24 April 2010

Hammer of the Gods: A Hungarian Sexy Beast Review

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He likes candies and his ladies.
Let me start this week's review by saying this: 5.19 Hammer of the Gods was a Trickster/ Gabriel centric episode.

Hammer of the Gods was teleplayed by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin, story by David Reed (who has been a script coordinator on the show for sometime). I had issues with Dabb and Loflin last time they wrote an episode, DSOTM. I thought Hammer was a much better effort by them. The episode was directed by newbie Rick Bota, who did a great job.

Was it a solid episode? Or was it a flat episode? Without having too much expectation, hugely due to the fact I know this episode was written by Dabb and Loflin, I think I have bashed them enough already, so I think I should shut my cake hole, we don't always get what we want. Anyway, I am surprised, in fact, VERY surprised I enjoyed this episode to the max!

Sad, YES! But Supernatural sent the Trickster/ Gabriel off in style.


Remember Tall Tales, Mystery Spot and Changing Channels? They all have his footprints all over them.
We know him by his mannerism and personality. He is always known as the candy loving ladies man prankster who has a soft spot on Sam in Mystery Spot. Hammer of the Gods has incorporated all these things we know about the Trickster/ Gabriel from the moment he entered the episode to finish.

Sure, not everything worked, but because I really loved seeing the Trickster/ Gabriel again and also guest appearance by Luci, I did't really care about the pagan Gods. On paper I thought this episode would focus on the Gods. I thought it was an interesting idea to mash the Judeo-Christian stories with the pagan Gods stories in one episode. I personally have not seen this done before in any movies or TV shows. So it was interesting to me to see the mix.

Supernatural
always have their own take on different kinds of folklores. We have seen episodes involving pagan Gods such as Mr and Mrs Santa (A Very Supernatural Xmas) and Leshii (Fallen Idol) before. I think it's logical for the show to ask what is the role of these Gods or other supernatural begins in the scheme of things or what they think about the apocalypse.
The scenes involving the Gods could've been written better, but to me they are not the focus of the episode, so, again, I can look past that. Lastly, I would have love to see the fight between the Gods Convention delegation and Luci to be more epic.

Intermission: spot the difference...



And now, we are back to Supernatural...

I flipping love the Trickster/ Gabriel in this episode. I have
previous mentioned that I reckoned Gabriel will help Dean and Sam, it was just a matter of time. The way he exited the show was epic in his own right. The Trickster/ Gabriel had never been too epic when it came to displaying his power. So in a way, you can't expect anything more epic than the way they've done it. I love his speech to Luci, it left me wanting more!!! Did he really die? I think so, because you can see his angel wings after Luci killed him. Casa Erotica was awesome! Only Supernatural can think of something like this!!!

Casa Erotica has revealed an
important piece of information to fans! It's not a secret and it's not spoilery at all. Dean and Sam WILL put Luci back to his cage. The next few episodes will hugely focus on finding the remaining Horseman rings and how the Winchesters will kick and lock Luci back to his cage in hell. The next few episodes will see how Dean and Sam strategically place the banana peel for Luci.

Luci discussed his evil plan with War.

I love Mark Pellegrino. He is getting soooooooo gooooooood at playing Luci. I will miss him when this is over! As Gabriel said, Luci is like a spoiled brat who crushed anything that is in his way, he hated anything that moved. I love the scene when Gabriel confronted Luci. Pellegrino interpreted the emotion so well in this scene. The moment before Luci killed Gabriel, I think I saw tears in Luci's eyes, fake or not? But after Luci killed Gabriel, he showed an emotion that I didn't expect to see. Was that a sad face from Luci? He didn't want to kill his own brother, but he had to. To me, that was an interesting reaction from Luci.

Intermission: Ghostfacers!!

Silly me! I seriously thought the GF were coming to a rescue or something! It wasn't a 'cut to commercial' transition, they actually used the special effect that is unique to GF
. What can I say? AWESOME!

And now, we are back to Supernatural...

The ending of the episode was awesome!
Luke was right about Darth Vader.... Oh wait.. wrong show... Dean was right about the Trickster/ Gabriel, there was still good in him. Casa Erotica is arguably the best WTF idea in the history of the show.

"Dean, this is me standing up!"
"This is me lying down!!"

A couple of technical notes:

- I LOVE the 'previously on'!! Love it!!
- I love the soundtrack at the end when Dean and Sam got into the car after they watched Casa Erotica. The soundtrack was so Terminator!
- Pellegrino put his own stamp on the slaughter scene.
I thought it was well done, considering the small budget they have for each episode. It's not the best, but it was great effort. It could have been a bit darker, but Pellegrino still creeped the hell out of me!

Hammer of the Gods scored 4 out of 5 stars from me. It would have been a 3 out of 5 if it wasn't the Trickster/ Gabriel and Luci.

According to TVbythenumbers, Supernatural scored 2.823mil, which was like a near season high.

2 comments:

  1. Its still just a 3 or a 3.5 for me. The Gods I thought could have been done so much better, but its the Angels really brought this episode up from just an average ep.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I give it a 4 out of 5 too. I agree, the Gods were almost irrelevant, it was all about Gabe and Luci. Also, Dean's been getting a lot of screen time lately, I'm assuming we'll see more of Sam as the next few eps unfold - seeing as what he is. I really liked this episode too. But Gabe and Luci were by far the highlight.

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