Saturday 30 April 2016

Supernatural 'The Chitters' Review


This review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS for the episode to be discussed, if you do not want certain plot points or story spoilt, please do not read further.


As much as I enjoy Supernatural, some of their monster of the week episodes are beginning to get a little stale, thankfully 'The Chitters' manages to include a pair of guest characters that makes this episode a little more enjoyable than the normal outing.

When people begin disappearing in a small mountain town Sam and Dean head out to investigate and come across a mystery involving a supernatural creature the two of them have never encountered before.  It would appear that people are becoming possessed by some kind of strange creatures that send people's eyes green and drives them to have sex before they change into grey skinned 'junkless' monsters.

Sam and Dean struggle to figure out what the creatures are, until they come across another pair of hunters called Jessy and Cesar, who fill them in on the mystery, that they are on the trail of cicada demons who possess humans every twenty seven years in order to mate and produce their next generation.

Jessy and Cesar are a married couple, the series' first openly gay hunters if I'm remembering correctly, who have returned to Jessy's home town to hunt the creatures almost thirty years after they killed his older brother.

The monsters of this week's episode aren't the most memorable, and the mystery around them doesn't really go anywhere as Sam and Dean do their usual to try and figure things out but come up with nothing.  The episode is saved with the inclusion of Jessy and Cesar, who bring a new energy to the episode, as well as answers and assistance for our resident heroes.


It's nice that when the characters decide to split up into two groups the two pairs divide up, giving both Sam and Dean someone new to interact with.  This also lend Dean to have a great conversation with Cesar about how often hunters go out for revenge, but usually by the time they finally get it they're so changed that the hunt just carries on for them.

We've seen this kind of scenario play out more than once in the show, and it does raise the question of whether hunters are some kind of hero who keeps going after their own demons have been put to rest, or if the life totally destroys any chance they have of being 'normal'.  It's an interesting point that it is only briefly touched upon here, though it does come up again at the end of the episode.

By the end of the episode Jessy and Cesar have finally killed the creatures that took Jessy's brother away from him all those years before, giving Jessy the resolution he's craved since that day.  When they tell Sam and Dean that they intend to leave the hunter's life behind and raise horses on a ranch together Dean makes the choice not to ask them to help with Amara, despite them making the offer.

Whilst this might be a bad choice for the brothers because they need all of the help they can get, and Jessy and Cesar prove they're competent hunters, I think it kind of shows what Sam and Dean are fighting for.  They understand that hunting is their lives now, that they'll never do anything else, but they're fighting for others to be able to live their lives.  Jessy and Cesar have the chance to get free from the pain and the darkness that have consumed Sam and Dean, and they want to make sure that they get that.

It's a shame that the chances are that we'll never see Jessy and Cesar again, but the fact that they get their happy ending, that they're some of the few hunters we see that actually get to have a life and get away from the horrors that exist is a really uplifting and hopeful note on which to end.

'The Chitters' is something of a disposable episode, it added nothing to the overall story and didn't feature particularly memorable monsters, but it included such a sweet story in Jessy and Cesar that elevated it from forgettable to something with a little be extra.


Amy.
xx

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