If they retired from hunting then that would feel like quitting and if the show ends with them still fighting the good fight then they’re bound to die eventually. The brothers coming back to our reality for good is highly unlikely, but it is an interesting thought. However, that would probably be too meta and edgy for even this show. This season still feels a bit aimless, but it has created a few episodes that are some of the best in the series.
Rating
9.5

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