‘Sweeps Weeks’ is upon us in ‘television land’ and that means that TV series are pulling out heavy hitting first run episodes for audiences to delve into and to entice advertisers to spend their money on buying ad spots during the shows. This past week’s episode of the hit CW Network series Supernatural titled I Know What You Did Last Summer swept into the fray with a powerful storyline about how Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) dealt with his grief over losing older brother Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) to death as Dean made good on his deal with a crossroads demon that came due at the end of season 3. The episode also introduced us to Anna Milton, a woman who hears ‘angelic conversations’, which makes her target of interest for angel and demon alike. We also got to meet up with the newest demon ‘big bad, Alastair (Mark Rolston) who seems to know Dean from the older Winchester’s time spent in hell.
Despite being pre-empted in many areas by CW Affiliates choosing to air Football instead, I Know What You Did Last Summer still garnered an impressive 3.91 overnight rating which means that Supernatural continues to hit its stride and continues to gain audience approval and viewer-ship in what is considered a very ‘killer’ Thursday night time slot. Just goes to show that those Winchester brothers are kick ass tough and they have what it takes to ‘go the distance’ (cue Eye of the Tiger Music’).
Supernatural continues on into ‘Sweeps Week’ with an episode titled “Heaven and Hell,” which will air on Thursday the 20th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW and will be the last original episode of 2008! Additional new episodes of “Supernatural” will resume airing on Thursday January 15, 2009 (The day before Jensen Ackles’ big screen horror movie My Bloody Valentine: 3D opens nation wide in select theaters).
Heaven and Hell is the the second half of a two-part episode bloc, which began with I Know What You Did Last Summer and resumes right where the story left off with Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) struggling to save the mysterious Anna Milton (guest star Julie McNiven). As Anna starts to remember her past, the brothers begin to understand the reason behind Castiel and Uriel’s (guest stars Misha Collins and Robert Wisdom) desire to see her dead and ignoring the angels’ orders, they attempt to help her recover an important part of her past so she can be saved. Meanwhile, Alastair (guest star Mark Rolston) and his demons continue to try to get to Anna and the Winchesters before the angels can. Also guest starring Genevieve Cortese as ‘Ruby’ and Traci Dinwiddie as ‘Pamela Barnes.’ The teleplay for “Heaven and Hell” was written by Eric Kripke from a story by Trevor Sands and was directed by J. Miller Tobin.
Previews for Heaven and Hell indicate that viewers might get to see more of the scenes that Jensen Ackles filmed at the end of season 3 of Dean being strung from what look like meat hooks as he was being tortured in hell.
At Comic Con 2008 over the summer, I had the chance to ask Jensen Ackles about filming these scenes and what kind of special effects were involved in them and even though Jensen and I had a different idea of what I was asking about (he thought I was asking if things were done with CGI), his answer was more than I could have asked for in terms of descriptiveness and willingness to share the details with readers.
“A lot of that wasn’t visual effects, a lot of that was real,” Ackles told me as he grimaced slightly in remembrance of the process. “Especially when I was getting killed and I was getting bruised up, I had a full body suit on and blood was flying everywhere, I had to wear that thing for six hours – it was like … I don’t know if you’ve ever had corn syrup blood on you… but it’s real tacky and sticky and I had that thing on for six hours… it’s not fun.”
Describing the scene of Dean hanging in hell, Jensen Ackles elaborated on this process as well. “In the hell scene, I was actually hoisted up about 13 feet in the air with wires connected to my wrists and my ankles, and one to my belt,” He says, pointing to the areas of his body where the hooks were attached to Dean. “Just splayed out like that and trying to hold myself up was difficult. The hooks were real and they were digging into my skin and with having spent four hours in prosthetics, getting those hooks put into my , you know, back, my stomach, yeah I wish they did all that with CGI,” Ackles finished his answer with a rueful smile.
So while we are waiting for more scenes of Dean’s time in hell and finding out what happened to him while he was there, Eclipsemagazine.com readers can check out the advance teaser clips so generously provided for us by Warner Bros. Television and then tune into the CW Network this coming Thursday November 20th to watch Heaven and Hell at 9PM EST.
Thanks for the post, interview with Jensen and these three amazing clips. What more could an old fangirl want? I truly do appreciate you getting the word out about Supernatural. I really, really don’t want the boys to try and kill an angel, though. Just think of the repercussions that sort of thing would cause.
Thank you, Ms. Reed. Very nice article with pics and vids included. I’m really looking forward to this episode, but sad that there will be a 6-8 week winter hiatus after that.