13×11: Breakdown

idontneedasymbol:

This episode decided it, Davy Perez should only write dramatic eps.
This and “American Nightmare” are by far his strongest work. Not that it
was a flawless ep, but especially for s13 it was quite good. It had
some moments of genuine horror, in a way that felt (like “American
Nightmare”) very old-school, early-season SPN. The opening was entirely
predictable but still managed to be tense and engaging, and the rest of
the ep was a lot less predictable and kept us guessing even though we’d
seen the episode stills (which were annoyingly spoilerific this time
around. Frankly if I were the writer I’d have been pissed that they
showed the FBI guy without his mask, because otherwise I’m not sure I’d
have guessed him as the culprit.)

(Unanswered question, was he
actually an FBI agent who was also running a murder auction? Or was he
faking the Bureau connection too?)

Enjoyed Donna being played
seriously, she felt like the character we know, grown and expanded upon.
And kind of liked her break-up; part of me feels like it was done for
Wayward, but then Donna being free to be slashy with Jody is extra-fine
by me, and also Doug wanting out is very legitimate. And he calls her a
hero when he goes, there’s a level that, he always knew she was out of
his league, he just didn’t realize how much.

(BTW as I didn’t do a
review of 13×10 but Donna was my favorite part of that, loved her
diving as gung-ho into hunting as into anything else she does!)

(Also
I appreciated Dean’s little explanation that the time it takes to vamp
out depends on the individual, sure, I can buy that.)

The murder
auction was appropriately horrific and also plausible (though if there
are really 10K-100Ks of monsters about, wouldn’t there need to be a LOT
more auctions to feed them?) And the monsters’ chatroom comments on the
side were perfect SPN black comedy.

And Sam getting the emotions
for once, while Dean is worrying about and cooking pancakes for and
trying to help and actually successfully rescuing Sam, yes yes YESSSSSSS
– could do with even more of it (that rescue scene could’ve been
longer!) but I have missed Dean’s caring side so much, and between how
he was with Sam, and his determination to help Donna – and also him
being clever with the trucker talk – oh, there you are, Dean!

The
episode wasn’t perfect, though its biggest flaw was not its fault.
13×10 didn’t do enough to set up Sam’s loss of hope. Like, it makes
sense – he’s been holding the optimism ball for so long, and even for
Sam that’s got to get heavy. And then Kaia dying in front of them, and
Jack being gone – yeah, that’s pressure enough. But there wasn’t any
sign of what it was doing to Sam in 13×10, and until now he’s been
bearing up so improbably well against anything that happens. So his drop
into obviously deep depression at the start of this ep was more of a
question mark than their angst usually is.

But I loved that in true Sam fashion
he didn’t want to talk about it or face it, even less than Dean did
when he was going through similar. And I’m hoping that with it
unresolved at the episode’s end that it will be a continuing story,
something we’ll see him work through, with Dean.