Stoutlimb and his fiancee are back.

Cast

Jensen Ackles as Dean
Jared Padalecki as Sam
Ty Olsson as Benny
Misha Collins as Castiel
Liane Balaban as Amelia
Patrick Stafford as The Maker

Directed by Guy Bee
Written by Erik Kripke and Ben Edlund

Original Airdate

Original Airdate: October 31, 2012

Synopsis

Dean runs off to help Benny with some problems. Benny’s nature is revealed. Sam has chick-flick flashbacks. Dean has bloody flashbacks. The bad guys die in the end.

High Point

The high point was bringing vampires into the series. They have been done before, but the series has usually shied away from them, considering how overdone vampires have been in other shows and movies. Vampirates!

Low Point

There was a lot of flashbacks in this episode, it’s getting a bit much.

The Review

Vampirates! That hasn’t really been done that much. Dean being friends with a monster is new still. The flashbacks in this episode stole a lot of momentum from the show; I mean, how many times do we need to watch monsters getting their heads cut off in a forest? It’s getting old. 3/6 for originality because they’re still stuck doing lots of flashbacks in some forest that we are supposed to believe is some different dimension.

The effects for what happened were quite appropriate for the most part. At least three good beheading scenes. Vampires getting all fangy. Nothing over the top, but the forest called purgatory still sucked. At least the short glimpses of Hell looked real when Dean had his vacation there. 4/6.

It was good to have an old fashioned vampire nest story for a change. The “good” vampire story has been done over and over, but still, Benny is likeable. The end, and Benny’s reaction to it, was more believable. I would have puked if the vampire got all weepy for his lost love… Sparkles don’t belong in Supernatural. A bit more of the back story was fleshed out in the flashbacks, but the flashbacks with Dean felt like redundant space fillers. The back story with Sam just feels like it’s still building up to something, not much happened. We give the story 4/6.

We both felt the acting was lukewarm, but fairly strong by Ty Olsson as Benny. We found ourselves rooting for Benny but yawning about Sam and Dean. All the guests for the vampire nest did a great job, the nest and it’s politics felt real. We give the acting 5/6.

Between us, was one thumb down, and mostly one thumb up. The Sam and Dean story was mostly a yawner, but the vampire story was a bit more involving. We give it a 3/6 for emotional response.

The production was fairly solid, this felt like a typical quality produced episode, nothing unusual stood out. 5/6.

This episode was a good incremental step in the overall story arc, and was worth watching, even if it wasn’t particularly intense. We give it a 5/6.

We give this episode a score of 29 of 42.