Supernatural Review: “Blood Brother” (Season 8, Episode 5)

With an episode focusing almost solely on fleshing out Benny and giving him a purpose in this series, “Blood Brother” remained at an almost steady pace on the border between highly intriguing and slightly lackluster with no grey area in between. Not that Benny was the one to blame – he still retained the charisma he possessed in the few minutes we previously saw him – but the whole point of his being was both cliché and wrapped in extremely vague dialogue.

Given that Supernatural has been sparse with its introduction of new characters and the fact that the only ones with actual “origin stories” are Dean and Sam, it was definitely a pleasure to see someone else get the treatment that even Castiel didn’t get. However, it just never reached the point of us particularly caring for the predicament Benny found himself in.

In this day and age, it is extremely hard to do anything new and exciting when it comes to creating a character and the world that surrounds it. Many a time do we see a television show premiere to extremely low ratings either due to poor marketing or just lack of interest. The most disappointing thing about these doomed shows is what could have been. Take Supernatural, a series that started out as a run-of-the-mill monster-of-the-week show, but found its way into territory that separated it from anything we’ve seen before. Nothing was particularly new about Dean and Sam, but given time, their characters have become deeply troubled and highly characterized.

With Benny, I hope the same comes from him. His origin story was nothing to become excited about. He was a bad boy who got in with the wrong crowd, found his reason to become a better man, and was killed because of it. However, the reason for this episode feeling a bit lackluster was not because of the few minutes Benny spent on telling Dean his story, it was because of the way they handled the rest of it – namely the reason he called for Dean’s help to begin with.

The introductory sequence gave a slight hint of promise. We didn’t know who this Quentin was and his relationship with Benny, but there was something in the way Benny spoke of Quentin that was highly intriguing in a respectful kind of way. Of course, we know why it all went down as it did, but the respect oddly and pleasantly never went away. Though we only saw a few minutes worth of Quentin, he clearly showed the same sort of charm that a “vampirate” would have – much like Benny. What broke that connection was the insane amount of vague dialogue between the two that came down to them talking about life, its troubles, and how it sucks. To top it off, we didn’t even see Quentin die. How anti-climactic.

And don’t get me started on Andrea. She was as useless a character as Vampire #7. But with all said and done, this episode was not about the present and it was not about the whole Quentin fiasco. It was about the relationships between the major characters and the flashbacks that everything was built upon – which were actually quite strong. If you take away the layers and layers of filler that were immediately presented to us, there are a number of gleaming gems to behold.

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