Supernatural episode 5.05 Fallen Idols aired this last Thursday on the CW Network and as I said in my sneak peek posting, it is the episode with the most controversial guest star the series has ever had: Paris Hilton. Yet in watching Fallen Idols, for this reviewer, her presence as a guest star wasn’t the most controversial thing to come out of the episode. I had a lot of issues with the interactions between Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles).
However before I go into my review of Supernatural episode 5.05 Fallen Idols, lets take the usual look around the fandom first and see what’s been going on.
There seems to be a mixed perception between some fans of the hit series and the CW Network of how well Supernatural season 5 is doing. The CW Network is still ecstatic about the veteran action series’ overall performance coupled with its new lead in show, The Vampire Diaries. The CW released the following stats on Friday October 9th, which was the day after the airing of Fallen Idols:
VAMPIRE DIARIES and SUPERNATURAL Make It Another Killer Thursday For The CW With Double-Digit Year-To-Year Growth Across Key Demos SUPERNATURAL Up Year-To-Year in Adults and Women 18-34. SUPERNATURAL grew 8% year-to-year in both adults 18-34 (1.4/4) and women 18-34 (1.3/3).
Sounds like a good thing to them, but Brian over at supernatural-web.net seems to think otherwise and published this statement urging fans and viewers to take action and sign a petition.
“We’re sick and tired of the way, our favorite TV-Show, Supernatural is being treated. We get the minimum of promotion and losing viewers every week. Instead of taking chances and finally starting some promotion TheCW keeps on promoting shows, which don’t seem to have a future. If you want Supernatural to get its deserved ratings, please sign up.”
I would love to hear from Supernatural viewers and fans on this concept that Brian has put forth about the promotion of Supernatural. Do you agree or disagree with the lack of promotion. Do you think a petition is the way to go?
Looking towards another issue and one that has my full backing and I think other viewers and fans might want to get behind as well is the one laid out by Clif Kosterman. Clif, as many of you know, not only guest starred in the Supernatural season 2 episode Folsom Prison Blues as the inmate named Tiny, he has also since become the bodyguard for series leads Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. On his Facebook page Clif has made the following statement on October 6 at 1:31pm, which he has kindly granted me permission to pass the word along:
“Ok Spn Superfans. It’s time for all of us to put a push on the Emmy’s. “The End” was a fantastic episode and we need to get some recognition for our boys. So get on it and get us an Emmy….lol”
While I’m not sure that “The End” is the episode that all the fans and viewers will want to rally around for an Emmy push, those who agree with Clif or just want to see the series overall and the lead actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles get Emmy recognition can start the push by going to the official Emmy Contact site or the official Emmy Twitter account.
And speaking of twitter, the last little fandom round up item concerns a statement issued by One Tree Hill actress Danneel Harris on her Twitter account at 4:40 PM Oct 9th from her API after she and some of her followers were bombarded with nasty rhetoric from a twitter account impersonating Supernatural actor Jensen Ackles:
“Jensen and Jared do not have Twitter accounts. They are fake. Sorry guys.”
As I see it, its appreciated that Danneel Harris took the time to call out the faker for what they are and she has no need to apologize for outing fakers who talk trash under the guise of Jensen Ackles or Jared Padalecki’s names.
Now on to the recap.
Before I go in-depth into my recap of 5.05 episode Fallen Idols, written by Julie Siege and directed by Jim Conway, I would like to mention the following facts as an aside to the episode. I live only 45 minutes away from Canton, Ohio, which is a thriving city that is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the William McKinley Memorial and The First Ladies’ Library. There however is no Wax Museum in Canton Ohio. Canton Ohio has a highly organized and multi-divisional police department, which includes its own CSI unit, homicide division and an Administrative division of the FBI not to mention a nearby police academy. There is no sheriff’s department. While I fully understand the concept of creative license and such, I just felt it was important to put that out there.
Another issue I feel compelled to address that is bothering me because of what I perceive to be an inaccuracy is one that seems to be perpetuated by everyone associated with the series. It has to do with that controversial guest star herself and is something which I think is doing a disservice to her and the work she did in Fallen Idols and a disservice to the storyline that was put forth as well.
Contrary to numerous statements to this affect, Paris Hilton was not *playing herself* in the Supernatural 5.05 episode Fallen Idols any more than Abraham Lincoln, James Dean or Gandhi were playing themselves. Paris Hilton hasn’t kidnapped anyone or tried to eat them or plant seeds in them (as far as we know and I’m not going to go into the issue of whether or not Hilton has tied handsome men to trees. Though I’m sure we would have read about it in the tabloids if she had!). In fairness and respect to her as an actress, it should be recognized that just like any other guest star in the series, Paris Hilton took on a role of a character outside of herself as a person. In Fallen Idols Hilton was playing an ancient pagan god who was taking the form of famous icons who are worshipped by their fans and one of the icons the ancient god impersonated was a celebrity named Paris Hilton.
In honesty and reality what Paris Hilton did in this episode was actually far more complicated than ‘playing herself’ and whether you are fan of hers or not, Hilton still deserves recognition for that. She had to convincingly play a character who was only pretending to look like Paris Hilton but was actually someone totally different: an arrogant entity that was disdainful that some mere mortal, whose only claim to being idolized was that she gets written about in the tabloids was getting the adulation the ancient god once gotten. Hilton wasn’t ‘making fun of herself’ either, she was actually being a very serious actor playing the role of an entity who, like a lot of people, was disdainful of Paris Hilton for being idolized for what seemed like nothing more relevant than being sensationalized in the media for being rich and beautiful. Hilton did a passable job of playing this character and at the same time allowing her image to be used as part of a social commentary on society’s fascination with the rich and famous and yet how necessary it is for any actor/celebrity to have fans support to feed off of in order to be ‘kept alive’ in their profession.
So like I said, whether you like her or not, Paris Hilton didn’t just cruise through this episode doing something as easy as ‘playing herself’. She did a fairly credible job of taking on the role of another persona altogether and, in my opinion, is something that should be recognized as such.
I have to admit that this episode is not going to go down as one of my favorites and certainly in my perspective hasn’t been on par with the level of excellence we’ve seen so far in season 5. I have to say in all honesty that for me its because of the writing by Julie Siege that showed, in my opinion, a basic lack of understanding of the history of the series and the characters. On a technical level many of scenes were just too abrupt and the dialog too glib for even Dean. But not all of the bad can be laid on Siege. The episode itself seemed to me to be choppy and unevenly paced under the direction of Jim Conway. I got the overall feeling of the lead actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki being yanked around from one scene to the next in a hurried manner with minimal focus on secondary characters.
To be fair, Siege did in some instances do well in capturing the characters of Sam and Dean Winchester and there were several key moments that really stand out. Dean practically turning into a giddy little boy over the idea that he might actually be setting eyes on James Dean’s infamous car “Little Bastard”. Having us the viewers and the fans being shown that for all he has been though, Dean still has that kind of innocence left in him. His little boy love for fast cars, was endearing. Of course what I have been left wondering is if the Impala has fully forgiven Dean for calling another car “baby”.
We got to see that for all he has been through, Sam is still the same in many ways and seeing him falling into the familiar pattern of research and his innate sense of being able to empathize with others was very gratifying. However the whole Gandhi thing just had a false ring to it as if where shoved into the story for the sake of wanting a reason to have a “killer Gandhi’” show up to use for comedic value. It just didn’t resonate with me and maybe I imagined what I saw, but in my perspective even Padalecki and Ackles seemed to have had a hard time “selling it” to the audience. Not that I think Sam wouldn’t admire someone like Gandhi, but that he would idolize him to such an extent that it would attract the attention of Leshi. All of Dean’s reactions to Sam’s idolizing Gandhi seemed forced and out of place as well.
Herein of course lies the crux of the biggest issue I had with this episode and keeps me from really liking it as much as the previous episodes of season 5. None of the key “brother moments” meshed or felt right to me. This had nothing to do with any thing on the part of Jensen Ackles or Jared Padalecki in their performances of the material they were giving, but had everything to do with how that material was written. As a viewer of Supernatural since the beginning of the show, I just felt like neither Julie Siege or anyone else in the writer’s room took the time to make sure what they were having the characters of Dean and especially Sam saying in this episode didn’t go against what we as the viewers and what the fans have already been told and shown. Sam Winchester, whom many have been waiting to have his moment and his say to Dean, was in my opinion really short-changed and ill-used in this episode. The moment he finally deserved was marred by the inconsistency of what was written for him.
Sam tells Dean that he went off with Ruby to get away from Dean so that Sam could feel like a grown up. As a “deangirl” my immediate response to that was “what the heck, weren’t we just told by Sam back in season 4’s I Know What You Did Last Summer’ that he turned to Ruby out of grief over missing Dean?”. Not only that, but Dean wasn’t even around when Sam made that initial decision to go off with Ruby and let her lead him around: Dean was in hell making good on his deal. In Fallen Idols the writers have Sam telling Dean that he needs to let Sam grow up and be on a more equal playing field, seeming to forget that Dean spent almost all of the strike shortened season 3 of Supernatural trying to show Sam he needed to be able to handle things on his own. What was that scene at the end of Fresh Blood all about when Dean hands over the care of the Impala to Sam and allows him to learn how to deal with fixing the car when Dean is gone if not to allow Sam to grow up and be an adult?
What were all those scenes in season two of Dean standing up to his hero John Winchester to side with Sam about the visions and the way they work together as team all about if not to acknowledge that Sam is an equal when it counts? How can Sam expect Dean to treat him like an adult after Lazarus Rising and Dean isn’t even out of Hell and back with Sam a day and Sam choose to run off with Ruby over looking out for his brother who has fallen asleep trusting Sam would be there to watch over him.
I understand that its possible the writers and the series creator Eric Kripke have come to realize that maybe they should have given Sam more justification for his actions in season 4 and his secretive behavior because a lot of fans and us viewers felt like we and Sam got cheated out his storyline by so much being hidden and left unsaid. But creating a scenario where Sam’s justification for following Ruby flies against the face of everything that we were told and shown before regarding Dean trying to allow Sam to grow up and be stronger on his own, isn’t in my opinion doing the character of Sam Winchester any favors. Plus all I can think of is what Sera Gamble said in an interview done at the 2009 Comic con where she stated that it’s sort of the nature of the storyline to show Sam Winchester failing every time he attempts to make his own decisions or be given a chance to be an equal. I can’t help but wonder what that means in regards to what we saw in Fallen Idols: are they just setting Sam Winchester up for the fall again? I hope not. He deserves better than a constant rehash and the viewers/fans deserve better as well. I hope the writers and the creator’s do better than this.
Next week is episode 5.06 of Supernatural entitled “I Believe The Children Are Our Future” and Castiel comes back into the mix. To protect the spoilerphobes, I will be doing a sneak peek and speculation on that episode in a different posting. The episode will air on the CW Network on October 15th at 9PM EST right after The Vampire Diaries.
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