SUPERNATURAL

SEASON TWO

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: violence, sexual content, thematic elements

Rated:

For awhile through the second season of the WB's supernatural series about two demon hunters, I honestly thought the show had lost its spark, but in a fascinating twist, it returned to the fast-paced, scary storylines that I had grown to love and engaged in a fantastic second half of the season.

In the aftermath of the horrible car crash that placed all of the Winchester boys in the hospital, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and his father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are left fearing that Dean (Jensen Ackles) may be lost to them forever. In a coma with no signs of waking, Dean is a disembodied soul floating around the hospital, forced to watch in horror as a filmy black mist sucks the last bit of life force from the people around him. Incapable of communication with his family and forced to watch his father make a tragic decision that will impact their lives forever, Dean is left with only one other wandering spirit to help him try and stop the reaper. Once returned to human form, Dean and his brother are left to cope with a devastating loss as they try and piece together their lives in the wake of great loss and personal sacrifice.

Stumbling upon a roadside bar known for its demon hunter patrons, they find unlikely allies in a former friend of their father's. Ellen (Samantha Ferris) is surprisingly closed mouth about her relationship with John, while her daughter Jo (Alona Tal) is fascinated with the boys' determination to destroy evil wherever it can be found. But when Dean falls into the company of a rogue demon hunter who makes no distinctions between good and evil threats, Sam is forced to reckon with his brother's dark side. Then there is the never-ending quest to find and destroy the demon that murdered their mother. Along the way, they encounter every conceivable kind of threat, from the ghosts of serial killers to vampires, and deal-making demons, but most of all they discover that the big baddie has devious plans that encompass a number of young men and women across the globe.

For about the first six episodes, this series bunny hopped between excellence and boredom, at least on my part. I have always felt that the strength in the show is the fact that its two protagonists are singular in their job. In that respect, I felt that adding other demon hunters was not a wise plan. It makes Dean and Sam a little less unusual and the episodes that featured heavily around fellow hunters were not as scary or intense as the rest. I did like Jo, however. She has a nice chemistry in particular with Dean, but it's less of a physical attraction than a mental one, and she has a scene late in the series with Sam that raised my hair on end. However, midseason the show really became fantastic. There were some outstanding episodes, with great emotional tension. By far the best (and most weepy) was "What Is And What Should Never Be," in which Dean experiences an alternate reality in which his mother is alive.

There's about as much content this time around as in the first season. There is some innuendo and Dean several times makes passes at girls; it's implied that he has a sexual fling with an actress in "Hollywood Babylon." But the sexual content gets graphic in "Heart," when Sam has a one night stand. The scene is quite long. Audience members might be afraid Jo is about to get raped in "Born Under a Bad Sign" (she isn't). In an alternate reality, Dean and Sam are both living with their girlfriends. Other than that, the violence is standard for the genre: demons are pumped full of bullets laced with salt; the boys are thrown through windows, across rooms, beaten up, and bloodied. Dead bodies are found hanging from the rafters. Ghosts tear out a man's heart (he's shown writing on the ground screaming), and cause another man to be dismembered by a spinning fan (unseen). Several people are shot and killed. There's a high body count.

Spiritual issues continue to be an ever-present cause for consideration. What bothered me the most was in the season premiere, when Sam used an Ouija board to talk to Dean in the spirit world. Ouija boards are nothing to play with, and I was glad it never made a repeat performance. In "Houses of the Holy," an angel is credited with telling people to go out and murder people. It turns out to be the tormented spirit of a former priest. Sam performs a minor form of a sance (much to the horror of the parish minister) in order to summon the priest so that he might speak to him. However, on the flip side, the episode also illustrates that Sam has an underlining faith in God and angels; and it is the parish minister who has the most influence on the ghost. Other than that, there's a healthy spattering of language throughout all the episodes, and another fantastic cliffhanger that leaves you counting down the days to season three. Bring it on!