Supernatural Review: “Southern Comfort” (Season 8, Episode 6)

Garth returns to Supernatural this week to give the boys some “Southern Comfort”. Unfortunately for him, this episode was anything but comfortable as it crawled through some truly vomit-inducing moments resulting in a complete mess. It was as if the writers and the director went, “Let’s try and make the most annoying episode ever! Flashbacks of Amelia? Check. Useless sibling banter? Check. Flashbacks of Amelia as a result of useless sibling banter? Check! Check! Check!”

Let’s talk Garth before we get into anything else: he’s a recurring character whose only existence is to remind us that the universe of Supernatural is a consistent one. Apropos to that, we usually get said character in the recap of what happened “then”. In this case, Supernatural was giving us a clear signal that this was to be an episode of humor along with a monster of the week – as is usual with Garth episodes. Knowing this, I sat down with the intention of not taking this episode too seriously and to ignore any mishaps in pacing and believability because it was only then could I write a clear-minded review.

So here we have Garth, a character who has more quirks than Sam and Dean combined: he’s a lightweight with alcohol, he’s insanely awkward, and boy does he love to hug. He’s the physical embodiment of everything Sam and Dean find annoying, which then creates the humor we all know Garth for. I for one, do not care about him. I don’t like him and I don’t hate him; he’s merely there to capture the attention of viewers in a run of the mill monster of the week episode.

His whole shtick with being Bobby’s replacement was one of the very unfortunate mishaps with this episode and possibly future ones to come. If I’m being completely honest, I was never as attached to Bobby as your average Supernatural fan – I cared about him, but his death wasn’t as effective as they made it out to be. I do however know the importance of Bobby’s character and the way he wrapped up any sort of sibling argument as efficiently as possible. As hard as Garth tried to do just that, he failed miserably and came off as forgettable.

I understand it might be part of Garth’s character to outwardly try too hard, but it felt so forced that even a character who is known for his awkwardness couldn’t pull it off. The whole Bobby’s hat, “balls”, and “idgets” was cringe-worthy and couldn’t have been more annoying – to give him credit, the only thing that worked was the phone chatter with the various hunters. Is Garth going to continue with the Bobby charade? Probably. I have no problem with it as long as they keep him to his own quirks and not Bobby’s.

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