SUPERNATURAL SEASON ONE EPISODES 5-8

SUPERNATURAL SEASON ONE EPISODES 5-8
By Ken Leicht

# 1.5) “Bloody Mary” – The brothers collide with the real life urban legend of Bloody Mary. It’s one of those “don’t say her name three times or else” type of deals. This one managed to be fairly scary but do we really need another RING/GRUDGE-like, herky jerky, girl ghost? I was able to let that bit slide because of the overall strength of the episode.

#1.6) “Skin” – Two of my least favorite plots on any show are trial episodes and evil twin episodes. It is the mark of a good series when it tackles one of these two dreaded plots and does it in a way that makes me not hate it. Sam pines to see old friends. While doing so, he and Jake cross paths with an evil being that can appear as somebody’s loved one. But instead of being the husband that comes home early from work, he’s really an evil psycho demon who likes to tie up women and cut them. When one of Sam’s old friends is framed for a murder by the evil force, he reaches out to his friend’s sister and tries to help.

I think this one mostly succeeded for me because the villain was fairly interesting personality-wise and because it largely skipped things I hate about stories like this (i.e. having the character put in jail and then spending an eternity trying to convince some skeptical policeman of the truth).

#1.7) “Hook Man” – This week’s urban legend is that of the Hook Man. When everyone surrounding an angry preacher and his troubled daughter meet a horrible death at the hands of the Hook Man, the brothers search for the villain’s bones so that they can end the reign of terror. Fun episode with cool villain is somewhat ruined by cheesy digital effects. Do we really need cheesy sped-up effects? Do we really need the villain to be entirely digital?...especially since it’s a man. It would be far more effective to put a guy in scary make-up. Instead, we get only the cheap digital stuff. Basically, this is my biggest problem with the series. I mean come on…it’s a horror show. Bring on the scary make-up!

#1.8) “Bugs” – The old building new houses on an evil land thing combined with a bugs on the rampage thing is handled quite well in this one. The brothers quickly figure out what’s going on but can they get the skeptical realtor and family out of harm’s way? Not without a pretty cool trapped in a house under siege by a swarm climax. The only flaw is the ending where dawn seems to come all too soon to save everybody. I mean it was only midnight when the siege started and it didn’t look like there was any let up in the attack. Why was it suddenly morning eight minutes later? Oh well….guess the show was running over and they had to cut it down. Despite that, this episode was okay cuz it’s hard to go totally wrong with insects on a rampage.