Supernatural: Halt & Catch Fire (10x13)

I... ugh. I didn't... like this episode. Like, at all. I mean, there were individual moments that were okay, but mostly I was just exasperated the whole time. Let's briefly go over what actually happens here.

Sam and Dean are on the case, as it seems a possessed truck has killed somebody. When they arrive in the town, it looks like things are a bit more complicated than that. The GPS system inside of a car started going crazy, and the car drove a man into a collision and killed him. Quickly, more bodies start dropping. One girl is strangled by her computer cord, another guy gets his head blown inward by intense sound as his stereo system turns up.

In the end, it turns out that there were four college kids in a car and they caused an accident. Wireless lines fell on the other car and it started a fire. The man inside died horribly. Now, this ghost is inside the wireless network, killing off the four kids who caused his death. There's only one girl left, named Delilah.

The dead man's wife knows that he's still around, and she comes clean to Sam about the visitations from her dead husband. Dean meanwhile stays with Delilah to try and protect her from the vengeful ghost. The ghost shows up and nearly kills Delilah, but then Sam and Delilah set up a video call so that the ghost's wife can talk to him. She talks him down, and he is able to let go and move on. Delilah goes to visit the wife to own up to her mistake and apologize for what she and her friends did.

Sam and Dean have a talk. Dean says that he wants to just do his thing and help people out, and that he's going to stop looking for a cure for the Mark. He can't just keep waking up with false hope. He'll keep fighting it as long as he can, and then he'll go down swinging. Sam is, obviously, upset by this.

Okay. Yeah, this wasn't very good. Sorry, but I must be honest. Let's go over some of my issues with this episode.

The main one is that in commenting on social media and the "me" generation, they go way, way, too far. It's like after their really respectful treatment of fan culture in the 200th episode, they've regressed to make fun of what they consider "main stream" college behavior. All of the "hashtag blessed" and "hashtag slut" thing, and the "OMGs" and the "dude I just retweeted your tweet..." I mean come on. This was way over the top. It wasn't clever, either. If there had been some way to make it come across as satirical, then maybe it would have been okay, but this wasn't that. Honestly it just pissed me off. I mean, I'm not the kind of person who takes a bunch of selfies and is constantly texting and tweeting and stuff... but that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with that kind of thing. I just got really fed up with the over-the-top shallowness of all of these college kids.

Speaking of college kids, Dean ogling twenty-year-olds is not funny or interesting. It could have been funny if maybe Dean had tried to charm one of the girls for information and then they had made a comment about how old he was, or something. But as it was, I really don't need to see Dean being so aggressively hetero. It depresses me. Also, on a critical note, if they're going to have Dean be really interested in women, they need to be either more consistent about it, or they need to make it clear why he sometimes stops to check people out while on a case, and sometimes doesn't.

On top of all of that, this episode was just kind of... boring. I'll talk in a minute about the few things I did like, but there really weren't very many of those. The episode just sort of lacked that creativity that I like to see. It was just a vengeful spirit. Pretty standard. But that would be okay if there were some fascinating characters or complex twists and turns, or if the episode served as a way to explore something about Sam and Dean. As it was... eh.

But let's look at a few of the good things. There were some genuine moments of good humor in this episode. I loved that the GPS system said "destination dead ahead." That was a cringe-worthy pun, but I didn't care. It made me smile. I also loved the Generation X thing, and when Dean, quite sassy, told Sam to "google it" when they were talking about honoring the dead by riding in the truck. Also, apparently Cas discovered riverboat gambling. Lol.

On a more serious note, I appreciated the whole thing about the truck and its deeper meaning. Sam asks Dean: "If you died and I drove your car, you'd kill me?" and Dean responds "if you stunk her up with taquitos, probably." This was obviously just supposed to be a comedic moment, but the fact still stands that Dean has died, more than once, and that Sam has driven Dean's car on those occasions. When Dean was setting his life in order before going to Hell at the end of Season Three, he taught Sammy how to take care of the Impala. I loved the more dramatic resonances in this comedic moment.

They played "Take Me to Church!" Yes! Where the hell is the CW getting all this money to buy the rights for Taylor Swift and Hozier? Whatever's going on, I'm sure as hell not complaining.

Also, we've got this whole Mark of Cain business. There wasn't a ton of focus on it, but I like the way we're seeing Dean and Sam handle the situation in a very different way. It's such a parallel to the way Sam was about his psychic powers back in the earlier seasons. Dean was in denial, always trying to find a way to fix the problem, but Sam basically demanded that Dean kill him if it came to it. Now, Sam's the one who keeps insisting they can fix the problem, while Dean says that he just wants to keep going like normal for as long as possible. Obviously, next week's promos make it pretty clear that the A-plot has returned, and that Cain is going to be in the story again. But still, for this moment I enjoy the idea of Dean trying to figure out how to deal with this on his own. Poor Sam just wants to help, but Dean might be right - living with false hope is too hard.

I think that's all I've got. Unfortunately, I didn't think much of this episode. Better luck next week!

5/10