Review

While driving to New York to investigate the drowning of a young woman in a shower, Dean confronts Sam over a bullet missing from the colt. Dean correctly surmises Sam has shot and killed the Crossroads Demon. Sam tells Dean he isn't their father, and the brotherly feud continues unabated. They meet with the mother of the deceased woman in New York and learn that she saw a ghost ship shortly before meeting her demise in the shower cubicle that dripped, uhmm, water. The mom, Gert Case, takes a shine to Sam, much to the amusement of Dean. However Dean is less than impressed when he learns Bela Talbot is also working the case, the Brothers correctly think Bela is out to further her own agenda somehow.

Bela, besides managing to get the Impala towed, has actually got the good oil on what's going down. Seems back in the day a Sailor was hanged by his Captain aboard the Espirito Santo, with the Sailor's right hand being kept as a good luck charm, "a hand of glory". Well okay that'll explain the revenant being in existence, I'm not going to give too much more away, watch the episode to catch up with the nuances. Needless to say the Winchesters are forced to pull out all stops to stop the waterlogged ghostly apparition.

Red Sky at Morning, shepherd's warning? - is the second episode in a row this season that show's Supernatural might be running slightly low on the creative juice. While I dug the humour involved, and am really applauding the character of Bela, it all seemed slightly stale for this Impala back seat driver. We have yet another revenant hanging on due to a body part still being in circulation, a number of deaths, and eventually the Winchester Bros winning out against both the corporal and non-corporal adversaries thrown into their paths. There wasn't a difference this time, was there was a feeling we had all got the Tee already, and the season was, if you will excuse the analogy, treading water as it continued the central conflict between the Bros that seems to be the main focal point of the season. I'm going to go so far as to say I was slightly bored by this episode, we need something new for the Winchester team to face, something other than revenants or demons.

So anyway there were a few positives from the episode, the chief one being the inherent humour that Supernatural has thrived on through three seasons. The retiree aged Gert Case takes a shine to Sam, who for once seems unsure of how to handle the situation. This proves hilarious to Dean who is pretty quickly cracking cougar jokes, and who is overjoyed when Sam has to be Gert's date to a function in order to gain access to the hand holds, having pun issues today, the key to dispatching the malicious marine malcontent. Of course Dean also has his own problems with Bela, who manages to not only get Dean's ride towed but once again outwits the Brothers, though admittedly this almost brings about her demise.

Before moving along here two points of interest regarding Bela in Red Sky. Firstly there's a deal of tension, in a sexual fashion, between Dean and the Brit exotic object procurement agent. Clearly this is going to be on going at least in this season. And secondly the nature of the "curse", for want of a better word, indicates Bela may have a far more interesting back story than we initially supposed. I'm looking forward to further encounters between the Bros and Bela as the season unfolds.

Has the franchise reached it's nadir, surely it can't get much worse from here. An altogether uninspired episode.

While the humour keeps the episode rolling, the actual scare factor seems to have been tossed out with the bath water. Can anyone remember when they last got a cold chill while watching a Supernatural episode? Besides the dodgy CGI involved, clearly no budget to film an actual ship, the revenant isn't in any way intimidating. There's just no "S" Factor© going down during this episode, it was poorly written from a dark genre perspective and really does nothing to further the season. I'm all over the current Winchester feud and want things to move along or at least something note worthy to go down on my screen.

In keeping with last week's lack of anything approaching mullet rock, we get nothing again in this week's episode. What has K-Tel recalled their golden hits of the 1980s or something? I'm getting desperate over here and have had to thrown on Blue Oyster Cult to cover the lack of Supernatural rock tracks. What the hell is going on, it's getting depressing here in the shotgun seat Dean?

Red Sky at Morning slumped to 3.01 million viewers in North America. How the hell do people know we're going to get a bad episode? Clearly Supernatural is being stripped to its core viewing audience as people find other more valuable ways of spending their leisure time. This does not bode well; thankfully the core audience is pretty sizeable.

I didn't notice the episode referencing any other horror outings, but then I wasn't paying all that much attention to developments to be honest.

Season Three is becoming increasingly hit and miss if we have to call a spade a spade, whatever that really means. Clearly the pending Writers strike is having a major impact on the quality of scripts being rushed to completion, but this is going to have a negative impact on the franchise as a whole. The season is crying out for something different from revenants and demons, can't believe I just said that, hopefully in the coming weeks the Producers will wake up to how far the show is drifting. One for the Supernatural fanatics, a pretty poor effort from all involved.