Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season – DVD Review

DVD Reviews, Reviews

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The season starts out like this: a young man wakes up in a coffin, obviously surprised to be there. He breaks through the coffin and digs up out of the ground to find himself surrounded by leveled trees. It looks like a bomb went off and the point of origin is his newly vacant grave.

Okay, so… hooked.

It’s a strong beginning to just about any story. The fact that it kicks off the fourth season of Supernatural is, at the very least, fortunate because so little of what follows lets the audience hang out to dry like this, as unsure about what’s going on as the hero, and with no helpful dialogue to get things straight. The open goes on for a bit, following the young man – Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), the moodier, straighter-laced half of the monster hunting Winchester brothers – as he gets money, food, and an earful of glass-shattering shrieking sent out from… beyond? What is it? And really, just how did he get here?

This great open soon fades from memory as we jump into the story – Dean was thought dead by his brother Sam (Jared Padelecki) and friend of the family Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver). After a tense reunion, the three go about trying to figure out exactly what brought Dean back from the other side.

Soon enough, they learn that whatever it was, even the demons they normally do battle with are pretty scared about what’s going on, too, and eventually a man named Castiel (Misha Collins) reveals himself to be the one who brought Dean back from the dead – but it’s the revelation Castiel is a angel sent from Heaven that really throws Dean for a philosophical loop and kicks the story into overdrive. Someone, it seems, wants to set Lucifer free and they’re unlocking the 66 seals that keep him in hell, one by one.

At some point after this, the series goes a bit soft on this through-line, keeping more in line with the monster-of-the-week type format. But any time it gets back to the grander vision of angels battling demons and God basically entrusting the survival of the human race to a kid from Kansas, things stay interesting.

When you get right down to it, Supernatural has one of the best premises around, even if it isn’t quite mined for all it’s worth. Two young, obviously completely insane brothers from Kansas travel the country searching out demons and killing them. This often requires killing the innocent people these demons possess, a fact that is brought up from time to time. In our world, we’d probably call these guys serial killers. Here, though, they are damned heroes, fighting the monsters the rest of us won’t even acknowledge as real. If you could sit down with either of them, you’d probably decide they were batty within five minutes. If you investigated the scenes of one of their – what do they call ’em, exorcisms? – you’d probably find some dead bodies, but not so much evidence of demons or monsters. If they were allowed to actually have Kansas accents, this could be the amazing horror version of The Dukes of Hazzard.

It’s the homogeneous casting and writing that holds this season and the show back from truly realizing its greatness. With the exception of a few folks, one of which being Jim Beaver, the casting tends to favor the pretty over the interesting. Granted, the leads need to be easy on the eyes, but when Singer takes the boys to see a trusted psychic and she turns out to be a mid-30s lady in a tank top with a totally slammin’ bod, you know that someone isn’t so much interested in details.

Then there’s the spell-it-out-for-’em writing that ruins some good moments. Like anytime one character says something like “Well, that leaves us with one question.” and then another character actually poses the question in question… I mean come on, Supernatural, where’s that trust you had in the audience during the awesome opening 10 minutes of this season? No dialogue, no clue as to what’s going on or why (it’s even better to go into season 4 completely cold with no idea what’s been going on). Why back away from that? For that matter, what part of Kansas are these guys from, exactly? Los Angeles? What exactly is the point of having the boys hail from Kansas? Why not just leave it at suburb, USA?

But this is the CW and McG and dammit, if you aren’t here to have fun then why did you come? Luxuriate in that opening, wrap your head around a truly grand plot that plays out solidly over the next 22 episodes or so and you’ll weather the low points just fine.

The show is presented in 1.78:1 and the audio is Dolby Digital Surround. Both are top notch, though the visuals tend to not go much beyond basic TV coverage.

The Mythologies of Supernatural: From Heaven to Hell – a well designed and very thorough walk through the mythologies that inspire the show. This is where the show tends to get bogged down the most, in its mythology. Nice to have all this stuff set to one side where you can put it on the steak if you want to, but otherwise leave it out of the entree altogether. (61:28)

When The Levee Breaks Audio Commentary by Robert Singer and Sera Gamble – The writer and the director of this episode do a watch and talk. (41:49)

Lucifer Rising Audio Commentary by Eric Kripke – The writer / director gives a behind the scenes talk as the episode plays out. (42:38)

Gag Reel – The cast and crew let it hang out on the set. Fart jokes and flubbed lines galore. (10:21)

Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season is definitely not classic television, but it is the rare season of a series that you can come into cold and still get a nice kick out of.







Warner Bros. Television presents Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season. Directed by: Scott Hamilton Kennedy. Starring: Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Jim Beaver, Misha Collins, Genevieve Cortese. Written by: Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, Ben Edlund, etc. Running time: 945min. Rating: NR. Released on DVD: September 1, 2009. Available at Amazon.com