Episode Review – Two and a Half Men

I do wonder about the show makers sometime.  While I can appreciate having a “flashback” portion in the front of the episode (or “then”), by now it’s getting to the point that it spoils what the monster of the week is.  So before I even saw the title screen my thought was, “I bet the woman just learned her husband’s a shapeshifter – I bet the baby is a shapeshifter!”

Thankfully they didn’t drag out the mystery and got to it about halfway through, with even the show giving a sense of “yeah we know you know already.”  I am surprised they didn’t do a bit of meta humor in this.  The X-files (Mitch Pileggi’s other big show) had an episode who’s first half was almost exactly like this (shapeshifter like guy knocks up a bunch of women) – one of the few X-files episodes I actually got to see.  Part of me is frustrated by the hunter’s inability to figure out what the “alpha” is doing.  It’s alive you fools!  It has a desire to breed and reproduce like most everything else alive.

Although when they were wondering whether they could kill the thing or not, my mind immediately went to chopping its head off with a silver chainsaw.  If they get around to doing that this season, this will officially be the greatest season ever!

It’s nice to see that maybe not all hunters are completely psycho, and I admit I’ve had more than a few fan fic ideas about a shape shifter hunter so I felt flattered that there was a bit of a shoutout to that.

Am I the only one that thinks the show is trying to “redeem” John Winchester’s reputation a bit?  First, notice that when asked about the baby’s name, Sam’s first thought is “John” after their real father (and Sam in seaons 4 & 5 had become much more sympathetic and understand toward their dad) while Dean picked “Bobby” their adoptive, maybe preferred father (while Dean may have worshiped John in the past, the last two seasons have drawn him much closer to Bobby – he needs to start wearing a trucker’s hat).  And yet, by episode end, Dean seems to start understanding his father more.  In fighting to not be like him, he seems to realize that maybe John wasn’t so bad – that he may have been a flawed human being, but he was still a human being.  In some ways, during this whole show run, Dean’s demonstrated the process that I think a lot of boys with fathers go through (those without fathers seem to go through a warped version of this, leading to a lot of the crime and social problems we see – but that’s an entirely different article and decades of research to go over):  worship (looking up to, wanting to be him), resentment (hatred toward, wanting to be nothing like him), acceptance (hey, he was only human, an alright guy).

I’m liking Dean and Lisa the more we get of them, and kudos to Sera Gamble for actually trying something different – something hard from a narrative standpoint.  They’re not going to take the easy way out – in some ways Dean is going to be like a trucker (see? he needs a hat): spending a long time away from the family on the road.  It obviously won’t be easy but then, no solution to the relationship will be easy save for killing her and Ben off (which would really suck and be lazy – narrative wise).  The bad part?  SPN has tried stuff in the past – think of the roadhouse, think of Bela & Ruby from season 3.  By the end of the season, the show runners realized that it “just wasn’t working” and what did they do?  I like the idea of running sitcomish situations through the SPN grinder (“Dean almost forgot their anniversary while fighting the wendigo!  Ohnoes!”) but will admit it could get tedious and old without careful handling.  On the other hand, with Ben getting a lot older, there could be some potential in teaching him the “family business” (remember when Dean said that phrase with pride?).  Yeah, I miss the days when hunters were seen a little more like EMTs, firemen, police, military, etc – doing unpleasant things that have to be done.

So in the end I give this…

A plus 1 bonus for finally bringing back the impala and the rock.  We missed you baby!