Saturday, November 12, 2016

Supernatural, Season 12, Episode 5: The One You've Been Waiting For



We have another Hitler episode and… can we not? It’s almost impossible to do this without it being awful, touching lots of awful and then wallowing in that awful. If you go supernatural it tends to appropriate, if you comedic it tends to be inappropriate, if you go serious it feels like you’re using The Big Bad as a tool to set tone. And when you’re going to do all this in a monster of the week episode

Of course, the Thule have been a recurring theme – Nazi necromancers running around being awful and difficult to kill and awful. They’re burning people so they can leave a signature trail of bodies of people they could just as easily have stabbed and then not have appeared on the Winchester’s radar.

The Winchesters follow the very obvious trail of breadcrumbs to find that the Thule have stolen a Nazi watch and are hunting a woman called Ellie who is waaaay out of her depth but quickly having to accept the existence of the supernatural because of the people burning to death around her

We also have Christoph, babynazi. Babynazi is the son of one of the Thule necromancers who are doing big bad terrible things and he has a shed load of daddy issues because his Nazi daddy isn’t a very nice man and continually emotionally abuses his son for failing to meet his expectations. The Winchesters are unimpressed because a) Nazi and b) The Winchesters have already cornered the market on daddy issues.

Christoph, whether because he’s not that strong willed or just not that invested in the cause or really doesn’t want a bullet in the head, decides to spill all: the Thule want Ellie because she’s related to Hitler. They want the watch because it contains Hitler’s soul. Throw in necromancer and, yes, they want to bring Hitler back

Honestly, do they really thinking the leader of their society needs to be someone who is 70 years out of date. And lost then as well. And in the modern world he’s going to have difficulty gathering a fol-

I’m not even going there.


Anyway rather than let the Thule fall apart because they’re being led by someone who wasn’t a sure bet 70 years ago let alone today, Sam and Dean need to fight this, hoping to use Ellie as bait to get all the top Thule in one place so they can kill them all at once. Mass killing Nazis is something I can get behind

This is somewhat scuppered since the Thule catch up and are pretty skilled fighting given Dean and Sam’s skill in combat. The fight allows Ellie to escape and be duly kidnapped again. We’re going to have her do her obligatory moment-of-agency to prove she’s not just the object to fight over, but really, she is just an object to fight over and her managing to be a distraction in a fight scene doesn’t change that

Luckily, Christoph’s dad aims for gold in the terrible parent Olympics and tries to have his disappointing son killed. Said son turns to the Winchesters for help and to lead them to Ellie

The ritual goes ahead and we get a reincarnated Hitler who is cringeworthy because if you’re going to have Hitler they’re going to throw in some mockery as well just to try and make the whole thing more palatable

Anyway, Ellie provides the necessary aforementioned distraction and the Winchesters escape and kill a lot of Nazis. And Dean kills Hitler

This makes his day. It makes his whole year. Honestly this episode’s only good point is Dean’s glee over killing Hitler

Ok, 2 sides of my brain

Side 1: Ok… he just shot someone in the head and is now grinning like a fool… that’s…
Side 2: He killed Hitler
Side 1: But shot someone in the head and then be all smiley and laughing?
Side 2: No shot HITLER in the head.
Side 1: But it’s kind of sociopathic…
Side 2: Hitler.

So Ellie gets to go back to her family, lots of Nazis are dead and Christoph runs off hoping the remaining Nazis don’t kill but we don’t care over much because he’s a nazi and one rescue doesn’t redeem that

And the episode closes being, at best, mildly amusing. But I guess it could have been far more of a hot mess than it was. I'm just not sure why the writers think people would be interested in watching a cringeworthy embarrassing Hitler-wannabe