Supernatural Episode 8-15 Review –”Remember The Titans”

Reviews, Shows

For those of you that were more than a little dumbfounded by last week’s episode (“Man’s Best Friends With Benefits”) know that you were not alone. In fact the only bright spot of that whole evening was the brief preview we got for the upcoming installment  – “Remember The Titans”, which hit on all the right notes for me – zombies, Greek and Roman mythology and a lot of things blowing up. What can I say…I am a man of diverse tastes. Now to see if the episode was worth all of the build up I have given it in my head over the last week.

The episode opens with a nice but troubled young man named Shane walking down a deserted highway at night. In a move which is always a harbinger of good things to come, he gets struck by a drunk driver who ultimately flees the scene with the victim’s guts sprayed all over the road. When Shane is found the next day by a State Trooper he is dead…in fact overkill dead; massive injuries to his chest, legs and head. As if that wasn’t bad enough he is having his liver eaten out by a bird (a bit of a nod on what is to come). After laying there for a moment he heals wakes up and runs off into the woods. Which of course shocks the State Trooper so much he reports it to the Weekly World News which therefore quickly gets the attention of Sam and Dean.

Very much like their audience, Sam and Dean rush to the scene with the hopes of fighting some Zombies only to find Shane, a real life “Kenny from South Park” or simply a man that is killed every day in a horrific ways but cannot seem to stay dead. Sensing quite correctly that something is amiss here our heroes try to help him out except he is really not that much help since he doesn’t know who, where, or how he is. Almost immediately he is attacked in the night by a mysterious woman….which is sort of a Supernatural trademark at this point. To Shane’s surprise he fights and defeats this attacker with relative ease. However when the battle is over he drops dead of a heart attack.

The next day there comes a knock on their motel room door. It is a woman named —– and she says that not only does she knows Shane she has a son with him called Oliver. She provides a little backstory. The first time she saw Shane die was on a mountain in Europe where he was seemingly killed by an Avalanche. He revived found her and they had sex which during the act he had a heart attack and died. Jeez this guy can’t catch a break.

Being a nerd like myself, all Sam needed to hear was the word Mountain coupled with the story of Shane having his liver eaten out to start his wheels turning. He informs Dean of the story of Prometheus, the Titan, who defied the will of Zeus and imparted upon man the gift of Fire from which all knowledge and technology spring. For this crime Prometheus was sentenced to death….over and over and over again for all time.  Shane at first disbelieves this whole idea until his son has an accident and dies…which the mother informs him isn’t exactly the first time that has happened.

From there Sam and Dean purpose the usual….summon Zeus and make him remove the curse from Prometheus and his family. Things don’t quite go as planned as Zeus escapes his Devil’s trap and begins reeking havok. That is until Prometheus offers himself up as a sacrifice to finally put Zeus away for good. With the deed done no one is really that concerned, sad or otherwise interested. We don’t even get a bit like “Well, Prometheus can finally rest easy…” or “Prometheus has once again sacrificed for mankind…..”. Nope he is dead. No one cares or cries. Move on. The audience isn’t even all that sad because the character was very boring and one which we spent all this time with but still know nothing nor really care about very much.

I wasn’t lying when I said I was really excited for “Remember The Titans” and I am being honest again when I say the whole thing was very mediocre to “blah”.  The Roman and Greek gods are a wonderful collection of varied characters that are capable of being as bitchy, cruel, wonderful and evil as the rest of humanity which is why they work so well. However in this episode that all gets cast aside for one note characters and some fairly predictable storytelling. The villain of  the whole piece, Zeus, doesn’t even enter till the last ten minutes and doesn’t even really explain why he cursed Prometheus or why he could be cruel enough to pass it along to a child. We just know that he is kind of a jerk and that jerk needs to die. His daughter, Artemis, who is the goddess of hunters (could have been some fertile ground there to explore), apparently loves Prometheus but we don’t know why or if it is even mutual. We don’t know how deep her loyalty to her father is or what she feels. She just sits there and does a “face” turn at the last minute when it was needed to advance the story. It doesn’t help that all the guest stars acted flat and bored the entire time they were on screen. Not likable nor interesting. Sure it wasn’t the best script…even by Supernatural standards but the actors provided no spark to even make things passable.

There as was so much wonderful potential here that just got squandered which makes it doubly disappointing. Bad script, cardboard acting, flawed logic, no defined characters, and an ending that just sort of happens out of nowhere. At least with a stupid episode like last week’s about a cop that is a witch that has sex with his dog familiar you know something is rotten. It is cliche as all hell but it needs to be said…I shan’t be remembering the Titans and I don’t think you should either.