Supernatural S10E15: "The Things They Carried"

Filler.

Filler with a guest we were supposed to get excited for, but filler nonetheless. A Khan worm on steroids terrorized a handful of recently returned soldiers. Sam and Dean showed up to investigate because Dean would literally rather do anything other than obsess over his Mark of Cain or watch Sam obsess over his Mark of Cain. Cole ended up with a face full of worm and got to spend some quality time with Dean and a car battery because no one spends quality time with Sam anymore.

Overall, I was kind of alarmingly bored by the whole thing.

I've said this before: There are certain expectations one has for the first episode after a hiatus, no matter the length of said hiatus. For me—and keep in mind, your mileage may vary—an ideal Supernatural return would've built off the momentum created by "The Executioner's Song" several weeks ago. Instead, "The Things They Carried" completely removed us from that story except for a few comments thrown in here and there. It hit on some of the old angst standbys: Dean torturing someone for their own good and angsting about it, Sam failing to save someone and angsting about it, but we've gone through those motions so many times in so many other scenarios that in this particular episode, they felt like lazy fallbacks. When in doubt, pull out some Season 4 dramatics. People loved Season 4. Or something.

Or Season 3, for that matter. Sam's failure to save Kit certainly harkened back to the whole failing-to-save-Dean-from-Hell storyline, while being forced to kill Kit drew upon the Winchesters' previous history with the notion of, "If you can't save 'em, kill 'em": Sam's boy king potential, being Azazel's favorite, and all the baggage that John Winchester left behind for Dean to drink over back in Season 2.

More than anything, I hope these allusions and inverted repeats are intentional and leading us toward bigger and better things for this CW stalwart. My biggest concern right now is that none of it is intentional, and this is a 10-year-old show with Season 11 on the way. However, it's because of that upcoming 11th season that I think it's fair to expect a lot more.

"The Things They Carried" certainly had its share of okay moments: I don't love Cole, but I think I prefer anti-hunter Cole to anti-Winchester Cole (it's a subtle difference). Meanwhile, the episode's few ties to the Mark of Cain were pretty good ties, at least. I'm just greedy when it comes to TV. I always want more.





CASE NOTES

– GOOOOOOORE. This was definitely one of Supernatural's grosser episodes. There's nothing wrong with that.

– Dumb Winchester Moment: Taking your damn time in locking Cole down even though he admitted he was feeling more homicidal than usual.

– Come to think of it, I didn't really care for the original Khan worm episode, "And Then There Were None," either.



