Episode Review – Live Free or Twihard

Continuing with our theme of pandering, we come to this episode, which panders to my beloved brothers and sisters at ImpishIdea.  I tried having a sort of online party for everyone but things conspired against it.  I would like to thank the Drunk Fox for patronizing me with her visit.

So once again we had a bit of flashback to the godawful (pun intended?) anti-Christ episode, where the show starts out fairly humorous before switching to drama/horror – except this time it was done much better.  Here we have some horror sprinkled through the humor and even when things turn “scary”, we still have a bit of humor pop up.

At the start we have a freaky look alike to Bella/Elena (the latter is the girl from the Vampire Diaries) which is already a great touch as well as numerous lines and shout outs to the entire Twilight series.  I hadn’t laughed that hard at an intro since Changing Channels.

Then when investigating the girl’s room, we get so many great lines I couldn’t hope to pick one as the night’s best.

“These aren’t vampires.  These are douchebags.”
“He’s watching her sleep.  how’s that not rapey?”

Then at the bar:

“Is that glitter?”
“Yeah.  Helps me get laid.”
“Really?”

Dean’s shocked expression is priceless.  At least till hobo vampire attacks him.

I like the reveal that there’s a vampire cure (as if you had to guess as soon as you saw the commercial that Dean was “converting”) but enough of a “catch” to it that they can’t hope to cure every vampire they come across.  And major props to the show for pointing out how the whole ‘Twilight’ phenom would help out any real, dangerous vampires if they existed.  The “hobo’s” claim that this is “the best time in the last 600 years” sent more chills down my spine than anything else this episode.

The scene at Lisa’s where Dean “watches her sleep” while funny, probably should have been cut.  Yeah it looks like they’re going to try and get Lisa out of Dean’s life without actually killing her but here…  It just bugged me.  We’ve had a lot of Lisa & Dean of late, can we spread it out a bit, maybe use the time to see Dean with his grandpa some more?  We know that possessed people get to be aware of everything that goes on while possessed… so why haven’t the two of them brought up the whole time travel deal?  Seems like a big issue.

But it was a nice touch that as Dean was “dying as a vampire” his “life as a vampire” flashed before his eyes.  Kind of a subtle joke for SPN, way to go guys.

Oh and… another alpha?  That’s two already this season!  How many are we going to get?  Looks like this season is going to be all about a turf war between the monsters since Lucifer & his demon minions are less of a concern now (thus, they are building an army for the coming battle).  Not bad… we’ll see how well this is all executed, but I’m hoping it’s sorted out by season end.  And do all of them HAVE to be alphas?  Can’t we have just one that’s like… the oldest surviving member?

Still, for overall exploring some interesting ideas, making me laugh the hardest I have in awhile, and letting Dean finally kick some serious ass, I give this episode…

Now the real quest is… will the pandering continue?