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.