Supernatural S05E10 - Abandon All Hope (2009)

Review

Castiel tracks down the demon Crowley but is unable to push the matter as Crowley has his crib warded against all things supernatural. Natural the Winchester Bros with a little help from Jo Harvelle are able to breach the defences and confront the demonic one. Surprisingly Crowley simply hands over the Colt, he wants Lucifer dead as well, he reasons once Lucifer has wiped out humanity he will turn his attention to Demons. Crowley also supplies the information as to where Lucifer is going to be hanging.

Dean, Sam, Castiel, Jo, and Ellen head to Carthage, Missouri following Crowley's lead, and find the township deserted, well except for a huge amount of Reapers that only Castiel can see. Worse yet the Winchesters, Jo, and Ellen run into Meg and her pack of hell hounds. Unfortunately Jo is injured badly and the team have to take shelter in a hardware store. Meanwhile Castiel runs into Lucifer and is trapped in a ring of Holy Oil. Dean connects with Bobby who informs the elder Winchester that Lucifer is attempting to raise Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The Winchesters escape the Hell Hounds, at some cost and actually get the jump on Lucifer, who is in the midst of the raising ceremony. What could possibly go wrong?

And wham bang thank you Supernatural we are back on track with the main plot arc of the season, kind of thought the Writers had forgotten about the whole Lucifer unleashed thing. The Winchester Bros are still trying to do the impossible, Castiel is looking glum and gumshoe, and the intent is to add some edge to season five. Probably the only downside of the episode is you really need to have been watching previous seasons to know who the characters are that pop up and exactly what the Colt is and does. I can understand why some people got a whole bunch of confusion watching this one; you really do need to be across the whole Supernatural mythology. For those of us who have been following the Winchester saga this episode rocks the house down. Okay let's break it down and scratch our heads over the weird Chinese reassembly instructions.

Just when we thought the show won't go dark the deaths pile up

Getting beyond the whole "how did Becky know about the Colt" thing, maybe she read it in one of Chuck's books - see what I mean about having to know the whole backstory, we do get to meet Crowley. I was actually digging a demon in this one, yes taking into account Ruby and Meg and the whole hotness thing, Crowley rocks the house down. The dude has one of the great intros, making a whole statement about homophobia and kissing some banking guy, before proving to have very little respect for the brothers Winchester. While he is no doubt a plot device, getting the Colt into the hands of the Bros, I would like to see some more of the demonic dude, there's a whole character you love to hate thing going down. On a weird note I had this whole 50's cartoon thing developing in my head where Castiel is on one of Dean's shoulders and Crowley is on the other, arguing over best course of action. Yes you are probably right, a tad too surreal for the Supernatural franchise right, fevered drug dream anyone, it could happen friends and neighbours.

Abandon All Hope also plunges into the darkness in a pretty harsh fashion, even Dean isn't hitting the one liners in the usual fashion. A couple of recurrent characters are killed off in pretty awesome fashion, hey I was digging hell hounds and hardware stores, who would have thought this would be a lethal mix. So even though the show is main stream it doesn't shy away from a bit of a kill scene though definitely with limited blood and gore. Guess the show runners don't want to let us get too comfortable with everyone surviving and such; after all it is the Winchester vs Lucifer with a little help from the Bros' friends. Guess since we are also dealing with the resurrection of Death as an actual entity then you could expect a few bodies to up the ante.

Of course while losing a couple of members of team Winchester was pretty drastic there's also the matter of the entire female and youth population of Carthage being buried in a mass grave and the onscreen deaths of a bunch of demonical possessed dudes, so you could say you are getting your death's worth out of this episode. Guess then Supernatural really isn't a show for the under tens, well unless they aren't yours, and who the hell doesn't mind giving the ankle biters nightmares if you don't have to deal with the trauma. Hey throw some red soft drink and lollies into the mix, traumatised kids on a sugar hit, get on down with the concept folks.

Guess the main thing to take from this episode, besides Lucifer being one of five beings that can't be killed by being shot via the Colt, is that there is also demonic opposition to his Satanic Majesty. So we have both Heaven and Hell divided, good times kids. By the way Sam is still on the denying Lucifer his vessel, so with the Colt being ineffectual the Boys are going to have to discover another way of defeating the greatest of all evil badness, maybe they could give Buffy a call or something.

Another couple of songs to add to the mullet rock archives, I'm happy with that, after all Supernatural isn't a musical y'all. The Main Ingredient deliver Everybody Plays the Fool, which gets airtime a couple of times - guess someone loved the song. Also added to my full respect was Santana Oye Como Va, no I doubt speak Spanish got the spelling from the interwebs.

So we got an episode of Supernatural that is dark, broody, and actually gets down into the horror trenches. Abandon All Hope is moving along the season plot arc while getting pretty grimy and upping the season body count by a factor. As stated in the review body you pretty much have to be riding shotgun in the Impala to follow along with what is going down, but guess the episode might just win a few additional fans for the show. Full recommendation on this episode, one of the best of the season thus far, so I'm not abandoning all hope that season five will end up rocking the house down.