Supernatural, S8 Ep9 – Citizen Fang

This is where he should mention that old sled he used to have. It would certainly class up the fact that he might be about to die next to hot sauce.

So we’ve reached the mid-season finale, “Citizen Fang”! Was anyone else a little disappointed that Benny didn’t whisper “Rosebud”? His granddaughter could have at least been named Rose instead of Elizabeth… Okay, never mind, onto the show!

This episode ended on a cliffhanger, but not quite the type I’m used to for Supernatural. Usually their cliffhangers involve eighteen-wheelers crashing into the Impala or Castiel leveling up to, “god with a smiting complex.” But maybe they just like to keep those sorts of things for season finales. This cliffhanger was mostly based in emotions and relationships. Sure, there was a dead body, but Supernatural always has dead bodies. But the big questions we’re left wondering about at the end aren’t things like, “will the brothers survive?”

Instead, we’re dying to know if Dean and Benny’s relationship has finally come to an end, and if Sam and Amelia really are over as a couple. These aren’t the kind of questions I’m used to asking with this show, but I don’t mind. I said at the beginning of the season that the writers are dealing more with the deeper emotional issues of the characters and their relationships, and I think that that’s a good thing. I like them actually talking things out like adults. It’s a bit refreshing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me some explosions and apocalypses, but after all these boys have been through it’s nice to see them trying to work through what has to be a mountain range of personal issues.

Another theme of this season is the brothers having separate lives from each other. Both of them have had their own personal storylines, as promised by the producers back at Comic Con. And those separate lives, something that the brothers haven’t been that great at handling since they’ve started hunting (if an archangel calls you co-dependent, then I think you might be a little co-dependent), came into conflict in this episode.

Welcome to the present, Amelia! It’s less blurry!

First of all, Sam’s break up with Amelia has finally been explained. He left so that she could go back to her husband, just as I had predicted last week. But of course he still has lingering feelings for her, which is why when he thought he got an emergency text from her he drove off in the middle of a hunt.

I’ve got to say, however, that I’ve lost most of my interest in the Sam/Amelia romance. I’m glad that Sam managed to have a relationship with someone who didn’t die horribly or turned out to be a monster–or both–but this plotline has gone too far into ridiculous soap opera territory for me. Things might start getting interesting again after this episode, though, since it ends with Sam finally meeting Amelia again in the present time. And hopefully, this also means the end of soft-focused flashbacks. Hooray!

Creeping in the bushes and watching people through windows is the favorite sport of the Winchesters and Castiel.

So Sam’s storyline left on a romantic sort of cliffhanger: he caught a glimpse of Amelia happily living with her husband again, but then she showed up at the bar where Sam was drinking away his woes because she had seen him creeping around the bushes and she wanted to talk. Maybe things aren’t as over as Sam had thought. Maybe Amelia found it hard to get back together with her husband, the both of them changed and now different from how they were before. I guess you could call this a will they, won’t they cliffhanger. Other than in sixth season, when Dean tried to carry on a relationship with Lisa in a very similar set up, we don’t tend to get that kind of a plot in this show.  Unless the will they, won’t they involves killing the devil to stop Death from being released. It’s not something I’m used to with this show, and maybe that’s why I’m losing my patience with it a little.

I want to see more about Kevin Tran and the tablets, Castiel and whatever is going on with Naomi, hell, I’d like to see more of Garth and his adventures trying to become the new Bobby. Finding out what happens between Sam and Amelia is very low on my list, but I’m glad that the writers tried to branch out into something they don’t usually do. It turned out not to be my cup of tea, but everyone enjoys a different kind of tea. It made my enjoyment of this episode not as high as it could have been, but it didn’t make me hate the episode either.

Dean’s story, on the other hand, had me doing something I never thought I’d do: cry for a vampire. His story also involved a relationship coming to a head, but not a romantic relationship. Dean and Benny bonded in purgatory in such a strong way that not only did Dean let Benny, a human-killing blood-sucking vampire, go on his merry way, but Dean has also claimed repeatedly that Benny is the one person who has never let him down. Every other relationship he’s ever had has turned bad at some point, even with Sam, but Benny has never ever ever let him down.

Well, that might not be true anymore. At one point in the episode Benny looked like a goner, but he survived (as far as we know). Instead, Dean’s half of the episode ends with the death of their old hunter friend, Martin, at Benny’s hands. Or rather, his teeth. But since Martin had gone completely crazy, and tried too hard to show that he was ready to get back in the hunting business by taking Benny’s granddaughter as hostage, Benny was only fighting in self-defense.

(Is anyone else side-eyeing Elizabeth, though? Am I the only thinking that maybe she’s not as human as we thought, and she’s got a bit of her granddaddy’s abilities? Or maybe she used the other knife that Martin had set aside, which was mysteriously bloody at the end? Maybe I’m just paranoid, but this show has a way of doing stuff like that.)