Hunted

Original Airdate: Jan 11th, 2007

 

After the amazing Croatoan, we’ve had several weeks worth of hiatus in which to puzzle over all the inquiries and issues that episode brought to the table. To speculate and build up Hunted in our minds. While finally seeing it last night, I had to try very hard to take everything, all the new information, in. To remember everything, and not to miss any disclosures, however big or small. Afterward, I found this viewing approach gave me a much wider view of this episode then of some previous ones I’ve reviewed, so I am going to review it differently as well, forgoing the full-recap, and instead writing about the individual topics that were addressed. I just hope this review turns out less convoluted than all the information swimming around in my brain right now…

The Big Reveal.
As promised by Kripke, after the requisite pre-title card slaying of an unknown character (in this case, a new psy-kid with the power to electrocute with his touch, the first since Andy’s crazy twin Ansem to openly state that he has been contacted by Yellow Eyes since the appearance of his powers, is slain in a parking lot) Hunted picks up right where Croatoan left off. The secret comes out, and it’s nothing good, though it’s not entirely unexpected either. Dean tells Sam that the last words their father told him were something, I imagine, like this, (only condensed): The demon has plans to use Sam and all of the psychics. The demon will try and manipulate these people, who are obviously elevated beyond human status, into committing horrible acts, thereby assuring they’ll be fighting on Hell’s side in an upcoming war, rather than leaving these super-powered soldiers to fight for the humans. As the brother and assigned guardian of one of the psychics (probably the most powerful, as the demon has gone through a lot of trouble to get rid of those who might have protected him in the future) Dean is charged with saving Sam. Saving his soul, keeping him from going over to Hell’s side, keeping the demon far, far away from him. Saving him. Should he fail in this, Dean could end up faced with the horrific alternative option of killing Sam, and thwarting Hell’s plans for him in that way. This, of course, explains most of Dean’s uncharacteristic actions since Dad’s departure. Determined not to let it come to fratricide, he implores Sam to give him time to think, to work out a solution, even if it means giving up life as a hunter for awhile and going M.I.A. While Dean is understandably upset about the whole ugly business, Sam’s reaction is more puzzling. He gets mad, sure, really mad. He yells at his brother for keeping such an important secret for so long, asks the appropriate questions that Dean can’t answer yet. All while continuing to drink his beer. Of course shock can make people act in strange ways, but still, I was expecting a much, much stronger response. He did, after all, just find out that the person he is closest to in the world has not only been keeping a devastating secret from him for months, but that it directly involves his possible eventual murder of him. Was it wrong of me to expect at least one punch be thrown? Then again, Sam’s passive reaction does speak volumes about his character- how can someone that can’t even raise a fist to his own betrayer possibly become evil? This strength in him may be what thwarts the demon in the end, and probably explains why Yellow Eyes seems to hate him extra.

The Newest Psychic - Ava.
Of course, Dean’s revelation isn’t completely without consequence. Sam does sneak away from his well-meaning sibling, though it isn’t in malice. Rather than wanting to get away because he is angry, he simply wishes to seek answers that he knows Dean would try and protect him from (ignorance is bliss, and all that). He has Ash list for him the psychics that fit the nursery-fire pattern- which is becoming less and less of a pattern all the time. There are only four (what?). Max (deceased last year), Andy, Sam, and the unfortunate soul we witnessed being stabbed in the beginning of the episode. Following this lead, Sam winds up in Lafayette, Indiana, where he meets a young woman named Ava, a psychic as well. Her own dream of the stabbing death a month ago apparently has her trusting her powers enough that she’s traveled from Peoria to find Sam- the victim of her latest death-vision, and warn him of his potential fate. Ever trusting Sam recruits her to help him dig up some dirt on the latest deceased psychic, and before we can say huh?, she is not only accepting Sam’s explanation of their powers, but embracing her departure from mild-mannered secretary to criminal accomplice. She helps him steal documents and tapes from the stabbing victim’s psychiatrist, and this (namely the tape) confirms what Dean has told Sam about the demon’s nefarious plans. In the end, Sam sends her back home to her fiancé, despite her admonitions that he is walking straight into her fiery death-vision by going off to liberate Dean from Gordon (we’ll get to that in a minute). Now, as an outside observer, my opinions on Ava. At first, I thought okay, this is reasonable. Strange, but believable. After having one vision come true, it makes sense that a naturally curious nature would have her seek out Sam and try and warn him, save him. Of course, she would think he was insane when he first starts spouting nonsense about how he’s psychic too, and how they’re all connected and this big evil plan and the war and blah, blah. Considering all of this, she seems to become far too cool with everything (her powers, Sam’s hunter skills, the existence of demons?!?) a little too quickly, an exclamation of ‘Dude, who are you?’ notwithstanding. Still, she and Sam have a chemistry, which makes her likeable despite her various inconsistencies- that is until the last scene of the episode leads us to believe that Sam may have let her out of his sight a little too soon. When the Winchesters travel to Peoria in an attempt to check up on her, a brutally slain fiancé, the presence of sulfur and a discarded engagement ring are all that they find. Is this the end of Ava? Has Hell finally claimed a psychic soldier, or is this the solo work of Yellow Eyes, a warning message to Sam perhaps? For now at least, we are left to guess.

The Return of Gordon.
As for Dean, as strange as he may be acting lately, some things never change. So it isn’t surprising when we learn that he has been trying to track Sam down since he first took off, calling the Roadhouse several times before Sam even arrives there, according to Ellen. After the matronly purveyor of drinks and advice has spoken with Sam, she has no qualms betraying her promise to him, telling Dean exactly where little brother is heading. When Dean arrives in Lafayette, his relief that Sam is okay is shortly overshadowed by two additional factors. First, that little brother is alone in a motel with a female- nice. And second, that OMGGORDON has tracked down Sam as well, and holy crap, he is shooting at him! The initial return of the character of Gordon is exciting, more so even than the little revelations that come from the Sam/Ava plotline. Dean, of course, wastes no time rekindling the special friendship he once had with the older hunter. You know, the kind of friendship where there’s a lot of punching in the face and threatening with guns, and that generally ends up with someone bound to a chair? Anyway, it turns out that word of Sam’s demonic connection may be spreading throughout the hunter community, and Gordon reveals to Dean that as much as he may have been dreaming of revenge since the Winchesters last left him beaten and humiliated, he isn’t here for personal reasons, but as a hunter. And Sam, as he puts it, is fair game. My favorite scene of Hunted takes place in an abandoned house where Gordon has laid his trap for Sam. Dean, tied up and at gun point, tells Sam where to find him, cleverly using a codeword (Funkytown- I don’t even want to know…) to warn his brother of Gordon’s trap. But Gordon is no slouch, and having counted on this, has his bases covered, planning on Sam coming through the back entrance where he has rigged trip-wires to set off explosives. What he hasn’t counted on, however, is Ava having already warned Sam. So did the return of the mad hunter who only sees in black-and-white live up to my expectations? Yes and no. A lot of the dialogue exchanged between him and hostage-of-sorts Dean is priceless. They can go back and forth with the best of them, their mutual dislike of each other laced with well-disguised respect. But why is Gordon so apologetic? He repeatedly tells Dean that he is sorry it has to be this way. Why is he sorry at all? After the ass-whipping Dean gave him last time? He might be psychotic, but he still sees himself as doing right in the greater scheme of things, does he not? Regardless, it’s obviously not okay to murder people in parking lots (in case you hadn’t already guessed, he was the knife wielding maniac in Ava’s first vision) because they could become evil, or to kill people while exorcising them. So he gets what he deserves in the end when, after Sam cleverly avoids his trap, he falls into a trap of Sam’s own design. Refusing to kill Gordon and confirm his view of Sam as a monster-in-the-making, and once more reassuring us that he will not go down that dark path without a fight, Sam instead calls the police, who promptly arrest the madman as he wildly shoots at the escaping brothers. Anticlimactic? Kind of. Funny? Yep. And it lends us hope that we still haven’t seen the end of Gordon, whose final expression is as good as if he had shaken his fist in the air and screamed ‘I’ll get you next time, Winchesters! Next time!’ That would have been cool. Everyone needs an archrival, right? Of course, now that he’s caught, there’s nothing to stop him from telling the police exactly how they can find a certain other fugitive we know in exchange for a bargain. Wonder if Sam even thought about that.

The Roadhouse Traitor.
Just before they go to Peoria to find out why Ava, who insisted Sam call and assure her of his still-living state once all was said and done, is not answering her phone, Dean makes a call of his own. In a scene that I was anxiously awaiting ever since Gordon revealed his hearing about Sam’s powers from his ‘Roadhouse connection’, Dean gives Ellen a royal bitching out. She was the only one who knew about Sam, after all. Right? Well, not really. Her excuse for the leaked info, that the bar is always full of hunters who are smart and figure things out, comes off as slightly lame, but there are a few obvious suspects besides her. Starting with Ellen though, we have to consider that even if she doesn’t have it in for the Winchesters (she assures Sam that she forgave John for the death of her husband a long time ago) she stated in the final scene of Simon Said that a war was coming, and there could be no more secrets if their side wanted to come out on top. So it’s possible that she could have spread what information she had about Yellow Eyes and his plan to some other hunters simply as a warning to them, and that Gordon heard about it that way. A more likely candidate, however, is Ash. Though he doesn’t seem to be bad or evil in any way, and he is obviously well trusted by the Harvelles, keep in mind that Ash as a character is completely self-serving. Any information he has offered up has come with a price, even if that price was as low as a beer, or the dregs of a beer at that. The Winchesters have in the past not only given him the means of tracking the demon itself, but have asked him about the psychics on more than one occasion. As smart as he is, it’s likely that Ash has figured out for himself the connection between Sam, the psychics, and the demon, even if he was never told outright by the brothers as Ellen was. It’s never been officially stated that Ash makes his way in the world by selling information to hunters, but it appears that that’s what he does, and so what would keep him from selling out Sam to Gordon if the price was right? His attitude regarding Sam’s newest request for information (making the monkey dance…) seems to confirm his disgruntled nature. Lastly, and I touch on this very briefly, there is the oddly absent Jo. She definitely heard Sam asking Ash about nursery fires in Simon Said and it’s highly possible she overheard his confession about his abilities to Ellen in the same episode. Her newly viewable blog (on the official WB Supernatural site) seems to go out of it’s way to highlight her past respect and admiration for Gordon. And she was none-too happy with the brothers the last time she saw them, was she? Curiouser and curiouser...

So, to jump from one Alice in Wonderland reference to another, the creepy White Rabbit opening set the stage for what was a dark and satisfying return to the series, even if it didn’t blow me away quite like the pre-hiatus episodes Croatoan and Crossroad Blues did. Maybe it was due to the brothers being separated for most of it, but their was something just odd to me about the pacing of Hunted. Ava seemed to change her song from innocent-drawn-into-a-scary-world to accepting of her strange destiny with too little strife for my comfort. Gordon, though it was funny to see him brought down a peg by the very law he lives above, well, I just expected more fire from him- less explanations and justifications of his actions, perhaps more hitting. Still good, though. One truly scary moment occurs when Sam opens the latest dead psy-kid’s closet to discover a crazy collage of yellow eyes. This speaks volumes by itself of just how harassed, how haunted the demon is trying to make these psychics feel, until maybe they think they have no option but to obey him. This is what I really liked about Hunted- for every question it answered, it seemed to raise five more. What really happened to Ava? Who is the Roadhouse’s resident Benedict Arnold? Will Dean be able to save Sam in the event that he does stray to the Darkside?

Will I lose my mind trying to figure all this out before the season finale?

Added: Jan 13th 2006

Reviewer: Amber D