Supernatural S06E07 - Family Matters (2010)

Review

Dean calls on Castiel to work out what is wrong with Sam, and if Sam is actually Sam, hey Supernatural run with it okay. The angelic one goes all faith healer, hand inserted into Sam's stomach, and determines the younger Winchester has no soul! Rather than bench Sam, the obvious solution to recent issues, Dean decides he will keep an eye on him, decent hunter and all. Naturally the Boys decide they will check out what team Campbell are up to, with Dean not trusting his grandfather. The Campbell's for their part are preparing to go after the vampire alpha, who they have located in an isolated house, hey what could possibly go wrong.

In due course the Campbells, along with the Bros, raid the alpha Vampire's liar, losing a few troops in the process but taking down the daddy of all vampires. For no apparent reason Samuel Campbell wants the alpha alive. Dean, forced into mopping up vampiric stragglers with Gwen Campbell, doesn't trust anyone and snoops out the situation. The vampire alpha is bundled into a van and driven to parts unknown. With Sam's help, not a given currently, Dean tracks down the wayward van and discovers the true purpose of the Campbell's alpha hunting.

We are at the quarter mark of the session and finally have some information about what is happening, and for sure it's as weird as one would expect from this show. Spoilers people spoilers, split to the next paragraph if you haven't seen this episode already. We quickly learn both Samuel and Sam were dragged from their respective after this mortal coil places of being by the demon Crowley. Seems Crowley needs to find the location of Purgatory, which he claims is right next to Hell and hence a good expansion location, which kind of begs the question, if he knows it's right next to Hell then why does he need to capture the alphas to ascertain its location? So anyways Campbell thing explained, but uhmm what additional information is Samuel not giving us about why he is Crowley's Bitch. We do learn monsters don't go to Hell or Heaven, its Purgatory that claims them, sorry Roman Catholic Church Supernatural> disagrees with centuries of religious dogma, but hey my invisible friend and all.

An episode that pretty much is all about explanation, which is needed at this stage

I guess the major discovery this episode for Winchester fans is that Sam is indeed Sam and not some escapee from the pit intent on evil. Unfortunately Sam is sans soul for some reason, I'm pointing a finger at Crowley here, hence his less than humane hunting style since re-establishing connection with Dean. I'm predicting the next block of the season will be about reclaiming Sam's soul in the continued face of alpha combat. Guess we are taking it for granted that unprecedented monster action is another Samuel mistruth or is yet to be explained.

Surprisingly Family Matters is one of the bloodier episodes in the Supernatural chronicles. Lots of death goes down, a lot of blood is splash about, and notably some secondary characters are dealt out of the series. Naturally, besides surprisingly a beheading, most of the deaths happen off screen so as to appease the advertisers. But have to say nice to finally see some blood drenched carnage going down, though unfortunately a streaming service would have seen a much more heady battle between the Campbells and the vampire Alpha's undead forces. I would be up for a Supernatural movie that takes the gloves off and gets down in the horror trenches.

Perhaps the one thing Supernatural has overplayed is demonic possession. No seriously it is now simply a plot device, anyone else hardly noticed that Christian Campbell is possessed, and not something to send chills down the spine with. Actually Christian's current tenant problem only served to show that Crowley is well ahead of the Campbells and it has to be said the Winchesters, otherwise surplus to requirements. I'm calling this a weakness in the franchise, being restraint by the requirements of commercial television to not show anything that might upset the advertisers you are in trouble if you throw horror tropes out with the bath water. What we are perhaps seeing is Supernatural transforming into The Vampire Diaries, expect viewer figures to plummet. Fingers crossed the show runners wake up and push into some more chill before we get bored and start to think about dialling into Hemlock Groove, I'm a reviewer on the edge here.

So with some aspects of the show being trivialised, perhaps if we got back to the monster of the week style of show, an injection was needed hence the Alphas. In a sort of insane Jaws III a bigger shark will be more frightening we get bigger more dangerous monsters. Except to be honest the monsters don't match the lofty requirements placed upon them. Yeah the vampire Alpha was well cast, enjoyed Rick Worthy's work here, but he was taken down way too easily by Crowley's crew. Back to my central premise here, Supernatural has become a little too horror light for my tastes, and hey I'm a bitter hater of gorenography.

We do get a repeat of the best scene from last episode and at least the Director has the good grace to ensure we know it is Dean in flashback mode. So we repeat the two vampiric little girls, really hoping the Winchesters run across them in a future episode. Nice touch of surrealism going down that I really appreciated, more of that would be awesome in the future.

In something of a recurrent theme, hey love using that term, the Winchesters and their team find themselves battling alone with supposed allies having ulterior motives. The Campbells have their own agenda as we discover this episode, and I just have to say deals with the devil and all that this implies. Dean is naturally cynical, and has taken a punch to the gut with the revelations about Sam, and his cynicism is vindicated.

While we are getting a zillion answers to things, some of which we hadn't actually asked, we are also left with the feeling that somethings are being swept under the rug for hopefully a later resolution. Castiel is off to fight the civil war in heaven, there's still weapons of mass angelic destruction in the wind, and of course the recently introduced Balthazar is no doubt going to come back to haunt the Winchester Bros at some stage. Whether this works in with Crowley's plans is hard to fathom at this state so hang on tight kids it's bound to get a little rugged from here.

Before I forget this week's mullet rock styling, oh wait nothing, nadir, complete waste of time turning on the turntable. So there's a point off the total score, sorry we have to go with some tough love here. Seriously how hard would it be to inject a couple of tunes to keep us rocking along to the sounds? So Dealer's choice on video this week.

So another episode that moves things along nicely and finally makes a definitive statement about Sam's strange behaviour. Still a lot left hanging but definitely not calling foul as we are only a third of the way through the season and there's still a lot of water to go under the bridge. The episode itself held my interest and threw a couple of surprises on the table, however if you haven't been following the season then some of the nuances might be a little confusing. A worthy addition to the franchise, have a look to further your exploration of the Supernatural universe.