Series 1, Episode 3: Dead In The Water

Rather upsettingly it has been pointed out to me that the wearbears which I believed to be my own original idea are already in existence as these guys!

Even more annoying is that I used to have one of these myself and completely forgot! They were pretty cool actually. You could peel back the fluffy face of the cute bear (sounds delightful!) to reveal the beast underneath! I always remember it being a right bastard to got the nice face pulled back over the evil one again though. Maybe that's a life lesson, that it is so easy to flip and be evil but once headed down that road it is so often extremely difficult to turn back...Or it could be a poor manufacturing design.

Anyway, this blog is progressing at a much slower rate than I intended! I've had the week off work for Easter and I haven't watched a single episode. That's disgraceful. So it's time to pull my finger out and watch episode 3. 

I'm about a third of the way through the episode and I'm really enjoying this one. To begin with it looked like it was going to be "Jaws-in a lake". The opening scene was very reminiscent of the beginning of Jaws with a young woman going out for a swim, only to be pulled under the water by an unseen creature. But now it seems that the villain is the water itself as evidenced by the water backing up in the sink of a nearby house and then drowning a poor guy trying to do his dishes! Pretty scary stuff. I've been having problems with my washing machine today so I'm now beginning to look at it in a whole new light! And I think my dirty dishes can wait till another day..

Well overall I'd say that was a very good episode. It kind of reminded me a little of the Friday the 13th franchise with its main antagonist turning out to be a child who had supposedly drowned in the lake. I like how I've totally spoiled people there for this episode and also Friday the 13th. I'm not going to feel guilty, the film came out over 30 years ago! You can't spoil something which is more than 30 years old! .... Saying that I was pretty pissed off with my brother when he ruined the end of Murder On The Orient Express for me and that's much older, but I digress...

Actually it's just occurred to me that the guy who plays Sam in Supernatural was also in the Friday the 13th remake so there's another connection. It was terrible. Jason runs! He's not supposed to run. He's supposed to shamble slowly towards you giving you plenty of time to find a terrible hiding place where he'll inevitably corner you and slaughter you! 

Overall I really enjoyed this episode. If I had to nitpick at any of it I would say the scene with the lady nearly drowning in the bath was ridiculous. Who puts that much water in the bath?? It was nearly overflowing before she got it. And then she left the taps running while in it! She did well not to nearly drown anyway with or without the need for a supernatural entity pulling her under the surface!

Dean and Sam have still to grow on me, but to be fair that's not surprising at the rate I'm watching this show. They seem likeable enough so I'm sure they'll get there. At the moment Sam seems to "goody goody" and Dean seems a bit of an arse. But then he is good looking so it's difficult to know where I stand on that one. 

Series 1, Episode 2: Wendigo

Yesterday the United Kingdom was treated to a truely awesome event, a solar eclipse! Not a full one but still pretty exciting. I was rather pleased with myself when I came up with the idea of dismantling some old floppy disks in order to use them as a make shift filter to view the eclipse with...I assume we don't need the information that was on the disks!! It was dated back to 2007 so I'm sure it will be fine. 

A few people at work were also excited to view the eclipse but a some others were completely disinterested which I found to be unusual. I mean I know we are all different people with different interests but seriously! A solar eclipse! These things happen so rarely. 

This week hasn't been completely thrilling though as I also had to suffer through a prolonged and painful oral operation and I'm still in some discomfort now. Being the martyr that I am, I bravely soldiered on and went into work straight after the op. Unfortunately I have to report that I got little support or sympathy from my fellow colleagues. "It's just a filling!" they kept saying. Well I've never had a filling before! So excuse me for having a panic attack and having to suck on a glucose sweet kindly handed to me by the dentist after she'd injected me! 

The pain lingers..but the world is a cruel and unsympathetic place it seems so in order to take my mind off such events I'm going to continue my journey through the world of Supernatural with episode 2 of the first season. It's called "Wendigo"...What the hell is a Wendigo??

Oh dear...This isn't a promising start. One of the guys from Glee is in this episode. I really hope he's not going to be one of the main charac...oh wait....nope, he's dead now. Phew! Some young guys are on a camping trip at a place called Blackwater Ridge and a big beast of some description has attacked them. I wonder if it's a werewolf! I hope so. That would make my talking of the eclipse at the start of this blog entry seem nicely themed. Almost like I'd planned it that way, which I swear I didn't! Do you really think I put that much thought into the crap that I type here??

Meanwhile, Sam and Dean are following some coordinates that they found in their dad's journal in order to find out what happened to him. The coordinates lead them straight to Blackwater Ridge. Upon arriving they learn of the missing boys and head over to the home of one of the boys (Tommy) to meet his sister who has been reporting her brother as missing but is being ignored by the local ranger. Dean pretends to be a associated with the ranger in order that she will allow them access to her home. Dean seems to have an impressive array of fake ID cards it seems. This is the second episode in a row that he has used a different one. My current theory is that at some point in the past, he met the Doctor and stole his psychic paper and it is in fact that paper that he is using now. We, the viewers, see whatever Dean wants us to see. That's my own personal continuity in my head now and I reserve the right to be annoyed when I'm proved wrong.

Also disappointingly I think my werewolf theory will be proved incorrect. There appears to be a lot of bear iconography littered through the episode so far (pictures on walls, stuffed heads behind bars) so I'm beginning to think it's going to be some kind of giant bear. That seems a little too normal though..maybe it's a wearbear?? Does such a thing exist? What am I talking about?! Werewolfs don't even exist so a werebear isn't likely too! Unicorns and Leprechauns on the other hand are real.

Dean and Sam meet an old man who was the only survivor of a similar attack many years ago which saw his parents killed by the beast. This man survived but has old scars on his shoulder from the claws of the creature. My new theory is that he is the new beast who is now hunting in the woods. He is the wearbear! (The idea of a wearbear is now copyrighted to James Nicholls) 

As we see inside the lair of the creature we see that the Tommy is still alive! Woohoo! Unfortunately so is the guy from Glee! Boo! Oh hang on... The creature advances on him and ...yep..now he definitely is dead. I realise now that these jokes (if you can call them that!) are in slightly poor taste as the Glee guy is now dead in real life. But I believe he died from a drugs overdose and he wasn't eaten by a werewolf/bear so I think I'm covered there..

After finding the trashed camp site and further reviewing their father's journal, the guys theorise that they are on the lookout for a Wendigo..Not a wearbear. Upsetting! I guess i really should pay more attention to the titles of these episodes. That was a pretty big clue! Saying that, the first episode was called "pilot" and I didn't see a single pilot in it! That's a joke obviously. Although for the longest time I was confused by the term pilot for the first episode of a series, mainly because the pilot episode of Quantum Leap had Sam leaping into an actual pilot! What a mind fuck that was! 

One slight criticism of the series so far. And this is a bit nit picky, but the trope of having a character feel blood drip on them and then look up to see a dead body has been used 3 times so far in the 2 episodes. No more of that please. 

Overall that was a pretty decent episode. I wasn't really blown away with it and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one. I think Supernatural is a series that I will get into in time but at the moment it hasn't quite gripped me. I'm only two episodes in though so it's far to early to judge. I gave Orange Is The New Black at least six episodes before deciding it wasn't for me. It was a bit too "lesbianny" for my liking. 

Every journey starts with a first step..

Well I can't exactly proclaim that this blog has got off to a fantastic start. I'm afraid my motivation to start watching the series just hasn't kicked in yet. I blame Judge Rinder! But I need to make a start so here goes. Now first of all I have to admit that I have actually seen the first episode already as I watched it a couple of months ago when Leanne first leant me the DVD but I can't recall it all that clearly so I intend to watch it again for the blog. To be fair, and I'm not making excuses here, that's probably one of the reasons that this blog entry has been held up. I knew I was going to have to watch something I'd already seen, and whilst I can watch Doctor Who 10 times over, I don't quite feel the love for Supernatural yet which is required for a repeat viewing. Anyway, enough procrastinating, let's get on with the episode!

I'm creeped out already. Anything involving baby monitors is not going to end well. I think it was Insidious that gave me a phobia of those things. If I have ever have a child (not likely!) then I think it'll just have to sleep in the same room as me because I couldn't cope with one of those things. I'd be convinced I could hear voices through the static.

Certainly a good start so far. Mary (I think that was her name) who is the mother of the two main characters is seen being killed off in the opening of the episode in a way which would pretty much traumatise you for life. Looking in on his youngest son, the father looks up to see his wife pinned to the ceiling which then bursts into flames. Not quite sure why but I'm sure that will be explained in due course.

Is it me or does she look like Catherine Tate in this picture? I'm going to be disappointed if Catherine Tate does not appear in this series now.

We now skip forward 22 years to the present day where the two children have grown up into..well...let's be honest, pretty good looking guys..Maybe this blog won't be so difficult after all! Dean meets up with Sam for what seems like the first time in a while and we have a huge exposition dump which seems to be setting up the series, explaining how their father was obsessed with hunting down supernatural beings in an attempt to find what killed his wife and now the father has gone missing. 

So far so good. Although I must admit that the character of Dean seems to be annoying me a little bit. The way he was leering all over Sam's girlfriend was a little bit uncomfortable! He definitely just made a reference to her breasts! Also, upsettingly, Dean has just declared that he is 26 years old. God, that makes me feel old! I always imagine people in these shows are older than me. 

So this episode seems to be all about a ghostly hitchhiker. Now I don't care how good looking a girl is (actually I really don't!) there is no way in hell that I would have picked this girl up at the side of the road. At best she is off her tits on drugs and will go mental on you, at worst she is a demon/ghost/entity intent on sucking out your soul and sending you straight to hell! In this case, my money would be on the latter. 

When the ghost lady sets the brothers car on them by chasing them down on a bridge, it leads to a daring dive into the water below. It's a really effective and scary scene. I mean I get scared when people put their drinks down on the table too close to their phone so imagine how I would feel diving into water knowing my phone was in my pocket and there was nothing I could do about it. Let's hope the guys left their phones in the car. And that they are password protected so that the ghost lady (I'm sure her name has been revealed by now, I've just not being paying attention) can't frape them both!

I think I'd like a leather jacket like the one Dean is wearing. Mind wandering a little now.

I'm a little confused as to why Constance (that's the ghost lady's name) is now targeting Sam and Dean as she is supposed to focus on guys who have been unfaithful. I could possibly imagine Dean being the sort of bloke who would play around but Sam seems a faithful kind of guy so I'm not sure why she is attacking him. Oh hang on, Sam has just said pretty much that to her. He has never been unfaithful so she can't kill him. She replies that he will be unfaithful and starts to grind around on top of him! I mean that's just...just...cheating!! She can't do that! Not fair at all! 

The episode ends with Sam being returned to college in time to see his girlfriend being burnt up on the ceiling in the same way as his mum was 22 years ago. Bad news! On the other hand, that leaves him free to go monster hunting with Dean and sets up the rest of the series. Good news!

So that was a pretty solid start to the series. I certainly enjoyed it so fingers crossed the rest of the many seasons of this show are equally enjoyable. I noticed that both the mother's death and Sam's girlfriend's death occurred when Sam was in the room so I'm wondering if there is some kind of connection going on there. Hmm interesting...Seems odd to have suddenly happened again to a woman who is close to Sam after 22 years of nothing like that occurring. Unless Dean has been a right bastard and somehow engineered it that way because he wants Sam to help out in tracking down their father. I think that's doubtful though. 

It's quite refreshing writing a blog about a series when you have no idea what is going to happen next!