The Girl With The Dungeons & Dragons Tattoo put the Leviathan arc back front-and-centre with a powerful and important episode.
One of the main things the episode did was solidify suspicions we've been getting from the dropped hints about Dick Roman's masterplan for the human race: fatten us up and pacify us through his numerous food franchises, but then cure all major diseases and turn us into the ideal cattle for the Leviathans to feast on for all eternity.
This episode also establishes Dick Roman as a supervillain in the same ball park as Mayor Richard Wilkins from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. However, James Patrick Stuart is no Harry Groener. Yet.
Dick had obtained the hard drive from Paranoid Frank's computer - confirming once and for all that Frank is dead - but couldn't crack it, so turned it over to the star of his corporate IT team, bubbly geek Charlie Bradbury (Felicia Day).
She manages to break down Frank's firewalls, but in the process an alert is emailed to the Winchesters, who come looking for the hard drive that is packed with not only information about Dick and the Leviathans, but also about the Winchesters.
In the meantime, Charlie has also stumbled onto the truth about Dick Roman - and the management of the firm she works for - and ends up teaming with Sam and Dean. Their plan is to get Charlie back into Dick's office, so she can steal all the information off his hard drive... and hopefully find out what his interest is in his many archaeological digs around the world.
This was another cracking episode, seasoned with a healthy sprinkling of geeky in-jokes, combining Supernatural's usual monster-hunting shenanigans with the tension of a good spy movie - with Sam and Dean "running" Charlie's break-in from a van parked near-by.
If things weren't complicated enough for the brothers, they also now have the issue of Bobby's ghost hanging around. Although he was able to help them, they're concerned that his anger at Dick Roman will corrupt him into a vengeful spirit and the Bobby they know will be lost.
As in Out With The Old, the script of The Girl With The Dungeons & Dragons Tattoo did suffer from a painful contrivance that our heroes discovered the "item" Dick has been trawling the planet for just happened to be arriving at the local airport at almost the same time they learned of its existence.
However, it was such a great episode besides that, and the brothers managed to pull off a Leverage-worthy heist, that I can overlook it this time.
Felicia Day also shone in this story and while not exactly playing against type I think this is the best performance I've seen her turn in and it's almost a shame that the denouement left things such that she is unlikely to appear on the show again.
There was great chemistry between her character and the brothers and she brought a whole new skillset to their operations that could come in useful again one day.
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ReplyDeleteI gave up on Supernaturals back around season 3. I think it was an episode that had something to do with 'good' vampires which finally made me turn them off. But all these posts about the show are reviving my interest.
The "good vampires" were very much a "monster-of-the-week" and appeared in maybe two or three episodes, but overall the show is incredibly strong and exceptionally good at delivering on season-long story arcs.
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