Review

The Winchester Bros investigate a Professor who deep sixed from a university administration building, and suspect a revenant of some description may be involved. As they ask questions around the university campus, they discover that some football jock called Curtis had an encounter of the third kind involving anal probing and slow dancing to “Lady In Red”. Gets my vote for most rugged night out of the year.

While seeing if ET phoned home, they discover a research scientist is the victim of an alligator in the storm water drains. Sam calls in the cavalry in the form of Bobby as things on the home front start to deteriorate. Sam suspects Dean of stealing his prized laptop computer, while Dean is sure Sam has let down the tyres on the Impala and in so doing threatening the wheel rims. Bobby has another theory and has his hands full keeping the boys from doing each other some damage. Ready to check out some urban myths?

Tall Tales opens with an unknown lecturer walking to his office late one night. In front of a traditional university building, our academic comes across a hot babe who claims to be one of his students. He invites her up to the office where she announces she isn’t really one of the kids and they get it on. This being Supernatural, she goes all Regan on us with a transformation that certainly puts the dampers on the ardour front. Uni Prof ends up doing a high dive out of the window and lands just behind a janitor leaving the building. Guess the janitor will know what job to get to in the morning. Excellent start to the episode and it got me all engrossed from the opening frame.

Notably, and for I think the first time ever in Supernatural, the editors completely miss an error in shot composition. The cameraman does an up and over shoot as he climbs the steps behind the actor playing our soon to be demised academic. Guess with the tight shooting schedule the odd thing will slip through to the keeper, but I found it slightly jarring and knocked a point off the rating for a pretty easy to spot issue.

Tall Tales follows a standard franchise convention with presenting the action one week later in a series of flashbacks covering the major developments. I was pretty cool with this as the Director takes time to show scenes from both Sam and Dean’s perspectives, with often times humorous results. It also helped explain why the Brothers are pretty much at each other’s throats, (though that girly wrestling match wasn’t needed), pretty concisely and without overdoing anything. Slight issue with the background taking up too much of the episode, however, with little time left to hit the resolution, though the post credits scene was worth the twist ending.

Solid enough episode, without climbing the heights to be a classic in the franchise

As usual the investigation develops with the audience being let in on details at the same time as the Winchester team members. Sam finds the university building is clean without a revenant in the house. Student Curtis got abducted from in front of Crawford Hall, possibly a reference there though I couldn’t pick it, and both Dean and Sam discover a round burn mark in the area were Curtis realised his dream of dancing with the stars *snigger*. Finally we find out the research scientist was on his way home when he spied something shiny down a storm water drain and became victim number three in an escalating urban legends scenario.

What’s interesting is that neither Brother identifies what they are dealing with and it’s left to Bobby to join the dots. This possibly further reinforces the notion that the character of Bobby is going to fulfil the post of mentor left vacant by John Winchester’s demise in the first episode of the second season.

As stated earlier in the review, the resolution kind of lumbers over the horizon with most audience members having picked the culprit behind our deaths from perhaps the first ten minutes. Not entirely sure if the attempt to turn in a slightly humorous episode worked overall but at least the Supernatural tradition of throwing on something different from time to time continues in season two.

Jim Beaver reprises his Bobby role and is certainly more than welcome in any episode. Here he scores with his exasperation over the conduct of the Winchester brothers. To a certainly extent stealing the show was Richard Speight Jr (The Trickster) who was brilliantly cast for mine and brought just the right amount of “naughty” attitude to the role.

Finally some action on the T&A front for hetero males everywhere, hey the gals are catered for with both leads. The U.S. lingerie industry gets a work out in this episode which I immediately dubbed “the last temptation of Dean”. Well appreciated and can we have some more please.

In terms of referencing other genre outings I couldn’t pick anything obvious though there’s a slight hint of The Mask going down. Admittedly I haven’t seen the first two Urban Legends movies yet so there may be comparisons there.

Weird and eclectic collection of the hits of mullet rock during Tall Tales. “Next to You” by Junk Food and “Walk Away” from James are pretty much par for the course and in keeping with the overall franchise soundtrack. Chris De Burgh’s “Lady In Red” works in one of the lighter moments of the episode (worth dialling in just for that scene kids), but some more respect needed to be shown for “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby” by the immortal Barry White.

I quite enjoyed Tall Tales while recognising the episode as being a slight departure from normal Supernatural fare. By and large this one is being played for laughs with out any real pedal to the metal attitude anywhere, notably with the resolution which isn’t quite as the Winchesters believe it to be. I don’t mind the odd left field episode in any franchise so didn’t call a foul here.

Looks like season three has wrapped in the U.S. with the good news that season four has the green light and is ready for 2009. Assuming there’s no writers’ strike next year we should get a pretty solid fourth season following what is apparently an up and down third season. Naturally ScaryMinds will be following the Winchesters through their third and fourth forays onto the small screen, though as usual we’ll probably be about a year behind everyone else on the net with the episode guide.

Tall Tales is worth a look for both horror and non-horror fans. I’m simply taking it for granted that franchise fans will dig in regardless. This episode isn’t a “take no prisoners” outing and you can be safe in the knowledge that the claret doesn’t splash the camera lens at any stage. There’s certainly some smiles to be had with a few scenes so everyone should be reasonably happy as the end credits roll. Check out one explanation for all those urban myths that float around.