Review

Dean receives a cry for help from an old flame, and the Bros head on down to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to check out what appear to be racially-motivated murders from beyond the grave. One of those big truck things is taking toll of the local dudes, and it’s up to Dean and Sam to work out what’s going down in the redneck hood.

Naturally, some white dude also gets got, which puts paid to the racial angle (at least currently), and a deeper mystery is uncovered. Past sins coming back to roost, and one smooth vehicle ensues. Pity the vehicle looks modern, but whatever.

We got a past flame of Dean’s, some unnecessary injection of the racial card, and a reasonable episode. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.

Route 666 is one of those episodes you kind of want to enjoy, as it’s off the by now well beaten path, but which you end up shaking your head over. Heavy-handed themes comes immediately to mind, but what the heck, suck it up and at least have a good time with the visuals. The episode is sans scares, but I was kind of grooving along to Dean being all serious over a chick for a change.

Right off the bat, I was kind of thinking of Spielberg’s Duel in terms of our four wheeled truck from hell. Director Shapiro is going for the same sort of an effect. The truck is a character unto itself, and you have to love an outing that simply says it’s heavy rolling metal dude, you don’t need to see some spectral guy driving it. Good use of the revving and inching forward when the vehicle was doing its thing, I was saying “hell yeah” during those scenes.

An episode that you really want to like but just can't quite get there with

What I didn’t dig with Route 666 was the whole explanation for the haunting. It simply failed to garner any sympathy for the victims, and seemed more of an excuse to explain road rage than offering something in terms of overall plot development. Oh that’s the reason, yeah okay, it’s not like we haven’t been dealt that card from the old horror tarot pack before. Pretty weak on the background explanation, but I did mention how cool the truck is, right?

There’s simply too much filler going into this episode to keep the tension up. Just how many scenes from a static camera angle of the truck driving down a deserted road in the middle of nowhere did we need anyway? The injection of this cut-away scene did nothing, and really didn’t add anything to the mix. We can expect this sort of stuff from Uwe Boll, but not from the producers of this series.

We are definitely in mid season, as a few episodes are showing the strain of trying to keep the high standards established by the opening salvos from the Winchester cannon. I would put Route 666 down as an attempt to produce the 22 individual weekly episodes needed by U.S. television each year, where something has to give if you have to try and flesh things out for that length of screen time.

The overall plot arcs are left alone, so we get nothing on where the season is heading, or anything approaching closure on the current arcs. Notably, Sam’s new-found powers don’t come into play either, which might turn out to be a weakness in the long run. You simply can’t turn that plot device on and off willy-nilly as each episode requires without having a pretty good reason for doing so.

What Route 666 does do well is add some depth to the character of Dean, who thus far has been pretty one-dimensional to be honest. Here we find the dude has a more serious side, and involves himself in more than just the family business.

Music-wise we get “Walk Away” by Joe Walsh, “Can’t Find My Way Home” by Blind Faith, and “She Brings Me Love” by Bad Company, so overall I’m not going to complain about this aspect of the show.

Route 666 didn’t work for this little black duck. A lot of filler was chucked in to get near the fifty minute running time, and the background story didn’t really have me sending dispatches home from the front. The episode sort of held my interest in places, but I wasn’t feeling the loving I have for previous chapters in the Winchester book of modern living. Pretty much a mid-season episode which is helping the series reach the required allotment for the year.

The resolution to this episode is perhaps the weakest element thus far in any of the shows. Did Sam actually work it out, or was it all guesswork? Your ideas on that are as good as mine; I may have missed something as I kept wondering how long till the end credits rolled.

Once again an episode worth watching if you have the DVD and want to go from go to whoa with the full season. Not one to set aside a night’s viewing for however. Route 666 never seemed to get out of first gear, but the truck was cool.