Supernatural S04E17 - It's a Terrible Life (2009)

Review

It's 6am and Dean Smith, the corporate version of Dean Winchester, is getting his day on. Apparently in this reality Dean is the Director, Sales & Marketing, for Sandover Bridge & Iron Inc. His day is pretty stressful, jam packed with phone calls, reports, and spreadsheets, on the bright side he gets to wear an expensive suit complete with tie. Meanwhile down in the tech support cubicle jungle Sam Wesson is doing the corporate shirt and slacks, and pretty much asking people to reboot their stuff to get it working.

Naturally not all is as it appears, a number of murders leads Dean and Sam to researching ghosts, thankfully Ghostfacers have a website, and taking on the corporate bogeyman. While battling their supernatural adversary Sam begins to question their current lifestyle, which is on target since Dean is on the Detox, and we find out it's all a test to prove something. Dean as the corporate hotshot, well there's been slightly more unbelievable scenarios in the franchise, but this one is out there.

Every now and again the Writers working on Supernatural like to go off the reservation and show us an alternative reality where the Winchester Bros aren't hunting or indeed battling forces trying to raise Lucifer. This is one such episode, though it goes a tad further and re-invents personas for the Winchesters that have no basis in the accepted timelines. While the episode is slightly confusing to begin with it still remains very solid, who doesn't want to check out Dean as a corporate douche, and there's certainly a message being sent to at least one of the Bros by the Angels.

Seems it's not only the audience who think Dean has gone slightly left field in the angst and emotional stakes, something we get enough of from Sam, the Angels are also not exactly grooving to this Smiths tune, Zachariah basically tells Dean to take a cup of cement and harden the frack up. And I think that's a rule we can all live by. Fingers crossed this angelic intervention is enough to get Dean back onto the wise cracking hard arse Hunter we all know and love.

Dean Winchester opting for the business report over mullet rock, has Lucifer already risen?

While Dean is fighting his corporate nature, who would have thunked, Sam is down in the cubicle jungle wondering if he has stepped into corporate Stepford. His co-workers are going down in fairly rapid fashion via apparent suicide, and here we're talking death by microwave oven and the ever popular death by sharpened pencil. Sam is also having dreams about fighting supernatural forces, hence he's picking up on something being wrong over at the company cooler. Which of course leads to the investigation of what might be going wrong, battling the forces of evil, the whole Supernatural nine yards. The difference this time is the Winchesters don't know what they are fighting and have to get a rapid on the job training program in how to deal with revenants.

I was digging the insertion of the GhostFacers online video, always got time for Supernatural's Lone Gunmen, to coin an X-Files term. Dean thinks they are the real deal and is almost taking notes on how to sort out a revenant based on the vid. The ironic part is the dynamic duo think the Winchesters are douche bags while pointing out the Winchesters supplied them with the whole shotgun shell loaded with salt thing. Thankfully Sam and Dean instinctively know their old moves rather than relying on the dubious advice of the GhostFacers.

Zachariah is the fourth, I think, Angel introduced and Castiel's immediate superior. Clearly Angels are taking more than a passing interest in the Winchesters and their current activities. While it was great to see Dean and Sam parred back to their original purpose of simply hunting it was also interesting to note that Zachariah at least is pointing to the natural order of things where Dean cracks one liners, Sam emotes, and the Brothers hunt down the supernatural evil that might be out there. Why exactly Zachariah is taking a personal interest remains a mystery but fingers crossed we are moving more to an action orientated final quarter of the season and away from the overly dramatic episodes we have been getting recently.

I'm sort of fleshing out this episode review as there's not a lot to say about It's a Terrible Life to be honest that I haven't covered already.

Okay the Producers might be doing a Rob Zombie with the Kinks' A Well-Respected Man, which is pretty freaking redundant given the visuals. I've got nothing against the Kinks, they have a decent catalogue, but I'm definitely against the insertion of obvious tracks in scenes, its pretty face palming material. We also get Brian Tichy's "Hollow", though for some weird reason every time I read Tichy I'm reminded of Dexter!

Before people start to write in and tell me I'm a complete twat I'm going to say I really enjoyed It's a Terrible Life, but there's not a lot of meat on the bone to write an episode review from. Great to see the Winchesters out of their comfort zone and I'm really hoping that the episode indicates the move to more action orientated episodes with a lot loss melodrama. Overall it was a pretty cool twist on the revenant plot line, which is to be applauded, retaining interest and keeping us happy with the show. Worth a look kids, but you need to have been following the season to get the nuances.