Supernatural S05E07 - The Curious Case of Dean Winchester (2009)

Review

Dean and Sam arrive in a City, which is never named, in order to track down a Witch who plays poker, the currency being the years in a person's life. Lose the game and you age, win the game and the years are removed. Naturally Bobby sees a chance to get out of the wheelchair and back into the game as an able bodied hunter, and naturally he loses 25 years. Which is okay as Dean steps up to the plate and gambles with a half century of his own life, and gosh the older Winchester Bro doesn't have the skill to match his witchy opponent. Did I mention the witch is a 900 year old Irish dude?

With stakes running high and options running out Sam, the least likely to win according to Dean and Bobby, enters the fray to save his Brother who is aging rapidly, if definitely not gracefully. A twist still awaits us in this one with the Witch's partner dialling out of their long relationship.

This episode really brought the season down for me, with nothing working on any level beyond a brief flurry of thought given to immortality and the consequences of living for ever. There is no real attempt at injecting anything like horror or tension into the episode, I wasn't expecting Dean to die and stay dead, so had no real investment in the situation the Winchester Bros and Bobby found themselves in. Equally a lot of could have been dramatic, if not atmospheric, content was jettison to allow a more light hearted approach to the subject matter. Not entirely sure turning Supernatural into a comedy show is going to work overly for the existing fan base, leave it to Dean one liners and more cultural references than Buffy could have poked a Xander at.

Okay we do get a couple of pathos moments, but heck this is meant to be a horror show not an afternoon hospital melodrama for the blue rinse set!

Bobby isn't handling his confinement to a wheel chair well and is seeking options to get up and get back in amongst the fray. Besides the obligatory "Ironside" references, kids check with your parents - old television show, it was pretty much handled as a semi serious issue. Bobby learnt some home truths I guess, in a sort of twisted Winchester logic fashion, and should be able I guess to accept the situ with at least not too much bad grace. We're talking chick moments galore here kids, not something we really want to see in our Supernatural diet.

Was it just me? Did this episode seem like lazy filler to get up to season length?

Patrick, our Irish witch for the evening, seems perfectly content to play poker for people's years, but on occasion doles out some freebies to the needy. While Patrick may have one of the weirder occupations you could imagine, he seems happy to go along with the whole immortality thing, though I wonder what the Reapers would think of his toying with people's life spans, would have been a good side track for mine. Patrick's chicky friend Lia however has had enough, she misses her family including a daughter who died some centuries previously, and is out to help the Winchesters take down Patrick. Not an overly surprising twist ensues, hey calling it as I see it folks.

Surprisingly, given the whack nature of the episode, it kicks off fairly effectively, though to be honest this is a false dawn. Chick is at home reading a headline in the Weekly World News, "Leading Psychics Agree: The Apocalypse Is Here!", when her husband arrives and rushes upstairs to the bathroom where a rapid aging, albeit off camera for the most part, goes down. The Chick charges upstairs to investigate and demonstrates she can match any scream queen on the planet. Effective, to the point, and promising a lot of goodness headed our way. Pretty much that's our lot however, the episode never recaptures this high for the rest of its running time, anyone else noting the disappointment.

While I'm all about the show going back to the episodic monster of the week format I would have still liked either the Angels or Lucifer to dial in to keep us up on their progress. Seems a while since we touch bases with the actual Armageddon festivities, what's brewing, and where are we up to? Actually while on the Lucifer hordes, sort of, anyone else feel the demonic element isn't anywhere near as chilling as it was during the first couple of seasons? Getting a real watered down feeling over here, maybe the Producers would like to address in the next few episodes.

What still no mullet rock? Has the cassette player broken, have they reached the end of the mixed tape!

Truly a disappointing episode that completely failed to live up to any sort of standard previously set by Supernatural and which failed to offer anything like a chill factor. If I didn't know better I would put this one down as fuller to help get the show up to the season requirements. Even for fans this episode takes a lot of effort to get through, for once zero recommendation.