Review

Dean and Sam are rescuing kids, fighting rawheads, and checking out Norman Bates' basement. Well okay, they rescue two kids, fight one rawhead, and are in a basement. Sam gets the kids out while Dean goes after the monster with a taser! Why a taser? Well, because it’s in the plot, and we are helpfully informed that this is the only way to take down one of those rawhead things. What’s a rawhead? Doesn’t matter, plot isn’t telling us. Anyone already thinking this is a pretty poorly written episode?

What’s important is that Dean zaps the rawhead while standing in a puddle of water, ergo he gets mucho voltage himself. Turns out the dude has done serious damage to his heart, and has at best a month to live. Never fear Dean Winchester fans Sam is soon on the net after a cure. Failing that – and hey, I thought the web had the answer to everything – Sam uses his phone-a-friend option, and gets directed by somebody named Joshua to a faith healer in Nebraska.

The Bros make the scene, which turns out to be one of those revival style affairs – you know, tent, muddy fields, believers – and Dean gets healed. Hey, we’re at the five-minute mark! The rest of the episode deals with just how Reverend Roy Le Grange is healing people, where his powers are coming from, and a touch of the moral dilemmas. Something or other ensued; I was kind of bored to be honest. Ready for that old-time religion?

For some reason this episode didn’t work for me, and in my opinion is the new low point of the season. Normally I’m more than happy with an outing which goes heavy on the dialogue, has some moral dilemmas facing the lead characters, and spices things up with the odd action scene going down. Faith had all of that, but didn’t seem to gel or make the various ingredients into a decent meal for me to chow on down to.

Firstly, the plot devices are heavy-handed to say the least. Dean gets zapped while the Bros are fighting a rawhead, although said monster is never explained. It seems, according to the script, that the only way to take down a rawhead is via electrocution. This whole opening gambit is simply a plot device to get the Dean character into a serious medical condition. So serious in fact, that Sam is forced to seek out alternative medicine in the form of a faith healer. Naturally our layer of the hands heals the incurable Dean, and we’re only five minutes into the show. The two plot devices used thus far were so heavy-handed that I was surprised the script writers' desks didn’t collapse under the weight of them.

Every season has a low point, we just reached it

This is all pretty fast stuff and bodes well for a good episode. Unfortunately Faith then goes on the slow burner for the next 40 odd minutes, before the resolution fails to provide any tension or scares. Word of advice if writing a script, don’t start out on the afterburners and then go into cruise mode, as you are going to lose your audience.

There are indications in Faith that Dean is an atheist, and is pretty cynical about the whole God thing. Now that was an idea the script writers could have run with, but unfortunately they prove totally inept with the concept; they bring it up, leave it dangling, and then drop the plot point. Right there they had an interesting idea: Dean fights demons but is sceptical about the good side of the supernatural equation. How exactly does that work out in terms of character development and motivations? Why is Dean sceptical about inherent goodness? Will the revival tent massacre of healing reform the truant Ghostbuster? A major insight into a character’s thinking shouldn’t be left hanging in the air, it simply reeks of substandard writing.

And before anyone gets on their high horse and simply must send a missive via email telling us we “suck, are gay, and are retarded for not liking this episode”, I’m a fan of Supernatural but am prepared to point out where the series gets things wrong. Save yourself some time, take the criticism, and get on with your life. Shockingly not everyone likes the same things you do, and some of us actually have a post first-grade education, and hence have a modicum of critical ability.

[Editor’s Note: We actually get email like that, although how they are finding a non-published email address remains a mystery. We particularly liked the one where some merkin went on a rant about our review of the remake of TCM. Would have been cool and all, except that to date we don’t actually have a review of TCM published!]

What Faith does get right is in putting Dean into a quandary over the character Layla. She is going to be healed, but it will cost someone else their life? - watch the episode to work out what that’s about, as I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers here. Does Dean have the right to deny Layla her remedy, even if this will prove costly to some dude he has only met in passing? Well clearly there’s an obvious answer there, but I do applaud the scriptwriters for bringing up the angle and at least giving the suffering audience some glimpses of drama in this hodgepodge of an episode.

Primarily in Faith the supernatural villain is a reaper, which I’m not going to talk about overly due to it being central to the plot. Anyways, the reaper is visualised in a pretty damn cool fashion – loved that evil little smile towards the end, a nice touch! The only slight gripe I had was that the makeup reminded me of Bud the Zombie from Romero’s Day of the Dead. But still, I was pretty happy with the supernatural aspects here.

Okay, finishing off. There’s no development of overall plot arcs, and if the episode is referencing a genre movie, I couldn’t pick it. Believe me, I was trying to find something fascinating about Faith as the episode plodded to its predetermined finishing post. Music-wise, another on the quality over quantity chain of thought with “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult being the obvious trite choice. Well okay, I dig the track so was happy with it getting an airing, even if it was one of those roll your eyes moments.

Faith didn’t work for me, and I was mentally doing my laundry list as the episode ground to a resolution that could be seen boarding a bus to get over that famed hill on the horizon. There are some good plot elements, but they simply don’t work when taken into context of the overall show. A few ideas are brought up, given an airing, and then put back in the closet to be forgotten. The episode needed a central theme to add starch to a pretty haphazard outing. Might need to cut this short, before I inflict even more metaphors of a washing line nature on ya. End of day, I found Faith okay, but didn’t get my normal Winchester excitement cap on.

As stated previously every season of any series will have a few bad episodes, Faith is hopefully the worst that Supernatural has to offer us in season 1. Not a good way to kick off the second half of the series, what was needed was a much stronger outing.

No recommendation on Faith, don’t hit the “play all episodes” option on your DVD menu as you can skip this one. Nothing new is brought to the plot arc side of the fence, and nothing overall original or unique is added to the other side of the fence to be honest. A pretty meh bulk standard television hour.